Saturday 14 June 2014

Squatting

I have removed heavy back squats from my routine. "Why?" You might ask. "Isn't this the king of all exercises?" The problem of heavy back squats is that they take away more than they give. Yes they are undoubtedly the best strength building exercise there is out there... if your goal is one rep maximum strength. However for functional strength, which is what is important to the majority of people, the one-rep max back squat strength is largely irrelevant.

Instead - I have found that all the best bits with minimal drawbacks can be achieved with goblet squats and high repetition back squats. If you have to do heavy squats for low reps - do front squats. This exercise engages the anterior core muscles (the muscles on the front of your body) and the posterior muscles in your upper back. The front squat, for heavy lifting, is a far superior exercise if functional strength is your interest.

Goblet squats are really the ultimate beginner exercise for squatting. It is the foundation. It is for this reason that it should continually be revisited throughout your life. Anybody can learn how to goblet squat. Just the other day my friend who has recently started lifting weights is now knocking out perfect goblet squat form on only his third gym session. This is the beauty of the exercise. The goblet squat forces you to use your core to a great degree, a heavy dumbell or kettlebell feels like twice as heavy. Doing goblet squats with 40kg feels as hard as doing back squats with 80kg. I firmly believe that the goblet squat offers the greatest functional benefit of all the squatting variants.

High repetition back squats are different to heavy back squats. By high rep I mean anything over 10 reps. Usually this is in the region of 20-30 but can be up to 50 reps. The weight used is comparatively lighter and as a result it is easier to maintain good form. I have found that this is an excellent exercise to do at the end of a session. The time under load is the secret benefit of the high rep back squat. It simply builds muscle. It is cardio intensive and a single set can take minutes. It's not uncommon to struggle to walk immediately after a set of high rep back squats. If you want to develop grit, throw in a set or two of high rep back squats at the end of your session. 

The goblet squat fits well into the warmup. A complex which I have used extensively and benefited from goes as follows:

8x swings
8x presses
8x goblet squats

6x swings
6x presses
6x goblet squats

4x swings
4x presses
4x goblet squats

This can be just a warmup, or it can be a workout. For a warmup I use a single 16kg kettlebell. This means that I do 8 swings on my left hand and then 8 on my right, and so on with the presses. The same complex can be done with two kettlebells. I have worked up to doing this with two 24kg kettlebells and it is a fantastic workout. Deadlifts done after this complex compliment it well.

Putting it all together a brutal workout for all around functional strength might look something like this:

The complex workout with a single 24kg kettlebell
Deadlift - building up to a couple of heavy sets of 5. I might do 130kg and then 140kg for 5 reps each.
High rep back squats, one set of 30 with 60kg.
Stretch.
Go home.

Saturday 21 December 2013

Where did they go?

I work for a company called Delphi Diesel Systems, you might know them by their former name: Lucas. All the way back in 1996 Lucas Industries merged with a company called the Varity Corporation (Americans). The new business was called LucasVarity.

In true American fashion the company tried to relocate the HQ to the states, to the uproar of the 46,000 british employees and the relentless media. Ultimately the shareholders voted against the move - perhaps directors can learn from this, that underlying all companies are people not automatons.

In 1999 the company was sold to TRW, another American company, who started splitting up LucasVarity's different divisions and selling them off.

So, where did the famous Lucas companies end up, then?


Division Current Owner Year Sold
Lucas Aerospace Goodrich Corporation 2002
Light Vehicle Braking System TRW Automotive 2002
Heavy Vehicle Braking System ArvinMeritor 1999
Lucas Diesel Systems Delphi 2000
VarityPerkins (Diesel Engines) Perkins Engines Company Limited(subsidiary to Caterpillar, Inc.) 1998
Electronic & Electrical Systems TRW Automotive & others 2002 & Various
Lucas Aftermarket Operations TRW, Delphi, Elta Lighting & ArvinMeritor 1996 to 2006



Saturday 3 September 2011

BOSS

Barbell Off-Season Strength for Rugby

1st Edition

Harry Munro


Specification:

Must Improve strength, power and muscle Mass. Benefits include increased acceleration, physicality, confidence and the ability to boss.

Must maintain or improve running fitness.

Analysis:

Training to increase strength, power and muscle mass is most easily accomplished using barbell lifts.

Training load must not be too high on the weights. Rugby players aren’t strength athletes, like weightlifters, and must be trained accordingly. Rugby players need to be able to move well, which leads to simultaneous lower risk of injury, and increased chance of winning. Moving well and strength training do not easily go hand in hand. Proprioception practice (controlling the movement of the body in space) should be conducted before and after training sessions, or ideally every day. The proprioception exercises serve a dual function of improving movement patterns and additionally providing core work for the trainee. Core work should not be performed in isolation, and should always include a degree of self limitation to it.

Weight training should not be based on bodybuilding. Gun polishing should be kept to a minimum or substituted appropriately. For example if one feels compelled to do bicep curls, take a logical intervention and do chin-ups instead. This will mould the beast just as well as curls and also provide additional upper back work. Think compound.

The program:

Barbell lifts: Squats, front squats, standing overhead press, power cleans, deadlift, pull-ups/chin-ups

Week 1

Monday

Squats 5x5

Overhead Press 5x5

Power clean 5x5

Deadlift 1x5

Tuesday

Hill Sprints

Wednesday

Squats or front squats 5x10

Chin-ups/pull-ups 5x10 or 5xreps

Power clean 5x5

Thursday

Longer slow run or cross training

Friday

Squats 5x1/2/3

Overhead press 5x1/2/3

Power clean 5x1

Saturday

Hill Sprints - 50% volume

Sunday

Day of rest

Week 2

Monday

Squats 5x5

Chin-ups/Pull-ups 5x5

Power clean 5x5

Deadlift 1x5

Tuesday

Cross training or longer run

Wednesday

Squats or front squats 5x10

Overhead press 5x10

Power Clean 5x5

Thursday

Hill Sprints

Friday

Squats 5x1/2/3

Chin-ups/Pull-ups 5x1/2/3

Power clean 5x5

Saturday

Cross-training or longer run - 50% effort

Sunday

Day of rest

Notes:

Pull-ups > chin-ups for general strength. Chin-ups > pull-ups for guns. Parallel grip = good compromise.

Conditioning – Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays

Hill sprints:

Find a steep hill or section of hill that takes anywhere from 8 to 15 seconds to sprint up. Sprint up it. Walk back down the hill without rest and sprint again. Perform five times to begin with and add a rep each session, don’t go overboard. You have been warned.

Cross training and Running

A longer run could be a mile, but keep the maximum to an hour or six miles. You aren’t training for a marathon here; too long runs will eat into your strength. As a rugby player you must find a balance and capping the runs at roughly 6 miles is a good place to start. Cross training could include anything that gets the heart rate up and keeps it there. A personal favourite is cycling or mountain biking. When riding the bike for a while ensure that the session is followed by hip flexor s

The cross training day is an opportunity to have fun and in the process get some conditioning in. It is a time to be creative. There are plenty of resources on the internet for rugby specific conditioning drills if that takes your fancy.

Tuesday and Thursdays: Hit them hard

Lazy Saturdays: Go 50%. Hill sprints half the number of sprints. Cross training and running either half the duration or drop the intensity (which shouldn’t be too high anyway). This is to help recovery over the weekend.

Nutrition

You will be hungry. Eat like a king. Lots of milk if it doesn’t make you shit like a baby. Brown rice, eggs, chicken, Burgen bread, peanut butter and jam sandwiches (get real peanut butter and 100% fruit jam with no sugar). Scrambled eggs on Burgen toast. Slather on the butter or even extra virgin olive oil if you are a person of expensive taste. Drink 100% whey protein shakes if you feel lazy or poor. Don’t forget lots of vegetables. Don’t eat sugar or white carbs like pasta, white bread or white rice. They are sugar in disguise. If you have takeaway pizza, go thin crust and have extra toppings.

For cooked meals try meat, legumes and veg. 1/3 of the plate for each.

Eat cholesterol, it’s been linked to testosterone production, you need testosterone. Butter is in, Benecol is out.

Technique: there are a lot of internet resources for technique. Crossfit.com contains a lot of instructional videos. Youtube is a good source of information. For literature start with “The Strongest Shall Survive” by Bill Starr. You will progress from there.

Rep Schemes

Mondays: Heavy and Hard. You will do five sets of five reps of each exercise with up to five minutes and at least two minutes rest between each set. The weight is to be ramped each set (that is, increased) so that the last set is very hard but can be completed with good form. The weight will have to be guess work at first. So if you are not sure, always be conservative and choose less than you think you can do. The upshot of a lighter than optimal weight is the bar will move faster so high power is still being developed. The downside of a weight too heavy is form breaks down which renders the exercise both ineffective with low power production and dangerous.

Why 5x5 with ramped weights rather than sets across with a constant weight? Sets across (using the same heavy weight for each set) are a fantastic method for rapidly increasing strength. However it comes at a cost of sapping all the energy from a trainee and leaving nothing in the tank. A proper 5x5 set of squats could take a week to recover from fully and the soreness experienced is like nothing else. This is contrary to the goals of a rugby player. Ramped weight is used to develop strength while leaving gas in the tank for other forms of training, and that shall be done.

For example on first day of training on Monday, squats could look like this for winger:

Warm-up empty bar (20kg) 2 sets of 5.

40kg x 5

45kg x 5

50kg x 5

55kg x 5

60kg x 5

The following Monday the squats would look like this:

Warm-up empty bar (20kg) 2 sets of 5.

40kg x 5

50kg x 5

55kg x 5

60kg x 5

65kg x 5

Write down on a piece of paper before getting to the gym exactly what weights you will hit and exactly for what reps. Next Monday add 2.5kg – 5kg to your final set. Progress.

For chin-ups and pull-ups you will first aim to complete five sets of five reps. If you can only do one pull-up than you will start with five sets of 1 rep. The reps will come. Once you have achieved five sets of five reps then add 5kg of weight to the next session either with a belt or by holding a dumbbell between your knees. Work it out. If you can’t do a pull-up then jump upwards and perform negative reps by lowering slowly.

The deadlift on Mondays: After your last set of power cleans add a 20kg plate to each end of the bar and perform just ONE set of five. You will feel like you can do more, the important thing is you don’t.

Wednesday

This is rep day. To flush the muscles with blood, promote growth and size, increase confidence under load and practice good form over and over.

Just like Mondays the loading will be ramped, but 5x10 will be used instead. That’s five sets of ten reps. The exception to this is the power clean, keep it to 5x5. For the cleans use your best weight from Monday and subtract 10kg. Subtract 20kg if you are gorilla strong and cleaning over 100kg.

For chin-ups and pull-ups, don’t use any additional weight and go for five sets of higher reps, aiming for 5x10 reps. When you hit 5x10 reps then great, keep it that way.

Friday

This is a low volume day but a great day to hit some new personal bests in the weight room.

You will ramp up to a personal best in the squat, overhead press and power clean. With squats and overhead presses this personal best can be a single, a double or a triple. With the power clean I want you to aim for a personal best single. Sets will still be around the five mark. Keep the reps to three or under.

If your last set of squats on Monday was five reps of 80kg then your training on Friday might look like this:

Empty bar 20kg 2 sets of 5 (warm-up sets)

40kg x 3

60kg x 3

80kg x 3

85kg x 3

90kg x 2

Write down what you do and aim to better it next Friday.

Warming up and cooling down

Warming up and cooling down will be the same. None of this gradually raising the heart rate bollocks, which will happen regardless. The goal of warming up and cooling down is to prepare the body, the spine in particular, to be loaded. Cross crawls serve to improve the movement and motor patterns of the body, while warming up the core musculature. The pump stretch serves to decompress the spine and mobilise the thoracic spine, hips and shoulders.

Cross-crawls 20 reps

These are simple. Stand and touch your elbow to your opposing knee without hunching or falling over. Keep tall. This is more difficult than it first appears. The slower you do this exercise the more benefit it gives. After a few weeks then this can be made more difficult by being performed in the press up position. This drill is used to strengthen the core and teach the body how to use the core properly as a stabilizer for moving limbs rather than a prime mover like sit-ups, crunches and leg raises teach.

Pump stretch 10 reps

My description for this exercise is awful so type “pump stretch” into Youtube.com and see for your-self.

Saturday 20 August 2011

Endurance

Have you ever noticed that children find the way that some people run funny?

I enjoy thinking. I’m quite a philosophical person, I think. I am at least more thoughtful than I was a few years ago. Most of the time my brilliance remains within my skull, attempts at sharing my thoughts and ideas with others usually results in bloodshed. Endurance exercise allows a unique opportunity to just think. Without distractions, which somebody with ADD can testify to is sometimes a niggle. On a side note I believe 100% that ADD (which I have been told I have) is the effect of a cause, not a disease. Mine was the result of computer games. Sidetracking, bloody distractions. You might call this thinking time meditation, or prayer, I just call it thinking. But, it is a different kind of thought, very insightful.

I find it funny when I see speed limp champion Bob. Does it ever enter this determined humans mind that something is wrong? Sadly I think the problem is many become acceptant there is no solution to their problem, which is usually a movement deficiency. I admire those who work on their problems, more so than those that complete marathons with ignorance to them. Note to endurance athletes: eat more protein. It is important and doesn’t make you big, just better.

Endurance comes in many forms. Be it 400m brutal lactic acid burning sprints, lung breaking quad suffering 50 mile time trials, or a power walk. It is endurance if you are enduring – and hopefully coming out the other side unscathed. In fact this is exactly what has been increasingly attracting me to endurance: enduring pain without pain (massive paradox). I derive an incredible amount of satisfaction by walking the ever growing lands of suffering while remaining pain free. It’s my way of poking the devil with a stick.

Pain free exercise and proper movement are the same thing. I could quite happily run 5k with an unnatural heel-strike and be pain free, however what other problems will be associated with this and why am I running on my heels in the first place?

“Some might think that by climbing a mountain, that we have conquered it. But, we are only visitors here” – David Attenborough

Mountain literature has been the cornerstone of my recent reading frenzy. I highly recommend reading Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer to kick start the habit. Quite simply I have developed more admiration for these athletes than any other. Not only do these athletes have to be technically brilliant, they have to be daring, brave and extremely fit in every fashion. Enduring in high altitude conditions is like being a hundred years old and walking with a zimmer frame, apparently. I shall simply leave a little fact. For every four people that attempt K2, one dies trying.

Tuesday 26 July 2011

130th Post - Making hard easy


How is this possible? This blog has received the upmost neglect over it's two year existance. This also means I've averaged one blog post every 5-6 days which means I'm actually not a too infrequent blogger - ha!

I've just completed a great workout. I'm feeling a little run down at the moment and have a bit of a cough so was debating whether or not to exercise. I decided to embark on a not too challenging workout:

24kg kettlebell(s):
5 turkish getups each arm (swapping arms between reps for total of 10 reps)
10x10 swings
50m farmers walk

Easy.

Well... what I have started to experiment with is what I have coined "easy hard". That is, attempting to make hard efforts or exercises easy, as opposed to making hard workouts or exercises hard and absolutely opposed to just doing easy workouts - although the goal is to make it easy.

The whole idea behind this is to pick something hard, and try to do it with as little effort as possible.



Einstein said:
"As simple as possible, but no simpler"

I say:
"As easy as possible, but no easier"

Imagine something hard, like running up a certain nemesis hill. When you run this hill, it is hard, and you try hard, because you want to get up it quickly and have a great workout while doing so. Have you ever tried to run up this hill while thinking about expending as little energy as possible?

"Of course I have, I've jogged and walked it before, or ran slower - why would I want to attack it slower?!"

But I didn't say slower, I just said with less effort. Try running this hill like a graceful wildebeest, stay tall, BREATH DEEPLY (into your belly button, not your ineffecient chest). I want you to run this hill just as fast as you normally do, but focus utterly on relaxing as much as possible.

You may find that you get to the top faster, you may find not. I gurantee you will feel more refreshed and charged at the top though, as opposed to feeling exhausted and about to die.

Try this out on your next workout or training session. Even if this means doing bicep curls in the gym.

Oh and on bicep curls, if you have to do them, firstly use dumbells, secondly try out for size closing your eyes when doing the exercise. Hello is that your core?

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Level 3 Runner: Less is More


"We are young, we are strong, we're not looking for where we belong.
We're not cool, we are free and we're running with blood on our knees."

Apologies for a rather shit blog, I'm sleepy and distracted, this is a bit of a random disorganized ramble.

In a week and a half I am competing in an Olympic distance (standard distance if you're not cool) triathlon. 1500m swim, 40km bike and 10k run. Tonight I set out on a run.

Music in ears the first 15 minutes of my run was pure uphill. I have discovered the art of economical running. How amazing it felt to own that hill, to get to the top without my heart rate going crazy.

Not too long ago running on the flat caused my heart rate to hit 160 as a minimum. I was perfectly fit, the problem was not in my fitness, but my economy of effort. In this recent pass I earned what I like to think of as "level 2 running". This is my version of running goal setting, instead of distance or times I'm basing it on the feeling of my performance. Level 2 dictated that I could run a reasonable distance in my Vibrams and actually enjoy it from start to finish, subsequently not feeling pain or crippling soreness the following day.

Level 3, earlier tonight, signifies a different change. I now feel that I can regulate my effort. You good runners out there will scoff, but there used to be no such thing as a recovery run for me. Running was always effort. Now I just ran up Mickelham without breaking sweat. Hello level three!

A couple of observations:

My right knee hurt at about 25 minutes in, it felt like the knee was being subjected to unbalanced force or is not being loaded properly. It basically felt like the muscles surrounding my knee were doing all the work but the muscles surrounding the hip were asleep. The solution? Actively think of squeezing the ground with big toe (which my left leg was doing naturally), this IMMEDIATELY solved the problem. I always think if there is pain, there is an immediate solution to be found before injury. Pain is a symptom, quickly treat the cause and it goes away.

It is possible to get an extreme adrenaline rush and workout from running downhill. To the tune of Pussy - Rammestein, I charged down a trail and had to leap and dodge the undergrowth, suddenly all this speed just arrived. My legs were turning over at an impossible speed, and my running form felt perfect. This was accompanied by a heart rate of 180-ish. Good times.

Sunday 20 March 2011

First week of new training program

I've only religiously followed a proper training program once in my life (starting strength: basic barbell training), and never have I experienced such progress. I gained nearly 2 stone in weight ovet the course of 4 months on that program, brought my squat from 80kg to 130kg and my deadlift from 120kg to 170kg. Good times. Those sort of goals are not of interest to me now, but I will always remember the power of being disciplined and sticking to a program - right down to the letter.

I always do something a little different to the crowd, thats for sure. I'm beginning my new program for cycling tomorrow - and it's going to be intense (actually I lie tomorrow is going to be easy). There is a yin-yang relationship between intensity and volume. Somebody like Chris Hoy will devote most of his training time to high intensity, and accumulate the volume with these high intensity workouts. This is because it is specific to his competition.
A pro level road racer will have the ability to train with great volumes and hours of road work, 6 hours a day maybe, and also throw in high intensity work to build their ability to attack and recover. I on the other hand, and most mortals for that matter, cannot do this without destroying oneself in the process.
I am currently a category 4 racer, that means my races are never longer than an hour and a half. They generally consist of cycling for a bit, then sprinting like mad at the end. I will be trying some time trialling soon - 10 miles - 20-30mins. My training is going to reflect these demands, I'm going to experience a massive gain in fitness over the next couple of months, so massive that it's going to suprise some people, including myself.
Here's the weeks plan:

Monday: 45-60mins lowish intensity "easy miles"

Tuesday: 60-90mins easy miles, then 8 min intervals x3 with a full 5mins rest between, at the point of just touching lactic acid territory. this will help in sustaining high power and dealing with lactic acid.

Wednesday: Rest day

Thursday: Same as Tuesday

Friday: Rest day

Saturday: Fun longer ride around 2 hours "easy miles"

Sunday: Hilly ride "easy miles"

Week 2 has three sets of intervals, and the style of intervals begins to vary. I'm excited, and nervous about the inevitable pain, but looking forward to seeing and feeling real progress.