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!)

Imagine you had only 5 hours per week at your job or office. “Yay, happy days!” would be the cheer from most people.

But think about it…

• That means that all your work would have to be done super efficiently.
• All meetings would be 15 mins and super focused.
• There would be no facebooking or tweeting or random internet surfing at work.
• Complete dedication would be needed to get the job done in 1 hour per day.

This is the same amount of time as most dedicated people spend exercising per week including stretching and warming up. After all, even the most committed personal training or fitness bootcamp clients come about 4-5 times per week maximum.

Yet, they fool around with this precious time.

Ok, fine, if you are doing heavy squats, you can rest a little longer!

Here are some signs of fooling around.

• Doing lots of cardio – the benefit per minute are miniscule compared to a proper strength training program.
• Resting longer than prescribed between sets – If you are doing heavy squats, sure, rest longer. But most people want to burn fat, and incomplete rest is critical to the fat burning effort. Lower the amount of weights if you need to but STICK TO THE REST TIME.
• Chatting or making phone calls/text messages – seriously? If you have lots of breath to talk, your workout is probably too easy and too ineffective.
• Doing only exercises you like – the ones you don’t like are probably better for you because you are bad at them, and they will give you more benefits.

So, when you are training, you are at “work” on your body and health. So keep it focused and effective, and you will have more time for the rest of life too.

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

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 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.

In day 2 we focused on mainly on eccentric training – which means emphasizing the part of the exercise where your muscle is lengthening instead of contracting – like the lowering portion of a chin-up. As well as fine tuning long term program design (like a 4 year plan where we prepare an athlete or client for a competition).

Most personal trainers and strength coaches don’t use specialized eccentric training methods in the way that they are meant to be used. When used correctly they are excellent tools for more advanced trainees to break plateaus and boost strength. When used wrongly they are excellent tools to create injury and over-training.

We covered the different types of eccentric training, the best time to use them, the best clients to use them with, and the possible problems that can come with badly designed eccentric training programs.

In the gym we tried out overload eccentrics with weight releasers (also known as eccentric hooks).

For long term program design, we covered a bit of theory, and have been sent off to design a 4 year training plan that will be critiqued by the course instructors. Being questioned and having to answer questions about my program design and thought process will be a great learning experience.

BTW the hotel room has a pleasant coconut aroma because I have been using organic coconut oil for lots of cooking. So far so good. Stay tuned for the next update.

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…

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.

Recently I was asked a lot about the range of motion that we should have in training. “why do we use exercise A rather than B?” etc. Here is what both clients and personal trainers need to know about range of motion.

You need to know that there are three different ranges of motion (ROM).

• ROM of the muscle
• ROM of the joint
• ROM of the exercise

While it is not possible to go through every possible exercise, lets use the common bench press as an example.

When using a barbell, the full ROM of the exercise is until the bar touches your chest. However, the main muscles used (prime movers) are the deltoids, the pectorals and the triceps muscles. The joints involved are (mainly) the shoulder and elbow joints.

When the bar is at the bottom, touching your chest, is your shoulder or elbow at the end of its ROM? No. Are your triceps, pectorals or deltoids stretched fully? NO.

For example the clavicular portion of the pectorals (the “upper chest”) would have a fuller range of motion in a elbow in line with ears fly. And the triceps would have a fuller range of motion for example in a lying dumbbell triceps extension.

The shoulder and elbow joints would be at their end range when doing one of the many possible flexibility tests for those joints.

So, whenever you think about ROM, you need to know which ROM you are talking about. And also note that it’s not possible to get full ROM in everything all the time. If you did so, you would dilute the benefit of the exercise you were trying to perform by using too light a weight, or by risking injury.

This means that the key to success and complete development is variety of exercise structured into your program. This is how we help out clients succeed in both our group bootcamp fitness programs and our personal training programs. Science based variation of your exercises for maximum results.