What is Working Smarter in the Gym?

Results matter. Whether it is our own training or programs for our clients, after investing the time, effort, and money, the point is to produce positive changes. Unless there is an immediate deadline such as a contest or special event, making training decisions for the maximum long term benefit will produce the greatest results overtime.

We must understand how and why the body adapts to exercise to develop a quality program. Additionally, determining the correct starting point is an absolute necessity. Unfortunately, many training clients start with such a low level of general fitness many common programs are simply too much for them. Using progressive overload and bringing the workouts to their level can do wonders in helping them to make lifestyle changes.

The process of change 

Change happens slowly. It is the result of the interplay of stimulus and recovery. This can be applied to the whole system or just to smaller components such as muscles and joints. It also has effects on trainable qualities like strength and speed. When balanced correctly the desired improvements happen.

Progressive overload is the practical application of the general adaptation theory. To get the best results for beginning clients this must be understood and followed. As professionals, why we choose exercises and loading needs to be specific, deliberate, and part of a larger plan. 

Important concepts

General adaptation syndrome (GAS) was proposed by Hans Selye in the 1950s, it explains how change happens in a living being. The simple version is when a stimulus is applied to the body, the body reacts to mediate the effects. If the stimulus is large or frequent the body will change to minimize any effect from future exposures to it. Some stimuli are too large and cannot be adapted to. This will cause death of the exposed tissue. For example with enough mechanical overload muscle cells will rupture. 

Super compensation is a commonly cited explanation of how this happens via training. Essentially wear yourself down, recover, and become awesome. Repeat this process often enough and you become the baddest on the block. This can be too simple, leading to poor training choices like going to absolute failure. Unfortunately, just going and getting tired only works for a short period of time. But because it works at all, these poor training choices stick around for too long. 

Progressive overload is a way to use all of this and continue to make long term gains. It really is simple. Pick a specific task to get better at. Do some of the task, rest, later do slightly more of the task. If this process is done specifically with consistent small increases, tremendous improvements of the trained quality can happen. It won’t work forever, but it does work for a very long time. When simple progressive overload no longer works it is time for complex programming using percentages and cycling volume and intensity.

Common programming errors

There are common faults coaches and trainers make which can fall on opposite ends of the spectrum; the trainer gets lost in minutia of correctives and stability based programming or they take pride in destroying the person who came for help. Each fault decreases the effectiveness of the programs people pay us for. Our profession requires many skills. Understanding when to do what, and why it is important is an absolute necessity for a coach. Just doing trendy exercises or trying to fill out an hour because that’s how much time the client bought is not programming.

Doing too much total work

Yes working hard will produce better results than slacking, but the rate of adaption of specific qualities is limited. Think of it this way, when a stimulus is applied the body adapts to it, meaning future exposures of the same stimulus will produce no further adaptations. Example; a new trainee starts a program of 1*5 on bench every other day adding 5lbs to the bar each time. Because the trainee is just starting the 5lb increase is enough work to get stronger. This very simple program might even continue to produce strength gains for months. It works because only the amount of stimulus required to produce the adaptation is provided.

If instead of 1*5 we started the new trainee with 5*5 would he get better results? No, it would be pushing someone in a lake when they asked for a sip of water. Strength would go up at a similar rate, but the adaptation happened with a bigger stimulus. To produce the next strength adaptation an even bigger stimulus is needed. This is how people hit a plateau early in their training careers. The important concept is “minimum effective dose.” Spend the rest of the training time working on other qualities.

When less stimulus is applied, there is less wear and tear to recover from. Shorter recovery time allows for a greater training frequency. Specific qualities can only improve so much from a single training session. Once the training stimulus reaches the threshold needed to produce the desired adaptation, doing more work will not create a bigger change of the specific quality. Greater frequency allows these small improvements to add up quickly.

Programming ADHD

Doing something different every time can keep the workouts interesting. However, it won’t get the best results for the trainee. Without measurable standards how do we know what improved and what should be done next? There are short term changes produced from just doing work; fat loss, improved conditioning, but these are not durable and will go away if the workouts cease. Durable adaptations are structural (denser muscles, increased circulatory capacity) and neurological (skill patterns, ability to recruit more fibers faster) even after a period of inactivity much of these changes persist. The durable qualities require repeated exposes to develop. Changing the exercises too often does not allow for this.

Adding complexity not intensity

The example of this would be going from squats to squats on a bosu ball. It is a more difficult version but does not add specific overload. Overload causes adaptation, randomness can burn energy but there is nothing regular for the body to recognize and prepare for with adaptation.

To design a training plan there has to be progressions such as weight, volume, leverages, and rest periods are all important variables. Structuring a series of workouts to build upon each other requires an understanding of what the exercise is doing to the many systems of the body. The size of the change between exposures determines if the series of workouts will collectively produce a greater response. If the change in the nature of the exposure is too great it is now a novel stimulus.

In the example of bosu ball squats, the exercise will not require an increase in force production from the prime movers. Neurologically muscles are not activated in the same pattern. And the point of force application is physically different. This exercise will burn energy, but adding the complexity of the unstable surface does nothing to improve the squat or make substantial changes to the trained muscles.

Other problems with overworking

• Increased hunger - Often a sudden or prolonged period of greatly increased workload will cause excessive hunger and cravings.
• Lower general activity levels - Fatigue or soreness causes a trainee to stop or reduce other activities and increase time spent sitting.
• Irritability - “I’m tired. Leave me alone.”
• Decreased performance - Training near max output produces great results. While it can take a new trainee many months to build up to it, max output can only be sustained for short bursts. With increasing fatigue, speed and quality of movement decreases. Trying to train when tired or under-recovered does not allow for pushing to the max output threshold thus stunting potential performance gains.
• Fatigue produces bad technique - Quality of movement matters. Every rep has an effect on the associated movement pattern. If performed tired or focusing on the clock, the quality of a movement will decrease. If the majority of training time is spent in this fashion, the trainee will be practicing mostly bad reps. Do this long enough and poor form will be locked in and require significant retraining to be changed.

Work hard, but more importantly work smart. One workout is never enough, it takes a series of deliberate workouts to reach a goal.

3 Easy Steps to Get Healthier

Effort is the enemy of change. It feels hard to do something different because entrenched habits become a virtual autopilot. Everyone day-dreams about how much better life would be “if this one thing was different.” That’s the easy part. You might even get some warm-fuzzies from the thought. How do we break negative habits holding us back?

Change requires action. Action requires effort, but the right plan has a natural flow to it opposed to pushing a stone up a hill. Often we end up in a willpower battle when trying to make a change, which can be fought for a while, but never won. For any change, when the needed effort feels overwhelming the attempt will sooner or later become another, “yeah I tried that.” We must make it easier. Smaller steps will keep you on the path.

Every goal regardless of size has a first step. If the first step is easy, the second step might happen. To pick the right first step we must know where we are going. Let’s define healthier. I can do it in six words: Lose Fat, Move Better, Feel Good. There are just three factors to meet this definition, and if done consistently success is virtually guaranteed. Certainly everyone knows the following points, but to ensure this blog post is long enough let’s go over them:

Eat Better – Quality and quantity are very important considerations. Quality is defined be nutrient density (vitamins, minerals… all the good stuff our bodies need to function correctly relative to total calories) veggies are a great example of a food with a high nutrient density. Quantity matters if you eat too much or too little, both extremes can cause problems.

Move More – For so many reasons, be active. Find something you enjoy (tolerate) and do it regularly. The only other consideration is to avoid activities that cause you injuries. 

Improve Mindset – Positive vs negative self-talk is crucial here. If you live in negativity about the food you are eating, the activities you are doing to change won’t stick.

Each of these factors are important parts of getting healthier. It may seem to be a short and simple list, but trying to do everything all at once is too much and doomed to failure. Pick one thing to work on. Make it specific. Build a plan of action. The other option is the technique in the video:

Easiest and fastest way to change.

Yes, finally, we are at the three simple steps to get healthier. Once you can get the song from the video out of your head, pick out one simple healthy habit. Then follow these steps to build a workable plan to implement the change:

Find the Time – When are you going to do it? Want to workout out more? It sounds nice and can definitely help, but put it on your schedule. Carve out the time or it won’t happen.

Clear the Path – What obstacles are in your way? Want to eat better, but somehow still end up at McDonald’s for lunch? If you pack a lunch so you have healthy food with you, you might very well end up eating better. Just hoping you won’t encounter any problems isn’t a plan.

Celebrate All Successes – Didn’t lose 100lbs this week? If you are only focused on the large goal with the long time frame it will feel like an impossible task. Reframe it, “I lost 1lb this week and I was able to walk a little further than the previous week.” Any progress is success. Don’t ignore it because it’s seems insignificant. Large successes are really just a bunch of small successes added together.

Make one change. Turn it into a habit. Then work on the next change. Build enough positive habits and you can achieve a real lifestyle change. At Cascade Peak Performance we help people do this every day. Thank you for taking time to read this, and please CONTACT US if we can help.

5 Qualities of Effective Fitness Programing

Exercise should be a part of everyone's life. Here are some considerations for picking/developing a program to follow. These are not in any particular order. All are important parts of a program. Ignoring any of them will prove to be an unnecessary roadblock. Remember, it is never just one workout that is needed, results come from consistency.

• Keeps you healthy

If you get hurt you won’t be exercising. Love soccer but twist your ankle every game? Until your ankles get stronger this isn’t the best way for you to get or stay in shape. Maybe reduce the number games or duration of playing time to allow for some healing. Getting in the gym to make the legs stronger can also help.

• Keeps you motivated

Going for a run every morning can be a good way to burn some calories. Running the same route at the same pace will get boring. Setting goals and achieving them can be a great step in sticking with it. Signing up for races or joining a running group is another way to stay motivated.

• It is progressive in nature

Can improvements be measured? To improve fitness there should be a measurable component. It could be that you ran longer or added weight to a barbell. This is how to determine if progress is being made and if changes to the program need to happen.

•  It is purposeful

Every part of the program should have a specific reason why it is there. The reason should be better than “that guy over there does this exercise.” Understanding why you are doing something is important to know when to do more or less of it.

•  It is enjoyable

If you hate it you won’t stick with it.

Thank you for reading, and if you need help on any of these points please come see us at Cascade Peak Performance.

What is Healthy Living?

This is something that is so commonly said, but often undefined. I thought I would take a stab at how we view it at CPP.

Eating foods that have a high nutrient density – You are what you eat is overused and true. Let’s start with a concept I got from Precision Nutrition, nutrient density is the ratio of the good stuff in food versus the calories in that food. One end of the spectrum would be veggies and the other would be donuts. Food needs to supply more than energy to properly support physical health. Vitamins and minerals that come from whole food sources are better utilized than from a pill.

When someone follows this they are getting the majority of calories from whole foods instead of processed alternatives. This will result in better physical health, improve body composition, and increase energy levels.

Move everyday – For every hour spent sitting spend an hour on your feet being active. This can be tough for office workers, but even more important. The human body is not made to sit in a chair all day. Physical activity in general becomes harder from the whole body tightness that sitting creates. Get on your feet and fight it.

Moving more can help you be happy. I am thoroughly convinced people who get up and do something are generally in a better mood than those who don’t. The improved blood flow and endorphins have a large role in this. Activity in general helps clear the head and reduce stress levels. So find something enjoyable and do it!

Being able to clear your mind – People worry, stress, mull things over; all this is normal. However, when it becomes constant it can negatively effect wellbeing. Some people meditate. Others have hobbies that allow them to be focused enough to temporarily forget everything else. For me working out, specifically lifting has been this. When I am working hard enough or that there is enough weight on the bar, for that moment nothing else exists.

When contemplating a problem, it is easy to get stuck. Being able to pull out of this even if only momentarily is important. Exercise, meditate, stare at a wall; anything that will get you out of your own head for a short time can do wonders. The anxiety from not being able to do this will often be a trigger for our bad habits.

Having something that you are passionate about – For a lucky few a passion can be a profession, but if this isn’t you that is perfectly fine. A job can just be a means to an end. This would allow someone to support themselves and still follow a passion. The great lie about following your passion to pick a career has caused much unnecessary stress.

Having something that you love and can put full energy into is part of the human experience. Shutting off that fountain of inspiration can make your worl

d gray. It’s ok if that passion changes. The things that we love as children don’t often retain the same meaning as adults. But find something. And to those that struggle to find one, the search is just part of the experience.

Having people to share positive experiences with – Humans are social animals. Being able to share the above experiences can make every one of them better.

Thanks for reading. I’m sure that there can be more said about each one, but this is a quick take on how we view healthy living.

Seminar Recap

Last Saturday I attended a Perform Better seminar in Seattle. It featured four presenters. Each talked for an hour in the morning and had a 30 minute hands on section in the afternoon. There were over 200 people in attendance. I try to go to at least two seminars every year, and always come back with new ideas and renewed motivation.

This was the order of presenters, the topics from the Perform Better website, and my comments:

Charlie Weingroff, DPT, ATC, CSCS - I Left Heavy Things & Put Them Down
There is often agreement that developing strength is a brilliant strategy to meet goals in both fitness and athletic development.  There are many ways that strength can be developed, ranging from neurological "tricks" to basic technical proficiency of compound lifts with dumbells, kettlebells, and barbells.  Principles of the nervous system and basic mechanics will always apply to different implements based against ultimately the laws of gravity.  Charlie will address the different perspectives in how we move and address specific adaptations to imposed demands in the effort of getting "strong."

Weingroff is a physical therapist and strength coach that has a powerlifting background. Having seen him speak before, I was excited that he was presenting because the perspective that his background brings.

He talked about general physical preparedness (GPP) vs specific physical preparedness (SPP) and how understanding where a trainee should be placed will help with exercise selection. The difference being that most personal training clients will never need SPP because the goal of being in shape does not necessitate specialty exercises to produce specific adaptations as an athlete training for a competition would need.

The other point that I took was considerations for loading an exercise. Essentially when a given training result can be produced by various means, choosing the option that has lower absolute loading (total weight used) will reduce the incidence of injuries.

Lee Burton, PhD, ATC, CSCS - Functional Exercise Progressions: Mobility, Motor Control and Strength
Every exercise professional should create a holistic exercise program that improves performance while creating more durability.  In order to do this effectively functional exercise should be utilized as a fundamental component of the program design. We must design a program that uses proper exercise progressions, which are designed to focus on the weaknesses while maintaining and progressing the strength and power. We must ultimately work towards overall gains in strength, power and endurance, which are laid on top of a solid foundation of mobility and motor control.  The focus of the session will be describing the importance of functional exercise and demonstrating how to implement and effectively progress functional exercise.

Burton is the co-creator of the Functional Movement Screen. He talked about the history and philosophy of the FMS. It did give me a better understanding of the FMS. One of the purposes of the screen is to determine what movements can be trained and what movements need to be developed with corrective exercises.

He also talked about what corrective exercise are and how they can be misapplied. Corrective exercises can be used to increase range of motion of a joint or to increase coordination, but only by incorporating those gains into bigger exercises in a training program can the correctives be productive.

Alwyn Cosgrove, CSCS - The Next Fitness Blueprint: New Programming and Operation Strategies
The only guarantee in the fitness business is that everything changes! 

This seminar will cover the latest changes and developments in programming and business practices.  From new fat loss studies and practices, to the latest in metabolic training and business delivery options (including semi-private 2.0), no stone will be left unturned.

He and his wife own a training gym in California that inspired much of how I setup Cascade Peak Performance. I have seen him speak twice before. He talks about the structure of gyms and the evolution of personal training. He and his team are constantly working to improve the model of a training gym, and it is always interesting to see the changes that they make each year.

Many people seek a trainer when the need to lose weight and feel better, but after a year or two of training that have enough success that they then reach “well now what?” Cosgrove terms this as the “Executive Athlete.” These are people that are now in shape and need something else to train for.  Finding races or powerlifting competitions to give them a goal to aim at becomes a big part of maintaining the lifestyle.

Martin Rooney, MHS, PT, CSCS, NASM - The Art and Science of Small Group Training
In this thought-provoking lecture, world renowned trainer and presenter Martin Rooney will examine the growing fitness trends of “microgyms” and small group training sessions.  His presentation will cover important and commonly overlooked training concepts like coaching, leadership and session architecture while teaching you how to increase client consistency, community, retention and most importantly, results. The motivational hands-on will show you how to combine the three important E’s for delivering a legendary session: Energy, Education and Equipment.  This promises to be an “Experience” you will not forget.  If you are a coach, trainer, or fitness enthusiast looking for new training direction or simply for ideas to better your small group classes, this is for you.

Rooney might be the most enthusiastic person alive. He started by asking how many of us eat broccoli every day. This obviously was a strange question to ask a group of personal trainers and strength coaches, but his line of questioning was purposeful to get those in attendance to think about how effective they are at getting people to make positive changes in the way they live. He also talked about how many clients come to us not because they don’t know to move more and eat less, but that they come to a trainer to be inspired to do it.

Rooney touched on how to create raving fans and to build an atmosphere that anyone looking in will want to be part of. His is a big advocate of high fives. Focusing on these points will not only increase client compliance but make you a more successful coach because people will be drawn to the experience.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I’m sure a few of you will notice the changes that these lessons will bring to the gym.