Supplement shenanigans!

Barely half way through the week and another supplement rant from yours truly.

As always I caveat this post by saying that supplements do form a valuable part of any good training program. However they are the 5% that complements a balanced nutrition and training program, they should never be the focus.

Unfortunately supplement companies with a vested interest in selling products (no issue with this) over-hype their latest products with unrealistic hyperbole (big issue with this).

Recent case in point is my favourite whipping boys at a certain bodybuilding website. Yes they do publish plenty of great articles on their site but this doesn't mitigate some of the rubbish claims and slick marketing that permeates their supplement business.

Whats got me hot and bothered? Well the website I alluded to is at it again with its a once in a lifetime, mega, cutting edge, game changing ( have I run out of superlatives?) fat burning panacea!!

The premise of the supplement is that it allows users to carb up heavily as it suppresses fat gain. The active ingredient is touted as cyanidin 3-glucoside (one of the active components in blueberries) and literature exists on 'possible' efficacy for weightloss. However to my knowledge studies thus far relate to those done on mice and invitro. Interestingly there is some suggestion in scientific literature of the extract being useful for eye health.

Now here is the thing. If the supplement works, great but why promote it in such a pontificating, self serving way that treats the customer like a 10 year old idiot. Not that it appears to harm this company, based on the livespill commentary on their site every knucklehead is lapping it up.

Take my hat of to them they use a marketing approach that would be right at home with infomercials for snuggies, bam wah absorbent towels and those funky knives that cut through cans?!!

What makes me laugh is the almost juvenile pitch. They claim they have spent a decade acquiring the right formulation (such dedication), have recently only been supplying to professional bodybuilders (ohhh legitimacy), have run a trial with a limited number of customers (wow worked for everyone of them) and wait for it.. the are willing to offer to regular guys like you and I (so generous).

Now the biggest insult to our intelligence is that they say they don't want the supplement trial to be 'wasted' therefore you have to buy a 6 week supply, and sign up for a credit card automatic refill. Now what the fuck is this? The spurious rationale provided is that people not using the supplement correctly bothers them ( they don't want you to buy one bottle and realise the shit doesn't work) and they want all of us to get the great results (hand over your credit card you schmo).

I have had enough of the crap these guys peddle and what frustrates me the most is they have some fantastic articles (not the staff writers) but great guys like Gentilecore and Dave Tate. But these efforts are soured when you realise it's really all a front for selling their house brand supplements. If you want to have some fun try this: read any article by one of the staff writers and check how many times they mention one of their products during the article.

At the moment I am investigating the cost of test sampling a range of supplements on a monthly basis for you guys. I am meeting with local University labs to see the cost of batch testing some of these supposed ground breaking supplements for purity. Will keep you posted.

In the mean time, train hard eat well and yes take supplements (creatine, protein and antioxidants) leave the other shit alone.

Stay strong!
Thomo

The Science of Squatting

While it was deadlift day today and a damn good session at that I had occasion to watch some pretty awful squat form in between sets.

I have mentioned before that I despair at the dearth of heavy squatting and dead-lifting in the gym that I train at. Rarely does anyone put more that two wheels a side on a squat and on the rare occasion that someone does the form and lack of depth is frightening. Take tonight for example. Young kid training squat, now I know for a fact he is on a low level of gear (amongst other things has a massive water bloat and acne on the shoulders that could be mistaken for braille)and has pretty decent genetics. Despite natural and augmented assistance he worked up to four plates a side and wobbled out some really nasty narrow stance, quad dominant, round back 1/8th depth sets.

Ok I know I shouldn't be too hard on this kid. His poor squat execution is borne from an absence of good instruction. Apart from decent hardcore and power lifting gyms it's rare to find gym staff versed in the correct execution of the key lifts such as squat deadlift and bench.

There are many great sources of information on the net and in print that assist with technique fundamentals. I would always recommend Mark Rippetoe's seminal work "Starting Strength" along with videos on his website. In addition the EliteFTS site is packed with great instruction from some of Americas top powerlifters. I recently revisited a great squat video series on this site by Matt Wenning. Matt knows what he is talking about having totaled over 2600 lbs in a professional competition, holds an all-time world record of 2665 lbs in the 308-lb class, and bench press over 800 lbs in a full powerlifting meet.

There are 5 videos in the series, the premise being Matt taking an average athlete and providing a master class in improving his squat.

It's a great instructional series and fantastic to see Matt decompose the technique of his subject and identify clear adjustments to turn around his form.

Here is the first video:


I recommend getting over to the site and watching the full series but a few key take aways for me were:

Form and set up is everything. Matt's key points included:

1. Set bar on back
2. Head up
3. Lock upper back
4. Lock abs and tailbone (nice lordotic curve)
5. Push knees out at the top and on the decent
6. Keep lateral pressure on feet (outside edge towards mid foot and rear)
7. Partial squat to unrack
8. Then 2 inch step back then another
9. First motion sit back knees out to sides
10. Key keep head up don’t look in a mirror get used to relying on your Proprioception (sense of your self and relative positioning)

Here is the link to EliteFTS and the video series: http://articles.elitefts.com/articles/training-articles/articles/powerlifting-articles/so-you-think-you-can-squat-part-1-and-2/

One thing apparent from this series and something I have come to appreciate over the last 4 years is the need for a critical regular appraisal on form. Now as I mentioned before you may not have access to a Mark Rippetoe or Matt Wenning but given today'technology there is no excuse not to video your technique and review offline. Also there are plenty of coaches that are happy to receive your video and provide some online coaching just make sure you pick your coach correctly.

Thankfully Sunday is squat day and I will be definitely doing a form check and putting Matt's great instruction to good use.

Stay Strong!
Thomo

5 ways to tell your gym is Shite!

I wish I could transplant the famed metro flex and plonk it down 5 kms from my house, better still give me the power freaks of Columbus at Westside. Hey I'd settle for Dave Tate as a neighbor. Alas it's not to be. The closest gym I love is a 5 hour flight to my great coach Damon Hayhow and his fantastic facility in Brisbane. Therefore while I am fortunate to live in a magnificent clean beautiful city on the West Coast of Australia with beaches and weather that make LA pale by comparison I do despair at the complete lack of decent gyms focused on strength.

Those of you who follow my rants know that my needs are modest. Give me a decent power-rack, heavy duty bench and most importantly an uncluttered dead lift platform and I will gladly shell our my hard earned dollars for a membership. Throw in a rubber plates (for cleans), reverse hyper machine and let me use chalk...hell I will sign up for life. This dearth of training facilities has led me to become an expert at identifying truly abysmal facilities (note my early post on joining a new gym). Therefore I submit to you the 5 ways you can tell that your current gym is shit!:

1. There are more cable crossover machines than squat racks:
Preoccupation with cable crossovers is a sure sign that your gym is a haven for douche bags. I wish I had a dollar for how many times I see guys wander in to grind out endless sets of crossovers. Generally the only chance they have of triggering muscle soreness is when they are craning their neck to watch themselves in the mirror.

2. No one lifts more than 2 wheels on compound lifts:
Getting strong and huge requires hoisting decent weight. Now you don’t have to squat like Dave Tate (check out Dave squatting below) but you have to shift some heavy iron if you want to grow! At my gym few guys rarely lift above 110kg in the bench and even fewer deadlift or squat with decent weight (very sad I know)



3. Preoccupation with Isolation Exercises:
Yesterday I worked a 10 hour day, followed this with a 2 hour flight home then sucked it up for my deadlift workout. I won’t mention that the mercury was still hovering at 35 degrees (Celsius) with humidity that would make metro flex feel cold. Ok ok I’ll stop whining now but my point is that regardless of the circumstances you still have to hoist the weight if you want the results. So as I sat between sets in a moist puddle of my own sweat I glance up to see 3 young guys obsessing over 1 arm cable tricep pulldowns . Each of these kids would be lucky to break 70kgs but here they were complaining how they needed more mass. Hell I managed to complete my deadlift workout and get to the chin bar while these clowns were still grinding out ridiculous sets for their triceps. I can’t stress enough how important it is for newbies looking to grow to forget isolation exercises and get their ass squatting and deadlifting!

4. 60%+ of the floor space is dedicated to cardio equipment: How disappointing, think how man EliteFTS college power racks you could fit in the space currently wasted with those ridiculous elliptical rowers, steppers etc. In my gym I regularly see one poor lass every day as she spends approx 1.5 hours on the cardio equipment. She is rail thin and its quite sad to watch her blithely waste an hour or so of her life to (in the word of my old coach) burn the equivalent of one Tim Tam biscuit or a small potato. Jesus for the sum total of 3 hours for the entire week I could transfer her physique just getting her skinny ass under a squat rack.

5. Your Staff are Dicks!: Too many horror stories surround trainers at many gyms. Here is a sample of trainer behaviour from the gym I train at.
a) spending time on the mobile phone while training clients
b) regurgitating rubbish theories that sound like they came from 1980's Weider magazine articles
c) focusing more on their clients ass than their squat technique
d) promoting routines based on (in no particular order) bicep curls, hack squats, leg extensions and...yup you guessed it cable cross overs

If you have any 2 out of these five then congratulations like me you train at a Shite gym!!

Ps you might wonder why i still train where I do given the obvious limitations of the gym. Well 3 reasons, its close, it is the only gym nearby with a power rack and finally all the stupid shit that occurs there provides me an endless source of material for this blog!

Cyclists please have a look at your self!!

I'm baaacckkkkk!!!

Apologies for the long delay between blogs but I have been working on a new home/website for the blog which should be up soon.

In the meantime I am long overdue for my rant of the week: recreational cyclists.

I am going to declare my hand upfront. I love road race cycling, hell in my teenage years cycling was my sport. At 55kg it was either cycling or training as a garden gnome. Even now I wistfully reminisce re the 80's tours with Greg Lemonds ground breaking Tour De France win against the badger Bernard Hinault, Stephen Roches' great triple crown year and one of my favourite movies is still Kevin Costners homage to road cycling, American Flyers.

Now despite my overt display of man love for the sport of cycling the burning question I have is why fundamentally are so many recreational cyclists complete and utter dicks!

Let me run through my grievances/observations:

1) Firstly where is their concept of hygiene? I can't tell you how many times I am exposed to some dripping sweaty guy leaping into the lift no shoes stinking of the street as they wander into the building following their morning ride. Furthermore in coffee shops each weekend they drape their ridiculous lycra clad bodies all over the seats spreading nice tepid pools of their sweat for the rest of the patrons to marinate in once they are gone.

2) Fat people wearing lycra. Just because you managed to squeeze yourself into Lance Armstrong's replica US Postal team jersey doesn't mean your lumpy 100kg frame is magically easier on the eye...IT ISN'T you look out of shape AND ridiculous!

3) Stay the fuck out of coffee shops. I have lost count of how many times the serenity of Saturday morning breakfast at the local coffee shop is interrupted by a peloton converging at the counter sans bikes. Can you imagine sitting at your table chowing down then being confronted by a mass of sweaty noisy idiots in lycra hobbling back and forth on their quick release shoes. My question is, when did it become habit for a hard training ride to be punctuated by coffee and a muffin!!! Go home carbo load and do your recovery you silly Fucks!

Now I am cognizant that there are quite a number of numb nuts in the gym as well. Actually many of them appear to train at my gym. The difference is most of these wife beater wearing, creatine breath idiots head straight home in their utes post training, they generally don't foist themselves upon the public in their post workout sweat drenched state.

So lets be clear, I love cycling and hoping Cadel finally breaks through for a win in this years Le Tour. However to the weekend wannabees why don't you consider pounding out a few km's of intervals at the end of a hard ride rather than parking your fat ass on the nice leather settee at Joondalup Dome. You might actually improve your sprint drop a few kgs and I know the leather will survive without your 2 hour ass print.

Till next time stay strong

To get strong you have to stay loose!

Dedicated iron enthusiasts know that staying strong and gaining muscle isn't easy. Hell, there are so many training modalities to manage, diet, recovery, energy levels, correct program etc... that sometimes it feels like your need a 40 hour day and 10 day week just to manage your training.

One of the key elements that gets lost in the process is mobility. No I am not talking about basic stretching but a full program of assessing your mobility issues and then working regularly on rehab activities to elicit improvements.

I know mobility training doesn't sound fun, actually it often isn't and generally when you suggest it to the average guy in the gym they look at you like the proverbial red headed step child at a family reunion! But poor mobility can adversely impact your big lifts so ignore at your peril. Critically, impaired movement from posterior chain issues, tight hips etc translate to poor movement patterns in your big lifts.

Recently I experienced persistent back tightness following squat day. Fortunately I managed to take a quick video of my form side on and immediately noticed that at the bottom of my squat my back was going into flexion. Suffice to say after a quick analysis of movement pattern it was clear some pre-existing hip tightness issues were limiting my squat depth and I was compensating with some dangerous back flexion. Since then I have been working on a number of mobility stretches pre and post workout which has seen dramatic improvements in form in just a few short weeks.

Based on my experience the first key element is to assess your mobility. Some of you are fortunate to train at facilities where staff are versed in mobility assessments however I would suggest these gyms are the exception not the rule. If you don't have access to a well versed trainer or a physio experienced in weight training then I suggest hinting the Google machine for relevant websites.  While there is a lot of rubbish online a couple of good sources do exist. Tony Gentilecore often has postings from his work at Cressey Performance with good videos of mobility exercises.



One that I find particularly useful is Kelly Starrett's blog mobility WOD: easy conversational blog dedicated to simple moves to increase your mobility. Importantly Kelly's style is straightforward and he blogs multiple times a week.




Once you assess your mobility issues its important to keep working on them daily. Yes it wont be fun, yes it is boring and yes sometimes it hurts but for the mobility impaired freeing up issues translates to bigger numbers under the bar and helps avoid injury.

Thomo

Want to gain muscle...manage your recovery!

As you know there are several fundamental success factors that contribute to gaining strength and muscle. Simplistically these are diet, training program and execution and recovery. Of these recovery certainly appears the most misunderstood.

Paradoxically recovery begins in the gym. By this I mean the program you perform and the intensity you bring to the program are critical in determining whether you will recover prior to your next training session. This was one of the most important lessons I had to learn in my own training regime and it is somewhat counterintuitive. 

Much of the ignorance is driven by bodybuilding magazines that too often talk about the pump, going for the burn and training to failure. In aggregate this paints a picture that training is only effective if you wipe yourself out by pushing maximally each set of each exercise every training day. For the non professional lifter nothing could be further from the truth.

Let there be no equivocation the pump and burn are a physiological response to training not a causal factor of training success. Constantly training to failure of every set and pushing to extremes will result in quickly overreaching your recovery ability leading inevitably to over training and stagnated progress. As a consequence the training program you undertake and the manner which you perform this is the first key element of managing recovery.

Recovery ability varies from individual to individual but anecdotally few individuals, unless heavily geared will continue to gain while pushing to failure every session. I have lost track of how many times I watch young trainers in the gym straining constantly with drop sets, forced reps and even super sets every session. They stagger out at the end of their sessions visibly spent having completely exhausted their nervous system. In fact I am sure if you wring their gym towels they would drip cortisol.

For a natural trainer a better approach is to focus on getting stronger at the exclusion of all else. This is best accomplished by a consistent progressive overload focusing on accumulating minor increases in poundage at each session and always hitting rep targets.  My best results have come from making just such a change, working on a Rippetoe 3 day a week full body routine.

Moving from a routine built around working to failure is a paradigm shift but ideal for managing recovery and keeping the gains coming. By not pushing to failure you can focus on always hitting rep targets with a weight that is progressively increased each session (the foundation to increasing strength). Furthermore it ensures you see each training session not as an individual activity but rather as an integrated element of your program. Thus the importance of not overreaching on any one single session as it puts at risk your program.

In a similar vein I see new trainers working too much with the eccentric portion of the lift. Of course we all hear that the negative portion of a lift is great for muscle growth blah blah blah. What happens next is the new trainee summarily wipes himself out by grinding out the eccentric portion on every lift. This results generally in massive soreness which directly impacts their capacity to back up for the next session. Worse still this can be dangerous if used on exercises such as the deadlift. I have seen several guys in my gym regularly resisting a deadlift heavily on each eccentric lift which is just soooo dumb.

Check out the form on massive freak Matt Kroc in the video below. Forget the "gear" forget that he is far above the rest of us mere mortals, what I want you to notice is that he virtually drops each rep once he has completed lift. Thats how you should deadlift pull strong then little resistance on the way down. That certainly reduces the risk of injury.



So for the enlightened ones our there I agree this does sound awfully simple, but the benefits to your training are enormous. To recap my keys to managing recovery in the gym are:

1. don't train to failure and don't grind out reps
2. increase poundage in moderate increments (2.5 kg) every session (assuming a routine based on Rippetoe or similar)
3. understand that each session is a precursor to the next so you must stay within your recovery so as not to risk subsequent sessions ( it is the aggregate increase in weight over your program that will drive gains)

Till next time stay strong!

Thomo

ps My thoughts go to all those in Queensland who have suffered terrible losses over the last week due to the flooding. As Australians we must all give however we can to help families recover.

Looking for easy money...flog bodybuilding supplements

Tomorrow is deadlift day so its only fitting I commence the pre-workout preparation and ramp the aggression with a rant on my favourite topic...supplements.

For those of you that have been in the game for a while you appreciate that is is difficult to find objective bodybuilding advice. This is never more evident than when it comes to supplementation. Where do you look for advice?

In my youth bodybuilding magazines were the primary source of information. Not surprisingly Muscle and Fitness was my first holy training bible, I can still picture the adds with Lee Haney, Samir Bannout and co hawking Weiders massive weight sugar...opps weight gainer

Now this brings me to my current peeve. Training guru's pumped to all fuck on gear, training national level competitors, also pumped to the gills with gear professing to know what it takes a beginner or natural trainer to get big and strong. What shits me even more is a particular guru who is the primary trainer on a well know bodybuilding site starts a training article asserting the importance of optimal workout nutrition and then reveals the article to be nothing more than an advatorial for their in-house supplement brand. Actually enough mincing my words...T-Nation  can kiss my balls.

You might think I am a little harsh, but calling out the bullshit merchants is important for every kid who will waste several years following pro routines and wasting money on esoteric supplements. I am writing this post for all those poor misguided teenagers who read these articles and assume the advice is gospel. Honestly the tone of the latest article is so disingenuous as to be offensive. Of course the article is rooted in a degree of truth. Clearly work out nutrition is important to maximize gains in the gym, in fact clean nutrition is a critical success factor in any training regime. However you don't need to spend money on ridiculously priced products with even sillier "proprietary" formulas.

Interestingly, we the buying public certainly share the blame. However those of us in the know have a responsibility to promulgate information that is true and protect the uninformed and impressionable. I remember a teenager caught up in the usual amalgam of insecurities and shifting focus. I had no training role models so generally obtained my information from Muscle and Fitness, graduating soon after to Flex magazine. It was only once I had access to Ironman  in the 90's and the brilliant writings of Randall J Strossen and  Bill Starr that I realised much of what appears in the magazines is rubbish.

With the advent of the internet the traffic of falsehoods is at fever pitch. Its bad enough with a million bozo's like me putting in their 2 cents worth. However what I cant abide is glossy websites purporting to be information sources and then finding them to be insidious infomercials for their in-house products.  Thats not to say their isn't some worthy content on these sites. Unfortunately the majority of material pushes the regular trainer in the wrong direction. I don't care what anyone says a training projects that talks about neural charge workouts and highlights Olympia level competitors as examples has limited utility to those of us in the trenches.

I don't have  trust fund and like most of you out there I'm out in the burbs working a 60 hour week. Talking about Neural charge workouts with a geared up pro athlete may look pretty on the net but it doesn't help me one bit. Try getting up at 3:00am take a 2 hour flight to a mine site, work a full day then fly back and think about dead lifts at 8:30pm after a day like that. I'm sure many of you have similar stories.

Bottom line stop the bullshit. Give me training advice that is to the point and not predicated on flogging your supplements.

Till next time stay strong

Thommo