A Look Under P90X2’s Hood

Here’s a great article from P3 on their pre-draft camp that doubles as a deep dive into the science behind P90X2. As you probably know, Dr. Marcus Elliott is a major player in X2’s development. Today you get a look at the kind of analysis and logic we used to create the program in P3’s post:

P3 Pre-Draft: A Scientific Approach to Draft Prep and Career Development

As training becomes more scientific analysis and application become more important. A look back at this program’s history outlines the framework of X2’s development:

Power 90 – The goal to get people moving and eating better. This is the crux for most of us, changing our lifestyle.

P90X – Takes it a step further by applying athletic training principles and methods to create a solid base of fitness.

P90X2 – Uses the latest findings in applying exercise science to improve human movement patterns, which not only creates athletes but reduces injury potential and creates a body that will age slower and function at a high level.

Of course with X2 we can’t do individual analysis you see here. But we use this analysis to find commonalities across the broadest demographics in order to create specific workouts. This is where and how it begins, by looking at human potential with open eyes and using a broad scientific template to improve areas that were once thought impossible to fix. It’s fascinating to see this process unfold, from the technical aspects:

To help John get in better positions to create force and become a more efficient and elastic athlete, we prescribed exercise that improved hip mobility (loaded strength movements, aggressive soft tissue, daily stretching programs) and emphasized eccentric adaptation work (lengthening movements, movements that force relaxation prior to muscle contraction). We worked extensively on John’s stimulus response and nervous system to build quickness and agility.

To the more accessible factors:

The 6-foot-4 shooting guard and two-time SEC scoring champion is toting a chiseled 212 pounds and six-percent body fat – down from 10-percent body fat.

Those of you into techie details are going to dig this, but it’s also a reminder of why you should keep working on difficult balance movements or go 100% on your complexes in PAP. All in all, it should help you realize that when you do P90X2 you’re in the rare company of those who use their bodies to make a living. And since we at Beachbody feel that living means a lot more than making money, access to this information becomes invaluable.

P90X2 A Slam Dunk!

Congratulations to P3 athlete Jeremy Evans who won the NBA slam dunk competition on All Star Weekend. In this video of Evans training at P3 you’ll see him doing a lot of the same movements we do in P90X2, including the exact same PAP movements (step-up convicts to split squats).



He began training at P3 immediately after being drafted, where Dr. Marcus Elliott and his staff have turned him into a dunking machine. Over 60% of his baskets have come via dunk, not counting this one:



When people use their athleticism to punch their meal ticket this is the kind of training they do. And it’s no coincidence Jeremy’s doing what’s more or less an X2 workout, since Elliott and P3 were integral in its design. If you want to improve your hops, or any aspect of your athleticism, P90X2’s a slam dunk.

This clip shows Evans’ winning dunks, with a guest appearance from fellow P3 athlete Gordon Hayward. Incidentally, after Blake Griffin won last year’s contest jumping over a car Evans went out and did it “just to see if I could.” He one-ups him this year by jumping over a seated Hayward, catching and dunking two balls in the process. Insane. Then he jumps over someone standing fully erect. Wow.

P90X2 Prep: Block 3

With the release of P90X2 imminent here are some final tips to have you read to take it on at full strength. While you’ve probably heard a lot about post-activation potentiation (PAP) in the various promos or, at least, on my blog, what might not have been made clear is exactly why you only see it during the final phase of the program. In answering this you’ll see why your final block of prep should be tailored very specifically for you personally.

Essentially, PAP needs to be earned. It’s only effective if you have the fitness base to withstand its rigors, which forces you to follow a heavy contraction exercise immediately with a 100% effort explosive exercise. And not for 30 seconds or a minute, but only for a few seconds, meaning that for the first time in a Beachbody program you’re being asked to give a one rep max effort--though one that’s been tempered by a set to failure (or close) of heavy resistance.


pap example at p3 from gordon hayward of the utah jazz

If you’re not physically ready the first set of exercise will wipe you out. However, once conditioned the resistance effort actually frees up higher threshold muscle cell motor units which, in brief, allows your muscles to work at higher explosive outputs than normal. When you train this process you increase your muscular efficiency that, in layman’s terms, means that your muscles get stronger without gaining any size, which not only improves your ability to perform now but also increases your capacity for hypertrophy (muscle growth).

So, anyway, I’m sure that sounds cool but here’s the rub; you don’t need to practice PAP training, you need to get fit for it. So block 3 of your prep should be to improve at whatever your weaknesses are up to this point.

If you don’t feel you have weaknesses you could start working on PAP with Tony’s One on One workout (see top vid). This workout isn’t dialed as Tony was just starting to learn about it but it’s cool in that it’s both an upper and lower body PAP workout and provides a template for you to create your own workout variations if you get time crunched while doing X2. Like pretty much everything, you improve at doing complexes with practice so trying this out now will provide benefits by the time you get to phase III of X2. You could also try this workout (added video of heel slide - aka "wall slide").

However, if you are still learning the balance movements from block 1 and block 2, I recommend that you spend more time focused on these. The better you get at these movements the quicker you will respond to the program. When you get to the point—like big wave surfer Laird Hamilton—where you can do heavy movements on unstable platforms as if you were on a concrete floor (note cameo by Shakeology guru Darin Olien) your strength gains are going to go through the roof. And then when you add PAP training to a base like that your body’s going to take you places you’d never dreamed you’d be able to go.

Final teaser: P90X2 is on schedule for early December delivery. Get psyched.

P90X2 Prep: The mc2 Version

It was brought to my attention that we never presented a schedule for those who purchased the entire P90X2 preview series: P90Xmc2. While I’ve covered a lot of how to use it to prepare for the real thing in the first two posts of this series, today I’ll provide specific guidelines for those using mc2 only. You will still want to read the two previous entries on X2 prep:

Part I

Part II

The reason we didn’t provide literature with mc2 is that it sold mainly to a savvy group of Xers who know the program’s philosophies inside and out. We didn’t have to instruct them how to plug and play the various workouts Tony would come up with for One on One. We also didn’t film them in any kind of specific order so a schedule wouldn’t have done any good until you had the complete series.



Since we’re now peddling to a wider audience ordering all of the workouts at once, here you go. Keep in mind there are a ton of individual variables you might want to consider, most of which are addressed somewhere in this blog. Use the search function (“customizing P90X” is a good place to start) or click on various labels to whittle down your research.

In a perfect world each training block would be done for 3-6 weeks but, with X2 out in less than two months, you might want to employ more of a practice schedule consisting of doing each week once and then spending a little time training the workouts you’re worst at. While this won’t allow your body to peak it will prepare you for P90X2 so that you’ll adapt quicker to that program, leading to faster overall fitness improvements.



Block I

Day 1: Core Syn mc2
Day 2: Plyocide
Day 3: Shoulders & Arms: mc2
Day 4: Yoga m2
Day 5: Stretch and Recovery
Day 6: Chest, Back, and Balls
Day 7: Rest

Block II

Day 1: V Sculpt
Day 2: Plyocide
Day 3: Upper Body X
Day 4: ARX 2
Day 5: Base and Back
Day 6: Yoga mc2
Day 7: Rest

Block III

Day 1: PAP
Day 2: ARX 2
Day 3: Yoga mc2
Day 4: Core Syn mc2
Day 5: PAP
Day 6: Stretch and Recovery
Day 7: Rest

Should you do the entire rotation in full blocks you’ll probably need a recovery week between blocks I and II but not III because it’s very different. A good recovery week would be doing Yoga, Core Syn, and ARX 2 once and Stretch twice, or else doing any activities that you like as long as they don’t have heavy resistance training.

Heel Slide: The Most Important Exercise You’ve Never Heard Of

If I told you that adding one exercise movement to your workout could reduce your likelihood of injuring your knee by 90% would you be interested? If so, this is your lucky day. Introducing the heel slide.

You’ve heard me talk about heel slides for some time but I’ve finally gotten around to shooting a proper instructional video. While this movement is easy to do once your understand it, the position you need to get into is subtle and requires some explanation. This movement should be done two or three times per week, either alone (as shown) or tacked on to the end of any lower-body workout.

While originally slated for P90X2 we replaced it because it requires a body length of open wall space, which is something surprisingly hard to find in many people’s homes. You also contact your heel with the wall, which could blemish your house, further complicating the scenario. We thus replaced it with a similarly-effective movement but for those of you with the space, I suggest swapping heel slides for an exercise we called Tony’s Triangle during Phase 3 or, at least, alternating between the two. I would also highly suggest adding it to whatever routine you’re currently doing.

So what’s the big deal?

All the credit for this exercise goes to Dr. Marcus Elliott and P3 because I’d never seen it before training there. I knew the importance of strengthening the gluteus medius but the movements I’d been show by various trainers and physical therapist paled in comparison. In fact, most of them allowed me to unknowingly cheat and use larger muscles to shoulder the burden of the movement, actually creating a further muscular imbalance—so essentially there we heightening the problem they were supposed to fix.

Anyway, anyone who follows sports knows that more athletes break down than ever before. It seems like society accepts this as a byproduct to becoming bigger, stronger, and faster but research has shown that to be fallacy. We are breaking down because we are unstable in our hips (and shoulders). This causes a biomechanical tracking problem that radiates through the body. Someone who lacks hip stability puts excessive force on their joints each time they move. Add enough force to the equation and breakdown occurs, usually at the weak link, our soft connective tissues. This is so prevalent that “torn ACL” is about as well understood today as “I’ve got a headache.”

As proven by Elliott and his staff, this is mostly preventable. Studies done on elite athletes have shown that instances of hip instability usually exceed 90%, meaning knee injury is a when not if scenario. Teams trained by Elliott have seen instances of non-contact knee injuries drop to virtually zero. And most of this is corrected by one thing; strengthen a small muscle called the gluteus medius.


chicago white sox all star carlos quentin showing proper heel slide technique at p3

But this is not as simple as finding the muscle and isolating it. The pelvic girdle is a complex area where muscles wrap around bones and joints and criss cross each other. When out of alignment the body reacts in a way where the larger muscles will take over the motions that should rely on smaller ones that exacerbate imbalance. When this happens we tighten up. Our posture fails, followed by our movement patterns. No amount of stretching or adjusting will fix it because the imbalance we simply pull us right back out of alignment until all the muscle are strengthened and taught to work together properly.

Granted, heel slides alone won’t fix all the imbalances along your kinetic chain (though P90X2 is designed to do just that). But adding them to your routine is a great place to start.

P90X2 Prep: Block II

Remember back to the very first day you tried P90X? Unless you couldn’t do pull-ups this was likely one of the more devastating physical experiences of your life. The P90X Chest & Back workout was nearly impossible to be ready for. When Tony first proposed this workout I showed it to a friend of mine, who practically does pull-ups in his sleep (“I could do 100 pull-ups a day for the rest of my life and I wouldn’t count it as exercise”), who said that he didn’t think he could finish it in good style. My first attempt had me hyperventilating in order to keep my lunch down.

P90X2 opens with a similar proposition. Day 1, as I went into last time, is going to challenge you in ways you’ve not seen before but the real nastiness hits on day 2. Plyocide is so much harder than the original that P90X master and superstar Beachbody coach and all-around master of fitness Mark Briggs looked as though he was going to pass out during the Plyocide rehearsal. “I just wasn’t ready for that,” said the guy who devises some of the most intense P90X/Insanity hybrids out there. You have been warned.

Luckily the warning comes with some advice. Block I of our prep focused on balance. Block II will up the intensity. Briggs had been training with Tony’s One on One Plyocide workout, which is a decent practice session for the moves, but the final version is a whole other ball game when it comes to intensity. There is simply no way this workout isn’t going to hurt out of the gate but if you start adding a day of ever-increasing plyometric workouts to your training now and you’ll be ready to stave off utter annihilation.

Here are some choices along with comments. Of course you need to work with what you’ve got, so don’t feel the need to get all of these. Just keep increasing the intensity of your weekly plyo session right up until you shut down for the last couple of weeks before X2 arrives.

One on One: Plyocide – this workout is a bit of a practice session. Good training but slow cadence.

P90X Plyo - If it’s all you’ve got it ain’t bad. If you can waltz through this your body is ready for the next X.

One on One: Plyo Legs – The very first One on One workout is a good next step from P90X Plyo

Insanity Max Interval Plyo – It was surprising Mark got so slammed after doing this regularly because it’s still very hard.

Turbo Fire HIIT 30 – Will have you well used to any jumping that life throws your way. Any of the HIITs will prep you, so work your way up to 30 if you're just starting out.

Asylum: Overtime – adding this short workout to the end other workout will destroy you in just the right kind of way.

Asylum: Vertical – Shaun T’s version of Plyocide. If you can handle this with good form you’re ready for anything. Train to get ready for this workout though because "it's not Insanity!"

P90X2 Preview: Don’t Try This At Home... Yet!

P3 (Peak Performance Project) just sent over some videos of their athletes doing some of the movements you’re going to see in P90X2. Here one to whet your appetite on what to expect for your results during phase III of X2. Perhaps a little exaggerated, especially what you see what the last guy--college baseball player Crosby Slaught--is doing. Wow.

This might hurt to look at right now. As our bodies age and break down explosive movements become more and more challenging. P90X2 will build you back up to where you will be able to not only once again handle heavy plyometric forces but have them feel good. You may not be able to match the explosiveness of a 6’5” 200lb college junior, but you will feel a lot younger than when you started.

Here’s what P3 has to say on the importance of skater movements:

Learn to do this movement and you will feel and look more athletic than ever. Dr. Elliott and P3 Performance Specialists test and employ skaters (lateral plyometrics) with all of their athleticism (sports that require a combination of power factors: quickness, speed, explosiveness, etc) athletes, as they have been scientifically proven to improve lower body power, multi planar speed, and challenge hip and trunk stability.

Why I say don’t try this at home, yet, is important. Many of us can handle this motion right now but you always want to be careful when doing 100% effort plyometrics. As most of you know we use plyometric movements in all of our advanced workout programs. However, we never do them at 100% like we will in phase III of P90X2. They may feel 100% to you but we’ve always strategically added volume in order to keep your intensity at bay. You are about to enter a new realm....

P90X2 Preppin’

Part of my birthday challenge training will be to also prep for a round of P90X2 that I plan to do starting first of the year. I’m easily fit enough to begin it without any special prep but that can lead to some serious breakdown because the fitter you are the more hurt you can put on yourself when you start training in a different realm than you’re used to. This post will have some tips on how to prepare yourself so that X2 doesn’t cripple you out of the gate.

A good example of what I’m talkin’ about can be found on my original P90X blog from 2003 (before we’d filmed anything so I’m training off of notes—re-read it and noted that we’d yet to name the workouts, hence things like “Legs and Pull-ups” and “The Gun Show”). I’d just finished a full bike racing/multisport season, so I was fit. But I’d done almost no upper body training and needed to get ready for a birthday challenge, quickly, and the first few weeks were ugly. I was so broken down that I could barely get my arms overhead to wash my hair. Of course I adapted, eventually, and ended up having one of my more kick-ass birthday challenges that year but phase one was absolutely brutal. That kind of pain is not a prerequisite. With a little forethought you can avoid having this happen to you.

First I should discuss how variable the P90X2 program is. You don’t necessarily need to be prepped if you’re the type of person who’s able to use restraint. Every move in the program offers not only an easier modification but also a band only version that can be done in just about any hotel room. So we’ve set it up so that you can ease into it. However, if you’re the type who’s going to try and keep up with Tony, keep reading.

Secondly there’s a huge group of you who’ve done 90X over and over and are now doing Asylum hybrids. The only possible better way to prep is to have done the P90X One on One MC2 series cause, ya know, those were pretty much the test workouts for X2. If you’ve done P90X or more you are ready, fitness wise, though you will benefit if you add some of these workouts to your program. I also recommend taking a good two to three week long recovery cycle before you begin.

This prep phase will be done in three blocks and is designed for fit people who’ve been away from weight training for a while. This group includes athletes coming off of a season, cardio junkies who’ve been doing Insanity or Turbo Fire or something similar, or those who’ve been training with a general gym program or one of our intro programs, like Power 90 or Slim in 6 and want to start building some specificity for the types of things you’re going to see in X2.

If you’re still struggling in an intro program you’ll want to keep doing it. Harder is only better when your body is ready. Remember that our “easier” programs get the same results as our hard programs because they target a less fit demographic. If you’re un-fit, be realistic and milk the easier programs for all the results you can get. When you start to plateau—usually you’ll notice the program no longer feels as challenging—is when you’ll want to switch. Not before.

non-specific training has many benefits beyond happy dogs and great scenery

My schedule is going to have a ton of non-specific training: climbing, biking, rehab/prehab workouts. I’m only adding a couple of X2-style workouts per week for specificity in block one. For your own training you can keep doing what you’re doing and simply add a couple of workouts from the below list. The main goal of block one is resistance work on an unstable platform of some kind so get yourself a balance ball (45, 55, or 65cm) and some med balls or similar (basketball, football, or anything you can prop yourself on--chair, couch, bed--will work). Prior to the filming of X2 Tony had been working on unstable platforms for more than four years, which you know if you’re a One on One prescriber. It takes a while to get this stuff down. The earlier you get a jump on it the better the program will work for you.

Block I

X2 doesn’t launch til X-Mas, so there’s no rush. For the first couple of weeks swap out two workouts per week with something from the following list. I will put these in order of specific effectiveness in case you want to buy from the list. The goal is to get used to instability and increase your unilateral balance. Also, once a week do this workout and some yoga (any yoga).

P90X One on One: Core/Syn MC2, Total Body X, 4 Legs, Upper Body Balance, Base & Back

P90X: Core Synergistics, Legs & Back

P90X+: Total Body Plus, Upper Body Plus

P90X2: The Next Revolution

For your weekend entertainment, here are a couple of P90X2 teasers. First a short video of Marcus explaining post-activation potentiation to our coaches at the Beachbody Summit—check out his struggle to speak in laymen terms, where he still confuses the audience. Probably would have helped if he’d just said, “the process is to recruit higher threshold muscle cell motor units” like I do in this webinar, where Tony Horton introduces P90X2 with me doing the color commentary. With Tony on stage I always feel like Ed McMahon, laughing down at the edge of the couch. Someone ought to get me a Budweiser (ok, so this jokes a little old, but, seriously, has any talk show second fiddle come close to matching the Carson era?)



P90X2: The Next Revolution (click here for the webinar. It's over an hour pour yourself some Shakeology, or a martini if Ed's inspired you.)

Since the Friday Psyche is provided for outdoor athletes, it’s important for all of you to know that we’ve made a home exercise program that will help you improve at your own particular esoteric pursuits. This program, far more than anything before it, is geared towards improving sports performance more than aesthetics. You are going to want it.

Training Weaknesses

It’s not just a cliché to say that in order to get better you must be willing to get worse when it comes to training. And though it’s easy to rationalize on paper it’s often hard to buy into a periodizationl strategy when you’re suffering and not seeing tangible improvement. This has been my July.

A month of PAP workouts, running drills, and short hard efforts on the bike are hopefully improving my power and top end speed but I’m is such a state of breakdown it’s impossible to gauge how it’s working. Re-tooling neuromuscular patterns wreaks havoc on the system and keeps me on edge. I don’t feel comfortable and find myself wondering if I’d have been better off overall to keep training my strengths in a way where I know I’d peak for my race in Sept. As I said at the start of the month it’s a gamble to try this on such short notice and I won’t know how it went until I begin integrating my training in August. At least this hay is in the barn and now I’m looking forward to unwinding with a recovery trip to France with some of Beachbody’s top coaches.



Where I can tell I’m getting stronger is in my PAP workouts. I’m leaping higher and have much better lateral stabilization. Last night I did Asylum Back To Core and Relief as a recovery day and it felt like one—itself an indication that something good is happening. But all this power gain comes with a loss in endurance and, hopefully, there’s time left to bring this back to competition level. Peaking for races is always tricky and it gets even harder when you also attempt to throw in a major body composition alteration.

This is why P3 tries to get as much time with athletes as far away from their season as possible. The longer time period you have to easier it is to make major changes. In these videos are the Utah Jazz’s Derrick Favors and Gordon Hayward. Both showed promise as rookies but need improvement to become household names in the NBA. To get there they’ve been working at P3 on weaknesses since the season ended. In the two examples of PAP complexes you’ll see Hayward jumping off of one leg to try and offset a discrepancy in leg strength, while Favors’ targets lateral explosiveness. Very motivating for those days you aren’t in the mood to bring it--as well as a small preview of P90X2.

The Development Of P90X2

It’s official; P90X mc2 is P90X2 since its unveiling at Beachbody’s annual Summit meeting last weekend. I know many coaches have been aware of this for ages but that’s one of your perks. Officially mum has been the word. This means that, among other things, I can wear the X2 hoodie that’s been buried in my closet for months out in public.

Tony, Jon, Carl and me in Tony's apartment; brainstorming about a sequel to Power 90 tentatively called P90X.

For those of you just joining us, today I’ll provide a recap of P90X2’s development. Beachbody’s old guard undoubtedly remembers Ned Farr’s serial about the making of P90X. For X2 we didn’t go to such production lengths. Instead, you got Tony’s One on One workouts (with Mason’s b roll segments—you all watched those, right?) and my blog. Here are a few of the more important posts, in chronological order. I changed the titles to reflect X2 but leaving all the X Next/mc2 et al references in for posterity.

Post-activation Potentiation

Going, Going, Gone!

I Hate It! But I Love It!

Feelin’ Springy

The Science Behind P90X2

Previewing P90X2

Buying Into The System

P90X2 Core: The Opening Engagement

Plyocide: Up Close and Personal

P90X: Muscle Confusion Two

P90X2 Rehearsals

The Stuff Of P90X2

It's a Wrap!

If you want to read the entire series click here and scroll down.

7AM, Day 3, 2011 Summit: 2,000 people get ready to workout with the Beachbody trainers in front of the Staples Center, minus some whom were skipping it because they’d done Tony’s PAP workout the day prior. “My legs are destroyed,” was a sentiment heard regularly.

The Science Behind P90X2

“I’m excited,” said Marcus last night as we put the finishing touches on P90X mc2’s final third phase workouts. “We’re going to do a lot of good for people.” Apparently I was pretty amped, too, as I awoke in the middle of the night with a head full of possible scenarios that might challenge the periodiztional flow of mc2. A couple of hours later, with no obvious holes uncovered in our logic, I fell back asleep.

From a scientific standpoint P90X was easy. Our development team needed only to bring what they already knew worked to the table. The big unknown was whether or not the public would buy in to the concept of hard training. Now, with the world watching, the accountability bar has risen. To meet the challenge we’ve enlisted the help of Dr. Marcus Elliott, whom if you’re a Straight Dope follower you’ve been reading a lot about.

Elliott’s training facility, P3, works only with serious athletes. Their approach is based on the latest applied science and, in fact, is so far ahead of the curve that they are defining what the cutting edge in athletic training is. What we’re doing at Beachbody is taking this knowledge and distilling it down to the everyday athlete. By analyzing the data from a broad spectrum of athletes we can find common deficiencies that lead to breakdown and anticipate this in our structure so that it best suits almost everyone. Mc2 is our first foray into this arena—actually; if you subscribe to Tony Horton’s One on One series you’ll see the actual first in our mc2 preview PAP workout.

Last week P3’s blog published an article on Post Activation Potentiation and how they apply it to their athletes. Since it’s about to get applied to you, too, I would call this required reading for anyone interested in understanding why your training works the way it does. Here's the rub:

At P3, a major route to improving performance is through the application of “complex training,” which involves combining high load strength movements with biomechanically similar plyometric/ballistic movements as a means of taking advantage of Post Activation Potentiation (PAP), a phenomenon that refers to enhancement of muscle function as a result of its contractile history. P3 has found that complex training is far superior in developing athletic power to either resistance training or plyometric training alone, and while there are other mechanisms involved in P3 complexes, the successful manipulation of PAP plays an important role.

Sciency, huh? That's what you get when you work with a bunch of brainiacs. So you’re going to see these complexes in mc2 but not until the third phase. The reason is that you need to build up to them. At P3 they substantiate this with testing:

To measure the effects of PAP on vertical and horizontal jump performance we had athletes perform Depth Jumps and Skaters off of our custom made force plates. For all of these tests, the vast majority (75%) of athletes performed significantly better post loading. It is important to note the athletes who were tested were all experienced P3 power trained athletes and that studies have shown there is a lot of individual variability in terms of when the potentiation effect occurs.

And we, in turn, get to use their data to project how this will work on a less conditioned general public. Not that anyone who’s done two phases of P90X lacks conditioning. In fact, the base conditioning it provides is elite, which has been proven in how many professional athletes are using it. But when it comes to scientific training there is traditionally fit and, then, there is the next level. And that’s where we—and ultimately you—are heading.

Complex training and the utilization of PAP have and will continue to give athletes many advantages. Unfortunately, general strength exercises paired with aerobic conditioning is still the norm, even at the highest levels of sport. These old school forms of training rarely take into account individual needs and the need for power in movement. Eventually teams and performance coaches will begin to conduct more precise and individualized sports specific programs. Until this transformation takes place, it is paramount that athletes understand their own performance and physical needs, as well as the proven methods that exist.

WFH: Stabilization

While by far the easiest day in the rotation, day 3 is vital for both performance and non-performance. Stability work keeps injuries at bay but, if done correctly, will also free up your prime mover muscles to function more effectively. I dedicate my knowledge in this area to the late Kevin Brown, who taught me much more about stability training than I learned from books, classes, training rooms and medical offices.

He was an innovator in the field of “prehab”, which is addressing injuries before they happen. Sports programs that worked with him saw their non-contact injury rates mostly disappear. Most of his breakthroughs seem obvious once in practice, yet are overlooked by athletes the majority of the time. Over the years he would continually take something conventional and mildly effective and tinker with it until he found something more effective. Eventually he came up with a system that worked for any group of athletes no matter what their given sport.

While training with Kevin could get complex, the cornerstone of his system is simple. There are a few key movements he used that, when done regularly, keep your musculature balanced and greatly reduce the chances of injuring your knees and shoulders, the two hot spots in the athletic world. My stabilizer days feature these movements with a couple others adding for climbing specificity.

Hip stabilization

Hip Medley
A series of four exercises, done in successive 45 second sets, which target the gluteus medius. The benchmark is 3:00 with 5 pounds. Hard to explain so you’ll have to wait for video.

Windshield Wipers
The “my guys would rather get shot” exercise, again targeting the gluteus medius. Do 3 sets of 25 reps with a 10 second hold at the end. Again, you’re going to need video.

Shoulder stabilization
I do three sets of one exercise that targets the muscles of the rotator cuff region. It’s a standard move, sometimes called scarecrow, though I do it one arm at a time. I use both a theraband and a weight to keep the resistance constant throughout (the benchmark goal is 50 reps with 15lbs). The trick is that I push down on a stability ball with my elbow. This deactivates the deltoid muscles that tend to take over the movement, focusing the exercise onto the correct muscle group. Again, vids coming.

Wrist
I do reverse write curls to work the extensor muscles in the forearm. 3 sets of 30.

Core
The same bridge and plank series from the day before, but I’ll do three sets. The benchmarks are a 3 minute plank and 10 sets of one-legged bridge held for 20 seconds rotated back and forth.

TA muscle
Normally I add the exercise from the preceding day on stabilizer days as well.

I can mainly hit my benchmarks so I don’t always do these exercises. During this program, however, I will do them religiously and try and exceed all benchmarks. The stronger these muscles are the better and when you’re spending a lot of time doing other stuff it’s hard to focus on them. I find a few intense periods will give you some margin for error so you can safely slack off at other times.

pic: in the 80s we had lycra, which instantly increased both your range of motion and stabilization strength. it was subsequently banned from competition.

Balance

My entire training philosophy is now based around balance. I’ve always known about the importance of balance but my endeavors as a human lab rat have meant that I was pushing the envelope in one discipline or another, meaning that balance was something that I advised other people to seek. With my ability to perform threatened for keeps, I’ve finally begun to follow my own advice and, in the process, entered a new world where I’m soaking up info like a kid in kindergarten.

I’ve blogged about both yoga and the Kevin Brown Training system. I work in both of these realms daily. All other training, along with my usual climbing, riding, and running, is focused on foundation; merely keeping my engrams primed for the harder training that will follow, once I’m up to speed on all of my benchmarks.

Benchmarks are the cornerstone of Kevin’s training method. These are tests that gauge the strength of your stabilizer muscles. Until they are strong enough to work in harmony with your prime mover muscles, your body is at a high risk of injury. In short, this is exactly why major sports headlines are as much about injury as they are about performance. With all the technological advancement in sport, you’d think we’d get injured less. But it’s exactly the opposite. This is because we focus too much on the prime movers, the large muscles we see that are primarily responsible for our feats of strength, and not enough on the stabilizers that hold our structure together. Essentially, we’re getting so strong that we’re literally tearing our bodies apart.

All you need are headlines to understand how rampant the problem is, but Kevin has done a lot of testing and has scary data. One example: he tested participants at an elite soccer camp and found that less than 10% of the athletes weren’t at high risk of knee injury. These were athletes being coached and doing high level training. Imagine how bad those stats would be for the average weekend warrior who tends to focus on sexier training that graces most books and magazines.

When I told Kevin that I’d be following his program he scoffed, “yeah, for two days!” His skepticism is valid. I’ve known him for close to twenty years. I see him whenever I’m injured and follow his advice until I’m no longer injured, at which point I go back to pummeling myself. I like pain, suffering, and, as one of my friends put it, “chasin’ the hairy edge”. This training is slow, controlled, and pretty much exactly the opposite of what I do for fun.

It also feels kind of, um, dorky. When I asked my friend Bob if he wanted to join me in a hip medley, he looked at me as though I’d just asked him to catch a Bette Midler show. At our meeting a few weeks ago, one of the attendees, who trains military, just shook his head at one of the exercises and said, “I’ll never get my guys to do that. They’d rather get shot.”

It’s hard to look outside on a beautiful fall day and not venture into the mountains. I’ll still go, but instead of spending eight hours traipsing through the backcountry until I’m exhausted, I’ll just get a taste and then come home and do hundreds of slow easy repetitions with puny weights aimed at training every tiny muscle in my body, and follow it with yoga.

And while I yearn to feel the deep pain that prolonged suffering brings, I’ve got to admit that I feel good. Really good. I’ve been at this since July and my range of motion—that was worse than it’s ever been in May after recovering from my injury—is probably better than it was in high school. Along with daily yoga (which also focuses on stabilizer muscle strength), Kevin’s system uses the theory that strong stabilizers reduce the strain on prime movers. This freedom increases range of motion without increases in muscle flexibility (which helps too), and thus increases the muscle’s workload capacity.

My benchmarks are up to the high school level in some things, college level in others. Most people aren’t close to the high school level, and neither was I when I started. When I hit pro, I’ll begin to ramp up my other training. Assuming all of my personal testing goes well, we’ll hopefully have a way to get this info out to all of you by then.

You Can’t Fire A Cannon From A Canoe

I’ve spent the last week at a conference. Well, it’s more of a brain dump, actually. A good friend of mine has cancer and, with his future uncertain, rounded up his friends to put his state-of-the-art training system on the record. In attendance were Olympians, world record holders, college athletes, golf pros, coaches, trainers, filmmakers, photographers and writers. Even though most of us had worked with Kevin on some level, were more credentialed on paper, and had spent most of our lives in athletics, the common sentiment was that we were being given an entirely new blueprint for athletic training.

The title comes from one of the clichés about stability training that seemed pretty appropriate because, until the base is solid, nothing works as efficiently as it should. The system we covered isn’t entirely new. It’s a hybrid of many popular systems based around core and stability training. But it was a lot more than Chek Institute stuff. Kevin’s philosophy is to identify the weak link in the system. Then, by strengthening the weak link, the process allows the strong links to do their job more efficiently. This results in improved performance prior to making gains in prime mover muscle strength (10% improvements in a few months prior to prime mover training seemed about average, which is off the charts).

What’s also revolutionary is that most of us tend to think of this style of training as injury prevention only. And, certainly, that is a big part of it. One of Kevin’s clients, a professional golfer, began working with him at age 14. He’s never had even a minor injury. The high school and university programs that have used his system (which is still evolving) have seen the instances of non-contact injury rates drop to almost zero. In a world where championships are won by the team who keeps the most players on the field, this is not an area to be discounted.

Perhaps the biggest upside is that the system is simple to implement. It doesn’t require expensive equipment or a trainer to supervise your every move. Most of us feel it’s going to change the way we train our athletes on a global scale.

I’m going to leave things a little vague for now. I’ve got 40,000 words to begin to edit and organize. We’re not sure where this will end up but you’ll be hearing a lot more about it here.