Monday, September 8, 2008
Why Attend the Minnesota ZHealth Workshop: move better, feel better - really (a workshop preview)
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Want to last longer, move better, reduce pain? At the end of october - in fact, that's halloween (Oct. 31) to Nov 2 - Dragon Door is hosting a Z-Health workshop called " Z-Health
The Essential Secrets of Elite Performance" for Athletes. Athletes is a term defined broadly: if you move, and want to improve your movement - your athletic effort - you're an athlete.
Why would you want to attend this workshop? There's a couple of big reasons:
(1) If you're an athlete who suffers from any kind of ache, tweak or out and out pain, and have repeatedly hit the manual therapists' offices - whether chiro, massage or similar, the approach presented in ZHealth (or Z-Health or Z Health) will help. That's a bold claim. It's true and i'll come back to it.
(2) If you're an athlete who's hit a plateau, you'll learn skills that will help you tune your performance in what are likely very new ways - unless you're already working with a trainer certified in the Z approach that will help you move past your plateau.
(3) if you're an athlete who needs good hand/eye coordination for your sport, believe it or not, you'll improve it.
(4) If you're an athlete learning a new sport or have been playing a particular sport for awhile, the workshop will help you move with more efficiency. More efficiency means more power, speed - more of what's good for your game. The same goes for whether you're a powerlifter, kettlebell'er or hockey player.
You may say, ok, those sound like incremental improvements. So what?
On the one hand, the answer might be well, increments are what it's all about in sport: in the recent olympics, the difference between a world and olympic record in the 200m men's sprint was 2/10ths of a second. it took almost a generation to beat that record, too. You may say well you're not competing at that kind of elite level; those kind of increments don't mean much to you.
OK. If getting better measurable gains in your activity is not important to you, that's fine. For instance, you mayn't care that you can walk your circuit faster; you just want to keep doing it.
So therefore, on the other hand, that's the other rationale for improving efficiency: improving function while reducing wear and tear on the body. If we move with more efficiency, we're using our bodies more effectively. That means less energy is put into that movement, which means we have more energy for other things. Likewise, that efficiency means better use of our limited resource - ourselves - which means fewer problems over the long haul.
A Stitch in Time Saves Nine
One of the things we learn about in human physiology is that we're internally extremely well connected - a tweak that starts in the foot can effect the knee, can effect the hip, can trigger the back, can bug the shoulder, can screw up the jaw, can hurt the head. The cumulative effect of these little things can mean at the least less effective, efficient movement and at the worst means a whole host of pain, and a set up for problems like injuries in the movements to come.
The z approach takes this science of our wiring and shows us how to tune our movement to create the clearest path, the freest signal through that wiring so that we can work as effectively as possible. That efficiency means better performance, reduced pain. It's freaky how these things connect, and how quickly the effect can be demonstrated.
The Missing Manual
One of the biggest drags about us is that we don't come with The Manual.
I used to work a lot on motorcycles - this was necessary as i could only afford ones that were made a decade or more before the period in which i was riding them, and so, that telling you something about my finances, i had to be able to maintain them. One of the best resources for this up keep was (a) canadian tire, home of many parts that could be jury-rigged into working and (b) clymer manuals on how these things fit together - both the mechanicals and the all-important electrics. Without these manuals, hacking around the bike to try to tune it was just guess work. If it worked, it was often more luck than knowledge.
We don't come with Clymers. Netter's Anatomy and Guyton and Hall's Physiology while great texts on body parts and discrete physical systems, ain't great when it comes to seeing how, to put it loosely, the mechanical interacts with the electrics.
Without such a manual, what we often do in our own training, especially those of us who do not have coaches, is our best guess hacks. We read the articles, maybe follow some forums, watch friends, and try to put together an effective approach to get results, from getting the right gear to applying "correct" form. But how do we know what we're doing *is* actually right? is actually good for us? We're extremely complex, highly adaptive systems. We take tons of abuse, from poor eating to high heel shoes and keep functioning. So sometimes it's hard to tell if what we're doing is wrong - especially if we seem to be making progress. But at what cost progress? Perhaps if you're making loads of gains and are completely pain-free (either during or apart from your activity), you've lucked out and are operating optimally. Way to go. For the rest of us, well, there's this tension we get in the neck, or the back kinda aches, or sometimes when we walk our knee hurts. Pavel has this comment on his seminar with Charles Staley "Put up your hands anyone who's had a shoulder injury. Anyone who hasn't put up their hands, can't"
Anyone who's been in pain, and been helped out of it knows how much better their activities or daily lives are. For some of us, we go to manual therapies, and feel great for a time once we're off the table. For some, that treatment's enough. For many of us, we have to keep going back to get that release.
For all of us in such tweaked categories, getting a manual to deal with these tweaks proactively can make a world of difference to our performance - on and off the field; in and out of the gym.
Demystifying Movement
In the Z approach, athletes get a broader view of movement than muscle. After all, we have bones, muscles, nerves, but we also have sensory and perceptual functions or various systems that maintain those bones muscles and nerves in space. Without these we couldn't stay upright, little own move. The Z approach takes each of these components into account when talking about tuning movement.
Some folks think that Z is about joint mobility: that its thing is just to focus on moving the bendy bits instead of manipulating muscles, like other folks do.
In my experience of Z the answer is yes and no. Yes, the initial approach (Day 1 of the workshop, R Phase focus) is HUGE on getting full range of motion around joints, but the focus on joints is there as a powerful means to an end. The real meat and potatoes of the this initial phase is about what's happening around those joints with our nervous system, particularly with mechanoreceptors. Joints have more of these awareness detectors than any other part of the body. If one part of the body is having issues with its reception, the ENTIRE rest of the body responds. You'll see a demo that shows a problem with a thumb - no pain, but a less than fully mobile joint - will substantially, hugely shut down the ability of the hamstrings to generate force, but how freeing up that thumb joint will bring that strength back. That improvement in strength had nothing to do with building mass; it had to do with improving the signal path from a seemingly unrelated joint back to the brain - to give the all clear for that joint.
Bottom line of R: decreased joint mobility (a joint that cannot move through full range of motion), decreased strength; increased mobility, increased strength.
In Day 2 with I phase, the focus moves from the joints' relation to movement into how our visual and vestibular systems - balance, eye tracking and so on effect movement.
The S part of the workshop begins to put these components together into movement practice for coordinated benefit.
THE GOODS
The workshop promo uses terms like "massive" development of power and "immediate" strength gains. These sound very much too good to be true, don't they? And (to me, unfortunately) the workshop also talks about "revealing secrets" to making these gains.
For the Less Trained. The thing is, if you haven't worked with a coach before ANY good coach will help you improve your performance - likely immediately. And if you haven't worked with a coach before, they may even break your current personal best in one session. So i'm not too moved by such claims. So on the grossest level, if you take this seminar you will definitely learn stuff to improve your performance, and you will see benefits right away. But what differentiates this approach from perhaps others is the longer haul: there are many many carry over effects of the whole Z approach that go beyond sport specific training.
If you learn how to squat right, for instance, you learn how to do this one activity well. If, however, you learn how to stand in balance on your bones, using as little energy as possible to hold a "long" spine, you have a foundation for effective powerful movement in any movement/activity (on day 3, if you're a kettlebeller, ask about "femur snap rather than hip snap" in the swing/snatch).
For the More Coached/Trained. If you have worked with coaches before, or do so right now, then you know how precious any gains can be. If your coaching/training has focused on mainly muscle work, it doesn't take a big leap of the imagination to get that if you can bring on board the other systems of the body like proprioception, like the vestibular and visual systems, that you're going to do better, harmonizing more of what the body has to offer to improve performance. Check out Mike T Nelson's posts about deadlift improvements with Z approaches for more.
For Those With Pain or Injury. If you've had an injury or are coping with one now, you'll know how valuable it can be to get out of pain so you can get back to your training. You may see a specialist to treat your ills and feel great while that happens. But have you asked yourself why do you have to keep going back to feel well? Do you believe that you will have to keep going to feel well? Would you like to explore the options of how you could take care of yourself such that you could get out of the treatment cycle?
If you are in pain, and would like that attended, may i recommend booking an appointment during the weekend with Dr. Cobb who will be delivering the workshop? He can assess and point you to a proactive plan for your own well being. It's worth it.
IN SUM
If you are keen to make your body last as long as possible pain free, running effectively, and efficiently, and if you want to improve your athletic performance, the skills you'll learn over these three days will literally last a life time.
Note for Instructors: if you're a trainer and want to learn how to provide these kinds of techniques for your clients, as well as how to do assessments of performance, you may want to consider taking in a Z-Health certification course rather than this workshop (here's a review of my experience with the first z-health cert, r-phase). Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Want to last longer, move better, reduce pain? At the end of october - in fact, that's halloween (Oct. 31) to Nov 2 - Dragon Door is hosting a Z-Health workshop called " Z-HealthThe Essential Secrets of Elite Performance" for Athletes. Athletes is a term defined broadly: if you move, and want to improve your movement - your athletic effort - you're an athlete.
Why would you want to attend this workshop? There's a couple of big reasons:
(1) If you're an athlete who suffers from any kind of ache, tweak or out and out pain, and have repeatedly hit the manual therapists' offices - whether chiro, massage or similar, the approach presented in ZHealth (or Z-Health or Z Health) will help. That's a bold claim. It's true and i'll come back to it.
(2) If you're an athlete who's hit a plateau, you'll learn skills that will help you tune your performance in what are likely very new ways - unless you're already working with a trainer certified in the Z approach that will help you move past your plateau.
(3) if you're an athlete who needs good hand/eye coordination for your sport, believe it or not, you'll improve it.
(4) If you're an athlete learning a new sport or have been playing a particular sport for awhile, the workshop will help you move with more efficiency. More efficiency means more power, speed - more of what's good for your game. The same goes for whether you're a powerlifter, kettlebell'er or hockey player.
You may say, ok, those sound like incremental improvements. So what?
On the one hand, the answer might be well, increments are what it's all about in sport: in the recent olympics, the difference between a world and olympic record in the 200m men's sprint was 2/10ths of a second. it took almost a generation to beat that record, too. You may say well you're not competing at that kind of elite level; those kind of increments don't mean much to you.
OK. If getting better measurable gains in your activity is not important to you, that's fine. For instance, you mayn't care that you can walk your circuit faster; you just want to keep doing it.
So therefore, on the other hand, that's the other rationale for improving efficiency: improving function while reducing wear and tear on the body. If we move with more efficiency, we're using our bodies more effectively. That means less energy is put into that movement, which means we have more energy for other things. Likewise, that efficiency means better use of our limited resource - ourselves - which means fewer problems over the long haul.
A Stitch in Time Saves Nine
One of the things we learn about in human physiology is that we're internally extremely well connected - a tweak that starts in the foot can effect the knee, can effect the hip, can trigger the back, can bug the shoulder, can screw up the jaw, can hurt the head. The cumulative effect of these little things can mean at the least less effective, efficient movement and at the worst means a whole host of pain, and a set up for problems like injuries in the movements to come.
The z approach takes this science of our wiring and shows us how to tune our movement to create the clearest path, the freest signal through that wiring so that we can work as effectively as possible. That efficiency means better performance, reduced pain. It's freaky how these things connect, and how quickly the effect can be demonstrated.
The Missing Manual
One of the biggest drags about us is that we don't come with The Manual.
I used to work a lot on motorcycles - this was necessary as i could only afford ones that were made a decade or more before the period in which i was riding them, and so, that telling you something about my finances, i had to be able to maintain them. One of the best resources for this up keep was (a) canadian tire, home of many parts that could be jury-rigged into working and (b) clymer manuals on how these things fit together - both the mechanicals and the all-important electrics. Without these manuals, hacking around the bike to try to tune it was just guess work. If it worked, it was often more luck than knowledge.
We don't come with Clymers. Netter's Anatomy and Guyton and Hall's Physiology while great texts on body parts and discrete physical systems, ain't great when it comes to seeing how, to put it loosely, the mechanical interacts with the electrics.
Without such a manual, what we often do in our own training, especially those of us who do not have coaches, is our best guess hacks. We read the articles, maybe follow some forums, watch friends, and try to put together an effective approach to get results, from getting the right gear to applying "correct" form. But how do we know what we're doing *is* actually right? is actually good for us? We're extremely complex, highly adaptive systems. We take tons of abuse, from poor eating to high heel shoes and keep functioning. So sometimes it's hard to tell if what we're doing is wrong - especially if we seem to be making progress. But at what cost progress? Perhaps if you're making loads of gains and are completely pain-free (either during or apart from your activity), you've lucked out and are operating optimally. Way to go. For the rest of us, well, there's this tension we get in the neck, or the back kinda aches, or sometimes when we walk our knee hurts. Pavel has this comment on his seminar with Charles Staley "Put up your hands anyone who's had a shoulder injury. Anyone who hasn't put up their hands, can't"
Anyone who's been in pain, and been helped out of it knows how much better their activities or daily lives are. For some of us, we go to manual therapies, and feel great for a time once we're off the table. For some, that treatment's enough. For many of us, we have to keep going back to get that release.
For all of us in such tweaked categories, getting a manual to deal with these tweaks proactively can make a world of difference to our performance - on and off the field; in and out of the gym.
Demystifying Movement
In the Z approach, athletes get a broader view of movement than muscle. After all, we have bones, muscles, nerves, but we also have sensory and perceptual functions or various systems that maintain those bones muscles and nerves in space. Without these we couldn't stay upright, little own move. The Z approach takes each of these components into account when talking about tuning movement.
Some folks think that Z is about joint mobility: that its thing is just to focus on moving the bendy bits instead of manipulating muscles, like other folks do.
In my experience of Z the answer is yes and no. Yes, the initial approach (Day 1 of the workshop, R Phase focus) is HUGE on getting full range of motion around joints, but the focus on joints is there as a powerful means to an end. The real meat and potatoes of the this initial phase is about what's happening around those joints with our nervous system, particularly with mechanoreceptors. Joints have more of these awareness detectors than any other part of the body. If one part of the body is having issues with its reception, the ENTIRE rest of the body responds. You'll see a demo that shows a problem with a thumb - no pain, but a less than fully mobile joint - will substantially, hugely shut down the ability of the hamstrings to generate force, but how freeing up that thumb joint will bring that strength back. That improvement in strength had nothing to do with building mass; it had to do with improving the signal path from a seemingly unrelated joint back to the brain - to give the all clear for that joint.
Bottom line of R: decreased joint mobility (a joint that cannot move through full range of motion), decreased strength; increased mobility, increased strength.
In Day 2 with I phase, the focus moves from the joints' relation to movement into how our visual and vestibular systems - balance, eye tracking and so on effect movement.
The S part of the workshop begins to put these components together into movement practice for coordinated benefit.
THE GOODS
The workshop promo uses terms like "massive" development of power and "immediate" strength gains. These sound very much too good to be true, don't they? And (to me, unfortunately) the workshop also talks about "revealing secrets" to making these gains.
For the Less Trained. The thing is, if you haven't worked with a coach before ANY good coach will help you improve your performance - likely immediately. And if you haven't worked with a coach before, they may even break your current personal best in one session. So i'm not too moved by such claims. So on the grossest level, if you take this seminar you will definitely learn stuff to improve your performance, and you will see benefits right away. But what differentiates this approach from perhaps others is the longer haul: there are many many carry over effects of the whole Z approach that go beyond sport specific training.
If you learn how to squat right, for instance, you learn how to do this one activity well. If, however, you learn how to stand in balance on your bones, using as little energy as possible to hold a "long" spine, you have a foundation for effective powerful movement in any movement/activity (on day 3, if you're a kettlebeller, ask about "femur snap rather than hip snap" in the swing/snatch).
For the More Coached/Trained. If you have worked with coaches before, or do so right now, then you know how precious any gains can be. If your coaching/training has focused on mainly muscle work, it doesn't take a big leap of the imagination to get that if you can bring on board the other systems of the body like proprioception, like the vestibular and visual systems, that you're going to do better, harmonizing more of what the body has to offer to improve performance. Check out Mike T Nelson's posts about deadlift improvements with Z approaches for more.
For Those With Pain or Injury. If you've had an injury or are coping with one now, you'll know how valuable it can be to get out of pain so you can get back to your training. You may see a specialist to treat your ills and feel great while that happens. But have you asked yourself why do you have to keep going back to feel well? Do you believe that you will have to keep going to feel well? Would you like to explore the options of how you could take care of yourself such that you could get out of the treatment cycle?
If you are in pain, and would like that attended, may i recommend booking an appointment during the weekend with Dr. Cobb who will be delivering the workshop? He can assess and point you to a proactive plan for your own well being. It's worth it.
IN SUM
If you are keen to make your body last as long as possible pain free, running effectively, and efficiently, and if you want to improve your athletic performance, the skills you'll learn over these three days will literally last a life time.
Note for Instructors: if you're a trainer and want to learn how to provide these kinds of techniques for your clients, as well as how to do assessments of performance, you may want to consider taking in a Z-Health certification course rather than this workshop (here's a review of my experience with the first z-health cert, r-phase). Tweet Follow @begin2dig
PDF
Friday, August 29, 2008
Brilliant RKC's? It's academic: meet Al
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Awhile ago, i pointed to RKC Mike T Nelson's ongoing reports on research for recovery. That piece in turn pointed to an interview i ran with Mike over at IAMGEEKFIT. Mike, as many of you know, is a PhD student in kinesiology.
This week, it's my pleasure to introduce you to another RKC who's area of interest lies in yet another field of inquiry: health sciences. Suleiman Al-Sabah is a PhD working as a researcher at the University of Reading in the UK doing amazing things with drugs around the issue of drug resistance. Within this, he's a martial artist who's turned to kettlebelling as the way he does his GPP. You'll find he's also a strong TSC participant as well. Hope you'll find the interview interesting.
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Follow @begin2dig
This week, it's my pleasure to introduce you to another RKC who's area of interest lies in yet another field of inquiry: health sciences. Suleiman Al-Sabah is a PhD working as a researcher at the University of Reading in the UK doing amazing things with drugs around the issue of drug resistance. Within this, he's a martial artist who's turned to kettlebelling as the way he does his GPP. You'll find he's also a strong TSC participant as well. Hope you'll find the interview interesting.
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Follow @begin2dig
Monday, August 25, 2008
Increase the Weight and Challenge of your KB's: Kneel!
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Some have shown that if you want a cheap way to increase the weight of your upper body Kettlebell work, go "bottom's up": hold the handle so the butt of the bell is in the air, rather than hanging down. Here's another that can increase the effort on your presses, whether with dumbbells or kettlebells: kneel. If you want to challenge your stability as well as strength, genuflect.
Taking the legs out of the equation to induce more of an upper body challenge is not new: Pavel Tsatsouline in More Russian Kettlebell Challenges uses various seated presses; Mike Mahler does likewise at least once in most of his DVDs.
The difference is that these are seated variants, and kneeling is the kind of halfway house between standing and sitting; kneeling vs genuflecting provides even more opportunities for working balance and motion. In the CK-FMS, more about these challenges are taught as corrective strategies for mobility and stability.
But even without such study, you can give kneeling/genuflecting a try: you'll be surprised no doubt at how the bell you feel comfortably challenged pressing from your feet becomes impossible on one's knees.
This simple positional change adds a radical new dimension to one's training. I'm personally blown away by how an adaptation that costs nothing gives me a whole new way to practice familiar moves with a new perspective, as shown by Rif here
Give it a try. Let me know what you find.
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Follow @begin2dig
Taking the legs out of the equation to induce more of an upper body challenge is not new: Pavel Tsatsouline in More Russian Kettlebell Challenges uses various seated presses; Mike Mahler does likewise at least once in most of his DVDs.
The difference is that these are seated variants, and kneeling is the kind of halfway house between standing and sitting; kneeling vs genuflecting provides even more opportunities for working balance and motion. In the CK-FMS, more about these challenges are taught as corrective strategies for mobility and stability.
But even without such study, you can give kneeling/genuflecting a try: you'll be surprised no doubt at how the bell you feel comfortably challenged pressing from your feet becomes impossible on one's knees.
This simple positional change adds a radical new dimension to one's training. I'm personally blown away by how an adaptation that costs nothing gives me a whole new way to practice familiar moves with a new perspective, as shown by Rif here
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Pull Ups: How To Do Pull Ups Resources (Pull Ups 101)
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What muscles do pull ups work? How increase number of pull ups: with weights or reps? How achieve that first pull up? What's Pavel's Fighter Pull Up Program? What's the difference between a chin up and a pull up? These topics and more looked at in this post.
For many, the quest to perform a single pull up is a Big Deal. For gals especially, where are upper body strength is at a disadvantage relative to the males of the species, achieving a single body weight pull up is to have reached a critical pinnacle of success. Indeed, in the RKC School of Strength, a key test for men and women as Level 2 instructors is the single Tactical Pull Up: dead hang, pull up so neck touches the bar. Must be completed once, men and women alike.
Methods a Plenty. Fortunately, for something perceived to be such a mark of fitness accomplishment, there are almost as many methods to training to achieve a pull up as there are people blogging about pull ups. Just a reminder, the pull up and chin up are distinguished by the hand grip: the pull up is pronated (palms facing away); the chin up is supinated (palms facing).
The purpose of this post is to go over a few of the many resources where i've heard back from folks i trust to say they actually work.
The Prime Movers of the Pull Up. Before getting into technique, it's worth reviewing what's going on mechanically in the pull up: that can help focus on what we need to be working to make progress (excuse me if this is going over what are basics for you).
Some folks would look at the pull up and say that's arm work: need big biceps to pull yourself up. Indeed, pull ups can be very good for the biceps. The rear delts also come into play. Mainly, however, the pull up works the back. In particular it really works the Lats, or latissimus dorsi one of the largest muscles in the body. Some folks may be skeptical about focusing on the lats rather than the bi's for pull ups. Charles Staley motivates the comparison this way "if you load your bodyweight onto a bar, how many times can you curl it? I’m guessing 0."
Why are the lats more vital than the biceps in the Pull Up? Let's take a sec to consider the connections of the muscles. The biceps for sure are elbow flexors. And yes, pulling UP means flexing the elbows.
BUT the lats also enable the trunk to be pulled up via shoulder (or glenohumeral joint) extension. How does that work? The lat is like a big triangle of tough stretchy stuff that is nailed down along the spine from the middle of the back, just under the shoulder blade, right down into the butt at the sacrum. That's a lot of back. So the mid thoracic spine is one point on the triangle; the sacrum is the second, and the third is in the arm, on the "medial side of the intertubercular groove of the humerus"
The lat connected in this way supports four movements of the shoulder joint: extension (movement of the humerus straight, posteriorly), bringing it across and in front of the body (adduction); internal rotation (putting your lower arm behind your back); bringing your arm up and around so that you can grab the opposite shoulder to the upraised arm (horizontal abduction).
So the biggie move of the lat in the pull up is to get that arm back down by your side. Remember, it's huge area is pulling from the mid back down to the butt, all focused on that single spot in the arm. That's a lot of reef.
Compare that amount of pulling area from the lats into the shoulder against the biceps into the elbow, and it's really no contest. Staley's visualization hits home: trying to biceps curl bodyweight (biceps focus in the pull up) vs pulling bodyweight (lat focus). Intriguingly, we also get an insight into why chin ups are "easier" than pull ups: with a chin up (supinated) grip, we have a more typical curl going, working flexors as well as biceps.
Thinking through the Movement. We can get in the way of our own pull up progress by focussing too much on the biceps and not enough on firing those massive lats. Below are a few techniques to visualize pulling from the lats. If the goal is to focus on the lats rather than biceps, a well known, powerful technique to focus muscle firing is visualization. Powerlifter Jerry Nicolas talks about doing a pull up imagining that the elbows connected to the sides by cables, so that when you're hanging from the bar, the cables are extended; getting up to the bar, the sides are reeling up the cable, raising your body. Charles Staley uses a similar visualization:
Aside: Contrasting Lat Pull Downs with Pull ups. Going deeper into not just what muscles are fired on the gross level, but on the micro level, some people wonder whether doing lat pull downs aren't the same as pull ups, except in reverse. The short answer is "no." Two quicky reasons: (1) hanging in space requires different neuro muscular adaptations (different numbers and patterns of muscle fibers recruited within the same muscle) than sitting on a bench and (2) based on Stuart McGill's research (see Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance) on how evil and unnatural sitting is for your back especially, do you *ever* want to do seated resistance work - of any kind?
Enough! Just tell me how to get up! So now that the muscle work is sussed, and the visualizations are worked out, how to get the physical work happening.
IF you can do One or More Pull Ups
Gold Standard: Clarence Bass describes Pavel Tsatsouline's Buddy Ladders. These are expanded in more detail as the Fighter Pull Up sequence (pdf only), also by PT. Each of these sequences is based on a ladder going up: do 1, pause. do 1, 2. pause. do 1,2,3 etc. This simple approach has been shown time and time again to have powerful effects.
Now, i have to say that i have plateaued with ladders at 7, so went looking for alternative approaches. Roland Fisher, a trainer in Alberta i really respect, pointed out a cool program in, yes, a Men's Health article by Mike Mejla, MS, CSCS. It provides some bench marks on when to add weight to body weight for increasing reps, for instance, that i'm finding very helpful.
Another approach that many RKC's have claimed super success: once you can do 7-10 reps, start adding weight, and start again. They have found that working with weights has let them, when going "naked" get rep ranges for which they have not trained.
These 4 approaches rather assume you can already do one pull up, but what if you can't? A number of both my male and female students haven't been able to get off the ground right off the bat, and that has kept them from thinking it's possible.
Getting to that First Pull Up
There are many tried and true strategies to get to that first pullup. One includes doing negatives. This is how i got my first pull up. With a negative, you find a way to get to the pullED up position, and then use muscle while going down. We are much stronger going eccentrically (using muscles streching out ) than concentrically (contracting). Negatives are a time proven way to help build up pull ups.
Another strategy is to use an appliance to help get up and down. A great appliance is stretch band. I personally like using Iron Woody bands: they're affordable and durable.
Here's an example vid of how to sling bands to a pull up bar:
Alternative Attachment of the band to the bar: as shown in the vids, some people just loop the band through itself around the bar - that uses up a lot of band and means generally you're using your knee in the band. You can change the resistance of the band by lengthening it. One way to do it is to use a big carabiner to attach the band to the bar. You can also set up some climbing webbing/tubing to the 'biner to get even more length and eliminate the biner. I like the biner when taking the band to the gym: means i can set it up and pack it up quickly.
One other strategy to get going, and a great use for a smith machine, are Floor Assisted Pull Ups. This approach also mean you're not using your complete body weight, but can increase the resistance (move your legs back or the bar up) as effort improves. Floor assisted work can also of course be combined with negatives.
Once a First Pull Up is achieved, Carter Schoffer also has an interesting pull up program mixing what might be called "raw" and assisted pull up work, where a multiple of the raw pull up is used to calculate numbers of assisted pull ups for sets.
Inspiration. If you would like some inspiration going for that first pull up, you may find it in these folks, men and women alike, who have done the Tactical Strength Challenge. My personal hero is Angela Craig, RKC, of the UK who has come in first internationally for the past two meets [1], [2], well ahead of many gals her junior.
And one more thing. Well three more: Head Position, Flexion/Extension and Bone Rhythm
How many of us crane our necks back to try to get our chins over the bar? Well it turns out, that's not a good ideal: cranking the head back puts a kink in the cervical spine. This spine compression has a negative impact on muscle activation, which can be powerfully demonstrated (as it was at a recent Z health cert) with a muscle activation test. More of an explanation of this "arthrokinetic reflex" can be found in this discussion of head position for the front squat.
Here's a really nice piece by Mike T. Nelson on form and the effect of head position on facilitating this move.
So no neck kinking on the way up. Indeed a drill we were given at z is to practice keeping our spines "tall" head in neutral while pulling up, and just pulling straight up under the bar, till the bar taps the top of the head (as shown in the above vid). No it's not a full pull up, but it gets ya to get optimal alignment for optimal muscle work. Form really is everything.
If you want to help your pull up further, you can, just with your eyes, look UP when pulling up, to focus on the lat extension of the pull up (eyes up connect with extension, also discussed here).
Suck it Up
One powerful technique within the pull up is to suck in the shoulders to enable the lat pull. But another very valuable technique is to suck in the abs - to shorten the distance between the ribs and the hips which Franz Snideman models here about mid way through the vid. Practice this tip and it pays big dividends pretty quickly:
Repping It to Get in the Groove. And if you really want to get in the zone, forget about pulling yourself up, grab one of those big iron woody bands and focus on bone rhythm (see end of this post on the kb front squat for a description). This is more z health stuff: think about the shoulder going up at the same rate the elbow is going down. If you de-weight yourself to practice getting the rhythm, you'll find your pull ups improve. Really. more form focus will pay dividends in short order.
Good luck on your Pull Up Mission. If you have other great pull up plans that have worked for you, please add pointers in the comments section for this post.
And finally
Related posts
For many, the quest to perform a single pull up is a Big Deal. For gals especially, where are upper body strength is at a disadvantage relative to the males of the species, achieving a single body weight pull up is to have reached a critical pinnacle of success. Indeed, in the RKC School of Strength, a key test for men and women as Level 2 instructors is the single Tactical Pull Up: dead hang, pull up so neck touches the bar. Must be completed once, men and women alike.
Methods a Plenty. Fortunately, for something perceived to be such a mark of fitness accomplishment, there are almost as many methods to training to achieve a pull up as there are people blogging about pull ups. Just a reminder, the pull up and chin up are distinguished by the hand grip: the pull up is pronated (palms facing away); the chin up is supinated (palms facing).
The purpose of this post is to go over a few of the many resources where i've heard back from folks i trust to say they actually work.
The Prime Movers of the Pull Up. Before getting into technique, it's worth reviewing what's going on mechanically in the pull up: that can help focus on what we need to be working to make progress (excuse me if this is going over what are basics for you).
Some folks would look at the pull up and say that's arm work: need big biceps to pull yourself up. Indeed, pull ups can be very good for the biceps. The rear delts also come into play. Mainly, however, the pull up works the back. In particular it really works the Lats, or latissimus dorsi one of the largest muscles in the body. Some folks may be skeptical about focusing on the lats rather than the bi's for pull ups. Charles Staley motivates the comparison this way "if you load your bodyweight onto a bar, how many times can you curl it? I’m guessing 0."Why are the lats more vital than the biceps in the Pull Up? Let's take a sec to consider the connections of the muscles. The biceps for sure are elbow flexors. And yes, pulling UP means flexing the elbows.
BUT the lats also enable the trunk to be pulled up via shoulder (or glenohumeral joint) extension. How does that work? The lat is like a big triangle of tough stretchy stuff that is nailed down along the spine from the middle of the back, just under the shoulder blade, right down into the butt at the sacrum. That's a lot of back. So the mid thoracic spine is one point on the triangle; the sacrum is the second, and the third is in the arm, on the "medial side of the intertubercular groove of the humerus"The lat connected in this way supports four movements of the shoulder joint: extension (movement of the humerus straight, posteriorly), bringing it across and in front of the body (adduction); internal rotation (putting your lower arm behind your back); bringing your arm up and around so that you can grab the opposite shoulder to the upraised arm (horizontal abduction).
So the biggie move of the lat in the pull up is to get that arm back down by your side. Remember, it's huge area is pulling from the mid back down to the butt, all focused on that single spot in the arm. That's a lot of reef.
Compare that amount of pulling area from the lats into the shoulder against the biceps into the elbow, and it's really no contest. Staley's visualization hits home: trying to biceps curl bodyweight (biceps focus in the pull up) vs pulling bodyweight (lat focus). Intriguingly, we also get an insight into why chin ups are "easier" than pull ups: with a chin up (supinated) grip, we have a more typical curl going, working flexors as well as biceps.
Thinking through the Movement. We can get in the way of our own pull up progress by focussing too much on the biceps and not enough on firing those massive lats. Below are a few techniques to visualize pulling from the lats. If the goal is to focus on the lats rather than biceps, a well known, powerful technique to focus muscle firing is visualization. Powerlifter Jerry Nicolas talks about doing a pull up imagining that the elbows connected to the sides by cables, so that when you're hanging from the bar, the cables are extended; getting up to the bar, the sides are reeling up the cable, raising your body. Charles Staley uses a similar visualization:
[Rather than the advice by others (eg this article) to squeeze the bar as hard as you can as a cue, since that cue focuses on the biceps rather than the lats] a better cue, which helps to recruit the bigger, more powerful lats, is to think about driving your elbows down to your ribcage. Not only does this cue encourage lat contraction, it’s also less daunting to imagine driving your elbows down, than it is to imagine pulling yourself up.Less muscular and more psychological visualizations are those Tom Venuto suggests: imagine yourself to be as light as a feather, and just floating up. Visualizations like these have a long history of success in sports [1] [2].
Aside: Contrasting Lat Pull Downs with Pull ups. Going deeper into not just what muscles are fired on the gross level, but on the micro level, some people wonder whether doing lat pull downs aren't the same as pull ups, except in reverse. The short answer is "no." Two quicky reasons: (1) hanging in space requires different neuro muscular adaptations (different numbers and patterns of muscle fibers recruited within the same muscle) than sitting on a bench and (2) based on Stuart McGill's research (see Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance) on how evil and unnatural sitting is for your back especially, do you *ever* want to do seated resistance work - of any kind?
Enough! Just tell me how to get up! So now that the muscle work is sussed, and the visualizations are worked out, how to get the physical work happening.
IF you can do One or More Pull Ups
Gold Standard: Clarence Bass describes Pavel Tsatsouline's Buddy Ladders. These are expanded in more detail as the Fighter Pull Up sequence (pdf only), also by PT. Each of these sequences is based on a ladder going up: do 1, pause. do 1, 2. pause. do 1,2,3 etc. This simple approach has been shown time and time again to have powerful effects.
Now, i have to say that i have plateaued with ladders at 7, so went looking for alternative approaches. Roland Fisher, a trainer in Alberta i really respect, pointed out a cool program in, yes, a Men's Health article by Mike Mejla, MS, CSCS. It provides some bench marks on when to add weight to body weight for increasing reps, for instance, that i'm finding very helpful.
Another approach that many RKC's have claimed super success: once you can do 7-10 reps, start adding weight, and start again. They have found that working with weights has let them, when going "naked" get rep ranges for which they have not trained.
These 4 approaches rather assume you can already do one pull up, but what if you can't? A number of both my male and female students haven't been able to get off the ground right off the bat, and that has kept them from thinking it's possible.
Getting to that First Pull Up
There are many tried and true strategies to get to that first pullup. One includes doing negatives. This is how i got my first pull up. With a negative, you find a way to get to the pullED up position, and then use muscle while going down. We are much stronger going eccentrically (using muscles streching out ) than concentrically (contracting). Negatives are a time proven way to help build up pull ups.
Another strategy is to use an appliance to help get up and down. A great appliance is stretch band. I personally like using Iron Woody bands: they're affordable and durable.
Here's an example vid of how to sling bands to a pull up bar:
Alternative Attachment of the band to the bar: as shown in the vids, some people just loop the band through itself around the bar - that uses up a lot of band and means generally you're using your knee in the band. You can change the resistance of the band by lengthening it. One way to do it is to use a big carabiner to attach the band to the bar. You can also set up some climbing webbing/tubing to the 'biner to get even more length and eliminate the biner. I like the biner when taking the band to the gym: means i can set it up and pack it up quickly.
One other strategy to get going, and a great use for a smith machine, are Floor Assisted Pull Ups. This approach also mean you're not using your complete body weight, but can increase the resistance (move your legs back or the bar up) as effort improves. Floor assisted work can also of course be combined with negatives.Once a First Pull Up is achieved, Carter Schoffer also has an interesting pull up program mixing what might be called "raw" and assisted pull up work, where a multiple of the raw pull up is used to calculate numbers of assisted pull ups for sets.
Inspiration. If you would like some inspiration going for that first pull up, you may find it in these folks, men and women alike, who have done the Tactical Strength Challenge. My personal hero is Angela Craig, RKC, of the UK who has come in first internationally for the past two meets [1], [2], well ahead of many gals her junior.
And one more thing. Well three more: Head Position, Flexion/Extension and Bone Rhythm
How many of us crane our necks back to try to get our chins over the bar? Well it turns out, that's not a good ideal: cranking the head back puts a kink in the cervical spine. This spine compression has a negative impact on muscle activation, which can be powerfully demonstrated (as it was at a recent Z health cert) with a muscle activation test. More of an explanation of this "arthrokinetic reflex" can be found in this discussion of head position for the front squat.
Here's a really nice piece by Mike T. Nelson on form and the effect of head position on facilitating this move.
So no neck kinking on the way up. Indeed a drill we were given at z is to practice keeping our spines "tall" head in neutral while pulling up, and just pulling straight up under the bar, till the bar taps the top of the head (as shown in the above vid). No it's not a full pull up, but it gets ya to get optimal alignment for optimal muscle work. Form really is everything.
If you want to help your pull up further, you can, just with your eyes, look UP when pulling up, to focus on the lat extension of the pull up (eyes up connect with extension, also discussed here).
Suck it Up
One powerful technique within the pull up is to suck in the shoulders to enable the lat pull. But another very valuable technique is to suck in the abs - to shorten the distance between the ribs and the hips which Franz Snideman models here about mid way through the vid. Practice this tip and it pays big dividends pretty quickly:
Repping It to Get in the Groove. And if you really want to get in the zone, forget about pulling yourself up, grab one of those big iron woody bands and focus on bone rhythm (see end of this post on the kb front squat for a description). This is more z health stuff: think about the shoulder going up at the same rate the elbow is going down. If you de-weight yourself to practice getting the rhythm, you'll find your pull ups improve. Really. more form focus will pay dividends in short order.
Good luck on your Pull Up Mission. If you have other great pull up plans that have worked for you, please add pointers in the comments section for this post.
And finally
Related posts
- pull up happiness
- the ottoman pistol series - muscles involved.
- the amazing shoulder part 1 - scapula
- the amazing shoulder part II - g/h joint
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Summer in Revew: Diet Science, Turkish Get Up, CK-FMS, Complexity and 'Tude - oh and kilts, too
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This summer has seen a lot of interesting activity in terms of approaches to training. The CK-FMS (reviewed here) introduced a bunch of us to the concept of looking at patterns of movement to help us understand how best to tune other moves. As a part of this, it seems we've all gained new appreciation for moves like the Refined Turkish Get Up. Discussion about optimally effective form is ongoing still. RKC's like Dave Whitly have talked about how they're pairing back their TGU work just to focus on this precision.
Within this quest for perfect form (and have you seen Will Williams do a kettlebell front squat?) have been discussions around how to achieve that perfection relative to simplicity at one phase and complexity in another - what is the tension between simplicity and complexity?
In other notes, i spent time to review the science claims of the warrior diet, a way of eating popular among many in the hard style RKC community.
One of the things i've learned is that adherents don't care if the science part of the diet's presentation is questionable, if it works for them, mate! If nothing else, my interest in how/why intermittent vs frequent feeding approaches work for some. As research discussed this summer shows, more than anything, it's staying connected with your support group when dieting.
Other nutrition questions that have been explored are around the Elevation of Fat as the new Black of nutrition and the conflation of carbohydrates as the new dietary evil. Caffeine is also in the precarious position of being both praised and burried. And then, if we're talking about nutrient extremes, there's Lyle McDonald's insightful anodyne reference on Ketogenic Diets. Or maybe you'd just like some miso soup?
In matters of style, there's Kilts & Kettlebells. Whether 21st Century hand made in Edinburgh or Utilikilts - or some other kind entire, there's no denying that kilted kettlebell'ing is grand (never mind the nuances of swinging while swinging). And as to form and function, well flat footwear has also been explored - when bare footing that deadlift ain't possible.
And speaking of deadlift, a few athletes have been inspiring in the DL (like Ruth Kasirye) and elsewhere like Ross Enamait (or did i ask, have you seen W2's front kb squat?)
Great as well to have been able to say hello to Rannoch (who is profound), Mike (who's so knowledgeable) and Rif (who's becoming a zen monk) in person after reading their stuff with mein bitte for so long. It's also been great getting to chat with Rich and Franklin and Rip. Thanks for dropping by gents; please continue to visit and share your thoughts. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Within this quest for perfect form (and have you seen Will Williams do a kettlebell front squat?) have been discussions around how to achieve that perfection relative to simplicity at one phase and complexity in another - what is the tension between simplicity and complexity?
In other notes, i spent time to review the science claims of the warrior diet, a way of eating popular among many in the hard style RKC community.
One of the things i've learned is that adherents don't care if the science part of the diet's presentation is questionable, if it works for them, mate! If nothing else, my interest in how/why intermittent vs frequent feeding approaches work for some. As research discussed this summer shows, more than anything, it's staying connected with your support group when dieting.
Other nutrition questions that have been explored are around the Elevation of Fat as the new Black of nutrition and the conflation of carbohydrates as the new dietary evil. Caffeine is also in the precarious position of being both praised and burried. And then, if we're talking about nutrient extremes, there's Lyle McDonald's insightful anodyne reference on Ketogenic Diets. Or maybe you'd just like some miso soup?
In matters of style, there's Kilts & Kettlebells. Whether 21st Century hand made in Edinburgh or Utilikilts - or some other kind entire, there's no denying that kilted kettlebell'ing is grand (never mind the nuances of swinging while swinging). And as to form and function, well flat footwear has also been explored - when bare footing that deadlift ain't possible.
And speaking of deadlift, a few athletes have been inspiring in the DL (like Ruth Kasirye) and elsewhere like Ross Enamait (or did i ask, have you seen W2's front kb squat?)
Great as well to have been able to say hello to Rannoch (who is profound), Mike (who's so knowledgeable) and Rif (who's becoming a zen monk) in person after reading their stuff with mein bitte for so long. It's also been great getting to chat with Rich and Franklin and Rip. Thanks for dropping by gents; please continue to visit and share your thoughts. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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