Strength Training

"Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general." -Mark Rippetoe

Strength training is crucial for anyone wanting to increase their fitness level. Strength training will help you burn fat. Strength training will build muscle mass which will in turn increase your metabolism and burn more calories. Strength training is also the only training that will have a positive influence on all other aspects of fitness. If you aren't following a structured strength training plan, you are cheating yourself out of major increases in your fitness levels across the board.

Workout from Monday 2/22/10
Strength:
Deadlift: 195x5
225x5
250x5
275x4

Metabolic Conditioning:
As many rounds as possible in 12 minutes:
1 Pull-up
4 Push-ups
7 Squats

Result: 16 rounds

Gymnastics

The ideal athlete should be equal parts weightlifter, sprinter, and gymnast. Athletes such as wrestlers and martial artist have long known the benefits of utilizing gymnastics as a means to increase fitness for competition. Why is gymnastics so important? Gymnast are some of the best overall athletes. Some of the benefits of gymnastics are increased body control, the ability to move the body through space, and improved spacial awareness. Now that we have established the importance of gymnastics, where do we begin? The place to begin are the basic gymnastic exercises such as push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, L-sits, dips, and eventually work up to the muscle-up. You should also do plenty of handstand work, pirouettes, and handstand push-ups, and handstand walking. To work on body control and spatial awareness you should do various rolls, cartwheels, and flips. So get out there and get started on some of these basic gymnastics moves. In the future we will talk about the other aspects of the total athlete.

Percieved Limitations

"Most men stop when they begin to tire. Good men go until they think they are going to collapse. But the VERY BEST know the mind tires before the body and push themselves further and further beyond all limits. Only when all these limits are shattered can the unattainable be reached." -Mark Mysnyk

Consistently I have athletes and clients come in for training that try to stop before they are finished. I have clients that try to stop with just a few hundred meters left in a 2k row, or 1 minute left in a time-domain workout. Why is it that we are afraid to accomplish what we are truly capable of? Our minds tell us to stop, because we are becoming uncomfortable, and we keep telling ourselves that we should stop because we are tired and we have already done enough work for the day. However, unless we push ourselves to stay in this state of discomfort, and push through our percieved limitations, can we every see what we are truly capable of accomplishing. It is only when we reach this level of training that we will truly get the results each of us are truly seeking. True fitness comes from this type of training.

Workout:
Rest Day

Squats, Enough Said

Squats are the single most important exercise to any training program, however they are so commonly overlooked or misunderstood. The other day, my boss wanted us trainers to run each other through a quick workout. When I started leading my co-worker and fellow personal trainer through his workout, I had him start out by doing air squats. His squats were quite possibly the worst that I have ever seen. When I told him to squat, rather than flexing the hips, he shot his knees half a foot in front of his toes, and did quarter squats. I then began to give him some coaching, using cues like butt down and back, its a hip movement not a leg movement. And then I proceded to demonstrate for him how to properly perform the movement, and he decided to correct me. He was telling me that if he bent forward like I did, he was going to hurt his back. While that would be true if he were to flex his spine, if he were to flex at the hips, his back would be able to stay in good position while also protecting his knees. How did we get where we are in our society that fitness trainers don't even know how to perform basic exercises, much less teach them to others? What is the mark of a truly great trainer? I believe that the mark of a great trainer is a focus on the fundamentals and the basics, and the ability to perform the common, uncommonly well. It is about time that everyone in the fitness industry stop focusing so much on money, and focus more on helping people. And that we begin to master the basics of exercise and nutrition, and stop relying on our ability to impress people with how tough our workouts are, or our bad science or our large repitoire of useless exercises. If you can't even squat yourself, you are worthless as a trainer. Make sure you humble yourself and learn the basics before you consider this as a career.

Workout:
"Fight Gone Bad"
Complete 3 rounds of 1 minute at each station, with one minute between rounds.

Wall-ball, 10 foot target, 20 pound ball
Sumo Deadlift High Pull, 75 pounds
Box Jumps, 20"
Push-Press, 75 pounds
Row

*Spend one minute at each of five stations, resulting in a a five-minute round after which a one-minute break is allowed before repeating. This event calls for three rounds. The clock does not reset or stop between exercises. On call of ‘rotate,’ the athletes must move to the next station immediately. One point is given for each rep, except on the rower, where each calorie is one point.