Something Missing From Your Training? GPP

The missing element is…being ‘generally’ fit

So I was first introduce to this ‘generally’ fit concept when I read it in Supertraining by Yuri Verkhoshansky & Mel C. Siff (a terrific read, that you will have to re-read multiple times). However, I didn’t start using the principle until I was given it by my coach Greg Farris of Myobrain. Since doing it personally and knowing what it is about, I can really see why it holds such an important role. Simply stated, almost every athlete of any sport should be doing it to some extent.

What does it mean to be generally fit?
Verkhoshansky & Siff call this General Physical Preparedness or GPP for short, it is characterised by the progressive development of motor skills through a wide variety of non-specific exercises.

It’s role is to expose the athlete to a wide variety of physical fitness skills to enhance well rounded and healthy development. Exercises chosen are general in nature, but specific in function, allowing such improvements even though they are different than those of the desired sport type.

In essence you get fit to train, we are building and or maintaining a functional base for our sport.

Medvedyev describes the exclusive role GPP plays in the overall training programme:

1. The formation, strengthening or restoration of the habits which play an auxiliary, facilitatory role in sport perfection.
2. As a means of educating abilities, developed insufficiently by the selected type of sport, raising and or preserving the general work capacity.
3. As active rest, assisting the restoration process after significant, specific loading and counteracting the monotony of training.

When you combine Medvedyev’s three point description, with the above we come to some pretty awesome GPP prescriptions:

• It needs to be general in nature, but specific in function, using a wide range of different movements & modalities.
• It needs to be fun, different and non-exhausting.
• If the above two principles are met it will facilitate our sport, by enhancing our recovery and building general work capacity.

Exercise selection:
Exercises should consist of any means that elevates a certain trait required by the athlete, or found within the sport itself. They should be working on areas that are neglected by sport specific exercises.

So knowing the above would you wouldn’t give 2×5 clean and jerk to an Olympic weight lifter, but that may be suitable for a Powerlifter. Remember, the exercises chosen are general in nature but specific in function, so an Olympic Weightlifter clean and jerks all the time, so it is specific, but a Powerlifter would rarely perform such a movement, so it enhances their general fitness.

I think for GPP to build the best overall, all round general fitness it needs to be full body in nature, meaning the following movement patterns should be included:

• Squat
• Press
• Hinge
• Pull
• Bracing, Crawling, Jumping

This is because it is aimed at raising one’s fitness of many components of many tasks, and therefore should give all round physical development. We are looking to develop general endurance, strength, co-ordination and flexibility.

So you should look to alter load, duration, intensity, type of movement etc. However, remember it should enhance recovery and be fun.

What it might look like for a Powerlifter/Bodybuilder:

Exercise		Reps	Instructions
Push Up		1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10	Bodyweight Circuit- this should take 30 minutes to complete. You will do 1 rep on each exercise, supersetting, then 2, 3 until reaching 10 reps on each exercise, before moving onto the next superset/tri-set. Rest where needed.
Inverted Row
Squat		1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
Squat jump
KB Swing		1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
Goblet Squat
1 Arm Row		1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
1 Arm Press
Single leg glute bridge (right)		1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
Single leg glute bridge (left)
Glute bridge
DB straight legged deadlift		1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10
Mountain Climbers

So what is missing from your training? General Fitness.

We are looking to improve the bodies functional capacity and therefore it’s general physical preparedness. We do this by incorporating exercises that enhance our sport, but are not specific to it. GPP needs to be fun, stress free and not take away from your recovery.

My athletes all seem to really enjoy GPP and there is no reason you won’t too, so go on, get fit!

That Which is Tracked, Improves- The Training Diary

We all want that special something that is going to help us push towards our goals to a greater degree. Compression gear, heart monitors, wraps, straps you name it there is something for everyone to try. However, there is one small item that is so cheap and easy to use, people often forget. That is a training diary.

What’s so special about a training diary? Well it has many purposes, for both a coach and a trainee, and in my opinion it is absolutely essential.

Is your current training productive?

If you were not to track your workouts you would go week to week without knowing for sure whether what you were doing worked. However, if you are noting down your training variables (sets, weight, reps, time etc.) then you could get an idea of how you are progressing week to week, and whether or not your current routine was working effectively. You might find that your current programme is getting you no-where and needs to be completely changed.

Do you need to rotate exercises?

By noting down your current training you can get a long term view. Some exercises are staples and don’t warrant changing, but others need to be switched to promote progress and to prevent body imbalances. For example you might know that you have been doing incline press for quite a long time, and you want to switch to flat or a decline, by looking back at your log you can identify how long you have spent on each and what action you should take next.

Do you need to rotate routines?

Hopefully you are periodising your programme, and if so then a training log can provide the information you need to identify when it is time for a change. For example, you have been focusing on the 1-5 rep range for the past 4 months, and you have come to a sticking point in your strength. You may want to up your volume by increasing your rep range to 6-12, allowing you to also stimulate muscle growth to a higher degree.

Do I need to add or reduce volume?

A log provides a week to week view of your total training volume. You can therefore see whether it is high or low, whether or not you need to increase or reduce it. Are you stagnating? Well it might be because your volume needs to be raised, to further disrupt homeostasis, however you might actually need it to be reduced so you can recover.

Did something else impact the quality of my workouts?

By having a diary you can make comments on your meal timing, sleep and recovery in relation to your training. This will allow you to spot whether certain aspects outside of the gym allow you to perform better or worse. You can then use this knowledge to generate improved progress. The keen eyed will have seen me note down one session where I was hungover (picture above) and ill (picture below).

As you can see there are many things a training diary can help with, especially when it comes to programme planning. An easy way to do this is to give your workout a title e.g. Upper Body 1, then underneath list out each exercise and the reps and sets you want to achieve. Then during your session you can note down the weight used and the number reps. Finally, you can finish your log by writing down anything regarding your diet, sleep, the time of day etc. that may have influenced your performance.

What diary is best? I was lucky enough to be sent this quality training diary by Citadel Nutrition. I have had ring binders in the past but find pages rip out easily, and the rings get out of shape. The binding that my current diary has is my preferred choice.

The classroom isn’t the only place where a notepad and pen comes in handy!

Horizon- Sugar v Fat – Review

This week Horizon presented an experiment, in which they sought to discover which of the two macronutrient’s, fat and sugar, was the ‘bad’ guy causing the health problems seen today. Two identical twins were given two opposing diets, one high fat and the other high sugar, they had to follow these diets for a month. During this time several tests were done, to see what impact the diets were having on their performance in particular tasks. Finally, the twins health markers were assessed at the end of the month and they came to a conclusion on whether it is fat or sugar making us ill.

Here I am going to take a critical view of the study conducted and give my opinion on the outcomes of the programme. I will first outline what took place and then go over what I liked and what I thought could be improved on.

Method

First the twins were tested on a few health markers; body fat %, insulin sensitivity, cholesterol levels, and BMR. Both saw very similar results and were classified as slightly overweight, being 27% and 22% body fat.

The Diet

The twins were advised to eat as much as they wanted from the foods given to them, one high carb (fruit, cereal, starches etc.) and the other high fat (butter, nuts, fatty meats). I will point out that on the high fat diet the twin was not allowed to consume trans fats, these are man-made fats and we want to avoid them where possible.

Cognitive Function Test

After the twins had been following their diets for a few weeks they were given the task of becoming stock traders. For this task they were given a sum of money and could use it to trade stocks and try and make a profit, the winner was the one who made the most money at the end.

The Outcome: The twin on the high sugar diet generated much more profit and performed better during the task.

This happens because when on a high fat diet you are without readily available glucose so the brain switches to use ketones (derived from fat) for fuel. This occurs so that the body breaks down less protein for glucose, by reducing the body’s total glucose requirements. And this is why carbohydrates are protein sparing, as we can derive glucose from them. This is known as ketosis, and some people do not perform well on ketones, they feel tired and become unable to concentrate. However, some people perform fine off ketones, once adapted, so in this case we can either assume the twin was not adapted or he was part of the crowd who perform poorly on ketones.

Satiety Test

Here the twins were given a breakfast of equal calories, one high sugar and one high fat of course. Then after this they were presented with a buffet of foods, and were instructed to eat as much as they liked of their prescribed dietary foods.

The Outcome: The twin eating high fat ate 825kcals, the twin on high sugar ate 1250kcals.

Protein has a significant short term satiating effect, this was seen here and has been seen in many studies; resulting in reduced self-reported hunger, increased self reported satiety and reduced energy intake in the next meal. The twin of course was meant to be eating high fat and not high protein, but as stated in the programme, the two often go together. Studies investigating the satiating impact of carbs and fat on their own show in-significant differences between the two, protein wins hands down for keeping you full. On a side note when looking at alcohol vs. other macronutrients satiating impact, it has been found that due to alcohols derived energy being hard to regulate by the body, we tend not to compensate for the calories ingested from alcohol, making it particularly easy for us to consume too many calories. Even more interesting is the fact that liquid carbohydrate forms, such as fruit juice or energy drinks have the same non-compensatory effect as alcohol. So because the twin on the high fat diet was also consuming higher protein than the high sugar diet he consumed less calories in his next meal. It was not the satiating impact of fat, it was the protein keeping him fuller.

Cardiovascular Test

The twins were put on bikes before breakfast and cycled for an hour, after which one was given an energy gel and the other given a stick of butter, roughly equal in caloric value. They then raced to the top of a hill, the winner being the one who got their first.

The Outcome: The twin on the high sugar diet reached the summit first.

Throughout the day we are mainly using our aerobic energy system, and this is powered mainly by fat. However, when performing high intensity exercise, such as in a race, we push ourselves past our aerobic energy system and move into our anaerobic and creatine phosphate energy systems. When we perform anaerobically we require glucose, when we have a diet high in carbs it is ready and waiting, however when we do not we have to get it from other places. Protein undergoes a process called gluconeogensis, this is where protein is broken down into glucose, this is inefficient and not preferential by any means.

Steve Phinney (ketogenic diet researcher) said ‘therapeutic use of ketogenic diets should not require constraint of most forms of physical labour or recreational activity, with one caveat that anaerobic performance is limited by the low muscle glycogen levels induced by the ketogenic diet, and this would strongly discourage its use under most conditions of competitive athletes’.

This explains why the twin receiving the high carb energy gel performed better on this task.

Body Composition Changes

Both twins lost weight, with half or more coming from their own muscle tissue. The twin on a high sugar diet saw an increase in insulin sensitivity and his cholesterol remained as per before the diet. The twin on the high fat diet also saw no change in cholesterol but saw a marked decrease in insulin sensitivity.

The Conclusion: They concluded that faddish diets prioritizing one food over the other is not the way to go.

My Thoughts

Likes:

• They used human twins as the test subjects.
• They tested the diets impact on brain function, cardiovascular ability and common health markers.
• They proved to be open minded, non-biased and skeptical. Key to being an evidence based practitioner.
• They concluded that we should avoid faddish diets and it is never one thing but the sum of things. Best is to avoid processed foods and eat a whole food based diet.

Dislikes:

• Diets were not calorie controlled.
• Protein was not controlled and hardly discussed.
• In general there was a lack of controls in all experiments e.g. they did not test the twins performance on their regular diets, for example one twin may have been fitter prior to the study.
• Both twins were overweight, which means the results cannot be directly applied to healthy populations.
• Small sample size.
• At no point were hormones discussed or studied, fat is essential for healthy hormone function and therefore I believe it should have been measured as a health marker. Also ghrelin and leptin were discussed but were never measured.
• They did not mention the fact that by excluding a whole macronutrient it was almost inevitable that the twins would be in a calorie deficit and lose weight.
• The diets were very unrealistic and unsustainable.

To me the study puts a clear case against high fat diets and really promotes carbohydrates. The twin on high carbs outperformed the other twin on both the cognitive and the cardiovascular task. Furthermore, his insulin sensitivity increase compared to the high fat dieting twin who’s sensitivity dropped, close to diabetic levels. Furthermore, the high carb twin lost only 1kg of muscle vs. the high fat twin’s 2kg. It looks like those who choose to eat a ketosis/high fat low carb type diet for extended periods of time would be at risk of diabetes and muscle loss. The study was very interesting, however it was uncontrolled and ignored some important areas, therefore it would be irresponsible to draw any conclusions from it.

Fat and carbohydrates are both important, they both serve their own purposes, to get rid of either would be a mistake. The amount we need is highly individual, if you want to know more about this please see my previous post Need to Know Nutrition- Practical Application. People today are becoming overweight because we have access to delicious food 24/7 and we do not have to work hard to get it. Studies show we burn less energy then we used to, and we also consume more calories.

As they said in closing on Horizon, ‘it’s up to you’, move a bit more and be conscious of what you are eating.

Resources

Alan Aragon ‘AACUK Conference’ 2013.

Beasley, J, M. et al. ‘Associations between macronutient intake and self reported appetite and hormone levels…’ American Journal of Epidemiology. 2009.

Horizon ‘Sugar v Fat’ 2014.

Lyle McDonald ‘The Ketogenic Diet’

Poppit, S, D. et al ‘Short Term Effects of Macronutrient Preloads on Appetite and Energy in Lean Women’ Psychology and behavior, 279-286pp. 1998.

Coming Back to Training After a Layoff

I recently received the following message from a friend:

‘I have been ill for 2 weeks with glandular fever. I haven’t been in the gym for 10 days and have lost my appetite and 8lbs to go with it.

How should I go about getting back into my stride? Obviously mentally I am raring to go, although disheartened because I’ve lost muscle and strength with it. Any guidance is appreciated, as you know a 2nd perspective always helps’

I have and I am sure everyone has suffered from ill health in the past. And although there are different degree’s of bad health, I do believe the process of building yourself back up is very similar. The premise of my site and what I feel makes me unique is that I have been able to recover (or revive if you will), from serious ill health and come out stronger.

Here I am going to give you some guidance, using my own experiences in combination with what the science says.

Your Immune System and Exercise

Exercise causes a major physiological change in our immune system. It can have both positive and negative effects. Studies have found a ‘J Curve’ relationship between exercise and illness, while moderate amounts enhance our ability to fight disease, excessive amounts may impair our immune function. Essentially exercises causes an increase in several stress hormones, and these cause a down regulation of various aspects of our immune functionality.

Now how does this relate to someone getting back into training after a period of being unwell? The degree of how unfit/recovered you are, will influence how fast you will approach the high exercise workload and be at risk.

In practical terms this means you need to approach training slower than you normally would, do not go all guns blazing, or you are likely to become unwell again. Obviously, the degree of your ill health will determine how fast you can add exercise. For example, prior to my accident I was running and weight training daily, when I first got out of hospital just walking at a slow pace for 20 minutes was incredibly hard. However, for the case in hand they can probably get back to their original training regime in a month, slowly adding volume and intensity each week.

Key here is listening to your body and not your head. I can attest to this, my mind wanted to be back doing what I was before, but my body wanted to be in bed. Pushing yourself too far too early will put yourself into the high risk zone on the J curve. Be patient.

Becoming Detrained

Training evokes a skeletal muscle adaption by which the trained muscles increase their tolerance to exercise. The opposite to this is the principle of training reversibility, or detraining, in which  we see a partial or complete reversal of training-induced adaptions. Our skeletal muscle tissue has high plasticity and so can adapt to variable  demands, by changing its functional characteristics and structural composition.

I found 5 studies which reported muscular strength returns to control levels over several weeks of detraining via a reversal of the neuromuscular and hormonal adaptions that occurred during the training phase. However, these studies were done on subjects who were previously sedentary, and therefore do not work well as evidence for the trained population.

However, there is a study that examined 12 strength-trained males who on average exercised 3.41 times per week for 91.1 minutes, performing 2-5 sets of 1-12 repetitions at an intensity of 70-100%. The average stats of the participants; 24.4 years old at 88.6kg and 181.1cm tall with a body fat of 11.5%. None of the subjects had used anabolic steroids or other ergogenic aids 6 months prior to the study.

The athletes reported to a lab for 3 days of testing, where their vertical jump, knee extension strength, 1RM free weight bench press, and 1RM squat were assessed. Following these tests the subjects took a period of 14 days away from training, maintaining a normal diet and daily activity. Following the 14 days the athletes took part in another 3 days of testing, as before. The results were largely in contrast to studies done on previously untrained individuals.

No significant pre- to post-detraining differences occurred in body mass and estimated body fat. Performance in their free weight bench press and squat decreased by an average of only 2kg. Furthermore, there were no significant changes in knee extension strength or force production and again no significant differences were seen in jumping height after a period of detraining.

Interestingly there was an average of 0.3% to 0.8% reduction in strength per week with training cessation. In addition there was a significant decrease in the Type 2 muscle fibers, this is thought to occur as these fibers do not get utilised outside formal training. Also strength training has been seen to convert muscle fiber type from slow to fast, however during the short period of detraining the reverse was not found to occur.

However, it has been seen that in long term detraining, such as one athlete who took 7 months off, all muscle fibers atrophy. Thus, we can delineate that the training cessation on muscle fiber distribution appear to be dependent on the duration of the inactivity period. 

Here I want to state, that short periods of time off the gym are actually very beneficial. During these periods you would still preferably be active, therefore blunting the strength and muscle losses. Deloads/tapers would require a whole blog post of their own, but essentially they allow you to recover and ‘super compensate’ which leads to muscular gains and prevents over-training. Short-term detraining has therefore been seen to augment tissue remodelling and repair, stress hormones down regulate and anabolic hormones up regulate.

So as we can see, short term periods of detraining are therefore not an issue. You may feel like a fat slob, but time off is actually beneficial. The implication being that the longer you are off from training and the more sedentary you are, the less beneficial and more detrimental the impacts become.

If we use me as an example, I was detrained for over a month, and during that time I was bed ridden and this further augmented the negative consequences. Therefore, I suffered from muscle atrophy losing 2 stone and my muscular strength was pretty much back to pre-training levels. However, for the individual in question who has been off for less than two weeks and can be active to some degree, they are unlikely to have suffered much muscle atrophy, and they can hope to regain their previous strength fairly quickly.

Summary

• There is a ‘J curve’ relationship with exercise and immune function. Therefore, exercise can help your health but if you take it too far it can be detrimental. If you are already in a un-well state, the quicker exercise will negatively impact your immune function.
• In trained subjects the impact of detraining for short periods of time has non significant impacts on muscle size or performance.
• Recently trained individuals do however see a reduction in performance and muscle size, often to pre-training levels.
• Short breaks where volume and or intensity are reduced can actually have positive impacts on our muscle size and performance. These are generally called deloads or tapers and last approximately one week.
• The longer the person is unable to train and the more inactive that person, the worse the impact on muscle size and performance.

So be sure to listen to your body, be patient and take things slow. If you have not been seriously unwell, and have only had a short period of time off the gym, don’t fret, you’ll be back to your usual self in no time. However, if you have been unable to train at full capacity for periods reaching over a month, you have to realise you are not what you used to be. In that case train smart, and focus on recovery, building up your training volume and intensity very slowly over a period of months.

I wish everyone the very best in their pursuit to recovery from their ill-health, by reading this I know you are better set in reaching your training goals.

Resources

1. Costill, D. L. Detraining: loss of muscular strength and power. Sports Med. Digest 10:4, 1988. 
2. Coyle, E. F. Detraining and retention of training-induced adapta- tions. In: Resource Manual for Guidelines for Exercise Testing and Prescription, S. N. Blair, et al. (Eds.). Philadelphia: Lea & Febiger, 1988, pp. 83–89. 
3. Gleeson, M. Immune function in sport and exercise. Journal of Applied Physiology. Vol. 103. no. 2. 693-699. 2007.
4. Gordon, T., and M. C. Pattullo. Plasticity of muscle fiber and motor unit types. Exerc. Sports Sci. Rev. 21:331–362, 1993. 
5. Hoppeler H. Exercise-induced ultrastructural changes in skeletal muscle. Int. J. Sports Med. 7:187–204, 1986. 
6. Hortobagyi, T. et al. The effects of detraining on power athletes. Med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol 25, No.8 pp. 929-935, 1993.
7. Mujika, I. Padilla, S. Muscular characteristics of detraining in humans. med. Sci. Sports Exerc., Vol. 33, No. 8, pp.1297-1303. 2001.
8. Nieman DC. Exercise, infection and immunity. Int J Sports Med 15: S131–S141, 1994.
9. Neufer, P. D. The effect of detraining and reduced training on the physiological adaptions to aerobic exercise training. Sports Med. 8:302-321, 1989.
10. Shaver, L. G. Cross transfer effects of conditioning and deconditioing on muscular strength. Ergonomics 18:9-16, 1975.

4 Steps To Learn Anything

It’s widely said that it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, that might be the case, but it takes much less time to learn something. A simple way to see the acquisition of skill for a task, is to measure the gradual reduction in response time for it to take place. This does however mean they must perform the task with full competence, because everyone can do something badly quickly.

The Four Steps

1. Break the Skill into Parts.

By breaking down the task into parts you can then prioritise the bits that matter most. So by using a step by step approach you limit the amount of multi-tasking required. Armi Legge has talked about the cost of switching and mixing tasks, and therefore by focussing on just one thing you will learn it much faster.

A switching cost occurs because of the ‘psychological refractory period’ (PRP), this is where the second task must wait until some critical processing of the first has finished. Studies have shown that performance costs of task switching can be at least partially reduced by preparing, or goal setting prior to changing tasks. Therefore, before setting out to do something prioritise the bits that matter most.

2. Learn Enough to Self-Correct

Once you have the basic components down, and you are familiar enough with the skill, PRP diminishes. This is because the tasks becomes everyday, we can perform it quickly and effortlessly with much less conscious awareness, this is known as automatization.

As you gain experience you can learn specific solutions to specific problems, this will occur when you encounter the same problem repeatedly. Once you gain enough experience with a problem you will be able to respond with a solution from memory, making the skill progressively more automatic in totality. For example, think about learning to use gears, at first it’s very clunky and difficult. As you gain experience the process becomes smoother and smoother, until it becomes effortless.

3. Remove Barriers

After steps 1 and 2 you may be confronted with barriers, preventing you from progressing with the task. There is a phenomenon known as the dual-task paradigm, it’s where you are required to perform two tasks simultaneously. This is similar to the switching costs I spoke of previously, however it differs in this sense as you will not be changing tasks. In this instance I am suggesting that when performing the task you do not think about anything but the task in hand.

If you are thinking about several things at once it makes memory retrieval much harder, preventing you from progressing. When you come to perform the task again it’s like trying to find a tree in a forest, but by focussing only on your skill, the fewer trees there are to choose from. This can be likened to mindfullness, which is the act of living in the moment.

4. Relax & Visualise Success

Skills can also be developed off-line, between practice sessions, during consolidation. Overnight improvements have been observed in individuals purposely trying to acquire a motor skill. Take some time to relax and visualise the task in hand, studies have shown that relaxation facilitates the learning-based process.

In one study with 21 male and 4 female elite shooters, 13 practiced ACEM meditation once a week for seven weeks and 12 did not receive any kind of mental training. The meditation involved 30 minutes of listening to a non-directed repetition of a simple sound. The participants had a test shooting where each shot 25 rounds on two different days within one week just before and after the intervention. Every condition both times was standardised including the shooting distance, the rifle used and clothing worn. The main result in the study was that, in comparison to the control group, the meditation group significantly improved their competition shooting season after the intervention. The study was not flawless but it supports other reviews claiming that mental training has a beneficial effect on sports performance.

So as you can see, by keeping our cool and taking some time to relax, we are more likely to succeed in our endeavours. Furthermore, it has been said ‘we live our lives in a kind of walking dream’,  and this is where visualisation comes in. Visualisation is an experience of creating a vision of what one wants in one’s mind. By constructing mental images we can reduce cognitive load and increase our comprehension and support the learning outcome. Relax, think about what you want to achieve, and by so doing you’ll be one step closer.

Practical Application – The Squat

Above we have 4 steps that will lead to quick skill comprehension. The steps can be applied to a wide range of things such as; learning how to play a musical instrument, understanding how to use a camera or how to do a certain exercise. Seeing as this blog is about fitness and health, I will use the example of learning how to do an exercise, and I will choose everyones favourite; the squat.

So first we want to nail the basics, allowing us to squat and work on the finer details later. When squatting there are a few basic things to get right; you want the weight to be on your heals, you want to keep your chest up and sit your butt down, remaining in a neutral position throughout, making sure to open your hips to allow a decent between your legs. You can practice each part separately, make sure you know the difference between the weight being on your toes vs. your heels. Practice making a big chest and keeping your butt back while maintaining a neutral spine. Finally put it into practice and decent between your legs, opening your hips, making sure your back is in neutral and your chest is up.

Now you have those basics down, you can move onto the second step and focus on the details. When squatting there is a lot to think about, you want to ensure you are getting sufficient range of motion, your neck wants to be kept in neutral, you need to avoid your knees collapsing inwards, your hips and shoulders need to rise together and you will want to take advantage of the valsalva manoeuvre. Here you are gaining experience, you know how to squat sufficiently so you can now practice, and well we all know practice makes perfect.

Now you have got some experience under your belt there is much less to think about, you are getting closer to it being automatic. This means when going about the squat you need to focus on the movement in hand, don’t think about your dinner, the hot chick in the gym or what you’re doing tomorrow. Concentrate on the task in hand and you will improve much faster.

Finally, you are almost a fully comprehensive squatter. You know what’s required, you have the focus and desire to perform it correctly. Now is the time to relax, you’ve got this. Take a few movements before your session to sit and calmly visualise yourself squatting with perfect form and heavy weights. By doing this you are supporting the outcome you want to achieve and you will be squatting heavy in no time!

And there you have it, four simple steps to help you learn anything.

Resources

1. Allport, A., Styles, E. A., and Hsieh, S. (1994). Shifting intentional set: Exploring the dy- namic control of tasks. In C. Umiltà and M. Moscovitch (Eds.), Attention and Performance XV, pp. 421–452. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
2. Allport, A., and Wylie, G. (1999). Task-switching: Positive and negative priming of task-set. In G. W. Humphreys, J. Duncan, and A. M. Treisman (Eds.), Attention, space and action: Studies in cognitive neuroscience, pp. 273–296. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
3. De Jong, R. (1996). Cognitive and motivational determinants of switching costs in the task-switching paradigm. Paper presented at the Ninth ESCOP Conference, Würzburg, Germany, September.
4. Fagot, C. (1994). Chronometric investigations of task switching. Ph.D. diss., University of California, San Diego.
5. Gopher, G., Greenshpan, Y., and Armony, L. (1996). Switching attention between tasks: Exploration of the components of executive control and their development with training. In Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
6. Gopher, G., Armony, L., and Greenshpan, Y. (Forthcoming). Switching tasks and attention policies and the ability to prepare for such shifts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
7. Gordan, D. Logan. (1988) Toward an Instance Theory of Automarization. Psychological Review. Vol. 95, No 4, 492-527.
8. Gottselig JM, Hofer-Tinguely G, Borbely AA, Regel SJ, Landolt HP, Retey JV, Achermann P. Sleep and rest facilitate auditory learning. Neurosci. 2004;127:557–561.
9. Greenspan MJ, Feltz DL. (1989) Psychological interventions with ahtletes in competitive situations: a review. Sport Psychol; 3:219-28.
10. James, W. (1890). Principles of psychology. New York: Holt.
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Picking Your Training Volume

You might be making a programme or looking at several ones to choose from. A component of any training protocol is the number of exercises, reps and sets per week, these come together to make up the training volume.

So the first thing I would like to note is that all things being equal two people could have the same volume, but one may train three times a week and the other five. So one way of manipulating volume is how you spread it across your week.

Right so now we understand what volume is and how we can spread it across the week, how much do we need? Everyone is individual but you can generalise volume with good confidence that it works for most people. A way I like to explain this is with the use of a cup, different people have different size cups and these cups get filled with volume. The longer you have been training properly the larger your cup will be, meaning the more space you have to fill your cup with volume. For example a complete beginner to training will have a shot glass and a small and can only handle a small amount of volume, but an individual who’s trained as a competitive power lifter for the past three years will have a pint glass. Why? Well overtime you develop fitness, your neuromuscular system becomes much more efficient and this combination means you can handle more volume.

However, a component to consider is other things that can start filling your glass. For example, a person who is playing sport three times a week with a stressful job will have filled up their glass substantially, leaving less space for additional training. Whereas someone working an easy office job with no additional outside exercise will leave their cup untouched.

So the volume you can handle is down to the size of your cup (training age) and how much its already been filled (sports, manual/stressful jobs etc. ). This component of a training programme is very important and many overlook it. If you do too much you will push your body past its capabilities, eventually you’ll stall become ‘overtrained’ and may regress. Yet if you use insufficient volume you will not provide sufficient stimulus to progress, and again you’ll stall.

The amount of volume you need is therefore very individual and an important programming tool to get right.

Practical Guidelines

• Volume can be worked out by multiplying weight used by total reps done per week.
• Volume can be spread across your week in different ways e.g. 3 sessions with 20 sets per session or 6 sessions with 10 sets per session.
• The more advanced you are in training terms the more volume you can handle.
• The more stress free and less physically demanding your life outside training is the more volume you can take.
• Each persons ideal volume is therefore very individual, too much and you will ‘overtrain’ and regress, too little and you will not progress.

My recommendation is to be realistic about your training goals, do not try and squeeze in as much exercise as possible. A good thing to ask yourself would be ‘can I keep this up for the long term?’, if not then I suggest you decrease the amount you are doing. Remember you can always increase how much you do, so I would say start with less than you think you can handle and then build from there.

The ‘How it feels’ Scale- Part 1

When you are doing your chosen exercise, whether it be sprints, weight training or circuits, how do you decide how hard to push yourself and why does it matter? You might be thinking ‘I just go as hard as I can’ or ‘I go to failure’, now that can be productive at times, but you might be selling yourself short, in the long run, as who can sustain that kind of training? The more experienced of you might have heard of some mechanisms of control such as the talk test, heart rate and the RPE scale (rate of perceived exhaustion). These are incredibly useful and are used by many coaches today, when training their athletes. The RPE scale is a particular favourite of mine, due to its ease of application by the trainee and coach.

So what is the RPE scale? How might you apply it to your training and more importantly why should you? The one I am going to talk about is that by Borg, he created a scale going from 6-22. 6 was basically the equivalent of being dead (or no exertion) and 20 meant all hell had been let loose (or going to absolute failure). This scale has been modified, and it is this shorthand version I use for myself and my clients, it is a scale of 0-10, again 0 being no effort and 10 being an all out max. So the scale measures exertion, but also quality. Quality is very important, it incorporates physical and emotional stress, so you will feel more recovered when using lower ranges on the scale, whereas near the high end you will feel the grind. The scale gives an objective magnitude of load, and how difficult that load feels during a particular set and workout.

Now how would one go about implementing this into their training? Generally for weight training you will find yourself within the 7-9 range, going slightly below this for the warm up (3-4) and occasionally slightly above, for example 1RM attempts. Whereas for cardiovascular training you will sit in a 3-6 range, again sometimes going above e.g. sprints.

So why should you think about applying this to your own training? Well we can only take a certain amount of stress before recovery becomes an issue, it’s not only our muscles/connective tissue taking a battering but also our neuromuscular system. By pushing ourselves to the absolute limit each time, we our not allowing ourselves to recover, and eventually we will not only see no progress but we will eventually regress, and nobody wants that. The RPE scale allows us to monitor our own ‘stress’ levels on a session to session basis.

In short some days you may be feeling fantastic and others you may be feel rubbish, and by using the RPE scale you can modify your training to how your mood. By not maxing out, and going to failure every time you train, you will be able to provide enough stress to recover from and keep progressing toward your goal.

Practical Application

OK, so now we know what the RPE scale is and why it’s useful. How now do we go about applying it to our training? I want to note here that the scale is not linear, but increases exponentially. A 4 does not mean the effort was twice that of a 2 and it also doesn’t mean it was twice the load or speed. Here I am going to apply the scale to weight training, for CV work you can adjust the ranges down slightly.

Warm Up: RPE 2-5

As I said before you want to use the lower end of the scale for your warm up and slowly build up into  your main work. The point of the warm up is to get your body ready for exercise, this means raising your pulse, body temperature and preparing your muscles. Therefore, we do not want to get fatigued during the warm up as it will reduce our performance for the real work.

Main Work: RPE 7-9

Now for the main part of your exercise, you want to push yourself out of your comfort zone, in order to progress you need to disrupt homeostasis. This would be anywhere from difficult to near max effort work. A good place to start using the RPE scale and applying it to your training is building up into a 9 (almost all out) and then scaling back the intensity to a 7 (very difficult). For example someone squatting aiming for 8-10 reps for 4-5 sets:

Squat – 200lbs x 10 (RPE 7), 210lbs x 10 (RPE 8), 225lbs x 8 (RPE 9), 200lbs x 10 (RPE 8), 200lbs x 8 (RPE 8)

They started with a lighter weight and then built to a max RPE for the day and then did some back off work. The great thing about the RPE scale, is it takes into account how you are feeling. On a good day the 225lb x 8 rep squat might feel like an RPE 7 and therefore you would be able to go heavier until hitting a 9, on a bad day the 200lb x 10 rep squat might be your 9 RPE. This can be applied to cardiovascular work in the same way. We all know that we have days we feel super fit and energetic and others where we just feel like slacking off, the RPE scale lets you take advantage of those good days and allows you not to kill yourself on the bad days.

As Matt Perryman puts it ‘how you feel may be a lie over a span of time, but while the effort is going on, how you feel is remarkably accurate’. So try out the RPE scale and take advantage of those great days and give yourself a break on those lazy days, because that’s how our bodies work and we need to take that into account in order to progress. In Part 2 I will talk about how we can use this scale to periodise our training.

Resources

1. Borg G.A. Psychophysical bases of perceived exertion. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. 1982; 14:377-381.
2. Perryman M. Squat Everyday: Thoughts on Overtraining and Recovery in Strength Training. 2013 May.
3. Siff C.M. Supertraining. 2003.