High Intensity Interval Training = Aerobic Conditioning?!

Well I've studied it, told it to people, even written about it, but it just seems to be too counter intuitive for most folks to believe that short duration high intensity training, resistance and/or otherwise, can lead to improved cardiovascular economy and performance. Okay, I get it, I must just be crazy. Well luckily for you all, and my argument, I guess I really am crazy. How crazy?
Two days ago I set out with my father, Steve, to do something pretty cool, that you can really only do in one place: the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. We parked our car in a town along Interstate 70 called Idaho Springs, elevation 7,526ft. We unracked our road bikes, and after wolfing down our official biking fuel, a Salted Nut Roll, set off towards our destination. That destination lay 28 miles, and 6600 feet of elevation away, at the top of Mt. Evans, elevation14,130ft.
So we headed out, and with a few short breaks for fuel and breathtaking pictures, made the top of one of Colorado's 54 "14ers" in a hair under 4 hours. Okay, so well done, not the first people to do it. Not even the only people that day. What's the big deal you ask? Why (besides the obvious) does this make me crazy? This is the type of ride that many cyclists plan as the grand finale for their entire season, if they even desire to attempt it at all. They train all spring and summer long, logging hundreds and thousands of miles, preparing to climb a skyscraper on their bikes. So how many hours did I log? How many months did I train? How many miles did I have on my bike before I decided to give it a go? It was my Fourth time on my bike, with maybe 150 miles on the road. Now it's generally considered unrealistic for a 215 pound man to ride his bike up a mountain of that magnitude in the first place, not to mention having hardly trained at all. So how the hell did it happen?!
Well while I've not been training on my bike this year, that's not too say I haven't been training. In fact not even a week before this ride I hit a personal record on my Olympic Snatch. I've been training my ass off. I've been training my strength, power, endurance, stamina, coordination, accuracy, and mental fortitude as I always have. And I can count on two hands the number of those Conditioning sessions that lasted longer than 25-30 minutes. You see, when you train your body at a very high intensity it has no choice but to improve the function of All of its energy systems just to keep you conscious. And that absolutely includes your Aerobic or Cardiorespiratory systems. And to be honest these systems are pushed to much higher limits during a High Intensity session than they ever will during a nice Saturday run or ride or row or whatever your endurance method of choice. Whenever you stress a system more than it's used to, your body will adapt in order to be able to better handle that level of stress, should you experience it again. That's a fundamental principle of training used in any sport or discipline. Beyond that it's how we humans have adapted to survive this long.
Long story short, train your body to its limits. All of them. Cram some short duration high intensity stimulus down your throat and then Stop and let your body rest and recover, and you'll be surprised how well it works when you're just headed out for some weekend excursion. Or perhaps if you decide to ride your bike up a Fucking mountain...  Yeah okay, you're right, I Am Crazy ;D

Stop Exercising, Start Moving

Over the last few years I've had the opportunity to learn about a great variety of "Exercise" methods. From Weightlifting and Crossfit, to Spinning and even Yoga. One of the things this type of variety gives you is a giant toolbox with which to help people achieve their goals in health and fitness. But as widely different, and at times polarizing, as they can be, what I keep realizing is that they're all just combinations of movement. Some may be fast and explosive, whereas others can be extremely slow, and even stationary. But no matter what about them seems so much different from each other, they all share that same similarity. And it's in that similarity that I think most people have lost touch a bit with what's so powerful about exercise in the first place.
These days exercise has become something that people do as a means to an end. "I want to get bigger", "I want to get leaner", "I want to get stronger and faster". So we do our homework to find out what we need to do in order to achieve that goal, or we hire a trainer, and set forth to get it done. We spend days of our lives on the treadmill, under the bar, on the track, in classes, and hopefully if everything's planned out right, in a matter of months or years we'll have reached that goal. Hurray!!
But I feel that using exercise simply as a tool is taking for granted what an amazing piece of machinery we're born with. Over hundreds of thousands, if not millions of years, our bodies evolved into a miracle of moving parts, energy systems, and neuromuscular magic, that is nearly endlessly adaptable to any and all stimulus placed upon it. You can make it stronger, faster, leaner, bigger, capable of the fastest and most explosive, as well as the slowest and most graceful actions. And as different as a world record Snatch seems from the slow methodical precision of a Tai Chi form, they're all based in human movement. The perfect synchronization of hundreds of muscles moving about dozens of joints, all controlled by an organic computer and wiring system that the most brilliant scientists in the world are barely beginning to fully understand.
But in today's society, where everything is rushed and we have no time to even look sideways at a rose, much less smell one, we've lost touch with the wonder of our bodies. The beautiful concerto of movement is relegated to 30 minutes on an elliptical, or so many sets and repetitions at some certain loading parameter. When was the last time you took the time to focus, and I mean really focus, on a movement, just one single movement, during one of these "Workouts"? When was the last time you tried to feel every muscle moving your arm or leg through some range of motion? Tried to feel your body change is pursue and joint alignments to keep your center of mass perfectly in place? Tried to sense how your entire body works together to absorb force, stabilize itself, and redirect that force back outward?
Sure, maybe these are just the types of things that exercise science nerds like me think about. But it's not required of You, the ordinary human, just to simply focus all your energy and simply feel what is going on during these movements. I promise you there are millions of people around the world that for whatever reason can no longer perform certain movements that once filled them with happiness. Whether they're paralyzed, injured, or just broken down, they might give everything just to move that way just one more time. Do you think they'd just fly through it from beginning to end to get it done? Or would they feel every muscle fiber? Every breath? Every signal in their brain? Imagine the effort and focus they would put into just feeling that movement! That's what I urge you all to feel.
Obviously it's not realistic to do this every single time you're going to move. You still need to train, work, pay rent, compete, for those of you who do. I understand that. All I'm asking is that over the course of the next few days pick a movement. It doesn't matter which one, but hopefully one you enjoy, a certain lift, or yoga pose, or gymnastics element, whatever. Try to do this in a quiet place if you can, to help you focus. Set up everything you need to get it done, and then just wait. Start by visualizing that movement. Over and over. See in your mind which parts of your body are moving where, which muscles are moving which joints, where everything starts and finishes. As you view it in your mind, start to focus on different muscles each time. See if you can feel those muscles ready to work as you stand there being ready. Towards the end try to focus on feeling each of those muscles, primed and ready. Take some deep breaths. Feel the air flowing in and out. Feel your heart beating, over and over, pulling pint after pint of blood throughout your body, and into all those muscles. Once your ready, take your ready position. Feel your toes grasping the floor, feel your hands gripping your equipment (if there is any). As you get set, notice how all your joints and muscles tighten in unison to prepare for what's to come. As you begin and finish the movement, focus on as much of your body as you can. If you can't feel all of it, then try the movement again, focusing on different pieces and parts.
Try this exercise a couple times a week if you can. I want all of you to stop simply exercising, and instead make each and every session a Symphony performed by the great Orchestra that is your body. Stop making all these workouts something you dread throughout the day, and instead look at them as an opportunity to get in better touch with who you are and what you can do. Above all else our bodies were designed to move. Let's get that back!

Stop Exercising, Start MOVING!!

A Body divided against itself cannot stand!! -- Part 1

Okay, so that may not be exactly how that quote goes. But it's more relevant to my post that way, so just go with it. After the last few months of teaching I've come to the troubling conclusion that most people really have no idea how torqued up their bodies really are. Now this time I'm not talking about nutrition, or aversion to exercise, or the strange eagerness for a large bench press (although that will make an appearance later on). In this particular case in speaking of the unfortunate lack of attention to proper posture and joint mobility.
Now I'd rather not talk at length about proper posture, as most people are pretty tired of hearing about it. Instead I'd rather talk about the havoc it creates in and around the joints of your body, because it seems that same majority of people has no idea the pain and suffering they may be inflicting on themselves. Overall, what I'm talking about is muscle balance, or more importantly muscle IMbalance around your joints. To keep this simple (and in many cases is very much Not simple) imagine that every joint in your body has one muscle on each side of it, and that these two muscles are designed to work together to produce a balance of forces across that joint to both create and stabilize movement. The easiest joints to envision in this fashion are his type joints like your elbows and knees. The biceps and triceps muscle work together to ensure that Flexion and Extension of your elbow happen safely, smoothly, and in a very stable way. However, if one of those muscles becomes overly tight then an imbalance can occur that could threaten to put more force on one side of the joint. On the one hand this makes the partner muscle have to work harder in order to move the joint to its side. If this was the only consequence that might not be so bad. However, in order to keep stress and friction in that joint to a minimum your brain many times will actually inhibit that actions of that partner muscle, making it weaker, slower, and less effective in both moving and stabilizing that joint. That's where you can run into issues.
So you may be saying to yourself "Who cares if my elbows are imbalanced?" Perhaps nobody, but the real problems are in those more complex joints, specifically the Hips and Shoulder Girdle. Create imbalances there and you're on the road to Pain, Injury, and possible Disfigurement. And make no mistake, I'm not shitting you in any sense of the word. Muscle imbalances in these two regions lead to more lower back pain, herniated discs, knee ligament sprains and tears, broken hips, rotator cuff sprains and tears, shoulder dislocations, postural deformities, and overall flexibility limitations than any other cause or malady in the history of man. And during the last century of two those types of issues have taken what can only be described as an Exponential rise. Why the last two centuries you ask? What kind of changes could possibly have led to this population of broken down souls weeping in their own sorrows of weakness and disfunction?! (Okay sorry, that one got away from me) To be honest one could almost entirely blame this downfall on our ever increasing opportunity to Sit Down. Yup. Just sitting. Weird right? Allow me to explain.
The human body has a truly amazing ability to adapt and respond to the world around it. The ability is what allows us to run faster, jump higher, and become ever bigger and stronger. We in the Fitness Industry have named this ability Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand, or the SAID principle. Basically speaking your body will respond to any stresses placed on it. And this ability can be used for both good and evil. Every human body on planet earth is designed to function and move in a certain standard way. And these movements are typically meant to move back and forth from what we call Anatomical Position. Stand Up straight with your toes pointed forward, hands at your sides, palms forward, and you're roughly in anatomical position. From here your joints are all in balance, with the right amount of tension and force necessary to safely move in any direction and speed you wish.
Now if you spent most of your time in this position, as say or primitive ancestors did, you'd be good to go for the most part. But think about an average day for most people. Where are they? Running around the Urban Serengeti? Nah, chances are they're sitting in a nice comfy office chair somewhere sending emails and filling out TPS reports, only to spend another hour driving home to spend a few more hours on the couch watching TV. So we're lazy. That's my point right? Not this time. Remember how I said your body adapts to how it's stressed? If your body spends the majority of its time in a seated position with a round spine, hunched shoulders, and arms resting out in front of itself, guess what; it's going to adapt to be more functional in that position. What's that mean? In order to produce normal forces around your joints, some of your muscles are going to shorten themselves, and their partners are going to lengthen themselves. Specifically, your calves, hamstrings, inner thighs, hip flexors, pecs, biceps, shoulder internal rotators, lats, upper traps, and neck muscles are now in a much shorter position. So what Is my point? From this new position you've adapted to, stand up. Two things will happen. First off, all those muscles I mentioned are now being stretched out, and are likely unhappy about it. They're going to try to keep their shortened positions, meaning horrible ankle positioning, inwardly turned knees, a rotated pelvis, hyper-extended lower back, rounded upper back and shoulders, and a head that's pulled forward like a giant plucked rooster. The second issue is that with all these muscles on the body being stretched and producing a lot of extra force, their partners on the back side of the body are now being inhibited from properly activating, just like our elbow example from above. Still not seeing an issue? Now almost all of the muscles on the front of the body are short and tight, and all the muscles on the back of the body are long and weaker/slower. The big issue here is that it's the muscles on the Back of your body that are needed for this like walking, running, jumping, pulling, moving side to side, decelerating your body from jumps, steps, and those side to side movements, and generating pretty much any power, speed or explosiveness you may need to, let's say, move out of the path of a runaway bus. Problem? Yeah, you could say that.
In addition to your new complete lack of ability to move like anything other than a Rollie Pollie, you've got one more problem: Stabilization. Those now weakened muscles on the back of your body that are supposed to work with the now shortened and pissed off muscles on the front of the body? They also now lack the ability to provide the proper stability of those same joints during movements. Lack of stability in the ankle/knee/hip? Sprains, tears, falls that cause broken bones. Lower spine? Herniated discs, muscle strains/tears, chronic pain. Upper Spine/Shoulder Girdle? Complete lack of flexibility, muscle strains/tears, dislocations, chronic pain.
At this point I'm hoping you're picking up what I'm putting down about how devastating a little imbalance can be, and how our favorite office chair may be the biggest Wolf in Sheep's clothing EVER! For now I'm going to leave you thinking about how you spend the average day, and the unseen hell it may be causing you. In my next post I'll get into how to reverse some of these issues, and to be honest it's fairly simple and straightforward. In the meantime, if you simply can't wait, talk to your Strength&Conditioning Coach about improving your postural distortions and muscular imbalances. And as always, if they give you a funny look like you just asked them for a half dozen Gordita Supremes... in Russian, then find yourself a new Coach!!

Now Friends, Go Forth, and be limber!!

Sometimes you've gotta Stop before you can GO GO GO!!

So as I've traveled the long and winding road of health and fitness I've notice that, just like in the rest of life, performance oftentimes is a lot of Give and Take. There are a lot of ways in which I could make use of that old cliche, but in this particular instance I'm talking about how a fast, efficient athlete (or average walking talking human being) must be able to effectively Stop before they can ever hope to effectively Go. In just about every athletic endeavor there will come a point where your average athlete will have to halt whatever forward inertia they've created, no matter how fast or slow, and some themself in a completely different direction. Think about the cut of a runningback; a center fielder having to make a throw to home plate after running back to the fence to make a catch; or in a slightly more abstract (and perhaps more relevant) example, an Olympic weightlifter stapling him/herself under a few hundred pounds and not being squished.
Every one of these athletes must have the ability to rapidly and effectively DEcelerate their bodies and just as rapidly and effectively be able to stabilize and reposition their center of mas in the direction they need to go before any type of strength or explosive REacceleration can begin to happen. The best athletes in the world can cut the time of this type and magnitude of directional change down to fractions of a second. And the ones who can't? They get to collect a lot of second place trophies.
Luckily for You, Me, and Them, your body has a very impressive capability to absorb and redistribute a huge amount of force...  but only if trained to do so. Most athletes, and people in general, spend a majority of their time, if not all of it, training their bodies to Go, to Explode, to Drive. But what they tend to forget is that the ability to create these types of movements from a dead start are rarely the real opportunities to display true athletic prowess, not to mention leave their competitors eating turf and clutching at air. To really train your body to be explosive in the performance realm your systems of deceleration and stabilization must be trained just like your systems of acceleration.
One of the most effective ways to train this type of ability is through training Plyometrically, and in every conceivable plane of motion. Plyometric training is a way of training your body to absorb and redistribute force more quickly and efficiently. Simply speaking, try to imagine there are little slinkies wrapped around your muscle fibers. The entire job of these slinkies (actually called Muscle Spindles) is to monitor the length of your various muscles both while still and during movement. Your brain uses this information to calculate where your different appendages are at, a term we call Proprioception. However, these slinkies have another very important capability. When a muscle stretches very quickly, such as in absorbing the impact of jumping down from a couple of steps, these slinkies can trigger a massive contain of that same muscle in order to counteract the forces of gravity, mostly so you don't eat shit and far all your muscles in half. However, with proper training we can use that contraction response to not only stop your body more quickly and stably, but also create a great deal of force in a different direction.
Aside from just this involuntary contraction from your slinkies, there are two other ways we can generate force in order to make this whole process more powerful. First off, many of the various tissues in your muscles have some degree of elastic properties. To keep things simple, imagine that mixed in around inside your muscles are thousands of rubber bands. When you quickly stretch that muscle all those rubber bands get stretched out, and immediately want to rebound to their normal position, which creates a lot more of that counter active force in the other direction. Last but not least is your ability to voluntarily contract as many muscle fibers as you can to create force in the opposite direction. Each of these three systems can be trained to be more efficient and powerful. Ask yourself, if you could have the power of three systems of contraction, versus just one, wouldn't that be a pretty sweet deal to take advantage of?
Quickly, let's perform an experiment to demonstrate what I'm talking about. Grab a chair and sit down so your hips are about level or even a touch lower than your knees with your feet on the floor. Now position your center of mass over your feet so you can jump straight up and not lose your balance. Without swinging your arms or learning forward, jump as high as you can. It helps to have a friend nearby to keep track of how high you're going. Next, stand straight up, arms extended in front of you. When you're ready, squat down and swng your arms back behind you, concentrating on feeling that energy storing up in all your little rubber bands. A split second after you hit the bottom of your squat drive up as hard as you can with yourlegs and arms and jump as high as possible. See if your second jump isn't significantly higher.
You see, sitting in the chair all you get is the force you can voluntarily produce with the muscles in your legs. Whereas using that squat first, a method we call a Counter Movement, allows you to store up and redistribute the energy in your rubber bands, as well as take advantage of the force generated by the activation of your slinkies. Many people train that dead stop power, like jumping from the chair. But to really take advantage of your capabilities, training the other two systems is vital, and pays big dividends.
Other factors apply as well, such as good flexibility, core strength and stabilization, and a Shitload of time practicing the actual redirection skills (which is improved through a different type of training), but being able to increase the ability of your muscular system to absorb force, stabilize your joints/body, and redistribute that force in a fast, effective manner will make even the most average of individuals a much more explosive athlete.
To find out more information about how to incorporate Plyometrics into your training program contact your nearest strength coach. If they look at you funny or ask Why, find yourself a new strength coach. I know a few as well if you don't have one...

Now, Go Forth Athletes, and practice the Art of the Stop!!

Practice how you play goes both ways

Recently, a particular exercise selection during the Crossfit Games created more than a little controversy from coaches and athletes concerned about its possible dangers to some competitors. The exercise in question was the Box Jump, or rather the "extreme" number of repetitions during the scheduled workout. Whether or not you're familiar with the exercise or not isn't necessarily relevant to the rest of the post, but if you've ever strung a few of these together you may have an opinion of your own on whether or not this level of concern is warranted.

The box jump itself is just a simple matter of jumping from the floor to the top of a box of a certain height, and has been used by strength and conditioning coaches for many many years in order to train explosiveness and agility in their athletes. The problem that can arise from this movement is when an individual attempts to complete multiple jumps in succession. In the case of Crossfit, and the controversy in question, this happens in order to complete a greater number of jumps than the next competitor in a short amount of time. Doing them in quick succession can turn the box jump into what's called a Plyometric movement, which is a style of training that's also used by coaches to train explosiveness and power. Depending on the athlete and the manner in which they've been training this CAN present an increased risk of injury. However with responsible training, preparation, adherence to a tissue quality protocol (SMR, massage), and proper warmup this risk can be minimized.

To complete rapid box jumps, two different methods can be used. The first, somewhat slower method, involves landing on the full surface of the foot and building up tension in the legs, hips, and shoulders to explode back up onto the box. This method, while still Plyometric in nature uses much more muscle stretch a and contraction than the second method. The second method, and basis of the controversy, involves landing much more on just the ball of the foot and uses the combination of the calf muscles (mostly gastroc and soleus), and more importantly the Achilles tendon to stretch and contract to rocket the athlete back up for the next repetition. So far these may seem just like two different ways to skin the box jump cat. There is quite a difference from a bio mechanics standpoint however. When landing flat footed the athlete is able to use all of the large powerful muscles of the lower body, such as the glutes, hamstrings, quads, and all their respective tendons and connective tissues, in addition to the calves, to jump back upward. This means that the force of their bodyweight and reversal of movement gets spread out through much more tissue. It is, however, also a bit slower. So when completing a large number of repetitions that slightly slower pace can begin to add up pretty quick.

The risk of the second method lies in the fact that over so many repetitions if an athlete's lower leg muscles and/or connective tissue aren't strong or elastic enough to decelerate/reverse all the forces involved some pretty nasty injuries can occur. This risk is inherent in any speed or agility movements of this type when an athlete must decelerate and reverse the movement of their entire body. Some other examples of this would be during sprinting, jumping rope, or the quick side to side motions of a football, basketball, or soccer player. So is there a risk from a physics standpoint?  Sure.  But as life is an inherently risky endeavor in itself, a little extra recreational danger shouldn't necessarily be such a big deal.

As I mentioned earlier there are a number of ways to reduce risk in this situation, and those same precautions can help reduce risk of quite a few other sport injuries as well. If those precautions are not taken, then clearly the risk increases, and when considering the entire pool of injuries of a certain type the number of athletes who Were taking all those precautions is most likely extremely small. Because of this fact, to say that a certain exercise is inherently to dangerous and should be removed from competition is being a bit hasty. One other problem that can increase the risk of injury is athletes disregarding their training and deciding to attempt exercise styles or methods that they've not been proudly expired to. In the case of the box jump, any experienced coach will always start their athletes jumping down safely from a box and landing with their entire lower body in order to build the necessary strength, nervous system reflexes, and tissue elasticity to prepare for a more advanced style. In addition, a good coach will be able to recognize that certain athletes may not be candidates for the faster style no matter how they train and prepare. For example, larger athletes will create a much greater amount of force in decelerating their box jumps, and because of this may be advised to always land more flat footed, and in some cases step down from the box rather than even actually jumping down. Older athletes as well may be coached to perform safer styles. The point here is that if an athlete has always been coached to a certain style or ability level it's not exactly fair to shun a certain exercise if that athlete decides to ignore their training and attempt something being their capabilities.

At the end of the day, it's not necessarily a valid argument to criticize a certain exercise or movement of of context. Given proper training, preparation, and recovery, the dangers of any sporting endeavor can be minimized to allow for the realization of the highest capabilities of each and every athlete brave enough to attempt them. The lack or ignorance of any degree of due diligence can easily lead to injury and heartbreak, and is the duty of both the athlete AND the coach to observe. If you're not ready, don't push it. To Thine Own Self be True!

Play how you practice!  And if you desire to achieve a certain level of achievement, ensure you have the right coach, and the right training to get you there. Be safe, be smart, and kick some ass!!

Strength Part 3: How you Get Strong!!

To get the most out of this post you really need to read the one before it about the pieces, parts, and characteristics of Strength. Otherwise the analogies used in this part may not make a whole lot of sense. This post is going to be about how we can attempt to train all those pieces of strength in order to make you a stronger and more capable individual.

Strength training, like all other types of effective training, works according to a few distinct principles, and if you're familiar with them then strength programming will hopefully make more sense to you. The first principle is the acronym SAID, and is arguably the most important principle in training. It stands for Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands, and basically states that your body will respond in kind to each and every imposed demand you place upon it. If you apply this principle in the right ways your body is capable of truly amazing things. However, if you apply this principle by half assing your workouts and spending a lot of time on the couch eating doritos your body will be happy to "Specifically Adapt" by becoming a worthless pile of goo. Don't Impose that kind of Demand on your body!!

The second principle is that of Progressive Overload. This principle really just means consistently applying carefully planned, and responsible, degrees of overload to the body to bring about those specific adaptations, through changes in the level of resistance, tempo of repetitions, number of repetitions, volume of repetitions, length of rest periods, and quite a few other variables. Basically as long as you continue to consistently overload your system in new ways it should reward you with the adaptations you wish to see. In terms of these last couple posts the adaptation we're shooting for is enhanced levels of strength.

So now I'll go through a few of the adaptations you can attempt to bring about using the analogies and terms from the last post, namely the behavior of all your little Amish dudes in raising that barn frame.

First off are Absolute and Maximal Strength. Since these two are just measurements of your strength they're not really adaptable except to say that with proper training your Absolute Strength level will rise a bit, and your Maximal Strength will be a greater and greater percentage of that Absolute level.

FIBER TYPE: This is the type of little dudes you have available, the 5 year olds and the Vikings. Through training with power and strength in mind you're going to hope to tax your Vikings much more than your 5 year olds simply because they're capable of pulling harder and faster. Your 5 year olds will still get worked, but just aren't capable of that much improvement in this area. However, there ARE certain fiber types you possess that can alter themselves depending on the training you give them. Meaning if you train for endurance activities they're likely going to start acting more like 5 year olds, which is good if you're going to run a marathon. They'll also begin to act more like Vikings if you train them that way. So if you train consistently using heavy loads and fewer repetitions you'll hopefully get as many of these variable dudes to grow into Vikings, and increase the speed and strength you have to pull up bigger and bigger barn frames.

RECRUITMENT: This is the number of total dudes your brain is able to call up at once to pull on that barn frame. Strength training will simply increase the number of dudes your brain is able to call up at once. It'll probably still never hit that 100% mark, but if you train consistently and raise that number from 50% to say 70% of your dudes, that's quite a big increase in the amount of barn frame you can pull up right? Overall this is just increasing the percentage of your total muscle you can activate all at once. And the level of recruitment of somebody fresh off the couch is extremely small when compared to elite strongmen like Olympic Weightlifters or Track athletes. After all, it may not be that a 187 pound Greek guy has any more dudes than any other 187 pound guy walking the earth, but a certain 187 pound Greek guy named Pyrros Dimas was able to recruit enough of his dudes to lift damn near 400 pounds straight over his head in a single movement at one time. Now THAT's some pretty amazing muscle recruitment eh?

FREQUENCY: The adaptation here is that your brain can begin to recruit your dudes faster and faster until that full recruitment is lightening fast! Some strength training is in very fast motions, like olympic lifting, sprinting, highland games type sports, and other training is for slower motions like traditional powerlifting (weird name for sure), strongman sports, etc. Training fast will drive up this frequency adaptation, whereas training slower won't as much.

EFFICIENCY: The fastest, strongest dudes ever can still pull in a fashion that isn't as strong or as fast or efficient as it could be. Training will help your brain to recruit your dudes in a way that's more cohesive and coordinated in order to pull in exactly the fashion it wishes to, instead of a chaotic mess where every dude is pulling at his own pace whenever he wants to. In addition your brain will become better at calling only the perfect number of dudes for each particular frame, meaning it'll use just enough, but not too much energy every time. If explosive speed is what your after, your brain can call upon your dudes in a way that will have them pulling all at once extremely fast. Higher levels of strength demand that your dudes pull in more of a series, applying their force in a steady acceleration applying the perfect amount to move some seriously heavy objects. For times when you'll have to lower and re-raise that frame multiple times (repetitions) your brain becomes very good at rotating the groups of dudes it calls upon for each consecutive lift so that they all get to rest as much as possible between lifts. So even if you're only using 20% of your dudes per lift, it'll probably be a different 20% each time so that no dude gets more tired than he has to to get the entire job done.

So these are the basic ways you become stronger when training for such. As you may or may not have noticed, most of these adaptations are on the Neural side of things, meaning they're all dependent on how your brain interacts with your muscles, and not necessarily the muscles themselves. This is one of the reasons that an individual can become much much stronger without having to get bigger in the process. With that said, there are certain adaptations that will probably take place that will affect the look and feel of your muscles. First off the connective tissues within and around your muscles will become thicker and stronger, yet also more elastic and pliable, leading to muscles better able to transfer their forces to the bones needed for movements, while also being more resistant to stretching or high intensity reflexive forces. Secondly your muscles will begin to store more carbohydrate fuel for those intense workouts. These carbs, called glycogen, like human starch, carry with them some extra water so your muscles will gain a bit of volume. However, these two adaptations will generally add just a bit of shape and/or "Tone" to your muscles.

Let me add to this last paragraph by saying that certain types of strength training can lead to growth and thickening of the muscle fibers themselves, a style of training used most exclusively by bodybuilders. However, in order to gain the type of muscle bulk these individuals are shooting for takes a great deal of time, effort, discipline and the perfect dietary, and in some cases hormonal support. It's fairly difficult to do past a few months, so those of you not wishing to gain that extra bulk need not worry in most cases, especially you lady-types. So I wouldn't worry too much about this. If you are worried about it however, be sure to get programming from somebody who knows what they're doing, as magazines and online forums don't know your story, and can't see you train from day to day.

All in all, strength is your friend, making your day go a bit easier, and adding a bit of extra sex-appeal to your physique. After all, as you may have heard, Strong is the New Sexy!! Go get em tigers!!

Strength Part Deux: Pieces and Parts

In trying to keep my last post readable I realized I left out a lot of the fundamentals of what makes up a person's strength. So I'll attempt to break them down into a couple posts and hopefully give you all a bit better idea what you're working with.

Today's post will be about the characteristics involved in measuring strength levels depending on the training status of the individual in question. Next post will be how strength training will cause different adaptations to those characteristics.

Throughout the next two posts I'm going to be using an analogy that I hope makes sense to most of you: an Amish barn raising. For those of you who haven't seen one of these, it's basically a bunch of guys with ropes tied onto the bigass frame of a barn, and they work together to pull it up to a vertical position to fit together with other frame sections. Multimedia Learning Tool  Skip ahead to about the 2 minute mark for a good example, or watch all the way through to get a bit cultured up!

So to start breaking things down, the barn frame is going to represent the bone(s) your muscle(s) is going to be pulling on to move a certain load. That frame may be lighter or heavier, may need to be raised at different speeds, and may need to be raised and lowered for a number of repetitions as well, and the actions of the dudes on the ground will change depending on these criteria.

ABSOLUTE STRENGTH: Depending on the number of total dudes on the ground available to raise that frame, and the amount of barn raising training they've been doing, there is a certain absolute maximum size of frame that they can possibly lift. However, it's highly unlikely, and usually impossible, to get all those dudes to pull as hard and efficiently as they can except in times of dire emergency or extremely abnormal condition. So this absolute strength is somewhat irrelevant, we'll only ever be able to achieve certain percentages of this strength.

MAXIMAL STRENGTH: This number is the highest number of dudes you can get to pull in real life under normal circumstances all on your own. This number can change depending on how long you've been making these dudes raise barn frames, and under what conditions. Generally speaking, athletes who train with very heavy loads, or those that move those loads extremely fast will have a Maximal Strength that's a higher percentage of their Absolute Strength than those that train in longer duration endurance types of exercise.

FIBER TYPE: Within your available group of dudes (individual muscle) there are different types of dudes, capable of raising barns in different ways. Type I, or Slow Twitch dudes, are like 5 year olds. They're not capable of pulling very hard or very fast on their rope, but they can do it over and over without getting very tired. On the other hand, there are Type II, or Fast Twitch dudes, which are more like giant viking strongmen dudes. These dudes can pull extremely hard and/or extremely fast, but can only pull a couple of times before they need a while to rest. There are other types in between these two, but these are the main types. So picture that you've got a field full of mostly 5 year olds and Vikings ready to raise that frame.

RECRUITMENT: Your brain is very aware of exactly how many Kiddos and Vikings it has available to raise that frame, and it's so smart it will only call on the perfect number of each of them to do it. If you need to raise the frame more than once (repetitions) or raise frames on consecutive days (sets) your brain even monitors which of your dudes are fresh and ready to go, and which ones need to rest before they can be called on to pull again. In addition, any time your brain calls upon a dude to pull, they will pull as hard as they can or not at all. This is the All Or None principle, and has to deal with a bunch of big scientific neurological words that won't really help with our story for now.

FREQUENCY: In pulling up a frame, your brain can also change the speed at which it screams at your dudes to pull. The higher the frequency, the stronger and/or faster your frame can be raised. Generally speaking, your 5 year olds aren't capable of being yelled at to go faster as much as your Vikings are, meaning those Vikings are going to be called on much more often if you have a very large frame to raise, or it needs to be raised very quickly. However your 5 year olds will still be there to help out as much as they can. 60 5 year olds can still move quite a bit of frame.

EFFICIENCY: This refers to how coordinated your dudes are pulling when your brain tells them to pull. If they're all pulling at their own pace then they won't be able to pull with as much force as if they all pulled in a more efficient fashion. Picture rowers rowing at their own cadence instead of rowing in perfect unison.

These are some of the basic characteristics of an individual's strength. Many can be altered to a certain extent depending on the type, frequency, and intensity of your training. My next posting will center around those types of adaptations, and how they may affect the next barn you try to raise.

Have fun guys! And have fun picturing all those little dudes the next time you're hoisting some iron!!