Everyone Loves A Great Core Exercise
Who doesn’t like to spice up the ab/core training routine a bit? The top 5 things I get asked by people regarding their programs are:
1. Can I get some more core exercises?
2. How about some more core exercises next time?
3. Can you put in some more core strengthening work?
4. I really want to work my core, can you give me more exercises for that?
5. Core?
Welcome to my life.
Clearly, folks understand the importance of a strong, stable core. If you are involved in any sort of athletics, or you know, any human movement, a strong midsection will absolutely be essential to prevent injuries and increase power output (aka, how fast, explosive, or strong you’re able to be).
Well, I’ve got just the thing for you core-crazy trainees:
Behold,
PUPP with Kettlebell Drag
Key points:
- Keep feet slightly wider than a normal PUPP (push-up position plank) stance to help control and stabilize the hips. Pretend there is a glass of water on your lower back and you don’t want to spill it.
- Speaking of your hips, keep those suckers as level as possible. Glenna does a pretty great job of it in the video (well done, Glenna!).
- Squeeze your butt and abs (do I even need to say that part?) as hard as humanly possible throughout the exercise.
- Start off with a lighter bell because just moving your hands around can be challenging. Once you can keep your hips stable, then move up in weight.
There you have it! Throw a few sets into your workout to get your midsection a power-transferring machine!
Coaching Vertical Jump with a Valgus Collapse
Ahhh, the knee cave, my old friend. This, by far, is the most common strength and movement pattern deficit I see in developing athletes. More officially known as a valgus position of the knee, it signifies not only a severe lack of specific and general strength, but also may be an indicator of poor body control overall (due to other common muscular strength deficits that generally come as part of the "package").
Ahhh, the knee cave, my old friend. This, by far, is the most common strength and movement pattern deficit I see in developing athletes. More officially known as a valgus position of the knee, it signifies not only a severe lack of specific and general strength, but also may be an indicator of poor body control overall (due to other common muscular strength deficits that generally come as part of the "package").
The valgus position, in my experience, is an oversized red flag waving high in the air. This red flag is warning of a looming knee ligament injury.
This is a very important topic, as most coaches, parents, and athletes have no idea how to correct the problem or even identify that it is a very big - and potentially dangerous - problem.
Check out the video where I break down film of an athlete in for training and discuss what I've found and how we're going to fix the problems:
Coaching the Forearm Wallslide
A deceptively simple exercise, the forearm wallslide delivers a huge ROI:
Deadlift Fine-tuning
The deadlift is arguably the most valuable exercise for sport performance (and life) improvement. It is extremely versatile and effective for pretty much everyone. But, not if you don't have excellent technique! This movement is a basic at SAPT and if you already lift with us you know you're getting the kind of very detailed fine-tuning shown in this video.
The Science Behind Falling Out of Shape
I've been asked repeatedly how long it takes to lose the performance gains athletes work so hard to achieve in the off-season. It's never a question I've felt comfortable answering, as I really have no idea.
But, finally, I came across this wonderful article from Outsideonline.com that lays it out. The bottom line - you can never, ever stop training. It's just not worth it for so many reasons.
Enjoy:
The Science Behind Falling Out of Shape
Or why you should never, ever stop training
By: Erin Beresini Mar 29, 2016
When you’re in peak physical condition, you feel like a superhero—like you could go forever, outpace a cheetah, or lift a VW Bug. But your superpowers are ephemeral; the second you stop training, they start to fade. We asked sports physiologist Iñigo Mujika to give us a quick rundown of what’s behind the glory and the fall. The takeaway: you should never, ever stop training for more than two weeks if you can help it. Here’s why.
When you start working out, wonderful things begin to happen. Take strength, for instance. In just a few sessions, you’ll get stronger—but not because your muscles are any bigger yet. “The initial gains take place because of neuromuscular adaptations,” Mujika says. In short, your brain gets better at communicating with your muscles, learning to use them more efficiently. It’ll also start to recruit more of them, so power ultimately increases, too.
Just over a week of endurance training—often described as at least 30 minutes per day, five days a week of upping your heart rate to at least 60 percent of its max— increases your plasma and blood volume. That’s part of the reason why, a few weeks into a training program, your heart rate won’t spike like it did when you first started running, or whatever your sport may be. And you’ll get better at dissipating heat through sweat.
“You need to increase your plasma volume to start to feel better,” Mujika says. “As time goes by, you’re going to increase your stroke volume, capillarization, mitochondrial volume, thermoregulatory capacity. That’s when you can say you’re trained.”
Keep up your training, and you'll gain muscle mass and strength. You’ll also fine-tune your cardiovascular system; after six months of endurance training, it’s possible to increase blood volume by as much as 27 percent.
All of those adaptations lead to peak performance. But the catch: there’s no peak preserving pill, and all of those benefits quickly erode when you stop moving. “When you stop training, almost immediately—we think three days—you lose plasma volume and blood volume in general,” Mujika says. “Your heart rate for a given intensity increases.”
After about 10 days to two weeks, your VO2 max, or the max amount of oxygen you can take in during exercise, will start to drop at a steady rate of about 0.5 percent a day. Two weeks off, and your brain’s ability to recruit muscle will drop, by about one to five percent. That’s not much. But it can cut power in sports that require fine-tuned movements for optimal performance, like swimming.
After three to four weeks off, your muscles will start to atrophy. Your body will increase its reliance on carbs rather than fat for fuel while simultaneously upping its capacity to store fat. In other words, your ability to burn fat slacks off at the same time it becomes easier to get fat.
That’s how metabolic syndrome gets started, Mujika says. Physical inactivity leads to becoming overweight, then insulin resistant, then diabetic. “The symptoms experienced by athletes when they stop training are the same,” Mujika says, “but on a very small scale.”
That doesn’t mean you can’t ever take a break. Breaks are necessary to avoid overtraining and burnout. Mujika tells his athletes, including three-time Olympic triathlete Ainhoa Murúa, to take two weeks completely off from training at the end of their seasons, then spend two weeks doing physical activity that’s not sport specific. For Murúa, that might be hiking, SUP, surfing, playing tennis—anything but swimming, biking, and running. “After two weeks of that we start training into more sport-specific exercise,” Mujika says.
Expect it to take twice as long to get back into shape as the time you’ve spent being inactive, Mujika says. With a few exceptions: “heat training can accelerate plasma volume expansion,” he says. And if you’re starting from scratch, you might have an advantage over people who are. “There are some indications there’s some kind of muscle memory,” Mujika says. Just like people who’ve already ridden a bike will pick it up faster than those who haven’t, it’s possible “the more trained you’ve been before, the quicker you get back into form in terms of muscular strength and power.”
