Full Body PAP

As promised, here's the friggin’ awesome workout I’ve been doing. If you don’t have time to do PAP Lower and Upper separately here’s an idea for combining them. It takes a while but is absolutely worth it; for sure one of the best workouts I’ve ever done.

This workout riffs off of the 30 rep workout I was doing for muscular endurance during my last training block, meaning that it’s tailored to my personal sports specific movement patterns. I began doing two rounds of each complex, now I’m at three, and I’ll hit four before the block ends.

A note on PAP: This isn’t a follow along cardio routine. You need to push yourself. And it’s not endurance work. You’ve got to go 100% on the explosive movements. 100, not 99. The difference between going 100% and 95% is massive. It’s not very hard to do a lateral skater in your comfort zone (or at a pace that you’d do for 20 or 30 reps). But it hard to go as hard, high, far, and fast as you possible can every single rep. That is the key. If you’re not going to do that then you might as well go do a Zumba class.


beautiful example of double skaters at 100% from crosby slaught

Move quickly through the warm-up, which will feel like a workout by design. Take a short break. Then treat every round of each complex as though it were a competition. Have fun!

WARM-UP
A slight tweak of the P90X2 functional warm-up—the perfect warm-up

Stability ball movements from X2: twist, squat overhead reach, overhead side to side, lunge overhead reach, loading dock

World’s Greatest Stretch: from X2: lunge, alt arms overhead, 3 each side

Inch Worm: X2

Scorpion: too hard to explain so get X2 (if you read my blog you SHOULD already have it!)

Fire Hydrants: From hands and knees lift leg (like a dog), extend leg backwards, back to start, repeat. Forward and backwards 10 each side

Groiners: again from X2

Plank - 30 sec

Wall Angels - 4 contractions held

Calf raises – heels straight, in, and out: 10 each

Shoulder retractions 10 weighted

YT Fly 10 – 12/12 reps

Side/cross hops 30 seconds

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). 12 each direction

Toe Raises – Tibealis Anterior exercise, back flat on wall feet out in front raise toes 30

END OF WARM UP

COMPLEX 1

Towel Pull-ups 5-8 (Weighted)

Jump pulls on rings ( go as high as possible hold high position for split second) 6

Banana (supine) pull down - 15

REPEAT 1, 2, or 3X

COMPLEX 2

Step up convicts (see X2) – 6 each side (as much weight as you can)

Split squat jumps 6

Heel slide - 15 reps each side

REPEAT 1, 2, or 3X

COMPLEX 3

Pullovers on a stability ball – 15

Med ball plyos – 8 (explode off/on a ball as fast as possible)

Fingertip chataranga hold 30 (or not fingertips when you fail—still hard)

REPEAT 1, 2, or 3X


samuel fuchs demostrates med ball plyos at p3

COMPLEX 4

One leg squat reach 8 each side

Lateral skaters 6

Side plank leg raise (see X2) – 30 seconds each side

REPEAT 1, 2, or 3X


see reverse pike v-ups (or whatever we called them) here.

COMPLEX 5

Squat, curl, press 8-10 (squat, curl with legs slightly bent, then push press to finish. Reverse in control)

Ball slams 6-8 (hold med/slam ball overhead, squat down slamming it to floor—make sure you can catch the rebound—bring back overhead with a jump. We wanted these in X2 but not practical in many homes. Sub reverse pike v-ups from X2 if these will break your floor cause rift with the neighbors.)

Bridge leg lift - 6 x 20 seconds on each leg 3 each

REPEAT 1, 2, or 3X

Neuro-integrated stretch (see X2 PAP and Plyo)



fun with pap: jeremy evans demostrates step-up convicts and other movements in this vid highlighting his slam dunk title training.

Importance Of Iron Fist

Since arms are the theme this week on The ‘Dope, here’s my latest article for DPM mag: The Way of the Iron Fist. It’s a guide to forearm training using a rice bucket, accompanied by stellar video of Master Wu explaining the subtleties of eliminating your enemies using the Buddhist Palm stance.

So, other than the obvious radness of aiding your Predator handshake, just why should you train using a rice bucket?

Obviously hand strength is important for climbers. Unfortunately, both the act of climbing and most of the exercises that climbers do to strengthen their attachment to the rock, work almost exclusively on what are called the flexor muscles of the hands and forearm. This creates a massive imbalance between flexor and extensor strength that leads to an assortment of ailments including elbow and bicep tendonitis, carpal tunnel syndrome, and various injuries to the hand tendons and tendon pulleys.

Climbers aren’t the only group to have a flexor/extensor imbalance. Almost everyone does but life required doing a lot of grabbing and very little of opening your hand against resistance unless you regularly practice essence absorbing stance. If everyone used a rice bucket carpal tunnel syndrome would not exist, much less be a syndrome.

A note on rice bucket form from my friend Ed. Don’t hit the rice with your fingertips. Slide them in. You still use force but you also must employ grace. Nerve endings in your fingertips affect your vision so smashing your fingertips regularly into anything can cause your eye sight to weaken.

Finally, if you’re looking for a cheap stocking stuffer how about a subscription to The Stash at DPM? For 5 bucks a year you can get access to unending psyche with their premiere videos. Check out the one below. It’s free. Just imagine how good those in The Stash must be.

Also, unfortunately, Master Wu’s video can only be viewed by those whom he feels are worthy. Others will be re-directed to Grasshopper Ben training in The Coop.

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.

Plantar Fasciitis Exercises (Video)

Here are videos the support the article I wrote last month:

How To Treat (and Avoid) Plantar Fasciitis

In and Outs


Towel Crunches


Toe Raises

How To Treat (and Avoid) Plantar Fasciitis

Here’s a decent little video on what plantar fasciitis is and how to treat it in its acute phase. What it doesn’t cover is how to get rid of it or, better yet, prepare your body so that you don’t get it in the first place. Once you get it there’s no way around a fairly lengthy rehab process and it’s not all that hard to avoid. Here are a few exercises that, when done regularly, will greatly reduce the chance of you getting plantar fasciitis. When you have it, these are also your go-to movements.

A,B,Cs: I hate it when doctors prescribe this exercise as a treatment for foot injuries. Not because it’s bad but because once you have foot issues you must get more aggressive with your rehab and this tends to get prescribed the most only because it’s simple. All you do is draw the alphabet with your feet in the morning before getting out of bed. If I’m spending a lot of time on my feet—like when I’m running ultras—I’ll do the alphabet both forward and backwards, slowly. It’s a great warm-up for your feet prior to getting out of bed.

In and outs: While A,B,Cs are a great warm-up, you need to strengthen all the muscles of your foot and ankel so that it doesn’t collapse, which is probably how you got PF in the first place. This exercise can be done anytime and anywhere. Sit with your legs parallel about two fist widths apart, feet flat. Rotate your toes inward as far as they can go, forcing your weight onto the outside of your foot. Now rotate out as far as you can go, forcing weight onto the inside of your foot. Do 50 reps daily until this is easy. Then you only need to do it once in a while to ensure you haven’t lost your strength.

Towel Crunches: I use a hand towel (wash cloth). Sit as above with a small towel on the ground in from of you with the edge under your toes. Use your toes to crunch up the towel as small as you can get it. Then use your toes to flatten it back out. Do 25 if you can. If not, that is the benchmark of strength you are looking for.

Toe raises: Stand with your back flat against a wall, feet together, flat on the ground, out in front of you about a foot or so. Now raise your toes while keeping your back presses flat against the wall. This works the tibialis anterior muscle on the front of your leg, which helps balance flexor/extensor leg strength and will also keep you from getting shin splints. Do 50 a day until they feel easy, then do them once a week or so for maintenance.

Double AA Workout

With the holidays in full swing, sandwiched by a couple of long work trips, time has been a little tight. Yesterday, Romney suggested a long ski in the Unitas for today so I combined two A workouts together. Depending upon the time of year this might not be practical. But given that I'm still in my first block of training, where A workouts still aren't as long and involved as they could be, it was pretty easy to strategize.

Warming up for an A workout should be un-hurried and thorough. We began with a family RUKE (run/hike aerobic outing) above our house. With the dogs appeased, I headed off to The Front, leaving Lisa at home to finish 100 burpees.
ruking is great for base aerobic conditioning. it's also quite social as you're never very out of breath. the goal is to keep moving with your heart rate up, but way below your LT. it's easy to train with others of different fitness levels with mountainous terrain. sometimes you're walking...
and sometimes you're jogging.
I warmed-up my upper body with about 30 minutes of bouldering. I began lapping some easy problems, then doing harder and harder moves but being careful not to pull too hard or get even remotely pumped, as this would interfere with the power investment that could be devoted to campusing.

My campus workouts still suck but are progressing slightly. I warmed up on the board with a few moves up with each arm, then followed it with two ladders of every other rung, with a one-minute rest in between sets. This was followed two sets of harder ladders or 1,3,5,7,9.

Normally, I'd rest 4 minutes and begin the most intense movements next. However, I'm not ready for super hard moves on the board yet, so I moved on to training-oriented movements that aren't quite at maximal power.

After a 2 minute rest:

I did two sets on each arm of 1-4-1s:
http://usa.moonclimbing.com/index.php?p=gal&gID=58&gImg=179

With a one-minute rest between sets, then rested two-minutes and did:

Two sets on each arm of 1-4-3-4s:
http://usa.moonclimbing.com/index.php?p=gal&gID=58&gImg=176

My climbing A workout was now finished and I moved into the weight area to work on lower body stuff. I generally add some core work to these circuits but I'd done P90X+ Abs/Core Plus the night before, so I could focus on explosive leg movements. I warmed-up by testing each movement with the right amount of weight and/or height.

Once organized, I did three rounds with no rest of 21 reps, followed by 15 reps, followed by 9 reps of the following exercises in this order:

Box jumps
Push-presses
Wall balls
Step-ups
Jumping pull-ups

Videos of these movements can be found here:

http://www.crossfit.com/cf-info/excercise.html#Exer

After a short cool-down, I was done; a short and concise workout providing a lot of bang for the buck.

Crazy 8's

8-8-08 was the starting date of both the Olympics and the Outdoor Retailer trade show in Salt Lake City. OR is a biannual event where most of my friends get to come to town on their company's dime. Sure, they're here to work, but we always seem to find plenty of time for play. Generally, there's a fair bit of outdoor activities scheduled if, for no other reason than to sweat out the prior evenings toxicants. We had those this year, too. But we kicked off the show with something special, in honor of 8-8-08.

Last week my buddy Hans called to make sure I'd have a good workout concocted for us. A bit later I get a text asking if I knew it was 8-8-08, and suggesting a crazy 8 workout. Then I found out that the Chinese believed 8 to be a lucky number and we starting the Olympic Games at 8:08 on 8-8-08. Since a billion Chinese can't be wrong, I just needed a workout for us, that would include lots of 8s, to begin at 8:08.

Since my wife does cross fit, and neither Hans or I had done a real cross fit workout, I asked her to make up something hard for us. She came up with something where we'd do 8 rounds of 8 sets of 8 exercises. Each round would consist of 20 seconds of an exercise, followed by 10 seconds rest, repeated 8 times. We wamed up by practicing each movement for form and to get an idea of how much weight we'd use. It all seemed easy enough. So we began...

The 8:

push press (squat thrust military presses)
kettlebell swings
push-ups
atomic sit-ups (fully extended body crunch)
squats
pull-ups
one-arm kettlebell snatches
hanging knees to elbows

Of course, competition dictated that we both began doing way too many reps or using too much weight on our first set. The last few sets of most of the movements were brutal, especially since neither of us wanted to have the low number of reps. Soon, to the delight of Lisa, who was worried it wouldn't be hard enough for us, we were grunting and screaming like a couple of WWF wrestlers. By the end of a 40-minute workout we were bathed in sweat and pumped up like a couple of ticks. It seemed like a perfectly fitting way to kick off the Olympics.

Aftermath: By Sunday we both had a brutal case of classic day two soreness. Hans called from the show to ask if my stomach hurt. He said he thought he'd eaten something bad until he realized that his stomach muscles were just super beat up. He gave big kudos to Romney for her ability to inflict this on a guy who "has done a least a hundread reps of core work per day for years". As for me, I could barely raise my arms overhead. This didn't stop me from riding and climbing over the weekend, but it sure cut down on my ability to do them well. As of Monday I'm still hobbling around the house like I'm injured. I can't wait til our 9-9-09 workout.