It’s a bit of a departure, but I’m going to devote this week’s Blowout space to someone else’s post.
A mentor and friend of mine that I’ve mentioned before, Geralyn Coopersmith, was just quoted in a Newsweek article about the 5 worst machines in your gym. Now I really don’t make any secret about my feelings towards most of the machines blocking up valuable OPEN SPACE on the gym floor, but this article does a great job of backing up why one really should just get up and move. And in the end, that’s what Thursday Blowouts are all bout. Enjoy the article.
Everybody’s invited to the next blowout. It’s a perfect opportunity to test your body in an open space. Post to comments or contact me to resrve your spot.
Simple, effective, fun, tough as hell when performed right.
Simple: Pick up a medicine ball (guys start around 15# or 20#, ladies start around 10# or 12#) above your head and slam it down onto the ground. When raising it up, you’re swinging it over your head as fast as you can, fighting that momentum to stop the ball and reverse its direction. Slam the ball as hard as you can down onto the ground, contracting around the torso (core) to help create as much momentum as possible. Catch it on the first bounce and do it all over again.
Here’s where you have to be careful. This isn’t about gravity pulling the ball down. It’s about you trying to drive a hold in the ground by slamming that ball as hard as you can. Arms, back and core are all working here.
Also, I’m using a Dynamax ball without much bounce in this video. Be careful and test out the bounce of the medicine balls you have available. The last thing you want is one of those babies bouncing back up into your teeth while you’re still trying to get out of its way. You also don’t want to do this with a ball that’s super rigid. It may actually break the ball. So, as with anything you see on this website, proceed with caution.
One hour on one night one time each week. Don’t save it. Spend it. Push as hard as you can and find out just how much you’ve got, just how far you can go, just how much you can move.
Kudos to Laura for bearing the brunt of this week’s workout without even the merest hint of shirking such a load. She could have said, “You know, it’s a pretty evening, I’ll just take a jog in the park.” “I’ll just spend a few minutes on the treadmill and go home.”
Instead she spent 60 minutes pushing her strength and endurance to their limits. One more breath. One more rep. One more squat. One more swing.
In the end, 4,426lbs lifted, 57 rows, 120 squats, 81 situps, 48 overhead lunges, 69 swings of the kettlebell, multiple manmakers and over 100 TRX jumps in an hour….well, that’s just really damn impressive.
This is where we turn your functional training up to 11. Over head (OH) squats.Go back to the post dated 1/13/09 “Elder Respect part 2″ and review the definition of functional. I want us on the same page here.
Ok, so same rules apply here as with the other squats. Neutral spine, ass out behind you and chest up in front. The goal is to allow the hips to sink back and down until your thighs are just about parallel with the ground and then back up to standing.
Starting with that bar at your chest, get your fingers under it. Grip it with your whole hand, palms up, and a generously wide grip. Take a quick dip with the hips and let your legs help you throw that bar up over head. Lock out the elbows. The arms should be just behind the line of your ears. STOP STARING IN THAT MIRROR! Listen to and feel your body. Use the force Luke. Use the force. Trust me on this.
Hips back & down, ass out, chest as up as possible. Keep your arms perpendicular to the floor the whole time.
Something else that goes against convention here, don’t stare at or spot the ceiling during your squat. Our goal is to maintain a neutral spine. Can’t do that when your neck, aka your cervical SPINE, is cranked all the way back to stare at the air conditioning. ducts. If you need a place to look, find where the wall meets the floor. Because of the rack placement in most gyms, this will line you up pretty well so that when you’re at the bottom of the squat, the most complex & intense portion, you’ll be pretty well in neutral.
Why overhead? Remember, the human body is one piece. We’re creating greater active flexibility by applying a pre-stretch to the lats before the squat. As you sink down, your spine will move more towards parallel with the ground. Your arms must stay perpendicular to the ground, thus creating more active flexibility and range of motion through the shoulder joint and major muscles of the back. Additionally, since that weight is now arm’s length above you, we’re looking at stabilizing that load through the torso (core) and shoulders in a way you’re not going to get with any other squat. You’re forcing substantial additional strength increases and using both your time and your workout efficiently and effectively.
Additional benefit for same time commitment and a new and engaging challenge that will translate directly into your day. Go for it. Give it a shot.
The sign up sheet for this week’s Saturday Night Blowout is up and ready to go. Contact me or stop by West River to reserve space.
I want to give some quick props to Jen Place, a triathlete and old friend of mine. She just posted a perfect example of fitness in the real world. I’m going to quote from her blog (JenPlace.blogspot.com) here. “…after that, I ran errands, literally, around my neighborhood and then an hour of strength training in the afternoon. Having a backpack full of groceries, I found, is a great way to work on running strength!” Look back to Foundation VII. Fitness doesn’t just exist in the gym. Find those things you can use to challenge yourself every day. Awesome job Jen.
Now, on to the big show…
Breathe Later!
Take stock my friend. Take stock and dare to push yourself.
While traveling to visit family recently my wife and I ended up training at one of those open 24 hours a day chain gyms. At least I thought it was a gym. My mistake. Once we were inside, turns out we’d signed up for a gym themed social club. It must have been a good five minutes on the floor before I saw anybody pick something up or lift their extremely well rested derriere up off the comfy bench or lay-z boy styled style machines they were holding hostages. Cliques of “workout” buddies and friends hanging out, waiting for the next round of Sports Center.
Ladies and gentlemen, checking in at the desk to merely check out on the floor does not constitute a workout and will not get you anywhere.
I’ve been questioned as to why I hate TVs in the gym so much. Plain & simple, if you have time to watch TV in the gym, you’re not working hard enough. And that applies to every fitness level. It’s scalable to everyone. If you are working efficiently and pushing your body at the appropriate level to illicit a training response, you’re not going to have time to give one rat’s furry butt which Olsen twin was seen doing what or who admitted to using steroids this week.
You’ve got a tv at home. You’ve got tv in your car, on your cell phone, iPod…. Try not watching it for 30 minutes while you’re working out. Focus on your routine. Rest later. Breathe later. Work now and actually see results.
You’ve trained yourself to balance your body, now train the body to be balanced. Instead of equilibrium, this time I’m talking about balanced movement. For each push, there’s a pull.
You’ve seen that guy walking around the gym on pencil legs with the rounded shoulders, knuckles dragging the ground while he walks? That’s anterior rounding. He’s not working through his back and legs as much as he’s working his bench and those “curls for the girls.” He’s also predispositioned himself for injury and back pain. Don’t be neanderthal man. Train balanced movements.
Pull a weight towards your body. Do it a certain amount of times. Now find an equivalent weight and push it away from the body in the same manner. Pick a weight up and throw it away.
Take foundations 2, 4, 5 & 7. Get outside, reach down to the ground, pick up something heavy and throw the thing as hard as you can. Ask the boys over at the Eads House of Pain how much fun it can be to throw a kettlebell on the beach.
In practicing Foundation II, you’ve already started this process.
You’re on your feet, now move your feet in closer together. Practice the same movement you were practicing. Now stand in a staggered stance. Practice like that.
The more you challenge your body’s ability to keep both feet on the ground, the more you’re stimulating response and growth from the body. It’s like saying “This one goes to 11!” If you’ve got all your stabilizers switched on and firing just by standing up, now we’re ratcheting them up a little higher by challenging your equilibrium.
It would be nice if all life’s demands were thrown at us when we’re standing at the ready in the universal athletic stance, but they’re not. You never know when you might have to jump back up the curb because of that taxi you didn’t see coming. And you’re certainly not necessarily going to be standing in correct neutral posture ready to receive your luggage in the middle of the swarming throngs of people at the baggage carousel when you lunge past that blue hair in front of you to grab your bag.
Dumbbells, barbells, sand, kettlebells, old tires, grocery bags full of heavy books and 5# bags of rice…I don’t care. When, in the course of your day, are you required to repetitiously push or pull an evenly loaded weight along a fixed linear path only to retrace that path and gently set that weight back where it came from while seated in a comfy supported position?
Like the workout sample in foundation II, stand up, find some object in space, pick it up and move it. Gradually work to move it an ever greater number of times. Maybe you make it a little heavier and then move it. Whatever. Just continually up the challenge to your system. We need to progressively train our bodies to handle demands we encounter every day. Since when did sitting in a padded seat pushing the handle on an overhead press machine equate to playing with your niece or nephew, lifting them up off the ground in the back yard? And no, a smith machine is not free weight.
Where do most of your most physically challenging moments occur? Standing on your own two feet. Hence, this is where the majority of your training should occur.
When you sit down, especially in a position that’s supported with a back pad, you’ve already shut down most of the muscles you use to perform the simplest tasks at work or around the house, your stabilizers. You’ve moved into more non functional, body building based isolation training. By standing up and keeping the muscles around our spine firing full tilt, we’re efficiently using our body as the machine, the complete system it is meant to be. Remember, the body is and functions as one piece. Stand up and train it that way.
Try the following. Depending on your strength, hold a heavy book, box, package or some other object that you can only just raise up over your head, at chest level. Drop into a squat and stand up quickly using the legs to help you push that object up over your head. Come immediately back down into the squatting position with the object at chest level. That’s a thruster. Legs, back, abs, shoulders, coordination, we’re working it all with that one. Try the following.
So what’s your goal? What are you working towards? Going to take a stab in the dark. You’d like to…lose weight and…have more energy. Am I close? Maybe it’s something like “get back my college body” or my “pre baby body.”
Awesome. The next question is, “Well, how will you know when you get there?” When does that morning come when you wake up and say “Holy haberdashery Batman, I look fantastic and jee willikers I look fantastic!!!”
So how do you set goals that are important to you and let you know just how much progress you’re making? Make your goals SMART. It’s one of the oldest motivational speaker tricks in the world. But you know what? It works.
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Attainable
R – Realistic
T – Time bound
Set a very specific goal that is important to you and sits squarely in the realm of reality. Tie that goal to a specific completion date and rock on. Doesn’t matter how advanced or novice you are.
I want to fit back in this pair of jeans from last summer by Memorial Day.
Come June 1st, I want to be able to walk from my place on 81st St to my office in 45 minutes.
I want to deadlift three times my weight by the end of March 31st.
I want to be able to play with the kids in the back yard for an hour without breaking 135 beats per minute.
What’s important to you? When do you want to make that happen?
It’s a bit of a departure, but I’m going to devote this week’s Blowout space to someone else’s post.
