JPAcceleration.com

New Blog

2009-10-22T20:39:00.001-07:00

Hey Guys,

I've moved over to a different site

Check out my future blogs over there...thanks!

Jason

Female Fitness

2009-08-12T11:13:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, I ran this 8 week small group training course called 21st Century Female Fitness. My main purpose of the course was to dispel many of the fitness myths out there geared towards females. Topics like getting "bulky", "toning", flexibility, strength, and nutrition were all subjects I wanted to clarify. Go into any commercial gym and you'll find the majority of women are on the elliptical striding endlessly in the hopes of losing any sort of appreciable amount of weight. A handful might be brave enough to step into the testosterone-filled weight room to wave around a couple of light dumbbells in various directions for hundreds of repetitions.

The only tissue in the body that burns fat is muscle. Your resting metabolic rate, which accounts for more than half the calories you burn in a single day is mostly governed by how much muscle you have. So, lets say that 60% of your caloric expenditure comes from your resting metabolic rate, 25% comes from some sort of activity be it weight training or cardiovascular exercise, and 15% comes the Thermic Effect of Food (food has a thermic effect, which means it burns calories as you consume them. Protein has a high thermic effect, simple sugars like candy do not). If you do not weight train and increase your lean muscle mass; thereby, increasing your resting metabolic rate (which has the highest percentage of your metabolism), then you are completely missing the boat in regards to your fat loss!

What do you want your body weight to consist of?

Beginners to weight lifting will actually experience gains in muscle mass while burning fat. At some point, that will stop and the only way to gain muscle mass is to consume more calories than you expend. Muscle cannot be developed through a caloric deficit - so women on a diet who are afraid of becoming bulky are incredibly off base. Women, physiologically, don't have the same muscle building properties as men.

I could go on and on regarding my thoughts on different myths in the female fitness realm, but that would take quite a bit of time so I'll just go through a quick rundown of what we did in that 8-week period.

1) Foam Rolling and soft tissue work

2) Dynamic warm ups

3) Strength training protocols

4) Interval Training

5) Steady State Cardio Training

6) Static Stretching

7) Circuit Training

8) Sample total body workout

Definitely a lot to go over in just 8 sessions, but I definitely think I dispelled some myths and the participants learned quite a bit on how to program their own workouts. Here's a couple of videos we took:

Reverse Lunge From Deficit:

The step forces the glutes to work a little harder because of the extra range of motion while also causing a deeper stretch to the often tight hip flexors in the back leg.

X Pulldown - X Pulldowns combine scapular retraction as well as depression. Combine that with the "shoulder friendly" rotation of the handles and the cross body motion of the exercise and you get a much more effective movement over the standard lat pulldown machine.

Tall Kneeling Sequential Lift: Core stability while working the body in three planes of motion (diagonally).

Towel Hamstring Curls: Glute/Hamstring strength...also keeps your floors clean!

Face Pulls: An extremely underrated exercise that targets the upper back musculature as well as the rear delts and rotator cuff. It's crucial for shoulder health and also helps reinforce better posture.

Unfortunately, Joanna was away when I took these video clips but she she did an awesome job as well in the other weeks! All in all, I think everyone had a great time getting stronger, fixing any imbalances and also just being in better shape! Big thanks to Kate and Anne for allowing me to film some of the stuff we did in class!

Great job, girls!

Jason

Matt: Weeks 2 and 3

2009-08-05T09:09:00.000-07:00

These past three weeks have been focused mostly on overall mobility as well as core and scapular stability. Since Matt sits at a desk for prob 8+ hours a day, we need to make sure to hammer on his thoracic spine and hip mobility. Also, because of his shoulder issues, scapular stability is going to be a huge component in his program.

Mobility/Flexibility work:

T-Spine:

Pec Stretch:

Pushup EQI:

EQI stands for Eccentric Quasi-Isometric. Isometric refers to holding a contraction in place. The reason it is "quasi-isometric" is because as Matt is trying to hold the position, he will at some point fatigue and will start to sink down deeper into more of an eccentric contraction. EQI offers a unique blend of stretching while strengthening in those new found ranges of motion.

Rectus Femoris Stretch:

The Rectus Femoris counts as one of your hip flexors and quadriceps - it crosses the knee and the hip joints. As a result typical hip flexor and quad stretches don't hit this muscles so we need to put the hip in extension and as well as have the knee in flexion.

Core Stability:

Pallof Press: 10 Second holds

Split Stance Cable Push: 8/Side

Side Plank: 10 second holds

Scapular Retraction:

Inverted Rows: 8 reps

Face Pulls: 12 reps

Scapular Stability:

Plank Walk: 30 Seconds

Half Get-Up: 6 reps/side

Medicine Ball Alternating Pushups:

If Matt were to follow some cookie-cutter program from Muscle and Fitness, it would probably look like this:

Bench Press: 3x12

Incline Bench Press: 3x12

Decline Bench Press: 3x12

Flat Bench Dumbbell Flyes: 3x15

Decline Situps: 2x20

Crunches: 2x20

This would not only wreak havoc on his shoulders, but also pull him down further into his poor posture. Even if Matt was a blank slate with no injuries and perfect posture, blasting any single muscle group like this is ridiculous. These type of workouts work for bodybuilders because they're not only genetically predisposed to gain muscle mass, but also because they take tons of supplements - many of them illegal. It's no coincidence that the top muscle magazines out there are directly linked to a top supplement company. They force these brutal workouts onto unsuspecting people and when they don't work the next solution is to buy into these supplements that the magazine is so highly advocating.

Train Hard,

Jason

Operation: Matt Garufi

2009-07-25T11:55:00.000-07:00

I've been good friends with Matt for over 6 years now. He was a good athlete back in high school with a couple of Varsity letters under his belt, and he also played a year of Division 3 football in college. He underwent extensive surgery back in high school on account of a separated shoulder. Physical therapy aided his recovery, but he still wasn't comfortable playing football with it, which is why he quit the team. He started to focus more on his academics and less on athletics and moving around, which unfortunately made his body adopt a computer/caveman posture.

With the help of a diet of Popeye's Chicken and Wendy's that was washed down with a bottle of Jack Daniels - he began to get increasingly out of shape and started packing on the pounds. He enlisted my help once he hit 180 pounds at a height of 5'7'' - 20 pounds heavier than his frame in high school.
Here are some details from my original assessment with him. I first took note of his static posture:

Nothing too big here - right shoulder drops lower than his left, and his feet are externally rotated. Not too much to nitpick about.

So, here we see some early signs of some exaggerated kyphosis - shoulders rounding and head protruding forward. Also, some anterior pelvic tilt.

Again, nothing to write home about. Static posture just gives me some clues on what to look for in my dynamic assessment, which includes an overhead squat and a single leg squat. So, let see some movement:

Overhead squat:

Here we get some forward leaning - probably from tight hip flexors. Also arms falling forward - probably from immobile thoracic spine, and tight pec minor and latissimus dorsi. His feet externally rotate, which might be from tight calves or externally rotated femurs. Also, when checking the front view we see a lot of instability in his knees and hips, which could be lack of core strength or posterior chain strength - probably a combination of the two. Let's see what happens when we shift his weight on to one leg:

Single leg squat:

His left knee is slightly unstable, and his quads look a lot stronger than his hamstrings and glutes (his knee shoots out over his toes). His right knee collapses quite a bit inwards in a manner that would be a recipe for an ACL injury if enough force was applied.

From here we moved onto some foam rolling for his hip flexors, calves, IT band, inner thigh, hip external rotators, and t-spine. Here are some t-spine extensions we performer to help loosen up his upper back:

Here's a picture of a spiderman lunge we did to loosen up his hips and inner thighs:
The Tin Man probably has better mobility!

But I've given Matt a mobility circuit he can do everyday that'll take him around 5-10 minutes that should help considerably.

After the foam rolling and mobility work, we moved on to some activation drills for his scapula and his glutes:

The wall slide stretches out the internal rotators of the humerus, while activating and strengthening the lower traps and improving shoulder mobility - awesome bang for your buck exercise.

The superdog - developed by strength coach Nick Tumminello, is an excellent glute activator because it removes any possibility of using the lower back because of the flexed hip on the opposite side.

After all of that, we moved on to the strength training portion of our work out, which included goblet squats, pushups, face pulls, and some core stability work. I'll go into more detail for Matt's strength training portion in the next coming posts, but right now the priority is on improving his mobility/flexibility and soft tissue quality. Here's one of the stretches we used at the end to target his rectus femoris:

Train Hard,
Jason

Client Spotlight: Ken F.

2009-07-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

My job enables me to develop relationships with some amazing people. You can tell a lot about a person when they're performing an intense, grueling workout. Do they quit? Cut themselves short? Rise to the occasion? The mental aspect to training is just as important as the physical part. I've found out that with the right motivation, people can push themselves past their self-imposed limit and really do some amazing things.

I first started training Ken back in December of '07. He had already began adopting healthy eating habits in October, which was when he decided to turn his life around:

In the above photo, he had a 40 inch waist and weighed around 200 pounds. Through healthy eating habits, he dropped down to about 185 pounds when we first started working together. Ken was 51 at the time - he could do one sloppy pushup, had knee pain, had the flexibility of a steel rod, and could barely get past eye height when he tried to raise his arms overhead. Of course, when I told Ken to get a referral from his physician for a physical therapist to look at his shoulders, he was told that the pain and lack of mobility in his shoulders was "all in his head".

That mental toughness I had mentioned in the beginning of the post was crucial to Ken's success. I'm not even sure I could've gotten through some of the workouts I designed for Ken! We focused on heavy strength training along with some targeted metabolic circuit and interval training. Ken also came in early for every session and performed my prescribed mobility and foam rolling exercises which was critical in improving his hip/shoulder/thoracic spine mobility and overall soft tissue quality.

18 months later, here's Ken!

Ken developing some power with box jumps:

Posterior chain work:
Deadlift: 315 pounds

Box Squat: 225 pounds

Bodyweight:

12 Decline Ring Pushups:

3 Neutral Grip Pullups:

Single Leg Squat with 10 Pounds:

If this doesn't inspire you to go work out right now, I don't know what will! Sadly, Ken moved away from Massachusetts last month so we've stopped training together. However, he did get a promotion, which comes as no surprise because like I said before - you can tell a lot about a person when you watch them perform an intense workout. Ken's determination and dedication inside the gym is as just a part of him as it is outside of it.

Muscle Fibers and Pennation Angles (Fun!!!)

2009-06-17T20:20:00.000-07:00

I think its important for trainers to know and understand functional anatomy. Would you hire a mechanic who couldn't tell the difference between a carburetor from a brake pedal? It amazes me that trainers still use body part splits and design their workouts around isolation movements like biceps curls or abdominal crunches. The body works in movements and should be trained that way. Check out this post I wrote back in April concerning the efficacy of some of the most popular machines at commercial gyms. I'm not saying that there isn't a time and a place for machines and isolation movements, but to base your entire workout on these overrated exercises are both inefficient and ineffective.

The"core". I've bashed conventional core training in my previous posts, but I'll go into further detail today. Core training has been somehow bastardized into abdominal training. The core is a lot more complicated than trunk flexion - you simply cannot it by performing sit ups and crunches!

There are superficial muscles like the rectus abdominus and external obliques, but there are also deeper muscles such as the transverse abdominus and internal obliques - this is just the anterior portion of your midsection. The posterior portion includes another host of superficial and intrinsic muscles that include your spinal erectors and multifidi. Now, in my opinion, the "core" is not just your midsection. I'd say its your entire torso all the way down to your hips, which means we need to include the latissimus dorsi, the glutes, and hip flexors just to name a few.

"You have your ubulus muscle, which connects to your upper dorsimus"

All those different muscles can't be there to just produce trunk flexion. It isn't a functional way to train them, and your other lifts like squats, deadlifts, lunges, presses, and rows will be limited by the weakness of your core. We've always trained the core for strength purposes with sit ups and side bends, etc. but is that its true role? Think about a tennis/golf/baseball player swinging their respective equipment - all the movement and power is generated through the use of their hips and thoracic spine (upper back), all the while maintaining a very ridgid midsection. What about a mother carrying a purse around one arm, with groceries in one hand, while carrying her son in the other? You better believe she's keeping her core tight otherwise she'd tip right over!

Now, check the direction of the different muscles fibers in your abdominals in the first picture I posted. Your rectus abdominus fibers are vertical, the transverse is horizontal, and the internal and external obliques run in diagonals - all of which connect to form a tight, interwoven web. Why is denim so durable?

It's crosshatched. What about an architect designing a house/building?

Same concept. Now, if the core was really designed for trunk flexion - I think it would look more like a hamstring:

Note how the muscle fibers essentially run straight up and down.

Continuing with our discussion of the core musculature. Let's take a closer look at the lats:

Notice how the muscle fibers run diagonally down from the humerus through the thoracolumbar fascia (the white colored fibers) and insert on to the iliac crest. The problem with traditional lat pulldowns and pullups are that they load your muscles in a vertical fashion. Because your lats run diagonally, they are in both a vertical and a horizontal vector. How do we add that horizontal component? We attempt to pull the bar apart. Obviously, the bar isn't going to allow that, but by performing the exercise in this manner, you engage more muscle fibers that woud've otherwise had an unfavorable line of pull.

The hamstrings are comprised of three different muscles: the semitendinosus, semimembranosus, and the biceps femoris (which actually has a short head, as well as a long head).

What we're concerned about here is the biceps femoris. I mentioned before that the hamstring muscle fibers run, for the most part, straight up and down. This is true, but the biceps femoris (BF) actually tracks slightly to attach on to the lateral portion of your knee. Why is this important? If your BF strength isn't up to par, your adductors will win the tug of war of your knee and your patellofemoral joint will literally "cave in" during running, squatting, lunging, climbing stairs, etc. I used to attribute this solely to gluteus medius weakness, but the glute med. is definitely an overrated muscle in this movement impairment. While the BF attaches directly onto the knee, the glute med. influences the knee via the IT(Iliotibial) Band:

Check out the knees of the girl jumping in this video:

Knees collapsing inwards like that is a recipe for an ACL injury. What exercises can we use to help prevent this? You can try squats with a mini band around your knees. Click here for a video with coaching cues by strength coach Mark Verstegen.
You can also try hamstring curls on a stability ball with your feet externally rotated to emphasize the BF.

Now, like I said before, your muscles work in movement patterns in conjunction with other muscles. You need to exercise your glutes as well, which is why I didn't include any exercises that purely "isolate" the BF.

Speaking of glutes:

Your glutes primarily thought of as hip extensors (when you stand up from a chair, as you push your hips forward - you are using your glutes). They are also hip external rotators - meaning they let you do this:

Check out the muscle fiber arrangement of the glutes - they run horizontally. Ask any informed fitness enthusiast on how to build great glutes and they'll generally reply with some sort of squat or deadlift variation. Next time you squat/deadlift/lunge/etc., I want you to think about "gripping" the floor with your toes. From there, as your coming back up from the bottom position, think about "spreading the floor" out from underneath you. In other words, try to externally rotate your feet. Just like you wont be able to pull a bar apart during a pullup, you obviously won't be able to break the floor underneath you, but by consciously trying to rotate your feet outwards, you engage more of the muscle fibers in your glutes, which results in a stronger lift.

I hope these tips add some tools to your training arsenal. Make sure your trainer understands their anatomy!

Train Hard...and smart,

Jason

Perform Better Summit

2009-06-04T11:41:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a 3-day seminar in Rhode Island. I try to make it a point to go to as many seminars as I can in order to keep up with the latest research, training techniques, and advice from the fitness industry's best and brightest minds. I had an awesome experience and it was definitely the best event I have ever been to. The only part that I didn't like was that there were way too many things going on at once. At any given time, there were four presenters either giving lectures or doing some hands-on work with the attendees. I had to really sit down and contemplate which speaker to attend and which topics would further enhance my knowledge. I decided to go to the lectures almost exclusively, as opposed to the hands-on segments just because I felt like I was there to learn and not necessarily work out. Here are a couple of key recurring themes that resonated throughout the weekend:

1) To state it simply - the foot is really important. It's got 26 bones; the human body has 206 bones. We've got two feet, which means that 52 bones out of 206 make up the skeletal component of our feet. That's basically a 1/4 of the bones in our body! The presenter, Todd Wright, said jokingly "If the foot wasn't that important, it would just be one big ass bone!" He went on to talk about how our feet and hands are great propioceptors, which means they communicate with the rest of our body about our surroundings. Think about how you can feel your way around a room when it is pitch black - our hands take on the role of our eyes and "tell" our bodies where to go. Our feet have this same tactile ability. However, we lose this ability when we don't train the intrinsic muscles in the feet.

Take a look at your shoes. Do they look like this?

All that cushioning might feel nice, but it does not allow your feet to assume its role as a propioceptor. I saw numerous people at the conference wearing these:

These seem a tad bit excessive and might garner some outlandish looks - I would just recommend training your lower body (weight training, not aerobic exercise) with either bare feet, or with shoes like Nike Frees:

Having strong feet can go a long way in protecting the ankles, knees, and hips - all while improving balance and proprioception.

2) The lats are really important. Take a look at how much surface area the latissimus dorsi cover:

It's origins consist of the sacrum, iliac crest, T7-T12 vertebrae, inferior angle of the scapula, and the thoracolumbar fascia. It also inserts on to the humerus directly. The "core" is usually referred to as the abdominal/low back region, but the lats are often overlooked as a key core stabilizer. Train this important muscle and make sure it is activated in all of your lifts.

3) Breathing. Are you a chest breather, or a belly breather? When you inhale, your stomach should rise, and not your shoulders. Our society is very upper-trap dominant. Desk jockeys, students, computer engineers all have a great deal of tension in their upper traps. Everytime you breathe with your chest, your shoulders rise and your upper traps fire. You breathe thousands of times a day - you can imagine how much tension you can build up. Try this exercise called crocodile breathing to help you to breathe using your diaphragm:

Lay face down and push your stomach into the floor and you inhale, and then relax as you exhale. Having too much tension in your upper traps can lead to shoulder, neck, and upper back pain.

4) The fascial sytem. If you can't stand up and reach your toes with your hands, then try this out. Grab a tennis ball and roll the bottom of your feet with it - you are most likely going to feel a quite a bit of discomfort. Find those "hot spots" and really try to dig in. Roll for about a minute per side making sure you cover the entire foot. Try to touch your toes again. Most people will notice a drastic difference in how far down they go. Fascia is what surrounds your muscle tissue - if your muscles are the train stations of the body, your fascia makes up the train tracks. The superficial back line is a line of fascia that connects the bottom of your feet all the way up your calves, hamstrings, back, and actually ends at the top of your forehead.

By manipulating the origin of the back line with the tennis ball on the feet, you get a systematic release and everything seems to "let go". So the tension in your calves, hamstrings, and lower back reduces and allows you to go further down in a toe-touch. Interestingly, a person who has plantar fasciitis (inflammation of the foot) often has headaches. The pain literally radiates up the line of fascia to the top of their forehead. I'll post more about the fascial system in the next couple of days, but do yourself a favor and start foam rolling!

Train Hard,

Jason

Pushups

2009-05-27T20:37:00.000-07:00

Quick post today, guys!

Pushups are an awesome exercise. When done correctly, you get a lot of bang-for-your-buck in one seemingly simple movement. At first glance, the push-up works the pectorals (chest), deltoids (shoulders), and triceps. But it also requires a great deal of activation in both your anterior and posterior aspects of your "core", as well as strengthening the scapular stabilizers and rotator cuff. Here's a clip of strength coach Eric Cressey showing proper technique:

At the bottom portion of the lift, you should think about bring your shoulder blades together and down (don't shrug). At the top, think about pushing yourself as far away from the floor as possible and spreading your shoulder blades at the top. This is one of the big differences from the push-up and the bench press. In the bench press, your shoulder blades should be locked together and depressed throughout the entire lift. By pushing your shoulder blades apart in a push-up, you activate and strengthen a muscle called the Serratus Anterior - an often neglected muscle that is crucial for long-term shoulder health. Thus, it is extremely important to make sure you include push-ups into your programs.
The elbows are tucked to about a 45 degree angle from you the sides of your body, and make sure your body is rigid (glutes tight, abs tight, knees locked out).

Push-ups from the floor can be made easier by pushing yourself away on an elevated surface (bed, chair, bench, smith machine). They can also be made harder (elevating your feet, placing your hands on unstable objects, or a one-arm push-up). The same rules apply to all variations, though.

Train Hard,

Jason

Fitting Square Pegs Into Round Holes

2009-05-19T19:59:00.000-07:00

I hate cookie-cutter programs you find in magazines or on websites. Everyone is different - different needs, goals, posture, strength, training experience, injury history, etc. the list goes on an on. I used to think if an exercise was good, it would be good for everyone. I used to take a random exercise from Men's/Women's Health Magazine and throw it into a client's program. I used to think if a client's back was hurting, they needed to strengthen it. I expect I'll come up with a lot more "I used to..." statements in the future, but I like to think that means that I'm progressing as a trainer. The first time I realized that I didn't know everything was when my clients start achieving better results. Oscar Wilde's quote "I am not young enough to know everything" really hit home for me. Without furder ado, here are 5 mistakes I've made in the
past:

1) Overhead pressing on an overly kyphotic thoracic spine: I've mentioned this in the past, but I'll go over it again. Push your shoulders forward and poke your chin out in front of you. From there try to raise your arms overhead. You will not be able to get your arms directly overhead. In a person with good posture and optimal mobility in their thoracic spine, the scapula will have enough room to tilt posteriorly in order to raise the arms overhead. However, on a person with poor posture and poor mobility, the scapula will be "stuck" in a position of anterior tilt. This is a very unstable position for your scapulo-thoracic joint, and very risky to put it under external load. Our deltoids get more than enough work on pushups, bench presses, and other horizontal pushing exercises to justify the risk/reward ratio in this scenario.

2) Doing an exercise to get increase performance for the same exercise. I couldn't really think of a way to phrase that any better, but I'll show you what I mean. We've all seen this at the gym:

The guy who does 50 pushups in a row barely moving his arms, and doing an awesome job of looking like a seal. If I were to train him, would I tell him to just do more pushups? No, he looks like a seal because he has zero core stability. I would tell him to perform more core stability work (ie. planks, pallof press, etc.) and to set aside his ego and execute the pushups on an incline to work on his form.
What about the side plank?

I used to think the side plank trained only the obliques (the muscles that run along the side of your abdominals). I didn't realize how much the lats, shoulders, and glutes came into play during this effective exercise. When my clients exhibited poor side plank times - my only expert solution was to just do more side planks! I started to realize that once I increased upper body pulling strength, as well as shoulder stability - side plank times improved dramatically.

Overhead Squat:

Overhead squats are extremely difficult. They require a great deal of mobility in your ankles, hips, shoulders, and thoracic spine. When my client's couldn't go low enough, I looked at all the possible contributing mobility factors. Were their ankles stiff? Were their hips immobile? Take a look at these two guys performing the OH Squat:

I would have originally thought maybe there were some hip flexor tightness, or maybe a restriction at the ankle joint. But now, take a look when they lay down on the floor on their backs:

Without having to support themselves, the mobility issues, for the most part, seem to clear right up. This means that the limiting factor happens to be stability and not mobility. In an upright position, when the body is lowering down into an overhead squat - if there is not enough core stability, the body will literally "shut itself down" as a defense mechanism to halt any sort of perceived danger placed upon it. As a result, I started to work on a lot more more anti-extension exercises such as planks, stability ball rollouts, and tall kneeling chops and lifts to help clear up this dysfunctional movement pattern.

3) Using soreness as an indicator of a good workout: It seems like everyone who goes to the gym uses soreness as an indicator of how effective a workout is. Consequently, many trainers seem to make it their number one priority to make their clients sore. Soreness usually occurs after the muscles experience a different stimulus than it normally does (new exercises, more repetitions, more sets, more time under tension). Beginners tend to get very sore extremely easily because nearly everything they do will "shock" their body. Now, if there's no added benefit to strength, hypertophy, endurance, etc. by being sore, why would I try to make my client feel crippled the next day? To possibly hinder their next workout, or their ability to walk upstairs? I can manipulate workouts to create this effect, but I'd rather focus my attention on getting optimal results. If soreness occurs as a result, then so be it.

4) Emphasizing strength too early in beginners: I used to try to progress my beginner clients way too quickly in an effort to accelerate results. Beginners experience adaptations with 40% of their max load and with only one or two sets of any given exercise. More is less in this situation as it could result in overtraining. However, for intermediate to advanced clients, more sets and higher loads will be needed to yield similar adaptations. According to Dr. Vladimir Zatziorsky in his book Science and Practice of Strength Training, a beginner should wait three years before progressing onto maximal strength work to develop the necessary connective tissue in order to handle the high loads. I think this definitely depends on the person, but I would still wait at least a year before trying to progress into strength-based workouts.

5) If it hurt's, don't do it!: This applies more for myself than my clients. I used to "man up" and work through the pain in my shoulders. I made no gains, and was constantly in pain. Only when I started performing some soft tissue work (with a foam roller and tennis ball), mobility work, improved my scapular stability, and stopped doing exercises that hurt was I able to perform at my best. I switched bench presses with pushupsand floor press, barbell overhead presses for dumbells presses, and did a ton of corrective exercises for my lower traps and serratus anterior. The result was a 70 pound increase in my bench press in four months, and more importantly - healthy shoulders.

Train Hard (and Smart)!

Jason

Shouldering the Load

2009-05-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

Shoulders have always interested me - maybe, because I've tweaked mine on a number of occasions playing various sports, or because of my poor lifting technique when I was younger, and having more than a handful of clients nursing shoulder issues. In this post, I'm going to outline some key aspects to train for or maintain healthy shoulders.

"Impingement" is a term you hear pretty often in the weight room. When people refer to their shoulder, they are most likely referring to their Gleno-humeral joint. It's where the head of the humerus (upper arm) meets the Glenoid Fossa:

The GH joint is a ball and socket joint, which means it has a capacity to move in large ranges of motion. This would be the opposite of a "hinge joint" such as the knee, which for the most part moves in one plane of motion, with some slight internal and external range of motion capabilities. If you take a look at the picture above, there is a beak shaped structure to the left of the glenoid fossa called the acromion process. Unlike the picture depicts, there is actually an extremely small amount of space between the head of the humerus and the acromion process. In order to raise your arms overhead, the rotator cuff muscles must first depress the head of the humerus to clear some space out to avoid "pinching" of the ligaments and tendons in between the head of the humerus and the acromion. If the rotator cuff isn't strong enough to do so, or there is a lack of stability in your scapulo-thoracic joint (because of poor posture, lack of proper programming in workouts, poor exercise selection, etc.), impingement occurs. There are three types of acromions:

You'll notice that type 1 has more or less a flat surface, type 2 is slightly curved, and type 3 has a pretty sharp hook to it. From this, one can surmise that the type three acromion shortens the space between the head of the humerus the most because of its "beak-like" structure, and therefore, can increase the likelihood of impingement syndrome. Your acromion can actually "morph" from a type 1 or 2 into a type 3. This change can occur from poor posture and a poor training program, which I'll go over in more detail later on. I'm more of a believer of contraindicated people, rather than contraindicated exercises; however, the majority of people I see at the gym tend to have poor posture, as well as poor training programs. This is why I included upright rows, and bench dips as "contraindicated exercises" in my first post.

Unfortunately, I can't change the shape of your acromion. But in this post, I'll show you how to improve your posture, strengthen your scapular stabilizers, and provide proper balance in your workouts.

1) Thoracic Spine Mobility. I explained in my last couple of posts how an immobile T-Spine leads to a more mobile lumbar spine, which is exactly what we do not want. Along those same lines, an immobile T-spine will lead to a more mobile scapulo-thoracic joint (ST). In my post A Joint-by-Joint Approach to Training, I went over that we want a stable ST joint, and a mobile GH joint. Our scapulae (shoulder blades) can tilt anteriorly and posteriorly. When we raise our arms overhead, our scapulae should tilt posteriorly to allow the movement to occur. But, let's say our t-spine isn't mobile enough for it to tilt properly:

Round your shoulders forward and poke your chin out like this desk jockey above. Now, in that same position, try to raise your arms up overhead. Your body will not allow it. This will kind of give you an idea of how a person with poor t-spine mobility will lead to poor scapular stability as well as shoulder mobility. My last post shows you some videos on how to improve mobility in your upper back.

2) Scapular Stability. The average gym-goer will not know what the heck a serratus anterior or where their lower trapezius is located. These two muscles perform a crucial role in stabilizing the scapula when raising your arms overhead. Individually, the serratus anterior protracts (pushes forward) the scapula, the lower trapezius depresses the scapula, and the the upper trapezius elevates the scapula. Collectively, they make up the "force couple" to help rotate the scapula to move the arms overhead:

Most people have very overactive upper traps and an underactive serratus anterior and lower trap. So how do we activate and strengthen these two neglected muscles?

Serratus Anterior: Hand Switches

Keep your core tight - you do not want your hips to sag. Just walk with your hands back and forth. Do 3 sets of 30 seconds each. Going as quickly as you can while maintaining proper form.

Lower traps: Wall Slides

Make sure you squeeze your shoulder blades together, keep your butt on the wall, and keep your shoulder blades down. When your elbows reach the bottom position, try to squeeze both elbows down and towards each other. If you do it right, you should feel it in the middle of your back. Do 3 sets of 12 reps.

3) Pull more than you push!
We need to strengthen our back muscles in order to maintain optimal postural alignment. If you go to the gym and do only pushups and bench presses, you're only reinforcing poor posture and effectively shortening your internal rotators so that you look like the desk jockey I showed you above. The cable row machine is one of the few machines I actually like. It's very hard to train the scapular retractors without cheating or compromising your lower back. We've all seen these meatheads at the gym:

The cable row allows you to stay upright and use an appreciable load, while maintaining good form.

Rotator cuff exercises are extremely overrated. Truth of the matter is, if you lack t-spine mobility, extra 'cuff work will be of little or no use to you. If you have the first three components of a balanced training program in check, then some external rotations will definitely help out, but don't think it is the cornerstone of your workout.

Train Hard,

Jason

Thoracic Spine Mobility

2009-05-06T20:24:00.000-07:00

Hey all, quick post today:

I've been talking about thoracic mobility pretty extensively lately. Like I mentioned in my Low Back Pain post, the lumbar spine has approximately 13 degrees of range of motion (ROM). The thoracic spine; however, has almost 70 degrees of ROM. The t-spine has a much larger capacity to rotate, yet people still focus on twisting through the lumbar spine. So, how do we increase ROM at the t-spine?

First off we need to loosen up the musculature (Rhomboids, traps, etc.)around it with the use of a foam roller, medicine ball, etc.:

Make sure you cross your arms together to get the shoulder blades out of the way, and make sure not to roll on the lower back.

Next we can perform quadruped (four point stance) extension-rotations:

Keep your core tight, reach your elbow down to the opposite knee, and then extend as far as you can up towards the ceiling. You should feel this near your shoulder blades, and NOT the lower back. Keeping your abs braced will ensure that you get the mobility from your upper back and not the lower back.

I did not take these videos - I got them from the user NutrexSolutions through youtube. I hope there are no copyright infringement issues!

Train Hard,

Jason

Superman

2009-05-05T20:55:00.000-07:00

Here's an excerpt from Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance:

"Training the back extensors is a challenge if the goal is to minimize spine load. For example, the "superman" is a commonly prescribed spine extensor muscle exercise that involves lying prone while extending the arms and legs. This results in about 6000N (about 1300 pounds) of compression to a hyperextended spine, loading the facet joints and crushing the interspinous ligament. This is not a cleverly designed exercise for anyone." (McGill, p. 227-8)

The National Insitute for Occupational Safety and Health set the action limit for lower back compression at 3300 N. Compression levels past this point has been correlated to a higher risk for injury to the lumbar spine. Incidentally, a straight leg sit up generates about 3500 N, while a bent-leg sit up created about 3350 N. Now, think about all the sit ups you see performed on a daily basis at a gym? Want abs? Strength Coach Mike Boyle often says to perform table push-aways - the best ab exercise he prescribes to his clients and athletes. Obviously this is a joke, but proper nutrition is the key to fat loss - you cannot out-train a poor diet.

So how do we strengthen the back extensors in a safer way? Stuart Mcgill recommends the bird-dog. It's an advanced exercise, and loses its effectiveness dramatically when performed incorrectly. I like to start clients off with the half bird dog:

The key is to be able to extend at the hip, while maintaining a neutral spine. Brace the abdominals, and contract (squeeze) the glute of the raised leg while keeping your chin tucked. Once mastery of this exercise is achieved, progression to the full bird dog can occur:
Here, the stability is reduced to two points of contact on the floor. The opposite arm is raised, and all the same cues apply (neutral spine, abs braced, glute of the raised leg contracted, and no movement occuring anywhere else). Its important that the spine remains neutral throughout. Too often, people overarch the lower back at the top of the movement, while also rounding over at the bottom of the movement. Do not try to touch your elbow and knee together at the bottom, but instead just let them hover slightly off the floor and then raise them back up again. According to McGill, the half bird dog imposes less than 2500 N to the spine, while the full bird dog creates about 3000 N. Both are under the acceptable limit set by the NIOSH, and also with a neutral spine unlike the superman and situp where the low back is taken through full extension and flexion, respectively. Couple that with glute activation, as well as an anti-rotary component, you get a lot of bang for your buck value, with minimal risk of injury to the lumbar spine.

Train Hard (and smart!),

Jason

Lower Back Pain Pt. 1

2009-05-03T20:36:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone,

I've been slacking a bit, but this week I'm going to have a couple of posts for you all concerning the lower back (the lumbar spine). I'll be referencing and quoting Dr. Stuart McGill quite a bit in these posts. For those of you who are not familiar with McGill, he is one of the world's leading researchers of the rehabilitation, injury prevention, and performance of the lumbar spine. He is "the low back guy" in the fitness industry, and is the go-to person for anything and everything back related.

With that being said, I am embarrassed to admit that I got his book Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance about 8 months ago and I still haven't finished it. But my goal for the week is to finish the book, because I am seeing him speak at a Perform Better seminar this weekend in Rhode Island.

So here's part one of the low back series:

Stuart McGill often states to "spare the spine". Much of today's research in lower back health points to keeping the lumbar spine stable, while increasing mobility at the hips and the thoracic spine. However, even with all the research present, the average gym-goer is misinformed and continues to strive to create mobility in the lumbar spine.
This is one of the most common mistakes that I see take place at the gym. Deadlifting/Squatting with a rounded lower back, russian twists, lunging with twists, supermans, scorpions, etc. All of these movements compromise the health of your lower back. Shirley Sahrmann states in her book Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes: :The overall range of lumbar rotation is ...approximately 13 degrees. The rotation between each segment from T10 to L5 is 2 degrees. The greatest rotational range is between L5 and S1, which is 5 degrees (pg. 61-2)." 13 degrees is an extremely limited range of motion (ROM) - why are we trying to mobilize a structure that so obviously craves stability?

The lumbar spine does not act as one fused structure. One way to picture how the rotation occurs is to think about how you would unscrew a nail. Each lumbar vertebrae rotates 2 degrees to its end range, and then the vertebrae directly above it proceeds to rotate 2 degrees, and so on and so forth. So if you factor in the 5 degrees of ROM from S1 - L5, and then the 2 degrees from every segment above that until you reach the L1 vertebrae - you get 13 degrees of total ROM.

That's about 15 degrees of range of motion to either side - now take a look at these next couple of exercises:

All of these exercises show an extreme amount of rotary torque at the lumbar spine with minimal movement at the hips. Here's a quote from Shirley Sahrmann from her book Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes:

"Rotation of the lumbar spine is more dangerous than beneficial and rotation of the pelvis and lower extremities to one side while the trunk remain stable or is rotated to the other side is particularly dangerous." (Sahrmann, pg. 72)

Rotating past the end range of the lumbar spine will stress and twist the ligaments and the facets that support the lower back. We have to evaluate the way we train the "core". Rotation IS a movement that occurs in everyday life, but people get so caught up in "isolating" that they limit the rotation to only the lower back. Herein lies the problem - we must realize that the "core" is not just the abdominal/low back region, but also includes the hips and the torso. Strength coach Mark Verstegen refers to this area as "the pillar", where the transfer of forces between the upper and lower extremities takes place. Here are two quotes from Sahrmann and McGill:

"During most activities, the primary role of the abdominal muscles is to provide isometric support and limit the degree of rotation of the trunk which, as discussed, is limited in the lumbar spine." (Sahrmann, p. 70)

"...elevated risk from very high tissue loading may occur when the spine is fully twisted and there is a need to generate high twisting torque. In other words generating twisting torque, while twisting away from neutral, appears to be problematic." (McGill, p. 103)

Sahrmann refers to the core as an "antirotator". This is not to say that rotation must never occur, but the rotation must occur through the hips and thoracic spine. Furthermore, we must have the muscular control to PREVENT rotation, before even thinking about creating it. Proper progressions from planks, side planks, pallof presses, landmines, etc. must take place before introducting rotary exercises such as cable woodchops, or dynamic lifts (picture below).

Notice how the rotation and power occurs from the turning of the hips and shoulders while maintaining a neutral spine position.

So, to wrap things up for now - we need to think about the true role and function of the "core". We focus too much on strength, and not on stability. Victims of lower back pain often try to "strengthen" their lower back, without realizing that they are exacerbating their current situation. The need for mobility through the hips and thoracic spine, while maintaing stability at the lumbar spine is evident in the research and has to be reflected in our training programs.

Train Hard,

Jason

Fat Loss For Dummies

2009-04-28T18:50:00.001-07:00

Fat Loss...everyone's favorite topic...I'll get right to it:

Let's start off with metabolism. According to the MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia, metabolism "refers to all of the physical and chemical processes in the body that create and use energy". In other words, your metabolism is the total energy expenditure of the body. Digesting food, breathing, heart rate, strength training - all requires energy.

Resting metabolic rate - the amount of calories you burn at rest - accounts for 60-75% of total energy expenditure in sedentary people.¹ This leaves anywhere from 25-40% of total caloric expenditure to come from activity level and the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF).

A fat loss program must address these three important protocols: resting metabolic rate, physical activity, and diet to maximize results. More on this later.

Now, how does one "burn fat"? This is "fat burning for dummies" so I'll explain relatively quickly here (note that this an extreme oversimplification of the complex process). Subcutaneous fat (commonly referred to as body fat) exists in fat cells. We need to "mobilize" this fat out of the cell, and into the muscle where it can be burned off. Muscle is the only tissue in the body that burns fat - the only reason that "cardio", "aerobic exercise", or "endurance training" burns calories is because of the demand from the muscular system. What happens when you run, bike, swim, etc? Your muscles are essentially performing hundreds of repetitions, which means that cardiovascular exercise cannot occur without the muscular system initiating the movement first.

So how do we mobilize the fat? Breakdown of triglycerides in the fat cell into free fatty acids (FFA) must occur so that they can enter the bloodstream. Hormone Sensitive Lipase (HSL) is called upon by glucagon when blood sugar stores are low to convert the triglycerides into FFA and shuttle them to the muscle and liver where they can be burned.² So, we need more HSL for more fat mobilization to take place. How do we get more HSL? According to The Journal of Biological Chemistry, catecholamine levels stimulate HSL activity. How do we increase catecholamine levels? We increase physical activity. However, HSL is limited by insulin, which the body releases to remove glucose from the bloodstream. To keep insulin levels low, we need to limit blood sugar levels through proper diet.

All that science mumbo-jumbo basically means we need to eat healthier, and increase physical activity. Rocket Science.

Now that we know how to mobilize the fat from the fat cells into FFA in the bloodstream. We need to figure out how to transport the FFA into muscle where it can be burned off in the mitochondria. This transportation process is controlled by carnitine levels. The higher the levels of carnitine - the higher the rate of transportation. ³ In order for carnitine levels to be high; however, muscle glycogen levels need to be low. In order to lower muscle glycogen levels we need to undergo physical activity and eat appropriately (a lower-carb diet will reduce glycogen levels).

So again with the science mumbo jumbo. All this really means is that in order to have high levels of fat oxidation - we need to exercise more and eat properly. Again, rocket science.

Now with all of that out of the way - the three key pillars to fat loss are:
1) Nutrition
2) Resistance Training
3) Energy systems work, cardiovascular training, GPP, whatever you want to call it.

I'll go over each one in more detail:

1) You can't out-train a bad diet. No matter how hard you work out, if your diet is poor- your results, or lack thereof, will suffer.
With that being said - according to the research above, it seems as though a reduced-carb diet will optimize fat burning capacity. I'm not a registered dietician or a nutritionist, but I think I can safely say that a diet low in sugar; high in fruits, vegetables, lean proteins; and high in fiber are good guidelines to follow for anybody pursuing body fat reduction. Drinking lots of water, making breakfast be your biggest meal, making sure you eat something healthy after your workout, and snacking on nutritious foods throughout the day to maintain a high metabolism are all other general guidelines and recommendations that would be advantageous to follow.

2) Resistance training comes before cardiovascular work. Most people who come to the gym have it the other way around. Like I mentioned before, muscle is the only tissue in the body that burns fat. The more muscle you have means that you have a higher resting metabolic rate because muscles demands higher energy expenditure from the body to maintain it.⁴ Since resting metabolic rate accounts for 60-75% of your total energy expenditure - the more muscle you have, the higher the caloric burn you induce without even moving. Also, like I mentioned before - the only reason the cardiovascular system burns calories is through the demand of the muscular system. If the muscular system can't handle the demands of performing hundreds of repetitions, we need to address that issue by focusing on resistance training. By enhancing the muscular system, we automatically enhance the cardiovascular system. I recommend three total-body workouts per week in order to expend the most amount of energy possible in each workout, while also making sure you allow your muscles to rest and recover.

3) Cardio. Once the resistance training is implemented into a program, the last part of the equation is supplemental energy systems work. Running, swimming, biking, etc. at a steady pace is not an efficient, or effective means of training for those interested in fat loss. Now, think about running a mile. Let's say you run a mile in 8 minutes and you burn 100 calories. Your body will adapt to this within a couple of workouts and will require maybe 90 calories of total energy expenditure to the run the mile. Now with weight training, to counteract this adaptation, we can increase the load (the amount of weight you're lifting). With cardio, you would have to run longer. So, what I'm trying to tell you is that your body becomes more efficient at running and it becomes harder to burn calories at the same rate before you started the running program.

How do we resolve this? We incorporate high-intensity interval training (HIIT). We make sure we switch speeds and resistances in order to halt the adaptation process. The higher intensity ensures we burn the most amount of calories during the session, and also elevate metabolism for at least the next 24 hours.⁵ Interval Training was also found to be 9 times more effective in reducing body fat than regular steady state endurance training.⁶ Because of the stress placed on the body through HIIT, I recommend no more than 3 sessions a week.

In conclusion, this is not a program, but more of a lesson in how the fat loss process works. It is up to you to incorporate these elements into your training. With all this being said, everyone is different (age, gender, thyroid activity, etc.) and there is not one secret program that will yield the exact same results for every single person. My recommendations in this blog are extremely generalised - I would need to perform multiple assessments before moving on into more specific programming.
The concepts are easy, but actually putting forth the effort and intensity and discipline is extremely difficult. Do you have what it takes?

Train Hard,

Jason

¹J. Connolly, T. Romano, and M. Patruno. Effects of dieting and exercise on resting metabolic rate and implications for weight management. Family Practice, April 1, 1999; 16(2): 196 - 201.

²Contreras JA, et al. Hormone-sensitive lipase is structurally related to acetylcholinesterase, bile salt-stimulated lipase, and several fungal lipases. The Journal of Biological Chemistry, 271 (1996): 31426 - 31430.

³Brass, Eric P. Supplemental carnitine and exercise. American Society for Clinical Nutrition, 72 (2000): 618-623.

⁴Pratley, R., et al. Strength training increases resting metabolic rate and norepinephrine levels in healthy 50- to 65-year-old men. Journal of Applied Physiology, 76 (1994): 133-137.

^{5Treuth, et al. Effects of exercise intensity on 24-h energy expenditure and substrate oxidation. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 9 (1996): 1138-1143.}

^{6Tremblay A, et al. Impact of exercise intensity on body fatness and skeletal muscle metabolism. Metabolism, 43 (1994): 814-818.}

Anterior Pelvic Tilt

2009-04-27T19:14:00.000-07:00

Anterior Pelvic Tilt - sometimes called Lower Crossed Syndrome is a condition where the pelvis is tilted forward. Here's what it looks like:

Like I've mentioned before, our society spends too much time sitting and not enough time engaging ourselves in any sort of physical activity. Let's say you're at a desk job stuck in front of a computer for 8 hours a day. Your hip flexors are going to be in a state of constant flexion and over time they become either short or stiff. Now, through a phenomenon called reciprocal inhibition - you're glutes become lengthened and weak.
To better understand reciprocal inhibition, think about when you flex your biceps - your triceps on the other side of your arm needs to lengthen and relax for the contraction to occur. So, in anterior pelvic tilt, the hip flexors are in a state of constant flexion and the muscles on the other side of your body - the gluteals, are forced to be lengthened.
Now what happens when the glutes cannot fire properly? The glutes are the most powerful hip extensors in the body, and when they can't fire at the right time - hip extension is substituted with lumbar extension (you use your lower back instead of your glutes). You see it all the time - someone will drop a quarter or a paper clip and instead of bending at the knees to pick it up, they'll simply bend forward at the waist with their legs fully extended. This might be okay when picking up something light, but what happens when that same person needs to pick up something like a couch or a dumbbell? They'll attempt to muscle up the weight with their lower back rather then using their lower body muscles and end up "blowing out their back". Now, as a result of the lumbar extensors being overused - they also become tight and exacerbate the situation.
Now, what happens when the lumbar extensors are tight? The abdominals become lengthened and weak.
So heres the formula for Lower Crossed Syndrome:
Lengthened and weak gluteals and abdominals + tight and overactive hip flexors and lumbar extensors = anterior pelvic tilt

If you were wondering why it was called Lower Crossed Syndrome, take a look at this diagram:

So what are the implications for someone with anterior pelvic tilt?

Higher likelihood of lower back pain, decreased recruitment of the glutes, increased kyphosis of the thoracic spine, and from a purely asethetic standpoint APT can lead to a "big gut, no butt" scenario.

So, enough with the science mumbo-jumbo - how can you combat APT?

Phase 1:

Warrior Lunge: Hold the bottom position of a lunge for 30 seconds. Squeeze (contract) the glute of the trailing leg (the right leg in the picture) and make sure the knee is behind the hip to ensure a good stretch. Raise your arms overhead, don't over arch your lower back like the guy in the picture, and keep your abs tight and contracted.

Glute Bridge: Lay flat on your back with your arms by your sides. Bring your feet in so that your knees form a 90 degree angle and raise your toes up. Drive through your heels and lift your hips up and squeeze your glutes and brace your abdominals. Hold for 30 seconds.

Plank: The plank position should look like you do when you are standing. You should maintain the natural curve in your lower back, elbows should be right below the shoulders, glutes tight, abs braced, and chin tucked. Hold this position for 30-45 seconds.

Repeat three times before you work out, or use it as your work out. Make sure you do perform this tri-set of exercises at least 3 times a week.

Phase II:

Rectus Femoris Stretch: This stretch should look similar to the warrior lunge stretch except this time you are going to reach back and grab your back leg to intensify the stretch. Same rules apply except you can keep your arms down. Hold for 30 seconds.

Cook Hip Lift: This is similar to the glute bridge but this time you are going to tuck one knee in towards your chest. Instead of holding at the top, do sets of 12 repetitions on each side. Take 2 seconds on the way up, hold at the top for 2 seconds, and then take 2 seconds to lower your hips back down. You might find that you can only go up a couple of inches. Even if this occurs, do not loosen your grasp of your knee - your range of motion will improve as you keep doing the exercise.

Stability Ball Rollout: Place a ball in front of you with your arms extended, roll yourself out keeping your abs braced and your glutes right, and at the bottom push yourself back up to the starting position. Be sure to maintain the natural curve in your lower back - it shouldn't increase or decrease. The greater the diameter of the ball, the easier the exercise will be. The further away you start with the ball the harder the exercise will be. Think of the stability ball rollout as an easier alternative to the ab wheel:

Perform 6-10 repetitions. If you haven't done this exercise before start off slowly -perform less repetitions otherwise you'll find yourself extremely sore in the next day or two.

Again, perform this tri-set of exercises three times either before your workout or as your workout three times a week.

How long should one stay in each phase? It really depends on the person's level of fitness, age, degree of APT, and how flexible they are. Move on to the next phase only when you are comfortable with Phase I.

When you fix APT, your able to recruit your core and glutes properly - which means you'll have a higher capacity to lift more challenging weights which in turn leads to strength gains, increased caloric expenditure, and most importantly better results!

Train Hard,

Jason

Machines Suck!

2009-04-23T22:10:00.000-07:00

Way back when, researchers used electrical stimulation on muscles to determine their function. What happens when they stimulated the quadriceps? Knee extension. The hamstrings? Knee flexion. The adductors? Hip adduction. I don't know about you, but I think this is an extremely simple depiction of the human body. What happens every time you take a step? Your glutes, hamstrings, quads, adductors, calves, and the other stabilizers in the lead leg are used in conjunction to decelerate knee flexion. Now what happens in that same leg as it begins to propel itself off the floor? The glutes, hamstrings, quads, adductors, calves, and the remaining stabilizers are used to accelerate knee extension. This is precisely why we shouldn't train muscles in isolation - our bodies simply don't function that way - hence, the term functional training. Now, soon after this research - companies began making machines to simulate the "function" of the different muscle groups. The age of Nautilus machines began.

I'm going to take you through four different machines that suck, for lack of a better word. The leg extension, the leg curl, the hip abduction machine, and the hip adduction machine.

Lets start with what seems like every woman's favorite machine...the inner thigh machine:

The hip adduction machine is used to target the adductors. Take a look at the adductors:

Truth is, the adductors are a complex of five different muscles: the Adductor Brevis, Adductor Magnus, Adductor Longus, the Gracilis, and the Pectineus. Now in the frontal (side to side) plane, all of these muscles are used in hip adduction. However when you start to break things down into real-life functional movements - these muscles all take on a secondary role. The Pectineus and Adductor Brevis are used as hip flexors, while the Adductor Magnus and Longus, and Gracilis are used as hip extensors. When the hip is in a position of flexion (think about hugging your knee to your chest), the adductors are in a greater position to contribute to hip extension. On the other hand, when the hip is in a position of extension (thinking about standing tall and bringing one leg behind you), the adductors are in a greater position to contribute to hip flexion.
Think about a soccer player kicking a ball:

Now take a look at her right leg - its in almost full hip extension. Based on what I just told you, the adductors are now in a position to contribute to hip flexion as well as adduction. The exact motion of the follow through of the corner kick. Now think about a hockey player as they skate:

This hockey players right leg is in a state of flexion. The adductors are now in position to contribute to hip extension in order to push the skate down and propel themselves further down the ice.
The adductors are used in so many different ways, and treating this whole group of muscles as if it only has one single function is both near-sighted and also dangerous. Imbalances could develop within the complex itself and could lead to all sorts of groin injuries.

The hip abduction machine follows the same theme. The main muscle used in hip abduction is the Gluteus Medius. Even though it is a single muscle, it has both anterior and posterior fibers. The anterior fibers are used for internal rotation of the femur, while the posterior fibers are used for external rotation. Again, this machine only focuses on the hip abduction component. Also, when the hips are flexed in this position, it is hard to fire and activate the glutes effectively (think about flexing your arm so that your biceps contract, your triceps on the other side is forced to relax - this is known as reciprocal inhibition).

The leg curl. When you walk, run, sprint, go up stairs - your glutes and hamstrings are used synergistically to produce hip extension. In any real-life setting, the hamstrings NEVER work in isolation of the glutes. Now take a look at the leg curl machine:

Knee flexion and therefore hamstring recruitment, BUT no activation of the glutes. Now lets say leg curls are the only exercise you use to work your posterior chain (glutes, hamstrings, lower back). Instead of training your body to use your glutes and hamstrings synergistically to produce hip extension like in a deadlift - you are training your body to preferentially recruit the hamstrings. Now what happens, when you start running or sprinting? Your glutes are so underdeveloped that the hamstrings now have to work overtime to compensate for the lack of function at the glutes. The end result? A pulled hamstring.

The leg extension machine.

Another machine that makes absolutely no sense. When in life would you ever bring your knee up towards your body and then try to kick your leg out in that position. Unless you're the karate kid, I'm assuming never.

The quadriceps consist of four muscles: the Vastus Medialis, Vastus Lateralis, Vastus Intermedius, and the Rectus Femoris. The Rectus Femoris is also a hip flexor and is commonly tight in most of the American population, because of how much time we spend sitting in a hips flexed position. According to EMG studies of the leg extension exercise, the Rectus Femoris showed improved activity, while in EMG studies of a squat - the Vasti muscles showed more improved activity. Now, the Vasti muscles are much more powerful as knee extensors than the Rectus Femoris and also serve as stabilizers to the knee. So why would we use an exercise that improved activity in an area that is already tight, and also delay activity in a muscle group whose recruitment is imperative for optimal knee health. Also, add in the fact that the ACL is in constant tension, the hip adductors/abductors are not working at all throughout the movement, there is more knee movement, and more joint stress - you're really looking at a pretty dangerous peice of equipment.

With all this being said - no machine is ever going to be able to replace free weights or body weights as a more effective form of exercise. There are a few machines I do use occasionally, but that's for another blog post...

In the meantime,

Train Hard!

Jason

A Joint - By - Joint Approach To Training

2009-04-22T21:06:00.000-07:00

The joint-by-joint approach to training the body was first introduced to me by an article written by Michael Boyle (Strength and conditioning coach for the Boston University hockey team). It completely revolutionized the way I viewed training. The beauty of it is that it is such a simple concept to comprehend, despite the complex subject matter.

The human body consists of a stack of joints. They each need a degree of mobility (the ability to produce a desired movement) and a degree of stability (the ability to resist a desired movement). These two properties work inversely. If you gain more mobility in a joint, you sacrifice some stability. With that being said, it seems like the body alternates from joints that need more mobility to joints that need more stability:

Note that this is not a black and white view - the human body is much more complex than this rudimentary diagram. With that being said, each joint I labeled prefer either more stability or more mobility. You want mobility in the ankles, stability in the knees, mobility in the hips, stability in the lumbar spine, and so on and so forth.

Now, what happens when a joint that craves mobility becomes stiff or immobile; therefore, making it more stable? The joints above and below that joint have to compensate and become more mobile. Lets take a look at the hips - a multi-axial ball-and-socket joint that is made to be more mobile. As a society, we sit around too much because of our jobs, computers, tv, etc. As a result, our hips become very stiff and immobile. Now look above and below the hip - the knee and the lumbar spine (lower back). Both of these joints crave stability, but because of the stiffness of our hips they are forced to move to become more mobile in order to compensate.

This is where I believe so many Americans experience lower back pain at some point in their lives. Mobility is something we lose if we neglect it. Check out this picture of a baby squatting

Picture perfect mobility. Now when I type in "mobility" into Google Images this is what came up:

Now if we are not mobile enough in our hips to squat down, bend forward to pick something up, etc. - our lower backs are forced to move. So instead of a clean squatting pattern like the baby pictured above, we get something that looks like this:

Back pain is a result of overuse. Victims of lower back pain tend to do exercises to "strengthen" the lower back. Stuart Mcgill, in his book Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance, actually mentions that this is the wrong approach to take because people with back pain tend to have strong lower backs. The problem is that they are extremely stiff in their hips and thoracic spine, which is why we need mobility in those areas, while emphasizing core stability in the lumbar spine.

Another example is someone with a rounder shoulder, forward head posture:

Try to put yourself in this position (push your shoulders forward and make your chin protrude forward). Now try to raise your arms overhead. You can't. This shows how your upper back (Thoracic Spine) can become immobile, force your scapulo-thoracic joint (point where your shoulder blades attach to your spine) to become more mobile, and make your shoulder joint more immobile. This can lead to shoulder injuries, and the only way to correct this is to get to the root of the problem, which is the immobile Thoracic Spine.

In the next coming weeks, I'll be posting videos on how to improve mobility or stability in these certain areas to keep you healthy in the long term. Until then, keep checking back, become a follower of my blog, and leave me feedback!

Train Hard,

Jason

5 Exercises You Should Be Doing

2009-04-21T20:40:00.000-07:00

Continuing on from my last post - I decided to do write one on exercises that people often neglect in their training. I think these 5 exercises are hugely important for a well rounded program and should be taken very seriously. With that being said, incorporate these in to your program!

1) Deadlifts. Squats are widely considered the "king of lower body exercises". Don't get me wrong, squats are awesome in terms of lower body development, but they are what is called a "quad-dominant" exercise. This means that most of the movement revolves around the knee joint and emphasizes the quadriceps muscles.
Our society spends way too much time sitting on our butts, and never end up using them. That's why we need to incorporate "hip dominant" movements that emphasize your glutes and hamstrings. We need balance in our workouts - if your quads are a lot stronger than your glutes and hamstrings you can end up with various types of knee injuries.

Its simple. Bend down, keep your back in its natural arch, chest high, and lift. No other exercise works as many muscles as the deadlift. Use it and its variations (Romanian deadlifts, single leg deadlifts, trap bar deadlifts, sumo deadlifts, snatch grip deadlifts, etc.)

2) Pushups. Theres something about pushups that guys hate: they're not as "cool" as the bench press, they're deemed a "sissy" exercise, they're "too easy".

Pushups offer tremendous value in terms of core stability, scapular stability, and upper body strength. Why not just bench press? In correct bench pressing technique you shoulder blades should be pinched together to give you a good stable platform to push the weight away from you. The bench press is a great exercise, but it doesn't let your scapulae (shoulder blades) move freely the way it does in a pushup. This means you completely neglect the rotator cuff and the serratus anterior. What the heck is a serratus anterior? It's a relatively small, but important muscle located under and to the side of your chest that help protract (push forward) the scapula. It also helps you rotate your scapula in order to raise your arms overhead. Neglect this muscle, and you set yourself up for shoulder injuries down the road.

Check out this guy's shoulder blades. The medial border of the scapula is "winging out" because his serratus anterior isn't strong enough to keep them in alignment.
If you can do regular pushups well, try out decline pushups, weight pushups, pushups on a stability, ring pushups, band resisted pushups, spiderman pushups, and even 1-arm pushups.

3) Face Pulls. Here's an amusing look at our evolutionary process. Desk jockeys, students, college fraternity kids who bench press every time they set foot in a gym screaming "it's all you!!!" in your ear when you ask them to hand a bar off to you - all share that common hunched over, rounded shoulder posture.

How do we counteract this? Pull more, stretch more, and push less. That means more rowing variations in your workouts, stretch your pecs and lats, and bench press less. One type of pulling movement that I particularly like is the face pull with external rotation.

Take a rope handle, grab it with a neutral grip (palms facing towards each other and pull the rope towards your face). Conventional face pulls are pulled towards the upper chest, but by bringing it higher up you get some rotator cuff work as well. Couple that with the strengthening of the scapular retractors and the rear delts and you get a great exercise for shoulder health and improving postural alignment.

4) Single Leg Training. I decided to group this category together because I couldn't pick just one. By focusing on only bilateral movements, you neglect key stabilizing muscles in the hip, knee, and ankle. This means not only are they are key in preventing injuries, but they're also great supplements to add strength to your bilateral movements.
Progressions are key in single leg training. Throwing lunges into a beginner's workout will literally cripple them from the massive eccentric loading placed on the muscles. Start with split squats and move on to reverse lunges, forward lunges, rear foot elevated split squats, walking lunges, and single leg squats. Progressions are different depending on the population, but nothing irritates me more than trainers making their new clients do a million walking lunges with weights when they can't even do a single stationary lunge.

5) Pallof Press. And any other core stabilization exercise. You see gym goers all the time hammering on their lower backs with rotational exercises - twisting and turning violently with cables. The core is used mainly as "anti-rotators". Here's a quote from Shirley Sahrmann in her book Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes:

"The most important aspect of abdominal muscle performance is obtaining the control that is necessary to:

(1) appropriately stabilize the spine,

(2) maintain optimal alignment and movement relationships between the pelvis and spine, and

(3) prevent excessive stress and compensatory motions of the pelvis during movements of the extremities."

Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes, p. 69.

When training the core, your mid-section should not move! I'm not saying that cable chops are bad, but most people do not know how to perform the movement correctly. Rotation should occur at the hips and shoulders - not the lower back. Also, how do you expect to create rotation when you can't even prevent it? The key to core training is to perturb the core by manipulating the upper or lower extremities. Here's an awesome exercise developed by physical therapist John Pallof.

Set up a handle a little lower than the bottom portion of your chest. Keep a nice athletic stance (feet shoulder width, butt back, chest high) and press the handle away from you. Your obliques have to work especially hard to maintain alignment.

Feel free to ask questions! What blog topics do you want me to cover in the future? I appreciate any and all feedback!

Train Hard,

Jason

5 Exercises You Should Not Be Doing

2009-04-20T18:44:00.000-07:00

I'm guilty of using every single one of these exercises in the past...but I want to make sure no one makes the same mistakes I did! Here are 5 exercises that you see often in most gyms but really are not worth it from a risk/benefit outlook.

1) Bench Dips
Check out the amount of extension you have in your shoulders in a normal range of motion
Depending on the person, you could have anywhere from 45-60 degrees of extension.

Now check out the amount of extension you get in a bench dip:

Most people will go down to a point where the upper arm runs parallel to the floor - about 90 degrees of hyperextension. Now couple that with the fact that your arms are in a position of internal rotation (more on this later) and your scapulae (shoulder blades) are tilted forward in a a very unstable position - you set yourself up for a myriad of shoulder injuries to the rotator cuff or the AC joint.

2) More on the shoulder...Upright Rows.
Impingement of the rotator cuff basically means that the tendons of the rotator cuff are being "pinched" by the head of the humerus and the acromion process when the arm is moved upwards. There are many different reasons as to why this occurs but I don't want this post to be any longer than it needs to be. Here is a simple test to determine impingement syndrome:

Basically the arm is placed in maximum internal rotation (deliberately shortening the space between the head of the humerus and the acromion process) and the elbow is then elevated. If you experience pain in this position - you're likely suffering from impingement syndrome and could lead to rotator cuff tendinopathy if left untreated.

Now take a look at an upright row:
Do you see the similarities? Horizontal adduction and internal rotation of the humerus coupled with elevation right into the impingement zone. Now explain to me why in the world would anyone want to load this movement pattern with an external load? Your shoulders get more than enough direct work by doing various type of pressing work - the risk is not worth the reward in my opinion.

3) Crunches/Situps

Head to any commercial gym and you'll see at least a third of the members performing a billion different types of crunches and sit ups to get that elusive six pack. Everyone has abs - whether or not theyre visible is determined by how much body fat your carrying. But rather than cleaning up their diet and training to be in a state of caloric deficit - these members are convinced that crunching and performing sit ups until they cramp up in their midsection is the key to washboard abs.
Whats the number one way to herniate a disc in your lower back? Repeated compression along with flexion of the lumbar spine. This is exactly what happens when you perform a sit up/crunch. Whats even worse for you low back? Compression with flexion with rotation. Stop doing bicycle crunches and russian twists - your lower back will thank you.
4) Prone Supermans

You also see this one a lot in gyms - members flopping around on their stomachs while wailing on their lower backs. The prone superman places a great deal of shear forces on the lumbar spine. And you wonder why 80% of Americans experience lower back pain at some point in their lives. Furthermore, Mel Siff, in his book Facts and Fallacies of Fitness, states that "Current research has shown that the superman exercise and several of its variations have little or no benefit on back strength and posture." (Siff, p.36) .

The alternating superman is even worse:
Siff states: "Since the lower extremities are heavier than the upper extremities, this can impose a torque or twisting action around the lumbar spine if the action of the extremities isn't well synchronized and instead of reducing any potential risk of hyperextension, it can add an element of rotation to the extension, thereby making this exercise less safe than controlled gradual simultaneous raising of the legs and arms. In fact, it's not uncommon for this exercise to cause acute back pain and spasm." (Siff, p.36)
Basically you get the worst of both worlds - not only is it useless, but also extremely unsafe.

5) Last, but not least: Any sort of balancing act on a stability ball, bosu ball, dyna disc, etc for the lower extremity. This one drives me completely insane. It seems like the only prerequisite to be a personal trainer is that some sort of ridiculous balance exercise needs to be included in every single clients workout routine.
"It's functional and helps balance". How in the world is this functional? Most people cannot perform even a body weight squat properly and when you put an unstable surface underneath them you promote compensation and faulty movement patterns. Add that to the fact that rate of force production decreases because as soon as force is pushed into the surface, it dissipates immediately due to the instability. This means you use less weight, which means less strength, less muscle, less caloric burn, and most importantly diminished results.

A more functional exercise that challenges balance, stability, and strength: the single leg squat

In this exercise, all your hip stabilizers have to work extremely hard to keep your pelvis in alignment as you squat down. This develops true balance and a great deal of single leg strength. What happens every time you take a step, walk up stairs, sprint, etc.? You're on one leg. How's that for functionality and balance?

Train Hard,

Jason

Hello Everyone!

2009-04-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

I prefer this layout on blogspot over the one on my website so I decided to set up account. I'll be posting workouts, some cool exercises and their variations, the latest in everything fitness related, as well any other rants and raves and tangents I might go on! Check back often!

Jason