Posts Tagged ‘new rules of lifting for abs’

One week gone already in 2011….

This was a busy week for me at Results Fitness. Not only is our gym busy, I’m finalizing my talk for next week’s Perform Better seminar in Los Angeles, and we had four days of masterminding with our Results Fitness Business Coaching group.

Nevertheless, one of my goals for January was to get twenty training sessions done. At the end of week one, I’m on track.

Here’s what I did this morning:

Dynamic Warm Up

Core:
Plank
Side Plank

Resistance Training:

Dumbbell Split Squat paired with Inverted Row (3 sets of each)
Dumbbell Romanian Deadlift paired with Push ups (3 sets of each)

Metabolic Training:
15 mins interval training

Total workout time was just under 50 mins and according to my HR monitor, I averaged 134bpm, peaking at 163bpm and burned approx 550 calories.

–
AC
PS – This workout was adapted from phase one of the New Rules of Lifting for Abs

In Part One, we covered the reasons we wrote NROL for Abs, and you explained your core-training philosophy and methodology. But core training is maybe one-fifth of the program in our book.

Let’s start with mobility, since that’s the way readers will start all the workouts. Pretend I’m a reader who picks up this book with the goal of finding a bunch of exercises that’ll help me get ripped abs. How do you convince me that the mobility exercises are just as important as the core training? What do I lose if I don’t work on mobility?

AC: Take a look at most 70 year olds and get back to me! That should be reason enough.

Let me illustrate this with a story. When I got out of the hospital in 2006 I was struggling to regain fitness. As part of my “comeback” training I was doing multiple sets of push ups. I think I had worked up to 4 when my Dad came to visit from Scotland.

Watching me struggle, my Dad dropped to the floor and banged out 10 “marine style” push ups (where you clap your hands in front of you between each rep). He was 64 at the time!

About 18 months later I was visiting him and challenged him to see how many he could do. At this point my Dad was unable to get into the push up position.

What had happened in the 18 months?

He’d retired. My Dad had a physical job all his life. Since retirement he’d become sedentary and lost mobility faster than any other qualities..

Mobility is the one thing we take for granted that can enhance all our other training, and our overall quality of life the most.

So I’ve done the mobility exercises, and I’ve done the core training. I finally move on to the weight room. But once I get there, the strength workouts in NROL for Abs have me doing all kinds of things I’ve never done before.

There’s a bench press where my shoulders are on the end of the bench and my feet are on the floor, with my torso completely off the bench. There’s a one-arm row where I have one hand on a bench, my feet on the floor, and my body in a plank position. And there are some squats and deadlifts that are so evil I can’t really describe them to a family audience.

People who know you know that you do everything for a reason – every exercise is part of an overall training mechanism. Take one part out, and you’ve changed the entire program.

So why these exercises? What do they offer that you can’t get from the basic movements?

AC: My goal was to present an athletically challenging program where we are training core “all the time”. Of course there are some traditional exercises in there, but in order to provide a new stimulus I wanted to provide some more challenging exercises for people, rather than just say “Add 5lbs and start over”.

Once you get past Phase One of the program, the workouts finish with 5 to 10 minutes of metabolic training. The exercises themselves are pretty simple – burpees, kettlebell swings, body-weight squats, push-ups. But they kicked my ass. I started doing the metabolic training at the beginning of the workouts because if I waited until the end, I didn’t have the energy for them.

Even so, I got leaner on this program than I’d been in years. This isn’t really a question so much as an observation that if you want to get lean, you have to get way the hell out of your comfort zone at least once or twice a week.

AC: I think everyone needs direct metabolic training. The problem is that for years we’ve prescribed traditional cardiovascular exercises (jogging, cycling etc).

If we think about jogging, one mile is around 1500 plyometric reps with forces of 2-4 times bodyweight. If our goal is just to challenge the metabolism and cardio systems of the body – that’s a ton of joint stress. Cycling reduces the loads obviously, but of course there are more repetitions involved.

So the way we do “cardio” at Results Fitness is to do high intensity metabolic circuits where we take something like the kettlebell swing and perform density circuits. Studies came out of Truman State last year showing kettlebell swings to have an oxygen cost higher than running (with similar heart rate responses), but with about 20% of the reps performed when compared to a mile run.

Basically it’s a more effective and safer option than traditional cardio when the goal is purely cardio conditioning and calorie burning.

The downside, you’re going to have to work!

–
AC
PS – You can pick up a copy of the New Rules of Lifting for Abs – HERE .

The latest book in the New Rules of Lifting training series is now available! You can pick it up HERE .

This is the first book that I feel really reflects the programming that we do at Results Fitness.

The first two books had great programs in them, but I was brought in as a fitness consultant for these books.
In other words – the original books weren’t what we’d do if you joined Results Fitness.

This book is as close as it gets to being a member of our gym, without actually living in Valencia, Ca.

Here’s part one of an interview that I just did with my co-author Lou Schuler:

Alwyn, let’s talk about the origins of our book. In the Introduction, I tell readers why I had to change the way I trained. Short version: I hurt my shoulder playing lumberjack in my back yard, I reinjured a knee in the gym, and I got a hernia. There was a point in the summer and fall of 2008 where I could barely walk. Running was completely out of the question. I was forced to rethink not just the exercises I did or the way I did them, but the goal of training itself.

As it happens, around that time you and Rachel changed the way you trained your clients. What was different about your clients circa 2008, vs. earlier clients? And how did you change your programming strategy to address those differences?

AC: Well the changes came around long before 2008 Lou. Probably closer to 2002 we started noticing it, and in 2004 or so we’d made a massive switch.

Simply put, our new beginner clients were arriving in worse shape than beginners maybe 5 years previously had arrived.

We’ve tracked the posture, range of motion, functional movement screen scores and initial body fat percentage of every new member at Results Fitness since we opened almost eleven years ago. We have more data on exercise than most peer-reviewed published studies have collected. People were arriving in worse condition than ever before.

A fitness program could have consisted almost entirely of weight training and cardio in the past. Now we had to address muscle imbalances, core strength and stability, dynamic flexibility, direct power training alongside strength and cardio.

As a result – our programming started to change around 2004, but we’re constantly tweaking. Each year we sit down and revamp the entire programming.

I’m excited because this is the first time I’ve been able to share exactly what we do at Results Fitness with the general public. The first two books in our series were good of course :) , but this more accurately reflects the training experience that our in-house clients are familiar with.

When I decided I was going to invest time for core training at the beginning of each workout, I didn’t really have a plan. I mean, that was my plan – to do core exercises. So I would do some stuff I got from McGill, some stuff I got from different articles, and some stuff I picked up from who knows where. I would just do stuff, then make it harder, then move on to new stuff.

I was genuinely excited to realize you had a systemic approach to core training. I could try to explain it to the readers, but I would just end up repeating what you told me.

AC: If it weren’t for dead guys, we’d probably never have started doing crunches. That’s because for years, much of our knowledge of the way muscles work was  based on the study of human cadavers. By looking at the anatomy of corpses, modern scientists figured that the function of our abdominal muscles must be to flex the spine. Which is exactly what you do when you perform a crunch, a situp, or any other move that requires you to round your lower back. As a result, these exercises were popularized as the best way to work your abs.

But the reality is that your abs have a more critical function than flexing your spine: Their main job is to stabilize the spine. In fact, your midsection muscles are the reason your torso stays upright instead of falling forward due to gravity. So your abs and lower back actually prevent your spine from flexing.

The upshot is that if you want better results from your core workout, you need to train your abs for stability.

LS: Now let’s get specific. When we talk about stabilization, we’re talking about static exercises. Some people will look at that and think, “Planks? Side planks? Why do I need a book for those?”

But once you get past those basic exercises, the stabilization exercises in NROL for Abs get really hard, really fast. Even our models for the photo shoots couldn’t hold a couple of them longer than it took for the photographer to snap off a shot.

So explain how you progress within the stabilization category, and why it’s important to take those steps one at a time.

AC: The purpose of the core (not just the abs) is to stabilize the spine. That’s the basic level we begin at. But when we examine more closely – the reality is that the core functions to stabilize the spine while the extremities are moving and producing or receiving force.

So stage one is pure stabilization. That’s our entry level – the ability to stabilize the spine without any change in forces or loading.

LS: The next category is dynamic stabilization, where you’re moving a load around the core. This category includes a lot of exercises that people have seen before, like cable lifts and chops, Swiss-ball rollouts, and Valslide push-aways.

But I can probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen them done the way you want them done. Just to pick one example, the cable lifts and chops, you tell readers to do them from kneeling or half-kneeling positions, with the shoulders and hips facing forward throughout the movement. If you can’t turn your shoulders and hips, it’s a much harder exercise, and most of us have to cut the weight in half to get it right.

Explain your thoughts here – why not let readers do those exercises the fun way, with full-body rotation?

AC: Level two is what we call “Dynamic stabilization”. It’s kind of a misnomer I suppose. The purpose of this phase is to maintain spinal stability while moving an extremity and changing force and center of gravity. For example – instead of merely holding a plank – we’d do a plank with a mountain climber or a pulldown to really challenge stability.

Gray Cook was the one who really brought the chops and lifts to my attention. Now if you use your full body to pull the weight stack – you’ll definitely use more weight – but at that point it’s a core strength exercise – the core is moving. We want core stability – make the extremities move and challenge the core to resist rotation.

The final category is integrated stabilization. Readers are doing lunges, squats, and walks with unbalanced and offset loads. You also have Turkish get-ups in this category. I’m sure a lot of the people reading this – coaches and experienced lifters – will want to start with those exercises, and skip the first two exercises.

What will they get out of the exercises by building up to them with weeks of preparation, vs. jumping right in?

AC: Level three is integrated stabilization where we do traditional exercises with a twist – for example using one dumbbell instead of two in a lunge, or shoulder press. Basically we offset the center of gravity and force the core to work harder than it would with a traditional exercise.

Now of course someone can jump in and train anywhere they want. But that shows a real misunderstanding of the programming. If you aren’t used to this type of training then you’ll progress faster by following smart progressions.

Training is a process. Just follow the recipe. And besides – we give enough variation of even a simple plank that will challenge most people. Try a one arm plank wearing a weighted vest with your hand on a medicine ball and your feet in the TRX straps if you’re not convinced !!

–
AC
PS – You can pick up a copy of the New Rules of Lifting for Abs – HERE .