Home Posts tagged "Bulletproof Athlete"

Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 5/27/14

Here's this week's list of recommended strength and conditioning reading/viewing:

2014 University of Texas Commencement Address - I thought this speech by Naval Admiral William McRaven was absolutely awesome.  Don't be surprised if it's the best 20 minutes of your day.

Bulletproof Athlete - Mike Robertson's popular program is on sale this week at a great $50 discount. As I wrote here, I think this is an outstanding resource, particularly for beginners who need some excellent direction to kick off their training careers on the right foot.

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Calories: Should You Be Counting? - This was an excellent piece from Dani Shugart at T-Nation on a controversial topic where the appropriate answer is a bit different for everyone. 

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The Best of 2013: Strength and Conditioning Product Reviews

To wrap up my “Best of 2013″ series, I’ll highlight the top product reviews I did at this site in the last year.  Here they are:

1. Bulletproof Athlete - I firmly believe that Mike Robertson created the best "beginner lifter" resource available on the market today.  This resource is an awesome start-up program that'll prepare novice trainees for a program like you'd find in my High Performance Handbook.  I wrote up a detailed piece on training beginners when I reviewed Mike's resource; check it out: 5 Mistakes Beginner Lifters Make.

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2. The Supplement-Goals Reference Guide - At a price of only $39 and with over 700 pages of content and lifetime updates, this resource is a game-changer, thanks to the folks at Examine.com.  I explained why in this post: The Question I Hate to Be Asked.

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3. Post Rehab Essentials 2.0 - I love reading Dean Somerset's stuff.  A lot of people "think outside the box" because they haven't mastered what's inside the box in the first place.  Dean has a great foundation of knowledge, and it gives rise to some innovative ideas and a forward-thinking corrective exercise approach.  This article is a perfect example.

4. Off the Floor: A Manual for Deadlift Domination - This was Dave Dellanave's first foray into the world of product development, and he crushed it!  It's a great resource not only for learning deadlift techniques, but also because it provides a great program for improving your pull. Check out my review here.

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5. The MX20V3 Training Sneaker - This was my pick for training sneaker of the year in 2013.  Full disclosure: I'm a consultant to New Balance, but that relationship was in part established because I was such a big fan of the original Minimus!  Since then, they've taken sneaker prototypes for test-drives with our staff at CP, and done focus groups with our athletes to make sure that the products get the job done.  Check out this commercial I filmed for the MX20V3 in August to learn more:

There were certainly some other great products I encountered this year, but these five proved to be the most popular with my readers.  Obviously, I also introduced some new products of my own in 2013, most notably The High Performance Handbook. However, Functional Stability Training of the Lower Body and Understanding and Coaching the Anterior Core were hits as well.  Hopefully, there will be plenty more to come in 2014!

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Quick and Easy Ways to Feel and Move Better: Installment 49 (Beginner Coaching Cues Edition)

As the final piece of "Beginner Week" here at EricCressey.com, Greg Robins touches on four common technique mistakes we see in beginners and outlines how to correct them.  These will all be video cues.

1. Get the hips back and knees out with your squat technique.

2. Don't be to either extreme with your elbow positioning on rows and presses.

3. Keep the shoulders closer to the knees on single-leg exercises.

4. Keep the hips closer to the bar on deadlifts.

5. Be consistent!

And, as a quick wrap-up, today is the last day to get the introductory discount on Mike Robertson's new Bulletproof Athlete product.  This is the premier strength and conditioning resource for beginners, so if you're just getting started with training or work with those who are, don't miss this great opportunity to pick up an awesome resource at an awesome price.

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4 Steps You Might Have Skipped in Your Strength Training Career

After he read my blog post from earlier this week, Mike Robertson reached out to me with this great guest post, which highlights in more detail how to be "smart from the start" with your training career.  Mike's new resource, Bulletproof Athlete, has set the new gold standard for safe and effective training for beginner lifters.

As EC discussed earlier this week, a lot of things can go right for beginners, but a lot of things can go wrong for them, too - even if these mistakes aren't perceived.  These problems aren't as simple as dropping a weight on one's foot or misloading a barbell and having it come crashing down.  Rather, they're usually acts of omission - meaning you skipped something (either intentionally or unintentionally) that needed to get done to ensure optimal long-term progression.  Here are four steps a lot of people skip along the way:

Step #1: Developing Quality Mobility and Stability

This is probably the most notorious offender on the list, and yet I think this is the point to which people are the most unwilling to listen.

Case and point: think about how your lifting career started. I can tell you how mine did. Here goes…

The summer before my junior year, we got a bunch of strength training machines at our school. We also got a bunch of hand-me-down barbells and dumbbells from Ball State University. With this mish-mash of equipment, my lifting career started.

Our upper body days were grueling – 5-10 sets of various bench presses, no upper back training, and biceps and triceps work until the cows came home.

And legs? Pffft – well, our leg training left a thing or two to be desired. We didn’t squat – ever – because we didn’t have a rack. And, because they were obviously bad for our knees. My leg training consisted of leg presses, leg extensions and leg curls. Do you see what I’m getting at here?

For most of us, our basic movement foundation is so screwed up, it’s no wonder we’ve either plateaued or ended up injured.

The Fix

Go back to home base. Rebuild your movement foundation via smart mobility and stability training. Teach yourself to squat, push-up, lunge, etc., with good technique and quality movement.

Don’t worry about things like load for now; just get yourself moving better. When you go back to lifting heavy things, not only will you be far more efficient, but you’ll be stronger as well.

Step #2 - Integrating the Core

Let’s quickly return to my first years in lifting.

We had tons of machines, which were great at isolating specific body parts. But we also know they’re virtually useless if you want to coordinate movement like you would in sports, powerlifting, Olympic lifting, or any ol’ activities of daily living.

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In my “main” lower body lift (a leg press, at the time) you have a built-in core. No wonder you can throw so much weight around when you’re totally supported and just allow your legs to do the work!

And my main upper body lift (like any young, American male) was the bench press. Again, great for developing the upper body, but not so good at integrating or “tying together” the upper and lower body.

What we’ve ended up doing is training either the upper OR the lower body, but not focusing on exercises that integrate the two.

The Fix

You’re probably already smarter than me early on, so keep doing those compound lower body exercises instead of isolated garbage.

On the upper body training sessions, put an emphasis on upper body exercises that unite the upper and lower body. Push-up variations are awesome here, as are inverted rowing exercises.

Step #3 – Jumping Right Into Deadlifts

I don’t know two guys who love deadlifts more than Eric Cressey and me. Well, maybe Konstantin and Andy Bolton, but we’ve got to be pretty darn close!

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Here’s the thing: if you watch enough people move, you realize that most aren’t ready to do a conventional deadlift on Day 1.

First off, most people these days have zero body awareness. ZERO. You ask them to hinge at the hips and all they really do is extend their back into oblivion.

Then, to make matters worse, they talk about how deadlifts (and hip hinging) “hurts their back.”

The Fix

I like to ease my clients into the hip hinge pattern. If they’re really dysfunctional, we may start with something like a hip thrust to teach them how to extend their hips first.

From there, I want to get them on their feet so they can start to put the pieces together. Whether you choose a Romanian deadlift (RDL), pull-through, or rack pull is irrelevant.

The goal is to get them hinging with a neutral spine, often with a reduced load and through a shorter range of motion than they would a traditional deadlift. Let them groove this pattern and get confident for a few weeks (or months, depending on the client) and then slowly progress them back into full range of motion pulling.

I love deadlifting as much as the next guy, but they may not be appropriate right off the bat.

And along those same lines, here’s one more thing to think about…

Step #4 - Back Squats

I’m pretty sure if I haven’t already gotten my powerlifting man-card revoked, it’s definitely gone after I say this.

Not everyone is prepared to back squat on Day 1.

I know I’m not alone in this sentiment, either. Gray Cook has gone on record as saying, “train the deadlift, maintain the squat.”

I know EC is a big fan of the front squat as well – not just for himself, but for his baseball guys as well.

The bottom line is, the back squat isn’t an easy exercise to master. Does that mean we just forget about it? Absolutely not – I love squatting, and it’s actually become my favorite lift over the years.

But again, that doesn’t mean we should jump right into back squatting Day 1.

The Fix

First and foremost, get that movement foundation first.

Once you’ve got that foundation, then start to re-build your squat technique. I love goblet squats (ala Dan John) and front squats early on in a program. Not only do they lock your spine into an upright position, but they maximize and reinforce good mobility through the hips, knees and ankles.

Plus, if you’re building a rocking posterior chain with your hip hinging exercises, it’s okay to blast those quads a little bit with a really quad dominant squatting variation!

Summary

We’ve all skipped steps along the way. Unfortunately, it’s just not that easy to find an amazing performance coach when you’re young and start working with them!

However, that doesn’t mean you can ignore the facts.

If you skipped any of the steps above, now is the time to rebuild your foundation, once and for all.

And if you want someone to outline all this for you, pick up a copy of my Bulletproof Athlete program. It’s on sale this week ONLY, and I guarantee you’ll be leaner, stronger and more athletic after you finish the program.

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5 Mistakes Beginner Lifters Make

A lot has been made of how easily one can make progress in the first year of strength training programs.  It’s possible for beginner lifters to drop body fat and gain muscle mass at rates faster than these individuals will ever experience again during their training careers.

However, very little attention is paid to how much can also go wrong during this initial period.

Beginner lifters can pick up on bad technique that leads them down bad “movement paths” that lead to injuries down the road.  As Gray Cook has noted, you never want to lay fitness on top of dysfunction.

Additionally, these beginner strength training participants can gain a false sense of what effective programming really is.  If the basic muscle magazine garbage plan worked, then why allow your training program to evolve from there? You got strong on sets of 8-15 reps and used the Smith machine a ton, so why would you ever want to lower the number of reps per set or head over to the free weight area?

The point is that we’ve measured progress too much in terms of how people look and too little in terms of how people feel and move.  The truth is that it’s possible for beginner lifters to improve in all three areas with quality programming from the get-go.  With that in mind, I thought I’d outline five mistakes beginners commonly make in their quest to make serious fitness gains.  The timing of the post is actually quite fitting, as Mike Robertson introduced his awesome new Bulletproof Athlete resource.  I think this program has instantly set the new standard for an ideal beginner template.

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Anyway, without further ado, here are those five mistakes:

1. Overlooking the Value of Quality Nutrition

Let’s face it: there are a lot of frat boys out there who start lifting in college, and make ridiculous progress in spite of the fact that they crush beer, nachos, and chicken wings for about 75% of their total caloric intake.  That doesn’t mean optimal nutrition can’t expedite process and – just as importantly – set the stage for a better internal environment for long-term progress.  Just remember that even if you just want to “bulk like crazy” to start up, those fat cells are with you for life once you’ve made them.

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2. Not Building Work Capacity

Most beginners will build work capacity just by continuing to show up for training sessions and “surviving” the workouts.  That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re adapting optimally to set the stage for long-term progress.

That said, in light of the “interval training is awesome and steady-state cardio is useless” propaganda of the past few years, there are a lot of people who completely omit steady-state cardio form their training programs – opting either for no supplemental conditioning or for high-intensity interval training (HIIT) only.  While some HIIT is certainly appropriate and acceptable, it’s not a good idea to completely overlook the value of building an aerobic base.

This aerobic component early on helps to optimize during- and between-session recovery – which, in turn, enables a trainee to get in more quality work over the long-term.  In fact, some of my best gains came during my “intermediate” lifting career when I was doing low-intensity cardio twice a week for 20-30 minutes.  As I wrote all the way back in 2005 in Cardio Confusion, as long as the intensity is low enough, it won’t interfere with strength or muscle mass gains.

3. Not Appreciating Soft Tissue and Mobility Work

When you’re a gung-ho beginner, nothing can stop you.  You feel great for every training session and just want to keep working harder and harder when the mirror gives you great feedback.  The problem, however, is that it’s hard to see the forest through the trees.  In this case, your abs or biceps are the trees, and the forest is how you’ll feel in ten years if you don’t go down a path that includes foam rolling and mobility work.  Rolling around on the floor on a stupid cylinder isn’t sexy, and doing side-lying windmills really isn’t anyone’s idea of fun, but trust me when I say that it makes a difference over the long haul.  And, the people who have the most continuity in their training career are the ones who make the best long-term process. 

I attribute a lot of my success in the weight room to the fact that I rarely get sick, and haven’t had any significant injuries over the year. In fact, at one point, I went eight years without missing a planned training session.  It took a storm with 38” of snow to get me to push a lift back a day!  I’m not saying you have to be this neurotic, but at the very least, set aside 8-10 minutes before you train to take care of your body.

4. Training Through or Around Injuries Instead of Fixing Them

Everyone has rolled an ankle at some point of another.  And, most people have had a cranky shoulder after a few hours of painting or playing catch.  There are obviously a lot of other examples of old “wear and tear” we might discount as normal and non-problematic.

There’s a problem, though: adding external load often brings these issues to threshold. A bum shoulder might not bother you grabbing a glass on the top shelf, but it’ll start to bark when you’re military pressing a significant amount of weight.  Don’t ignore these issues!

You see, we’re all resilient when we’re in our teens and early 20s, but things get a lot tougher as we get older for two main reasons.  First, we acquire structural abnormalities – bone spurs, rotator cuff tears, disc hernations, even fractures – that we never perceive until it’s too late.  Second, as we get older, degenerative changes kick in much faster, as tissues just can’t handle the same loading they once did. 

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The more proactive you can be with addressing old aches and pains at the start of a training career, the more likely you are to avoid missing significant training time for one of those issues down the road.

5. Getting Away from Compound Exercises Too Quickly

There’s nothing wrong with direct arm work if you want big arms.  However, early on in a training program, chin-ups and bench presses are going to give you a more impressive gun show than you’d get from curls and pressdowns.  Down the road, these isolation exercises may serve a valuable role, but build a solid foundation before you cross that road.  And, make sure the compound exercises remain the central focus all along.

These five mistakes are just a small sample of some of the flawed approaches a lot of beginners take; I'd love to hear your thoughts on the many more you've witnessed - or made yourself!  In the meantime, I'd highly recommend checking out Robertson's Bulletproof Athlete program if you're a beginning lifter or you work with those just getting into the "iron game."  It's a professionally organized, well written presentation of the right way to start people up with a comprehensive fitness program, from strength training, to mobility work, to energy systems development, to recovery/regeneration and nutrition. You can check it out HERE.

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LEARN HOW TO DEADLIFT
  • Avoid the most common deadlifting mistakes
  • 9 - minute instructional video
  • 3 part follow up series