Back To Par

Image courtesy of dailygalaxy.com

When I was first introduced to Muscle Activation Techniques™, one thing that stood out to me in my mind was the intent of the modality.  I saw it as a tool to, in a sense, get the client's body back to par or back to the way it could work under circumstances that are free from pathologies or structural deformities and are within the person's threshold to tolerate stress.  In reality, MAT is more trying to give the brain more options regarding what it has available to work with to produce specific motions and/or maintain specific positions, which I suppose may be seen as getting the body back to par.

Coming from a sports performance background, this was a drastically different idea than what had always been proposed to me. Previously, par had not been good enough. You had to train to be better than that. Suddenly, it seemed like par was what almost every person was failing to get to.  While the ability of contractile tissues to generate tension may have improved through the sports performance type of training, I'm not sure how much it was doing in terms of improving the ability of tissues* that were in a deficit regarding their ability to send enough afferent signal so as to have the opportunity to generate tension when needed.  Rather, this training may have just been improving the tension generation capability of the contractile tissues that were already working well, so any deficit of other tissues that was present to begin with may have remained.Perhaps a better way of improving the way the body functions and subsequently the way it performs may be to, at some point in the progression, just try to get the body closer to par, meaning having more of its options available for motion production and position control at a given point in time, and then improving upon what all of those options can do instead of taking a more limited number of options that are already working well and trying to build something bigger and better off of those.

If you had a building and wanted to make it bigger, would you just add more new structure to the top of it without going back and reinforcing all of the weak points in the current structure?

Inter­ested in find­ing out more? Check out the “Mus­cle Acti­va­tion Tech­niques™” page.

Inter­ested in set­ting up an assess­ment time or dis­cussing this sub­ject fur­ther? E-mail Char­lie at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.

Your body.  Your training.

Want to use this arti­cle in your blog, newslet­ter, or other plat­form?  You can, but be sure to include all of the bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion found in the yel­low box below!

*muscle fibers and their associated muscle spindles

Five Reasons Athletes Should Consider MAT

Image courtesy of mcall.com

If you are a seemingly healthy, well-functioning athlete, how can MAT be of benefit to you?

1) More tension-generation capabilities = improved ability to move = improved sports performanceMAT improves your muscles' ability to contract and generate tension.  More tension generation means more potential force that can be put into the ground, ball, water, etc.  This potentially allows for faster, more efficient movement and greater sports performance.

2) More muscles available for work = greater ability to work through fatigueIf you only have 75% of your muscles coming to work to their fullest capacity on game day, that may mean three muscles are trying to do the job of four.  While they may be able to handle this in the short term, if one of those guys gives out due to fatigue or stress, now you only have 2 trying to do the job of 4.  That's significantly harder.  Instead, if you have all four coming to work to their fullest capacity from the get go, you might not have any give out because they are able to distribute the work evenly over the course of the game.  When the game is on the line, would you rather have all of your guys working for you or only half?

3) More evenly-distributed workload = greater ability to recover from training and competitionIf everybody worked for you during yesterday's game, they will be a lot less exhausted the next day than if you would have only had half.  This means you can potentially recover faster from your training and competition, which means you can potentially get back to performing at a higher level sooner.

4) Inter-competition tune-upsWhat was the toll last night's game took on your body?  MAT's assessment process can figure out what positions you are having difficulty moving into, out of, and maintaining and potentially what muscles may have been inhibited during the previous competition.  More importantly, this information can be used to dictate your training and treatment process to give you the best chance to be firing on all cylinders by your next competition.

5) Injury preventionYou train hard, and you compete harder.  All of those hours can take a toll on your body, more so than you'd expect.  Even if you feel good, you could be one stressor  away from the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.  Why risk watching all of your hard work and hours go down the drain with one injury when you could give yourself a little insurance?  Once again, more muscles contracting and doing their job at a higher level means a greater potential ability to control your joints and withstand potentially negative forces.  All good things.

As an athlete, do you want to improve your performance?  Perform at a high level when fatigued?  Improve your recovery time?  Feel good between competitions?  Prevent injury?

Inter­ested in find­ing out more? Check out the “Mus­cle Acti­va­tion Tech­niques™” page.

Inter­ested in set­ting up an assess­ment time or dis­cussing this sub­ject fur­ther? E-mail Char­lie at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.

Your body.  Your training.

Want to use this arti­cle in your blog, newslet­ter, or other plat­form?  You can, but be sure to include all of the bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion found in the yel­low box below!

Eccentric Training for Athletes

Need to mix up your current routine or break through a plateau? Check out this article by John Gaglione for more info.

Eccentric Training for Athletes by John Gaglione

Get big or die tryin'.

Athletic Bodybuilding: Back

Looking to build your back? Check out these five keys by Travis Stoetzel.

Athletic Bodybuilding: Five Ways to Build a Bigger and Stronger Back by Travis Stoetzel.

Get big or die tryin'.

Isometric Training for Athletes

Check out this article for a quick and simple guide on how to use isometric training with your athletes!

Isometric Training for Athletes by John Gaglione

Get big or die tryin'.

Timed Sets for Auto-Regulation

Auto-regulation is a field that I have become increasingly interested in over the course of the past nine months. What first intrigued me was how individualized each and every training session would become once auto-regulation was applied. It was a level of individualization I had not run across before, a level that looked at not only what each and every athlete had to specifically work on to maximize their potential, thereby dictating which exercises would be performed, but also what each athlete’s work capacity was for that particular session, which in turn dictated the number of sets and reps that would be performed of the aforementioned exercises.

This thought of individualizing a training session based on strength deficiencies and movement pattern abnormalities, combined with the physiological changes that would take place within an athlete before, during, and after each set, was ground-breaking to me. Despite how complicated this method of training seemed I was bound and determined to make it work for myself.

After spending countless hours and training sessions trying to figure out how to apply this science perfectly within my own training, I was finally struck with an epiphany. During my internship in the summer of 2009 I was taught a way of efficiently training large groups of people by having a central stopwatch dictate when the groups of people would switch from one exercise to the next. This way, everybody got as much done as they could in a given amount of time. This training method served as a guide as I figured out how to apply this way of training to a more strength-based regimen as apposed a high calorie burning one. This was the easy part though, and within a day or two I had a plan as to how I was going to incorporate this into my own training program.

What I came up with for myself was to use an extended length of time for my main lifts and shorter periods of time for my subsequent exercises. I would rest as much as I needed to between each set instead of timing out my rests. Finally, I would try to get as many sets in of each exercise as I could in the amount of time I allotted for them. The total time for each session, not including warm-up and cool-down, would be an hour.

So this is how it works in the SMS training series, starting with SMS 7. For the four main lifts each week (squat, bench, dead, military) you get 20 to 25 minutes to do your warm-up sets, your working sets, and to clear the bar for your first pair of subsequent exercises. At the 25-minute mark (20 minute mark on Day 4), you begin arranging the weights for your first pair of C exercises, which you perform for 15 minutes, getting as many sets in as you can. After 15 minutes, you should have cleaned up and put back whatever equipment you have used for those exercises and began the D exercises, which you perform for 10 minutes, getting as many sets in as you can and putting the weights away before the 10 minutes are up. Then you move on to your E exercises and so on.

Training using this format allows your body to dictate how many sets you will get in, so on days when you feel great you may get six or seven sets in, resting very little between each set. On others days you may not feel as sharp and then you may only get three or four sets in. However many sets you get in is fine as long as you are pushing yourself. This type of format will not work well with someone who is unmotivated to train or wants to take the easy way out of everything. However, for people who are motivated and like and are able to push themselves then this format will be very effective.

I figured out how much time to assign to each exercise by timing how long it would take me to complete the number of sets that I had been assigning for the first six SMS training programs. I did not take into consideration the amount of time I spent putting away my weights between exercises, but what I have found is that even with this time now added in I am still able to consistently get more sets in throughout my workout. For example, the first time I used timed sets on my deadlift day I performed eight working sets, whereas before I was only performing four in the same amount of time.

Not only have my working sets increased on the days when I feel well, but on the days when I’m not feeling as well I don’t have to grind out sets when I’m fatigued, greatly reducing the chance of injuring myself as well as allowing me to recover quicker for my next training session. This has been vital to my body not falling in to an overreached or overtrained state. The time limits also force my workouts to be shorter than they previously were, allowing me to get in and out of the gym in a timely manner and still enjoy great progress in strength and size.

The SMS training series doesn’t incorporate timed sets until you train in a more traditional fashion for six months so you can learn to listen to your body and learn the signs and symptoms of your body telling you it is fatigued or to press harder. Having this self-awareness and mind-body connection will only increase the effectiveness of a timed sets training program. While this isn’t a completely pure form of auto-regulation, as the exercises and reps are pre-determined, it does allow for a very simple form of what would otherwise be a very complicated and confusing process. As I talked about earlier, this type of training isn’t for everybody. If you are unmotivated, unfocused, or unwilling to push yourself when you are in the gym then a more regimented training program may be a better option for you. But if you do not fall along these lines then I would STRONGLY recommend incorporating timed sets into your training program.

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/). 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 atcharlie@selfmadefitness.com.

This article may be reproduced with biographical information intact.

5/3/1 vs. SMS

Somewhere between Arnold, ESPN hosting Strong Man competitions, and the steroid scandal, the fact that the weight room is a tool to facilitate movement was forgotten. And with an increasing number coaches implementing Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 into their athletes’ training programs, it doesn’t look like this will be remembered any time soon.

Jim Wendler’s 5/3/1 is considered by many to be one of the best training programs for getting stronger on the market today, and I completely agree. Time and again I have seen its success in getting both competitive athletes and every day lifters stronger than they ever thought they’d be able to in such a short period of time. I am, however, concerned that 5/3/1 may be being used inappropriately for most athletes. In light of this, I would argue that S.E.L.F. Made Simple (SMS) would be a better alternative for most athletes because the program allows the athletes to build a strong foundation by incorporating joint integrity work, it has more of a “core” focus, and it is less demanding on the athletes hormonally, allowing them to effectively train for other areas of their sport.

First, let’s recognize what 5/3/1 is and what it is not and then do the same for SMS. Finally, we’ll compare the two programs head to head. To start, 5/3/1 is a powerlifting program in its most elemental state. This means that it is designed to get athletes (and yes, powerlifters are athletes) as strong as possible. It is designed to be incredibly simple to follow, which is great, and it is designed to get continuous results over the course of many months. It is also written such that whoever performs the program can alter the supplemental lifts in order to allow their main lifts (back squat, flat bench, deadlift, and standing military) to be as heavy as possible. This is one thing that SMS doesn’t allow for (I’ll explain why later) but that I really like about 5/3/1. There are, however, some things that 5/3/1 lacks that are vital to an athlete’s development and performance.

The first thing 5/3/1 is missing is any type of joint integrity work, whether it be for the hips, knees, ankles, or shoulders. Joint integrity work keeps athletes healthy and pain free and is vital for an athlete’s well being because it prevents injury and when you are injured you cannot perform as well as when you are healthy. The second thing 5/3/1 is missing is daily core work, and by daily I mean every day you train with the program. For this article, I’m considering the “core” to be the rectus abdominus, internal and external obliques, lumbar and thoracic spine, psoas, and the lumbo-pelvic hip complex, including the hip flexors, adductors, abductors, and gluteals. Power, i.e., strength times speed, is the name of the game for the vast majority of sports, and the core, particularly the hips, is where power lives. An athlete’s core is arguably the most important area that needs to be trained, so quite frankly it is beyond me why this wouldn’t be hit every training session.

Finally, the last thing 5/3/1 is missing, in my opinion, is a realization that skilled athletes are exactly that, skilled athletes. This means they need to also have some type of movement training and skill training that should, in most cases, be a higher priority than their strength training. (Just for clarification, being a “skilled athlete” is not limited to those athletes who use some type of ball, instrument, or tool during their competition. The term “skilled athlete” includes any athlete who has to move and control their body, even track sprinters, because as Martin Rooney points out, running and sprinting are skills and they must be practiced year-round.) The problem with 5/3/1 when trying to implement it into a skilled athlete’s training program is that it requires the athlete to rep until failure with their heaviest lifts four times every week. Hormonally, this leaves the athlete a wreck and not only exhausts them for their other training sessions, but also puts the athlete at great risk for injury. Now, some may say that Wendler is actually asking for technical failure, meaning when the lifter’s form breaks down, not total or muscular failure, which would be when they are no longer able to complete a full repetition. This may be true, but I would argue that the vast majority of people who are lifting don’t have proper form to begin with, so how does someone judge when incorrect form fails?

Let me stop this comparison now and reiterate an important point: 5/3/1 is a really, really good training program for people who are looking to get stronger. So, these “deficiencies”, or whatever you want to call them, that I am pointing out are no fault of the program’s and no fault of Wendler’s. It is, however, the fault of the coaches who implement this program into their teams’ training regimens. Wendler wrote a program for people, specifically powerlifters, to get as strong as possible, not for every athlete to maximize his or her potential on the field of competition, which, along with injury prevention, is really what the purpose of training is.

Now let me tell you a little bit about the SMS training series. This series of training programs was written by myself with the goal of getting as strong as I could without sacrificing my ability to move, i.e., putting on too much mass or being completely drained from the lifts. Most of the basic principles of 5/3/1 are still there—the continual progression from phase to phase, the heavy main lifts and higher-rep supplement lifts, and the percentage-based progression within a single mesocycle. However, instead of writing in a set of reps to failure at the end of all the main lifts, I have another set written in of a pre-determined rep number. Also, in regards to the supplement lifts, instead of having you do 50 reps of each exercise like 5/3/1 calls for, SMS dictates the exact number of sets and reps you will do. When the reps for your main lifts are lower (1-3) the reps for your supplement lifts are in the 6-12 range, and when the main reps are higher (4-6) the supplement reps are in the 8-15 range. Also, like 5/3/1, every fourth week of SMS is a deload week followed by a new program so the athletes are able to stay fresh with their strength training.

Addressing the “deficiencies” that I identified with 5/3/1, the SMS series implements a general, ground-based warm-up that targets the hips, knees, ankles, and shoulders before every lift followed by a specific warm-up to target the muscles that will be the prime movers in that day’s main lift. These specific warm-ups range from different squat variations to box jumps to medicine ball work. The medicine ball work serves as a way to strengthen one’s grip in addition to being a warm-up, which for skilled athletes is very important. There is also core work written in at the end of every day, with all of the muscles in the core being worked over the course of one week. Equally as important, there are exercises to isolate hip flexion, extension, abduction, and adduction each week as well. Finally, like I stated above, the SMS training series does not call for the athlete to take the final set of the main lifts to failure, technical or total, each day, which allows the athlete to stay fresh so they can have other productive training sessions as well.

The SMS training series is by no means perfect. In fact, there are many problems I could see people having with it. The most common problem I could see people having with it is that the volume still may be too high for a lot of skilled athletes (think soccer and basketball players). In response to this, I would say to cut out the second pair of supplement exercises each day. Unlike 5/3/1, which only has one pair of supplement exercises for each day, SMS has two, with each pair having fewer sets than the one pair in 5/3/1. However, if the volume were too high, I would say to get rid of one of these pairs of exercises. SMS1 is more along the lines of 5/3/1 in this sense, but once you get to SMS2 you’ll see what I’m talking about.

A second problem I could see people having is that, starting with SMS2, there are a lot of triceps and biceps isolation exercises, and by a lot I mean four to five total sets per week. First of all, these exercises can be easily removed from the program—just don’t do them. Day 4 of SMS2 contains a lot of these sets, so if you are worried about that or don’t want to do them, then don’t and just use the fourth day as more of a recovery day after you hit your standing military presses. However, I would like to point out that confidence is a HUGE contributor to athletic performance, so if you can see your hard work paying off in the form of bigger arms, you may be more confident when heading into battle.

Finally, a third problem I could see is that the SMS series isn’t as individualized as 5/3/1, meaning that the supplement lifts for each session are chosen for you, as appose to 5/3/1 where you choose your own supplement lifts to best allow you to increase the weight of your main lifts. I’ll respond to this by saying that the vast majority of people don’t know what lifts to perform to get the results they are looking for, so while 5/3/1 is an excellent choice for a more knowledgeable powerlifter, for the baseball player who is a freshman in high school, giving them free reign in the weight room is not a good idea. The SMS training series structures the supplement exercises to ensure that a balanced approach is taken to strengthening the body for athletic movement.

In light of the information just presented, it seems to me that the program you should choose for your training depends on your goals of your strength training sessions. As I stated above, 5/3/1 is one of the best programs out there for purely increasing strength, but coaches need to realize that being the strongest athlete does not make you the best sportsman or sportswoman. You need to choose a program that is conducive to the goals of your athletes and your program within the realm of the individual sport itself. 5/3/1 For Football has now been released, and while this is a great step for many football programs, once again, does it make sense to implement this training into a lacrosse or soccer player’s program? You wouldn’t give a powerlifter a basketball player’s training program and expect them to become the best powerlifter they can be, so why would you give a basketball player a powerlifter’s program and expect that it will make them the best basketball player they can be?

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/). 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.