In the month of November, it will be time for continuous education for our coaching team. In addition to the weekly staff training meetings that we hold, our senior training team will flying to all corners of the world to learn from experts in the areas of fitness, and sports performance training, as well as healing.

The size of the globe is no obstacle to the persuit of knowledge!

3 of our more senior coaches will be taking up the Poliquin International Certification Level 1 and 2 in Perth Australia. And I will be traveling to a land with only 5 hours of daylight per day in November. Oslo, Norway to learn dry needling, an advanced form of acupuncture which will be able to help our clients if they have issues with trigger points. The teacher is Dr Yun-Tao Ma, the world’s expert in dry needling, and the writer of the top two textbooks on the subject. (Already bought them and read them!:)

Currently we use different forms of massage to deal with trigger points. This is effective, but in more chronic cases, it is slow. (on the order of several weeks if a client is consistent with his self-treatment). The reviews I have heard about dry needling are excellent and it should be able to reduce healing time to a couple of days! A many-fold increase in speed.

As usual, my team and I are committed to staying on top of our games so that our clients get the best results in the shortest time safely possible. Whether you are a sedentary “office job” kind of person trying to burn away some ugly, unwanted fat, or a competitive athlete trying to boost your performance to the next level, my team and I will make sure we have the tools and skills to help you.

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.

I just got back from Rhode Island where I attended the Eleiko Strength Summit where top coaches presented some of their pet topics.

These are real coaches, with real athletes and real results. This is an important statement because in the days of the internet, the number of experts has suddenly increased exponentially, while the requirements to become an expert have exponentially decreased.

First up was Jonas Sahratian, the head strength and conditioning coach for the University of North Carolina, a constant top basketball program which has produced multiple NBA players.

I learned from him how important if is for a whole team of experts to fully prepare a champion team of athletes. For example, their star point guard Ty Lawson (now with the Denver Nuggets in the NBA) had a persistent toe injury but with the help of an osteopath and the use of pompage (french for “pumping”) as a treatment method he hardly missed any game time.

On a side note, I was honored that Jonas recognized me from my website and gym! So for our Genesis personal training and fitness bootcamp clients, you all are getting known world wide so train hard and make us look good ok!:)

Next was Sean Hayes who worked with the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and now coaches the University of Georgia. The main thing I learned from his presentation of acceleration training was a good method for teaching correct acceleration footwork.

Emil Johnson who is the Conditioning coach for Yale University showed us a great method of motivation and discipline for team sports training, his video of what he does with the Yale American Football team made me feel like going out there and lifting weights immediately.

Finally Mark Knapp presented some research on the (gasp) importance of cardio training for performance. He had valid points and his research was accurate. However the methods for achieving high levels of sports specific conditioning I feel can be better met with more sport specific interval training, and longer duration strongman training circuits.

There we have it, it was a great seminar and perhaps even more importantly, the audience was awesome. I caught up with old friends who are awesome coaches. People like Yves Nadeau, the worlds most medaled olympic speed skating coach (the guy is like national treasure, and is actually trying to promote speed skating in Singapore), Eric Falstrault who works with Olympians from Canada’s ice hockey team, and Joe Dowdell who is the “real-deal” trainer of the stars in New York. Too many more guys to mention but all people I would trust to take care of my clients if my clients traveled to their cities.

I also met the bosses of Eleiko, the Armani of barbells and weightlifting equipment. Very humble guys who have a great customer focused business plan.

Thanks to everybody who attended.

In the picture above is Coach Jonas Sahratian from UNC.

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.

As many of you know, I am working hard so that our clients get the best possible equipment. In fact by the end of 2010 the Genesis Performance Center Gym will be upgraded with lots of new and better equipment. One reason that I am upgrading our dumbbells is that we want the dumbbells to be increment-able in 1kg jumps (instead of the usual 2.5 or 5kg jumps). This allows for more progressive loading and thus better improvement in strength. More strength means better fat burning, weight loss and athletic performance for our clients.

On a slightly selfish note, the new dumbbells will have weights up to 75kg. The heaviest in any Singapore Gym or fitness training center. Why? Simply because I have personally outgrown the ones we have now. We have sets up to 50kg and they are pretty easy to lift. So for my personal progress as an athlete, new, better and heavier dumbbells are necessary!

Here is a video of me pressing 50kg dumbbells easily.

As you can see, for my personal training clients, and for myself, there should be only the best possible equipment!

Many personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches miss out on the key to grip training. As I mentioned in my previous grip training post, the key is variety, in the tempo, the exercises, the angles, the weights, the isometric holds, the finger positions, WHICH finger is used, and which type of wrist or hand strength you are trying to develop.
At Singapore’s best gym, our personal training and sports performance programs allow for a great variety of grip training and thus grip is not a limiting factor in out athlete and personal training clients. Here are some of our grip tools shown below, these are made by what I consider the best hand strength training company, Ironmind. They sponsor the world’s strongest man contest so their stuff is tough! Not cheap for sure (but hey I’m learning to buy once and never worry again) but it should last many lifetimes, and help our many personal trainers at Genesis get the clients strong! You have, from left to right… A lifting pin (we have a couple of these and they are the best way to load grip training as well as chin-ups and dips), hand opening training, mini grippers for individual finger training, bands to train hand opening as well, finger loops to train finger closing strength, hub cap grip, box grip, grippers, finger loops so you can train finger strength, wrist roller which can attach to a power rack or squat rack so that the wrist gets the training while the shoulders are supported, and a wrist roller to train an often underdeveloped part of grip strength, moving the wrist “sideways” for anatomy nerds like me, this is called radial and ulnar deviation. Strong hands here we come!

All kinds of grip training tools!

Speed Training - What You do Near Tournament Time

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.

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.

One of the keys to proper program design is to test the attribute you are training to see if you are making progress. In this last 15 days I have been working on strength in the 3 rep range. 5 days ago I managed a best set of 170kg x3, this week, as the “end” of the phase I am trying 180kg for 3 reps (see video below). After a phase in the 3 rep range, we need to choose different exercises in a different rep range to continue progress.

The rep range you choose should be dependent on the kind of activity you want to excel in. For example a discus thrower would spend more time in the 1-3 rep range. While a soccer or basketball player would use more of the 8-12 rep range. That doesn’t mean that no other rep ranges are used, but this should be the main one that most of your sets are performed in.

Rep ranges, tempo, rest intervals, and weight determine what kind of training effect you get from your sessions. At our Gym in Singapore – The Genesis Performance Center, these are the things in our personal training, fitness bootcamps and athlete training programs that we vary for constant, measurable progress in strength, speed, fat loss, weight loss and jumping ability.