Deadlift Party 2017

Busy week working on the gym, i'm doing a bunch renovations over the holidays. Saturday was our annual NYE deadlift party, we had 2guys Burgers come and cater for us. Great day had by all, plenty of shots of whiskey drunk between heavy attempts and double cheese burgers for post workout recovery!

Heres video of the day enjoy -

Programming Considerations - Part 3

Boris was super stoked, that's the Russian face for I'm having a great time...

In part 2 we discussed some reasons for the information we collected in part 1, this time I want to talk about as a coach what information I'm going to collect.

When I'm writing a program for an online client, I personally like to see a video of their current lifts (squat/bench/deadlift/military press/etc.) not just them telling me some number they hit in testing, as this is really not going to give me much information.

I have them video the top 3-4 weights, not just the top set. This is so I can analyse their form breakdown and determine whether or not this is going to be purely a technical issue or they have some sort of muscular imbalance/weakness, and not just the main lifts, I like to see some footage of a few basic aux lifts as well, the execution of these can give a good indicator of why there may be muscular imbalances.

Also you can get an idea of what type of athlete the person is -

The under doer - will stop their max/max rep sets short, and you can clearly see by the bar speed and lack of strain how much more weight/reps were left.

The over doer - will strain their fucking balls out, the form breakdown will be at an all time high.

And the seasoned athlete - who gets its spot on, a small amount of form breakdown, slowing in bar speed but still able to drive it through to the end without 26 seconds of pant shitting strain.

Or just seeing how emotionally invested the person is in attempting that lift... if they have triple ply knee & elbow sleeves, 4 pairs of wrist wraps, 7 belts, just watched some 8mm snuff film and has drunk 1 litre of ammonia with the sounds of machine guns in the background then hits their squat.

Identifying if it's a technical issue or a muscular weakness will determine the exercise selection and or frequency of certain movements.

Technical - then more volume and frequency will need to be done on the lift or lifts that are suffering, this gives the athlete plenty of opportunities to correct the problem.

Muscular imbalance - then there may be a greater focus on lift variations i.e. pauses, different bars, stances/grips, chains/bands/boxes/boards, etc. or maybe a greater proportion of energy devoted to more volume/frequency on given bodybuilding/isolation movements to remedy the weakness.

Identifying the type of athlete or how emotionally invested they are, is going to determine how you manipulate the intensity. If the athlete is an over doer and just did 26s of ass splitting strain or ridiculously high emotional state and you use that number as his/hers 100% to base the programme percentages off, when in reality they were probably @110% then the accumulative fatigue at the end or mid training cycle will be extremely high and basically negate any supercompensation. 

As for the under doer his/her percentages would need to come up a little as under training will also negate supercompensation. As for the seasoned athlete the numbers would be sufficient. So there could be 3 totally different outcomes from the one program just by not addressing how legit the testing weights are.

Programming Considerations - Part 2

In part 1 we got the information about what the individual is actually going to be capable of due to lifestyle factors and training history. This is important not just for a coach to consider, but as an individual trying to choose an program template off the net. You should think about who the program was written for, as generally templates are programs that were designed for and individual or a group of people that had great success with it.

An example - 
CrossFit box 1 is using and having great success with a program they designed, the demographic of that individual club is it's in an affluent area and the people have low financial stress, the club has a real good nutrition trend through the gym, and the majority of the people on the program had a decent background in collagate sports and had been involved in some S&C through thier sporting careers.

CrossFit box 2 trying to implement CrossFit box 1's program, but its in a less affluent area, they work longer hours, have great financial stress, there is no nutrition trend through the gym everyone just eats what they want and the sporting background of the group is pretty much non-existent.

Another example -
The "sheiko" templates like the ones you find on the Internet 29, 30, 31, 37, etc, they where all written for an individual athlete with a specific goal for each training cycle. In Russia a committee decides whether you can move from 3 days per week training to 4/5 days per week, so just because some of the templates are 3 days per week does not mean its for a beginner this could be a well season competitor with many years of training under their belt within that system.

All programs will work its just the intensity of that program may need to be adjusted significantly for the individual to be able to tolerate the volume and/or frequency. Remember no one is going to tell you about the failures of their programs, there will always be failures if you have a rigid system and don't adjust for the individual.

Above is a screen shot from a recent youtube video of Kirill Sarychev discussing the very same thing.
heres the link to the vid - https://youtu.be/yV9VgIwk7eU

This can be seen in the above graph, training too hard is going to result in you being the same strength/fitness as you were before the training bout/cycle.

This could be as simple as starting a training cycle off too hard, if your anus is bleeding and you need to suck down a bunch of pre-workouts and ammonia to to get through the first and second week of a training block then your training to hard, fatigue is accumulative, and by the time your mid training cycle you will be getting buried with warm up weights.

Programming Considerations - Part 1

This is a question i get asked regularly is how do i learn how to wrote programs, i always answer "its pretty simple, you just need to know a few things"

Heres my list of questions i ask -
gender
age
occupation
level of stress
work hours
amount of sleep per night
personal life
social life
drug use (recreation/ped/current/previous)
sports (current/previous)
training history
current training split
injuries
diet
how many days per week can you make it to the gym

Why?
Gender - females can tolerate more volume and frequency than males, females have less upper body mass on average.

Age - a 21yo is going to be able to tolerate more training than a 50yo, given there maybe exceptions but the rest of the questions will separate this.

Occupation - a removalist may need less volume and intensity or more frequent deloads than a accountant.

Level of stress/work hours/social/personal life - all integrate, i.e; if the person owns their own business, has just had a baby, the wife has is highly stressed. you can pretty much guarantee the volume and intensity that can be tolerated at this point is going to be pretty low.
Same goes for the young 21yo that goes out both friday and saturday night to party by default even if they aren't taking drugs or drinking alcohol they are going to be loosing roughly a nights sleep each week which will significantly impact recovery when compared to someone who doesn't.

Drug use - again may tie in with above but someone who's on anabolics is going to be able to ramp up intensity through out the program much quicker than a non PED user, conversely someone using speed/coke/ectasy etc on the weekends is by default going to be under eating and under sleeping.

Sports/training history/current training split - a 25yo who competed in track and field since they were 13yo and has been lifting weights in an s&c program for roughly the same time is going to be able to tolerate a fuck tonne more volume, than Betsy who didn't compete in any sports and has been doing crossfit for the past 6 months. also if the person plays a sport recreational or professionally its again going to affect how many days per week and volume can be done.

Diet - someone who has eaten quality food and drinks plenty of water/fluids will be able to tolerate more training than someone who misses half their meals, has poor protein consumption and the only water they see is in the shower.

Injuries - pretty self explanatory, you may have to work around something for a certain period of time.  But also a common injuries is going to give an indicator of weak areas that need to be addressed with in the program. Generally the injury aries from poor quality of tissue i.e; adhesions/knots/tightness or inherent weakness of a muscle or group of muscles that never gets rectified due to high level of form breakdown.

How many days per week can you make it to the gym per week - 5days maybe optimal for the individual but their schedule may not allow for this and you will need to design a program that best suits what the individual can achieve.

Pre-workouts, Why cunt!

I dont understand people needing pre works, this doesn't make sense to me, if your the type of person that needs some shit to get you through a workout, then your probably not going to achieve much in the gym at all... The only motivation you should need is that every time you get through a session good, bad or indifferent, you will be one step closer to your goal.

Not every session is going to be amazing, a lot will suck, a lot will hurt, some will be awesome and at some points in your training you will bleed from your asshole, but its only training just a step on the staircase.

If you need pre-workouts to get through most of your workouts then maybe you should consider looking at your programming as your vol/intensity is obviously more than you can currently tolerate.
if you need more simple caffeine tablet or couple of shots of coffee to get you though some anus splitting volume, you should look between your legs and see how much sand is caught in your vagina dust that bitch out.

Save your money and buy more food because pre workout don't improve recovery, food and sleep does and thats what will take you the furthest.

Playlist for Speed Deads Today

Speed sumo reads today with 6 chains 8 sets of doubles on the minute, then downstairs for some timed farmers holds.. that was it for me since my leg is pretty fucken Ghey! and I'm bring to ease back into it but heres what i was listening to for the pulls... 1. Bitch Nigga - Scarface,

2. Real Muthaphuckkin G's - Eazy - E, 3. Real Niggaz Don't Die - N.W.A, 4. Final Frontier - Mc Ren

5. Still - Geto Boys, 6. Who's the Biggest - Bushwick Bill, 7. G.E.T.O. - Geto Boys

8. One More Road To Cross - DMX...... Then headed down stairs to the dungeon and Hatebreed - Supremacy played through, like to keep it to rap on speed days putting on hatebreed or lamb of god just gets me angry and i want to chuck barbells through windows and use metro hipsters as deadlifting blocks to drop weights on..... i want to save that energy for strongman training or max deadlifting.

Strength and Conditioning for MMA what to periodise and when Part 1.

By Mixed Martial Arts Coach Mick Spinks & Strength coach Shannon Green.

Mick Spinks
With the amazing popularity of Mixed Martial Arts fighting there has been an increase in MMA gyms which is needed to cater for the influx of students and why not, it is real, exciting and has advanced pugilism to the next level grasping the attention of fans from all corners of the Globe.

If you are a serious competitor who wants to evolve with this revolution how do you stay ahead of the field?
Well train harder, yes I agree you have to train really hard but with all the disciplines required to be a competitive well rounded MMA fighter, you need to periodise and prioritise so as to get the gains required and progress not plateau or get injured as a result of overtraining

I sometimes use the statement to over trainers, “You always train hard which is really great” Then I ask, but how hard are you training? You need to have benchmarks in your program to be able to identify over training and to know where you are.

The first area we would like to cover in these articles is structural balancing, as the senior coach of our MMA team TP. Double Dragon I need to structure the requirements of the athlete to get the maximum result in the time available. When we have a good time frame we review the balance of the body, Shannon Green our strength coach has outlined a couple of the common imbalances which strengthen and increase the overall performance of the MMA fighter.


Shannon Green
Two reasons why you should do structural balance

1. Prevent injuries - In every sport there is some form over use to certain muscles, muscles groups and/or movement patterns, and over long periods of time these imbalances can become quite significant either causing Impingement due to alignment issues, or pain from wearing of cartilage, restriction of neural output to working muscles.

2. Improve sports performance - A muscle ability to develop “force” is a direct function of the strength of its antagonists and stabilizers. In other words the more balanced your body is the more weight you can potentially lift, the more power you can exert, the more times you can exert that force.

You’re only as strong as your weakest link, If the antagonist (opposing muscle) are too weak they actually tell the brain to shut down the agonist (working muscle).The best way to think of it is to imagine metal chain and Depending on how strong the links in the chain are, the force needed to break the chain could be large or small.

If the chain has big metal links except for one link which is small plastic, then the whole chain is weak (despite the strength of the other links). So You can only improve once those weak points have been made stronger.

As fighters most of do not care how much we can lift, and as long as our conditioning improves, our punches and kicks get harder, and we can still make weight who cares right.

Well the best way to improve these things without increasing body weight is by balancing you body. Since stabilizers are relatively small muscles hypertrophying (making them larger) is going to add minimal weight to your frame.but the strength increases can be near to 40% improvement in areas. A lot of the time peoples conditioning does not improve simply because strength is there limiting factor.

Areas which need consideration – Upper body Proper Scapulae Function

Most Fighter tend to present with Pretty bad looking posture this is due to stance causing sports specific position - excessive internal rotation of the humerus, Abduction & elevation of the scapular. As you can see in the image below

What does this mean?
In technical terms . . . An alteration in the normal position or motion of the scapula during coupled scapulohumeral movements will result in the inhibition and/or disorganization of activation patterns in scapular stabilizing muscles.

The scapula plays many roles in order for proper shoulder function to occur, like providing synchronous scapular rotation during humeral motion, serving as a stable base for rotator cuff activation, and functioning as a link in the kinetic chain (If scapular motion is impaired, the forces generated from the lower extremity and trunk will not be effectively transmitted to the upper extremity).

Each role is vital to proper arm function and can only occur when the anatomy around the shoulder is uncompromised. The presence of bony and soft tissue injury as well as muscle weakness and inflexibility can alter the roles of the scapula and alter scapular resting position and/or dynamic motion.

“So If the shoulder is not functioning correctly. . . you couldn’t put a dent in a rice pudding!!”

How to fix it

The thing is its not just a fact that your muscles are weak they are also tight and you need to address this with soft tissue work aswell as corrective exercise

Here is a few mobility videos to get you started