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Jason

Female Fitness

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

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

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.

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!!!)

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

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