SAPT Exercise of the Week: Pushup Bodysaw Series

Here's a fantastic pushup variation I've found myself using with increasing frequency in my own training, along with programming them for some of the athletes in SAPT who have progressed appropriately.

What is it: Pushup Bodysaw Series. You can choose one three options shown in the video below:

Why I like it

Ummm, 'cuz it looks completely awesome! While I have yet to confirm this, I'm pretty sure Batman used these in his preparation to battle it out with Bane, the verifiable genius and muscle-bound brawler we'll experience during The Dark Knight Rises this Summer. (Yes I'll be seeing this opening night in IMAX)

Sorry, I got distracted....let me try this again.

Why I like the pushup bodysaw series

• You can do it virtually anywhere, without needing any crazy special equipment!
• It's a pushup variation. When it comes to "bang for your buck" exercises, few can top the pushup. I rank them right up there with deadlifts, chinups, and farmers carries for best return for your investment.
• It really increases the difficulty of the standard pushup by adding a dynamic component for the hands+scapula, providing an "anti-extension" challenge for the core, and decreasing the mechanical advantage via base of support shifting.
• You get a bit of scapular rotation work with the arm that's sliding up.
• The spiderman bodysaw (third in the series) increases the difficulty even further by taking away a base of support, along with giving you a bit of hip mobility as your leg goes into flexion and abduction at the top. 

How to do it

• Grab one or two furniture sliders, these are crazy cheap and can be found at nearly any hardware or Bed, Bath, & Beyond-related store. If you insist, you can omit the sliders and simply use a towels (if you have a slick surface to use, like a wood or tile floor), or paper plates on carpet.
• Squeeze your glutes HARD (as if you could crack a walnut between your buttcheeks) and brace your abdominals as if the world is about to end. This will keep your hips and low back from "sagging" throughout the movement.
• Keep your neck in neutral by resisting the urge to let your head drop, "reaching" for the ground. This is probably the most common error I see people unaware of.
• Perform 4-10 reps per side.
• Pretty self-explanatory from here, just watch the video and try to avoid falling on your face.

Depending on where you're at, I would NOT begin by trying to slide all the way out. Stay within a range of motion that you can keep good form in, and progress from there (most of you will have to watch out for the hips sagging to the ground). If you haven't already, master the perfect pushup before moving to one of the pushup bodysaw variations.

Mid-Point Goals

I want to give a few personal updates on my training these days. I am just over the half-way point with this pregnancy (21 weeks) and last week we found out we're having a boy (yay!). Since I've already been through this process once before I know that the next 20 or so weeks can become quite physically trying. So, I've reassessed my progress to this point and have created some new goals.

First 20-weeks goals:

1. Build a solid aerobic base ahead of time - ACCOMPLISHED. With Arabella I had NO IDEA how important aerobic exercise would be for my day-to-day tasks. I ended up having to play "catch-up." You'd think this would happen late in the pregnancy when you've gained a bunch of weight... surprise! It doesn't! It happens very quickly as the result of increased blood volume. The aerobic training helps your body adapt more quickly. For Baby #2 I began a conditioning program (geared towards 800m runners) about 1 month before we started trying to "get pregnant" - it has worked wonders. Weight gain has been slower and I've felt much better.
2. Address my body's areas of breakdown ahead of time - ACCOMPLISHED. I've learned that, while pregnant, I need to take special care of my lower back via simple strength movements like the bird-dog, address calf weakness and overall foot health, and can train with more vigor than I did with Arabella (again, I realized this about half-way through with her). The result is that while my back flares up from time-to-time, it is under control and overall I feel much more like myself in terms of strength and health. Regarding foot health, I won't know if I've been successful until after the baby is born.

Second 20-week Goals:

1. Continue to prioritize low- to moderate-level conditioning but without laying the foundation for wicked plantar fasciitis. I'm shifting towards Prowler sled pushes 2x/week, stepper or bike or smililar low impact activity 2x/week, and 1 or 2x/week of actual running. Believe it or not, with Arabella I ran 3-4x/week (with low impact on off days) up until I was 38 weeks pregnant. For my Prowler pushes I will do a "trip" for every week pregnant I am - today I did 21. Took about 30 min.
2. Keep up with lower leg pre-hab to keep my feet and calves strong enough to safely continue to propel my heavy(er) body when I'm running.
3. Maintain pullups and chinups in my training regime. Sadly, these will not be body weight. BUT, on the upside, they can be called "Banded + 25lbs Pullups" by the due date - I'm sure somewhere in there things even out. With Arabella the stretch placed on my torso from the hang position was too uncomfortable/borderline painful to keep in (even banded). So, I'm hoping to keep them in throughout, if possible. Same approach as the Prowler: 1 rep for every week pregnant.
4. Lastly - and, okay, I recognize this borders on the ridiculous - but, if everything goes smoothly and all the variables line up in the best possible way. Then my goal is to beat my time in "active" labor. Arabella took 55 minutes. I'm after a PR with this little guy.

One final note is that I'm not entirely a crazy person, I do certainly understand the limits of my body and the safety of the baby comes first. So, as with #1, I know when to dial things down if my body isn't feeling quite right. And, the above is by NO MEANS my recommendation to pregnant women looking to stay active throughout their pregnancies. Rather, this is the by-product of a body (mine) which has been trained consistently at a very high level for about a decade.

I categorized this post under "Awesome" and "Chest Thumping" because, well, staying active throughout a pregnancy is really, really tough. So, anyone who manages that feat should feel it is both awesome and a serious point of pride!

Quick Thought on Early Sport Specialization

(Note: If you're wondering what "early sport specialization" refers to, check out THIS great article by Max Prokopy) Correct me if I'm wrong, but seemingly everything is becoming increasingly competitive these days:

• Number of high school clubs (sport and academic) you can be a part of
• College admission requirements
• Grad school admissions
• Climbing the "corporate" ladder in the business realm
• Racing the person next to you in the self-checkout line of a grocery store (yes, I did this yesterday)
• How quickly one can reach level 80 in World of Warcraft

And the list goes on.

Along with all this has inevitably surfaced the incessant push for children to excel in sport as quickly as possible. This will help little Johnny or Sally become the most distinguished child in the neighborhood, and increase the likelihood of receiving a scholarship to a DI or DII university.

Given that SAPT is a facility that strength trains middle and high school athletes , I'm frequently approached by well-intentioned parents informing me that their 12-year old child only needs to be doing drills that are, quote, "specific," to baseball, or soccer, or volleyball, or whatever (in fact this concept is quite similar to the vertical jump issue I discussed on Friday).

Let me cut to the chase here. As Sarah has mentioned before on this site: Americans have royally screwed up the process of athletic development, in adolescents and adults alike. Along a similar vein, Pavel Tsatsouline (former Soviet Special Forces training instructor) tells us:

"Soviet sport science has made it clear: Premature overspecialization delivers a quick increase in performance followed by stagnation. Extensive research and experimentation have demonstarted that athletic specialization must be supported by all-around preparation. That means GPP."

What does this mean? BEFORE an athlete (especially a young one) engages in true, sport-specific training, they are best served working on 'general physical preparedness,' or GPP. This will actually HELP the athlete excel in future sporting events by accumulating a wide range of fitness components, carrying over to a broad scope of tasks.

Given that few seem to understand what 'GPP' actually is, I'll resort to Professor Nikolay Ozolin on this one. Ozolin is one of the founders of Soviet sport science, having mentored Yuri Verkhoshanksy (the "Father of Plyometrics") and is a distinguished athlete and coach of the USSR himself. He defines GPP as:

"GPP contains the idea of all around physical development. Which is why the qualities developed by GPP may be called general as they express the ability of the organism and its psychological sphere to perform any physical work more or less successfully. Hence general endurance, general strength, general joint mobility, general coordination, general psychological preparedness."

At SAPT, when we  train our young athletes (even high school athletes, depending on their stage or emotional+physical development) we help them develop a wide range of physical attributes that will help them not only in their chosen sport, but also in countless other physical endeavors. Then, when they are actually ready for true sport specific training, they'll be way better off than if they specialized too soon. And yes: SAPT does of course take into consideration the sport the athlete plays and adjusts the program accordingly, but not at the expense of neglecting other physical attributes.

In closing: Encourage the young athlete (be them your child or not) to immerse themselves to a wide range of sports and physical skills. While it may appear counterintuitive, this will actually:

• Prevent early stagnation and help them maximally blossom when it comes time for true sport-specific training
• Potentially expose them to a sport they enjoy more or are more adept at than the sport they (or their parent!) thinks they were initially meant to specialize in
• Reduce the risk of overuse injuries (ex. it's scary how many adolescent baseball players are developing elbow+shoulder dysfunction due to early sport specialization)
• Help the athlete enjoy training for the sake of training. Then, even after their competitive athletic career is over, they can still engage in physical activity without a negative association
• Give the child more time for things he/she actually enjoys! Be it fishing, ice skating, doing schoolwork, playing backyard football, whatever.

Vertical Jump Initial Testing. Is it Really the Bees Knees?

Given that we train a lot of high school volleyball players at SAPT, I'm inevitably faced - on a weekly basis - with two questions that continually pop up from the players, or, more commonly, the parents of the girls: 1) Why aren't you testing my/my daughter's vertical jump on Day 1 as a baseline measurement?

2) Why aren't you doing a lot of plyometric drills with me/my daughter?

(Note: Although all this is being discussed with regards to volleyball, many of the same principles can be applied to other sports when it comes to verticals and improving change of direction speed)

While the answers to these questions could easily be an entire article series on their own, I'll do my best to summarize my points here.

1) The vertical jump simply isn't an appropriate test for most (but not all) high school athletes. Not only are there other methods of assessing one's athletic potential, but continually making an athlete  jump up and down with maximal effort can be dangerous. Let me briefly explain.

To put it simply: Many high school athletes lack the strength and neural control to execute a solid vertical jump. Just watch nearly any volleyball player do a standing vertical jump attempt on the vertec. However, instead of focusing on their torso, arms, and where their hand smacks the vanes, watch their knees during the countermovement phase of the jump (as they transition from moving down to moving up). What you'll see often resembles my replication in the video below:

May not have noticed that the first time you watched your kid jump, huh? Essentially the athlete is limiting how high they can jump by allowing "force leaks," to take place, in which they end up in sub-par biomechanical position for force production. Not only that, but it is dangerous for their knee health (along with other passive restraints in the lower extremity) to continue practicing like this.

While there are multiple root causes for this phenomenon, a good strength coach can often add a few inches to the athlete's vertical jump by merely teaching the athlete to keep themselves in powerful alignment during the countermovement phase. This involves much more than simply shouting at them to keep their knees out, BTW!

2. Plyometric drills are not a "one size fits all" approach. When you're administering individualized program design for each and every person in the room, as we do at SAPT for all our athletes, it's not a matter of just throwing a bunch of adolescent girls into the same cattle call drills.

Very precise decision making must be made in order to administer and match the exercise to the individual. In fact, any perceptive strength coach who's been in the industry has recognized by now that the more "advanced" and technical exercises (be it jump training, sprint training, medicine ball drills, olympic lifts etc.) will do NOTHING for the athlete unless he/she already possesses the necessary physical and technical preconditions for performing these drills!

As a quick example, we run the strength and conditioning for the majority of the Woodson high school volleyball team (shown in the picture below), who recently won the the district title - and continued to the regional finals and state tournament - for the first time in school history. However, we still give each and every girl on that team an individualized training plan, and this includes their jumping and plyo drills (not the same thing, by the way).

Although all of them together make up a great team, some possess a greater degree of spatial awareness, neural coordination, and strength than others. It would do every individual a disservice to throw them all in the same drills together rather than match the appropriate drill to the person.

Bottom line: Some athletes will be ready for true plyo drills, others will be not-so-ready. A good coach will be able to evaluate the individual and determine where they need to begin along the plyo continuum (if at all).

So, What To Do?

While it is beyond the scope of this post to delve head-first into the myriad progressions/drills that are ideal and appropriate to use, I can at least say that 90% of the athletes I've worked with need to begin by with some variation of drill force reduction. Developing eccentric force absorption and muscle contraction will lay the framework for enhanced concentric strength potential.

What do I mean by this? You can't optimally PRODUCE force until you can adequately ABSORB force. In a vertical jump, the first move that takes place is the force reduction component (lowering yourself to jump) before the actual force production phase (extending body to accelerate upward) during which you leave the ground. The athlete will only be able to accelerate quickly if they are able to efficiently decelerate FIRST.

An example of a Level 1 force absorption drill would be an altitude drop with a stick landing, as shown in the video below. These will drill landing mechanics, develop yielding strength, and create a strong excitation of the CNS.

It looks simple and easy, yes, but you'd actually be surprised at how many top-notch athletes cannot land properly upon initial testing! It is not uncommon to see athletes having difficulty landing properly from a mere 5" box height.

From there, you'll want to progress to elasticity jumps with variable landings in order to the teach the athlete to use his/her active support structures (muscles and tendons) to minimize stress on the passive support structures (bones, ligaments, labrums, etc.).

This will help prepare them the more "real life " scenario come game day.

10 Rules to Keep Your Man Card

In the short time I’ve been a strength coach I’ve learned a number of lessons from mentors and co-workers.; one of those lessons being how to lose your “man card”.  It’s important for us to understand that our man card is not a right, but a privilege. And trust me, if you’re not careful yours will get snatched away!  Hence the reason for writing this post; follow these simple rules and I promise your man card won’t be going anywhere. Rule 1: Do not wear your clothes so tight that your girlfriend mistakes them for hers.  Guys, there’s no excuse for this, either buy some bigger clothes or get bigger yourself.

Rule 2: Do not comment on how vascular another man is/don’t talk about how vascular you are.  Is this something I really need to explain?  Just don’t do it, it’s weird.

Rule 3: If your 140lbs soaking wet do not talk about wanting to gain mass and then complain about not wanting to lose your “six-pack”.  MAN UP! Start pounding whole milk and peanut butter and start MOVING WEIGHT!

Rule 4: Do not lip sync to your awful music in the mirror at the gym in between sets with an angry look on your face.  When I was in college I saw this entirely too often.  Let’s keep that nonsense to yourself guy in the tiny Affliction t-shirt and Euro Puma shoes.

Rule 5: Bringing this back to the beginning, do not wear skinny jeans so tight that your girlfriend asks if she can borrow them.  Much to my dismay, I feel like this happens more than it ought to.  As a matter of fact just don’t wear skinny jeans.

Rule 6: Do not begin every sentence with the word “Bro”.  Usually the sentence that follows goes something like; “Bro, can I get a spot on these Preacher Curls?”

Rule 7: Do not lift your shirt up to check out your abs in the mirror while at the gym.  Put your shirt down and get back to your Smith Machine quarter squats.

Rule 8: Do not use a foam pad on the barbell when squatting or front squatting.  Again, MAN UP! Get used to the bar, get some bigger shoulders, and get a bigger yoke!

Rule 9: Do not update your status on Facebook to “gettin’ swole at the gym”. Newsflash, no one cares that you’re at the gym.  Unless your status is “attempting a 600lbs deadlift today” we don’t want to hear about your adventures on the elliptical machine.

Rule 10: Do not be the guy five years out of high school at the local gym telling everyone about the glory days and how “strong” you used to be.  This is what I like to call the Uncle Rico syndrome.  It’s over man, move on.  And chances are you weren’t as strong as you thought you were.

[vsw id="Fmh5e-9bn8w&feature=youtu.be" source="youtube" width="425" height="344" autoplay="no"]

I know what you’re saying to yourself, “Ryan, you’ve never been guilty of any of these things?”  And my answer would be nope, not a one.  Come on, you seriously think I’d admit to any of these things?  Anyway, be sure to follow these rules in order to keep doing those manly things we like to do such as, chopping wood, going on river boat gambling trips, making beef jerky, hunting bears with our bare hands, and wearing flannel.

One Exercise or Many Exercises? That is the Question.

Once or twice a week I lift in a small commercial gym. Some may ask why I would do this, given that I have free access to a state-of-the art facility, packed full of strength "toys" to use whenever we at SAPT aren't training athletes+clients. I mean, why would I want to ever avoid training in a place with prowlers, turf to sprint on, sandbags, no mirrors to throw me off, and plenty of free squat racks?

Not to mention, I have freedom to drop a ton of weight on the ground without worrying about the manager of the wine shop below coming up to yell at me. (Yes, the commercial facility I lift at is situated immediately ABOVE a wine shop...DON'T ASK. I was not the architect/urban planner for that one).

Well, for one thing, it does provide a change of scenery, and, thus, a bit of a "mental" break. It can actually be nice to lift under a different roof than that which I coach under all day, all week long. Second, the commercial gym just so happens to be right across the street from my favorite local coffee shop, so I can knock out both in a one-two punch.

Below is a picture I recently took at Caffe Amouri. In the middle is a cup filled with the best coffee your lips will ever touch. I'll even go so far as to state that their coffee is the best I've EVER had, and, when it flows over your tongue like velvet, the flavor hits you as would the sweet nectar of the gods. On the right is my awesome Lord of the Rings PEZ dispenser that Sarah gave me for Christmas.

Okay, actually that entire introduction was just a way for me validate showing you my sweet PEZ thingy, but I digress.

You are jealous though. Admit it.

Anyway, back to training at the commercial gym. One thing I consistently notice is that the majority of people in there bounce around from one exercise to the next, perhaps hitting upwards of 10-15 different exercises in their workout. You know....squat for a set of ten, do side bends for a set of ten, lunge, russian twist, cable row, pec deck, do some crunches, then leave. This got me thinking about something I've known for a while but apparently have taken for granted:

Your body will adapt to a given loading parameter (weight used, rep range, tempo, etc.) faster than it will an actual exercise.

As such, in order to get the most out of a resistance training program, it is better to manipulate the reps, sets, rest period, bar speed, etc. for one main lift than to consistently change what exercise you are doing.

Let me provide an example. Say I give you twenty-four weeks to get as strong, lean, and mean as possible. You have two choices:

1) You can only use the squat as your primary knee-dominant lift. However, I will give you a program that perfectly manipulates the loading, sets, reps, tempo, rest periods in order to minimize the risk of progress grinding to a halt.

2) Every few weeks you have free reign to cycle in whatever knee dominant lift you want (front squat, bulgarian split squat, single-leg squat, stepback lunge, split squat, forward lunge, walking lunge, skater squat, etc.). However, you must ALWAYS do three sets of ten reps with a :75 rest period for the entire duration of the twenty-four week program.

Which option would you choose?

I can guarantee you that option 1 will allow you to see better results across the board. Manipulating the bar speed, reps, sets, rest period and other variables using one good exercise is certainly going to allow you to see superior results compared to multiple exercises using the same parameters. The body will adapt to a given loading order far before it will adapt to a particular exercise.

As a disclaimer, I do realize (and I may get a lot of hate mail for this) there are schools of thought out there preaching the continual rotation of exercises on a weekly basis, but that's precisely my problem with using that style training for beginner and intermediate lifters (you can ignore this statement if you're squatting 600lbs+). It's simply too frequent of a shift to allow for continued adaptation, accommodation, and to see what is actually working.

So, when in doubt, stick to the same exercise, and milk it for all it's worth. You'll be far better off squatting (or deadlifting, or bulgarian split squatting, or whatever) and appropriately changing how you do the exercise rather than constantly rotating exercises.