Just over a month ago I attended a seminar/internship with Canadian National Weightlifting Coach Pierre Roy. His method of teaching the very technical Olympic lifts was the fastest and most effective I have ever seen.
My own technique has improved alot ever since practicing for a few weeks since I’ve been back from this internship.
The way Coach Roy teaches, may be equivalent technically to what is used in other countries Olympic lifting coaching. But the main point is that it can be taught in … 1 hour as opposed to 1 year! (For a fairly coordinated guy).
Just the same for anyone trying to achieve their fitness goals. Both our fitness bootcamp and personal training programs have the same idea – time saving, maximum efficiency and world class results.
Imagine that you are an athlete and your feet were weak. Could you run fast? Or jump high? Now imagine that your hands and grip were weak… would you be able to use those back, chest and arm muscles well? Nope. Grip and forearm training is critical for all athletes. And even for those trying to build mass, the better your grip, the better you will do in all exercises. Even lower body exercises like the deadlift improve with better grip.
All our athletes from rugby, rock climbing, golf and basketball… all improve with better hand and grip strength. And anybody who wants to do well in MMA or a martial art will also improve their ability to control their opponent with better grip strength.
There was once a story about a wold champion Russian wrestler who did not have top ability in traditional weightlifting exercises like the bench press… but could squeeze hard enough to break pliers in one hand. So when he grabbed his opponents, it was game over for them!
The key to grip training is not a magic number of sets and reps, or a magic machine. The key is variety. The grip has so many components that no single piece of equipment can cover it.
That is why I recommend a wide variety of implements. At our Singapore fitness center, I have over 15 different pieces of grip training equipment ranging from wrist rollers, to pinch grip handles, to finger strength tools, to grippers of all varieties… in addition I design grip training programs to suit the individual athlete or personal training client.
If you have not progressed in your training recently perhaps taking your grip training seriouosly will help you. Come join our programs at Singapore’s top Gym and we will help you!
I will be away for more than 2 weeks starting tomorrow. I will be another set of 25-30 hour trips to the Rhode Island where the temperature is currently -2 to -8 deg C… I’m not even sure I have the right clothes for this! But its ok:) all for the love of knowledge.
There will be a series of seminars about various topics.
Training of special warfare guys like body guards and commandos (and learning the best methods for handling shift work!)
Special considerations for training females
Special considerations for training kids
Developing power for sports
Healing back injuries FAST (80% of people will have back pain some time in their life)
Training Busy Executives (lots of these in Singapore!)
Anatomy
How to do better nutrition consultations.
Do I think I’m currently BAD at these things… probably not… but these courses are taught by various instructors who are at the top of their field in the world! So I know I have much to learn. Braving the cold will be a small price to pay.
Study, experience and practice.Put them together and you get results!
Unfortunately most personal trainers in Singapore work with only a few clients at a time. But at my center, my staff and I work with over 160 clients at one time. We have their nutrition information, their flexibility and body fat measurements, their health indicators and their training program logs. This means we know with great certainty what works and what does not.
The past few days we have been learning about the latest in rehab of the joints and how to recover from them. we have done the shoulder and the knee and using nutrients to reduce inflamation fast.
Things have really progressed since I last studied with Charles. Thats good! Information vastly improves every 18 months on the cutting edge of science. I go for these courses to keep as close as possible to that edge!
I will be using improved methods when I get back! Including the best nutrients to quickyl reduce swelling so you can start training ASAP, as well as frequency specific microcurrent which is vey effective in speading healing.
On a sad note… my computer CRASHED, im writing this blog post from the computer of one of my friends whom i met here. He is a pro volleyball player who is aiming to represent the USA in the 2012 olympics.
Many of the clients at the Genesis Performance Center play a sport of some kind. Because many of these clients are highly motivated types of people, they often play these sports competitively and want to do as well as possible in tournaments. The level of the tournament can range from school leagues to professional (i.e they do it for a living).
Part of the personal training, or athletic training /strength and conditioning program is to get them to peak for the day of competition.Every sport is different, every athlete is different and if you want the program customized for you, then you need to sign up! But there are some principles that hold true for almost any sport.
1. End your training with a “strength and power” phase of training. Some training programs are for growing muscles, some are for building endurance, but the program just before your competition should be one that emphasizes speed, strength and power.
2. Don’t do your conditioning workouts too much, and don’t do them too early. You only need a few weeks to condition yourself for endurance/fitness. Don’t waste your recovery ability on that stuff far from the tournament. And when you condition – ONLY use stuff that will be used in your sport. Long distance running is useless unless you are a long distance runner.
3. Finally, taper correctly for goodness sake. 2 weeks of no training before a competition is not a taper. It’s a disaster. In most cases, drop training 20-80% in the week approaching the competition depending on how you feel. Tapering is an incredibly complex topic and needs to be customized.
Most importantly DON’T PANIC. If you have done too little and there is only a week to go before tournament, its too late! You cannot “cram” for physical performance. Do your best but learn from your mistakes.
But, more common, is that people do TOO MUCH before competition and enter feeling drained. The feeling you want is “I can’t wait to compete” when the game begins.
Things like this can make the difference between winning and losing (and for sure you don’t want to be off yoru game when your opponent is peaking). That is what our athletes training program is for.
I have just finished a phase of “cluster” training. Clusters are a fairly advanced training method that allows a person to do more repetitions at a higher weight than normal programs by taking short rests of 8-12 seconds between repetitions. I used this for the earlier part of my workout, going up to 155kg reps in the high bar back squat for sets of 5.
In this part of the workout just before Singapore ’s best gym, the Genesis Performance Center closed at night, I did 155kg x 4 rep Good Mornings, super setted with trap bar deadlifts working up to 240kg. It was not particularly hard, but the trap bar ran out of space to put more plates…
Kettlebells have taken on alot of publicity in Singapore. In fact I have people who come into our gym for a consultation for personal training and ask “do you all teach kettle bells”…
First, what is a kettlebell? To a person who has never see one, I say its a cannon ball with a handle.
Here is a picture of my 54 year old mom swinging a 16kg Kettle bell with great technique during one of our “Lean Body” Fitness Bootcamps. (Yeah I’m proud of my mom! And she is 3 inches from a full man-style chinup too! Give her 3 weeks and she will get it! If my mom can do it, im sure anybody can too!)
Kettle bells are very old school. In fact they are one of the oldest kind of strength training tools.
They do have their uses, and there are entire sports devoted to lifting Kettlebells for as many reps as you can.
But sometimes things go too far. There are some people who think kettlebells are some magical fitness device that can easily give you the body of your dreams, or the strength to move a mountain.
They are not. They are weights with the handle in a different position. No more no less. They are tools we can use to vary workouts. They are good for training strength endurance. But they are not magic!
In fact dumbells in my opinion are more versatile, and If I were setting up a gym at home and had a limited budget, I would get a set of adjustable dumbells before getting any kettlebells.
Sure, our gym, the Genesis performance center has kettle bells from 4kg to 48kg… but honestly, they are not used as much as our dumbells and barbells are.
One thing that is good about kettlebells and kettlebell instructors worldwide, is that they tend to do total body, non-stupid training. They do stuff like swings, cleans, jerks, and snatches. These programs will get results.
But it is not the magic of the kettlebell! It is simply a good program. It could be done with dumbells, barbells or heavy rocks from a granite quarry. It doesn’t matter that much.
So in conclusion, Kettlebells are good tools. But if anybody tries to start a cult because of them, that is not a balanced viewpoint. We need all kinds of tools to give the body variation to ensure progress in training.
Chains are used sometimes during a year to make the exercise different. It makes your body accelerate the movement fast because you have to “outrun” the chain as it makes the weight harder and harder on the way up. This was a simple non maximal lift done at the end of this recent training phase.
Here is my workout for today, its the end of a strength development phase of 15 days. I managed to do 125kg for 3 reps on the bench press and today worked up to 140kg for 1 fairly easy rep. I tried 147kg but did not make it. With one more strength phase using chains and partial reps I should be able to get 150kg! Which is not bad at all for a 80kg man! Stay tuned.
Entries (RSS)