4-Weeks to a Stronger Total Body

That’s a short amount of time to make some big gains, I’ll admit. But for much of the population adding a grip strength specialization routine to their regular training program can result in significant gains on all of their lifts. Why is improving grip strength so effective? Basically, grip strength tends to be the “weak link” for recreational lifters and athletes alike and, thus, a lot of extra neural activity is wasted in the direction of controlling the grip musculature that can be more effectively directed towards the large muscle groups (think about the deadlift… what fatigues first? Your legs, your back, or your grip? The last thing you should notice fatiguing is your grip). So, spend a handful of weeks crushing your grip and you should quickly notice the following benefits:

1. For most men, another 3-5 reps squeezed out on pulling movements like body weight pull-ups and for most women, another 1-2 reps. 2. The perception of easier deadlifting and – gasp – even squatting! You heard it hear first, folks, a stronger grip will give you a bigger squat, too! 3. A slight bench press PR… it might show up in the form of a repetition PR or a max PR, I’m not sure. But you’ll get a PR, I promise. Want to test this one out? Set up a bench press with just the bar, for the first 5 repetitions lightly grasp the bar and notice how it feels. Then reset and this time squeeze the bar as if your life depends on it. What do you notice now? Something you already though was easy is now way easier and those nagging issues with shoulders and wrists often clear up like magic.

You’ll even get injury prevention benefits for the elbow and shoulder directly from increased and focused grip training. Plus, if you want to include the numerous injury prevention benefits that will come from increasing load and proficiency on the lifts I noted above, you only have to ask yourself… “How fast can I get some heavy fat bar holds going on?!?” At SAPT, grip training is a regular portion of our programs and can be found in forms both direct and indirect. Here are a few examples of some of our favorite direct grip exercises:

• Farmer’s Walk variations with a towel hold. • Kettlebell or plate pinch (squeeze as if you’re trying to ring water from the iron). • Sledge Leveraging. • Sledge Finger Walks (not for the faint of heart). • Barbell Holds – one of my personal favorites for the rowing team at Mason – just load up a barbell and hold with perfect posture for time.

Consider spicing up your routine and your fast tracking your strength gains by adding in some direct grip work – and for goodness sake, if you know what “straps” are, throw them away!

SAPT's Top 5 Exercises for New Moms

Happy Birthday Arabella!

I’ve always heard a lot about how hard it is for a new mom to find time to exercise. But, I’m now living it and I’m here to tell you it’s a bunch of hooey. Regardless of time, here are my top 5 best exercises that ALL new moms are already doing in some form or fashion. So why not make them an actual workout?… you’re doing them anyway!

My Top 5 Exercises for New Moms

1. Baby Goblet Squat (Ass to Grass) - I can’t even begin to guess the number of deep squats I’ve done over the last 12 months. This is a legit exercise that allows mom to work on ankle, hip, and thoracic mobility along with quad, hamstring, glute, CORE musculature, and upper back strengthening. Start with just a couple sets of 3-5 reps and work up 10, 15, or even more reps.
2. Stairs – This one’s easy and obvious. That sweet little baby wants to be held all the time and mom wants to finish losing those last few LB’s, so why not take advantage of the situation and do a little low impact cardio on your household’s stair case?
3. Baby Clean and Press – This one is fun for mom and baby and, as is common for all these exercises, occurs naturally. Hold the baby about mid-torso level and hoist her up overhead. This will work on a touch of posterior chain power development and get mom some much needed upper body strength and stability! Stick with just a handful of reps (3-6) for multiple sets.
4. Baby Gate Hip Mobility – If the Ass to Grass Baby Goblet Squats aren’t getting it done for the hip mobility, then inevitably mom will have the benefit of crossing over a baby gate about 3 zillion times a day. I started enjoying improved hip mobility around 7 months when Arabella began crawling and suffered two cracked toenails to prove my hip mobility could, in fact, use improvement. You can’t do to many of these, just try to keep good form (chest up, lift you knee, no hip drop) and enjoy the benefits!
5. Baby Carrier Household Chores – Talk about great for improving general physical preparedness (GPP)! Last summer Arabella and I spent many hours together with her strapped on my chest in the baby carrier while I did everything from dishes to laundry to vacuuming. You quickly learn if your core is strong or not. This one crushes the lower and upper back, in particular, but is excellent for rebuilding stabilization strength in mom’s midsection.

Here are a few more advanced exercises you can give a try if you’re feeling “froggy.” I should note that my baby is not old enough to reliably stay on my back for the plank or push-ups, maybe in a few more months!

1. 1-Arm Baby Cradle Carry + Full Laundry Basket Carry – An advanced technique for the busy mom. Grab baby in one arm and full laundry basket in the opposite arm. This exercise is very similar to some of the Mis-loaded bracing/farmer’s walk variations we do at SAPT. Great for improving core strength and stability!
2. Baby Plank – Use baby’s body weight to increase the difficulty of a standard prone plank.
3. Baby Pushups – Again, using baby’s body weight to increase the difficulty of a push-up. Although we haven’t tried these yet, I’m pretty sure she’ll be having a pretty good time sitting on my back while “the ride” takes her up and down!

I’ll admit when I got the idea for this post it was designed to be “tongue in cheek,” but as I got to thinking about all the ways having a baby challenges new moms physically, I realized that these are some pretty darn good exercises. Not only are they fun, but they are also very productive if you just focus on doing a few things correctly and accumulating a bit of volume.

So to sum up, today is Arabella’s first birthday and I find myself exceptionally happy. I’m completely in love with my daughter and have found that my husband and I truly work well together. I’ve managed to lose all my “baby weight” and even a few more pounds to boot. And the icing on the cake? I’m working less and earning more.

If you know any new moms who might find this post motivational or inspirational, please forward it to them and don’t forget we offer comprehensive distance coaching to help moms all over the country lose those last few baby LB’s!

7 Ways to Help Your Golf Swing

Recently, I was speaking with a colleague about the elusive "magic bullet" golfers are always trying to find. This behavior pattern is similar to the overweight person who refuses to buckle down and do actual work to lose the extra inches and pounds. They would rather spend money on ineffective supplements and As-Seen-on-TV merchandise that promises a quick fix to 5 years of poor eating and exercise habits. Somehow it never quite works out the way the box says it will. Golfers tend to have a similar disorder driven by products on the Golf Channel that point them towards virtually everything except the only proven method to improving golf specific performance: integrated weight lifting and flexibility training. There’s nothing new or sexy about the following notes, but if you are dedicated to seeing your accuracy and distance improve, then give these tips a try:

1. A thorough dynamic warm-up will dramatically improve static and dynamic flexibility. Spend about 15-25 minutes to get a sufficient warm-up prior to weight training. Standard dynamic movements for the SAPT golfer include: prisoner squats, over speed good mornings, knee hugs, Frankenstein kicks, walking lunge with twist, lying reach-backs, hip bridge, bent knee twist, active “t” stretch, plus many, many more.
2. Prehab everyday to keep the pain away. Prehabilitation exercises are special movements designed to help prevent injury in specific high-risk muscles or joints. Terminal knee extensions, rotator cuff movements, and grip strength/mobility movements are great places to start.
3. Golf, like most power sports, relies heavily on the strength of the posterior chain. Your posterior is comprised of all the muscles on your backside, so get these areas as strong as possible. You will see improvement in drive length and golf posture.
4. Instead of traditional supersets, take an integrated approach to flexibility training by coupling a strength exercise with a dynamic flexibility exercise. For example, couple a squat with a movement geared towards improving T-spine mobility (like lying reachbacks). This approach increases workout efficiency, allows for rest between sets, and places a greater priority on active flexibility training.
5. Stance is best trained through traditional strength movements: squat variations, good mornings, rows, hang clean, etc. Powerful hip rotation is driven by a strong posterior.
6. Backswing, downswing, and follow-through are best trained through a series of special exercises and flexibility movements. If you are a right-handed player, part of the goal here is to help achieve greater stance specific strength in left arm abduction and right arm adduction (if you swing left-handed the goal is left arm adduction and right arm abduction strength).
7. Be smart and train all aspects of muscular contraction: concentric, isometric, and eccentric. Examine all parts of the swing and stance to determine what types of strength are needed throughout. For example, a great deal of isometric strength is needed in the adductors and lower back to maintain proper golf posture.

Make It Effective

Understand that there is a right and wrong way to do everything and everyone will have a different starting point. Because serious golfers have a heightened ability to perceive changes in their body, they are extremely sensitive to any new demands imposed on their bodies. Be conservative in your approach to starting a strength training program – remember we’re after long-term consistency. To improve new program effectiveness, several factors need to be taken into consideration:

• Training age
• Chronological age (this is important as golf is one of the few sports where it is possible for a 57 year old to consistently beat a 20 year old)
• Stance
• Backswing
• Downswing
• Follow-through
• Flexibility through all stages of swing and standard flexibility

Look at each of these variables independently to identify strengths and weaknesses. Then take a step back and look at the whole picture to determine training priority. For example, if you have a difficult time maintaining a flexed and stable posture during the downswing, then there may be a problem with calf flexibility – notes like this will help inform exercise priority.

A carefully planned and consistent program that includes weight training and flexibility will provide huge returns and lower scores.

On My Mind Grapes

Over the last few months I’ve been battling with some programming that seems easy, but is actually a pretty complex problem to solve: the proper progression and periodization for some of the most talented sprinters and jumpers in the country. It’s like when something is so simple it becomes paralyzing in its complexity! Let me give you a little background on the team… the George Mason men’s sprinters and jumpers are extremely talented. Extremely. This past weekend they won the outdoor season’s conference title for the second year in a row. And we didn’t just win - the team annihilated the rest of the conference. In fact, the win was so “in the bag” that the 4x400 team didn’t even run the 4x400. Why? Because they didn’t need to. Those guys are focused on the NCAA National Meet and nothing else. Currently, they’ve posted the 9th fastest time in the NATION. There are some other high points with guys ranked nationally, but I think you get the picture.

Outside of great talent, the unique quality about track and field coaches is that they actually understand and apply sound programming for their kids. So, for the first time in the 6 years I’ve been a NCAA D1 strength coach, I’m interacting with coaches on a daily basis who understand some pretty important concepts that most team sport coaches don’t appreciate: how to get individuals to “peak” at the end of a season. (I’m not trashing team sport coaches, they have many other things to worry about: skill, technical aspects, X’s, O’s, etc.)

To ensure my programming efforts are matching those of the coaching staff and athletes, I’ve been doing a lot of research on training and coaching practices for elite level sprinters and jumpers.

Recently, I came upon Charlie Francis’ lecture on “Weights for Speed.” Charlie Francis passed away almost exactly one year ago (May 12, 2010) and was best known as the coach of the first ever athlete to be stripped of an Olympic Gold Medal (Ben Johnson) for doping. Outside of what, in reality, is a tiny blip on the radar of a great career, Charlie Francis has contributed some wonderful information to the sport. I liken him to Mel Siff in the unbelievable volume of precise training information he managed to produce in his lifetime.

Two of Francis’ closely held coaching tables are the Force/Time Curve and something called Vertical Integration.

In the Force/Time Curve (see my beautiful sketch below), Francis has marked up the curve to reinforce his argument for why the Clean exercise is a poor choice for sprinters (especially as they advance in training age). Francis points out that while plyometric jumps and the Clean come very close to the Sprint in terms of the Force/Time Curve the closeness is actually a problem as it's consistent execution/practice actually takes away from sprint performance. He recommends, instead, to focus on General Strength exercises ONLY for the duration of an athlete’s career. Francis points out that a coach and athlete must develop ALL qualities of the Force/Time Curve (including maximum strength, strength-endurance, etc) to make overall progress, i.e., faster sprinting and longer jumping. I agree wholeheartedly.

The Clean uses 85% of the same muscles that is used in an actual sprint, Francis admits that while being counter-intuitive, this is simply too close for comfort. Especially if using the Vertical Integration style of coaching.

What is vertical integration you ask? It is the concept of training session organization by training age. You can see in the picture below that as years pass the speed work takes up increasingly more training time while plyometric training all but disappears. But general weight training remains an important part of the training week and career long constant. Francis states that the Clean does not fit into this model of training because it TOO closely resembles the sprint. So, in Vertical Integration, an athlete would be walking into the weight room after a speed and light plyometric training session, and then would be required to perform a high skill lift that recruits 85% of the same active muscle that has already been fried in the earlier sprint session. Overtime this continued practice will STALL PROGRESS.

Charlie Francis claims that NO sprinter who has ever broken into the 9.7-9.8s 100m dash time has EVER had a Specific Weight Training program. He claims they have ALL been on General Training programs.

So, what’s the moral of this story? Honestly, I’m not sure. As a general rule, I rarely implement the Olympic lifts with any of my teams. George Mason strength finds its roots with Conjugate Sequence System programming based off the power lifts (squat, bench, deadlift). But, I’m not yet ready (nor have I ever been)  to write off Olympic lifts entirely. I believe it’s important to keep as many training “tools in the toolbox" and have a thorough understanding of what to use at the proper moment to ensure an athlete continues to progress safely forward at a higher level of performance.

Does anyone get the 30 Rock “mind grapes” reference? - Sarah

5 reasons why SAPT’s adult onsite and distance coaching training plans are for you…

5.  Because rather than perpetuate imbalances with your current 60 minute wander around the gym/sit on the recumbent bike, mouth agape routine, you’ll be provided a thorough individualized training program applicable to your specific needs and goals allowing you to hit the gym with vigor and purpose.  Dare I say you’ll experience results? 4.  Because you won’t be allowed to avoid the things you hate, the things you didn’t know you hated, and learn to embrace these things as the most important parts of your week (well almost).  Learn to enjoy movement prep, mobility, and soft tissues drills designed specifically to improve active range of motion around joints and soft tissue quality.  Muscular knots and adhesions don’t resolve themselves through quick, unfocused static stretching routines; in actuality, they’ll typically make the knot tighter leading to further discomfort.  Knead those knots and adhesions out with our localized soft tissue techniques and experience improved recovery, less inhibited movement patterns, and a general feeling of relief. 

3.   Though you’ll miss the SAPT coaching staff and community feel of the SAPT training facility during your offsite training sessions, you’ll be able to pacify our SAPT cravings through our thorough and extensive, mobile devise accessible, SAPT Exercise Database.  Enjoy the descriptive prose and meticulous demonstrations to ensure you’re executing with perfect form even offsite, on your time.  There’s only one way to garner the intended benefit of a training stimulus, and it’s through perfect execution.  Going through the motions will elicit blah training effects, plus it’s kind-of unsafe…You exercise to improve your health, right?    

2.  To stave off type II (fast twitch) muscular atrophy and neural drive impairment.  As one ages, without central nervous system activation, and therefore limited type II stimulation, type II fibers will actually disappear (to never return again) and thus significantly lower strength and power output levels.  Not only does this present grim performance and overall functionality implications, but structural repercussions as well.  Because type II fibers are more hypertrophy inclined, neglecting their recruitment will overtime significantly speed-up muscle mass decline.  Consider there is a 10% decrease in total number of muscle fibers per decade after the age of 50, and it’s a wonder the majority of the “well-seasoned” population hasn’t evolved into soft, slithering, amoebas of goo (HA, I had fun writing that!).  Our adult programming safely implements compound movements and drills designed to improve power output to elicit the physiological responses necessary to ward off the dreaded “amoeba of goo” condition.  Besides, throwing medicine balls (or should I say health balls), is just freakin’ fun.            

1.  Because you’ll relearn how to take time for…yourself…it’s okay, you’re allowed.

Your first step towards a more pain-free, stronger, youthful you, starts by clicking here…

You’ll love it…

Chris