SAPT MailBag: The Path to SwoleCity
SAPT MailbagQ: I’m 6’1 and I weigh 160 lbs soaking wet. My goal is to get to 200 lbs by June. I work out 5 days a week. Monday & Wednesday belong to the Lower Body; leg press all day, then burn it out with hamstring curls and leg extensions. Calf raises if I took my pre-workout. I do upper body on Tuesday and Thursday. I run on Fridays. I start out with chest flys, then I grab a squat rack and knock out 4 or 5 sets of bicep curls. I’ll finish up with some lateral raises, tricep extensions and lat pulldowns. I take mass gainer before and after my workouts, but the scale hasn’t moved at all! Tell me the secret to getting ripped!
- Drew C, NY.
Drew… first of all, thanks for your question. Second of all, I’m sorry to hear about your lack of success thus far in the mass-gaining department. Luckily for you, I’m about to drop a knowledge bomb that is bound to get you moving in the right direction. Relax, take a seat, and get ready to learn.
Expectations
It’s great to have goals. Goal setting is a vital skill to possess, and it’s the first step you need to take in order to actually accomplish anything of significance. Not only that, but you’ve also put together some semblance of a plan on how to achieve your goal. That’s fantastic, but let’s take a minute to examine your goal and see how feasible it actually is.
By my count, we have about 18 weeks until the beginning of June. This means you’ll need to gain around 2.2 pounds per week to achieve your goal. When gaining mass, putting on 1-2 pounds per week is considered excellent progress. Remember, our goal is to put on lean muscle mass. Sure you could sit on the couch, drink a gallon of milk a day and eat oreos until you develop a mild case of type-II diabetes. You’ll have no problem ballooning up to 200 pounds, but how much of that weight do you think will be muscle, and how much do you think will be oreo?
Patience is key. The mass gaining process is a journey, and there’s no point in gaining weight if it doesn’t make you stronger, healthier, and manlier. A more achievable goal would be to put on 25-30 pounds by June, or extend our deadline to the end of July. With either of these strategies, we would only need to be gaining 1.5 pounds per week. A much more attainable feat that gives you a greater chance to succeed, and allows you to maximize how much muscle you will gain, while simultaneously limiting excess fat accumulation.
Diet
As convenient as mass-gaining shakes are, they aren’t magical. You may be drinking upwards of 2 mass-gaining shakes a day, but if you’re not in a calorie surplus, you’re only spinning your wheels. Hire a nutrition coach. Make an appointment for a consultation with our very own Coach Kelsey Reed, mass gaining extraordinaire. She’ll point you in the right direction, show you how to truly understand nutrition, and book you a one-way ticket to swole-city.
Most experts agree that you’ll gain about .5-1 pound of fat for every pound of muscle that you put on. Making sure to properly manipulate your food intake is vital to gaining muscle in the most efficient and effective manner. Shoot for around 1.5-2.0 g/kg of protein a day, and try to hit about a 10-15% calorie surplus. Understand that more is not always better, and it is accuracy and consistency that really matter. Examine.com, and Precision Nutrition are fantastic resources for all things diet-related. The web is wonderful place. Take advantage of it.
Exercise Selection
The average person interested in bulking up will google “workouts for getting yolked,” grab the first routine that pops up, and repeat it over and over again until they develop an over-use injury or get bored. Oftentimes, these routines are loaded with isolation exercises. They’ll consist of a chest isolation movement, a back isolation movement, a shoulder exercise, three more for your arms, and core circuit. The program will have you going to the gym 5, sometimes even 6, days a week. I’m here to let you in on a little secret...
You don’t need to be lifting 5 or 6 days a week. You’re wasting your time isolating muscles. Ditch them and start performing multi-joint, compound movements with heavy weight. Bench press, overhead press, squat, deadlift, row, perform chin-ups and push-ups until you can knock them out in your sleep. These are the “bang-for-your-buck” exercises. These are the exercises that will allow you to gradually add weight to the bar over time. They allow you to use greater loads and utilize more muscle mass, which in turn releases more growth hormone, more testosterone, enhances bone density, strength, and power.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdbTxbQQWaY
Conditioning
Believe it or not, your run on Friday is probably working against you. Long, steady state cardio is exactly the kind of thing that you want to avoid when your goal is to put on size. Instead, try higher intensity methods of conditioning. Perform hill sprints, prowler sprints, loaded carry variations, crawl variations, medicine ball slams, etc. High-intensity conditioning work and resistance training have a synergistic effect upon each other. Sprints, slams, and loaded carries, just like heavy barbell work, is going to seriously jack up your hormone production, and leave you gassed and weak-kneed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0-jd8418FU
Conclusion
Follow the above recommendations and you’ll be well on your way to gaining a respectable amount of size. Remember, individual differences will also play a huge role. Genetics are the cold, hard reality, and some of us (myself included) just aren’t as genetically gifted as others. Work with what you’ve got. Learn the how to lift with PROPER technique before you use heavy loads. We can help you with this. Book an appointment for a consultation with one of our coaches today and you won't regret it. We excel at teaching proper lifting technique, and progress our clients intelligently, systematically, and consistently. We absolutely love this stuff, and have been turning average Joes into superheros since 2007.
Use the Deadlift to Bring Your Jumping Skills to Life
The deadlift has long been associated with strength and power and an exercise frequently prescribed and executed by the wonderful athletes here at SAPT. A recent study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research examined this exercise and discovered illuminating data to further validate the positive effects this exercise has on athletic performance.
The primary purpose of the study was to examine what effect 10 weeks of deadlift training would have on rate of force development (RFD), rate of torque development (RTD), and vertical jump performance.
RFD, a person’s ability to rapidly create force, is paramount to success in sports performance. A higher RFD produces much quicker and more explosive movements. In the weight room this equates to being able to move a barbell or implement with a given load at a faster rate. On the field or court the results will be noticed in laser quick cutting and lightning fast running.
The study consisted of 18 people who completed 5 sets of 5 reps on the deadlift twice per week for 10 weeks. Utilizing pre- and post- vertical jump test results, the authors found a 7.4% increase in vertical jump height. To put that in a real world measure, it would be similar to adding about 1.75 inches to a 25in. vertical jump. Not a massive increase but certainly enough to get you closer to the ball in most cases. The study also noted marked improvements in RTD for the major lower extremity muscles groups.
The results of this study give hope to jumping athletes looking to take their athletic prowess to the next level. I feel Dan John said it best in the book Easy Strength, "If you aren't deadlifting, you aren't training."
Teaching and Improving the Vertical Jump- Strength and Power
Last week's post was all about the technique side of improving the vertical jump. Today will entail multiple videos (for those of you who don't want to read on a Monday morning) of different drills and exercises that help improve strength and power for purpose of gettin' dem ups.
The following are SAPT's go-to exercises for all of our volleyball and basketball players for improving their vertical. We have two goals:
1. Increase force output- that is, the amount of force applied to the ground. The greater the force, the greater the jump height (it's physics).
2. Increase rate of force development- as we've discussed before, how fast can an athlete apply force to the ground. The faster she can hit peak force output, the higher she'll jump (more physics).
Goblet/Barbell Squats:
Why- Squats, both goblet and barbell, increase strength/power in the hamstrings, glutes, and quads- more notably the backside muscles- all of which are the primary jumpers. An article in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that deep squatting (below parallel) was beneficial in both strength and power development. I find it interesting that partial squats actually decreased strength and power...
Deadlifts:
Why- Again, posterior chain development but also, look at the hip angle. The hip hinge of the deadlift is very similar to the hip hinge needed in the vertical jump. Not only that, we can toy around with the reps/sets/weights to either train for strength or for speed (i.e. increasing the rate of force development) both of which contribute to more air time. Above is conventional style deadlift, but sumo works too. Incidentally, I've noticed that most of our volleyball players sit into conventional more comfortably.
Kettlebell Swings:
Why- Kettlebell swings are a delightful (well, I think they're delightful) and effective way to improve power production. The Olympic lifts are touted as the best power production exercises, but I think the risk-reward ratio is skewed in the "risk's" favor for the O-lifts- mostly because they're extremely technical lifts that take a large investment of time to see the benefit. Kettlebell swings are, by comparison, fairly easy to teach and we can milk the swing for a long time to continue to increase strength and power.
Split Squat/Lunge variations:
Why- While I know that vertical jump is a bilateral movement and if I were training athletes ONLY for vertical jump tests (which are very controlled) then I would certainly prioritize squats/deadlift. However, the vast majority of the time the context these athletes will jump in, games/practice, the vertical jump will have a variety of take-off stances. Therefore, they need to be strong in a split-stance. Unilateral training also evens out imbalances and improves stabilization. Unstable athletes don't jump high.
I really, really like Bulgarian Split squats (second video)because of the extra stretch on the glute muscles of the front leg which ilicits a higher growth response. And they're hard.
Split Stance Vertical Jumps*:
Why- Speaking of split stance, we can specifically train the jump technique with this drill. I only move athletes to this drill when they've mastered the basic vertical jump technique. I like this drill a lot as it mimics what a lot of game-time scenarios will actually be, especially for outside hitters and basketball players going up for a rebound.
Vertical Jump with 180 Degree Turn:
Why- Vestibular training! How often, in a game or practice, does an athlete have to turn and jump? I'd wager the scientific measure of "a lot." While an athlete may not do the 180 in the air, the change in direction does stimulate the vestibular system and teach the athlete to orient him/herself faster.
Seated Vertical Jump:
Why- The seated part takes out most of the benefit of the countermovement (the arm swing and sitting back) which challenges the athlete to generate more force/power from the legs to achieve any semblance of height. It's a way to challenge the lower body without adding weights to the athlete.
Depth Drop to Vertical Jump:
Why- This taps into the reactive component of jumping. It helps increase rate of force development, but also trains the reaction of the athlete. Athletes will often have to jump multiple times in a row without much respite, so training their ability to rebound upon landing is advantageous.
There we have it! This should be enough to jump-start (pun totally intended) improving your/your athletes' vertical jump.
* In case you were wondering what I was listening to, it was Nightmare Before Christmas Revisited. Yes, it is awesome.
What You Need to Know About Training While Sick
It’s flu season! And with flu seasons comes the age old dilemma of figuring out if you’re too sick to train. Every trainer can attest to the dozens of emails and texts that we receive stating, “I’m kinda sick, should I still come in?” Just like every other answer we give you about training, it depends. Are you contagious? Fever? Just a cough?
The last thing you want is to make yourself worst or lessen your recovery, but the thought of missing out on all the gainz is just as maddening as the tickle in your throat! This dilemma is sure to be even more prevalentthis year considering the fact that the flu shot has missed its mark and is only 23% effective.
"Listen to your body"
Yes, I just dropped that cliché line. But honestly, it’s true. If you’re feeling unmotivated and weak from your illness, then pushing through it is not a great idea. It’s important not to mistake motivation for stupidity. Forcing one intense session while still recovering can prolong your recovery and keep you from getting back to positive training effect sooner.
The main symptoms that will excuse you from trying to get your gainz on are generally:
- If it’s anything below the neck(chest congestion/bronchitis, diarrhea/stomach issues)
- If you’re contagious…. Seriously, if you come in and get me sick, you’re getting backflips to failure in your next program
- Fever
- Wide-spread muscle aches (has potential to create compensations in your movements and cause an ineffective session)
Obviously if it’s just a runny nose or just some minor signs, get over yourself. You may need to scale the intensity, butexercise should actually help your condition. In fact there are several studies that have linked cardiorespiratory exercise to significantly reduce the likelihood of upper respiratory infections aka the common cold.
Strength training will also help to stimulate the immune system, however it’s recommended that intensities stay conservative. Higher intensity lifts can take more of a toll on the CNS and result in temporary immunodepression. This is no bueno if you’re currently fighting off an illness and could make it easy pickings for the bacteria. It’s for that reason that it’s usually a smarter idea to have a speed day or stick to about 80% effort.
With all of this being said, even if you’re too sick to train, you’re not too sick to move. Be sure to get your rest, but staying in bed all day may actually limit your recovery. The reason for this lies in your lymph.
We’re used to hearing about how important it is to get the proper nutrients and to stay hydrated while we’re sick, but not much is mentioned beyond that. When you have a fever or when you’re fighting off illness, your cellular metabolism increases. This is why the extra hydration and nutrients are key. With the increased metabolism, comes increased biproducts and waste. The lymphatic system serves to help clear this waste as well as extra fluids, nutrients and infectious material/bacteria to the closest lymph node where white blood cells do their thing to clean everything up.
The way lymph (and the bacteria, waste, fats and fluids that it carries) is transported through the bodies is through capillaries similar to veins. Unlike arteries who use the pressure created by the heart to shoot blood forward, lymph capillaries and veins rely on muscular stimulation for transportation. Their structure prevents any back-flow so that when tension is put on the segment, the fluid can only move forward. Without surrounding muscular stimulation, there is very little movement.
The lymph already doubles blood in volume within the human body, but during illness there may be even more. Ideally it serves to move that much more waste and infectious materials to the lymph nodes, but when the individual remains bed-ridden it’s all for naught. This just pulls more of the hydration from the blood and can result in lymphatic congestion when one is extra sloth-like. Without the muscular stimulus to push the lymph through its capillaries, the infectious materials, pus(gross, right?) and bacteria just pool instead. This is VERY counterproductive to getting back to health.
By giving your body certain conservative movements, you can actually help to expedite your recovery process through draining the congested lymph structures. All while helping to maintain joint mobility and peace of mind.
Movements to do while laid up
1. Bounce
Yup, bouncing up and down. It sounds silly, but it actually helps to move the lymh through the entire body. Because the body goes from a moment of weightlessness to almost double within seconds the body’s tissues go from no pressure to a lot of pressure back to back. This creates a pump-like stimulus on the tissues and helps with lymph and venous return to help clear out the congestion. It also doesn’t need to be as weird as it sounds, if you’re healthy enough you can jump rump or do jumping jacks. If you’re pretty ill you can just sit there and bounce on your bed. Or you can even do whatever this is:
2. Foam Roll
Foam rolling is rarely a bad thing. This too can help to serve as excess pressure on the tissue to improve lymph flow. It also is just good for general soft tissue health. You can increase its effectiveness on your illness if you focusing on rolling centripetally(towards your heart). This will just help to ensure more of the fluids are moved towards their respective lymph nodes and eventually back to the thoracic duct.
3. Movement Flows
Just doing light movement flows can make a world of difference in the way you feel. Again the activation will help move some fluids around, but it’ll also just help you to work on mobility, stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system and just give you some quality patterning work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SdYZk-YYJY
4. Balloon/straw breathing
There are hundreds of breathing drill variations, but choosing one that focuses on thoracic expansion and active exhalation can be extremely beneficial when you’re recovering from a flu or cold. The thoracic duct(think end of the line for lymph) sits in the thoracic cavity, obviously. By focusing on a breathing drill with these characteristics, you can create the pumping mechanism once again, but right where the lymph delivers the excess nutrients it picked up right back to the blood. It also assists in getting a good stretch out of your intercostals, which are probably pretty tight from all the coughing you’ve been doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfgBGJY4VEw
So stop being a bum and get out of your bed so that you can get back under the bar or on the field that much faster. Utilizing these movements within reason as well as covering your rest, hydration and diet can dramatically shorten the amount of time you're out.
Movement Patterning: The Why and the How.
Movement Patterning: The Why and the How. I love lifting weights. I think it's safe to say that every single person who works for SAPT, also loves lifting weights. Sometimes the very thought that people exist who actually don't enjoy the process of picking heavy objects up and putting them down again, keeps me up at night. How could you not enjoy this...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrQ7Jq1s95o
That's 462 pounds!! Insane!
BUT, before I was able to enjoy dropping down into a nice deep squat with 225 pounds on my back, I had to learn how to actually perform a proper squat in the first place. You can't be strong without first being proficient. Words to live by.
As you may have gathered, today I want to talk about the importance of becoming proficient at a movement pattern PRIOR to becoming strong at a movement pattern. It may seem obvious, but it's something that a lot of beginner lifters get wrong, and it's something that we hold in high regard when progressing our own athletes. In my opinion, possessing the ability to teach a new movement to a beginning lifter, is just as valuable (if not more so) then the ability to progress a lifter's strength levels. This is what separates the good coaches from the great coaches, and our track record of teaching proper lifting mechanics speaks for itself.
The Why?
It may seem crazy, but I've heard stories of coaches attempting to lower an athlete's squat depth by loading up the bar with more weight then they can handle and telling them to squat and hold it at the bottom, essentially using a large load to "push" the athlete into a deeper squat. I hope it's obvious to you how poor of a strategy this can be. Unsafe, unreliable, and unacceptable, we prefer to use much safer and more effective methods at SAPT.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbozu0DPcYI
During the first 6-8 weeks of lifting, the "gains" that a beginning lifter experiences is mainly a result of increases in neuromuscular efficiency. Let's take the squat for example... When you first start squatting, your body needs to adjust to the demands of the movement. Rarely can a beginner drop down into a perfect bodyweight squat without falling backward, and even more rarely are they able to do it with a barbell on their back. It's a completely new movement, and a completely new demand that we're asking our body to undertake.
Muscles are stupid. They're "good soldiers" in that they simply accept commands and follow them through. Movement originates in our central nervous system. The motor cortex of our brain is termed the "motor control center," and it's job is to send commands down our spinal cord, through our efferent nerve fibers, and into our muscles. Our muscles then perform their role as "good soldiers" and provide a response in the form of movement. Only once these motor patterns are cemented down as reliable, effective motor programs, should we begin loading these movement and training strength. Remember, like Gray Cook says, movement quality over movement quantity.
The How?
Now how do we actually go about training movements and getting our athlete's proficient at them? Drills. Sport coaches have their players perform drills in practice in order to reinforce positioning, technique, and play proficiency. It simply makes sense that one would apply similar tactics to teaching someone a new skill such as deadlifting. Let's take a look at a couple of exercises that we use at SAPT in order to teach our athletes proper deadlift technique.
The Dowel Rod Hip Hinge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lHamIPidrc
This drill is our "go-to" exercise when it comes to teaching our beginner athletes proper deadlift technique. By performing this drill properly, the athlete learns how to organize their spine in a nice, neutral fashion, and hinge at the hips instead of at the knees. This drills a great "intro" to deadlifting, but is also useful as an activation drill for more experienced lifters and acts as a good "grease the groove" movement. We'll often include this drill in an athletes warm-up, their A series, or throughout the session. Below is an example of a deadlift day template where the hip hinge drill is used to groove the deadlift pattern.
BR KB Deadlift ISO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPnyLULK9Cg
We use this next drill to teach our athletes how to set up properly and gain confidence in the bottom position. We've found it works very well to teach out clients how to properly engage their glutes, and we add a dynamic component to order to really get those suckers to fire during the lift.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uHFeR55Su0
This certainly isn't a comprehensive list of drills that we employ of SAPT, but they're effective and powerful tools for teaching proper mechanics. Jarrett Brummett, our on-staff Massage Therapist, brings up a few other drills and shows you the proper way to implement his creations in the post: 4 Drills to Clean Up a Hinge Pattern. I hope that this article helped you in some way, and please feel free to reach out if you have any questions at all. Enjoy your Thursday!
BONUS: Below is a snapshot of some of the other drills variations that ConcentricBrain has to offer!
Book Review: Power Positions by Andrea Hudy
This winter I’ve had a great opportunity to read some rather fantastic books on a variety of topics. One strength and conditioning related books I read was Power Positionsby Andrea Hudy, Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Performance at the University of Kansas. This book was a very easy read designed not only for the sports performance professional but also for parents and coaches looking to help athletes improve their athletic skill. Coach Hudy primarily works with the basketball programs at Kansas, but the book goes beyond that sport and separates athletes into three power positions that emphasize different types of training. These positions were:
Lateral or Reactive Athletes: Basketball Players, Setters and Middle Blockers, Defensive Backs
Rotational Athletes: Golfers, Tennis Players, Pitchers
Linear Moving, Speed Athlete, or Timing Athlete: Cyclists, Outfielders, Wide Receivers
The authors goes on to describe the physical requirements of each athlete based on sport and position and lays out typical methods used to train each type of athlete throughout a macrocycle. It’s complete with charts, data, and sample workouts to make the information easier to digest for the reader.
One portion of the book that I found to be very unique were the author’s descriptions of the fundamental movement qualities that she measures in athletes including:
Load: The ability to decelerate or control the body against gravity through anterior chain strength
Explode: The ability to create strength through muscle stiffness and brace against forces
Drive: The ability to overcome gravity to reach and maintain maximum speed through compliant muscular contraction in the posterior chain
To conclude, I think this book makes for a very useful resource with an abundance of information from an intelligent and experienced coach. Check it out if you are looking to increase your knowledge or are curious as to why, what, and when training is important.
