Core training is a hot topic. It always has been and always will be. Why? – Because even though we all may have different approaches to training the “core”. We all agree that the Core is important for health and performance.
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In this post, I’m going to provide with with an informative video that reveals a major missing piece to the core training spectrum. And, in the video, I show you a simple, very effective way to fill the gap and make your rotary / anti-roation core training more complete.
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So, if you want to discover a quick and easy way to improve your core training and create workouts that are safer and more effective, watch the video below now!
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I can honestly say that what I just taught you in the video above is one of the most important, yet often overlooked, aspects of an effective core training exercise program!
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Post your comments and let us know some of your favorite, “go to” Rotary and/or Ant-Rotation exercises!
A few weeks ago, I did a post covering a 12-week interval training progression using the Tabata Protocol.
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In that post, I discussed exactly what Tabata Intervals are, why Tabata Workouts benefit athletes of all levels and off course, how to gradually progress over a 12-week period to prevent overtraining.
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In this post, I’m going to cover a slightly shorter, 8 week Tabata Workout progression.
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If you are a fitter athlete with a solid conditioning base. This 8-week progression is just what the doctor ordered to help you maximize the results of your Tabata training efforts.
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8-Week Tabata Workout Progression
Key – 10/20 x6 = 10 seconds work / 20 seconds rest x 6 rounds.
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Wk.1 – 10/20 x6
Wk.2 – 15/15 x4
Wk.3 – 10/20 x8
Wk.4 – 15/15 x6
Wk.5 – 20/10 x4
Wk.6 – 15/15 x8
Wk.7 – 20/10 x6
Wk.8 – 20/10 x8
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Do you have any personal favorite Tabata workouts?
I have a few killer Tabata workouts I will posting soon – keep checking back!
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In the meantime, post your comments and tell us about your favorite and most effective Tabata workouts!
Occasionally, I like to talk about some of the music on the Performance U playlist. These are songs and bands we like to jam to when getting after it in the gym. I try to only talk about lesser known bands that rock!
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The Band – RA
Favorite Album by RA – Duality
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Favorite Songs by RA – Rectifier, I Lost Everything Today, Everything Little She Does is Magic (cover)
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5 Superpowers You Didn’t Know Your Body Was Hiding From You
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This is a very interesting, insightful and humorous article found on Cracked.com.
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Those motivational speakers are right: You are capable of amazing things. You wouldn’t know it, because 99 percent of the time your body or brain hides these superpowers from you.
Sure, they say there’s a good reason, but we’re not sure we’re buying it. Dammit, we want our…
The low back and low back pain is a hot topic these days among Strength Coaches, Trainers and exercise enthusiasts. As well it should be because low back pain is a huge problem that effects just about everybody at least one time in their life. That’s why I, like many other coaches, read as many books as I can on the subject of low back pain.
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One of the best books I’ve ever come across in regards to low back pain and research on low back pain is - Medical Management of Acute and Chronic Low Back Pain: Pain Research and Clinical Management Series, Volume 13 – By Nikolai Bogduk BSc(Med) MB BS MD PhD DSc DipAnat Dip PainMed FAFRM(RACP) FAFMM FFFPM(ANZCA).
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If you don’t know? – Nikolai Bogduk is the worlds number one Functional anatomist and has been since the early 90’s. You can view a list of all Bogduks books and research publications here at BioMedExperts.com.
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This book is unlike any book I’ve ever read and really is responsible for my current approach to training and my overall philosophies about science in general.
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In this book, Bogduk analyzes and compares 100s of research studies on low back pain. What he concludes with shocked me and will shock you too!
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In the first part of the book, Bogduk systematically invalidates and rules out many highly quoted research studies for one reason or the other. He then compares the findings of the “valid” research studies left to find commonalities in the findings about what causes low back pain, what are the best treatments for low back pain and what we should do to prevent low back pain.
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By the way, Bogduk defines back pain as pain arising from the tissues of the axial skeleton or body wall, “perceived in an area not more than a hand’s breadth either side of the lumbosacral vertebral column.” (Medical Journal of Australia, 3 Feb. 1992.)
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Interestingly enough, after over 250 pages of some seriously scientific bedtime reading, the Worlds #1 Anatomist concludes that because most of the current research on low back pain has drastically inconsistent findings – We really don’t know a damn thing about what causes low back pain or how to prevent it!
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Now, this book was published in 2002 so many may say it’s out of date. But, even after the eights years since his book was published, Bogduk still conveys the same message that much of what we believe about what causes and prevents Back pain is not trully evidence based.
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This is why I don’t just follow one researcher or the other. Nor do I ever just throw out stuff that I know works because one study says it maybe no good. Because another study will come out saying something completely different. This is what Bogduk found when he wrote this book and is still finding to this day – One researcher says this. But the other researcher says that! The science almost always conflicts itself. You read the research, you know what I’m talking about…
Some folks who have herniated discs get pain, but others do not! So, does a herniated disc cause back pain? Maybe? – Maybe not!
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Some folks with degenerative disc(s) have pain, but other do not! Does degenerative disc(s) cause back pain? Maybe? – Maybe not!
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Some folks with Spondy get pain, some have spondy and fell nothing! So, does having Spondy cause back pain? Maybe? – Maybe not!
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Some folks have tight hips flexors and get pain, others test tight but have zero pain. Do tight hip flexors cause low back pain? Sometimes yes and sometime no!
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Some folks who exercise get back pain but others who don’t regularly exercise get low back pain. So, is back pain caused by activity of lack there of?
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I could go on but I think you get my point! The truth is, after reading this book, it changed my outlook on everything thought I ‘knew”. I realized that I really had no right to argue or look down on anyone who does things different than me because everything I “knew” was really based on nothing more than my personal experiences, opinions and my own interpretation of research.
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My approach now is simple – I have a system that works for me. Sometimes I don’t know why it works, but I don’t really care because it works!
One of the best and most popular shoulder stabilization / pre-hab drills used among strength coaches these days is the Push Up Plus exercise. Why? – Because it’s a great exercise for activating and strengthening the all important Serratus Anterior muscles of the shoulder.
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Serratus Anterior
A strong Serratus Anterior muscle is crucial for optimal shoulder health and functional movement. Put simply, the Serratus Anteriror keeps the Scapula (Shoulder Blade) pressed against the rib cage while your arm moves or deals with load.
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Many folks blame a weak Serratus Anterior muscle for causing a winged Scapula. Although this can be true. There are some cases in which Scapula winging is cause by a long Thoracic nerve problem. This an an issue that is way beyond the scope of most coaches and therefore beyond the scope of this Blog.
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Now, what IS within the scope of this Blog is to provide you with yet another new, smarter and more effective way to use the Push Up Plus exercise for the purpose of shoulder strengthening and injury prevention.
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In the video below, I demonstrate how to perform the Push Up Plus exercise to MAXIMALLY recruit and strengthen the Serratus Anterior muscles.
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These recommendations featured in the video below are based on the current Bio-mechanical research and teachings of world renowned Physical Therapists like Mark Comerford and Kevin Wilk.
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Check out this video and discover how to Perform the Push Up Plus a Better way!
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As always, I love to hear your thoughts and feedback. So, don’t forget to comment below…
In today’s post, I’m going to provide you with an article written my good friend and colleague MIke T Nelson of Z-Health.
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MIke is very smart and one heck of a nice guy. He has some insightful things to tell you about the brain and Joint Mobility. Check out his article “Ichabod Training” and cool videos below. When you’re done, check out his Blog here.
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Ichabod Training
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I see it gyms all around the country and it is spreading worse than the swine flue (sorry, H1N1 since we don’t want to blame the pigs). I call it “Ichabod Training.” In case you live in a cave with Osama or are pulling a very long Salman Rushdie, Ichabod Crane was a fictional character in Washington Irving’s short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
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During his fabelled journey home one night, Ichabod encounters another traveler, known as the legendary Headless Horseman; the ghost of a Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannonball during the American Revolutionary War. Ichabod is chased and then disappears. Rumor has it that he himself was the Horseman, of whose legend he took advantage to dispose of his rival.
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That is the classical background for all you literary critics in the crowd. For a more modern version I like it when George Costanza (of Seinfeld fame), remarks in one episode “Why don’t we smooth the head down to nothing, stick a pumpkin under his arm, and change the name to Ichabod Crane?”
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I know you are asking, how the hell does this relate to training? Good question and I am glad you are still reading. There are some people training in the gym like they don’t have a head or it was replaced with a pumpkin on a good day. I am not referring to you, the reader’s of Nick’s blog here, you guys are way too bright. I am talking about your average commercial gym goer that you see. Everything they do is focused on “this or that muscle” how to recruit “this or that muscle”, how to make “this or that muscle” bigger, ad nauseum. Of course those things are important, but we need to look more upstream and find what causes those muscles to contract, get bigger and perform better.
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The Brain: The Final Frontier
Pretend you are a salmon going upstream in the land of physiology to find out how to get stronger and perform better. Once you finally reach the stream (and just before you die, poor salmon) you find the brain and nervous system. This is the control center for human performance. Your brain controls all of your movement and strength, so to optimize it we need to look at how the brain gets its information. This primarily comes from:
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1) Eyes (visual and eye muscle movements)
2) Vestibular (inner ear “balance”)
3) Proprioceptive (info from the joints)
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In order to optimize the body for performance (and pain reduction but that is a whole different topic), we need to optimize each one of these systems.
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Just the other day on this very site, Nick said, “Between folks like myself, Mike Boyle, Eric Cressey, Mike Robertson and many others (editor’s note, cough cough Mike T Nelson, too, hehehe),the importance of Joint Mobility for optimal health and human performance has been made crystal clear. Every joint in your body needs optimal mobility to function properly.”
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I could not agree more!
Better movement = better performance
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Better, higher quality and more efficient movement is the goal. At its simplest level, this is just coordination. If we look at my favorite exercise of all time, the concentration curl (ok, so it is not my favorite, but it works well for this example) I can increase my curling power by two main ways.
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1) Fire up more muscle fibers.
If I can find a way to get my nervous system to get more muscle tissue to contract, I can lift more. While highly debatable how much muscle tissue you can contract at any one point, the range is about 20-60% with the higher end being a highly trained athlete. The take away is that is it 100% or even close to it! Pavel Tsatsouline says (paraphrasing here) “your muscles can already lift a car; they just don’t know it yet.”
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2) DECREASE firing of the antagonist
The antagonist is the opposite muscle that works to brake the action. In our power concentration curl, the antagonist is the tricep. If you take our foot off the brake, we can increase performance. Less tricep contraction = more bicep strength.
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Moooo P.O.W.E.R!
So just how do we do this? Joint mobility the rescue.
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“Jammed joints create muscular weakness.”—Dr. Cobb, Creator of Z-Health Athletic Performance System
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If I injure my elbow, neurologically my body will start to shut down the muscles that cross my elbow (triceps, biceps, etc) in an effort to protect my body and reduce the risk of further damage to the joint. My body is trying really hard to protect itself which is pretty smart! If that joint (or ANY joint) is not brought back up to 100% health, it will still has some “neurologically braking” going on, thus performance is not optimal. At some level, my body thinks that there still is an issue in my elbow and will be shutting down the muscles to some degree. The technical term for this is arthrokinetic reflex.
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The direct opposite is also true. More mobility (a measure of health) will result in more strength, instantly!
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Further Down the Rabbit Hole
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If that make sense, lets go even further, so hold on to that pumpkin. The nervous system connects ALL the joints, so ANY joint that is not back to 100% mobility is going to dampen performance! Yes, that is a leap, but it makes logical sense (and I’ve seen it happen many times).
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So far, every chronic shoulder issue that I’ve helped someone with, I have yet to do anything with their shoulder!
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“He who treats the site of pain is lost” –Karel Lewit
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Where there is smoke, there is fire and the pain is usually just the smoke. We need to find the fire! In my experience with chronic shoulder issues, I find that by doing mobility work on the opposite foot/ankle, opposite hip, thoracic, or same side wrist will normally do the trick. The body moves as a whole (hopefully or else you have some problems), so ALL the joints must be working optimally. The key to performance is optimal mobility at EVERY joint (including the jaw).
As you know, I take pride in developing new, smarter and more effective exercises and training concepts. In this post, I’m going to show you one version of new hip mobility drills I’ve been using with great success!
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Actually, my fellow Strength Coach and Friend Kevin Neeld is going to show you the exercise. He is the one that shot the video and originally posted it on his site after visiting me here at Performance U.
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Kevin is a very smart guy who is willing to actually listen to what other coaches (like me) have to say. He has taught me some great as well, through our personal interactions and through his Hockey Training Blog which I check regularly.
Anyway, here’s what Kevin had to say about this new Hip Mobility exercise and his video demonstrating it.
A couple weeks ago I visited my friend and colleague Nick Tumminello at his facility in Baltimore.
Nick is a brilliant coach so I love stopping by his place to steal some good stuff from him.
While there, I saw him do a hip mobility exercise I had never done before. I started playing around with it this week and really love it. It’s a great way to mobilize the hip into adduction and abduction in a hip flexed position. This is one of those “must-includes” for hockey players and soccer players that tend to have a lot of hip problems.
First off, I hope you had a fantastic New Year, I know I did!
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To kick things off right in 2010, I wanted to tell you the one word every Strength Coach, Personal Trainer, Athlete and Exercise Enthusiast needs to know and apply to their training to ensure success!
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The word is EFFORT!!!
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Put simply, anyone can exercise and train, but it’s the folks who put in the most effort who get the biggest return. Now, even though I could get all philosophical here, I’m not going to. Instead, I’m going to keep it simple and talk strictly about effort as it relates to training.
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You see, everyone is always looking for the newest “magic bullet” exercise or best program to follow. But, none of that will mean much if your not willing to do more than just go through the motions.
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For instance – I could say “do 6 reps of back squats” and just let you go through the 6 squats in any way you want. Or, I could say “do 6 reps of back squats as fast as possible”, or “do 6 reps of back squats and explode out of the bottom with everything you have on each rep”.
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It’s obvious that the second two scenarios will get the best results. But they are also much tougher. And that’s my point. Its not just doing the back squat, its how you did the back squat. This goes to show that our results are not do any specific secret exercise or training program. But rather on the effort we put into our training, even if its using old school, low tech exercises.
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Now, I’m known for developing new, high-tech exercises. But, my main training focus is always to get maximal effort from my clients and athletes on each rep, set and exercise. All the fancy stuff comes second! The truth is, I don’t need any special exercises or equipment to deliver a killer workout that gets results. I can bring even the most elite athlete to their knees strictly on effort.
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So, in 2010, if you do one thing, give your personal and professional training programs more EFFORT and enjoy the mental and physical benefits it brings!
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Don’t just move the weight, move it as fast as you can!
Don’t just lift the weight up, explode the weight up!
Don’t just do 10 reps, try to complete 10 reps in 10 seconds!
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