Archive for June, 2011

Some random stuff off the top of my head (and sometimes the bottom of my heart!):

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The part that most trainers miss as regards training (that I’ve always felt) is that Olympic lifting and powerlifting are designed to move as much weight as efficiently as possible (ie as little “work” as possible ). Competitive kettlebell lifting is the same – make the movement as efficient (and therefore as least demanding) as possible.

Bodybuilding is about creating as much tension and overload on a single muscle as possible, regardless of load (ie make everything feel “heavy”). That’s the reason machines were invented – to isolate and overload muscles.

Cardio training is about becoming as efficient as possible in a usually cyclical repeated movement so that it becomes easier and easier over time.

General fitness and metabolic training for fat loss might be about creating as much IN-efficiency as possible – creating as much systemic stress overall as possible with as little localized joint stress or repetition as possible. So the body can never habituate, and there is no risk of overuse injury.

So why did we copy lifting sports, bodybuilding and endurance sports when we wanted to train general fitness athletes? We can’t just copy other modalities when we want a completely different outcome.

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Bernard Hopkins just won the World light-heavyweight championship at 46 years old beating Jean Pascal – a 29 year old once-beaten fighter.
Contrast that with David Reid – a former World Champion boxer who won Olympic Gold, and the World Championship in his 11th pro fight, but who’s career was over by the time he was 28. Joe Calzaghe retired undefeated at 37. Fernando Vargas was finished at 29.
What’s the difference?

Or in other sports, David Beckham who at 36 is way into the latter part of his career and seemed to go from one of the best in the World to average in record time. With millions of pounds at different team’s disposal for trainers, nutritionists, therapists – why the decline?
Staying with football – Ronaldo, widely considered to be one of the best of all time – World Cup winner, Golden Boot winner… retired at 34.

Tom Watson just won the Senior PGA championship at age 61.

And why is Hopkins getting better at a far more physically demanding sport than football or golf, at a much older age?

We spend so much time studying athletic development. More fascinating to me is athletic longevity. With all of our knowledge on sports science, nutrition and training – why do some athletes have longer careers than others? What are we missing?

If we could extend an athlete’s career at the top level just one year, by knowing what the difference makers are, that could be worth millions of dollars….

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Speaking of longevity – we’ve been wrong about training seniors. We started with cardio because the heart is important — and they lost muscle mass and function. Then we embraced strength training to maintain muscle and got closer…. now finally we’re understanding that seniors need explosive power training… we lose power long before we lose muscle mass or cardio conditioning, and it’s been shown that power training maintains muscle and improves balance and co-ordination.

Maybe the only reason muscle sticks around is because the body senses the need for it to produce power. Power training tells the body it needs the muscle to stick around – and moving fast tells the body to shift the excess baggage (bodyfat)….

Maybe we’ve been thinking about the whole thing backwards….

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AC

This is a concept that I learned from one of my mentors – Geoff Thompson and was reminded of recently by Thomas Plummer.
It’s a concept that taught me (and reminded me) that the only way to grow was to recognize when I was staying in my comfort zone, regardless of the activities I was doing.

For example – if I told you that tomorrow you were going to give a presentation to a thousand people, and then do some full contact sparring, a lot of you would recognize how difficult this was. And it is.

But for me, who presented over 26 times in the last year, and spent years fighting competitively and doing hard sparring, it’s well within my comfort zone. I can pretend that it’s difficult, but it’s still easy to me and won’t help me grow.

Anyway – Geoff explains it a lot better than I can:

Difficult difficult, difficult easy
Geoff Thompson

I bumped into an old friend from the distant past. In my early days as a hard-nosed knuckle-dragger he was one of my compatriots, and one of the hardest working martial artists around. He had always prided himself on his sinewy mentality when it came to all things physical, and he had a prolific work rate. After a brief (and predictable) catch up (how’s the work, the car, the kids, the wife and the mum – in that order) he said ‘hey, you still doing animal day?’
Animal day, for those that do not know, is a form of knock-out or submission fighting (any range, any technique) that I pioneered in the mad, bad (and often sad) 90’s. A time I absolutely loved, but a time I am also grateful to have left behind.

I shook my head in the negative. It had been a many years since I engaged in my last animal day fight.
‘Why not?’ he asked, adding, ‘I’m still mad for it.’

‘Because it is difficult easy,’ I said, ‘and in order for me to continue growing my character, I don’t need difficult easy. In order for me to grow my character I need difficult difficult.’
He gave me one of those loud, squinty eyed confused looks that shouted from a hundred feet ‘Explain!’

So I explained.

Even as a veteran of thousands of fights, animal days were still a scary experience for me, it was violent and dangerous and extremely difficult. But because I had fought so many times and knew the terrain well it no longer stretched me.

Whatever it was that I needed to reap from that hard period of my life had been well and truly harvested; there was nothing left for me to learn there. Animal day was still difficult, and from the outside looking in it probably looked as though it was mad difficult, but for me it wasn’t, in fact it had become difficult easy.

My friend was still in love with the ground-and-pound style fighting and whilst his physical prowess was evident he had not grown even a single inch in any other area of his life, probably not for the last ten years. His was the mistake made by many; they presume that if something is difficult then they are in the arena. But experience has taught me that the only time you are truly in the arena is when you are (ever so slightly) out of your depth.

Difficult easy is when you are on familiar terrain, not matter how hard the going.

Difficult difficult is when you find your self at the bottom of someone else’s class with three crazy training partners; fear at your left, doubt on your right and (that big bastard) uncertainty squaring up in front of you.

Difficult easy is treading water whilst kidding yourself that you are swimming against the tide.

Difficult difficult doesn’t need to employ pretence because it is drowning and swimming for its life.

I see many people suffering stalled development because they are so busy occupying themselves with very worthy, respectably, difficult easy tasks that they use to avoid the difficult difficult areas of their lives.

I am doing it right now as it happens. I should be doing a re-write of a difficult (difficult) film script that is over due, but instead I am busying myself with a piece of difficult (easy) work that is not really due to be in print for another fortnight (damn, caught myself out again!)

Some (more) examples; you bury your relationship problems (difficult difficult) under hundreds of miles of road running (difficult…but easy).

You fill every spare moment with hard lists of worthy causes (difficult easy) so that you don’t have the time to invest in the book that you were always going to write, or the film you would love to make (if only you were not so committed in other areas) or the (difficult…very difficult) painting career that you had always intended to create.

You immerse yourself in course after course, book after book (so difficult, and yet….so deliciously easy) on becoming a life coach/property developer/master chef instead of just getting out there (difficult, oh so difficult) and actually doing it.

Listen. Let me tell you, the moment a task becomes difficult easy you stop growing. That is a fact. In order to re-establish your vital development you need to take an honest inventory (difficult very difficult – I have done it) of your life, ditch the pretence, and embrace the black that is….difficult difficult.

And stop chasing ostentatious challenges (that are difficult easy for you) and sort out your health; you are three stone over weight and your blood pressure is off the scale.

Kill the worthy endeavours that you think other people will think are impressive and do something truly and uniquely impressive; take your (secret) addictions to task and kill the porn (in all its forms).

Stop collecting trophies and certificates and belts that tell the word how successful you are and actually BE a success, by taking a hammer to that creepily burgeoning fear that you are harbouring.

And don’t, please (like my old mate) fall into the trap of mistaking hard work – even extremely hard (easy) work – for progress. Because, let’s be frank, difficult easy is really just another way of saying ‘easy’, and there is no growth in easy.

We aspirants are into the hard game, the long game, the difficult difficult game. What we are not into, or what we should not be into is the game of easy

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AC

One of the most requested things I am asked is “what is your favorite exercise for X?” or “if you could only do one exercise what would it be?”

You asked. We responded with the Results Fitness Exercise Library DVD Set

These are the most commonly used exercises at Results Fitness.

This 2 DVD set contains over 180 exercises with coaching cues, tips, instruction, and explanations for why we use certain exercises.

The exercises are presented in order of difficulty, from the most regressed version of an exercise to the most advanced version.

The most commonly used exercises are recorded and given to you in a easy to understand, technically accurate video that will give you the tools you need to be confident in coaching clients and athletes.

 

 

 

Click here to order

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AC
PS – this will give you an insight into the most used exercises at Results Fitness and allow you to replicate what we do in terms of exercise selection and coaching cues
Pick it up here