Muscular Endurance

“What are you training?” asked ex-MLS player/now BB employee Johnny Alcaraz while watching me do 30 reps (each side) of step-up convicts last night, which reminded me that I hadn’t reported on my training in a while and should probably share this phase with the world. Muscular endurance was my answer, which I followed with some details on my particular block that’s also targeting pelvic and scapular stability. “But mainly muscular endurance.”

I’ve explained why you’d want to train muscular endurance in other articles. For a detailed explanation click on the summary below:

What 30 reps does is train your glycolytic energy system. As I said in an early post, the glycolysis is what allows a fast 100 meter sprinter to win at 400 meters. Essentially, it’s the system that uses glycogen and oxygen to recharge your body’s anaerobic system.

That article explains why women might be drawn to training muscular endurance (it ensures you can’t build bulk) but it’s also extremely helpful for almost any athlete except those in complete power sports, and even those will benefit from training this system enough to keep it efficient. Its downside is that gym sessions get long and the workouts hurt.

During 30 reps sets you can actually feel your system load change. The weight you use may seem impossibly light during the first 6-10 reps. Around 15 (or less later in the workout) you’ll start feeling it. At 20, the point where most traditional weight exercises end and about as long as your can reasonably hold your breath under duress, you’re muscles will begin to give out as you change systems. From then on it’s a fight to the finish (providing you’ve used enough weight which takes a little practice). If you do these sets correctly you’ll be dying (in my case screaming) to get your last five reps done.

This time around I’ve put a spin on the Workout From Hell format, essentially supplementing P90X2 movements. Those of you who’ve been following along know that I altered my original round of X2 when I hurt my back (getting tripped running down a mountain). It recovered quickly but I’d already designed a 3 block hangboard cycle (will be published in an article if I like it) and a supporting training that includes a three week block of muscular endurance. Here’s the workout I’m doing 3x a week. You will notice a lot of instability. Next week I transition to PAP.

Full Body 30

Functional warm-up (stability ball [SB] moves that open X2 workouts)
Plank - 30 sec
Wall Angels - 4 contractions held
Heel slide - 15 reps each side
Calf raises – heels straight, in, and out: 10 each
YT Fly on SB (see X2) – 30 reps
Darin squats – named for Shakeology’s Darin Olien (I saw he and Laird Hamilton doing these in a workout), you support yourself holding onto a bar and squat back and forth on each leg, extending the opposite leg straight (like a reverse hurdler stretch). 30
Superman (prone) pull down – lying on a bench on stomach in superman position, pull downs with a band 30
Toe Raises – Tibealis Anterior exercise, back flat on wall feet out in front raise toes 30

END OF “WARM UP”

V-Rows – Row from the V position (legs and back raised for instability) 30
Pullovers on a stability ball – 30
Step up convicts (see X2) – 30 one side
Fingertip push-up 30
Step up convicts (see X2) – 30 other side
Bridge leg lift - 6 x 30 seconds or 3 each leg
Banana (supine) pull down - 30
Super Skaters with lateral hop – skate slow and then jump 30
Push press - 30
Side plank leg raise (see X2) – 30 seconds each side
Curls in a lunge - 30
Upright rows - 30
Front tri extension w/band in a lunge - 30
Reverse curl on one leg – 30

(REPEAT EVERYTHING AFTER THE WARM-UP)

Neuro-integreated stretch (see X2 PAP and Plyo)

pic: extended side plank on unstable platform - note down turned toe for glute med activation.

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.

The One Workout Every ONE Should Do

My latest training article for DPM has launched. It’s titled The One Workout Every Climber Should Do but it’s a workout every single person should do. Although the strength you gain from it is very specifically applied to climbing it’s also vital for almost everything else you do with your upper body. So while it may not be the ONE workouts you should do, everyone will reap huge benefits from it. I could go on but I’ll quote the article instead.

Climbers aren’t the only demographic to ignore the importance of stability training. A few sports scientist friends, trying to answer the riddle as to why bigger, stronger and faster-than-ever-before athletes are also most injured in history found that most—in some cases as high as 90%--showed significant muscular imbalance. When we’re out of balance don’t move with biomechanical efficiency and our linear movements don’t “track” correctly. When this occurs an injury can happen anywhere along the body’s kinetic (movement) chain.

In populations where these imbalances have been correct they’ve seen non-contact injury rates plummet. The major areas of focus are the shoulders and hips. Pelvic (hip in the colloquial) stability can be important for climbers (and everyone) but in the need-to world of sports specific performance we’re only going to address the shoulders.

This region hosts the origin of almost every move that climbing begins with. And while it does not include the “money” area, the hands and forearms, biomechanical alignment problems will radiate to that area as well, meaning that imbalances in the scapular region can lead to elbow, wrist, or even finger problems. Even though you rarely fail on a climb because your back or shoulders were pumped, strengthening these areas properly will shift more of each climbing movement’s burden to this region’s larger muscles, thus saving your smaller hand and forearm muscles for when you actually need them. This energy savings also translates to less strain on connective tissues, reducing instances of tendon and ligament damage.

Html version of the article (easier to read)

This article is the second in a series. The first is titled Should You Train?, which means should you train for climbing (it is a climbing magazine after all), but has some application across the board as well and should be worth reading, especially if you participate in a sport where you get a lot of exercise by just doing the sport.



The movement videos should be live sometime today on DPM. If they aren’t you can find them by clicking the two presented here on the You Tube icon and following the series.

P90X2 Has Launched!

It’s not quite out, but P90X2 pre-orders start today. As your trainer I advise that you get it. I don’t usually hype our products. I just make them and let that gang in the marketing department decide how peddle the stuff. This one, however, I’m going to harp on you about.

If you follow my blog you’re probably more interested in fitness than the average Joe. And given that’s the case you’re going to want what is, by far, the most advanced training program ever put on video. That’s no knock on anything we’ve done at Beachbody. Most people don’t need advanced. If you’re overweight and hate exercise Slim in 6 is fantastic. If you like to dance you’ll probably love Hip Hop Abs or Turbo Fire if you're a bit fitter. If you need something more advanced we’ve got P90X or Insanity. P90X2 is the next level: movement specific applied science tailored to the masses. If you want to be more athletic, improve at a sport (no matter which one), or simply age more gracefully you’re going to want to own P90X2 at some point.

Instead of presenting you with a sneak preview of X2 like everyone else, here’s some behind the scenes footage. Al Jefferson, of the Utah Jazz, is literally one step away from being an NBA all-star. When he’s on the floor and healthy he’s a consistent 20/10 guy—-Hall of Fame numbers. Unfortunately that step is due to a bad knee. If he can improve the stability of his platform and get his knee to respond to how he’d like to push it, he’ll then be able to back-up his silky smooth throwback post game with athleticism, which will also improve his defense, shot blocking, and rebounding.

This is Al at P3, in Santa Barbara, Ca, where we did most of our research and prep for X2. I saw him during his first trip out, over a year ago. He was covered in sweat, completely destroyed (like me during my first workout at P3), and kind of embarrassed to have others watch him train. Check out Big Al now,doing the same style of training you'll be doing with X2, and keep in mind this guy is a shade under seven feet tall and three hundred pounds. Remember when Shaq could move like this? Look out, NBA!

From P3 (yep, this is the kind of description you’ll be able to use about your own improvement after X2): Al Jefferson is making tremendous gains this off-season at P3...Much of our work with Al has focused on giving him dynamic hip stability, and shifting demand from knee to hip. This process involves both strengthening and neuromuscular re-education of how to stabilize and activate his gluteus medius and upper-third of gluteus maximus.

Back To Core In The Asylum

Back to Core is one of the more interesting core routines I’ve done, and unlike any other core routine in that its focus isn’t on your abdominal region. Right now my back is sore in spots I’ve never felt. My back. Not my abs or obliques.

The core is not just the front side of the body and by the time most people reach the entry level for Asylum they’ve done requisite ab work. Back to Core puts its focus on areas of neglect, which are mainly in areas of the back that aren’t strengthened doing traditional back exercises. The net effect is that you can feel your posture improve after each workout.

On the challenge factor—important for both Asylum and Insanity—it ranks below many of the other workouts in the series as it's not explosive. You can do these movements. The only question is whether or not you can do them with good form and for the requisite amount of time, which results in a dialog with yourself about pain tolerance. I have good core strength and was able to “on sight” this workout (do all of it first try). But it didn’t get easier second time through; it was the opposite. This is because as my form and range of motion increased, as each exercise can be made harder and then harder still.

I begin each set thinking “this isn’t too bad” but by around 15 seconds it’s hurting. By 30 seconds I’m thinking there is no way I’ll finish. The rest of the movement becomes about concentration and staving off pain. My focus is clearly placed on only the next breath and, if I’m still standing I re-focus on the following one. Somewhere in this pain exchange I would find the zone, which allowed me to finish sets that lasted as long as three minutes.

The benefits of this workout are already apparent. I’m standing taller, my shoulders fall further back, my stomach tucks in a more natural position, and I move in a more aligned position. It’s going to stay in my arsenal of workouts long after I’m through with this training cycle.

pic: of shaun, in case you're questioning the six-pack factor

P90X: Muscle Confusion Two

This ain’t your granddaddy’s weight training program. It’s too early to explain just what they are, exactly, but one thing that comes to mind consistently while doing the mc(muscle confusion)2 resistance workouts is a line Tony says in the preview to one of the P90X resistance workouts, “It’s just good old fashioned weight training.” P90X mc2 decidedly isn’t that, so today we’ll preview its weight training workouts.

In fact P90X wasn’t really old fashioned either. One of the things that make it so successful is that its workouts are complex. It takes a while for most anyone to master it and that keeps your progression curve heading skyward. This, of course, is part of our overall strategy for the program. By creating some amount of what our marketing team coined “muscle confusion” your body keeps adapting, and this prolongs the period of time it takes before you master the program and start to plateau.

But compared to mc2, 90x is old fashioned. Not only have we designed workouts that keep you adapting longer, they also target laser-specific weakness in the body that occur across a broad spectrum of the population. In the most laymen of explanations, this means that your muscles will not only grow and get strong, but they will do it in a way that’s forcing your body to use them more effectively. So as your muscles grow they are also going to work better from a biomechanical perspective. This means, quite simply, that beyond just improving how you look you are going to get better at doing stuff.

The first time you go through these workout it’s going to feel strange to most of you. At times you’re spending so much focus on holding the various positions that you may hardly move any weight. As your balance improves so will your ability to move more weight but, more importantly, you’ll be moving it with a more harmonious kinetic chain. This you’ll notice in your movements as everything you do in your daily life that requires you body to move will become easier. It’s the kind of feeling that’s addicting in an “I never thought this was possible” sorta way. Once you’ve felt it you’ll never want to go back, which challenges us to keep coming up with new and better stuff.

If this seems like a brush over of nearly half of the program’s workouts, consider that it’s really all you need to know. Decide, commit, and you’ll succeed beyond what you realized was possible.

pic: sure granddaddy was big but could he move?

Carrying The Torch For Jack

As I’m sure you all know, fitness icon Jack LaLanne died this weekend so , after a week of silence, TSD giving him the Friday psyche (again). As he passed I was a couple of hours south, working on the next great fitness program, P90X mc2 with Marcus Elliott, Tony Horton, Steve Holmsen, and the Beachbody production crew: Heather, Mason, and Anna. In addition, it was the day my wife had framed a signed poster that Jack had given me for my 5oth birthday. Serendipitously I think this means we’re the ones who are supposed to carry his torch.

“I couldn’t hold a candle to Jack LaLanne,” said Tony upon reading a text from someone saying it was up to him. “No one can,” was my reply. But maybe our entire group, together, will keep it going. We’re certainly going to try. Here’s part of my eulogy for Jack:

Jack, you lied. You said if you died it would ruin your image but now that you’re gone nothing has changed. You were THE fitness icon yesterday; you’re THE fitness icon today. Without you it’s impossible to say if there would even be a fitness industry. You started it, you grew it, your influence never waned and you are still its leader. I think it’s safe to say that your image is, and always will be, intact.

Jack LaLanne is my hero. I suppose that, if pressed, I have others but he’s the only one that I recognize. And even though one of his most famous sayings , “I can’t die, it would ruin my image,” is challenged by his passing it bears little merit on the validity of his life. Because Jack’s MO had nothing to do with dying, it had to do with living; getting the most out of the days you’re given. He was not above a bit of hyperbole if it drove his cause but was never more straightforward than when he said, “Billy Graham preaches about the hereafter. I preach the here and now.”

“My name’s Jack,” he told my friend Denis, who’d referred to him as Mr. LaLanne, with a look that clearly stated “save the mister for old people buddy.” He was 95. I only met him once but I felt like I knew him well. He was an open book when it came to what drove his existence. To all of us whose lives are a passionate pursuit of fitness he was simply The Man.

To read the rest click on the highlighed text. To subscribe to the Beachbody or P90X newsletter, where it was published, enter an email address in one of the boxes on the lower right side of the landing page:

pics: denis and i at jack's 95th, my training log as it sat when i was in ca (of course it's filled in now), and the poster that motivates me daily on the wall of my gym.

Phase II: My Friends, It Is Time To Get Serious

Winter training moves into phase II tomorrow at which time The Straight Dope will get back to business. Party time is over and, to borrow a phrase from Tony, “my friends it is time to get serious.” This not only goes for training but for work. There are a lot of changes in the fitness and nutrition world that need to be addressed and I’ve been holding off on them until the New Year. Let’s get busy.

Phase I Recap: The last 50 days have been a combined rest and foundation phase. These are commonly coupled because athletes don’t like doing nothing and foundation training movements are less intense (and usually somewhat foreign) than actual sports training. It’s also a good time for endurance athletes to do some base training, which is essentially long slow distance or some variation. I’ve been doing daily stability training and not-very-long slow distance. It could have been way more focused but, as it’s also a rest phase, lack of structure was a planned.

Phase II Plan: Strength

All sports training should begin with an analysis of your strengths, weaknesses, and goals. My goals are in climbing, riding, running, and to improve at skate skiing. The latter, being a technical pursuit, isn’t a part of the training plan except as a note to self to plan recovery and aerobic conditioning on skiing days until I get good enough at it to do targeted high-level workouts.

Running: my base conditioning is very good but I’m having some foot issues, which I think will be cured by some more targeted speed and skill work (including more barefoot drills). So while I will continue to do a lot of aerobic conditioning to get ready from long days later in the year, I will begin to do more focused speed work.

Cycling: my cycling is in the worst form in years. This is because I completely shut it down when I hurt my back twice in the last two years and, thus, have essentially gone three years since I was in racing condition. Since It’s winter, most my aerobic conditioning will happen running or on skis and my riding will be doing short intense work for VO2/max, lactate turnpoint (more on this term later), and power training on my stationary trainer.

Climbing: I’ve been in full shut down mode for climbing and plan to milk this a bit longer. I feel I need more shoulder power, back, and forearm strength and will use this phase to increase all of these before I begin to apply them to rock. I’ve never found intense weight training and climbing to be effectively done together. This phase will focus on the gym work and will flip-flop in phase III.

I have essentially six weeks, which I’ll break into two three week blocks that I’m going to call hypertrophy and power. There will be overlap, as you’ll see, but the idea is to build all the mass that I want (not much) and big muscle absolute strength (aka power, and the big muscle term simply means not climbing specific, which is all attached to your fingers) in this phase. Then I’ll transfer it to performance in the next phase, and then roll it over towards mega-endurance for ultra events during the latter part of the year.

One big change in this year’s program is that I’m combining the same training focus for different, NON-RELATED sports. I generally break these up so that when I’m, say, training for power in climbing I’d be training endurance on the bike. This makes a lot of sense but, as a lab rat, I feel it’s my duty to try something new. After all, the ultimate goal here is not my own performance, which is only a barometer to assess training effectiveness, but a growth in my knowledge of training that I can then impart to you.

That’s enough for today. As the pic suggests, party time is not quite over. The actual workouts and structure will be reported as I go.

Winter 2011 Training Program

Big Wall Cribs with Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson on El Capitan from Black Diamond Equipment on Vimeo.

It’s the time of year, again, when I re-tool for a new training program. I think I learned more in 2010 than I have in a given 12-month period in ages. Thus, I’m thinking this may be my most complete training program yet. Of course—as is my M.O.—it’s going to be experimental. In fact, you’ll see these elements in our upcoming P90X mc2 program but only after they’ve been thoroughly tested on me first.

As it’s a 50-themed year, my off-season conditioning program is going to be in three 50 day training phases that will mimic what we’re doing with mc2. These will be coined foundation, strength, and performance.

Goal: since all training plans must have one, is to build a huge fitness base that will see me through an epic year of adventures.

Phase I: Foundation (Nov 18 to Jan 6)

Here we’re going to get more literal with terminology, as we’re referencing our foundation, or base, as in the thing that roots our bodies to the ground as opposed to its usually meaning of any requisite fitness conditioning that readies you for further training. The goal of this phase is to build a physique that is structurally sound and in balance in order to handle the rigors of athletics without breaking down.

Most athletic programs only pay lip service to this phase, instead of making it a priority to the point where actually sports-specific training is put on the backburner until the body is ready for it. P90x did a better job than most, which is why it’s so popular among athletes. This time around we’re targeting it with laser-like focus. This phase will target completely revamping weak areas. Granted, you can’t offset 50 years in 50 days but I’m going to do the best I can.

I’ve been talking about this for a long time but the training is ever evolving. What were once a lot of boring rehab-style exercises are gradually getting more fun, and more like normal exercise.

Key words: balls (balance, physio, medicine, massage), foam roller, instability (not just in the gym as it’s snow season, which is like one big stability ball), kettle bells, yoga, rice bucket.

Phase II: Strength (Jan 7 to Feb 25)

There‘s a fair amount of wiggle room under the strength moniker. In mc2 we’ll focus on hypertrophy for most people. Since I’m not looking for much size increase this is where I plan to build my strength to weight ratio in a non-targeted sense.

Why I say non-targeted is because the sports themselves—and the next phase—will target my training. Here, especially because I train for sports that are not complimentary (climbing and biking/running), my goal is to build a very strong overall base. But instead of base as in phase I (the human kinetic chain), it’s a solid base of performance-oriented muscle mass.

This means both hypertrophy (as needed) and power (for all muscles) in a foundation format (generic strength tests, like the 90x or mc2 fit tests).

Key words: static strength, lock-off strength, wattage, form.

Phase III: Performance (Feb 28 to April 19)

Here I’ll try and put my winter fitness to use towards some goals. Specifically, the Duathlon Nationals at the end of April and some targeted climbing goals (short powerful routes) before that. This phase will feature a lot of sports specific training, postactivation potentiation, and neuro-integrated stretching to bring my power base into focus for the season ahead. After these tests I plan to roll this fitness over towards endurance based activities for the long days of summer.

Key words: speed, power, explosiveness, PAP.

So that’s the overall structure. Of course there’s a lot of fill in, including the sub structure of each phase, which will bring up words that should be familiar to Xers, such as blocks, transitions, adaptation, and mastery. By following along you’ll get a preview of why P90X mc2 is what it is, and also get a feel for ways to incorporate P90X and our other programs into your own active lifestyle plans.

vid: since i didn’t have anything fun of my own to post enjoy this clip of life on el cap. the captain's got to be on a list for this year somewhere, right?

Engage The Cage

Lance Armstrong likes to talk about how cancer survivors are the lucky ones because they are forced to re-evaluate their lives, often leading to a new lease on life. This analogy isn’t reserved for those with cancer. Anyone who has had a major illness, injury, or situation that’s forced them out of their comfort zone is privy to similar “luck”. Challenging situations can lead to us bettering ourselves. So much so that, I would say, most of us define our personalities when the chips are down.

Admittedly that’s a pretty lofty lead-in for a post on core training. But it’s often the smallest details that lead to the biggest improvements. My injury has forced me to re-evaluate what it means to focus on core and posture work, and it’s not a topic I’ve ignored over the years at all. But I can’t help thinking that if I’d done a better job with that aspect of my life (and not just training) I wouldn’t have re-injured myself.

In P90X + Tony talks about “engaging your cage” a lot during the workouts. This, no doubt, came from Isabelle Daikeler’s influence on the program. She’s a Chek-ian (my word for disciples of the Paul Chek school of functional training) where all movement begins with the core. And while trainers ubiquitously champion the importance of core strength the Chekians say it’s the fundamental starting point of all human movement.

Isabelle’s training style can be a little “out there”. She’s worked with me a bit and it’s fantastic cerebral stuff. We tried to have her create a program for us but it was canned by our CEO (her now husband) because he didn’t think we could sell it to the general public (though he must have thought a lot of it himself). She’s worked with a lot of famous athletes, too. She says “some get it, others don’t.” Those who do improve.

I tend to be part of the latter group. I say tend because while I get it I don’t always practice it. Like most athletes I’m far more motivated to do something sports specific, or at least powerful or painful. Her training is balancy and frustrating—like a lot of other training that is took nearly 50 years for me to do religiously. After all, I rationalize that if I can do front levels and weighted leg raises (which most can’t) doesn’t this make my core strong enough?

The answer is yes and no. It’s strong enough but not necessarily engaged enough. Just because you have ample strength does not mean that you’re using it correctly. In fact, it can be the opposite because you can get away with not using it correctly. The getting it aspect of core training is not actually the training; it’s the posture part where you teach your body to focus on its core for every physical action. You actually lead all movements with your core first or, engage the cage.

My injury has forced me to a place where I’d never been. If I lose core rigidity (not a flexed core but a rigid—contract your core to see where it should be then relax and do the movement) for a rep it hurts. I have a reminder, like an angel, to warn me anytime I’m not using perfect form. Coupled with my long 30 rep sets it’s providing an engrained postural change like I’ve not before experienced. Therefore, what appeared to be nothing but a sucky start to my summer has is instead made me one of the lucky ones.

pics: in what apparently is the di rigueur ab pose for climbers in the 80s two fit-looking lads show what a steady diet of off-widths and living out of a van can do for your core.

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.

Morning Yoga

I re-injured my back mountain biking a couple of months back and have been trying to play through it. Finally, alas, I’ve been forced to deal with it head on and take some time off. Well, not off exactly, but focused. And the primary point of this focus has been on morning yoga.

Yoga and stabilization exercises were the cornerstone of my rehab last year. A year after the injury I felt as though I was 90% back. After my Mexico trip in March I allowed my focus to wane a little. I was still doing both but not with the same fervor. I wrenched my back a bit in a small crash but it was pain that I could deal with so I kept trying to perform and ramp up my biking mileage. The pain, however, has steadily increased to the point where it’s no longer possible that it’s residual. Something new is wrong.

My standard policy on most injuries is to rehab first and see doctors later. My theory is that the rehab is going to happen, one way or another, so you might as well try it first. This keeps me (and clients) out of the doctors’ office 9 times in 10. After a week it seems to be going well again.

I hadn’t been totally avoiding yoga but I hadn’t been doing actual classes or videos. As a trainer I usually don’t need these things. I know what I want to do and, in fact, almost always train harder when I’m alone and not doing a video. Probably due to my sports background I’m more intense by myself. My sets are more focused. I also concentrate better and, thus, recover quicker between exercises. This competitive nature has the opposite effect on yoga, where intensity is not the objective. Classes and videos slow me down, reduce the intensity, and increase its effectiveness. A lot.

Now, like all those months when I was acutely injured, each day begins with a yoga class (in video or in person). I’m going to keep this up until the pain is gone. I’m so much better than I was a week ago that I find it hard to conceptualize how I went so many years not doing yoga at all.

pic: romney in the canyonlands

Synergy & P90X Plus

I’ve been doing a combination of P90X Plus along with riding, running, and climbing to try and bring my training back into focus. All the hubbub surrounding the Mexico trip, along with the small injury I suffered beforehand, put a kink into the schedule. With a month before a planned trip to Europe I’m trying to round out my overall fitness prior to departure, which will complete my base training for a planned big year ahead.

This is slightly different than the plan I drew up and began in December. But as I said then, it’s almost never the right course of action to complete a training program without some alteration. What happened, besides the slight injury that altered my climbing training, was that I began putting so many miles into running that my other fitness suffered. The main problem was lack of consistent sleep. With my aging dog requiring a lot of attention it’s been rare to get more than a few uninterrupted hours of sleep over the last few months. This kind of thing can wreak havoc with recover and training, especially volume, needs to get adjusted as necessary when it occurs.

The key to regaining lost fitness and keeping what I’ve gained in other areas is synergy; finding a training schedule that concurrently taxed many energy systems at once. For this I’ve been using the 90X Plus workouts. Sometimes it’s best to training energy systems separately because it builds strength more efficiently. The down side with this approach is that you then need some time to integrate this fitness together. When you have less time training synergistically, where you train across styles and energy systems, is more apropos. Crossfit follows this model, as does P90X Plus.

The downside to X Plus is also its upside: synergy. Because you train a lot of systems at once, including the kinetic chain, it’s a very efficient system for getting overall body fitness quickly. But because it’s training so many things together the workouts don’t plug into the 90X schedule very well, making it harder to use to affect targeted body composition changes, especially where hypertrophy (size) is concerned.

This style of synergistic training creates, as one of my bodybuilding friends put it, “skinny fit guys”—a club he has no interest in being a member of. I, however, am a poster child for the skinny fit guy club as I feel fat no matter how fit I am because nothing improves your strength for gravity sports as much as losing weight. Right now, my goal is to get as skinny and as fit as I can in three weeks time.
pic: romney showing the advantages of strength to weight ratio gained by training many systems at once.

P90X...Y & Z

I’ve been writing a series of articles about how to customize P90X for various sports. I’d point you to the series but the archive pages aren’t up yet. I will as soon as they are. My next training cycle will be a part of this series. Even though I’m not using 90x (though I will use many movements from it and perhaps some workouts when I don’t have time to concoct my own) it will help you understand the principles, which are the same no matter what program you are adapting.

The first question I ask everyone adapting x towards another purpose is “what are your goals?” Without this it’s impossible to structure anything significant. P90x is a great foundation program. If you don’t have goals, just doing variations of it will keep you fit and ready for life’s encounters. With goals, however, your template changes because you must now focus on not only the activity(ies) at hand but also the different energy systems that will enhance your chances of reaching your goals. Training can vary from X-like to, well, not X-like at all.

One thing that’s a constant is a periodizational approach. All training programs address various systems one at a time. In my case, as you’ll see, it’s a bit different because I’m trying to train for three separate sports while also improving at another sport. To do this I’m using my experience at training for a single sports as well as my penchant for doing many different things that tax completely different muscle fibers and energy systems.

True training starts tomorrow, December 25th, 2009. The end of this round of training is April 1, at which time I want to have my strongest climbing base in 15 years, a good running base, and a decent biking base.

Since I’ll be racing with the Raramuri in Mexico in early March I NEED a sound running base—it’s a 48 mile race with, I dunno, 20,000 feet of elevation change, minimum, and it also includes a 66 mile “taper” that is a cultural exchange with The Running People that leads up to race day. I’m not going down to try and win, or even impress, the Raramuri. I’m just there for the experience and a chance to meet them. But I also don’t want to die, or come back injured. As my friend Jamil said, the Raramuri are “no joke” when it comes to running great distances fast. I need to have some miles under my feet.

My injury is not, nor will it be, 100%. Those of you who follow this blog know that I’m still in recovery. It’s going well, very well, but it’s also something I need to constantly moderate. But I’m now able to train at damn near 100% intensity. And as long as I keep my benchmarks constant I’m confident that recovery will continue.

That’s the announcement. The details will follow. The basic schedule looks like this. For you Xers, this should look familiar:

Block one: 3 weeks (focusing on hypertrophy and aerobic conditioning)
Transition/Recovery: 6 days
Block two: 3 weeks (focus on power for climbing/biking, and power/endurance for running)
Transition/Recovery: 6 days
Block three: Feb 15-27 (focus on power/endurance for climbing/biking and tapering for running
Transition: Feb 27-Mar11 (running in Mexico. Rest for climbing/biking. Heaps of running)
Block four: Mar 11-April 1 (power/endurance training for climbing/biking and running [speed work])

I’m also going to be playing with an absolutely cool, and hopefully revolutionary, diet theory. So stay tuned!
pic: in the new team kit and in need of earning it (http://www.ritteracing.com/story/)

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.