This blog is for anyone Who Likes a Tough Cardio Programme

Hi

Today has  been a really steady day, which is good as I am off on holiday tomorrow for five weeks (nice job if you can get it) I will try and update the blog at least once a week while I am away so any readers don't lose interest. I managed to get another short session today, just some heavy Squats (heavy for me anyway) 5 x 5 @130kg and some dips 5 x 5 @ 80,85,90,95,100lbs, that was it 20 mins, but I got a decent sweat on!.

I was going to write about specific strength training sets and reps tonight, but then I thought, I have written a lot about strength training and not a lot about Cardio-vascular training, so for any Cardio Junkies out there I am going to write about something called Mad Max Training. You may be able to tell from the title of the programme that it is not for the faint of heart and it is very hard work, but the results that you can get from it are outstanding in a very short period of time. It is quality training if you are into any type of distance running and will definitely improve your race times, guaranteed. Also great for team sport players for improved conditioning.

Mad Max Training will improve VO2 max and your Critical Power.


What is VO2 MAX?

Simply put VO2 MAX is the amount of Oxygen that you can get to your working muscles. VO2 max is  important to your performance, and the higher yours is the better you will be able to handle moderate intensity exercise than someone who has a poor VO2 Max. However, having a good VO2 max, does not mean that you will be able to run faster for longer than someone who has a lower VO2 max than you, this comes down to CRITICAL POWER, or you could refer to it as RUNNING ECONOMY.

WHAT IS CRITICAL POWER?

CRITICAL POWER is the maximum intensity an individual can maintain for ever (on paper) So athlete A with a high VO2 MAX may run at 10 MPH and be at his limit, but it is possible for athlete B with a lower VO2 MAX, to be able to run at 11MPH. This is down to athlete B's CRITICAL POWER being superior to athlete A's with the higher VO2 MAX..

MAD MAX TRAINING


Finding your V-MAX. (Velocity max) to do this:

1. Pick a speed that you think you can handle on a treadmill  somewhere between 6 mph (10kph) and 9mph (15kph)
2. Start on a 0% gradient and increase the gradient every minute by 1% (do not adjust your speed)
3. Keep increasing the gradient every minute until you are exhausted and have to stop, or if you are really hard core, it shoots you off the back (if you are going to do this, ensure you have a padded area to land on, and I am not encouraging this option)
4. Record the last gradient you were on, that you could last at least 30 seconds and also record your speed. This is now your V-MAX.
5. Normally you will last around 8-12 minutes if you have your speed right at the start.

On your next training session, you will need to find your T-MAX (Time maximum). To establish this, go to your treadmill and put on the speed and gradient from your V-MAX.
Jump on and run to total exhaustion at that speed and gradient, you will do well to stay on for 3-5 minutes

Now you have your T-MAX and V-MAX, you will need to work out your training intervals. Each Interval should be 70-75% of your T-MAX.

So if your speed (V-MAX) was 6mph (10kph) and your gradient was 8% and you lasted for 180 secs, you would set your treadmill on 6mph on a 8% gradient and your training interval will be 180*75% = 135 seconds.

Rest intervals

When you first start out your rest intervals should be twice the work interval, so using our above time of 135 seconds work interval, you will rest for 270 secs. The aim is to eventually use a 1:1 work and rest interval.

I do not recommend a 1:1 work/rest ratio to start out with unless you are a very accomplished Athlete, otherwise you will see a big drop off in performance in your session if you do.

Volume

In each session you should try to work up to 8 repetitions, but I would aim for 5 at the start, you will be going well if you can achieve this.

How Often?

These sessions are very intense, so I don't recommend more than 2 of these types of session per week.

The improvements to your VO2 max come very quickly, so you should retest your V-MAX and T-MAX after 4 weeks.

This type of training has some spectacular results when tested, in one study it was found to improve a 3000 meter time trial by 17 seconds. In another study it was shown that 4 weeks of this type of training increased V-MAX by 1kph, T-MAX by 75 seconds and VO2 Max increased significantly.

Well that is all for tonight, just so you are in the know, I have done 4 weeks of this train in the past (wouldn't fancy it now mind) and it is very hard, but well worth the effort if you can stick it out.

Have a great day

Steve

Training for Growth (Hypertrophy)

Today has been a steady day, with nothing special going on. I only managed to get a short training session in though 22 minutes to be exact, that still got me 10 sets of Incline Bench (machine as I had no spotter) with 6 sets of 3's at 140kg  for max strength work and 50 chin ups, so not bad really. I was really hurting today after yesterday's Kettle bell conditioning work. So on with the Blog.

Once you have been lifting weights for around 3 -  6 months and you have built up a knowledge base of exercises and correct exercise form, you will need to start mixing up your weights sessions to continually get the right training stimulus and force adaptation to take place, so that you can start to increase gains in Muscle Mass (Hypertrophy) and increase your strength. I have mentioned before that doing the same programme all the time will eventually lead to a training Plateau and staleness, even reversal of some of the gains you have made.  It comes down to the old saying "The definition of Insanity is doing he same thing over and over and expecting different results" why waste hours of effort for no gains. Now if you are going to progress with your training, you must have a basic knowledge about what you are trying to do and that is the point of this blog from here on in.

Muscular Hypertrophy Training

Since you started training you will have been seeing some signs of Muscular Hypertrophy (muscle growth), as it happens, when you first start out, just about any stimulus will work for you, but this stimulus will tail off, so now you have to progress, but what are you going to do?

The first thing you will need to do is a good year of  Hypertrophy training. You have a few choices open to you.

1. You can do lots of Isolation work (if you have read my blogs you will know that I do not subscribe to this unless you are specifically training for Body Building))
2. You can do a Split Training Routine (Best for if you can train 4-6 times per week)
3. You can do a Full Body Training Routine. ( best for if you can only train 3 times per week)

If you are sticking with full body sessions, the reps and percentages I am going to prescribe for the split routine apply.

For a Split Training Routine you can use many different variations, but here is a sample one for you.

Session 1.  Locomotion --------Lunges, step ups. etc.
Session 2.  Push ------Press ups, bench press, overhead pressing. etc.
REST/ RECOVER DAY
Session 3.  Pull -------Chin ups, pull ups, decline rows, Lat pull downs, Seated rows etc.
Session 4. Changing levels -----. Squats, Dead Lifts, Pistols
REST /RECOVER DAY
Session 5  Rotation ------Wood chops, sledge hammer work, medicine ball work

If you can only fit in 4 sessions, add rotation into session 1 and session 3.

To specifically train HYPERTROPHY, you must work in the 8-12 repetition range for the majority of exercises, however some parts of  your body may respond better to higher repetitions, such as your Traps and your Legs, it is not set in stone as all people respond differently to training stimulus, so a bit of experimentation on your behalf is necessary.  Not a bad thing as this is how you learn.

You might be thinking that it is a lot of guess work, but here is where a bit of experience  comes into play. Over the many years of strength training, we know that if you lift in the 8-12 Repetition range at the right weights intensity (Load in this case) you will stimulate mass growth.

The correct training intensity for Hypertrophy is around 60 - 85% of your 1 repetition maximum for a given lift. This percentage figure will differ slightly depending who you listen too, but you won't go wrong with it.

When you are at this training stage you will know that the heavier you lift the less number of reps you can do with a given load, so training for Hypertrophy in the 8-12 rep range will give you strength gains as well, but the main effect will be growth as long as you back your training up with the right Nutrition. This means eating around 1.8 to 2.2 gram of Protein for each Kilogram of fat free mass (Lean Muscle Mass) and you will need to eat plenty of Carbohydrates too.

It may not be practical to test a 1 rep max for all the different types of lifting that you are going to be doing, doing a 1 rep max for some lifts is not advised. So you will 1 rep max test just a certain few lifts. The rest of your lifting intensities are done using a bit of guess work and trial and error.

The main lifts suited to 1 rep max test.

The Squat
The Dead lift
The Bench Press
The Pull up
The Overhead Press
The Power Clean
The Bent over row (I would use a 3 rep max test for this, for safety sake. When you have your max, use a predicted 1 rep max  using a chart) Repetition Max Calculator (click the link to view)

You can use the calculator for any lift if you don't fancy an all out effort.

Putting it all together.

For example sake I will use The Bench Press.

You test your 1 rep max on the Bench Press and find that it is 100 kg

so you would train the bench press for 8-12 reps between 
100/65% = 65kg to 100/85%= 85kg
Meaning 65kg x 8-12 to 85kg 8-12

This does not mean that you will definitely get 8 reps at 85% of your 1 rep max, but it will come somewhere between those weights specified.

So a Hypothetical session for the Bench Press may look like this

Set 1.  Warm up 12 reps at 50%
Set 2.  Warm up 10 reps at 60%
Set 3. Working set 8-12 @ 65% ( You will do a maximum of 12 reps)
Set 4. Working set 8-12 @70%
Set 5. Working set 8-12 @ 75%
Set 6. Working set 8-12 @ 80%

By the time you get to the latter sets you will be looking to be at failure somewhere in the 8-12 range. You can see that you are increasing the load by 5% each time.

Or another method could be:

Set 1 and 2 warm up sets

Set 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 75% x 8-12, here you are using the same load for all your sets, hoping that the sheer volume of the sets will induce muscular failure.

There is no right or wrong as long as you get the Percentage right and the correct amount of reps. You will have 12 months of this Hypertrophy training to experiment all the different loads and reps to use to find out what works best for you. Using all the different methods will also give you an ever changing training stimulus to force adaptation to take place.

I hope this all makes sense, tomorrow I will do  a piece on Maximum Strength training.

Have a good night

Steve  

PUTTING A BEGINNER WEIGHTS PROGRAMME TOGETHER

Hi all,

Hope you have had a good weekend, whatever you have been doing. It's been pretty steady here, just business as usual. We had a massive Hailstorm today, it lasted for about 15 minutes and it was good to see, it has cleared the air and kept all the dust down for the first time in weeks. Great !! I did a spot of training today, did 200 reps on the 24kg kettle bell Clean and Press and 100 snatches in a total time of 29 minutes 15 secs, which I was pretty pleased with, although right now I feel like I have been hit by a bus, I am aching like a good 'un!

For tonight's blog I am going to attempt to explain how you would now format your own weights training session after you have done your initial testing. This is aimed at the beginner.

Now that you have done your 15 repetition max testing you will need to put together your programme so that you can start to improve your strength.

So first we will deal with week 1 -6 of your training programme.  We will work on the premise that you are going to train 3 x per week and that you have one hour in which to complete your training.

I can't guess what exercises you are going to do, but remember what I wrote earlier, you would need to pick 4 or 5 exercises per training session from the list that I gave you. For this purpose I will pick 5 and we will just do a snapshot of the week, so we will just look at the first session, but the other two will look exactly the same as far as sets, reps and recovery are concerned, it is just the exercises that will need to be different for each session.

Session 1 week 1.

This would be your testing session where you will find your 15 rep max's

1. Locomotion - The static lunge  = Bodyweight 15 + 15 reps (means each leg)
2. Push - The Overhead Press = 15 reps @ 10kg  Dumbells in each hand
3. Pull - The Bent Over Row =  15 reps @ 20kg Barbell
4. Changing levels - The Back Squat = 15 reps @ 20kg Barbell
5. Rotation - The standing horizontal wood chop =  3 plates on the cable cross over machine.

Above are our hypothetical results for the first session of our new weight training programme. As I have already stated, you would do this for the next 2 sessions and record what you achieved for each exercise. So that you can understand what I mean:

Hypothetically

Exercise 1. We managed 15 lunges on each leg with body-weight only.
Exercise 2. We managed to overhead press 2 x 10kg dumbbells 15 times
Exercise 3. Doing the Barbell bent over row, we did 15 reps with a 20kg Barbell
Exercise 4. when doing the Back Squat, we managed to push out 15 reps with a 20kg barbell on our back
Exercise 5. Found us doing the Wood Chop with 3 plates on the cable cross over.

For this session on week 2, we now have to put into place how we are going to do the session. There are 2 choices, we can do it Horizontally, this means that you would complete all the given sets for a single exercise and then move to the next exercise on the list.  Or we can do it vertically, as in circuit fashion, so we do 1 set of exercise one and then move to exercise two and so on. Don't worry it will become apparent what I mean if you don't get it yet.

Week 2. Session 1.  Horizontal version

Ex 1. Set 1. Do 50% of your max = 7+7 lunges.
Set 2. Do your maximum reps = 15 + 15 lunges

Move to exercise 2

Ex 2. Set 1. Do 50% of your max weight overhead press = 5kg x 15 reps
Set 2. Do your max weight 10kg x 15 reps.

Do the same for the rest of the exercises in this session. Your first set will be 50% of your maximum, in the case of the lunge, we had no weight, so I just did 50% of 15 reps = 7 reps. Your second set will be your 15 rep max.  You would then move onto Ex 2 and complete both sets, before moving to exercise 3. and so on.

Week 2 session 1. Vertical version
Ex 1. Set 1. Do 50% of your max = 7+7 lunges.
Ex 2. Set 1. Do 50% of your max weight overhead press = 5kg x 15 reps
Ex 3. Set 1 Do 50% of your Barbell bent over row =  10kg x 15 reps
Ex 4  Set 1 Do 50% of your Barbell Back Squat = 10kg x 15 reps
Ex 5  Set 1 Do 50% of your Horizontal wood chop = 1 plate x 15 reps

You would then go on to start at exercise 1 and go through again, but this time use your 15 rep maximum for all the exercises.

That would be the end of that session.

I would recommend training vertically when you start out.

Week 3 session 1


In the third week we would add another set to our programme

It would look like this for all your exercises, (so I am only going to give an example for 2 exercises, one with body weight only, one with an external load)

Ex 1.  Static lunge, set 1. = 50% of rep max = 7+7 reps
Set 2. = 75% of Rep max = 10+10  reps
Set 3. = Rep max = 15+15 reps

Ex 2. The Overhead Press Set 1. 50% rep max = 5kg x 15 reps
Set 2. 75% rep max = 7.5kg  x 15 reps
Set 3. Rep max 10 kg x 15 reps.

You would do these % whether doing horizontal or vertical training.

Once you have finished week 3. On all the exercises that you managed to get your 15 rep max on the final set, you will need to retest your 15 rep max weight, any exercises that you failed to get your full 15 rep max weight, stick with that weight until you get it on the third set.

Use the 50% - 75% - Max for weeks 4,5 and 6.

Once you have completed the first 6 weeks, you can now have a testing week on week 7. This will give you a bit of a rest. This time though, you are going to find a 10 rep max for your chosen exercises.

Once you have found your starting weights, you will do 6 weeks on this programme. Use the same method that you used for the first 6 weeks, but this time start straight out at 3 sets. Using:

Set 1. 50% max
Set 2. 75% max
Set 3 100%max.

Whenever you can perform 2 extra reps on your final set, then you should add 2.5% to your max weight for the next training session.

This method of training is called the Delorme method and works very well with beginners.

Rest times.

Your rest times should be short for the whole 12 weeks. Use 30 seconds rest in between sets and 60 seconds in between exercises for Horizontal type training, and 15 seconds between exercises and 60 seconds between circuits on vertical training.

That's it for tonight, I have tried to keep it as simple as possible, for ease of understanding, so I hope I have achieved my aim.

Tomorrow I am going to explain about lifting intensities for more advanced lifters.

Happy training  

Steve

MAKING UP YOUR OWN WEIGHTS SESSION PART 2

Evening all,

Been up on the range today, all afternoon, it was an excellent afternoon's shooting, using a variety of different weapons, only draw back is the heat and we are having real high winds at the moment every afternoon which is making the air full of dust, which gets in your eyes and mouth, not nice. Anyway, enough of that, I am going to carry on with the theme of making up your own weights sessions and continue with providing you information so that you can make your resistance training more targeted toward what you are trying to achieve. Whether it is Hypertrophy or Strength.  As I have said in the last blog, I will cover Power and Endurance at a later date.

To get the best gains from your weight training, there are certain parameters that you need to adhere to.

1. You need to know what you are currently capable of lifting. This means testing
2. You need to know how to manipulate your training loads, to allow you to get the best gains.
3. You should stick to a programme for at least 6 weeks before changing it (unless you are an experienced lifter or athlete, who will need to change things on a more regular basis for stimulation)
4. You will need to test yourself again at 4-6 weeks, to see if what you are doing is working. It would be a pretty pointless exercise to keep doing the same thing if no gains were made.

TESTING

There are many different ways to carry out your testing. I will give you a couple here.

• For a complete novice
• For an intermediate lifter
• For an experienced lifter

The Novice Lifter

When you first start out on your resistance training you should test all the exercises that you are planning to do in your training programme.

The test should consist of what is known as a 15 Repetition maximum test. 

To do a 15 repetition maximum, take a fairly light weight, be very conservative at this stage, and carry out the chosen exercise for a total of 15 repetitions. If you get all your 15 Reps, which you should have if you picked a light weight. Rest for around 2 minutes and now have another go using a weight that you think will allow you to only get 15 reps. It is a bit of a pain working out your starting weights because there is quite a lot of guess work on your behalf.

Your 15 repetition maximum should be a load that you find difficult to do on the 14th and 15th repetitions. This does not mean that you are struggling to move the weight and losing your form, it just means that it is difficult to do. 

If you find the second attempt fairly easy, then you should rest and try again with a heavier weight, if you find it is too heavy, then rest and have another go with a lighter weight. You should really only have3 attempts to find your 15 rep max for an exercise in any single session. It is possible to do as long as you are honest with yourself.

After your first 6 weeks, you can test again. This time though you should find a 10 repetition maximum for each of your lifts. Now you will have a much better idea of how much you can lift, so you will have no problem finding your Max's in 3 attempts.

Use exactly the same method as when you did your 15 rep max, but this time you are looking at finding reps no 9  and 10 difficult without losing your form.

The Intermediate & Experienced Lifter

Testing for these two groups of lifters can be heavier, at this stage you can start doing anything from a 5 to a 1 rep maximum lift, depending on what type of programme you are going to embark on.

It is essential that you warm up very well to do this type of heavy testing, 

1. To avoid injury
2. To give you the best chance of getting your optimum load

To find your 1 rep max, you should have a guess at what you think your max will be.  This may sound a bit odd as that is what you are trying to find, but you will have a rough idea in your mind.

Use this guessed weight and do  8 reps at 50% so if you think you can do 100kg on the bench press, do 8 reps with 50kg.

Then rest for 2 minutes and do 5 reps with 60% (60kg using our 100kg max)

Rest 2 minutes do 3 reps with 70% (70kg)

Rest 3 minutes do 1 rep with 80%

Rest 3 minutes do 1 rep with 90%

Rest 5 minutes and have a go at your max (100kg)

if you get the Max, rest for a further 5 minutes and add about 2.5% to the last load and go again. You can keep on at this until you max out.

If you fail your first attempt but were close to getting the desired weight, then rest 5 minutes and try the same weight again. (you can have 3 shots total)

If you fail your desired weight, and are not close to getting it, then reduce the load by 2.5% and have another go after 5 minutes rest. You should be somewhere near on this attempt.

When you have done your testing, you will now have a starting point to kick off your weight training programme.

On Sunday I will explain how a novice should structure their weights loading for the first 6 weeks and how to put it together after the second bout of testing.

I hope you all have a great weekend.

Steve

MAKING UP YOUR OWN WEIGHTS SESSION PART 1

Hi all,

I have had a good day today, I got in a quality training session, I did some Push and Pull work including 50 weighted pull ups, some Bent Over Rows, Barbell Benching, Incline benching, Dumbbell benching, some press ups and some floor press. It took 59 minutes and was pretty hard work, but I felt good after. It was 33 sets in total, 3 more sets than I normally do, but no problem. I want to take the last couple of blogs a bit further and write about Exercises, Sets and Reps. It’s good to know what exercise to do, but I suppose it will help quite a lot to know how much to do.

First of all, when starting out on a programme you have to decide:

 How often you can train.

 How long you can train for.

Without knowing these two components it is very hard to put any sort of programme together.

If you can only train 3 times per week, full body training is the way to go. The way to decide what exercises to use, if you are going down this track is pretty easy. You just need to pick one exercise per movement for each training session. E.g.

1. 1 x Locomotion
2. 1 x changing levels
3. 1 x Push
4. 1 x Pull
5. 1 x Rotation

You would pick a different set of exercises from each list for the 2 subsequent sessions. You will need to refer to my last two blogs to understand this.

How many sets and reps will depend on what your aim is?

 Hypertrophy (muscle gain)

You can use 3 – 5 sets per exercise and your repetition range should be between 8 and 12 reps. you can take this up to as high as 20 reps for larger movements such as squats and lunges.

Strength

For strength training, you will need to use heavier loads; because of this you can’t use high reps; however you can do a few more sets for each exercise. 4-6 sets of 3-6 reps will do for strength training.

Whatever you are training for, Hypertrophy or Strength, I would cut off the session at a maximum of 75 minutes for Hypertrophy and a maximum of 60 minutes for Strength training.

Power and endurance

I am not going to cover these in this blog, but will in the future.

If you can train more frequently, then you can use what is known as Split Training.

Split training means that you would dedicate each training session to a different movement, this way you can do more work per training session on each particular movement.

Day 1. Locomotion

Day 2. Push

Rest day

Day 3. Pull

Day 4.  Changing levels

Rest day

Day 5. Rotation

Or you could split this way.

Day 1. Locomotion

Day 2. Push / Pull

Rest day

Day 3. Changing levels

Day 4. Rotation

Rest day

Rest day

Whichever split you use, you should pick a maximum of 4 exercises for each of the movements and the reps and sets remain the same as previously explained.  There are no real hard and fast rules for how many exercises you can do, but remember the Sets, Reps and Rest times explained below and it will pretty much determine how much work you can get in per session. Stick to the time guidelines for each session

Rest times

Hypertrophy

When training for Hypertrophy, your rest times should be short; you are trying to fatigue the muscles to force maximum growth in them. Optimum rest times should be around 45 – 60 seconds between sets and 60-90 seconds between exercises.

Strength

When you are training for strength, then longer rest times are necessary so that the muscles and the Central Nervous System can recover sufficiently for you to lift heavy repeatedly. Fatigue is not what you want when training for strength, so if you feel that your intensity is dropping, then it is better to stop your session, no matter what stage you are at, at the time. Ideal rest times, if you go by the book are approximately 3 minutes between sets and 3-5 minutes between exercises. However, over the years I have found that you can still get decent results if you structure your sessions well with much shorter rest times.

That’s pretty much it for tonight, have a good one, wherever you are.  In the next blog on this subject, I am going to tell you how to determine your weight loads using percentages of Repetition Maximum.

Steve

EXERCISES THAT TRAIN MOVEMENT PART 2

I hope you have found the last few blogs informative, now tonight I will carry on with the effective strength exercises for Push, Pull and rotation. I will start with Push Exercises.

Push Exercises.

The most effective push exercises are without doubt, the Push up (Press up) and the Overhead Press. The push up can be seen here, in fact I have written a whole eBook on the exercise, which is entirely free on my website (you must register to get it, it’s all free)

The Overhead press:

This can be done in 2 different forms.

1. Lifting a resistance overhead
2. Lifting your body weight in a handstand position.

The overhead press using an external resistance.

You can see an image here

It is important when you are lifting anything overhead, that you know how to get rid of the load, should you get into trouble. It is a simple case of either, stepping backward and pushing the load forward with your arms, or stepping forward and releasing the load backward. Do not try to get control of the load, it is not worth it. Let go and start over is a better option.

The best way to lift a load over head is as follows.

First of all, you need to learn what it feels like to be tight; this will be helpful in all you’re lifting.

1. Go to a doorway and stand in it
2. Put your hands up under the door-frame
3. Standing directly under the door, push upward as hard as you can.
4. You will feel everything tighten up; this is how solid you should feel when you lift weights
5. You will also feel that you are being pushed downward into the ground, now this is the key with lifting overhead. Don’t think of pushing the weight upward, but think of it as pushing yourself away from the bar (just like in the door-frame) you will see that you remain tight throughout your lift and will be able to lift heavier loads above your head once you have cracked this. Be aware, it takes practice, but don’t give up as it is rewarding when you know how to do it.

The Handstand Push up.

I don’t know many people that can just get into the handstand push up and start knocking out reps, so you will need progressions if you are going to go down this route. However, if you take your time to learn this movement it gives fantastic strength rewards. Click here to see how to progress to the Handstand Push up.

Pulling.

The best bodyweight pulling exercises are the Chin up and the Pull Up and also the Horizontal or Decline row.

They are great exercises for increasing your pulling strength.  Other resisted exercises that are highly effective are:

1. Bent over Barbell rows,
2. Bent over Dumbbell rows,
3. Single arm rows
4. Isolated Lat rows.
5. Face Pulls

All of these exercises are great for increasing your grip strength as well.  I recommend learning the chin up and Pull up first though. You can find progressions for these exercises here.

Rotation.

Rotation is extremely important to daily life and especially sports performance. Every movement to do with locomotion needs a strong core, which is where you are mainly affected by rotational forces. If you can’t resist the forces of rotation, you will not be able to walk or run efficiently, so rotation must be trained in 3 types of muscular contraction, Isometric, Concentric and Eccentrically.

To train rotation, rather than do hundreds of crunch type exercises, look to doing some of the following.

1. The Wood Chop

• Low to high
• High to low
• Horizontal
• The Turkish get up
• The Windmill

By doing these exercises you will find that your core strength really goes up a couple of levels, not only will you have a strong core, but you will also find that all your lifts increase to. Do not over-train the core though. All the exercises that I have given you over the last 2 blogs, will be working your core quite hard if you are doing them correctly. I would not suggest doing more than one out and out core/rotation session more than once per week.

A final word on strengthening movement. If you have trained using machines or mainly isolation exercises, when you start to use Barbells, Dumbbells and other types of weights to train movement, you will find it hard to control at the start. This is quite normal and you should expect this, it won’t take long for your nervous system to adapt, so stick with it as the results are well worth it in the end.

I hope that these articles have got you thinking about the way you train, if you are an isolation person or a machine addict give them a go.

All the very best

Steve

EXERCISES THAT TRAIN MOVEMENT

Now that I have explained about training movement not muscle, it would be a good idea to tell you what the best types of exercises are to give you the best results.

First of all we need to look at human movement, so what are the main movements available to us that form the basis of all our movement? Well according to Juan Carlos Santana,(Renowned  Strength and conditioning expert)  they are:

1. Locomotion, moving forward backward and side to side
2. Changing levels, bending, extending, squatting, jumping type movement
3. Pushing and Pulling
4. Rotation , rotation is extremely important because in almost all of our movement we have to either rotate or counter the forces of rotation, especially when walking or running.

You will hardly be able to disagree with him.

After studying the above movements, it makes sense that to strengthen these movements will improve your daily life (especially as you get older) and will also have a dramatic affect on your sporting performance should you participate in one.

The next phase is to look at the exercises that you can use to strengthen all these movements.   To do this you need exercises that will not necessarily replicate the movement exactly, but will set of the movement chain of events that are associated with the movement you are trying to strengthen. So this means picking exercises that will work multiple joints and muscles incorporating the core and that take into account balance and stability issues associated with daily life and sporting performance.

First let’s look at;

 Locomotion.

Locomotion includes, running, walking, climbing steps or stairs, changing direction.

In my opinion the best exercises to strengthen these movements are the Walking Lunge, Lateral Lunge and the Single leg step up. They mimic these movements, really well, although exaggerated to place more demand on the joints and muscles. It is not a good idea to go straight into these exercises in their final form, but it is best to build up through a series of progressions, these progressions could look like this.

The Static Lunge in place

1. The Lunge
2. The Alternate Leg Lunge
3. The Reverse Lunge
4. The Walking lunge
5. The Walking lunge to push press
6. The Marine Lunge walk
7. All the above in a lateral direction

For climbing steps;

1. The alternate leg step up (boxes of increasing heights)
2. The Single leg step up (boxes of increasing heights)

Changing Levels

Changing levels is an everyday part of life, squatting, bending over to pick things up can’t be avoided, on the Sports field is the same, lowering your centre of gravity for rapid movement, or jumping. For all these types of movement you are changing levels. Exercises that will help you strengthen changing levels are:

1. The Squat and its many variants
2. The Dead lift and variants
3. The Squat to press
4. The clean and Press

Not only do these exercises strengthen your movement, but they also tend to pack on mass, so they give great bang for buck.

That is all for tonight, tomorrow I will cover Push/Pull and Rotation.

Have a good one

Steve  

TRAIN MOVEMENT NOT MUSCLE AND FREE WEIGHTS NOT MACHINES

Over the years I have seen a lot of people strength training in the gym, always using the same routines. Normally they will go in and knock out 8 to 12 reps on several different exercises, usually what are called Isolation exercises, this is where they train one muscle group at a time, isolating a particular muscle and working only one joint at a time.

Well for normal daily life or for any kind of sport, your body does not work this way at all. You will never do a movement based task where you will only work one muscle at a time. Movement will always require several muscle groups and joints to work in a chain of events. To understand what I mean, I will give two examples with a very simple explanation. One is an everyday task and the other is a sporting movement.

Example 1. Walking
Walking is something we do every day (most of us anyway) when you take your first step, the first thing that happens is one leg must move in front of the other (obviously) to make this happen, first of all you must lift your leg at the hip, at the same time you have to start to bend your knee, then extend the knee to put your heel down, then you have to extend your hip and plantar flex your foot to place force through your foot to get forward locomotion, at the same time the muscles of your core have to work so that you don’t collapse in a heap.

Example 2. Jumping
Jumping requires a chain of events to get the vertical movement that you require. First you will have to do what is known as a counter movement, this means you will quickly bend at the hip, knee and ankle, followed quickly by what is described as triple extension of the Ankle, knee and hip, by doing this movement forcefully it will propel you upward. At the same time your core must remain strong so that the minimum amount of force is lost during your jump.

All movement requires lots of different muscles to work together to produce it. Thinking about that statement, you should be able to see that apart from looking the part in the mirror, lots of Isolation work is not particularly productive to movement as there is no chain of events across multiple joints taking place.

So when you start a resistance training programme you should consider using Exercises that will train more than one muscle and one joint at a time.

Another point to consider if you go to a gym, you will normally find stacks of fancy machines these days. The majority of machines will train muscle but are not great for training tendons, ligaments and all the small stabilising muscles around the joints that you are training. The reason being is that the machine will keep you nice and safe by supporting the load in a fixed line.

To understand this, you can try an experiment the next time you are at your Gym. Try this out on any machine based exercise. I will use the Smith Machine Bench Press as an example. If you don’t know what a Smith Machine is you can see an image Click here. Get on the Smith Machine and find your best Bench Press weight. Once you have done this, rest for 3 or 4 minutes and then get a spotter (partner who can help you) and go for your best bench press weight again, this time though use a Barbell. You will find that the amount you can lift is a significantly less than you could lift on the Machine. This is because you now have to use control to stop the barbell moving about and your central nervous system will only allow you to lift a weight that you can control. To take this even further, if you now try to lift a pair of Dumbbells in the same lift, the combined weight of the dumbbells will be quite a way off the amount that you could lift with the Barbell; this is because even more control is required to lift the Dumbbells. Therefore unless you have to use machines for medical reasons, you should always consider using free weights for your main exercises when doing resistance training so that you get better carry over into your daily life or chosen sport where you require balance and control for all your movements.

I hope you have had a great weekend.

Steve

GETTING MORE MENTAL IN YOUR WORKOUT

Hi all,

I have had a great couple of days, training has gone well and I got another article published on ezine articles about Recovery for Improved Performance, I was chuffed with that, I never thought it could be that difficult writing a real article but it took quite a bit of thinking about and re-writing. 

I had a go at a 2 minute Dip challenge this afternoon, got 65 dips, so wasn’t that happy really, I am going to have another go in the next couple of days, I want at least 80, so I will have to see how it goes. I did it on a spur of the moment as I was in the Gym taking a rehab session for a couple of mates who have been injured, so didn’t have any time to prepare mentally for it. So the next time I have a go at it, I will do it in my mind first, that will definitely get me a few more reps. So with that, it brings me round to today’s blog about getting mental with your training.

Many people think that using mental training in sport or any type of physical performance is just mumbo jumbo and doesn’t work. I can assure you though that there have been many scientific studies that show that it does and it is very difficult to ignore the evidence.

In one study, done with Basketball Players in a University in the States, showed that one group that did 100 free throws per day for 30 days improved by 24%, amazingly another group of players who were not allowed to do any type of free throws physically,  were asked to visualize (see it in their mind) 100 free throws per day for 30 days and they improved by 23% when it came to physically performing the task at the end of 30 days. Only a 1% difference. In simple terms, this is because your brain can’t really differentiate what is real and what is not, so for skill improvement visualization is shown to work.

Another study, again, done in the States, was done on Little Finger Strength and Elbow Flexor Strength, the group were under instruction to visualize an exercise to increase their strength in their little finger and their Elbow Flexors, at the end of the Study the Little finger Strength average increase was up by over 30% and the Elbow Flexors was 17% if my memory serves me correctly. So you can increase strength by visualization as well.

Visualization means creating or recreating an experience in your mind, and anyone can use it to positive effect. It will also help with building:

1. Confidence
2. Increasing motivation
3. Controlling emotions

So you can see that it is a very powerful tool to have in your armoury.

To use visualization effectively it is important to make the mental picture as vivid as possible, utilizing all your senses.

For it to work at its best you should always see in your mind’s eye the execution of whatever you are trying to improve and you should always see a positive outcome. The more you practice the better you will become at it.

For example let’s say that you have decided that you want to lose some body fat and start training. You have set your goals and have decided that you are going to get started in the morning. You are going to go out and do some body weight training and you know you don’t like exercise and it is going to be difficult to motivate yourself to do it. You know what exercises you are going to do and you know how to do them. This is where visualization may be of use.

All you need to do is go to a quiet room and lie down and relax, there should be no distractions. 

Once you are relaxed start off with a picture in your mind of the following morning, imagine getting up and putting your exercise kit on, going down the stairs and entering the room where you are going to train, think of the warm up you are going to do, how you are going to do it and how great and full of energy you feel. Your first exercise is the Squat, picture yourself doing the number of Squats you have made your target, feel the great aching feeling in your legs as you approach your target number and how your breathing and heart rate are increasing, you can feel the sweat starting to emerge from your body and then you hit your final rep and you have achieved the exact number you wanted to do, with comparative ease. Now it’s rest time for a minute and then move on to the next exercise, The Press up. I am sure you get the picture.

Notice in the above scenario, you set yourself up, carried out the skill and had an outcome which was successful. By doing this type of mental rehearsal you stand a much better chance of completing what you intend to do than if you went with no mental rehearsal at all.

 I have written a PDF Manual that is available for free download on my website click here.  All you need to do is register and it’s yours if you want a more in depth description of how to do it and what VISUALIZATION is good for.

Other mental strategies open to you are positive self talk. Basically this means talking yourself up. If you know you are going to face a difficult situation, positive self talk is a great tool to help you overcome it.

There are certain rules you must apply to Positive self talk and these are must do’s:

1. Your statements should be short but to the point
2. They must be positive statements expressing your intent
3. They should always be in the present tense
4. You should always be kind to yourself and never criticise your performance
5. You should repeat Positive self talk often.

Using the scenario in the bit about visualization, let’s say that you are now doing the exercise and it is getting tough. This is where positive self talk comes in.

Phrases such as “Come on you can do this” or “you’ve got this” or my favourite to myself is “Piece of P*ss”

Never say a statement such as “I can’t do this” or “I am not going to fail this” The Subconscious mind does not recognise the word don’t, so you are basically telling yourself that you are going to fail with statements such as the above.

A good saying for today, to do with positive self talk is:

IF YOU THINK YOU CAN’T, YOU WON’T. IF YOU THINK YOU CAN, YOU MIGHT

Further Mental strategies you can use to name a few are:

1. Distractions. If you are exercising you can use music or video to distract you from the physical exertion you are going through.
2. Set yourself realistic targets to achieve.
3. Use past experiences, where maybe you faced some difficulty and tell yourself you have got through tougher things than this

In conclusion, the mental side of Performance is huge and will ultimately determine whether you succeed or fail at something, so do not ignore it. You have a much better chance of success in anything that you do, and that is whether it is Physical Exercise, Fat loss or you are trying to achieve something in life if you use these mental skills on a regular basis.

Have a good one!

Steve

  

THIS BLOG IS FOR ME READ IT IF YOU WANT, (Not bothered if you don't)

I wasn't going to do a blog tonight, but decided to write one for myself. 

I have been pretty pissed off the last few days, which is not like me, after all I am always preaching positive thinking and all that mental malarky, so for the last two hours I have been sat here searching out the reason why, I needed to rectify it, because for a fact, one negative thought breeds another and another until you end up feeling down, and if you don't stop the rot, then things just keep getting worse, not only that, you actually attract events that you don't want to happen.

So I got to reading some paperwork on mental states and creating your own reality, something I read regularly, but just recently I have been so tied up with doing all the blogging and the website not to mention my work responsibilities, I have not kept on top of the mental work.

What I read got me thinking, and I  now know what set me off on this short negative period, which has now gone by the way. It was all to do with a video that I put on You Tube on Saturday. Someone put a like against it and a positive comment. Someone else, A Pilates Instructor (God bless her) had commented to this person on facebook that he should be careful doing this particular exercise, because the person in the video (me) allowed one of his legs to come up off the floor when doing it, and he was using his hip flexors to do  the rep and this could cause low back damage.(I agree that's possible if that is what you did all the time) Being a bit sensitive to the comment (I am sure that this instructor was only trying to help) I put my own comment on, which was, "I will bear this in mind, glad I don't do Pilates". Which was a bit petty I know. But looking back over the last couple of days, that single comment actually ruined them for me and that has lead to a negative effect on the people around me. Which is no good at all. So sorry to those concerned.  The point is, if you identify the cause of your negative emotions early, you can save yourself and those around you a lot of grief. Why should I let someone else's opinion get me down like that, it's ridiculous.  One person liked it, the other did not, so what? That is going to happen all the time. So I am over it.

Straight after this, I read an Article by Martin Rooney( A strength and Conditioning Specialist that I follow)

The Article read Run With The Outlaws, and it was basically about going back to some old school training, about the times when what you could lift and do was what mattered and not being overboard about form and what exercises you should and shouldn't be doing because they might hurt you. This doesn't mean ignore form in your exercises, that would be stupid, but don't get anal about it. In every day life and especially sport (which I participate in on a regular basis) physical exertion is not always pretty and straightforward, done in a neat and perfect way, sometimes you are off balance or under extreme fatigue, but you don't stop and say "please stop while I adjust my form or I may get hurt". to your opponent ,you get on with it and try to keep your technique as best you can. Keep your form when you can, but sometimes it goes now and again, accept it and that's it.

Well that's it, my rant and the pissed off mood is over and I am back on even track again. In my next blog I am going to write about getting more MENTAL in your thrust toward a Healthy Life. Meanwhile, I am still glad I don't do Pilates though.ha ha.

"He that will not reflect is a ruined man".

If I have any readers from the USA, I hope you had a good independence day yesterday.

Steve.

RECOVERY FOR A HEALTHY LIFE

Hi all,
I have had a couple of uneventful days, got a cracker of a cold, so I havnt been training at all, just doing my normal work. However, I do not take that many days off training and if it wasn't for the cold, I think I would feel pretty good and rested, so it has done me good being forced into an unscheduled rest period. So that links in pretty well with todays subject. Which is RECOVERY.

Recovery is so important to you making improvements in your fitness, I have touched on this subject in the Blog about doing relentless cardio and how I found out to my own cost that "train train train" does not work.

Before I write more about recovery, it is important to know how the body reacts to exercise, it can be explained by what is known as the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). When you first start to exercise you put your body under stress (fight or flight stage) this is known as the ALARM Stage, you then enter what is known as the RESISTANCE STAGE, this is where your body tries to adapt to the stress you are putting it through, now if you persist with this stress you will then enter the EXHAUSTION PHASE. Understanding these 3 stages of GAS will help you understand why recovery from exercise is so important.

After subjecting the body to exercise, you will be in the exhaustion phase, if you recover properly, your body will adapt to the stress you have put it through, and come back stronger than your start point. Put simply you will have moved from point 1 to point 2 if you charted your progress by numbers. However if you continually put your body under stress and don't allow ADAPTATION to take place, you will go from point 1 to -1, your performance will go backward.

You have a similar problem if you have too much recovery, you do not provide enough stimulus for the ALARM stage and then you will not force the body into ADAPTATION, there is a phrase here that you can think about, USE IT, OR LOSE IT. Which means do your training or you will lose what you have gained also known as The Law Of Reversibility

So how much Recovery is optimal?

Well that all depends on how hard you have worked. There are ways to find out whether you are recovered enough to train again. The most simple way used as a general rule of thumb is by measuring your Resting Heart Rate. First of all you should know your own Resting Heart Rate (RHR), this is how many times per minute your Heart beats at rest. To find out what your RHR is, make sure you are fully rested, the best time is when you wake up. You have a choice now, you can do it the easy way, by buying a Heart Rate Monitor or by taking your Pulse manually at the Carotid Artery or Radial Pulse click here to find out how once you have established what your RHR is, you now have a bench mark to work with. After training, when you wake up the following morning, check out your resting pulse if it is around 8 beats higher than normal then you are probably not recovered from your previous training session and should think about what you intend to do that day. I will cover this in a moment.  If this higher resting heart rate is coupled with a feeling of unwillingness to train and fatigue, it can be an indicator of illness, or if you train very hard, it can be a sign of over-reaching or over-training.
Now I will explain what to do if you just have a higher than normal RHR. If this happens to you, you have a choice, to either:

1. Take a day off
2. Do a recovery training session

The day off option may seem like a good idea and there is no harm in it, however, sometimes it is more effective to do what is known as a Recovery Session. These can be very simple, such as a brisk walk, or steady jog, or even a jog up and down the Local swimming pool in the water followed by a good stretching session. By doing this, as long as you keep the intensity (effort) of  your exercise at a low level, you can speed up your recovery process. If you own a Heart Rate Monitor, this will mean working no higher than 70% of your Heart Rate Maximum.(The amount of times your Heart will beat per minute when you are working out at your absolute maximum effort) If you don't have a Heart Rate Monitor, then think of a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being no exercise and 10 being very extreme exercise, you would need to exercise for 20 minutes at a rating of 6 or 7 at the most only. Be careful not to turn these Recovery Sessions into full on training.

The key to getting your Recovery right is:

1. Prior to finishing a session start your recovery process early by drinking a Carbohydrate/ Protein (about 50 gms of Carbs to 25 gms of Protein) drink, start to drink this about 30-20 minutes before your session finishes.
2. At the end of your session, warm down with a steady jog and stretch for 6-8 minutes. This will flush out all the crap that has accumulated in your muscles throughout your session, the stretching should be held for no more than 15 seconds each stretch at this stage.
3. Get the Correct Nutrition to Support your training
4. Get enough sleep, 8-10  hours per night

I f you get these 4 points right, you will be well on your way to recovering correctly in between training sessions.

Just to finish off, I mentioned earlier about Over- training and Over- reaching.
Over - training (Known also as under performance syndrome) is not good, it will lead to poor motivation to train, going backward in your fitness levels and can lead to illness. Endurance Athletes are the Athletes that are exposed to this the most. AVOID IT AT ALL COSTS.

Over - reaching, is not the same as Over - training.  Over reaching is a fairly common practice for coaches to do with there Athletes early on in their Pre- season Training. They will purposely train their Athletes hard for several days or even weeks, so that they actually stay in the exhaustion phase. Then they will give a prolonged period of recovery. The idea is that if the recovery period is right, the Adaptation that takes place will be very significant and lead to greater gains in Performance.

Well that's all for tonight, good luck with your training and recovery, hopefully things are all falling into place by now.

Steve

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.