Press Reset Today

I once worked for someone who savored Daylight Savings Time in the spring when he could move his clocks forward an hour and be given a “free” hour. I’m not sure why, but the meaning he got from that one extra hour has always stuck with me. I think we all enjoy getting that extra hour added to our day, but c’mon, this is the thing you look forward to every year?

Well, apparently, this was an extremely important day for him. He explained to me that it made him feel like he was able to operate within his day more well rested and with lots of time to spare. In just that one hour he felt he was able to reset (and reorganize) his life.

Today is Labor Day and most of us have the great fortune of having a day off from work. It’s traditional to have a barbeque and visit the pool one last time. Of course, while we’re all anticipating the shift from summer to fall and quickly into winter, it’s worthwhile to reflect on the status of your work and non-work lives. 

The origin of Labor Day stems from the need to help workers get more time off from their jobs. When this concept was introduced, it was commonplace for factory workers to put in 70 hours a week. 

Like many areas of life, I find I must diligently continue to prune ineffective uses of my time to help me maintain a reasonable balance between my work life and my home life and to ensure I’m still on track for my immediate and long-term goals.

Days like today are perfect for taking a stepback, doing some introspective thinking, and pressing the reset button on your life.

Here is an easy 3 step process that will help you maximize today for the benefit of your future:

1. Set/check goals: what are you working towards? 

2. Get organized: what systems need to be in place for you to be successful? Or rather, to make success more automatic? Automatic success sounds good doesn’t it? Well, get organized.

3. Execute: once you have your systems defined, it just becomes a matter of execution.

I’ll give you a couple examples of some simple processes I put in place over the past year that help automatically keep me working towards my long-term goals:

Example #1: More Time with My Family

Step 1 - Set the Goal: Not coaching during hours when my children are not in school. So, this means evenings and weekends. 

Step 2 - Get Organized: Make sure the SAPT coaches are fully trained and ready to run the show for sessions.

Step 3 - Execute: If the first two steps are done correctly, step 3 becomes a piece of cake. In this case, it’s been almost a year since moving to this system and it has had an enormously positive impact on my home life. Plus, the coaches continue to get the experience they need as they develop.

Example #2: Financial Diversification

Step 1 - Set the Goal: Amplify my savings plan and future returns.

Step 2 - Get Organized: Set up my investment account for automatic purchases each month.

Step 3 - Execute: This is about as automatic as it gets.

I’m sure you’re not here for my basic thoughts on how I am managing my home and financial life. So, what about making your health and fitness automatic? Well, it’s truly easier than you may think, but you need to press the reset button and really think about goals.

Improving your overall health

Step 1 - Set the Goal: what, specifically, do you want to measure? In my examples above I measure hours at home and returns on my investments. To be successful, you MUST measure something specific! 

Take a good, hard look at yourself and the direction you’re currently heading.

This can really be anything, but it must be meaningful to YOU.

Common measurables in the health category include: blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, body fat, and even something like servings of vegetables in a day. All of these will work, but only pick one (of define another that is important to you).

Step 2 - Get Organized: Overall health improvement almost always depends upon foundational habits. So, making sure you are feeding yourself nutritious meals at each meal, every day and ensuring you get at least 30-min of easy aerobic exercise daily (an evening walk will do the trick nicely).

How do you make those things happen? Meal prep on Sundays for the week leads to easy grab ‘n go for meals and setting an alarm for that evening walk are just a couple of ideas.

Step 3 - Execute: Time to put rubber to the road and follow your plan. Of course, if you feel you are lacking the proper knowledge or support to achieve your goal, hiring someone to guide and support you in this journey is always a very good idea.

Improving fitness or hitting a new strength record will require a different 3-steps, but in each case it is critically important that you choose meaningful goals that contribute to the things in your life that matter most.

One final note: plans often go astray. But continuing to take days like today to reassess and even reset will eventually, as haphazard as it may seem, get you further than if you had no goals and no plans.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

Thank you! SAPT

Building Armor: Strength is Corrective

This is an excerpt from the recordings I do regularly to capture and share my ideas around performance, nutrition, and strength. It sounds conversational because it is. Enjoy!

Recently I did a presentation for the team on some pretty massive changes to training that I have been thinking about for the past year. I felt like now we could truly start to condition for the sport, we’ve had 2 years of working on the fundamentals and the team was beginning to get a good understanding of the basics.

What I really had to communicate to the team before we started using some more advanced methods was to remind them that strength is always our foundation, that’s what’s going to protect their bodies from getting hurt.

So, when we start doing the more advanced conditioning and somebody gets hurt (during a game… not in the weight room), or I see something I don’t like, they will immediately get pulled off of conditioning and back to strength.

If someone gets hurt, the first thing that we need to get done is get stronger in the area that was injured, as soon as we possibly can once the doctor or trainer says they are ready. But that's not four weeks, that's not even two weeks of inactivity, it's a few days, and then we quickly transition into building strength.

The touchstone in sports and athletics is always strength. As a foundation, we always have to come back to building strength. Your back hurts, let's get stronger. Your shoulder hurts, let's get stronger. Your knees hurt, let's get stronger, and let’s get stronger through a full range of motion. That is how your body stays healthy and safe. Of course, this is under the understanding that more major issues have already been ruled out and we can identify a strength deficit.

I like to think of strength training as building armor for the body. This doesn’t equate to growing huge muscles, especially for females. I’ve been strength training for the last 20 years, and by no means do I have tons of muscle mass. Yes, you will build some muscle, but there is a limit to that. So again, for women reading, you can trust your body to get as strong as possible, and not get enormous.

Another reason we lift weights is because it has an incredible effect on your tendons and your ligaments, making them thicker and stronger. It's not just the muscular strength that can help us reduce injury. It’s the other effects as well, such as thicker ligaments and tendons as well as bone density. This isn’t something we should start thinking about in our 40s and 50s, lets build these dense bones and thicker ligaments now. Let your children start to build those as young athletes. 

Another method that I see a lot of people using is they'll condition their athletes very hard. They then typically only use corrective exercises, the ones that you typically see during physical therapy. They're very targeted exercises designed to strengthen a very specific part of the body.

In most cases, they're not large multiple joint exercises but again more specific single joint exercise. There’s nothing wrong with corrective exercises, but they are a supplement not a staple. It’d be like your only nutrition being a protein shake, definitely not a long term plan that covers all of your bases.

First we squat, we deadlift, we do glute bridges, and we do lunges. Then let's add in some targeted correctives, some lateral side steps, deadbugs, clams… things that are used to build a little bit of strength and bring up what's very weak, but only if it's part of the larger performance program.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

Thank you! SAPT

Add this to your warmup ASAP

Have you ever spent 10-minutes thoroughly warming up your entire system: mind, body, and even soul only to still feel deflated as you walk over to the barbell to start your workout?

You're not along. Often we get so wrapped up in increasing blood flow, mobilizing joints, and carrying out our injury prevention protocol, that one of the most important components of the warmup gets swept under the rug.

CNS Activation

I think we can all agree the central nervous system is truly the foundation of any training session - without its responsiveness not much is getting done. But does it have degrees of responsiveness? Degrees of readiness? Or is the nervous system always ready to fire at 100% efficiency and effectiveness? 

Exciting the Central Nervous System is a crucial final component to anyone's warm-up. It turns out, the CNS is NOT always ready to go and needs some "priming" of its own.

A bit of proper CNS activation is the final step to warming up that will allow the athlete to feel ready to go - reactive, fast, excited. 

How to:

Any gentle rotational work, builder sprints, light plyometrics will do the trick. The key is to do a couple of sets of 3-5 reps and allow the body to build from about 70% effort to 90% or so. It is key to adjust effort based on how the athlete is feeling on that particular day. If the athlete can't get through this part and "wake up" you should take note as it is a sign the body is not be ready to train that day... but that's another topic.

Upper Body Days - my favorite way to get ready for an upper body training day is to finish my warm-up with a light medicine ball circuit. I tailor effort to how I'm feeling. Sometimes the throws stay fairly light and fast, while other times I end up close to 100% effort by the last couple of reps.

Lower Body Days - Box jumps are my favorite to prime for a deadlift or squat day. You can minimize the impact from landing quite a bit and that helps this feel easier on the body while still doing its job to fire up the CNS. Another great option are very small hops/jumps: side-to-side, front-to-back, and single leg hops are all great options.

Give your CNS some love the next time you warmup and see if you feel your readiness to perform on the field, court, or gym changes.

Basic Power Development Drills for the Contact Sport Athlete

For sports that require explosive bursts of power against outside forces (like other athletes) you will want to look towards loaded plyometric movements to get the job done.

Most athletes and coaches think that the clean, snatch, and their variations are the only option for power development. Fortunately there are many alternative exercises that are both safe for athletes new to this type of training and extremely effective.

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Medicine Ball Keg Toss

Good for: Beginners

Virtually any athlete can safely use this movement. The primary goal is to make sure triple extension of the hips, knees, and ankles is achieved on each toss.

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Explosive Medicine Ball Push

Good for: Intermediate Skill Levels

For athletes that need explosive starts, this is a great option. You will need a medicine ball and something soft to fall onto.

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Dumbbell Box Jump

Good for: Intermediate Skill Levels

Before adding weight to the box jump, the athlete should be able to demonstrate correct mechanics of an unloaded box jump. There is no need to select a high box for these to be effective. Instead focus on the box appropriate for the athlete to use about 30-40% of their body weight.

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Hex Bar Jump

Good for: Advanced Skill Levls

Prior to using this movement, an athlete should be proficient in the barbell or hex bar deadlift. They must also be comfortable with hip hinge mechanics and be able to maintain a neutral spine. With this movement, start with about 50% of body weight and progress up as long as mechanics are maintained along with speed.

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Try adding in one of these movements on your next leg day after the warm-up and before the main lift of the day. Keep everything crisp and fast to rack up the power production benefits.

Coach Sarah Walls, founder of SAPT, is a professional performance development coach and personal trainer with over 15-years experience. SAPT offers athletic training programs for individuals of any age and background. Please email Sarah if you would like to learn more!

The Science Behind Falling Out of Shape

I've been asked repeatedly how long it takes to lose the performance gains athletes work so hard to achieve in the off-season. It's never a question I've felt comfortable answering, as I really have no idea.

But, finally, I came across this wonderful article from Outsideonline.com that lays it out. The bottom line - you can never, ever stop training. It's just not worth it for so many reasons.

Enjoy:

The Science Behind Falling Out of Shape

Or why you should never, ever stop training

By: Erin Beresini Mar 29, 2016

When you’re in peak physical condition, you feel like a superhero—like you could go forever, outpace a cheetah, or lift a VW Bug. But your superpowers are ephemeral; the second you stop training, they start to fade. We asked sports physiologist Iñigo Mujika to give us a quick rundown of what’s behind the glory and the fall. The takeaway: you should never, ever stop training for more than two weeks if you can help it. Here’s why.

When you start working out, wonderful things begin to happen. Take strength, for instance. In just a few sessions, you’ll get stronger—but not because your muscles are any bigger yet. “The initial gains take place because of neuromuscular adaptations,” Mujika says. In short, your brain gets better at communicating with your muscles, learning to use them more efficiently. It’ll also start to recruit more of them, so power ultimately increases, too.  

Just over a week of endurance training—often described as at least 30 minutes per day, five days a week of upping your heart rate to at least 60 percent of its max— increases your plasma and blood volume. That’s part of the reason why, a few weeks into a training program, your heart rate won’t spike like it did when you first started running, or whatever your sport may be. And you’ll get better at dissipating heat through sweat. 

“You need to increase your plasma volume to start to feel better,” Mujika says. “As time goes by, you’re going to increase your stroke volume, capillarization, mitochondrial volume, thermoregulatory capacity. That’s when you can say you’re trained.” 

Keep up your training, and you'll gain muscle mass and strength. You’ll also fine-tune your cardiovascular system; after six months of endurance training, it’s possible to increase blood volume by as much as 27 percent. 

All of those adaptations lead to peak performance. But the catch: there’s no peak preserving pill, and all of those benefits quickly erode when you stop moving. “When you stop training, almost immediately—we think three days—you lose plasma volume and blood volume in general,” Mujika says. “Your heart rate for a given intensity increases.” 

After about 10 days to two weeks, your VO2 max, or the max amount of oxygen you can take in during exercise, will start to drop at a steady rate of about 0.5 percent a day. Two weeks off, and your brain’s ability to recruit muscle will drop, by about one to five percent. That’s not much. But it can cut power in sports that require fine-tuned movements for optimal performance, like swimming.  

After three to four weeks off, your muscles will start to atrophy. Your body will increase its reliance on carbs rather than fat for fuel while simultaneously upping its capacity to store fat. In other words, your ability to burn fat slacks off at the same time it becomes easier to get fat. 

That’s how metabolic syndrome gets started, Mujika says. Physical inactivity leads to becoming overweight, then insulin resistant, then diabetic. “The symptoms experienced by athletes when they stop training are the same,” Mujika says, “but on a very small scale.”

That doesn’t mean you can’t ever take a break. Breaks are necessary to avoid overtraining and burnout. Mujika tells his athletes, including three-time Olympic triathlete Ainhoa Murúa, to take two weeks completely off from training at the end of their seasons, then spend two weeks doing physical activity that’s not sport specific. For Murúa, that might be hiking, SUP, surfing, playing tennis—anything but swimming, biking, and running. “After two weeks of that we start training into more sport-specific exercise,” Mujika says.

Expect it to take twice as long to get back into shape as the time you’ve spent being inactive, Mujika says. With a few exceptions: “heat training can accelerate plasma volume expansion,” he says. And if you’re starting from scratch, you might have an advantage over people who are. “There are some indications there’s some kind of muscle memory,” Mujika says. Just like people who’ve already ridden a bike will pick it up faster than those who haven’t, it’s possible “the more trained you’ve been before, the quicker you get back into form in terms of muscular strength and power.”

Training With A Chronic Illness

I had another awesome opportunity to write a guest post for Dean Somerset's blog. If you haven't yet read his stuff, you should do yourself a favor and start today. He is extremely intelligent and posts useful and so-that's-why-that-happens type stuff.

If you have a chronic illness or recovered from a long-term injury, I hear ya.

Most of fitness literature out there focuses on on training methods to get stronger, bigger, leaner, healthier, etc.,– which is exactly what you’d expect an industry called “fitness” to talk about.

There is, however, a small-ish (or perhaps not- so- small) portion of the population that has some form of chronic illness. Training for us is, well, different.

My aim with this post is to provide encouragement and practical strategies to anyone out there who is either battling a chronic illness, or may be dealing with a long-term healing process from a prior injury. Continue reading...