Expert Health and Training Advice From Joseph Coyne AEP

The Most Important Muscles To Strength For Running - Part 4: Lower Extremity Accesory Muscles

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 02:56:00 GMT

Getting you running quick means getting you strong in all the right muscle groups. For those that have missed it, I have already detailed why lifting weights will not make you slow and the importance of strengthening the hamstrings as knee flexors, the hamstrings as hip extensors and the quadriceps. Now it is time to talk about some of the other muscle groups that will really get you rocketing along; whether you are running a marathon or 100m sprint. The muscles we will cover here are what I call the lower extremity accessory group. They are the triceps surae, tibialis anterior and flexor hallucis longus.

The triceps surae is basically the combination of the two heads of the gastrocnemius and the soleus or in non-anatomy talk, the calf! These muscles are responsible for plantarflexion at the ankle and provide vital propulsive forces at the end of the stance phase (remember running can be divided into three basic phases: stance phase or how long you spend on the ground, stride length and stride frequency). The more force the triceps surae can exert on the ground, the greater the ground reaction force is generated. This means you travel further with each stride that of course equals an increase in your stride length and running speed. Triceps surae function is also an important part of the triple extension movement, which is why Olympic lifts are so popular amongst strength & conditioning circles.

As you can see the solues actually attaches right up around the medial hamstring

The triceps surae also plays a role in injury prevention of the both the ankle and knee. At the ankle it obviously acts on the Achilles tendon and if your strength in the triceps surae is poor or you have a lot of soft tissue problems in that muscle group, you are going to be more prone to Achilles tendon issues. Also because of the intimate involvement with the plantar fascia, it is a good bet the worse the function of the triceps surae the worse plantar fascia type symptoms. (A note for soft tissue practitioners like ART/Trigenics is that clinical outcomes seem tremendously improved with attention to the posterior calf and even distal hamstring in plantar fascia problem clients!). One of the best exercises to improve Achilles tendon health (and plantar fascia) is the 2 to 1 Calf Raise below – which is also a great strength exercise in its’ own right! Now it also acts very similarly as the hamstrings as knee flexors at the knee by providing stability for medial/lateral rotation and reinforcing the posterior aspect of the knee. And this is not just the gastrocnemius that is involved at the knee contrary to popular belief. The tendinous arch of the soleus is basically attached to the medial hamstrings at the knee and also has a number of important nerves and veins (posterior tibial and popliteal) pass through it. That is why for all knee rehabilitation programs time should be devoted to bring up the strength in seated calf and standing calf raise movements.

2 to 1 Standing Calf Raise

The next accessory muscle group to be aware of in the lower extremity is tibialis anterior. Tibialis anterior is a dorsiflexor of the ankle meaning it pulls your toes towards your knees (along with the extensor group). Increased speed and force of dorsiflexion will shorten the lever arm of the recovering leg during sprinting. This means that the quicker the ankle can go into dorsiflexion, the quicker the leg can get through into the next stride. This will obviously increase stride frequency.

Tibialis Anterior is crucila to improving your stride rate

This dorsiflexion ability is even more important if athletes have to run on uneven surfaces like sand or grass. Machine dorsiflexion exercises are the best way of training this function but you can also use a low cable.

Machine Dorsiflexion

From an injury point of view, if you have disfunction (whether it be strength or poor soft tissue) with tibialis anterior you are more at risk of chronic ankle sprains and shin splints which are all common conditions in runners. It can also lead to hyperpronation symptoms and when you have impaired dorsiflexion function, the lumbar spine has to go through more range of motion during each recovery phase of your stride as described here.

The last lower extremity muscle that we really want to be aware of is the flexor hallucis longus (FHL). This muscle has a vital role to play in proprioception of the foot, propulsion off the ground and making sure too much pronation does not occur when the foot makes contact with the ground. If these properties are impaired during the stance phase, it will prolong the stance phase because excessive pronation will occur meaning it will take your foot longer to get off the ground and the foot will not be able to exert the same amount of force into the ground. I always remember a story from Mike Leahy who created ART and after treating a 100m sprinter’s FHL and he literally fell over next time he tried to run. But from memory two weeks later, this sprinter set the world record. So although small it is vitally important to running speed.

FHL will make you run quicker and exert more force onto the ground more rapidly

Like tibilias anterior, FHL is involved in the occurrence of shin splints and compartment syndrome. Again like tibilias anterior, it is also involved in hyperpronation. One quick and easy was of getting an indication of your FHL function is to raise both big toes off the floor as high as possible while the rest of the foot stays on the floor. If one big toe can be raised significantly higher than the other, this is termed functional hallux limitus and it may mean your FHL is fibrotic and/or weak. FHL will be trained somewhat with all calf raise work but you can increase the recruitment of FHL by shifting more weight over the big toe when performing these exercises. Band resisted and bodyweight flexion of the big toe also works to strengthen FHL. To do this effectively the action should be to “scrunch” your big toe into ball and then go into plantarflexion of the ankle.

As you can see, training these lower extremity accessory muscles are vitally important to help you run faster and stay injury free especially if you are doing a lot of running training. This is even more so if you have suffered from shin splints, compartment syndrome, rolled ankles or you excessively pronate. Keep an eye out for Part 5 in this series where I will talk about how the trunk musculature is involved in your running. And if you ever wanted to run a marathon (or even half marathon), make sure you check out my Run A Marathon In 8 Weeks program by clicking here.

The Functional Movement Screen

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:55:00 GMT

This January I traveled down to Sydney to take the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) Levels 1 & 2. To be honest, it was quite overdue as I had been looking at the material for over two years but never had a chance to get taught it correctly. In essence, the Functional Movement Screen is a series of seven movement patterns that require some form of balance, stability or mobility. It is massively popular in the United States at the moment (most NFL teams use the FMS in their training programs) and it is a great method of getting a good idea of where you are at in terms of your injury risk; whether you are an athlete or not.

Now people can get confused with the actual purpose of the FMS and it is not designed to be used to predict athletic performance (which recent studies concur on). For instance, just because you score less on the FMS than another athlete does not make you a worse athlete in your chosen sport.

What it is designed to do however is to give you an idea of the quality of movement patterns and an indication of injury risk based on biomechanics. Now before I go further, I must mention that biomechanics are only one factor that contributes to your injury risk. For instance, some researchers have found that back pain is almost 60% genetic so if your parents had back pain, sorry but you are likely to have it too. Other proven factors include chemical makeup of individuals (i.e. an imbalance of fatty acids, low cellular pH), proprioception and neuromuscular control at joints, gender, hormonal levels, previous injury history, previous activity levels and BMI (sometimes you just have to lose some weight to take the loads of the joints!). So although as health professionals we would love it if biomechanics were the be all and end all for improving injuries because it is something we can assess and control easily, unfortunately it is really multifactorial. In saying that though, we need to address biomechanics and the FMS is a great place to start.

Here is the FMS being used on Nike's top basketballers in the U.S. - if you are a sports geek like you'll love the video!

The FMS consists of as mentioned seven movements: the overhead squat, hurdle step, inline lunge, shoulder mobility, active straight leg raise, trunk stability push up and rotary stability. There are a few orthopedic screening tests that are also included but basically you get scored out of 3 for each movement and if you score less than 14 – 16 out of 21 (depending on the study and population i.e. NFL players vs. firefighters) you are around 4 times more likely to be injured. Also if you have asymmetries in the test (one leg you get a score of 3 and another you get a score of 1) then you are also much more likely to be injured.

The 7 Movements of the FMS

So after attending the course and becoming certified, I consider the FMS a great tool to check up on how you are doing in regards to injury risk. You can think of it as being similar to using your blood pressure to check your cardiac risk or going to a dentist for a yearly annual check up. It is something you should do to know what is going on. Anyway apart from learning the nuts and bolts, there were also a few great little pieces of advice I picked up or was reminded of that I thought I would share with you. Here they are:

For most cases, if you mobility problems (i.e. you cannot get enough range of motion at a joint) that needs to be addressed before trying to add stability exercises. So it is no good doing full squats with weight until you can get in the full squat position first.

Your ability to dorsiflex the ankle (pull the toes up to the knee) decreases the need for flexion of the lumbar spine during locomotion (i.e. running or walking). This is crucial as we don’t really want the lumbar spine to be doing countless flexion cycles during running or walking as it will potentially place a heap of wear and tear of lumbar structures and vertebral discs. Because of this I really like machine dorsiflexion movements.

Improving dorsiflexion function will help lower back function during running

If you have problems with the hips, you are probably going to have to address those first before you look at shoulder issues. The shoulder has a really intimate relationships with both the ipsilateral (same side) and the contralateral (opposite side) hip. As a tip, this relationship also exists with the ankles as well! Nevertheless, it never ceases to amaze me how fixing hip problems leads to a decrease in shoulder issues and if you both at the same time, always concentrate on the hips.

If your hips are not up to speed, they are going to play havoc on your shoulders

Another thing to check over before addressing shoulder problems or injuries is both thoracic extension and thoracic rotation. If either of these are deficient it means the shoulder (and especially the external rotators as they decelerate the arm in punching, pressing or throwing motions) will have to go through a whole lot more wear and tear than what you would like. This will eventually lead to overuse and chronic injuries like rotator cuff tendosis.

In athletic positions, you normally generate power from three positions: a squat stance, a split squat (or lunge) stance or on one leg. The FMS does a nice job of seeing if there are issues in one or the other and which one you might need to devote a bit more time to. So for instance, if someone scored a 3 on the overhead squat (which is perfect) but only a 1 on the hurdle step then they are more than likely going to need more work on one leg exercises than on squatting type exercises.

How Junior World Champion Surfers Train

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 23:55:00 GMT

At the start of the year, I was approached by 2011 world junior surfing champion South African Bianca Buitendag to help her with her training while she was here competing on the Gold Coast. Bianca is a great girl, really athletic, surfs really well and should be mixing it with the big girls on the World Tour in the next year or two. Anyway she was nice enough to allow me to share you her two video training programs and the exercises involved for our benefit.

Just as a bit of an explanation, professional surfers travel so much that getting consistent training in a gym is very VERY hard. Although I would love Bianca to be able to devote 6-8 weeks to physically preparing herself and fixing all her weak points that might be holding her back and predisposing her to injuries, the nature of professional surfing means that just will not be possible for her. So we do the best we can with what we have available. What I have given her below are two workouts she can use wherever she is. In both workouts, they begin with self myofascial release exercises and flexibility work which is a must for any person; not just athletes or surfers. From there, one workout only uses bodyweight and the other uses a TRX suspension system (the TRX by the way is great to use when you are travelling a heap.) Now because Bianca is super nice, you are more than welcome to use these workouts yourself and make sure you go and check out Bianca's website www.biancabuitendag.com.

Bianca in action...

Workout #1 BW Only

Workout #2 TRX

And here is what it'll help Bianca get more of!

The Most Important Muscles To Strengthen For Running - Part 3: Quadriceps

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 02:06:00 GMT

To make sure you are up to speed (no pun intended), make sure you have had a look at Part 1 & Part 2 of The Most Important Muscles To Strengthen For Running and also read this article here. Now the quadriceps group (as the latin translation suggests) is made up of four muscle heads: vastus lateralis, vastus medialis, vastus intermedius and rectus femoris. These muscles primarily extend the knee while the rectus femoris also flexes the hip, which makes it a doubly important muscle for running (as we will see in the next part of this series).

Let us remember that running speed and endurance are all about improving the three main components of locomotion: stance phase, stride frequency and stride length. The quadriceps will especially help with the stance phase. Rectus femoris (with the help of the other hip flexors and the lower abdominals) will also aid in improving stride frequency by bringing the leg into triple flexion more rapidly.

The reason an increase in strength in the quadriceps will help so much with the stance phase is that the quadriceps will now be able to exert more force into the ground with each foot contact. This means the runner will experience greater ground reaction forces and it will propel them forward at a greater pace. This will also indirectly increase stride length, as now you are moving further with each foot contact. Increased strength in the quadriceps will also enable a better ability to handle eccentric loading forces (i.e. braking forces when your foot hits the ground) that again means that you will spend less amount of time of in the stance phase. This is very similar to the knee flexors role in the stance phase.

Probably the most important muscle of the quadriceps group that runners need to strengthen is the Vastus Medialis. There are two reasons: a) it is normally underdeveloped compared to the other muscle heads due to normal locomotion patterns and the half squat being the predominant squat being performed in gyms and strength programs b) because of it’s more distal insertion (e.g. it attaches further down the leg than the other quadriceps), it has greater responsibility for terminal range of motion (ROM) at the knee. This terminal ROM is the ROM that the knee goes through the most when running (e.g. your knees only bend a little bit when running right?) which makes it even more important to be strong in that particular ROM.

You cannot see Vastus Intermedius here but trust it me, it is under the Rectus Femoris

Exercises that you want to use to improve the strength of the quadriceps are almost all closed kinetic chain exercises and from anecdotal experience, you want to train them through either a full ROM or that terminal ROM I have just mentioned. This is especially true for the Vastus Medialis.

Here are two full ROM quadriceps exercises – the full squat and split squat

The correct way to perform a full squat

DB Split Squats are not just a great strength exercise, they also improve hip flexor flexibility dramatically

And if you are wondering about the safety of full squats, have a read of this. Ethically, I do not recommend anything that does not have a significantly greater reward to risk ratio for athletes or clients – meaning the potential rewards from performing a certain exercise has to drastically outweigh the risks associated with the exercise. In fact, if most exercise professionals knew that full squats improve 11 out of 13 knee stability markers (while there is no effect on the other 2) while half squats only improve 4 out of 13 (while 4 of the other markers actually get worse with the other 5 not having any effect on) there would be a lot more full squats being performed in gyms.

And here is a terminal ROM quadriceps exercise – the side step up:

Bringing up strength levels in the quadriceps with these exercises will also dramatically help reduce the amount of knee and hip related injuries runners will experience. This is especially true with Vastus Medialis’ involvement in preventing patellar tendonitis, and other patellar tracking problems in the knee. As I have already mentioned just above, other markers of knee stability will also increase which will aid in preventing knee injuries.

Training the quadriceps the right way will make you run faster and stay injury free if you are doing a lot of running training. Keep an eye out for Part 4 in this series where I will talk about how some of the accessory muscles like the hip flexor group impact your running. And if you ever wanted to run a marathon (or even half marathon), make sure you check out my Run A Marathon In 8 Weeks program by clicking here.

The Best Training Splits

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 22:30:00 GMT

A training split is basically what you train or what type of training you do on any given day of the week. For instance if you train your legs on Monday, back on Wednesday and chest on Friday, that would be an example of a training split. In the never-ending quest to enhance our training results, athletes, fitness enthusiasts and bodybuilders have experimented with a number of different training splits – some good, others terrible. Here are some of my favorite splits I use for athletic training, fat loss and rehabilitation that you are more than welcome to take or adapt for your own purposes.

Before I go further, there a few basic rules I have that you should know before designing a training split.

The first is that simple things work best so don’t make it anymore complicated than need be.

The second (and this one relates especially to athletes) is you should always train speed before strength and strength before endurance during the week.

The third is that the upper body can usually handle more load than the legs because the muscle groups aren’t as large and will recover quicker. This means you can train them more often in your training split.

The fourth rule is that I do not to regularly pair two big compound movements in one session e.g. a bench press with a pull up. By avoiding this, it allows the trainee to concentrate more on the dominant exercise in the session. NB: Check out Bodybuiliding Split #1 to see how I have done this.

The fifth is that you want to train antagonistic muscle groups in your sessions 60-80% of the time e.g. if you train the biceps, you also train the triceps or if you train the quads, you also train the hamstrings in the same session. By doing this, you get more overall work done in the session and you will get stronger a lot quicker due to a neat nervous system function called reciprocal inhibition. However you can’t do this all the time especially if you start using the Olympic lifts and you can see how I have slightly modified the splits in Bodybuilder Split #2 and Fat Loss #3 to reflect this.

The sixth is you should design your split around a 7 day cycle as this is what most people will naturally be able to fit their schedule into the easiest. I am not a big fan of shorter training splits (e.g. 5 days) because most people (even elite athletes who do not have to work) are simply preprogrammed to be working on 7 day cycles.

Unlike training the splits, training splits help you organize your training

So check out these possible training splits for different scenarios that again you are more than welcome to take and adapt to your own training:

Football (AFL, League, Union, Soccer) Off Season #1 (Can train twice daily)

Monday AM: Speed

Monday PM: Lower Body Weights

Tuesday AM: Upper Body Weights

Tuesday PM: Interval Training/Strongman Training

Wednesday: Off

Thursday AM: Speed

Thursday PM: Lower Body Weights

Friday AM: Upper Body Weights

Friday PM: Interval Training/Strongman Training

Saturday: Aerobic Training

Sunday: Off

Football (AFL, League, Union, Soccer) Off Season #2 (Can only train once daily)

Monday: Speed

Tuesday: Chest & Biceps

Wednesday: Legs

Thursday: Interval Training

Friday: Back &Triceps

Saturday: Aerobic Training

Sunday: Off

Bodybuilding #1

Monday: Chest & Biceps

Tuesday: Quadriceps & Knee Flexors (e.g. hamstring curl)

Wednesday: Shoulders & Calves

Thursday: Back & Triceps

Friday: Hip Extensors (e.g. deadlift) & Abs

Saturday: Weak Points (e.g. the body part the trainee feels lets them done the most)

Sunday: Off

Bodybuilding #2

Monday: Chest & Shoulders

Tuesday: Quads

Wednesday: Back & Calves

Thursday: Hamstrings & Abs

Friday: Arms

Saturday: Weak Points (e.g. the body part the trainee feels lets them done the most)

Sunday: Off

Bodybuilding #3 (Can only train 4x week)

Monday: Chest & Hamstrings

Tuesday: Off

Wednesday: Back & Shoulders

Thursday: Quads & Calves

Friday: Off

Saturday: Arms, Forearms & Abs

Sunday: Off

Fat Loss #1

Monday: Upper

Tuesday: Lower

Wednesday: Off

Thursday: Upper

Friday: Lower

Saturday: Interval/Aerobic Training

Sunday: Off

Fat Loss #2 (Can only train 3x week)

Week 1

Monday: Upper body

Tuesday: Off

Wednesday: Lower body

Thursday: Off

Friday: Upper body

Saturday: Off

Sunday: Off

Week 2

Monday: Lower body

Tuesday: Off

Wednesday: Upper body

Thursday: Off

Friday: Lower body

Saturday: Off

Sunday: Off

Fat Loss #3

Monday: Quads, Back & Biceps

Tuesday: Hamstrings, Chest & Triceps

Wednesday: Off

Thursday: Quads, Back & Biceps

Friday: Hamstrings, Chest & Triceps

Saturday: Interval/Aerobic Training

Sunday: Off

The Ultimate Christmas List V2.0

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 01:56:00 GMT

It’s Christmas time again and we all know how good this time of year is. Parties, presents and time away to refresh and recharge should all be at the top of our priority list. Now I am here right now to give you ideas for what you might give to your family and friends who are health conscious and enjoy their training. Whether it is a “secret santa” at work or a gift to a loved one, you cannot go wrong picking up presents from the following list. And if you are still stuck for inspiration after reading this, check out my list of goodies from last year by clicking here.

1) YouBar. These things are customized protein bars that you can mix and match ingredients for whatever your taste buds require. Gogi berry, cacoa nibs, cashew butter, maca powder… there are a heap of great options that you can play with to make a great tasting bar for a gift. Plus you can even personalize the wrappers (in my last order, being super creative I named mine the “Coyne Bar”!). One of the best thing I like about them is that they can be made with rice protein which for people who are diary sensitive and want to avoid too much whey protein is a pretty cool. Anyway I’ve set up a special with YouBar and anytime you order, just enter “coyne” in the coupon code and you will get 5% off your order. You can check them out here.

2) Healthy Toes Stretchers. These little beauties I recommend to every patient that I see with foot issues – from plantar fasciitis to bunions. Clinically, I have found they compliment soft tissue work with ART really well and speed up recovery rates. Even if you do not have foot problems, we are on our feet the most out of any other appendage so it makes sense to devote some time to them. And ladies this is even more important if you wear high heels! You can pick up a pair from Amazon here.

3) FATGRIPZ. I know I included these in my gift list from last year but I still can’t get over how versatile and effective these things are for your training. From increasing your grip strength so you can handle more weight in exercises (especially grip dependent exercises like chin ups or deadlifts) to fixing elbow problems to evening out strength imbalances between arms (which is a really cool but as yet unexplained benefit from using these suckers), I would make sure these are in your gym bag. And if you haven’t seen this, I made decided to make a “take the piss” video last year for FATGRIPZ that hopefully you get a laugh out of.

I don't know what I was thinking on this day but it sure was fun...

4) Pong Casemate For iPhone or Blackberry. I use this on my iPhone because it has been shown to decrease what is called electromagnetic radiation (EMR) by manufacturer claims of up to 95%. This EMR From mobile phones have been clinically shown to mess with sleep patterns and decrease testosterone, sperm motility, sperm mobility and sperm volume in men. Studies from fertility clinics have backed this up by also showing that the more cell phone usage a male has, the less likely he will be able to do his bit in the bedroom and helping the female to conceive. Plus there is also a growing link between cell phone usage and brain cancer. So that is why I use it but even if you are skeptical of the potential damage cell phones cause, I would recommend you think of this as a health insurance policy. Better to be safe than sorry… Again you can pick up a Blackberry case (click here) or iPhone case (click here) from Amazon.

5) ithlete. This iphone app and gadget plug into your iPhone and give you a measure of your Heart Rate Variability. I first learned about this in university from a cardiovascular disease perspective but heart rate variability (HRV) is the variability between the time intervals of heartbeats. An increased HRV indicates recovery and good health and a decreased HRV indicates overtraining, stress and an increased risk of mortality (not fun!). Because of the sports performance implications, it is used with a number of professional football clubs (AFL & NRL that I know of) here in Australia. Now although endurance athletes will take to this quite eagerly as it is superior to just monitoring heart rate with a Polar or Garmin, it is also useful for strength & power training because it measures nervous system activity. For instance, it will tell you whether today will be a good day to train power or if HRV is low, maybe you need some non-neural work like hypertrophy. Anyway to check this out to see if sounds like a gift you want to give, click here for more information.

HRV is the next step up on just measuring heart rate

Takeaways From The ASCA Level 3

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 01:23:00 GMT

Just recently I attended the Level 3 Australian Strength & Conditioning Association (ASCA) course with 7 other top strength & conditioning (S & C) coaches. The best part of this course was that Australia is blessed with world leaders in S & C and nutrition. The next best part of it all was that we had access to them (and other experts from the United States) for 5 days of “training & nutrition nerdism”. Here are just a few of the things I picked up:

Professor Jeremy Sheppard (who is probably THE world's leading expert on getting people to jump higher and also happens to be my thesis supervisor) elaborated on how bike training decreases vertical jump. He also made a great point in how we get caught up on all the latest recovery practices like compression garments and cold baths etc. but if we are not taking care of at least 8 hours sleep each night and eating well; you are missing the forest for the trees.

Dan Baker PhD has been the strength coach at the Brisbane Broncos NRL for over 15 years and is a bona fide strength expert (no matter how he tries to convince you otherwise). Besides giving us his breakdown of his training systems and the why's, he also detailed a study conducted by the Auckland Blues that looked at dehydration and soft tissue injury. Basically almost all soft tissue injuries occurred when the players had been dehydrated in the previous 3 days so monitoring hydration levels is crucial for any contact sport.

If you want to prevent injuries make sure you consume enough water

Former AIS dietician Dr. Gary Slater PhD hit us all with a few home truths on sports nutrition. Basically all the energy balance equations (i.e. after accounting for exercise and lean body mass, you need a certain amount of calories per kg of bodyweight per day) do not matter due to the variability in everyone’s metabolism. For instance, two 65kg females may eat exactly the same calories per day but one may lose fat on it and the other may put on weight. He bases everything off previous energy intake and previous changes in body composition.

Jay Dawes PhD from Texas A & M was kind enough to lecture to us and he drew us to the fact that if you want to get faster, you either need to increase stride length or stride frequency. Besides getting stringer in the gym, you should use resisted sprints (i.e. sled sprints, weighted vests) if you have issues with stride length and you should use assisted sprints (e.g. bungees, downhill running) to increase stride frequency. You just have to be careful here because using these methods should only really be used with advanced athletes and it can mess with their biomechanics. Because of this, using no more than a 5% extra load or accepting no more than a 5% reduction in times is a good place to start with using these methods.

If you are careful with the loads you use, sled sprints can be a great method of increasing stride rate.

Dean Robinson who has had premiership winning teams with Geelong in AFL and Manly in the NRL gave a lecture on athlete assessment and also injury management. He declared that you need to rehabilitate the muscle (especially if you are trying to return athletes to full running) based on it’s fiber type. For example if you rehabbing the soleus, which is predominately a slow twitch muscle, you would increase the volume of work (i.e. run further) rather than increase the intensity (i.e. run faster). This is something that I have believed in for years in terms of rehabbing injuries with strength exercises so it was nice to feel validated and also to see it applied to a different mode of exercise.

If you want to rehabilitate muscles, you need to know their predominant fiber type

One of the biggest names in field sports repeated sprint performance and a premiership winning S & C coach with West Coast Eagles, Stuart Cormack PhD showed us that the latest research all points to active recovery hindering phosphocreatine (PCr) resynthesis. PCr is one of our body’s best forms of energy for high intensity efforts (which is why people get so many performance benefits from using creatine) so it does not make sense to slow it’s restoration in the body. This means that if you get subbed off in a game of league or AFL, you should just rest rather than walking around or sitting on a stationary bike (which is what the leaguies are fond of). Although he did suggest that if you wanted to train this system to perform better in states of fatigue, you would use active recovery between efforts in training BUT just make sure recovery is passive during competition.

The Most Important Muscles To Strengthen For Running - Part 2: Hamstrings As Hip Extensors

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 21:44:00 GMT

So everyone understands that getting stronger by lifting weights will actually make you a faster runner and will not get big and bulky, please read this blog post here and this article here. Also let's quickly revise the dynamics of running. There are basically three parts to running: the stance phase (which is the amount of time you spend on the ground every time your foot touches the ground), the stride length and the stride rate (or frequency). To run faster, you have to either a) decrease the stance phase, b) increase the stride length or c) increase the stride frequency. As I have mentioned here, this applies to every distance from a 100m sprint to a ultramarathon. The second group of muscles we are going to talk about in regards to their importance to running and why they need to be as strong as possible are the hamstrings and in this case when they extend the hip.

The portion of the hamstrings that extend the hips are a vital part of propelling the body forward during locomotion. This extension of the hips is vital to almost every running based sport and it is why most good strength and conditioning coaches and personal trainers use exercises that involve triple extension (extension of hip, knee and ankle) like Olympic lifts. The hip extensors are predominately made of slow twitch muscle fibers. This again influences the amount of repetitions you should use to train them with.

The hamstrings as a hip extensor play a crucial role in running fast

The main aspect of running that improving strength in the hamstrings as hip extensors will benefit is your stride length. It does this in two ways. The first is by increasing the force the hip and the leg applies to the ground each stride. This increase in force gives a larger ground reaction force to the body and results in greater speed and greater distance travelled per stride. As you can no doubt reason, improvements in hip extensor strength are vital for acceleration and speed. This aspect of running is not only important for sprinters and other team sports athletes but also long distance runners or marathoners too as they change pace to distance themselves from a competitor or have to outsprint another runner at the finish line.

The second way it increases stride length is that it decreases inhibitory measures the body uses to protect the hamstring during running. If the hip extensor portion of the hamstrings is weak, the brain will send inhibitory signals to the legs preventing them from entering a range that might cause a hamstring pull for their current level of strength. When you become stronger in the hamstrings, the runner can handle greater loads through the hip extensors. This means the brain does not need to send the same inhibitory messages at the same stride length or speed (because now the runner can handle the increased eccentric load. This means an increase in stride length (and therefore speed) is developed.

The best ways of strengthening the hip extensor part of the hamstrings, besides the aforementioned Olympic lifts, involves variations of deadlifts, back (hyper)extensions and reverse hyperextensions. Just like the knee flexor portion of the hamstrings, both open and closed chain kinetic exercises will benefit runners. Here are examples of two:

The Straddle Reverse Hyper is a gymnastic variation that is great for strengthing the hip extensors and improving lateral gluteal function.

The Romanian Deadlift is excellent for bringing up hip extensor strength

Strengthening the hip extensors will also significantly aid in reduction of hip related injuries and adductor/hamstring pulls. It does this by increasing hip stability during running. Another way it aids in reducing injury is that by making sure your hamstring as strong enough, the hips do not need as much contribution from other muscles that are not prime movers during running. For instance, if the hamstrings as hip extensors are weak, a really common biomechanical issue that develops is that the pelvis has to rely on the posterior portion of the adductors to fully extend the hip. This if unattended to for long enough can leads to adductor or groin strains and chronic overuse conditions like osteopubis.

Training the hip extensors (just like the knee flexors) will help you run faster and stay out of the physio clinic if you are doing a lot of running training. Keep an eye out for Part 3 in this series where I will talk about how the quadriceps role in running super quick. Plus if you ever thought about running a marathon (or even half marathon), make sure you check out my Run A Marathon In 8 Weeks program by clicking here.

The Most Important Muscles To Strengthen For Running - Part 1: Hamstrings As Knee Flexors

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 22:39:00 GMT

Before you read this, make sure you understand that getting stronger by lifting weights will not mean you are going to get too big or you will lose speed. This blog post here and this article here explains why this is not the case (with references) and why lifting weights will actually make you quicker! We should also understand the dynamics of running. There are basically three parts to running: the stance phase (which is the amount of time you spend on the ground with each foot strike), the stride length and the stride rate (or frequency). To run faster, you have to either a) decrease the stance phase, b) increase the stride length or c) increase the stride frequency. This applies to every distance from a 100m sprint to a ultramarathon. The first group of muscles we are going to talk about in regards to their importance to running and why they need to be as string as possible are the hamstrings and in particular when they flex the knee.

The hamstrings as a knee flexor are made up of predominately fast twitch fibers that flex the knee (e.g. bring the heel closer to the bottom). This influences the amount of repetitions you should use to train them with. This part of the hamstring also assists in lateral-medial and anterior-posterior stabilization of the knee. This means they are very important anatomically to strengthen to prevent injuries especially Medial Collateral Ligament, Anterior Cruciate Ligament and meniscus injuries. In terms of what strengthening the knee flexors will do for your running, it assists in two of the three aspects: stride rate and stance phase.

Stride rate: As your knee flexors become stronger, they can flex the knee more rapidly after the stance phase or foot strike. This decreases the lever arm of trailing leg and allows the trailing leg to be brought forward faster ready for the next foot strike. By doing this, it will increase stride frequency as now it takes less time for the leg to be brought forward ready for the next foot strike because a) the lever arm is shorter and b) the hamstring is stronger so it can more forcibly flex the knee.

Stance phase: Because the knee flexors aid so much in the stabilization of the knee, research shows this aids biomechanics in the stance phase. The biggest reason increased strength (and especially eccentric) strength in the knee flexors helps is that it takes less time for the leg to stabilize itself when it hits the ground so that foot can push off faster and the next leg cycle can begin. This means you spend less time on the ground running and the stance phase is reduced.

Now just making the knee flexors stronger help these two aspects of your running. But if you want to really improve your running speed and endurance, you want to use knee flexor (hamstring) strength exercises that match the same biomechanical kinetic chain. For instance, the shortening of the trailing leg’s lever arm as part of your stride recovery is what is known as an open kinetic chain. An open kinetic chain basically means where you apply force moves. In this case, the runner is applying force through the posterior (or back) of the leg and it is moving. Now in the stance phase on the other hand, the hamstrings as knee flexors are actually part of a closed kinetic chain. Where the hamstrings are applying force (i.e. the ground) does not move. That means for a runner who has poor stride rate they would want to use more open kinetic chain strength exercises like hamstring curl variations:

Prone Hamstring Curl

On the flip side of the coin, for a runner who has a long stance phase, they would use closed kinetic chain strength exercises like GHR variations. Here is a little tip - one way of really picking a poor stance phase up without video footage is the sound of the foot when it hits the ground – if it is loud, the runner has poor eccentric strength in the leg and are more than likely spending too much time on the ground when running.

Toger Lift (or Russian Hamstring Curl)

Razor Curl

Now obviously besides providing running efficiency and speed benefits, strengthening the knee flexor portion of the hamstrings will also significantly decrease your risk of lower limb (and especially knee) injuries. In fact, around 80% of all hamstring injuries are distal (meaning closer to the knee) so strengthening this part of the hamstrings will also aid in hamstring pulls. Knee flexor training will also help protect both the medial & lateral meniscus, lateral & medial collateral ligaments and anterior cruciate ligaments of the knee. This is caused by the strong fascial connection the hamstrings have with the just mentioned connective tissue.

As you can see, training the knee flexors can help you run faster and stay injury free if you are doing a lot of running training. Keep an eye out for Part 2 in this series where I will talk about how the hamstrings as hip extensors impact your running. And if you ever wanted to run a marathon (or even half marathon), make sure you check out my Run A Marathon In 8 Weeks program by clicking here.

Weights Will Make You Too Slow & Big??

Sun, 04 Sep 2011 23:55:00 GMT

‘Do not lift weights’ coaches and so called experts say. ‘It’ll make you slow and too bulky’ they declare. ‘Just look at those bodybuilders’ they’ll add to back this up. Unfortunately for athletes that are coached by an anti-weight training coach, they will never achieve their potential in their chosen sport. Here are the facts.

Speed in any movement is a product of the following qualities: explosive strength, acceleration ability at the beginning of the movement (which is a product of strength), development and maintenance of maximum speed and resistance to fatigue¹. So strength is important to at least two out of the four factors for speed – explosive strength and acceleration. It is also very well correlated in the research that speed of movement increases with muscular strength². Lastly greater levels of muscular strength means a longer time to exhaustion and a greater ability to resist fatigue during endurance activities. You can now see why the Russians came up with the adage that ‘strength is the mother of all qualities’!

Now to take things further, the predominant patterns of movement for most sports is acyclic locomotion and activity. Acyclic activities involve completing a movement at random intervals (e.g. throwing a punch in boxing or a sprinting during a game of soccer) compared to cyclic activities where the movement is constantly performed (e.g. swimming for 200m). In all acylic activities, speed is determined by the muscles ability to overcome significant external resistance³. And how do we teach ourselves to overcome significant external resistance? We get stronger by lifting weights. Taking theory into practice, the fastest human beings on the planet are sprinters. There has not been an international elite sprinter in at least the last 30 years who has not completed serious weight lifting as part of their training.

So we have learned that lifting weights will make us quicker and faster but we will still get too big right?

Not at all. Properly designed resistance programs can make you stronger without adding any body mass. It is seen countless times in the sport of weightlifting and gymnastics. If you flick through footage of elite 48kg and 53kg class female weightlifting ( I have included a video below), you will see petite small women lifting massive amounts of weight overhead. Often they will lift more than 150% of their body weight in a snatch!

The key to making sure you do not put on any unwanted body size is actually keeping the repetitions low and using enough weight to avoid natural anabolic hormone increases following the lifting⁴. These increases in hormones will of course make you bigger if you do not know how to structure your training to avoid them. In fact, using high resistance and low repetitions is exactly how elite gymnasts and weightlifters train. They rarely (if at all) lift over 5 repetitions and the majority of their work is done at close to maximum. The take home point here is that if you are worried about increasing your body mass, you need to know how to manipulate hormones through weight training to design your workouts.

For the whole inflexibility thing with resistance training, let us make sure we know what type of flexibility is important first. Dynamic flexibility (compared to static flexibility) is the most important type of flexibility for both sports and life in general. As an example of why this is, there are countless cases of individuals being able to touch their toes in a hamstring stretch. However these same individuals will tear their hamstring when they run at a certain pace due to a lack in dynamic flexibility at a certain rate. As a rule of thumb, you actually want to decrease the difference between dynamic and static flexibility to reduce injuries in sports.

If you do weights correctly, you can kill two birds with one stone - get stronger and more flexible. This will mean you do not need to stretch as much!

Weight training completed correctly through a full range of motion is inherently an dynamic flexibility movement. And the research actually shows us that full range of motion strength exercises increase static flexibility and also decrease the difference between dynamic and static flexibility¹. This means that the athlete who can touch their toes in a hamstring stretch will NOW be at less risk of pulling that hamstring due to strength training. Plus they will have greater static flexibility which again means less likelihood of injuries. The last thing to muse over is that Olympic weightlifters are the second most flexible athletes behind gymnasts in all sports and all they do is lift weights.

So as you can see if completed correctly, lifting weights will only make you faster and more flexible for your chosen sport!

References

1. Siff, M.C. "Supertraining", Supertraining Institute: Denver USA (2003)Another myth bites the dust.

2. Kusnetov, V & Fiskalov I (1985) “Correlations between speed and strength in cyclic locomotion” Teoriya i Praktika Fizicheskoi Kultury 8:6

3. Farfel (1939) & Donskoi (1960) quoted in Siff, M.C. "Supertraining", Supertraining Institute: Denver USA (2003) p. 137

4. Häkkinen K; Pakarinen A. Acute hormonal responses to two different fatiguing heavy-resistance protocols in male athletes. Journal of Applied Physiology (1985) 1993;74(2):882-7

Great To Watch Before Training

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 22:39:00 GMT

Every now and then we need something to watch to get us in the right frame of mind before we start our training or to get us back on track with diet. So here are the videos I have watched lately that have inspired me or I had a laugh at recently. Hopefully they do the same for you. Anyway, the first two reinforced a lot of reasons why I use a combination of applied gymnastics, Olympic lifting (and derivatives) and good old fashioned strength training with almost all our clientele. The last two I just found quite humorous. Enjoy!

Check out the hamstring curl towards the latter part of the video. Mental strength!

Nothing like only using a barbell and plates to knock out your workout!

In all seriousness, BOSU's can be used quite effectively for rehab but I had to have a laugh at this one...

Got to love Terry Crews. If you haven't seen the FATGRIPZ video that he inspired me to do, CHECK IT OUT HERE

Squaring Up The Truth About Squats

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 07:05:00 GMT

Let us clear up something for the start - squats are no more dangerous then sitting down to eat at the family table. Or getting on the bathroom throne every morning, for that matter. From a biomechanics point of view, these movements are almost exactly the same. So inherently squatting is no more dangerous than a number of everyday activities, even if you do have hip, back or lower limb dysfunction like sacroiliac joint pain. Then why do people hurt themselves squatting?

The biggest issue is using improper loads (i.e. too heavy a weight for the trainee), a constant axial load (i.e. the trainee never varies the bar placement on the back) and most importantly, a whole heap of fitness industry myths about squat technique. Correctly, a squat should be performed through a full range of motion at the knee with the trainee finishing in a deep squat (or ‘ass to grass’) position. Now I know you are going through the first stage of shock right now – especially if you have been a regular aerobic or pump class participant.

Coyne athlete & world champion Melissa Howard demonstrates correct squat technique

In the weightlifting community, this is the accepted way to squat and is commonplace throughout thousands of training halls worldwide. However in the health and fitness industry where partial range squatting and restricting forward knee movement is gospel, this is viewed as pretty much a quick way to busted knees and a bad back. There are three reasons behind this false gospel.

One is that initially most people (at least in Western countries) do not posses the required flexibility and strength to perform the squat through a full range of motion. Instead of developing this flexibility and strength (which is quite easy by the way if you know how), they simply carry on with the half squat. Experts like Canadian strength coach Charles Poliquin actually consider all trainees that cannot assume this full squat position to be still in a rehabilitation phase. Plus they should NOT squat until they are able reach the full squat position.

The second reason is that the people developing the teaching content in the fitness industry (be they physiotherapists, medical doctors or personal trainers) have never been shown how to develop a full squat. Or they have not had the required experience within the weight room, which can often be the case.

The last reason is the whole ‘do not let the knees travel past the toes, or it will hurt your knee’ myth. Unfortunately there is no convincing scientific evidence that actually supports this in individuals performing any version of squatting¹⁸. Salem & Powers (2001) noted no difference between patellofemoral joint stress at squat depths of 70^o,90^oand 110^o19. This was also conclusion of Comfort & Kasim²⁰ with their review on squat technique. In fact, stopping at parallel and restricting forward knee movement may be the most dangerous of all. According to research my good friend and Australian strength coach Tony Boutagy put me onto, the leading squat researcher in the world Rafeal Escamilla found that patellofemoral forces increased up until around 75^o of knee flexion and the forces ACTUALLY decreased as the squat depth increased²¹. Plus it harms your back more when you do not let your knees go past your toes. Andrew Fry and his colleagues demonstrated this when they found that restricting forward knee movement while squatting actually increased low back joint loading ten times as much as when forward knee movement was allowed²².

The other thing that happens if you do not perform a full squatting range of motion (i.e. below parallel) is that you do not get sufficient recruitment of the gluteus maximus, hamstrings and vastus medilias muscles²³. Why is this important? Any physiotherapist will tell you that a strong gluteus maximus is one of the most important factors for preventing chronic back pain. At the point of their attachment to the spinal erector muscles, strong hamstrings also help reinforce the back against injury. At the other end where attach below the knee, they provide the best protection against dangerous medio-lateral rotation of the knee which cause ACL, MCL, LCL and meniscus tears. Lastly the vastus medialis muscle is crucial for knee health as it prevents what physical therapists call lateral deviation of the patella, which causes all sorts of problems. Especially in athletes that are required to do a lot of sharp changes of direction and jumping e.g. track athletes, tennis & basketball players.

Unfortunately pump classes will not improve your knee health. In fact long term, it will probably place both your knees and spine more at risk.

The last thing that should be realized is that if full squats were bad, then weightlifters would have an enormous amount of knee injuries. Especially considering that almost all their lifting movements are performed in a ballistic fashion (this is actually another myth but it will have to wait…). Epidemiological studies show us that statistically serious knee injuries are actually rarer in weightlifting than other sports^24/25. Not only this but this next point is bigger than Oprah was in the 1990s (no pun intended). As a population, they actually have the best knee stability of all athletes and non athletes²⁶!

Weightlifters have the best knee stability out of any athletes. The predominant reason is that they full squat.

So as you can see, it is actually far safer for you to full squat with your knees traveling past your toes. Just make sure you get a qualified strength coach or Olympic weightlifting coach to guide you through the technique. They should be able to address any flexibility or strength limitations that would prevent you performing a full squat safely. Let me know what you think!

References

1. Escamila RF, Zheng N, Macleod TD, Edwards WB, Imamura R, Hreljac A, Fleisig GS, Wilk KE, Moorman CT, Andrews JR. Patellofemoral joint force and stress during the wall squat and one-leg squat. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2009;41(4):879-888.

2. Salem GL, Powers CM. Patellofemoral Joint Kinetics During Squatting in Collegiate Women Athletes. Clinical Biomech. 2001;16:424-430.

3. Comfort P, Kasim P. Optimizing squat technique. J Strength Cond Res 2007; 29(6):10-13

4. Escamilla, R. F., Fleisig, G. S. et al. (1998). Biomechanics of the knee during closed kinetic chain and open kinetic chain exercises. Medicine & Science in Sports Exercise, 30(4), 556-69.

5. Fry AC, Smith JC, Shilling BK. Effect of knee position on hip and knee torques the barbell squat. J Strength Cond Res. 2003;17(4): 629-633.

6. Caterisano, A., et al. The effect of back squat depth on the EMG activity of 4 superficial hip and thigh muscles. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 16(3):428-432, 2002.

7. DeHaven K.E., Lintner D.M. Athletic injuries: comparison by age, sport, and gender. American Journal of Sports Medicine. 1986 May–Jun;14(3):218–224

8. Calhoon, G., Fry, A. Injury Rates and Profiles of Elite Competitive Weightlifters J Athl Train. 1999 Jul–Sep; 34(3): 232–238.

9. Chandler, T. J., Wilson, G.D., Stone, M.H. The effect of the squat exercise on knee stability. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 299-303, 1989

Figuring Out Fat

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 03:40:00 GMT

Fat has to be the most debated part of food. Most people are so scared of fat in their diet due to guidelines like the food pyramid. Definitely no personal training or exercise physiology client of ours on the Gold Coast or Brisbane really understand the role of fat in our diet when they first come to see us. So to clear things up and finally figure out fat here is the cheat notes.

Fat is the only macronutrient that has no effect on insulin. This means that it helps to regulate blood sugar and insulin; which means less lipogenesis or less fat storage.

Fat also stimulates a number of hormones like cholecystokinin which helps provide a feeling of fullness and decreases the cravings

Liposoluble vitamins like Vitamin A, D, E & K are optimally absorbed in the presence of a fat source. These vitamins are needed for optimal health so adding a little bit of organic butter or olive oil to your vegetables is a great way of achieving this. As a side note on liposoluble vitamins, if you take too much of them, you can run the risk of becoming toxic because they can be stored in the body unlike water soluble vitamins.

Fat is an essential part of our cell membranes and aids in detoxification

Good fat sources contain a number of antioxidants

If your diet is not at least 30% fat, your sex hormone levels are not going to be optimal. One benefit of an increased fat intake is a corresponding increase in testosterone which will mean LESS fat storage! On the flip side, avoidance of fat in a diet is a really good way of nutritionally castrating males and decreasing sex drive and vitality in females. If you want to figure out if diet does contain this 30% amount, you will need to figure your total caloric intake each day and how many calories you are consuming from fat each day. You can do this with online calculators like Calorie King.

Omega 3 fat sources (and in particular DHA) helps with brain function

Omega 3 fat sources (and in particular EPA) has anti inflammatory properties so it is good for joints and injuries. In fact for all rehab protocols, I make sure my patients are taking at least 4000mg Omega 3 (e.g. combined EPA & DHA values in the capsule) per day.

Fish oil (the best source of Omega 3 fats) increases basal metabolic rate helping you burn more calories overall

Fish oil along with carnitine improves the use of fat as a fuel source during exercise meaning you use less muscle glycogen and more fat for your training. This means you lose body fat faster.

The Poliquin Fish Oil Range Are The Ones I Personally Use Predominately

Now this is a long list of good things eh? And the kicker is I haven’t even really got started – I could easily list three to four times more benefits fat has for human health and fat loss!

Now there are obviously some negatives about eating fat. Here they are:

Trans fat is the worst fat. It is produced by hydrogenating (or adding hydrogen atoms to) fat, which changes the carbon structure from its’ natural form. Hydrogenating the fat source stabilizes the fat so it lasts longer and also improves taste but unfortunately it also happens to be a real killer. Trans fat has been shown to raise LDL and a long term studies my colleague Jonathon Wong has shown me suggest you get an increase of 1/3 inch extra on your waist per year if you increase your trans fat intake by a mere 2 percent. Start letting out the belt boys…

Unfortunately trans fat is everywhere – cakes, snacks, cookies, margarine, and almost every fried food. And even more unfortunate is that Australia has no legislation requiring it to be completely removed from foods as they do in other health conscious countries like Canada.

Avoid almost all trans fats at all costs. The WHO recommends that the only safe level in our diets is 0%.

Interestingly enough though, there some naturally occurring trans-saturated fats that do help with your health and fat loss. Conguated linoleic acid (CLA) is sold as a popular fat loss supplement which has been shown to decrease abdominal (visceral) body fat, cancer risk and also increase muscle gains in the extremities. It is also a really good idea to be taking if you use whey protein as your protein source due to it's effect on betacellulin - which is a cancer causing compound found in diary that has had CLA removed like whey and skim milk. Now to be exact, it is only part a trans fat (the other part is cis, which is what every other healthy fat source is) mainly found in beef and diary products.

CLA is a great idea to take especially if your main fat storage area is on the stomach

The predominant Western diet promotes a high intake of Omega 6 fats to Omega 3 fats. Now it is not that Omega 6 fats are bad for you per se, but when they totally outbalance the Omega 3’s it cause metabolic havoc in our bodies. The ratio of Omega 6:Omega 3 should be anywhere from 4-2:1 and some experts estimate that a typical Western diet has a ratio of around 40:1. The main source of Omega 6 fat in our diets is normally vegetable derived cooking oils like canola. Exchanging these type of oils when cooking for an organic butter or macademia oil and supplementing with Omega 3 will go a long way to correcting this ratio.

So where should you get your fat sources?

Smaller Fish (Larger fish like swordfish, tuna and shark all contain higher levels of mercury than smaller fish)

A can of tuna once a fortnight probably won't hurt you but over consumption on canned tuna can definitely lead to heavy metal toxicity. Just ask Jeremy Piven (Ari Gold on Entourage) who suffered from mercury poisoning due to only eating fish and predominately tuna

Practitioner range Omega 3 supplements like Poliquin or Thorne

Ground flax seeds (I am not a raving fan of flax seed oil. Reason being – it has a very low melting point meaning in warm climates like ours here in Australia it can become unstable and rancid)

As many different types of nuts as you can think of (except for peanuts which are actually a legume like a bean)

Avocados

Oils like olive, macadamia, coconut and avocado

I like to rotate through my cooking oils: olive, macademia, coconut and butter are all great choices

Now most natural occurring fats are all fine and as you can see even natural trans fats like CLA can be beneficial. This also includes most saturated fats that are actually essential for cell formation, hormonal health and more!

How much?

Fat is not really the evil nutrient that you must avoid at all costs as the food pyramid suggests. It all depends on what types of fat you eat. The list of proven benefits that fat possess are far too long for it to be completely excluded in your diet. As a sports nutritionist, exercise physiologist and running a team of personal trainers in Gold Coast & Brisbane, I commonly recommend that your diet contain at least 30% fat and as much as 65% fat for certain individuals. No matter if you are in Gold Coast or Brisbane or anywhere else for that matter, wanting to lose fat or put on muscle, you need these healthy fats in your diet.

Make sure you let me know what you think below!

How Hormonal Fat Loss Really Works

Thu, 14 Jul 2011 11:43:00 GMT

The main method of fat loss we use here in our Gold Coast personal training and athletic performance facility is nutritional consultations that use a software that identifies individual's “BioSignature”. The "BioSignature" is a method of determining how to lose fat in most rapid fashion by assessing where you hormonally store fat. Once you have that figured out, you then combat those hormones with natural diet, lifestyle and supplement changes. This all means you lose fat faster and a greater proportion off your trouble areas. Pretty cool right?

I have been using the "BioSignature" software since 2007 and it is definitely the quickest way of losing massive amounts of body fat. Just to prove a point, one of my athletes, Ironman and Olympian swimmer Ky Hurst dropped from 87kg to 83kg when he started working with me. Now he hadn't been at 83kg since he was 18 years old (which he rates to me as his best racing season because he was at that weight and loves his new weight), he trains more hours in the day that I am normally awake for (so the amount of exercise definitely didn't increase!) and over that last 12 years, he had had access to the best nutritionists Australia had to offer (so he wasn't short of "expert" advice). Unfortunately he didn't have access to my version of nutrition and the "BioSignature" software before...

Anyway I have knocked up a screencast for you all to watch where I explain how the BioSignature works and what your trouble areas may be telling you about losing body fat. Here it is here:

I hope you enjoyed that and make sure to leave a comment.

Ivan Abadjiev and Bulgarian Weightlifting

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 08:25:00 GMT

At the recent Eleiko Strength Summit in Rhode Island, I had the pleasure of listening to the former Bulgarian & Turkish weightlifting coach, Ivan Adadjiev.

Abadjiev is quite famous in weightlifting circles and somewhat revolutionized the sport of weightlifting (and training athletes in general) with a radically different approach to training. As a lifter himself, he won a silver medal in weightlifting at the 1957 World Championships. After finishing his athletic career, Abadjiev started training young weightlifters.

At the time, Bulgaria was still basically a satellite country for the Soviet Union and as such followed their training regimes. To cut a long story short, Abadjiev did not really share the same training philosophy as the Russians who used a wide variety of exercises and spent most of their training time lifting weights at 85% of their maximum. He decided that his lifters would only focus on the competition lifts (clean & jerk and snatch) along with front squat and back squat. He also decreed that his lifters should spend most of their time lifting at or above 95% of their maximum. Not only this but he demanded a much higher workload from his athletes. For instance in Russian training manuals that were current at the time Abadjiev was coaching, it states that an experienced lifter at a certain weight should not lift over 1000 tonne per calendar year. At the seminar, he revealed a Bulgarian weightlifter’s training log who was in the same weight class where the weight lifted in that particular day was 66 tonne – meaning the lifter would have lifted over 1000 tonne in 15 training days!

Because of his different and near maximal training methods, he got in a lot of trouble with the Bulgarian sports administrators. In fact, he openly admits that even with the performances of his youth team, he was lucky not to be kicked out of the sport. To put this in perspective, his young lifters won some of Bulgaria’s first medals in the Junior World Championships and set multiple world records by massive margins (from memory, as much as 30kg in one division)! Because of that success, he eventually got the job as the head coach of Bulgaria’s weight lifting team, which had never been a serious challenger in international competitions for a number of years. After he took over the struggling mens’ team, they went on to win multiple world & Olympic medals with a number of world records falling in the process. From memory, as it stands now, there have only been 6 people to lift 3 times their body weight over their head – all 6 have been Bulgarian and all 6 had been coached by Abadjiev!

Naim Suleymanoglu is one Abadjiev's greatest lifters

This of course demonstrates that what he does works and is quite evidence based. During his talk, Abadjiev really impressed me as a weightlifting coach who had immense knowledge of physiology, chemistry and the laws of adaptation in the human body. Here are a few of the gems he revealed in his talk:

The human body is just like another animal – it adapts to the environment it is placed in. As such with training, you need to sufficiently stress the athlete (or yourself) enough to cause adaptation to occur.

And just like any other animal, Abadjiev trains his lifters to be able to lift maximal weights with as little as possible warm up. For instance, an antelope cannot not ask the lion to wait until he has stretched has hammies or take 10 warm up sets before the lion tries to run him down! The translator of Abadjiev’s talk was also one of his lifters who mentioned that he likes to get to his max with only 3 to 4 warm up lifts.

Abadjiev mentioned adrenaline can replace anabolic steroids as a training aid and that you need a certain amount of adrenaline before the lifter will be able to lift maximal loads. To show him that there is enough adrenaline in an athlete’s system, Abadjiev requires a heart rate of above 180 bpm after finishing maximal single repetitions. There is also a much better efficiency of ATP (our cell’s energy source) at these heart rates. Afterwards the translator (who is a very talented weightlifter) mentioned that he has never been able to get above 180bpm on single reps and Abadjiev will simply tell him he is not trying hard enough!

One theory Abadjiev mentioned was Hyden’s Theory Of Protein Memory. To keep this shorter than a thesis, proteins are needed for muscle strength and growth. Proteins also remember at which intensity they were developed e.g. 70%, 80% or 90% or maximal weight. Because of this, Abadjiev said that there is no use developing protein structures at less than 95% of maximal load because you do not need them for competition. Weight lifters are only required to lift maximal weights in competition so it is a waste of time developing lower intensity protein structures.

Because at 95% of maximum in all sports coordination starts to falter, Abadjiev does not care too much if lifters do not make or succeed at new maximal weights when they first attempt them. He mentioned he normally allows 3 “misses” or failed attempts before moving on (although the translator had sometimes had up to 12 misses at a weight before he was allowed to move on!!) Eventually however the stress adaptation to loads of above 95% level leads to production of specific proteins that are needed to be successful at those weights. I suppose you could use the old motto – “if at first you do not succeed, try, try and try again!”

So we all can understand what the training sessions looked like, this is a rough template of what most of his lifters would complete:

AM Workout: Squat, Snatch, Clean & Jerk, Snatch, Squat

PM Workout: Squat, Clean & Jerk, Snatch, Clean & Jerk, Squat

And in each exercise (even in the exercise where there are two in each session), the lifter would normally work up to his max weight that he could lift for one repetition and then take 10% off the bar and complete 2 sets of 2 reps. Remember that these sessions would normally be completed 6 days a week!

The great coach a.k.a. "The Butcher" and myself at The Eleiko Strength Summit

It is fair to say, Abadjiev's approach is massively different from traditional sport training models. As always let me know what you think. Or even if you think you would be up to training like the Bulgarians??!!