I find myself harping on and on about form following function…  especially with my female clients who are overly analytical and negative about their fitness journeys.  Most new clients come in focused solely on the scale and level of fatness.  “I want to lose this right here” as they pat their hips.  First order of business, as far as I’m concerned, is overhauling their expectations and perceptions about exercise.  Most of them never considered performance to be a variable worth paying attention to.  They quickly learn though, once performance is dialed in relative to their goals, improving it drives positive physique changes.  My happiest clients are typically my strongest clients.  Of course nutrition plays a massive role here as well, but that’s besides the point.  Anyhow, Nia Shanks, whom I’ve grown to really admire, has written a great 2 part article along these same lines that’s definitely worth checking out: part 1 and part 2.

Time.  It waits for no man.  We’re born.  And we die.  What’s between those events depends on a lot of things.  It depends on the parents who made you.  It depends on the environment you grew up in.  It depends on the events that have happened around and to you.  It depends on a lot of things that are beyond your control.  It doesn’t end there, and Smitty does an excellent job at reminding us that in his article titled The Speed of Life.

I liked this article from Bret Contreras titled A Strong Booty is a Healthy Booty.  For starters, it shows a bunch of hot women doing hot things with heavy weights.  What guy isn’t going to like this?  I’m a fan of the barbell hip thrust.  My clients can vouch for it since most of them have done it at one point or another.  And while the article is all about building a heavy hip thrust, it should also be a reminder for women that good things happen when you get strong.

Have you ever been winked at by a butt?  Damn, that leaves some alarming visuals in my mind!  I’m sorry if it does yours too.  But butt winks while squatting are beyond common in the gym and Tony Gentilcore does an excellent job at explaining how he remedies the issue here and here.

I have to admit, when I was spammed for the billionth time about the Elite Training Mentorship that Cressey, Robertson, and a few others were releasing, I was getting a bit irritated.  And when I actually skimmed the sales page to that new service, it rubbed the hell out of me that there were so many errors between spelling and inaccuracies.  Be that as it may, Mike Robertson is still a go to resource as far as I’m concerned.  I have a lot of respect for him and genuinely enjoy listening to him speak and reading his stuff.  He recently wrote an article titled Q&A: Is Static Stretching Good.  I think there’s still a lot of confusion about this topic in the mainstream and Mike does a nice job explaining how he utilizes stretching at his gym.

Tony Gentilcore deserves a round of applause for his 3 part series on chin-up progressions for women.  Here’s Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.  In part 1, beyond covering the basic cues that should be used in pretty much all vertical pulling exercises, he shows 3 great progressions that can be done with a suspended training apparatus.  Heck, in reality you could also use a barbell that’s set in the rack as well.  In part 2, Tony introduces you to the concept of eccentric only chins.  In part 3, you’re introduced to loaded eccentric chins and band assisted chins.  I have my own thoughts on the subject which I hope to share soon, but this is definitely a must read from Tony..

I’ve mentioned numerous times on my blog that I think there are many women who have undiagnosed borderline eating disorders.  At a minimum, there’s a lot that have horrible relationships with food.  I’ve found that the solutions to many of these horrible relationships are “too simple.”  Notice that I didn’t say too easy.  They’re too simple in that they’re overlooked or not respected.  You’ve got people, men and women, jumping full fledged into extremely rigid protocols followed, in fast order, by complete slips and failures.  This is followed by feelings of extreme guilt and despair.  I really like Nia Shanks’ recent article titled Nutrition Triggers & Tips.  She even throws a couple of challenges at you.  One thing I’d be very careful about is her recommendation for fasting around times of overcompensation/indulgence.  She issued fair warning too, but I think that warning needs to be stated again.  Compensatory behavior in the form of punishment can do way more harm than good.

This is an awesome read.  One of JC’s clients shares his experience with climbing out of the mindset where ‘food = bad’ and ‘harder = better’. Really it’s a story about letting go of preconceived notions about exercise and dieting and adopting a more logical approach that matches his goals.  This is such an important story given the fact that pretty much everyone is basing their programming decisions on preconceived notions.  And where do these notions come from?  For most of us, they come from media outlets.  You’re delusional if you think media outlets have your best interest at heart.  They’re most, if not solely interested in separating you from your money by disingenuous selling.  There’s a lot of emotional attachment to many of the lies we’ve been sold.  It takes a lot of nerve to disregard these emotional attachments and to start looking at your programming decisions and behaviors with a greater degree of objectivity.

Sometimes the simplest of adjustments makes substantial differences in the flow of a resistance training session. Elsbeth Vaino wrote up a great tweak for unilateral leg training that she has been experimenting with here.  This is something I’ve been using in a majority of my client’s strength circuits successfully. Definitely worth the read.

Tom Venuto reminds us about the importance of NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) in his most recent article.  The spotlight doesn’t shine on this little bugger nearly enough, which is unfortunate.  I think it’s a major factor in the incidence of obesity seeing as how much more non-obese people tend to move compared to obese people.  And what about weight loss plateaus?  There’s a good bit of data pointing towards one of the primary adaptations to dieting being a reduction in NEAT.  We can offset a lot of that “starvation response” by jacking up our energy output throughout the day.  As Tom notes, the little things add up.  Anyhow, thanks to Tom for keeping interest pointed at NEAT.

Matt Perryman dishes out some high level thinking regarding calories and they’re role in weight control here.  I’m sure this one is going to have a lot of the zealots and gurus out in arms.  They’ll be quick to explain how they’ve uncovered the secret that negates thermodynamics and the need for energy deficits.  Read this one slowly and let it sink in.  There are a mess of nitty gritty details that definitely have varying roles in our bodies.  Nobody’s suggesting otherwise.  Nobody is suggesting that calories are the only variable that matter, especially in relationship to nutrients.  The question really comes down to how many of the minor details do we actually have control over?  And if we have control over some of them, to what degree does it matter in the grand scheme?  More importantly, if something matters in relation to losing fat, does it matter irrespective of the number of calories you’re consuming?  Meaning, as many would like for you to believe, have they “discovered” some magical way of eating that allows for you to lose fat while eating a surplus?  I don’t think there’s sufficient data to believe anything beyond most of your mileage coming from not being an idiot in the food department and resisting the temptation of slothfulness that’s so tempting in modern day living.

Looking for an advanced progression to the pushup?  Shon Grosse shared an awesome idea he has come up with for doing single arm pushups with postural alignment similar to what’s seen in a regular pushup.  This is the sort of creativity I love in this field!

Nia Shanks takes you through her mental and physical battle during a 20 rep set of squats.  I don’t care who you are… if you get under a relatively heavy load and squat it 20 times, you’re going to test your limits.  You’re going to find out what you’re really made of. Keep in mind, I’m positive that Nia wasn’t squatting with hand weights here.  This sort of commentary is so great in the female fitness community.  Far too many women that I encounter equate “good exercise” with feeling the burn or getting winded.  There’s more to productive exercise.  Get strong, be strong, look strong!

Stephan Guyenet discusses an interesting study titled “A Satiety Index of Common Foods”.  The paper highlighted the inverse relationship between the palatability and satiety index of certain foods, which isn’t surprising.  Put differently, the more a desirable a food seems, the less full you’ll feel – the more room you’ll make for it.  This drives home the point that the brain packs a powerful punch in terms of influence over things such as hunger.  The paper also highlighted the positive relationship between energy density and satiety index, which is something I discussed in the Nutrition 101 article.  Meaning, stick primarily with foods that are high in protein, fiber, and water and you’ll tend to eat less.

I’m still in a writing drought.  Actually, it’s not a drought… I have plenty of stuff I want to write about.  There’s just too few hours in a day right now.  I’m still answering emails when they come in, so I’ll share this exchange in an attempt to inject some life into the blog.

I have exercised my way down to about 120 lbs (I’m 5’4″, 26 years old) but my body leveled out at 128 and I was able to maintain that just by being active and eating a clean diet (at this point, I had stopped tracking calories which was HUGE for me and completely freeing and I was still able to maintain). I gained a lot of weight in the past year, due to a new stressful job complete with heavy business lunches. It’s harder than ever losing these pounds, i think mostly because I’m so upset at myself for letting this happen. I promised myself I’d never see the 130′s again. I am trying to get back into it and have been tracking calories religiously, measuring out everything. I try to eat as cleanly as possible (I must admit, I love my vita tops) and I add healthy fats like nuts, seeds, avocados, etc.
(oatmeal w/ chopped apple and a few walnuts for bfast, 1/2 avocado w/ tomato on 1 peice of sprouted grain bread and dijon for lunch, homemade chili for dinner, 2 snack during the day). I aim to eat about 1500 calories per day. It’s really hard for me to eat 1200 calories but I used to be able to do it. I exercise at least 3-4x weekly doing low impact cardio for about 45-60 minutes. I have bad knees and try to run intervals when I can but I’m afraid of doing more damage.

I know I shouldn’t be so discouraged by the scale when I add in exercise and that I’m a girl and bloating comes easy to me but would you change things in my diet? I am so tired of feeling so terrible about myself. I’m also going through extreme stresses at work which should subside in a few weeks. Last night I tried eating two eggs with spinach and onions and no carbs except for peach slices for dessert because a lot of people say carbs at night are bad. I know this is a
terribly lengthy message and I’m sure you’ve answered this question many times in the past, but is strength training the answer? Should I lose weight and then try to tone up? Do I need to just put in the work and drop my calories to 1200?

Any help is appreciated, I apologize for the length of the e-mail and any repetitiveness.

I couldn’t deduce what your current weight is. Is it 128?

Also, it’s great that you listed out your typical days worth of food, but I’m more interested in the breakdown of protein, carbs, and fats in terms of grams. Can you supply me with those?

How long have you been plateaued?

Do you believe that you’ve been extremely compliant during this plateau?

What is your main goal?

Carbs are not bad in the evening. That’s just bogus horse crap that gets passed around as fact in an industry that’s littered with lies and soundbite science.

Most importantly, you asked, “Should I lose weight and then try to tone up?”

This tells me that you’re misunderstanding how things work. Toning up is a function of losing fat while preserving as much muscle as possible. If you can add a little muscle while losing fat, which can be pretty hard to do, then all the better. You seem to think toning up is synonymous with lifting weights, and it’s not. Toning up is about losing fat primarily, and doing the muscle preserving stuff secondarily.

If it were the other way around, you could lift weights without losing fat and you’d get lean. But this isn’t the case as subcutaneous fat resides just below the skin and right on top of the muscles.  Think of toning up as shedding a layer of soft stuff in order to expose the hard stuff that’s hiding under it.

But to answer your question, in the case of most of the females I work with, in order to reach their ideal physiques they need to do progressive strength training. There’s just no way around it.

Thanks a lot! That clears up the “toning up” confusion. I must have edited out my current weight, unfortunately I am back up to 140 whichmis disappointing after having reached my goal weight. You asked about my goals, it has been to get back to 128 but I guess I just want to look healthier than this. I want to lose this stomach pudge and arm fat and all of it really. I will definitely start strength training as I can see that is a big part of what I’m missing.

I’ve been at this weight for several months but I can’t say I’ve been perfect with my diet/exercise. To be honest, I’ve kind of faltered and don’t know where to start again. Some days I think sticking to 1200 cals is the way to go and sometimes I read things about eating more and I switch it up. I’ve tried juicing and going raw recently as well but didn’t stick with it- it made me so cold all the time! I don’t think going raw during the winter in nyc is a wise choice for me. There is SO much info out there and it’s so easy to get caught up in all of it. Do you suggest certain calorie amounts or do you focus more on the macro nutrients? Today my final counts were

carbs: 147g
fat: 60g
protein: 70g

I’m guessing too many carbs and not enough protein.

Let’s start with the biggy. You need to reset your current mindset. Seriously. Forget it all. You’re getting tripped up with a bunch of crap that doesn’t matter. You lost this weight before so you know it’s possible. But you have to find a way that leads to lasting change. And that means avoiding and ignoring the “get thin quick” scams that flood this market. Things like juicing and raw and all of that.

Have you read my nutrition 101 page? If not, you must. That’s an order. It’s meant to bring people back to a sensible baseline… a fresh start from a more informed position with realistic expectations.

Your mission? Shed some fat, build some muscle, and reach a happier state about your health, your abilities, and our body.

Your path? You’ve already figured one thing out. You need to lift some weights. Don’t make it trickier than it has to be. Just get under some relatively heavy weights using big exercises like squat variations, deadlift/hip hinge variations, pushing, and pulling. Start out by learning the movements and then start loading them to a point where doing 5-12 reps is difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. Something like 2-3 full body sessions per week would be perfect.

Throw in “cardio” as needed. Cardio’s not even necessary since your nutrition can take care of the fat loss on its own. But I do suggest doing conditioning for other reasons that transcend calories. 3-5 days would suffice. 20-60 minutes per session. Some of those sessions can be low intensity, steady state… which would be the longer duration. One or two of those sessions can be higher intensity interval work at 20-30 minutes.

The nutrition front is where you really need to take a step back and just focus on the basics – the common sense stuff. Let go of finding a particular diet. Let go of the mindset where there has to be a specific calorie intake that’s “just right” or a strategy that you might be missing. All that is hocus pocus bullshit.

You’re 140 lbs. If I had to guess at your maintenance intake, where calories in = calories out, I’d say it’s roughly 1800. Subtract 25% from that in
order to establish a deficit, which would put you at about 1350. If you think you have problems accurately tracking calories and portion sizes, it’d be wise to invest in a digital food scale and use it for a short while. At least until you get a good feel for this tracking thing. I definitely don’t suggest relying on the scale forever… it’s too constrictive.  But in insight it can provide in the short run is invaluable.

More importantly, don’t worry about 1350 calories being “right’ or “wrong” for your given situation. You’ll never really know if it’s a good intake for fat loss until you actually consistently adhere to it for an appreciable length of time. And if you find out after 3 weeks or whatever that you’re still plateaued, than it’s simply a matter of adjusting accordingly. You’re not signing any contracts here. You’re allowed to change things in response to a lack of progress.

But it should be about changes that make sense. Not changes for the sake of changing, which so many people are accustomed to doing as they search for the perfect approach, as if that existed, while drowning themselves with impatience.

So yeah, pick a reasonable calorie target, like 1350, be consistent with it for a handful of weeks, and then adjust as needed.

What foods should be providing those calories? Well, that’s tough… I’m not about to write out a meal plan. That’s not me. You need to figure it out on your own. And most foods aren’t solely protein, solely carbs, or solely fats. They’re typically a mixture of nutrients. But the best I can do is throw you some targets in
terms of nutrients and you fill in the holes with foods you enjoy that get you close to these targets.

Set your protein at roughly 1 gram per pound of goal body weight.

Set your fat at roughly 25% of your total calorie intake.

Get at least 3 servings of fibrous veggies in per day. I’d prefer 5 or even 6.

Eat some fruit… maybe 2 or 3 pieces.

You’ll probably have a little “wiggle room” left over in terms of calories even after the aforementioned bases are covered. Fill them with whatever you want, as long as you like it and can control it.

Does this help? Questions?

I was feeling really badly about messaging you as I’m sure you get tons of inquiries a day- but I am SO glad I did. I spend hours reading everything i can on diet and nothing has been as helpful as your advice.

I’m excited to put this into practice. I was going to enlist a personal trainer to get started but I just saw your post on the abundance of questionable personal trainers I’m in NYC, I’m sure if I put in my work to research I can find a good one! I’d love to just learn some basics of strength training.

I’m a diet junkie and you would cringe to see the diet books lining my bookshelves. Is nutrition 101 on your website? Checking it out now!

Thanks!!!

I’m glad some of the advice resonates with you.  Keep me posted on how things go.  More importantly, if I can drive home one point that I want to be very clear on… let go of the dieting mindset where you’re constantly searching for the one right way. It doesn’t exist. And the marketing propaganda wants nothing more than for you to believe that it does exist. That way they can sell you their latest and greatest product.

Keep a level head.  Be patient and consistent.  And be flexible.

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.

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 story.  However, there was a great conversation on his facebook page earlier tonight and I wanted to share some of what I consider to be the important posts.

If anyone has any questions, I’ll do my best to explain a bit deeper and I’m sure I could get Matt to chime in as well.

Keep in mind that I’m cherrypicking the important posts from a long conversation.

Enjoy!

Matt said:

People seriously just have no clue what goes on in their bodies.  They read some nonsense on woo-woo blogs and that becomes the truth.

Pubmed tells a different story but you’d have to branch out of your comfort zone and see what other fields are doing to understand that, no, glands don’t get fatigued and CNSs don’t “burn out”. (CNS = central nervous system)  There’s some freaky mess going on which I think is worth understanding but the majority of anything ever posted about “CNS anything” on the internet is just voodoo.

Someone than asked Matt for the cliff notes on the central nervous system, and in response to that, he said:

It’s kinda hard to give cliffs but to make it easy there are two different things happening:

1. feeling bad after a workout via soreness but also that “man I feel burned out” sensation — this is a specific response of the immune system acting on the brain and triggering “I feel bad” feelings.

2. loss of fine motor control (strength and power performance) within a workout session due to a specific pattern of activity in parts the brain controlling mental effort and motor control — this expresses itself as fatigue but neurologically speaking it’s more like a safety device

“CNS fatigue” as an internet concept wraps up both of them into one package, and they are related weakly, but one doesn’t lead to the other, and neither of them has anything to do with long-term recovery (and recovery itself is a misleading idea)

I then asked:

Are you saying that recovery itself is a misleading idea from the standpoint that we are not locked into some fixed stress/recovery/supercompensation curve that’s the same for everyone irrespective of individual circumstances? Or what?

Matt replied with:

Mostly I think supercompensation is a poor model of what actually happens.

We don’t have hitpoints.

Muscles recover and rebuild themselves but for most people “recovered” means “I’m not sore anymore” and that’s really got no impact on the real question of “can I train again?”

JC Deen says:

so you don’t necessarily look at it from a standpoint of having “x” amount of recovery units in a period of time and once we run out, we die? kinda like a video game. or something.

and

so do you feel there is an optimal recovery period? or that it’s highly individual when it comes to work load, stress, sexcapades, etc?

Matt replies with:

depends on workloads, life stress, individual biology-psychology and past training experience mainly

After a few more questions, Matt cuts to the meat of his point, which is what I thought was too good not to share:

see what I’ve been seeing as a consistent thing is that stress does most of its work *through* the psychological response

so the actual physical stress of a workout might be nothing, or at least minimal, but if you’re all wound up over it, that magnifies the negative symptoms

and not just that, but folks prone to getting mentally wound up do it for *everything else* in their lives too, so not only do workouts beat you up extra bad but you’ll take any other life-stress extra bad too

Sapolsky wrote about these folks and they’re actually measurably stressed out, and there’s prolly a heritable cause as it runs in families

hence my interest in mindfulness and relaxation techniques; if you learn to dial back your own emotional reactions to squats (or anything else) then you rob it of much of its power to cause “recovery problems”

in my thinking the physical stress of a workout can be laregely adapted to, hence why daily squatting works *if you wrap your head around it and stick with it* (and don’t get too wacky with the workloads until you adjust to each new level)

but the emotional response, when you get in there and dump all your energy into your work sets and spend 16 hours stressing over it before and after, that’s what will floor you

Just to make sure I was reading Matt correctly, I asked:

Yeah, that’s the best I’ve seen you explain it, Matt. Even factoring in all the talk of stress/recovery and HFT you’ve had on your site over the last while. Good stuff.

Says a lot about the batshit crazy dieters too, who flip the hell out about fractions of a calorie, endless workouts, and body image. How they’re perceiving the importance of what, for the most part, amounts to trivial things is causing greater “disturbances” than said “things” themselves… if that makes any sense.

Going back to an old analogy you used to explain the concept of stress/recovery… and this goes back well before you’re newer line of thinking… but I believe you used the sink full of water to represent our recovery capacities. The drain represented the application of stress – training, dieting, life, or whatever. Each variable sucking out a portion of the available recovery capacity. And the faucet represented our ability to replace said capacity.

This older line of thinking was limited in that, more or less, we were viewing the capacity and recovery as fixed variables locked into the patterns of the theoretical model of the day (single factor or dual factor curves of recovery/supcomp).

Therefore we were constantly balancing our “drains” in accordance to these fixed variables, which always netted to our basic full body training, upper/lower splits, or even body part training as long as there was adequate rest between training each muscle/movement/or whatever.

But now we’re saying not only is the size of the sink and the volume of the water pouring out the faucet more adaptable than originally assumed, but also that the drain is going to open up more in response to our perception of training rather than it is to the actual dosage of training.

Am I thinking about this correctly?

Matt’s final reply for completeness:

ya that’s a good way to look at it

this is why I’ve been so big on the belief aspect as well, I mean if you start from the premise that “squatting again tomorrow will overtrain me” then you’re going to react to that as such and, physical damage to tissues aside, you’ve started a cascade of events that is potentially more harmful to your physical condition than the workout itself

Just some food for thought… sorry if the disjointed copy and paste job doesn’t make a lot of sense to some of you.  Matt is one of those guys who’s always making me think, which is a very good thing.  I need more people in my fitness network who make me question my beliefs and ideas.  You can check out more of Matt’s stuff here.

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 eat like a bird.  Oh, exercise will give me a hot body?  Fantastic… I’ll go in balls to the wall.  Each. And. Every. Day…. while still eating like a bird mind you.  And oh yeah, I’ll do sprints afterwords until I’m ready to pass out.  Sort of off topic to JC’s post, but the point he’s making, and the one I’m trying to make is that people need to realize that it’s not about going 100% each and every day.  Some times less is more.

Neghar Fonooni is no stranger to my Good Reads lists.  I think she’s pumping some of the most sensible information out to the female fitness community. She recently make a guest post on Mike Boyle’s blog that she titled, Nutrition Advice for Females.  I liked the article simply because it highlighted Neghar’s objectivity while also slaying some dogma that won’t die off about meal frequency.  Bottom line… all these different ways of eating or nothing more than methods – different plays using the same underlying principles.  It’s the principles that need to remain intact.  As for methods, there are hundreds… it’s just a matter of figuring out what works for you and your body at this point in time.

Borge Fagerli recently posted some of his ideas about the religion of low carbotology in addition to the cultural aspects of acceptable physiques… I think it’s worth a read.

I always enjoy reading Mike Robertson’s blog.  He pumps out a ton of practical stuff.  His most recent article dealt with knee pain, and since I’ve had 3 people contact me this week alone regarding knee pain, I figured it’d be worthwhile throwing this article in here.  I also suggest reading the older articles Mike posted at the beginning of this article.

I think Matt Perryman was targeting fitness professionals when he wrote A Systems View of Exercise but in reality, this is an important read for everyone involved.  Chalk it up to how we’re taught in school, the soundbite science we’re slammed with every which way in the media, the alarmists and crooks who cherry pick research in order to sell you something you don’t need, or whatever.  But across the board in the fitness industry, people are hung up on reductionism and Matt’s article does an excellent job at trying to shift that focus.  Or better yet, zoom that focus out a little bit so people stop missing the forest for the trees.

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? Bit of a background from my point of view – I play netball and touch rugby, have recently (in the last 8 months) taken up running and can now run for 5k non stop. I used to love doing weights in the gym ahead of cardio but I can no longer afford a gym membership so am using 30DS as my ‘weights’. What I ideally would like to do is a combo of cardio and weights that will give me endurance as well as sprint speed, plus a good body shape – I am not a fan of the marathon runner look! I would also like to compete in a sprint distance triathlon this year so would like ‘all-round’ fitness. I have a full time job and also in summer I go out hill walking every other weekend so quads strength and endurance is paramount in those months. I am trying to do too much? Is it humanly possible to achieve all these things at once or should I just focus on what is to hand (eg netball and rugby seasons are separate and the triathlon would be before mot of the hill walking would be done for the season.). I’m 5’6″, 29yo and weighing in as of this morning at 76kg. I’m not too bothered about how much weight I lose but I know to perform better I need to drop some weight and so have my goal weight at the high end of healthy BMI (for what it’s worth). My food and exercise diary is open if you wish to see what I currently do, although I have been on a bit of a break for Christmas
and New Year.

Anyway, what I thought would be a quick question has become quick long winded so I’ll leave it for now.

Thanks for your time,
XXX

Yes, only the very lucky can excel at everything at once… get strong, have optimal endurance, have an ideal body composition, etc. All these goals require different modes of training if they’re to be optimized. So if you optimize one, you’re, by default, taking away from the other.

That’s not to say you can’t improve everything at once, depending on where you’re currently at in terms of your training career.  In theory, the further you are from your genetic potential, and thus the more room for improvement you have, the easier it is to bring the various qualities up. It’s just that you can’t dial everything in perfectly simultaneously.

I train a lot of women and most have goals of primarily looking better (chasing that athletic, toned look) while improving general fitness. And for these things to be accomplished, training needs to be spread across progressive heavy strength training and various forms of conditioning work.

The conditioning work is sort of the wild card, as the type and dose is going to depend on the goal. If they just want to improve generally, they can pretty much do anything that keeps them moving for any sort of duration. But if they’re training for a specific endurance event or whatever, it’s going to require more
deliberate training in order to dial it in.

Put simply, there isn’t one best program out there. It’s going to depend on the person, where he or she currently is, where they’d like to go, etc.

Thanks for your reply – I did think I was asking a lot when I looked at how much I want to be fit for.

Is twice per week of each training block enough to see moderate improvements? Eg if I did endurance cardio 2 days, sprint cardio 2 days and weights 2 days is that enough in your opinion for anyone of what would probably actually be low fitness if I were to take my VO2max.

I think I am always going to be aiming for good overall fitness rather be a specialist in one area as I don’t want to feel like exercise is a chore or that I’m working on one area and then going on to focus on another area and losing all the gains made in the first place.

It’s hard to say. We know that you need to stress your body above a certain threshold in any given capacity (strength, endurance, etc) if it’s going to improve. And that threshold changes with training/experience. Which is to say that for the novice, they can get better across the board pretty much doing whatever. For this reason, I think it’s important for novices to sort of do what they want and figure things out as they go. There’s no need for being crazy specialized or regimented unless that’s something they want.  Just take a balanced approach doing some strength oriented stuff and some conditioning oriented stuff… focus on quality effort and consistency.

As that training theshold adapts/increases though, it takes more deliberate work to squeeze out the adaptations/improvements we’re looking for. In these cases, I’m much more inclined to specialize. But it’s not an on/off switch as you’re suggesting. It takes less work to maintain an attribute than it does to build an attribute. So I’d simply cycle through blocks where I’m building up one or two capacities while maintaining the rest, and then change this emphasis with each successive block based on needs, goals, etc. And when those changes occur, things that were being focused on will now be moved to maintenance, and thus, less attention will be dedicated to them.

This is all theoretical, but it is how I manage my clients’ programs who have goals that transcend looks. There’s always some strength training and always some conditioning work. But the mix, dose, and specific type varies based on current needs.

This may have opened up more questions, which is totally fine. Just let me know.

Well I definitely think despite having played sports and exercised for most of my life I could class myself as a novice to proper training of any sort, especially when it comes to pushing myself cardiovascularly. I think therefore I can hope for improvements in all areas for a while yet.

So once I think I’m ready to focus on specific areas I cycle through the focus areas and do one or two at a time? Then switch them to maintenance and focus on what had been on the backburner of maintenance? I guess then once I am trying to get more serious my macros will matter more in my nutrition? And that would open a whole other can of worms…

I think it’s such a shame that so many people have looks as their goal with P/T – either the men that want to bulk up or the women that want to be slim and toned. I guess that would make up the majority of your clients? Not that I’d complain if I had a body like Jessica Biel or similar!!

Out of curiosity, do you provide P/T via Skype/emails?

Yup, you’ve got the idea. Start out as a generalist and then as you progress, you’ll learn that eventually more planning and specialization are in order. And maybe not.  Some people stay generalists forever.  They’re able to do all the things they like to do and they’re happy with how they look.  How will you know if you need to graduate from being a generalist? Well as everything progresses and you focus on everything at once, eventually you’ll become spread too thin. At that point, you’ll sort of feel like a big pile of poo and your performance across the board will start to lag.

In the novice stages, you can’t muster up enough intensity to justify such planning. Granted, that doesn’t mean you can’t work your ass off. Or that you can’t over do it. It’s just that the hit on the body increases as your abilities increase.

Nutrition doesn’t change that much throughout the process. I mean obviously it needs to change based on whether you’re trying to gain or lose weight. And it should change in response to your exercise load… which a lot of people overlook. Doing stuff, like exercise, requires fuel/nutrition. Do more exercise, need more fuel. Without it, people tend to run themselves into a hole…. especially the neurotic dieters and exercises we see in our culture today.

Regarding your comment about it being a shame that most people’s primary goal revolves around looks…. that’s a HUGE can of works. I can’t blame people for training for looks. Let’s face it, we don’t exactly live in a society that’s very deep. We’re very shallow and view pretty much everything on the surface. With such an intense focus on weight and appearance, a lot of people are brainwashed into living and dying by the numbers.

But here’s what a lot of people have trouble grasping. If they focused on performance and consistency more than numbers, they’d arrive at the same destination eventually. They’re too hung up on the immediate feedback the scale provides, regardless of how irrational it is at times. Taking an extended viewpoint just doesn’t jive with how their mindsets have been molded by our fitness culture.

I say it time and time again, but form follows function. If you get somebody strong and they pair that with sensible nutrition, more often than not their physique is going to be optimized within their genetic limits. The body that most men are shooting for is nothing more than a strong body with low levels of body fat. The body that most women are shooting for is nothing more than a strong body with low levels of body fat. The difference is men have the hormonal dispositions to support a larger base of muscle mass.

As far as my client base goes, it’s pretty mixed, thankfully. Of course I have those people who hire me who are solely interested in the scale and their appearance. But I also have a large base of clients who are merely interested in maintaining functionality and health. If they wind up looking better, they’re happy, but it’s not the prerogative. I also work with a lot of athletes. I’m a strength coach too, so I deal with individual athletes as well as a few teams.

And in terms of web-based services, you can read about them here:

http://body-improvements.com/services/online-training/

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.  Are we still friends?

Onto this week’s list:

Holy shit this is an epic article.  Seriously.  You want a kick in the pants?  Read this.  Now.  I don’t care if your goals pertain to fitness, business, or whatever.

I’ve been reading more of Dewey Nielsen’s stuff and he recently wrote what I consider to be an excellent article about Crossfit.  I agree with it wholeheartedly. Favorite line from the article… “Crossfit is not a thought-out progressive exercise system, it is an extreme sport done with strength training tools.”  So true… at least true in the context of how I’m seeing most CF “professionals” handle their training.

Nia Shanks has been on a roll.  She recently wrote a beginner’s strength training article for women that I think many of you will enjoy.

This is a great rant on the Science of Running blog about Crossfit and in particular the Crossfit Endruance methodologies. Decent follow-up discussion under the article too.

That’s it for today.

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 interview.  They were full of the simple truths that many people need reminding of.  Check it out.

Matt Perryman is the one fitness writer who continually improves.  I swear, I’ve been reading him for what feels like a decade on various forums, articles, and blogs and it becomes clearer and clearer that he’s not afraid to revise his thinking.  He’s not hung up on being Right.  He’s just concerned with helping people learn to think better.  And he’s real good at it.  His recent article titled Knowing Stuff: How to Learn a New Subject proves my point perfectly.

It’s no secret that I believe most of today’s dieters have truly awful relationships with food.  It seems to me that many people, especially women, have borderline eating disorders.  I think we need to start focusing on this over what exercise program is best, what foods are good and which are bad, etc.  Nia Shanks recently posted a blog titled Food Struggles and Victories.  In it, a number of women shared their experiences with overcoming unhealthy relationships with food.  Definitely worth a read.

Borge Fagerli doesn’t get enough exposure in my opinion – he has some fantastic ideas about training and he doesn’t sling bullshit.  Check out his recent article titled Taking a Big Dump.  He spits all kinds of common sense across many facets of training and diet.

I couldn’t be happier.  It’s rare I meet someone impressive in the fitness community on a local level, but I did just that recently when I came across Shon Gross, a physical therapist in Colmar, PA.  This guy knows his stuff, no joke.  Shon has really been cranking out great material for his new website.  Most recently he wrote an article titled Video Tutorial-Scapular Depression with Shoulder Extension.  I figured I’d share it since a large majority of my clientele has poor thoracic extensibility and scapular dyskinesia.

Joel Jamieson recently wrote an excellent article about the big picture of injury prevention.  I think a lot of people skip articles like these since they’re currently healthy and believe, misguidedly, that they’ll never get hurt from their training.  But in today’s fitness culture where more and harder is always better, I think a lot of lessons are learned the hard way.  Training and the application of stress needs to be individualized, timed properly, and dosed appropriately.  This article is a must read as far as I’m concerned.  Check it out!

Lastly, but certainly not least, my boy JC spits some truth about Turning Your Fitness Struggles Into Strengths.  JC’s always good for putting things into realistic terms.