Personal Trainer Singapore – Coach Jonathan Wong

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!

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!

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

I recently took a week “off” training as a deload before a basketball tournament (I love training but I had to take my own advice about how to deload for competition!). That means a week of light training and some conditioning work.

5 days from the basketball tournament I tried out a crossfit workout just for fun. It was what was posted on the crossfit website for that day. Also known as the “crossfit workout of the day”

It was called “DT” and it consists of

12 deadlifts at 70kg, 9 power cleans at 70kg and 6 push press/push jerk at 70kg.

Done for 5 rounds, with the fastest possible timing you can achieve.

I did this for 2 rounds and the time was about 4 minutes. But I stopped. Was I tired… yes… this was a tiring workout. But it was not the tiredness that stopped me.

It was the danger.

I am by no means an expert olympic lifter, but I’m decent and have a 120kg power clean, 125kg push press, and a 80kg clean (narrow) grip power snatch.

But by the second round, fatigue makes my technique really dangerous and bad. So I stopped.

In general, if you are doing conditioning work, don’t use olympic lifts for high reps because they are very techincally demanding. Use more simple movements like jump squats or Kettlebell swings to get the same benefits with much less risk of injury.

Some crossfit workouts are alright for conditioning and you can get fit doing them, but not this one.

There is always a risk to benefit ratio for every exercise and every exercise program. As a personal trainer or strength and conditioning coach, we need to weigh these risks to develop the best possible program for our clients.

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.

There are personal training and fitness bootcamp members at the Genesis Performance Center who are going into the fasting month soon this year. And recently they have been wondering what would be the best way to maintain their fat loss, weight loss and muscle building results that they have gotten.

In fact when I was working at the Singapore Sports School, we did research on how to help Muslim atheltes perform well even during fasting month/ramadan.

So here are my recommendations…

Either train early in the morning (immediately after the morning break fast) or at night (after the evening break fast)

If you train in the morning, do it at about 730am or 8am if you do it in the evening, do it at about 8pm. This is so that you don’t train on a super full stomach.

Even though we may not get the ideal 6 feeding opportunities per day, we should get at least 3 good ones. Morning break fast, evening break fast, and one more big meal before bed. These meals should be slow digesting ones so that you stay full longer. That means no starchy bad stuff. More protein and healthy fats which digest slowly.

So a sample daily timetable for morning training would be:

• 6am breakfast – eggs, meat, nuts, cheese, a whey protein shake
• 730am training
• 715pm breakfast (evening) – eggs, meat, nuts, cheese, a caesin protein shake
• 10pm supper – eggs, meat, nuts, cheese, casein protein shake

For evening training:

• 6am breakfast – eggs, meat, nuts, cheese, a casein protein shake
• 715pm breakfast (evening) – eggs, meat, nuts, cheese, a whey protein shake
• 8pm training – another whey protein shake post workout
• 10pm supper – eggs, meat, nuts, cheese, casein protein shake

There we go! It’s not ideal, but it’s good enough that you shouldn’t lose too much progress during fasting month.

NOTE: Drink water in large amounts as often as you can during the times when you are allowed to. You should be needing constant toilet breaks and your urine should be colorless – that is the correct amount!

I recently got a bunch of emails sent to Singapore personal trainers and Singapore strength and conditioning coaches offering a “power plate” certification.

Cool name, but for a machine costing about 10,000 SGD per piece it better do more than sound cool. We could set up a decent small gym or home gym for the price of that machine alone!

What is a powerplate? It is a small platform that vibrates fast. That is it.

What does it claim to do? It claims to improve your blood circulation, flexibility, and increase bone and muscle strength.

Possible… yes!

But only for a VERY untrained or elderly patient and only for a limited time till be the body gets used to it.

The only claim that is of some validity to me is the one about increasing flexibility. The reason for this is that fast vibrations are known to “turn off” what are known as spindle cells in your muscles. Spindle cells are something that all of us have in our muscles that report changes in muscle length.

So if we turn them off using vibrations from a power plate, you don’t “tighten up” when you try to stretch, so you can improve flexibility.The “stretch reflex” is turned off.

However… if you do this too much, you will “turn off” the spindle cells too much and then your body will lose coordination because it has no clue how long the muscles are and how fast their length is changing.

Also, the stretch reflex is important in generating power and speed so you will deprove in those areas as well.

Finally, the stretch reflex is an injury prevention mechanism in your muscles so if you turn it off long term its bad news for preventing muscle tears/pulls.

Also, any good flexibility program can get you to improve flexibility and range of motion without these side effects.

All in all, the problem I have with the power plate is not that it is totally useless, just that it is not a good value for your money, and it’s claims are overstated. For the price, get yourself a good set of weight plates, bar, power rack and dumbells!

NOTE: Most countries have laws against how many hours per day you can operate heavy machinery like jackhammers. This is because constant vibration is not a good idea for your body especially internal organs. Just think about that when deciding if a power plate is something you want to be training on.