You know that regular exercise gives you energy, but it also takes energy to exercise, and you don’t seem to have an ounce to spare. Well, there is a way to circumvent this trap. It will take willpower at first, but I believe through small steps you can eventually find a place of balance and build a weekly habit to improve your health.

If you’re looking to charge into the weekend with enough juice to go play a pick-up game with your buddies or run an obstacle course race, instead of plant yourself on the couch for 48 hours, this plan is for you.

Declare War on the Weekend

If you put a rubber band in the freezer overnight and then take it out the next day and try to stretch it, it will most likely snap. That is essentially what can happen if you go from zero during the workweek to 100 on the weekend. Most of us sit all day and all week at a desk job. There’s no shame in that—we happen to have a society that enables laziness. There are seats, benches, and chairs wherever you go. But all that sitting atrophies muscle, slows metabolism, tightens hip flexors, and weakens glute muscles. In other words, it’s a cocktail of bad news for your health.

A lot of people think that, to counteract all this sitting during the week, they have to hit the ground running and kick butt from day one. But burnout, squashed enthusiasm, and even injury can attend this reckless, sit-to-sprint mentality. The trick is to devise a plan of action that coaxes you into a better daily habit pattern; one that checks all of the required boxes to enable your success.

Let’s first set a few ground rules before we declare war on the weekend: 

• Focus on the necessary: Big, multi-joint exercises will form the backbone of this program. Training with a ton of isolation moves is neither efficient nor as effective as stimulating the most muscle in the least amount of time.
• Stay flexible: Having a plan in place is great, but without any room for adjustment, it’s sure to fail. Be ready to roll with the punches.
• Be brief: Since you’re on a schedule and can’t waste time, you must not only have an effective program, but it must be efficient as well. No wasted time, no wasted effort.
• Mean business: Since time and effort are priorities, you must make every set and rep count. Going through the motions won’t cut it, you must apply intensity.

Your Arsenal

This program doesn’t require a bunch of expensive equipment only found in big commercial gyms. It does, however, require your focus and ingenuity regarding getting the most out of the short list of things at your disposal. Here are some tools you might find helpful. If you don’t have them all, use what you have to improvise.

• Barbell
• Dumbbells
• Kettlebells
• Suspension trainer
• Adjustable bench
• Pull up bar

The Weekend Warrior Workout Programs

Don’t think that just because “weekend” is in the name, this will be a walk in the park. You’ll be training very different components of your system by touching on several variables. These will include building overall strength, increasing muscle mass, improving stability and balance, and training both your muscular and cardiovascular endurance and conditioning.

Below are two programs that you can interchange as desired. One utilizes the minimal equipment listed above. The other is a complete bodyweight-only program designed for the traveling types who find it hard to train on the road, or for those who just want to change things up at home.

Minimal Equipment Workouts

Perform each training session on nonconsecutive days of the week (for example, Monday, Wednesday, Friday). Be sure to dynamically warm up before each workout with two rounds of push ups, jumping jacks, and body weight squats for 10 reps each.

Bodyweight Workouts

This program is a complete bodyweight workout that needs only a pull up bar, a suspension trainer, and a bench. As with the program above, perform each training session on nonconsecutive days of the week (for example, Monday, Wednesday, Friday). Be sure to dynamically warm-up properly before each workout with two rounds of push-ups, jumping jacks and body weight squats for 10 reps each.

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While squats, deadlifts, and lunges are three of the most popular exercises for shaping legs, they are certainly not the only way to get the job done. Today I am going to show you that a few more general exercises can yield big results, especially when used in addition to your regular lower body training.

General physical preparedness (GPP) exercises are normally intended to build overall fitness—general strength, healthy movement quality, and an increased work capacity. Many GPP movements involve a high workload on your lower body, particularly the largest muscles like the glutes, quads, and hamstrings.

As an added benefit, many simple GPP exercises, such as pushing a sled, are almost completely concentric in nature, which means they will inflict less damage to the muscle fibers. This will allow you to recover more quickly than you would from traditional squats, lunges, and deadlifts.

Basic Leg Functions

There are many muscles that make up our legs, and most are involved in multiple movements. Some are primary movers, others are assistant movers. They work together to create each of the movements described below.

Linking each of these movements to an exercise will help to develop strength in your legs and a well–rounded lower body.

• Hip abduction: Movement away from the center line of your body
• Exercise: Standing lateral leg raise

• Hip adduction: Movement towards the center line of your body
• Exercise: Squeezing a stability ball between your legs

• Hip extension: Straightening the hip joint to increase the angle between your thighs and torso
• Exercise: Glute bridge, bird dogs, or the upward motion of a squat

• Hip flexion: Decreasing the angle between thighs and torso
• Exercise: Knee raises

• Hip Rotation: Rotating your upper leg towards (internal) or away from (external) of the center line of your body.
• Exercise: Lateral band walks with a band either around your feet, below your knee, or above your knee

• Knee Extension: Opening the knee joint
• Exercise: Quad extension machine or any kind of front kick movement

• Knee Flexion: Curling the lower leg towards you, bringing your heels towards your bottom
• Exercise: Butt kicks or leg curls

GPP Movements for Stronger Legs

Squats, deadlifts, and lunges are often drilled into our brains as the only exercises to build strong legs. While I agree that they are great exercises, incorporating GPP exercises will help to give your legs a more well-rounded training exposure to build upon your current shape and strength.

Choose exercises that will compliment your existing lower body training, or that you can easily interchange with similar movement patterns. Here are my favorites:

Sled Push

The sled push is a wonderful exercise that hits all the main muscles in the leg. If performed correctly, you should get a nice pump in your glutes and hamstrings.

Backwards Drag

The backwards drag can be used with any piece of equipment that has a handle or something you can pull on. It is important to get a nice backwards lean to work your quadriceps more.

Walking Pull-Throughs

This is performed just as a normal cable pull through, the only difference being that you are walking with it. In this video, I demonstrate with a carpet sled with added weight.

If you have a regular sled at your gym, you can hook a rope to it and perform the same exercise. You want to focus on pulling through with your legs and squeezing your glutes all the way through.

Lateral Band Work

Band work is often forgotten in resistance training. Exercises such as the lateral shuffle and skaters target the inner and outer areas of your legs, while the back pedal really targets your quadriceps. Because the resistance of the bands is very high, performing higher reps provides more benefit.

Sample GPP Leg Workouts

Here are three different workouts using the movements above. Incorporate them either at the end of a lower body day to get that last bit of burn, or use them on an active recovery day.

Workout 1: Sled push/pull – 80 feet, 10 rounds

Push your sled 40 feet, and then drag it backwards another 40 feet. Rest 30-60 seconds between sets

Workout 2: Backwards sled drag/walking pull-throughs – 6 rounds

Drag the sled backwards 80 feet, then perform 40 feet of walking pull-throughs. Rest 30-60 seconds between sets.

Workout 3: Resistance band work – choose from the following

5 sets, resting 30 seconds between each:

• 10 lateral shuffles (each side)
• 10 skaters (each side)
• 10 back pedals

Or

5 sets, 1 minute rest between each:

• 30 seconds lateral shuffles (each side)
• 30 seconds rest
• 30 seconds skaters (each side)
• 30 seconds rest
• 30 seconds back pedal

These three workouts are guaranteed to get the job done, but make sure you program them each week so that you are progressing. For example, on workout 1, increase your rounds to 12, or go a further distance.

Even reducing your rest time is progressing. I always treat these sessions as I would a regular lifting session. The more you increase your workload, the stronger you become.

Whether you are an athlete or someone simply looking to get stronger, incorporate more GPP into your training plans. Does it all have to be lower body? Absolutely not, but who wants weak legs?

Stop hiding in your pants:

Chicken Legs Don’t Suit You: It’s Leg Day

The post 4 GPP Finisher Exercises for Leg Day appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The modern exercise world tends to use language more like a cudgel than the scalpel it can be. Words have exact meanings and if you make them up as you go along, then language loses all clarity and next thing you know we’re all back in the trees, so to speak, flinging poo at each other (which is pretty much what happens in the comments sections on the Internet).

Be prepared to defend yourself against flying Internet poo.

Case in Point

Take intensity, as an example. Originally, when intensity was spoken of in exercise terms it was taken to be in relation to your maximum lift. A lift you could perform once and once only. This guy Prilepin even made a table showing that the less intense the lift, the more reps you could perform, and the smaller the percentage of your best effort it was.

But these days, “intense” is usually used to describe a workout that goes for a long time and is extremely taxing. “Murph” would be a good example. A tough workout, for sure, but anything with hundreds of reps in it that takes an hour or more for people to complete is the exact opposite of intense according to the original definition.

What Does GPP Mean?

And so it is with GPP too. In traditional periodization terms, there are only two phases someone could be in – SPP or GPP. SPP stands for sports (or specific) preparation phase. GPP stands for general preparation phase.

In a typical athletic year, you have a period where the athlete will be training specifically for the sport – SPP – which includes all work needed to be successful in that sport. This can include anything from hypertrophy work, for a junior football player needing to put on muscle, to speed and power work to play rehearsals.

“The moment you choose to become solely focused on soccer is the moment you start becoming worse at swimming or rock climbing. That’s also the exact moment you open yourself up to becoming injured via a repetitive strain type injury.”

But over the last few years, GPP has become a catchall phrase for just about anything in the gym. Pushing a sled? GPP, bro. Farmer walks? That’s GPP, too. Doing some interval work? Mate, didn’t you know that’s GPP?

There are really only two types of trainees. On one side of the room you’ve got those training for an event. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as it has an end goal. It could be climbing a mountain, running a race, or competing at a throwdown fitness event. On the other side is everyone else who is just trying to stay in shape. Those who are training for an event that occurs on a given day are involved in SPP. Their training is designed to peak them on a given day and produce the best performance it can. Everyone else is doing GPP.

People who are training for an event are involved in SPP. Everyone else is doing GPP.

How to Do It

If GPP was originally designed to build basic levels of strength and conditioning, then what are the best ways to do it? In Supertraining Mel Siff wrote:

The GPP is intended to provide balanced physical conditioning in endurance, strength, speed, flexibility, and other basic factors of fitness…Characteristically, the GPP may include participation in a variety of different physical activities which provide low intensity, all-round conditioning, with little emphasis on specific sporting skills. Participation in activities such as jogging, swimming, cycling, tennis, or volleyball may be appropriate for this phase for some sports. If the player needs to gain muscle or lose excess fat, this is regarded as the appropriate period to do so.

Note: Let’s make this easy. If you’re training for a specific event and made it this far into this article, then there’s no need to read any further. What follows isn’t for you. However, for the rest of the world interested in staying in shape and living a full and healthy life, please read on.

If you pull apart the above paragraph by Siff, what you should get out of it is this – play games, engage in light and varied aerobic activity, and optimize body composition through a combination of the aerobic work, resistance training, and diet. Apart from the diet, which in my experience benefits from structure (at least in terms of how a day of meals is designed), the rest can be kept in a loose framework.

“[P]lay games, engage in light and varied aerobic activity, and optimize body composition through a combination of the aerobic work, resistance training, and diet.”

If we look at a single movement variation like the hinge, we can see exactly how varied it can be from session to session:

• The basic hinge movement of the deadlift could be done on the first day of the week, but there’s no need to deadlift daily to get our dose of hinges.
• We could do kettlebell swings, choosing from two hand, one hand, or dead swings, as well as use variations like the high pull or snatch.
• We could jump on another day.
• On another day, we could do only flexibility movements that help our hinge such as the active straight leg raise-toe touch series from FMS.

Because we don’t have a specific goal in mind, just overall health and fitness, we can pick and choose any hinge variation we want and keep satisfying our overall GPP goal. The same can be done for squatting. Today, pick front squats with a bar. Tomorrow, it’s goblet squats with a kettlebell and Ido Portal’s Squat Routine 2.0. The following day it’s overhead squats. The reality is that it doesn’t matter one bit which you choose so long as you avoid using only a single variety.

That’s the one concrete rule in developing good all-around abilities – you have to avoid specialization. You can’t allow yourself to pick favorites or reduce your training to working on a single exercise. The moment you do, you start heading down that SPP path. The moment you head down that SPP path, you start losing some of your all-around abilities.

Outside the Gym

The same can be said for outside the gym activities. Today you could play soccer. Tomorrow it might be rock climbing. The day after it might be an adult gymnastics class. The only thing you need to focus on is doing many things and moving many ways.

“That’s the one concrete rule in developing good all-around abilities – you have to avoid specialization.”

The moment you choose to become solely focused on soccer is the moment you start becoming worse at swimming or rock climbing. That’s also the exact moment you open yourself up to becoming injured via a repetitive strain type injury. You can choose to play a variety of team sports and you can choose to use a variety of aerobic methods such as swimming, riding, rowing, or running. It doesn’t matter which ones.

The most common mistakes I see the vast majority of people making are simple:

• Not enough variety.
• Not enough “other work.” Other work, in this case, is all the exercises that involve rotation and single-leg stance. Gym exercises are largely bilateral and done facing in one direction. Train single arm and single leg, and train not just to prevent rotation but to develop it, too.
• Eat to control your body composition.
• Engage in at least some team sports, which are important for a variety of reasons – multi-planar activities are fantastic, but equally fantastic is spending time with people.

More Like This:

• GPP Forever: How to Avoid Accidential Specialization and Actually Get Fit
• How to Run Faster and Lift More (While Training GPP)
• Your GPP Is Broken: Why You Need 90+ Minute Sessions
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post GPP in the Modern World: How to Become an All-Around Athlete appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Likewise, another friend of mine, and also a super experienced coach, Dan John, brought another great coach’s comment back to popularity. Dan Gable, one of the greatest athlete coaches ever, said, “If it’s important do it every day.”

What Dan Gable Actually Meant

One of the things to keep in mind when reading fitness advice is the perspective of the person who said it. You need to read the words through that person’s filter. In the case of Charles Poliquin, that means you need to think about working with elite strength and hypertrophy athletes. Compare that to someone like Ben Greenfield. While each is an advocate of strength, the kind of workout they deem appropriate is largely going to be determined by the audience they deal with. I doubt many triathletes could keep up with the strength programs used by Poliquin, and they certainly wouldn’t hit many of his strength standards.

In the case of Dan Gable’s quotation we need to keep in mind that he was dealing with elite-level wrestlers. For people who aren’t familiar with wrestling, it may be the greatest all-around test of athleticism in the world. It combines high levels of strength, power, stamina, coordination, flexibility, and agility. And despite their bouts being relatively short at six minutes total length, Gable had wrestlers run ten miles once per week to also build aerobic capacity. In other words, wrestlers address every single component of fitness every day. As much as they specialize in wrestling training, their total athletic needs are actually being met.

Contrast this with a typical gym patron who has seen the light and wants to reduce the random acts of variety from his program. How can we get what we need in a short workout?

What the Navy SEALs Know About Training

Let’s talk for a moment about Dr. Philip Rasch. He headed up the Naval Human Performance Laboratory at Quantico from its founding in the 1960s through the 1970s. He created workouts for the Marines, as well as the Navy’s UDT and early SEALs. He based his programs around a simple 70% concept.

Imagine a baby crawling on the floor. What is he doing? He is pushing with his lower extremities and pulling with his upper body. 70% of our pelvis and lower extremity muscles push and 70% of our torso and upper extremity muscles pull. Based on this idea, Rasch concluded that if we find the most efficient lower-extremity pushing exercise and the most efficient upper-extremity pulling exercise we will work 70% of our total body musculature in the most commonly used ways.

You could be forgiven for thinking at this point that all we need do then is some front squats and pull ups and we’d have achieved our goal. Perhaps, but that still doesn’t fill all the gaps, nor does it address the other 30% of the body. Let’s look at some of the gaps and then figure the whole plan.

Gap #1: The Push to Pull Ratio

We have three distinct leg patterns. We can work bilaterally, as in a squat, but we also have options with a staggered stance, as in lunges, and a single-leg stance, such as we use for running.

While 70% of our upper-body musculature may be used for pulling, we still have a lot of pushing muscles that need to be worked. Probably the biggest problem many have is that they seek balance in their program and try to match pulling and pushing exercises, one for one. But a better solution would be to do either two pulling sessions for every one pushing session (if on a typical three-day split program), or maybe even bump that to three-to-one if there are fewer restrictions on training frequency.

Similarly, while I know it has become sexy to train the deadlift more frequently than the squat, as a lower-body pull it might work better to train it only once per week, in the same two or three-to-one format we will use for the upper body.

Gap #2: The Danger of Losing Skills

One of the things that I notice more and more as I get older is that if I remove exercises from my training, then I struggle more when doing a wide variety of things. One of my basic premises for training is that my program should make me athletic enough to complete a Spartan Super with no special training. (This is my filter. If yours is to deadlift a world record, then today’s plan is not for you).

To do that I need to be able to run, climb, crawl, lift, pull, and swim, as well as perform a variety of athletic challenges involving grip strength, agility, and coordination. If I rely on only performing my minimalistic plan, then I will lose out on many of these, as I am simply not practicing these skills.

Your Basic Strength Workouts

For the sake of this program, let’s schedule four days per week. Each day will focus on a different leg pattern (bilateral, split, or single leg) and a different pulling pattern (vertical, horizontal, or stabilizing). We will also include a day for lower-body pulls and upper-body pushes.

The basic strength template looks like this:

• Week 1: 3 sets of 5
• Week 2: 5 sets of 3
• Week 3: 5 sets of 2 increasing weight each set attempting to work up to a new 2RM
• Week 4: Return to 3 sets of 5, but add some weight to the original load used

Day 1:

Front squat

Pull ups

Day 2:

Single leg

Rows

Day 3:

Deadlift

Bench press*

Day 4:

Lunges

Rack pull/shrug

*Alternate horizontal presses such as bench presses with overhead pressing every four-week cycle.

Your Conditioning

Conditioning comes in two parts. The first is bodyweight circuits. Bodyweight training is a great way to round out athleticism and enhance your ability to move through space.

Pick four movements – an upper-body push and pull, a core exercise, and a lower-body movement. I suggest using elements included in that day’s strength training block. So, if you’re on Day 1, make sure to include bodyweight pull ups and squats in the conditioning. If on Day 3, push ups and back extensions are logical choices. Perform a circuit in EDT (escalating density training) fashion for twenty minutes. Use the same circuit on each training day for four weeks (so you’ll have four different circuits), attempting to beat your reps each week.

The second part of conditioning is performed either after the bodyweight circuits or separately later in the day. Just go for an easy run for anywhere from twenty to sixty minutes. An easy-to-follow method would be:

Day 1: 30 minutes

Day 2: 40 minutes

Day 3: 20 minutes

Day 4: 60 minutes.*

*If new to running please start with a sensible run/walk program.

If you want to do something on your three spare days I suggest walking and yoga.

The Value of Minimalist Training

This minimal plan will keep you fit, strong, and healthy, while exposing you enough to multiple movements that you won’t lose any abilities, as is common with most minimal plans. This is absolutely GPP and for the result I’m looking for – high levels of overall health, fitness, and strength – there is no need to specialize in one exercise over another.

Rather, there is a need to hit many different patterns during the week and address all energy pathways, too. The suppleness work on the recovery days will go a long way to boosting overall fitness, as well, as you’ll find that these days play an enormous role in keeping you healthy long term.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Minimalist Training 2.0: The How and Why appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

How to Create a Focused Plan on a Broad-Spectrum Goal

The sad part for many is that early on you can train anything and have a result. If you’re a thirty-year-old with no significant history of exercise, then simply getting up off the couch on a regular basis and watching what you eat will likely get you in the best shape of your life. But sooner or later that progress will grind to a halt and you’ll need something a bit more focused.

For people working toward one specific goal, that plan would mean focusing in on only one thing. But since we’re interested in GPP, we’re going to deliberately maintain a wide focus and continue working on multiple aspects of our fitness. The only difference now is that we will apply a systematic approach to our training, rather than going by feel each day.

To keep our plan broad focused, let’s just say that we want to get strong and increase our running ability at the same time. We have no specific goal to increase one lift over another, just to gain more strength overall, but our main goal is to run faster.

What the Week Looks Like

If we divide the week into some broad categories, then we’ve got a few options, but let’s stick with some really simple ones. Let’s simply have a bent-arm day, straight-arm day, and a leg day:

• Bent-arm strength means pushing and pulling, like dips, chins, bench press, rows. It’s anything that you have to bend the arms to perform.
• Straight-arm strength is usually represented by hard abdominal skills like levers and planches, although assistance exercises such as straight-arm pulldowns could be placed here, too. Straight-arm day is also an ideal place to put our assistance core work because the main exercises focus so heavily on the midsection.
• The final day is a leg day, which should be obvious.

The basic format, because running is the main goal, is that we are going to run four days per week. The runs will be Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. The format for the runs is simple:

• Tuesday – Easy aerobic run of 30-45 minutes.
• Thursday – Hill repeats. Here’s a good sample workout: First, pick your goal pace, and for the sake of this article let’s say we want to be able to run 5min/kms. Warm up by running 1-2km easy. Then run 500m on a slight incline (3-4%) at 4:30min/km. Recover by returning downhill at 5:30 pace. This will still give you an average of 5min/km while increasing leg strength and helping to work on form. Perform three to four sets the first few weeks. Cool down with another 1-2km of easy running.
• Saturday – Easy aerobic run of 30-45 minutes.
• Sunday – Long run of 90-120 minutes. Focus on an easy pace for the first two thirds, then come home trying to maintain goal pace (in this case, 5min/km).

For the strength days, you can put in whatever exercises you want. Just stick to the following guidelines:

• Monday – Bent-arm strength. An example might be 20 minutes of performing as many strict muscle ups as possible. Then 5 x 5 ring dips and pull-ups.
• Wednesday – Leg day. It’s important to keep this day as far away from the long run as possible so you have the freshest legs to do that run. 5-8 x 3 front squats and RDLs is ample.
• Friday – Straight arm strength. 10 sets of front levers and planche holds. Finish with a circuit of crawling, plank holds, and get ups for 3-5 rounds.

Feel free to switch the exercises listed to any others, provided they stick within that framework. The use of bodyweight exercises for runners can’t be overlooked. They give you loads of body control, which is essential for handling yourself for long periods of time, particularly if you trail run. Bodyweight exercises also won’t make you heavier, which can cause all sorts of problems to your running. And you need little equipment to perform them. (Tip: If you’re looking for good bodyweight strength progressions I suggest Convict Conditioning or Foundation One. Both are superb).

Don’t Overspend Your Conditioning

The final point to remember is not to waste your conditioning on gym training. Imagine you only have a set budget for your conditioning each week. Overspending in the gym can mean that you have little left over to tackle running. Spend your energy wisely and use it where it most benefits your goals. When in the gym, use exercises or loads that limit you to five reps per set or fewer. This will help build strength while keeping your body weight low. Don’t get caught in that middle ground of metabolic conditioning or hypertrophy work, as that will lead to exhaustion or gains in weight – both of which will affect your running.

When you’re ready to switch from a running focus to a strength focus, perhaps as the seasons change, just swap the schedule around so you spend four days each week in the gym and only three outside running. During that phase just do easy runs, trying to maintain your form and not worrying about boosting fitness. But when you’re in the gym during this period, you should go all-out and even add a few exercises to maximize your work.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post How to Run Faster and Lift More (While Training GPP) appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

My Martial Arts Dilemma

Despite the fact that I would train four or five times per week, and always medalled at competitions, martial arts was never really my thing. It became clear one night when I was talking to a friend about whether or not to continue grappling after my shoulder surgery, or stop grappling as I had always told myself I would if I ever needed a second surgery. What my friend said literally dropped my jaw it was so insightful.

As we were talking, he said to me that I wasn’t a good student. My first reaction, was, “F%#k you buddy, I schooled you last time we rolled.” But then he went on to say that even though I trained a lot and was progressing, I was never that excited about it. I never told him about how I’d just bought a new BJJ DVD and had spent the last few days reviewing it. Instead I’d tell him about FMS, or Mike Boyle, or any other new strength and conditioning thing I had been getting into. I was a fitness guy who did martial arts as a form of cross training. Was it any surprise that my game stalled more often than my lifts did?

My Moment of Clarity

But this leads to my point. How much strength did I actually need to be good at BJJ? For a short while I went to the gym and lifted just enough to stay as strong as I was. I found a simple two-day-per-week plan was easily enough to stay strong and get some extra conditioning. The upside of that was I had far more energy when it came to grappling training and my BJJ game improved dramatically. It was helped further by me studying DVDs and becoming a better student of the game.

As it turns out that approach made me miserable. I missed the gym and doing things other than grappling. My friend was right. BJJ was nothing more for me than another form of fitness training. That set everything clearly into focus for me, and has allowed me to happily continue my athletic adventures, playing with as many forms of fitness as I can, and always using strength training as the basis for all of it. But if I hadn’t had that moment of clarity, of being honest with myself, I never would have been able to enjoy the training or make progress, because how can you plan a trip if you don’t even know you’re starting point?

When Enough Strength Is Enough

I’m lucky enough to train some really fast people and we always go back to the same point – how do we make you even faster? Every single thing we do in training is guided by that one question. If we deadlift X and run Y that is good. But if we deadlift X + 10 and run Y – 2, then we’ve gone the wrong way.

It may seem counterintuitive that if you have a certain level of strength and run a certain speed that adding strength won’t make you faster. After all, there are a number of well-known fitness cults that suggest that strength fixes everything.

Well, maybe. A little bit more strength, especially in distance athletes, may help. But spending the time and effort to greatly increase lifts may leave these same athletes so sore and tired that they don’t have time for what really counts – which is running.

Focus on What You’re Really Training For

I have a client who runs amateur track and clocks eleven seconds for the 100m. He was recently at an event where he did a 2000m row in a personal record of 7:30-ish, but was beaten by some of the other guys by up to a minute. This client lamented to me that he wasn’t very fit compared to these other guys. I asked him if he thought he could outrun them. He instantly replied that he’d crush them.

So does it really matter if he gets beaten rowing when that is not his thing? Does a soccer player care if he loses a game of basketball? While my client may still harbor the dream of being the best at everything, he is realistic enough to know that fast sprinting is what he does and trains for, so rowing, while a fun distraction, doesn’t matter one bit for him. But without knowing who he truly is, and what he is really training for it would be quite normal for him to suddenly get onto the rower and spend a few weeks bringing his times down. But that’s just ego and wouldn’t do anything to help his sprinting. Keeping a clear vision of what he is training for and what is needed to get faster at running is the only thing that matters.

Short-Term Goals for Long-Term Life

Training someone with specific goals is easy. But what happens when you train to be fit for life? I would suggest that having clearly defined short-term goals is the best way forward. It can be as easy as focusing on strength for a six-week period followed by a conditioning or fat-loss phase. Six weeks is long enough to run either a couple three-week blocks or a single six-week block of training and see some results. You can then hold onto whatever strength you’ve gained quite easily and transition to a fitness phase for six weeks. It’s that simple.

The tricky part for many people is trying to ride two horses with one ass. Don’t get to the middle of the strength block and worry that you’ve lost some fitness. You’ll get it back. Conversely, don’t lament that you’ve dropped 5kgs on your squat because of all the running you’re doing. That’ll come back, too. Avoid specializing in anything – you’re training for life, which means that you are doing GPP.

So do GPP.

Use a wide variety of tools and methods when training for both strength and fitness. For example, if you’re training for strength, and you’ve identified that your leg strength is lacking, does it matter if you just do a different form of squat each time you train? If you’re a competitive lifter, an SPP athlete, then of course you need to focus on back and front squats. But for the GPP fit-for-life crowd you can do back, front, overhead, bodyweight, goblet, and kettlebell squats. You can add in lunges, step ups, and sled work, too, because it will all help your overall strength and fitness. Trust me when I say that long term you’re going to have way more fun this way than trying to make yourself follow a specialized lifting program if you have no aspirations in that direction.

Photo 1 courtesy of Miguel Tapia Images and CrossFit LA.

Photo 3 courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post Know Thyself (And You’ll Know How to Train) appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

A few years ago when I was in a bad relationship, we went to get counseling. (As an aside: if you’re not married and you need counseling, then you may as well leave now.)

For people who haven’t yet figured it out, I am probably borderline for quite a few social disorders. I don’t deal well with crowds. I am almost completely unable not to tell people when they’re being idiots, too.

A few years ago when I was in a bad relationship, we went to get counseling. (As an aside: if you’re not married and you need counseling, then you may as well leave now.)

The biggest thing the counsellor said to me was that I needed to stop trying to fix everything in my life. I have a habit of wanting to fix things, to manage situations, and always trying to get the best possible outcome.

Only sometimes, things should be let to fall apart, and you can’t attach blame to yourself for that. It’s kind of like the circle of life – some animals get eaten, but the environment as a whole carries on because that is how the food chain works.

But sometimes, you get a situation, just like in The Lion King, where a usurper comes along and tries to get you to do something you don’t want to do.

The end result is misery and hardship despite doing your best to make everything fit just right. A classic example of this occurs in the gym with your training. We take a good idea like training to get stronger, and we make an unholy mess of it.

The Genesis of the Unholy Mess

This mess starts all the way back in the planning phases, as the person writing the program begins to steer away from the goal and head towards some other cloudy destination.

Let’s say that your goal is a typical gym goal of wanting to “tone up and lose some weight.” Part of reaching that goal should be strength training. We know that increasing strength has a positive effect on muscle tissue and therefore on our resting metabolic rate.

We know that tissue rebuilding post-strength training will help to burn calories. And we know that the training itself can burn just as many calories as doing some form of cardiovascular exercise.

But here is where it gets tricky. We start trying to make gaining strength the only goal. It’s an easy enough trap.

We see that gaining a little strength has been beneficial in helping to reshape our bodies and thus, we want to do more, and so we redouble our efforts to lift more.

But how much stronger do you need to be to lose fat? Will adding 20kg to your squat help you lose fat? Maybe. But what about adding 100kg to your squat? There’s a fair chance that when you go from trying to add a little to trying to add a lot, that all of a sudden you just tried to cram something in that didn’t belong.

When GPP Turns Into SPP

At some point everyone will make this mistake. We will try to turn what should be generalized physical preparedness (GPP) into specialized physical preparedness (SPP).

We’ll end up getting caught up in the numbers and trying to make them bigger. It’s a natural thing to do, especially if you’re a competitive person. This situation isn’t helped by all the tables you see floating around of people suggesting what common strength levels should be.

You’ll often see references to people being “beginners” until they hit a double bodyweight squat or deadlift. The resulting mistake people make is that they think if they’re advanced in one thing they automatically are at another as well.

This is related to one of the biggest differences I see between expert and novice coaches. One of the biggest mistakes I see new coaches making is analyzing everything to death as if talking more about it will make the trainee an expert.

If you’ve ever had the good fortune to be coached by one of the greats, you’ll see one thing clearly – there’s not a lot of talking going on. If you’re doing something right, you may not even hear from the coach for the entire session. If you screw up, well, things will be different. But for the most part great coaches don’t waste air on much.

In contrast, you’ll see an inexperienced coach worrying about whether he or she should tie his or her shoelaces with a left- or right-handed knot.

Or what kind of knee brace Klokov uses and where to buy it. You’ll see new coaches worry about these tiny details, but when it comes down to it, their clients won’t be improving.

How can they when they’re never allowed get reps in? The poor things, every time they step near a weight their head is filled with every single cue the novice coach can come up with.

And most of these cues will make no difference to someone who is training for GPP. If you bench press body weight for reps, do you really think it matters what Dave Tate says about bench press?

If you struggle to squat 100kg, do you think it matters what Louie Simmons says about chains and bands and where you place your DE versus RE versus ME days? Not in the least.

If your sport is competitive lifting, then these things will matter, but while you’re in the gym training for GPP, most of this won’t matter. Learn what safe form is and then lift. Get some reps in.

That’s the bottom line for GPP, and as a coach if you can’t get your clients there very quickly, then please retire now.

All that extra detail, all those tiny things you want to say to your client, just button up and keep them to yourself and let the animals lift. They’ll make way faster progress.

But then as they progress you’ll keep coming back to the same place – wanting to put them on a bench plan, or a squat plan, or some other plan. That starts heading in the wrong direction for many. That’s SPP. Most people do not and will never need SPP.

The extra time you spend on traveling that path could be better spent on developing better movement and mobility, increasing other physical skills such as basic tumbling and crawling patterns, or maybe even starting a new physical hobby like rock climbing.

Say No to Strength Coaches

Personal training has become overtaken by all the “strength coaches” out there. Except these coaches are dealing with clients who are still very much in that beginner range.

Do you know what beginners need? GPP. So are these people really strength coaches or are they GPP coaches? And isn’t part of GPP developing all physical skills to broaden the base of fitness possible? In fact, isn’t it an essential part?

Because when you spend too much time on one quality, focusing on a specialized form of training, then you’re going to pay somewhere else. Maybe you pay with injury. Maybe you pay with losing movement, or flexibility, or fitness. But you will pay.

The ultimate goal for the vast majority of people shouldn’t be to get really good at one thing, but to get good at many.

As I’ve said before: specialization is for insects. Keep the goal of broadening GPP and keep working at all aspects of fitness – without letting one distract you from another.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

The post GPP Forever: How to Avoid Accidental Specialization and Actually Get Fit appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

You’re special. No, really, I mean it. You are gifted beyond the norm and can get away with things that no one else can at your gym. You can use more advanced exercises, recover less, and train harder. Aren’t you a special little snowflake?

Except you’re not. You know how to test if you truly are special? Look for an Olympic medal hanging around your neck. If you don’t have one of those or aren’t even in the running to compete for one, then the reality is you fit in the fat part of the bell curve and are average, just like most everyone else.

If you’re not training for elite competition then that means your time in the gym or playing your chosen sport needs to address your overall health and fitness to some degree. I know, training for performance is sexy, and it’s fun to go on training plans that will improve your squat, snatch, or “Fran” time. But are you really ready for performance? And how much of your overall plan should be devoted to performance versus health? Because the two goals are not always aligned.

The Snatch

Let’s start with what is probably the most complicated thing you can do with a barbell – the snatch. Because of the nature of the lift and the loads used it’s not normally a lift used for high reps. Therefore, training the snatch takes a long time, measured in decades, not years.

There’s a reason you can find YouTube videos of eight year olds in China performing the lift. If they don’t start that young, they’ll never achieve the level of mastery needed to compete at the ultimate level. But that training isn’t geared towards health or fitness, only performance. And for every child who makes it to the world stage there are probably about 3,190 who don’t.

Bob Takano noted that in Bulgaria the weightlifting program began each four-year block with 3,200 potentials and whittled it down until you had ten incredible athletes at the Olympics. No mention is made of the 3,190 who never made it.

So let’s get back to you. There’s a fair chance you are past the ideal starting age for weightlifting, which is twelve years old. (This is based off Soviet methodology. The prime starting age for serious lifting is twelve because that is when hormones start to make a big difference in the loads and recovery possible for young athletes.)

If you’re like many and you’ve come to serious training later in life, having been delayed in your arrival by machine-based training or plain old inactivity for years prior, you’re going to need to start with the basics.

Most good coaches will agree there are many lifts that lead to the snatch, and they will progress you through them slowly, rather than hand you a bar on your first night in the box and say, “Here’s the snatch. Now do it.” (Although, I have heard of this, too.) Among these other lifts are the overhead squat, snatch balance, power snatch performed at various heights, snatch pulls, and finally the full snatch.

Is the Snatch the Answer?

But let’s step back even further. Are you really ready for the snatch, and do you even need it? Preparing to write this article, in just minutes I found more than twenty videos on Kelly Starrett’s YouTube page that relate to better squat and overhead mechanics.

I’m sure there’s more than that, but it proves the point. If so many people have so many issues, then is the snatch the best way to go about training? Especially when so much of training should be geared towards health and fitness?

If we all need so much mobility work, why are we working so hard on strength? Why aren’t we working on our weak areas, and why aren’t coaches giving people what they need? And once we have given clients the adequate mobility to do the snatch (if we ever actually manage that), do we really want those people snatching anyway? Or is there a more efficient way to get the same job done?

Deadlifts and Swings

I’d argue that for most people they would get a far better result, and far faster, if they just concentrated on deadlifts and kettlebell swings. The two sides of the power equation deal with speed and load. The deadlift gives me one, the swing the other. Yes, the snatch is a more efficient way to accomplish that as you can get both sides of the equation from one exercise.

But in the ten years it takes you to become mobile enough and develop good enough form in the snatch, how many deadlifts and swings do you think I’ll have done? And because of the huge volume of work I have done compared to you, who is going to be in better shape, with more strength and better body composition? Sure, I may not be able to snatch, but in terms of who has achieved a better outcome for all-around health and fitness I will be far better off.

In the time I save working on my snatch I can address other elements of fitness such as mobility, flexibility, agility, aerobic and anaerobic fitness, and even my diet. Meanwhile, you’re still working on that pesky snatch that you just can’t seem to get right. In a year, who do you think will move better?

And how much fun do you think I’m going to be having in my fitness journey when I have been rock climbing, swimming, running, lifting, and hiking versus you, stuck on that platform in the gym working on your snatch?

Don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot to be gained from acquisition of skills. I’m just not sure you really need high-level skills for most purposes. When I see video of people being taught to bench press with really high back arches and these people have no plans to compete, I just shake my head and think of all the other things they could be progressing instead of working on a high-level technique they will never need. If you’re not a specialist, as evidenced by not competing in a strength sport, then you have no need of specialist technique.

What You Should Be Doing

If you’re training for GPP then what you want is the biggest bang for your buck in the gym. I won’t insult Paul Chek, Ian King, Mike Boyle, or Dan John here by rehashing the basic human movements, but a routine that consists of hinge, squat, pull, push, and core will give you all you need.

I will suggest that you use deliberately less-complicated versions of the lifts and modify them so that they fit you, rather than trying to make your 35-year-old, desk-ridden body fit the lifts. Doing a power snatch off blocks is as good a choice for a quick lift for many as you’ll find, and I can teach you to do it relatively quickly.

Below is a two-day split that can be performed four days per week. I like Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, but any four days work as long as they’re not all consecutive.

Day 1

• 1A. Deadlift 5-3-2
• 1B. Two-hand kettlebell swing 10-10-10
• 2. Barbell push complex – 2 reps of pressing, 2 reps of push press, 2 reps of push jerks. Add a small amount of weight each round (2.5–5kg) until you can’t get the presses, but keep with the 2-2 push presses and jerks. Continue adding weight until you’re left with the jerks.
• 3A. Plank hold x 60s x 5 sets
• 3B. Get ups x 1 each side x 5

Day 2

• 1. Power snatch off blocks 3 x 3 increasing weight each set.
• 2. Front squat 4 x 4 increasing weight each set
• 3A. Pull ups x AMRAP x 4 rounds
• 3B. Sled pull x 1 x 4 rounds (Attach a long rope to a sled and hand over hand pull it towards you, as if single hand rowing it.)
• 4. Hanging leg raises 3 x 5

In your spare time add in fitness, flexibility, and movement skills such as martial arts or agility drills. Training for all-around fitness and health will be far more fun and far more beneficial in the long run than working on a single skill like the snatch or arched bench press. Specialization is for insects. Man evolved to do many things, so remember that in your own training.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

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