Monthly Archives: September 2010

In all the discussion of strength training being “simple”, albeit an over generalization of training, it also needs to be stressed that it comes with a series of interesting paradoxes. While it takes a number of years to understand that within mass training goals, the best use of your time is the movements that utilize the greatest amount of muscle fibres a far step ahead in the same movements, to move a weight in your hands you must use your legs. That might roll off the tongue a bit easier than actual compliance but like ideas of “spreading the floor” or “dropping under the bar”, they take years of experience with “cold metal”.

One of the other greatest twists in the iron game that both young and old need to consider is that while you will use great power movements as the mainstay to your program, attention to the finest of details is key to your success. This squarely relates to “proper generation of movement”, which is the foundation of training as noted the “Renegade Concepts of Training”. Yet movement generation, the form and function of training are typically ignored within standard gym settings and I have to admit a broad swath of “experts” in the industry seem to ignore its importance.

Is it because the digital age has swept the business quickly in front of the clients, many of whom are impressed with a heavier load but nothing about technique and proper form? Furthermore, with virtually no educational barriers to enter the field and coupled with the frontier of social media in which anyone can publish, quality controls do not exist because few stand up and hold said “experts” accountable. Unfortunately, who suffers are exercise enthusiasts, athletes and anyone else who steps on a gym floor as, what I refer to as the “culture of mediocrity” takes hold.

Form and technique in resistance training and while I like to use the idea of “getting the job done, anyway, anyhow”, it does not come with poor execution of lifts that will not only reduce the positive effects of training but set the individual up for the chance of injury. Unfortunately, resistance work and its many jewels of training get put on the blocks when this occurs.

Possibly the greatest example I am aware of is within the most important of all basic lifts for athletes, that being Squats. Commentary of Squats being dangerous or “painful is based upon the inability to execute the movements properly and worse yet, poor teachers at the helm or another example of the average, leading others to be average. While fault must be shared with the user, those who taught the movement are effectively its executioner and for that matter, the purveyor of broken dreams. As professionals it important to lead through example so great movements are used properly and the iron game is passed down to future generations.

The key point to this is not (simply) the benefit of performing Squats in your training but with all movements, execute the lifts correctly. While it looks “great” in advertising photos to have a big load on the bar, if technique is incorrect it will not only teach improper technique but harm the “iron game” that, given you are reading this, are potentially a steward of it. For those of us who are professionals in this field, consider the final section of that sentence as it is the responsibility of this generation to restore the iron game to its formal glory that the previous allow to decay.

Squats are likely the most important "basic" resistance exercise that an athlete needs to perform yet somehow important tips of how to perform properly are missed in the majority of media releases. Given their importance, please consider these three major elements when digging into the Squat racks.

Squats’ are not a “torso lift”, where you lean forward and effectively take a great deal of the impact off the legs and put is squarely on the back. The torso at the base of the lift should be roughly 45°, with some individual variation based upon limb length, but at no time should the upper body lean forward beyond that and force the ascent via the back. That is an accident ready to happen, yet common in many teaching circles. The reason for this occurring is a mixture of engrained poor movement patterns of the lift, generally brought on by weak, inflexible hamstrings and hip flexors, the lack of impulse coming from the glutes and insufficient core strength.

Right beside improper torso angle is the incorrect action, in a wider base stance typical of most athletic regimes, of initiating movement from pushing the knees forward at the very start of the exercise. This action reduces, eliminates, the chance of performing the lift correctly, which should start by pushing the hips back. It furthermore is rarely a simple coaching cue as it stems from weak, inflexible hamstrings and hip flexors and the only way to resolve the problem is shore up the weaknesses.

The third major flaw in performing Squats, or for that matter all actions involving the lower body, is possibly the most difficult to spot, that being the action of the big toe whereby most individuals roll to the outside of their feet. Without proper action, range of motion and impact from the big toe, generation of movement with the hamstrings, hips and glutes suffers. More visible in gait analysis by a Podiatrist, it needs to be corrected through a proper body re-education system and if I have my preference, top quality orthotics.

Oddly enough as we review compliance issues of Squat, the common denominator we see is weak, inflexible hamstrings and hip flexors and while we will look at a series of measures to solve the problem, all training regimes, whether for elite athletes, Bodybuilders, Powerlifters or everyday exercise enthusiasts should start with basic lunging pattern within RED².

prepared by John Davies

photo by Renegade Style Productions, copyright protected.

Amongst the often-confusing world of health and fitness is a problematic myopic vision of how-to exercise. Without a shred of doubt, this issue developed during the great boom to the sector as it went from a common participatory experience to an enormous business. As the public slowly shifted away from recreational activities as well as manual chores, along with epidemic rise in obesity the fitness industry grew. Hence, one of the most alarming points that is irrefutable, as the public continues to spend unimaginable amounts on health and fitness, never in the history of man have levels of obesity been higher. Quite obviously, what is being done in the mainstream exercise world is far off-base and doing little to assist the problems of obesity but it also gives rise to the point of versatility and variation within training.

Of the many problems of the modern exercise field is versatility in training. I tend to believe this stems from the basic reason of keeping your clients within the corporate setting, hence why the development of so many gadgets and new classes to keep interest within the facility. While I often make light of it, somehow the marketing of industry has convinced people to drive to the gym to walk on a treadmill.

How has that precisely occurred when a simple step outside would not only satisfy exercise goals but do much greater and potentially enhance the quality of life. Yet the fact is the marketing machine of the industry has done just that and so each night, treadmills are busy with people walking nowhere.

This, albeit peculiar stand-up observational routine is both pointed and solidifies the notion that the modern exercise climate is stagnant, lacking originality of thought and for the most-part fails to see “the obvious”. If your goal is improved fitness as in the case of someone walking a treadmill, you have countless options other than the ritual of driving to gym for a stroll nowhere.

This problem is not the sole domain of the fitness sector as what masquerades as the present “iron game” is following the same path. Specializing has crept into a highly generalized area and where resistance training should incorporate a broad variation of mediums, all too often lifters resign there self to a few.

While the Concepts of Training never change, training mediums and exercises should vary considerably in order to avoid adaptation. Adaptation is both a friend and foe to the dedicated exercise enthusiast as it can be used to their advantage to say enhance range of motion in doing a movement daily but equally, when doing so it turns the lift into a “skill” and the physical impact is significantly reduced.

As a perfect example, I need to look no further than myself as I will perform Squats daily, often two to three sessions a day. I would in no way call these “strength building” training sessions but merely it maintains range of motion, assists in blood flow and ultimately leads to enhanced regeneration and fluidity of action. In a word of caution, for those considering such an approach I strongly urge regular review by a training professional to ensure technique is perfect, lest you will create a series of imbalances and possible injuries. This situation is also applicable those who train exclusively with kettlebells as given the mediums limitation and the standard approach of very high repetitions, the incidence of exercise induced problems is very frequent.

By varying training mediums, we are able to navigate our way through the tricky corridors of adaptation and provide stimuli to grow. While the overall movement does not change, the slight shifting of the methods of executing a slight can create a significant impact. Return to my personal example, I will further enhance my own training with basic lifts, squat variations with different start positions, lunging patterns to blindfolded movements (i.e. blindfolded Bulgarian Squats) to explosive jump patterns (i.e. single leg box jumps and bounding drills) or very progressive training that involves trampoline work. Each has its own unique benefit, a “not-so” hidden secret to my long-term success and adaptable to suit any program.

Furthermore, the issue of variation and versatility drives straight in the face of the present-day habit of “back to basics” training, that while well intended, is often very troubled in design. In an effort to restore “back to basic’s” training, many have unknowingly simplified their training to such a degree that they are performing the same movement infinitum and unbeknownst to them, not deriving significant benefit from training given they have adapted. The overall movements do not change but by varying mediums, the desired impact will be positively impacted and development improves exponentially.

Finally, this point needs to be stressed to those who engage in weighted general physical preparation (GPP) approaches because while I was pleased to introduce it to the market many years ago, I never believe it would spawn an endless parade of dedicated pieces of equipment. Unfortunately, in the eagerness to raise work threshold it has been forgotten that is “generalised” training and not specialized manual labour. If you fall into this category, the adjustment is simple as you merely have to adjust your GPP section to have broader variation.

This goes against the habit that many fall to, of choosing an easier path of least resistance and one that you are familiar with, yet as you expand your training horizon, you will find your goals ultimately closer. This will require a firm demeanour to challenge yourself with new obstacles but as you do, what you do with all your might, you will find your pathway to greatness that is within each of us.

prepared by John Davies

photo of John Davies performing a Front Squat from Renegade Style Productions DVD "Deuces Wild"

If training to excel in sport is not difficult enough, the modern athlete has another foe standing in their way. Rarely noticed, one of the greatest problems athletes face today is not simply competition but inaccurate training information in the “marketplace”.

Though this is not condemnation over the entire online community, far from it but within athletic development and the coaching world, I have serious reservations of the quality of information provided. Strictly speaking of athletic development, it is very possible that one of greatest limitation young athletes today have is coaching provided in the online community.

While that is not the case with all services, in many directions young athletes are sold on ideas that are lacking insight into athleticism but are done because it markets a product. The online business spends an inordinate amount of time selling what true athletes do not need and almost unilaterally by those with far less raw athletic ability than the actual users. Though that is a harsh comment that will annoy many in the “business side”, young athletes of far greater ability than coaches are continuously sold on ideas that only a lesser one finds challenging.

Simply put, the “average” teaching others to be “average”, creating a culture of mediocrity.

I do not care for being “average”, not slightly, not at all. I believe in excellence and pushing the boundaries of your dreams. That is why my athletes eschew to a higher level of character, noted by our company motto of “honour, commitment and loyalty” and while working towards excellence in sport, they do so in overall life and in such cases, their scholastic studies. That might be a bit more that you decided to think of today but the building leaders of tomorrow, starts today with men and women of honour.

Returning to sport development, while skill coaches continuously raise the bar on teaching proper technique and recognize the need for superior athletic abilities, the training rooms are not following suit. Beyond the online community that is focused more upon sales and marketing a dumbed-down product, the reason for this in daily compliance is two-fold; the lack of reliable, unbiased information being provided to young coaches and poor levels of fitness with developing athletes.

With respects to the former, as it relates to the topic of speed development, athletes and coaches are victims of a barrage of marketing efforts to sell gadgets, each removed from the basics of development of explosive power.

In a departure of my typical comment of things being “simple”, speed development is a complicated mix, particularly when it is for specific sporting activities.

Akin to academic studies, individuals must be exposed to a broad range of different activities to stimulate learning processes. Training regimes must be challenging, in order to avoid adaptation but further recognize the fine motor patterns and skills. All too frequently, training has been “dumbed down” to suit their coach’s individual preferences as opposed to what the young athlete needs. This is extremely evident within resistance training where athletes of extraordinary skills are subjected to training of coaches who simply never came within a shadow of personally understanding those abilities and ultimately the program is ineffective.

With this, I leave coaches and athletes a simple point to remember; ask more from yourself and incorporate more challenging activities. Champions are built from getting off the canvas and as you add broader stimuli, you are building a stronger foundation. As a very basic example a number of years ago, I listened to a coach tell me, in front of a group of athletes, that teaching a Snatch lift was “too complicated”. After reviewing with said group, the various schemes in their defensive playbook as well as the complexities of a CB in “push coverage”, we “decided” that they could handle learning the lift. Following my instructional template, that lasts less than one-minute, each performed the movement to the letter. Point being, ignore the culture of mediocrity and "ask more".

Within resistance-training measures, maintain a series of focal points each an offshoot of the Renegade Concepts of Training™.

Posture must always be near perfect and this goes more visible areas of the shoulders pinched back but ensure the foot is positioned correctly with action coming off the big toe. I will be releasing further information on the new Renegade Body Re-Education system shortly but begin with RED² system immediately and make it a part of your daily regime.

Ignore the weight on the bar and focus upon the speed in which you execute the lift, while always maintaining correct posture and movement generation. This is a deeply challenging area for many, particular when you the marketing is overloaded with images of those lifting enormous weights but take a step back and ensure you derive the intended benefit.

Understand all training must have an “organic” side to it that teaches an individual to react to rapidly changing environments. From my book, “The Beautiful Game”:

Successful performance on the pitch (in sport) is primarily based upon technical sport skill (as well as tactical initiatives) and the ability to move and react in an explosive manner to changing situations. It is simply the ebb and flow of sport; in that you are competing in conflict against another force. Sport is not a generic pristine event such as a weight room where you decide how or when you are to lift but instead your reaction to an opponents move. Sport requires a unique enduring tenacity that once again overcomes adversity and makes the impossible, possible. In the oddest of observations, it is in fact only within testing-day environments when we able to decide when to tackle our challenges, i.e. when we are "ready.” Oddly enough, sport (and again life) is rapidly changing, imperfect and random. The paradox being, that in sport and life the only thing certain is that chaotic events are in fact certain to occur. Yes, of all the things we can predict to occur, is the one that unpredictable events, predictably will occur. With all the "scientific" research and expertise in strength training, few address the simple fact that reaction to imperfect conditions as in reactive strength and abilities is the key to being truly prepared for enhanced performance.

Finally, stay focused, confident and bold. While I know this is more of a motivational, personal comment, trust me, I understand the road less travelled as it is somewhat of a medical marvel I am here to pen this article. Though the world around you expects mediocrity, I do not as I have faith that within each of lays greatness to not only personally excel but quite possibly something much greater, in building a path for others to follow.

photo from "Agility, part 1", a Renegade Style production 2005

Amongst the most frequently asked questions of the “iron game” is how to add muscle size. While it is steeped with some mystery, for the most part is a relatively straight-forward when you use a older approach to resistance work and becomes even that much easier when applied to modern supplementation and diet knowledge.

The supplementation field has made an enormous step forward in that last five years whereas that last generation or two in the “iron game” have served as a black spot. Whether it is because of lowering physical activities in childhood games, manual chores in our daily lives, the reduction of phys-ed in school systems or even the growth of the training sector as a business, common physical abilities of the past are now awe-inspiring.

While climbing a rope a few stories, sans padding on the ground, has turned into a near circus performance, one of the greatest areas of impact is the reduction of manual chores in our daily lives. The technological breakthroughs of making functions around the home “easier” have had an ironic twist because now, in-essence, everything is more of a challenge. This has created an odd impact because in making thing easier it has eliminated the need to stabilize and using your legs, or more accurately said for exercise purposes, while under duress.

Physical activity is performed most efficiently when posture is maintained under duress and movement is generated in an optimal pattern. When posture breaks down and the body is no longer able to stabilize itself, total body movements become more upper body dominant, without sufficient action from the hips and lower body.

How this relates to mass development is further unique twist because while compound movements are the best way to develop muscle mass, even the best intended often find they are unable to generate enough power from the legs. This leads to one challenging visualization but within compound movements, even though a weight is in your hands, you must generate power coming from your legs. Hence, move a weight that is your hands with your legs.

This will be a lot easier said then done for many with a lifting background, as they may be unknowing victims within typical fitness facilities where the majority of equipment is for upper-body training. While the reasons for this are varied the result is the same as many, males in particular, suffer from the inverted pyramid look as they focus on the upper body and ignore their legs. Like a tree without roots or a stable trunk, growth will be limited as the individual will be unable to use significant loading in multiple-joint movements given the legs simply cannot handle the load. To accelerate mass development, it must begin with a focus of Leg and Hip power within the resistance section of training.

Should you accept this approach within your training and mass development goals a further “unique” observation will be noted.  In time, as the legs become the “power base” of the body, the individual will be able to handle significant greater loading, thus creating a super compensatory effect on the upper body. Effectively, the lower body strength levels have required greater loading which in turn forces the upper body to accommodate to greater loading. By generating power with the legs in multiple joint movements a super-compensatory effect is created that will enhance upper body muscular growth.

With these three training cues, it is no wonder why those who focus upon Pushing, Pulling, Pressing and Squatting have no problem with muscular development. In the next of the series, we will look at how to piece together a training regime for optimal growth. This process is complicated because we have to reverse the trend of not simply previous exercise patterns but lifestyle and for that, it is time to get back to work and use the legs.

prepared by John Davies

photo of John Davies, photos credit: Ar’Shaun Johnson of www.arshaunjohnsonphotography.com

Speed, for me just the word symbolizes “victory”. The ability to dictate competition, to shift your opponent’s tactics to your strong suit and leave them defeated in a swift, cutting stroke.

That paragraph may be difficult for some to digest, if not accept but in sport there are those who excel and those who are routinely vanquished. Athletics, teaches great lessons, including that of preparedness but for those who take preparation lightly, the role of the vanquished is reserved.

I take preparation extremely serious, possibly more than any mentor you have ever met. Every detail, far beyond the surface is combed over with an understanding of both short and long-term impact. Those under my direction in the field of sport excel in life because they have been trained to respond to adversity, to fight when others shiver and I know when the knock of the door comes, they are ready to rip it off the hinges. Unpredictability is predictable just as the response to well trained individual.

Swift, silent and deadly in the field of competition, we are always prepared because we have prepared for the task at-hand.

Yet, this is one of the more peculiar points of speed training and the modern exercise world because athletes for the most part do not train for sport, they train for the testing day.

Quite possibly the gravest unseen error for skill coaches is not realisation that the conditioning section of their athletes off-season is be administered with the notion of testing better and not playing better.

Rule number one for athletes and coaches for speed development is that everything must directly apply to sport production. Recalling that our goal is to develop explosive speed and power such that you can dictate the ebb and flow of the competition and therefore assist in achieving victory but distinctly not to simply win combine tests.

Combine tests and the marketing of said results have become the modus operandi of and the industry as they care little of their players results but instead how to sale their services. It is unfortunate because while skill coaches fret over “workout warriors” who cannot produce in the heat of battle, the blame lays firmly on the strength and conditioning field. Echoing an educational system that prepares people to test better as opposed to embracing education and the process of learning, this problem runs amuck in the coaching sector.

Though repetitious, all speed development must directly apply to sport production.

Rule number two, albeit closely connected to the first, is that all training is either creating a generalized base of athleticism or in advanced stages, specialized to the sport. Like the first concern, this is a major problem in training today because we have athletes rambling down this decade’s version of “cross training”.

While the intention is good-natured, “cross training” can create a problem of deflecting a player’s off-season training and thus lose focus. I have seen countless athletes inadvertently shift their goals to become better at Track, Squash and Power/Weightlifting while losing focus that did so to be faster, quicker, stronger for their sport. Though each of those endeavors can be helpful, if applied incorrectly you may be have a player ready to play another sport.

Thirdly, speed training for sport creates a culture of discipline and aggressiveness. This cannot be emphasized enough as a well-developed program creates an individual or team ready to attack at the slightest opportunity. Athletes who train with the notion of using speed as the ultimate weapon is sport understand a simple phrase you will hear from me constantly.

Attack, attack, attack.

photo of John Davies, copyright protected, Renegade Style 2009

Prepared by John Davies

John Davies is available on his personal page on Facebook , Renegade Training™’s, Google+, Renegade Training™ on Google+ as well as or Twitter.

John’s present supplement stack starts daily with the “athlete’s advantage”, Modern, Super Cissus, PowerFull and Prime, along with additional use of Recreate, Yok3d, Anabolic Pump and Pink Magic depending upon his training cycle (workout log 1, 2, 3, 4).

Disclaimer
The information provided in “Instant Training Improvement Tips”, as well as this web-site blog is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be interpreted as medical advice for any condition. Always consult a qualified medical professional before beginning any nutritional program or exercise program. By reading this disclaimer, you hereby agree and understand that the information provided in this column is not medical advice and relying upon it shall be done at your sole risk.