Archive for May, 2010

Guest Blog from Jason Ferruggia

Renegade Training for Football

To become a better athlete you need to not only get stronger in the weight room but you also need to include some plyos, speed and agility work on a regular basis.Just to be sure everyone’s on the same page here, plyos consist of jumping, bounding and hopping exercises. These can be done off of one or two legs. Some of the simplest and most effective plyos are vertical jumps for height, box jumps, hurdle jumps, and broad jumps.

Speed work consists of short sprints from 10-50 yards. When we discuss speed we usually mean straight ahead speed, whereas agility represents change of direction. So agility work would consist of running straight, sideways and backwards; changing direction often throughout the drill. No set of plyo, speed or agility work should ever last more than ten seconds.

People often try to make all of this more complicated than it has to be. You don’t need the fanciest equipment or most complicated drills in the world. To improve your vertical jump you jump. To run faster you sprint. To improve your agility you work on some basic change of direction drills. And you try to always out do what you did last time; just like you do in the weight room.

Pretty simple stuff. Of course you have to improve your relative strength but I will assume that everyone is already doing that. So as long as you are doing squats, glute hams, pistols, chins, etc., and consistently getting stronger you’re on the right track. The jumps, speed and agility work should be done two to three times per week either immediately before your strength training workout or as a separate workout 4-8 hours earlier or later as a double session.

So how many sets should you do? The easiest way to control the volume is through performance. When you are doing plyos, sprints or change of direction drills you should always use complete rest intervals. When your performance starts to decline, you are done for the day. It couldn’t be any easier than that.

Let’s say you are doing simple box jumps. You start with low boxes to warm up and continually increase the height of the box as you go. You can take short rest periods on the low boxes but once the height becomes challenging you need to increase the time between sets. You hit a 45 inch box, rest then make a 46 easily. You’re feeling good so you add another mat and make it 48 inches. You make the 48 but know it was probably your max for the day. You could stop there or take another attempt at 49 if you so desired. If you get 49 you could keep going. If you miss it you have two options. Call it a day or try 49 one more time. Make it and go to 50, miss it and you’re done. Easy, right?

Now, if you are coaching a group of athletes or training with partners, using performance to dictate volume isn’t always practical. In that case I would recommend 3-10 sets of 1-6 reps for plyo work. When jumping, you will notice that better athletes jump higher or further the more attempts they take (up to a certain point). Average to mediocre athletes seem to top out earlier.

For sprints it really depends on the distance. If you are doing 10 yard sprints you can do more sets than if you are doing 40’s. So take Charlie Francis’s approach and measure the volume of the workout by total distance covered. 300 total yards for the day makes up a good speed or agility workout. Simple enough. Always think quality over quantity.

Rocket science it aint. Get stronger in the gym, relative to your bodyweight, while keeping your bodyfat levels low, and keep pushing your numbers in basic jumping, sprinting and change of direction drills and you will improve your athletic ability and be a beast on the field this year.

Good luck.

Jason Ferruggia

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Check out Jason’s newest product: Renegade Training for Football

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Alwyn

If you’ve been a reader of this blog for any length of time, you’ll have heard mention of my friend Jason Ferruggia.

Jason is one of the country’s foremost experts on gaining muscle and size. I’ve known Jason for years (we first met at a seminar in the late 90′s). I’ve recommended his muscle building information for quite some time, and even flown him out to the west coast to do a staff training seminar for me at Results Fitness.

What a lot of people may not be aware though – is that the bulk of Jason’s clients at his facility in NJ are high school and college football players. So not only do they need to gain size – they need to develop athleticism and real world on-the-field power.

For the past year I’ve been bugging Jason to release some of his football-specific programming. Most of the time he ignored me :)
But yesterday – it was announced that the NFL will be holding the 2014 Superbowl in NJ at Giants Stadium.

I guess Jay took it as a sign as today he is releasing his football training manual:

Renegade Training for Football

It includes a complete 12 week strength, conditioning and speed program designed specifically for grid-iron athletes and a LOT more.

Take a look: => Renegade Training for Football

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Alwyn

I’m a huge believer in using the “alternating set” system when training. For time management reasons, I tend to do exercise one for a set, rest 60 seconds or so, do exercise two for a set, rest 60 seconds or so, and continue. This allows me to increase work density while still getting “true” rest.

In other words, I perform a set of squats, rest 60 seconds, perform a set of push-ups, rest 60 seconds, and repeat. So in effect, I’ve almost tripled the rest period between squat sets (60 seconds plus the time taken for push-ups plus 60 seconds) as opposed to using a straight set system. And for fat loss training, it’s unparalleled.

However, the biggest problem or complaint I get from clients who use commercial facilities is that it’s really hard for them to tie up two pieces of gym equipment at peak hours. I have my own facility, but I realize this can be a real problem elsewhere. So I started experimenting with a few things—doing dumbbell lunges and push-ups for example or step-ups and dumbbell bench presses where I could use one set of dumbbells and one piece of equipment.

It was an okay compromise, but it started to somewhat limit my exercise selection. And to be honest, it still had the issue of people working in and possibly disrupting your rest periods.

So I went a step further. What if I created a fat loss or conditioning program based around one piece of equipment where you stayed in the same spot, using the same load for the entire duration. So I tried it. At first it was awkward, but after reading Istvan Javorek’s work and talking with über strength coach, Robert Dos Remedios, I started to implement different variations of combination lifting.

I just hoped that it would work as well as alternating sets for fat loss and conditioning or at least close enough that it wasn’t too much of a tradeoff. As it turns out, it worked better! In fact, it worked so well that it became a cornerstone of my conditioning programs with several athletes.

Part two

Part two of the evolution of our fat loss programs came shortly after. I have always recommended interval training as a superior form of fat loss over steady state cardio. Interval training is essentially periods of hard work alternated with easier periods of work using a cardio exercise.

The problem—running a mile doing intervals involves about 1500 repetitions. For someone looking to cut body fat, and hit total body weight training two to three times a week, that is a lot of extra volume and potential joint stress. So I started thinking. Interval training is similar to weight training in that it involves sets (and reps) followed by a rest period (albeit active). What if I used a lighter version of traditional strength training and created metabolic circuits?

Timed sets

This is the simplest variation of metabolic work. Pick a load that is about 80% of your 10RM. Perform as many reps as possible at a constant tempo for a period of time (e.g. 60 seconds) and try to perform as many repetitions with as good form as possible. Rest for 15–30 seconds and perform another exercise.

Example #1

Barbell reverse lunge, left leg, 60 seconds
Rest 15–30 seconds
Barbell reverse lunge, right leg, 60 seconds
Rest 15–30 seconds
Barbell push press, 60 seconds
Rest 15–30 seconds
Repeat three times for a 12-minute routine.

Example #2

Kettlebell swings, 30 seconds
Rest 15 seconds
Push-ups/burpees, 30 seconds
Rest 15 seconds
Prowler push, 30 seconds
Rest 15 seconds
Repeat for five rounds for a 12-minute finisher.

Metabolic density training

This is a modified version of EDT as popularized by Charles Staley. However, Charles recommends two exercises performed as a superset for 15 minutes. In this case, we are going to use three exercises and work for ten minutes.

Example #1

Dumbbell bench pres
Alternating lunges
Swiss ball crunch

In this method, select a load that will allow 10–12 reps and perform sets of 6–8. There is no rest between exercises. Work continuously for ten minutes moving from one exercise to the next. The alternate version is to perform five rounds of 6–8 reps of each as fast as possible.

Complexes

Be warned, these are pretty grueling. Perform the complexes at the beginning of your workout when you’re fresh. They’ll elevate your metabolism beyond anything you’ve ever experienced before. The most frequently asked question about complexes is how much load to use. Remember, it’s a metabolic stimulus, not a strength or hypertrophy stimulus so be conservative. Now, don’t go too light either. A good “Cosgrove rule of thumb” is that if you’re not questioning why in the hell you’re doing these exercises or convincing yourself that twice around is enough, you’re not going heavy enough.
Let’s get into it.

Perform each complex once per week for four training sessions per week. Use the following progression:

Week one: 4 sets of 5 reps of each, 90 seconds rest
Week two: 5 sets of 5 reps of each, 75 seconds rest
Week three: 5 sets of 6 reps of each, 60 seconds rest
Week four: 6 sets of 6 reps of each, 45 seconds rest.

Then puke.

Complex A

Bent over barbell row
Hang clean
Front squat and push press hybrid
Jump squat (bar on back)
Good morning

Complex B

Romanian deadlift
Hang clean and front squat and push press (combination lift, perform one rep of each in series)
Reverse lunge (alternate legs)

Complex C

Deadlift
High pull (onto toes)
Squat clean (clean the bar from the hang and then drop into a full squat on the catch)
Military press (strict)
Jump lunges (switch legs)

Insert my evil laugh here!

Complex D

Jump squat
Squat
Squat and hold for 10 seconds
Military press
Push press
Squat and press (combination lift, perform one rep of each in series)

Note: Try to work all exercises at a speed of 1–2 reps per second.

Tabatas

A Tabata protocol is a very high intensity anaerobic interval program that involved eight rounds of 20 second work periods at 170% of your VO2 max with a negative recovery period of 10 seconds. The best way to use these with strength training exercises is to alternate one upper body with one lower body exercise. The second progression we used is to vary the work to rest ratio.

Beginner: 10 seconds work, 20 seconds recovery
Intermediate: 15 seconds work, 15 seconds recover
Advanced: 20 seconds work, 10 seconds recovery

A great pairing is squat jumps and running push-ups (a single push-up and two reps of mountain climbers in alternating fashion) in pairs.

Medley conditioning

This is similar to the other methods in that we are working for time, but we will use 15 seconds on and 15 seconds off and perform multiple rounds with different pieces of equipment. For example, an MMA fighter competing in five-minute rounds may use four exercises in a circuit and perform multiple rounds until the five-minute period is up.

Example #1

15 seconds, Prowler push
15 seconds, rest
15 seconds, squat jump
15 seconds, rest
15 seconds, sledgehammer or medicine ball chops
15 seconds, rest
15 seconds, kettlebell swing
15 seconds, rest

Keep working through the medley until the five-minute period is up

Finishers

Finishers are just short body weight or single piece of equipment only, 3–5 minute routines at the end of each workout.

Screamers:
3 push-ups, 1 tuck jump
6 push-ups, 2 tuck jump
9 push-ups, 3 tuck jumps
12 push-ups, 4 tuck jumps
15 push-ups, 5 tuck jumps
Continue to add three push-ups and one tuck jump to each set until you miss a rep. Then climb back down the ladder.

Leg Matrix:

24 squats
12 lunges each leg (alternating)
12 lunge jumps each leg (alternating)
24 squat jumps
(If you can complete this in under 90 seconds, do two rounds with no rest.)
Squat series:

20-second squat jump
20-second squat
20-second isometric squat
Repeat for three rounds with no rest.

Countdowns

Select two exercises (e.g. kettlebell swing and burpees or squat jumps and plyometric push-ups).
Perform 10 reps of each, nine reps of each, eight reps of each and so on. Each week start with one set of one more rep than your top set (e.g. 11 reps, 10 reps, 9 reps, etc.).

A final warning

This isn’t for the faint hearted or de-conditioned. They are not beginners’ routines. If you’re coming back from injury or illness, don’t try this program yet. It’s brutal. However, if you follow this routine for four weeks, you’ll see a very significant improvement in your conditioning and a massive drop in your body fat!

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To pick up a copy of the Metabolic Acceleration Training DVD — CLICK HERE NOW!

Here’s a very simple metabolic workout that I did earlier this week.

I used a gymboss timer to track my work intervals – but you could do it with a regular stopwatch, or even just looking at the second hand on a clock.
This looks simple – but I tracked heart rate and found it to be a great interval training session!

All i did was the following:

1) Start the gymboss timer and set it for one minute repeats (so it ‘beeps’ every minute)
2) Do 10-12 kettlebell swings or similar (takes about 2s per swing on average)
3) Rest for the remainder of the minute
4) Repeat at the start of the next minute (when the timer beeps)
5) Go for 30 mins or however long you want the interval session to be.

This was an effective 30 min interval training session, using a 20-25s on, 35-40s off work:rest interval.

I changed up the swings – going from two hand swings, to one handed swings (5 each side), to hand-to-hand swings. I also added a round or two of kettlebell snatches, and a round or two of kettlebell clean and jerks (I only did 3 each side of these to keep the work interval the same).

Give it a try, next time you want a short and effective interval workout.

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Alwyn

Hey Guys,

I was just recently interviewed by John Izzo. Check it out:

JOHN IZZO: Alwyn, you’ve performed a lot of work with fitness professionals over the years helping them develop into effective exercise program designers and lately, business-minded individuals. What would you say are 3 things you have seen change within the typical (or not so typical) personal trainer over the last 5 years?

Alwyn Cosgrove: Great question. I think that we’ve seen a massive shift in good trainers realizing that they need to know more about business, coaching, communication, customer service etc. The ability to just teach exercises and count sets and reps isn’t going to cut it anymore – particularly in today’s economy.

I don’t like to focus on the negative stuff, but for a while it seemed that the fitness ‘business’ had forgotten that there were real clients in gyms who needed help. There were people who wanted instruction, and that didn’t just mean downloading an ebook or buying a book.

So I guess I’d say that:

1) it’s an understanding of the entire picture of what being a professional entails. Not just marketing and sales, but customer service, your core values and your overall professionalism.

Good coaches and trainers are getting it. Those that aren’t getting it are dropping by the wayside pretty fast.

2) there has been a move towards a systems based approach to program and teaching exercise. For a long time trainers would “customize” every workout for every client. The problem with that is, there isn’t a consistent experience for the clients. How can you build a business when the experience of training with you is more of an art form than a science?

The answer is to start with a system so each client can experience the best you have to offer, while taking into account their personal goals, assessment, injury history and time frame to achieve their goals.

I think this is why assessments, the functional movement screen etc are so popular now.

3) I think the standards are getting better. We’re still not there yet, but I’d say 5 years ago the average trainer had an 18 -24month career cycle. Basically there were very few trainers anywhere with more than two years in the field. The pay wasn’t there, the job security wasn’t there, and the happiness wasn’t there. So we lost people.

For a long time we had expert trainers who maybe had 3-4 years experience. That’s not a lot of time in (particularly when you think of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours to mastery rule) so it was hard for us to be taken seriously as we were a young profession with the bulk of our members being inexperienced. I mean, a guy with 4 years experience in martial arts may not even be a first degree black belt yet – but 4 years as a trainer you’d have been at the relative top of the field a couple years ago.

Now, when I’m on the road with the Perform Better crew or at some other event, I see trainers and gym owners who I’ve known for 5-6 years on the circuit. It’s not uncommon to meet a bunch of trainers with 5,10 or even 15 years in the field. That was unheard of even a few years ago.

Basically I think it’s too hard to make it as a trainer unless you’re good – particularly as we’ve just experienced the worst recession in a long time. Mediocrity quite simply cannot survive. Lots of gyms are closing and lots of trainers are giving up and moving into other areas. As a result – I think our profession is starting to get better.

JOHN: Alwyn, you lecture around the country and abroad. Do you see a difference in the personal training industry on the East versus West Coast?

Alwyn: You’re trying to get me in trouble here John!! ….

(For more of the interview click here)

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Alwyn

Excerpted from Mens Health
By Adam Campbell

The Great Aerobic Hoax

For decades, we’ve been told that the best activity for burning calories and fat is aerobic exercise. In fact, you can practically pinpoint the year this idea started to take hold: 1977. That’s when Jim Fixx’s The Complete Book of Running was published. This bestseller popularized the notion of running to improve health and lose weight, and it’s widely credited with kicking off the jogging boom of the 1980s. Hundreds of studies since then have reported that aerobic exercise offers many benefits, from improving markers of heart-disease risk to coping with mental stress to enhancing cognitive function. That’s all good. But if you’re looking to shed fat, the newest weight-loss research will tell you to look elsewhere for your exercise routine. “It’s sort of like a self-fulfilling prophecy,” says Jeff Volek, Ph.D., R.D., an exercise and nutrition scientist at the University of Connecticut. “Any type of exercise burns calories. So if you’re told that running is ideal and you start dropping pounds once you take it up, then you have no reason to believe otherwise.”

But Volek’s research gives him good reason to doubt the conventional wisdom about the superiority of aerobic exercise for fat loss. In one study, Volek and his team put overweight people on a reduced-calorie diet and divided them into three groups. One group didn’t exercise, another performed aerobic exercise 3 days a week, and a third did both aerobic exercise and weight training 3 days a week.

The results: Each group lost nearly the same amount of weight—about 21 pounds per person in 12 weeks. But the lifters shed 5 more pounds of fat than those who didn’t pump iron. The weight they lost was almost pure fat, while the other two groups shed 15 pounds of lard, but also gave up 5-plus pounds of muscle. “Think about that,” says Volek. “For the same amount of exercise time, with diets being equal, the participants who lifted lost almost 40 percent more fat.”

This isn’t a one-time finding, either. Research on low-calorie dieters who don’t lift shows that, on average, 75 percent of their weight loss is from fat and 25 percent of it is muscle. That 25 percent may reduce your scale weight, but it doesn’t do a lot for your reflection in the mirror. (Can you say “skinny-fat”?) However, if you weight-train as you diet, you protect your hard-earned muscle and burn extra fat instead.

Picture it in terms of liposuction: The whole point is simply to remove unattractive flab, right? That’s exactly what you should demand from your workouts.

The New Science of Calorie Burning

There’s one argument for aerobic exercise that’s always been rock solid. It’s well documented that an activity like moderate jogging burns more calories than weight training, an activity that’s highly anaerobic. In fact, if you go by the numbers you find that even golfing beats out a light circuit workout. But recent research shows a new perspective.

When Christopher Scott, PhD., an exercise physiologist at the University of Southern Maine, began using an advanced method to estimate energy expenditure during exercise, his data indicated that weight training burns more calories than originally thought—up to 71 percent more. Based on these findings, it’s estimated that performing just one circuit of eight exercises—which takes about 8 minutes— can expend 159 to 231 calories. That’s about the same as running at a 6-minute-mile pace for the same duration.

“Exercise physiologists often use the techniques for estimating the energy expenditure of walking and jogging and apply them to weightlifting,” says Scott. “But clearly, aerobic and anaerobic activities differ, and so too should the way we estimate their energy expenditures.” Scott’s revelation is most certainly a relief to gym rats everywhere, who no doubt wondered why an intense, energy- sapping weight workout supposedly burned so few calories.

Real-world Results

The unfortunate reality is that science is slow. “If we waited around for studies to tell us what works best for fat loss, we’d go out of business,” says Rachel Cosgrove, C.S.C.S., who co- owns Results Fitness in Santa Clarita, California, with her husband, Alwyn. Over the past 10 years, the Cosgroves have risen to the top of the fitness industry because of their clients’ successes. From the beginning, their programs were scientifically based. “Starting out, we knew that weight training was necessary to avoid muscle loss, and that it appears to boost your metabolism for hours after you work out,” Cosgrove says. “We also knew that according to studies, higher-intensity exercises such as interval training and weight training resulted in greater fat loss than lower-intensity exercise did.”

But from there, the Cosgroves started their own experiments. “As time went by, we began to drop aerobic exercise from our fat-loss programs altogether. And guess what? Our clients achieved even faster results,” says Cosgrove. Keep in mind that the Cosgroves’ clients aren’t like Biggest Loser contestants. In other words, they don’t have 4 to 6 hours a day to work out. “Our average client has to be in and out of the gym in 45 to 60 minutes and has only 2 to 4 days a week to exercise,” she says. “We design workouts to optimize that time.” That’s why the Cosgroves rely on what they call “metabolic circuits.” These are fast-paced weight-training routines in which you alternate between upper- and lower-body exercises. You might compare this type of activity to running repeated bouts of 30- to 60-second sprints. While sprinting has been shown to burn calories at a high rate, it can’t be sustained for long because the muscles in your lower body become fatigued—and that’s even if you’re resting between sprints. “But with metabolic circuits, you’re emphasizing different muscles in each exercise,” says Cosgrove. “So you can maintain a high- intensity effort for a much longer duration, and with almost no rest.” The result: the muscle-saving, calorie-burning benefits of intense resistance training and sprints, combined with the nonstop movement of long, steady-state aerobic exercise.

It could be the greatest fat-loss workout known to man.

Of course, if you try to find evidence of this workout’s effectiveness in the scientific journals, you’ll be disappointed: No one has studied it yet. But researchers like Volek and Scott are beginning to put the pieces together. Just as important, trainers like the Cosgroves are already using this kind of routine to help their real-world clients achieve faster results than ever.

(A full version of this article was previously published in Mens Health magazine and at MensHealth.com)