Core Training Article

An article I contributed was published this week on TMUSCLE.com.

There are some cool embedded videos of exercises you probably haven't tried so check those out.

In it is some advice on building a strong midsection from the perspective's of myself, a bodybuilding coach, and guys such as Mike Robertson that trains some athletes.

The real keys lie in the commonalities of our approaches: Nobody uses crunches, and we all understand the importance of train the anterior core to develop core stability, strength in torso extension, rotation, and anti-rotation functions.

Of course anything with firing neurons realizes that nutrition plays a huge part in being able to see the fruits of your labor, and so bodybuilding coach Scott Abel drops a good line:

Diet plays the biggest role here, and it's a deal-breaker. "No one can out-train an inconsistent or improper diet," Abel says. "And if your own metabolic set point is such that having quilted abs is not your genetically natural predisposition, then you'd better have expert help in achieving that look."

As for aerobic training,

Abel says to practice caution here. Hours a day of steady-state aerobics can lead to a suppressed metabolism, burned-out adrenals, and even an unexpected weight gain. "As I always say, force the body and it reacts. Coax the body and it responds."

To sum it up be on point with your nutrition, then skip the aerobics classes and crunches, and instead train your core in ways top trainers in various sub-fields of fitness know work.

Back Off, Make Progress

Yesterday T-Nation ran an article I contributed to called Get Bigger By Doing Less.

My part was to write a sample week-long program as an example of what to do on a back off (deload) week.

Over the past few years I've really come to appreciate the importance of periodically decreasing volume in order to give our bodies and nervous systems a break so that we can keep making progress and keep from getting injured. Of course that means you have to be training hard in the first place, but that's another discussion.

Most all my programs have some sort of deload built into them, depending on the training status of the person. If it's a 25 year old guy that new to training then he'll be able to go longer without backing off, but for a 50 year old person that has joint issues they'll obviously need to be careful with training volume and intensity.

In other words a person cannot keep doing the same thing and expect to remain healthy, nevermind make progress.

On to the article. Bryan Krahn drops some good knowledge.

1) Going hard all the time never, ever, works

If you try to go hard every single workout, week after week and month after month, you'll end up with a mix of serious and half-assed workouts, and if you don't get hurt, you'll probably burn out completely at some point.

By the end of any given training year, you'll discover you would've been better off taking planned breaks, rather than letting your body and brain decide when you're ready to push toward a peak and when you're not.

2) Your muscles and joints need a break

Not every part of your body recovers at the same pace. You can restore energy substrates in your muscles faster than you can remodel tissue that's been damaged from serious training. Muscles repair themselves faster than connective tissues. And connective tissues might be ready for a serious workout before your central nervous system has fully recovered.

3) Sometimes you get stronger by not training

With full recovery comes supercompensation. With supercompensation come greater gains in size and strength and higher levels of fitness and conditioning. This is why swimmers and runners taper before major competitions in which they hope to break records, and why a lot of serious lifters will describe how they hit PRs right after a deloading phase.

A review published in the NSCA's Strength and Conditioning Journal compiled this amazing list of benefits that research has attributed to tapering:

• Up to 20% increases in strength and power
• Increases in muscle cross-sectional area of 10 to 25%
• Lower levels of stress hormones
• Higher levels of Testosterone
• Better moods during the day, and better sleep at night

4) Training is a marathon, not a sprint

Finally, unloading is just plain healthy, no matter what your age. Along with pampering the musculoskeletal and nervous systems, a phase of relatively easy training is also good for the immune system. Train too hard for too long, and you'll not only feel tired and unmotivated, but you'll also increase your risk of catching a cold or flu.

But if nothing else just watch the technique of that guy doing kettlebell clean and jerks... ;)

Finally EVERYONE should watch this video of Dr. Stuart McGill demonstrating effective core training movements for a healthy back and strong core.

Mythbusters

The article I mentioned last week is now up on T-Nation: Mythbusters

Let me say that I'm honored to be quoted in the same piece as guys such as Dave Tate and Eric Cressey, as I've been reading their material for years. And I particularly liked Eric Cressey's contribution regarding "functional" training with bosu/stability balls:

Myth: Unstable-surface training works for everybody.
Mythbuster: Eric Cressey

While UST works for people in the rehab setting, a lot of trainers assume they can apply the same techniques to healthy athletes and prevent ankle sprains, improve balance, and enhance performance.

This makes perfect sense. We talk about "prehab" all the time when it comes to back and shoulder joints, so why wouldn't preemptive ankle training help you avoid sprains?

But then I dug into the research for my master's thesis, and what I found there surprised me: There's no evidence that UST reduces injury risk or improves performance in healthy, trained athletes.

When I conducted a study of my own, I had the good fortune to use one of the country's best Division I men's soccer teams as my subjects. Our results were published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research in August 2007.

My study showed that replacing 2 to 3 percent of overall training volume with UST didn't improve performance. But I also discovered something even more important: UST minimized improvements in jumping, sprinting, and agility tests. Put another way, the subjects who weren't doing UST made bigger gains in power, speed, and agility.

So just because something works in rehab doesn't mean it's useful for healthy athletes. In fact, if it takes the place of something else in their training, the opportunity cost seems to make things worse.

Once the study was finished, I invested a lot of time creating a framework for this type of training. One goal was to show the appropriate uses for UST, and there are some. But I also wanted to show an overall progression model for true instability training in healthy athletes.

A lot of people choose the binary route — either "it sucks" or "it's awesome" — but by the time I finished the 100-plus-page report (which you can purchase here), the answer turned out to be a lot more interesting and complex than those two extremes.

The next in the Mythbuster series might have something from me regarding kettlebell (aka dangerballs aka kookballs) training, but I'll give a sneak preview in a subsequent post.