Difficult to do - Yes, Useful - probably No (unless balancing on a board while lifting is your sport!)

The British poet Alexander Pope is credited with coining the phase:

“a little knowledge is a dangerous thing”.

It was true when he said it in the 1700s, and its true today, and certainly true in the fitness and health industry.

There is a school of thought that we should always use exercises that are as close to real life activity as possible. In addition, these exercises should be made as challenging as possible by doing them on one leg, or even better still, on a wobble board or bosu ball (it’s like half a swiss ball with a flat, but unstable surface).

Many personal trainers in singapore and elsewhere, call this “functional training”.

I call this “nonsense”.

Some examples…

• Doing squats on an unstable surface or vibration plate (or pretty much anything on a vibration / power plate)
• Connecting a golf club or tennis racquet to a cable machine to “try” to improve your sports technique
• Combining two good (or more!) exercises to make one bad one. E.g. split squats while doing alternate arm shoulder presses, or lunges while doing biceps curls with a barbell connected to resistance bands

While my stand is rather harsh, I will explain.

The true meaning of “functional training” is none of the above.

What it means to a client is: “training that will help me achieve my goal”

Story time!

I have actually had a client decide NOT to join Genesis Gym because he thought it was not functional enough.

While my team and I don’t hard sell any of our training programs, and he was free to find another place to train, I was sad for him because this was the “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” phase in action.

Like many of our members he was looking for a place to help him burn excess body fat, and he had seen some (misguided) books and online videos about functional training.

One of the training programs we use in a fat burning phase is the 100 rep method where you do only a few types of exercises, but perform 100 reps with a heavy weight, in as few sets, in as little time as possible. When you push yourself, this is an excellent fat burning workout and has proven effective with dozens of clients so far.

We also do these exercises with slow tempos for maximum fat burning effects at a hormonal level.

When he came for his fat burning fitness bootcamp trial class, he found this program, in his opinion “not functional” (who moves that slowly in real life!, we need a bigger variety of exercises to make things more random and unpredictable, like real life!).

However, for this group class, the main goal is fat burning, and for that purpose, the program, and the exercises are functional.

More examples:

Leg presses for athletes?

Not functional for a person who wants to jump higher, but very functional at the end of a workout for a person who wants to put on size on their legs.

Biceps curls? I thought only chinups are functional?

True, chinups do give you more benefits for your training time, but… if your biceps are too weak to allow you to do heavy chinups properly, then biceps curls are extremely functional for you. Also, your sport may require strong biceps e.g. a rugby player holding on to the ball when an opponent is trying to strip it away, for this person, biceps curls are functional as well.

So what are the benefits of those weirdo exercises that I mentioned earlier?

• Doing squats on an unstable surface or vibration plate – possible rehab uses, and good for learning to squat or play sports during an earthquake, but not functional to becoming stronger or leaner.
• Connecting a golf club or tennis racquet to a cable machine to “try” to improve your sports technique – great for looking goofy! but not functional to hitting the ball further/harder, that would require specialized strength training in the muscles that accelerate and decelerate your arms.
• Combining two good (or more!) exercises to make one bad one. E.g. split squats while doing alternate arm shoulder presses, or lunges while doing biceps curls with a barbell connected to resistance bands – In general a waste of your time, because doing one of those exercises at a time, will allow you to use a much heavier weight which will give you a better result.

Function is all about your goal. Not what your perception of exercise is.

We are here to help clients, and functional training is certainly the way to help them. It just may not look like the crazy videos you see on youtube! (thanks to one of the best coaches and stretch therapists in Australia, Keith Bearne for the link below!)

Another seminar I attended while in the USA was taught by master weightlifting coach Ivan Abadjiev.

For those of you who are not into the history of strength training and Olympic sports, Coach Abadjiev is the man who made Bulgaria a world power in weightlifting. Both as an athlete (he was 2nd in the 1957 world championships) and as a coach.

His teams brought a small country Bulgaria to win more medals than the powerful (and much larger) Russian teams. So much so that the Russian coach almost got his butt sent to Siberia for losing so much to the Bulgarians.

The methods he explained are not for the faint hearted and take years of training to learn to tolerate.

His athletes do 3 or more training sessions per DAY, almost year round. And they lift maximum weights all the time with little to no off-weeks or de-loads.

They hardly do any training under 95% of their 1 Rep max weight. And the do multiple attempts of 100% weight each session.

So a session could be:
Front Squats – warm up with 4-5 sets to 100%, do 5-8 attempts at 100% (its ok to fail) and then perhaps 3 sets of 2-3 reps to finish off.

Then you REPEAT the same pattern with snatch, clean, and more front squats to finish off.

The theory is that only heavy weights matter. Because in competition, only heavy weights are used. In the athlete’s body, the growth and repair of the muscle tissue is specific to the weights used. Anything less than 95% of 1 RM repairs muscle that is useless to the weightlifter.

Specific results for a specific sport. And Coach Abadjiev has the results (multiple gold medals) to prove it!

There are some reasons this method needs to be modified for other sports besides weightlifting and is certainly not for the average personal training or fitness bootcamp client…

1. It takes years of very hard practice to tolerate such training loads and amount (volume).

2. It takes full time (i.e. all you do is train) dedication, no job no worries about money etc

3. Clients who want to train for sports other than weightlifting need to use weights lower than 95% and with reps higher than 3 because many sports have components that last longer than 3 reps.

4. Most people aren’t mentally tough enough to tolerate the grind of working so hard, so often, for so many hours per day.

It was a great insight into the process of building champions. And it shows the dedication and focus it takes as a country’s sports system. I hope Singapore can match this dedication some day.

One of my personal training clients asked this question last week, and I also saw it posted on some local health forums. So here is the answer…

Yes it does. But only in the short term.

For example, I had a client who was a dancer. She wanted to get stronger so that her ballet moves would be more powerful (seen by the audience as graceful). I gave her a workout and within a few weeks she said: “I don’t think your workout is good for me, I stumble and fall more than before”.

I said “Great! Its working!”

What is happening is that in your muscles there are 2 kinds of feedback sensors called golgi tendon organs (GTO), and muscle spindle cells. Spindle cells are responsible for feedback of position, and golgi tendon organs feedback tension.

When you train, your muscles change size, and your spindle cells are not in the same positions as before. So their feedback is different and you are not used to it. Your GTOs also are not used to the new tensions placed on them by the training. So the feedback they give your nervous system is messed up and you stumble.

This takes approximately 21 days, in my experience, to reset. So train really hard till 3 weeks before your competition or performance, then just maintain your strength and size. This will allow your body to be both strong and coordinate the new strength.

Exercises like strongman training where things like farmers walks, log presses, and sled and prowler work also help to coordinate the strength you have gained in the gym to “real-world” strength that is “functional”.

So a combination of understanding anatomy and strength training leads to great results.

3 weeks later my ballet client remarked how much better her performance had become. Just as physiology determines that it would.

When a personal training client comes to our center wanting to excel at golf, it is even more critical that we assess and design a program that meets the demands of golf.

Often, personal training clients who choose golf as their sport, fall into two categories.

1. They have never devoted time to improving their body (money and time is mostly spent looking for the latest gadget or tool that will improve their game)

OR

2. They have been doing training that does not make sense when we take a science based look at the demands of golf. (And thus, give less than optimal results)

Category 1 clients would benefit far more from improving they body rather than their club collection. Mozart would sound like a master pianist on any halfway decent piano. It is the musician that makes the magic, not the instrument. Similarly it is the body of the golfer that makes the most impact on his or her performance – not his equipment.

Category 2 golf clients may need a bit more convincing to understand why we train them like real athletes rather than circus animals.

Let me explain. There is a great influence in the golf fitness training world of (and I’m being kind here) … ineffective exercises. Their inventors do not understand strength training well and therefore come up with fancy names for their training methods. “Core” work, balance boards, unstable surface training, vibrating plates and other such contraptions are a waste of a clients time, effort and money.

On average, a client at our gym in the east of Singapore, gives us about 12 weeks to get them ready for a tournament. This is a very short time because physical training is not the same as cramming for an exam. You are limited by your body’s ability to recover from training. With such stringent requirements for delivering results, we can only afford to use the most effective methods.

Will the ineffective methods give some improvement? Of course, but the improvement is incremental compared to what real training will give you.

Here are some of the reasons that truly serious golfers will require truly serious strength training.

1. The kind of contraction required in golf is approximately equal to 90% of a maximum. That means that on a hard drive, you are firing your muscles almost as hard as they can go. You need to train this ability to fire the muscles safely with this kind of force. This means that a serious golfer has to build serious strength to maximize performance and minimize injury. After all, one of the reasons Tiger Woods dominate golf for years is… his strength. It has been reported that he has a bench press of about 300lbs (134kg). That is strong, and strong is good.

2. The energy system required in golf is almost all anaerobic alactic. In regular speak, that means that its short duration. Isn’t that what golf is? Repeated, short duration efforts. Most golf training methods use sets which last 40 or more seconds. (“Try your best to do 15 lunges on that vibrating plate”)

Average set length must match closely to the specific sport requirements for best results. A shot putter also has a short duration of effort. And you don’t see champion shot-putters doing many sets of 15. A serious golfer needs to devote time to being strong for short bursts.  And don’t worry, we work on endurance (mental mostly) with customized nutrition.

3. EMG research shows that the firing pattern of a golf swing is the same as that used in more “vigorous” sports like shot-put, olympic weightlifing, and sprinting. Top atheltes in those sports don’t waste time with the ineffective methods I mentioned earlier.

They don’t use TRX, they don’t balance on Swiss or bosu balls, they don’t use funny weight implements (i.e. golf clubs attached to a cable machine). Years of sport science research has shown these methods to be wastes of time.

Mainly because they do not replicate the correct firing patterns of the body. If you use a weighted golf club in training, it is too different for there to be a carry over effect to your regular weight clubs. Similarly a good sprinter does not use weighted devices while training his top speed sprinting technique.

What training would I do with a serious golfer?

I would dedicate 6 months almost completely to strength training. Reducing golf sessions. During this time we would asses his strength balances, so that we can work on parts that are the “weak link” in his strength.

After fixing the weak links, we would work on the muscles that are the prime movers in the golf swing. Everything on the back of the body from hamstrings, to glutes and to back muscles. As well as the lat muscles. I expect good golfers to be strong in the deadlift exercise, as well as chin-ups. Once we get to this point, there would be significant benefits to golf performance.

If he was coordinated, we would move on to variations of the Olympic lifts. The muscle firing pattern for these lifts is almost the same as that of a golf swing. These lifts “integrate” the strength that we have built in previous phases of training into a proper movement.

Finally. We reduce strength training, and re-introduce more golf training. With this new strength and power, the golfers’ old “feel” for the game would be gone. Science shows that it takes about 21 days for the athlete to get used to his or her new strength.

I have had clients who were dancers tell me: “Jonathan, your training is bad for me, I keep falling down now, I need to do more balance work, its so embarrassing”

My reply: “Great! that means the training is working! give yourself 3 weeks of dance practice, and thank me later.”

Without fail, 3 weeks later “Oh jumping and turning is so much faster and more graceful now”.

Properly applied science works in any sport. From dance, to rugby to golf, science based,  customized training programs are the reason we can guarantee our clients results.

I am recovering fairly well from 30+ hours of travel from Singapore because of supplements. I take energizing supplements in the morning (US time) and relaxing ones at night. This is the best way to “reboot” the body so it shifts time zones quicker. I will write more about this in a future post. It takes one day to recover per hour of time zone shift (its 12 – well 11 or 13 if you consider its daylight saving now) so, in theory it should take me 12 days. But I should be ok in 3 days with the supplements.

I am done with day 1 of the PICP 4 certification for personal trainers, and strength and conditioning coaches. So far it’s very informative. At this high level of education we don’t mess around with basic stuff, not because it’s not important, but because we are expected to know it already. E.g. if a Singapore personal trainer doesn’t know how to design programs, you don’t really have the right to run a Singapore gym.

I am loving it. Not just because of the quality of the course but because of the quality of the participants. When we talk about being world class, this is what we mean. Besides the instructors John, Andre and Coach Poliquin who are all guys who walk the talk at the level of international sport performance coaching, all the participants are really serious about improving their craft.

I will talk more about the participants of the course in future posts, but there is one of the top speed skating coaches in the world, a guy doing his PhD in sport science, one of the best female fitness competitor coaches in the world, the strength coach for some of Europe’s top track and field athletes, the strength coach for many American Football and Hockey professionals, a well know coach in the movie industry and more. All of them own their own fitness businesses and all of them are totally dedicated to helping clients get results.

Day 1 was very much about the “Success” factors in business and personal matters. While this is not exactly a Zig Ziglar motivational or personal growth seminar, the truth remains that,  in anything, as I have written about many times, “WHO YOU ARE” matters perhaps even more than “WHAT YOU KNOW, or DO”.

We talked about stuff like personal effectiveness, time management, and success factors. Things like how you schedule your life, and how to make our learning and study even more effective.

Why?

Because if we can improve ourselves, our habits and our character, we can take our technical and business management skills to a higher level and our personal training, or sports performance clients can get even better results.

Some of the things I learned are about how to make the best use of reading time, the best strategies to use for learning, and even things about how to make clients get better results not via more fancy or advanced methods, but by being a better/stronger influence so that we get better compliance – which leads to of course, better results.

I will build some of these systems into our Singapore fitness boot camps and mass building and weight loss personal training programs.

Stay tuned for day 2…

Last week our personal training and fitness boot camp clients and visitors benefited a great deal from Keith’s seminar on “How to customize a stretching program for yourself”. I had the pleasure of interviewing him so that clients and even other fitness professionals can find out more about how an expert in his field grows his knowledge and reputation.

What made you interested in the field of fitness and health in the first place?

I have always been an active person, competing in Gymnastics, Diving and Breakdancing since I was a kid. While in University I suffered a shoulder injury that stopped me from dancing.

After becoming so frustrated not being able to find anyone to help my shoulder I eventually researched, studied and fixed it myself. After that I figured that other people would be having similar problems and I could help them.

It’s the same story with Stretching too. It’s something that’s has always been part of my training, but no one ever had any solid answers to my questions on the best way to do it. After studying with Chris and Ann Frederick and Charles Poliquin and realizing how powerful the information was, I had to share it with anyone that would let me.

Which part of this profession gives you the most satisfaction?

Seeing people achieve their results or goals. Even if they are not 100% there yet there is always a light bulb moment when things come together for them, either physically, mentally or emotionally. It’s amazing to be able to be part of that.

You anatomy knowledge impressed many of the seminar attendees, How much do you study to get good at your profession?

I try to read/study for an hour a day, but probably only get there 80% of the time. Driving a lot for work means that audio books come in real handy and I usual manage knock out one or two a week. I then try to catch up on blogs and other internet articles on the weekends. It’s a busy schedule, but it’s not taxing if it’s something you’re passionate about.

What do you find to be the most commonly “tight” parts in clients that need the most attention?

Top 5 crucial areas that people get tight in my opinion are:

• Hip Flexors
• Glutes
• Pec Minor
• Quadratus Lumborum
• Lats/Teres Major

Often one of these is the source of the problem and treating it will unlock a lot of tightness in other areas.

Interestingly enough most of this comes from sitting for long periods of time, so as well as stretching, a standing workplace or even just moving more can make a massive improvement in these areas.

What is the coolest and most impressive result that stretching has helped someone with?

Working at a gym gives me the chance to see my stretch clients at training as well. One female client after four stretch sessions had an amazing, for the first time pain free, leg session with deep split squats and snatch grip dead lifts, it’s been 3 months and she is still pain free with no additional stretching with me.

Freeing up a lot of backs is a common one too. Enabling people to train/dance/compete when pain has stopped them is a pretty cool feeling.

Having traveled all over the world for your education, how did you find the quality of the gym and services at the Genesis Performance Center?

I had been dying to see Genesis ever since I met Jon and then even more after seeing all his new equipment on facebook. On top of world class equipment the staff are great and the whole place has a very motivating atmosphere to it. Cannot wait to come back! Thanks for the great experience.

Thanks for your time Keith and you are welcome back any time!

In the world of bodybuilding, where mass building is important there is saying – “Half squats, Half leg” or something to that effect. Even on online forums, the pros and cons of partial rep training are often discussed and debated.

Here are some points you need to know about partial reps. By “partial” we mean not performing the full range of motion of the exercise. After all, most exercises are partial reps of the range of motion of the joint anyway as I have talked about in my article on range of motion.

Firstly, partial reps are not evil. There is a place for them, for example, partial reps in the bench press as performed in a pin press have helped me put on size in my triceps and strength on my bench press. Olympic lifts from the hanging position help develop power and improve technique, and partial reps can also trick the nervous system into doing more as in the example of standing under super heavy loads before squatting. These are just some of the applications (there are many more that we use with athlete personal training clients) of partial rep training.

Secondly - You must be able to quantify “how partial” the rep is. Is it a 1/4 rep? Is it a 1/3 rep? Is it a 1/3.42352353 rep? Who really knows! And if you don’t know, how are you going to gague progress? It is impossible to say if you lifted heavier this week, of if you lifted 0.5cm less range of motion. That is why, whenever I prescribe partial reps in training, it is always “precise partial” – hey I think I should trademark that term… – anyway this means e.g. pin press from 6 inches above chest on a 15 degree incline bench on an Atlantis brand power rack with pins set at hole no.22. Thus the conditions of the exercise can be repeated.

Finally, one of the things I have learned about partials is to always include full range exercises in the same workout with the same movement – e.g. after my heavy partial rep pin presses, I would do full range bench presses in the same workout. The strength transfers better.

There we go, put some precision into your partial reps and you get precise partial reps, and better results.

One of the best ways to make sure that the strength you build lifting weights transfers to real life sport performance or activities, is strongman training. While we need not do the exact exercises (or lift the weight!) that the “world’s strongest man” competitors do, some of the exercises are very useful for core training (farmers walk, super yoke), grip training (farmers walk and all kinds of heavy holds) and as conditioning tools to make sure that an athlete stays fast late in games (all kinds of carries, drags and walks).

That is why I wanted to increase the variety of strongman equipment that we have at the Genesis Performance Center. So some of our staff and I went to a metal workshop (see pic above) to get some new strongman equipment cutom made. When these items are ready, we will have sled/prowler, log press, 2 kids of farmer walk, super yoke, and possibly (if I can convince the building management….) a tire to flip indoors and varieties of thick bars from 1.75 inches to 2.75 inches.

I know family members, personal training or bootcamp fitness clients and friends who have been seriously injured playing sports or performing daily tasks like shifting furniture or carrying kids. The question is are these preventable? Well, they are preventable if they are non contact – i.e. you were not punched, kicked or tackled! However almost all non-contact injuries are preventable with the right kind of athlete training programs.

Below are two videos inspired I believe by Australian sports performance coach Ian King, one of the veterans of the field of sports conditioning, and a man who has helped many athletes get medals in international competition. They illustrate how the usual mindset of “oh it’s just my bad luck that I’m injured” is wrong and doesn’t make sense.

Proper strength training can vastly reduce the chances of all injury.

Every time a client visits our personal training center for a consultation, I always ask them what their top 2 goals are. It may be to drop 10kg of fat, it may be to fit into an old dress or pair of jeans again. It may be to rehabilitate a shoulder or knee to full strength and function, it may be to improve running, jumping and athletic performance to win a athletic contest.

No matter what it is, one of the important aspects of coaching, is to help that personal training or fitness boot camp client to break their goals down from the “outcome goals” that that want, into the daily “process goals” that will help them get the result.

A set of process goals for fat burning or weight loss might be…(written in present tense as that is most “recognizable” by our brains)…

• “I eat a breakfast of meat and nuts for maximum energy and immune system function everyday”
• “I eat 8-10 servings of veggies and fruits to make sure that I have all the fiber and nutrients that I need”
• “I will take 12 (or more depending on body-fat levels) grams of fish-oils per day”

etc…

Making the weight loss or fat loss outcome happen is easy when the process is in place.