Maximize Each Workout: Train Like No One is Looking

Potentially - or probably - the biggest barrier keeping most people from making progress on their goals (fitness, build muscle, fat loss, strength, etc...) is their own state of mind. That feeling like "Oh, people are watching me, so I don't want to [X]..." [look like I'm trying], [fail], [struggle], [make a weird face], etc. But, all this self-limiting behavior successfully accomplishes is self-limiting progress. I've trained all over the place in a multitude of different environments and have often been seen doing off-the-beaten-path type exercises. But, even I sometimes get a little nervous about the liklihood of drawing attention to myself. When that hesitation kicks in, here are my top 3 reminders to keep my self-limiting behavior out of the way of accomplishing my goals:

1. No one is looking. Most of the time no one cares what you're up to in your daily workout and they really are not watching. Trust in this first rule.

2. Don't let your assumptions of someone else's perceptions affect your behavior. Okay, so you're doing something attention grabbing (read: weird) in your workout. Yes, you will probably catch a few eyes, so if #1 isn't working for you. Then ask yourself this: "So, someone is watching me train, why would I stop just because they're watching?" They're probably watching to learn something new. That's what I've found over the years. No one has ever approached me to tell me I'm "wrong" - rather it usually means I'll get to have a conversation with someone new about whatever it is I'm doing. They want to learn!

3. The world doesn't revolve around you. At least in the realm of weight training - I can't actually speak for other areas. This is really the bottom line. Whether you like drawing attention to yourself or dread it, the world doesn't revolve around you. So, keep your eyes down and power through on taking a small step towards whatever is going to help you accomplish your next goal.

The point in training for fitness, building muscle, or strength is making progress towards personal goals and achieving things you, personally have never achieved before. Don't allow those self-limiting behaviors derail your success!

Give Me Strength!: The Process

It hurts.  The short-term effects from strength training often leads to pushing the body to places the mind may not want to go.  But, if the mind is open and willing, the body can be pushed to places it may not realize are possible.  Strength-training, like any activity, requires a detailed process, which focuses on daily progression.  Below are three tips to help your mind stay right as you get your body tight:

1. Goal-Setting:  It’s imperative to have daily, weekly, and monthly fitness and strength goals.  These should not just be based on weight loss/gain or amount of weight lifted.  Instead, there should be deliberate practice goals, which focus on progression.  Focus on the process of improvement rather than simply end results. Examples: Daily - Commit to trying one new exercise [pick one to help you put extra emphasis on a weak area or an area you enjoy training] for each daily training session for a month; Weekly - Commit to a weekly schedule of weight training, avoid a haphazard approach... what time does your workout begin? Don't be late!; Monthly - Did you achieve your daily and weekly goals? What does the next month look like, what are you planning to accomplish on a daily level? Is it time to do a quantitative test yet?
2. Willpower Talk:  Use committed words like “will” over words like “gotta”.  Direct attention to what you will do rather than what you gotta do.  The more you talk about will the more you will get. For example, what is your weakest area that you WILL improve to build muscle and strength? A lower body unilateral exercise, perhaps?
3. Expectation Scorecard:  Create a scorecard for yourself to grade your mental performance during a strength-workout.  Have categories like attitude, positive self-talk, energy management, etc. so that you will grade your mental-toughness.  This will hold you accountable to maximizing performance.

A couple other things to consider: what is your pre-workout preparation? It probably involves some foam rolling and a warm-up, but are you preparing your mind to take full advantage of the soon to start training session? Are you fully focused when the first set begins?

Like most things in life, success in strength training, fitness, endurance training, fat-loss, etc. is at least 50% mental. The process of engaging in a long term progressive program also teaches excellent (mental) practices that translate into many other areas of life (discipline, goal setting, enjoyment, commitment, etc.).

Circuit Training for Fitness

Picture this:

You got out of work later than ususal... perfect timing to hit rush hour at its height and extend your normal 20-minute commute to the gym into an all-out 45-minute crawl full of frustration.

By the time you get to the gym, you only have about 25 minutes before you need to leave.

What do you do? Do you literally throw in your towel and just go home? How can you possibly salvage a decent training session out of the train wreck that was the afternoon?

Circuit Training is waiting to save the day! Well, so are Time Turners, but pretty much no one has one of those things...

What is Circuit Training?

The possibilities are limited only by your imagination (and your physical capacity. I know from personal experience that performing box jumps after a barbell sumo deadlift is a baaaaad idea).

Typically, circuits are comprised of 5-8 exercises and you want to work with weights about 75-80% of your max. Translation: pick weights that you could probably perform for 8-10 challenging repetitions. String them all together, and work through the circuit with minimal rest between exercises.

In terms of time, you can set up your circuit a couple of different ways:

1. Set a particular rep goal per exercise and then set your time for 15-25 minutes and see how many rounds of the circuit you can perform.

2. Pick a number of rounds to complete and try to finish as quickly as possible. Usually, if you have about 5-8 exercises, 5 rounds will be around 20-ish minutes.

Benefits of Circuits:

1. They're a great way to improve overall conditioning without watching  your hard earned muscle mass wither away. Two recent research reviews (abstracts here and here) have found that steady state cardiovascular training can a) decrease power output (yikes! Not good for athletes that need to produce power aka: everyone) and b) compromise muscle mass (and thus strength) gains. This effect is seen most prominently when aerobic training is 3x/week for greater than 20 minutes. The metabolic pathways that aerobic and anaerobic (think strength training and sprint/interval training) are conflicting. It's very hard to maintain a large amount of muscle mass and be a long-distance runner!

Circuit training is similar, metabolically, to sprint/interval/hill training in that it preserves lean muscle mass.

Steady state cardiovascular training, on the other hand, can lead to elevated levels of cortisol (stress hormone) which can decrease the effectiveness of muscle-building hormones such as testosterone and insulin-like growth. It also encourages muscle protein break down.

While strength training too breaks down muscle tissue, the anabolic  (building) environment produced by strength training encourages repair more than the catabolic (break down) environment of aerobic training.   Strength coach Charles Poliquin says:

Whereas endurance exercises compromise anaerobic performance and body composition, anaerobic training modes such as sprint intervals and weight lifting will benefit endurance athletes if programed properly. To improve endurance performance, do a strength-type resistance training program with loads of 80 percent of the 1RM or heavier. This will train the type IIA muscle fibers so they increase the rate of force development and get faster.

Type IIA muscle fibers = strong, powerful muscles. We want those!

So if you're still with me, we'll move on to the second point.

2. It's time-efficient. After a quick dynamic warm-up and maybe a warm-up set or two of the planned exercises, the total time of a circuit should be no more than 25-minutes start to finish. 15-minutes would even be sufficient depending on the intensity of the exercise selection and weights used. Nice huh? It's just long enough to make you feel like you've worked out but not too long that you're home late for dinner.

3. (but really 2.5) Not only are they time-efficient but they're efficient in the sense that a circuit can hit a lot of muscle groups, through full ranges of motion, in one fell swoop. While a jog will really only get your legs (and, I would argue, not very well since the range of motion is small, the force production is low, and the intensity isn't that high either) and maybe some low level core activation, a circuit can be full body. Take a look at this sample:

Goblet or barbell squat x 6-8

Pushup x 8-10

Step back lunge x 6-8/side

3 Point Row x 8/side

Kettle bell swing x 10

Can you see the total body genius in that? We have lower body (both bilateral and unilateral movements), upper body (push and pull) and a delightful amount of full range of motion exercises. All of which, if one wanted, could be done with just one kettlebell.

Run through that baby 5 or 6 times and try to tell me that's not cardio. Oh wait, you can't. I can't hear you over your screaming lungs and gasping breaths.

4. Because circuits demand so much from your muscles and cardiovascular system, they're pretty calorically expensive, which means your body will be burning calories longer post-workout than they would after a lower intensity training session (aka: low-intensity, steady state cardio). On those above-linked research reviews, it was found that athletes reduced body fat when they performed high intensity exercise (sprints or circuits).

So, if you're looking for an efficient way to reduce body fat, preserve lean tissue, AND improve your cardiovascular fitness, circuit training is definitely a tool you want in your toolbox!

I feel obligated to note that strength training, solid strength training sessions, need to make up the bulk of your training week. Picking up heavy things repeatedly is the best way to build muscle and get stronger. Circuit training, while it won't make you weaker and can aid with strength gains, is inferior overall to 80-90% max lifting in terms of producing maximal strength gains. While I don't recommend basing your entire training plan around circuits, they are beneficial and even fun (yes, fun.) to throw in every once and a while.

Strength as a Foundation

On March 15, 2013 I became a regular person - well my perception of regular anyway - and I love it!

Why did I have to relinquish my super-hero status? I’ll leave it at this: I saw my dreams not just faltering, but failing. So, to get back on track, I stopped working two full-time jobs... which I had been doing for years for "fun" versus necessity. I took a break from my love-affair with iron. I also sit more than I have in about 15 years... that's a mega regular person activity!

Well, if we fast forward to today, my big dreams in life are properly realigned and effectively back within reach. But, I want to talk about what has happened to my physical foundation over that time.

SAPT’s methodology is based on the approach of Strength as a Foundation. We use various examples to explain why this is the best approach for building speed and explosiveness, but my favorite is “imagine shooting a cannon out of a canoe” sounds silly, right? Well that’s because it is. Never having operated an actual cannon myself, I can still easily imagine how ineffective and potentially dangerous it would be to try to shoot the thing out of a canoe.

The same concept holds true for performance training. If Strength as a Foundation is ignored, you’ve effectively set yourself or your child up for ineffective and potentially dangerous training.

Okay, so getting back to my little story: since becoming proudly “regular,” I’ve been working out at home and put a huge emphasis on improving my overall fitness. “Fitness” in this case meant I wanted to put a big focus on improving my cardiovascular system's functioning and efficiency. My exercise of choice? Running. And because of time limits I have only been lifting an average of 20-minutes, twice a week... but my running workouts stick around 60-90 minutes, 4-5 days a week.

Do you see where this is heading...?

I've let my foundation crack. My strength foundation. It sort of sucks. But, I planned for this to happen... I guess I just didn't know what it would feel like once I arrived. I've been lifting consistently since I was 19 years old. The longest break I’ve ever taken (up until this year) would have been a MAXIMUM of one week off from lifting. Crazy, but this 20-min/2x per week lifting has been going on for almost 4-months. With several weeks in there taken completely off from lifting.

I’ve been trying to shoot a cannon out of an ever destabilizing canoe. Attempting to keep up such a high volume, frequency, and intensity of running without maintaining my strength foundation is trouble. I’m feeling it now.

My goals have been accomplished in terms of “fitness” but I’ve been surprised what a slippery slope running that much and lifting that little has been. It’s like the losses are compounded. My knees often ache and the muscle mass in my legs (read: glutes and hamstrings) has dropped significantly.

What’s the plan and what’s the lesson?

I need to build muscle and lift weights more frequently. That’s the plan. And the lesson? As advertised, running really is detrimental to strength levels. I’m undecided about how I feel about this. Where I am in my life, running really lines up well with my mentality and goals. I can’t even begin to tell you how many excellent ideas I’ve had while running... SAPT was actually conceived during a run 6-years ago(!). But, I need to prioritize more prehab exercises to keep myself on the trails. In terms of the biggie compound lifts, eh, I’ll probably continue to take a break. 13 years straight of weight training means I’m certain the lure of the iron will pull me back when the time is right. In the meantime, I’ll continue setting a laser focus on building an amazing business and embracing my “regular” side.

Last week I attended a workshop on marketing for the small business owner. It was amazing and led by John Jantsch who is *tha guy* when it comes to this topic. As much as I believe the experience has already had a permanent and positive change on SAPT, I will try to exercise some self-control and stay on-topic. I do mention the experience for good reason: the first - and most tangible - impact from this workshop for our readers is in how we deliver content on the blog. Here are the changes you can look forward to:

1. Each month will have a theme that each primary (MWF) post will address. This month's theme: Give Me Strength!
2. We will be attempting to up our quality from an internal standpoint by actually editing posts ahead of time.
3. All this requires *gasp* planning, so posts should be more reliable with few, if any, missed posts.

Please engage if you like or hate or even have no feeling about what you read here!

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Sneaky Brownies: Healthy Fats and Fiber Right Here!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We had a great time with lots of fabulous food and fantastic family time. My family has a tradition, it's the tradition of Pie. Every year, the main even at Thanksgiving is not the turkey (we had 3...) not the side dishes (not even the whipped-with-real-cream mashed potatoes) but it's, really, about the pies.

This year, the 23-pie selection included pumpkin, pecan, key lime, S'mores, chocolate creame coconut, a General Pie-treas (my witty brothers' pie) and numerous fruity variations. Delicious!

However, I don't like pie.

I made a Not-Pie instead. Also, being the nutrition nut that I am, I made a healthy Not-Pie and I thought I would share the recipe so this holiday, there can be some desserts that are not an insulin coma waiting to happen. Here's the link to the original recipe (I love Cara's site!), and below is my not-following-the-recipe version:

- 1 can black beans, drained and rinsed

- 1/2 fairly ripe avocado

- 3 eggs

- 4 Trader Joe 100 calorie 70% dark chocolate bars, mostly melted (they were cheaper than other chocolate options...)

- About 2 Tbs of agave nectar (honey works too)

- Heaping tablespoon of Hershey's Dark Chocolate cocoa powder (yuuuummmm)

- 2 TBS stevia powder (or until it tastes good to you) I actually don't have sugar in my pantry, much to my tea-drinking mother's distress.

1. In a food processor, blend the eggs, beans and avocado until smooth. It will look like dark poop.

2. Pre-heat your oven to 350-ish (I always forget to to this first and since I'm relating how I made this delicious chocolaty goodness, I'm trying to stay true to my actually cooking technique.)

3. Melt the chocolate bars in the microwave (or stove if you have a double boiler) until their mostly melted. I'm impatient so I didn't wait for them to melt all the way. Add them into the black bean goopy-goop. Also add in the cocoa powder and agave nectar. Pulse until well blended.

4. Add stevia (or whatever sweetener you prefer) until it tastes good to you. Mine were not super sweet (like traditional brownies) but still maintained the bitter characteristic of dark chocolate. And sweet enough not to taste the black beans too.

5. Pour mixture into pan of choice; since I was making a Not-Pie, I used a circular pan, but I'm pretty sure that a rectangular pan will make no difference in taste. Cara suggests using an 8 x 8 pan and she's pretty smart.

6. Bake about 30-ish minutes or until you can poke the middle and the poker comes out clean. They'll be more fudge-like than cake-like.

Ta-daa!! Pretty easy huh? So, why should you make these this holiday season (and risk 5-year olds telling you they don't like your pie? (True story)). Reasons are as follows:

1. The recipe offers up a healthy dose of fiber, which we know is a good thing for our bodies and can be scarce during the holiday meals. Also, the fiber helps prevent blood sugar spikes and the ensuing insulin spikes, keeping a steady blood sugar level in the blood (and NO sugar crashes). The fiber also helps fill you up so you eat less.

2. There are healthy monosaturated fats in the avacado (the ones doctors are ga-ga about for healthy hearts). These fats are incorporated in cell walls (helping keep cells healthy, happy and young).

3. There is a good dose of protein from the beans and eggs (woefully lacking in most sweet things)

4. Avocado and black beans provide multiple beneficial compounds like luetin (prevents macular degeneration), vitamin E  and glutothione (both helps fight against disease and sickness, like colds, keeping you healthy during the festivities),  both contain multiple flavonoids that have anti-inflammatory properties. My favorite fact, black beans have molybdenum which is a trace element which breaks down and detoxifies the body from sulfites, compounds found in wine and salad dressing, and while only some people are sensitive to them, they can't be great to have floating around your body.

5. This is more of a personal benefit, but because they're not as sweet as most desserts, I feel less sluggish after having some.

6. The feeling of smugness knowing what is in them when people are enjoying your delightful brownies.

Band Geeks Need Strength Too!!

This past weekend I went to watch my brother, a tuba player in the Marching Virginians at Virginia Tech, play in the halftime show at football games (let's be honest, anyone who has met me quickly realizes that the band is the ONLY reason I go to football games. Blasphemous Hokie am I!) And if you're unfamiliar with the MVs and how AWESOME the tuba line is, here's a little sample:

(My brother is the one on the end closest to the camera.) Aren't they awesome? That's my bro-pod! Anyway, being the geek that I am (both a Band Geek and a Strength Geek...yup, I was in band all through high school and a bit in college!) as I watched the MVs perform I started thinking that they could really use some strength training. Not just the tuba's either! The WHOLE band would benefit from lifting heavy things that don't make music!

The MAIN point of this post (besides offering this piece of advice to my fellow band geeks: LIFT WEIGHTS!!) is that EVERYONE needs to be stronger no matter if you're an "athlete" or not. Read that again: EVERYONE NEEDS TO BE STRONGER!

Ahem, excuse me, I got a little carried away. Moving on, here are some exercises that I thought of while watching the MVs perform (and thinking back to my own marching days):

KB Swings:

Admit it, you knew I was going to say this. But seriously, this would be perfect for the tuba players doing the hokie pokie and sticking their heads in and out and shaking it all about. Check out the hip hinge (or rather, lack of) that tuba players need from the video above. Wouldn't a strong posterior chain make that easier? (especially on the 5th rendition of the Hokie Pokey)...

And then the swing:

Not only would this help make lugging the 25-45 pound tuba (technically sousaphone) up and down easier, it would prevent lower back injuries for over-enthusiastic hokie pokie-ing. Besides, swings improve cardiovascular fitness and who needs to be able to produce a lot of air without passing out more than a tuba player? (and the floutist. Fun fact: tuba players and flute players pass out more often from lack of air than any other instruments.) Every band member should swing; it'll improve their ability to make through the loooong Game Day of pre-game practice, marching and playing throughout the game. ANNND (one more thing) swings improve upper back strength and band members have to stand up straight throughout their performance, hence the need for a strong upper back.

Rows/Pullups/Chinups:

Speaking of strong upper backs, let's take a look at what the drum line has sitting on their chests:

I used to play drums and I can tell you, those instruments are NOT light! Rows, chins and pullups would be ideal to strengthen those muscles. By doing so, it will take the strain off the lower back because the upper back will be able to support the weight much more easily. (Cymbal players, I'm looking at you too! Those suckers are heavy, row/chins will also improve bicep strength which is needed in holding/clashing cymbals repeatedly.) Which leads me to my next exercise...

Planks/Anti-rotation presses/Anterior Core:

In junction with a strong upper back, a strong anterior (front side) core is CRUCIAL to preventing lower back injuries or aches while standing for long periods of time. This post highlights some exercises. I really like the landmine as there's a lot of dancing around in the bandstand so being able to resist rotation of the spine during wild cheering would be awesome!

And more anti-rotation:

Having a strong core is very, very (VERY! I'm not kidding!) important to band members who want to have a pain-free marching season.

Farmer Carrys:

This one should be obvious. Practice walking around with heavy things. Here's a post I wrote a while back about. Band geeks, read it!

And last but not least:

KB or Band-Resisted Dorsiflexion:

My high school band director used to say (or rather, shout): "I want to see 'HI MOM' written on the bottom of your shoes!!' meaning we had to march with our toes straight up to the sky (it looks nice...). Therefore, band geeks need super strong tibialis anteriors!

There are many more exercises I could list off (Pretty much everything in here) but I'll cut it here as I know band practice takes ALL of one's free time. However, I would encourage band geeks to squeeze in at least 30 minutes to improve there strength levels. And if a band geek can fit in time to get strong, then anyone can!

LET'S GO HOKIES!