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.
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!
There have been several articles lately on fitness coaching and personal trainers in Singapore. They question the knowledge and ability of personal trainers and they question the lack of standardization in the education of trainers.
And so do I!
After all, your personal trainer is going to help you take care of your body just like a medical doctor would. So it makes sense that a personal trainer needs to know enough about your body to help you get the results that you want from your fitness program.
Education is vital to me. I spend an average of 10 hours per week learning better ways to help out fitness bootcamp and personal training clients get great results.
In fact I just came back from 16 continuous days of seminars with the best coaches, doctors and physiotherapists in the world. We discussed the latest improvements in helping back pain, osteoporosis, PMS, kids training, nutrition, detoxification from plastics, heavy metals and excess estrogen, strength and speed training for sports, stress management, and many more things. The pictures on this post are from this trip.
Just the fact that it is a gathering of those who are the tops in the health industry helps because even the informal meals and training sessions are a chance to learn from each other.
The knowledge and information is worth the 30 (36 with delay!!) hour plane rides and the sub zero temperatures.
classroom lessons (this one is about shoulder health)
Canadian National Weightlifting Coach Pierre Roy
Our Demonstrators For Olympic Lifting. At the Left Olympian Marilou and Canadian champion Paul
Advanced Stretching Techniques
36 hours travel... including 6 hours waiting for this plane!
Learning about pain caused by internal organ dysfunction
We have been working hard over the past 2 weeks to get Singapore’s best gym, the Genesis Performance Center up and running! We are ready to go and are open for the business of helping Singapore residents burn fat, build muscles and perform to the best of their God given ability! Our personal training and fitness boot camps are going to be better than ever.
Building our olympic lifting platform - its beautiful!
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…
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.
After 16 hours of airplanes and airports and another 3 hours of train rides, I arrived in Halmstad, Sweden for Coach Charles Poliquin’s Sports Specific Training course. We will go through 5 days of program design, principles and application of stretching, strength training and periodization for maximum performance in sports.
Central Train Station At Malmo
We will learn the approach to take to bring a person from being weak and injured all the way to world class (if he or she has the potential to do so). Day one will be on all things in the shoulder and throwing sports. Day 2 will be all things related to jump training, and Day 3 will be all things related to spring training. Day 4 and 5 will be integration of all these ideas into a program.
On each day we will learn from Charles’ experiences. And the lessons are structured to teach the steps to bring a person from injured to Olympic level.
Sounds fun… oh yeah we will also be training 2 times per day… I just bought some protein powder here to help recovery. I think I will need it!
It’s no point knowing. Knowledge is useless till it is applied. And that is where the art of coaching meets the science of training.
There are 4 general types of clients that we see, either as kids, children, youth or adults. And each type requires a slightly different coaching style to get the best possible response from them.
Type 1: Low Motivation + Low Skill
These clients may be shy, quiet, perhaps lacking confidence and ability (probably interrelated). Excitable coaching methods will probably not work with this kind of person. We need to be more quiet, personal and careful so that this person doesn’t feel targeted by our questions or coaching.
While these clients may take more patience to work with, and may not be the most “gifted”, there is great satisfaction is helping them achieve things they might have thought impossible for themselves. I believe the important coaching style for these clients is to “enable” so that they are encouraged that they can do it!
Type 2: Low Motivation + High Skill
These clients are technically or physically gifted, they are just good at all the things we ask of them. Things just come naturally for them. Sometimes they may not focus enough, or pay enough attention. Perhaps they and kids who were forced to come by their parents, perhaps they are just no longer interested in the current exercise.
The problem for many of these children and kids is that things are not hard enough! the coaching style I like to use is “inspire” or “challenge” for these kids.
Type 3 is High Motivation + Low skill
These kinds of clients are a great joy to work with. They have great attitudes, want to get better and try their best. They just need extra guidance on technical skills. We need to be energetic and eager as coaches to help them become technically proficient and boost their skill level. The key word for the coaching of these clients is “Guide”.
Type 4 is High Motivation + High skill
Of course this is the aim of all our programs, to get our clients, both children and adults, into this “high motivation + high skill” category. From a person lacking confidence and motivation, to one that is both intrinsically motivated, and high in skill.
One thing I try to be careful about is to overly shelter these clients. Instead, high motivation high skill clients need to be give more ownership, more discussion, more feedback, and more “empowerment” for their own development. That is not lazy coaching, that is teaching a man to fish!
There we have it, part of my learning as a (still learning) coach and personal trainer/fitness/sports performance professional. This is what works, and this is how we treat our different clients.
When I join a basketball tournament, I am now an athlete “in-season”. I may play up to 4 full court games in a weekend. There are 2 common mistakes athletes (and unfortunately… coaches as well) make during sports season time. They either…
Stop Strength training altogether – in favor of endurance work to “stay fit” – this just gets your weak and worn out.
Over-train – because the season is draining with multiple games, extra tactics sessions, increases stress, injuries and possible traveling and schedule disruptions.
During the season we are just trying to maintain the improvements we made during the OFF-SEASON! It is not very reasonable to expect great physical progress during this stressful time.
We should do the minimum required to maintain all our physical attributes. So for most team sports athletes, I recommend at most 3 short, total body strength training sessions per week (usually 2), and 1-2 sports specific interval training, conditioning sessions (especially for those guys who don’t play much during games…) The Main purpose is to – MAINTAIN muscle mass. This keeps you healthy by helping your immune system stay strong during the season.
As for nutrition, unlimited as long as its healthy. In fact most athletes need to eat MORE. All the combined stresses tend to wear out athletes and they lose weight during the season. We want our teams to be peaking at the finals, not in the preseason so we must stay strong all the way to the end.
As for the carbs or no carbs debate, it still depends on the individual. If he is fat adapted, then he still doesn’t need that much carbs. Only post game/training to boost recovery. If he is carb tolerant, he should eat carbs like there is no tomorrow!
Type 1: Low Motivation + Low Skill
The problem for many of these children and kids is that things are not hard enough! the coaching style I like to use is
high in skill.
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