Run 10 1 minute x 30 second
4 sets Tabata kettle bell swings
Foam roller work
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
WOD 11-28-11
Pull ups using the 30 rep method
Barbell and dumbbell rows
Barbell and dumbbell rows
Ring Shrugs
Ring Rows
Foam roller work
Monday, November 28, 2011
WOD 11-27-11
Dumbbell floor presses
Swiss ball assisted Iron Crosses and dips
Ring push ups
Floor triceps presses
Military presses
Shoulder raises
Band presses
Face pulls between sets
Foam roller work
Swiss ball assisted Iron Crosses and dips
Ring push ups
Floor triceps presses
Military presses
Shoulder raises
Band presses
Face pulls between sets
Foam roller work
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Fascia Work or Why I Use a Foam Roller
The Web of Life
Just beneath your skin lies a complex network of connective tissue called fascia. It helps you move well, stand straight and play hard. Keeping it healthy might be one of the fastest — and most overlooked — ways to improve your health and fitness.
There’s a good chance you’ve never heard of fascia: the stretchy, mesh-like substance that interweaves through and around your musculature, surrounds and supports your organs, and shrink-wraps your entire internal structure like a second skin.
But if you were able to peek beneath your epidermis, you’d probably be surprised to see that this messy, elastic white stuff — made of collagen fibers, and similar to the material that makes up your ligaments and tendons — is virtually everywhere.
Unlike muscles and bones, though, fascia has historically been given so little attention by therapists, trainers and other fitness pros that it’s not even on the standard gym-wall anatomy chart.
“From an anatomical perspective, fascia is often seen as ‘the gunk you cut through to get to the good stuff,’” says corrective exercise specialist Anthony Carey, MA, owner of Function First in San Diego, Calif., and a leading fascia expert.
In recent years, however, some forward-thinking trainers and therapists have begun to recognize that this seemingly inconsequential webbing plays a far more important role in everyday functioning than was once believed.
Building on ideas outlined by anatomy teacher and bodyworker Thomas Myers in his book Anatomy Trains: Myofascial Meridians for Manual and Movement Therapists (Churchill Livingstone, 2009), these therapists have begun to devise ways to improve the quality and elasticity of the fascia directly through bodywork, stretches and targeted exercises.
Among these novel methods are Kinesis Myofascial Integration (KMI) — an approach to Rolfing developed by Myers — and Fascial Stretch Therapy (FST), founded by the husband and wife stretch-therapy team of Chris and Ann Frederick. These methods can significantly enhance the benefits of a stretching and strength program, making you stand taller, run faster and play harder. At the same time, fascial work often provides relief from chronic back and joint pain where many more conventional, muscle-based stretching and massage methods fail.
“Everybody needs to start incorporating the fascia into their conception of the musculoskeletal system,” says Myers. To his way of thinking, however, that may mean a fairly substantial shift in the way we think about how we’re made and how we move.
So if you still think “the foot bone’s connected to the ankle bone,” get ready to expand your thinking.
Facing the Fascia
Anatomy textbooks will tell you that the musculoskeletal system consists of thousands of separate parts: a couple hundred bones held together by more than 600 muscles and a near-countless number of ligaments and tendons. But Myers and Carey both assert that these divisions are largely artificial, created not by nature but by an anatomist’s scalpel.
“The fascia links the entire muscular system, not just muscle to bone but muscle to muscle, along with all the structures in the body, like organs, ligaments and tendons,” says Carey. “Whether you’re exercising or treating pain, it doesn’t make sense to treat it like a machine with separate parts because of this head-to-toe continuity.”
Seen from this perspective, Myers contends, “You don’t have 600-some-odd muscles, as we’ve always been taught: You have a single muscle with 600-odd stopping points, all linked by the fascial web.”
Far from the haphazard mesh that the first anatomists perceived, this fascial network is now described by researchers as sensitive, dynamic and extraordinarily adaptable. “There are 10 times as many more nerve endings in your fascia as there are in your muscles,” says Myers, making fascia far more susceptible to pain and sensation in general than your muscles are. “Most sports injuries are in fact failures of fascial structures, not muscle tissue.
“We say ‘muscles attach to bones,’” he continues, “but muscle can’t attach to anything. It’s formless, like hamburger. It’s the fascia that goes over and around and through your muscles that organizes that tissue into linear pulling machines.” When you perform a biceps curl, for example, the fascia of the biceps muscle shortens, tugging on your tendons and drawing your hand closer to your shoulder. And when you perform a quick, athletic movement — a layup in basketball, for instance — it’s the whip-fast elastic action of the fascia in your legs that transfers the force of those contracting muscles into the floor and launches you off the hardwood.
Through decades of experience as a bodyworker and an extensive study of anatomy, Myers began to notice that the fascial webbing appeared to be organized into distinct meridians, or “trains” — dense bands connecting multiple muscles and spanning multiple joints, tacked down at numerous bony “stations” along the way. If you were to think of the entire fascial network as a suit of clothing, these “anatomy trains” would be a series of elastic straps, suspenders and seams that give it structure and shape. Myers has found about a dozen of these fascial superhighways, which seem especially effective in understanding human movement and treating pain and dysfunction. Some run the length of your body, head to toe; others spiral the torso, shoot over the top of your head, and run down the middle of your back.
Like guy-wires on a well-rigged boat, a balanced, harmonious tension among these myofascial meridians helps support fluid, effortless movement. Too much chronic tension or slack in key meridians can, however, lead to poor posture and pain — and not always in the places you expect. Trace the fascial lines through the muscles and across the skeleton, and it’s possible to see, for instance, how shoulder pain might be caused by dysfunction in your opposite ankle, or how “tight hamstrings” might actually be caused by tension in the soles of the feet.
According to Myers’s model, it is through these myofascial lines, moreso than through individual muscles, that the body adapts to and reinforces alignment and movement. Says Carey, “Fascia adapts to every move you make — good, bad or indifferent.” Over time, a competitive rower, for example, might develop thicker fascia in her back and shoulders to support the repetitive movement of pulling oars. The fascia in the front of the rib cage of your typical desk jockey, on the other hand, may become thick and short to reinforce a habitually caved-in posture. And injuries, even minor ones, often result in fascial “patches” in the muscles that can cause restricted motion, leading to compensations in gait and movement. These might remain long after the injury itself has healed.
“Injured or poorly adapted fascia can start to act like glue, binding to muscles, other fascia, even your ligaments,” says Carey. In a sense, your entire individual life history — exercise habits, injuries, common sitting and sleeping positions — is written in your fascia.
Depending on these and other behavioral factors, fascial adhesions can subtly accrue over years and decades, leading to movement inhibition and sometimes chronic pain.
“Certain things in our bodies become tight, certain things become weak, and before you know it, our joints and limbs begin to make subtle twists and turns, making us a human game of Jenga,” jokes Sue Falsone, vice president of physical therapy at Athletes Performance and Team Sports in Phoenix.
The Tangled Web
So, think you might have a few kinks in your fascia? In a sense, if you’re already exercising and stretching regularly, you’re ahead of the game. “Muscles and fascia are so interwoven that you can’t affect one without affecting the other,” says Falsone.
Nevertheless, standard, static stretching and muscle-isolating exercises, while beneficial in some ways, often have little effect on deeply ingrained fascial tension, especially if, like most people, you spend a large portion of your day sitting down.
“If we spend months, years, even decades sitting at a desk and think that a few hours in the gym per week are going to undo all that, we’re probably fooling ourselves,” says Carey. Stretching a muscle with bound-up or poorly adapted fascia is a bit like trying to stretch a knotted bungee cord: You’ll get much better results if you get the knots out first.
Some of the best methods for untying these knots take a therapeutic approach, in which a practitioner works with an athlete or client on a massage-style table. Other methods have the client participate more actively, moving and stretching him- or herself in fascia-friendly patterns.
“Table work helps a client find more pliability and elasticity throughout the body,” says Carey. “Exercises help the client integrate the new range into their daily lives.” (For suggested exercises, see the Anatomy Trains at Work sidebar.)
Although KMI and FST are among the first treatments to fully integrate Myers’s anatomy-trains concept into their methodology, other treatments have had measurable impact on the suppleness of the fascia, including active release therapy, resistance flexibility and strength training, and even self-myofascial release with foam rollers and other implements. As Myers’s research gains wider recognition, it’s likely that massage therapists, bodyworkers and trainers in other fields — from yoga to Feldenkrais — may well begin to emphasize fascial relationships in their teachings as well. (For more on Feldenkrais, read “The Feldenkrais Fix.")
Myers’s KMI approach, which builds on the Structural Integration model developed by Ida Rolf (of Rolfing fame), takes the form of about 12 structured, progressive hands-on sessions with a KMI-certified practitioner. (Find one in your area at www.anatomytrains.com/kmi/practitioners.)
Initially, the practitioner takes photos and makes detailed observations about the client’s carriage and posture, noting especially where his or her fascial meridians appear shortened or contracted. From that point, each session focuses on a specific area of the body, starting with more superficial muscles, working gradually inward toward the core as the sequence progresses, and, finally, incorporating fully integrated movement.
Throughout the treatment, the practitioner manually works out the fibrotic knots and scarring in the fascial tissues, restoring balance among the meridians by applying direct, sometimes fairly intense, pressure directly along the affected fascial lines. Although treatment can be painful at times, the results often feel terrific. Many people report marked improvements in everyday activities like sitting and standing, and even more impressive strides in active pursuits.
Flexibility Reclaimed
Forty-seven-year-old Nancy Di Benedetti, from Calgary, Alberta, began her KMI treatments with therapist Nadine Samila with the goal of touching her toes. “After the first session I was already walking differently. And after 12 sessions not only was I able to touch my toes, but I actually started skiing again,” she says.
Chris and Ann Frederick bring to bear many of Myers’s principles in their Fascial Stretch Therapy (FST) system, which takes an unusually gentle approach to athletic flexibility training. “When you stretch too quickly or intensely, as many athletes do, the muscles go into a protective mode, contracting and resisting,” says Ann. “To get around these protective mechanisms, you’ve got to romance — not attack — the nervous system for optimal results. If the client is in a relaxed, calm state, his or her muscles and connective tissue will be much more responsive to the work. So you can’t yank on a muscle or deliberately push past a person’s comfort zone.”
In practice, FST can be almost dancelike, as the practitioner slowly and rhythmically moves the client’s limbs in a series of slowly expanding arcs.
These gentle, oscillating movements can elicit a soothing, parasympathetic response from the client’s nervous system, much like rocking in a chair or swinging in a hammock. “I never push the joints to their limits. I just gently test the boundaries of what’s possible for them at that moment,” says Carey. “A rhythmic tempo lowers apprehension, allowing the trainer to get past resistance in the fascia and into the muscles themselves.”
This calm state also primes the client for learning new movement patterns, while at the same time, the broad, multidimensional movements stretch the entire fascial fabric in ways that conventional, single-plane stretching and many other types of therapy don’t.
“I once worked on an insurance executive who had knee pain from years of high school and college athletics. His doctors were at a loss because the joints themselves seemed fine,” says Chris Frederick. “Through soft-tissue work and some well-chosen stretches, I was able to create space in his hip joints and relax the tension in his hip flexors, which took the pressure off his knees. And the pain he had had for 10 years was gone.”
Frederick emphasizes that treating the whole person — rather than a single symptom or a single part of the body — can often mean paying attention to issues farther up and down the various meridian lines from the site of pain or dysfunction: “Where there’s pain,” he says, “ain’t usually where the problem is.”
DIY Anatomy Trains
Although working with a qualified therapist is the best way to deal with acute problems in the fascia, smart exercise choices involving the fascia can also help address some imbalances.
One very effective option is to focus on full-body movements like Olympic lifts (and their regressions) and medicine-ball throws. Working with implements like battling ropes, Indian clubs and kettlebells, rather than trying to build or work different body parts in isolation, can also be helpful. Many of these movements require a dynamic transfer of force from the ground, through the body, and out through the arms or hands, in a pattern that simulates a wave. Done correctly, these wavelike motions parallel the sequential, muscle-to-muscle transfer of force that occurs along the fascial meridians just below the skin. As a result, they help reinforce healthy, integrated relationships among the myofascial meridians.
You can approach flexibility training with a similar mindset: Rather than stretching one muscle group at a time, think about stretching an entire plane of the body at once, and of long movements that extend and spiral the body head to toe.
Myers recommends stretching in multiple planes, adding rotation of the feet to a toe-touching stretch, for example, in order to more fully stretch the fascia across the hamstrings, calves and lower back. The asanas in yoga and the gentle oscillations of Feldenkrais are good examples of fascia-releasing work that helps enhance flexibility. (For more specific exercise and stretching choices, see the “Anatomy Trains at Work,” sidebar.)
For greater suppleness throughout the fascial network, Myers also encourages people to incorporate bouncing of some kind in their workouts: skipping rope, jogging, jumping on a trampoline. “You lose elasticity in your fascia as you age. Kids exemplify that bouncy elasticity in their fascia, and bouncing helps you hold on to what you have.”
Variety, however, may be your best safeguard against tightness and adhesions in the fascia, notes Myers: “If there’s one thing I could say to people who wanted to get fit or stay fit, it would be ‘Stop repeating yourself!’”
Repetitive physical action — including forms of exercise like running or cycling — can leave its mark on the fascia, unnaturally tightening certain areas and eventually leaving you more susceptible to injury. The take-home lesson? Mix things up. Hike or cycle on uneven terrain, switch strength-training exercises frequently, and seek out new ways to move, through dance, sports, martial arts or other activities.
For some time now, progressive fitness professionals have been emphasizing integrated forms of exercise, from dynamic flexibility work to full-body strength training to outdoor exercise and Eastern-style movement. In a sense, the anatomy-trains model represents the anatomical basis for this approach: Just as the fascia links the muscles together in interconnected chains, so integrated exercise and movement link the muscles functionally, through dynamic, coordinated movement patterns.
In all likelihood, the more we can shift our perspective to see the body that way — as a whole system working together — the healthier we’ll be.
Andrew Heffernan, CSCS, is a contributing editor at Experience Life.
SIDEBAR
Anatomy Trains at Work
To experience the interconnectedness of your own fascial webbing, try some of the following exercises, and consider building similar moves into your workouts. Activities that include long, sweeping patterns, full extension of the limbs, and spiraling gestures through the torso (notably yoga, tai chi and Feldenkrais) can enhance awareness and foster optimum balance of your body’s major fascial lines. Many types of dance as well as racquet and ball sports, which require jumping, leaping, throwing and reaching, also have similar benefits.
"The World's Greatest Stretch"
• Stand and step forward with your left foot into a deep lunge position.
• Lean forward and place both hands on the floor, with your left knee outside your left arm and shoulder.
• Keeping your right leg straight and your back long (aim for a perfect line between your head and right heel), gently press your left elbow against the inside of your left knee for a two-count.
• Still keeping your right leg fully extended, slowly straighten your left leg as much as possible, rocking your weight back onto the heel of your front foot. Hold for a two-count.
• Rebend your left knee and lift your torso from the bent-over position, assuming a standing lunge position with your right knee floating 2 inches off the floor. Hold for a two-count, then step forward with your right foot and repeat on the opposite side.
• Perform six to eight repetitions on each side.
“The World’s Greatest Stretch,” recommended by Sue Falsone, vice president of physical therapy at Athletes Performance and Team Sports in Phoenix, mobilizes both front-of-the-hip and back fascial lines in their entirety, head to toe.
Side Bend with Rolling Feet
• Stand upright with your feet parallel and about shoulder-width-and-a-half apart.
• Keeping your hips and shoulders square, reach your right hand directly overhead.
• Perform a side-bend to your left, reaching your right arm over your head and as far to your left as possible.
• Once in this position, roll both feet to the right, shifting your weight onto the outside edge of your right foot, and the inside edge of your left foot. Hold for 10 seconds and repeat on the opposite side.
Although the standard side bend is traditionally seen as a stretch for the lats and obliques (the muscles on the sides of your torso), rolling the feet in this position — which inevitably intensifies the stretch — makes it clear that you are in fact extending a unified fascial line that extends along the side of the body from the outside edges of your feet all the way up to your ear.
A Better Hip Mobilization
• Lie flat on your back on a firm surface. Bend both knees with feet flat on the floor.
• Lift your right leg in the air.
• Take hold of your leg with both hands — behind your knee, on the outsides of your thigh, or wherever feels comfortable.
• Keeping your neck relaxed and your head on the floor, gently pull your leg toward your upper body until you feel a gentle stretch.
• Maintaining your hold on the leg, gently rotate your foot, circling your leg to the outside, then to the inside of your torso.
• Continue to experiment with easy movements of your leg in whatever range and plane of motion feels comfortable for about two minutes, then repeat on the other side.
Many people stretch their hips and hamstrings in one plane of motion: generally straight forward (as in, touch your toes). Since the fascia runs through and around the entire musculature, it can be more thorough to stretch in this multiplanar way: up, down, forward, back. And, avoiding the pain threshold can be more effective because you fly beneath the radar of the protective mechanisms of the joints, which tighten and shorten muscles when you stretch forcefully.
WEB EXTRA!
Snuffing Out Fascial Inflammation
Long-term inflammation and irritation in the fascia — the intricate web of connective tissue that holds your body together — is fairly common, and can sometimes aggravate and make worse certain arthritic conditions.
What causes fascial inflammation? “No one knows for sure. It’s partly genetic, but it’s often related to overdoing one particular type of movement,” says Nadine Samila, a practitioner of Kinesis Myofascial Integration (KMI) and Myofascial Release Therapy (MRT) from Calgary, Alberta.
Inflammation and tightness in the iliotibial, or “IT,” band (the thick fascial strap that runs along the outside of your thigh), for example, is common in avid runners. “A tight IT band can pull the kneecap off its track, which irritates the knee joint and can eventually lead to arthritis,” says Chris Frederick, PT, coauthor of Stretch to Win (Human Kinetics, 2006).
Similarly, habitual slumping and slouching can cause the fascia in the front of the chest to shorten and tighten, restricting freedom of movement in the arms and shoulders. Desk-sitters, for example, will often be unable to reach behind themselves comfortably from a seated position because the fascia in and around their pectoral muscles is so short and tight. As a result, the smaller, weaker muscles of the rotator cuff can get strained or injured, even during seemingly harmless movements. “I’ve had clients who have torn their rotator cuffs trying to reach something in the back seat of their car,” says Frederick.
Perhaps the worst-case scenario of fascial inflammation is called compartment syndrome, which is a restriction of the fascia surrounding the muscles of the lower leg. It often occurs in seriously overtrained athletes and exercisers. Let this condition go on too long, says Frederick, “and you could even lose your leg.”
But it’s plain old inactivity that causes the most fascial troubles. Healthy fascia is well hydrated and smooth, like the fine membrane that covers fresh, uncooked chicken. But the connective tissue in older and inactive people, explains Samila, “gets fuzzy and sticky, like cobwebs. It doesn’t move well. That’s partly due to age, but inactivity makes it much worse. We just don’t move enough!”
The antidote? Move. As much as you can, and in as many different ways. “The more you move, and the more ways that you move,” says Samila, “the more you keep the fascia soft, hydrated, and healthy.”
WEB EXTRA!
Tennis Ball Trick
• Perform a standing toe-touch in bare feet, with your knees soft, and note how far down your legs you can comfortably reach without straining.
• Stand, and carefully roll the bottom of your right foot over a tennis ball, paying particular attention to spots where your feet are tender or sensitive. Hold on to something stable for balance if necessary. Continue for at least a full minute, then repeat on the left foot.
• Perform the standing toe-touch test again.
Fascia Facts: After a quick foot massage, many people will feel as though their hamstrings suddenly got looser. The hamstrings are affected as the tennis ball helps loosen the Superficial Back Line as a whole, a fascial train that runs from the bottoms of your feet to your head, allowing many people to reach further on their second try.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
WOD 11-26-11
Body weight Pistols 8 sets of 3
Weighted lunges
Deadlifts 5x5 with 220 lbs
Split squats with body weight
Glute ham raises 6x4 with and without weight
Foam roller stretching
Warmed up on the bag.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Back Blogging
Perfect Pulling Exercises for a Bigger Back
by John Gaglione – 11/25/2011
People who understand strength respect a big back. Dave Tate said when he used to powerlift competitively, he never worried about the lifters with big chests or quads – it was the guys with thick lats and spinal erectors that concerned him.
A thick, strong back is a sign of a strong lifter. The erectors, lats, rhomboids, and traps are of paramount importance for both weekend warriors and competitive lifters. We all know guys at the gym that look impressive from the front but resemble middle school kids from the rear. Don't copy them.
Why a Big Back is Important
Training the back is crucial for strength sports as well as overall health and performance. A strong, thick back will bolster your bench, squat, and deadlift as well as support other lifts that help you get big and strong.
A thick upper back creates a nice shelf for the bar to rest when squatting, while strong lats allow a lifter to "lock in" their position on a deadlift and power through to lockout.
Your lats are also the foundation for all pressing movements. The wider and thicker your back is, the bigger the base of support you'll have to press big weights.
Furthermore, the strength in your upper back is crucial for shoulder health. Many people focus too much on pushing movements and neglect their pulling strength. At the very least, you should perform a pulling exercise every time you perform a pushing one to balance out the body.
Shoulder specialists like T NATION's Eric Cressey recommend as much as a 3:1 pull to push ratio when trying to bring up an athlete's strength and correct imbalances.
Enter the Barbell Row
The barbell row (and its variations) is one of the best movements for both back size and strength. Unfortunately, it's also one of the most butchered lifts you'll see performed in the gym, which is a shame, as too much body English completely diminishes the barbell row's potential benefits.
This isn't to say that sometimes you can't work up a little heavier and use looser form, but many take this to an extreme, performing "rows" that resemble a penguin having a seizure. The key is to keep tension on the muscles you're trying to work, namely the upper back. Leave your ego at the door.
Finally, lifters often have horrible shoulder positioning when performing rows. Below is a great method to correct this pattern.
Pack the Shoulders
Safe and effective barbell rowing requires packing the shoulders, or actively depressing and retracting the shoulder blades. First, think of sticking your chest out and pinching a ball in between your shoulder blades. Next, try to pull your left scap to your right hip and your right scap to your left hip.
A very good way to learn this is by performing bat wings, either with your body weight or with dumbbells.
Set up a barbell in a power rack about waist height. Elevate your feet on a bench and perform an isometric inverted row. Keep your chest "proud," while keeping your hips level. Squeeze your glutes, drive your heels into the bench, and keep your neck packed. You're essentially in an upside down plank; learning to keep a neutral spine and packed shoulders.
Dumbbell Chest Supported Row
You can do these with dumbbells or kettlebells. What's great about performing this movement on an incline bench is that it's very hard to screw up. Keep your belly and head glued to the bench and stick out your chest while keeping your shoulders down and back. If your head, chest, or belly come off the bench you're cheating, so it's a self-correcting exercise.
A good idea is adding an isometric hold. These will teach proper shoulder positioning when performing more advanced rowing variations. To accomplish this, simply hold each rep for a one-count and notice the change in muscle recruitment in your back. The difference is quite humbling.
Bent Over Row
When performing bent over row variations, many lifters are too upright and don't sit back enough. You want to try to get your body parallel to the floor so you're completely bent over. This way the resistance directly opposes gravity and allows for much more efficient conditioning of the lats and upper back.
Focus on keeping your core braced to help maintain a neutral spine. Also, keep a "soft bend" in the knee, as too much knee bend will result in the bar crashing into your kneecaps.
You can perform this exercise with a pronated (overhand) or supinated (underhand) grip. With all rowing variations, it's important to stick the chest out while pulling the shoulders down and back.
I like to perform rows with a supinated grip as it allows for more external rotation. Think of performing the movement as the opposite of a bench press and tuck the elbows in towards the body as you raise the weight.
Yates Row
This is similar to how I see most barbell rows being performed, although most times I think it's unintentional. This is a good variation for when you want to hit the back a little differently than a traditional bent over row. Your body will be more upright and you'll pull the bar to the lower part of the stomach. This is a very good variation when you want to move a lot of weight for high reps; just don't use it all the time.
Dead Stop Variations
Rack Row
Many lifters don't have enough hip mobility to keep proper position for true bent over rows. A way to work around this is by performing bent over rows in a power rack using a very low pin setting.
This variation allows the lifter to reset his back every rep to ensure his form and positioning is optimal. I also like this exercise for improving deadlift starting strength since the lifter has to lift the weight from a dead stop every rep. You can play with different heights, but usually around the lower part of the shin works well.
Pendlay Row
This is a dead stop row variation performed from the floor. It requires more hip mobility than the rack row but has the same benefits. You won't be able to use as much weight as a regular bent over row since there's no stretch reflex, and you must lift the weight from a dead stop every rep.
This is another great exercise for improving starting strength. I like to initiate this exercise with my quads as in a deadlift, and then row to my lower stomach. This is a great exercise to perform heavy for pure back strength.
Increase your Grip Strength
Towel Bent Rows
This is a great bang for your buck exercise to work your upper back and grip at the same time. Simply grab two towels and wrap them around the barbell where you'd normally place your hands.
This is also a great variation for people with shoulder issues. The towel allows for a neutral grip, which is a very easy position for the shoulders. It also forces the lifter to grip with more force, thereby activating more stabilizer muscles in the shoulder girdle. Lastly, it will force the lifter to use a lighter weight, which again will be a little easier on the shoulder joint.
Towel T-Bar Rows
This is a great way to perform T-bar rows when D-handles and other T-bar machines aren't available. The towel also allows for a more natural range of motion.
Stick a barbell in the corner of two walls or inside a power rack and wrap a towel over the barbell. This movement can be performed very heavy and is a great exercise for size and strength.
Like the last variation, this will also work the grip and allow for a shoulder-friendly neutral grip.
Unilateral Movements
One-Arm Barbell Row – Staggered Stance
If your gym doesn't have heavy dumbbells, you can perform one-arm barbell rows. This is also going to work the grip since you need to balance the barbell by gripping it in the middle. Perform them on a bench or in a staggered stance. One-arm rows are great for developing each side of the back independently and can help prevent asymmetries from developing.
One-Arm Barbell Row – Neutral Stance
One-arm barbell rows can also be performed from a neutral stance, which will work the core more since you need to resist the side from bending due to the asymmetrical load. This variation can also be performed inside a power rack with dead stop reps to increase starting strength.
Rowing Wrap Up
As you can see, there are many effective rowing variations you can add to your training. Each of these exercises can be used as a supplemental or assistance movement on your strength building days, or as a main back exercise if you're following a body part split.
But to reap all the benefits of rowing, you must be mindful to keep your technique as clean as possible. Start by performing barbell rows with a lighter weight and master your technique before piling on the weight. You'll be surprised how much weight you really need when you perform rows with strict form.
Here's a summary:
Make sure to perform a proper hip hinge.
Sit back to get the body parallel to the floor.
Only bend the knees slightly.
Keep the core braced to ensure a neutral spine and to help eliminate unnecessary body English.
Keep the chest proud and the shoulders packed to ensure shoulder health and optimal muscle recruitment.
When in doubt, lighten the weight and really focus on the muscle being worked. If you feel it in your legs, lower back, and neck, you're using too heavy a weight.
Holding each rep for a one-count at the top eliminates most bad technique.
Work the lats isometrically from time to time.
These exercises will help you set new PRs in your bench, squat, and deadlift, while making your physique an impressive sight when seen from behind. Start performing these exercises regularly – and properly – and build some wide, thick lats that would make Dorian proud!
by John Gaglione – 11/25/2011
People who understand strength respect a big back. Dave Tate said when he used to powerlift competitively, he never worried about the lifters with big chests or quads – it was the guys with thick lats and spinal erectors that concerned him.
A thick, strong back is a sign of a strong lifter. The erectors, lats, rhomboids, and traps are of paramount importance for both weekend warriors and competitive lifters. We all know guys at the gym that look impressive from the front but resemble middle school kids from the rear. Don't copy them.
Why a Big Back is Important
Training the back is crucial for strength sports as well as overall health and performance. A strong, thick back will bolster your bench, squat, and deadlift as well as support other lifts that help you get big and strong.
A thick upper back creates a nice shelf for the bar to rest when squatting, while strong lats allow a lifter to "lock in" their position on a deadlift and power through to lockout.
Your lats are also the foundation for all pressing movements. The wider and thicker your back is, the bigger the base of support you'll have to press big weights.
Furthermore, the strength in your upper back is crucial for shoulder health. Many people focus too much on pushing movements and neglect their pulling strength. At the very least, you should perform a pulling exercise every time you perform a pushing one to balance out the body.
Shoulder specialists like T NATION's Eric Cressey recommend as much as a 3:1 pull to push ratio when trying to bring up an athlete's strength and correct imbalances.
Enter the Barbell Row
The barbell row (and its variations) is one of the best movements for both back size and strength. Unfortunately, it's also one of the most butchered lifts you'll see performed in the gym, which is a shame, as too much body English completely diminishes the barbell row's potential benefits.
This isn't to say that sometimes you can't work up a little heavier and use looser form, but many take this to an extreme, performing "rows" that resemble a penguin having a seizure. The key is to keep tension on the muscles you're trying to work, namely the upper back. Leave your ego at the door.
Finally, lifters often have horrible shoulder positioning when performing rows. Below is a great method to correct this pattern.
Pack the Shoulders
Safe and effective barbell rowing requires packing the shoulders, or actively depressing and retracting the shoulder blades. First, think of sticking your chest out and pinching a ball in between your shoulder blades. Next, try to pull your left scap to your right hip and your right scap to your left hip.
A very good way to learn this is by performing bat wings, either with your body weight or with dumbbells.
Set up a barbell in a power rack about waist height. Elevate your feet on a bench and perform an isometric inverted row. Keep your chest "proud," while keeping your hips level. Squeeze your glutes, drive your heels into the bench, and keep your neck packed. You're essentially in an upside down plank; learning to keep a neutral spine and packed shoulders.
Dumbbell Chest Supported Row
You can do these with dumbbells or kettlebells. What's great about performing this movement on an incline bench is that it's very hard to screw up. Keep your belly and head glued to the bench and stick out your chest while keeping your shoulders down and back. If your head, chest, or belly come off the bench you're cheating, so it's a self-correcting exercise.
A good idea is adding an isometric hold. These will teach proper shoulder positioning when performing more advanced rowing variations. To accomplish this, simply hold each rep for a one-count and notice the change in muscle recruitment in your back. The difference is quite humbling.
Bent Over Row
When performing bent over row variations, many lifters are too upright and don't sit back enough. You want to try to get your body parallel to the floor so you're completely bent over. This way the resistance directly opposes gravity and allows for much more efficient conditioning of the lats and upper back.
Focus on keeping your core braced to help maintain a neutral spine. Also, keep a "soft bend" in the knee, as too much knee bend will result in the bar crashing into your kneecaps.
You can perform this exercise with a pronated (overhand) or supinated (underhand) grip. With all rowing variations, it's important to stick the chest out while pulling the shoulders down and back.
I like to perform rows with a supinated grip as it allows for more external rotation. Think of performing the movement as the opposite of a bench press and tuck the elbows in towards the body as you raise the weight.
Yates Row
This is similar to how I see most barbell rows being performed, although most times I think it's unintentional. This is a good variation for when you want to hit the back a little differently than a traditional bent over row. Your body will be more upright and you'll pull the bar to the lower part of the stomach. This is a very good variation when you want to move a lot of weight for high reps; just don't use it all the time.
Dead Stop Variations
Rack Row
Many lifters don't have enough hip mobility to keep proper position for true bent over rows. A way to work around this is by performing bent over rows in a power rack using a very low pin setting.
This variation allows the lifter to reset his back every rep to ensure his form and positioning is optimal. I also like this exercise for improving deadlift starting strength since the lifter has to lift the weight from a dead stop every rep. You can play with different heights, but usually around the lower part of the shin works well.
Pendlay Row
This is a dead stop row variation performed from the floor. It requires more hip mobility than the rack row but has the same benefits. You won't be able to use as much weight as a regular bent over row since there's no stretch reflex, and you must lift the weight from a dead stop every rep.
This is another great exercise for improving starting strength. I like to initiate this exercise with my quads as in a deadlift, and then row to my lower stomach. This is a great exercise to perform heavy for pure back strength.
Increase your Grip Strength
Towel Bent Rows
This is a great bang for your buck exercise to work your upper back and grip at the same time. Simply grab two towels and wrap them around the barbell where you'd normally place your hands.
This is also a great variation for people with shoulder issues. The towel allows for a neutral grip, which is a very easy position for the shoulders. It also forces the lifter to grip with more force, thereby activating more stabilizer muscles in the shoulder girdle. Lastly, it will force the lifter to use a lighter weight, which again will be a little easier on the shoulder joint.
Towel T-Bar Rows
This is a great way to perform T-bar rows when D-handles and other T-bar machines aren't available. The towel also allows for a more natural range of motion.
Stick a barbell in the corner of two walls or inside a power rack and wrap a towel over the barbell. This movement can be performed very heavy and is a great exercise for size and strength.
Like the last variation, this will also work the grip and allow for a shoulder-friendly neutral grip.
Unilateral Movements
One-Arm Barbell Row – Staggered Stance
If your gym doesn't have heavy dumbbells, you can perform one-arm barbell rows. This is also going to work the grip since you need to balance the barbell by gripping it in the middle. Perform them on a bench or in a staggered stance. One-arm rows are great for developing each side of the back independently and can help prevent asymmetries from developing.
One-Arm Barbell Row – Neutral Stance
One-arm barbell rows can also be performed from a neutral stance, which will work the core more since you need to resist the side from bending due to the asymmetrical load. This variation can also be performed inside a power rack with dead stop reps to increase starting strength.
Rowing Wrap Up
As you can see, there are many effective rowing variations you can add to your training. Each of these exercises can be used as a supplemental or assistance movement on your strength building days, or as a main back exercise if you're following a body part split.
But to reap all the benefits of rowing, you must be mindful to keep your technique as clean as possible. Start by performing barbell rows with a lighter weight and master your technique before piling on the weight. You'll be surprised how much weight you really need when you perform rows with strict form.
Here's a summary:
Make sure to perform a proper hip hinge.
Sit back to get the body parallel to the floor.
Only bend the knees slightly.
Keep the core braced to ensure a neutral spine and to help eliminate unnecessary body English.
Keep the chest proud and the shoulders packed to ensure shoulder health and optimal muscle recruitment.
When in doubt, lighten the weight and really focus on the muscle being worked. If you feel it in your legs, lower back, and neck, you're using too heavy a weight.
Holding each rep for a one-count at the top eliminates most bad technique.
Work the lats isometrically from time to time.
These exercises will help you set new PRs in your bench, squat, and deadlift, while making your physique an impressive sight when seen from behind. Start performing these exercises regularly – and properly – and build some wide, thick lats that would make Dorian proud!
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
WOD 11-23-11
Dumbbell floor presses
Swiss ball assisted Iron Crosses and dips
Ring push ups
Floor triceps presses
Military presses
Shoulder raises
Wrist curls
WOD 11-22-11
Body weight pistols
Weighted lunges
Deadlifts
Glute-ham bridges
Poly-metric work between setsM
5 minuites of bag work
Max heart rate: 151
Monday, November 21, 2011
How to Build Any Muscle Group
How to Build Any Muscle Group
When you hear the word "science," what does it mean to you? My guess is that word probably makes you conjure up images of a nerdy looking dude in a lab coat who's hovering over a Petri dish that's filled with bacteria.
And when it comes to building muscle, we all know that science often falls short of giving us the best solutions. That's because there's very little funding for studies that elucidate the best methods to turn little Henry into the Hulk.
Computer technology has progressed at an astonishing pace because there's so much funding and because the potential financial rewards are enormous. Not so in the world of muscle building.
Yep, if you've got a burning desire to add muscle to a stubborn body part you'll have no luck finding your answer on Pubmed, even if you pull an all-nighter.
So Where's the Answer?
While I was in graduate school one of my professors made a profound statement that has stuck with me over the years. To quote the good doctor, "Science is about observing the world around you."
For example, if you want to cure Alzheimer's it makes sense to study cultures where the disease is virtually nonexistent. Then you try to figure out what they do that the rest of the world doesn't do.
And if you want bigger quadriceps, it makes perfect sense to look for a sport where the athletes have proportionally large quadriceps development and figure out what they're doing that you're not doing.
That's smart science.
Gut Check
Before I get to the details of how to add muscle where you need it most, it's important to understand what truly deserves the title as a stubborn body part. Your proportionally challenged biceps might not be stubborn at all, and that's why you should first consider two points.
1. Be honest with yourself. Is the muscle group in question too small simply because you haven't been training it more than once every week or two? Many guys have puny calves because they rarely train them. No big mystery there.
2. Understand that muscle growth takes months. If you just started lifting weights three weeks ago and you're frustrated with your lack of upper arm development, join the club that every guy has been a member of. No one ever complains about building muscle too fast. You must be patient, even if you find the training method that's best for your body type.
Now that those two points are out of the way, if you've been training the stubborn body part consistently for a few months without noticing any results, it's time to do some problem solving.
30 Reps to Bigger Muscles
First, consider the training parameters you've been using. Three sets of 10 reps isn't an ideal way to build muscle, even for muscle groups that welcome growth. Therefore, the best initial approach is to train a stubborn muscle group with a less traditional method that works awesome to build muscle.
30 Rep Method – this is a more effective twist on the 10 sets of 3 reps method that I've been advocating for a decade. Instead of doing 10 sets of 3 reps, you'll start with a load you can lift no more than six times for the first set.
Next you'll perform a second set of as many reps as possible (usually it'll be less than six reps). Then you'll perform a third set of as many reps as possible.
You'll continue performing as many sets as it takes until you reach 30 total reps.
You'll use the same load for all sets and the reps will decrease with the sets. This is an ideal way to train since you'll never miss a rep, and it's the way I approach muscle building in my book, Huge in a Hurry.
Here's a sample exercise pairing for the upper arms:
| Exercise | Weight | Sets | Reps | Rest | |
| 1A | Hammer curl | * | ** | *** | 30 sec. |
| 1B | Lying dumbbell triceps extension | * | ** | *** | 30 sec. |
* a weight you can lift no more than 6 times for the first set
** until you reach 30 total reps
*** as many reps as possible
This is an example for one workout. You'll use only one exercise per muscle group and you'll put all your energy into that lift until you reach 30 total reps. Perform the 30-Rep Method three times per week with a different exercise in each workout throughout the week. You can use those same three exercise pairings for all four weeks.
Of course, the 30-Rep Method can be used for any muscle group that needs more mass without sacrificing maximal strength. You can perform straight sets with 60 seconds of rest between each set, but I've found that it's more effective and more efficient to alternate between exercises for different muscle groups.
You don't have to use an antagonist pairing. For example, if your calves and triceps need help, you could alternate a calf raise with a triceps exercise. The options are endless.
Here's an overview of the parameters for the 30 Rep Method.
Duration: 4 weeks
Frequency: 3 times per week
Number of exercises per muscle group for each workout: 1
Total reps per muscle group: 30 reps each workout
Exercise selection: use a different exercise for each workout throughout the week
The 30-Rep Method is my first line of attack to build a lagging muscle group. Try it for four weeks and I bet you'll like what you see. Importantly, you don't need to perform an entire workout with this method, even though it's an excellent way to train.
For example, you might be content with your current program, but you feel it's neglecting a muscle group that you want to make freaky enough to scare the neighbors. Use the 30-Rep Method three times per week for four weeks to fire things up.
Back to Real World Science
At this point you might be wondering what all my rambling was about in the beginning of this article when I talked about the relationship between science and real-world observations.
Let's look at the deltoids and quadriceps. They're two muscle groups that are sometimes outliers. They can be problematic for many good muscle building methods, even the 30-Rep Method. Yep, sometimes you've got to break the rules and look around for guidance. Sometimes multiple sets of heavy reps isn't the best approach.
Indeed, if there were ever a muscle group that thrives on high-rep training with lighter loads, it's the deltoids. You only need to look at the shoulders of professional boxers for proof.
The quadriceps can be tricky for a different reason: it's extremely draining to perform 30 total reps of a heavy multi-joint quadriceps exercise three times per week. Elite Olympic lifters might have the best quadriceps development of any power athlete but we all know how impractical and time-consuming it would be to work up to their frequency and volume while keeping your joints in tact.
So we need to keep looking around. Which other athletes have quadriceps development with proportions that even Tom Platz can envy? Professional cyclists.
When you think about professional boxers or cyclists, it's easy to hypothesize that any muscle group can grow if you stimulate it with enough volume and frequency. While that might be true sometimes, it doesn't appear accurate in all cases.
Take the biceps, for example. If the amount of volume from boxing or cycling could carryover to head-turning biceps proportions, elite rowers would have the best biceps on the planet. But they don't.
Gymnasts who perform the rings events hold the title of best pound-for-pound biceps on earth. That's because the biceps need high-tension exercises for growth, unlike the deltoids or quadriceps which are made up of a higher proportion of fast fatigue resistant (FFR) motor units. Those FFR motor units love high-rep training like a fat kid loves cake.
If you need to add more muscle to your deltoids and quadriceps so you can finally hit the beach without ridicule, here's your solution.
5 Minutes of Hell
The two exercises I use to build the quadriceps or deltoids when traditional training doesn't work are the hill climb and boxer drill. Both of these exercises induce a lot of fatigue so perform them at the end of your workouts or on a day when you're not lifting heavy.
As an added bonus, the following two exercises will help you burn more fat!
Hill Climb: adjust the seat on an exercise bike so your knee joint can only extend to 160 degrees as you pedal. Basically, just make sure your knees can't completely straighten during each revolution to keep tension on your quads. Next, crank up the resistance so you can't perform more than 60 revolutions per minute (RPM) when you're pedaling with maximum intensity.
Continue pedaling with the most effort possible for five minutes. As you fatigue you'll need to decrease the resistance on the exercise bike. The ideal range to stay within is 45-60 RPM. Don't let it drop below 45 or exceed 60 RPM throughout the five-minute climb from Hell.
Perform the hill climb exercise every other day or three times per week until you've added enough muscle to make the effort worthwhile.
Here are a few tips for the hill climb exercise.
- Stay seated throughout the exercise! If you stand up and pedal it takes stress off your quadriceps (since your body weight can push the pedals down).
- Don't grip the armrests or handles because it will accumulate unnecessary fatigue. Keep your hands relaxed. It's best to have your arms hanging down at your sides or interlock your fingers and place your hands behind your head.
- Keep your chest held high throughout the exercise. It's easy to slouch while you're grimacing in pain but this can lead to disc problems.
- If your cardiovascular system isn't accustomed to high intensity training, start with three minutes and add 30 seconds every other day until you reach five minutes.
Boxer drill: the boxer drill is very straightforward and tough to screw up as long as you put out five minutes of continuous effort. Just grab a pair of 5-pound dumbbells and do your best to mimic Arturo Gatti against the ropes. Throw straight punches, hooks, and upper cuts for five minutes without resting.
Perform the boxer drill every other day or three times per week for as long as you desire.
Here are a few tips for the boxer drill:
- Keep your hands up throughout the entire drill. You should never drop your hands in a fight and you should never drop your hands in this drill either, since it will take stress off the deltoids.
- Move around as much as possible while you're throwing punches and switch your stance from right to southpaw every 30 seconds to keep your T-spine mobility in balance.
- If 5-pound dumbbells are too heavy, start with three pounds.
- To get the most out of this drill you should be able to throw decent punches. So if you're completely at a loss for how to throw a hook or uppercut, ask a qualified person for technique tips.
- If your cardiovascular system isn't accustomed to high intensity training, start with three minutes and add 30 seconds every other day until you reach five minutes.
Final Words
One of the best ways to build up a lagging muscle group is with the 30-Rep Method. It can work for any muscle group. However, if you want to mix things up, or if a traditional approach hasn't worked for your quadriceps or deltoids, now you have a couple of solutions that will also help you burn more fat!
Sunday, November 20, 2011
WOD 11-20-11
General fitness and stretching today.
Stretch and foam roller.
Swiss ball assisted Iron Crosses.
Glute Brides without weight
Bag work
4 rounds of running 1 minute x 30 seconds
Stairs
2 sets of 20 kettle bell swings with 40 lbs
162 was max HR
Choices
Choices
by Matt "Kroc" Kroczaleski – 9/28/2011
People love to say how someone is a "product of his or her environment."
Often it's apologist jargon reserved for when someone does something wrong or commits a crime. It suggests the accused had no choice other than to become what their environment led them to be. To put it bluntly, I don't agree with this line of thinking.
If this were true I would've dropped out of high school, gotten into drugs, and become a full-fledged alcoholic. I never would've accomplished anything and blamed everyone and everything else for my failures.
To be fair, I'm not saying that your environment has no effect on you whatsoever. I'm merely stating that everything in life boils down to choice, and the power to choose lies within the individual. Certain situations may increase the difficulty of the choice, but the freedom to choose your actions – and your attitude – remains.
It Begins With Responsibility
First, one must assume all responsibility for everything that's happened or has failed to happen to them. Once you adopt this as a philosophy for governing your life, you become empowered.
You see that you and you alone decide your future through the choices you make. This philosophy is the key to unlocking your potential as by doing so you not only assume responsibility, but also control of everything in your life.
Successful people choose to learn from adversity and allow it to make them stronger, while weaker people use adversity as a crutch to blame their failures on. Yes, bad things may happen to you that appear to be beyond your control (developing testicular cancer was one such occurrence for me) and you may not always be able to control those instances.
But you can always control how you react to them. You can see them as learning experiences and opportunities to grow into something better, or you can use them as excuses that will ultimately hold you back from reaching your true potential and lead you down a path to mediocrity or worse.
Believing that my choices directly affect the quality of my life has allowed me to fight through much adversity. As a child, I was surrounded by drinking and drug use and could've easily gone down that path, but I also had many goals.
From a very young age I knew that these negative things that surrounded me would only prevent me from achieving what I really wanted. I made a conscious decision, a choice, to avoid them.
I also grew up poor, in an area that was rife with poverty, and was led to believe that wealthy people were somehow privileged and that their success was due to some inherent advantages that I didn't have access to. Yet as I matured, I noticed that the harder a person worked, the more successful they were, and usually, successful people just worked harder than less successful people. This relationship between hardwork and success not only applied to economics, but also athletics and scholastics.
The Greatest Success Factor
There are many other factors that play into success, but I believe the single most important factor is hard work. There's no disputing that hard work is a choice that anyone can make, but as you might've guessed or experienced, hard work is difficult.
Many would rather make excuses or blame others instead of simply admitting that their lives are substandard because they've chosen the path of least resistance.
Similarly, it's also much easier to temporarily escape your problems with alcohol or drugs than it is to get to work solving them, and as such, the temptation to self-medicate is too much for many to resist. In either case, it's choosing the path that presents the least challenge and the results will usually speak for themselves.
I've been through some difficult situations I'd very much like to forget. I've had to wrestle a loaded gun away from the head of a loved one to prevent a suicide.
I've had to go out into the woods in the dead of winter to break up branches because there wasn't enough money to buy firewood to heat our home.
I've had to sit helpless in the passenger seat of a car while it careens at eighty-plus miles per hour down a dirt road with the driver so drunk, he had no memory of it the next day.
I experienced all those things during my adolescence, and honestly, these are far from the most difficult things I've had to deal with.
I know what it's like to contemplate suicide because my problems seemed so insurmountable. I felt completely alone in the world, just me and demons, and the only thing I desired was for the pain to stop. I've felt all this on the inside and yet had to walk through life presenting myself as if nothing was wrong.
I used to hate when people would ask me, "How are you?" Even though I knew the question was just a rhetorical greeting, it bothered me that I had to put on a fake smile and lie, answering "Good, how are you?" when I really wanted to reply, "Well, things are so dark and horrible right now that I was just contemplating killing myself."
Adversity Makes You Stronger
I'm not sharing these things looking for sympathy or pity. I loathe pity, and there are many out there that have had much more difficult lives than I have. I only share these experiences so that others going through tough times can see that anything is possible if you're willing to work hard enough and persevere when things are at their worst.
I can say with total honesty that I feel fortunate to have experienced all the negative things that I have. Adversity makes us stronger.
Every time you overcome something difficult it makes the next challenge that much easier. My biggest fear with my own children is that their lives are too easy and that they'll have a very hard time coping with difficult things in life when they inevitably arise.
I could've easily used any of my experiences as excuses for not achieving anything, as so many often do. Instead, I chose to learn from what I went through and make myself a better, stronger person. I chose to use what I observed to make better choices and build the kind of life I really wanted.
And even in my darkest times, when it seemed like there were no answers to my problems, I made the choice to never take the path of least resistance. You can do the same.
So choose to not to be a product of your environment, but rather a product of your desires. While I can't promise you that it will be easy (it most certainly won't), I can promise you that it'll be worth it.
by Matt "Kroc" Kroczaleski – 9/28/2011
People love to say how someone is a "product of his or her environment."
Often it's apologist jargon reserved for when someone does something wrong or commits a crime. It suggests the accused had no choice other than to become what their environment led them to be. To put it bluntly, I don't agree with this line of thinking.
If this were true I would've dropped out of high school, gotten into drugs, and become a full-fledged alcoholic. I never would've accomplished anything and blamed everyone and everything else for my failures.
To be fair, I'm not saying that your environment has no effect on you whatsoever. I'm merely stating that everything in life boils down to choice, and the power to choose lies within the individual. Certain situations may increase the difficulty of the choice, but the freedom to choose your actions – and your attitude – remains.
It Begins With Responsibility
First, one must assume all responsibility for everything that's happened or has failed to happen to them. Once you adopt this as a philosophy for governing your life, you become empowered.
You see that you and you alone decide your future through the choices you make. This philosophy is the key to unlocking your potential as by doing so you not only assume responsibility, but also control of everything in your life.
Successful people choose to learn from adversity and allow it to make them stronger, while weaker people use adversity as a crutch to blame their failures on. Yes, bad things may happen to you that appear to be beyond your control (developing testicular cancer was one such occurrence for me) and you may not always be able to control those instances.
But you can always control how you react to them. You can see them as learning experiences and opportunities to grow into something better, or you can use them as excuses that will ultimately hold you back from reaching your true potential and lead you down a path to mediocrity or worse.
Believing that my choices directly affect the quality of my life has allowed me to fight through much adversity. As a child, I was surrounded by drinking and drug use and could've easily gone down that path, but I also had many goals.
From a very young age I knew that these negative things that surrounded me would only prevent me from achieving what I really wanted. I made a conscious decision, a choice, to avoid them.
I also grew up poor, in an area that was rife with poverty, and was led to believe that wealthy people were somehow privileged and that their success was due to some inherent advantages that I didn't have access to. Yet as I matured, I noticed that the harder a person worked, the more successful they were, and usually, successful people just worked harder than less successful people. This relationship between hardwork and success not only applied to economics, but also athletics and scholastics.
The Greatest Success Factor
There are many other factors that play into success, but I believe the single most important factor is hard work. There's no disputing that hard work is a choice that anyone can make, but as you might've guessed or experienced, hard work is difficult.
Many would rather make excuses or blame others instead of simply admitting that their lives are substandard because they've chosen the path of least resistance.
Similarly, it's also much easier to temporarily escape your problems with alcohol or drugs than it is to get to work solving them, and as such, the temptation to self-medicate is too much for many to resist. In either case, it's choosing the path that presents the least challenge and the results will usually speak for themselves.
I've been through some difficult situations I'd very much like to forget. I've had to wrestle a loaded gun away from the head of a loved one to prevent a suicide.
I've had to go out into the woods in the dead of winter to break up branches because there wasn't enough money to buy firewood to heat our home.
I've had to sit helpless in the passenger seat of a car while it careens at eighty-plus miles per hour down a dirt road with the driver so drunk, he had no memory of it the next day.
I experienced all those things during my adolescence, and honestly, these are far from the most difficult things I've had to deal with.
I know what it's like to contemplate suicide because my problems seemed so insurmountable. I felt completely alone in the world, just me and demons, and the only thing I desired was for the pain to stop. I've felt all this on the inside and yet had to walk through life presenting myself as if nothing was wrong.
I used to hate when people would ask me, "How are you?" Even though I knew the question was just a rhetorical greeting, it bothered me that I had to put on a fake smile and lie, answering "Good, how are you?" when I really wanted to reply, "Well, things are so dark and horrible right now that I was just contemplating killing myself."
Adversity Makes You Stronger
I'm not sharing these things looking for sympathy or pity. I loathe pity, and there are many out there that have had much more difficult lives than I have. I only share these experiences so that others going through tough times can see that anything is possible if you're willing to work hard enough and persevere when things are at their worst.
I can say with total honesty that I feel fortunate to have experienced all the negative things that I have. Adversity makes us stronger.
Every time you overcome something difficult it makes the next challenge that much easier. My biggest fear with my own children is that their lives are too easy and that they'll have a very hard time coping with difficult things in life when they inevitably arise.
I could've easily used any of my experiences as excuses for not achieving anything, as so many often do. Instead, I chose to learn from what I went through and make myself a better, stronger person. I chose to use what I observed to make better choices and build the kind of life I really wanted.
And even in my darkest times, when it seemed like there were no answers to my problems, I made the choice to never take the path of least resistance. You can do the same.
So choose to not to be a product of your environment, but rather a product of your desires. While I can't promise you that it will be easy (it most certainly won't), I can promise you that it'll be worth it.
Straightforward Knee Rehab
Straightforward Knee Rehab
For years, it's been the same story. Nervous excitement fills your every muscle fiber as you read the latest program offered to you for free at T NATION. "I can't wait to try this out at the gym tonight" you say, and tonight can't come fast enough.
But it always ends the same. You, sitting on the bench, massaging your aching knees. Every time this happens you believe that soon it will "fix itself." But it never will.
Fact is, few injuries are as debilitating as knee pain. There are solutions out there for nearly every other problem. Barbell benching rough on the shoulders? Try using dumbbells. Tweak your back deadlifting? Do some front squats, hip thrusts, and reverse hypers. But knee pain? There's always changing leg day to next Tuesday, or the Tuesday after that.
Differentiating Pain
Most T NATION readers are smart enough to know the difference between simple knee pain and discomfort and something severely wrong. The latter can't be treated over the Internet, but in many ways, you're almost better off with a Joe Theismann-esque lower leg injury requiring an operating table and getting your flesh mutilated with sharp metal objects. In such a scenario you know what the problem is and you know the path to rehabilitation.
But for those with everyday aches and pains, do you really ever know what's wrong? Better yet, does your doctor? Once interior damage is ruled out, it's a guessing game.
What are the common sources of chronic knee pain, what's the difference, and how are they treated? Most importantly, what's causing your pain?
Patellar Tendonitis
Patellar tendonitis is acute (short term) inflammation of the patellar tendon, which is formed from the quadriceps tendon. It usually gets aggravated after an intense bout of exercise. If you were playing basketball, you'd have a concentrated ache below the knee post game. Easily fixable with rest and ice.
Patellar Tendonosis
Tendonosis is a more severe form of tendonitis. By fighting through the acute bouts of discomfort, the pain can become a chronic (long term) issue in which the tissue degrades over time.
Unlike tendonitis, the pain nestles above the knee cap, usually in the quadriceps tendon area. If you were playing basketball you'd be in pain before the game started. You'd need extra time to get the juices flowing and probably would be sporting a brace or wrap during the game.
Ironically, both of these conditions improve when blood is pumping to the area. For most high paced team sports, the constant moving will dull the pain. But when the legs are called on for high force contractions, pain increases. This usually makes lifting weights unbearable.
Patellar Mistracking
Mistracking is a confusing and misunderstood phenomenon. A few years back, it was said to be caused by a muscular imbalance between the vastus medialis oblique (VMO) and vastus lateralis, causing an uneven pull on the kneecap. Efforts were directed at strengthening the VMO.
Two common exercises were terminal knee extensions and Peterson step-ups:
Terminal knee extensions are performed with a band tied around an immovable post and then looped behind the knee cap. The knee is then slightly flexed and fully extended, with the focus on contracting the quadriceps.
Peterson step ups are similar, only the resistance was provided by stepping onto a slightly elevated platform. Both target the top half of knee extension.
There's research emerging, however, saying that the VMO might not be as important as once believed. A 2009 meta-analysis found that preferentially activating the VMO doesn't really happen, and these results were congruent with another meta-analysis in 2008.
Regardless, if fixing knee pain is all about fixing the VMO, and fixing the VMO is as easy as a few sets of terminal knee extensions, then how come knee pain is still so prevalent?
The Fundamental Flaw
Popular knee pain theories focus on the knee itself, specifically the patellar tendon. After all, as the saying goes, where there's smoke, there's fire. Since the quadriceps join to form the quadriceps tendon, which becomes the patellar tendon, they're a focal point for rehabilitation.
That's why the VMO theory exists. That's why people drag sleds backwards. That's why people do slow eccentric squats. That's why people do leg extensions. That's why people still have knee pain.
Chad Waterbury recommended the use of a neutral grip for performing high-frequency pull-ups here as various elbow and shoulder injuries can result from the frequent use of pronated and supinated grips. In other words, the position of the wrists can influence elbow and shoulder health.
So if you embark on a quest of doing 100 chin-ups (supinated grip) per day and get elbow tendonitis, elbow specific rehab isn't going to fix you. Instead, you need to change your wrist positioning during chin-ups.
It's similar with the knee. A hip or foot that's out of whack causes a kink in the chain. The knee, being the middle man, is at the mercy of their functioning. It's not so much a problem with the quadriceps or its tissues. It's that a bad hip or a bad foot is forcing those structures to work more than they're supposed to.
Here are three practical tips that can be implemented immediately.
High Volume Hips
If squats are making tears dribble down your face, a few months without them isn't going to kill you or force you to wear sweats in the summer to conceal your chicken legs.
It may not even require ditching all squats, but it could. It might even mean deadlifts. You have to get rid of the exercises that cause pain, at least for a while. Even if they only hurt "a little bit." They shouldn't hurt at all.
Find the lower body exercises that can sustain your psyche for the next few months. It might be good mornings, Prowler pushes, sled drags, whatever. As long as your knees feel good when doing them.
Next, crush – and I mean crush – your glutes with an absurd amount of joint-friendly volume. They are the largest (and, might I say, most visually appealing) muscle in the entire body.
Those with knee pain lack hip control, which means that the knee ends up doing many of the things the hip should. Developing control starts with creating an intense mind-muscle connection with the glutes. Doing terminal knee extensions and the like hurt you more than help you because they only reinforce the duty of the quadriceps to override the hips.
So pick a bodyweight exercise that gives you the best glute burn. Glute bridges, hip thrusts, bird dogs, back extensions, and reverse hypers are good choices. The only rule is that your glutes power the movement. If you pick reverse hypers and your lower back is burning out, pick a different exercise. Aim for a minimum of 100 repetitions per day, topping out at 300 for those with the dedication.
The big question is, "When can I start to reincorporate squats?" The answer is whenever your mind-muscle connection borders obsession. If you're not feeling your glutes when you walk up steps, get in and out of your car, and stand up from the toilet, you're not quite "there." And when you get "there," make sure your glutes control the movements that used to evoke pain.
This means starting over. Master your bodyweight before moving onto a barbell. Chances are you weren't close to breaking a world record, getting sponsored, or winning a gold medal so it's all good.
Track Your Knee Over Your Second Toe
The knee is a hinge joint, kind of like a pair of scissors. If you open and close them in one direction all is well. But if you twist the handles, you can hear the blades grind against each other.
Altering the natural hinging groove is a big reason why people have noisy, crackling, crepitus-filled knees. To prevent it, you have to minimize lateral movement of the knee under an external load.
Most people are aware of the dangers that are associated with the knees collapsing inward during a squat. But not many people seem to be concerned with the other extreme – knees too far outward. The truth is that each position comes with unwanted baggage.
The foot has three bony protuberances that are the foundation for balance. Together, they form what's known as the tripod. When the weight is too far inside or outside of the tripod (as with knees too far in or too far out), it inhibits the ability of the hips to do their job. This is crucial for a healthy functioning lower body.
The ideal relationship during any standing exercise is that the knee tracks over the second/third toe. If it's there, your weight has to be centered over the tripod, which allows for maximum hip involvement. Shoving your knees to the outside is great if you're having trouble with them caving in. Otherwise, you're just creating more problems.
Destroy Your Rectus Femoris
If I had to pick one muscle that was responsible for knee pain it would be the rectus femoris. Not because of any crazy muscular imbalances, but because we sit down so damn much. You live in hip and knee flexion. The lucky rectus femoris crosses both the hip and knee so it gets shafted from top to bottom.
To fix it, simply smash it with soft tissue and flexibility work. Throw away your foam roller and bring out the lacrosse ball. Work the length of the rectus femoris with small up-down-back-forth motions. Repeatedly flex the knee when you have a sensitive area trapped.
Don't be predictable. Soft tissue work is kind of like combing your hair. The knots untangle in one or two strokes if you always go in the same direction, but as soon as you comb against the grain there's a host of knots that you wouldn't have noticed otherwise. Target an area and hit it from all angles.
As for flexibility, you need a stretch that gets you in hip extension and knee flexion. Some may recognize this as the wall stretch, but I'm going to give you a little secret: don't do it against a wall. Instead, find a bench or chair; something that you can shove your knee under.
Once you're in position, follow these three steps for the leg that's elevated on the bench.
First, squeeze the glute. Second, tilt the pelvis forward and up. This may be a bit confusing, so just think of having the posterior pelvic tilting posture of a nerd. This is to safeguard you from going into an anterior tilt, which reduces the effectiveness of the stretch. Third, try getting your glute to your heel.
Hold as long as tolerable, but amass 2-3 minutes per leg. It's going to be painful, so do it as a cool down. Once comfortable, feel free to turn, twist, and reach for a more intense stretch.
Wrap Up
If you suffer from knee pain you're a different animal. You can't follow the same rules as everyone else. You have to change the game. These three tips just scratch the surface of helpful things you can do to feel young again. Use them as your foundation.
My last recommendation would be to clean up your diet a bit and avoid processed things as they encourage inflammation. Take a quality fish oil and trust in the process. See how you feel after a month or two. My guess is much better than how you feel right now.
For years, it's been the same story. Nervous excitement fills your every muscle fiber as you read the latest program offered to you for free at T NATION. "I can't wait to try this out at the gym tonight" you say, and tonight can't come fast enough.
But it always ends the same. You, sitting on the bench, massaging your aching knees. Every time this happens you believe that soon it will "fix itself." But it never will.
Fact is, few injuries are as debilitating as knee pain. There are solutions out there for nearly every other problem. Barbell benching rough on the shoulders? Try using dumbbells. Tweak your back deadlifting? Do some front squats, hip thrusts, and reverse hypers. But knee pain? There's always changing leg day to next Tuesday, or the Tuesday after that.
Differentiating Pain
Most T NATION readers are smart enough to know the difference between simple knee pain and discomfort and something severely wrong. The latter can't be treated over the Internet, but in many ways, you're almost better off with a Joe Theismann-esque lower leg injury requiring an operating table and getting your flesh mutilated with sharp metal objects. In such a scenario you know what the problem is and you know the path to rehabilitation.
But for those with everyday aches and pains, do you really ever know what's wrong? Better yet, does your doctor? Once interior damage is ruled out, it's a guessing game.
What are the common sources of chronic knee pain, what's the difference, and how are they treated? Most importantly, what's causing your pain?
Patellar Tendonitis
Patellar tendonitis is acute (short term) inflammation of the patellar tendon, which is formed from the quadriceps tendon. It usually gets aggravated after an intense bout of exercise. If you were playing basketball, you'd have a concentrated ache below the knee post game. Easily fixable with rest and ice.
Patellar Tendonosis
Tendonosis is a more severe form of tendonitis. By fighting through the acute bouts of discomfort, the pain can become a chronic (long term) issue in which the tissue degrades over time.
Unlike tendonitis, the pain nestles above the knee cap, usually in the quadriceps tendon area. If you were playing basketball you'd be in pain before the game started. You'd need extra time to get the juices flowing and probably would be sporting a brace or wrap during the game.
Ironically, both of these conditions improve when blood is pumping to the area. For most high paced team sports, the constant moving will dull the pain. But when the legs are called on for high force contractions, pain increases. This usually makes lifting weights unbearable.
Patellar Mistracking
Mistracking is a confusing and misunderstood phenomenon. A few years back, it was said to be caused by a muscular imbalance between the vastus medialis oblique (VMO) and vastus lateralis, causing an uneven pull on the kneecap. Efforts were directed at strengthening the VMO.
Two common exercises were terminal knee extensions and Peterson step-ups:
Terminal knee extensions are performed with a band tied around an immovable post and then looped behind the knee cap. The knee is then slightly flexed and fully extended, with the focus on contracting the quadriceps.
Peterson step ups are similar, only the resistance was provided by stepping onto a slightly elevated platform. Both target the top half of knee extension.
There's research emerging, however, saying that the VMO might not be as important as once believed. A 2009 meta-analysis found that preferentially activating the VMO doesn't really happen, and these results were congruent with another meta-analysis in 2008.
Regardless, if fixing knee pain is all about fixing the VMO, and fixing the VMO is as easy as a few sets of terminal knee extensions, then how come knee pain is still so prevalent?
The Fundamental Flaw
Popular knee pain theories focus on the knee itself, specifically the patellar tendon. After all, as the saying goes, where there's smoke, there's fire. Since the quadriceps join to form the quadriceps tendon, which becomes the patellar tendon, they're a focal point for rehabilitation.
That's why the VMO theory exists. That's why people drag sleds backwards. That's why people do slow eccentric squats. That's why people do leg extensions. That's why people still have knee pain.
Chad Waterbury recommended the use of a neutral grip for performing high-frequency pull-ups here as various elbow and shoulder injuries can result from the frequent use of pronated and supinated grips. In other words, the position of the wrists can influence elbow and shoulder health.
So if you embark on a quest of doing 100 chin-ups (supinated grip) per day and get elbow tendonitis, elbow specific rehab isn't going to fix you. Instead, you need to change your wrist positioning during chin-ups.
It's similar with the knee. A hip or foot that's out of whack causes a kink in the chain. The knee, being the middle man, is at the mercy of their functioning. It's not so much a problem with the quadriceps or its tissues. It's that a bad hip or a bad foot is forcing those structures to work more than they're supposed to.
Here are three practical tips that can be implemented immediately.
High Volume Hips
If squats are making tears dribble down your face, a few months without them isn't going to kill you or force you to wear sweats in the summer to conceal your chicken legs.
It may not even require ditching all squats, but it could. It might even mean deadlifts. You have to get rid of the exercises that cause pain, at least for a while. Even if they only hurt "a little bit." They shouldn't hurt at all.
Find the lower body exercises that can sustain your psyche for the next few months. It might be good mornings, Prowler pushes, sled drags, whatever. As long as your knees feel good when doing them.
Next, crush – and I mean crush – your glutes with an absurd amount of joint-friendly volume. They are the largest (and, might I say, most visually appealing) muscle in the entire body.
Those with knee pain lack hip control, which means that the knee ends up doing many of the things the hip should. Developing control starts with creating an intense mind-muscle connection with the glutes. Doing terminal knee extensions and the like hurt you more than help you because they only reinforce the duty of the quadriceps to override the hips.
So pick a bodyweight exercise that gives you the best glute burn. Glute bridges, hip thrusts, bird dogs, back extensions, and reverse hypers are good choices. The only rule is that your glutes power the movement. If you pick reverse hypers and your lower back is burning out, pick a different exercise. Aim for a minimum of 100 repetitions per day, topping out at 300 for those with the dedication.
The big question is, "When can I start to reincorporate squats?" The answer is whenever your mind-muscle connection borders obsession. If you're not feeling your glutes when you walk up steps, get in and out of your car, and stand up from the toilet, you're not quite "there." And when you get "there," make sure your glutes control the movements that used to evoke pain.
This means starting over. Master your bodyweight before moving onto a barbell. Chances are you weren't close to breaking a world record, getting sponsored, or winning a gold medal so it's all good.
Track Your Knee Over Your Second Toe
The knee is a hinge joint, kind of like a pair of scissors. If you open and close them in one direction all is well. But if you twist the handles, you can hear the blades grind against each other.
Altering the natural hinging groove is a big reason why people have noisy, crackling, crepitus-filled knees. To prevent it, you have to minimize lateral movement of the knee under an external load.
Most people are aware of the dangers that are associated with the knees collapsing inward during a squat. But not many people seem to be concerned with the other extreme – knees too far outward. The truth is that each position comes with unwanted baggage.
The foot has three bony protuberances that are the foundation for balance. Together, they form what's known as the tripod. When the weight is too far inside or outside of the tripod (as with knees too far in or too far out), it inhibits the ability of the hips to do their job. This is crucial for a healthy functioning lower body.
The ideal relationship during any standing exercise is that the knee tracks over the second/third toe. If it's there, your weight has to be centered over the tripod, which allows for maximum hip involvement. Shoving your knees to the outside is great if you're having trouble with them caving in. Otherwise, you're just creating more problems.
Destroy Your Rectus Femoris
If I had to pick one muscle that was responsible for knee pain it would be the rectus femoris. Not because of any crazy muscular imbalances, but because we sit down so damn much. You live in hip and knee flexion. The lucky rectus femoris crosses both the hip and knee so it gets shafted from top to bottom.
To fix it, simply smash it with soft tissue and flexibility work. Throw away your foam roller and bring out the lacrosse ball. Work the length of the rectus femoris with small up-down-back-forth motions. Repeatedly flex the knee when you have a sensitive area trapped.
Don't be predictable. Soft tissue work is kind of like combing your hair. The knots untangle in one or two strokes if you always go in the same direction, but as soon as you comb against the grain there's a host of knots that you wouldn't have noticed otherwise. Target an area and hit it from all angles.
As for flexibility, you need a stretch that gets you in hip extension and knee flexion. Some may recognize this as the wall stretch, but I'm going to give you a little secret: don't do it against a wall. Instead, find a bench or chair; something that you can shove your knee under.
Once you're in position, follow these three steps for the leg that's elevated on the bench.
First, squeeze the glute. Second, tilt the pelvis forward and up. This may be a bit confusing, so just think of having the posterior pelvic tilting posture of a nerd. This is to safeguard you from going into an anterior tilt, which reduces the effectiveness of the stretch. Third, try getting your glute to your heel.
Hold as long as tolerable, but amass 2-3 minutes per leg. It's going to be painful, so do it as a cool down. Once comfortable, feel free to turn, twist, and reach for a more intense stretch.
Wrap Up
If you suffer from knee pain you're a different animal. You can't follow the same rules as everyone else. You have to change the game. These three tips just scratch the surface of helpful things you can do to feel young again. Use them as your foundation.
My last recommendation would be to clean up your diet a bit and avoid processed things as they encourage inflammation. Take a quality fish oil and trust in the process. See how you feel after a month or two. My guess is much better than how you feel right now.
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