Monday, February 28, 2011
This Past Week (2/20-2/26)
This past week was my deload week for SMS^2.2. Monday was squat day, Tuesday was bench, Thursday was deadlift, and Friday was my circuits day. On Wednesday I had me deload week plyos as well. Also, I didn't have any SMF this week.
The biggest things that happened with Self Made this week were that I released a new article, "Back Squat vs. Leg Press", which can be found on the articles page. I also scheduled my CSCS exam, which I will take on Friday, March 4.
Aside from that, not much went on this past week.
That's all for this past week. Now it's time to go live this one.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The Power of the Pen
Let’s brainstorm for a minute. Stop everything you're doing, grab a pen and a piece of paper, and let’s start to write. Why? Because writing is an incredible experience, regardless if you are talented or not. The process of writing, of being able to put your thoughts and ideas into words and form concrete evidence of consciousness, has many different effects on the mind, body, and spirit. For some, writing is a very therapeutic experience, calming the author and allowing them to relax or unwind from the stresses of everyday life. For others, words flow less freely and therefore writing becomes a source of frustration, especially when it is being attempted in a creative manner. But the writing I want you to do is neither for relaxation nor for creativity. Rather, the writing I am assigning you is for motivation and accountability.
This past summer I was let in on a little secret of Todd Durkin, owner of Fitness Quest 10 in San Diego, CA and trainer of Drew Brees and LaDainian Tomlinson. He told me about a writing exercise he does every three months called 90-Day Wonders. All you have to do is answer four questions, but you need to be honest with yourself. The four questions you need to answer are:
1) What do I want to have accomplished 90 days from now?
2) What do I need to get there?
3) What is stopping me from getting there?
4) What opportunities do I have right now?
What do I want to have accomplished 90 days from now?
This is the basis to the whole exercise. What do you want to be different about your life in three months? What goals to you want to have reached? The more concrete and measurable you can make you answers to this question the greater your chances are of accomplishing what you write down.
Don’t write you want to do more, how much more? Don’t write you want to lose weight, get stronger, or eat healthier. How much weight do you want to lose? How many pounds do you want to lift? How many whole-food meals are you going to prepare yourself every week? Exactly how many???
You can write down as many or as few goals as you’d like, just make sure they are things that you truly want to accomplish as cluttering up your sheet with a bunch of nonsense is only going to lead to frustration. Also, be mindful of the timetable you are working with. This is not a 5-year plan. This is what you want to accomplish in three months time. What small changes are you going to make in your life today that will lead to much greater changes down the road?
What do I need to get there?
This step is vital to the success of this exercise because this is where you break your larger goals down into things you can accomplish in the next day, hour, or minute. This is where you begin to let your plan of action unfold. Want to get back to your high school weight? How about you pick up the phone and schedule a session with your local personal trainer. Want to start spending more time with your family? Start a list of activities you can do together, and have that list grow by one or two each week. Give yourself steps to reach your goals that are too easy for you to not do right now, because once you take that first small step towards a goal, then all of the bigger steps down the road will come much easier.
You can answer this question in as much detail as you would like. Some people are very self-motivated and can easily commit themselves to accomplishing a task. These people can get away with only writing down the major stopping points between now and where you’ll be in 90 days. Other people, however, cannot get excited about making changes no matter how important they are, and these people usually need the most help, so for them it would make sense to write down every thing that needs to happen in order for them to reach the goals they wrote down. I would suggest writing down more steps than you feel is actually necessary to write simply so you can start crossing those steps off sooner and more frequently and begin seeing progress.
What is stopping me from getting there?
As with answering the previous two questions, you need to be honest with yourself here. The reason you haven’t already reached the goals you wrote down for the first question or completed the steps you wrote for the second question is because there has been something stopping you, and you need to identify it. This may be the most important question of them all, because once you have identified what may prevent future success you will be able avoid those situations or actions with much greater ease. And once you have removed all of the roadblocks and speed bumps all there is left to do is hit the gas and go.
What opportunities do I have right now?
This question does not refer solely to the job market, although if you are currently searching, writing those options down here is a valid response. Rather, this is a place to write down the opportunities you have in your everyday life to accomplish the goals you set for yourself in the first question. This is also an area to write down the opportunities you have to impact others’ lives.
So with these four questions in mind, I want you to start writing. Just to give you an idea of how powerful this exercise truly is, in December I wrote down ten goals that I wanted to have accomplished by the first week of March. I wrote them down, identified what I needed to do to get there, and put that Word document away. Two days ago I opened that document back up, and nine out of the ten goals I had written down had been accomplished and the tenth one is well on it’s way, as well. Ninety percent of those goals were accomplished. Just think about what you could accomplish in your life if you reached ninety percent of your goals. That is the power of the pen.
Your body. Your Training.
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Monday, February 21, 2011
A Debate Between Powerlifting and Olympic Lifting
Have you chosen your side? I know I have chosen mine. But check out this article by Jack Johnson to see why choosing sides may not be the best alternative when considering athletic development. Then again, it may be.
A Debate Between Powerlifting and Olympic Lifting as the Main Athletic Training Method by Jack Johnson
Sunday, February 20, 2011
This Past Week (2/13-2/19)
This past week was a tough one for me. I felt pretty fatigued all week, and it definitely showed in my lifts and my RHR. I am really looking forward to my deload week this upcoming week. So yeah, it was my heavy triples this past week, with squats on Monday, bench Tuesday, deadlifts Thursday, and circuits on Friday. I also had my plyos on Wednesday and Friday, as well as SMF on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. My SMF's for this week were the same as last week--plate pushes on Monday, ropes on Tuesday, and bike sprints on Thursday. Once again, no SMF on Friday. I am liking the way these are flowing with my lifting schedule, so I am planning on keeping these same ones for a little bit. I will resume the SMF work after my deload week.
Some good news regarding my training: I have gained seven pounds since the start of 2011, which I am really pumped about.
Outside of my training, I finished reading the CSCS book (again) and will be taking this exam in the upcoming weeks. I also had my second weekend of MAT Jumpstart courses. This time the courses focused on the upper body, i.e. the shoulder and elbow. I also received my first feedback from the Monster Pushups program. This person went from doing 70 consecutive pushups to 120 consecutive pushups in just the first six weeks of the program!
Hmmmm...that's all I can think of that happened this past week. My brain is kind of foggy, though, from sitting in class for eight hours each of the past two days. Well, if I think of something more I guess I will just have to tell you next week.
That's all for this past week. Now it's time to go live this one.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
The Hills
The first time I remember running a hill was when I was 8 years old. My father, my uncle, my cousin, and myself ran this really long hill at our cabin, and before we ran up it my father said, “This is where we separate the men from the boys.” The hill seemed to go on forever and I can still remember how incredibly exhausted I was once we finally reached the top. There wasn’t any pacing yourself either; you ran the hill as hard as you possibly could the entire way up. There was a sense of pride that went along with being able to run that hill. It was the biggest hill around, and to be able to get to the top of it gave you an objective marker by which to measure your “greatness”. That was a hill that I would run semi-frequently when we would visit our cabin in the following summers, and while it was a great workout, it was always the glory that went along with making it to the top that brought me back for another round.
The summer before my freshman year of high school I began to take my training a lot more seriously. This was the summer that I started adding in hill runs more regularly while at home. About half a mile from our house is all farmland and rolling hills, and here is where my father showed me another set of hills that brought the same burning of the legs and lungs and the same feelings of mongerness. These hills could be run any time of the year, and as often as the weather changed so did my running partners. Some days I would go solo, some days it would be my father and I, some days my brother would join or it would just be the two of us, and then there was one summer where myself, my brother, and up to six of his friends would run those hills every Saturday morning. Those were the best runs.
While we would keep our times from week to week to mark improvement, it was never about how fast you could run the hills. Rather, it was always about running up the hills as hard as you possibly could, pushing yourself to be the best you could be on that day. Success was not measured by the number of minutes and seconds that elapsed from departure to arrival, but by the hybrid feeling of pain and satisfaction with every inhalation lasting hours after completion. That was the greatest lesson that the hills taught me.
When I got to college I took advantage of my new mountainous surroundings, running hills in the fall and spring. In the fall of my sophomore year I switched the route I was running to incorporate running up the side of a mountain. It was one of the most physically demanding workouts I would do, with one trip up often times being more than enough, but every Saturday morning I’d be back running on, what I now refer to as, Self Made Mountain. Self Made Mountain brought new challenges, including severe inclines and being chased by dogs, but every step was fueled by the view that awaited me at the top. On clear mornings you could see for miles, and as fall progressed the foliage set the landscape ablaze. Whether Self Made Mountain was run solo or with a teammate, it was always run the same way, the way the hills had always been run—as hard as you possibly could on the way up, slow and controlled on the way down.
We all have hills in our life, times of struggle and times of ease, but how you choose to run them will determine a lot. You can either put your life on cruise control, going at the same pace day in and day out, never switching things up or taking the time to assess and appreciate where you are at. You can claim this lifestyle is most efficient, using your numbers to back these claims, since the numbers are all you really care about anyways. Or, when you are presented with a challenge, you can put everything you have into conquering it, exhausting yourself so that once you do reach the top, you have no choice but to stop and enjoy the view.
Perhaps this is where the efficiency of the way I live my life starts to unwind. Perhaps focusing solely on the destination is, in fact, the best way to get there. If this is true, then perhaps all the ideas in my head will only turn out to be just that, ideas in my head. But while the possibility of failure and decline loom on paper, it is the burning in my lungs that marks progress, fore while the destination is motivation, the journey is why I breathe, and thus I choose to live the latter.
Charlie Cates
Self Made, Owner
Charlie Cates is a human performance specialist and the owner of Self Made (http://selfmadefitness.com/) in Chicago, IL. He is a Certified Personal Trainer and Performance Enhancement Specialist through NASM and has worked with competitive and everyday athletes of all ages and ability levels, from 9-year-old kids to NFL MVP's. He can be reached via e-mail at charlie@selfmadefitness.com. This article may be reproduced with biographical information intact.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
An Effective Plan to Boost the Hypertrophy of Elbow Flexors
Want bigger biceps? Check out this article by Charles Poliquin to get the arm growth you desire.
An Effective Plan to Boost the Hypertrophy of Elbow Flexors by Charles Poliquin
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Get Big Or Die Tryin'
Every morning I wake up and there is only one goal in mind: survival. I know what makes me happy in this world, and I know what makes me sad and frustrated. I try to maximize the good while inflicting as few regressive external and internal stimuli as possible. In my mind my day is mapped out; I know exactly what I’m going to do and when I’m going to do it. Granted, most days for me are exactly the same, minus a few details here and there. Even still, I know what I am going to do because I know what I want to do.
I have found something in this life that consumes me. Call it what you want—addiction, dedication, obsession—I know what makes me happy and I know what makes me really, really happy, and it is that latter that I have found to be the focus of the majority of my waking hours. This stimulus puts me in a state of being where I am not myself. A transformation takes place and I am no longer part of a society. I am so entranced with what I am doing that I feel as if I am in my own world. And it is this feeling that I try to pass on to others.
The feeling of finding something in your life that turns you on and allows you to be something that you never thought you could be. So many people in this world go through their life doing a bunch of things that they kind of enjoy, or doing things they don’t enjoy at all. I cannot, for the life of me, understand why this is. I am not trying to say that all of your actions need to be focused towards maximizing your personal utility or that there isn’t any benefit from struggling through times of the despair. In fact, I believe that some of the darkest times in one’s life can produce the greatest qualities in a person, allowing them to succeed in the rest of their life.
My apprehension lies in the effort individuals put forth towards activities that they are less than interested in. Too many people fill the majority of their days with activities they do not enjoy, while not paying enough focus and attention in doing these activities to make the outcomes worthwhile. Because of this cycle, we are left with a society of mediocrity, mild depression, and no signs of change to come soon. And to top it all off, every time you open a newspaper or turn on a television you have to hear and read about how bad the current times are. We are trapped in this bubble of gloom that never allows us to truly live, and this is where “Get big or die tryin’” steps in.
You need to find something in your life, whether it is an activity, a cause, or another person, that, to you, is greater than yourself and that inspires you to become something greater than yourself. In fact, you need to find something in your life that is so important that you would be willing to die for it. Now, I am in no way promoting self-sacrifice. However, I do believe that it is vital to have something, anything, in your life that you are willing to give anything for; all of your time, focus, energy. Whether you do or not is a different story, but it is important that you have something in which you would at least be willing to.
Just by having something of such magnitude in your life you will now have a reason to wake up each day, you will have a reason to be better each day, and you will have a reason to help others each day. There is now this concept of being a “well-rounded person” that much of society seems to follow. This is fine and well if you actually commit to involving yourself in the activities you partake in, but too many of these “well-rounded individuals” never get any farther than skin deep in their activities, they never progress beyond mediocrity in their activities, and their activities end up being a source of frustration and stress for these individuals as they never find something truly worth committing to and their schedules are constantly full.
So this is what “Get big or die tryin’” is implying. This is why I sign off all of my articles and e-mails with this phrase, to constantly reinforce the idea that there are some things in this life worth dying for, and until you have something in your life worth dying for you are not really living, you are just simply getting by from day to day with no real purpose or direction to focus your energy and intentions towards.
So find something in your life, anything in your life, that is so incredibly important to you that you would be willing expend everything to ensure its success. If you don’t think you have anything in your life that would qualify, stop what you are doing and assess where you are at. Step back and figure out what makes you the happiest in your daily activities and concentrate on that. If you still can’t find something, strongly consider a change in what you are doing with your life because you can’t go through your life doing activities in which you are only halfway committed, attending events and fighting for causes in which you are only halfway interested. Find that one thing that lets you know you are truly alive.
Charlie Cates
Self Made, Owner
Charlie Cates is a human performance specialist and the owner of Self Made (http://selfmadefitness.com/) in Chicago, IL. He is a Certified Personal Trainer and Performance Enhancement Specialist through NASM and has worked with competitive and everyday athletes of all ages and ability levels, from 9-year-old kids to NFL MVP's. He can be reached via e-mail at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.
This article may be reproduced with biographical information intact.
Monday, February 14, 2011
How To Do Rows For A Bigger Stroger Back
Not sure how to do rows correctly? Want some pointers to help improve your form? Check out this video by Jedd Johnson of DieselCrew.com.
How To Do Rows For A Bigger Stronger Back by Jedd Johnson
This Past Week (2/6-2/12)
This past week I had my singles for SMS^2.2. Monday I squatted, Tuesday was bench, Thursday was deadlift, and Friday was my circuit day. Despite pushing my circuits back to Sunday the week before, I still felt strong with my squats on Monday, hitting sets at 420. My deadlift was my other very strong lift this week, hitting sets at 435. I had plyos on Wednesday and Friday as well.
I started a new thing this past week where after each lift I had an SMF, a "Self Made Finish". Basically, it is some type of anaerobic conditioning exercise for about 5 to 10 minutes after the lift in complete on paper. This isn't something that's written in to the workout, but rather something that allows you to go above and beyond what has been prescribed so you can truly give that Self Made effort. My SMF for Monday was plate pushes, Tuesday I had battling ropes, and Thursday I had bike sprints. I didn't have an SMF for Friday because I did both plyos and the circuits together. I am considering making a boxing circuit my SMF for this day.
New training goals: I want to gain a minimum of 10 pounds, preferably 15, by the beginning of June. I have started eating more at each meal and adding in extra shakes and sandwiches throughout the day. By the end of July I want to hit a 475 squat and a 345 bench.
That's all for this past week. Now it's time to go live this one.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Chin-ups: The King of Upper Body Exercises
Have you been using the bench to state your upper-body strength? Maybe you should reconsider that. Read this article by Charles Poliquin to find out why.
Chin-ups: The King of Upper Body Exercises by Charlie Poliquin
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Things That Won't Be Allowed In Self Made
In no particular order:
- Talking on the phone while lifting. (Enough said.)
- Reading magazines while lifting. (Enough said.)
- Excessive amounts of cardio equipment. (If it's not being used for speed work, interval training, or recovery work, then it is excessive and taking up valuable space. You can go sit mindlessly on the eliptical at some box gym.)
- Low-energy music. (It's going to be a high-energy facility so you better come ready to rock.)
- Excessive weight machines. (I can't think of any weight machines at the moment that aren't excessive, except for maybe a multi-hip. I'm not counting cable stations as weight machines, though.)
- Heartless training. (If you don't care about your training, then I don't care to train you. Buh-bye.)
More to come soon!
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Neurological Tips To Improve Your Bench Press
Want a heavier bench press? Try these tips by Charles Poliquin the next time you train to help you move more weight.
Neurological Tips To Improve Your Bench Press by Charles Poliquin
Get big or die tryin'.Tuesday, February 8, 2011
SMS: A Year In Review
I initially wrote this program solely for my own use after having read “5/3/1” by Jim Wendler. I wanted to put my own spin on it, however, so I messed with the rep ranges and tweaked what I felt was unnecessary. After having spent the summer working in at Fitness Quest 10, I was in the mindset of doing total body lifts each strength session. I wrote that into SMS 1, and while it definitely served its purpose to build a base, I quickly realized that I much preferred a more traditional upper/lower/push/pull-type split.
I brought that split out in SMS 2, going with a lower, push, pull, arm split. In SMS 3 I got rid of the arms day and instead put half of Day 2 and Day 4 together and made one of those wholes the new Day 2 and the other the new Day 4. This was the split that was followed through SMS 6. With the start of the second half of Year 1, I made the switch from prescribed sets to timed sets. This brought a whole new intensity to the SMS series, with workout volume often doubling. With SMS 9 and SMS 10 came complexes to the core lifts each day (squat, bench, deadlift, and standing military). I also added isometrics to SMS 10. Those were tough. Then in SMS 11 and SMS 12 I cut back on the volume by removing the second pair of supplemental lifts. After going through a year of this training I have learned a lot in regards to programming.
The number one thing I learned from writing the SMS series is just how important having a deload week is to the overall progression of the program and of the athlete. (Just as a side note, I refer to anybody who does the SMS training series as an athlete.) Up until this point, I hadn’t ever taken a deload week in my training. At the start of the program I was questioning why I was doing it, as I was not feeling the need at all to lighten the weights. But as the year progressed, I looked forward to those weeks more and more. If you are interested in learning more of the science and theory behind the deload week, read my article “Deload To Reload” at http://selfmadefitness.com/selfmadearticles.
The second important thing I learned from SMS is how powerful auto-regulation is. I hadn’t ever done timed sets before this program, and I must say, I don’t know if I will ever go back to doing prescribed sets again. As I mentioned above, the volume of my workouts increased significantly, especially for the working sets of my core lifts. The feeling I had after completing the workouts during the first week of SMS 7 was very similar to how I was feeling after I would complete a Cratos workout. For more information on both timed sets and Cratos training, visit the above link and read the articles “Timed Sets for Auto-Regulation” and “Cratos Training”.
The third important thing I learned from SMS is to cut back on the supplemental lifts and keep those to one pair. After I did that in SMS 11, I was able to attack the first pair of supplemental lifts so much harder because I knew that I only had hips and abs after that. It also allowed my lifts to be completed in under an hour, which was a huge psychological boost knowing that I was getting stronger in less time. I didn’t feel that I lost any gains by cutting out that second pair. On the contrary, I felt as though I was getting stronger than before because I was able to lift harder during the single pair and recover faster as well.
Some questions that I still have to answer about SMS are: If I am switching up deadlift and squatting styles, why I am not switching up bench or military press styles? How beneficial is the military press day? Is there a way to mix the old and the new—the Russian conjugate periodization with the new way I learned to train athletes at FQ10? Where do Olympic lifts and kettlebells come into play in SMS, if at all? These are all questions that need to be answered before I write and release SMS2, but suffice it to say, if I learn as much about programming during this next year as I did during this last, we could be dealing with something very big. If you aren’t on this program, do yourself a favor and get on it. SMS2 coming at you in the next year.
Charlie Cates
Self Made, Owner
Charlie Cates is a human performance specialist and the owner of Self Made (http://selfmadefitness.com/) in Chicago, IL. He is a Certified Personal Trainer and Performance Enhancement Specialist through NASM and has worked with competitive and everyday athletes of all ages and ability levels, from 9-year-old kids to NFL MVP's. He can be reached via e-mail at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.
This article may be reproduced with biographical information intact.
Monday, February 7, 2011
Five Awesome Inverted Row Variations, Part 2
Inverted rows are easily one of the most underutilized exercises in gyms today. For those of you who do them regularly, however, or are just looking for a new challenge, check out this article by Ben Bruno.
Five Awesome Inverted Row Variations, Part 2 by Ben Bruno
This Past Week (1/30-2/5)
This past week was the start of SMS^2.2 for me. Sunday I squatted, I had bench on Monday, deadlifts on Thursday, and circuits on Sunday. I did plyos on Wednesday and Saturday and I did sprint training on Saturday as well.
On Friday I sent out the February issue of The Source. I also made a lot of progress in the CSCS text and am planning on taking that exam during the first week of March.
Not much else happened this past week. I am really enjoying SMS^2.2 and am noticing increases in strength already.
That's all for this past week. Now it's time to go live this one.
Friday, February 4, 2011
7 Essential Tips for Squatting Big Weights
Looking to add more plates to your squat bar? Check out these tips by Mehdi of Strong Lifts.com.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Evolve Your Warm-up, Part II
This is the second of a two-part series. In the first part I discussed the “why” of warming-up. This article will discuss how you should go about creating a proper warm-up.
Some people know why they should warm up before a training session; even fewer know how to do so properly. One thing that always needs to be kept in mind when constructing a warm-up is that you are preparing your body for movement, so you need to move your body. This includes exercises that move your joints through their full range of motion, as well as exercises that prime your central nervous system. Finally, the warm-up is a great time to perform joint integrity, stability, and pre-habilitation exercises in an attempt to correct imbalances and prevent future injuries while your muscles and mind are their most fresh.
In my opinion, the ground-based warm-up I created (see my Exercise Index) is a very effective warm-up for all ages and ability levels because it incorporates all of the above criteria. After completing that, moving on to a dynamic movement warm-up for five minutes or so would be ideal. The dynamic movement warm-up can consist of exercises such as skips, bounds, lateral slides, side runs, forward runs, backpedals, bear crawls, inchworms, cliff scalers, lunges (forward, reverse, lateral, and diagonal), box jumps, straight-leg walks, and different walks with bands around the ankles and/or wrists. These exercises all consist of very basic movement patterns and will hit home how we should properly move. These exercises are also great for priming the central nervous system to move the body explosively and powerfully. You can also include different types of dynamic stretches in this portion of the warm-up, such as leg swings.
Different joint integrity exercises that can be performed during the warm-up include: dirty dogs, thoracic mobility, bird dogs, horses (getting on and getting off), swimmers, single leg toe touches, Y’s, T’s and W’s, external and internal shoulder rotation, field goals, John Travoltas, and 3-Point Balance Touches. Instead of explaining how to do all of these, I will refer you to my ground-based warm-up, which includes most of these exercises. The other exercises can be found on YouTube and in The IMPACT Body Plan by Todd Durkin. There are numerous stability exercises that can be performed during your warm-up. Some of them would be appropriate to include in the workout itself as well. I would recommend including at least one stability exercise in your warm-up, preferably done with bare feet to maximize proprioception and kinesthetic awareness. In fact, if possible, the entire warm-up should be done barefoot. This will help to strengthen the feet, which can serve to prevent future injury.
An example of the structure of a proper warm-up would be to first roll out your feet, legs, and any other parts of your body that are tight for about three to five minutes. This will get blood flowing to those areas and break up any fascial adhesions. Second, to move into some type of ground-based warm-up, focusing on mobilizing the joints first and stabilizing the joints second. In other words, perform your joint integrity work early in the ground-based warm-up and your stability work towards the end. You can finish your ground-based warm-up with some aerobic work such as jumping jacks. Finally, finish off your warm-up with some type of dynamic movement training, focusing on technique and quality of the movements. By the time you finish your warm-up, you should be dripping sweat, not just have beads forming, and your heart rate should be 70 to 75% of your max heart rate. I know by the time I finish my warm-up my heart rate is around 150. All in all, my warm-up takes about ten to fifteen minutes to complete.
So there is the “how” for a proper warm-up. Apply these techniques to allow yourself to train at optimal intensity and achieve optimal results.
Charlie Cates
Self Made, Owner
Charlie Cates is a human performance specialist and the owner of Self Made (http://selfmadefitness.com/) in Chicago, IL. He is a Certified Personal Trainer and Performance Enhancement Specialist through NASM and has worked with competitive and everyday athletes of all ages and ability levels, from 9-year-old kids to NFL MVP's. Athletically, he was a 4-year member of the Williams College men’s basketball team, which made a run to the national championship during his senior year. During this time he also worked intensively with the team’s off-the-court training, helping to develop All-Americans and a National Player of the Year. He can be reached via e-mail at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.
This article may be reproduced with biographical information intact.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Hatin' On Grains
Hatin' On Grains by Sean Croxton
Get big or die tryin'.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Evolve Your Warm-up, Part I
Five minutes of light jogging on the treadmill followed by five minutes of static stretching. Now you’re loose and ready for your workout, right? In the early 90’s this may have been an acceptable practice, but two decades later with the disappearance of aerobics classes and an increase in higher intensity training, it has become very obvious that as our training methods have evolved, so must the ways we prepare our body to train.
Before I get into what constitutes an acceptable warm-up it would be good to know why these actions are so vital to the training process. A proper warm-up should physiologically do five things:
1. Increase your core temperature
2. Prime the central nervous system for performance
3. Increase the elasticity of the working muscles
4. Increase the pliability of the connective tissue
5. Increase the blood flow to the working muscles
I would like to call your attention to number 1 and number 2, as these seem to be the most overlooked aspects of warm-up at large today. Increasing your core temperature does not mean your warm-up ends as the first bead of sweat appears on your brow. Increasing your core temperature, in this sense, means you should have sweat dripping off of you. Now, this will be easier to come by for some than for others, so if you are one to not sweat much, like many females, then understand that and don’t extended your warm-up to be 45 minutes just so you can end dripping with sweat. On the other hand, if you are a heavy sweater, this does not give you the right to stop your warm-up after three minutes because you have already made a puddle on the floor.
Just as the training sessions themselves should be individualized, the amount of time needed to warm-up properly will very from individual to individual, but in general your warm-up should be no shorter than 10 minute and no longer than 20 minutes. This will allow sufficient time to accomplish all five of the afore-mentioned criteria of a proper warm-up, with the end result being that you are ready to perform at your peak at the end of the warm-up, not 20 to 30 minutes in to your training session. Not only will this make for a more efficient training session, leading to faster and more dramatic results, but it will also decrease your chances of injury if your body is physically able to push itself when your mind tells it to do so.
Priming your central nervous system for performance may seem like a criterion that only applies to the competitive athlete population, not the weekend warrior or the early-evening gym folk. However, this step of the warm-up is vital for all populations, regardless of their competitive status. Just because there aren’t judges or a scoreboard does not mean that what you do in the gym is not a performance. In fact, I would argue that regardless of your goals, you are in the gym to increase your performance as a human being on an everyday basis. Whether you are looking to drop fat, relieve stress, increase strength or muscle mass, or improve your capabilities in an athletic event, you are training with the goal of improving how your body functions, and in turn, how you as a human being performs. With this in mind, it is easy to see why you need to not just train, but train as efficiently as possible so as to get the most out of your time in the gym. In addition, it is important to acknowledge that there are other systems than the musculoskeletal system at work why you train, i.e., the central nervous system, among others. So, just as you need to make sure that your muscles and connective tissues are warm and pliable, you need to make sure your central nervous system is primed and ready to go as well.
The third and the fourth criteria go hand in hand with each other, but it is important to note that you need to take in to consideration multiple types of soft tissue during your warm-up, not just your hamstrings, quads, and whatever other muscle groups you may or may not have been passively stretching before you worked out.The fifth criterion covers two things: an increase in your respiration rate and an increase in cardiac output. An increase in your respiration rate means you are taking in oxygen at a greater frequency than while you are at rest, which is measured in the number of breaths per minute. Nutrient-rich oxygen is vital for energy production at the cellular level, energy that is depended upon by your working muscles as your glycogen stores begin to deplete. An increase in your cardiac output means that there is an increase in either one of or both of the following: your heart rate and your stroke volume. Your heart rate is measured in beats per minute and is how often your heart beats. Your stroke volume is measured in milliliters of blood per minute and is a measure of how much blood is pumped out by your heart. So, by increasing either how often your heart beats or how much blood is pumped with each beat, or both, as well as how much oxygen is taken in during a given amount of time, you are increasing how much energy is available to be used by your working muscles. Just as before, this will lead to more efficient workouts as well as faster and more dramatic results.
Now that you understand why it is important for you to participate in a proper warm-up, you need to know what constitutes such a warm-up. Be on the lookout for “Evolve Your Warm-Up, Part II” where I will give you examples of what a proper warm-up should consist of, as well as how to implement these exercises in to your training routine so you can get the most out of your time in the gym.
Get big or die tryin’.
Charlie Cates
Self Made, Owner
Charlie Cates is a human performance specialist and the owner of Self Made (http://selfmadefitness.com/) in Chicago, IL. He is a Certified Personal Trainer and Performance Enhancement Specialist through NASM and has worked with competitive and everyday athletes of all ages and ability levels, from 9-year-old kids to NFL MVP's. Athletically, he was a 4-year member of the Williams College men’s basketball team, which made a run to the national championship during his senior year. During this time he also worked intensively with the team’s off-the-court training, helping to develop All-Americans and a National Player of the Year. He can be reached via e-mail at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.
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