Good Reads – 2/15/12

by Steve Troutman on February 15, 2012

Shon Grosse recently posted up an article on the single leg romanian deadlift.  It’s one of my favorite exercises for a number of reasons.  But, as Shon points out in the article, very few people have the requisite performance attributes required to complete the movement with appropriate form.  In the article Shon shows a 3 stage progression into the full blown movement.  It happens to be very similar to the progression that I use with my clients.  Some of the article is a big technical for the lay person, but the value will come from the videos.

Matt Perryman and I were discussing some things on facebook about exercise, stress, and recovery the other day.  I highlighted the conversation on my blog here.  That conversation joggled my memory about an article Matt wrote a while back about fat loss and running.  Some of his views have changed slightly, which is evidenced in our recent conversation, but I still think this is a phenomenal article that many people I’m encountering need to read.

Nick Tumminello is always delivering quality exercise videos on his blog.  In his recent post he highlights an underutilized exercise that I really like throwing into the mix every now and again.  We’re so hung up on bench pressing that we often forget about other horizontal pressing exercises.  Hell, the closed chain push-up is a phenomenal exercise that people write off.  I haven’t done true bench pressing for months as I’ve been primarily weighted dips.  Point is, don’t get sucked into the bench press or die mentality.

JC Deen responds to a question I receive time and time again… “Can you draft me up a meal plan?”  I couldn’t have responded better myself.  People asking for meal plans are missing the forest for the trees.  Back in the day I used to write up meal plans for my clients.  I took them a step further by providing “swaps” for every single food listed in the plan.  That way there was some variability and latitude.  But even there, I never felt like my clients were learning anything.  They weren’t learning how to eat.  Though the meal plans provided opportunities to learn… people weren’t using them as such.  Instead, they would be lazy and take the meal plan as something that allows them not to think about their nutrition.  Which is silly.  So check out JC’s article titled Fitness Meal Plans – Why I Don’t Make Them.

Listening to an old strengthcoach podcast over the weekend, I was reminded of an article Patrick Ward wrote titled Stress and the Female Athlete.  The majority of women I work with are not athletes.  I suppose we could call them recreational athletes as they’re mostly into lifting weights and running.  Be that as it may, Patrick’s article applies to this population.  I encounter so many women who are obsessive about their training and eating.  To a point they’re stressing constantly.  Piling this sort of stress on top of low calories, poor nutrition, negative body image, and social/family stress and you’ve got a system that’s out of whack after a while.

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Training frequency, recovery, and Matt Perryman

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I’m not even sure if I want to post this since I’m thinking a lot of you will be missing too much context.  If you haven’t read a lot of Matt’s stuff in the past, you’ll probably be left scratching your head.  And it’s late, so I’m not going to go into the whole back [...]

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Good Reads – 1/25/12

January 25, 2012

I really loved this article from my boy JC.  I sound like a broken record, but people really need to do a better job at managing their expectations.  It seems as if most believe they’re some sort of machine that can handle any and everything.  A shortage of calories means I’ll lose fat?  Great, I’ll [...]

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General vs. Specific Programming & Training for Looks vs. Function

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Thought I’d share a recent email exchange with one of my readers: Hi Steve, I’m not sure if you’ve covered this in a post before – feel free to point me to the post if you have – but I was wondering what your thoughts are on a regime that gives overall fitness and strength? [...]

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Good Reads – 1/16/12

January 16, 2012

No, I didn’t jump on the bandwagon with a New Years post.  Just not my style… so business as usual.  Speaking of which, business in my gym comes first.  This website is mostly just a hobby… one that I love very much.  But I do want to apologize for not updating the site nearly enough.  [...]

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Good Reads – 12/16/11

December 16, 2011

We’re inundated with technical articles dealing with the intricacies of diet and exercise.  This leads to a lot of people missing the big picture… missing the fundamentals that truly do drive the most mileage in terms of success.  That’s why I really liked Alan Aragon’s responses to Anoop Balachandran’s (who operates www.exercisebiology.com) questions during an [...]

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Question from a client: measurements going the wrong way due to muscle gain

December 15, 2011

Ok, i know weight lifting isn’t going to make me huge but the one thing I don’t want to get bigger are my legs since they’re already too big….and in the last couple of weeks….I have a pair of boots I can’t zip up anymore, another pair is tight that wasn’t and a pair of [...]

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Good Reads – 12/5/11

December 5, 2011

Joel Jamieson gives a great primer to the autonomic nervous system and heart rate variability and how these things relate to stress and recovery. My buddy JC dropped some awesome insight on the everyday struggles we all face pertaining to fitness, progress, and consistency.  He always has great perspective. Many of the women who contact [...]

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BI Interviews James Krieger of Weightology.net

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It’s been a few weeks since I’ve updated the blog.  Since I’m past due, I promise to deliver something that’s worth your time.  James Krieger, one of my favorite fitness/weight loss bloggers, took some time out of his busy schedule to answer some questions about obesity.  That’s his primary area of interest and study. While [...]

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Good Reads – 10/11/11

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Dr. Arya Sharma discusses an interesting concept pertaining to core body temperature and its relationship to metabolic rate.  It’ll be interesting to see what new research arises from the line of thinking that obese people may very well have lower core temperatures.  Be that as it may though, the current body of evidence seems to [...]

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