Quality > Quantity

Posted on December 11, 2012 by Justin

Quality conditioning is beneficial to all trainees and necessary for some. “Conditioning” itself is a vague term; any adaptation is a conditioning to a stress, but we use it to imply an adaptation to “work capacity” and is therefore a sub-set of “endurance”. The act of ,and adaptation to, conditioning can aid in recovery as well as express the application of all physical ability. In other words, light conditioning can help the system recover and being “more conditioned” can facilitate shorter rest times between sets and more energy for a training session. Conditioning also expresses strength, power, speed, mobility, etc. in sustained activities whether they are a strongman medley, working construction, or being in a fire fight.

However, the key is on quality conditioning.

We can think about this in two ways: 1) the quality of the conditioning programming and 2) the quality of the movements while conditioning. I’ve written about both of these topics for at least four years, but let’s expand on them.

Quality Conditioning in a Program

It leaves the scope of this post to try to make a comprehensive review of how to program, but the basis for any program is strength acquisition. Strength is a fundamental capacity that facilitates the development and application of other physical attributes, including conditioning. Several years ago I wrote about how CrossFit programs needed to sprinkle in conditioning with a barbell strength program — the same thing that strength and conditioning coaches have been doing for over 50 years. The article was rejected from the CrossFit Journal on bounds that it didn’t contain “observable, repeatable data” (it did), so instead I made a very basic article that turned into the “Strength and Conditioning Program“. Not only have thousands of people used this and accumulated success, but CrossFit Football launched with a similar style of program and has had the same results — strength programs with conditioning yield better athletes than programs with a high frequency of conditioning. Everyone learned this on their own over the last four or five years.

But let’s get back to why and how to program it with quality. A quote from my pdf:

Metabolic conditioning is a collection of movements and activities that are organized to A) produce and maintain a high metabolic output relative to the amount of time it is performed and B) minimize any necessary recovery, if any, between those bouts of high output. Subsequently the body mobilizes and distributes resources more efficiently and effectively – an adaptation that is gained and lost quickly. Even though metabolic conditioning is an important aspect of performance, it must be understood that its expression is strength-dependent. As strength improves, the effort to maintain an output becomes a smaller fraction of absolute strength, and/or there is a reduction in effort to maintain a higher output. Therefore, recovering for strength training maintains precedence over conditioning in this program.

The strength training must maintain priority in a training program. The only exception I can think of is if an athlete or applied fitness trainee (a term we use in FIT to represent fire fighters, LEO, military, etc. — people who require a given fitness level for their job or life) who is peaking for a specific event (like a deployment). In that case, their final phase before the event will consist of ‘sport specific’ activity as it weens off of traditional strength training. But, again, this depends on the individual and the circumstances.

Good guys that do bad things to bad people need to keep their structures adapted year-round.

What’s important is the presence of the strength training. The act of actually lifting is just as important as the adaptation to being strong. The fact that a trainee loads their entire body and takes it through a full range of motion to have all of their muscles working together is necessary. It not only maintains strength or lean body mass, but it keeps the muscles, tendons, bones, ligaments, and nerves adapted to the activity. It also provides a systemic stress and subsequent adaptation that will keep the body adapted to work. And obviously the result of being strong will make someone more capable — nobody denies that.

If we accept the above, then we know the presence and recovery from strength training needs to maintain priority in a training program. This starts with the placement of training days and what occurs on those training days. In the S&C program, there are four, maybe five training days with two to four of them consisting of lifting. Yet the actual lifts done on those days will vary so that the same movements or muscle groupings aren’t repeated on consecutive training days.

When the strength training is programmed, the conditioning must be sprinkled in intelligently. It shouldn’t specifically go on rest days, because then those days are no longer rest days. The type of high intensity conditioning can vary — in FIT I define six different types of endurance training with five of them in the high intensity realm. How they should be implemented is explained in immense detail in FIT, but they shouldn’t be erratic or random. Conditioning workouts should compliment the strength training by not abusing the same musculature in the same day, by fatiguing muscular for a future session int he week, and the type of the conditioning should depend on the volume and intensity of the strength training itself.

If these factors are accounted for, a trainee will get stronger and either maintain or improve his conditioning. This is paramount to applied fitness trainees like soldiers who cannot avoid conditioning for the sake of barbell training; at the very least they need to maintain a structural adaptation to their job. The same goes for athletes; it wouldn’t behoove an American football player to show up to pre-season training camp de-conditioned — at worst he’ll be extremely sore, fatigued, and injury prone and at best hurt his chances of achieving a starting position.

Ray Lewis conditions throughout every off-season and is in his 17th year in the NFL with 13 Pro Bowls and over 2,000 tackles.

There are a few instances where conditioning can be ignored, but most of the time it’s inclusion will only benefit the trainee, provided it is programmed and performed with quality.

Quality of Movement When Conditioning

Too often we cringe while watching videos of people performing exercises under extreme fatigue, yet this is an acceptable norm in the realm of conditioning. There are several reasons that higher technique standards should be used while conditioning It’s actually quite amazing that there aren’t more injuries, yet the weight is relatively light and injuries do develop with chronically poor mechanics. This is one reason “mobility” has been such a hot thing — not only will normal athletes need maintenance, but trainees who perform thousands of reps with crappy mechanics will eventually need repair.

Injuries are certainly debilitating to training, but what’s more important is using efficient mechanics to move a load. Poor technique does not distribute the force application throughout the necessary muscles and instead focuses it on a single or group of muscles that did not evolve to handle the effort. For example, it’s not uncommon to see a lack of hamstring involvement in CrossFit to result in an over development of the quads and under development of the posterior chain. Not only will the musculature itself be trained poorly or incorrectly, but the trainee is not performing as well as the could have.

If a trainee has adapted to conditioning with proper mechanics — and proper force distribution across the muscles — then they will be using the maximum number of muscles in a given movement, therefore applying more force and improving the economy of effort. They will either use less energy or become more resistant to fatigue since one specific muscle group is not bearing the bulk of the load and fatiguing quickly.

In other words, proper mechanics will yield better performance — in addition to decreased injury and better muscular development.

Note that using proper technique for the first time may result in slower conditioning times. This would be a result of the “muscles not being developed correctly” thing and will improve with consistent, quality technique and better strength training.

When I have to coach conditioning workouts (it’s not exactly fun), I coach two things: movement mechanics and overall economy of effort. The movement mechanics are the same, if not a more simplified, version of coaching the barbell lifts. “Knees out”; “chest up”; or “elbows up and in”. The difference is that I do not allow trainees to do it incorrectly. It’s the coach’s job to yield a quality training session for quality results. I’ve stopped the workout before to emphasize a point. I’ve lowered the weight (much to the trainee’s chagrin). I’ve made them stop moving or put the bar down for a short rest. Whatever I do, it’s to get them to move with efficiency.

Coaching “economy of effort” is easy, but surprisingly poorly done. During breaks I coach people to take a certain amount of breaths — between one and five breaths. They will do this at logical pauses in their sets. If they need to do a set of ten, they’ll stop at 5. If they are doing a set of 15, they’ll stop at 8. If the weight is simply too heavy to be performed, then we know I didn’t program the workout because if the weight is too heavy it’s not a conditioning workout. There are guidelines in FIT for that too.

Whether a coach or trainee, quality technique in the actual conditioning workout is the difference between a spaz session where everyone gets sweaty and an effective, muscle developing conditioning session that will improve performance in the future.

Summary

Conditioning is both loved and hated in the training community. The truth is that it’s a quality addition to most programs, but only if it’s done right. To do it right, it needs to be programmed and executed intelligently. If the time is taken in order to actually do it, then we should optimize our effort with the best results possible. Results start with good programming and end with quality execution.

Addressing Spinal Hyper Mobility

Posted on December 10, 2012 by Justin

Usually Monday’s are about a female training topic. Today’s applies to both men and women with hypermobility, particularly with spinal position. You women will have to let me know what you want to hear about, because a year of female topics has left me out of ideas.

We spend so much time thinking about how to improve mobility and flexibility with tight, inflexible lifters that it’s easy to forget hypermobile trainees. While there are a few hypermobile guys, it mostly applies to women. The primary area or hypermobile concern is in the spine via over extension.

The above MobilityWOD video shows Kelly Starrett working with Jenny LaBaw, a CrossFit Games competitor. Jenny has a bad habit of over extending her spine during lifting (particularly during squatting and pulling movements). This not only leads to undue stress on the spine, but it also facilitates poor shoulder and neck positioning. The over extension can be addressed by cuing trunk stability — something that makes the person clamp down their lower abs — yet it the trunk would still round under heavy loads and only cuing the abdomen would leave out necessary hip musculature that can fix the problem.

In the video, Kelly states that Jenny is “hanging off of her hamstrings”. In other words, her hip is flexed (meaning the distance between the front of her trunk and her thigh has decreased) while standing, and her hamstrings are anchoring her trunk from falling over. The problem, as Kelly says, is that she has not effectively engaged the rest of her hip musculature — namely the gluteals and the rest of the external rotators. By activating this musculature, it more evenly distributes the force across those muscles to allow their involvement in the movement or to stabilize it. This concept is important in lifting because it takes a movement from “moving the bar from point A to B” to something that properly engages and works all of the musculature to produce more force safely. It’s more efficient, safer, and garners better performance (by either allowing more reps with light weight or applying more force with heavy weights).

Kelly cues Jenny to produce torque on her hip by actively pushing her knees out. However, instead of thinking about this as just moving the knees out, think about the knees moving out because the femur (thigh bone) rotates laterally (towards the outside). This produces the “torque at the hip” that Kelly frequently alludes to, but it helps contract and engage all of the musculature in pulling or squatting motions. I’ve also done several posts and videos to help explain this concept (“Hip Torque”, Toe Angle, and Squatting; Should I Point My Toes Forward?; and Public Service Announcement: Toe Angle) , and the same “torque to engage musculature” applies to pressing (The Lats While Benching and 3 Press Fixes).

Lastly, notice how Kelly coaches Jenny through a couple of movement drills that work on engaging this musculature through hip flexion in an abbreviated RDL and squat. He greases her through that beginning range of motion — right when the hip starts to flex and the spine accumulates load. These “drills” don’t need to be a primary focus, but a trainee could consider them a primer before warming up the large scale movement. They could also be implemented in assistance exercises; the RDL is an effective exercise for most athletes and it is only improved by emphasizing tension at the hips.

Whether you’re a coach or a trainee, you now know that when spinal over extension occurs, it can be eradicated by providing tension and torque in the rest of the hip area. And if you’re into Jenny in the video above, you’ll probably like this video too:

3 Press Fixes

Posted on September 26, 2012 by Justin

Whenever I teach and coach the press at seminars, the same faults show up.

1. Grip width
2. Wrist position
3. Elbow/shoulder position

It’s a little difficult to discuss this without a visual aid, so I made an explanation video below after a press workout. Starting Strength does a good job explaining grip width, but for some reason people usually use too wide of a grip. I first wrote about proper wrist position on the SS forums in 2009, and it still is a common fault. Basically the bar needs to be over the heel of the palm instead of back in the hand or fingers. Lastly, over the last couple of years I’ve put more of an emphasis on maintaining proper external rotation during the press as it will distribute the force application through the full muscle bellies of the triceps and anterior deltoid. If these three flaws are present, then it will inhibit press progress. If you are doing these three things wrong, then it will behoove you to accumulate several weeks of work with lighter loads to develop and train the musculature through proper mechanics and range of motion.

Other pressing related sources:

Better Push-Ups video, external rotations role in push-ups and benching
The Lats While Benching article, discussing the anatomy of external rotation during benching
Internal Rotation Post, showing some MWOD fixes for internal rotation
Pressing a Dead Horse post, talking about some programming, but general methods of improving the press.

Learning About Strength and Conditioning

Posted on August 29, 2012 by Justin

I’ve been asked several times, “What books do you recommend for coaching and lifting?” A coach has a duty to continuously learn and improve. In all likelihood, that means a coach will amend or modify recommendations over time. I know that I can look back two, four, or six years and wish I could go back and re-program trainees differently. Clint Darden does an excellent job explaining this concept in this video.

To maximize your learning and growth, engaging with numerous coaches is key. Don’t hesitate to meet and converse with as many coaches as possible, including those who may not be considered as skilled as you. Even from them, you can gather valuable ideas and methods. Additionally, seek out coaches who excel and have achieved more significant success. While you don’t need to blindly accept everything they say, there’s always something to learn, even if their approaches differ from your own. Embracing a diverse range of perspectives can be as beneficial as using a hospital learning management system to enhance your knowledge and skills in the field.

Unfortunately it’s not possible to badger various people with questions. They don’t have that kind of availability and their time is valuable. The next best way to learn and get better is to read and study. This isn’t confined to training related resources; I’ve pulled coaching lessons out of communications, leadership, and history books. Read as much as you can from as many training methodologies as you can. If possible, read different sources about the same topic.

Keep an open mind about everything and be wary to fully commit to one person’s ideals. Unfortunately for me, that applies to me as well. My “style” or “methodology” is to adapt to what the individual needs. I could use a “CrossFitty approach” that has a lot of conditioning, a standard strength linear progression approach, an Olympic weightlifting focused approach, or a combination of all of them. Despite the fact that I don’t pump one method or program over another for the majority of situations and don’t subscribe exclusively to a single methodology, I am still not the gospel. I try to have a level view of everything and pick and choose based on what a person or group wants or needs, but you should still look to others for knowledge. Most of you do anyway, but I hope it helps everyone become a student of ‘strength and conditioning’ as a whole instead one coach’s disciple.

That being said, the best way to solidify a foundation in strength and conditioning knowledge is by starting with anatomy and physiology. The continuum of knowledge would look like this:

– Anatomy
– Physiology
– Biomechanics
– Classic Strength Training
– Endurance Training
– Mobility Training
– Sport/Exercise Psychology
– Advanced Classic Strength Training
– Advanced Endurance Training (specifically with a high intensity focus)
– Advanced Mobility Training (prehab/rehab, corrective maintenance, soft tissue work, etc.)
– Modern Advanced Strength Training

This starts with the fundamental properties of the body and gradually increases the knowledge base. It also prevents an unnecessary focus on the more advanced stuff before the basics are understood. For example, a trainee should understand how a beginner strength training protocol works — on the programmatic and phsyiological level — before worrying about comprehending the Westside Method. Furthermore, it would be beneficial to read and understand the Conjugate Method from Russian translations too. If a trainee, lifter, or coach doesn’t understand the concept of stress, recovery, and adaptation within the context of physiology, then he has no model to base programming on.

As a side note, I would love to teach classes on each one of these topics. Nerd boners galore.

The core of strength and conditioning lies with anatomy. The way to start learning anatomy is to hold a bone in your hand, feel it, and start learning its landmarks. Bones are always taught first, because if you know the attachment sites of the muscles, then the concept of how muscles work makes learning about muscles easier. It’s daunting at first, though. I can pick up an ulna and orient it to how it would fit into a forearm, but when I first touched an ulna I didn’t even know what it is. And it’s even harder if you’re not in a university class, because you won’t have a model to hold.

That’s why it’s important for you to use very good anatomy books to assist your coaching or training ability. Here are three anatomy books that I deem mandatory:

1. Trail Guide to the Body, 3rd Ed. (or 4th) by Andrew Biel

I carry this book everywhere. It’s with me at every seminar, and I even had it at the USAPL Raw National meet. There is no other book that has as clear, distinct, and well drawn pictures of musculoskeletal anatomy. Some people say Netter’s or Gray’s work is the best, but they pale in comparison to this book.

It’s made for physical and massage therapists, so the reader is taught how to palpate every structure in the book. This is immensely important because you can learn where these structures lie underneath your skin. It helps in diagnosing injury, learning how to rehab a muscle, seeing the action of muscles, and even what muscles are included in a given movement. Combine this with some basic understanding of musculoskeletal biomechanics, and you can analyze movement.

There’s really no excuse not to have this book. The 3rd Edition is available online for as low as $15 (the newer 4th Edition is a standard textbook price).

2. Anatomy Without A Scalpel, by Lon Kilgore

Yes, Dr. Kilgore is a friend. Yes, this book is partially full of pictures of me (this picture is the best). No, these two facts do not have any bearing on my recommendation. Kilgore isn’t a pretender. He has augmented the careers of countless people and consistently works towards a life-long goal of improving knowledge in the world of fitness. This book is the culmination of years of thought and teaching lessons that Kilgore synthesized for the purpose of teaching fitness professionals applied anatomy.

I am actually re-reading this book right for my daily “anatomy study” block; it’s a refresher, reminds me of forgotten lessons, and even is teaching me some new ones. The best part about the book is that Kilgore always brings the lesson into an applied format and avoids the conventional fitness trash that we usually see. Squatting, pressing, benching, and deadlifting are the examples instead of isolation movements and bosu balls. This is functional anatomy the way it should have always been. If I were a professor, this would be one of my text books (along with The Trail Guide to the Body).

3. The Trigger Point Therapy Workbook, 2nd Edition by Clair and Amber Davies

This book has direct and indirect utility. Directly, it teaches you about muscular anatomy and how tightness in muscles or muscle systems can revert pain at another location. This can help you learn how muscle is integrated throughout the body instead of thinking about them working in isolation. Indirectly it is providing more repetition with (primarily) muscular anatomy. This will only help the S&C student learn about the body, but it will also teach them how to work on soft tissue.

Just keep in mind that the authors are obsessed with the “trigger point concept” that muscles have triggers that make them feel better. Instead, think in terms of tension. If there is a lot of tension on the quadriceps (due to their shortening from prolonged sitting, for example), then that would provide tension at the hip and cause pain in the hip or lower back. By using basic massage techniques, it’s possible to alleviate that tension and either reduce the pain immediately or over time. If we combine these soft tissue techniques with positional stretching and joint distraction, we can reduce a lot of pain, prevent injury, and improve mechanics in training.

This book will help with the basic anatomy stuff, but it provides very good information on what actions injure particular muscles and how to treat them.

More About Strength and Conditioning

In future posts I’ll point out books that can help coaches or curious trainees improve their knowledge. In the mean time, get to reading and studying

This is why we do it

Posted on June 18, 2012 by Justin

Mondays are dedicated to females and training. We have a lot to cover this week, including the GoRuck Challenge and IPF Raw Worlds, but the ladies look forward to this day’s dedication.

I first met Ben at the 105kg weigh-in at 2010 USAW Senior Nationals. We got along immediately, joked around, and his coach at the time, Paul Doherty, helped handle me at the meet. Ben and I stayed in touch, he let AC and I stay at his house when I did a local seminar, I encouraged him to start his awesome training log, and I still intend on helping him finish a really cool children’s story he wrote. Throughout all this, Ben has continued weightlifting and got into coaching. His stable of lifters has grown, and it’s been really cool to see the coach and lifters excel.

He recently handled 5 lifters at the Midtown Classic weightlifting meet at Midtown Strength and Conditioning and wrote a really good post on it. I know how it is to handle five people in a meet, and I know how it is to see them have success and failures. I also know how it is to be physically and emotionally drained at the end of the meet because of funneling all of my energy into those lifters. To have that moment when someone you train with, someone you care about, someone whose success means more than your own…to have them finally hit that lift, that mark, that goal that they’ve been working towards…it’s an indescribable feeling. I watched this video of CC, Ben’s friend, training partner, and lifter, hit this ballsy 98kg clean and jerk (below); it’s an amazing effort. But the part when she makes her way to Ben and gives him a hug…it honestly made me well with tears.

I know that feel, bro. Good work CC and Ben. Here’s to more of the same.