Common Beginner Mistakes - Part 3

Part 3 of the "Common Beginner Mistakes" series is underway!  Like all the great series' out there (Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Star Wars...), it's important that you check out each and every single one.  Take a look back at Part 1 and Part 2.  I'm sure you'll find a hidden gem or two in there that will help you make better progress in the weight room. As you may know, I'm a creature of habit.  I tend to order the same meal from Taco Bell (6 crunch tacos), dry my body off in the same sequence after taking a shower (I know... I'm weird), and I always choose the color blue while playing Settlers of Catan. With that, let's check out a couple of videos of incredible feats of strength.

Mistake #7 - Program Hopping

"Programs Hoppers" are a severe annoyance to all experienced strength and conditioning coaches out.  They typically suffer from a mild case of ADD, commitment issues, and a severe lack of gains.  These individuals can often be seen at your local Crossfit gym, never performing the same workout twice.  These people need a lesson in the mechanisms of musculoskeletal adaptation.  Mentioned in part 2, a major principle behind strength training is called the SAID principle.  This states that you body will form Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands.  In other words, your body will adapt to the stimulus that you apply to it, HOWEVER, it's critically important that you apply the stimulus for a sufficient period of time. If you're constantly changing the stimulus, the training effect will be negligible, and your body won't experience enough of the same stress to adapt and grow stronger.

This is why most of the established training programs are designed in blocks.  The exercise selection inside of a single block is typically static, and each block typically lasts 3-4 weeks.  This way your body has enough time to experience and adapt to the method of training.  Now, I'm not advocating doing the same exact thing for 3 weeks straight.  Another important principle of strength training is termed the Repeated Bout Effect.  This principle states that as you apply a stimulus and your body recovers and adapts to it, the same stimulus will not elicit an equal amount of adaptation.  Your body experiences a point of diminishing returns, and this is the reason we apply progressive overload and increase the weight on the bar over time.  In this way, we're applying a slightly greater stimulus, but maintaining the movement and allowing our body to adapt to greater and greater amounts of the same stress, and grow stronger because of it.  Here at SAPT, we program our clients in 4 week blocks, increasing volume over time, which in turn elicits progressive and consistent adaptation.

Mistake #8 - Sticking to the Same Program Too Long

Now, this may seem a bit contradictory to our previous point, but hear me out.  I touched briefly on the Repeated Bout Effect above, and this point of diminishing returns applies to whole strength programs/methods of training as well. Eventually, if you continue to do the same thing over and over and over again, you'll reach a point where you just aren't making measurable amounts of progress.  Once this occurs, you need to change the stimulus that you're applying to your body.  This doesn't mean do 1 week of 5/3/1, 2 weeks of the Cube Method, and follow it us with another week of Starting Strength.  You need to stick to a program to actually elicit the adaptation you are trying to achieve, and then mix it up and change the program once you've gotten all that you can from it.

This is a tricky concept, but in reality, you should be grateful for these training principles!  They allow you to gain valuable training experience.  All these programs are created using different training philosophies.  They utilize different methods of manipulating volume over time to elicit strength gains.  We're all unique human beings, and, because of this, we respond to stimuli in different ways and to different degrees.  Some people respond better to high frequency training with low to moderate intensity loads, while others adapt more efficiently to lower volume, high intensity training plans.  You may not respond to a training program in the same exact manner as your best friend, and you also may not adapt as well the second time you perform a program.  As you become more and more experience in strength training, you'll discover what works best for you.  You'll discover the style of training that meshes with your personality, lifestyle, and preferences, and, with a little bit of patience, you'll develop a system of eliciting strength gains progressively.

The A Skip

Today we will take a closer look at the A Skip running drill. There aren’t many things worse than being outran by someone either in competition or when trying to snag a seat on the Metro and this drill is here to help you with your high speed running mechanics. The purpose of the A skip drill is to improve the coordination of your upper and lower limbs during running while also engraining proper arm and leg positioning into your movement library. Below is a video of the A-skip in action with solid technique. https://youtu.be/RKmVZe45CJI

Key Points:

• Maintain a tall posture keeping the hips and chest up throughout the movement to avoid slouching
• Arms rotate from the shoulders
• Elbows bent at 90?
• Avoid rotation and focus up keeping movement in a strictly forward and backwards motion
• Find you rhythm and stay relaxed to avoid looking like a malfunctioning robot
• Keep your knee and toes up and quickly strike the ground
• STRIKE THE GROUND UNDER YOUR HIPS AND PUSH YOURSELF FORWARD

For those who don’t feel comfortable hopping directly into a skips this drill can be regressed by following the key points listed above and turning it into a march like the video shown below.

https://youtu.be/DUSnDnUDm5Y

How to Write a Warm-Up for Strength Training

Walk into any commercial gym and here are the various warm-ups folks execute: -       Swing the arms back and forth

-       Quad stretches

-      What warm-up?

What if you could enhance your workouts, prevent injuries, and perhaps strike up a conversation with that cute guy or girl in just 10 minutes? (Well, no promises on that last one.)  The easy, albeit not-so-sexy, answer is: perform a dynamic warm-up! I get it, warm-ups are boring and unimpressive, but when done right, can go a long way to increasing the benefits of strength training and extending your lifting career.

What’s the point of performing a dynamic warm-up anyway?

1. Increase bodytemperature- cold muscles, joints, and ligaments are more likely to get angry and sustain an injury.
2. Prepare the body for movement, part 1- especially if you fly a desk all day long, the joints are probably a little gunky. Warm-ups help restore range of motion (link for temp loss of ROM) lost during periods of lack of motion.
3. Prepare body for movement, part 2- exercises employed in warm-ups can help “groove” the nervous system for certain movements, making the body more efficient, which in turn allows it to hoist heavier weights. For example, a quadruped rock can prime the nervous system for hip hinging or squatting patterns.
4. Activate dormant muscles- along the same lines as point #2, prolonged positions (i.e. sitting) can reduce the function or certain muscle groups, either through changes in muscle length or tension. A classic example is, prolonged sitting tends to shut down the glutes and tighten the hip flexors.; supremely unhelpful when trying to deadlift massive loads from the floor. If you want the maximum benefit, you need the muscles turned on!
5. iYou look like a Jedi- true story: the first time I saw someone going through a dynamic warm-up (my to-be husband actually) I thought he was doing tai chi or some other marital art thingamabob.

Right, so you’re convinced you need to have a dynamic warm up before hitting the weights, but what do you do?

Let’s think in *very* general terms, everyone needs:

Correct breathing mechanics

Hip mobility

Glute activation

Thoracic spine (T-spine) mobility

Core stability

CNS (central nervous system) activation

Granted, depending on sport played, injury considerations, and whether or not you have laxity, the specific needs for each individual will be different. However, I’ve found that if you include exercises that encompass those components, you’ve got a pretty solid warm-up that will take care of 90% of the demands for general fitness preparation.

Here are some sample exercises geared toward the above mentioned characteristics:

90/90 Breathing

What it’s good for: breathing mechanics. This is a good beginner breathing drill if you or your client is having a hard time attaining 360-degree expansion of the diaphragm and rib cage.

I’m not going to delve into breathing today but if you want to know more (and you absolutely DO want to know more) you can read a few posts HERE and HERE (Also, indirectly, improving breathing mechanics will improve both t-spine and hip mobility.)

Crocodile Breathing

What it’s good for: breathing mechanics. Another good beginner drill as the floor provides tangible feedback for expansion.

Bulldog Hip Mobility

What it’s good for: hip mobility and core stability and a wee-bit of glute activation. Maintain a neutral spine and relatively stable hips as the knee moves around for maximum benefit.

Adductor Rockbacks

What it’s good for: hip mobility. Specifically this helps work out some of the gunk the adductors accumulate. If you don’t know what I mean, try a few rockbacks and you’ll instantly know where your adductors are. These bad boys are the “groin” in groin pulls and knotty, nasty adductors are more susceptible to pulls. Keep ‘em happy by rocking!

Half-Kneeling Hip Flexor Mob

What it’s good for: hip mobility and (indirectly) glute activation. This one, as the name implies, targets the hip flexors (front of the hip). Tight hip flexors can wreck havoc on pelvic position- which can set you up for back injuries or hamstring pulls- and, delightfully, shut down glute function through a process called reciprocal inhibition. Considering that most athletic endeavors require high-functioning glutes, this is a problem.

Glute Bridge

What it’s good for: glute activation. Wake up your sleepy glutes!

Quadruped Rockback

What it’s good for: hip mobility, core stability, CNS activation. Primarily, at SAPT, we use this to groove the hip hinge and teach neutral spine while moving. It also tells us if someone can squat to parallel or not by how their spine and hips move. Read more about that HERE.

Bird Dog

What it’s good for: glute activation, core stability, CNS activation.  Try to maintain a neutral spine and pretend you have to balance a glass of water on your butt. You’ll feel it in the right places. The cross-body movement (opposite arm and leg moving) fires up the CNS and solidifies coordination between the brain’s two hemispheres.

Spiderman with Overhead Reach

What it’s good for: hip and T-spine mobility. This hit everything and feels amazing. Make sure you follow your hand with your head so the neck isn’t cranked around.

Bear Crawl

What it’s good for: core stability and CNS activation. Similar to the bird dog, by maintaining a neutral spine and level hips, the core muscles have to fire and the brain has to coordinate the cross-body limb movement. (Technically, there’s a some glute action in there as they come in to stabilize the hips laterally.)

Yoga Pushup to T-Rotation

What it’s good for: All of the above. If you’re very limited on time, this is a great all-around movement to hit everything in one swoop. As a bonus, it grooves the pushup technique and encourages scapular movement- which is often non-existent in most people.

Stepback Lunge with Over-The-Shoulder Reach

What it’s good for: all of the above.  Plus, you’ll look like one cool cat doing this one.

Walking SL RDL with Reach (forward or backwards)

What it’s good for: all of the above. In addition to all the other benefits, this one will challenge your balance.  This is another exercise that can help groove a pattern, namely the hip hinge.

Putting it all together

Another note, I try to program warm-ups to progress- loosely anyway- from ground, to quadruped, to standing. For example:

Crocodile Breathingx 8 breaths

Quadruped Rockbacks x 10

DL Glute Bridge x 8, hold :02

Bulldog Hip Mobility x 8 each

Spiderman w/ OH Reach x 6/side, hold 1 breath

Bear Crawl x 8 yds

Walking SL RDL x 6/side

That whole thing should take about 5-8 minutes; a small commitment for big benefits!

The body is like a car: you can’t expect the car to speed off at 80 miles and hour on a cold day. Likewise, you can’t expect your body to jump into heavy strength work while it’s still cold. Prevent injuries and capitalize on your time under the bar by employing a proper warm-up before each training session.

The Difference Between "Good" and "Great"

Over the past week, I've been fortunate enough to spend time with 2 very high level athletes.  I spent a little over an hour training one of them, a college infielder looking to be drafted in this upcoming MLB draft, and sat down for coffee with the other, a professional triathlete looking to break into the top-tier ranks of the sport.  I'm incredibly lucky to have both of these opportunities, and they turned out to be two very eye-opening experiences... ______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Oftentimes, when you think about professional and higher-level college athletes, you put them up on this pedestal.  You may view them as heroes or individuals who you may have absolutely nothing in common with and who wouldn't waste their time on a conversation with you, but this really isn't the case.  In reality, they are very normal people, just like you and me.  They enjoy good movies, they have relationship issues, they absolutely despise the smell and taste of mustard (maybe that's just me).

You'd be surprised how much in common you may have with your favorite athlete, but, the fact of the matter is, these people reside in the upper echelons of their profession.  They are the best of the best.  They're professionals in every sense of the word.  What got them there?  Were they lucky?  Did they know somebody important?  Were they bitten by a radioactive spider?  The answer is actually quite simple...

These people are DRIVEN.  They live and breathe their profession, and understand that they have no room to slack off if they want to achieve their goals.  They refuse to let others get in their way, and they truly believe in themselves. This drive is what fuels them, and it's what motivates them to take that next step, allowing them to inch closer and closer to success.

During his training session, I asked the baseball player what's changed for him over the past year.  What has he done differently this year than any year before it, and how has that led to the success he's had this season?  Mind you, he is currently leading the nation in triples.  He's playing at an extremely high level and has been generating a ton of interest from MLB scouts.  His answer had nothing to do with improving his bat speed.  It didn't involve keeping his eye on the ball a little longer, or generating a more powerful first step.  His answer: meditation.

Before each game, this kid puts on his headphone and sunglasses, turns up "Lord of the Rings Radio" and falls into this relaxed, meditative state while his trainer stretches him out.  He doesn't think about the opposing pitcher.  He doesn't analyze his week of practice, or the last game he played.  He literally relaxes every part of his being, including his mind, and, in his words, "goes to sleep."  Afterwards, he "wakes up" prepared to play just another baseball game. It's this focus, this passion, and this dedication to self-preparation that has allowed him to have his best collegiate season thus far.

There are so many high level athletes out there that will never make it to the big leagues.  They're too jacked up in the head, over-analyzing every situation and getting in their own way.  At the elite level in sports, athletic abilities are almost identical.  Sure, some people are slightly stronger, some are a little bit quicker, and some have greater raw power.  However, at the end of the day, it all comes down to what's between your ears.  You can have all the athletic ability in the world, but everyone messes up at some point.  What really makes you great is how well you rebound from that mistake.  Are you the type of player that absolutely dominates in practice, but then goes and makes an error during the first play of competition and absolutely falls apart?

Now, I'm a strength and conditioning coach.  I relate everything to athletics and sports performance, but this lesson applies to EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON PLANET EARTH.  Whether or not you're a computer engineer, a recruiter, or a sales executive, you have the ability to get in your own way when that bad day comes your way.  But guess what?  You also have the ability to reach deep down, grab your proverbial sack, and keep on chuggin'.  All you need is that drive, that passion, and that unwavering focus that is going to push you to the next level.  No one gets anywhere in life by having a defeatist, "boo-hoo," "woe is me" attitude.

Youhave what it takes to succeed.  You just need to accept it, harness it, and use it to push through the hard times.  Be the person you've always wanted to be, even if you don't know exactly who that is yet.  Chances are it includes the following attributes: hardworking, friendly, dedicated, passionate, exciting, innovative, useful, successful, compassionate, creative, inspirational and self-reliant.  Everyone fails in life, but the best learn from that failure and use it to improve themselves and prepare for their next set of challenges.

See you next time.

The Lateral Lunge

https://youtu.be/GqpL0jDXHiM Today I had the opportunity to go into the gym and reconnect with some of my favorite exercises of the past with one of them being the goblet lateral lunge. Too often in modern times gym goers and athletes alike have restricted themselves to movements in a strictly forward or backwards pattern.

https://youtu.be/IpO6TaLBg5E

One of my favorite attributes with the lateral lunge is that like the goblet squat the placement of the weight puts athletes in a counterbalanced position that can allow them to perform the exercise safely and confidently. During the exercise if an athlete feels as though he or she is about to fall backwards they can simply move the weighted implement away from their body to regain their balance.

https://youtu.be/OMMX4F8zxdU

This exercise also does a tremendous job of helping the overall development of the stability of the knee joint and improving the dynamic flexibility of the adductor muscle group responsible for moving and stabilizing the leg and pelvis.

Key Points:

• Try to maintain an upright torso throughout the movement
• Allow your leading knee to stay in line with your toes

Training With A Chronic Illness

I had another awesome opportunity to write a guest post for Dean Somerset's blog. If you haven't yet read his stuff, you should do yourself a favor and start today. He is extremely intelligent and posts useful and so-that's-why-that-happens type stuff.

If you have a chronic illness or recovered from a long-term injury, I hear ya.

Most of fitness literature out there focuses on on training methods to get stronger, bigger, leaner, healthier, etc.,– which is exactly what you’d expect an industry called “fitness” to talk about.

There is, however, a small-ish (or perhaps not- so- small) portion of the population that has some form of chronic illness. Training for us is, well, different.

My aim with this post is to provide encouragement and practical strategies to anyone out there who is either battling a chronic illness, or may be dealing with a long-term healing process from a prior injury. Continue reading...