Vanishing Point. Zen And The Art Of Training

"Vanishing- point: the point at which receding parallel lines viewed in perspective appear to meet: the stage of complete disappearance."

           - The Oxford Reference Dictionary

Vanishing Point: Make sure you watch the original 1971 film

 
Typical Gym Conversations


Typical gym conversation no.8

Member: I'd like to book in to get a new program written
Instructor: (Places coffee cup down) Ok, when did you last have a new program?
Member: 4 weeks ago
Instructor: I see (skepticism now kicks in), can I have a look at the program
Member: Sure, here it is
Instructor: This program card looks pristine, have you actually done this program?
Member: Yeah, at least 3 times
Instructor: And what's this, all these other program cards stapled to it. You've got a program from every trainer here. And they are all untouched! Dammit, you're a program whore! You're looking for the magic bullet. Stop wasting my time and get out! (or more realistically, okay, you're a paying member, so I'll write another program you'll never do and a little piece of my soul will die and my bitterness levels will rise another notch).


Typical conversation no.9

Member: I think I need a program update
Instructor: (carefully places his protein shake down) Ok, how long have you been doing the old one?
Member: 2 years, but I'm not getting any results
Instructor: 2 years and no results, wow, that's a long time with no return for your investment
Member: I know, and I train every week, a minimum of three times a week
Instructor: Ok, lets have a look at what you are doing..... so by how much have you increased the weights you are lifting, the time you run for, the speed you run?
Member: Oh, I haven't changed anything, I do exactly what the instructor wrote, I lift the same weights, do the same amount of cardio at the same level and at the same speed. I thought it would be unsafe to increase without someone telling me how.
Instructor: Listen to your body! Train with intuition and most importantly you need some progression. Your body will never have to adapt if you never increase the load or the stimulus. I bet you do cardio while reading a book or watching This Morning. You're making me look bad!

Typical conversation no.12

Member: I haven't trained for 6 weeks because I was ill, what should I do? I need a new program
Instructor: Just do what you were doing before, but lower the weights, times and sets. Take it easy and see how you feel.
Member: I'm not sure how to do that
Instructor: Listen to your body, feel your way back into it. What weight were you lifting before? How far were you running.
Member: Lets see, before I was ill I did a couple of runs, but before that I was on holiday for 2 weeks, I managed to get one gym sessions during that time. But before that I was really busy with work, so only made it to the gym twice that month, and I tried running outside but it hurt after 10 minutes so I stopped.
Instructor: You've got no consistency. Do the basics consistently. It doesn't have to be complicated, a simple program you will follow is the best. Without training on a regular basis you won't have any feel for what works or what your body is trying to tell you.

Simplicity, Consistency, Intensity.

Variations of the above conversations happen in nearly every gym every week.  I've come to the conclusion that most training programs should follow three basic concepts, simplicity, consistency and intensity. If you follow these principles you will get results. I'm going to give you examples of world class runners, weightlifters and martial artists who follow these principles with great success. If they can, so can you and your clients.

And its not all the fault of the gym members, yes some are lazy and don't want to be there but others are just confused by the shear amount of information and disinformation and don't know what to do for the best. Trainers and instructors have written them programs, but no one has shown them how to train properly.

The three pillars of training:

Simplicity: The program doesn't have to be complicated, but it has to be effective and work. In the first example above, the member was looking for the golden fleece of programs. Trainers can end up writing more and more complicated programs to appease the clients boredom and frustration, none of which work because the basics haven't been mastered. As we will see, some of the best Olympic Lifters and Power lifters of all time follow deceptively simple programs. And constant program switching also means no consistency.

Consistency: Mastery of something involves repetition. Without consistency there is no training effect. As we will see below the Kenyan distance runners are the masters of this. In the conversations above, the last member had no consistency, constant breaks from training and interruptions means your body doesn't have a clear run at it. You will never progress because you don't know where you're at.

Intensity: In the middle conversation above the gym goer had consistency, they trained regularly every week. But there was no intensity, they were going through the motions. If you don't stress your body in some way, it will not have to adapt.

The foundation

Before moving onto examples of the three pillars. There is a key element that has to be in place for these principles to work. Without this foundation the pillars will fall down.

In the book Kurikara: The Sword and the Serpent, the author quotes Miyamoto Musashi, the famous Japanese sword fighter:

Discern the advantages and disadvantages of all things

Discover through yourself those things that cannot be seen

Take care even with small matters

Do not do useless things

and explains

Even though the goal is desirelessness, if you do not find a genuine love for this art, leave it well alone      

 - John Maki Evans

In short, before you do anything you need to want to do it. If you want to run an ultramarathon or enter a powerlifting competition, do it because you really want to do it, not because you think others will look up to you or respect you more for doing it. The passion and excitement must be there in the first place, to help fire you through the darker times when you wonder why the hell you're doing this thing in the first place. Conversely, if you hate going to the gym, stop blaming everyone else and making excuses, just stop going and find something else to do, something you actually want to do. Life's too short to waste time.

There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment

         - Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai

Or to put it another way, how many summers you got left, how many good summers? If time is limited, focus on the things you want to do, simplicity, consistency and intensity require you to first be in the moment doing what you want to do. Of course, this is easy doing something you love. I can't make it any clearer than this.

Time is a funny thing. Time is a very peculiar item. You see when you're young, you're a kid, you got time, you got nothing but time. Throw away a couple of years, a couple of years there... it doesn't matter. You know. The older you get you say, "Jesus, how much I got? I got thirty-five summers left." Think about it. Thirty-five summers.                                                          

- Tom Waits in the film Rumblefish

Tom Waits as Benny in the film Rumblefish. How many summers you got left? How many good summers?

Simplicity

Training programs don't have to be complicated but they do have to work. The average gym bunny does more exercises than an Olympic athlete, but it doesn't make them any fitter. The equipment options are vast now, weights, dumbbells, kettlebells, bands, swiss balls, bosus, cables, vibrating platforms and a million fly by night fads. And personal trainers sometimes try to combine all these equipment options into one workout, utilising sagittal, frontal and transverse movements in 20 exercises variations per workout.

Compare this to the average Olympic Lifter, who does the following:

1. Clean
2. Snatch
3. Jerk
4. Front Squat
5. Back Squat

Yes, some of these are technical movements, and they may do some power variations of the lifts and some pulls and presses. But this amounts to about 10 exercises in total, forever!! And the better a lifter gets, the more they focus exclusively on the lifts.

Simplicity in weightlifting

Check out the training programs that Glenn Pendlay gives his Olympic lifters and American Football Players at California Strength. There is rarely more than five exercises in a session. This simplicity allows for the other elements to shine, they can focus on coaching and a fantastic training environment.

In the book The Purposeful Primitive Marty Gallagher outlines the training programs of some of the greatest strength athletes in history.

For example, Bob Bednarski was an American lifter who clean and jerked 486 pounds (220kg!) back in 1968. His training program consisted of the following after warm up sets:

Monday: Clean & Press 3reps x 5sets

Tuesday Snatch 3reps x 5sets

Wednesday: Squat 3reps x 2 sets

Thursday: Clean & Jerk 1 rep x 5sets

Friday: Rest

Saturday: total on 2-3 lifts, work up to max single in 2 or 3 lifts

Sunday: Squat  3reps x 2 sets

Simple as that. Everyday concentrating on one lift. Chemical assistance aside, this guy managed to put 220kg over his head at a bodyweight of 110kg following this program.

And Ed Coan, the greatest power lifter of all time also followed a simple approach, get as a strong as possible in the off season in the bench, deadlift and squat wearing no lifting gear, not even a belt; and crucially never missing a lift in training. He then basically followed a 5 day split program of legs, chest, shoulders, back, light chest & arms. No crazy exercises, the same rep ranges everyone else uses in the gym and progressive incremental increases in resistance. The guy deadlifted 901 pounds at a bodyweight of 219 and squatted below parallel 1003 pounds (455kg) at a bodyweight of 241 pounds! (if you want to know more, go and buy the book The Purposeful Primitive).

In weightlifting you can basically do push movements, pull movements in the upper body, knee dominant & hip dominant movements in the lower body. Pick a few of these and get better at them, and get stronger.

Simplicity in running

The Kenyans are pretty good at distance running. So what do they do differently to everyone else. In his book More Fire: How to Run the Kenyan Way Toby Tanser outlines several of their training programs.

Kenyans generally don't use heart rate monitors or fancy gear, they generally don't record their weekly mileage though most of the marathon runners are hitting over 100 miles per week.

So what do they do? Firstly

"run to improve running." (Tanser, 2008:282)

Couldn't get more simple than that! Tanser also states that Kenyans get a training program and stick to it. If its a 12 week program they follow it exactly, and do exactly what the coach says. The book More Fire outlines the training programs of a whole host of runners from 800 metres up to the marathon. Below is a typical program. Felix Kipchoge Limo has a personal best of 2.06.14 for the marathon:

Monday

AM 60 mins easy running

PM As above

Tuesday

AM Fartlek, not less than 15k of 3 mins hard, 1 min easy*

PM Easy running, distance does not matter

Wednesday same as Monday

Thursday

AM Long run, 38k, start program at 30k and work up

PM Rest

Friday Same as Monday

Saturday

AM Either 1 min easy 1 min hard for 15k or 2 mins hard 1 min easy for 15k

Sunday Rest

* Can be hill work or speed session 15 x 1000m

(Taken from Tanser, 2008: 229)

Running programs can really only have 4 elements

1. A long steady run (slow run)
2. A run where you go fast and then slow and recover (interval, fartlek)
3. A hill run (can be slow or fast, short or long)
4. A fast run (tempo runs, or where you try to run as fast as possible for a set distance)

That's it. The distance you are training for will determine the length of these runs, the number of intervals you do and how fast you run relative to your maximum speed. But that is all there is, all training is effectively a combination of these elements. Simple.


Consistency

Throughout your life advance daily, becoming more skillful than yesterday, more skillful than today. This is never-ending.

           - Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai

To get good at anything requires repetition.

"This is stressed in maxims like 'ten thousand hours achieve the goal' or 'a hundred thousand swings bring mastery'. Yet other factors must be taken into account if repetition is to bring success." (Evans, 2010:1)

This means be wary of going through the motions. You must fully engage in the repetitions and the moment. Sometimes you must battle for fatigue, and this can involve attempts to 'switch off' but this is only possible if you are completely confident in your technique and form. Mindless repetitions are no use.

See the video below of John Maki Evans training in Japan, learning the art of the sword. At the start of the video he states that he trains 30 hours a week, and the art of the sword takes 30 years to master. Now, not everyone is going to go and live in a temple in Japan or stand under a freezing waterfall in the snow (7 mins into the video), but that sure is dedication.

It is a hard concept to grasp for the western mind that after 2 or 3 years of training, one of your teachers would consider that you really hadn't made any progress but that is what one of his teachers says at about 8mins30secs into the video. Training for over 10 years in Japan for 30 hours a week certainly is consistency. We live in a world where people are considered experts and masters after a weekend course. Where exams are designed to make sure no one fails, where quality has been subsumed by quantity and the 'I want it now' attitude.




Of course, training 30 hours a week and living in Japan may not be feasible if you have a full time job, a family and other commitments. But you can certainly take elements of this approach and apply it to your own training. Dedication. You take what fits into the time and place you live.

It is said that what is called the 'spirit of an age' is something to which one cannot return. Although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation. This is the mistake of people who are attached to past generations. They have no understanding of this point. On the other hand, people who only know the disposition of the present day and dislike the ways of the past are too lax.

          -Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai

This applies to weight training as much as anything else.

Consistency in running

As noted above to get better at running, you need to run more. The average beginner or runner doesn't run enough to get better (I include myself in that). Matt Fitzgerald outlines this in his book Run The Mind Body Method Of Running By Feel.

"Most runners run less than they could and would run better if they ran more, but they prefer not to run more." (Fitzgerald, 2010;64)

In essence they like running, but they don't like it that much. And in the real world, you can only run so much when you have to go to work etc and are not a full time athlete. And for the average person, the increase in performance is not worth the effort. As Fitzgerald point out, very few elite marathon runners run less than 100 miles per week. For distance running, getting your mileage up above 70 miles a week means you are going to have to run twice a day.

Consistency also requires volume. You may consistently run for 30 mins once a week, but you are never going to get any better doing that. And if you're happy with that, it's fine. If, however, you want to improve you need to do more, but in the right way. Below is the training program for Deena Kastor when she prepared for the 2004 Olympic Marathon, she got a bronze medal.

Day           First Workout               Second Workout    Third Workout

Mon          12  miles easy               30-60 mins easy

Tues          6-8x 1 mile                   30-60 mins easy      Strength & Plyo

Wed          2 hr run                        30-60 mins easy      Strength & Plyo

Thur          12 x 600m                    30-60 mins easy      Strength & Plyo

Fri             Easy Run                      30-60 mins easy

Sat            8-10 mile tempo run      30-60 mins easy

Sun            long run 2- 2.75hours

Source: Fitzgerald (2010;69)                       

Note the other key thing here is repetition. Doing the same runs and the same workouts over and over again. Both Fitzgerald and Tanser point to this as another reason for the Kenyans success, they do the same training runs, run the same hill, over and over again. This gives you a standard against to measure yourself, if you keep running random distances on all different courses, you will never know if you got any better. And your body doesn't have time to figure out how to cope with a distance, how to pace itself. Try and be consistent with your intervals and hill training, this way you will see if you are making progress. Take you time building up volume, getting to the point of running 70 miles a week takes time. Be patient.

Repetition obviously applies to weight training. If you follow a program for only 6 weeks, and this program has legs only once a week, and you do a standard 3x10 with squats; this means at the end of 6 weeks you would have only done 180 repetitions of squats. If you then replace squats with something else, you really haven't done anywhere near enough repetitions to even be competent at squatting. Let alone thinking about increasing your weights and intensity with the squats. Pick something and do it consistently.

Intensity

To practice Zen or the martial arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserve - as if you might die in the next instant.

        Taisen Deshimaru - The Zen Way to the Martial Arts

This is easier said than done. Living intensely while you are standing in the queue for the supermarket or waiting for the commuter train to arrive is a hard thing to do. However, you can apply this to training.

Make every repetition count, make every step perfect. This doesn't mean you should finish every training session exhausted, in fact the opposite. You should try to concentrate and be in the moment and feel vitalised.

Now, sometimes intensity does mean you need to go for it. You need to try and lift a heavier weight than last time, you should push to run faster or further.

The Kenyans are the masters of the improvised intense session. They may start with their planned intervals and if they are feeling good, just keep going and going until exhaustion. Spontaneity is important in training, if you are feeling good, then use that energy.

Intensity in running

Hill training is intense. In the training program used by Felix Limo mentioned above he would sometimes replace his fartlek training for hill training, after a 30 minute warm up he would then run up and down a 200m hill for the next 1.5 hours! The famous Kenyan runner Moses Tanui, another guy who can run a 2.06 marathon will often run the infamous 20k hill in the Eldrot region of Kenya that starts at 1300m altitude and climbs to 2700m, he does this in 1hr 30mins! As he says, if you run this hill, you will never fear another hill.

Intensity is about picking something you're not sure you can do. Running through the fear. Try and clean and jerk that weight that you're frightened to pick up over head. We can't all train like we're at the Kenyan Armed Forces Marathon training camp, but you can apply intensity whenever you need to push past barriers in your own training.

Intensity with weights

Donny Shankle, American weightlifter, advocates going maximum every day. Ripping that weight off the floor. He states that a master is somone who lives without fear. You must fear that heavy weight, and overcome it.

Beyond intense

Ray Zahab was one of three guys to run the entire Sahara desert, 4300miles over 111 days without a day off. By his own admission Ray was just a regular dude who decided to start to run. In the documentary film about the run, Ray says

Any limitations we have, we set upon ourselves. If you think you can only run 5-10k, you will only run 5-10k. It's where we set these boundaries.

Vanishing Point Redux

Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase 'Form is emptiness'. That all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase, 'Emptiness is form'. One should not think that these are two separate things.

         Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai

Somewhere in France: It's the same distance back as it is forward. Run to the vanishing point and then keep going until you disappear

Head for the horizon. Run for the vanishing point. In the midst of  the repetition and the intensity, go beyond the vanishing point, until you disappear. Until there is no you, there is no training, it just is.



References

John Maki Evans(2010) Kurikara, The Sword and the Serpent, Blue Snake Books
Marty Gallagher(2008) The Purposeful Primitive, Dragondoor
Taisen Deshimaru(1982) The Zen Way to the Martial Arts, Compass
Matt Fitzgerald (2010) Run, The Mind Body Method of Running by Feel, Velo Press
Yamamoto Tsunetomo Hagakure The Book of the Samuria translated by William Scott Wilson
Toby Tanser (2008) More Fire, How to Run the Kenyan Way, Westholme

The Supine Pallof Press aka The SC Press (patent pending).

This is an exercise I came up with a few days ago. As far as I am aware I invented it, as I haven't seen it before. However, if someone else happened to come up with this first don't write to me, I'm sure there is nothing really new in fitness.



The SC Press - how it came about.

A couple of days a go I was working with an exercise referral client, and he was having all sorts of trouble with the pallof press (see video below for standard Pallof press), his knees were too bent, hips too flexed and shoulder position was off. He couldn't kneel down due to knee surgery, therefore half kneeling and tall kneeling versions were not an option.

So I came up with a supine (laying down on your back) version - The SC Press.

With this version quite a few things became easier to coach. Firstly, no kneeling down, so no knee pain. Secondly, it's easier to grasp the concept of neutral spine and bracing, and easier for me to check the lumbar spine to make sure it wasn't imprinted or too curved. And lastly, it was easier to cue the idea of packing the shoulders down and the neck, with the floor giving automatic feedback. If the shoulder girdle is protracting too much, its easy too see and cue the shoulders to be pulled back and down. And the head forward posture is corrected straight away because the head is on the floor.

Plus the core seems to be working harder.

When I got my colleagues to try it out, we all agreed that it seemed to work the core a lot more than the standard standing Pallof press. Maybe, it's because the legs are taken out of the equation, so the core has to work harder, but we could all feel our rectus abdominis (6 pack, 8 pack, 1 pack, depending on who you are) and obliques working hard.

Shoulder Position.

Yesterday, I tried this with another client who has shoulder issues and normally has trouble with the concept of shoulder packing. But with this exercise she grasped the idea of shoulder packing straight away, as the floor is giving feedback and she felt her core working harder as well.

Why call it The SC Press?

The Romanians have the deadlift, Arnie has the Arnie shoulder press and Bret Contreras has the hip thrust, so I'm claiming the SC Press. It could stand for 'Supine Core Press' or 'Static Core Press', and SC also happens to be my initials (Steve Collins), what are the chances?!

How to do it.

Set the cable hand up at chest height. I tried other heights, but this worked best for me.

Press out cable and hold statically. Keep the lumbar spine neutral and the core braced. In the video you can see I check the curve in my back with one hand. I could only do this as it was a light weight for filming purposes, you wont be able to do this with a heavy weight.

Keep the shoulders packed, the neck packed and keep breathing!

If you don't have a cable, then use a band.

Three possible leg positions:

1. Both legs straight. As the hip flexors are lengthened here, it can put more curve in the lower back than when the legs are bent, so you may have to work harder to keep neutral, and it is also harder to use your legs to brace in this position.
2. One leg bent/ Turkish get up position. I bent the leg that is nearest the cable column to try and mimic the turkish get up where the weight is in the hand on the side the leg is bent. You could try the other leg bent. You could even try one arm holding the cable as well.
3. Both legs bent. When we tried the various versions out most people seem to find this hardest, however, some people find the leg straight version harder. The glutes seem to work harder in this version as the feet and press into the floor to help stabilise you. Experiment, see what works for you.

You can hold this for 10 secs or 30 secs or try transitioning leg positions while still pressing the weight out. I imagine this would be good conditioning for floor based martial arts like Brazilian Ju Jitsu or MMA.

In the video below, Nick is doing the bent leg version static hold for 60 seconds.




In summary

An anti rotation exercise that works the core, especially the obliques and helps clients to grasp the idea of neutral spine, core bracing and shoulder packing and enables the trainer to check positioning.

Give it a go, thought I'd share it with you. Remember The SC Press, The Supine Core Press or The Static Core Press, you heard it hear first (probably, if not, you heard it somewhere else), a cool new core exercise.

I'd still use standing versions of the pallof press to integrate core strength and leg strength and help root yourself into the ground, generating power into the floor. But to really target the core and take the legs out of the equation try the SC Press.

HIP HINGE! Your Body Wants You To

The hip hinge is a fundamental movement pattern. You need it to get out of a chair, squat, pick things up, deadlift, do an Olympic lift and generally spare your spine while moving.

See the video below of how to do a hip hinge.



However, it's surprising how many people can't hip hinge. I've noticed it with a whole host of different populations. When I get a client who has back pain, one of the first things I do is observe them get in and out of a chair. A high proportion of these clients tend to get out of the chair by lifting their hips up high and then unrolling or flexing/ bending  through the lumbar spine. Some can't even get out of the chair without using their hands to push themselves up. A few simple cues and adjustments and then suddenly they can get out of the chair with a neutral spine and without using their hands. Mostly I tell them to bring their feet wider, push their knees out, hinge from the hips, keep the chest up and drive into the floor with their feet - and bingo they get out of the chair with a neutral spine and using their hips.

Chair Squat - start position

Chair Squat - mid point

Why can't people hip hinge then?

If the hip hinge is a fundamental movement pattern, and everyone should be able to do it and use it on a daily basis, why can't people do it. Why do they bend/ flex in the lumbar spine? Why does the thoracic spine round too much?

The body will take the path of least resistance, the least stiff part will move and compensate for the stiff part. In the words of Charlie Weingroff (2010):

"The movement goal is achieved but there is no integrity to the movement."

Which means I asked them to get out of the chair and they got out of the chair, the goal was achieved. The hips and thoracic spine may be stiff so they used the lower back to get out of the chair, they achieved the ultimate aim. Or in the context of weightlifting, one person deadlifts the weight using the hips, while another person uses their lower back - they both got the weight up, and if you're in a competition you can justify it to yourself, but don't train like this, you're going to end up in a world of hurt.

Your body responds and adapts to what you practice most. If you adopt a certain posture 8 hours a day, what does your body do, it adapts to it.

"Prolonged sitting has been cited as a factor in the development of back pain. Cyclists who spend 3 hours riding their bicycles in a position of lumbar flexion have a reduced lumbar curve when compared with control subjects who do not ride bicycles." (Sahrmann,2002:13)

which means

"repeated motions of daily activities, as well as those activities of fitness and sports, may also induce undesirable changes in the movement components." (Sahrmann, 2002:13)

So in most cases the lumbar spine is moving too much. In this context the joint by joint theory espoused by Mike Boyle and Gray Cook makes sense. If the body is a series of joints stacked on top of each other, with some tending to be more mobile and some more stable, a loss of mobility in a joint may affect the ones above or below. So in the case of the hip hinge, if I lose mobility in the hips the lower back will compensate, if I lose mobility in the thoracic spine, the lower back will compensate; the lower back should be stable. In lower back pain rehab we always ended up spending as much time on trying to restore peoples hip mobility and strength and their thoracic spine mobility, as well as lumbar spine stability. When I first read Mike Boyle's joint by joint article in made perfect sense because I was seeing it on a daily basis with people.

And remember, stable doesn't mean static and still

"stability is the ability to control movement in the presence of potential change." (Weingroff, 2010)

So why can't I bend my lumbar spine, it's meant to bend isn't it?

Somewhere in Canada there's a guy called Stuart McGill and if he's not on his yacht or kayaking or cross country skiing or grooming his moustache then he's in his spinal lab at the University of Waterloo. He breaks spines so you don't have to.

It seems the number one mechanism for herniating a disc is fully flexing the spine.

"In fact, herniation of the disc seems almost impossible without full flexion." (McGill, 2002:56)

 And the number of flexion is important, the spine doesn't have to be loaded up, the repeated flexing of the spine with minimal load can cause disc herniation. I like Mike Boyle's analogy of a credit card, if you keep bending it back and forward eventually it will snap, not because you were applying much force but the repetition caused a weakness in the plastic until it snapped.

Imagine this shiny new gym membership card is your spine, eventually it's going to snap

"repeated spine flexion - even in the absence of moderate load - will lead to discogenic troubles." (McGill, 2002:127)

The way to avoid this is to flex at the hips while keep the back in neutral and the abdominals braced for the task at hand. This is the hip hinge. Interestingly,  one group of people who lift some of the heaviest weights are Olympic lifters, they lock their spine into neutral and rotate around the hips (McGill, 2002). Their incidence of back pain is lower than the general population. If you look at the video clip below of the snatch grip romanian deadlift, you can see the spine in neutral and the hips doing the work. The position of the bar below the knee is essentially the same as the start of the second pull in the Olympic lifts. (note: if you ever film yourself doing a lift, then it gives an insight into your technique and will immediately make you lift with better technique).



Hang on, shouldn't I be able to touch my toes?

Toe touch: an assessment not an exercise

Being able to touch your toes is still seen as a measure of flexibility. It appears in Gray Cooks Selective Functional Movement Assessment  as one of the tests you employ if someone is in pain, it's the multi segmental flexion assessment (Cook, 2010).

I think Charlie Weingroffs Core Pendulum theory is a good explanation of this. Charlie explains this in his excellent DVD set Training=Rehab Rehab=Training (go and order it now, it'll change your life for sure! And I don't get any money for saying this). We need to exhibit for flexion and full extension for our spines to know where the middle is, joint centration. If you have a loss of flexion then your neutral spine will be off because your body doesn't know where the middle is, same as if you have a loss of extension. The lumbar spine is meant to flex and extend but going to the end range on a regular basis is not a good idea, its proven to eventually cause disc problems. Remember an assessment is not an exercise you should be doing on a daily basis.

Core Pendulum: If neutral is in the middle(3), then your body only knows its the middle because it can get to the end ranges (1 & 5), if it can't, adopting neutral spontaneously is going to be difficult.

As an example, I never practice touching my toes and I hardly ever stretch my hamstrings passively and my flexibility in this area isn't the greatest and yet I can touch my toes. This is purely from doing hip hinges, kettlebells swings, deadlifts and so on.

Save your spinal flexion for when you need it, on those occasion's when its impossible not to flex, the rest of the time adopt spine sparing strategies such as the hip hinge, squat using the hips or a golfers lift for picking things up.

Golfers Lift: reduce load on lumbar spine when picking up light things

A quick note on the golfers lift: The leg cantilevering behind acts a counter weight, effectively hinging one hip and helps reduce the load on the spine. To train this movement I like to put a kettlebell in the hand opposite to the one on the floor.  For back pain clients who can't balance, it's acceptable to support one hand on a wall or chair or table when picking things up.

Hip hinge common mistakes

In the first video clip below you can see Nick is bending his knees too much and flexing in the thoracic spine. Knees should be about 20 degrees  (if  you happen to carry a protractor or goniometer around with you) this allows the glutes to be engaged more effectively. You should feel a stretch in the hamstrings on every repetition. Cue to keep the chest up but the head neutral.



In the second clip below, you can see the hips hardly move back at all. In fact, Nick had a hard time trying to demonstrate this because he's is so used to hip hinging, his hips are still moving, you'll see some people with no hip movement and all spinal flexion. You can try to get them to push their hips back by standing near a wall and trying to push their glutes (bum) back to the wall and touch, may be a foot length away from the wall at first. The broomstick on the back can also help people feel when the back starts to bend.



Another thing that can happen mainly with women is the lower back has too much curve in it, too much extension. No video of this because neither me or Nick can get that much extension in our backs! Remember neutral is not over extended, it's in the middle of the pendulum swinging.

You can start to weight the movement using a kettlebell once the hip hinge has been grooved in, and some people will naturally start to brace more when they have a weight in their hands, and it helps to get that stretch feeling in the hamstrings, loaded up and ready to contract.




And finally the squat

For most people using a squat that has some kind of hip drive component to it is the way forward. If you're an olympic lifter you are going to drop almost straight down and most probably be in a front squat position. For everyone else, especially the general population, sitting back more is going to be more beneficial.

I've used the bench squat technique (see video below) successfully with back pain clients as well as clients referred to me on GP referral (exercise referral scheme) with knee replacements and hip replacements. It is essentially an unweighted box squat. The client learns to break at the hips first and sit back, keeping a near vertical shin also helps those who have knee pain. The hip hinge is a vital component of this.



When a person can't sit all the way down onto a bench or chair I use a step on risers, and gradually as they get better reduce the number of risers down. Don't think about loading up a squat until someone can do it bodyweight with neutral spine.

In the video below are some common squat mistakes.




On the first repetition - trying to do all the movement at the knees, no hip hinge. A lot of people do this when you ask them to squat. I think it might actually be a misunderstanding, you say squat and they think the knee must bend, they have an image in their head of what a squat is. Sometimes you can correct this immediately with the right cue to use the hips. Thus demonstrating it's not always a muscle or joint issue.

On the second repetition - rounding the thoracic spine and over extending the cervical spine by looking up.

On the third repetition - knees caving in.

To paraphrase Gray Cook (2010) I wouldn't get too caught up trying to analyse why all this is happening, is it because the hips are tight or not working, or the lower back not stable, or thoracic spine being immobile or the ankles being stiff? Possibly all of these, but work on fixing the movement pattern. Sometimes its just because the person just never moves that way, the software isn't in their brain, practice the movement and the nervous remembers it and saves the software for the new improved movement pattern.

And maybe they never challenged themselves before, if you sit in a chair all day you don't need to be very mobile or stable. You only need stability in the presence of mobility (Weingroff, 2010)


In conclusion

You need the hip hinge. You need it to spare your spine and keep your lower back neutral when picking things up at home or in the gym. You need your hips working for you, not against you. Your body remembers what you do most.

Tina Fey: No, don't pick that typewriter up with a flexed spine, hip hinge dammit! Okay, I forgive because you created 30 Rock and you're hot. But if you're ever in England and you have back pain give me a call and I'll see what I can do.

References

Cook G (2010) Movement
McGill (2002) Low Back Disorders
Sahrmann (2002) Diagnosis & Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes
Weingroff (2010) Training=rehab rehab=training DVD

Top Ten Fitness Trends For 2011

It's been a busy January. Unlike some internet fitness gurus I actually train people in the real world, hence this is my first blog of 2011.

Here are my predictions of what's going to be big in 2011 fitness-wise.

Note: Of the top ten trends I have put together, some are things that I like, some are things that I don't personally like but will be popular anyway, and a couple of things are probably wishful thinking on my part - things that I want to be trends. I have also put a list together of things which are already popular and will continue to grow.

Before I get to my list I want to review the list that is put together by the American College Of Sports Medicine (ACSM). Below is their list and my commentary on it

1. Educated and experienced fitness professionals. Of course they would say that, they are an accreditation organisation. I want this one to be true. Rather than having a system that at one end of the spectrum churns out sports science graduates who don't even know how to squat or deadlift, and at the other end has courses that last a day or two and then suddenly the person is a fitness professional. A profession that lets you deal with peoples bodies, the most sacred possession they have, with the minimal of experience of training. Let's hope this changes.
2. Fitness programs for older adults. This one has been around for years, and it has never really taken off or come to fruition. Here's why: older adults are not all the same! I have a female client in her 70's who can rack deadlift 60kg from just below the knees, as well as doing goblet squats and a whole range of strength exercises. I also teach a group of older people, where at least 4 of them couldn't get of a chair due to a whole host of problems they have accumulated over a lifetime. And then we have ultra runners like Jack Dennes who is in his 70's completing the badwater ultra. The obvious point is, the population over the age of 60 are not one amorphous group; some are very fit, some are injured, some have trained their whole life, some haven't.
3. Strength training. How can strength training be a trend?! It should be a fundamental component of any fitness program!
4. Children and obesity. Another one that has been banded about for years. All attempt I've seen so far to tap into this market have failed.
5. Personal Training. Of course they would say that. See my list to see a more specific trend. One to one training may well be over.
6. Core training. Whatever the core may be, there is no definitive definition. Having core training as a trend is like having leg training as a trend.
7. Exercise and weightloss. Shouldn't this be number 1, every year, forever?
8. Bootcamps. This is already happening, see my list for how it may evolve. And my previous post on bootcamps here.
9. Functional training. Whatever this is, isn't a deadlift functional?
10. Physician referrals. This is a whole other blog post, because the healthcare system is set up differently in the UK compared to the USA, I will write about this another time.

And without further ado, to my list of the top ten fitness trends in 2011.

1. Small group training/ semi private training.


I'm going to make a bold statement. Personal training doesn't work for most people, you might as well do a gym induction and write them a program to go away with, it has about the same success rate. Here's why. Most people only have one personal training sessions a week, if you're lucky they might do two. Then most of these clients don't do any training when they aren't with the trainer or train in a half-arsed way, and then most of these have a few sessions and then stop. Of course, there are some exceptions, but most people follow this route.


The cost of one to one sessions is too prohibitive for most people. That's why they only have one session a week or buy a block and then stop. Small group training makes the sessions more affordable, suddenly a person is paying a quarter of the price, so they can then attend more sessions.

But the most important reason the small group sessions work better for most people is the group dynamic. With all the small group training sessions I have been involved with, there is a sense of group camaraderie, banter between the participants and the instructor, and they are always high energy with everyone pushing everyone else to achieve more. The results from semi private training are superior in my opinion. As an instructor, they are more enjoyable to teach and you end up getting results with more clients. Everyone's a winner.

The semi private training model has been perfected and made popular by the likes of Alwyn Cosgrove and Cressey Performance and has been around for quite a few years. However, it seems commercial gyms have never really gotten a hold of it, and don't know how to deal with it. Are the trainers teaching a class or doing a personal training session they ask? It doesn't fit their payment model. This year might be the year commercial fitness facilities finally grasp the concept, and don't get left behind; as they increasingly are these days.

2. Online training

You can only train so many people one to one, and even in group training environments you can only train so many people per week. With online training, it is possible to have hundreds of clients at any one time.

This guy has 500 online personal training clients

Again, online training has been around for a while. And got a bad name in some circles, as it ended up being the domain of internet gurus who had never really trained anyone in real life. Also the technology wasn't there to begin with. Now anyone, can put together some decent quality videos and post them immediately.

Two recent products seem to have exploited this video phenomenon. Eric Cresseys Show & Go and Mike Boyles BodyByBoyle. I don't own or subscribe to either of these products. But the model is sound, why buy a book when you can get a whole video library as well, either through a one off payment or on-going monthly subscription.

Commercial gyms already have access to the market, but once again are lagging behind. If someone joins your gym and has a one off induction, (and if you're lucky they might get 4 or 5 follow up appointments) but then want to remind themselves of an exercise technique, why not create a video library online. They can still get advice and coaching from the instructors, they two concepts are not mutually exclusive. If a customer wants to buy an exercise program from you or access your virtual gym, why not let them. Sales people and owners of large chains are still enamoured by equipment and museum tours. Your product is not the room full of treadmills, it is the expertise of your staff and how they help clients achieve results.

With an online product, your market is not just the town you live in, but everyone in the world who could benefit from your knowledge. It's time the true fitness professionals took the online market back from the hucksters and keyboard warriors.

3. Crossfit style workouts & crazy gymnastics

There are a few crossfit facilities in the UK, but not that many. I expect a few more will open. But what is more likely is trainers will start to copy the model. Get yourself an olympic lifting qualification, even if you haven't lifted a weight in your life, buy some gymnastic rings, put together a random workout and bingo - you got yourself a class!

There are some good people involved in cross fit, see Kelly Starrett's mobility WOD blog for an example. And we could debate the benefits of high repetition olympic lifting all days. But more troubling, will be the trainers with a little knowledge making people do stupid things. These are probably going to be the same people doing bootcamps in the park. Don't worry if you've got the hip mobility of a wooden table and a bad back, these clean & jerks and hand stand back flips should sort you out.

Crossfit does make women hot

Conditioning workouts can be great, and crossfit does seem to produce an abundance of hot women. But appropriate movement screening and exercise modalities to suit the individual should be considered.

Or are the women of crossfit hot before they even start?

Again, commercial facilities could create their own version of this and invest in their staff training, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Who cares: hot women do crossfit, that's all we need to know

4. Bootcamps

Yes, bootcamps are already a trend. See my post here. In 2011, I think the market will become more segmented and commercial facilities will try to get in on the game about 2 years too late.

There already is some market segmentation, with bootcamps for women only like Fit For A Princess. This year there will be more of this. Rather than just military bootcamps, there will be weight loss bootcamps, kids bootcamps, sports bootcamps etc. Of course, the exercises you will do in all these bootcamps will be exactly the same! Run around the park, do some burpees, crunches, plyometric lunges and press ups.

Workout in the park: Bootcamp Peter Griffin style

Bu the people running these know they are onto a good thing. No equipment, no personal training rent, no individualised program, no building needed. Why make �40 an hour from one person, when you can get 20 people and charge them �10 each, that's �200 an hour for shouting at people in the park. Job done.

5. Corrective exercise & mobility.

With all these cross fit style workouts and bootcamp randomness there are going to be some injured people. The trainer well versed in corrective exercise and mobility will be positioned to deal with this. These days, it's rare for me to see anyone who hasn't been injured in some way. May be its just the people who get referred to me, but in  nearly every consultation I have some kind of back, shoulder or knee injury is mentioned. Almost every week someone says to me in passing 'I've got a shoulder/ knee/ back / problem what exercise should  I do for it.'. The correct answer is, it depends. I'm not going to give you some random exercises without assessing it and getting some history.

With regards to this I recommend Charlie Weingroffs DVD 'Training = Rehab Rehab = Training'. Use the functional movement screen, the selective functional movement assessment, the joint by joint approach and the core pendulum theory as your blue print. Again I can't recommend this DVD highly enough.

Even if you don't use this, have some type of systematic approach to it, I have no problem blending the work of Janda, Sahrmann, McGill, and Thomas Myers Anatomy Trains. Be the go to person.

This is one of my wishful thinking trends. I still see trainers giving people crunches and knee side to side...sigh.

6. Indian Clubs/ Power Clubs

The most popular exercise of the Victorian era is due a come back. I first saw 'bear clubs' mentioned on www.intensefitness.co.uk (the place I bought my first kettlebell from) about 6 years ago. Since then Indian clubs have been threatening to be the new kettlebell, but have never quite broken through.

Indian Clubs

There is now at least one training organisation (Premier) in the UK offering a one day course in 'power clubs', see the video clip below. I haven't done this training course, but I may well do.




The name 'Indian clubs' has always been dragging them down, if they'd called them 'hardcore MMA conditioning clubs' or 'fat loss skittles' then they'd be mainstream already.

The potential for shoulder rehab work, mobility, as well as conditioning, make these are versatile tool.

7. Yoga, breathing, meditation

Yoga makes a comeback every few years with a different emphasis. Sometimes its as a cardiovascular power workout like Ashtanga, sometimes its purely as a stretching class and sometimes its a bunch of folk in a super heated room overstretching their ligaments.

The current comeback will be based around breathing. In this ever increasing  sedentary and stressful world people are breathing in a very poor way. Recently, I've seen quite a few people breathing high up into their chest and shoulders, and they were unable to breather into the diaphragm or abdomen when I first demonstrated it, they had lost the ability to breathe properly.

The benefits of meditation and breathing correctly are well known. Many people are still reluctant to go to a class on meditation, but they will go to a yoga class, where they can get many of the same benefits. Though, I think in 2011 we may even see a rise in meditation classes. Good yoga instructors can combine breahting, stretching, mobility and quietening of the mind into one seemless narrative.

Here's a good article on the benefits of meditation.

And this is an article on breathing I like by an RKC and yoga teacher

He may be meditating peacefully now, but how's he going to get back to dry land?

8. Intermittent Fasting

The only nutrition trend to make the list. Fasting has been around since forever, but as a product it's hard to sell. You tell someone not to eat for 24 hours, they don't really need a diet plan or supplement for this. There's nothing to sell them.

In recent years, intermittent fasting has started to get an underground internet following which may well go mainstream. Brad Pilons ebook Eat Stop Eat is very good and covers some of the science, the website leangains has a good following and most recently Christian Thibaudeau on T-nation has come up with at least two fasting protocols. And rather than saying eat nothing, they've linked it to a supplement protocol, which makes it more marketable. And once somethings on t-nation its only a matter of time before someone copies and pastes it. True story: I have seen a PowerPoint presentation given by a training company to group of people as part of a Fitness Industry Association seminar that had sections in it copied and pasted from t-nation. Now the information was good, but it shows that the people running training companies don't know anymore than anyone else with an internet connection.

When intermittent fasting goes mainstream expect it to confuse the public and the mainstream media. For years, the message to eat breakfast and  eat 4-6 small a day has been a mantra in the fitness industry. Suddenly, the message will get confused, when someone starts saying, actually you don't need to eat breakfast, and may be try eating nothing for 24 hours?!

Of course, the 'eating small and often' and the 'intermittent fasting' approach both work, just to add to the confusion the public will have about this.

9. Vertical pole

Pole dancing has never gone mainstream. However, as I mentioned in the complete history of fitness part 1, at least one company is offering vertical pole classes to men and women. And if anyone at pussycat poles wants to invite me to try the class and write a review, I'm more than happy to give it a go!

All you need to do is put one of the vertical poles in a crossfit style circuits and call it a  'gymnastic core conditioning pole' and you got yourself a trend.

10. Everything will continue as before.

The biggest trend of 2011 will be inertia. Commercial chains will do what they've always done, offer their members one to one service in the sales blurb and then ignore them. Rely on an underpaid, undervalued and minimally qualified workforce. And continue to sell memberships like you're buying some double glazing off of a guy in 1983. Keep investment low, and have facilities over reliant on cardio machines and resistance machines that they have had for years. And a whole group of personal trainers with spikey hair and shaved legs will continue to say 'awesome' too much and will become bootcamp & crossfit experts as well.

If only Rollerball was going to be one of the fitness trends of 2011

Trends that will continue.

Zumba

Already popular. I didn't realise until I recently sent some staff on a zumba course, that it is a 2 day certification that anyone can do. No fitness qualification needed. They show you a few moves and then encourage you to free style and add in your own moves. Like most fitness courses, everyone passes regardless of how bad they are (remember the ACSM number 1 trend). Which means, you could go to class taught by someone who is a trained dancer and it will be great and inspiring or you could go to a class taught by someone who dances like you Nan at a wedding. Either way, expect there to be more zumba instructors than participants by the end of the year. Kerching!


Kettlebells

Popularity will grow because they work when done properly.

It goes without saying, if your instructor can't do a clean or snatch or turkish get up and doesn't know what a hip hinge is, go somewhere else.

Excuse for another crossfit woman picture

Boxing/ MMA

Either in small group format or as part of the bootcamp. Either way 'tap out' have got a lot of clothing they need to sell.

Suspension training, TRX, fitkit

Becoming part of mainstream gyms at last. Gymnastic rings are the cheaper option.

Wrap Up

Well those are my predictions, lets see if I'm right.

Another Lost Year -this time it's gonna be different - not the usual goal setting article

National Lampoon Christmas Vacation: Cousin Eddie 'That's the gift that keeps on giving the whole year'

3am and all the wasted decades and lost years are right there in the darkness. Deep inside your limbic system the fear kicks in, the fear of all the things you�ve never done. The silence amplifies the failures. The heart rate kicks up a notch and the sweat is cold, another wasted dream half remembered.

Write your goals down and then burn the paper, watch it burn, watch the ashes scatter. You�ve written down so many goals, missed them so many times, had too many fresh starts, until the act of setting them and writing them becomes meaningless. Put that list next to your lottery ticket and then burn that too.

In conversation with your friends, you realised they�ve �settled�, it�s over for them, they gave up half way through the game. You ask them what their plans and goals are for the following year, they answers �you know, keep on plodding on� �try to keep my job� �keep up the payments�. The formula answer was set long before they used it, they just joined the queue.

There�s a question you remember asking, but you don�t remember what it was. Somewhere in childhood, the fear came flooding in, and the person you are was set before you even knew who you wanted to be. The dreams became lost, and the memory is fuzzy, you can remember having those dreams but you can�t remember what they were.

Everyone took a piece: your parents, your teachers and friends you lost along the way. And you spend a lifetime trying to put that puzzle back together. Trying to figure out what you want and who you should be. What were you going to do before you tried to be just like everyone else, to fit in, to make your parents proud, not stand out in the crowd.

The fundamental question

�Who am I?�

The question you need to answer before you can set any goals. The question that determines the path. But no one even told you about the question, let alone the answer. All the books and psychics and tarot card reading mystics can�t answer that question for you.

In the endless snow it�s easy to lose track of yourself.

But the answer is right there, you�ve always had it, always known it, but it got lost somewhere between childhood and the life you settled for.

Sometimes the answer is right there, close, glimpsed through a crack in the curtains. In the forest running at night the answer is there, mountain top sun up, the answer is there, 3am the answer it's trying to break through. Washing up the answer is there. The mundane day to day drudgery, the answer is there, breathe in, breathe out, the answer is there.

You know exactly what to do, right there in the darkness, close to the truth of who you should be, the mystery solved. And then 3am turns to 4am and daylight dissolves all those dreams, and you�re back at the start again.

Desolation days. Endless trains, everyone sits in silence and quietly dies, outside the countryside and the towns rush by. Like a film you once watched on a Sunday afternoon.

How many lost years? How many you got left? When you gonna stop playing the part someone else wrote for you?

The time of death is uncertain. But the warm glow of the comfort zone keeps you on the same path you wrote for yourself along time ago. Everything dies,except the things that were never born. That can be hard to grasp, sometimes it takes a life time or two.

Fear keeps you here, keeps you safe, makes sure you never make a mistake or fail because you never push yourself.  That warm fire of comfort will burn you alive and you wont even notice.

The constant loop of �what could have beens�. What if I had said that, what if I had done that, what if I had risked everything, what if I had spoken to that girl/boy, what if I said how I really felt. How many people put it on the line? The real conversation is always happening in the spaces in between.

Lost moments. That girl you walked past in the street, you turned around, she turned around, then you walked on, may be she was the one, you�ll never know, you�ll never see her again. That marathon you were going to run, you bought the trainers but never entered it, didn�t have time to train. Line up the excuses like dominoes. That time you were going to speak up at work, you kept your head down, you blew it. These moments will haunt you.

The conventions made it so, keep your head down, get a good job,buy this, buy that, learn to die quietly inside. Walk along a crowded street, there a million lost dreams and failed goals walking right past you, the paranoia is palpable. Keep your head down and consume and conform.

Alcohol, drugs, shopping, food, therapy and constant media flow help to dull the pain. And you think you�re doing okay, and then the past walks right by you in the street and waves at you, and you realise you never got over it, the past is dragging behind you. All the faded memories and false hopes are there again. Let them go, the past and future are one and the same.

This is the wealthiest society the world has ever seen, and yet rates of depression and anxiety are sky high. Why is that? What if you�re not special, what if you�re just another cog in the machine, grinding away, what then.? Is it something peculiar about our society that instills the idea that you can be anything, achieve anything, be anything, that everyone is talented. What if that�s not the case, what if most of us are worker drones, then what?

Somewhere, someone just got blown apart or vaporised by a computerised bomb or wasted away from a run of the mill disease, probably while you were doing your weekly shop or sitting in traffic. Life is cheap in some places. That�s why you need to live it.

In hospitals you can feel the years passing you by, death is close by. But still you stay in your comfort zone. The fear of failure and fear of the unknown trumps the fear of death. People would rather die than break out.

Life is a series of connections. There are billions of people you will never meet, an infinite number of things you will never know. Somehow, you weave a thread through life, and connections are made and connections are lost. And you look for patterns, and they only become apparent after the fact. Were they always there, or did you project them on events afterwards.

Synchronicity

All the people you ever met, all the people you are ever going to meet, all the places you are ever going to go. Every so often lifelines intersect and it seems right.

Don�t get caught up in thoughts of destiny. Live your life.

You could write your goals down, and make them achievable and realistic, make them public, and then break them down into manageable bit size chunks, and visualise and really believe. And it doesn�t mean a thing.

Unless you actually do something, you might as well burn that paper and go sit back in your cubicle and read 'the secret and wait for someone to rescue you.

You need to actually go out and run those first steps, or start writing that book or go and tell that girl how you feel. Otherwise, you�re gonna die with all those �what could have beens� eating away at you.

There will be times when you are tired and depressed and feel alone. Push on. Mediocrity is a swamp that most people will fall into. Run for your fucking life. This is it. There is only your mind and body, refine them as best as you can. Live a life that is authentic to you. Moment to moment, there is only now. Nihilism is not the intention.

Someone I vaguely knew died. Didn't drink, didn't smoke, trained everyday, and then fell over and died, as prosaic and pointless as that. So why live a healthy life, if death can take you at any time. The point is he lived the life he wanted to, lived authentically. Was the person he wanted to be. There is no other way. Strengthen the body and the mind.

If the mythical teacher or mentor doesn�t arrive, then what? Keep going, do the best you can. No one is going to save you or do it for you. There is no success or failure.

Define yourself by your actions. There is only action and non action, there is a time for both.

The flashbacks and attachments are mere illusion. You don�t have to be the person that was set all those years before. Be who you want to be. Make meaningful connections with people who seem meaningful to you.

Move on, cause moving backward ain�t no move at all.

Fitness goals are some of the easiest ones to achieve. They don�t rely on other people, no one has the power to give you fitness like someone can give you a job or a book deal or make your film. You decide whether to achieve them or not. Simple as that. Fitness goals are easy to measure, you either got stronger or didn�t, you either lost weight or you didn�t. All the information you need to achieve fitness goals is already out there. A moderate effort and you will be able to obtain most of them (unless your goal is the Olympics). Train, rest, eat right, be consistent. The downside,, no one to blame when you fail. No buck to pass. Fitness goals are one of the few things in life that are black and white.

Guide to achieving goals:
1.    wake up
2.    decide what you want to do
3.    do it!

What's it gonna be, another year in suspended animation? Or push past the edges into the wilderness, into the unknown.

Happy New Year and thanks for reading.

"The future is unwritten." - Joe Strummer

Here's a clip from The Wire, the greatest TV show of all time, Lester Freamon says it all.



"If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is."
� Charles Bukowski (Factotum)

"We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives." - Robert M Pirsig


"To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top."
- Robert M Pirsig

The Complete History Of Fitness - Part 1- from paleo to pole dancing

The Complete History Of Fitness � Part 1- from paleo to pole dancing

Note: Of course, no history can be complete. And pre-history is a matter of guess work. Everything, however, mentioned in this article is true, except the mythical bits and the bits I made up,.

In The Beginning

Somewhere in the Paleolithic era some cavemen were trying to stay warm, as no one had figured out how to light a fire yet. One cave guy was doing jumping jacks, but no one called them that back then. And then another cave dude picked up a big rock and held it over his head to try and impress one of the cave women.

Everyone eat raw food because that�s all there was until someone figured out how to light a fire and cook stuff. And everyone ate paleo, because that�s all there was back then, until it became the Neolithic period, so I guess they ate �neo� then. They pretty much ate whatever they could and didn�t worry about macro nutrient ratios and whether seeds and nuts were good for them, if meat was around they ate it, if they only had fish they ate it. You get the picture.

And everyone walked everywhere, because that�s all there was. No one had invented the wheel yet, and even when they did, it took a while for them to figure out how to make a cart and make an animal pull it for you. And it was literally aeons before someone invented the bicycle. Everyone was barefoot as they tramped across the super continent. When the Pleistocene came along it got pretty cold all the time, that was the time for footwear and skis.

Back in the Paleolithic, as they were hunting and gathering, every so often they would come across some water, and then someone probably invented swimming, but it�s unlikely anyone invented the butterfly stroke as it is so ridiculously hard and not user friendly.

Then they hit the sea and someone probably made a kayak out of a some tree bark and then before you know it they were rowing too and spreading out across the world. No one had invented the indoor rowing machine as of yet because there was no need for it

The Film 2001 A Space Odyssey: I like to think it started like this, but it probably didn't

Train like an Egyptian

The ancient Egyptians did a lot of things quite a few thousand years ago. One of the things they did was invent sand bag training, as the picture below shows. They liked to wave the bags overhead. Mostly though the Egyptians were pretty busy building pyramids and mummifying people, so they didn't have much time to exercise.

Egyptian sand bag training

Greece � things get classical

The Greeks really got things going, they liked sport and fitness, so much so they invented the Olympics and set the template for many of the western ideas of fitness.

The word gymnasium comes from the Greek gymnasia, a training facility and place to hang out � literally. The Greek word Gymnos means naked, as competitors in Greek sports were naked and it was men only. They also oiled up before training and competing, much like the modern day competing bodybuilders, except the ancients used a lot less fake tan and didn�t have dynabands to pump up pre-contest.

The Greeks had three weighted implements - javelin, discus and halteres. The halteres are hand held weights that they use during jumping exercises and drills, sometimes this was to music, flute driven music no less, sadly the jazz flute did not exist back then. Halteres can be considered the ancient dumbbell.

Halteres - ancient dumbbells

Milo of Croton

Not only did Milo have a cool name and come from a place with a cool name, he was really strong. He lived  in the 6th century BC and supposedly got strong by lifting a calf as a child, as Milo got older the calf got older and bigger and he kept lifting it until he could lift an adult bull. Thus he invented linear progression and progressive overload. If only he�d known about Westside and conjugated periodization he would have lifted a small sheep on dynamic effort days and de-load weeks and attached some chains to the bull to create accommodating resistance; (Well that's what an internet fitness expert would have told him to if they existed in ancient Greece). He was a 6 times Olympic champ in wrestling between 540 and 520 BC. He also ate loads of meat and bread and wine, thus setting the template for modern powerlifters.


Marathon

In 490 BC Pheidippides ran from to Sparta and covered about 240km in two days, and immediately invented mutli day ultra running without even wanting too. Then more famously he ran from a battlefield near Marathon to Athens, about 40k or 25 miles, and invented the marathon. Unfortunately, no one had yet invented the energy gel or recovery drink, so he immediately dropped dead from exhaustion.

The marathon distance continued to be about 40k/ 25 miles until the 1908 Olympics when it was officially set at a bizarre 26 miles and 385 yards � so the queen at the time could see the finish. Marathon runners ever since curse this extra distance as they limp the extra yards of pain.

Let�s get mythical (to be sung to the tune of Olivia Newton Johns Let�s Get Physical)

In Greek mythology Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to push a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll down again, and then push it back up again for eternity. Sisyphus is therefore widely regarded as the mythical inventor of The Prowler, eccentric-less training and GPP Hill training and conditioning.

GPP hill training

Achilles became the first person to suffer from an Achilles heel problem and he didn�t even wear trainers.

Heracles/Hercules was really strong, but he was half god, so it doesn�t really count, like anabolic steroids, it wasn�t a level playing field, having a dad whose a god is considered cheating for sure.

Go tell the Spartans

Sparta was a city state in ancient Greece. The Spartans were hardcore, they trained for war all the time. At aged 7 young boys had to enter The Agoge � a permanent military bootcamp/ school.

This military bootcamp format has survived through the ages. Little did the Spartan know that thousands of years later this would result in people paying trainers �10 an hour to shout at them in the park while they do burpees.

Also, without the Spartans Mens Health or whoever couldn�t have invented the 300 workout and spawned a myriad of random workouts based on 300 reps.

Sparta is really the first time we see fitness women as well. Women had quite a few rights in Sparta, they could wear revealing clothing. Both girls and boys exercised nude, mainly as it was thought to promote fitness, which is probably more feasible in the Mediterranean climate than in northern Europe.

They had women who were sporting celebrities, but they weren�t allowed to compete in the Olympics in Athens

Apparently in the comedy ( I don�t know if it�s actually funny, I�ve never read it) Lysistrata by the Athenian playwright Aristophanes, some Athenian women say to a Spartan women called Lampito . 'What healthy skin, what firmness of physique.' And then one says, 'I've never seen a pair of breasts like that.' To which Lampitos comes back with, 'I go to the gym. I make my buttocks hard.'

This seems to be the first example in history of a female fitness athlete/ gym goer.

Spartan woman: Doing a rotational lunge (probably)

The Romans

There�s a lot of crossover between the Romans and the Greeks. The Romans liked chariot racing, marching places and gladiators. Gladiatorial battles are the ultimate cage fighting, no holds barred, with the advantage that no one is wearing �Tap Out� clothing.

Roman women were allowed to train and use halteres/dumbbells. Check out the mosaic below, no one had yet decided that dumbbells for women had to be pink.

'Bikini Girls Mosaic' 4 century AD. The worlds first figure athlete picture

Everyone was eating the Mediterranean diet as well, because that's were they lived, except those poor Romans who got stationed up on Hadrians wall, they were probably eating a bit more paleo as the Scottish hadn't discovered the battered Mars Bar yet.

Western culture is slightly obsessed with Greek & Roman history, but lets not forget�

Meanwhile In India

The Indians had been doing there own thing for quite a while. Yoga has been around a long time, maybe 4000 or 5000 years! Which means while in Europe we were figuring out how to eat nettles the Indians were doing down dogs and working on their fitness and mind body connections. The first corrective exercise.

Without yoga there is no pilates or bodybalance or err yoga. It�s one of the few things that has stayed constant

The Indians also invented the Indian Clubs. Except they didn�t call them that. These probably developed from Gada or war clubs. These were as the name implied heavy clubs for hitting people with during battle. Swinging a club around for fitness had been practiced in the Middle East and and ancient Egypt. Eventually in India the war club became a fitness device. There were two types of clubs a light one for speed and a heavy one for strength. During the British colonial period in the 19th Century some British military personnel noticed how muscular and built some of the Indian soldiers were. They put it down to their Indian club training, exported it to England and it became the most popular type of training in the 19th century. The Brits only used the light clubs. They should have kept the name 'war clubs' though, it is a lot cooler. (This will be covered in more detail in part 2).

Light Indian Clubs

They also invented a gymnastic sport called Mallakhamb somewhere  possibly back in the 12th Century and for definite in the 19th century. You can see from the video below that this is like some crazy pole dancing. However much I watch that clip I still can�t see how the guy gets on the pole without permanent injury.
Anyway, this takes phenomenal amounts of core strength & balance.

Don't attempt this without some 'No More Nails' and a safety harness

It also justifies my attempts to attend those pole dancing classes; women only, pah! What you talking about, I want to work on more core strength like those Indian guys and nothing more. And I want to wear traditional pants like those Indian guys and will not be looking at you in your hot pants.

Pole Dancing: Great for core strength, it really is!

And while �researching� this I found this link. Yes, it seems someone has set up pole classes for guys, it�s called Vertical Pole. I am so going to be there in my orange pants dominating with my core strength!

Meanwhile over in China � Shaolin

Bodhidharma, a Buddhist monk was born in India, and then decided to make his way to China to spread the word. Back then you couldn�t go overland, so he went by sea and arrived in China in about 475 AD. Long story short, the guy then becomes the mythical patriarch of Zen Buddhism and makes his way to Shaolin.
It�s probable that having come from India he already knew yoga and some martial arts. When he gets to Shaolin he finds the monks are weak and sets about showing them some fitness moves, maybe some yoga, or qi gong type stuff. Before you know, kung fu is invented and Bodhidharma walks off into the sunset carrying one sandal.

Without Bodhidharma, there�s no Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan and to stretch the plausibility even more, there�s no bodycombat either, though the Shaolin monks probably don�t know who Les Mills is.

That�s it for part 1, in part 2 I�ll jump forward to the 18th & 19th century and cover barbells, kettlebells, strength training, aerobics, Arnie, Jane Fonda, health clubs and everything else in between.

Sources:
Wikipedia
From Milo to Milo - A History of Barbells, Dumbbells and Indian Clubs by Jan Todd. Iron Game History
http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/n-s/spartans2.html
http://www.ihpra.org/war_clubs.htm

The Yoga Up Dog Pose For Mobility (Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, What?!)

I've been meaning to write this for a while. A few months ago Mike Reinold posted on his blog that the Yoga cobra pose may be the best postural stretch. The reasoning was quite sound, using the joint by joint approach this stretch opens up many of the tight areas in the body.

Standard Desk Jockey Position

However, what I wanted to know was how to do this pose correctly, and the best person to ask is a Yoga teacher, so I asked a friend of mine, Janet Kelly, to talk me through it and demonstrate various progressions (see the video below of Janet demonstrating it). The first thing to note is she called it the up dog pose and not the cobra. I'm sure that many Yoga people argue the subtle differences between the cobra and the up dog and where the arm positions differ. All in all I'm looking for the mobility exercise that can be modified, used by the most people and benefit the most people. This is the strength of Janet's progressions and explanations of where you should be feeling this pose and how to do it, and this is why I think these up dog progressions are going to better for most people.

Why You Should Do It

This pose is going to lengthen your anterior chain. In the desk jockey picture above you can see the head is forward, the shoulders rounded, the chest collapsed inwards (Janda Upper Cross Syndrome) the hips flexed and the knees flexed. The up dog pose is really the opposite of this posture.

Who Should Do It

The up dog pose is similar to the McKenzie extension position, one of a series of extension exercises popularised by New Zealand Physiotherapist Robin McKenzie. This extended position is proven to provide back pain relief for some people with discogenic back problems, helping to 'suck' the disc back in. However, like everything, this is an individual thing.See the quote below from Stuart McGill (online article 'Selecting Back Exercises' available at his website)

"The location of the annulus breaches can be predicted by the direction of the bend. Specifically, a left posterior-lateral disc bulge will result if the spine is flexed with some additional right lateral bend (Aultman et al, 2004). Subsequent twisting leads circumferential rents in the annulus that tends to make McKenzie extension approaches for these clients useless, or even exacerbating."

Also, I imagine any type of facet joint problem could be made worse by this position. In short, use your judgement, if it hurts, stop, figure out why and do something else.

If you don't have any of these problems, this is a fantastic mobility exercise that you should make it part of your training routine, especially if you are a desk jockey or do a typical bench press routine or spend a lot of time cycling or driving. This is a great reverse posturing exercise.

As usual the people who should be doing it are the ones who are not doing it. All the guys in the gym spending all their time bench pressing should be in the studio doing some yoga and mobility work, and all the women in the yoga studio working on their flexibility should be in the gym lifting weights. This is the nature of things, resist the urge to only gravitate towards things you are good at, sometimes do the opposite of what you normally do.


How to do it

In Yoga the up dog pose is done as the opposing move to the down dog and is part of the sun salutation (don't ask me, I'm not a Yoga teacher!). In this example we are doing it as a stand alone move. In the video and explanation it is broken down into 5 levels, this is for ease of explanation and progression, these aren't 'official' levels.



Level 1

• Forearms down, elbowed directly beneath shoulders
• Rolling shoulders back and down
• Think of sliding chest forward and up
• Chin tucked & head neutral
• Relax lower back
• Big toes in, all 10 toenails resting on the floor
• Relax glutes

Level 2

• Slide elbows behind shoulders
• Opening middle back but not 'impinging' shoulders
• Imagine back and chest equally open and wide
• Don't retract shoulder blades, think of length

Level 3

• As previous levels but now more pressure through the forearms
• Think of pushing floor away rather than lifting the body up

Level 4

• Hands beneath shoulders, softness in the elbows
• Make sure there is space between your ears and shoulders
• Eyes looking forward
• Hips are now off the floor

Level 5

• Knees off the floor
• Now only the top of your feet and hands are in contact with the ground
• The body is not being driven downards, think relaxing again rather trying to force yourself down
• Stay open and still think of the chest going forward and up

 A note on breathing: Breathe in as you go into the pose, then exhale as you settle into position and soften

How long for

As we are using this as a stand alone mobility exercise, as long as you need to, 15-30 secs would be a good starting point to aim for

Where should you feel it

You should feel this opening out your hips and in the thoracic area. When I first tried this I felt it in my lower back, until Janet coached me to relax my lower back, and relax my glutes and then I could really feel it in the thoracic area. Remember, you are not trying to push your hips into the ground.

If it's painful stop and try something else, there are plenty of other exercises you can try to open out the hips and shoulders, this one just happens to accomplish a lot of things in one go. Using the joint by joint approach the only joint I think that needs to go the other way for most people and especially runners is the ankle. In this pose the ankle is in plantar flexion, I think for a lot of people working on dorsiflexion and calf tightness is the way to go. Of course, that's why in Yoga, they do the down dog pose as well. Who would have thought they knew a thing or two about keeping the body in balance a few thousand years ago.


Thanks to Janet Kelly. Also bear in mind that Janet is your typical flexible yoga teacher, her spine looks like that without her forcing it, don't expect yours to necessarily look the same, mine definitely doesn't!