Exercise & Your Body's Circadian Rhythm

Anyone who travels across time zones regularly knows quite well about the challenges of trying to quickly get your body on-board with it's new schedule. With the constant quest being to find the perfect combination of rest, food, relaxation, etc. to ease the transition quickly.

So, is there an answer?

A recent study from the University of Kentucky examines the role of "zeitgebers" - or time cues - in helping to reset the body's internal clock.

As it turns out the body has several tried and true time cues. The most common, strongest, and well-known is the role of night vs. day (or dark vs. light). Meals are also an important and well-known cue to help set the body's circadian rhythm.

But, as it turns out, scheduled exercise is also an important time cue:

These data provide evidence that the molecular circadian clock in peripheral tissues can respond to the time of exercise suggesting that physical activity contributes important timing information for synchronization of circadian clocks throughout the body.

What's the best way to quickly adjust to a major time zone change?

1. Make yourself sleep when it's dark and wake when it's light outside.
2. Eat meals at regular times (Usually have lunch in NY at 1pm? Then eat lunch at 1pm London time, too).
3. Stick with your usually scheduled training times. Don't fall for waiting for your body to tell you 11pm "feels right" for training, that will prolong the adjustment process.

Hmm, that list above looks suspiciously like good advice to follow whether your traveling or just looking for good information on how to make the most out of your day and maximize energy levels!

2012 USAPL Richmond Open: Opening Attempts

The 2012 USAPL Richmond Open is a couple days away and I’ve officially switched into competition mode.  This has been a very up and down training cycle.  I’m attributing this to trying to get used to my gear and my own impatience.  This is my first geared competition (single-ply) and I spent FAR too much time trying to get a lot of weight out of my gear.  I rushed into trying to get a lot of support out of my gear which in hindsight was the worst thing I could have done, why?  People spend years trying to figure out and use their equipment correctly; I tried to figure it all out in about 11 weeks.  This took all of my energy and focus off the NUMBER ONE thing…. Getting stronger!  Instead of spending those 11 weeks trying to get the most weight out of my equipment I should have just been trying to get stronger.  After all this time I’ve gotten VERY little help out of my equipment and didn’t get much stronger at all.  It was extremely impatient and immature of me to do that and trust me when I say I have learned from my mistakes.  I know now that learning the gear will come I just need to focus on getting strong.  With all that said I’ve sat down and examined everything that has gone on and what I hope to accomplish out of the meet and it’s quite simple…. Perform to the best of my abilities and get at least an 1100 pound total. I put all of this behind me a couple days ago and am now completely focused on the positive.  I can tell everyone one thing, no one will compete as hard as me and no one will leave it all on the platform like I will.

Opening Attempts...

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It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.  

-Theodore Roosevelt

3 Awesome Things I've Learned...

I’ve been in the strength and conditioning field for a very short time; luckily I have luck on my side and ended up surrounded by very smart people.  Whether it’s coaching, watching my colleagues coach, reading, or training myself I consistently learn something new every day.  With that said here are 3 awesome things I’ve learned both as a coach and as someone who trains.  

• Keep things simple…

If you’re an inexperienced lifter or you’re dealing with an inexperienced athlete don’t try and get to crazy; you’re not and their not as advanced as you think.  Squatting (bodyweight, goblet, barbell), deadlifting (kettlebells, trap bar, straight bar), and pressing (pushups, bench press, overhead press) are the best ways to gain strength, power, and body awareness.  If you are just starting out or are coaching someone who is just starting out you will be much better off refining these motor patterns, using progressive overload, and coupling them with unilateral movements like split squats, stepback lunges, bowler squats, single leg balancing.  I don’t care if someone is 8 years old or 50 years old these movements form the foundation for athletics and everyday life and should be learned proficiently.  Things like powercleans or Turkish getups are awesome but they are advanced.  I see absolutely no need to give them to someone who cannot squat, deadlift, or do a pushup correctly.  Milk the simplicity of the other exercises for all their worth; you or your athlete will be better for it in the long run.

• Get Experience Under the Bar…

In one of the first conversations I ever had with Sarah was her telling me I need to compete in powerlifting.  Her reasons were it would help me learn more about strength and conditioning and it would make me a better coach.  I wasn’t quite sure how competing would do both those things but I started training for powerlifting anyway.  Time has gone on since then and looking back I completely understand what she was talking about.  You cannot be a coach or a trainer unless you get experience under the bar.  I was re-watching the EliteFTS BIG seminar with Jim Wendler the other day (which everyone should watch) and he said two things that really stuck with me.  Keep in mind I’m paraphrasing here but he said something along the lines of “I have authority on the subject (strength training) because I’ve had a bar on my back, not because of a certification I have or something I read” and later “everything you want to know about lifting can be learned through training”.  These are bold statements but they are absolutely true.

If you’re a coach you need to try everything out, you need to get some scratches on you or no one will take your advice.  It’s like a tennis player telling you how to improve your golf swing because they read an article about it once, doesn’t make any sense.  And if you’re just trying to train stop reading internet articles all day long and go put a barbell on your back and squat it, go pull something heavy off the ground and then press something off your chest or over your head.  You can listen all you want to this guy or this girl but the truth is you will NEVER know what works until you do it yourself.  Get under the bar!

• Don’t Ever be Content and Always Have Fun…

This is where I feel people lose it.  No one should be content whether it’s your knowledge base, your numbers, the money your business brings in, your teaching abilities, it doesn’t matter always strive to be better.  If you’re a coach you shouldn’t ever come to a place where you say “I know everything I need to know” because you don’t.  The greatest strength coaches in the world still educate themselves and then apply it.  This is what’s going to make you and your athletes better.  If you’re just a person trying to get stronger that’s great but once you hit a specific goal, don’t stop there, make a new one.  I’m not saying don’t be happy about what you’ve done because that’s ridiculous.  You should be happy about what you’ve accomplished and you should reflect on those achievements but strive for more.

This leads into my next point of having fun while you’re doing all of this.  There hasn’t been one day where I haven’t had fun training or coaching.  Are there days where I’m tired and don’t necessarily feel like going to train?  Yeah, but by the end I had fun and am glad I did it.  And as far as coaching or teaching for that matter, if you’re not enjoying helping people get better and realize their potential than you need a new career.  That has been the best part of coaching and teaching for me is that I can truly have fun.  I can joke around with the clients and athletes and I can help them reach their goals.  People want to be so serious and mope around all the time, I don’t get it.  We have all had some bad stuff happen in our lives but its our ability to overcome that makes life great. Life is truly short and we need to enjoy it and have some fun while we’re living it.  With that said, I’ll leave you with this… because it’s funny!

Complete and Utter Randomness

Just a few random thoughts that have been running around my mind and some training videos for everyone out there. Random Thoughts:

• I’ve been struggling as of late when it comes to high school weight training either as a class or after school for sports.  It seems to be very few and far between that you have sport coaches/weight training teachers who know what they’re doing in the weight room (I’m not saying all of them).  Just talking to athletes about what they do in there blows my mind such as maxing every three weeks with terrible form, crumpling under the barbell during a squat or rounding their back and hitching a deadlift just to get the weight up.  Most of these kids can’t do a bodyweight squat correctly, why are they maxing with a barbell on their back?  I’m not trying to make people angry but it just seems ignorant when there is so much good/free information everywhere that would help these coaches and their athletes immensely.  I attribute this to one of two things, they are to prideful to admit they don’t know what they are doing or they just don’t care to find out that what they are doing is wrong and harmful.  Either way it’s unacceptable.

• The previous thought kind of led into the idea of being average. I’ve heard people for as long as I can remember talk about how they are better than “average” or that they don’t want to be just “average”.  I always thought that thinking like that was arrogant, or that they felt they were superior.  I used to be of the mindset that in order to be above average you had to be something like an astronaut, sports superstar, movie star, bill gates, you know things along those lines.  I’m assuming I thought that way because from the time I was in elementary school to the end of high school that’s what I felt I was, just average.  Why? Because I was led to believe that’s what I was by OTHER people. It wasn’t until college when I started taking my physical education and exercise science classes that I started to realize that I wasn’t “average” and that I never want to be “average”.  I started becoming more confident in my intelligence and through weight training I became more physically confident, and most importantly I stopped listening to negative people.  This all lead to me understanding that it’s OK to NOT want to be average.  Nobody should want that.  Whatever it is that you are currently doing you shouldn’t be satisfied with being average at it.  Whether you are a student, strength coach, teacher, sport coach, attorney, grounds keeper, etc. you should STRIVE to be better so you can look back when it’s all said and done and be able to say you left your mark.  Anyways the reason why this all got sparked was because I’ve been hoping this is the message that I am instilling in the athletes I work with.  There is enough negativity in the world and I REFUSE to be a negative influence when it comes to working with these kids.

• My last thought as of late is that I want to buy a truck. Really not for any other reason than to buy a Prowler to leave in the bed of the truck just so I can always have it on hand in case the mood strikes to push it.  Weird right?

Videos:

And without further delay, here are some videos to take your mind off the incoherent rant you just read….

Here are two of our female high school volleyball athletes.  I think they are just realizing that they are really strong.  SAPT is really proud of all their progress…

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The next video is of one of my training partners and GMU’s S&C graduate assistant John Delgado.  He’s currently doing Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 and he decided to get real squirrely with this 315 deadlift for what I believe is 13 reps…

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The last video is of me getting in some work for my upcoming powerlifting competition.  My training is going really well and my squats and pulls feel really fast and smooth (bench is still feeling a bit weird and wild).  I’m about 7 weeks out from the Richmond Open and I am getting all sorts of jacked up about it.

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How to Get HOOGE!

By far the question that I get asked the most by our male athletes is “how do I get bigger”.  I give them the simplest answer they could ever want yet they still for some reason don’t like what I tell them. My answer is usually along the lines of “eat food… a lot of it, all day…“ The resounding follow up from them goes something like “but I don’t want to get fat”.  At this point, in my mind, I want to just go kick down a door (figuratively speaking of course). [vsw id="q3SFXQfE4kk&feature=youtu.be" source="youtube" width="425" height="344" autoplay="no"]

I blame society.  For the last 20 years we have been told by media organizations that if we eat food we will get fat and then we are made to idolize people that look like sticks, RIDICULOUS!  Sorry, I’m digressing from the point… What was I talking about again? Oh yeah, gaining weight.

Fellas, the only way to gain muscle mass is to eat A LOT of REAL FOOD and have a sound strength and conditioning program.  Please, I beg you to get rid of the notion that you will get fat because honestly, you won’t.  The guys I get the gaining weight question from are usually 5’6”, 130-140lbs or 6’0” 165-175lbs; the last thing you should ever worry about is getting fat.  I can’t really blame you for thinking this because I was the same way when I was younger.  It wasn’t until college that I started to educate myself on the issue and ignored my ridiculous thoughts about getting fat.  I went from 5’8” 150lbs to around 6 months later weighing in at 177lbs (after trying to gain a little more muscle recently, I weigh in around 187lbs currently).  All that said I’m going to give you a list of some of the foods I ate frequently to help me reach my goals (the foods are in no specific order).

I did not measure out my food when trying to gain weight.  I don’t feel this is necessary because it ends up getting in the way and becomes a huge hassle which leads to giving up.

- 6 eggs (whole eggs, not egg whites) with a handful of cheddar cheese and a WHOLE LOT of vegetables.  Try and find whatever you can, mine consists of broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, green and red peppers.  I ate this for breakfast and sometimes dinner.  I scrambled it all up with some olive oil.  This was a great way to get in a lot of good nutrients consisting of fats, carbohydrates, and protein.

- Natural peanut butter and jelly on Arnold’s Double Fiber wheat bread and a glass of whole milk.  This was one of my favorites which is why I ate it twice a day; one of those times being after my training session in which case I would substitute a glass of whole milk with chocolate milk/one scoop vanilla why protein. I slabbed on as much peanut butter as I could. Be sure to get natural peanut butter, don’t eat that processed stuff.  If it claims to be natural but lists palm oil as an ingredient then don’t buy it; palm oil acts as a trans-fat.

- Burrito bowl from Chipotle with rice, fajitas, black beans, chicken, pico de gallo, cheese, and guacamole.  This was usually a once a week thing because of cost.  This was a great way to get in a lot of calories on a day where I was slacking or short on time.

- Stir fry diced chicken breast with as many vegetables as you can cram in.  It should consist of tomatoes, green peppers, red peppers, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, and baby spinach with olive oil and teriyaki sauce.  I usually got 3 to 4 pounds of chicken breast filets and made it all on Sunday so I could have it already prepared for the week. Again, gettin' a lot of calories while satisfying vegetable intake.  I know what you are thinking and yes you have to eat spinach, because it’s awesome and if you want to be strong like Popeye you have to eat like Popeye.

- I loved drinking smoothies because it was an awesome way to get in a boat load of good calories. The fact that it was liquid allowed it to not sit very long which allowed me to eat again quicker.  I had my own recipe but Stevo’s is far superior so I’ll give you that one.  Frozen berries, whole milk, Kefir, brazil nuts, and one scoop vanilla whey protein.  If the blender isn't full by the end… Just add more.

- West Virginia Goulash with a side of 4% milk fat cottage cheese mixed with strawberry jelly.  This is a meal that my dad (from Beaver, West Virginia) has cooked for my family forever.  It’s nothing special really, just 90/10 ground beef cooked in a pan with LITERALLY whatever vegetables you can find.  My dad uses potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, peas, corn, green beans, green peppers, and tomatoes.  As for the cottage cheese, I do like it by itself but after a while the taste takes its toll on you so I added the flare of strawberry jelly. Again, just like the chicken stir fry I would make this at the beginning of the week. If you don’t like this meal then we just can’t be friends.

A Few Things to Note…

- Every week I would rotate between the chicken stir fry and the West Virginia Goulash, a big bowl of either would be my lunch or dinner.  The peanut butter and jelly, cottage cheese with strawberry jelly, the scrambled egg dish and the smoothie would be something I ate every day, every week.  With all this I would end up eating around 5-6 times a day and drinking around 3 liters to 1 gallon of water a day.

- At this time the only supplement I took was cod liver oil because I needed extra Vitamin D due to lack on sun exposure and protein powder.  If you are trying to put on mass for the first time I highly discourage you from taking other supplements such as NO2 products and creatine products.  The reason being is not because they are bad for you (because they are NOT bad for you) it’s more so because they end up being a crutch, especially for teens.  People and again especially teens tend to think supplements are a “magic pill” and make them a staple of their diet rather than what they are; a “supplement” to your diet.  Whey protein is fine; just keep it to one scoop after your training session along with the other post workout food I listed and one scoop for your smoothie.

- If you’re reading this and saying things like “oh man, that’s unhealthy to eat that many eggs”, “I’m going to get fat if I do that”, “his cholesterol and blood pressure must be through the roof!” then I'm sorry to say, you are sorely mistaken.  If you truly believe those things then you probably don’t exercise (lift heavy things and condition) enough, you pay too much attention to bad sources of information, and you just aren’t ready to take on the challenge.  All of the products I ate were natural and either not processed or very minimally processed.  There is nothing “unhealthy” about drinking whole milk, it’s a great source of good fats and is much less processed than skim milk.  Egg yolks are fine, actually its the best part of the egg.  And, I can assure you that my cholesterol and my blood pressure are better than average.

Stop letting society dictate your life.

Breaking in a New Bench Shirt

This post is definitely a departure from SAPTstrength's usual fare (and essentially the antithesis to Stevo's Monday post). Not only are we diving headfirst into powerlifting preparation, but I'm talking about GEARED powerlifting! For the uninitiated, geared powerlifting involves using very snug fitting "shirts" and "suits" (think the tightest compression shorts or shirts you can possibly imagine and multiply that by 100) to aide in the power lifts: squat, bench, and deadlift.

So, what's the point of these aides? You can move more weight. Plain and simple. There is a huge cool-factor involved (read: ego-factor).

Up until this past summer, I had ONLY competed in geared events and I freaking loved it!

It is worth noting - and this cannot be UNDERstated - the training for geared powerlifting varies significantly from raw powerlifting. As you'll see in Sean's videos below, he has to work to simply get the bar down to his chest. He is literally having to PULL the bar down - hence why back work becomes so critical for the geared bencher. This can be very tough to imagine for someone who has never experienced a shirted bench.

Anyhow, my point here is not to convince you to be pro-gear. What I'd like to do is simply show an excellent progression to help learn the "groove" in a new bench shirt:

Sean starts his first set by touching a 3-board, the next set is to a 2-board, and the third set he is just able to touch his chest. This is a very intelligent way to learn to handle a new shirt. Some people get in them and simply pile on more and more weight until it finally touches their chest. Unfortunately, during this process they may never learn solid, safe, and effective form.

It is worth noting how well Sean is able to stay under control - you see very little, if any, breakdown in form: elbows stays tucked, chest stays up, and he is clearly actively pulling the bar down.

By the way, if you want to go to the true experts in powerlifting, you need to make your way over to EliteFTS.com and check out their training logs, the Q&A, and articles.