Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Tips from Olympians

Pillar 1: Set Clear Goals

Olympic gold? That's probably not in the cards. But a best-ever bench press, or completing a half marathon, or losing 20 pounds? Those could happen. Your first step, as it was for Usain Bolt, is to state your goal. Tell your wife, your training partner, your dentist—someone who will remember it and hold you accountable. And hold yourself accountable. Write your goal down and post it on your refrigerator. Going public with your goal creates the kind of contract that's hard (and embarrassing) to break.

The difference between a goal and a daydream is whether you take action to achieve it. So your second step is to give yourself a deadline and count backward from there to come up with incremental benchmarks. Or count forward from where you are now.

Third step: Create a program to achieve both the incremental goals and the grand prize. "My coach, Glen Mills, splits the season into cycles with specific goals," Bolt says. "Then he breaks down the cycles by the week and by the day, with each unit having its own goal. There is a purpose to everything we do. Each session we know what we want to accomplish."

It's an approach approved by Martin Rooney, P.T., C.S.C.S., creator of Training for Warriors. "I have every client write down goals. Your goals become your 'why,' and if that's powerful enough, you will figure out a 'how.' " Set monthly goals for body-fat percentage, strength, and performance, with weekly checkups to see how you're progressing.

Pillar 2: Upgrade Your Workout

You probably don't have a cadre of coaches armed with camcorders and calipers, stopwatches and syringes to analyze your every move. And luckily, you don't need that kind of prodding and poking to tell if your routine is working. Just take this quiz, formulated by MH's dream team: Craig Ballantyne, C.S.C.S., creator of Turbulence Training in Toronto; Joe Dowdell, C.S.C.S., founder of Peak Performance in New York City; and Nick Tumminello, a strength coach in Boca Raton, Florida.

Does your workout feel like forced labor?


NO, IT'S THE HIGHLIGHT OF MY DAY = 15
YES, BUT ISN'T THAT THE POINT? = 10
SOMETIMES = 5

You won't achieve your goals if you're averse to hard work. You don't have to love it, but you have to understand that it's a key to success. Not psyched to sweat? Make one of these adjustments.

CHANGE YOUR PROGRAM
Ask a buddy for his favorite workout. Or buy a book—we like MH's Huge in a Hurry—and follow the program for at least 3 months. You can also take a class to learn a new sport or to reach a higher level at something you enjoy.

CHANGE YOUR ENVIRONMENT
If you work out at home, join a gym. If you don't like your gym, join a different one. If you're indoors, try training outdoors.

COUNT YOUR WORKOUTS
Give yourself weekly, monthly, and quarterly goals for total number of workouts. Make the number ambitious and the totals nonnegotiable, with rewards for reaching them and penalties for falling short.

Does your warmup make you sweat?


YES = 10
A LITTLE = 5
ONLY IF THE A.C. IS DEAD =-5

Your warmup should take 10 to 20 minutes, progressing from slow, easy movements to drills that test your power, balance, coordination, and range of motion. You can start with a couple of minutes of foam rolling for your major muscles, focusing on areas where you're typically tight or frequently injured. Proceed to basic movements like body-weight squats, lunges, and pushups. Follow that with more ballistic movements, like forward and side-to-side hops and jumps, and then finish with power movements, like skips, shuttle runs, and box jumps.

Are your muscles sore the day after your workout?


ALMOST ALWAYS = 10
RARELY = 5
ONLY IF I DROP SOMETHING ON ONE OF THEM = 0

Technically, soreness just means you did something your muscles weren't prepared for. It's not directly linked to muscle growth or improved strength. But if you're pushing yourself, you're probably going to feel it the next day. A muscle might feel a little tender or maybe just a bit heavier than it did before the workout. If you're so sore it hurts to lie down in bed, you'll know you took it too far. And if the pain is in your joints rather than your muscles, you may have done something wrong.

How often do you change exercises, sets, and reps?


EVERY 3 TO 4 WEEKS = 15
WHEN IT STOPS WORKING = 10
ONCE EVERY PRESIDENTIAL ADMINISTRATION = 0

If you're a beginner, you can probably stick with the same workout for up to 8 weeks and continue to grow stronger while mastering the basic exercises. But once you're beyond that stage, you should change your workout every 3 to 4 weeks. That doesn't mean dropping one program and picking up another that may have been designed for a completely different purpose. You simply want to freshen up your routine by subbing in new exercises, changing the order, increasing or decreasing the total weight lifted, raising or lowering reps, or some combination of those four.

Are you nearing your goals?


YES = 20
NO = 0
GOALS? = *5

You need to identify benchmarks that prove you're making progress. If your goal is weight loss, you need to know two things. First, are you losing weight? The answer is easy if you weigh yourself at the same time every day. (First thing in the morning is best.) You also need to know you're losing fat and not muscle. Measure your waist at least once a week, and the circumference of your upper arms, thighs, and calves once a month. If your waist shrinks but your arms and legs stay the same, you're losing the right kind of weight.

How long can you hold a plank?


UNTIL TOMORROW = 20
30 TO 60 SECONDS = 10
LESS THAN 30 SECONDS = 0

Stability of your core muscles—a marker of their endurance, strength, and coordination—is crucial for maintaining good posture, training effectively, and remaining pain-free.

Score Your workout:


60+ = Rocks!
30–59 = Needs a tuneup!
<30 = Is junk!


Pillar 3: Eat to Win

At the Beijing Olympics, Ryan Lochte picked up a stomach bug. So to play it safe, he ate every subsequent meal at McDonald's. By the end of the Games, he'd gained 13 pounds of fat, despite burning 6,000-plus calories a day. If you ever needed proof that you can't outtrain a bad diet, this is it. "I watch what I eat much more closely now," Lochte says. "If my abs start to disappear, I tweak my diet."

Research shows that many of us overestimate the number of calories we burn during exercise. For instance, in a 2010 University of Ottawa study, people who walked briskly for 30 to 45 minutes thought they'd burned at least 825 calories—three to four times the actual amount. They subsequently overindulged by 300 to 350 calories.

The point of exercise, of course, is to end up with a net energy deficit. That is, you want to burn more calories over each 24-hour period than you consume. But a long list of hormones and metabolic processes make that surprisingly difficult to pull off. Hunger, to our everlasting frustration, is an unreliable guide to how much energy the human body really needs.

If weight control is an issue, use a three-step process to figure out how much you're eating, how much you should be eating, and which times and circumstances are the most likely for imbalances to occur.

Step 1 is easy to describe, but difficult to pull off: Keep track of everything you eat—seriously, every bite—for at least 3 days. To figure out total calories and tally your daily average, use an app (try Lose It!) or an online calculator (try fitday.com). This drill works only if it includes typical workout and nonworkout days.

Step 2 is to estimate the calories you actually need. MH nutrition advisor Alan Aragon recommends this formula.


Don't work out? Multiply your body weight by 10. If you weigh 200 pounds, that's 2,000 calories a day.
Work out once or twice a week? Multiply your weight by 12. That's 2,400 calories for a 200-pound person.
Work out three or four times a week? Multiply by 14. Now we're up to 2,800 calories.
Work out five or more times a week? Multiply by 16, bringing the daily feast up to 3,200 calories.

These are just estimates, Aragon says. Human metabolism is notoriously resistant to simple math. But we need to start somewhere, and Aragon's formula allows you to focus on how much you eat and burn in an average 24-hour day. This determines whether you end up with more body fat or less.

That brings us to Step 3: Figure out when, where, and how you can tweak your daily calories to create a bigger deficit.

The timing of your meals matters, but not for the reason you think. "Your nutrient timing should be personalized to whatever maximizes your training or doesn't hinder it," Aragon says. Training on an empty stomach might work for your buddy, but if hunger pangs derail your workout, you're better off with a light meal before hitting the gym.

That applies to postworkout nutrition as well. Aragon says that while short-term studies find that protein and carbs increase markers of muscle protein production, recent long-term research suggests that making sure you meet your daily needs for protein, fat, and carbs will benefit you more than a postworkout meal or protein shake. Of course, you can also do both!

Pillar 4: Target Weaknesses

"If you work only on what you're good at, you may get good," says Rooney. "But if you work on what you're not good at and make that good too, you can become great." This strategy improves performance and helps prevent injuries.

Exhibit A: Bolt. "I started working with Coach Mills in 2004, when I failed to qualify for the finals in the 200 meter at the Athens Olympics," Bolt says. "Glen rebuilt me from the ground up." Back then, Mills saw in Bolt a gifted but flawed athlete. Bolt's height, the attribute that now seems his greatest asset, was slowing him down. He was imbalanced, Mills observed, running behind his center of gravity. He also suffered frequent hamstring injuries. Mills realized that both problems could be addressed by building Bolt's strength, which helped him increase his stride length and maintain his maximum velocity. Longer strides would help him use his height advantage but only if his feet could hit and leave the ground as fast as his competitors'. The combination has made him unbeatable: At the 2009 world championships in Berlin, Bolt covered 100 meters in 41 strides, compared with 45 for his rivals—and set a new world record.

Exhibit B: Hardee. He excelled at sprinting and jumping in college, but struggled in the three throwing events of the decathlon: javelin, discus, and shot. Working with his coaches, he recalibrated his training. "It's a combo of core work and explosive movement-specific drills," Hardee says. "Plus, I was sharpening my technique for each throw and watching video." Two world championships later, it's safe to say it worked.

So how will you upgrade your own training? Rooney suggests making a list of your three weakest areas. These could be exercises, like deadlifts or pullups for a lifter, or sport-specific skills, like climbing for a cyclist. Or they could be overall fitness qualities like flexibility, or specific injury-prone muscles or joints. Seek guidance from a trainer to learn how to fix your weak areas, and track your progress with tests every 4 weeks.

If you find that a weak core is on your list of problems to fix, here's a solution, courtesy of Ballantyne: It's called 5-Minute Abs.

Do these exercises as a circuit; when you can complete three, your core is no longer a weakness.


1 Swiss-ball plank: (with your forearms on the ball) 30 seconds
2 Swiss-ball jackknife: (hands on the floor, shins on the ball; use your lower legs to roll the ball toward your torso while keeping your back flat) 20 reps
3 Swiss-ball rollout: (with forearms on the ball and feet on the floor, roll the ball forward as far as you can while keeping your body in a straight line) 12 reps
4 Side plank: 40 seconds a side
Pillar 5: Cross Train
Most Sunday afternoons in the off-season you'll find Lochte flipping tires and dragging a 450-pound chain with Matt DeLancey, the strength and conditioning coach for Olympic sports at the University of Florida. It might seem like an odd approach, but DeLancey says the strongman-inspired regimen gave Lochte the power to set a world record in the 200-meter individual medley in 2011. Our elites also mix it up: For instance, Hardee paddleboards, which improves both balance and core endurance.

Your strategies: Add an activity that mixes exercise with social contact so you're more motivated, says David Jack, performance coach and director for Teamworks Fitness in Acton, Massachusetts. He recommends hoops or flag football. "You'll boost your cardio, hone coordination, and make friends."

Sign up for a charity walk, run, or ride; it'll improve your fitness and contribute to a worthy cause.

Take a week off every 12 weeks and do yoga. You'll tune up your balance, flexibility, and core.

Pillar 6: Make Your Mojo
Before his final pole vault attempt in the 2008 Olympics, Hardee felt emotionally empty. He was in fourth place, with a chance to medal. He just needed to clear the bar. He didn't, leaving himself with a goose egg. He vowed never to be caught emotionally unprepared again. To elevate his mood, he listens to the same mix of songs by the Strokes while he's waiting to compete. He also visualizes each event.

Mental prep can help you, too. "Think of imagery as a skill, and practice every day for several minutes," says Robert S. Weinberg, Ph.D., a professor of kinesiology at Miami University in Ohio. "Focus on sounds, smell, and feel. The more senses, the better." Researchers believe imagery trains your muscle memory. When done before a specific movement, it prepares your body with small but beneficial neuromuscular adjustments. So there you have it: A mind-body plan to put yourself on top of the podium. Now, isn't that a great image?

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