Category: Doing Something New

This category covers things that relate to trying something different. It is a sort of catch-all category that contains things are more verb-like than noun-like. These things like be new movements, new ways to think, or a specific suggestion that you try something that you may never have tried before. It’s a big category because humans are action oriented beings that are kinesthetic learner who benefit the most from interacting with their immediate environment.

Coaching High Level Athletes

I wrote the following about 4 months ago but I didn’t hit “Publish” for some reason. My work situation has changed since then and I don’t get to work with this group of skaters any more. The lessons however have stuck.

I have fallen in love again – Rachel need not be jealous or concerned for it is not romantic love or the feelings of love that I create as a muse for writing. I’ve fallen in love with coaching high level athletes since I was tasked with looking after the strength and conditioning needs of a group of figure skaters in March.

Initially I wasn’t sure what to expect. As an athlete, I was never very good; I was the middle of the pack and was happy with any finish in the top half and ecstatic with the one or two finishes in the top quarter. I trained hard to make up for a lack of talent and as anyone who doesn’t have the correct fiber typing and didn’t do the correct type of training at key periods in their development knows, hard work is a very poor substitute for talent. I probably came within a couple of places of my potential, which might have been in the top 15 -20%. Before I began working with the figure skaters I felt that I was probably as athletic as most of them – given that I am about twice their age and likely stronger than all of them. It turns out, my belief was not rooted in reality. Figure skaters are athletes in many ways that I would never have considered.

My understanding of them changed very quickly one day in late March when we were able to go outside for the first time. The snow had melted enough to allow for them to run laps outside of the building. Being who they are (young, bright and looking for any way to make their workout easier) all but one of them decided to cut their lap short and come in the back door, walk back to the workout room and pretend to be winded. Initially I thought they had run really quickly, but there was something strange about the way they looked – their faces weren’t red, they finished together in spite of their differing running abilities and the guy who I thought would be the fastest was the last one back and he didn’t finish with the group. Once I figured out what had happened, they were assigned more weights instead of running. The guy who ran the lap was the only one I let run it again and given that I wanted to make sure he ran hard, I ran with him. I embarrassed myself trying to keep up. It was close for the first 100 meters, but he was pacing himself. I started to surge and catch up with him, but he looked back and accelerated. He finished about 20 or 30 yards in front of me and a lot less winded that I was. I said “do you feel good about yourself beating an old man?” He laughed with me as I called it a workout. This was the sign of things to come.

As the weather got nicer, we were able to spend more time outside sprinting. One of the things that struck me was just how quick most of them can run. Technically, their running isn’t that smooth – all of them would benefit from ironing out some of their arm movements and relaxing when they run, but boy can they accelerate and their top speed is something to be envied. They are on track to run as fast as any of the football players I have trained who are the same age in spite of the fact that they do not train to be quick runners. This was the most remarkable thing to me, they don’t work on starts, accelerations or top speed tempo work – they jump and spin and dance with quick feet on the ice; football players train their starts for the 40 in combines. The speed of the figure skaters is remarkable when compared to those athletes who are actually trying to get faster.I look after 3 groups which are determined based on their skill level. The elites are the top group followed by the senior A and then the senior B. The elites tend to be older and all of them have been skating for a very long time – some started when they were 2 and are now 18. The B’s tend to be younger (ranging from 8 to 14) and the A’s are a range of ages from 12-17. I’m not certain what the criteria is for moving up in groups, but it has something to do with the type of Axel they are able to do – I think a B becomes an A once they can consistently land a double.

I look after 3 groups which are determined based on their skill level. The elites are the top group followed by the senior A and then the senior B. The elites tend to be older and all of them have been skating for a very long time – some started when they were 2 and are now 18. The B’s tend to be younger (ranging from 8 to 14) and the A’s are a range of ages from 12-17. I’m not certain what the criteria is for moving up in groups, but it has something to do with the type of Axel they are able to do – I think a B becomes an A once they can consistently land a double.

I’m not sure if I am coaching any future Olympians but I wouldn’t be surprised if I was. The drive of some of these athletes is remarkable. I have little doubt that the drive comes from the fact that they started when they were young and didn’t realize that they could give less than 100%. A few of the younger elite group will cut corners and complain about the work I assign, but when they come to work, they work intensely. They work like they are trying to make up for a lack of talent and in that way, they remind me of myself.

The toughest part about working with them is that they do so much skating. They are on the ice at least 2 hours a day and it’s closer to 5 hours a day during the summer. This makes it challenging to train them not because they are tired, but because some of their eating habits are abysmal. I can related to this because when one is completely engaged in their passion, eating falls by the wayside, but their performance suffers because of it. The first version of food journals I collect from them looked like something a middle aged lawyer would have submitted – one or two meals a day of fast food, less than the minimum amount of protein, too much refined sugar and not a mention to any vegetables. When asked about it they all said basically the same things “we don’t have time to eat”. I got the evil eye from a few of them when I said “if you don’t have the time to eat, you don’t have the time to be the best”.

I feel for them because they know they should be spending more time and energy on nutrition, but they’re also told that they need to spend more time on skating, and school, and ballet, and a multitude of other things that conventional wisdom dictates will make them better performers. Regardless of their conflicting agendas, only a quarter of them are at or close to the right body composition to excel. My desire to be a better coach means I’m offering them parts of my lunch, commending them on their positive nutritional changes and praising them for making the tough decisions to skip the burger and fries and suffering through another salad of mixed greens, ground flex seed and chicken breast.

The strangest thing about working with them, and it’s only something that I noticed after reading Speed Trap again, is that I am forming unique and purposeful relationships with them. Some of the athletes really like me – they know I care about them as people and as well as athletes and skaters. I talk to them like adults regardless of their age and I try to explain my rational for choosing the exercises and program they are following. To others, I am just another coach who is trying to get them to do things that they wouldn’t spontaneously do. There is rarely a battle of wills because I’ll be very blunt with them and let them know that I do not suffer when they do not work, they suffer and in particular, their on-ice performance this season will suffer if they don’t try.

Power Cleans – Sets of 5 with 1 Minute Rest

About 4 months ago I decided to start cleaning – this is when you pull the bar off the ground, drive your hips forward and catch the bar on your shoulders. I regard it as a speed movement because there’s no way your going to be able to catch the bar on your shoulders if it isn’t moving very quickly. It’s fun to do because it’s new and there is something exhilarating about making weights fly – which is basically what happens when you pull with everything you have.

The reason I decided to start doing power cleans is because my starting strength is brutally slow – my first 3 steps or peddle strokes look and feel like I’m taking it easy when in fact I’m actually trying to make them really quick. Once I start moving my muscle are able to fire at a speed that gets me up to my top speed fairly quickly.

The initial learning phase takes about 6-8 weeks. During this time I learned the mechanics of the movement, improved the flexibility of my forearms to allow me to catch the bar and my nervous system became more efficient at firing the fast twitch fiber to allow me to get the bar moving and accelerate it to top speed. Once this happens, you can start to load on the weight and experiment with different rep and rest schemes.

Over the last month I have been doing sets of 5 with ~60 seconds rest between sets. The bar comes to a complete stop at the bottom and I may rest up to 10 seconds between reps; if the bar is moving slowly I will rest longer and if I’m still able to pull with max speed there will be about a second between reps. Depending upon how I am feeling, how quickly the bar is moving during the 4th and 5th rep and what else I am planning on training, I will do between 5 and 10 sets.

I like this approach because I think it carries over to cycling very well because 5 cleans is roughly the equivalent to 5 complete peddle rotations which is exactly what is needed to kick it into top speed to pass another rider or to blast into an open space to lead the group into the single track.

My starting strength has increased and I feel more force being directed to the peddles. I have also found that my 10 yard sprint time has improved.

Riding With Elite Riders

On Sunday I went to Albion Hills to do some riding. I rode with a few guys I’ve known for a while and one guy I have never met before named John, who rode a single speed with no shocks. It was a great ride and it’s the hardest I have worked in years.

John is one of these guys whose physiology is ideal for bike racing. He beat me at everything which is unusual. I worked hard to keep up and when we stopped to wait for the other guys, I was always winded while he just seemed to be breathing normally. I asked him about this and he told me that when he was last measured his max heart rate was 216 – which he has gotten his heart to. He is able to maintain a HR of 185 for extended periods of time and it recovers really quickly when he slows down. Compared to my numbers of 174 – the highest my HR has been in years – and my ability to sustain work at 157 and it’s clear why I was left trying to stick to his tire for the draft.

I asked him how his numbers compared to other people and he admitted that his cardiovascular system is in a league of its own – he’s in the same range as top professional cyclist. Being 10 years younger than me, the fact that I didn’t die trying to keep up with him was both lucky and a sign that my training is moving me in the right direction.

What I liked most about the ride is that it was a pissing match. He knew I wanted to beat him and he was pretty vocal each time he passed me, which only served to fire me up even more. It was good natured and it brought up my riding to a level I haven’t seen in years if ever. I’m not sure if he was being nice but he did make a few comments that it was good to finally have someone stick with him, but then he pulled away again so I’m not 100% sure he wasn’t mocking me.

Hopefully I’ll get to ride with them again. The guy who set-up the ride has just started back to cycling after a decade long break and he’s getting better each day. He’s picked the right group to ride with because they are forcing him to get improve much faster than he would if he was doing it on his own and his progress is fantastic; it’s even better considering 8 weeks ago he was still smoking.

The take home lesson – train up if you want to improve; and quit smoking today!

Too Much Training Volume

Too many coaches hold the view that more is better when it comes to training volume and this belief is hurting their athletes.

Most of the conversations I have with coaches about a lack of progress focus on the athlete and not the poor program design. I hear things like “the athlete just isn’t getting it” or “they are losing focus” or “the athlete is weak and needs to work harder”. I have yet to hear a coach say “I’ve asked them to do more work than they can recover from” or “I don’t really know what I’m doing so I just get the athlete to do more” or “I train them the way I trained 20 years ago and don’t really feel like advancing my understanding by learning”.

I’m not implying that these coaches do not know how to make their athletes better at their sport because many of them do; they have an eye for the sport and can see things that more people can’t. In fact, many sport coaches are the only people who can coach the skills with their athletes. The issue is, they don’t understand the body well enough to understand that their athletes are failing to make progress because the brain cannot control the muscles to the precise degree needed to make the progress and instead blame the athletes will or focus.

Why are the athletes not progressing? There are two reasons, the muscles are not recovered enough to move as required and the nervous system is not recovered enough to coordinate the muscle fibers to move as required.

In the car racing world a driver can tell his mechanic that the car isn’t responding correctly when he press down the accelerator. The mechanic will then take a look, uncover the problem and fix it. A damaged spark plug for example will limit the amount of power that an engine is able to generate and once it is replaced, the engine goes back to full power. This is like the muscle not being fully recovered. A chef may find that he’s burning all of the items he tries to fry and when he looks at the stove realize that the gas dial goes from off to full with nothing in between. Once the dial is fixed to allow for precise heat adjustments the chef regains the ability to cook foods perfectly. This is like fixing neurological fatigue.

Cooking and car racing have one thing in common that most sports don’t have – a tool that acts as a medium between the individual and performance. This medium can be examined, shown to be malfunctioning and adjusted to function correctly. With most sports, the medium is the athletes body so it’s harder to figure-out the cause of malfunctions and since it’s harder to figure-out or see what is causing them, the first impulse is to blame the athletes will or conscious effort.

This is, when dealing with high level athletes, completely wrong. These individuals work hard, have greater focus than most people and are driven to perform better and better each workout. Their body’s however, cannot perform at a higher level each workout because of muscular and neurological fatigue and without sufficient recovery, their performance decreases. The coaches solution of making them do more reps, more cardio, more anything only serves to decrease their performance further, which will make the coach work them harder.

The good news is that body won’t allow this to continue for every long and the athlete will get sick well before they work themselves to death, which most high level athletes will do because of their work ethic. After about 6-7 weeks of over training, illness takes over and the athlete can’t perform at all. They take a few days off to recover from the illness which allows their body to recover and when they get back to their sport, they perform much better. The coach is happy and feels good knowing that they did a good job because of the improvement. They attribute the illness to a cold or flu and they start the cycle again – performance will begin to decrease after a few weeks as the athlete “loses focus” and the illness will return.

This pattern will continue until the coach smartens up, the athlete switches coaches, the athlete quits their sport or the athlete becomes aware enough to dictate the pace of training and lets the coach know that they are taking a few days off when they need to. Unfortunately, too many young and promising athletes will leave the sport and never actualize their potential because the fun leaves the sport due to this avoidable pattern.

If you are a coach and you notice in your athletes a pattern of decreased performance followed by sickness, a lack of focus following intense training periods, dramatic increases in performance following time off or if your solution for everything is more training, you need to get back to school and learn about neurological and muscular fatigue. If you allow your athletes to continue this cycle YOU are failing them and you may be chasing them out of the sport they love.

Strength Training for Cyclists

As an avid mountain bike rider, I spend a lot of time on the trails. I try to do a couple of races each year – at the participant level vs. the competitive level – and train year round to make sure I don’t shame myself too badly when the gun goes off and there’s a mad frenzy of riders hammering to be the first into the single track. The racing is a lot more fun when you’ve put the time into the practice and training. In fact, while races are won on race day, I believe they are actually won during the off season, in the gym, lifting weights and building strength. There has been a dramatic improvement in my performance once I incorporated strength training for cycling into my year round program. Below are 7 strength movements that a cyclist should perform if they are to hit their peak performance level. Note that this is not a workout, it’s a list of exercises, recommended rep ranges and my rational as to why a cyclist should use them.

1) Bulgarian split squats. Similar to a back foot elevated static lunge except the focus is on moving forward and back vs. up and down. It’s a great movement because it works each leg equally. It focuses a lot on the VMO which is critical for both peddle force production and knee stability – remember, you are going to fall and usually the only thing saving you from hitting the ground is being able to quickly put your foot on the ground to catch yourself. Knee instability at this point is going to increase the chance of falling and injury to your knee. Having the back foot elevated recruits more of the hip flexor muscles which are critical for the knee drive that pulls the peddles from the bottom to the top.

I like to work with a rep range of 12-15 for this movement.

2) Bent over standing hamstring curls – the reason you are bent over is to mimic riding position so aim for 45 degrees of hip flexon. This movement is critical because many riders do not have good hamstring recruitment – in fact, most people do not. Unless someone is moving quickly, these muscles play a role in maintaining knee stability. The hamstrings are made up primarily of fast twitch fibers so you need to focus on explosive contractions and controlled eccentric phases. Given that half of the peddle stroke is made up of knee flexon, you will need to learn how to powerfully recruit the hamstrings if you are to generate the most amount of force.

I work with a rep range of 6-8 for this movement.

3) DB bench press. Strong pec and anterior deltoids muscles are critical for holding the upper body in the right position when riding the rough trails. This movement is good at building this type of strength.

I work with a rep range of 6-10 for this movement and will alter the angle of the bench to include decline and incline pressing.

4) Bent over pronated (palms away) BB row. With trail riding, you are going to have to pull the front wheel off of the ground to clear logs and other obstacles. To do this, you will need a considerable amount of back strength. Bent over rowing is ideal for developing this. It is also great because being bent over places the upper body in the same position it would be in when riding.

I work with a rep range of 8-12 for this movement.

5) BB squat (front and back). The BB squat is one of the best strength movements someone can perform because it recruits muscles from the entire body, particularly the legs and core. Squatting deep is a fantastic way to develop the strength of the VMO muscles and it’s one of the best ways to develop eccentric strength that is needed anytime you put your feet on the ground to catch yourself from falling.

I work in a variety of rep ranges for these movements. With front squats I’ll do 3-6 reps and with back squats the range will be between 2 and 25. I’ll never do front and back squats in the same workout and like to change them up to keep my body adapting to the different movements.

6) BB deadlifting. I perform this movement primarily to work the core, lower back and glutes, but is also works the legs and upper back so it is a fantastic way to develop full body strength. It is particularly good at teaching you to recruit your glutes as you drive your hips forward to complete the movement at the top. These muscles are particularly important for force production when standing and sprinting.

I work with a variety of rep ranges ranging from 2 to 20

7) Power cleans. This is a movement used to develop speed because it is extremely difficult to clean a weight slowly – it’s impossible to be completely honest. Hip drive is absolutely critical with this movement so it’s a fantastic way to train your glutes to contract quickly. It’s also a fantastic way to training the upper back muscles to be faster along with your legs given that you are lifting the weight of off the ground from a dead stop.

I work with a variety of rep ranges with this movement but do not go above 6 reps. The goal when performing power cleans it to make the bar move as quickly as possible. To ensure that it helps to build speed, it is critical that a set end as soon as the bar speed drops by 10%. While this may seem like a tough thing to figure-out, you can feel any slow down and catching the bar on your shoulders is really tough unless it’s moving quickly.

I encourage you to incorporate some of these movements into your strength training program if you are a cyclist. You will notice an improvement on the trails and you’ll be riding faster than you ever thought you could!

Functional Training for New Strength Training Athletes

Functional training is taking the strength and conditioning world by storm for three very important reasons. First off, it’s fun. If you have never dragged a sled or flipped a tire, you don’t know what you are missing. It may sound kind of silly but the first time you get under a tire, drive your hips forward and heave it over you’ll know that you’ve found something that you’ll want to do again and again.

Next, there is less muscle soreness in the days following a functional workout vs. a traditional strength training workout using barbells, dumbbells and bands. The reason for this is that there is little or no eccentric contraction to most functional movements. The eccentric phase is the lengthening phase for a muscle – with a squat, it is the movement from the top to the bottom and this tends to be the phase that causes the most damage and subsequent pain. With functional movements, this phase is all but eliminated. For example, when dragging a sled, the load wants to stay still. No matter how much weight you put on it, it is never going to pull you backwards.  The same applies to tire flipping, sledgehammer swings and battle ropes – basically you are breaking inertia and that is it.

Finally, functional training gets you results that are useful in sport. Traditional BB and DB work makes an athlete stronger and they can then use this strength in their sport, but there isn’t a direct relationship between BB strength and skating for example –performing a dead lift will make someone much stronger but the strength they gain is general and needs to be assimilated in order for it to be put to use. Functional movements however more closely resemble the movements one performs during athletic competition. Sled drag crossovers, for example, will increase the strength of the muscles responsible for the crossover movement which will help to increase the power of this movement. Another great example would be Russian Boxes – two 35 degree ramps that slope towards each other. The action of jumping off of the outside leg from one box to the other is very similar to the skating motion. This functional movement is excellent for improving ones skating power.

Given these facts, I recommend functional training for everyone – from the young athlete to the older adult who is looking to keep their mobility into their later years, and everyone in between. In fact, I believe that functional training is particularly useful for those athletes who have never done any formal strength training before because they already have some experience with the movements – most sports have the athletes run, twist and jump and these are all facets of functional training – the learning curve for functional training is much shorter making these types of workouts production very quickly.

When functional workouts are paired with proper nutrition the results are fantastic! Body composition will improve dramatically as decreases in body fat are coupled with increases in lean body mass. On-field or on-ice performance will also improve dramatically as stronger leaner athletes are able to produce more relative force – this translates into harder hitting, higher jumping, and faster running or skating. Proper nutritional habits will fuel the body correctly meaning it can function optimally – higher sustained energy, higher force generation and quicker recovery from intense efforts.

If you have never done a functional workout before, you have no idea what you are missing!

What Can Aerobic Athletes Learn from Strength Athletes?

For too long, many people have been unwilling to bridge the gap between how aerobic athletes and strength athletes train. It is as though they are on different sides of the training fence and anyone who suggests that there should be similarities in the way these two groups train is considered an outcast. But recently, research shows that things have started to change; at least in terms of what an aerobic athlete can gain from training like a strength athlete. There are so many obvious benefits, that we now know it is not wise for an aerobic athlete to hold onto the notion that strength training isn’t useful for their purposes.

Here are some of the benefits of strength training for aerobic athletes:

Strength training will help avoid injuries

There is a popular saying that if you repeat one movement too often, you’re going to sustain an injury in the overworked area. This is true because, while the body can adapt to becoming very good at the one thing, it starts to become very poor at the things that are not being tended to. Long distance runners, for example, tend to end up with bad knees. Some believe that this is because of the impact running causes to the leg and hip joints.  But this isn’t necessarily the case, because the body eventually adapts to the impact sustained. The actual reason why the knees end up hurting is because the work of running results in an imbalance in the muscles of the upper leg. Distance running doesn’t require a lot of hamstring strength and as a consequence, the hamstrings do not develop well enough to hold the knee in a safe manner. This lack of development decreases the structural strength of the knee and therefore increases the risk of injury.

Strength training will help to eliminate pain caused by muscle imbalances

Many cyclists suffer from knee pain because their IT bands are extremely tight which causes their knee caps to track incorrectly during peddling. (IT Bands – iliotibial – are a tough group of fibres that run along the outside of the thigh.  They function primarily as stabilizers.) This IT Band pain can be avoided if the muscles that pull the knee cap in the other direction are strong enough to hold the knee cap in line. Strength training is the only way to correct this weakness and allow for pain-free riding.

Because strength training improves the body overall, aerobic exercise will seem easier

In almost all sports, performance improves if the athlete is able to generate more relative force from their muscles. The easiest way to increase relative force is to get rid of extra body fat and increase muscle mass. Contrary to popular belief, strength training is much more effective at reducing body fat than performing aerobic exercise. In fact, there is growing evidence that aerobic exercise stops being an effective method for fat loss after about 8 weeks as the body adapts to the demands of the movement. Once this happens, fat loss tapers off and the body stays the same. More often than not, if food intake is not reduced to adjust for this decrease in calorie-burn fat will begin to accumulate and the athlete will be LESS powerful.

Strength training will help make the muscles more powerful, thus increasing relative strength

Making the muscles stronger will boost relative strength. From a practical stand point, a muscle that produces more force will propel an athlete further with each movement when compared to muscle that is weaker. Imagine an athlete who is able to add an inch to stride length because of strength training. Given that stride rate tends to remain stable over the course of a 24 mile marathon, that extra inch is going to mean fewer strides are needed to complete the run, so a runners time will decrease by a significant amount. Even if the stride length only increases by 1 cm, the improvement is going to be dramatic.

Strength training will make the body more efficient at recruiting muscle fibres

The nervous system adapts to the needs of strength training and it becomes more efficient at recruiting more muscle fibres. This improved coordination of firing will result in a further increase in force production. This is different from increasing the strength of the muscle in that a weaker muscle can produce the same amount of force as a stronger muscle if more muscle fibres are recruited, but the outcome is improved stride length and increased force production.

The diet of strength training athletes is very close to the ideal diet for aerobic athletes

Contrary to popular belief, aerobic athletes do not need to consume massive amounts of carbohydrate. However, it must be said, that they need more carbs than the average under-active person.  They should take in similar amounts of protein and good fat as the strength training athlete consumes. The type of carbohydrate consumed should include slowly digested carbohydrates, like oatmeal or sweet potatoes, as well as carbohydrates that are immediately available for energy, quickly digested carbohydrates such as Gatorade, dextrose, maltodextrin, etc… at the time of greatest physical exertion. This is exactly the same way strength training athletes eat. It ensures they get enough energy to fuel their workout and enough protein and fat for body repair.

Too Young To Appreciate The Lessons

I was at my parents house last week for my dad’s birthday. While I was there I decided to pick up some of my books so I could reread them – in this case I picked up Speed Trap: Inside the Biggest Scandal in Olympic History by Charlie Francis. {Check out My Top 10 Books post for some information about this and my other favorite books}

What is funny about this book now is just how much sense it makes – I’ve had plenty of time to assimilate the lessons it teaches given the almost 20 years that have past since I first read it. But equally shocking is just how little I did with the information between the time I first acquired it and very recently. Frankly, I’m a little concerned at the latency. It’s making me wonder what other lessons I have had that I have yet to action on?

Charlie talks about two types of fatigue – muscular and neurological. Muscle fatigue is easy to understand because there is a physical symptom associated with it – delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS) is the result of the muscle fatigue – okay, they are not exactly sure why people get DOMS but given that it only shows up after someone has used their muscles fairly intensely we know it is related to muscle fatigue. Basically, after intense or prolonged use, muscle are damaged and need time to recover. Provided you give them enough nutrients, water and rest, they will be good to go again fairly quickly.

Neurological fatigue is more difficult to understand because there is no pain to indicate that it is there. In fact, you can only tell that you have it if you compare your performance to a previous performance and notice a decline in intensity. For example, you lift 20 lbs LESS for the same number of reps, you do fewer reps with the same amount of weight, you move the bar or run slower. These decreases in performance occur REGARDLESS of how well rested or pain-free your muscles feel. Nervous system recover takes much longer than muscle recovery for reasons that are well outside the scope of this post but it is fair to say that for a very intense workout – one that demanded repeated all out efforts – it can take 3 – 5 days or more to get back to normal. Also consider that training age factors into the neurological recovery – given that highly trained people have better recruitment patterns than untrained people. It would be safe to say that someone who is just starting to workout will suffer muscle fatigue much more frequently than neurological fatigue and that their training frequency can be much higher because of this.

It isn’t surprising that I missed the lesson the first time I read the book – I wasn’t a speed athlete and I was so new to weight lifting that I didn’t realize that I was always in a state of neurological and muscular fatigue. Back then some of my lifting numbers didn’t go up for months and the only time I grew was when I stopped training in the summer. Looking back with the knowledge and years of experience I now have, it’s very clear what was going on. I wasted a lot of time training when I should have been resting. I didn’t realize that my nervous system was so fatigued that it couldn’t fire a signal to recruit a sufficient number of fibers to help me move a heavier load. The outcome of this lack of recruitment was a lack of progress because I wasn’t able to overload my muscles.

But back then I knew everything and was doing it all by the book. Ah the wisdom of youth!

Today, depending upon how I am training, I use a variety of ways to make the decision about my readiness to workout out. I use time since last workout, muscle pain and heart rate to help me decide if I am ready to go. For example, I try to wait 2-4 days between workouts for the same body part – 4 days if the last workout was very intense in terms of percentage of 1 rep max, 2 days if it was a lower intensity workout. I will take a day off or train with less intensity if the muscle group I am supposed to train is still sore. When it comes to cycling, if I am having difficulty getting my heart rate up to 155-160, I will cut a ride short, or I will treat it as an active recovery ride and aim to keep my heart rate between 135 and 145.

The saying goes “better late than never” and I suppose that is true. It is just kind of sad to think about the potential gains I squandered because I did not hold on to the lessons of my youth. I guess this plays a big part in why I work as a strength coach because I am hoping I am able to help someone avoid the pitfalls I made.

Tri-sets – My Experiences

The most recent training method I used was tri-sets. This is a grouping of 3 exercises for the same body part, performed in sequence with 10 seconds rest between each exercise. Once the third exercise is completed, you wait between 2 and 3 minutes before moving on to the next tri-set or exercise. It’s an accumulation type method that boosts your work capacity while also increasing lactate tolerance to a small degree. It will make you grow but won’t really add much strength.

Exercise selections – with tri sets, you are moving from a weaker ROM to a stronger ROM for exercise 1 and 2. For example, incline press followed by flat or decline press, or incline DB curls followed by standing BB curls. You do this because it helps keep the load as high as possible for each exercises.

The third movement should be something that is significantly easier for new to moderate trainees or something that is tougher but with fewer reps or less weight for the advanced trainee. For example, trap bar deadlifts, DB split squat, hack squats as a beginner or intermediate tri-set and front squat, back squat, front squat for an advanced trainee. When the first and third exercise are the same, we call this a double tri-set and it tends to increase size gains over the traditional tri-set, but it has a much larger intensity cost and should only be performed by people who have the capacity to work that hard.

Some examples of what I did were, for back, lean back supinated chin-ups, neutral grip pull-ups, and lean back supinated chin-ups; wide grip pull-ups, mid neutral grip pull-ups and narrow grip supinated chin-ups; weighted pronated mid grip pull-ups, bend over DB row, standing rope to neck. For chest, 45 degree DB press, flat DB press, and 45 degree DB press; 70 DB press, 30 DB press, DB flies. For shoulders, seated military press, seated Arnold press, and medial DB laterals.

Tempo and timing – the goal is to get about 30-50 seconds of time under tension for each segment of the tri-set. When we include rest time we are looking at about 4:30 to 5:00 minutes of time for each tri-set. This means that you can train two body parts in about 30-40 minutes leaving enough time to do some accessory or structural balance work.

I’ve been doing tri-sets for about 4 weeks now and am getting ready to change things up again. My work capacity has definitely increased and I’ve been sore in the days following my workouts – an indication that my body is adapting to a new form of stimulation. It is a good method that I will come back to in a few months. It’s also a mentally challenging approach because the sets are so long – up to 2 minutes.

The main error people make when performing tri-sets is not adhering to the rest interval of 10 seconds between segments. There is a tendency to take longer and while I can understand why someone would, it lowers the effectiveness of this approach dramatically. Keep in mind that the 10 seconds is only long enough to move to the next exercise, it isn’t long enough to get a drink or have a conversation. But with 2-3 minutes rest between sets, you should have plenty of time to do all of those other things.

I have given it to some of my clients and they have experienced the same things I did – growth, pain and a boost in work capacity. Try it out if you are looking for a new challenge.

When Do You Change Your Workout Routine? Part 1

A common question I hear from trainees, athletes and clients is “how do I know when it’s time to change my workout?” The traditional answer has been “when it stops working for you.” Recently I’ve come to realise just how useless this answer is because when all is said and done almost every workout will continue to give you some results if you do it consistently. The answer I prefer now is when the rate of adaption to the program slows to a critical rate.

To fully understand the implications of this you need to keep in mind that the body responds to physical work by adapting in two key areas (there are changes in many areas, but to know when it’s time to change a program we need to be concerned with only two areas) – the nervous system and muscular system. The nervous system is concerned with coordinating and transporting the commands that fire the muscle fibers. The muscular system is concerned with the changes within the muscle fibers themselves.

When we first start doing a program the specific demands of the workout are completely new to the body. For example, the rest pause training approach has a trainee perform a set in 3 segments with 15-20 seconds between each segment and 60-180 seconds of rest between sets. The goal is to complete the same predetermined number of reps during each segment. There are very few activities in the real world that mimic this training method so it is an effective way of boosting intensity, work capacity and time under tension.

During the first workout the body is very inefficient that coordinating the required muscle impulses needed to move the load as the workout requires. As a consequence the number of reps that is performed during each segment drops dramatically. When I first did this with behind the neck barbell press I was able to move 115 for 8 reps in the first segment, 5 reps in the second segment and 4 reps in the 3rd segment. With set two I did 105 7 times, 5 times, 4. Set 3 was 105 for 6, 4 and 4. My performance was basically the same for all other body parts, diminishing rep numbers after each pause and lower weight for each set. But it doesn’t take the nervous system long to adapt to the program and after about 3 weeks the behind the neck shoulder press numbers were 125 for 8, 6,5, 115 for 8,7,5 and 115 for 7,5,5.

Lets compare the first workout to the week 3 workout. My max weight I lifted went up from 115 to 125 for 8 reps. The lightest weight I lifted increase to 115 from 105 and the total number of reps I did for this exercise increased from 47 to 56. Overall the amount of work I did (assuming the time under tension remained constant for every rep) increased from 5105 units to 6630 units or about a 30% increase. NOTE: the units are an arbitrary measure that represents the weight multiplied by the number of reps.

So getting back to the CNS and muscle adaption, both contribute to the increase in work capacity and max weight lifted. How do we figure out what is responsible for the increase? My belief is that the improvement in the first segment of each set is the result primarily of muscle adaption while the increase in the second and third segments is the result of CNS adaption. My rational for this is that right before I was did rest pause I was doing push / pull sets and was able to lift 115 for 8 reps. The reason I say the CNS was primarily responsible for the increase in work ability in the 2nd and 3rd segments is that I had the muscle capacity to lift the weight (as indicated by the first segment), I simply didn’t have the capacity to get the muscle fibers to fire. After a few weeks, my CNS has developed the ability to recruit the muscle fibers needed to make the weight.

So how do we use this to figure out when it’s time to change a program? First off, the CNS will adapt much faster than the muscles do so we can use this as an indicator that we’re getting close. With rest pause, we would know that the CNS has adapted when we’re able to do the same number of reps with each set and segment for example, when set 1 and set 3 are made up of 8,6,5 reps each. CNS adaption is not complete, but it has reached what I would consider a critical level. Once you’re able to do that, you know that a program change is getting near.

Check back soon for Part 2 where I will outline how to identify the changes in the muscle system that indicate a program change is needed.