Better Is Better

"What muscle does that work?"

I loved this so much that I had to steal it and post it here.  It is from the blog of coach Charles Staley.  He is fielding a question from someone in the gym...

I was mid-way through a power clean session when a well-meaning but hapless inhabitant of a nearby Smith machine asked "Hey- could you tell me what muscle that works?"

"Ya know when you're, say, on a football field, and someone throws you the ball, and you sprint and catch it?" I replied

"Sure"

"It works that muscle."

Perfect!

Paradigms are changing.  We're figuring out that physique is a by-product of health, mobility, function and attributes.  And that dealing with the whole body is the only way to achieve that.  And the message is hitting the mainstream.

Mental / Emotional Preparedness

Most people who have been around physical preparation or fitness for a while will have heard the term General Physical Preparedness (GPP) or some variation thereof.  As the name implies, it is general.  It lays a base for future work, like finishing a more general bachelors degree before beginning a specialized masters degree.  One builds off the other.  In the case of physical training, the next evolution from GPP is Specific Physical Preparedness (SPP).  This equates to the master's degree, building off the base we created in GPP.  Unfortunately, due to the fact that most people just go into a gym and "workout" instead of "training," (subject for another blog post...) they never climb out of GPP into SPP.  This is because they aren't training for anything.  There is nothing to get specific about.  Just more of the same old, same old...

Circular Strength Training provides the perfect tool to understand progression towards a goal in their Training Hierarchy Pyramid (THP).  It provides a road map which runs from GPP to SPP to Sport Specific Preparedness (SSP), to Mental / Emotional Preparedness (MEP).  Now, considering most people never even get out of GPP, you can imagine how powerful a tool we are talking about in reaching a goal if we can master the use of the THP!

Although I have wandered a bit from the original purpose of my post, understanding the THP will be useful in grasping what I want to talk about.  This morning I did a Trial by Fire with 15 lb Clubbells in 15 minutes and 45 seconds.  As far as I know, that is the fastest recorded time (although I know a few guys who could give a run at it!). 

Back in February, I did a time of 17 minutes 24 seconds at the Lambda Cadre CST Instructor Certification Course.  At the time that was the fastest time I had heard of and almost 3 1/2 minutes faster than the next time on course.  But the problem with setting a great time, is you set yourself up to have to beat it next time around.  So when I hit the TBF again recently, I set myself a goal of breaking into the "15s".

When I set the goal, I was not certain if it would be possible.  It would mean shaving around 2 minutes off my Personal Record.  But I thought it was at least feasible and would make for some great training motivation.

Now I can finally get to the meat of what I want to talk about, the THP and its final stage, MEP.  When I picked up the TBF again, my GPP was already there.  My first try back I did a time of 17:56, really close to my PR.  So I didn't need to build a "base" back up.  My time told me that my SPP was pretty clean too. 

I spent some transitory time on SSP, cleaning up technique a smidge and working on the rhythm and coordination of the swings.  But where the lion's share of progress lay was in MEP.  Yes, there were certainly some adaptations happening on the GPP/SPP/SSP levels, but the big improvements were in me learning just how fast I could go and how little I could rest and still make it to the end OK.  I had to learn to listen carefully and understand when I was slowing down because I was being wimpy and it "hurt," and when I was slowing down because it made tactical sense.

But the only reason I could make such progress at the MEP level was because each of the underlying levels was providing a solid base to work from.  It wouldn't make any sense to try and squeeze out a better time using "mental toughness" if you did not have the energy system base (cardio) or strength to support the work of swinging the Clubbells in the first place (GPP)?  And why bother with mental and emotional issues if I can't even perform a Mill smoothly (SPP)?  And if I can't string a series of 130 Mills per side, 130 Swipes and 130 Hammer Swings together (SSP), what is the benefit of working on TBF tactical considerations?  All the underlying levels need to be in place before you start working on the next step up the pyramid.

But if the base is there, MEP is a powerful thing indeed!  I attribute most of my progress over the last month (2+ minute improvement in my time) to mental, emotional and tactical improvement.  By knowing that I was standing on solid ground, I was able to really listen to what was going on in my head, filter out the noise one session at a time, and whittle down to the essentials.  Only then did I begin to hear the clear signal of just how fast I could go, how little "rest" I could get away with and what kind of pace I could keep.  I don't know if there is anything left to squeeze out, but I would imagine so.  I'll keep at it and keep listening though...

Rely on your team

About 2 1/2 months ago, I started developing an issue in my upper back.  It's a deep muscle strain in the stabilizing muscles of the upper back.  I changed around my training drastically, cared for the area, and managed to let it heal to about 90% very quickly.  The problem, as with many things, is that last 10%.  Well, a couple months later that last 10% is still hanging around nagging me.  I doesn't cause me much trouble, but every now and again I will feel it kick in, limiting what I feel comfortable doing.

So yesterday I finally got smart and gave my chiro a call.  He is also certified in Active Release Therapy.  Anyhow, after just one session I can already tell the difference.  He even thinks that one session may be all that it takes, but we'll see.  The point is, why did I wait so long!!??  I could have gone to see him 2 months ago and already be back to 100%.  Sometimes you need that outside help for your body to finish the healing process.

And if you are laughing at me, I submit that it is very likely that you have done something very similar... 

Why do we so often forget to take advantage of our team?

Next time you say to yourself, "I should really go see my (insert healthcare professional here),"  just do it.  And if you don't have a team of people you trust, start building one.  Ask friends for references, check them out, interview them, etc.  If you are going to get the most out of your health and your body, you need a team.

Anti-Inflamatory Effects Of Fitness

This study lends more weight to the health benefits of exercise.  We all know, as active individuals, that exercise makes us feel better and lends to our daily functionality.  One of the mechanisms for this well-being may be the anti-inflamatory effect of exercise.  This side effect of exercise is not completely proven or understood, but the study seems to get us closer to a more concrete understanding.  Aside from the benefits of reduced fat mass on inflamation, the parasympathetic nervous system plays an important roll, and we may be able to improve it through exercise.

Have you noticed that when you have been training consistently, you are able to catch your breath and get your heart rate back to normal more quickly after effort.  This is largely due to the efficiency of your parasympathetic nervous system, which slows things down for you.  Conversely, the sympathetic nervous system speeds things up, like during exercise effort (heart rate, breathing, etc).  By improving the function of the parasympathetic nervous system through exercise, it seems that there may be an overall benefit in reducing inflamation, a known marker for many diseases.

Interesting stuff...  Read the article.

What about a 5x7 program?

I've been using the 4x7 protocol with great success for just shy of a year now!  It is a ground-breaking and insightful approach to using modulating intensity through a wave of medium, high, no and low days.  It works incredibly well.  But what if we did a 5x7?  Would that work?

Coach Sonnon, of Circular Strength Training, himself says that the 4x7 protocol is in fact a "tendency" that he has mined from the journals of his own training and the training of his clients.  It is not a law, it is something that seems to work best the majority of time for the majority of people.

Lately, I have been intuitively pulled to stretch some of my cycles out to 5 days, containing two days straight of very short High Intensity sessions.  This seems to be working out extremely well for me at this time and with this program.  So although 4x7 works best for me most of the time, right now 5x7 seems to be a better option.

However, it should noted that I worked with the 4x7 protocol, as is, for 10 months before allowing myself to mess with it!  There is definitely something to that old saying about standing on the shoulders of giants...

So you can give yourself license to experiment, but not until you do your time in the trenches with whatever it is you want to experiment with.

On Competition

I recently competed for and won the RMAX International Internal Power Challenge.  The challenge consisted of performing a series of 130 Mills (per hand), 130 Swipes and 130 Hammer Swings, referred to as a Trial by Fire (TBF), using 25 lb Clubbells.  It is a grueling test which taxes both the body and the will.  It tears skin off your hands and makes your muscles scream.  And the only way to get through it is to have the "internal power" which comes from integrating your breathing, structure and movement.

The mechanism for winning the challenge was bettering Head Coach Scott Sonnon's original time of 36min 52sec (he has subsequently dropped that time significantly though).  The first time I ever tried the TBF I did it in a time of 46 minutes and change.  To win the Challenge I brought that all the way down to 28min 38sec.  That is an improvement of almost 20 minutes!

I'm not writing about this to expound on my performance, but to highlight the power of competition.  In order to achieve big things, we often need some form of competition.  Great athletes get better when competing with better athletes.  Businesses get better (or go out of business) by competing with better businesses.  Competition drives us forward.  Coach Sonnon of Circular Strength Training likes to point out the etymology of the word.  It derives from the latin con and petire which in essence is to seek together.  By entering into competition we seek excellence through our interaction with others.  We push each other forward.

It is unlikely that I would have driven myself nearly as hard to achieve a TBF time of 28:38 if I had not been seeking that excellence inspired through competition.  When faced with discomfort (physical, mental, emotional or spiritual) we tend to back off, unless we are driven by something bigger.  When I just don't want to keep going because of that blister that just ripped off my finger, I can focus on my goal of competing at my utmost.

Competition is often derided, shunned or diluted in modern society.  We teach kids that as long as they are having fun, nothing else matters.  Everyone gets to be right.  Everyone gets to be a winner.  All the time!  Now, I am not saying that we should not encourage our kids to have fun.  They are their most open to learning while they are having fun.  But we should also be teaching them that there is a value in seeking to improve every time out.  They should want to win, or at least do better than they did the last time.  And they should feel crappy when they lose!  And want to figure out how to improve.  Those are valuable lessons that our politically correct dogma is trying to whitewash.  I agree that competition is not about winning and losing.  But it is about using winning and losing as a tool to grow and improve!!!

Sure, I won this challenge, but the last RMAX competition I participated in, I did not win.  I took part in the RMAX 4x7 Transformation Challenge last fall.  I worked my but off for 28 days... and didn't win.  Yeah, I moped around for a few days.  But the end result was that I worked even harder in the months afterwards using the lessons I had learned from losing.  Losing made me better.  It made me a better CST Instructor.  It made me a better trainer.  It made me a better athlete.  It forced me to examine myself in a way that I probably would not have done if I had won.

If you want to inch ever closer to your potential, you need to constantly slip past your comfort zone.  That is a very hard thing to do on your own.  The most effective catalyst is competition.  But you don't need to enter a contest, a challenge or join a league.  Sometimes something as simple as having a training partner who pushes you is, in itself, a form of competition.  But something needs to be driving you forward and making you examine yourself when you don't make the grade.

Clubbell Mills

The Clubbell Mill is one of the most all-encompassing exercises in Clubbell Athletics.  Here is a short clip of me doing Mills during my recent go at the Trial by Fire.  If you want the real trick of the Mill, and the secret of "Internal Power," take a look not only at the movement of the Clubbell but the movement of my body in relation to the Clubbell...

Time to throw out your physioball?

The fitness industry has been flooded for years with gadgets for your abs.  More recently, we have seen the positive development of looking at the core as a functional unit which stabilizes and enables the rest of the body.  But again, many people have jumped on the "functional training" bandwagon and repackaged it to sell... gadgets.

I ran across this study today which provides data showing that there is a "moderate to poor, and inconsistent" link between "core strength" and sports performance.  But if you read the story, you may have the same reflection as I had.  These are highly trained athletes in this study and very likely have already achieved a baseline of core strength required for their sport.  And those athletes which tested as having stronger core strength may have been beyond that baseline (so you can even think of them as having "wasted" core strength - in that it serves no extra purpose).

I don't think we need to throw the baby out with the bath water.  But we do need to get real with the core training.  There are tons of credible resources out there telling us what can and should be done to gain the baseline strength we need in the core in order to have optimal health and function.  Coach Mike Boyle goes into great detail in his book, Functional Training for Sports.

The entire Circular Strength Training system is built around the idea that the body is a whole.  In such a view the core becomes an essential link when conceptualizing movement and program design.  An excellent CST product which addresses the functional development of the core and its accompanying breathing patterns (an essential and oft forgot component) is Be Breathed.

Yes, I have a physioball (2 actually) and I do tons of useful stuff with them, when it fits with my goals!  But I never do crunches on them... :)  So don't throw any of your tools out.  Just make sure you are using them appropriately, based on your needs and goals, and in order to develop good health and function.

The Power of PRs

No, I am not referring to public relations.  I'm talking about Personal Records (PRs).  A PR is your very best performance at a given task under pretty much the same conditions.  And they are probably one of the most underused tools in our belts.  Yet the PR is so simple and powerful to use!  How many people spend week-in and week-out pushing the same amount of weight, running the same speed for the same amount of time or doing the same number of push-ups and sit-ups, and wonder why the results aren't as rapid as hoped, or why they stop all together.  What if these same people tried to beat their own performance as often as humanly possible?  How would progress look then?  A PR gives you a way to compete with yourself.  It gives you a goal to shoot for every time you get to a High Intensity training day.

I have been keeping my PRs on a whiteboard chart in my training area lately.  And every four days, when I hit my High Intensity training day, I have been consistently setting a new PR!  And I feel great.  The progress I am making in this THP is awesome.  And I attribute much of it to my pursuit of PRs.

Here is an example of one of the elements I am achieving PRs in presently.  It is called the Trial By Fire (TBF).  It is performed with Clubbells and consists of...

• 130/130 Mills (so 130 with each hand)
• 130 Swipes
• 130 Hammer Swings (65 per side)

With this kind of thing, it is really easy to keep track of PRs.  I just record the total time it takes me to do all the reps.  It doesn't matter the order I do them in, just the time to get them all done.  Then I try to beat my time the next session.  It's as easy as that.

You can also do it with other methods.  For example, you can try to increase the weight on a strength exercise (caution - you can't necessarily do this every time out and for a long time running - you sometimes need to change up variables and exercises...).  You can try to beat the height or length of a jump or the number of sit-ups or push-ups you can do.  There are tons of options.  Give it a try.  I'm sure it will kick-start your progress.

Save time on/with your warm-up

To me, the value of "warm-up" is undeniable.  But time is, in this day and age, a valuable commodity and nobody wants to waste any of it.  Here are two tricks you can use to make sure you optimize your warm-up time.

Plan and write down your warm-up routine:
I find that if I do not take the time to plan out, write down and follow a prescribed warm-up routine that I tend to flounder around, do stuff that I don't need in warming up for that session, forget stuff that I do need and generally waste time.  I like to keep my routine posted on the wall or handy on a piece of paper so that I can fly through it one item after the other without missing anything and without screwing around trying to remember what I was supposed to do next.  The following example is the warm-up routine I am currently using for my Medium (M) and High (H) intensity days.

• FlowFit x 3 rounds (Level 2 - 3 - 4)
• 50 Be Breathed Spinal Rocks (Butterfly, Pike, Straddle, Hurdler, Shinbox Switch x 10 each)
• Plank routine (15 sec each - standard, right arm raised, left arm raised, right leg raised, left leg raised, left arm/right leg raised, right arm/left leg raised)
• Dynamic Range of Motion Routine (again - same each time and written down)
• Shoulder Routine (see previous point)
• Torch Press 5/5 x 1 with 15 lbs Clubbell

This is the routine that I put together for my current needs and the work which I know I have ahead of me during the session.  I can fire through this one item after another with no wasted time because it is sitting there right in front of me on the whiteboard.

Incorporate "specific prehab" into your warm-up routine:
I use a very prehab oriented system, Circular Strength Training, but nonetheless there are often very specific and targeted exercises which I want to make sure I do on a regular basis to address my issues, skill deficiencies or weaknesses.  When possible I like to incorporate them into my warm-up because I know that it will be a regular part of my plan and also because I won' t tend to cut it out if I run out of time the way I might if it was at the end of my session.  Also, by incorporating it into my warm-up, I can use it for a double purpose: train my weaknesses and prepare / warm-up my body at the same time.  In the above warm-up the Shoulder Routine and the Torch Press serve that very purpose.

It's not rocket science, but these are two small things you can do to increase the efficiency and the effectiveness of your overall training using the unassuming warm-up.