Are you in Magic land looking for the Magic Strength Coach or Magic Workout? Do they really exist?

The strength and conditioning business can be pretty interesting.   The true professionals are very willing to discuss and share the ideas of training great athletes.  They recognize that just having a recipe does not make a great chef and therefore do not feel threatened.  They are open minded and constantly learning.  However some in this business present themselves as the Magic Trainer with the Magic workout.  If you are looking for this trainer you may lose the most precious thing an athlete possesses; Time.

I tell clients that as a strength coach my real product is time.  I know that sounds funny but athletic careers are an asset with diminishing value.  If you could always be at your optimum age for physical performance throughout your entire career, think how good you could be.  If Usain Bolt could remain the age he is right now and continue to develop his body and mind, how fast could he really run?   The problem is fast twitch muscle fiber starts to diminish at an early age and that is why you do not see many competitive older sprinters.  So the training that he receives today is of great importance to moving him as far forward during the time his body is performing at its optimum level.   Some sports allow for a longer physiological optimum, but eventually time will take its toll.

So if you look at your career and really think about what is important in your training, you will realize that a strength coach really provides strategies and tactics that will allow the athlete to make the greatest progression in fitness without injury during the age that their body is performing at its peak physiology.  Therefore, if all else is equal, time is really the most precious of commodities for athletes competing at an elite level.

So we come to the magic strength coach with the magic workout.   You will hear about all kinds of things that people do that have improved an athlete’s performance.  You will look at peers that are better than you and want to do what they do.  You think this is the magic training regimen and if you just add this you will make huge gains in fitness.

The problem with this thinking is determining why was the improvement in fitness achieved?   Make sure you pay close attention to the differences between observations, associations, correlations, and causations of performance improvements.  Otherwise you will fall prey to searching for the magic bullet and paying good money while losing the most precious commodity of time.

First of all there is not a magic bullet.  Improvements in performance come from hard work, a sound strategy, and excellent training tactics based on the science of the human body and performance.    Everyone is human and the science applies to us all.  The problem with the Magic bullet is that most humans will always look for a simple solution to solving problems.  For example:   If athlete A’s performance has made big improvement by adding sprints;  then if you do more sprints you will experience the same increase in performance as  Athlete A.  This result is observational on your part.  You associate the increase in performance by Athletes A’s addition of sprints.   However, it may just be a correlation and not causation that Athlete A’s performance has increased.  It may not be the addition of sprints, but the reduction of the volume of longer duration training to fit the sprints into their week that is the real cause of the increase in performance.   So sprints may help, but not for the reasons you think they help.

So how as an athlete do you give yourself the ability to better evaluate training and not be prey to the magic bullet?

The first step is a thorough evaluation of your sport to determine what are the most important ingredients of peak performance in your sport?    A good strength coach can add to this based on their own experience with the training of athletes in your respective sport.   Next, you need to have a proper evaluation of your fitness and establish where the gaps exist between you fitness and the needs of your sport to perform at the highest level.  This is why a one size fits all approach to training athletes is typically flawed.  We are all different and the strategy that is developed from this evaluation and the tactics employed on a daily and weekly basis is where the real magic lies.

Another important ingredient to not fall prey to the Magic Trainer/Workout is to get answers to WHY you are doing a particular workout and does it support your overall strategy to reach optimum fitness in the time you have to train?  Why sprints at this time in the off season?  Why heavy and not light?  What is the primary objective of your daily workout and how do the tactics support the overall strategy?   For example why are you doing low volume heavy leg exercises before power?  Why are you performing 30 second intervals instead of 20, instead of 10?  If the only reason is “because” this is what I do with sprinters then you may be in magic land.  If the answer is we do this with everyone that can be ok for a while.   You just need to know why this is the protocol with everyone and when does your training start to focus in on your specific needs and the needs of your strategic goals?    Training and the physiology of training is constantly changing.  Research is revealing more about our bodies and how to elicit greater performance metrics.  What is known today may change tomorrow.  This environment coupled with the changes in your body and fitness requires a dynamic strategy that can accommodate these changes.  In many cases athletes change their coaches during their career and see a great improvement.  In many cases this increase in performance is a result of a past strategy that has been static for too long and did not take into account the ever changing environment that surrounds an athlete.  It is not the new coach that produces the performance as much as it is a change in the training.  This same situation can occur with the new coach if the training becomes static once again.

I had a professor that told me some books are to be tasted, some chewed, some spit out, and very few that should be swallowed.  This is good advice with the world of training athletes.  There is a ton of research out there and many magic workouts that are produced as a result of poor research, hype and rumor.  In many cases there is a correlation in the research to performance improvement, but not causation.    This is an important concept to keep in mind.

The easiest way to evaluate a new workout or coach is to keep asking WHY.  It is only with the whys answered that you truly know if you are spending time in magic land.

Train smart, have fun, and you will prevail!

Jacques DeVore, CSCS

President Titan Sports Performance and Sirens Fitness

www.titansb.com  www.sirensfitness.wordpress.com

Paleo Crunch Recipe

Here is a great new low-carb recipe for Paleo Crunch. Thanks Dana Petersen for finding this! This is a great snack for your next hike or bike ride.

Ingredients

1/2 c. coconut oil

1/2 c. raw honey

2 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 c. raw pumpkin seeds

1/2 c. raw sunflower seeds

1 c. almond meal

1 c. shredded, unsweetened coconut

2 c. raw slivered or chopped almonds

Instructions

1. Pre-heat oven to 325 F

2.  Whisk first 3 ingredients in a small bowl.

3. Add all dry ingredients into a large bowl and mix the wet ingredients with the dry.  Combine well.  On a baking sheet with small sides spread a thin layer of the mixture.  Place in oven for about 10 minutes take out and mix around a bit and place back in oven for another 5-10 minutes.  You just want it toasted, once it looks nice and toasted take out and let cool for 5 minutes.

Enjoy!

 

Taken from: http://crossfitfenrir.com/2011/09/22/paleo-breakfast-cereal-recipe/

The Toxic Nature of Sugar

Two weeks ago, 60 Minutes had a special on the toxic nature of sugar, fructose, and High Fructose Corn Syrup, which is a regular ingredient on most processed foods.  This is a must see!  As I have said in the past, you want nutrient dense carbohydrates preferably coupled with fiber.  The video is 13 minutes and worth watching. This segment gives you plenty of reasons to minimize the sugar in  your diet.  Those of you who have recently started training with us will recognize much of this information in my healthy eating discussion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELTldYccY1U

Train smart, have fun, and you will prevail!

Jacques DeVore, CSCS

President Titan Sports Performance and Sirens Fitness

www.titansb.com  www.sirensfitness.wordpress.com

“Fatigue Makes Cowards of us all” Vince Lombardi

 

The Psychology of your training:

Sports and training are very similar to play fighting in the animal kingdom.  Animals from a very young age engage in play fighting to prepare them for life in the wild and the real fights to come.

Sports and training are testing and proving ground for the civilized man and even more so when we’re young.  But know this:  every athlete wonders if they are really tough enough to win at the highest level and everyone has doubts at one time or another.  How do you deal with these doubts and build a level of invincibility.

Do you have what it takes?

Will you crack when the pain and suffering get too great?

What are your limits?

Will you dig so deep that you surprise yourself?

What are you willing to do to overcome your doubts?

How do you eliminate doubt and get control over your own weaknesses.

The answers to these questions and your mental toughness lie in great training!

I will talk first about the training, then in a later post, competition.   I have trained a very large number of great athletes over the years and I have observed some common threads that exist in the mentally tough athletes and how they approach their training.

•  The number one common thread to be successful is the attitude to training and practice.  If you do not have the right attitude and learn to love the struggle and pain of training it will be difficult to prepare for competition.  It is not to say that there are not some talented and gifted individuals that will be exceptions to this observation, however it is rare.

• There needs to be an early recognition that training and practice are where the game is won.

• Training and practice is where you take risks.  Risks are not risks to injury, but to fail.  This is where you test your limits and with great coaching learn to extend those limitations judiciously.   This is equivalent to the play fighting that animals do to prepare for the real world competition.    Great training gives you the confidence to know that you have put in the work and can be comfortable that win, lose, or draw you have done the work to win.

• The above concept is probably the most important.  A great example of this is how anxious athletes get the minute after an injury.   Their confidence is immediately compromised because the day of the injury they feel they are starting to de-train.   The opposite of this occurs when sound strategy and tactics are built into the athletes training.  Athletes want control in their sport.  The most control comes during training.  During competition control is dramatically diminished, so good training allows them to be more comfortable with the lack of control at game time.   This is the bedrock of mental toughness during competition.

• Everyone is suffering; just some people go faster when they suffer!  This is huge, because many athletes internalize and magnify their suffering during competition.   Training is the time to recreate this environment and learn to control your doubts and emotions.

• Have a primary objective for every training session.  This is huge.  You may have intervals on your calendar; however what is the objective and desired outcome from this session.  Spend a few minutes before to establish what you are trying to accomplish.  Time is your real enemy so make sure that you have thought about your session before you begin.

There is a ton of information and time spent on the physiology of training, but the psychology of training and the understanding of how training impacts your performance is a subject you should spend more time contemplating.  A few hours planning and a few minutes before training will give you great returns and help you to squeeze all the value you can from the countless hours spent training.

Train smart, have fun, and you will prevail!

Jacques DeVore, CSCS

President Titan Sports Performance and Sirens Fitness

www.titansb.com  www.sirensfitness.wordpress.com

Prioritizing Your Time

This is an interesting article on time and why we think we never have enough time for exercise, family, and other interests: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/are-you-as-busy-as-you-think.html

I know everyone is busy, but this is something you should think about.  In many cases people do not make exercise and eating a priority because they think they do not have the time.

I posted in my previous blog about elevating the urgency of the goal as a tool to help with prioritizing your health.  See http://sirensfitness.wordpress.com/2011/12/15/how-bad-do-you-really-want-it/

This article reinforces this notion.

Train hard, have fun and you will prevail!

Jacques CSCS

President Titan Sports Performance and Sirens Fitness

www.titansb.com  www.sirensfitness.wordpress.com

Are You as Busy as You Think?

By Laura Vanderkam | The Wall Street Journal 

There was a time, not so long ago, when I was busy, busy, busy. At least I thought I was.

I told people I worked 60 hours a week. I claimed to sleep six hours a night. As I lamented to anyone stuck next to me at parties, I was basically too busy to breathe. Me time? Ha!

Now I work 45 hours a week and sleep close to eight hours a night. But I’m not getting any less done.

My secret? I started keeping track of how I spent my time, logging how many hours and minutes I devoted to different activities such as work, sleep and chores.

I soon realized I’d been lying to myself about where the time was going. What I thought was a 60-hour workweek wasn’t even close. I would have guessed I spent hours doing dishes when in fact I spent minutes. I spent long stretches of time lost on the Internet or puttering around the house, unsure exactly what I was doing.

I’m not alone in this time fog. If you believe results from the American Time Use Survey, done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and other studies, plenty of Americans have faulty impressions of how they spend time in our “too-rushed-to-breathe” world.

We all have the same 168 hours per week — a number few people contemplate even as they talk about “24-7″ with abandon — but since time passes whether we acknowledge it or not, we seldom think through exactly how we’re spending our hours.

We also live in a competitive society, and so by lamenting our overwork and sleep deprivation — even if that requires workweek inflation and claiming our worst nights are typical — we show that we are dedicated to our jobs and our families. Being “busy” and “starved for time” is a way to show we matter. Put another way, it makes us feel important.

But if you think about it, complaining about a lengthy to-do list is not only boring, it’s a sad hook for one’s self-esteem. Owning up to how we spend our hours gives us more control of our time, and ultimately, of our lives.

Here’s how to do it:

Keep a time log. If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, you may have tried keeping a food journal. Sure, you’re eating grilled chicken for dinner, but the eight M&Ms you grab from the receptionist’s candy jar add up, too.

Like tracking meals, tracking time keeps us from spending it mindlessly or lying to ourselves about what we do with it. Write down what you’re doing as often as you remember for at least a week. Add up the totals. Checking Facebook five times a day at six minutes a pop adds up to two-and-a-half hours in a workweek — curiously, the exact amount of time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends we exercise.

Be honest. While Americans claim to sleep six to seven hours per night, time logs show we sleep more than eight. One study tracking people’s estimated and actual workweeks found that those claiming to work 70, 80, or more hours were logging less than 60.

Ask yourself what you’d like to do with your time. Claiming to be busy relieves us of the burden of choice. But if you’re working 50 hours a week, and sleeping eight hours a night (56 per week) that leaves 62 hours for other things. That’s plenty of hours for a family life and a personal life — exercising, volunteering, sitting on the porch with the paper, plus watching TV if you like. Set goals — maybe three hours of exercise and swapping out two hours of TV for reading — and see where in your 168 hours you could make that happen.

Change your language. Instead of saying “I don’t have time” try saying “it’s not a priority,” and see how that feels. Often, that’s a perfectly adequate explanation. I have time to iron my sheets, I just don’t want to. But other things are harder. Try it: “I’m not going to edit your résumé, sweetie, because it’s not a priority.” “I don’t go to the doctor because my health is not a priority.” If these phrases don’t sit well, that’s the point. Changing our language reminds us that time is a choice. If we don’t like how we’re spending an hour, we can choose differently.

Write to Laura Vanderkam at cjeditor@dowjones.com

 

Strength vs. Endurance Training: How do you mix oil and water?

There is a lot of discussion in the strength and conditioning circles about how much time “endurance” athletes should spend strength training and vice versa.  Training for one outcome in most cases negatively impacts the other.  At Titan we train a number of athletes both endurance and non endurance strength and power athletes.  We are constantly working on better ways to take parts of one type of training to enhance the other.  It is even more important when you have a limited amount of training time with an athlete.   In the strength and conditioning circles there tends to be a perception that you can only do one or the other.   Take a look at premier league soccer players today versus 10 years ago and you see how much bigger they have become and  yet they can still run for a 90 minute game.  Some of them look like rugby players, yet soccer is considered one of the most aerobically taxing of sports.  Today’s sportsmen, both endurance and non-endurance, have to be both strong and be able to produce power at extremely high levels for longer and longer periods of time.

So what is concurrent training and how do you most effectively utilize what we have learned in the training of both types of athletes? Training time is more and more valuable so concurrent training is something that needs to be considered.   In previous blog entries I have discussed the importance of having a primary objective for each workout.  This is even of greater importance if you are concurrently training an athlete.

Many strength coaches believe that any amounts of endurance training will diminish the ability to produce strength and power.  On the face of this it does not make that much sense.  If this was the case then why does it take so long to make gains if all you do is strength and power training?   You are not going to change fast twitch muscle fiber to slow twitch and vice versa with small amounts of training in the other area.  However, with the right strategy a non-endurance athlete can improve the ability to perform short term high intensity intervals and larger amounts of high strength and power outputs by adding some longer term endurance training to the strategy.  This doesn’t mean an offensive lineman is going to train for a marathon.  It just means that if the ability to recover between intervals is improved then greater output and overloads can be obtained in the intervals performed.   On the other side of the coin an endurance athlete can improve average power output on longer term efforts by adding short term strength and power training.  This also will result in the each type of athlete being able to obtain bigger overloads in the energy system most important to the sport.  I call this “opening the window” to other areas of fitness that are positively correlated and improve and support training.  I have cyclists that will go months without any short term intensity because of some conventional training methods that dictate this in the winter.  They seem perfectly fine with this idea.  However, when I ask them what they think would happen to their fitness for racing a bicycle if they did nothing but 100 meter sprints for 4 months, they usually respond with a gasp and think they would lose all of their fitness.  Then I ask them what they think happens to their ability to go hard if they don’t go hard for 4 months straight!  So, you must open the window to all the necessary energy systems necessary for your sport.  At some times the windows are open wider and other times not so much.  I have spent a lot of time looking at periodization and will talk more about this in a later post.  I am looking at this principal from a completely different perspective and how it may be able to improve performance by turning it on its head.  The point is that you need to regularly question tried and true training conventions.

Coming back to concurrent training, there are some definitions necessary to better understand how strength and endurance improvements come about, and the primary enzymes that impact these improvements.

AMPK- Activated protein kinase.  Without going into all the physiology involved, understand that this enzyme is activated when large amounts of ATP are needed for exercise that is long in nature.  ATP is necessary to fuel this type of exercise.  AMPK increases you ability to uptake substrates of sugar and fat to fuel the exercise.  You also see the role of epigenetics involved in giving your muscles more endurance as a result of this enzyme being regularly present.  Greater capillary density and mitochondria are evidenced when longer amounts of endurance training take pace with the activation and presence of AMPK.  Higher intensity intervals increase the levels of AMPK.   Many trainers think that high intensity intervals provide a halo effect that bumps the metabolism and results in weight loss.  However, AMPK increases fat metabolism and sugar uptake as a fuel source for supporting this type of exercise and will make changes in the gene expression.  (Exercise &AMPK Activation, Derek Beast, Charlebois Feb 2005)

mTorc1-mammalian ‘target of rapamycin complex 1   

mTorc1 activity is required for muscle growth and increased strength.  It is most active during resistance training.  This enzyme regulates protein synthesis.  As it increases, there is an increase in protein synthesis and subsequently muscles get stronger and bigger.  So if you want to increase strength you need to increase the presence of this enzyme.    Amino acid supplementation activates this enzyme and that is why adding this to a post workout recovery drink and prior to resistance training can be helpful in developing strength.  Your body has a way of seeking homeostasis so you can’t just keep adding amino acids and expect strength.  So adding amino acids before and after heavy resistance exercise is helpful in maximizing strength gains.  If you do not time the amino acids effective you body will reduce the activation of mTorc1 to seek equilibrium.  You want mTorc1 as high as possible for as long as possible for maximum effect.   (Sports and Exercise Nutrition pg 126. Susan Lanham 2011)

So how should you think about both of these enzymes and the interaction?  The problem lies in the fact that one enzyme turns off the other.  This is why strength coaches are so opposed to doing both.  However, you can strategically incorporate these together effectively by following a few rules.  What we have to do is reduce the impact of one enzyme on the other.  AMPK is increased with high intensity intervals.  You can increase this further by training in a low glycogen environment.   If you are going to follow your endurance training with a strength session add some carbohydrates to your diet after the workout.  Higher glycogen will reduce AMPK after the workout to help negate the impact on mTorc1.  Make sure that the strength portion is low on volume and high on intensity.  This is also tactically easier to accomplish for most athletes as intervals can be mentally and physically very taxing.  Higher glycogen will reduce the impact of AMPK on mTorc1.  You can also add a pre resistance workout protein drink to activate mTorc1.

In a previous post I discussed power times an X factor when analyzing a sport and subsequent training requirements.   The X factor is the level of power needed how many times (X) to be most competitive in a sport.   When looking at training both strength and endurance simultaneously you need to look at the X factor of the sport and the needs of the athletes to take the best advantage of these enzymes and the impact on endurance and strength.   Understand there may be a time when your training is highly focused and you  will not perform any concurrent training, however if used strategically it can enhance your ability to perform the primary training objective for your sport and better utilize limited available training time.

So keep an open mind and no matter what the sport identify ways of better supporting the primary training objective within your sport.

Train smart, have fun, and you will prevail!

Jacques DeVore, CSCS

President Titan Sports Performance and Sirens Fitness

www.titansb.com  www.sirensfitness.wordpress.com

How Your Brain May Limit Your Physical Output and What It Means to the Order of Exercises.

I was recently reading some research on VO2 max and what limits this max.  For those of you who may not be familiar with VO2 max, it is the absolute limit on how much oxygen you can deliver to your muscles during exercise.  A Tour de France racer may have a VO2 max in the 80s.  The average man could be half or less of that.  It is the size of the engine that you have developed to deliver the oxygen needed for aerobic endurance.  The other side of the coin is the utilization of the oxygen once it is delivered.  That is another story that I will talk about in a later blog.  A large amount of time is spent on how to increase this VO2 maximum. The research I read discussed the concept that we never really reach our maximum because our brain, which is always trying to keep us alive, will not allow this to occur as a defense mechanism (Tim Noakes, “Central Governor Theory”).

What was as interesting to me was the discussion of testing methods for VO2max.   Most of the tests are conducted with a progressive exertion until you reach failure.  What they found was that if they reversed the testing protocol to reduce the effort the V02 that was produced was 4.4% higher. This increase is significant when looking at the difference between winning and losing.

The science showed that the brain does have a role in the maximum output.  The speculation was that emotional stress affected the output.  If you have ever taken one of these test they are very painful and you never look forward to having to take them.

What I found interesting was the possible application to the training and the impact on the structure of training high intensity exercises. With that, i thought about a descending order or an ascending order of the intensity.  I have found this anecdotally to be true. When I am conducting interval sessions and the athlete knows the hardest output is on the front end the maximum output is usually better than when I reverse the order.  Remember there are a time and a place for reversing the order and I will use this when appropriate.  Competitive sport is not always in a linear output.

The real lesson to be learned is that you want to pay attention to the effects of the brain on output.  When you are trying to get max outputs and overloads in your training you may want to start with the highest intensity first and then know that it will get easier as the session continues.   When creating exercise order do not underestimate the brain’s role in getting overloads in your training.

 

Train smart, have fun, and you will prevail!

 

Jacques DeVore, CSCS

President Titan Sports Performance and Sirens Fitness

www.titansb.com  www.sirensfitness.wordpress.com