Stuff to Read 3/29/12

21 Exercises For Injury Free Mass - by Bret Contreras

Here Bret makes a solid case for the fact that not all lifters are created equal, and that their exercise selection should reflect this. Yes, squatting is good for many of us, but what if you're beat up? What could you use in place of it to receive a similar strength, size, and hormonal response?

Don't get me wrong, I'm near dogmatic about the fact that a host of human issues - world hunger being one of them - could be solved with a healthy dose of squatting and deadlifting, but this article really resonated with me as sometimes we tend to "shove square pegs into round holes" in our training, instead of swallowing our pride and training SMART when the time/circumstance calls for it.

It's All About the HIPS: Kettlebell Swings! - by Kelsey Reed

Here Kelsey gives an awesome write-up on one of the most excellent booty-scultpin' exercises out there. She covers everything from learning the swing to how to implement it into your training.

Definitely a must read, as I can't tell you how many people have told me they've hurt their backs as a result of poor kettlebell swinging. Get those HIPS involved yo!!

A Strength and Conditioning Coach’s Take on Social Media - by Ryan Wood

Ryan Wood delivers a guest post on agilitysocialcues.com regarding the importance of social media for strength coaches and personal trainers. As Alwyn Cosgrove once told me at one of his small business coaching seminars that I attended, "You coaches and trainers may be great at training people, but suckwhen it comes to the marketing and business side of the equation."

Not to mention, for you strength coaches and trainers in the crowd looking for some advice on how to use social media, to your advantage and to its fullest potential, I HIGHLY recommend you keep up with what Lisa is doing with her new business over at Agility Social Cues. She REALLY knows her stuff when it comes to marketing, and is tossing out tons of free knowledge bombs over at her website on a weekly basis.

Not to mention, she walks the walk of picking up heavy things. Need I say more? Do yourself a favor and head over there.

.....That's it. Hope everyone has a great weekend.

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!

SAPT Exercise of the Week: One Arm Pushup, Band-Assisted

I'm pretty crunched for time this morning as Kelsey and I need to head to a doctor's appointment in a minute, so I need to make this brief. Strength coach Shon Grosse recently came up with a pretty brilliant way to do the one-arm pushup. I'll admit, when I first saw it I thought it was a little "foo-foo," but after trying it a few times myself, I'm sold.

It's much safer on the shoulders than the traditional one-arm pushup, and it's a tremendous challenge for the chest, shoulders, triceps, and core. This is a great option stronger individuals that train with minimal equipment (ex. at home), and/or have exhausted most other pushup variations and are looking for a new challenge:

You can raise/lower the difficulty by adjusting how high the band sits, and by toying with how you hang the band (ex. just one end or both ends hanging from an attachment). For those of you who train at home and have an Iron Gym, that's a perfect place to put the band. Here's mine at home, using a "micro" band from EliteFTS:

Shon gives a fantastic write-up on the entire exercise HERE, so I encourage you to read it if you're looking to give this a shot.

Hope you enjoy!

Runner's High Measured in Humans, Dogs, & Ferrets

Here is some pretty cool research highlighted by SweatScience. I don't so much care about the ferrets, but the measured "high" in humans and dogs is fascinating!

Aerobic Hill Sprints

Yesterday, my wife and I headed outside to a local hill to complete our first (of many) hill sprint sessions for the Spring/Summer. There is a perfect hill near our place that is very steep and will literally own you unless you are giving full effort up the entire hill. (Note: If you're wondering what the 3 primary constituents of hill sprints are that make them so awesome - and why you'd be a fool not to do them - then read THIS POST by Chris Romanow.)

Given that it was our first time sprinting (outside) since 2011, we were definitely tempted to run until our legs and hearts couldn't take it any longer, as there's something incredibly freeing and "human" about sprinting full speed outside. However, we managed to hold ourselves accountable, ensuring not to overdo it, as steep hill sprints can wreak havoc on the achilles/calves if you go too much+too soon and don't warm-up properly beforehand.

Anyway, this got me thinking: when the majority of us go out for a conditioning session, there is really no rhyme or reason to what we do. We hear that circuit training is good, so we perform a Spartan, "300-esk" circuit until we shoot our spleen out the back of our pants as we writhe around on the floor. Or, we hear that running 400m repeats will help our marathon time, so we run them until our our glutes bleed and our hamstrings no longer recognize friend from foe.

Now, let me be clear: For the average person who simply enjoys the feeling of their lungs burning and the sensation of pushing the limits of their mental+physical faculties, this is fine. I am all for having fun and sometimes we get too complex with things simply for the sake of complexity.

However, for the competing athlete, haphazardly running through conditioning drills can be the difference between a big W and getting crushed by your opponent.

It is beyond the scope of this post to go into all the different means and methods of conditioning (and which methods are best for each sport), but I'd like to touch briefly on the concept of aerobic hill sprints.

What?? How can you be aerobic if your SPRINTING? Doesn't "aerobic" imply long, slow running reserved for weaklings?

No, sir.

Aerobic Hill Sprints

With aerobic hill sprints, as long as you monitor your heart rate accordingly, you can accomplish a very "neat" training effect: you can improve the aerobic abilities of the fast twitch fibers. In essence, this will train your body to produce high levels of power over a longer period of time.

And who doesn't want that??

The aerobic system has gotten a bad rep in the industry over the past ten years or so (I'll admit, I used to shun it), when the reality is the aerobic system is probably the most important of all of them.

How to Do Them

Strength coach Joel Jamieson refers to this method as High Resistance Intervals. The work duration is short, and the resistance is high. In the case of hill sprints, our "resistance" equals the grade of the hill (hint: you want a REALLY steep one). Here's the protocol:

• Each "rep" (or run up the hill) should last 10-12 seconds. No more, no less.
• Every rep is MAXIMAL intensity. I'm not kidding, drive those knees up and elbows back as if your life depended upon it.For me personally, I pretended I was Wolverine right after adamantium was shot into my skeleton and, filled with rage, was breaking out of my container to exact revenge on those responsible for murdering Kayla.

  

• Rest to a heart rate of 130-140 beats per minute. This is critical to ensure you're actually able to give a true maximal effort on each sprint and not deplete yourself too quickly. Most importantly, this will ensure the intended adaptations of the session are actually taking place.
• Heart rate should be below anaerobic threshold. Again, this is critical. This is not the time for a vomit fest and it's key that you don't go glycolytic on these. (Yes, I have read the Tabata study, and yes, it is one of the most misunderstood and ill-applied studies in performance training history I believe).
• If you haven't sprinted in a while, start with 7-10 reps. Once you get in the swing of things, 15-20 reps should comprise an average "high resistance interval" workout.

Football and rugby athletes are an obvious group I would have do this (heck, pretty much all field athletes), on top of those in the fighting arts and military. Not to mention, aerobic hill sprints would be a staple to place in the preliminary phases of training for a triathlon or long-distance race.

And last, but not least, these are a fantastic option for those that simply love training and want to ensure they're being the most efficient with their time when they go out for conditioning. The hills are a perfect place to start, too, due to the minimal joint stress received, on top of the fact that poor running form (something I'm still working on) won't have as much as a negative impact as it would on a 5-mile run.

One of my favorite quotes by Jim Wendler is "My training plan is simple. It's three things per training session, usually done 3-4 times/week.

• Stretch
• Lift
• Sprint

That's it, and that's all you need. If you stretch hard, lift heavy, and run fast, everything else seems to take care of itself."

Couldn't have said it better myself. Now go get after it.

Friday Musings 3/23/12: Hunger Games, Stuffed Peppers, Powerlifting, Introverts

1. I went to go see the the opening night showing of The Hunger Games last night, and,  needless to say, I'm really looking forward to it.

"Wait just a minute there Stevo, didn't you just use both the past and present tense in that sentence of yours?" some of you may be asking.

First of all, don't chastise me in a condescending tone like that. Second, I'm actually writing this post on Thursday, due to the fact that I won't be getting home till past 3AM and certainly won't be up for throwing together a blog post before the Friday morning appointments at SAPT. So I thought the best way to tell you about my little jaunt over to the opening showing of Hunger Games would be to both discuss it in the past AND present tense. Did I just blow your mind?

Anyway (talking from Thursday right now), I'm realllyyyy looking forward to it. It may not hold a candle to Braveheart or Gladiator on a manliness scale, but it's going to be a fun change of pace nonetheless. I haven't gone to an opening night showing of any movie since college, so I thought The Hunger Games would be an appropriate movie to end that streak with, especially given that this was a photo I took last Fall, essentially representative of all of my Saturday mornings in November:

For those of you who haven't read it. I HIGHLY recommend it, if anything for the fact that it's "easy reading" material, and I've found that nearly every age group, and both males and females, tend to enjoy the read.

I'll keep you all posted on the movie!

2. My wife is a really good cook. Not only that, but she continually keeps me guessing with what she prepares for dinner each evening. This past Tuesday's meal was so incredible (and cool) that I wanted to share it with you all.

Enter the Stuffed Peppers:

Don't they look awesome?!? You see the recipe HERE, where Kelsey goes into detail on how to prepare them.

To you ladies and gents the crowd: You're guaranteed to woo the man or woman of your dreams by inviting them over to your place and preparing these babies. They'll be impressed by your culinary skills, I promise. AND, I'll even give you permission to take credit for the dish.

3. Jeremy Frey is one of my new favorite powerlifters. I just love how deliberate he is with everything from start to finish with his lifts. And, if there was a such thing as perfect form in powerlifting, I think Jeremy is pretty darn close.

**Check out the video for some pre-lifting inspiration (I apologize for the language in the song....I'd turn the volume down if you're at work or don't like to listen to such things)

4. At heart, I'm as introverted as they come. My wife can attest to this, as the first thing I want to do on a Friday evening - after spending the entire week surrounded by blaring music, weights crashing, and remaining the target of the myriad questions of the SAPT athletes+clients - is head to the local coffee shop (alone) and spend some time with me, myself, and Stevo, and a good book.

In fact, when I first hopped on board the "SAPT ship," Sarah and Chris (the only SAPT staff at the time) chuckled when it came up in conversation that I'm an introvert. They laughed because they, too, are introverted, and they responded with: "Wow, just what we need.....3 out of 3 staff members with introverted personalities in a business that requires 8+ hours a day with constant human interaction!"

Not to long ago, I was discussing the concept of introversion vs. extroversion with Jason, a good friend of mine,  and we were musing how, contrary to popular belief, being "good with people skills" doesn't equate to extroversion and introversion. While there are many definitions of the two personality types Jason (who is an extrovert) came up with one that I thought was pretty good:

"When you have a choice to either:

A) Be around people B) Be alone

and, more often than not, you would choose to spend time alone, you're probably introverted."

Other people have said "Depending on whether you recharge by spending time with people or spending time alone determines your personality type." I think this works in most cases, too.

Anyway, my friend (and fellow introvert), Tony Gentilcore, recently shared an awesome video on his blog by Susan Cain titled The Power of Introverts, and I thought I'd share it here for those who haven't seen it yet.

Whether you're introverted or extroverted, it will be twenty minutes well spent:

Susan is the author of a book out titled Quiet: The Power of Introverts, that I'm heavily considering picking up.

That's all, hope you all have a great weekend.

**Note: Just saw that Ryan posted a video of Jeremy Frey in his post yesterday on deadlifting. Jerk! Ah well, I guess great minds think.