Human 2.0

I’m currently working with a client in a rehabilitation clinic and for the past couple of weeks we’ve been having a problem. Every time we’re about to begin some sort of walking drill, which she needs to do if she wants to get better, she begins to feel sick. Now the first time this happened, I chalked it up to a cold or something, but this has been going on for a couple of weeks now and I’m starting to think that she just doesn’t want to work. That got me thinking about what I could do to motivate her.

I’ve had experience training people before, but not in a clinical setting. I teach kids boxing at a gym near school and it goes without saying it’s a very different environment. Almost all of the class is male and between the ages of 12 and 16. By and large, I run the class like I would most sport practices. I push them hard till there covered in sweat and giving me dirty looks. When we talk, it’s usually me correcting something or some guy humor. And when they slack off or don’t do what I say? I yell at them. You’d be surprised how loud I can get.

Absolutely none of that prepared me to deal with my client. I can’t very well yell at her for not exercising. After all, there are very real limits to what she is able to do. Ultimately, all I was able to do was say “Okay, we’ll do something else today,” and move on. I can support her and encourage her, but I can’t order her around. It just wouldn’t work.

I guess what I’m rambling about is something we all know but probably don’t think about much. We can’t and don’t train everyone the same way. What makes a personal trainer more than just a person who knows how to lift weights is the ability to work with everyone from a top athlete getting ready for competition, to a senior citizen trying to become more independent, to an obese kid who just wants his weight to be gone and be able to give them a workout that will accomplish whatever their goals are.

I don’t know if any of you have caught the new show on Discovery channel, but it is a great program. I just got done catching a rerun of one of their first episodes and I was impressed. This particular one focused on the body’s amazing ability to perform superhuman feats of speed, endurance and power. The science in the show is spot on and really well done, but not so academic that it would turn off someone who hasn’t been studying this stuff for five years. Other episodes look like they deal with other aspect of the body: vision, the brain, etc. I would encourage everyone to check it out if you get the chance. It usually airs Sundays at 8:00.

Well it took me long enough, but I finally managed to drag myself to a yoga class. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for awhile, mainly because I have no flexibility and apparently its pretty good for that. So I’m running a little late and I show up just as the class is getting started. The second I walk in the instructor asks “Has anyone not taken yoga?” I was the only one to raise my hand. Good start so far.

The instructor, who I’m sure is a very nice person, was almost a parody of herself. Her voice reminded me of hypnotists that I’ve seen before, so smooth that you want to roll over and take a nap just listening to it (which I almost did, those mats are pretty comfortable) and she started class by saying “For the next hour, let me be your guide through the world of yoga.” It was like a bad SNL skit, but whatever.

Now I knew that yoga wasn’t a walk in the park, but I was surprised at just how hard it was at times. Not the flexibility stuff, I knew I was gonna suck at that. It was the strength bits that killed me. Well, not so much strength I suppose as muscular endurance. As anyone who has taken a class before knows, the postures in yoga force you to contort yourself into some rather strange positions then hold those positions for what seems like forever. I’m a pretty strong guy, but my muscles were burning by the time the instructor let us rest.

All that being said it was a great class and I fully intend to go back for more. Coming out of the class I felt loose and energized and after only one hour of practice I already felt more flexible. I would definitely recommend that everyone give yoga a try.

Not being able to work out sucks. For the last month and a half I have been lying around, unable to work out due to the fact that I’ve been healing from surgery. I realize that I need to take it easy and let my body concentrate on healing, but I can’t stop thinking about all the progress I made wasting away. My strength, speed, endurance, all are atrophying for lack of use. Now I am finally healed and am able to start working again. On the downside, it is a long, slow road to get back to where I was. The good thing is that with a blank slate to work with, I’ve finally decided to start using a technique known as periodization during my work out. What is periodization? Why thank you for asking.

Periodization refers to dividing up your workout into separate periods, usually a few weeks in length, in which certain aspects of fitness are emphasized, with the goal of incrementally building up fitness in preparation for an event, usually a competition. It is most often used in resistance training methods, which is what I will be using it for and which is what I will be discussing. Periodization is useful because it helps to ensure that an athlete won’t overtrain, which can have harmful consequences and decreases performance, and because it helps to target various aspects of muscular fitness (strength, strength-speed, strength-endurance…) For the purposes of this article and my workout, I will be using a four period program in which I will be attempting to increase my levels of muscular strength and power. Depending on what you want to achieve (strength, speed, endurance) the specifics of your workout may differ.

The first period lasts approximately four weeks and is dedicated to hypertrophy. Hypertrophy is simply a big word for muscle growth. During this first period the goal is to build a solid base of muscular strength before moving on to the harder and more specialized workouts in the later periods. I like to use basic, functional exercises for this portion, such as squats, deadlifts, bench press and pull-ups. I’m not saying those are the only ones you should do, there just my personal favorites. The important thing to remember during this stage is to have a high volume and a low intensity to your exercises. Volume is defined as sets times reps while intensity refers to the amount of weight your lifting. As such, a high volume would include a large amount of sets (3-5) and reps (10-12), while a low intensity would mean a relatively low weight (70% of max.)

The second period will last about four weeks and focuses on strength. Strength is defined as the ability of a muscle to produce a force. The higher amount of force that the muscle needs to produce (i.e. the weight of the bar) the greater the gains in strength for the muscle. What this means is that this period will have a lower volume, 2-3 sets and 6-8 reps, and a higher intensity, 70-80% of your max. As far as exercises, continue using functional ones like the ones listed above and be sure not to switch out one exercise for another. Switching exercises can be dangerous, because the new exercise might target muscles that haven’t been worked up to that point and lack a good foundation of hypertrophy. This will increases your risk of an injury.

The third period takes about three weeks and will focus on power. For those of you who don’t know, power and strength are two very different things. As noted above, strength is simply how much force you can produce. Power is defined as how much force is produced times the distance traveled divided by the time it took. In simpler terms, power is defined as strength times speed. This period will utilize even lower volume, 2-3 sets and 3-5 reps, and higher intensity, 85-90%. In addition, at this point a change in exercises in order. I know, I know I just said not to do that, but in this case it’s necessary. Many of the exercises that I, and most likely you, have been previously using are not well suited for developing power. As such, for this period I recommend switching to lifts that do, namely the Olympic lifts. Power cleans, the clean and jerk and the snatch are all well suited for this period, so feel free to use any of them.

The final period lasts about two weeks and is devoted to maxing out. At this point, athletes are close to the date of their competition and are looking to peak, so the goal is to squeeze whatever is left out of them in preparation. Since most of us aren’t athletes we won’t have an event to worry about, but we can still use this time for the same reason, taking our bodies to the limit. You’ve probably already guessed this, but you will be using less volume, 1-3 sets and 1-3 reps, and a high intensity, >90%. Push yourself as hard as you can.

Technically there are only four periods to this workout, but there is one more that needs to be addressed; the rest period. After pushing yourself to the limit, your body is going to need some time to recuperate. Take a week off, maybe two depending on how you feel, and let yourself heal. Since you’ll be in pretty good shape at this point your unlikely to lose any of the muscle mass you just gained. So take a break, you’ve earned it.

After going through all this you might be thinking, “Well what do I do know?” You could simply seek to maintain the gains, or you could start the process all over again. Maybe this time you’ll shoot for more weight, or maybe you’ll shift your focus and concentrate on another aspect of you fitness. Use you imagination, there’s always a new mountain to climb.

You hear the term functional exercises thrown around pretty often. Usually everyone agrees that doing them is a good idea, but not everyone understands why. What are functional exercises and why should I do them are some common questions posed. After reading this, hopefully you’ll have a better understanding of what they are and the effect they can have on your training.

Functional exercises are so named because they mimic many of the movements found in activities of either daily living or sport activity. In short, they utilize the movements that allow us to “function” in a given activity. Typically they involve use of free weights, medicine balls and other types of equipment that allow a great degree of motion. This is important because athletics, and daily life, always occurs in three planes of motion. A running back in football may have to accelerate quickly in one direction, cut quickly in another direction, spin away from a tackler before leaping into the end zone.

So what are functional exercises? They are for the most part, multi-jointed exercises. This is because almost all of the movements performed in sport or daily living involve multiple joints (running, jumping, catching, throwing). Isolation exercises on the other hand, most often found on exercise machines, work one muscle or joint at a time and are not considered functional. As an example, exercises like squats or deadlifts would meet the criteria because they involve the use of many joints and muscles, while something like leg extensions would not. As stated earlier, they tend to mimic activities of the sport or of daily living. To use the previous example, squats and deadlifts are movements found in almost all sports and in daily activity, that is pushing and pulling with the legs, and are therefore functional. Leg extensions or other isolation exercises are not functional because the movement they train, movement of one joint in isolation to the rest of the body, almost never occurs.

One important thing to remember is that an exercise that is functional for one group may not be so for another. For example, long distance running, while certainly functional for marathoners and triathletes, would not be considered a functional exercise for a football player, since football involves very little long distance running. Since football consists of short bursts of activity followed by longer periods of rest, a football player would be better served using interval training, or another exercise which mimics the events of a football game, to increase his endurance. When deciding what exercises you should utilize in your exercise program, it is important to consider the movements you will be performing in your activity. Try to choose exercises that are as close as possible to the movements found in your sport or daily life. In this way you can maximize the effects of your training.

With the fitness industry as large as it is, and growing bigger every year, it comes as no surprise to learn that there is a lot of misinformation floating around out there. So, in an effort to curb this tide of ignorance and save my own sanity (if I hear one more eat-celery-and-you’ll-lose-weight diet I’m gonna shoot somebody) I figured I sound off on some of the more well known weight loss myths.

Myth 1: Eating certain foods will make you fat

FALSE. Low-fat diets, low-carb diets, low-protein diets, are all based around the idea that certain foods will make you fat. I will say this once, THE TYPE OF FOOD YOU EAT DOES NOT MAKE YOU FAT!!! Gaining weight follows a very simple formula: if you take in more calories than burn off, you will gain weight. Eating too many calories is the reason that people gain weight and your body does not care where those calories come from. If you ate 4000 calories of broccoli, guess what, your going to gain weight. Conversely, eating certain foods will not help you lose weight. Low-carb diets (in addition to being horrible for your heart) will not help you lose weight if you still take in an excess amount of calories. To lose weight, a good diet program will recommend, you guessed it, cutting a moderate amount of calories while still maintaining a varied and healthy diet. Now like all good myths there is a small element of truth in that certain foods do contain more calories than others. Specifically, a gram of fat contains 9 calories, whereas a gram of carbohydrate or protein contains 4 calories. This does NOT mean that eating foods high in fat will make you fat, because the bottom line is that it’s the calories, not the food, that make you gain weight.

Myth 2: Resistance training is better than cardio for losing weight.

FALSE, sort-of. Any form of exercise will aid in losing weight, because any form of exercise will burn calories, but cardio exercise has shown to be the most efficient at fat burning. Your body uses two primary fuels to power itself, carbs and fat. Carbs provide quick energy and are used primarily during short, sprinting activities. Fat on the other hand is used during long sustained activities, such as jogging or swimming. Resistance training works the muscle in short bursts of activity and primarily makes use of carbs for its fuel source. This makes it ineffective as a fat burning activity compared to cardio training, which uses primarily fat, especially in the so-called “fat burning” zone (50-60% of your max heart rate.) In addition, cardio training for moderate to high durations has been shown to raise the metabolic rate of the body significantly, meaning that the body is burning more calories even after you stop exercising. All that being said, resistance training does have its place in a weight loss routine. A pound of fat consume about 2-3 calories per day, where as a pound of muscle consumes about 6-7 calories per day. A good resistance program that adds muscle to the body means that you will naturally burn more calories during the day, even while you sleep.

Myth 3: Diet alone can lose weight just as effectively as diet and exercise

FALSE. If you follow a simple diet program that has you cut your calories to the point that you are burning more than your taking in, you will lose weight. But what exactly are you losing? When most people talk about losing weight, what they’re really talking about is losing fat. Unfortunately, diet alone is not the most efficient way to shed that unwanted cellulite. For every pound lost on diet alone, only ¾ of that is fat. The other ¼ is muscle. As we already know, muscle burns more calories than fat, so losing it is counterproductive to losing weight. The more efficient method is diet and exercise combined. Using both, for every pound lost your actually losing 1¼ pounds of fat and gaining ¼ pound of muscle.

More myths will follow as I update this article.