30 Things I Want to Share
I started this post back in September when I noticed that I was exactly 30 years and 30 weeks old, thus, the 30 points I want to share. I hope you enjoy this one... going back and rereading what I had written, I realized this post was better than I originally gave it credit for. Lots of things I've learned about training, coaching, and life throughout!
- I’ve discovered that with every moment older I get, the less and less interested in material objects I become. I guess this is how real adults are able to buy things like vacation homes and afford retirement.
- Weight training does not make women gain weight, unless they are eating like they want to gain weight.
- Considering the cost of gas consumption when purchasing a car is one of the greatest financial lessons my parents ever taught me. It is also the reason why we own a Prius.
- Imposing a strict tempo is probably the most important change I’ve made in my programming over the last 4 years. Prior to that I really had very little appreciation for how powerful training the eccentric and isometric portions of every movement can be.
- Knowing you can provide well for you children is hugely satisfying.
- I frequently feel that only a handful of trainers/coaches in the world actually know how to teach a squat correctly.
- A professor I had in undergrad once told me "a Bachelor’s degree simply shows you have the ability to commit to something and finish it over a long period of time. The people at your first job will still have to teach you what you really need to know." It’s all about experience.
- Certifications mean very little. It’s, again, all about experience.
- Everyone who lives in and around DC should check out the National Arboretum. It’s a beautiful and relaxing place to unwind.
- I recently read a running book that did a much greater job explaining the importance of working at your current pacing level (i.e. % of 1RM for weights) than any weight-training book I’ve ever read. The book is Daniel’s Running Formula.
- Every trained female should be able to perform at least 3 pull-ups. I used to make excuses for myself about why I would never be able to do them… then I smartened up and figured out a great pull-up progression (see #9). After a bit of time, I found myself doing sets of 10 dead-hang pull-ups.
- Mel Siff’s Supertraining is still the most comprehensive book about anything ever written. My mind is blown every time I crack that book open. How someone produces a work like that is beyond my understanding.
- You can tell a great deal about how parents raise their children by how their kids act in the face of a challenge.
- “If you want to be fast, you have to move fast.” This is referring to bar speed in the weight room.
- “You will pass out before you die.” Another great weight room quote from a mentor of mine.
- If you’re unsure about set/rep schemes as they relate to percentage of 1RM. You MUST read Tim Kontos’ article on Prilepin’s Chart. I continue to reference this when I need solid guidance on final decisions in volume and intensity.
- Working to become less egocentric is an important endeavor to improve overall satisfaction with your life. For example, women who avoid the free weight area of a gym because “all the guys stare at me.” No they don’t. Get over yourself.
- Coaches (strength or sport) who become frustrated at athletes easily are not well equipped to be teaching in the first place. We’re teaching more than how to set a screen or do a pushup, we’re teaching life skills.
- Not having spent any time around babies before having one, I never really knew what the big-deal was… I get it now!
- Everyone should consider wearing shoes that have a zero drop or a very low drop. I don’t like the term “barefoot” shoes because you’re not barefoot. You still have shoes on they just don’t have any elevation change from heel to toe.
- You will be better off if you make an effort to go to sleep and wake up at around the same time every day (yes, weekend days are still days, so they count towards this).
- You don’t have to yell at athletes and put on a big show to get them motivated to perform. Just treat them calmly and with respect. Get excited when appropriate.
- Television is such a massive waste of time.
- Work on soft-tissue quality regularly.
- I fully believe in the idea and pursuit of the American Dream.
SAPT 2nd Annual Thanksgiving Lift: Come Join the Fun
Thanksgiving is this week. Awesome. I mean, come on, Thanksgiving rocks pretty hard. It's one of the only days of the year (if not, the only day...) where it's widely acceptable, and even encouraged, to make it your top priority to eat, sleep, play backyard football, and watch football as much as humanly possible. And then repeat as many times as you can before the day is over. Not to mention, this is the first Thanksgiving I can recall where the football games actually matter. Like, when was the last time the Lions were good?! On top of that, the 49ers are my favorite team, so it's awesome to seem them doing well for the first time since circa 2002. I have high hopes for they'll pull off something respectable this year. Admittedly, those who know me well understand that watching football is far from my favorite pastime, but I bring this up nonetheless as it's a fairly monumental shift on the Thanksgiving football side of things.
Okay, SO, since you're all going to be eating turkey and pie as far as the eye can see, and then laying down to nap shortly thereafter, what better way to start your morning than to train inside Northern Virginia's Mecca for all things awesome in the lifting department??
This Thursday morning, at 8am, SAPT will be hosting its 2nd Annual Thanksgiving Lift. All ye in the Northern Va area are welcome to to come and train with us.
Yes, you read that right. All you need to do is show up and have some fun. No excuses, either...it's early enough so that you all can finish in plenty of time to travel and/or enjoy the rest of the day feasting and relaxing.
Come on, you know you want to. Plus, you get to see all four of the SAPT coaches under one roof! While, yes, at any given moment you may find us lifting heavy things, or in a similar position as Coach Ryan in the picture below...
we are actually kind-spirited at heart, and appreciate the little things in life, namely:
- The smell of new tennis balls
- When others actually use their turn signal in traffic
- When your smoothie blends just right (you know...when all the frozen fruit and ice chops PERFECTLY and quickly, and doesn't get lodged in the blade or stuck at the top without going down to the bottom)
- Achieving that perfect, crisp brown on a s'more marshmallow without torching it
- The aroma/atmosphere of a good coffee shop
- Hitting the traffic lights just right on a busy main road
- Rescuing kittens that look like this:
Considering we will all be there, along with a fair number of the SAPT community, where ELSE would you want to be on Thanksgiving morning?
Feel free to join simply to socialize, try out new and quirky exercises/routines you may have never done before, compete in farmers walk and/or tire flip races, and render your stomach more eager than ever to go home and devour copious amounts of dead animal flesh.
And, in case you missed it last year, here are some brief clips of our 1st Annual Turkey lift:
Hope to see you there!
What is Your Secret?
Many of you may be familiar with Ross, who, I personally believe, is the only human being alive who seems to possess outstanding development of all three of his energy systems. I mean, how many people do you know that can - on any given day of the week, mind you - perform a true 1-arm pullup, deadlift over 550lbs, do 1-arm standing rollouts (with a weight vest), jump rope like he's in fast forward, and slay dragons? Below are two awesome clips that many of you have probably already seen, but I post them for those that haven't (or for those that can't get enough of this stuff):
'Nuff said.
He has accomplished what many people strive for in multiple sectors (strength, endurance, body composition, etc.). And he has done this primarily by training with minimal equipment either in his home garage or outside.
One of the things I like most about Ross is he has a great way of boiling complex topics down and communicating them in a way that makes it easy for his followers to understand. Not too long ago, I was reading some of the forums on his site, and someone asked him,
"Ross, what did you do to accomplish what you did?"
They were, of course, referring to some particular piece of equipment, or maybe a secret training methodology they hadn't heard of/tried before. The point is, they wanted to know what his "secret" was.
Ross responded with a simple yet profound piece of training advice:
Years and years of hard work.
That was it. That was all he said. I chuckled to myself at my desk, as I knew the person asking the question may have been slightly miffed and probably felt like Ross was short-changing him by not giving him a complete answer. The reality was that couldn't have been further from the truth; Ross was giving the young person probably the best thing he/she could have heard.
This got me thinking about how important the virtue of patience really is. There are countless athletes that will never see their full potential come to fruition because of impatience. Or someone whose goals lie strictly in the aesthetic realm may never succeed because it's always an "I want it now" approach.
Leo Tolstoy, the famous author of War and Peace, wrote in that very novel:
"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."
So true. And, carrying that quote over to the exercise science realm: a program written by an expert coach who perfectly manipulates intensity, frequency, exercise selection, and volume, will do nothing for someone who lacks patience. Impatience will dissolve any potential positive outcome that could be attained by intelligent program design.
Athletes and non-athletes alike will never get to where they want to be unless they're willing to fight tooth and nail, every single day, for years and years on end. If a client/athlete approaches me and is too impatient to be willing to progress through one step at a time, then I honestly can't really help them. I can't be the coach they need to take them from Point A to Point B unless they can actually understand that there is no magic pill.
I receive countless questions on a monthly basis through email, Facebook, and in-person meetings on "how can I lose this weight" or "how can I increase my vertical ten inches over the next month" or, my favorite, the good ol' "what is the best exercise I can do to make my pecs bigger?"
I've honestly boiled down my answer to:
"Eat whole, unprocessed foods. Pick up heavy things. Repeat this for years on end."
Sometimes this irritates people, but it's the truth. In fact, it makes training all the more enjoyable when you're expectations are realistic.
That's all for now...I don't think I really have a closing point, but I hope Ross's lesson to the young padawan in the beginning hits home for some of you. Years and years of hard work....well, let's all keep goin' then.
Our take on "sport specific"
Quite frequently we're asked, "Is this (insert sport here) specific training?" Here's our take: Understand that all athletes, no matter what sport, need to engage in general movements to enhance their global strength so to speak; these exercise include squats, deadlifts, rows, unilateral movements, horizontal pressing and pulling, vertical pulling etc. These are, and should be, the bread and butter of every good strength training program.
We also blend drills that have a bit more dynamic correspondence, or specificity, to one’s sport. For instance, with our baseball players we incorporate various overhead and rotational drills with light medicine balls to improve velocities on these various planes of motion.
These occur primarily in the offseason as competing for the energy to develop technical abilities is not as significant. When implementing, we're careful to not too closely mimic the intricate movement patterns required by sport, i.e. throwing a baseball, as this can lead to a hindrance in the actual development and create inconsistencies with that particular skill. Read that again; yes, mimicking too closely, or inappropriately weighting a particular movement can actually prohibit technical mastery of specific sport skill. This is why as one gets closer to a competitive season, and certainly as one is engaged in-season, we wean these drills from the student-athletes program as the acquisition and refinement of sport skills are of paramount importance during this time.
From an injury prevention stand point, we are very cognizant of the stressors placed on the body during various sports, and understand that many of these stressors transcend sports. As such we tend to focus most of our efforts on these areas in an attempt to combat the repetitive and asymmetrical nature of sport. Our efforts are also aimed to improve the shortcomings of the individual as each present their own intimate challenges.
Getting strong all day long,
Chris
For Your Reading Enjoyment
Unfortunately I'm quite short on time today, so I'm going to pass on a couple reads I think you'll enjoy. Both two-part series come from Brian St. Pierre, who keeps a fantastic website that primarily centers around nutrition. I check his site a couple times a month, and there were a few I found over the past four weeks or so that really hit home.
1. Why Pointing the Finger at Carbs is Missing the Point: Part 1 and Part 2
Here Brian does a fantastic job directing people away from idiocy and brings us back to seeing things with a clear lens. As Alwyn Cosgrove once exclaimed: "Regardless of pesticides, fructose levels, etc., people who eat the most fruits and vegetables are healthier than those who eat the least. You're going to have a hard time convincing me that the current obesity epidemic is a result of people eating too many apples!"
2. Tips for Time Management: Part 1 and Part 2
Given that I deleted my Facebook account in college to help me manage my time better, on top of the fact that my wife and I don't even pay for basic cable due to TV being an utter time-vacuum, I felt this short series really hit the nail on the head and offered some very practical+effective tools to improve one's sense of well-being.
That will do it for today. Be back soon!
Pomegranate Juice Reduces Muscle Soreness?
The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research published a paper entitled "The effect of pomegranate juice supplementation on strength and soreness after eccentric exercise" in July of 2011. Here is the abstract:
The purpose of this study was to determine if pomegranate juice supplementation improved the recovery of skeletal muscle strength after eccentric exercise in subjects who routinely performed resistance training. Resistance trained men (n = 17) were randomized into a crossover design with either pomegranate juice or placebo. To produce delayed onset muscle soreness, the subjects performed 3 sets of 20 unilateral eccentric elbow flexion and 6 sets of 10 unilateral eccentric knee extension exercises. Maximal isometric elbow flexion and knee extension strength and muscle soreness measurements were made at baseline and 2, 24, 48, 72, 96, and 168 hours postexercise. Elbow flexion strength was significantly higher during the 2- to 168-hour period postexercise with pomegranate juice compared with that of placebo (main treatment effect; p = 0.031). Elbow flexor muscle soreness was also significantly reduced with pomegranate juice compared with that of placebo (main treatment effect; p = 0.006) and at 48 and 72 hours postexercise (p = 0.003 and p = 0.038, respectively). Isometric strength and muscle soreness in the knee extensors were not significantly different with pomegranate juice compared with those using placebo. Supplementation with pomegranate juice attenuates weakness and reduces soreness of the elbow flexor but not of knee extensor muscles. These results indicate a mild, acute ergogenic effect of pomegranate juice in the elbow flexor muscles of resistance trained individuals after eccentric exercise.
Sometimes... okay, lots of times... I find strength and conditioning research to be quite limiting and, in the end, not that helpful. It's been well accepted and practiced for years that the best post-training meal to consume is a liquid meal with roughly a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio of carbs:protein.
Pomegranate juice really has nothing more substantial in it (for exercise recovery) than any other fruit juice or a sports drink. It's ALL sugar.
Take this study for what it's worth: further proof that something is better that nothing after you train. I'm sure the study participants would have been better served and demonstrated recovery in the "knee extensor muscles" if they'd been given a pomegranate drink that also included the proper ratio of carbs:protein.
Here's a SUPER simple recipe for a recovery drink I make for myself:
3-4 tbsp Nestle Quick powder
1/2 scoop protein powder
Water
Dunzo.
