Chris Shugart recently wrote an article on T-nation about balance. Basically, he said, "Balance good, karate good, everything good. Balance bad? Better pack up, go home."
Ok, maybe that's not exactly what he said. But, Chris' point was that most trainees fell into three camps—the “all training, no diet camp,” the “all diet, no training camp,” and the “lifestyle saboteur.” And this killed their progress. The solution Chris suggested was an appropriate balance between the approaches.
You'll get no argument from me. But I started thinking about the entire "balance" thing. You see, I train athletes and a whole bunch of regular people too. The thing is I don't train the two groups differently. Oh sure, the exercises change and the relative intensity changes, but my overall philosophy remains the same.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that a large proportion of people who email questions to this site had a training program that was almost exclusively strength training based. Or they had, at best, 75 percent strength and then cardio whenever they got around to it.
Now I know what you're thinking, “I’m only interested in strength.” Or, “I’m only interested in aesthetics.” I understand that. But in general, most athletes look better than most bodybuilders. In general, the look that the majority of people are after is more Roy Jones than Ronnie Coleman. In general, a strength only approach usually leads to injury.
In general, a complete athletic approach to training (regardless of your primary goal) might just be the missing link.
So suspend your belief that training consists of only weight training and aerobics and be open-minded enough to accept that there may be more to "training" than just those two areas.
I think that the strength and conditioning industry is to blame. Think of the name-strength and conditioning. This sends the message that strength is our number one goal and everything else is just lumped together as "conditioning." I don't buy it. For example, when I worked with Dave Tate on some injury and mobility issues, I helped design the program, but I did not design the "strength" portion. Dave knows more about strength than me. Yet, I fulfilled the role of "strength and conditioning coach" for him. I guess it's just a horrible term. But overall, whenever an athlete comes to our facility, he is looking to enhance performance and prevent injury. For me, this means that all “non skills” or technical training is my responsibility. I don't like situations where I am the "strength" coach and we have another "speed" coach or "nutritionist" all working independently. This becomes a chop-shop approach to training, and at this point in my career, I don't get involved in these situations.
From my viewpoint, physical training is an actual juggling of SEVEN key areas. I have completely stolen the names for these phases from several sources, but special mention has to go to Mike Boyle and Mark Verstegen who first brought this stuff to light.
These phases are almost arbitrary. Where does mobility end and flexibility begin? Where does gluteal "activation" end and gluteal strengthening begin? I don't know. And it's almost a waste of time to try to figure it out. Just think of these classifications as a continuum. You may be on one end of the continuum but your goals remain similar.
This article is not going to give you an actual program to follow. It is designed more as an overview. I realize that some of you will understand that every template needs to be tweaked so giving an "overview" is better. The other reason is that every single freaking time that I write an actual program online or in a magazine that includes, for example, dips, or something on an adjustable bench, I get a dozen emails. People ask me, "I only have a flat bench, what can I do?" or "I just had reconstructive shoulder surgery, should I be doing dips?" or other such nonsensical crap. So for your education, a template to work from is a better tool.
Can you do each of these as a separate session? Sure. But for practical purposes, we prefer to integrate all of the following into an entire training session. At first glance, it will look just like a combination of some bodyweight exercises and some strength training exercises. That's all it is, but each exercise has a separate goal.
So this is what a "session" under my own or my staff's supervision will consist of. This is the true story of seven training principles picked to live in a workout and have their results taped. Find out what happens when training stops being nice and starts getting real. (Ok, I'm up too late writing this.)
Every single session in our facility works through the following phases:
1. Mobility, Activation, and Movement Preparation (MAMP)
This is a term that essentially describes a "modern" warm-up. The point of a warm-up has been lost over the years. It is designed not to just get you warm, but to prepare you for the activity that is about to follow. Jogging on a treadmill for ten minutes is not getting the job done, although for psychological reasons we sometimes keep this type of activity in.
For a great starting point, Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson’s Magnificent Mobility DVD and articles will be your first resource. Another great resource is Parisi’s Warm-Up DVD, which is a really comprehensive resource on the subject. I'm not going to cover this issuein too much detail as it has been done to death. Just get the concept that this is NOT an optional phase. This is designed to prepare the entire body for your workout.
The time invested should be related to how poorly you can move. A very tight athletemay spend 20–30 minutes on this phase. An extremely tight athlete may spend longer and precede it with foam roller work and static stretching. I think it's important to say that I have absolutely no problem with a client who needs to develop a range of motion doing static stretching before activity. I think the studies that showed this to be a bad idea were flawed, and it's only common sense to have a tight client work on developing range before you do anything else.
A more athletic client may only spend 5–6 minutes on this phase. Pre-workout or during workout shakes are introduced at this time.
2. Injury Prevention
I hate this term. I've tried to come up with another term, but none really get the message across. Pre-habilitation means training to prevent injury. As opposed to training to increase injury? I feel that all training should be with injury prevention as a goal. However, over the years I've recognized the need to pay special attention to "problem areas." This is your warm-up, part two. This is where we run through the types of exercises that I mentioned in the article, , and some gluteal activation work.
This is where the YES/NO answer determines how much work you do. Does anything hurt? It's a yes or no answer. "A little" or "only when I..." are "yes" answers. That means we address that area with some additional work. Or we determine whether we need to seek some additional help (PT, ART, etc).
Examples: YTWL, push-up plus, reach, roll and lift for shoulder
Mini band walks (also shoulder and rhomboids), glute bridge, and hip thigh extension variations for the gluteal and hip complex. One to two sets of 8–10 reps of each should suffice. The entire phase should take about 6–8 minutes.
3. Core/Pillar Training
Yep, we do core training first. The logic that you train "abs" last because it tires them out never made any sense, even in squatting. The abs don't work concentrically coming out of a squat so I'm really not concerned that my athletes did a pillar bridge for 60 seconds or two sets of reverse crunches.
What I do know though is that for an athlete, core strength is where it's at. Most coaches working with athletes would like more core strength. It's that important.
And if it's that important, why would we ever do it anywhere but first? If it's a priority, then prioritize it.
A typical "core" session consists of one stability exercise held for time (e.g. a bridge), a rotation exercise (e.g. a wood chop), and some kind of hip flexion exercise (e.g. a reverse crunch). Basically 1–2 sets of a challenging variation (for your level) for 8–10 reps will be enough. For each workout, we would select a different trio of exercises. Progression will take place as usual—increased reps, increased loading, and increased difficulty of exercise.
The time invested will be about 4–5 minutes. Basically the movement preparation runs right into the injury prevention and core training stage, which is set up as a mini-circuit for all intents and purposes.
4. Elasticity/Reactive/SSC Training
This refers to explosive bodyweight work or what has become commonly known as plyometrics. Think of it as making your body more "springy." This will not only enhance sports performance (as in most sports, speed and explosiveness is the difference maker) but will also help to reduce injuries.
This stage gets a wee bit trickier. We don't count reps. We focus on time but with quality as our key factor. As soon as the exercise slows down, we stop the set. Additionally the time frame will depend on the athlete and their goals/sport (some athletes will obviously do more than others). This portion will typically last around 4–8 sets.
We also classify these exercises in terms of range of movement, from rapid response (think jumping side to side over a line) to very long response (think of a long range squat jump type movement).
We further split this into linear and lateral variations and single and double leg levels.Intensity is controlled based on the exercise selection, with a box jump being at a low level and a depth jump being at a high level.
Time spent on this phase will again be 5–7 minutes.
5. Resistance Training Portion
This is still the single most important phase for many athletes. Almost every high school kid that comes to see us is too weak. (And too slow, too tight, too small, or too fat.) And in the world of sports, strength is still a major factor in almost ALL sports. If it wasn't, females would beat males because total body strength wouldn't be a factor.
Now for YOU, you might have a hypothetical strength level of an 8 on a scale of 1–10 for an activity that requires only a 6. In that case, you would reduce the volume of strength work and focus more on your weaker areas.
For time management reasons, I always use the alternating set system. I have yet to hear a convincing argument for the superiority of straight sets. We tend to do exercise one for a set, rest 60 seconds or so, do exercise two for a set, rest 60 seconds or so, and continue.
And as most of you are probably aware, I think basing your exercise selection on a body part split is an exercise in futility. We use one of two options most of the time—total body (different exercises each workout day) or an upper-lower split.
For most of you, most of my clients, and pretty much all athletes, a strength training portion of more than 20–30 minutes in this type of routine wouldn't be necessary. Based on the alternating set system, we do a work set plus a rest every 90 seconds to two minutes or so (depending on the total reps). So for a 30 minute time period, you could do 15–20 work sets. This is more than enough so don't worry about getting short changed. Interestingly, although the amount of time for each of these "phases" varies, I've never had the resistance portion comprise more than about 50 percent of the entire athlete's session. For a purely aesthetic goal, I'd still be unlikely to have the resistance portion be much more than 60 percent of the session. (Again we would tweak the exercise selection, sets, and reps based on experience.)
6. Energy System Development (ESD)
Energy System Development = "extra stuff to do." My friend and co-author, Lou Schuler, came up with that term, but I think it describes exactly what we are talking about. The old term used to be "cardio," but most people tended to think that meant steady state aerobics.
ESD encompasses the entire cardio gamut, from steady state aerobic work to interval training to metabolic complex type work. We use this as a conditioning tool, although with a little manipulation, this can obviously be used to enhance fat loss if that is a goal.
Typically, the higher the intensity, the shorter the session and vice versa. On average, this will be a 12–20 minute period of time at the most. For convenience, this can be done either during the session or in a separate workout.
7. Flexibility, Regeneration
The first part of this (which I guess is the "modern" cool down) focuses on self myofascial release. This is really just an approach to addressing the quality of our soft tissue. For most of our clients, this means using "the stick" or the foam roller to work on a type of self massage. Hold the "hot spots" for 30 seconds or so or until they release. The problem areas are usually the ITB, the glutes, the quads, and the calves. Think of this as a poor man’s massage therapist.
The second portion in this phase is stretching. Much has been written on stretching and flexibility work over the past few years (i.e. which type is best, etc.). The result has been that most people have stopped doing any flexibility work whatsoever. This is the worst possible solution. For future reference (beyond the scope of this article), flexibility training is always necessary. This just doesn't mean stretching. It can mean a variety of things.
But for now, I don't care whether you do yoga, dynamic stretches, AIS stretching, CRAC stretching, or old fashioned deadly static stretching. What I DO want is for you to spend a good 10–15 minutes on flexibility through all your tight areas. As this tends to be the most ignored portion of most people's routine, I prefer this to be done in the gym. Otherwise, it tends to be skipped.
We also have everyone drink a post workout shake at this point.
For the anal guys who are trying to figure out how long the entire session will take, generally it averages about 50–55 minutes. A workout for a real tight client with energy system work to do may last 70–80 minutes, including the entire stretching at the end. Obviously, time is the biggest factor so many clients do their flexibility work or cardio work in a separate session, which is fine.
To summarize, start by just considering how much time you spend in each area in comparison to your current goals. Even adding 1–2 minutes of specific work in each area may help you improve your overall progress.
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