Prepare To Succeed

As obvious as this blog post title sounds, preparation is something that we all can continue to educate ourselves on.  Preparation is the key to succeeding, winning and finishing.

What I wanted to do here is share my first half marathon road race experience with you and give you some insight into what I learned.  The biggest mistake I see in my athletes is that they are doing the wrong practice, incorrect lifting, and just overall poor training.  Training specificity has it's place and time, when when you get that wrong, it can severely derail your progress toward goals.

Training Schedule

One of the biggest reasons for my successful completion of the race was a good training program and a solid timeline for when I needed to get it done. If you're a first time racer/runner, I would highly suggest looking at Hal Higdon's Website to attain a free and useful training plan.  In training for this half, I was able to spend twelve weeks building up my endurance, training my slow twitch muscle fibers, and learning my body's pacing.  This all led to a solid run on race day, an 8:15 pace for 13.1 miles, not bad for a power athlete, which brings me to point number two, training for your sport.

Train For Your Sport

For all my life I have been more of a power athlete, and still really only compete in sports that allow me to use my agility, power and leverage, not my long distance endurance.   Even as a child I excelled at baseball, flag football, and goal keeping in soccer (all fast twitch muscle recruitment).  As a basketball player I had skills but didn't have the long term endurance you need to play a hard 7 minutes at a time.  Right now for example I play competitive golf and for the better part of my life before that I played soccer, but more specifically I was  goalkeeper, so power and bursts of quick energy is how my body is trained.  Well how does that relate to this?  It is key to understand your body's composition because it will allow you to see where your weaknesses are in your sport or a sport you want to play, in this case for me, it was long distance running.

The twelve weeks of training were spent primarily on long distance running, increasing distances each week and mixing up the type of runs in order to help my body and muscles learn about the impact on running.  Needless to say my body was able to adjust, I became a decent long distance runner (all things considered) and I can owe it all to proper training.

HUGE MISTAKE MADE: There is one crucial error I made though, and that was leaving any kind of power, rotational, stability, and strength training basically on the shelf.  Because of this, I lost a lot of what I had built up in my golf game.  I lost a lot of power in my longer clubs, some swing speed, and the ability to go after the ball like I had used to.  I felt as if I lost some control of my body because of the way my muscles were being trained and not compensated to fit 'my sport'.  Luckily I'm back in that training mode and my body is responding fast, so I'm just praying I can get back to hitting my 295yard bomb when I need it in my upcoming tournaments.

The bottom line here, after a bit of a ramble session, is that you need to train your muscles for what you will be expecting out of them.  Train for your goals.  If your goal is to run a half marathon or a whole one, and you are spending 4 days a week on a recumbent bike or treadmill for 30-40 minutes of "cardio", you are in for a rude wake up call come race day. On the opposite, if you're a power athlete and you're known for your ability to change directions and speeds fast, and your training is running long distance to 'get in shape', you will soon see the repercussions of the way you're training your body and will start to see major declines in your performance.

Week Of Race, Day Before and Day Of, Eating Habits

I know all you ladies out there reading this are already thinking no way, if he says eat carbs I'm not doing it, just a big fat storer.  Well ladies, then good luck pushing your body to where you want it to be without fuel.  Here's a good example, we all know food is fuel for you body, after all, calories=heat=energy.  Pretty simple concept.  If you continue to starve your body of the fuel it needs, or put the wrong fuel in it, it will break down fast.  When a car starts running low on gas, the infamous gas light comes on.  When your body is running on low, our gas light comes on, it's called hunger.  Fuel your body so it can perform.  I CAN'T STRESS HOW IMPORTANT FOOD IS TO YOUR SYSTEM.  During the week of training try to start taking in some extra calories, preferably more in the form of carbs the days leading up to the race.  The night before consume a huge helping of good whole wheat carbs from pastas, bread, and fruit. Your hydration is key here too.  Drinking a nalgene the half hour before you work out will not hydrate you, but drinking plenty of water through out each and every day, starting and ending your day with a glass or two, will lead to proper hydration.  So after you're carbed up and have gotten some good sleep, have your first pre race meal about 3-4 hours before race time.  I did a bagel with peanut butter along with a banana.  Then about 60-90 minutes before your race I learned that it is beneficial to have another small meal (so you're still with me here, big meal early, then small meal leading up) like a cliff bar or power bar (both are great for lasting energy for workouts and races).  Once you finish your activity, refuel ASAP.  A good mix of protein, carbs, and fats will do perfectly.  Your body is starving for replenishment at this point, the worst thing you could do is let it run on empty.  This will lead to a proper recovery, which is just as important for your body as the preparation is.  Let your body build itself back up before you break it down again.  I know it seems like you're taking steps backwards but really you are allowing your body to take bigger steps forward.

If you include all of these little helpful tips for your training, I have no doubt you will be successful with whatever your sport may be.  Please remember, getting into shape is a sport, it's called fitness.  Train for your sport, train hard, train strong, and train smart.

Train Like A MAN!

Found this article a couple of weeks back and loved every bit of it. Felt the need to share, Enjoy!

-Brandon

Train Like a Man!

by Martin Rooney – 3/24/2011

The Fall of T

America is becoming the poster-child for low testosterone levels. Men today are becoming increasingly more feminine, fussing about their eyebrows, spray tanning, and booking mani-pedis.

There are many potential explanations for the drop in testosterone and subsequent increase in American Idol voters. Skeptics will argue that it's simply our aging population that's to blame for our country's collective low T. Yet that fails to explain the feminine leanings of the younger guys. I believe their shockingly low T scores are due in large part to poor lifestyle choices.

Obesity, stress, prescription meds, staying up late, and poor food choices all affect T to varying degrees, but in a weird way, a low T lifestyle is almost glorified.

The 25 year-old guy with the muffin-top waistline due to the stressful job that keeps him up late is essentially what college prepares most "successful" people for. Follow that lifestyle too long and voila– self-induced castration, a gut you can't seem to lose, and an iPod chocked full of Kenny G.

But here's the kicker: castration has infiltrated and infected the one spot you might think immune to low T levels – the gym.

Castration in the Gym?

What do squats, deadlifts, bench presses, overhead presses, and dips have in common? Answer: They're all compound exercises that can be loaded to produce extreme amounts of testosterone-building tension.

Sadly, a lot of people answer: "They're all dangerous exercises that yogagirl127 posted on Facebook can hurt you and should be outlawed!"

Dangerous? To whom exactly? And what isn't "dangerous?"

Look, I'm not only a trainer, I'm also a physical therapist, and I respect the importance of proper biomechanics and injury prevention, but those basic exercises are not inherently dangerous.

Everything you do in the gym has some potential for injury, as do most things in life. Reading is bad for the eyes, door handles are caked with germs, and pesticides are sprayed on virtually every stitch of produce at the grocery store.

Are you going to stop reading, opening doors, and eating vegetables? Before we outlaw the overhead press, let's crack down on texting-while-driving and we'll really start making the world a safer place.

Safety in my training is paramount, but so is common sense – which isn't always common in the fitness industry. Over the last 20 years, I've watched bizarre trends in fitness information dictate the actual training that occurs inside the gym.

After the rise of the internet, articles written by any "expert" that could type had you in a full sweat-suit to stay warm during your dynamic warm-up and pre-habbed on the foam roller before you rehabbed with your corrective exercises.

In short, as information became more plentiful, more had to be written about the minutia. Once the minutia was deeply covered, the only thing left was to write about what everyone was doing wrong and the risks involved with just about every exercise.

Fact is, most stuff I see talked about today is about what we supposedly can't or shouldn't do. My goal is to remind us all that life is often better when you take the "t" off your can't.

This information overload leads us first on a quest for something safer, then moves us to something either more time consuming or boring, then moves us to skipping that new thing all together due to a lack of time or interest. Ultimately, we're unable to go back to the old exercise that worked and kept us stimulated because we're now convinced that it's bad for us!

Knowledge is power? No, knowledge is only power when we put action behind it. Today, I believe knowledge is often paralyzing.

Here are a few examples of "castrating" training trends and exercises.

Kettlebells vs. Dumbbells

Kettlebells are a great tool, but since the explosion of the kettlebell cults, dumbbells have taken a backseat in training. Funny, but no one ever takes a picture with a dumbbell, yet I see more shots every day of people carrying a kettlebell like it was his or her first-born.

I have nothing against kettlebells and use them in my training. I just wonder if the KB explosion would've ever happened without the internet? Kettlebell shirts, kettlebell necklaces...

Poor dumbbells, I'll miss them.

Bands vs. Chin-ups

Chin-ups are one of the all-time great upper-body exercises (and I include the abdominal area in that too). But they're difficult to perform, which turns people off.

So some genius discovered that a band originally designed for stretching also works great to make chin-ups easier by removing all the testosterone-producing tension. Now you have rooms full of guys doing sissy chin-ups thinking they're Olympic gymnasts.

Dump the bands. Do your chin-ups. And hurry up, because even though they haven't been outlawed yet, I'm sure someone is already working on an article called "Why Chin-Ups Are Bad For You."

Glute-Ham Raise vs. 45-Degree Back Extension

Back extensions are a great exercise, especially when you hold as many plates as you can across your chest.

Too bad some "efficiency expert" discovered that by just having a glute-ham raise bench you didn't need a back extension or a lying leg curl machine because the GHR effectively trains both knee flexion and hip extension. So now, both the back extension and leg curl are falling into exercise obscurity.

Turns out the joke is on them. Glute-ham raises are difficult and about as comfortable as a muay thai kick to the quads, so no one does them. So now, no one does anything, except of course occasionally working the triceps while wiping the dust off the GHR.

Prowler Pushes vs. Suicides

I love the Prowler, but this idea that you need a special piece of equipment for conditioning is bunk.

Unfortunately, we've learned to value exercises either by their novelty or their ability to produce soreness or fatigue. I'm not sure there are many sports or activities that you need to prepare for by either passing out or puking in training, but hey, while we're lowering our testosterone levels, might as well find a way to crush our nervous and immune systems, too.

Want a really new exercise that no one is doing? It's called sprinting.

The biomechanics of sprinting is essential to our basic mobility, but it's also very much a "use it or lose it" skill. If you're 27 and haven't sprinted since high school, you need to get out to the field and start doing it. It's slowly leaving you, every day – and that means you're only racing faster toward the big dirt nap. (Maybe they should call being fat and sedentary a "suicide" instead?)

Notice I said "sprinting" not treadmill running, elliptical training, or texting your friend while you ride the recumbent bike. Each one of those pieces has castrated the thing we all need to make progress:impact. Oddly, biomechanists spend a whole lot of time trying to remove impact from our lives.

Lateral Raises vs. Shoulder Pressing

What's more functional than pushing something heavy overhead? I'm all for the YMCA dance and whatever else we do with ten-pound dumbbells to activate our lower trap, but there's nothing scary about a proper overhead press. It's a fantastic way to challenge significant musculature and load the spine.

Yeah, these can bother you if you have poor mobility, strength, or movement issues, but what wouldn't bother you in that case?

Pushdowns vs. Dips

Dips ruin the shoulders, right? That's why I see countless athletes in my facility with fantastic physiques complaining about shoulder problems from performing dips up to one hundred times per week.

Oh wait, that's right... I don't. And by the way, some of these athletes are girls I call "gymnasties" that often out-chin and out-dip the guys.

Pushdowns are great, but strap a 100-pound dumbbell around your waist and see if you can replicate the tension at the cable station.

Planks vs. Spinal Flexion

In the last few years, bending forward at the waist has been under siege. The firefight is all over the internet, and although I've adopted many anti-rotation, anti-flexion, and anti-everything else exercises to stimulate the core, I admit I still throw in some spinal flexion. Somehow I've still produced pretty solid results.

I will agree that a poorly performed sit-up isn't great for your back or neck, but you know what the absolute worst thing is for your back and neck? Sitting slumped over your desk surfing the internet for the latest plank variation.

Sit-ups aren't the biggest problem – it's sit-ting. Let's figure out how to stop people from doing that before we figure out any more things we shouldn't do.

Step-ups and Split Squats vs. Squats and Deadlifts

Step-ups and split squats are great exercises, but for building muscle they aren't in the same league as squats and deadlifts. Tension wise, they don't even come close. But because they're less "scary" than the big lifts, they're making a single-legged run at it.

Here's the irony: because they're unilateral, they also take twice as long to do, so people find them boring. So after a few weeks, nobody does anything. And then they sit in their chair and tell you to watch your back if you dare to deadlift?

Active Warm-Up vs. Static Stretching

Static stretching has been beaten down so hard it's barely breathing. Dynamic flexibility during an active warm-up is a wonderful thing and something I personally use daily, but static stretching definitely has its place in training.

Just about everybody has dropped static stretching in favor of dynamic movement, but here's the thing: dynamic flexibility during a warm-up is time consuming and sometimes complex, so many trainees simply skip it.

Now people are doing no flexibility training at all, and the result is they no longer have the mobility to squat or deadlift properly. So instead of performing some simple static stretches before performing the dynamic movements, we have immobile guys confined to doing planks on an Airex pad in the squat rack.

Stretch out, then warm-up, and then pick up something heavy!

80/20. Not 20/80.

Getting tension back into your workouts doesn't mean you have to kill yourself or get injured. It means scaling things back so that most of the time you spend in the gym is doing stuff that's actually productive.

The 80-20 rule never fails. If 80% of your time is spent straining under good old-fashioned barbells and dumbbells, with 20% spent doing pre-hab, rehab, and "potentiation work" then you'll probably look more fit and have a handful of calluses.

If that split is more like 20-80, then you likely have a problem that includes veggie hotdogs, waxing, and a dream to someday fit into those damn skinny jeans.

PUBLISHED 03-24-11 09:53

OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS SERIES

• Train Like A Man, Part II 04/14/2011

OTHER ARTICLES BY AUTHOR

• Train Like A Man, Part II 04/14/2011
• Train Like a Man! 03/24/2011

More...

Martin Rooney has been a man for as long as he can remember. Over the last 20 years of training, he has worn the many hats in order to get his Man Card authorized. He has been a Division I scholarship athlete, physical therapist, US Bobsled Team member, trainer of first-rounders in every major sport, sparring partner of UFC champions, and hit a 1330 raw powerlifting total this year. For more info, visit his website at www.trainingforwarriors.com.

The WEEKEND WARRIOR workout

We all know how tough it is to get in efficient work outs in on the weekend, mostly because we have the tendency to be lazy and not want to plan.  This ends up with us showing up at the gym completely unprepared and leaving within a half hour of getting there, and that is probably because your baby butt hopped on a treadmill or elliptical and did 25 minutes of 'cardio'. Sorry if that sounded mean....No I'm not. Here is a great set of work outs you can do on the weekend that aren't super time consuming and will allow for maximum fat burn so you can enjoy your weekends the way you want, not counting every calorie and regretting not heading out to the gym that morning. So, lets do this.

*rest time in between exercises should be no more than 20 seconds. Rest time in between sets should be 1-2 minutes.

Friday 

Dynamic Warm up 10 min

 

Set 1 (x3)

-Bench step ups with rotation 12/leg

-Decline push ups feet on bench or ball x15 or max

-Box jumps, 30 seconds

Set 2 (x2)

-Hip progression 15 out, 10 out/up, 10out/rotatate per side

-Mountain climbers 30 seconds

-Bike crunches to max (on Bosu)

-Ball back extensions

-Y’s and T’s on the ball (prone)

Set 3 (x3)

-Goblet squats 25lb dumbbell x20 (on Bosu)

-Incline bench press x12

-Medicine Ball biased push ups to max

 

Set 4 (x2)

-Ball roll ins (knees to chest)

-Ball bridges x 15

-Side hip ups x15/side (on Bosu)

-Alternating dumbbell bench on ball x30 (15/side)

Finisher

-Box jumps: 10 seconds on, rest 10 seconds, 15 seconds on, rest 15, 20 seconds on, rest 20, 30seconds on, rest 30, 40 on rest 40 then work your way back down 30 seconds rest 30 etc.

Saturday 

Dynamic warm up

Set 1 (x3)

-Body weight rows x15 (preferably on TRX)

-Back foot high lunges x12/leg

-Bicep curls single leg x 15

Set 2 (x2)

-Lat pull downs x15 (kneeling in a lunge, feet on line for unstable base)

-Lunge switch jumps x30 (15/side)

-Bent over dumbbell rows x15/arm

Set 3 (x2)

-Ball bridge w/ hamstring curl x12

-Bike crunches to max

-Ball roll ins to max

-Mountain climbers to max

Set 4 (x2)

-Bent over reverse dumbbell flys x12

-Bicep curls with straight bar hands over (not under like normal curl) still curling up like a normal one though

-Seated rows x 15

Finisher: 300 yd shuttle (12 runs back and forth at 25yds) do it 4 times, 2 minutes rest in between. 

Sunday

45-60 Minutes steady state and Monday RESTTTTTT! (A well deserved rest I might add.)

ENJOY!

Pray.Learn.Grow.Go. 

Power Burbees and Starfish?

The golf swing is one of the most technical and variable athletic skill I know of.  Because there are so many moving parts, coupled with power and balance, it is important to work all aspects of the swing from joint integrity to power movements. Here are two of the opposite ends of the spectrum, using one easy piece of equipment, called an FMT (Functional Movement Tubing). Apply these into your daily work outs and watch as your body soars!

The "Starfish" via TPI

Resisted Burbees

Two Great Golf Performance Drills

Hey guys, so happy to be back and will be updating this blog MUCH MORE REGULARLY now that I will have the time.

Here are two drills that I did with one of our athletes Kevin. (I pre apologize for the wind, you can still get the gist and the wind is only bad in the middle of the video, sorry, can't control the weather!)

In his golf swing he has a huge tendency to hang back on the ball at impact so here is a great way to retrain your body and muscles to 'cover' and not hang back, leading to good contact and less pushes/slices.

(What hanging back and proper covering looks like)

He also has very limited shoulder flexibility and hip mobility, so this deep overhead squat progression will be great for working on separation of the lower and upper body, flexibility, stabilization, and core strength.

Trigger Point At The NFL Combine!

Check out the Trigger Point Therapy CEO Cassidy Phillips on ESPN radio at the NFL Combine talking about the value of the TP Therapy products.  Great use of 9 minutes and a great encouragement to go out and get one of their kits!  TPTherapy.com   ENJOY!

For The Golfers!

Here is a video I was asked to do for John Hafera, PGA Pro out of Germantown, MD.

It's just a 2 min synopsis of the do's and don'ts of a proper warm up before hitting balls at the range, but can be used for any kind of physical activity.  ESPECIALLY in cold weather! Enjoy!  Does this mean I 'made the big time'? haha not yet I guess, but working my way on up!