Post 22: What Does That Do?

          I love being interrupted by people during my workout. If I'm feeling extraordinarily vain, I do one exercise - for four sets - on biceps per week. Naturally, since my workouts deviate from typical stagnant gym routines, they elicit questions like: "What does that do?" Additionally confused because my shirt has sleeves and I usually lace my shoes up. 

Not a good look at the gym.

          To give credit where credit is due, I was already deep into my assistance exercises for the day about a week ago and was knocking out some BB Hip Thrusts (see video below.) Some guy comes up, introduces himself and is curious about who I am, what I'm doing etc. Never once did this guy ask about the exercise, BUT I saw him a few days later crushing a set of his own!! That's what I think is missing in today's training, people will so willingly take information and just parrot it to their friends without ever doing their own research or even trying the thing they're talking about. I call these "hollow claims" - the person reporting these things as factual has no substance or basis for opinion if you ever questioned them. That being said, if you've done research and practice what you preach, I think you're entitled to your opinion because you're willing to stand by and support it.

          That good looking guy up there is Bret Contreras, and even though he has (and never has) sleeves on; he probably has forgotten more about training than I know, so I won't say anything else about it. In fact, he's a successful trainer and if you're interested, The Glute Guy can be found here or his blog here. Anyways, to get back to today's topic: What Does That Do?

          Here are two tips, before you frustrate someone who is a lot bigger and scarier than you, take my advice on the matter. 

- 1. Think about the MOVEMENT before trying to identify MUSCLES INVOLVED. (make a deduction)

- 2. TRY IT YOURSELF.

Tip #1: Think about the MOVEMENT before trying to identify MUSCLES INVOLVED

          If you are anatomically savvy to any respectable degree, then this isn't too much of a challenge. To quote White Goodman - You might break a mental sweat as well! Anyways, in the video above we see Bret doing a Barbell Hip Thrust. Before we aggravate him by tapping his shoulder and having him drop 405 on his iliac crests, let's take a moment during our 12 minute rest intervals and try to understand what's going on here. 

• Loading is on/near the center of gravity, this is going to be a compound movement. 
• Angle between trunk and lower extremities increases and decreases, this is hip centered movement.
• Concentrically, the glutes and hamstrings need to contract to move the load.
• This is a compound, posterior chain exercise.

          Now get back to your dumbbell curls before you lose that sick pump. This is a great way to identify the purpose of an exercise you've never seen without bothering anyone, and more importantly, without looking or sounding like a dimwit. Who knows, you might even learn something! Weird right? If you remember anything from philosophy, this is simple deductive reasoning - applied to strength training. If premise 1 and 2 are true, your conclusion can be assumed to be true. Just for fun let's do one.

P1: You must be strong to bench 500 pounds.

P2: Carl can bench 500

C: Carl is Strong

          That was a blast. In addition, thinking in reverse can stop you from asking a question like "What's a good exercise for my calves?" Well: 

• Calves (with a straight knee) act as prime movers to plantarflex the ankle. 
• Straight leg plantarflexion with loading will work my calves.
• Standing heel raises ought to do the trick.

          My dad always warned that "It's better to keep your mouth shut and have people assume you're an idiot, than to open it and remove their doubt." What a pearl of wisdom that is, unless of course you have a question that is appropriate and the answer is not speed-bagging your face. 

Tip #2: TRY IT YOURSELF

          Here's a novel idea. Like the guy in my earlier story about the hip thrusts, just go and do it yourself. This should prove to answer all your earthly questions about the purpose of an exercise, and even better, how many reps you can do, and what the best way to program it into your workout is. You won't get nearly as much grief for asking the person you saw doing it if you're doing it right, or where you should be feeling it most - they may even join you for a bit. 

          The last part of that paragraph started sounding like a cosmo article so I'm going to stop there. Happy Training!

-Alex

Post 21: Rep Ranges, What Do They Mean?

          Ok, so this may not be exactly groundbreaking, but I've come to a pseudo-conclusion about rep ranges and strength development. Athletes may or may not notice patterns in rep ranges throughout their training and pick up some inkling (read: slight knowledge, or suspicion) of periodization without really realizing it. However, as coaches, just as every exercise should have a purpose, so do the rep ranges that govern how much work actually gets done. My initial understanding of rep ranges was low volume for core movements, high volume for assistance movements. As I gained better knowledge about energy systems, I figured that these concrete parameters need not apply for types of exercises, but for the strength quality desired in the training effect. What I mean by this was the typical low volume for strength and power, high volume for endurance and hypertrophy model. Later in the year we started messing around with time under tension (TUT) and recording our results before failure: total reps, speed, time etc. More recently, while experimenting with some "HIT" style workouts for my summer training - I gained more understanding of what I was actually achieving using different rep ranges. Finally to tie it all together, I was referring to some notes I made in the past from some of Louie's work on the dynamic method, and I saw light!

Prilepin's Chart

          In Louie's work, there is reference to Prilepin's chart and speed of repetition execution. In as few words as possible, it says:

-At 70% 1RM, force production decreases at the 7th repetition.

-At 80% 1RM, force production decreases at the 5th repetition.

-At 90% 1RM, force production decreases at the 3rd repetition.

          Now, these are going to be somewhat ambiguous figures, depending on the athletes you're working with, and what type of training effects you have created with them in prior sessions or training blocks. BUT we're onto something.

          What I'm getting at here, is that force production, the energy system targeted, and time under tension all play an equally important role when determining rep ranges. To use the most popular and common example, it's believed that 45-60 seconds (60 being on the high-end) under tension, with anywhere 30-45 seconds rest in between (with a high intensity) is optimal for developing hypertrophy. This is due to the fact that during this event (assuming there is no break in the eccentric-concentric chain) vasoconstriction of the vessels and capillaries within the muscle causes immediate post-set influx of fresh blood and the PUMP that people so often talk about. To bring this back together, assuming a quality rep takes 3 seconds, 45-60 seconds under tension lands us in the ballpark of 15+ reps, classic hypertrophy prescription! 

          Also, notice the quality of work done, according to the above parameters from Louie and Prilepin. You'll notice that when dealing with high intensities (85% and above) as we all have, that your speed of rep execution decreased a LONG time before you got to that 15th rep (including forced reps.) That's because this duration of exercise slaughters ATP-PC stores, and gets into lactate onset. Consequently, hypertrophy and endurance are two qualities attributed to the classic 12-15 rep range.

          In regard to this, I'm not so sure we've had it right all along using concrete numbers to determine training effects and stimulus, but we're on the right track. What many people overlook or tend to disregard is the cause of these training effects, and even then, this requires coherent execution by the athletes we train. I think rather, speed of execution, and time under tension are more relevant factors when training. To illustrate this, think of strength-speed training. Typically, 1-3 reps are used at 90%+ (again: see above parameters) to maintain speed of execution. While I agree that this is certainly a safe guideline for strength-speed, there's not a doubt in my mind that certain athletes with different muscle fiber compositions could possibly achieve a 4th or 5th rep without diminishing returns.

          Having said that, training optimally on an individual basis becomes a very tedious task, but it can be done. Using "tendo unit spotters" in particular when developing strength-speed, could ensure that athletes are completing the optimal number of repetitions based on their personal characteristics and thereby enhancing the quality of training effects that are created. This is additionally productive in ensuring that we get what we can out of individual athletes on any given day. In this scenario, a specified percentage, and speed of execution become the parameters for a given set, and rest intervals could be determined by heart rate recovery.

-Alex

Post 20: Summer Training

          I heard a funny comment earlier this year in our office regarding the nature of S&C professionals. Actually, in my experience this applies to anyone that spends a worthwhile amount of time in the weight room either coaching or lifting. The guy I'm talking about said you could take five people from any other profession and put 'em in an elevator, hallway, anything; and they'd talk for hours. If you're familiar with strength coaching, or coaches you know damn well that most of them would gladly do the opposite, if you're lucky a smackdown might even ensue and you'd have great seats. Unfortunately this is the personality type that most of us are assumed to possess. I will admit there are many of us who do exhibit these types of behaviors, and there are also some who have a little more humane approach. The egalitarian side of me will tell you that it all depends on the athlete, and a little plasticity with respect to how you handle them will go a long way.

          Again, I've digressed from the purpose of my musings. What I intend to allude to is that there are several realms of training that each have their own dedicated and aggressive advocates. These disciples range from bodybuilding, powerlifting, Olympic lifting, and high intensity to the martyrs of bosu balls, TRX bands, and kettlebells. Again, my democratic alter-ego would say that ALL of these things work, but at different times of the year - of course I'm referring to periodization of athlete training programs.

          Anyways, the most recent of my training experiments has lead me into the church of high intensity. I read some good stuff by Ken Mannie and saw Mickey Marotti's latest salary and that turned into the flavor of the week for me. I hadn't even taken a serious look at a machine in a gym since my junior college days, but when I looked at them in this light I was "inclined" (get it?) to throw two days of my workout at that side of the gym. I called these two days my "intensity" days, one for upper and one for lower body. I called the other two days Volume Days where I went back to dumbbells, cables, and some of my other favorites. I'm falling in love with the machines because they afford the opportunity to get some high volume work done with better loading and more time under tension. The blood coming back to these muscles gives you that good full feeling or "pump" that we all so desperately seek. In combination with good rest periods this is a great opportunity to add some more pounds to your program, and maybe bust some plateaus wide open when you don't have access to equipment for a good dynamic day.

          The above is what I've been up to since I got back, a little less than two weeks ago, and it's a refreshing change from what became somewhat of a stagnant routine from before. In the next week or so I'll be looking to make some changes involving some more "true HIT" in the intensity days, and potentially try some different pre-exhaustion strategies in my compound sets on volume days to see how I like that. That's it for now.

-Alex

Post 18: "Facebook Official"

         Trying to route people around here. Check out "Gamedaystrength Page" on Facebook, or @GameDayStrength on Twitter.

Post 17: The Functional Movement Screen

                                                 

         So as promised (finally) here is my review and opinion on the Functional Movement Screen. It's been a while since I've had the opportunity to update as frequently as I'd like, but the semester is winding down; and even at this school, that can chew up a lot of your time. Anyways, finally getting around to the topic of the FMS as promised in Post 8: Mobility as A Component of Training. Cook has used the analogy of children in many of his lectures and writing that I have come across. The idea that children need to learn the workings of the body by rolling around, moving their heads, stabilizing their cores, mastering manipulation of the extremities and learning to balance are all "training" methods to eventually learn to navigate their environments through crawling and eventually walking. In this regard, Gray talks about young children being symmetrical in muscular development and unexposed to the imbalances they will experience when they become athletes or otherwise physically active.

         Once these kids become athletes is when they begin to use compensatory movement patterns and postural changes in order to accommodate imbalances and poor mechanics. This could not be more true. I used FMS to illustrate a point in a coaching "seminar" recently, and included a practical/lab type component where my peers could have a chance to go through the movements and evaluate each other. These are not athletic people for the most part, and it seemed the greater population had minimal training history. What I saw only made sense until after I thought more about it, these people were scoring high on the unilateral tests and only had noteworthy trouble with trunk and rotary stability. Once I considered the fact that (unless you count PRI evaluation) people who are not consistently active really don't have adequate time to spend developing poor movement patterns and create consequent imbalances. 

         The functional movement screen had three parents, but Gray Cook is the one most recognized in the paternity cases. Cook is a PT and in clinical practice there is typically a lot more static testing for imbalance and compensation in the musculature. Recognizing this, the Functional Movement Screen was born. Finally, something to assess and evaluate the movement patterns of athletes/clients/patients. In Cook's book "Athletic Body in Balance," he discusses a performance pyramid with three components, functional movement (mastery of basic movement patterns,) functional performance (athletic skill/power production,) and functional skills (sport related skill.) The optimal pyramid should look like this: 

                                                       

          A million times, you will hear pyramids used as analogies for everything. In this case, functional movement is our foundation, our base from which to build on. The premise here is simply that if an athlete can not navigate through fundamental and functional movement patterns, they will be limited in the heights they can attain in the functional performance, and functional skill blocks above. The purpose of the "buffer zones" is to illustrate the fact that without a greater foundation, we are limited in the extent to which we can develop the subsequent skill-set. That being said, we will still always encounter athletes who have a greater "functional performance" block, or "functional skill" block, but the fact remains that without increasing the base, the room for improvement will be limited by the lack of a buffer zone, or a base to provide support for growth. This may even mean that sometimes, we will regress in observable performance before we can improve, a one step back, three steps forward type of approach. 

          The beauty of the movement screen is that it is easy to conduct and requires little set-up if you know what you're doing. If you have a well-trained staff and adequate space to set up stations, you can run through a team of 10 in less than an hour. For a test of only seven movements, it still provides a good picture of functional movement for your athletes, and can help you identify weaknesses as well as use the corrective exercises to make adjustments. Identifying and correcting these holes in athletic movement will unlock greater gains in functional performance and supplement the sport-specific skills that much more. Again, it's all about widening the base of support. The wider the base, the taller the pyramid.

-Alex