RUNFAST! Take a Peek At What It's All About
The first RunFast workout occured yesterday. Check out this great video that Goose created on-the-spot as we went through our first work out.
Prepare for the fall seasons this summer and come out and join us for conditioning, technique work, and loads of fun!
My L5-S1 Disc Explosion Part I
So I destroyed one of my intervertebral discs in my lumbar spine a few years ago, and it was followed by a year of pain, endless treatments, frustration, de-training, and overall unhappiness. I’ve been wondering for a while if I should write a blog describing the injury and the path it led me down. I’m sure some people may find the story interesting, or others with a similar injury might find solace in seeing that they aren’t alone. I know that while I was injured I was desperately reading through articles, blogs, forums, and spinal research books to not only search for information that might help my condition but to also read others’ stories and see what they’ve gone through. But for a while I didn’t want to write it because I’ve come to HATE the fact that this injury took away so much from me. I HATED the fact that I still owe money to some medical practices for the treatments I went through. And I HATED the fact that for the better part of a year the injury became the focal point of my life. I just wanted to leave it in the past and move on.
But...I figure it’s time to stop being a drama queen and give you guys a “play-by-play” of what happened.
A Long, Long Time Ago...
I’ve always been an active kid, partaking in activities like skateboarding, snowboarding, fishing (is that active?), pick-up basketball and football, dirt-jumping on bikes, and all kinds of stuff that are fun and dangerous. In high school I played lacrosse as my primary sport, but also dabbled in various track and field events. After high school I played club lacrosse at VCU before transferring to GMU but also got hooked into grappling sports. I started competing in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and submission grappling fairly regularly. I loved it! It definitely made me regret not wrestling in high school. This was also around the same time that I started lifting a little more seriously.
Life was good! I was squatting, deadlifting, wrestling, grappling, and having a lot of fun. In terms of training I admit I did some stupid stuff. I never cared about “overtraining”, soft tissue quality, mobility, or pre-hab. I just wanted to get stronger and lift more weight. I always looked at “ab work" as a waste of time and effort.
I distinctly remember one day grappling with my training partners one and getting caught in a shoulder lock called a “kimura”, which basically forces your shoulder into deep internal rotation. It happened so quickly that I couldn’t tap in time and heard (and felt) a loud “POP” in my shoulder.
What did I do later that day? Heavy weighted dips! Genius I know… But my shoulder was fine! I was invincible!
In 2011 I was training extremely hard for an international grappling tournament in New York. The year before I had competed in the same tournament and lost in the first round pretty quickly. The loss really drove my motivation to come back and perform this time around. I was training 7 days a week, sometimes twice or even three times a day. I continued to lift heavy and hard as well. I was sore all the time. My entire body ached, but I noticed that my back was especially flared up. I simply shrugged it off. If you’re training hard you should be sore, right?
One particular day I was grappling with my coach for about an hour and a half, then went to class. As I sat through the class I couldn’t take my mind off of how uncomfortable the desk chair was. Finally, when class was dismissed and I stood up it felt like someone took a baseball bat to my lower back. My back locked up and I couldn’t pick up my backpack. It was time to see a doctor.
The General Practitioner
Keep in mind that back pain is one of the top reasons for a doctor's visit, second only behind the common cold. It's a very common occurrence and more often than not some pills and time off will do the trick.
At the doctor’s office, I gave the doc the rundown of my symptoms and she gave me some anti-inflammatories. I expressed my concern about a disc issue and she was convinced that it was just a muscle strain. I went home, took the pills for about two weeks and called back for another appointment. My back was still jacked up.
The second time she gave me some muscle relaxers along with the anti-inflammatories. She was still convinced that there is no need for an x-ray or MRI.
Again, I was back in her office within a few weeks. Despite putting my training on hold and diligently popping these prescription pills, nothing had changed. She finally put in an order for an x-ray. The x-ray came back with no significant results, and she said the structure of my spine is fine. That’s all good and dandy, but it’s important to note that an x-ray will not image the intervertebral discs between the bones, and you need an MRI to diagnose a disc herniation. She was still unwilling to give me a referral for an MRI.
She sent me home with a fresh prescription of anti-inflammatories and another muscle relaxer, and recommended I get a massage.
I got a massage, took the pills, and came back to the office a few weeks later with no good news and a frustrated attitude. I demanded the MRI. She gave me the referral and my MRI was scheduled about two weeks after that. If memory serves me right, it took about three months of living in severe lower back pain before I even got a referall for an MRI.
The MRI
If any of you have had an MRI before, you know how… not-fun it can be. I was shoved into this cold hard alien tube of death for what felt like days lying flat on my back, which happened to be one of the positions that aggravated my back pain at the time. When it was all said and done, the MRI confirmed the fear that was lingering in the back of my head since the day my back locked up in class: Herniated disc, L5-S1.
Physical Therapy
The next time at the doctor’s office I got some more pills but also a referral to physical therapy. I remember feeling somewhat glad that I was finally taking steps in the right direction. My condition was diagnosed, I’ll do the PT, and finally make my way back into sports and training.
My physical therapy consisted of manual therapy, electro-stim, and a TON of extension exercises. It seemed to be a very “McKenzie method” based rehab protocol, which involves a ton of spinal extension.
The idea is that these positions will help re-center the disc bulge. Bottom line for me is… Nothing helped. Sure the massage and electro-stim felt good, but the majority of my day was spent in intense lower back pain that seemed to be getting worse. It was during my time spent regularly going to physical therapy that the pain in my lower back started creeping into my left glute and down my leg…
I used up all my PT time referred by the doc, and even came back for more sessions that were paid for out of pocket, believing that it might help. After a few months of PT with zero resolve and a ridiculous bill, I stopped coming.
The Chiropractor
Around the same time I tried seeing a chiropractor. The chiropractor I went to had a decompression table, where you get strapped down to this apparatus and it gradually applies a stretch to your spine. The idea here is that the stretch will increase the space between the vertebrae and “suck” the disc back into place. After about 20 minutes on the decompression table, the chiro cracked my back in a few places and sent me on my way. Again, nothing seemed to help.
During one particular “back-cracking” session the chiro told me I should consider giving up lifting weights, grappling, and snowboarding and take up an activity like ping-pong. He might as well have said, “Maybe you should stop living” (no offense to ping-pong players). Needless to say, that was my last session with him and I never saw him again.
Although I had a less-than-favorable experience with this particular chiropractor, I am by no means a non-believer in the practice. Since this experience I have met with several different chiropractors with whom I am very impressed and would trust to treat me or my athletes if need-be.
Acupuncture
Not too much to say in this department… I only had one session, where they placed needles in my leg in a pattern that seemed to follow my sciatic nerve. They also placed wires on the needles that provided a gentle shock to the needles. It felt strange, slightly relaxing, but provided no lasting relief.
I didn’t know what to do at this point. My whole life was pain now, and by this time it was shooting down my left leg at full blast, sending pins and needles into my toes. I woke up to agonizing pain and stiffness in the morning, spent my entire day crippled, and crawled into bed at night praying it won’t hurt as bad the next day. I was flexion intolerant, extension intolerant, sitting down hurt, laying down hurt, walking hurt, everything hurt. I wasn't worried about competition anymore. I was worried about my quality of life and well-being. My friends and family noticed that I wasn’t the happy-go-lucky person I usually am, but I was quick to snap at people and I was irritated all the time.
I knew something had to be done, so after talking to several doctors I decided that I would try a few more options of treatment, and if there is no progress, I would go see a spinal surgeon.
To be continued!
RunFAST: Join Us for our First Run
Come out to Draper Park in Fairfax on Wednesday, June 26 at noon for a sample of the RunFAST program. Bring water, appropriate shoes for the turf, and a towel... it's gonna be hot and humid.
We'll be posting the actual runs on the website at some point tomorrow - so you can always do it on your own!
More is NOT Better - Intern Post by Josh
I've been going on and on about the quality of our interns and the SAPT internship experience, but it's true. We've got some crazy awesome interns this summer. Below is Josh's first post. Like Goose, Josh was also on the track team at Mason... as a pole vaulter *gasp!* That's my gut reaction, anyway... terror! Having my feet above my head has never been okay. I never learned to do a proper cartwheel because of that. I'll happily pile hundreds of pounds on my spine, but feet over my head? No thanks.I used to watch in amazement as Josh would perform handstand pushups outside of my office at Mason. Pretty cool to witness an athlete perfecting that variety of movement as a key skill to their sport. If you ever get the chance to meet Josh (which you might) he's this super relaxed, low-key kind of guy. He'll very quickly put you at ease and somehow seems to have an endless supply of energy. But, he's also always on top of his stuff and tends to always impress me. Everything from the best off-the-cuff dynamic warm-ups ever to thought provoking questions to coming up with the below killer blog about regulating intensity and volume when addressing your conditioning work.
He's one of the RunFAST coaches, btw. ENJOY:
The Issue
I ask younger athletes a lot what they plan to do over the summer now that school is out and the season is over. Many of them say that they will probably run a couple of miles a day to stay in shape and get faster. This mindset causes these athletes go out for the cross-country team expecting to get faster and stronger for their primary sport: baseball, lacrosse, or even soccer. Don’t get me wrong cross-country is great if you are out of shape and just want to develop general conditioning. HOWEVER, for the athlete that needs to be reactive and explosive, running 40-50 miles a week will not only fail to accomplish this goal but it will shift the muscle composition to be more slow twitch dominant thus losing explosiveness and reactivity capabilities.
Well Actually...
You may be thinking, “Endurance actually sounds great! I want to last a whole basketball game without passing out at the end or be able to run up and down a soccer field without gasping for air. I just want to be more in shape then everyone else.” and you still can! You can accomplish these same goals by running way less. Your sport does not only require you to last but also be quick and explosively responsive to the dynamics of the game. So why would you jog around for hours on end when your sport has high demands of fast twitch moments.
To help you better understand this concept of less there is the 80-20 Rule (or “Pareto Principle), which states that 80% of the gains comes from 20% of exercises you do. For example, let’s say for your workout for the day you do 10 exercises, 2 of those exercises are going to be responsible for 80% of the performance results. This does not mean that the other 8 exercises are not important, they are! However, this should help you understand that it is not the “more” that produces better results.
What Should I Do Then?The way this can be accomplished is by working on is fast twitch (type 1) endurance. Yes, as odd as it sounds there is such things as fast twitch endurance. Look at track and field for example. Many people who do not know the sport consider the sprinting events to be anywhere from the 400 meters races and below. However, when you start looking at the college and professional times of the 1600 meters (1-mile) race these athletes/runners are looking at the event as more of a strategic sprint.
Ok I Get It... Just Tell Me How To Train For It Already!
Sprint endurance can be trained by running slightly longer intervals such as 200-400 meter workouts with a set rest time in between. Even though these distances are longer than one would run in a game, this trains the athlete to maintain a top speed for much longer durations.
The rest time for these intervals should be anywhere from a 1:3 - 1:5 work to rest ratio. Huh, you ask? These means that if you run a 400 meter interval in 70 seconds then you would rest anywhere from 3X to 5X the amount ran. So in this case it would range from 3 1/2 - nearly 6 minutes rest. The reason for this ratio is because biologically your ATP-PC energy system takes about that time to recover. When you are training speed endurance, you are actually training the ATP-PC energy system to recover faster. It normally takes the ATP-PC system 6-8 minutes to replenish itself.
For more information on energy system, which is IMPORTANT to understand, check out Gustavo's Article from yesterday. Scroll down to Myth #2 and he breaks down the energy systems really well.
Judging the amount of rest you should take also depends on what your workout is for the day and how you are feeling. You want to make sure you can get through the workout but you also do not want to make it too easy either. Longer rest should be taken for those who are running longer distances such as 400-meter intervals vs. 200 meter interval. Also if your main focus is on speed then you want to be well rested so that each interval is quality and fast.
One More Thing!
We live in a day where overuse injuries are very common. A lot of this is due to the association of the great workout burn to getting stronger. This mentality is what causes people to get hurt. They workout to feel that pain to justify what they do is working however they actually put too much stress on the body and not give it enough time to rest and recovery. Sure in the beginning everything is fine. You are getting stronger and more in shape but as time progresses you get that nagging pain in your hamstring or your foot. This can be caused by improper form that you have been running on consistently for months or one muscle group is trying to compensate for the other. These injuries are very difficult to treat and for an athlete to go through because in many cases the treatment is to do nothing. Every competitive athlete I know hates the idea of doing nothing.
SOOOooo....
Be smart about your training. Run with quality not quantity. It will benefit a lot more in the long run. Pun intended.
Tough Mudder Training: You're Doing it Wrong!
I have to say, SAPT's internship program absolutely rocks. We've got awesome interns and they regularly reinforce their awesomeness by rising to pretty much every challenge thrown at them. Our 400-hour interns, Goose and Josh, have been impressing me for about a full year now, beginning with volunteering hours at the Mason weightroom. Here's another great post from Goose:
With my first Tough Mudder coming up soon the topic of training has been on my mind. For those of you who’ve never heard of it, the Tough Mudder is a 10-12 mile military style obstacle course with 20-25 obstacles spaced out throughout the course. Some of the obstacles include: climbing ropes, scaling walls, crawling long distances, submerging your entire body in 34 degree water, running through fire, and being electrocuted.
I asked people what they were doing to prepare and a shocking majority simply answered with running distance. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a track guy and love running but this is not the best way to prepare for a Tough Mudder. With so many obstacles spread out throughout the course you’re doing a lot of starting and stopping not running 10 miles at once. People get too worried about the total mileage and don’t even think about what sets the Tough Mudder apart, the obstacles!!!
Here is where people go wrong:
1. Way Too Much Running Volume!
Like I said before, people are getting too caught up on the 10 to 13 miles part of the race. The largest distance between obstacles is no longer than 800m which means its lots of stop and go. People would benefit more from doing sprints than 10 mile jogs. Having speed endurance to run fast between obstacles while everyone else jogs will get you to the front of the pack real quick. Some of the obstacles also involve sprinting up a slippery slope and running over a wall. Speed training will benefit individual more than slow repetitive miles.
2. No Strength Training
As I previously stated, people somehow forget about the obstacles! Climbing, crawling, scaling, all of the above take strength and mobility. How are you going to complete theses if you can’t do a simple pull up??
As I explained in my previous article, lifting will make you stronger and run faster! The Tough Mudder is really a prolonged power event with some jogging in between, not an endurance event. Lifting and mastering your bodyweight should be on top of that priority list.
3. Too Much Too Soon
With individuals being in charge of their training and with the mindset that “the more you do the better you get” we’ve got a recipe for disaster. People like to jump right into running way too much or lifting way too heavy. The thought of a prep phase to get the body ready to go gets thrown out the window because we want results NOW! This leads to injury and/or mental burnout if they somehow survive their training. The plethora of knowledge floating around on the internet doesn’t help either. The average Joe seeking a good running and lifting program could end up on an Olympic marathoner’s training plan and Jim Wendler’s 5-3-1 powerlifting program. That’s going to end well ß*sarcasm*
If there is one thing you learn when you’re an injury prone individual, like me, is to listen to your body! The way your body tries to tell you things is with pain signals and soreness. If you go run 10 miles after not doing anything for 6 years and can’t get out of bed the next day, that’s your body calling you an idiot! It may be cliché but slow and steady really does win the race. A well thought out training progression will get you much further than putting yourself through a hell week of training.
4. HR Monitoring
A simple way to gauge your training intensity is getting a heart rate monitor. You might be thinking, even if I get a HR monitor I don’t know what the numbers mean! Don’t worry I’ll explain it through some simple vocab and math:
• First we want to find your Maximum Heart Rate and Resting Heart Rate:
Max HR = 220 – Age
Ex. Max HR: 220 – 22 = 198 bpm (beats per minute)
RestingHeart Rate (RHR): take a couple of minutes to site down and relax. Next find your pulse on your neck or wrist and look at your watch. Count the number of beats for 60 seconds and that is your RHR. A healthy RHR can range from 40 to 80 beats per minute depending on your age and gender.
•Now we need to find your Heart Rate Reserve (HRR):
HRR = Max HR - RHR
Ex. HRR: 198 – 62 = 136
• Almost there! Now we find Target HR. This is where it get a little trick so stay with me. We do this equation twice, once with 60% and the other with 80%.
Target HR: (HRR x 60%) + RHR
Ex. Target HR: (136 x 0.6) + 62 = 143.6 <--- rounded up 144 bpm
Target HR: (HRR x 80%) + RHR
Ex. Target HR: (136 x 0.8) + 62 = 170.8 <--- rounded up 171 bpm
• There we go, finished! So now we have our Target HR range between 60% and 80%. This simply give you an indication of where your HR should be when training. If it goes over the range you’re going too hard, if it goes below you’ve got to step it up a bit.
*This calculation is a close estimate of your Target HR, depending on your conditioning level it may be higher or slightly lower <--- (not likely)*
5. Improper Recovery
Recovery, this is something that gets overlooked by athletes and average Joes alike! All they think about going hard in training 24/7 but are their bodies ready for it? If you went hard yesterday is your body ready to go again? Did you refuel correctly? Get enough sleep? Bro do you even foam roll?
3 simple but effective ways to enhance your recovery:
- Eat Right!
This may sound like a broken record but eating right really is the best way to refuel. Throw the “recovery drinks” out the window! Fruits, veggies, grains, lean proteins, and of course the staple of any healthy diet: PB&J!! ;)
Quick note on carbo loading. STOP WITH THE CONSTANT CARBO LOADING!!!!! There’s a time and place for everything. Carbo loading was designed to increase the amount of glycogen in the muscles leading up to competition! Glycogen = energy, you’ll get all the glycogen you need to train from a healthy diet. Leave the carbo loading for what it was meant for, competition time.
- Soft Tissue Work!
Foam rolling, sports messages, lacrosse ball smashing, voodoo floss bands! Yes it’s uncomfortable and yes it hurts but nothing worth doing was even easy/painless! Soft tissue work not only enhances your muscle and joint recovery, it prevent injuries, and it gets rid of those nagging aches all over your body! Tony Gentilcore wrote a great article explaining why even “tough guys” should do soft tissue work. So I repeat my previous question. Bro, do you even foam roll??
- No More Recovery Beers!
Sorry guys and gals! No more brewskis with the broskis to celebrate that hard WOD you just did. Don’t give me that “research has shown a beer a day is good for you” crap! That’s like saying a cigarette per day keeps the doctor away, sounds legit right???
Don’t listen to doped up Arnold people! And don’t get me wrong I enjoy a nice cold one just as much as the next guy but training is a commitment. How do you expect your body to perform for you if you keep shoving crap like that into it every day! I’m a big believer in you are what you eat/drink, guess what this guys been drinking:
Below is Big Joe, one of out clients here at SAPT. He proves that age is just a number by being stronger than an ox! He qualified for The World's Toughest Mudder which is a 24hr long Tough Mudder. Less than 5% of people who compete in TM qualify for this event, he is one of them and he also lifts heavy objects!
Enough said.
Running Faster... It's Not Just for the Guys.
Today's post goes along with the string of themed posts about our new running program we're launching next week. Yes, that's right, a running program. But not just any ol' running program where you plod seemingly endless mile after mile. It's called RunFast... a simple name that explains exactly the purpose of this program. I strongly recommend reading the other blog posts this week, if you don't already, as they're stellar.I'm a Strength and Conditioning Specialist. Or, the title I prefer, Jedi Training Master. Either way, my job as an SAPT coach is to strengthen the bodies and minds of our trainees to support excellence in life (aka: cultivating Jedi Skillz). As SAPT athletes know, I advocate incessantly for hoisting heavy things on a regular basis and eating your vegetables. While I know the a solid strength foundation is essential for success in life, I also know that training the cardiovascular system (outside of a lifting session) is essential for across-the-board excellency. Most of you, I'm willing to bet, immediately thought of running for miles or hopping on an elliptical...
This post is specifically aimed at my ladies out there who think high intensity training for running is either a) for football players or other male athletes or b) inferior to long-distance running (eliptical-ing) for body composition changes. Both are incorrect suppositions.
*Note* I know I have a lot of distance runners who read this blog. I'm in no way advocating that you cease your running; however, I do think you'll benefit tremendously from training the other energy systems mentioned in Goose's post from Monday and cultivating a higher rate of force development.
So, convince me Kelsey, why should I step outside the cardio box and perform sprints, hill sprints, shuttles, and other such bouts of heart-pounding exercise?
1. They teach your body to produce force faster- Remember that Rate of Force Development thing? Ladies, if you want to run faster (and this means during a competitive sport, like soccer or lacrosse, too) you need to push off the ground harder (this propels your forward further) and increase your stride frequency (more steps per unit of time). There's an old adage, "Train fast to be fast." Training at a slower, continuous pace will NOT cause the adaptation in the muscles required to produce that burst of energy needed in sprinting down the field or court. What about sports that don't run much, like tennis or volleyball (only a few steps in each direction)? Training for power will make those few steps explosive and get you in contact with the ball sooner. Therefore, unless you're a cross country runner.... stop. the. slow. speed. stuff.
Excellent point.
2. It trains your phosphagen and anaerobic systems- As Goose laid out in his post, these two energy systems are responsible for the quick, explosive, and often the first movement, in sports. Every sport requires the use of these two systems to some degree; therefore, in order to maintain a high level of force output throughout a game or match, it's terribly important to keep these systems up to snuff by challenging them through training. An example to train the phosphagen system would be a short, but all-out, hill sprint lasting around 10 seconds or less. For anaerobic training, shuttles of 25-50 meters, or a burst of activity lasting 30-45 seconds or so. The cool thing is, the more developed these two systems are, the longer your body can rely on them for energy. This translates into the ability to produce high outputs of force for sustained amount of time, aka, sprinting further at higher speeds. Strong girls win right?
You'll also win lightsaber duels.
3. Higher intensity training is superior for body composition changes and maintenance- *This of course assumes you're eating a clean diet with lots of vegetables, lean proteins...* Without going into the physiology of it, high intensity exercise is a great way to raise your metabolism (even for hours after the activity is over, depending on the intensity) which leads to favorable body composition changes. Not only that, but high intensity exercise is muscle-sparing, meaning you maintain your hard-earned muscle mass (and ladies, we need all the help we can get in that department!). Long distance training tends to decrease muscle mass. Again, with a solid weight training program and carefully managed physical stress levels, a long distance runner can be perfectly healthy. However, from a body composition standpoint, it's more efficient for us non-runners to perform high intensity training. Plus, it's also quicker than spending 45 minutes on the elliptical... I'd rather to hill sprints for 15 minutes.
Want a visual? Look at the difference in body types:
Marathoner vs sprinter
Also, have you ever stood at the finish line of a marathon? How many people are limping? If body composition is on your list of goals, high intensity, short duration, cardiovascular training is the way to go!
No thanks....
4. Most people don't train this way- if 99% of the people are doing something in the gym, it's a safe bet that it's not the best nor most efficient way to accomplish your fitness goals. 'Nuff said.
If a TV is involved, you're not working hard enough.
Hopefully the above reasons are enough to convince you to step outside the standard "cardio" box, both from an athletic and body composition standpoint. Even my long-distance runners, train for power and watch your times decrease!
because he employed high intensity training...
