Quit being Dumb...

The idea for this article has swam around in my brain for a while now.  Unfortunately, you haven't seen it sooner, or any other stuff from me in a while, because I've been too busy largely enjoying the mindlessness of internet entertainment.  While I do enjoy writing, sharing a meme on Facebook that sort of echoes what I think is so much easier to do.  I don't have to be bothered with trying to be articulate or original.  Click, click, done... half-ass thought transmission completed. 

A recent example of the extent of my thoughtfulness on FB lately...

The lifting world at large has been far, far ahead of the written world in brain-free activity.
Strength training has been in a nearly 60 year spiral towards getting dumber.  That was the take-away that I got after I read This article by Peary Radar which was written when I was chewing on Legos and struggling to not shit my pants.  Apparently, powerlifting as an organized lifting competition became reality because not everyone was really interested in Olympic Weightlifting. 

The O-lifts are well-known to be technical lifts.  The require more coordination and timing than powerlifts.  Radar himself admitted as much.  By contrast, the squat, deadlift and bench press can be learned in a much shorter period of time.

The differences between these two styles of lifting go back farther than the formation of the competitions themselves.  There has always seemed to be two ways to lift stuff:  either you can do it with coordination, timing and speed (Athleticism).  Or you can do it with pure muscular strength.   Crack open some of Alan Calvert's 110 year old ranting and you can see how he considered bent pressing trickery since it required considerable skill and overhead pressing a better lift because it built, and tested, brute strength. The  patron saint of junkyard weight training, Ed Zercher, was likely a victim of lack of a place to show off his strength because while very strong, he was a mediocre O-lifter.   So, while power lifters lacked a sport to participate in, they were around and simply waiting for their venue to form. 

God bless this skinny bastard for coming up with such a fun way to lift...

Just like the invention of the internet, power lifting obviously didn't intend to start a dumb-assing effect in the barely-formative years of the larger subculture but I submit to the reader that it most certainly did.  Nobody likes to admit it but American powerlifting sponged off a lot of lifters away from Olympic Lifting, exactly as Bob Hoffman thought it would.  It's certainly a much simpler form of lifting.  So, the mold was set that people would lift weights in droves as long as it didn't require too much skill. 

I don't think it's coincidental that a mere 10-15 years later, weight machines became a big business, dragging gyms along with them.  The only thing that could be easier than powerlifting with a barbell was to lift without a barbell.  After all, there is as much IQ required to use a machine as there is to have a reality TV show on the E! Network.

...and we wonder why we make no progress here!

I'm fond of saying that things can only be made so simple.  After a certain level of simplification with all things in life, including strength training, you get to the point where things get harder because you're trying too hard to make them too easy. 

Strength training isn't really as technical and IQ-dependent as seminar pimps would have you believe.  Sure, there are some pretty technical lifts out there but as a whole, most strength training movements are pretty easy to learn as long as you don't have an ADHD-riddled mind that was recently lobotomized.

What happens when we try to remove too much of the skill requirements out of lifting in order to make lifting simple to do is we don't get strong.  Sure there are strong humans that have used machinery and low-IQ movements to build up somewhat-impressive bodies here and there but that shit only can take anyone so far. 

Crossfit may have taken this whole dumbing down effect a step farther:  they seem to enjoy taking movements that require skill and removing those key pointers from execution.  There isn't much to learn about doing a pull-up and even doing those key points is just to cumbersome for them...

 



 

 Since I threw the picture up, let's beat up on people who can't be inconvenienced to become proficient with pull-ups.  Pull-ups don't require too much instruction.  I love to tell people, "think of bending the bar on your chest on the way up and pushing the bar away from you on the way down."   Simple, not easy.  Things don't get easier by kipping every, single rep.  It just shred your labrums.   Saying screw it and telling yourself that pulling the entire stack on the Lat Machine is just as good just makes you weaker. 

 

Just bite the bullet and do the fucking pull-ups...Correctly!

 

Squats have been accurately described by people smarter than me as, "easy to learn, hard to master."   Mastery takes time but learning, once again, is simple:  chest proud, hips back, knees out.  That's three cues that covers most squatting.  That's not so, damn difficult that you have to go running to the leg press.   Quit being an idiot or pretending to be stronger than you are and just SQUAT.  

 

So, yes, you need a little bit of skill to get strong.  This isn't trigonometry but it isn't mindless either.  If you're going to build power, you need to use your head in your respective gym for something other than a hat-holder.

 







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Loaded Carries to Fix Your Run Gait...or...How to do a More Productive Loaded Carry

I have been experimenting with fixing some run gait related problems in runners using slow, deliberate suitcase carries (walk while carrying a heavy dumbbell/kettlebell in one hand).  We are starting to see some success in clearing up some nagging problems (i.e., calf tightness, hip flexor soreness, IT band issues etc...).  This  experiment started after I began experimenting with this issue highlighted by the Gait Guys:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WptxNrj2gCo&feature=player_embedded

About half of runners suffer from a cross over gait problem.  For some runners like me, Morton's toe (2nd toe longer than big toe) compounds this problem.  As a result, this causes excessive pronation.  Running shoe stores will inevitably try to sell you a motion control shoe.  This can actually make the pronation worse.  Think about it.  If you have a cross over run pattern, and your shoe causes your foot to land perfectly flat, this is going to cause more lateral bend at the ankle, essentially pronation.  For many people the  key is working with fixing motion at the hip, not the foot/ankle with special shoes.  Unless the hip is tracking correctly, no running shoe is going to eliminate the pronation.  Many try to fix run cross over with a simple drill.  In this drill you run along a painted stripe in the road and try not to step on the stripe by having your left foot land on the left side of the stripe and your right foot land on the right side of the stripe.  This is OK but if you don't have the strength to sustain this run pattern, this drill will not be productive.

Take a look at the image above.  I want you to notice three things.  One, her foot is landing across the center line (cross over).  Her hip has dropped excessively on the non supportive side (see red line at waist).  Her hip on the support side (see arrow) has moved out laterally.  This is really common and can cause lots of problems, including the problems I mentioned earlier.  What is causing this gait pattern?  Of course the causes can vary.  However, in most cases it is muscle weakness and faulty muscle recruitment patterns.  If the glute medius were contracting hard enough (the muscle that is being pointed to with the red arrow), the leg would abduct (move out laterally) and the red line that bends at the knee would be straight and the foot would land under the hip, instead of over the center line.  Also, the hip on the non support side drops primarily because of lack of core strength.  A stronger glute maximus can also  help stabilize a proper position.  So, the key is activation and strengthening of the glute medius, stronger  glute maximus and core and the ability to coordinate these motions in a gait pattern.  How do we do this?

I like heavy suitcase carries.  I cannot think of a single exercise that targets these three gait issues more directly.  However, the suitcase carry has to be done correctly or it will have little benefit. 

This is a farmer's walk, not a suitcase carry.  It is not bad, but notice the foot crossover pattern and the hip drop on the non  support side (see red lines).  This is the compensation we want to avoid during carries.  To avoid these natural compensations, the carries have to be done deliberately. 

Above is a different, and also very common compensation.  Notice the red lines.  In this case he is leaning away from the load.  This compensation lets the core off the hook and simply shifts your center of gravity so that the weight is more balanced, rather than using your core and glute medius muscles to counteract the load.  We want to avoid this compensation as well. 

Above is a more correct suitcase  carry.  The hips did not drop on the non-support side and have not moved out laterally on the support side.  This is the posture you are looking for during your suitcase carries.

The way to do these is with slow deliberate steps.  As you transition from one leg to another, slowly transfer weight to the front leg, contract the core to keep your non-support hip from dropping, simultaneously contract your glute medius to pull in your support side hip, maintain this muscle tension and  .....slowly....step through and  repeat.  Be sure to switch hands.  After several repetitions, try walking slowly unloaded and repeat this correct gait pattern.  Then transition to slow back and forth jogs, again repeating the correct gait pattern.  This can be done daily.  Once you get  the form and feel for the exercise, begin to load heavy. 

This is not going to fix all run gait related problems.  However, it will likely provide some benefit to almost all runners and for some it will literally transform the way they run and walk.  You don't need any special equipment.  A suitcase will do just as well as a kettlebell or dumbbell! 

You should also include the  additional exercises that I discussed in the "Run Cross Over Gait" post as well. 

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220 - Age Max Heart Rate Formula is Garbage

The most widely used formula to predict maximum heart rate is 220 - Age (in years).  I am 46, so my predicted max heart rate is 220 - 46 = 174.  As it turns out, this is not a bad estimate for me.  However, this is purely due to coincidence as the ability of that formula to predict max heart rate is pretty poor.  Take a look at the graph below.  This is actual data from a study that measured maximum heart rate (as opposed to predicting it) in a large number of subjects.  Focus on the two dots in the red circles.  The bottom red circled dot represents a 24 year old subject with a measured max heart rate of 173 beats per minute.  We'll call him low max heart rate guy.  The top red circled dot represents another 24 year old subject, but this one has a max heart rate of 210!!  We'll call him high max heart rate guy.

The standard 220-age formula would predict a max heart rate of 196 beats per minute for both of these 24 year olds.  So what is the big deal?  If I am using a standard heart rate training zone system like the one below to establish heart rate training zones for these two individuals, and we are using 220-age to determine max heart rate, both of them are going to have problems!  Let's illustrate:

Zone 2 training is 75-80% max heart rate.

High max heart rate guy:  220-age predicts a max heart rate of 196 beats per minute.  If we use that figure and compute 75-80% we get 147-156 beats per minute.  However, his actual max heart rate is 210 beats per minute so his real zone 2 is 157-168 beats per minute.  If we use 220-age, we don't work him nearly hard enough!

Low max  heart rate guy:  Again, 220-age predicts a max heart rate of 196 beats per minute.  If we use that figure and compute 75-80% we get 147-156 beats per minute.  However, his true max heart rate is 173 beats per minute so his real zone 2 is 121-138 beats per minute.  If we use 220-age, we are working him WAY too hard.  In fact, by using 220-age to predict his max and then applying the zones above, we would be training him in zone 4 instead of zone 2!  Imagine if we had him doing all of his long runs at this incorrect heart rate zone!  It would be a disaster for his training program.

So is there a better formula to use?  No, not really.  All of the formulas that have been developed so far are just about as bad as this one.  The only way to really know your maximum heart rate is to test it.  There are several ways to do this.  Some people use a series of hill repeats, with each done progressively faster and the last one done at an all out max pace.  Your heart rate immediately after the last repeat will be your max heart rate.  This works if the hill repeat takes at least 2-3 minutes, even at the fastest pace.  Other approaches would use progressively faster 1/2 mile repeats on the track to max.  You can do this on the treadmill by starting at an easy pace and increasing the speed by 1 MPH every minute until you simply cannot go any longer.  Incidentally, if you use a 1% grade, you can use my VO2 max chart from a previous post to estimate your VO2 max from this test as well.  You may not reach absolute max heart rate with any of these approaches (due to residual training fatigue) but it will be very close, and much better than any formula. 

Reference:  The surprising history of the HRmax = 220-age equation, Journal of Exercise Physiology, volume 5 (2), 2002, Robergs, R., and Landwehr, R. 

 

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Strength, hypertrophy, muscular endurance, power

Below is a graphic that illustrates the current state of knowledge concerning training for these various abilities.  Although this is presented as fixed categories, the reality is that this is a broad continuum.  There is a significant "bleed over" from one category to another.  However, these variables are often employed as shown below in designing periodized training programs that focus on a single fitness component for one training block at a time.  For example, a football conditioning program may focus on hypertrophy early in the off season, followed by a strength block, and finally a muscular power block right before the season.  In season may be a combination of muscular strength and muscular power.  This is classic linear periodization.  A non-linear periodized approach may combine several of these fitness components in a single week.  For example, Monday might have a hypertrophy focus, Wednesday a strength focus, and Friday a muscular power focus.  Non-linear periodization is more appropriate for athletes who do not have a fixed competitive season (i.e., tactical athletes).  Both linear and non-linear periodization can be effective. 

Note:  Core = primary lifts like squats or deadlifts.  Assistance = accessory lifts like curls or calf raises.  Power = explosive lifts like cleans or snatch.

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4 Week Fat Burner

This is a modification of coach Dan John's 10,000 swing workout.  I did this with my wife over the Christmas holiday as a way to minimize holiday damage.  The conditioning effect was significant.  My heart rate recovery improved tremendously during this time.  I added 6 inches to my long jump, 30 pounds to my hip hinge strength, and 30 lbs of force to my grip strength.  My wife went from 22% to 16% bodyfat.  It was a great way to spend those cold, dark days of winter.  It would also make a nice kick start to a pre-summer fat loss plan. 

Don't underestimate the impact of this volume though.  There is a 2-4 week lead in period.  If you are not doing swings regularly, do the lead in workout or you will regret it!  Take good care of you hands.  That was the most difficult part of the 4 weeks.  It was a daily task to keep my hands in good shape.  It was worth it though. 


P.S.  Here is a little secret.  This workout is not really about fat loss, although many people have that experience.  The primary purpose of this workout is repetition and patterning of the hip hinge movement, along with training the usually neglected hamstrings and glutes.  I credit this workout with finally fixing my deadlift.  Pay attention to the swing form and you may have a similar experience.

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Squatting Cues

Squatting correctly is really simple.  All you need are 4 cues.  Focus on each one of these unloaded first.  Then when that feels good, move to goblet squats.  Finally, move to barbell squats.

1.  Weight on the heels.
2.  Shins vertical.
3.  Sit back into it.
4.  Knees out.

He has it all figured out without even thinking about it! 

Most people are going to mess up cues #1 and #2 above.  If you feel unbalanced or like you are going to topple over forward, go back to the first two cues. 

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A Tranny goes to the CF Games...

The hilarity that ensued over this woman all over my Facebook feed couldn't be avoided.  If you have any sort of strength training-oriented pages that you've like you couldn't have missed it.  In case you did, here's the deal.  This is Cloie Johnson, and she wants to compete in the Crossfit Games.  There's just one problem:  she was born a man.  Or, at least Crossfit's high command thinks that's an issue and stated that if she wanted to compete, she had to do so in the men's division.  So, like any good California-based T-Girl would do, she sued Crossfit for a lot of money.  After all, money makes discrimination feel all better, right? 

Yeah, I never understood that either.  The conversations about this were positively alive and often times on fire.  Leave it up to me to have friends that would happily throw gasoline on this issue.  Unfortunaely, I was sidelined since I wasn't friends with the original posters.  That's about the time that it hit me:  I have a blog and I can say what I want on it.  So, what I was aching to tell everyone that I couldn't post to was that this issue is a triple-stacked bullshit sandwich.  Here are the layers of uncomfortable facts that everyone loved to ignore:

SEX REASSIGNMENT IS INCOMPLETE!
Crossfit's reasoning behind telling Johnson that she has to compete in the men's CF games because  being born a man gives her too-significant advantages over the rest of the natural-born women to assure a fair contest.  The counter-argument is that since California legally recognizes her as a woman after going through the obligatory chopAdickFromy procedure, getting some fake boobs, and taking the right hormones to feminize her body.  After all, the Olympics has long-recognized transvestite athletes and allowed them to compete in their newly adopted sex.  So, what leg does Crossfit have to stand on? 

Frankly, probably the right one... even if few want to acknowledge it.

What people fail to take into consideration is that Gender Reassignment Surgery (GRS) is a biologically incomplete process.  Yes, it takes a man/woman and makes them look and feel like the opposite sex but that doesn't address the other differences between men and women.  A characteristic of every, single mammal is that the males are typically built bigger and stronger.  Relevant to our discussion here, they have bigger, thicker bones (why archeologist can identify millennia-old skeletons as male or female, in part), more muscle mass (why male fighters can cut more weight than women:  they can have more meat to dry out), thicker tendons and ligaments (why women are more likely than men to tear ACL's), and those tendons insert and attach in differing positions that make a male capable of producing more power than a female. 

Does GRS go through the effort of re-positioning tendons, thinning those tendons down, removing extra muscle mass, and changing bone structure? 

So, if Crossfit is interested in an equal playing field for the female competitors in their games, then there is a basis for not allowing Johnson to compete with the women.  She was likely born with some distinct, masculine advantages that her GRS didn't address, regardless of what the State of California and the IOC say.  To CF, it's unfair, whatever that means because...

FAIRNESS AND SPORTSMANSHIP DOESN'T REALLY EXIST ANYWAY...
To the best of my knowledge, sports have existed for 4,000 years.  Formal notions of sportsmanship and fair play seem to be, at best, 140 years old.  The only notations about anything related to these two beacons of playing nice in sports seemed to crop up with the Marquis of Queensbury rules in boxing, the establishment of sports with a more game-like element to them (baseball, basketball, etc) and the re-establishment of the Olympic games in the late 1890's. 

Prior to these happenings, the most common sports, dating back to antiquity, were throwing sports (javelin, rocks, shot puts, etc), various forms of wrestling, boxing and striking-based martial arts, archery, and often horseback-based sports.  Surely there are more but has anyone yet noticed the strong, warfare element that all of these share?  That's not an accident.  Where I to draw a conclusion about why sports even exist, it would be for warfare training.  Since when did we have any notions of fair play and doing not to win but for the sake of doing like Baron de Fredy envisioned when he got the 1896 Olympics off the ground?  Where do we get off using war metaphors in sports so often?

It was a fanciful thought but ever since those formative years in the mid-late 1800's as when we started getting more rules, sportsmanship and fair play we seemed to get the much stronger notions of cheating as well as the curious concept of gamesmanship...playing not particularly fair but not really breaking the rules either.  Ever since sports got so damn popular, the lines about what is universally fair and what isn't has been consistently hard to define. 

• Is it fair to train in high altitude but not to Take EPO, despite the fact they both increase red blood cell count?
• Is it fair that fighters in combat sports can cut 1-2 gallons of water out of their bodies (8-16 lbs weight) to make a weight class? 
• Are steroids fair if most of the participants are using them even though the rules prohibit them? 

 Is a feminized male going to have a significant advantage over a naturally-born female? 

The reason why these cute ideas fail to work out most of the time is that they fail to take into consideration the combat origin of sports to begin with.  People may be convinced ostensibly to play by the rules initially but we all know that there is an overwhelming urge to win at costs beyond what a sport tells us we can do.  Does Cloie Johnson only want to play with the girls just because she considers herself a girl?   Or, does she think she'll get her halfway-female ass kicked if she decides to re-cross the gender line in sports? 

I'm sure that CF sees this as an issue of fairness in sport but let's face another fact here...

CROSSFIT ISN'T A SPORT!
If you wanted to look up the definition of a sport and prove me wrong that the Crossfit games are indeed a sport, you might be able to convince a few people that I'm a dick for saying such a thing.  Here's your definition:

²sport

noun

: a contest or game in which people do certain physical activities according to a specific set of rules and compete against each other
: sports in general

: a physical activity (such as hunting, fishing, running, swimming, etc.) that is done for enjoyment

So, getting together and doing competitive exercise is now a sport.  So, by that definition, we could make a sport out of hockey drills couldn't we?  Maybe we could call sparring in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu a sport while we're at it.   It seems that, by Crossfit standards and a dictionary's wording, we could just throw some rules and competition into a physical activity we therefore make a sport out of it.  Is that going overboard calling physical preparation for sports sports themselves?  We've already established that sport is watered-down warfare preparation.  I'm curious about how farther diluted things can go. I ponder how much longer before we call tying shoelaces a sport since we have to tie up laces to do exercises.   Hey, it's physical activity and all we need to add is a competitive element...

This whole ordeal is bullshit because each issue I brought up seeks to change reality for the sake of human benefit.  Life doesn't work like that.  I have no overwhelming interest in GRS's legitimacy, notions of sportsmanship, or in sport in general.  Chloie Johnson can play in anything she/he wants and Crossfit can tell her where to play it for all I care. 

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Running Cross Over Gait

This is a great video explaining the biomechanics that can cause cross over gait. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WptxNrj2gCo&feature=player_embedded

The resistance tube lateral walk, and the suitcase carry exercises below, using the biomechanics discussed in the video, would be excellent choices to start correcting this issue.  Adding some glute bridging would also be a good choice. 

Resistance tube lateral walk

Suitcase Carry

Glute Bridge

Plank

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The Plank - You are Doing it Wrong

I am in the position to see hundreds of people do planks on a regular basis.  More than half tend to do this simple exercise wrong, completely negating the positive benefit.  It is all about hip control and the ability to stabilize the pelvis in a neutral position.  Most people take a lazy approach due to core weakness or a poor core stabilization pattern.  As a result, the exercise becomes useless and only serves to reinforce poor movement and muscle recruitment patterns.  The image below is from an article by Laura Williams (http://www.sheknows.com/health-and-wellness/articles/991097/6-exercises-you-are-doing-wrong).  The two images at the bottom illustrate what I most commonly see.  I have added the yellow lines to illustrate what I am trying to explain.  In this case, the core muscles must engage to rotate the top of the pelvis back (posterior tilt) in order to achieve the proper alignment (top picture).  If the core is too weak to engage, or if the person has a faulty muscle recruitment pattern, the top of the pelvis will rotate forward.  In the bottom picture on the left, the pelvis has rotated forward (anterior pelvic tilt) and now all of the stabilization in the plank is being done by the passive structures of the spine (ouch!).  In the picture on the bottom right, the pelvis is rotated forward, but instead of using the spine to stabilize, the rear is lifted in the air in order to maintain the anterior tilt of the pelvis.  Both of these are common compensations in the plank position for someone with a weak core or poor core stabilization pattern.  In the properly performed plank, the key is to rotate the pelvis posteriorly by engaging the abs, keeping the back flat as in the top picture.  Incidentally, the two compensations you see in the bottom are often repeated in sit-ups, squatting, deadlifts, push-ups, walking running etc...

 

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Endurance Training and Racing Zones

This is a "Rosetta Stone" type of document that lets you translate from one training zone system to another.  It also provides reasonable guidance on heart rate zones for training and racing (run and triathlon).  This is based on your maximum heart rate.  There is no formula to predict your max heart rate.  You have to test it.  If you have a heart rate monitor you can do this easily at the track.  Do a nice and easy 10 minute warm up.  Then, do 1/4 mile moderately hard, followed immediately by 1/4 mile hard, then immediately by 1/4 mile as hard as you can (all out).  Check your heart rate as you cross the line.  The max value you see is going to be a very good estimate of your max heart rate.   I have put this document together from my own lab testing and experience, as well as from other sources on the web (Endurance Corner, Dr. Stephen Seiler).  I hope you find it useful.

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