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.

At Genesis, no personal training or bootcamp client has complained that the workouts are not challenging. However, as a coach I have observed a “problem” among (especially!) the most motivated of clients.

As you all know, I am a big fan of records. We record everything from monthly body-fat, nutrition changes, supplement recommendations and of course, training progress. Anybody who does not record stuff is not really serious about training or results.

The most motivated clients have a tendency to “fill in” their program sheets exactly according to what the program says.

For example:

If the program asks them to do 8-10 reps of squats with a cambered squat bar (a bar that changes the center of gravity of the lift to enhance variety and progress), with a 4110 tempo. That is exactly what they want to get no matter if they have to start and stop the set 2 times to get that result.

They simply must fill in the program sheet, or else they feel it has been a “failed” workout.

I have a feeling this desire to avoid failure comes, at least partially from our school system where not completing an exam or assignment would result in failure.

While I appreciate effort and encourage each client to put in their best, doing things simply to fill in a program sheet is not the purpose of training.

What I tell them is that training is not like an exam.

Training is like an experiment in a lab. You are simply recording your observations of what you can do, if you put your best effort into it.

If you don’t make it to the required 8 reps, don’t start another set and add the reps on, in most cases, simply record the number you did (6 for example) and try again next workout.

If you fill in a program but took 2x the rest time, and rested in between sets, the problem is that you never know if you are truly progressing. The numbers you fill in are inaccurate and don’t reflect real life.

So, when training…

1. Take records

2. Put in maximum effort

3. Record what you can do in REALITY

4. Try to improve next time – 2% increase in weight, or an extra rep is a good sign of progress

Sometimes my personal training and fitness bootcamp clients (along with online consultations) ask me…

Should you use a full “thumbs around the bar” grip or a “false” thumbs on the same side as fingers, grip when training? Some people go by feel, some do a full grip all the time for safety… so what is best and what will help you get the best results from you training?

The reason for my answer is neurological. I.e. it is because of the way your brain connects to your muscles.

For pressing exercises and extension exercises like bench presses, shoulder presses, triceps exercises etc its better to use a lightly gripped full grip, and if you are experienced and can perform the exercise safely, a false grip.

For pulling exercises and flexion exercises, like chin-ups, rows and biceps exercises, its better to use a full grip and squeeze hard!

Why? You see, the nervous system must be utilized fully for maximum strength. When pulling, and flexing (e.g. a biceps curl or chinup), the brain is telling your muscles to flex your joints. So for maximum efficiency, you should flex your fingers too! that is why you should grip HARD with a full grip.

In pressing exercises, you are teaching your brain to “extend” the joints, so in this case, squeezing the bar hard can confuse the brain. Your big muscles want to extend the joint, but your hands want to flex? “Huh!!” the brain says, and reduces your neural drive to the big muscles.

So for pressing, a loose full grip, or even a false grip is better.

Note: This does not mean that you can’t “pull the bar apart” like many bench pressing coaches reccomend, you can still do that because thats not flexing the hand, that is still extending the triceps.

As you can see from the above picture of clients in our Singapore fitness boot camp, doing rows, we recommend a full, tight grip!

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.

As usual, if there is something that gives greater training variety and results for our personal training or fitness bootcamp clients, we go out and we buy it! One of the most important pieces of training equipment are barbells. And we just got 16 new ones.

2 Types of cambered bars, safety squat bar, short and long fat bars from 1.75 inch to 3 inch, fat E-Z bars, and rotating handle kettlebells (the only kind I can truly say are useful).

Greater variety of bars = greater variety of training and that means the body has a greater variety of stimulus and a greater ability to have long term gains. It’s great!

I spent the last evening going through what I was about to present to the awesome class of personal trainers, fitness coaches and strength and conditioning experts at my PICP level 4 class.

I was considering a discussion on training for strongman competitions, 6 year development of youth basketball athletes, and the topic that I finally selected – classification and selection of strength training methods.

A “method” is a system of training that a personal training client or athlete will use for a few weeks to develop a certain attribute.

For example the popular Reg Park or Starting Strength 5 sets of 5 is a method, Coach Poliquins German Volume Training with 10 sets of 10 reps is a method, etc.

I listed down more than 45 different methods (if you count their variations the list could get into the hundreds) of strength training and divided them into categories depending on what physical attribute they trained – speed/power, strength, size, endurance etc.

I then further categorized them into different levels of difficulty within each attribute. For example medicine ball throws and Olympic lifts both develop speed/power but medicine ball throws can be used with beginners, while Olympic lifting requires more learning and training time so are classified as a more advanced technique.

This took me a while to do, but I was actually pleased with the end result. I presented this chart to the class and we had a great time discussing it. My chart was certainly not perfect and I learned a lot from the input and comments of my classmates and the instructors.

This process helped clarify my knowledge even further and this will help our personal training and fitness boot camp clients get even better programs in the future.

All of us had to present something and I was very interested in the presentations of my course mates. They come from many different fields and their presentations included:

• Training Stuntmen by one of the best coaches in the film industry
• Speed skating 4 year plans by the head coach of the International Speed Skating Union
• Speed skating strength training by the strength coach of the Hungarian national team
• Preparation for female figure competitions by one of the most experienced coaches in Canada
• Coaching of elite track and field throwers by a Hungarian coach who is preparing a guy for the 2012 olympics
• Training requirements for BMX athletes by the coach from New Zealand’s Olympic cycling training center
• Coaching programs for elite NFL players
• Coaching competitive basketball from youth to the professional leagues.
• And more!

It was great to see how my colleagues use the knowledge gained over years of experience and study to help their clients, from all walks of life and from different sports, get awesome results.

With the discussions of each presentation and the suggestions of classmates and instructors, I believe all of us will go home with the capacity to get even better results with our clients.

The entire day 4 was spent on a topic that I am often asked about by the personal training clients that come to me to boost their performance in sports.

Plyometrics.

Today the class went through a complete lesson on how, when and who needs to add plyometrics to their training. And if we do add them, what kind to add and how to add them to our year long training plan.

One of the key coaching points that I learned was to teach jumping drills by asking an athlete not only to “jump” but to focus on moving their HIPS as high as possible. Rather than getting them to think of simply jumping up.

This is because many athletes will think of adjusting their legs and feet for maximum height, when instead, it is the hips that determine how high they go.

This may seem a minor point, but with just this simple change in thinking, we could see instant improvement in the control of the jumps. I.e. everybody in class could jump and land on the same spot instead of bouncing all over the place.

It’s coaching gems like this (and many more) that make these practical courses extremely useful for personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches!

The next day is my presentation. Still deciding between a few topics:)

Last week, Keith Bearne, one of the top stretching instructors in Australia came to give a seminar attended by 25 clients and visitors at the Genesis Performance Center, Singapore’s top personal training gym. He explained the principles and fundamentals of stretching and how they can be applied to any stretch to boost its effectiveness while at the same time reducing pain!

The information is designed to help each attendee improve their performance just about instantly.

I personally added some of the stretch techniques to my pre workout routine and found some positions like the deep squat position more comfortable within one session.

We look forward to bringing in more world class experts to improve the level of health education in Singapore.

Here is some feedback from one of the seminar participants.

“Being a personal trainer myself, I’ve always been intrigued by the benefits that stretching can have upon our bodies. Through this seminar, I got to see a clearer picture of how stretching can help relieve many of the common problems faced by the average person and/or athletes. It is extremely useful for me as I am better able to assess my clients’ flexibility issues and address them.

I have since incorporated the stretches that Keith had demonstrated, on myself to relieve the extreme muscle imbalances due to the nature of my sport which is competitive Dragon-boating.

Genesis Performance Center has done a fabulous job in organizing this seminar. Looking forward to more seminars. Thanks!”

-Allison Yen

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.