Sunday, January 18, 2009
Thank you to b2d readers: what would you like to read?
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Over the past few months, some of you have been dropping by begin to dig (b2d) regularly, sometimes commenting; sometimes not. I'd like to say thank you for your visits, and glad you've occasionally found something worth your time here. I'd like to thank the folks in particular who have let their blogger id's show up on the page publicly as folks who grok b2d. Honored by your links. And to folks in general who subscribe to reader feeds, again, thanks for making b2d a part of your reading time. I was looking at the list of countries where folks have pinged from - that's super, and much obliged. Hope the weather's ok where you are.
If i may, i'd like to ask you all about tuning b2d.
Mainly the articles come from what's driving me in my own practice, and efforts to explore and unpack them, and present what i find back to anyone else who may have some of the same questions/interests.
If, however, there are related topics you'd like to see covered in b2d -- working out with kettlebells, functional movement, the science of same, and the such like -- that i haven't touched on, please let me know. I was writing recently about expertise and the 10 thousand hours required to get to that expert level, and one of the places i have that 10k it seems is doing research. So, i may not have The Answers, but i may know how to get a wedge into some of them.
Otherwise, i'd be keen to hear if there's something b2d brings that you particularly enjoy, and just want to see kept or enhanced?
Will look forward to hearing from you.
All the best
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
If i may, i'd like to ask you all about tuning b2d.
Mainly the articles come from what's driving me in my own practice, and efforts to explore and unpack them, and present what i find back to anyone else who may have some of the same questions/interests.
If, however, there are related topics you'd like to see covered in b2d -- working out with kettlebells, functional movement, the science of same, and the such like -- that i haven't touched on, please let me know. I was writing recently about expertise and the 10 thousand hours required to get to that expert level, and one of the places i have that 10k it seems is doing research. So, i may not have The Answers, but i may know how to get a wedge into some of them.
Otherwise, i'd be keen to hear if there's something b2d brings that you particularly enjoy, and just want to see kept or enhanced?
Will look forward to hearing from you.
All the best
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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Friday, January 9, 2009
EMS (electromagnetic stimulation/ electrotherapy) for rehab and active recovery
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I recently have had the dubious pleasure of working with an electro magnetic stimulation (EMS) and TENS (transcutaneous electrical neural stimulation) unit, along with z mobility work, to rehab a shoulder strain. Gotta tell ya, the results in terms of (a) speed of rehab and (b) maintenance of muscle performance seem impressive.
For those who have strained a shoulder muscle, you know that, depending on the intensity of the injury, you can forget about normal training with that muscle for weeks. SLOOOOW build back of performance. It seems EMS and z can help accelerate the recovery process. This isn't new information. In looking at various web sites on the usual rehabing of shoulders, several techniques kept recurring depending on strain severity: ice it initially (check), and use ultrasound and/or electrical stimulation, and from there, get one into a program to build back strength.
My understanding of the role of ultrasound is to help move waste products away from the affected tissue. This is what normal range of motion movement generally does. If you can't move, stuff can accumulate. EMS also has this effect.
The recommendation for EMS is listed as something a sports medical professional provides. This can mean seeing a doctor to get to a physio who has EMS gear, and getting in for appointments frequently enough to have a benefit. Seemingly not as simple as ice. Unless you have access to a portable unit yourself. We'll come back to that.
It may help to describe a bit about EMS/TENS first.
Most of us have seem electro-magnetic stimulation devices if we've ever seen infomercials about building up abs without exercise - or seen the Dragon movie with Bruce Lee sitting hooked up to a machine that's causing his muscles to twitch rapidly.
It's electrical impulses in our body that cause our muscles to contract, and that's where the money is in muscle growth: the work of contraction. Thus, EMS devices pass varying (low) levels of current through the muscle in varying cycles and intensities to stimulate muscular contraction. Taken to extremes, the same principle applies to the use of electricity in torture: the current causes extreme and painful involuntary contraction of the muscles. At appropriate levels, this approach to muscle rehab, as a quick look though pubmed research shows, has been used for treating a range of conditions including renal failure, arthritis, and stroke rehabilitation especially.
TENS is more often used as an analgesic, to stimulate endorphin responses. It's been used for pain management in a range of conditions and researched over decades.
Here's an entire chapter in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation on the use of EMS. Pretty well accepted techno for rehab/muscle building/performance protocols.
Rehabbing Tweaked Muscles
For sport rehab, which is where this story comes in, EMS has a long history of helping to build up muscle when voluntary contractions have not been as possible. In my case, pressing or snatching was not gonna happen, and i was loath to part with 2-3 weeks of training. So ok, i was fortunate enough to have access to a Compex Mi-Sport unit so thought i'd give it a go.
For the past week, each evening, i've been hooking up my arms to a rehab program of EMS - which feels like pulsing the muscles into forced fast contractions - bang bang bang - but not painful. For the past two days of this week, i've followed up rehab with strength building. The strength building is interesting: there's a sensor on the thing that detects muscle contractions. That is, you make muscle contractions while it's pulsing away - it stops if it senses you're not doing your contractions. Once your contractions kick in again, off it goes. There's timing built into this too according to research studies so, some programs have contractions for a set period and intensity, followed by an "active recovery" break. There's a pain program here too called "endorphic" - and it is. oh ya.
The results: accelerated recovery; maintenance of strength.
Within one week, the ROM without pain of my delt has improved dramatically. It's not 100%, but 85-90% yes. More than that, the other day i thought i'd see if i could press my 16 with the sore side. I could - nothing really pushing it - but yup, C&P'ing away - just for a test - wasn't really focusing on going for it; just if i could begin to work it again with weight.
Then i got a little cheeky and tried snatching - something that twinged considerably with an 8 the day after the strain happened and made me say "well that's it for swings, snatches and presses for awhile." Much to my surprise, it was ok. In fact, i was going back and forth non-stop for 10's a side with more ease than ever before. No pausing to put down the bell between tens. I wished i'd had a timer for my snatch test numbers.
Now, i'm not claiming that the EMS work made me stronger. Not at all. But having suffered through shoulder pulls in the past, i am impressed that within a week of easy therapy, not only am i able to get back to my training, but, it seems the EMS has kept the muscles from losing too much progress. The research wasn't kidding.
You may say that a week off is not going to kill anyone's progress - and may even be good for it. Ah! but i'd already had my back off week - this was an enforced second in a row. And maybe that's ok, too (though that's not really been my experience), but i do know i've not had such fast recovery from shoulder issues in the past. Based on the research, it also seems that this kind of repair is not unusual.
Indeed, the cool thing about the research is that it shows that combining weight training (or any training) with EMS is great for strength and power improvements as both approaches work the muscles somewhat differently. In some cases, EMS was able to improve torque over voluntary contraction (VC) alone, too, and likewise to improve muscle perfusion over VC alone, and help the CNS "to optimize the control to neuromuscular properties" when followed by sport-specific training. Chris Thibaudeau at T-Nation, in response to a question from John Berardi, goes into more detail about each of these benefits (citing older research than what i note above, showing this stuff has been around for awhile).
Active Recovery
While the unit has settings for various training programs, based on this past week's experience, i'm most interested in exploring it to support not only rehab, but active recovery. A quick glance at YouTube shows athletes using just such protocols - and claiming to get improved performance results. While one might be tempted to think that they're just saying this because the person has invested in a device, again, the research suggests that these things, in combination with regular training for enhancement, active recovery or rehab, have a strong benefit.
There's also some pretty weird looking applications being explored that the company has yet to put in their brochures - these are called Functional EMS - in other words, rather than sitting in a chair and being zapped, or simply flexing your muscles while being zapped, you do your activity in sync with the zapping. Back in 1998 this was done with the vertical jump; rehab protocols as well use this work *with* the stimulation.
There's a youTube vid of a swimmer claiming great improved results from active recovery with these (he has two on him. who's his sponsor??) And, since you'll find it anyway, perhaps the best "cult" video for EMS is this one, where the cyclist/reporter looks like he's in pain using it - and yes, you can ratchet the machine up to painful levels, but how clever is that? (i wrote the fellow in the vid about this protocol to get a copy of it. He said it's "experiemental" and has yet to be released to the public. uh huh). To quote zhealth, never move into pain.
Therapist in a Box
What is unusual is access to such a tool outside a clinical setting. Though that is changing. In the US, as Thibaudeau recommends, there's a product by compex, called the Sport.
In the EU, for some reason, there are a plethora of models. None of these is cheap gear. The Sale price in the US on the Sport is around 699 (from 899); in the uk, units range from just under £200 to over £600. And you thought a Beast kettlebell was expensive.
Is it worth the price? Well i guess that depends on what the "it" is and where that "it" fits into one's training sense. What i can say is that if i had had to pay 35 quid to go see a therapist for a session for 7 days of treatments, that's £245 right there - and usually a PT session is only 20 mins; the compex are 30-60. And would i have been able to schedule 7 appointments in a row? So, a week of treatments and one of the entry level units is more than paid for. That's almost scary - on demand rehab, recovery, strength support for the price of the therapy i would have needed this week, but wouldn't have gone to get, and i'm back training two weeks sooner than anticipated? and i'd still have the device?
This is a tool with some proven research chops for rehab, recovery and even strength/power enhancement. I'm very impressed with its rehab effect, pleased to see that that is backed up by research and not some fluke or me imagining an effect. While i have the opportunity, i will be checking out its active recovery effects further - and maybe the massage settings, too.
Anyway, this could be a device worth considering adding to your workout repertoire (by the way, full disclosure, i have no connexion with compex or any other ems manufacturer). Tweet Follow @begin2dig
I recently have had the dubious pleasure of working with an electro magnetic stimulation (EMS) and TENS (transcutaneous electrical neural stimulation) unit, along with z mobility work, to rehab a shoulder strain. Gotta tell ya, the results in terms of (a) speed of rehab and (b) maintenance of muscle performance seem impressive.For those who have strained a shoulder muscle, you know that, depending on the intensity of the injury, you can forget about normal training with that muscle for weeks. SLOOOOW build back of performance. It seems EMS and z can help accelerate the recovery process. This isn't new information. In looking at various web sites on the usual rehabing of shoulders, several techniques kept recurring depending on strain severity: ice it initially (check), and use ultrasound and/or electrical stimulation, and from there, get one into a program to build back strength.
My understanding of the role of ultrasound is to help move waste products away from the affected tissue. This is what normal range of motion movement generally does. If you can't move, stuff can accumulate. EMS also has this effect.
The recommendation for EMS is listed as something a sports medical professional provides. This can mean seeing a doctor to get to a physio who has EMS gear, and getting in for appointments frequently enough to have a benefit. Seemingly not as simple as ice. Unless you have access to a portable unit yourself. We'll come back to that.
It may help to describe a bit about EMS/TENS first.
Most of us have seem electro-magnetic stimulation devices if we've ever seen infomercials about building up abs without exercise - or seen the Dragon movie with Bruce Lee sitting hooked up to a machine that's causing his muscles to twitch rapidly.
It's electrical impulses in our body that cause our muscles to contract, and that's where the money is in muscle growth: the work of contraction. Thus, EMS devices pass varying (low) levels of current through the muscle in varying cycles and intensities to stimulate muscular contraction. Taken to extremes, the same principle applies to the use of electricity in torture: the current causes extreme and painful involuntary contraction of the muscles. At appropriate levels, this approach to muscle rehab, as a quick look though pubmed research shows, has been used for treating a range of conditions including renal failure, arthritis, and stroke rehabilitation especially.
TENS is more often used as an analgesic, to stimulate endorphin responses. It's been used for pain management in a range of conditions and researched over decades.
Here's an entire chapter in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation on the use of EMS. Pretty well accepted techno for rehab/muscle building/performance protocols.
Rehabbing Tweaked Muscles
For sport rehab, which is where this story comes in, EMS has a long history of helping to build up muscle when voluntary contractions have not been as possible. In my case, pressing or snatching was not gonna happen, and i was loath to part with 2-3 weeks of training. So ok, i was fortunate enough to have access to a Compex Mi-Sport unit so thought i'd give it a go.For the past week, each evening, i've been hooking up my arms to a rehab program of EMS - which feels like pulsing the muscles into forced fast contractions - bang bang bang - but not painful. For the past two days of this week, i've followed up rehab with strength building. The strength building is interesting: there's a sensor on the thing that detects muscle contractions. That is, you make muscle contractions while it's pulsing away - it stops if it senses you're not doing your contractions. Once your contractions kick in again, off it goes. There's timing built into this too according to research studies so, some programs have contractions for a set period and intensity, followed by an "active recovery" break. There's a pain program here too called "endorphic" - and it is. oh ya.
The results: accelerated recovery; maintenance of strength.
Within one week, the ROM without pain of my delt has improved dramatically. It's not 100%, but 85-90% yes. More than that, the other day i thought i'd see if i could press my 16 with the sore side. I could - nothing really pushing it - but yup, C&P'ing away - just for a test - wasn't really focusing on going for it; just if i could begin to work it again with weight.
Then i got a little cheeky and tried snatching - something that twinged considerably with an 8 the day after the strain happened and made me say "well that's it for swings, snatches and presses for awhile." Much to my surprise, it was ok. In fact, i was going back and forth non-stop for 10's a side with more ease than ever before. No pausing to put down the bell between tens. I wished i'd had a timer for my snatch test numbers.
Now, i'm not claiming that the EMS work made me stronger. Not at all. But having suffered through shoulder pulls in the past, i am impressed that within a week of easy therapy, not only am i able to get back to my training, but, it seems the EMS has kept the muscles from losing too much progress. The research wasn't kidding.
You may say that a week off is not going to kill anyone's progress - and may even be good for it. Ah! but i'd already had my back off week - this was an enforced second in a row. And maybe that's ok, too (though that's not really been my experience), but i do know i've not had such fast recovery from shoulder issues in the past. Based on the research, it also seems that this kind of repair is not unusual.
Indeed, the cool thing about the research is that it shows that combining weight training (or any training) with EMS is great for strength and power improvements as both approaches work the muscles somewhat differently. In some cases, EMS was able to improve torque over voluntary contraction (VC) alone, too, and likewise to improve muscle perfusion over VC alone, and help the CNS "to optimize the control to neuromuscular properties" when followed by sport-specific training. Chris Thibaudeau at T-Nation, in response to a question from John Berardi, goes into more detail about each of these benefits (citing older research than what i note above, showing this stuff has been around for awhile).
Active Recovery
While the unit has settings for various training programs, based on this past week's experience, i'm most interested in exploring it to support not only rehab, but active recovery. A quick glance at YouTube shows athletes using just such protocols - and claiming to get improved performance results. While one might be tempted to think that they're just saying this because the person has invested in a device, again, the research suggests that these things, in combination with regular training for enhancement, active recovery or rehab, have a strong benefit.
There's also some pretty weird looking applications being explored that the company has yet to put in their brochures - these are called Functional EMS - in other words, rather than sitting in a chair and being zapped, or simply flexing your muscles while being zapped, you do your activity in sync with the zapping. Back in 1998 this was done with the vertical jump; rehab protocols as well use this work *with* the stimulation.
There's a youTube vid of a swimmer claiming great improved results from active recovery with these (he has two on him. who's his sponsor??) And, since you'll find it anyway, perhaps the best "cult" video for EMS is this one, where the cyclist/reporter looks like he's in pain using it - and yes, you can ratchet the machine up to painful levels, but how clever is that? (i wrote the fellow in the vid about this protocol to get a copy of it. He said it's "experiemental" and has yet to be released to the public. uh huh). To quote zhealth, never move into pain.
Therapist in a Box
What is unusual is access to such a tool outside a clinical setting. Though that is changing. In the US, as Thibaudeau recommends, there's a product by compex, called the Sport.
In the EU, for some reason, there are a plethora of models. None of these is cheap gear. The Sale price in the US on the Sport is around 699 (from 899); in the uk, units range from just under £200 to over £600. And you thought a Beast kettlebell was expensive.
Is it worth the price? Well i guess that depends on what the "it" is and where that "it" fits into one's training sense. What i can say is that if i had had to pay 35 quid to go see a therapist for a session for 7 days of treatments, that's £245 right there - and usually a PT session is only 20 mins; the compex are 30-60. And would i have been able to schedule 7 appointments in a row? So, a week of treatments and one of the entry level units is more than paid for. That's almost scary - on demand rehab, recovery, strength support for the price of the therapy i would have needed this week, but wouldn't have gone to get, and i'm back training two weeks sooner than anticipated? and i'd still have the device?
This is a tool with some proven research chops for rehab, recovery and even strength/power enhancement. I'm very impressed with its rehab effect, pleased to see that that is backed up by research and not some fluke or me imagining an effect. While i have the opportunity, i will be checking out its active recovery effects further - and maybe the massage settings, too.
Anyway, this could be a device worth considering adding to your workout repertoire (by the way, full disclosure, i have no connexion with compex or any other ems manufacturer). Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
10 thousand hours, the Kettlebell Clean and Perfect Form for Strength - again
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Year End Clean Up
I'd like to talk about a nervana experience i just had, the last day of this year, working on my clean and press. As some of you know, i've been trying to improve the strength of my press by following a version of Kenneth Jay's beast pressing protocol. I've celebrated the effect of volume on form, and how that translates to strength. I've lauded strength as a skill that practice of correct form gives.
In this post i'd like to talk a bit about related insights that come from high volume (by "high volume" i mean LOTS of practice) and how this lead to an insight about the clean that might be useful to you, and how it lead to a PR for me in a C&P set, with heavy emphasis on the "personal" part of PR.
Making Connexions: the Ten Thousand Things
I've recently been listening to the audio book of Gladwell's Outliers. His mission is to show that success is not talent alone - the myth of the self-made man (sic) - but that it is a combination of talent, opportunity and context. This is all pretty much sociology 101 (at least the way it was taught 10-15 years ago): nothing is in isolation; we are all products of our context, and some of those are the context of "demographic accidents." Take sports training for hockey in canada or football (soccer) in the EU.
He Shoots and Shoots and Shoots and Shoots - and then He Shoots and Scores.
Gladwell demonstrates how, alas, the canadian hockey training system (and football/soccer) is biased towards kids born in the first few months of the year, and how statistically kids born in the last quarter might as well not apply. No really, the pure stats are overwhelming - all because the system biases towards kids at a very wee age who have a few more months maturity than their younger peers at a time when those few months makes a BIG difference.
As Gladwell argues, if the system had two or three periods - phasing in testing of kinds when they're ALL at exactly the same age - +/- a month or so, then the sporting world could double (or triple) its talent pool.
The key thing that Gladwell pulls together with this work is that these kids who are selected to play hockey in special teams get more ice time, more coaching, contact with better players etc etc etc. There's a cumulative effect that such that by the time they're leaving highschool, they are so much better than their casual hockey playing peers, there's no contest.
Practice - And a lot of it for Expertise
Indeed, in the most impressive part of the book to me, Gladwell shows that a person, to reach this kind of Expert level, needs to put in 10,000 hours of practice: effort with the intent to improve performance.
He goes over cases by other researchers looking at virtuoso musicians. Not one - not one! - of them (including, we see, Mozart) got away with less than 10k hours of practice to achieve mastery of their area. This is critical: there were no stars who rose to top on talent alone without this effort - equivalent to 3 hours a day, every day, for ten years. Gladwell shows that practice time ramps up over time, so it's not actually 3 hours a day non stop, but progressively building building building for a child, to a teen.
Aside: How to get 10,000 hours is no small thing: sometimes it's the result of so many cascading opportunities it's no wonder one has to be in the right place at the right time, over and over again with the wit to take advantage of those opportunities. The cases in the book make this stunningly clear and hard to deny. The affluent youth is certainly at an advantage over a less affluent youth, for instance, whose practice time may be more taxed because they have to hold down jobs - unless their jobs feed into what they want to practice in any case.
How does all the above story of practice relate to the Clean?
I'll come onto what i think is happening with the Clean and Practice in a moment. First a bit of background.
In the past month, i have not done 10 ooo cleans or presses. I've not cracked 1000. I've done around 700 presses and 150 cleans. It's interesting to start adding these things up. Makes me kinda go "only 700?? - you call that "high volume"? and yet that's 150+ reps a session on high days. So what have i learned from as *little* repetition as sub 1000 reps? Form, breathing, and today THE CLEAN.
Here's the deal: Good clean (seems to) equal(s) "Going Small"
The last big day i had that was supposed to be my "heavy" day doing maybe 12 complete reps with the 16k if i'd amazingly doubled on the week before turned out to be 36 reps - a 6 fold increase on the previous week. I put this down to improved attention to breathing technique.
Doing a few C&P during the week, i tried getting some sense of a ladder of C&P's: if i could do 36 singles a side, surely i could do at least 2 consecutive C&P's on the left? While i found i could do is three C&P's in a row on the right, but still stuck on singles in the left. Indeed, while i could fire off five presses in a row on the right with the 16, i could not get more than 2 presses (not C&Ps) on the left, and usually just 1.
This did not make sense to me physiologically. What was the problem?
Today, after a break from concerted heavy pressing of 9 days rather than the usual 6, i wanted to focus on consecutive C&P's after doing some partials work with a 20 (mm mm good). As before, i start with the strong/more coordinated side first. The first thing i noticed is that the clean seemed a wee bit easier - feeling more like the 12 than the 16. I also noticed that the whole breathing/form cycle was feeling more like the light day (work with the 12 and 8) than it had with the 16. That is, i was able to exhale a bit on the lowering of the arm, and definetly exhale on the drop (i'd been rereading pavel's discussion of the drop in ETK so this bit on form was fresh in my mind).
When i moved to my left side for the first attempted set of c&p's i failed just as usual when going for the second C&P. Stupid. Put the bell down, do a C&P from scratch with little recovery and there it is. Try the second; nothing. Shite.
Ok, now for the big Clean observation:
So i went back to the right. and really focused on the clean, really hearing brett from his kettlebell basics for strength coaches and personal trainers dvd (recommended) echoing pavel in ETK about the clean as so crucial for a good press. That's when i got the first sense of an ah ha. The clean was a little thing. A small move. Ya ya i know: we practice tame the arc, but in my conceptualization of the 16 as "heavy" i was reefing on this thing to get it up while still keeping a technically tamed arc.
When i tried deliberately what i'll call "going small" on the left hand side, the bell sorta landed in a slightly different place; it felt different around my wrist. Inhale. Up it went. ok. try that again for a single. good. up it went. do the drop for the repeat, go small up, there's that neat landing. UP! i just got two reps - no hip - pure and clean, literally. come down, go for the drop, go small into the clean, same landing, up it went. I got four fricking non-stop C&P's in a row on my left side. That's a personal record. Personal especially in that there's no competition where 4 C&P's in a row is a big deal, but it's a meaningful bench mark for me, i can tell ya. And it seems to be unequivocably the result, yet again, of technique technique technque. But how did i *get* that technique?
This is where i think the 10k comes into play.
If Strength is Also a Skill, where are our Ten Thousand Hours?
I have been focused on this move diligently with reps. So there's practice. I've also been teaching intensely over the past week, including teaching the clean (which i've found is way harder to get than the high pull; it's easier to teach the high pull first and then come back to the Clean as a "low pull" - first part before the stab up). Because of this effort to communicate to others, i've been thinking a lot more about it myself - wondering if it's been a lame clean that has screwed up my left side performance of consecutive C&P's over singles.
Combine these efforts today with intent to explore possibilities. Explore being less formal than experimental design; more "hacking" as it's called in software engineering. Good hackers are principled about their hacks: they narrow the set of possibilities they could try to likely candidates. I make this distinction lest the interpretation of "hacking" be read as assing around till something comes up. And in this case, quite early in the exploration, a solution was developed.
I doubt however that this combination of effects leading to a solution would have happened without all the previous rep work that had done two things: (1) improved overall technique in the press, so that the press technique, including breathing as part of that technique, could be ruled out as the problem (2) genuinely improved strength sufficiently so that the 16 was experienced as light(er) enough to enable less of a pull to get it up (really, it has been pretty ugly). Bring those things together, and inside a month i've gone from 1 press on the left to 36 singles, to now four full and consecutive C&P's on the left with more in the tank.
This to me, ok, incredible progress (some strength; mostly technique) has come with sub 1000 reps. Imagine what might be possible with 10,000? Or in terms of time, each workout being half an hour just focusing on the press, twice a week. That's one hour a week over 4-5 weeks. Hardly anywhere near 10 thousand hours, is it? It's 0.05 of a percent. A drop in the bucket or an intent-ful start?
Not just Practice But practice practice practice - with intent
What's the old joke about "how do you get to Carnegie Hall?" and the reply is "Practice, practice, practice"? Gladwell showed that the researchers looking at musicians demonstrated that those who would get to carnegie hall did indeed practice - but they practiced alot - and they practiced a lot more than the next level of proficiency down from them. Likewise with other models of 10k success he describes. Before they became field leading experts, no matter their native ability, they got in their 10k hours.
Mine is not a story of 10 thousand hours. In my case, i'm looking at reps rather than hours - the two are not entirely interchangeable, but when we look at learning, there is an argument that says for something to become automatic or effortless we need that many reps.
Perhaps the big Lesson of 2008 in terms of strength as a skill practice for me, and the one i'll take into the New Year is the incredible value of practice and of practice via high reps. I've heard it said before strength is a skill; treat your training as practice, but you know they were just really words before. Now those words have real and proven meaning to me.
So, micro lesson here: the clean - if your C&P is not getting you to where it should be, consider making the clean a smaller pull. It may take awhile to build up the strength to do that, but once you do, and can execute "going small" in the clean, you may find your C&P's start to track in line with your expectations. I'd be keen to hear if that helps you.
macro lesson: practice is good, fun, rewarding - more and more often, please.
A lot of exercise strategies stress "see results in only 15 minutes a day" with the obvious rationale that people have other things they want to do with their lives than be in the gym. That's fine. Charles Staley's EDT is based on 15 minute zones. Pavel's Program Minimum can be 15 mins a day.
I think a lot of us haven't thought of our workouts really really *as* skills we're developing. For myself, for instance, i wanted to be taught correct form and practice it in order to get strong. The end game was to lean out, get strong, show others (especially geeks) how to do likewise. In other words, learn the form, then just do it a lot. Like those mind bendingly boring scales on the piano: know how to do the finger positions, then just keep doing them and upping the tempo. Not that swinging a KB has ever been boring like scales were as a kid, but i have been known to have the TV on while doing them.
So where does the ten thousand hours equals expert come in here? What i'm getting from strength as a skill, as a practice, is that there are levels of expertise to something as simple as pressing a weight. I kinda had an inkling of that the first time i saw Will Williams do a KB front squat, but i didn't make the connection between that and that practice practice practice isn't just doing scales, it's doing each rep with *intent* to learn and do better.
Hearing the Obvious - finally: the Tao in the Ten Thousand Things is Real
Reading the above back, it all seems so basic: i'm not saying anything new. But i guess it's taken this journey of exploring the Perfect Rep to really hear this message. This is a nice conclusion to a big year of learning and practice: RKC, nsca cscs, zhealth, fms, and this past week completing the ck-fms. It's nice to wrap up with something approaching an insight or better understanding of the meeting and meaning of strength as a skill.
So for the new year, i hope for all the folks who have been kind enough to read through this and make it to the end, that you find new love and purpose in your practice of strength, and if not new, then reinvigorated. I hope for you a year filled with health and practice so engaging that you don't hit any dry patches where you lose faith, stop working out for any length of time. So i guess i hope you find a way to practice daily, to get to a love of practice that takes you to your own 10k in fitness and in health.
All the best for 2009,
mc
Rest is good!
it's a Little Thing - the little clean
Why avoid practice? Tweet Follow @begin2dig
I'd like to talk about a nervana experience i just had, the last day of this year, working on my clean and press. As some of you know, i've been trying to improve the strength of my press by following a version of Kenneth Jay's beast pressing protocol. I've celebrated the effect of volume on form, and how that translates to strength. I've lauded strength as a skill that practice of correct form gives.
In this post i'd like to talk a bit about related insights that come from high volume (by "high volume" i mean LOTS of practice) and how this lead to an insight about the clean that might be useful to you, and how it lead to a PR for me in a C&P set, with heavy emphasis on the "personal" part of PR.
Making Connexions: the Ten Thousand Things
I've recently been listening to the audio book of Gladwell's Outliers. His mission is to show that success is not talent alone - the myth of the self-made man (sic) - but that it is a combination of talent, opportunity and context. This is all pretty much sociology 101 (at least the way it was taught 10-15 years ago): nothing is in isolation; we are all products of our context, and some of those are the context of "demographic accidents." Take sports training for hockey in canada or football (soccer) in the EU.
He Shoots and Shoots and Shoots and Shoots - and then He Shoots and Scores.
Gladwell demonstrates how, alas, the canadian hockey training system (and football/soccer) is biased towards kids born in the first few months of the year, and how statistically kids born in the last quarter might as well not apply. No really, the pure stats are overwhelming - all because the system biases towards kids at a very wee age who have a few more months maturity than their younger peers at a time when those few months makes a BIG difference.As Gladwell argues, if the system had two or three periods - phasing in testing of kinds when they're ALL at exactly the same age - +/- a month or so, then the sporting world could double (or triple) its talent pool.
The key thing that Gladwell pulls together with this work is that these kids who are selected to play hockey in special teams get more ice time, more coaching, contact with better players etc etc etc. There's a cumulative effect that such that by the time they're leaving highschool, they are so much better than their casual hockey playing peers, there's no contest.
Practice - And a lot of it for Expertise
Indeed, in the most impressive part of the book to me, Gladwell shows that a person, to reach this kind of Expert level, needs to put in 10,000 hours of practice: effort with the intent to improve performance.
He goes over cases by other researchers looking at virtuoso musicians. Not one - not one! - of them (including, we see, Mozart) got away with less than 10k hours of practice to achieve mastery of their area. This is critical: there were no stars who rose to top on talent alone without this effort - equivalent to 3 hours a day, every day, for ten years. Gladwell shows that practice time ramps up over time, so it's not actually 3 hours a day non stop, but progressively building building building for a child, to a teen.
Aside: How to get 10,000 hours is no small thing: sometimes it's the result of so many cascading opportunities it's no wonder one has to be in the right place at the right time, over and over again with the wit to take advantage of those opportunities. The cases in the book make this stunningly clear and hard to deny. The affluent youth is certainly at an advantage over a less affluent youth, for instance, whose practice time may be more taxed because they have to hold down jobs - unless their jobs feed into what they want to practice in any case.
How does all the above story of practice relate to the Clean?
I'll come onto what i think is happening with the Clean and Practice in a moment. First a bit of background.
In the past month, i have not done 10 ooo cleans or presses. I've not cracked 1000. I've done around 700 presses and 150 cleans. It's interesting to start adding these things up. Makes me kinda go "only 700?? - you call that "high volume"? and yet that's 150+ reps a session on high days. So what have i learned from as *little* repetition as sub 1000 reps? Form, breathing, and today THE CLEAN.
Here's the deal: Good clean (seems to) equal(s) "Going Small"
The last big day i had that was supposed to be my "heavy" day doing maybe 12 complete reps with the 16k if i'd amazingly doubled on the week before turned out to be 36 reps - a 6 fold increase on the previous week. I put this down to improved attention to breathing technique.
Doing a few C&P during the week, i tried getting some sense of a ladder of C&P's: if i could do 36 singles a side, surely i could do at least 2 consecutive C&P's on the left? While i found i could do is three C&P's in a row on the right, but still stuck on singles in the left. Indeed, while i could fire off five presses in a row on the right with the 16, i could not get more than 2 presses (not C&Ps) on the left, and usually just 1.This did not make sense to me physiologically. What was the problem?
Today, after a break from concerted heavy pressing of 9 days rather than the usual 6, i wanted to focus on consecutive C&P's after doing some partials work with a 20 (mm mm good). As before, i start with the strong/more coordinated side first. The first thing i noticed is that the clean seemed a wee bit easier - feeling more like the 12 than the 16. I also noticed that the whole breathing/form cycle was feeling more like the light day (work with the 12 and 8) than it had with the 16. That is, i was able to exhale a bit on the lowering of the arm, and definetly exhale on the drop (i'd been rereading pavel's discussion of the drop in ETK so this bit on form was fresh in my mind).
When i moved to my left side for the first attempted set of c&p's i failed just as usual when going for the second C&P. Stupid. Put the bell down, do a C&P from scratch with little recovery and there it is. Try the second; nothing. Shite.
Ok, now for the big Clean observation:
So i went back to the right. and really focused on the clean, really hearing brett from his kettlebell basics for strength coaches and personal trainers dvd (recommended) echoing pavel in ETK about the clean as so crucial for a good press. That's when i got the first sense of an ah ha. The clean was a little thing. A small move. Ya ya i know: we practice tame the arc, but in my conceptualization of the 16 as "heavy" i was reefing on this thing to get it up while still keeping a technically tamed arc.
When i tried deliberately what i'll call "going small" on the left hand side, the bell sorta landed in a slightly different place; it felt different around my wrist. Inhale. Up it went. ok. try that again for a single. good. up it went. do the drop for the repeat, go small up, there's that neat landing. UP! i just got two reps - no hip - pure and clean, literally. come down, go for the drop, go small into the clean, same landing, up it went. I got four fricking non-stop C&P's in a row on my left side. That's a personal record. Personal especially in that there's no competition where 4 C&P's in a row is a big deal, but it's a meaningful bench mark for me, i can tell ya. And it seems to be unequivocably the result, yet again, of technique technique technque. But how did i *get* that technique?
This is where i think the 10k comes into play.
If Strength is Also a Skill, where are our Ten Thousand Hours?
I have been focused on this move diligently with reps. So there's practice. I've also been teaching intensely over the past week, including teaching the clean (which i've found is way harder to get than the high pull; it's easier to teach the high pull first and then come back to the Clean as a "low pull" - first part before the stab up). Because of this effort to communicate to others, i've been thinking a lot more about it myself - wondering if it's been a lame clean that has screwed up my left side performance of consecutive C&P's over singles.
Combine these efforts today with intent to explore possibilities. Explore being less formal than experimental design; more "hacking" as it's called in software engineering. Good hackers are principled about their hacks: they narrow the set of possibilities they could try to likely candidates. I make this distinction lest the interpretation of "hacking" be read as assing around till something comes up. And in this case, quite early in the exploration, a solution was developed.
I doubt however that this combination of effects leading to a solution would have happened without all the previous rep work that had done two things: (1) improved overall technique in the press, so that the press technique, including breathing as part of that technique, could be ruled out as the problem (2) genuinely improved strength sufficiently so that the 16 was experienced as light(er) enough to enable less of a pull to get it up (really, it has been pretty ugly). Bring those things together, and inside a month i've gone from 1 press on the left to 36 singles, to now four full and consecutive C&P's on the left with more in the tank.
This to me, ok, incredible progress (some strength; mostly technique) has come with sub 1000 reps. Imagine what might be possible with 10,000? Or in terms of time, each workout being half an hour just focusing on the press, twice a week. That's one hour a week over 4-5 weeks. Hardly anywhere near 10 thousand hours, is it? It's 0.05 of a percent. A drop in the bucket or an intent-ful start?
Not just Practice But practice practice practice - with intent
What's the old joke about "how do you get to Carnegie Hall?" and the reply is "Practice, practice, practice"? Gladwell showed that the researchers looking at musicians demonstrated that those who would get to carnegie hall did indeed practice - but they practiced alot - and they practiced a lot more than the next level of proficiency down from them. Likewise with other models of 10k success he describes. Before they became field leading experts, no matter their native ability, they got in their 10k hours.
Mine is not a story of 10 thousand hours. In my case, i'm looking at reps rather than hours - the two are not entirely interchangeable, but when we look at learning, there is an argument that says for something to become automatic or effortless we need that many reps.
Perhaps the big Lesson of 2008 in terms of strength as a skill practice for me, and the one i'll take into the New Year is the incredible value of practice and of practice via high reps. I've heard it said before strength is a skill; treat your training as practice, but you know they were just really words before. Now those words have real and proven meaning to me.
So, micro lesson here: the clean - if your C&P is not getting you to where it should be, consider making the clean a smaller pull. It may take awhile to build up the strength to do that, but once you do, and can execute "going small" in the clean, you may find your C&P's start to track in line with your expectations. I'd be keen to hear if that helps you.
macro lesson: practice is good, fun, rewarding - more and more often, please.
A lot of exercise strategies stress "see results in only 15 minutes a day" with the obvious rationale that people have other things they want to do with their lives than be in the gym. That's fine. Charles Staley's EDT is based on 15 minute zones. Pavel's Program Minimum can be 15 mins a day.
I think a lot of us haven't thought of our workouts really really *as* skills we're developing. For myself, for instance, i wanted to be taught correct form and practice it in order to get strong. The end game was to lean out, get strong, show others (especially geeks) how to do likewise. In other words, learn the form, then just do it a lot. Like those mind bendingly boring scales on the piano: know how to do the finger positions, then just keep doing them and upping the tempo. Not that swinging a KB has ever been boring like scales were as a kid, but i have been known to have the TV on while doing them.
So where does the ten thousand hours equals expert come in here? What i'm getting from strength as a skill, as a practice, is that there are levels of expertise to something as simple as pressing a weight. I kinda had an inkling of that the first time i saw Will Williams do a KB front squat, but i didn't make the connection between that and that practice practice practice isn't just doing scales, it's doing each rep with *intent* to learn and do better.
Hearing the Obvious - finally: the Tao in the Ten Thousand Things is Real
Reading the above back, it all seems so basic: i'm not saying anything new. But i guess it's taken this journey of exploring the Perfect Rep to really hear this message. This is a nice conclusion to a big year of learning and practice: RKC, nsca cscs, zhealth, fms, and this past week completing the ck-fms. It's nice to wrap up with something approaching an insight or better understanding of the meeting and meaning of strength as a skill.
So for the new year, i hope for all the folks who have been kind enough to read through this and make it to the end, that you find new love and purpose in your practice of strength, and if not new, then reinvigorated. I hope for you a year filled with health and practice so engaging that you don't hit any dry patches where you lose faith, stop working out for any length of time. So i guess i hope you find a way to practice daily, to get to a love of practice that takes you to your own 10k in fitness and in health.
All the best for 2009,
mc
Rest is good!
it's a Little Thing - the little clean
Why avoid practice? Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Perfect Rep Quest Con't: Insane Improvement - from Breathing?
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Ça me surprend.
It's been one more week of the mc variant of the KJ Beast Hi/Lo volume program. I hadn't planned on writing up until next week as i didn't anticipate having anything compelling to report, based on Light Weight/ High Rep day - just steady progress. The change on the low volume/heavy weight day seems, well, absurd: it's a six fold increase on last week. What's that about? Let's recap:
Light/High Volume day (dec 18): steady progress
Good improvements, more in line with what i'd call normal increases with a kind of EDT approach.
That said, the what was supposed to be low reps / high load day kinda blows this progress out of the water. You won't believe this. I don't know why i'm writing it down. It's too insane. You'll see.
Low (ha!) Rep/ Heavy Day (Dec 21): well that's a surprise
Just to recap, this is my saga to get up to the 24kg. An impossible seeming dream considering i could maybe press the 16 once on the left (my weaker side) and that only on a very very good day. To recap with the sixteen pressing, starting with the right, but gated by the left.
Recovery: Less =more reps?
Last week i'd said how important full recovery was. That i was taking my 3 mins, and failed after 6 good reps. So this week, again, i focussed on full recovery, z health drills during those 3 mins.
After i hit 11 reps, which was already one shy of doubling my last week's progress, i decided to cut the recovery back - surely that would nip this progress in the bud. It didn't. So after a few more reps, i just kept cutting the recovery time back: 2.30, 2.00, 1:30, 1:00, 0.45, 0.30, till it got to where i was just C&P'ing, putting the bell down, marking down the rep and time, and repping it again.
Just for ref, here's the times from after rep 11. - a rep is C&P right; C&P left; recovery. The times mark the END of the set - after i've scratched a | for the rep.
12 - 13:03:53
13- 13:07: 02
14- 13:04:40
15- 13:12:15
16 - 13:14:34
17- 13:16:49
18 - 13:18:54
19 - 13:20:55
20 - 13:22:05
21 - 13:22:59
22 - 13:23:57
23- 13:24:40
24 -13:25:32
25 - 13:26:16
26 -13:26:16
27 - 13:27:42
28 - 13:28:18
29 -13:28:56
30 - 13:29:30
31 - 13:30:09
32 -13:30:45
33 - 13:31:20
34 - 13:31:50
35- 13:32:23
36 -13:32:50
Ok, i personally have never ever had a change of this magnitude in a week. Last week, i was SURE that it was because i had rushed recovery time just a bit (from 3 mins to closer to 2min30sec) that resulted in failing at rep 7. This week, after 35 reps, i couldn't fail with as little as 30 secs rest. So what's different this week? I had a shot in my left (weaker) arm Friday which still hurts, so thought i was really gonna suck this week. Other than a virus coruscating through me? It may be breathing.
Breathing - Part of Efficiency and the Perfect Rep
As part of a convo with breath master Will Williams, we got looking at the difference between the specifics of the Valsalva maneuver and Power Breathing as Pavel has decribed it. This exchange caused me to go back to anywhere Pavel's discussed breathing in ETK, Power to the People and Naked Warrior.
The version that resonated with me the most? Naked Warrior, where Pavel recalling what he'd learned from Mas Oyama about forcing the air down. But fundamentally, Pavel writes "As long as the contents of your stomach are compressed—you are power breathing" (p.82). That really resonated with me. There's lots more in that chapter of NW and i strongly recommend it, cuz i'm just saying that of ALL the parts of the technique, that is the aspect that really was Ah Ha with me rereading it. I still don't have Will's hiss down (see his front squat vid), but i was able to get that stomach compressed, sinking the breath down. grr.
So what's coming together here? Form of the C&P - it's getting smoother, and i suspect that's coming a lot from the high volume/light days. And that 6 fold improvement over last week? Is that down to the breathing?
You may ask if so, what on earth was i doing before? On the light loads, i'm inhaling when pressing up, and exhaling when bringing the bell down. On the heavy day last week i tried to have enough space to inhale a bit pressing up; exhale on the down.
This time, taking that power breathing of not to inhale or exhale completely, but to hold that compression, i got my air down, held it through the up phase of the C&P, getting a proper park/pause at the shoulder and press up. Most of the time, i still had the breath in me with the bell coming down; other times it was shhh'shd out coming down.
I've become a convert as well to the notion that a good clean sets up a good press. It's not like i didn't believe this before, but with all this practice, i feel like my clean really is becoming smoother - and easier with the 16 - a challenging weight- which is nice. I'll be intrigued to see how this smoothness with the mass translates - or if it does - to my 5min snatch test.
Whither Next with Heavy Day?
Today's practice feels like some kind of breakthrough. I don't really feel any different, but i can't deny the numbers. Many things to check out at any point in the future. Based on these 36 singles, it may be time to start thinking about giving regular ETK ladders a try with the 16.
As for the Bête quest, and since Kenneth's heavy days are supposed to be 5 - 15 heavy presses, requiring that full recovery, it may be time to go for KJ's double bell pressing and partials. That is, use two KB's rather than one. A 16k with a 5 pounder (see, those GNC/Everlast suckers can come in handy) is 18 and a bit kg, so more than 16 and not quite the 20. Kenneth also suggests that the requirements to balance those two bells really pushes on correct form.
Is this a Great Big WTF Effect or am i Dreaming?
Of course a big part of me says that today must have been some mysterious fluke, since i haven't gained pounds of muscle in my shoulders, i'm quite sure (i don't think it's possible within a month for a gal to do that). If there was any doubt before, i'm here to testify: strength sure does seem to be a skill. So here's to neuromuscular adaptation, form, breathing, and lots and lots of perfect rep practice. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Ça me surprend.
It's been one more week of the mc variant of the KJ Beast Hi/Lo volume program. I hadn't planned on writing up until next week as i didn't anticipate having anything compelling to report, based on Light Weight/ High Rep day - just steady progress. The change on the low volume/heavy weight day seems, well, absurd: it's a six fold increase on last week. What's that about? Let's recap:
Light/High Volume day (dec 18): steady progress
Good improvements, more in line with what i'd call normal increases with a kind of EDT approach.
- In the first 15 min PR Zone, 13 sets of 5 reps with 12k. fine.
- In the second 15 min PR Zone, 4 sets of 5 with the 12, followed by 12 sets of 5 with an 8.
That said, the what was supposed to be low reps / high load day kinda blows this progress out of the water. You won't believe this. I don't know why i'm writing it down. It's too insane. You'll see.
Low (ha!) Rep/ Heavy Day (Dec 21): well that's a surprise
Just to recap, this is my saga to get up to the 24kg. An impossible seeming dream considering i could maybe press the 16 once on the left (my weaker side) and that only on a very very good day. To recap with the sixteen pressing, starting with the right, but gated by the left.
- 1st week: 1 Rep
- 2nd week: 2 Reps
- 3rd week: 6 reps
- all of these going to failure.
- this week: 36 reps. I *quit* before failure, and with perfect form.
Recovery: Less =more reps?
Last week i'd said how important full recovery was. That i was taking my 3 mins, and failed after 6 good reps. So this week, again, i focussed on full recovery, z health drills during those 3 mins.
After i hit 11 reps, which was already one shy of doubling my last week's progress, i decided to cut the recovery back - surely that would nip this progress in the bud. It didn't. So after a few more reps, i just kept cutting the recovery time back: 2.30, 2.00, 1:30, 1:00, 0.45, 0.30, till it got to where i was just C&P'ing, putting the bell down, marking down the rep and time, and repping it again.
Just for ref, here's the times from after rep 11. - a rep is C&P right; C&P left; recovery. The times mark the END of the set - after i've scratched a | for the rep.
12 - 13:03:53
13- 13:07: 02
14- 13:04:40
15- 13:12:15
16 - 13:14:34
17- 13:16:49
18 - 13:18:54
19 - 13:20:55
20 - 13:22:05
21 - 13:22:59
22 - 13:23:57
23- 13:24:40
24 -13:25:32
25 - 13:26:16
26 -13:26:16
27 - 13:27:42
28 - 13:28:18
29 -13:28:56
30 - 13:29:30
31 - 13:30:09
32 -13:30:45
33 - 13:31:20
34 - 13:31:50
35- 13:32:23
36 -13:32:50
Ok, i personally have never ever had a change of this magnitude in a week. Last week, i was SURE that it was because i had rushed recovery time just a bit (from 3 mins to closer to 2min30sec) that resulted in failing at rep 7. This week, after 35 reps, i couldn't fail with as little as 30 secs rest. So what's different this week? I had a shot in my left (weaker) arm Friday which still hurts, so thought i was really gonna suck this week. Other than a virus coruscating through me? It may be breathing.
Breathing - Part of Efficiency and the Perfect Rep
As part of a convo with breath master Will Williams, we got looking at the difference between the specifics of the Valsalva maneuver and Power Breathing as Pavel has decribed it. This exchange caused me to go back to anywhere Pavel's discussed breathing in ETK, Power to the People and Naked Warrior.
The version that resonated with me the most? Naked Warrior, where Pavel recalling what he'd learned from Mas Oyama about forcing the air down. But fundamentally, Pavel writes "As long as the contents of your stomach are compressed—you are power breathing" (p.82). That really resonated with me. There's lots more in that chapter of NW and i strongly recommend it, cuz i'm just saying that of ALL the parts of the technique, that is the aspect that really was Ah Ha with me rereading it. I still don't have Will's hiss down (see his front squat vid), but i was able to get that stomach compressed, sinking the breath down. grr.
So what's coming together here? Form of the C&P - it's getting smoother, and i suspect that's coming a lot from the high volume/light days. And that 6 fold improvement over last week? Is that down to the breathing?
You may ask if so, what on earth was i doing before? On the light loads, i'm inhaling when pressing up, and exhaling when bringing the bell down. On the heavy day last week i tried to have enough space to inhale a bit pressing up; exhale on the down.
This time, taking that power breathing of not to inhale or exhale completely, but to hold that compression, i got my air down, held it through the up phase of the C&P, getting a proper park/pause at the shoulder and press up. Most of the time, i still had the breath in me with the bell coming down; other times it was shhh'shd out coming down.
I've become a convert as well to the notion that a good clean sets up a good press. It's not like i didn't believe this before, but with all this practice, i feel like my clean really is becoming smoother - and easier with the 16 - a challenging weight- which is nice. I'll be intrigued to see how this smoothness with the mass translates - or if it does - to my 5min snatch test.
Whither Next with Heavy Day?
Today's practice feels like some kind of breakthrough. I don't really feel any different, but i can't deny the numbers. Many things to check out at any point in the future. Based on these 36 singles, it may be time to start thinking about giving regular ETK ladders a try with the 16.
As for the Bête quest, and since Kenneth's heavy days are supposed to be 5 - 15 heavy presses, requiring that full recovery, it may be time to go for KJ's double bell pressing and partials. That is, use two KB's rather than one. A 16k with a 5 pounder (see, those GNC/Everlast suckers can come in handy) is 18 and a bit kg, so more than 16 and not quite the 20. Kenneth also suggests that the requirements to balance those two bells really pushes on correct form.
Is this a Great Big WTF Effect or am i Dreaming?
Of course a big part of me says that today must have been some mysterious fluke, since i haven't gained pounds of muscle in my shoulders, i'm quite sure (i don't think it's possible within a month for a gal to do that). If there was any doubt before, i'm here to testify: strength sure does seem to be a skill. So here's to neuromuscular adaptation, form, breathing, and lots and lots of perfect rep practice. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Gifts for the Fitness Geek
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It's not too late to think about giving a fitness geek in your life something that will make them *really happy.* If it's too late for the package to make it under the tree, why not print out an image of the thing so they know it's on the way?
The following has suggestions for Stocking Stuffers, Readable References, Kettlebell Training of many Varieties, Lifting, Training Support and of course FOOD. Hope y'all enjoy - and maybe treat yourself.
Stocking Stuffers:
If you need something small to pack into that stocking, here's a couple suggestions
Bands: Iron Woodies are great bands, excellent quality. Especially for someone working on their pullups, these can be a powerful assist.
I like 'em cuz they're
Timers: I've been writing alot about the value of timed sets, being a big Escalating Density Training fan. There are many devices you can use - an egg timer, a good old fashioned clock. The gymboss is designed for workouts, though, with various modes of single time zones; dual time zones (for work/rest intervals), repeats. It's just convenient. And it works.
Hydration. Nothing like a great water bottle to take to the gym, or use at home mid sets. Though i would love to say my passion is for stainless steel, the valves on such bottles usually suck. The best compromise right now seems to be the Camelbak Bottle with bite valve - now without toxic bpa's!
Sunshine.
Given the fact that unless you live in sunny climes such that you can bask your body, most of us are apparently super vitamin D deficient. This is the nutrient generated by the sun in our skin. If we don't get a great big sun hit, it makes sense we're tacking to the low side, and this is SO IMPORTANT for calcium in our bones and a whole raft of other good things to work. Daily doses are now recommended to be anywhere from 2000IU (10 times the current RDI) to 15,000IU, pending who you read - anyway it's more than most of us get. This may not seem like a big deal, but as a loving stocking stuffer, a can or two of high potency Vit. D (at least 1000IU a shot) wouldn't go amis - print out one of these articles as wrapping paper. Now Foods and Carlsons make these biggie IU sizes, and seem to have good reviews for quality as well. Vegetairians, take note that D2 is an alternative to the sheep lanolin/fish base for Vit D, and a recent study suggests D2 is equivalent to D3 in efficacy.
Shirts & stuff. Nothing stuffs into a stocking like a highly compressed T.
Designed in the UK (Scotland is part of the UK); made and sold in the US of A, Rannoch's Way of the Kettlebell T.s
Other lovely small things that could be in the stocking or under the tree? I know it's not much of kb, but whether as a paper weight or a double kb one-handed press, i still get a kick out of these itty bitty 5lb'ers at GNC. They're just fun.
Recovery Stocking Stuffers (or under the tree if you're feeling generous). If your fitness geek is just starting to workout at home or at the gym, they may not be used to getting that recovery nutrition thing happening with a workout drink, so here's a few to think of:
Readable References:
Strength Training Anatomy, Frederic Delavier, Amazon US ||Amazon UK
This is a fabulous illustrated manual that shows what muscles are hit by all the main weight lifting moves. It's organized by muscle group: arms, shoulders, chest, back , legs, butt, abs.
It shows the muscles in the context of the actual move, so you can see why those are the muscles affected. This book is recommended for the interested fitness geek.
Manual of Structural Kinesiology, Thompson, Floyd, Amazon US
|| Amazon UK 
Now while the Anatomy book is grand for seeing muscles used in context, it doesn't explain how that muscle operates in a move. This text on kinesiology does just that in a well illustrated and highly accessible fashion. It's one of the books i've used in putting together why the pull up is a Lat based move, and how firing the lats works in the kettlebell swing. This book is recommended for the more serious fitness geek.
SuperTraining Mel Siff (US, via Amazon || UK, UKSCA)
For a book easily acknowledged as one of the best in the field, if not the Bible of training, it is not easy to find. So if you have a serious fitness geek on your hands who does not have this tome, scoring if for them will trigger some truly warm seasonal glow. This ain't a book for the faint of heart, but for those keen, the rewards are a plenty. Serious Fitness Geek recommended
Essentials of Strength Training and Conditioning. Beachle and Earl Amazon US ||in the UK
This is the NSCA's main text for their CSCS certification. As an overview of all aspects informing athletic performance, from muscle physiology to hormones to lifting practice to program development, it's a fabulous reference. This is the BRAND NEW 3rd edition. It's a FAB reference for any coach or someone you can see becoming a serious fitness geek.
Science and Practice of Strength Training. Zatsiorosky and Kraemer Amazon UK || Amazon US
This book is a great complement to both Supertraining and Essentials. It focuses on plan development, the rational and approaches. Again, this is serious fitness geek territory.
Kettlebells
Now if you've heard someone you care about saying they want to get back into shape, and you've discussed kettlebells, of course the best way to get them started is that bundle of tough love for the beginner and experienced swinger alike that is Enter the Kettlebell, book and DVD (review here). If they are brand new to the experience, you may want to add the appropriate kettlebell to that package, too. Dragon Door makes the best US made bells in North America. London Kettlebells is the best value in the UK, and Kenneth Jay's Kettlebells.dk are indisputably the best in the rest of the EU.
Muscle Mass & KB's If you're also want to be-gift someone who is keen to add some mass while
getting strong, and are keen to support a kettlebell addiction, the original source of the KB+Heavy=Mass is of course Mike Mahler. Kettlebell Solutions for Size and Strength is a great one, but my fave is actually the Kettlebell Solution for Fat Loss and Mental Toughness - and not because i've used it to burn fat; because the videos of the big moves are better than the previous edition. I'd combine the ebook "The Agressive Strength Solution for Size and Strength" and its workouts with the Mental Toughness DVD. DVD's Available in the US from MM's site; available in the UK from London Kettlebells.
Cadio and KB's If you're interested in helping out someone who wants to get a little more cardio into their lives, there's any of the Art of Strength vids, the Newport in particular (review) being a challenger. These are available from AOS in the US, and from yup, London Kettlebells in the UK.
Cardio Overdrive: VO2 Max. Advanced Strength Strategies, Kenneth Jay. This is it: the original VO2max KB program, illustrated, discussed, demonstrated as formally taught at the RKC Level II cert.
Lifting
Deadlift Nirvana. If the fitness geek in your life has discovered the deadlift (perhaps you've helped foster that discovery), of course the best program for getting into that move is Pavel's Power to the People. If you're concerned about that person's well being, though, and want to ensure they're getting that all-critical form just right, there's a super DVD that can help: Brett Jones and Gray Cook's Secrets of the Backside. The DVD details potential issues with the lift, how to correct them, and of course, shows (from dual angles) proper deadlift form(s). Excellent.
Pull Ups. Lifting oneself is a great alternative or complement to lifting heavy objects. An affordable, non-invasive pull up bar is one that can work in a door way. In the UK, there's Golds Gym Telescopic Chrome Chinning Bar
. I've been using this at the office for over a year. i can quickly attach and detach iron woody bands to them for high rep days via a carabiner (big mouth type from REI). In the states, a version of this kinda bar is available, too, by Go Fit for about 18 USD.
There's more than one way to swing a pull up. If you have a space that allows it, the TRX is a mechanism that puts many bodyweight assisted exercises, from pull ups to dips, all in a single unit. By space, i mean a beam somewhere you can put a hook into, or a tree or a bar. I've seen these slung of chain link fences. There are other similar gym-in-a-bag products, for sure. This just happens to be the best built - really. The design of the sliders for instance is really top rate, using very good hardware.
And for yet one more spin on the pull up or the dip, especially for crossfit junkies, one of the sweetest versions of the classic rings are these super-light and portable rings by Elite Fiteness. Great articles on the site as well as companion DVD's.
Training Support
Dynamic Joint Mobility.
Perhaps one of the most crucial and often overlooked aspects of a fitness program is joint mobility. The reasons for taking ten minutes to move *each joint* through its full range of motion are myriad.
While there are a variety of joint mobility DVDs, the one i recommend is Z health. You can see why in a series of three posts (1, 2, 3), but the fast answer is that there is a well-founded scientific, neurologically centered reason for *each* move in the program.
The program starts with R-Phase, and is complemented by an abbreviated routine called the Nueral Warm Up. It is followed by I-Phase. R-Phase is what it's founder Eric Cobb refers to as the vocabulary of the program; i phase is the grammar. If you want to start with only one DVD, the R-phase DVD is great, but i'd recommend getting the R-Phase and Neural Warm Up 1 package. R-Phase provides detailed moves and instruction that are critical; the neural warm up would potentially move too fast without those building blocks, and precision is the name of the game here. The advanatage of the Neural Warm Up is that, based on what you learn in R-phase, it takes you through a total joint range of motion session in 10 mins. Z Health DVDs are a great family gift, too: we *all* move.
The Gift that Keeps on Giving: Give the Gift of One on One Assessment
If your athlete is just starting out or is an experienced fitness geek, there's one thing that will always provide a super return on that gift: give them a check up session with a certified trainer/movement specialist.
For hardstyle Kettlebells, there are RKC's all over the world (listing) that can give a keen eye to movement and tweak it to add to that athlete's movement efficiency. Speaking of efficiency, most of us could move better. The Functional Movement Screen is one assessment an FMS specialist can offer to evaluate movement patterns. If your beloved geek has been complaining of pain or weakness in certain moves, the Z Health assessment by a Z certified trainer is another great tool. As currency crumbles, you will find that there are an increasing number of RKC's who are also FMS and Z certified, so you can get even more bang for that gift-giving buck (or euro or pound).
Food that says health and love:
And finally, since eating is such a critical part of any fitness geek's repertoire - indeed without which nothing - help in the hungry heart cannot go amiss.
Raw Cacao Nibs. What says love better than chocolate? This legendary aphrodisiac has also more recently been listed as a "super food." Lots of protein, good fiber, polyphenols. Good stuff (here's more info).
A really great way to put max love into another's hands is by going straight to the source with organic cacao nibs. The great thing about the nibs is you can eat 'em for one heck of a cocoa hit straight out of the bag. You can also pour them in a bowl with raisins and nuts, and have an incredible taste sensation - the raisins bring out an almost red wine-y flavour to the nibs. Awesome. They're also great in a blender to make a protein shake. Add in some coffee beans, and it's lethal.
Organic Raw Chocolate Cacao Nibs by Sunfood Nutrition are probably the best quality in the US. In the UK, intriguingly, a wee company called "detox your world" has made the best effort to get the best sources onto the island.
Cooking? Who said Cooking?
Making a healthy but decadent meal for someone is also an act of love, of course, but what to cook that meets both these requirements? The Gourmet Nutrtion Vol. 2 cookbook to the rescue. The pictures alone get taste buds salivating. Check out the site: there's a sampler you can download for a range of recipes from the book.
One of the big plusses of GN2 is that it has all the nutrition info of the complete recipe AND it gives that info based on large and small portion sizes. One more benefit: it has meal templates as well to help make selections based on your fitness goals.
If you're giving this to a cooking neophyte, no worries there, either: there are sections on what to shop for, basic tools to have in the kitchen and some basic techniques for making sure these recipes work.
Ok, and as an aside, in case the one you love doesn't quite know how to think about their eating you could also bundle in the Precision Nutrition System which includes 7 books/guides for creating and supporting 10 habits for lifetime successful eating (review here). This ain't a *diet* plan, where one is restricted in what they want from eating for a period of time. This is an approach to eating - all the time. Paradigm shifting habits, we're talking.
You can also give them this pdf for free on the Strageties for Success that is Precision Nutrition. It's a 40 page condensed version of the whole system, as a preview.
And to All a Good Night
All the best of the Season to you, and here's to a healthy, happy, prosperous New Year.
UPDATE: additional book ideas from pain management to motivation now listed
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
It's not too late to think about giving a fitness geek in your life something that will make them *really happy.* If it's too late for the package to make it under the tree, why not print out an image of the thing so they know it's on the way?The following has suggestions for Stocking Stuffers, Readable References, Kettlebell Training of many Varieties, Lifting, Training Support and of course FOOD. Hope y'all enjoy - and maybe treat yourself.
Stocking Stuffers:
If you need something small to pack into that stocking, here's a couple suggestions
Bands: Iron Woodies are great bands, excellent quality. Especially for someone working on their pullups, these can be a powerful assist.I like 'em cuz they're
- a tad less expensive than some of the others, but still very well made.
- they come in three lengths, depending on application
- they have a specific "pull up package"
- Great value for money.
- they have a specific EU rate, BUT,
- if you're in the UK, you can get them from London Kettlebells directly
Timers: I've been writing alot about the value of timed sets, being a big Escalating Density Training fan. There are many devices you can use - an egg timer, a good old fashioned clock. The gymboss is designed for workouts, though, with various modes of single time zones; dual time zones (for work/rest intervals), repeats. It's just convenient. And it works.Hydration. Nothing like a great water bottle to take to the gym, or use at home mid sets. Though i would love to say my passion is for stainless steel, the valves on such bottles usually suck. The best compromise right now seems to be the Camelbak Bottle with bite valve - now without toxic bpa's!Sunshine.
Given the fact that unless you live in sunny climes such that you can bask your body, most of us are apparently super vitamin D deficient. This is the nutrient generated by the sun in our skin. If we don't get a great big sun hit, it makes sense we're tacking to the low side, and this is SO IMPORTANT for calcium in our bones and a whole raft of other good things to work. Daily doses are now recommended to be anywhere from 2000IU (10 times the current RDI) to 15,000IU, pending who you read - anyway it's more than most of us get. This may not seem like a big deal, but as a loving stocking stuffer, a can or two of high potency Vit. D (at least 1000IU a shot) wouldn't go amis - print out one of these articles as wrapping paper. Now Foods and Carlsons make these biggie IU sizes, and seem to have good reviews for quality as well. Vegetairians, take note that D2 is an alternative to the sheep lanolin/fish base for Vit D, and a recent study suggests D2 is equivalent to D3 in efficacy.Shirts & stuff. Nothing stuffs into a stocking like a highly compressed T. Designed in the UK (Scotland is part of the UK); made and sold in the US of A, Rannoch's Way of the Kettlebell T.sOther lovely small things that could be in the stocking or under the tree? I know it's not much of kb, but whether as a paper weight or a double kb one-handed press, i still get a kick out of these itty bitty 5lb'ers at GNC. They're just fun.
Recovery Stocking Stuffers (or under the tree if you're feeling generous). If your fitness geek is just starting to workout at home or at the gym, they may not be used to getting that recovery nutrition thing happening with a workout drink, so here's a few to think of:
- Surge - if resistance is their bag. It's a 2 to 1 carb to protein ratio, just right and nice for workouts
- Endurox - if cardio is their bag - intense rowing, cylcing or that VO2max kb cycle. That's a 4 to 1 Carb/protein ration, shown to be optimal for endurance efforts and recovery.
- ICE - this is a BCAA and flavouring drink for someone working out, trying to get lean with the focus on that fat burn - the BCAA's make sure the muscles get the amino acids they need for repair without adding caloric load - BCAA's aren't digested as regular whey protein is.
- Roll Your Own - if you have an adventurous fitness geek at home, you can provide the ingredients for each of the above by ordering them from TrueProtein.Com or BulkNutrition.Com - or by providing gift certificates to the same. Hydrolyzed whey protein, bcaa's, and maltodextrin/dextrose in the appropriate ratios, and you're rocking.
- TO SHAKE IT ALL UP: my fave shaker cup by far - cuz it really works - the turbo shaker.
Readable References:
Strength Training Anatomy, Frederic Delavier, Amazon US ||Amazon UK
This is a fabulous illustrated manual that shows what muscles are hit by all the main weight lifting moves. It's organized by muscle group: arms, shoulders, chest, back , legs, butt, abs.It shows the muscles in the context of the actual move, so you can see why those are the muscles affected. This book is recommended for the interested fitness geek.
Manual of Structural Kinesiology, Thompson, Floyd, Amazon US
|| Amazon UK Now while the Anatomy book is grand for seeing muscles used in context, it doesn't explain how that muscle operates in a move. This text on kinesiology does just that in a well illustrated and highly accessible fashion. It's one of the books i've used in putting together why the pull up is a Lat based move, and how firing the lats works in the kettlebell swing. This book is recommended for the more serious fitness geek.SuperTraining Mel Siff (US, via Amazon || UK, UKSCA)
For a book easily acknowledged as one of the best in the field, if not the Bible of training, it is not easy to find. So if you have a serious fitness geek on your hands who does not have this tome, scoring if for them will trigger some truly warm seasonal glow. This ain't a book for the faint of heart, but for those keen, the rewards are a plenty. Serious Fitness Geek recommendedEssentials of Strength Training and Conditioning. Beachle and Earl Amazon US ||in the UKThis is the NSCA's main text for their CSCS certification. As an overview of all aspects informing athletic performance, from muscle physiology to hormones to lifting practice to program development, it's a fabulous reference. This is the BRAND NEW 3rd edition. It's a FAB reference for any coach or someone you can see becoming a serious fitness geek.
Science and Practice of Strength Training. Zatsiorosky and Kraemer Amazon UK || Amazon USThis book is a great complement to both Supertraining and Essentials. It focuses on plan development, the rational and approaches. Again, this is serious fitness geek territory.
Kettlebells
Muscle Mass & KB's If you're also want to be-gift someone who is keen to add some mass while
getting strong, and are keen to support a kettlebell addiction, the original source of the KB+Heavy=Mass is of course Mike Mahler. Kettlebell Solutions for Size and Strength is a great one, but my fave is actually the Kettlebell Solution for Fat Loss and Mental Toughness - and not because i've used it to burn fat; because the videos of the big moves are better than the previous edition. I'd combine the ebook "The Agressive Strength Solution for Size and Strength" and its workouts with the Mental Toughness DVD. DVD's Available in the US from MM's site; available in the UK from London Kettlebells.Cadio and KB's If you're interested in helping out someone who wants to get a little more cardio into their lives, there's any of the Art of Strength vids, the Newport in particular (review) being a challenger. These are available from AOS in the US, and from yup, London Kettlebells in the UK.Cardio Overdrive: VO2 Max. Advanced Strength Strategies, Kenneth Jay. This is it: the original VO2max KB program, illustrated, discussed, demonstrated as formally taught at the RKC Level II cert.
Lifting
Deadlift Nirvana. If the fitness geek in your life has discovered the deadlift (perhaps you've helped foster that discovery), of course the best program for getting into that move is Pavel's Power to the People. If you're concerned about that person's well being, though, and want to ensure they're getting that all-critical form just right, there's a super DVD that can help: Brett Jones and Gray Cook's Secrets of the Backside. The DVD details potential issues with the lift, how to correct them, and of course, shows (from dual angles) proper deadlift form(s). Excellent.
Pull Ups. Lifting oneself is a great alternative or complement to lifting heavy objects. An affordable, non-invasive pull up bar is one that can work in a door way. In the UK, there's Golds Gym Telescopic Chrome Chinning Bar. I've been using this at the office for over a year. i can quickly attach and detach iron woody bands to them for high rep days via a carabiner (big mouth type from REI). In the states, a version of this kinda bar is available, too, by Go Fit for about 18 USD.
There's more than one way to swing a pull up. If you have a space that allows it, the TRX is a mechanism that puts many bodyweight assisted exercises, from pull ups to dips, all in a single unit. By space, i mean a beam somewhere you can put a hook into, or a tree or a bar. I've seen these slung of chain link fences. There are other similar gym-in-a-bag products, for sure. This just happens to be the best built - really. The design of the sliders for instance is really top rate, using very good hardware.
And for yet one more spin on the pull up or the dip, especially for crossfit junkies, one of the sweetest versions of the classic rings are these super-light and portable rings by Elite Fiteness. Great articles on the site as well as companion DVD's.Training Support
Dynamic Joint Mobility.
Perhaps one of the most crucial and often overlooked aspects of a fitness program is joint mobility. The reasons for taking ten minutes to move *each joint* through its full range of motion are myriad.While there are a variety of joint mobility DVDs, the one i recommend is Z health. You can see why in a series of three posts (1, 2, 3), but the fast answer is that there is a well-founded scientific, neurologically centered reason for *each* move in the program.
The program starts with R-Phase, and is complemented by an abbreviated routine called the Nueral Warm Up. It is followed by I-Phase. R-Phase is what it's founder Eric Cobb refers to as the vocabulary of the program; i phase is the grammar. If you want to start with only one DVD, the R-phase DVD is great, but i'd recommend getting the R-Phase and Neural Warm Up 1 package. R-Phase provides detailed moves and instruction that are critical; the neural warm up would potentially move too fast without those building blocks, and precision is the name of the game here. The advanatage of the Neural Warm Up is that, based on what you learn in R-phase, it takes you through a total joint range of motion session in 10 mins. Z Health DVDs are a great family gift, too: we *all* move.
The Gift that Keeps on Giving: Give the Gift of One on One Assessment
If your athlete is just starting out or is an experienced fitness geek, there's one thing that will always provide a super return on that gift: give them a check up session with a certified trainer/movement specialist.
For hardstyle Kettlebells, there are RKC's all over the world (listing) that can give a keen eye to movement and tweak it to add to that athlete's movement efficiency. Speaking of efficiency, most of us could move better. The Functional Movement Screen is one assessment an FMS specialist can offer to evaluate movement patterns. If your beloved geek has been complaining of pain or weakness in certain moves, the Z Health assessment by a Z certified trainer is another great tool. As currency crumbles, you will find that there are an increasing number of RKC's who are also FMS and Z certified, so you can get even more bang for that gift-giving buck (or euro or pound).
Food that says health and love:
And finally, since eating is such a critical part of any fitness geek's repertoire - indeed without which nothing - help in the hungry heart cannot go amiss.
Raw Cacao Nibs. What says love better than chocolate? This legendary aphrodisiac has also more recently been listed as a "super food." Lots of protein, good fiber, polyphenols. Good stuff (here's more info).A really great way to put max love into another's hands is by going straight to the source with organic cacao nibs. The great thing about the nibs is you can eat 'em for one heck of a cocoa hit straight out of the bag. You can also pour them in a bowl with raisins and nuts, and have an incredible taste sensation - the raisins bring out an almost red wine-y flavour to the nibs. Awesome. They're also great in a blender to make a protein shake. Add in some coffee beans, and it's lethal.
Organic Raw Chocolate Cacao Nibs by Sunfood Nutrition are probably the best quality in the US. In the UK, intriguingly, a wee company called "detox your world" has made the best effort to get the best sources onto the island.
Cooking? Who said Cooking?Making a healthy but decadent meal for someone is also an act of love, of course, but what to cook that meets both these requirements? The Gourmet Nutrtion Vol. 2 cookbook to the rescue. The pictures alone get taste buds salivating. Check out the site: there's a sampler you can download for a range of recipes from the book.
One of the big plusses of GN2 is that it has all the nutrition info of the complete recipe AND it gives that info based on large and small portion sizes. One more benefit: it has meal templates as well to help make selections based on your fitness goals.
If you're giving this to a cooking neophyte, no worries there, either: there are sections on what to shop for, basic tools to have in the kitchen and some basic techniques for making sure these recipes work.
Ok, and as an aside, in case the one you love doesn't quite know how to think about their eating you could also bundle in the Precision Nutrition System which includes 7 books/guides for creating and supporting 10 habits for lifetime successful eating (review here). This ain't a *diet* plan, where one is restricted in what they want from eating for a period of time. This is an approach to eating - all the time. Paradigm shifting habits, we're talking.
You can also give them this pdf for free on the Strageties for Success that is Precision Nutrition. It's a 40 page condensed version of the whole system, as a preview.
And to All a Good Night
All the best of the Season to you, and here's to a healthy, happy, prosperous New Year.
UPDATE: additional book ideas from pain management to motivation now listed
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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