Put yourself in your potential client’s shoes. Why would they fork over a large amount of cash to train with a person they barely know? Or, when they become clients, how do you keep them coming back? The answer is in the buy-in.
Are the clients buying what you’re selling?
Read 5 Ways to Get Client Buy-in and Increase Client Retention at its original source Breaking Muscle:
http://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/5-ways-to-get-client-buy-in-and-increase-client-retention
A good workout starts with a good warm-up. As Breaking Muscle podcast guest Dr. John Rusin says, a warm-up should accomplish two things:
Read Do World Class Warm-Ups for World Class Performance at its original source Breaking Muscle:
https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/do-world-class-warm-ups-for-world-class-performance
The term metabolic damage has gained lots of traction over the years. Researchers1 initially observed a reduced metabolic rate in subjects who had lost a substantial amount of weight. This reduction is far from shocking since lowering an individual’s body weight will simultaneously reduce their energy demands.
However, what was unique in this case was that some individuals’ metabolic rates were far lower than what the researchers projected.
These findings became popular within various fitness circles and were quickly given the label of metabolic damage. However, at the moment, there isn’t any convincing evidence to support the existence of metabolic damage within this context. What researchers were observing is more accurately defined as metabolic adaptation and adaptive thermogenesis.1
During a period of caloric restriction accompanied by a reduction in body weight, your body undergoes several physiological changes to adapt to the changing environment—both internal and external.
Leptin is a hormone whose primary function is regulating energy balance and maintaining bodyweight.
Observations show that fat loss during a sustained caloric deficit can reduce thyroid values, thereby decreasing basal BMR.5
Additionally, Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) synthesis becomes more efficient. Typically ATP synthesis is roughly 40% efficient, which means approximately 60% of energy is lost via thermogenesis.6 However, in low energy availability and reduced body fat, mitochondrial efficiency increases.
Proton leak, a process regulated by uncoupling proteins, causes energy to be lost as heat. But increased mitochondrial efficiency reduces proton leak and increases ATP synthesis as an adaptive response.7
We also see other aspects of our physiology, such as muscular work efficiency, increase as calories are restricted, and reduced weight.8
As these adaptations occur, we also see a reduction in Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT). This reduction is associated with spontaneous, nonexercise-related physical activity and accounts for most energy expenditure.9
Researchers have observed that caloric restriction and loss of body weight can reduce an individual’s NEAT significantly. Unfortunately, this is mainly unconscious, so there’s not much that you can do.
Adopting a daily step count is a common practice to keep an account of and regulate energy expenditure.
However, because this is for the explicit purpose of expending calories, it’s not technically NEAT. It’s exercise activity thermogenesis. But I digress.
Researchers have found that our bodies like consistency. Enter the settling point theory. As one paper described it,
“The set point model is rooted in physiology, genetics, and molecular biology, and suggests that there is an active feedback mechanism linking adipose tissue (stored energy) to intake and expenditure via a set point, presumably encoded in the brain.”10
Although this does not account for all relevant variables, it does explain to some degree the body’s desire to preserve homeostasis from the body weight and energy availability standpoint.
Essentially as energy availability from external, like food, and internal, as in body fat stores, sources decrease, our body tries to resist this change via several physiological and neurochemical changes.
As mentioned previously, changes in thyroid, leptin, and even increased hedonic dive for food are just some of the numerous adaptive responses.
As you reduce your body weight, the energy requirement for locomotion decreases accordingly.11 NEAT may vary between individuals of the same size by 2,000 kcal per day.12
In a previous article, I wrote for Kabuki Strength,
I mentioned “A paper by Rosenbaum and colleagues cited a reduction in Total Energy Expenditure (TEE) of 10-15% which was unexplained by body composition changes. Of this 10-15% reduction, roughly 85% could be explained by reductions in nonresting energy expenditure of which NEAT is the largest contributor.”13,14
Once we account for these changes, the vast majority of discrepancies are accounted for between estimated BMR and actual BMR.
So, is metabolic adaptation an issue? Absolutely. But does it suggest some form of damage? Well, at the moment, there doesn’t seem to be strong supporting evidence of this.
What can you do to manage some of these adaptive responses to maintain your new body weight composition successfully? One potential approach is utilizing a high energy flux approach.15
Researchers have consistently found that regular physical activity is strongly associated with successful weight management.
Metabolic damage doesn’t appear to have strong supporting evidence at this time. What we typically observe instead is metabolic adaptation.
These adaptations are entirely reversible in the vast majority of cases.
When done correctly, dieting can be an important aspect of healthy eating and optimizing body composition.
1. Michael Rosenbaum and Rudolph L. Leibel, “Adaptive thermogenesis in humans.” International Journal of Obesity, London. 2010 Oct; 34(0 1): S47–S55.
2. R V Considine 1, M K Sinha, M L Heiman, A Kriauciunas, T W Stephens, M R Nyce, J P Ohannesian, C C Marco, L J McKee, T L Bauer, et al., “Serum immunoreactive-leptin concentrations in normal-weight and obese humans.” New England Journal of Medicine. 1996 Feb 1;334(5):292-5.
3. Miguel Alonso-Alonso, Stephen C. Woods, Marcia Pelchat, Patricia Sue Grigson, Eric Stice, Sadaf Farooqi, Chor San Khoo, Richard D. Mattes, and Gary K. Beauchamp. “Food reward system: current perspectives and future research needs.” Nutrition Review, 2015 May; 73(5): 296–307. Published online Apr 9, 2015.
4. Brian Kim, “Thyroid hormone as a determinant of energy expenditure and the basal metabolic rate.” Thyroid, 2008 Feb;18(2):141-4.
5. Edward P. Weiss, Dennis T. Villareal, Susan B. Racette, Karen Steger-May, Bhartur N. Premachandra, Samuel Klein, and Luigi Fontana. “Caloric Restriction But Not Exercise-Induced Reductions in Fat Mass Decrease Plasma Triiodothyronine Concentrations: A Randomized Controlled Trial.” Rejuvenation Res. 2008 Jun; 11(3): 605–609.
6. Sunil Nath, “The thermodynamic efficiency of ATP synthesis in oxidative phosphorylation.” Biophys Chemistry. 2016 Dec; 219: 69-74. Epub 2016, Oct 15.
7. Martin Jastroch, Ajit S. Divakaruni, Shona Mookerjee, Jason R. Treberg, and Martin D. Brand, “Mitochondrial proton and electron leaks.” Essays Biochem, 2010; 47: 53–67.
8. Michael Rosenbaum 1, Krista Vandenborne, Rochelle Goldsmith, Jean-Aime Simoneau, Steven Heymsfield, Denis R Joanisse, Jules Hirsch, Ellen Murphy, Dwight Matthews, Karen R Segal, Rudolph L Leibel, “Effects of experimental weight perturbation on skeletal muscle work efficiency in human subjects.” Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. 2003 Jul; 285(1): R183-92. Epub 2003, Feb 27.
9. Christian von Loeffelholz, M.D. and Andreas Birkenfeld. “The Role of Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis in Human Obesity.” Endotext, {Internet}. Last updated Apr 9, 2018.
10. John R. Speakman, David A. Levitsky, David B. Allison, Molly S. Bray, John M. de Castro, Deborah J. Clegg, John C. Clapham, Abdul G. Dulloo, et al., “Set points, settling points, and some alternative models: theoretical options to understand how genes and environments combine to regulate body adiposity.” Disease Model Mech, 2011 Nov; 4(6): 733–745.
11. Michael Rosenbaum 1, Krista Vandenborne, Rochelle Goldsmith, Jean-Aime Simoneau, Steven Heymsfield, Denis R Joanisse, Jules Hirsch, Ellen Murphy. Dwight Matthews, Karen R Segal, Rudolph L Leibel, “Effects of experimental weight perturbation on skeletal muscle work efficiency in human subjects.” Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. 2003 Jul; 285(1): R183-92. Epub 2003 Feb 27.
12. Christian von Loeffelholz, M.D. and Andreas Birkenfeld. “The Role of Non-exercise Activity Thermogenesis in Human Obesity.” NCBI, Endotext {Internet}. Last updated Apr 9, 2018.
13. Debrocke, Daniel, “Preventing Weight Regain After A Diet.” Kabuki Strength, Apr 24, 2020. Accessed Feb 25, 2021.
14. Michael Rosenbaum and Rudolph L. Leibel, “Adaptive thermogenesis in humans.” Int J Obes (Lond). 2010 Oct; 34(0 1): S47–S55.
15. Gregory A Hand and Steven N Blair, “Energy Flux and its Role in Obesity and Metabolic Disease.” Eur Endocrinol. 2014 Aug; 10(2): 131–135. Published online 2014, Aug 28.
Based on my email inbox and Instagram DMs, recovery from training is a hot topic. I get asked all kinds of questions about recovery techniques.
I’m delighted people are giving their recovery some attention. Sadly, I think they are focusing their attention on the wrong parts of the recovery puzzle. In this series of articles, I will help you maximize your recovery and results by focusing on what matters.
I’ll explain:
This trend for increased attention to recovery is admirable.
In part, it isn’t surprising given I’m fond of reminding people they don’t get bigger and stronger lifting weights, but by recovering from lifting weights.
I have often tried to illustrate the importance of recovery by displaying progress as a simple equation:
Stimulus + Recovery = Adaptation
Stress can be both good and bad. Good stress, or what psychologists refer to as eustress, is the type of stress we feel when excited. Training is a stress to the body. If adequately dosed, it is undoubtedly useful.
Bad stress comes in two forms:
Your tolerance for stress and the ability to manage it is different from mine.
Our tolerance also fluctuates over time. There is only so much stress you can handle. When you have too much pressure, you get overwhelmed. Your recovery from training will suffer at times of high stress.
Managing your stress levels will improve the quality of your life.
It will improve your digestion, recovery, mood, and productivity. It will also enhance your muscle gain and fat loss efforts.
Notice I refer to it as stress management—Not stress avoidance or reduction.
The fact is that you cannot avoid stress altogether.
You can, however, improve how you manage it. If you manage stress better, you will be happier, fitter, leaner, and more muscular. In short, life will be better.
The body’s control center is the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). The ANS regulates the involuntary functions of the human body. The stuff that happens without you consciously thinking about it, such as breathing or digestion.
The ANS has two branches:
These two work in a see-saw-like fashion. Whenever one of the modes is activated, the other isn’t. When one is up, the other is down.
Unfortunately, your body cannot differentiate between different types of stress.
When the sympathetic nervous system is upregulated, it cannot tell the difference between the stress of a life-threatening event, a challenging workout, or the asshole who just cut you off in traffic.
To manage stress, we want to spend most of our time in a parasympathetic state. The reality is, however, that we spend too much time in a sympathetic state. The non-stop barrage of stresses adds up as we face daily challenges.
This sympathetic state has many negative health implications and inhibits our ability to build lean muscle and drop body fat.
In my experience, so many hard-gainers struggle to see progress because they are chronically stressed and work to manage stress, which increases their anxiety and causes a downward spiral.
Rather than being hard-gainers, I refer to these people as easy-losers.
Their stress levels result in them losing gains alarmingly quickly with the slightest change in a routine or life circumstance because they manage stress poorly.
With that background out of the way, it’s time to identify strategies that help to control stress as much as possible.
A good proxy for your stress levels and parasympathetic versus sympathetic dominance is your waking heart rate.
Monitoring your heart rate will give you useful data to assess your general stress status and identify when stress levels spike upward.
Significant increases or decreases in your waking heart rate indicate when you are experiencing higher periods of stress. I suggest you get a decent heart rate monitor to assess this. You could also explore heart rate variability apps to add another level of assessment.
Cal Newport talks about how being on autopilot can help you be more productive and less stressed. He says that there are two types of work in his world:
Regularly occurring tasks
Non-regularly occurring tasks
Being on autopilot is true of almost everyone’s life.
The problem with regularly occurring tasks is that they are so numerous that if we try to manage them on the fly, we get behind and become overwhelmed.
I believe this sense of being overwhelmed is one of the critical drivers of stress in people’s lives. It certainly is a significant cause of mine.
To deal with this, Newport assigns every regularly occurring task a specific time slot. He calls this his auto-pilot schedule. He found that he doesn’t waste time or energy struggling to prioritize and schedule tasks day-to-day. They run on autopilot.
Once you have this stuff allocated to specific times and make that a routine, you can assign all other available time to other things that interest you. This method takes some up-front planning but, it pays dividends.
The final point is to understand that it will take time to refine and adjust this process.
Fortunately, you’ll be so much more efficient you’ll have the time available to make adjustments when needed.
Having a morning routine to start your day gets you off on the right foot and sets the scene for the rest of the day.
It allows you to run the day rather than the day running you.
I am a proponent of the Miracle Morning Routine. I do the express version, which takes less than 15 minutes and has six steps.
The six steps are:
Silence
Exercise
Reading
Scribing
There are various apps available that guide you through the process.
When I stick to the Miracle Morning routine, I am more productive and feel in control.
Meditation is a great way to combat stress. I have not gone full granola-yogi yet. Perhaps when I’m a bit older, I’ll embrace Zen fully.
I am aware that the word meditation conjures negative connotations with some people (my granola-yogi reference is a case in point). So, if you’re not quite prepared to consider meditation, call it sitting in silence, chillaxing, mindfulness, or whatever makes you comfortable.
Rather than full-on meditation, I sit quietly and focus on my breath for a couple of minutes.
Belly breathing deep breaths through the nose and slow exhalations out through the mouth do the trick.
If you want some guidance, then the app Headspace is excellent. I have done some of the 5-10 minute guided meditations, and it certainly chills you out. These few minutes every day will have a remarkable effect on managing your stress levels.
Being mindful or present is all the rage these days.
There is a good reason for that. We live in an ever-connected yet hyper-distracted world. The sheer volume of inputs competing for our attention is mind-boggling.
Living in this always distracted state is stressful and similar to Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD).
Try to fix this:
Whether that be journaling in your leather-bound notepad while drinking a coffee, hanging out with friends at a BBQ, or drafting that killer sales pitch sitting in front of your laptop in the office.
Being fully in the moment will make you more productive, efficient, and effective at whatever you are doing. It will help to improve your mood and filter out external, potential stressors.
Cheesy quote alert:
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift––that is why it is called the present.
Eleanor Roosevelt
In his book, The Chimp Paradox, Dr. Steve Peters talks about our chimp brain and how it can control us. When the chimp takes over, logic evaporates, and emotion takes over. All too often, when we are under stress, we take the emotional approach. The chimp inside us gets irritable and can wreak havoc before we know what has happened.
When we get an emotional reaction to something, it usually subsides after about 90 seconds if we don’t act on it.
Pema Chodron speaks about this in the book, Living Beautifully: With Uncertainty and Change.
Emotions will ebb and flow. Under stressful situations, they might rise like a Tsunami inside you. That’s only natural. It seems the best way to deal with and keep stress under control is to accept the emotions. To feel them. But do not act on them. If you act on them, you add fuel to their fire. They will rage higher and for longer. Instead, let them burn themselves out. Then, once you are calm and logic has returned, consider ways to avoid repeating the situation, which placed you in a stress position and caused negative emotions like fear, worry, hate, or anxiety to surface.
Pema Chodron
While feeling the emotions, it might be a good idea to take a deep breath in through your nose, hold it for a few seconds and then exhale through your mouth.
This deep breathing has an incredibly calming effect on your body. In my experience, it can help to speed the reduction in negative emotions when they arise.
A side effect of stress is shallow breathing.
Shallow breathing impairs the proper oxygenation of cells and reduces your body’s ability to recover.
Given I am so fond of saying, “You don’t get big lifting weights, you get big recovering from lifting weights.”
I’ve said it twice in this article, so it should be obvious why I believe being stuck in a stressed, shallow breathing state limits your gains.
Post Workout Recovery Pro Tip: Using some simple breathing exercises, post-workout switches you from the fight or flight mode to the restorative rest and digest mode.
This breathing instantly reduces stress levels, increases the oxygenation of cells, and accelerates the recovery processes. If you train in the evening, it will also help you to relax and get to sleep.
Sleep is the most powerful recovery tool you have available, so this is crucial!
Breathing exercises can also be beneficial as a proactive stress management tool when done daily. As I mentioned earlier, I try to do it each morning for a couple of minutes. It creates a wonderfully calm sensation. I would never claim to appear serene, but this is probably the closest I feel.
Is what is stressing you out that bad? Most of the stuff we worry about is not that significant. It’s rarely life or death or leading us to financial ruin.
Sit back, take stock, and ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Often this allows you to gain some perspective, view the stressor objectively, and place its significance appropriately in the hierarchy of events, needs, wants, or stresses in your life.
Nine times out of ten, you’ll then chill the f**k out and realize you’ve got your knickers in a twist unnecessarily.
Bonus Tip:
Step away from your phone–no, not this very second–keep reading this fascinating article:) then, step away from your phone.
While waiting for a train or in a line, what do you instinctively do? Most of us reach for our phones. This dependency for our phone wasn’t the case as recently as 10 to 12 years ago. We would have to wait—occupied only by our thoughts or perhaps the conversation struck up with a stranger waiting alongside us (conversations with real people, in-person–now that is weird).
We’ve lost the art of patience, waiting, and thinking.
Boredom is a thing of the past. There is always a notification, something on social media, YouTube, or Netflix to entertain us. We still plug into the matrix and appear unable to extract ourselves.
There are many positives to smartphones (don’t get me wrong, smartphones are incredible). The downside is we have become slaves to them.
Our phones increase our stress and anxiety and help to push us towards a sympathetic state.
Try to take some time away from them—a digital detox of sorts. Switching off/into flight mode can relieve stress and anxiety. It can also allow you to achieve the mindfulness and presence that I discussed earlier.
Taking time away from our phones isn’t easy. Smartphones are addictive! I struggle with it but, I am aware that when I have work to do, or I’m out with the family, I am less stressed, more productive, and happier when the phone is out of sight. This struggle applies to those that I am with also. Start small and build up the time.
Some ideas to begin to control your phone usage are:
Don’t check it for the first 30 mins of your day.
When doing important work, please switch it on airplane mode and set a timer for how long the work task should take. Don’t look at your phone until the time is up.
No smartphones at mealtimes
Put your phone down in another room when at home so you’re not distracted by it.
Are you watching TV with your wife, girlfriend, husband, boyfriend, friends, family, cat, or dog? Have the phone out of sight. Enjoy doing what you are doing and the fact you are not distracted by the phone.
Establish no-go zones. Whether it be physical (e.g., not in the bedroom) or time zones (e.g., no phone use for the first hour after I get home from work), this rule will improve the quality of your relationships with significant others.
Lead by example on this. If you would like to be less distracted when spending time with your partner, begin by deliberately being less distracted yourself. Then, when you suggest they do the same, they are more likely to respect and value your opinion. Trying to force it on them before you have achieved it will meet with resistance.
I hope the above tips on managing stress are useful to you.
If you can use some of these to manage your stress, you will be a happier, more productive, and focused person. You will also thrive on rigorous training programs and translate your workouts into noticeable gains in strength, size, and body composition.
Stay tuned…
In the second installment of this series, I will be explaining why significant recovery begins with excellent program design.
In it, I’ll outline four key concepts you need to understand how to optimize your training and maximize your recoverability.
When it comes to talking about food and dieting in fitness circles, one of the terms you keep hearing over and over is macronutrients. Its lesser discussed counterpart, micronutrients, are the topic for today.
While often disregarded in the fitness industry, micronutrients are essential for optimal body function and reaching your fitness goals—namely, the purpose of body recomposition.
So if you’re looking to step up your game, expand your knowledge, and improve your health, micronutrients are where you need to start.
Starting with the basics, the difference between macro and micronutrients is in the name—large and small nutrients. This doesn’t refer to their physical size but rather the quantity required in a healthy diet to perform bodily functions.
Macronutrients include the three staples which make up the bulk of your calories:
Within the three macronutrients, you have micronutrients.
Micronutrients refer to the vitamins and minerals consumed in smaller amounts and are mostly found within the larger macronutrient group.
For example, avocados are also a fat within the macronutrient grouping and contain the following micronutrients:
However, some micronutrients aren’t found in macronutrients.
For example, vitamin D is created directly from sun exposure. When the UVB rays hit the cholesterol in the skin cells, vitamin D synthesis occurs.
But as a general statement, micronutrients are predominantly found within the three main macronutrients of food.
Daily body functions require an array of different vitamins, and each has a unique role and function.
There are 13 essential vitamins, meaning that they are essential for your body to work optimally. You may experience adverse side effects without them, ranging from dry hair, acne, increased fat storage, and more unfavorable side effects.
Vitamins are in two main categories:
There are four fat-soluble vitamins: A, D, E, and K.
They are easily absorbed when consumed with fat because they are stored in adipose tissue.
Water-soluble vitamins are the remaining nine vitamins that are not stored in the body, consequently highlighting the need to maintain a healthy, vitamin-rich diet for maximum function and performance.
Some of the functions of vitamins include:
Minerals also help your body to function.
Some examples of minerals are calcium, magnesium, and potassium. Minerals play an essential role in bone health, growth, regulating fluids in the body, heart health, transmitting nerve impulses, and are precursors to many hormones.
For example, as shown in a 2014 study, the mineral iodine is found in the thyroid hormone, which plays a role in metabolism.
As briefly touched on, we predominately find micronutrients within carbohydrates, fats, and proteins.
Each whole food that is not processed is likely to contain several different vitamins and minerals. Often, these micronutrients cause the food to have a specific color, known as phytonutrients.
Phytonutrients are found in plant foods and correlate with particular vitamins and minerals, which is why people often tell you to eat the rainbow, with each color providing a unique vitamin and mineral density.
Here are some example sources of micronutrients:
Calcium: Milk, yogurt, spinach, kale, sardines
Vitamin B12: Beef, chicken, fish, cheese, eggs
Potassium: Bananas, spinach, potatoes
Vitamin C: Oranges, lemons, strawberries, broccoli
Vitamin E: Vegetable oils like sunflower, nuts, seeds, spinach, broccoli
Vitamin K: Kale, spinach, brussels sprouts, broccoli, fish, beef
As you can see, whole foods and plant foods are rich in micronutrients. If you’re wondering whether you lack any micronutrients, the best advice is to adopt a plant-based, whole food diet that includes foods of different colors that have been processed the least.
This is of the utmost importance if your goal is body recomposition.
Body recomposition is a term used in the fitness industry to describe the process of losing body fat and gaining muscle mass.
The way you do this is by:
So how does this link to micronutrients? It comes down to the magic word: optimization.
If you want your body to work as efficiently as possible, you need to be providing it with the tools to do so. As much as trainers would like to believe it’s as simple as calories in versus calories out, there is so much more to it than that.
For example, 100 calories of ice cream are not the same as 100 calories of kale.
Within a calorie, you have different macro and micronutrient offerings. If you are deficient in any vitamins, you’re not going to optimize your fat loss or muscle gain efforts. You could be preventing yourself from achieving any progress.
For example, vitamin D deficiency is associated with fat storage.
A study that examined low vitamin D levels in a group of women found that those with the lowest levels gained more weight throughout the study, despite not changing their diets.
Another example of this is B vitamins, which are essential for metabolic function.
If you’re deficient or insufficient in any of the B vitamins, your body is going to be in fat storage mode.
This is because B vitamins’ primary function is to metabolize macronutrients. If you don’t have enough circulating in your blood, you will be storing the calories instead of burning them. A study found that vitamin B supplementation was able to reduce body weight by increasing metabolism.
When it comes to building muscle, if you’re deficient in any nutrients, you will also face similar problems.
Vitamin E is an antioxidant that fights free radical damage and helps to flush out metabolic waste.
During exercise, you create oxidative stress. If you don’t have enough circulating vitamin E, you’re going to experience intensified Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), poor recovery, and stunted muscle protein synthesis. Not ideal. A study published in The International Journal of Preventive Medicine found that vitamin E supplementation improved recovery by reducing muscle damage markers.
If you’re busy counting your macros without much thought for your micros, you need to reprioritize.
Without micronutrients, your body will not perform optimally, you’ll experience adverse side effects, and your fitness goals will move further out of reach.
Adopting a diet rich in whole plant foods with various colors will provide you with most of your micronutrient needs.
Hell, even the words themselves are eerily similar. When, in fact, the two couldn’t be more different. The strength culture that is booming right now needs a little time to sort out some basic science.
Herein lies 85% of the problems/misunderstandings for most coaches.
I’m writing this because I was that guy a long time ago, not only as a coach but as an athlete myself. A young person does not have the years of experience and a vast number of tools in their kit to have the necessary programming flexibility to suit their needs.
They all assume big is strong and powerful and fast.
And it’s just not the case. So, I’m hoping to clear up some thinking so that you can walk away from this with curiosity and the desire to investigate further.
I’m probably going to piss off many of my peers; I 100% don’t care.
Athleticism is not a singular quality. It is the marriage of several qualities that happen naturally in a person; Naturally, unconscious movement competence. I need you to understand that.
Our greatest athletes do things instinctively, without thinking.
Their gifts lie in the most optimal movement patterns to express:
The first and best way to sniff this out is to look at a person’s feet when they stand at rest.
To further melt your mind, two things sound counterintuitive in what I’m saying above.
It must be burnt into their nervous system, but it can be done. Check out some of the great work being done here at Mater Dei High School, at WeckMethod in San Diego, or GOATA in New Orleans.
These systems radically accelerate those qualities that we inherently see in someone we would say has great athleticism.
We have seen extraordinary results in both degrees of athleticism along with reducing injuries.
Who doesn’t want:
I’m staring 50 years old in the eyes, and the young man still alive and well in me would love one more shot at all of the above- Ahhhh, the good ole days.
Regardless of how old you are, much of the recipe to do these things is very clear cut, such as high volume sets, lots of sets per body part, isolation exercises, and a mix of free weights and machines.
The list goes on, and that list is effective for building muscle, etching in detail, and shaping form. Yes, it takes time, incredible discipline (not just in the gym), and a true willingness to suffer.
Add cardio of all sorts to the list of weight training exercises to lean out and resistance training to build and sculpt, and you have the perfect mix.
Whereas the conditioning work is to strip away as much body fat as possible to see the muscularity beneath.
The people who invest their time in creating programs to do this are true artists.
And the folks who choose to live their lives this way to carry elite conditioning 24/7 are some of the most masochistic folks on earth.
When I was a kid and growing up into my teenage years and young adulthood, all we had access to for training advice were muscle magazines. And since our entire culture can’t differentiate between muscle for looks and muscle for function, those of us coming up in the 80s and 90s (although well-intended) ended up training like bodybuilders for sport.
The result was some of the most gruesome athletic-related injuries you can imagine.
When I sit down to write a team program, dozens of factors come into play before putting pen to paper (or keyboard clicks to screen).
The first thing we must consider is the handful of repetitive motions that a given sport forces on an athlete, such as:
Once we have determined the qualities necessary for the sport, we lean into whether or not we have chronic use issues (because of those repetitive motions) and the most likely catastrophic injuries this sport sees.
It all becomes really complicated versions of math, trying desperately not to introduce something detrimental to the team while addressing the pre-hab type of programming without losing sight of what the head coach’s asks are.
I promise I’m not trying to make this more fantastic than it is for effect.
What I’m trying to do is give you a glimpse into the mind of a coach who is getting ready to write a program for 30 teenage girls who play water polo, and the demands of their sport are vastly different from that of my wrestlers, footballers or my hoops kids.
See, my program can never be why we have a performance hiccup, an injury trend within a team, or the primary reason an athlete sustains a season-ending, non-contact related injury.
And what most of you readers will come to find out, we have more ability to manipulate things in either direction than you might understand.
And herein lies the most pressing reason for the difference between training for aesthetics versus athletics.
My exercise menu for sport is enormous. 25% is standard-issue stuff that you would find in both programs:
But where we start to see the most radical differences is, my facility has no machines. We are strictly free-weight-based and use all sorts of equipment that you would never find in a Planet Fitness, 24 Hour Fitness, or Golds.
The biggest reason for all of this is, I need performance, not sexiness.
My last statement in the previous section is the seed of this article.
Most coaches fall on their faces because they are so blindly loyal to how we’ve always done things that the exercises selected have no legitimate use to the athlete on the field.
Big for big sake is not a reason to program certain exercises. Yes, there are a few positions in a couple of sports where considerable body mass increases are part of the job. But, most of those situations are quite isolated and can still be executed in more sophisticated ways.
Part of the reason traditional bodybuilding type workouts are ineffective and somewhat dangerous is focusing on single-joint exercises.
Left to their own devices (and I know this because it was me many moons ago), an athlete will overemphasize those exercises that load the arms and upper body because they equate form with function.
And, let’s face it, they want to look swole to themselves in the mirror in the morning while brushing their teeth. This over-focus on things that truly don’t matter to athletics creates a tremendous amount of disharmony from segment to segment of the body.
The best way to frame this is with my own experience.
I was a great bench presser. Without drugs, in my sophomore year in college, I hit 485 lbs for a set of 5. If you run percentages, that is over a projected 525 lbs single.
During that time, I hit 42 repetitions on the 225 bench press test (the one they use at the NFL Combine). I was big and had triceps for days and was truly strong… except… at that exact time, I couldn’t do a single pull up—yup, all that anterior strength and literally nothing behind supporting it.
As a result of this, after my junior year, I got to lay on the surgeon’s table and have my shoulder put back together. I didn’t dislocate it or have a sudden football-related injury. I just wore the shoulder out due to a massive imbalance. I couldn’t use it anymore. When my surgeon got in there, my labrum and much of my rotator cuff had been frayed in several places.
That’s an easy, straight to the point example. When you look at lower-body injuries, what you end up seeing are soft tissue injuries in hamstrings, hip flexors, groins, and calves.
If the programming is bodybuilder-ish, and the athlete has some of my tendencies, you can see where an overemphasis on one area will subject the rest of the body to forces that can’t be managed.
Another example of this with my own experience is hamstring tears. My hamstrings were the cause of my athletic demise. Repetitive strains and poor rehab practices eventually led to a low back that absolutely derailed my career.
There wasn’t professional football in my future, but there were the last three games of my senior year that I watched from the sideline. Thirteen years of football… ended in a thud.
Most aesthetic lifting programs create significant imbalances front to back, top to bottom. This puts an athlete trying to move his/her entire body in one grand movement to achieve a task into real danger.
If you see many soft tissue injuries in your athletes, you need to look long and hard on either how you are:
I’ve had to take those long lonely walks down the how did we get here road, only to discover that it was, in fact, something that I was teaching, emphasizing, or programming that led my athletes into a situation where they were more likely to have X injury.
As you sort through your programs, my best way to navigate these sometimes troubled waters is to ask, “What is your reason for that?”
I tell my coaches all the time; you can program however you want, but you better have a quick and satisfactory reason for writing the way you are. If you are programming ten sets of 60 seconds of the hula-hoop, great, tell me why.
And if you can’t give me a reason why it’s there, it must go—this one thing of asking their reasons why has been one of the most educational experiences for me. I think in a very streamlined way.
Yet, I give my coaches as much programming leash as they could ever want. Then, when interrogated why they put that there, more often than not, they are thinking about an exercise, rep range, or location of exercise (within the session of the lift) in a way I never thought of, and it’s brilliant.
As you sort through your programming, ask yourself why, and if your answer has to do more with how it makes that athlete look, then it’s time to rethink your prescription.
Since the idea of work-from-home is getting extremely popular during the pandemic, make sure you do not leave your health regimen high and dry. Everyone is suffering from Schrödinger’s disease.
The self-isolation focuses on the idea of assuming that either you are containing the virus from the outspread or preventing yourself from being infected by avoiding any contact with the external environment.
As necessary as it is to stay indoors and work from home, it is also a good idea to focus on a Workout Program to Burn Fat.
Utilize this time to achieve your fitness goals.
If you are self-conscious about excess body fat and weight issues, the following is a list of exercises curated workout program to burn fat for women that work.
This exercise serves as an activator for your glutes, hamstrings, and core muscles.
It is an exercise that will serve as a prerequisite for pushups.
Lunges focus primarily on your core and abdominal muscles.
They help shred extra body fat and are included in the Tone Program For Females. If you are looking to build stability, this exercise is excellent for you.
The squat is a prominent lower body workout regimen.
The most important aspect of a squat workout is ensuring that your form is correct. Otherwise, there will be no visible results.
Crunches are the go-to workout plan when it comes to scorching your excess belly fat. It requires immense core strength to perform crunches.
If you feel that crunches are on the more accessible side of the spectrum and you want to intensify them, you can add resistance bands or weights.
It is one of the most conventional exercises in tone programs for females.
The reason being that the plank helps in shredding fat evenly from your body without causing any stretch marks.
With time, you will be able to do a plank for a longer duration of time.
This exercise is meant for you if you are not a beginner.
The exercise helps in toning your hips.
Yes, you heard it right; like its name, it’s an effective exercise you can perform at home to reduce weight.
Even though you are confined to the four walls of your home, do not let this confinement stop you from following and achieving your fitness goals.
Make sure that you are eating right and following a workout routine to stay fit and healthy.
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