For the second time in a month I have been back and forth to the U.S.  This time I went East Coast to Rhode Island for Charles Poliquin’s Level 3.  I had a blast over there and caught up with a friend of mine who is at Yale University.  I even managed to score tickets three rows back from the court at the TD Gardens and watched the Boston Celtics take down the Chicago Bulls.  Another great thing was hanging out with a whole heap of likeminded health & fitness professionals.  One of the guys I hung with the most was Joe Dowdell who also happens to be one of the U.S.’s top personal trainers.  Get this too – this guy lives the life right because during the week, the dude also got voted into the top 100 bachelors in New York.  Not bad considering he will applying for the pension soon (just joking Joe…)

Joe Dowdell

Anyway I learned a heap and I thought I would share a few of the little gems with you guys.

1) The concept of joint nutrition.  Charles mentioned that if he could change one thing he would have started focusing on this earlier.  This is because for athletes (or anyone for that matter), it kind of sucks having sore knees or shoulders as your get older right?  So for instance, if you are taking glucosamine you need to make sure you take the right minerals. This is because glucosamine is basically a sugar pill and you want it to go and help the joint – not turn you into a fatty which will probably make your joints worse.

2) Eccentric contractions can remodel our joints and are a great tool for rehab especially of tendons, ligaments and muscle.  I had known about this for quite some time.  When I was young I got diagnosed with patella tendonitis and had to do a ton of eccentric single leg squats.  Also top rugby league clubs in Australia have used eccentric single leg presses for similar conditions for quite a while.  Anyway it was nice to see I was on the right track.

3) The faster you want to be (this could be in anything – running, punching, paddling), the more flexible you need to be in the joints involved.  Plus you need to make sure you add strength to that new range of motion.  Why? If it stays weak, the joint or the body will have a protective response that stops you exerting force from that new range.

4) Maximizing hormonal response and recovery form workouts.  One way of doing this is at the end of your workout, complete one set of 25 reps of the same exercises you trained in the workout.  So for example if you had A1: EZY Bar Scott Curl 6 x 6-8 reps, A2: Lying DB Tricep Extensions 6 x 6-8 reps; you could go B: EZY Bar Scott Curl 1 x 25 reps C: Lying DB Tricep Extensions 1 x 25 reps.

5) For some people increases in strength can disrupt fine motor skill to begin with.  However the increased strength will ACTUALLY improve the skill after the athlete adjusts to their new strength levels.  For example in a golf swing, your club head will actually arrive at the ball a lot quicker without you trying after you get stronger.  This will probably throw your swing off a little for a short period.  But once you become accustomed to this increased strength and swing speed, your golf shots will start going further.    

6) The role stomach health has in mental and sporting performance.  66% of our neurotransmitters (the things that drive for our brain) are made in the intestines.  If we want high levels of motivation, drive and focus for any endeavor, we need to make sure we have our brain (& gut) nutrition on the money.

7) “Less can be best”.   Economists talk about the 80:20 rule, where 80% of your income comes from 20% of your businesses’ clients.  Well this can also be true with your fitness training and athletic training.  Charles mentioned that in his time with the Canadian alpine ski team, they all had better aerobic test scores (like VO2max) than the ultra-fit Canadian cross country ski team.  Not only this but the alpine skiers only did 25% of the total volume in fitness training the cross country skiers completed. 

8) This one I picked up Yves Nadeau who is the most medaled Olympic speed skating coach in history and was also on the course. Yves showed us his annual plans for speed skating.  These plans had more colored boxes than a Lego set in them.  But besides being colorful, they also showed what and when he wanted to train certain things with his athletes.  So make sure you know what you want to train and when you want to train certain things before you start the actual “training”.

My view from my seats.  The only colour in here was green which may have confused Yves..

9) Probably the most overlooked things to train for sporting success is your wrists (grip) and ankles.  Modified strongman training and especially Farmers Walks will train these things without you noticing it.  Even if you don’t care about how well you do in sport and just want to look good, modified strongman training is a super efficient way of dropping body fat like crazy.

10) If you need to maintain concentration and focus for long periods and you don’t want or don’t have the chance to eat much, take 3-5g BCAA each hour.  This can be applied to athletes that have multiple heats on their competition days (think surfers and sprinters) and do not want to full heavy or their nerves do not allow them to eat much.  Busy executives going from meeting to meeting where they do not have a chance to eat can also use this strategy.

Tell me what you think.  Oh and sorry ladies I am not allowed to give out Joe’s number either…