For those of you who have mastered split squats and lunges and are looking for something more advanced, give this a try...
It's called a rear foot elevated split squat and is a great single leg exercise to give you a new challenge with your strength work. As an added benefit it works as a great self-mobilization on the back hip (think hip-flexor and quad stretching) so can help fight the negative effects we see from sitting so much. Just try to keep a flat (not too arched) low back.
A lot of people ask about keeping a vertical shin vs. letting the knee travel forward. I'm a believer in the knee being allowed to travel forward IF the heel stays down...and this is especially true in more athletic movements.
With strength moves, the higher the load used the more I will look for a vertical shin as the loads tend to be transferred more to the active restraints of the back (we're talking muscles- this is a good thing) as opposed to shearing at the knee. Again, under heavy loads look for a vertical shin. With faster, more athletic movements (even lunges) the knee will often, and should be allowed to, travel forward even beyond the toe.
You can load it with dumbbells or kettlebells in the goblet position, at your side, in one arm or by wearing weight vests.
In today’s work climate, clients and gym-goers often ask or
present the problem of “trying to fit it all in” when it comes to their
workouts. Three workouts a week at an hour apiece can be a luxury for most. So
how do we go about designing a program given these obstacles?
First we need to define what “cardio” actually is.
In mainstream fitness we’ve divided two distinct populations
into the “meatheads” and the “people on the hamster wheels”. Look around a
big-box gym and you’ll get the idea. We’ve come to understand cardio as
synonymous with treadmills, ellipticals and stationary bikes. It was sold as cardio-equipment,
their programs promoted the “fat-burning zone” (which I think exists wherever
unicorns come from) and you could do it while watching “The View” and flipping
through the latest teen magazine. What’s not to like?
Well, for starters, it doesn’t work. And when I say “it” I specifically mean
consistent, low-intensity, steady-state aerobic training with the goal of fat
loss. In this case the tool doesn’t match the goal (the “why” to this question
is a different article entirely).
So what can you do for a good cardiovascular
workout?
Just about anything. Remember, your heart doesn’t know the
difference between a treadmill, a bike, or a barbell. It simply responds to the
stimulus you impose on it by working muscles; more working muscles (i.e.
multi-joint exercises) are going to demand more blood be pumped and in a
shorter period of time.
Some other factors that will affect your heart-rate response
to exercise include intensity, duration of work and rest bouts (for intervals
or metabolic strength circuits), and whether or not the exercise is new to you
as familiar exercises will demand less work effort and therefore lower heart
rates.
When it comes to fat loss, we know two forms of exercise are
going to take priority and give us the best bang-for-your-buck with results. (Disclaimer:
Without some improvement in nutrition this all becomes moot!).
How do I design a program
that fits in both strength training and cardio?
It helps to understand a few basic principles.
1. Form trumps all. No matter what sets and reps are
programmed you are only working to technical
failure. In other words, we want to leave 1 or 2 perfect reps in the tank for each set.
2. Order of exercise is important. There are an infinite
number of varying designs when it comes to writing exercise programs but all
good ones share a few things in common. One is the order in which they do
things:
a. Some
sort of massage/foam rolling
b.
Activation (waking up the glutes and/or rotator cuff usually)
c. Dynamic warm-up moving from
slower to quicker motions (should include movement in all directions)
d. Core (many do this at the end;
since it’s so important for back health, it makes sense to do it early on when
you’re fresh. It can be worked into the strength supersets as well)
e. Power or strength work
f. Strength or Metabolic Strength
circuits
e. Metabolic finisher
g. Recovery/Stretching/Nutritional component
It is important to do any intense cardiovascular at the end
in order to garner any benefit from the strength and power work early on.
If you design a program in that order you are putting
yourself ahead of 90% of the general population.
What might a good “cardio”
program look like?
First, metabolic strength training should make up the meat
of your workouts if you only have 2-3 gym sessions per week. These consist of
metabolic circuits that can be continuous, alternating and non-competing
exercises with minimal rest. After a sufficient warm-up you may pair together
circuits like so:
This is not a comprehensive plan but a snapshot example of
what you could use to combine solid strength training along with your
cardiovascular work. Counting the warm-up this program could be done in less
than 45 minutes. It is based on a primary goal of fat-loss, not strength.
If the primary goal was
strength, we would focus at least one exercise if not the entire strength
portion on lower rep, higher rest plans and add intervals in later (at the end
of the workout, or on alternate days if possible). It may look something like
this:
4. Intervals: 15 seconds work/45 seconds rest for 12 rounds
Here we have more of a focus on a true strength exercise
(trap bar deadlift) at a lower rep range, a mix of assistance strength
exercises that cover most functional movement patterns and then a dedicated
finisher focused on anaerobic power (short intervals with a 3:1 rest:work
ratio).
Again, this is nothing close to comprehensive as far as
physiology and programming go but hopefully it gives you a few ideas when
trying to fit it all in to your own workouts.
I just finished listening the audio version of Charles
Duhigg’s The Power of Habit
(Many-a-audio book has helped me deal with evening traffic on our stretch of
I-95), and there were some quality take home points that I will be applying
myself and that are simple enough to pass on to clients that may need a little extra
help towards reaching their goals.
All of us have, or have had, bad habits. Whether it’s
wasting time at work, poor nutrition choices, skipping workouts, texting and using
the phone while driving or procrastinating on things you generally don’t want
to do. When it comes down to it, most of us are downright helpless if we say we
want to give up a bad habit. That’s right…just quitting bad habits doesn’t
work.
Just like a movement pattern, these choices become so
natural to us that they eventually run on auto-pilot. The brain changes and it
takes less energy and focus to continue doing whatever it is we shouldn’t be
doing.
Sounds pretty crappy, I Know. So what can we do?
With poor movement habits
we also know someone can’t just choose to start moving better one day. In fact,
Shirley Sahrmann estimates that it takes about 300-500 repetitions to learn a completely
new pattern the right way but 3-5,000 repetitions to re-wire a pattern that is
already poor.
The same concept holds true for the choices we make. In
order to give up a bad habit we need to do a couple of things. First we need to
identify what cues lead us to our choices. What event, environment, person etc.
do we associate with the poor habit? Do you spend time on Facebook as a means
of putting off work that you might not want to do right now? Whatever it is you
need to identify and acknowledge it.
From here, we can make a decision to replace our poor habit
with an alternative every time that cue presents itself. We can temporarily get
away with quitting whatever it is we want to give up but eventually we just
leave ourselves a void that will be filled again with whatever it was we were
trying to get away from. We need a positive alternative that we choose ahead of
time that will fill that gap. Repeating this process will eventually lead the
brain to re-wire and a new, better habit will be created.
One way to aid in this process is by changing your surrounding
environment. From the time I was a teenager all the way through college I always
had a TV in my bedroom. I became completely dependent on it to fall asleep. My sleep
quality was awful and I never realized why. About 6 years ago I decided to get
rid of it cold turkey. For probably three weeks I couldn’t sleep at all but
eventually it got better and now it would be almost unbearable to try to sleep
with any sort of electronic on.
One common habit we see here with clients is lack of a
proper breakfast. Because we’re always on the go it becomes easy to grab a
bagel or fast food on the way to work rather than getting a good source of
protein. I admittedly struggle with this when I don’t plan ahead. I love to
make breakfast, especially good scrambled eggs, but to do it right means getting
up 30 minutes earlier which would put me in the 3 o’clock hour. I’ve been a
morning person for years but I’m not completely crazy. So for me a recent
choice as an alternative habit has got to be setting aside time on Sunday to
get my (simple) breakfasts ready for the week so I can just grab and go and
leave them at work. As an ectomorph I have trouble keeping weight on so getting
a good caloric start to the day is really important.
What’s one habit that you would like to change before the
end of the summer? What cue tends to lead to you acting out this habit? And
what alternative activity can you fill that void with?
Here are my initial thoughts from the Perform Better summit in Providence this weekend:
-Perform Better manages to get better every year. Some
organizations could learn a lot from them when it comes to putting on seminars. It's easy to see how great of a company they are when you see almost the same exact staff helping out with each seminar over the last 6 years. Turnover is next to nothing and that says a lot.
-The pre-conference (Thursday’s session) was worth the
investment on its own. Great Strength
Coach social after the lectures as well! Thanks to Anthony Renna for making
that happen!
-It’s amazing how hard it is to choose who to see each hour.
I changed my mind 2 or 3 times at the last minute. It’s impossible to go wrong
though with the quality of speakers on this tour.
-Alwyn Cosgrove is still the most entertaining speaker on
the Perform Better tour while at the same time being motivational, educational
and flat out funny.
-Overall, the rules of training haven’t changed much but
some tools and application continue to evolve. The principles that Lee Taft
instilled in me out of grad school still hold incredibly true to this day and
maybe even more so with the movement towards more primal, natural movement (“don’t
train kids like they are little adults; train adults like they are big kids”)
-There still seems to be a misunderstanding in some circles of
what the Functional Movement Screen is and what it is used for. It is not a
performance test. It is not a fitness test. Judging it as one is like saying
blood pressure is useless as a predictor of hair color. I’m pretty sure one isn’t
related to the other.
-It’s important to find specific performance goals for
people who may not have a body composition goal to reach. “General Fitness”
seems to be out if you’re trying to create a culture and motivate people to
stick around your gym. There’s a market for training the “general fitness”
client towards event-goals like mud runs, Spartan races, 5-10k races, etc. (Cosgrove).
-I heard Bill Knowles speak for the first time. He had a
great approach to getting an awesome training effect in the stages that are
typically reserved for “physical therapy”. This is very applicable to my
setting right now and falls in line with the “focus on what someone can” do belief system. This is great for
increasing the amount of prep time before returning to “performance” to avoid
rushing back.
-Al Vermeil can play for my team any day.
-A common theme from the weekend focused on the importance
of proper breathing to not only enhance core stability but to allow improvement
in mobility as well. Stretching doesn’t work to increase length in muscles (if
it’s even needed). Proper strength training through full range of motion is
more effective at lengthening a muscle than stretching, since stretching takes
over 30 minutes one position to have an effect (adding sarcomeres in series to
increase length). The combination of Charlie Weingroff and Art Horne really
drove this point home (I hear Brandon Marcello’s hands on was great also).
Rob Lewis on stage with Charlie
-Nick Winkelman is an incredible coach from Athletes
Performance. I saw his hands on and heard great buzz from his talk on cueing
and almost regret not seeing it. I still disagree with some ways that AP
teaches multidirectional speed (shuffling specifically, from this hands on) but
it’s impossible to argue with Nick’s effectiveness as a coach and motivator.
-The reason I say I almost
regret missing Nick’s lecture was because I was lucky enough to see Greg Rose’s
hands on, focusing on developing rotary power in athletes. I’ve seen Greg speak 3 or 4 times now and he
always gives you simple and applicable take home points.
This year, he went over his 4 tests used to reveal a power
deficit were genius in their simplicity to administer and understand. For
rotary athletes it’s expected that a seated medicine ball chest pass (upper
body pressing power) and a supine overhead medicine ball throw (chopping motion)
will be close to equal (in feet). The number in feet should mirror the athlete’s
vertical jump in inches (lower body power). The final test was a standing rotary “shot put”
that allows for an explosive step as part of the throw. In a well-balanced athlete
this number, in feet, should be 1 ½ times the distance of the first three. One
of these numbers off? Now you know what area to address with training. Pretty
cool!
-Art Horne gave some great cues (verbal and tactile) for
coaching breathing. “Fill up the Canister” is one I will be using immediately.
His explanation of filling up the balloon in the front of the core with a
breath to counter the pressure created from the back and sides (erectors and
obliques) was a gem as well. We need 360 degrees of pressure when breathing – creating
pressure outward is not enough
-It’s funny to see young coaches (myself included-we’re
going with the relative definition of “young” in this case) when they meet
their biggest professional influences. And what might be funnier is meeting an
attendee who is not in the profession
and has no idea who these people are. Yes, there was one of these here. He
decided it’d be a fun guy’s weekend to go a seminar with his trainer and attend
a few workouts in Providence. Classic.
There is so much more that is left out of this
wordy write-up but I wanted to get a few thoughts on paper before I forgot
them! The networking that goes on at these things is unbelievable as well. Being
able to meet and talk shop or at least interact with other coaches and
presenters is what makes these things great. Can’t wait for the next one!
After taking a few days off early last week I spent the past four days in Providence for the most recent Perform Better Performance Training Summit. These events are always amazing for the content, energy, networking, socials and hands-on learning experience.
I've been rifling through my notes to try to avoid the normal post-conference effects of forgetting almost everything I thought I had learned. While I do this I thought I'd share a quick note from Chris Mohr who gave a talk geared towards dispelling some basic myths of nutrition.
One focus of the lecture was clearing up the debate of Organic vs. Non-Organic eating. Which is better?
Dr. Mohr's approach was great in that it focused on the big picture. In other words, don't get bogged down by minutiae when trying to make nutrition changes for the better.
He made a lot of good points but one that is easy to remember is that it's much better (from a nutrition standpoint) to eat locally grown produce as opposed to food items that had to spend time in shipping. If you can get food that was picked yesterday instead of last week , the nutrient profile will be much more favorable. Your body will make much better use of the locally grown food vs. the preserved item.
Was organic better? In some cases. But when in doubt keep it simple and go local!
Just a quick link for everyone today since I'm on vacation and on the way to the golf course :)!
Most of my clients' goals are centered around 1) avoiding further injury and 2) general fat loss goals. I wanted to address #2, and I could try to articulate the information as well as possible, the fact is Alwyn Cosgrove did it better than anyone several years ago and the content is still top-notch. Take a look!
I currently work as a personal trainer in a physical therapy clinic in Stamford, CT. My background includes time as an athletic development coach for youth (primary through high school athletes), strength and conditioning in the college setting as well as adult personal training/group classes. Kind of dabbling for the last 6-7 years while finding my strengths and finding a niche.
