The Keys to Unlocking Explosive Power

It wasn’t too long ago that athletes, parents, and coaches believed strength training made you slow and inflexible. To avoid these supposed undesirable effects, athletes steered clear of weights like the plague.

Over the years, we’ve come to debunk these myths. We now recognize the myriad benefits of strength training for sports performance, from injury prevention to increased positional endurance and improved speed and power -- the subject of this post.

Most of us have a general idea of what power is. We know it when we see it. But it’s not entirely intuitive how strength affects power.

To appreciate the relationship between strength and power, we must first understand that strength is equivalent to the ability to produce force, and speed is the expression of strength quickly (i.e. at high movement velocity).

How to Design a Workout Program [Free Webinar]

A few months ago, I was asked to deliver the exercise prescription lecture for the 2nd year Doctor of Physical Therapy students at my university.

In preparation for the talk, I spent a good chunk of time reflecting on my own process for designing training programs versus what the textbooks recommend.

I knew this would be one of the students’ only exposures to the topic. So I wanted to pass on as much essential information as I could in the hour and change I had with the students.

The lecture was a hit, so I decided to make a recorded version of it so more people could benefit. Here it is in all its glory. Please don’t hesitate to reach out with questions.

Are There Good and Bad Exercises? [Lift the Bar Podcast]

Three years ago, I almost quit school for good. I’d become disillusioned with biomechanics and academia in general. Hardly anyone in my master’s program was talking about the topics I was interested in — athletes and sports science — and it seemed like all the research dollars were going towards geriatrics and disease.

As I took some time off from school to reflect on my career trajectory, my path slowly started to take shape. I realized my true passion was bridging the gaps between training and rehabilitation as well as research and practice.

It wasn’t long after that I met my current mentors and started my PhD program in Rehabilitation Sciences — a subject area ideally suited for my aptitudes and interests. 

In this program, I’m able to do the exact research that gets me excited — research on athletes, pre-participation screening, and injury risk. As clichéd as it may sound, it hardly feels like work when you’re doing what you love.

One of the coolest parts of this whole process has been taking what I’m learning in the research and sharing it with people in the field who can use it and apply it in their daily work. That’s what it’s all about.

So when Stuart Aitken, host of Lift the Bar podcast, contacted me recently to appear on the podcast and talk about this stuff, I was tickled. Moreover, I was blown away by how thoughtful his questions were. It was like he had ESP in terms of asking me about all the topics I’ve been mulling over for the last couple of years.

Is CrossFit Safe for the General Population?

Q&A with Clark Hibbs

Travis: Thanks for agreeing to this Q&A, Clark! Ever since I did my first CrossFit workout (circa 2010), I've been intrigued by it. Coming from more of a bodybuilding background, it gave me an opportunity to compete against myself and the clock. It was a welcome divergence from the traditional three sets of ten.

As CrossFit has grown from a niche training style to a worldwide phenomenon over the last few years, though, so too have the myths and misconceptions surrounding it. As a box owner, I'd love for you to clear the air regarding what actually goes on inside a CrossFit box on a day-to-day basis.

Let's start from the beginning: how do you define CrossFit?

Clark: CrossFit can be defined as constantly varied, functional movements, executed at a high intensity. We try to train movements that we see direct application or benefit to movements in everyday life, and we try to make it as fun as possible.

Travis: I think the fun is often what hooks people. It can sometimes be missing from other styles training.

What’s the difference between competitive CrossFit and CrossFit for the general population?

Clark: CrossFit is inherently competitive, but there is a big difference between the sport of fitness (CrossFit Games, Regionals, etc.) and your everyday class at your local CrossFit affiliate.

The sport of fitness is about winning at all costs and truly testing an individual's maximum work capacity. It’s not uncommon to see form breakdown and dangerous levels pushed… just like any other sport or competition. We don’t always see perfect tackles made in the NFL under the pressure of competition. A linebacker will do whatever’s necessary to take down the running back. In the same vein, we might not see the greatest clean form at the CrossFit Games either. A competitor will do whatever’s necessary to get that barbell to the shoulders and stood up.

CrossFit for the general population is focused on one thing: making people healthier. Competition inside an affiliate leads to increased levels of intensity (which people otherwise might not reach on their own), but we should never let competition inside of an affiliate get to the level of excessive technique breakdown.

The Biggest Gimmick in Performance Training

“Sports-specific training.”

Everybody wants it for their athletes, but do they really know what it means?

Taken literally, sports-specific training is often interpreted as the act of mimicking sporting movements in the gym. This approach sounds great in theory, but it doesn’t always pan out in practice.

Not only do “sports-specific” exercises tend to be awkward to load and perform, but the added load also changes the movement pattern subtly. This change can be just subtle enough to negatively interfere with the actual performance of the sport.

A classic example of this type of error is wearing ankle weights to run. The weights change the way you run, which can reinforce bad habits.

Wearing ankle weights could make you run like this.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have the camp that believes strength and strength alone is sports-specific. Get freakishly strong in the gym, they say, and leave the sporting movements to the sports coaches.

As with most things, the answer typically lies somewhere in the middle of the extremes.

11 Things Every Personal Trainer Should Be Doing For Their Clients

They say one bad apple spoils the whole bunch. Unfortunately, when it comes to the personal training business, there’s no shortage of bad apples. And it’s true: they give the rest of us a bad name. To raise the standard and elevate the field, I implore you not to be one of the bad apples. Luckily, doing the 11 things below will put you well on your way to being the Honey Crisp of personal trainers (i.e. the best!).

1. Base the training program on your client's goals.

Personal training isn’t about you or your goals. It’s about the client’s. That’s why it's called PERSONAL training.

For example, just because YOU are a powerlifter, that doesn't mean all your clients wants to squat, bench, and deadlift as heavy as possible. If they just want to "tone up," then by golly your sole job is to help them do it.

Or, just because you think big quads and boulder shoulders are sexy, that doesn't mean every client feels the same way. If your client doesn't want bigger quads and wider shoulders, then keep the quad and shoulder training to a minimum (within reason).

How Working Out is Just Like Eating a Reese’s

During my 500-hour personal trainer certification program, I learned a lot of things about exercise from the instructor, Barry Fritz. One of the most important was the necessity of having a rationale for whatever it is you’re doing at the gym.

I like to make the analogy to eating a Reese’s. (Actually, I’ve never made this analogy before, but hear me out.) We know there’s no wrong way to eat a Reese’s. Likewise, there’s no wrong way to design a workout — as long as you have a rationale.

I guess it’s not a great analogy, since it doesn’t matter the slightest bit why you chopped your Reese’s into a hundred tiny pieces, organized them from smallest to largest, and ate every third morsel. Oh well. Back to exercise.

What I mean is that you could put together what might seem to be a completely bone-headed training program. You appear to make every “mistake” in the book. Yet if you can justify all of your choices with sound logic, then your program may not be so bone-headed after all.

8 Coaching Techniques You Should Use to Help Your Clients Succeed [The PTDC]

Not all personal trainers are created equal. (That's just a nice way of saying some personal trainers stink!) To help separate the good from the bad, I created a list of 8 techniques that great trainers use to help their clients succeed, including

• Simple things like adjusting on the fly and demonstrating proper form
• Surprising things like underestimating clients' abilities, and
• More nuanced things like involving clients in the decision-making process. 

Great trainers should use most, if not all, of the techniques.

Read the article on thePTDC.com:

>>http://www.theptdc.com/2016/04/8-coaching-techniques-great-trainers-use-to-help-their-clients-succeed/

If you're a personal trainer, how many of the 8 techniques do you use? If you're a trainee, how many of them does your personal trainer use?

Can You Bench Press Every Day?

Conventional wisdom says you can’t bench press every day. Your shoulders and elbows just can’t take it. You can squat every day. You can eat an apple every day. But you can’t bench press every day.

A few weeks ago, I set out to test that hypothesis. I had a hunch that there were two basic reasons lifters got hurt from benching too frequently:

1. They lacked balance between their pushing and pulling strength.
2. They didn’t have a plan, or at least not a good one.

Because my one-rep max pull-up is actually 25 pounds heavier than my best bench press — and I had what I thought was a flawless plan — I was confident I could bench every day for a month. After that, I’d rest for a few days, then PR my bench by 10-20 pounds.

Here was my plan:

Everything Works, Until it Doesn’t: How being BAD at Exercise makes you BETTER at Fat Loss

This blog post, which originally appeared on my friend Andy Van Grinsven's website here, really struck a chord with me, partially due to the swimming reference and partially due to his informative and witty writing style. I think the idea that NOT being good at something is actually BETTER for fat loss is under appreciated. Thus, I was elated when Andy agreed to let me re-post his piece on my blog. Enjoy!

Everything Works, Until it Doesn’t: How being BAD at Exercise makes you BETTER at Fat Loss

By Andy Van Grinsven

The fitness and nutrition world has gone insane. Like bat-shit crazy.

And much of it thanks to social media and the internet, where everything is true and everyone is an expert. And if you don’t agree then you can go eat a bowl of liquid mercury, because heaven forbid you have a different perspective.

Gluten will kill you. GMO's will kill you. Vaccines will kill you.

I’m of course being facetious and I don’t believe any of those things. But spend 5 minutes on Facebook and someone will try to convince you otherwise. Hell, even as a fitness professional I find my head spinning from all the “information” and “facts” found on the interwebs.

knowyourmeme.com

TonyGentilcore.com: Tony Is Critical of CrossFit, But Should He Be?

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of people hating on CrossFit -- especially people hating on it when they unknowingly do CrossFit themselves!

That's right, I'm talking about people who in one breath say CrossFit kills and then turn around and do an AMRAP or EMOM.

I believe it was Shakespeare who wrote "that which we call a rose / by any other name would smell as sweet."

Perhaps these haters call their workouts by other names, but it's all the same. After all, the very definition of CrossFit is

Constantly varied functional movements performed at relatively high intensity.

Thus, any time you're doing exercise that falls under that description, it's CrossFit!

No, CrossFit didn't invent the "As Man Reps as Possible" or "Every Minute on the Minute" set/rep schemes. But it did help to popularize them, and for that it deserves some credit.

In my new guest post for The Man, Tony Gentilcore, I describe 

• Four different CrossFit protocols that I use for myself and my clients
• The unique benefits of each, and
• How to implement them in your workouts.

Read the blog post here:

==>http://tonygentilcore.com/2015/11/tony-is-critical-of-crossfit-but-should-he-be/<==

And after you read it (or before), make sure you pick up my new e-book, 50 Fit Tips, for FREE right here:

==>http://www.fitnesspollenator.com/p/welcome.html<==

Why Do HIIT when Hypertrophy is the Goal?

I recently reached out to my good friend Marc Lewis with a question regarding muscle hypertrophy and interval training. With Marc's background in exercise physiology and research interest in concurrent training, I knew he'd have the answer.

When I received Marc's incredibly thorough response, I realized just how lucky I am to have such a smart friend. I learned so much, I figured I'd share it here. If nitty gritty exercise science tickles your fancy, read on!

Hey Marc,

Even when someone’s primary goal is muscle hypertrophy, we still recommend a combination of cardiac output training and high-intensity metabolic training (i.e. HIIT).

In really simple terms, cardiac output training improves a person’s ability to recover, which helps them train with more volume and more frequently (thereby promoting hypertrophy). 

Why, though, do we recommend the high-intensity component? The argument you see a lot of the time is “just look at a sprinter’s body,” but you could also make the case that elite sprinting selects for muscular body types. Is there research showing that high-intensity metabolic training builds muscle?

Thanks a bunch,

Travis

Marc's All-Star Response

Meet Mark: The Case for Online Training

Meet Mark. Mark is a 30-something father of two and administrator at a university.

Mark enjoys being active. His primary fitness goals are simple: to look good and continue engaging in recreational sports with his buddies.

Lately, Mark’s been experiencing a plateau with his resistance training routine, though. He’s tasked me, his online personal trainer, with evaluating his current program and making some recommendations to help him break out of his rut.

The Fitness Handbook: The Story of My Double Bodyweight Chin-up

​For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a knack for pull-ups. You might say I owe it partially to my physical difference. For bodyweight exercises, the congenital absence of my left leg is actually a blessing; my prosthetic leg weighs only a fraction of what a human limb does.

Back in elementary school, I remember testing max rep pull-ups in gym class each year. Cueing up some inner rage at whichever crush had recently broken my young, naïve heart, my seven or so reps consistently scored tops among my peers. Being sore in the biceps for days thereafter was like my badge of honor.

Fast forward a decade and change to my mid-20’s, when double digit pull-ups became my norm. Needing a new challenge, I began adding extra weight via a dip belt. One day, about three years ago, I decided to test my one-rep max. After a thorough warm-up, I threw 90 pounds on the belt and asked my co-worker to film my attempt. Surprising even myself, I busted out three reps.

​And so a new quest was born: a double bodyweight chin-up....

Read the rest of my article for The Fitness Handbook here:

https://www.thefitnesshandbook.com/in-the-gym/the-story-of-my-double-bodyweight-chin-up

10 Reasons You Look Like You Don’t Even Lift (#10 May Surprise You)

1. You lift hard for a week then skip the gym for the next three.

Consistency is the key, and we're not talking about just a few weeks here. You know those monstrously muscular dudes you look up to? It probably took them years of dedication to develop that kind of physique.

2. You follow around the biggest, most roided out guy in the gym, doing whatever he does and hoping he doesn’t notice.

You’re not him, and you probably aren’t on the same juice he is. Unless you are, in which case, go right ahead and follow him around. But know that at some point, he will probably notice. So you might as well just introduce yourself and ask for help. Hopefully, he's not as mean as he looks.

T Nation: 5 Ways You're Wasting Time in the Gym

If you're anything like me, you love lifting weights. It’s the best part of your day. There’s no finer feeling than the blood coursing through your veins, no finer sound than metal clanking against the floor. But when your life starts to revolve around three-hour marathon gym sessions, you’re no longer getting the most out of your training.

Though your intentions are pure when it comes to these all-day exercise affairs, your results are suffering. You see, building muscle depends on a delicate hormonal balance. Anabolic, or muscle-building, hormones are released at the onset of training, and catabolic, or muscle-wasting, hormones are released around 40 minutes in. Spend much more than an hour pumping iron, and you start tipping the scale in the wrong direction.

It’s easy to fall into this trap. We’ve all been there. One minute you’re warming up; the next you’re only halfway through your workout, it’s two hours later, and you’re late for dinner. Through a combination of improper warm-up, suboptimal exercise selection, and idle rest periods, you’ve managed to turn what should have been a gym quickie into some sort of tantric chest and triceps experience.

With a little extra attention to detail, though, you can get back to building serious muscle without the full-time plus overtime commitment. In my latest T Nation article, I chronicle 5 Ways You're Wasting Time in the Gym -- and what to do about them. Read it here:

>>https://www.t-nation.com/training/5-ways-youre-wasting-time-in-the-gym<<

Biofeedback: Bogus or Brilliant?

Key Concepts:

• Biofeedback is an autoregulation, or self-monitoring, technique. It provides information about the “agreeableness” of a particular movement with your body.

• Range of motion testing, like the toe touch, and handgrip strength are two of the easiest ways to apply biofeedback.

• To find the best variation of a movement for you on a particular day, simply establish your baseline measurement, then repeat the test in between a few variations of the movement to see which one tests the highest.

• Biofeedback can be used to individualize and optimize training, help get out of pain, or just become more in tune with your body.

RobertsonTrainingSystems.com: Putting the C in S&C

Let's say you're training a pro American football lineman who needs to develop an aerobic base. At upwards of 300 pounds, running for hours on end would be ill-advised due to the principle of specificity, the risk of injury, and the effects of interference.

In order to develop the lineman’s aerobic energy system safely, effectively, and in accordance with the types of movements required in football, you're going to have to get a little creative.

In our new article for Robertson Training Systems, my coauthor, Marc Lewis, and I tackle this issue and so much more.

Read Putting the C in S&C: An Energy Systems-based Approach here:

http://robertsontrainingsystems.com/blog/putting-the-c-in-sc-an-energy-systems-based-approach/

Brief Lessons in Biomechanics: Moment Arms

Back in middle school, I remember learning about simple machines like ramps, pulleys, and levers for the first time. Like every other kid in the class, I was probably thinking, ‘Why should I care? I’m never gonna use this crap!’

Fast forward a decade to my graduate studies in biomechanics and movement science. It turns out this stuff is my jam!

As a matter of fact, the human musculoskeletal system is nothing more than an intricate network of levers (bones), with muscles acting on them to produce movement.

As such, this system can be analyzed in light of simple machine principles like leverage, or mechanical advantage, and the primary topic of this post: moment arms.

The upshot? Direct and purposeful applications to resistance training, of course!

thePTDC.com: The 10 Most Hotly Debated Fitness Topics

These days, many fitness professionals are quick to adopt polarizing, black-and-white stances on hot topics. While sweeping generalizations do tend to stir up controversy -- thereby bringing the renegade coach/trainer to the fore in a fairly flooded market -- they also cloud the general exercising public’s judgement.

• “Will just squatting fix my wonky squat, or should I spend an hour rolling around on the floor?"

• “Are squats, deadlifts, and pull-ups enough to train my core, or do I need additional exercises that work it more directly?”

• “Does high-intensity interval training take care of all my conditioning needs, or would I be better served with steady state cardio?”

Of course, no one in a position of exercise authority wants to come across as wishy-washy on an important subject. But the truth is that most issues in this business exist on a continuum. As such, it’s best to adopt the middle ground the majority of the time.

In my new article for The Personal Trainer Development Center, ‘The 10 Most Hotly Debated Fitness Topics,’ I advocate for a more tempered approach to some of the most polarizing false dichotomies plaguing the industry today.

Read all about it here:

—>http://www.theptdc.com/2015/05/the-10-most-polarizing-fitness-topics/