How to make any workout feel easier

How you feel during training is not always a reflection of how fit you are. If you know just how to manage it and use a variety of mental tricks you don’t just get to feel better than you would otherwise, you will be performing better, doing more and work out harder. Fitness is, mostly, inside your head. It’s first of all a mental battle you need to win in order to make yourself train, make yourself train on the level you need to, and then to continue doing it time and time again. Once you do get yourself to exercise, there are a few tricks you can use to make the whole process easier on yourself:

Don’t think about how hard it is.

We often concentrate too much on how difficult and challenging training is, magnifying it in our head, all the while struggling more and more with the load. The more you think about yourself not being able to cope, the harder it feels. Essentially this is the pre-game pep-talk technique, applied to your training routine: Keep telling yourself that what you are doing is no big deal, it’s a walk in the park and you’re breezing it, you’ll find that you are capable of handling just about anything – and what’s more after you blast through a few of these your future training routines will feel all that much easier.  

Take yourself elsewhere for a few seconds.

This is the classic SAS tip for getting through incarceration or interrogation. If where you are is less than comfortable, imagine where you would like to be right now and take yourself there in your head. Imagine something pleasurable, something you enjoy very much for just a few seconds. It will help you reset your brain and take its attention away from thinking about the tough training session. 

Lie.

Just tell yourself that you will never do this again or will take a long break…after this time. All you need is give yourself hope that what you are doing right now may be challenging but it’ll be over soon, possibly permanently. Then show up the next day or the day after that. The lie works because it reprograms your brain to to stop complaining and simply focus on the time training will end. Tomorrow is always another day when you have rested, recharged and are thinking more clearly. 

Work out with music.

According to a study done by the research team led by Thomas Hans Fritz of the University of Ghent and the Max Planck Institute,  music, due to its calming effect, can lead to reduced muscle tension and more efficient oxygenation. We are not just able to do more and feel less exhausted later on, but the exercise itself feels less taxing. 

Try gamification.

When you keep your mind on a short-term goal you are less likely to check up on how you are feeling. It’s just simple refocusing that helps you forget about fatigue or any other discomfort. If your goal is to just get it over with and you have nothing else to occupy your thoughts with you’ll end up analyzing yourself and how you feel every other minute. Work for points (every rep of each exercise is a point, for example) with friends and try to reach the maximum number possible or give yourself a number and try to get all the points you need to reach it every day. Ingress, for example, is one of the best examples of unintentional fitness, just by participating you can’t help it by exercise. In order to play you need to go from portal to portal on foot or by bike and, if you want to be good at it, you want to do it often or all the time throughout the day. You don’t think about it as exercise but it is and a good one, at that. 

Homeostasis, Stress and Training Adaptations

Introduction to new concepts

Homeostasis, not a word everyone uses on a day to day basis. However, it is something your body is doing (or is trying to do) day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. The Oxford dictionary defines homeostasis as: “The tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements as maintained by physiological processes.”

Homeostasis is fundamental to our survival. It also helps us understand how our bodies react to ‘stress’ or stimuli and as we are concerned with our training, how we respond to our training stimuli. Homeostasis is the process where your body tries to reach equilibrium, or a balance with itself.

Let’s use the example of stenothermic organisms – this describes the ability of an organism to live within certain, limited ranges of ambient temperatures, typically only a few degrees. This is typical of marine animals where temperature fluctuation is small. If the temperature is outside this range the organism cannot cope and will die. Adapting to temperature takes energy and organisms want to use the least energy to be efficient. On land temperatures fluctuate more so organisms have had to adapt to cope with this. However, this cost more energy.

When an organism is at optimal operation, it is in a state of balance or stasis. Anything that disrupts this balance, a change in temperature, diet change or physical exertion takes more energy to deal with and regain stasis.

This change to stasis is stress. Stress is not this horrific condition of overworking balloonedout of proportion by the media. Stress is a stimulus that brings about a response in the body to achieve equilibrium. However, as I previously mentioned this does require energy. If the stress is a good stress, bringing a favourable adaption this is a eu-stress. If the stress brings about a negative response, illness, or in the case of the stenothermic organism example even death, this is a dis-stress.

Now the heavy part is through let me explain why you should care about homeostasis.

The aim of training or dieting is to upset this balance or stasis. This upset will evoke a response in your body to change in order to adapt. This adaptation will bring about equilibrium or stasis. As you then reach equilibrium your body will no longer adapt to that stimulus as it is not big enough or long enough to cause change. This is when you make a change to a bigger or different stimulus to continue to lose weight, gain muscle and get stronger or faster. For example if you wanted a tan you go out white as a sheet and tan veryquick so not much exposure is needed. As you became more bronze, longer exposure is needed, a bigger stress is needed to cause your body to change pigmentation colour. A common mistake is people doing the same thing week in week out and expecting results. A change is needed to evoke an adaptation.

“If you always do what you’ve always done you’ll always get what you’ve always had”.

However, as not all stress is good. This dis-stress occurs when the stimulus is too big or goes on too long. If you train too much inappropriately you become tired or ill. This is overtraining. Going back to the tanning example, as you go out white as a sheet and fall asleep in the 35 degree sun you wake up burned to a crisp skin so red you would put a lobster to shame.  The key to training is giving your body enough stress to change but not so muchcreate a negative response or become ill.

Optimising food for maximal results

Food is energy. To get better and adapt you need food. As I said adapting requires energy, lots of it. In order to train you need energy as you train more you need more energy. If you are calorie restricting to lose weight ‘over-restriction’ may be counterproductive as your body fights harder to reach equilibrium.  Work requires energy, so as you need energy you need food. If you calorie reduce too much you cannot do the work you need to achieve the results you want, especially if you are trying to keep or gain muscle while staying lean. If you are just aiming to cut down without lean gains your body uses fat as energy store. If you over-restrict calories your body will do everything to keep hold of its energy stores in times of less food (your diet). This means often sacrificing lean muscle as energy.  Also your body will more effectively store energy (fat) as soon as food becomes available again. This leads to unproductive yo-yo weight changes. Simply put you need to eat to lose weight.

Alterations to training

As I said earlier your body can only adapt to a stimulus for so long until it plateaus, drops or reaches exhaustion. This is called General Adaptation Syndrome pioneered by Canadian endocrinologist Doctor Hans Seyle.  A single cycle is shown in picture one. As you change training your body adapts to cope, but if the stimulus is too much you become exhausted. The key to training is shifting the focus. To elicit what is called the supercompensation cycle. You cannot always train strength. You cannot always train for fat loss. Your body stops adapting or becomes exhausted.  Changing the stimulus avoids fatigue and elicits permanent positive results.  Shown in the second picture are several cycles with differing outcomes. These can represent individual workouts or blocks of training the principal is identical. Here you can see the first two examples show a positive response where strength is gained or fat is lost. Either way there is progress. The negative response is where the body has sub optimal time between workouts or blocks and performance is lost, be it weight gain or strength loss.  The accumulation of fatigue elicits a larger or longer lasting response but typically is only used by athletes in a principal call overreaching. Here several cycles or workouts are undertaken before the body has recovered and fatigue accumulates. If judged correctly and bouts of activity end before exhaustion occurs the net gain in performance is larger.  Finally a null cycle is where no adaptation is made because there was a break between cycles and although progress was made. It was not maintained. Effectively you return to square one.

Summary

In summary you need to be smart when you train. Eat enough to engage in the essential activity to change but not so little your body goes into a starvation mode.  Train well and regularly but schedule regular changes in training to keep responding, keep performing and keep adapting. Constant and miniature fluctuations in stress evoke positive non damaging responses to the body.

This article was expertly written by Coach James Warren MSc CSCS

Tips to Stay Fit Over the Holidays

It's that time of year: The clock has turned back, Halloween is over, stores are preparing for the holidays and our diets go by the wayside.

Farewell, bikinis and salads. Hello, big sweaters and comfort food. All those yummy holiday meals will invariably add a few pounds that we'll struggle to lose when the New Year starts.

How about finally putting an end to the seasonal cycle? Staying on track during winter means establishing healthy habits that will be with you throughout the year--habits you will celebrate as the sunny days return and you are ready to shed the sweaters.

Here are my top five tips to stay in shape throughout the holiday season:

1. Don't stop exercising.
Shorter days, frosty temperatures, bad weather: Excuses are easier to find at this time of year. As a result we burn less calories than we take in, and the first pounds soon settle in.

The solution: Keep up your usual activity levels and, if need be, create a schedule to keep you from procrastinating. Opt for more indoor activities and reconsider what time of day you exercise.

2. Allow yourself one indulgence meal per week.This might be the season of holiday dinners and office parties, but by overindulging on all of those occasions you run the risk of packing on the pounds fast. The trap? Telling yourself that because it's the holidays you might as well relax and enjoy yourself -- and that January will be the time for "starting fresh."

The solution: Plan one pleasure meal a week. But whatever the dish, always have steamed vegetables in place of bread or potatoes. Counterbalance with some "light" days, with all-fruit breakfasts and enough exercise to sweat off the excesses of the table.

3. Eat winter fruits and vegetables.Flu, tonsillitis, coughs and sniffles and other bugs: This is also the time of the year our immune system is under the most strain. If you're not eating enough vegetables and fruits, you're probably not getting enough vitamins and antioxidants. As a result, you end up fighting one winter illness after another and have little energy to move, let alone exercise.

The solution: Load up on seasonal fruit and vegetables. Gorge on colorful root-vegetable salads and steamed or stir-fried veggies. The choices might not seem as broad as in the summer, but there is plenty out there you might not have explored. Don't hesitate to try something new.

4. Start with a soup.Every winter the same thing happens: You get home from work or school cold, hungry and desperate for something hearty and warming.

The solution: Begin every meal with a homemade seasonal vegetable soup. Brimming with vitamins, minerals and fiber, it will fill you up before you tackle the rest of your meal. Prepare a big batch and freeze the extra so you'll have a stash ready to eat in minutes.

5. Stay motivated.How do you keep up the motivation when it's cold and dark outside? Staying active and getting outdoors -- even for a short while, preferably at the brightest time of the day -- is by far the easiest solution to break the pattern of sluggishness. Did you know that no amount of indoor lighting can compete with the sun for boosting our energy levels? Even dull winter sun filtered through a thick layer of clouds is significantly more powerful than artificial lighting.

The solution: Make yourself accountable. Find a buddy and make a date to get outside. Nothing beats mutual support to remain motivated.

--Valerie

This post was expertly written by Valerie Orsoni. Connect with Valerie on her website, Facebook and Twitter.

Tips for People Who Have Big Weight-Loss Goals

On the face of it, losing weight can seem both easy and daunting. Easy because we all know that, in principle, if we eat less and move more we'll lose weight; daunting because it requires sustained motivation and the ability to resist crash dieting.

By the same token, losing five pounds in time for bikini season isn't the same as losing 100 pounds for your health.

The techniques for shedding a few extra pounds should never be the same as the ones for losing large amounts of weight. That's why I have devised a list of 10 tips specifically for people who have more than 25 pounds to shed:

1. Set a specific goal. Decide on your healthy weight and how much you need to lose to reach it. Overall and in the long run, you shouldn't lose more than two pounds per week, although the weight might drop off way faster at first.

Here is a formula for figuring out your timeframe, based on empirical evidence from my clients: Divide the number of pounds you need to lose by two. This will give you the number of weeks you'll need to shed the weight. If you've followed many diets before (more than eight), add 25 percent to this number. So, if your result was 20 weeks, you need to add five more weeks to reach your goal.

If you have more than 100 pounds to lose, you need to add another 50 percent to that total because you will need to give your body time to adjust to new weight levels along the way, stabilize and then restart losing weight.

2.Be patient. You need to accept that if it took you years to pack on the pounds, it will be unrealistic to expect to lose it all in two months. Don't just think it: Write down your goal and time frame and share it on your social networks. It will strengthen your resolve to take the time you need, not the time your social agenda might dictate.

3.Get support. Don't put this off. Don't wait. Support for long-term, massive  weight loss is key. It can be your neighbour, your significant other, your coach, a parent, a good friend or simply a like-minded person who has the same goal and shares the same values.

4.Plan ahead. Create menus up to four weeks in advance with healthy fast-food backup plans. Share those menus with your supporters. Carve out time to cook in advance and freeze or preserve healthy meals for the coming weeks so you'll never be caught short without a healthy option at home.

5. Share your results on social media. You can even create a specific account for this. You will be surprised by how much support you receive. Tweet your results, successes and failures.

6.Challenge yourself. After three or four weeks, the dieting honeymoon usually ends, so give yourself a challenge to meet each week, for example:

* A week without bread
* A gluten-free, dairy-free week
* A meat-free week
* A vegan week
* A smoothie and one buckwheat crepe every morning for breakfast for one week

Create your own challenges. Stimulating your creativity and constantly keeping yourself focused on new ways to lose weight will keep you at the top of your game.

7.Don't slack off. Being active might not have been your cup of tea before you started on this journey, so you may have started in overactive mode -- like long daily workouts at your new gym -- but now you're not feeling the same incentive to go every day, even if the results are coming.

To break this pattern, shake things up: Try one new group class each week and invite your supporters to join you, or change where and when you work out.

8.Go shopping. Buy a new gym outfit -- one size down. Keep it somewhere you see it every day so your mind will get used to this new possible size for you and it will motivate you to kick yourself in the butt and keep going.

9.Don't use food as a reward. I know you know this one, but let's reinforce it: Never ever reward yourself with food unless you cook it. Food is a pleasure that you should not deny yourself, but the method to success is to prepare it yourself from scratch.

10.Make yourself accountable. Be accountable, publicly and personally: Write a weight-loss blog, share it with your coach and your friends. Wake up and fall asleep repeating your mantra, "Yes, I will make it happen this time." In the end, it is the accumulation of all those little steps, daily battles, weekly successes and sometimes small setbacks that will help you reach your goal.

--Valerie

This post was expertly written by Valerie Orsoni. Connect with Valerie on her website, Facebook and Twitter.

The 5 Training Mistakes You Need to Avoid After 35

Aging, if done correctly, is full of beauty, comedy, wisdom and enlightenment. It’s a great ride with plenty of ups and downs. You can save yourself years of trouble, pain, and calamity by accepting that successful people adapt to aging, that the rules of biology apply to you, and that education is your best friend.

 

By all means, do not go gently into that good night, just make sure you rage against the dying of the light with the one thing we all forget to use in the beginning: our heads. Here’s are the top five training mistakes made after turning 35 and how you can avoid them.

 

1. You Still Believe You Can Do It Like You’re 25

We all know that the personal record days coming off a pizza-and-beer all-nighter are over. But even when we clean up our diet and lifestyle, we still want to train like we did when we were in our twenties. With all the same volumes, rep schemes, intervals, and non-recovery days, and all the sexy programs we see in the magazines and on the Internet.

 

This makes no sense. And you know it because you feel like shit and can’t “keep up” with “those damn kids” anymore.

 

 

Science tells us our metabolism is slowing down, it takes longer to recover (recovery is the unsexy place where growth happens in training) and changes in sleep patterns and circadian rhythms occur, which means you will probably sleep less at night and not sleep as deeply. All bad news for training.

 

So what do you do during this transitional period? Easy. Grow up.

 

2. You Still Think More Is Better

More training is not better. Smarter training and more recovery is better. Understanding this is vital to your continuous improvement.

 

Your training program must be a progression toward your goal, whatever that goal may be. Yes, training can absolutely have the appearance of randomness, but it absolutely cannot be randomly programmed. 

 

"More training is not better. Smarter training and more recovery is better."

Periodization in an intelligent must-have. Your program must allow for the proper rebuilding of broken-down tissue between sessions. This takes longer as you age, and you’re best off seeking the help of a professional when it comes to programming. Programming is as much art as it is science.

 

Mechanics and body alignment (i.e. mobility), as well as technique, play a huge role in your training sessions as joints age. Joint pain is not okay and is, in fact, a biomarker for injury. Don’t be afraid to seek out new strategies and new techniques. Play. Experiment. Adapt. Overcome.

 

Remember, abundance and complications are the way of youth. Quality and simplification are the challenge of adulthood. Think on this. Apply it to your training.

 

3. You Have No Respect for the Most Insidious Device Invented

This piece of equipment drives sedentary behavior, is practically unavoidable for most of us; is a major cause of those tight sensations in our hips and hamstrings; weakens our stabilizing muscles; ruins posture; increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity; and has been linked to cancer, depression and a shorter life expectancy.

 

It is most likely right under your ass right now. It’s called a chair. How’s your posture right now?

 

Want to blow your own mind? Take a random day in your workweek and time yourself. How many hours did you spend sitting? Include your relaxation time at home. Now, before you decide to run out and be that treadmill-desk person, try a little management of the problem instead.

 

 

Start by getting up and moving around a little more throughout your day. Walk down to your coworker’s office instead of shooting an email. Cut your TV time down by a third. Have a team meeting with everyone standing or go for a walk and talk.

 

"Start by getting up and moving around a little more throughout your day." 

Your legs are the big movers. The contractions of these muscles increase fuel consumption and will mediate the collection of high levels of blood sugar in the bloodstream due to inactivity. This is a good thing. Move your big movers.

 

4. You Have Yet to Grasp Situational Awareness

Remember in college when you were so busy? What’s your reaction now when a twenty-something tells you how busy he or she is? Exactly.

 

There are many factors in your life that did not exist before now: children, bills, unexpected bills due to children, a job with increased responsibility and leadership roles, more stress, more relationships to manage, more creative and innovative opportunities, more responsibilities at home, more decisions to make each day and less time to make them, more stress, less sleep, and fewer hours in the day to be selfish.

 

This all must be accounted for in your training. Your training log should include a record of your stress level, how much sleep you got, and if you stayed on track with your diet. It doesn’t have to be a complicated log. Record them all on a scale of 0 to 3. Zero is horrible. Three is excellent.

 

The truth is there are no bad days training if you just accept that sometimes life is going to get in your way. Do what you can with what you have where you are.

 

Only have time for a quick warm up and 3 x 5 on the back squat today? Own it. Only have thirty minutes for your run? Do a light five-minute warm up and four sets of hard running for three minutes, rest for three minutes.

 

5. What and Who You Compare Yourself to Is All Wrong

It is dangerous when you compare your numbers and your look to the professionals who do it for a living or the person next to you in the gym who is ten to twenty years younger. These people do not have the same life as you. They don’t have the same responsibilities, complications, or genetic traits as you. You are not comparing apples to apples. You are being a juvenile idiot.

 

 

By all means, have goals, but respect that you’re not “who you were back then.” You’re not even who you were yesterday. You are you, right now, and the only person you should compare yourself to is you. Period.

 

Have Fun With Your Fitness

You must acknowledge that immediate gratification plays no role in your evolution, so enjoy the pursuit of a disciplined practice in the art of fitness. Have fun! Eliminate pressure. If you do this, you will learn that fitness can offer a lot more than just aesthetics and statistics.

 

And it will be these lessons that ensure your life will be full of grace, beauty, comedy, wisdom, and enlightenment. Avoid all five of these mistakes and you can get to the good stuff much more quickly.

Why 10 x 3 Is Best for Strength and Size

One of the things that has always stuck in my head as far as training goes is to do the opposite of what most do. Breaking Muscle athlete and super-coach Charles Staley is the guy who said this. It’s a fairly simple concept. If you see people using machines, then do free weights. If you see people doing chest and biceps, then do legs.

But the biggest disconnect usually comes when we talk about volume. Everyone knows typical gym training begins with three sets of ten. There is actually some science behind that. Back in the 1960s, Dr. Thomas DeLorme found that people responded better to multiple sets than they did to a single exposure, both in terms of building muscle size and strength (which explains why high-intensity training doesn’t work long term).

While sets of ten will work to begin with, they do have some limitations, especially for the natural trainee. Sooner or later the decreasing intensity in these sets of ten will have you need to work fewer reps per set. To begin with, a set of ten may leave you out of breath and flushed, but it won’t stay that way. The best way to think about it is like going for a jog. At first it’s difficult to even get around the block, but if you keep running those relaxed runs, you will be covering more and more distance pretty quickly. And at that point the only way to get fitter is to run faster

 

It may seem like a strange analogy, but there are far more similarities than differences between strength and fitness training. Beginners usually find themselves training at around seventy percent of what they are ultimately capable of. In fact, there is even a table to work out how hard you are working based off how many reps per set you are doing called Prilepin’s Table. A single set that is the heaviest thing you can lift once and once only represents 100% of your maximum. Looking at Prilepin’s Table, you’ll see that it goes down and eventually ends up at sets of ten and a corresponding seventy percent effort.

 

One of the things people often lose sight of is how many total reps are in a session. There’s a real reason why top strength coaches record not just weight, but sets and reps in their students’ work, as it helps to calculate the total intensity for the session, and even the training cycle. When you look at successful training plans the majority have one big thing in common - they share a total number of reps between the mid twenties and low thirties.

 

Think about it:

 

• 3 x 10
• 3-4 x 8
• 5 x 5
• 4 x 6
• 6 x 4

 

But there’s one incredibly valuable scheme that is overlooked in these plans, and that is the flip side of the old three sets of ten. What happens when you do ten sets of three? Let’s look at some of the benefits of 10 x 3:

 

• In a lift like the deadlift, where the set up can often be half the battle, this gives a trainee more opportunities to learn how to set up properly.
• Fatigue per set is kept to a minimum, reducing the possibility of injury. It’s rare to hear of people hurting themselves on the first rep of a set, but far more common for people to push hard while fatigued and hurt themselves on the eight, ninth, or tenth rep.
• Instead of thirty reps done at seventy percent intensity, this is thirty reps done at around 85% intensity.

 

This style of training allows for much greater stimulus to be applied to the muscles, which will result in greater strength and hypertrophy along the way. This is a great tool to use with opposing muscle groups and big lifts. Good choices are:

 

• Front squats and Romanian deadlifts
• Front squats and power cleans
• Bench press and chins

 

It can also be used to good effect on its own, and Westside Barbell made the 10x3 workout famous when they started using it for speed work on their Dynamic Effort days. For people who have never tried it, the end result is similar to what Dan John had in mind when detailing the One Lift a Day program. Just know that ten genuinely hard sets of three in a big exercise will take some time to get through, and the rest needed to do all this properly will make what seems like a small workout push out to the hour mark.

 

I’d suggest scheduling no more than two workouts per week for the ten by three sessions and using lower intensity work on the other days. A good sample split would be:

 

• Monday: 10 x 3 front squat and power cleans
• Tuesday: 5 x 5 bench press and chins, 3-4 x 6-8 of another upper-body pair
• Wednesday: Rest or easy cardio
• Thursday: Same as Monday
• Friday: Rest or easy cardio
• Saturday: Same as Tuesday
• Sunday: Rest or easy cardio

 

Give it a try for six weeks and see how fast you grow in size and strength.

Beyond the FMS: How to Design Powerful Corrective Exercises

The Functional Movement Screen (FMS). As healthcare and/or fitness professionals and enthusiasts, we know the routine. We perform our seven movement pattern assessments. We score each movement pattern. We take note of any weaknesses, deficits, asymmetries, or limitations in flexibility. We design a rehab or fitness program consisting of what our patient or client can do safely to achieve his or her goals.

 

And, hopefully, our client’s condition improves. He or she moves more efficiently and safely or improves performance on the field or at work, and everyone happily moves on with their lives. Right? Isn’t this the way it is supposed to happen?

 

 

How Valuable Is the FMS?

But what if this cookie-cutter approach doesn’t work? What if your client completes the FMS without any significant weakness, deficits, asymmetries, or flexibility limitations, but is still limited functionally and having trouble performing at work or on the playing field? What then?

 

Do we abandon the FMS completely? Or does this potentially valuable evaluation tool still have merit in our treatment plan or fitness program?

 

I believe the FMS most certainly does have value, but based on a particular aspect of the screen. An aspect that, in my clinical experience, is frequently either never considered or not fully understood. I am talking about the aspect of neuromuscular control and sequencing.

 

When Measures Are Normal, But Movement Is Not

Let us use, for example, a female patient who comes to physical therapy with an order from her doctor for you to “evaluate and treat” generalized weakness. You decide to administer the FMS as part of your initial evaluation. Your patient performs the FMS without difficulty and scores twos throughout. 

 

RELATED: Can the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) Actually Determine Ability?

 

According to the FMS, this particular patient has no outstanding deficits that would potentially limit her functionally. But despite three weeks of a treatment plan consisting of stretching and strengthening, your patient still cannot flex forward and touch her toes in sitting or standing position. She reports that this limitation is problematic in several aspects her life, including caring for her children and completing tasks at work.

 

So, being the thorough clinician that you are, you again tediously check all the normal parameters: hamstring and gastrocnemius flexibility, hip range of motion, lumbar flexion, pelvic tilt, and sacral angle. As with your initial evaluation, all the measures prove to be relatively normal. Without any new objective findings, you and your patient continue to blindly implement a program that is clearly ineffective.

 

 

Neuromuscular Control and Proper Sequencing

But the problem may not be the musculoskeletal system exclusively. Rather, this patient may have deficits related to neuromuscular control and proper sequencing of key functional movements. Consider that maybe this patient has an overactive posterior chain. In other words, her hamstrings and gastrocnemius-soleus complex are always on and she does not possess the ability to consciously turn them off.

 

As evident by your initial evaluation, it is not a posterior chain flexibility or tissue extensibility issue. Rather, it is a neuromuscular sequencing problem or motor control dysfunction. Gray Cook, one of the creators of the FMS, uses the term SMCD (stability or motor control dysfunction) to describe such a deficit.

 

But why does this happen? How do we develop muscle groups that are excessively active and hypertonic and limit normal functioning? In his book Movement, Cook provided a possible reason. He hypothesized that it is due to “pain, previous injury, or chronic dysfunction.” Furthermore, he stated that such dysfunctional patterns need to be broken before implementing an effective program to improve stability and motor control.

 

"Incorporating effective corrective exercise into a rehabilitation program requires thorough examination of a patient’s history and current condition as well as intense effort regarding design and implementation of stability and motor control corrections."

Designing Powerful Corrective Exercises

Treatment of SMCD can be difficult and is, for the most part, outside the scope of this article. Evaluating and treating SMCD borders on application of the Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA). The SFMA is the clinical big brother to the FMS and is performed only by healthcare professionals (physical therapist, chiropractors, etc.). However, for discussion’s sake, we will consider how to approach SMCD.

 

Let’s be honest, the neuromuscular system is relatively abstract when compared to the musculoskeletal system. In our example, we can easily understand posterior kinetic chain tightness. We know the origin and insertion of the hamstrings, and we know several effective ways to stretch them, both at the proximal origin and distal attachment. Furthermore, we understand the gastrocnemius -soleus complex. And like the hamstrings, we can easily attack associated deficits in our treatment plan or fitness program.

 

 

But such superficial understanding of the musculoskeletal system is not sufficient to treat a true SMCD. As Cook stated in Movement, “[W]e cannot simply lengthen a tight muscle or move a stiff joint and think we have effectively changed a movement pattern.” Unlike the musculoskeletal system, the neuromuscular system is not always so easily understood. As a result, it is often ignored. Incorporating effective corrective exercise into a rehabilitation program requires thorough examination of a patient’s history and current condition as well as intense effort regarding design and implementation of stability and motor control corrections.

 

Two Important Factors in Designing Corrective Exercises

True corrective exercises are not challenges to the body. Rather, they are challenges to the brain. Gray Cook went as far describing corrective exercises as “experiences” instead of exercises. It is important to remember the brain has developed and memorized faulty and inefficient movement patterns that inevitably lead to dysfunction and injury. The brain and body would love nothing more than to continue to perform and refine these patterns as long as possible (as long as we allow).

 

In order for corrective exercise to be effective, the brain must perceive that it cannot perform a new challenge (or experience) without developing a new behavior. The brain realizes the previously learned, faulty movement patterns are not sufficient to support the new demand and a new behavior must be learned.

 

Corrective exercises must also remove all compensatory strategies and techniques. The brain is a master at creating and using compensation patterns throughout life, particularly when faced with injury or pain. This talent can be a wonderful thing, but it becomes problematic when compensatory techniques are developed with no regard for quality.

 

"In order for corrective exercise to be effective, the brain must perceive that it cannot perform a new challenge (or experience) without developing a new behavior"

Habits are formed for the sole purpose of immediate survival (or function). The brain never considers potential detriment, injury, or dysfunction in the future. It is not until these detriments, injuries, or dysfunctions present (possibly years in the future) that we become motivated to correct them. So, it is imperative that corrective exercises remove compensatory patterns and force the brain to adopt a new, safer solution. 

 

Conclusion

Treatment of SMCD is not always the answer. Often, your patient or client may truly only be lacking hamstring flexibility or shoulder range of motion. But if your current plan is ineffective in addressing whatever deficits exist, consideration of neuromuscular control and sequencing may prove to be invaluable.

How to Use the Front Squat to Improve Strength and Performance

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. The front squat is hands-down my favorite exercise. Whenever I say this, it tends to start a front squat versus back squat debate. Which is crazy, as it’s not an either-or situation. 

But I will say that for an athlete who wants to get all-around strong, steer clear of injury, and maximize carry over into strength sports, the front squat offers a number of advantages.

Why Do Front Squats

In my article When in Doubt, Do Front Squats: 25 Tips for Better Front Squats, I explain:

• From a coaching perspective - Front squats are easier to teach, more self-correcting, and promote better depth. 
• From an injury prevention perspective - Front squats are kinder on the shoulders, and incur less shear forces and compressive forces.
• From an athletic perspective - Front squats facilitate awesome core strength and have incredible carry over into other strength movements. This is not just strength-wise, but in terms of position and mechanics, too.

 

For Olympic weightlifters, the front squat is the best movement for learning the squat clean bottom position. Weightlifting coach Bob Takano explains why in his article Hitting Bottom: 3 Tools to Perfect Your Olympic Lifts:

The best movement for learning the squat clean bottom position is the traditional front squat. This movement performed with an optimal amount of weight will force the body into the bottom position, while simultaneously stretching the tendons and ligaments involved in achieving the position. At this point the front squat is not a strengthening exercise, but a positioning and stretching exercise.

 

For powerlifters, the front squat can be valuable as an assistance exercise to the back squat. For strongmen, the front squat ties in very well to positions within the sport, such as sitting with a Atlas stone on your lap, ready to drive the stone up and onto the platform (pictured below). For CrossFitters, it also has carryover to other movements within the sport, such as thrusters and wall balls.



So let’s take a deeper look at the movement itself, why you might want to perform it, and variations on the standard barbell front squat.

 

How to Perform the Front Squat

For those less familiar with this movement, strength and conditioning coach Traver H. Boehm provides a demonstration and basic explanation in his video on the front squat.

If you prefer a written format, read through this great basic skill review by Breaking Muscle founder, Mindith Rahmat from her article Deconstructing the Front Squat:

• Take time to find your starting position.
• Find your natural foot stance width your feet slightly wider than shoulder width apart and your toes slightly out so your toes can follow the path of your knees.
• Find your grip on the barbell slightly wider than shoulder width.
• Receive the bar from the rack on the front of the shoulders and step back onto the platform.
• Keep chest up and raise the elbows high.
• Stabilize the midline taking in a deep breath.
• Keep the feet flat on the ground pushing down through the heels.
• Squat down until the thighs are below parallel.
• Keep the chest up, back tight, and the elbows high when coming out the squat aggressively drive the elbows up to come out of the hole.

 

How to Improve the Front Squat

When people ask me how they can improve their front squat, they are disappointed when I don’t reply with something secret and Russian. Rather, I’ll ask to have a look at their front squat. The first place to look for improvement is within the movement, every time.

I’ve written two articles to specifically help you with this. For technical tips on the front squat, check out When in Doubt, Do Front Squats: 25 Tips for Better Front Squats – and I’m only half joking about the “when in doubt do front squats” bit.

"The first place to look for improvement is within the movement, every time."

Another way of creating improvement within the movement is to regress the movement down to even simpler forms. In this light, take a look at Squat Therapy: 4 Drills for a Better Squat. Squat therapy will improve your squats through the fact it is formed of four self-correcting movement drills. You are grooving good movement simply by performing the drills.



From regressions, we can move onto variations. Let's take a look at two variations of the movement, and how they compare to the clean grip barbell front squat.

Crossed Arm Grip

Strength coach Jesse Fernandez explains how this variation works in his article A Primer on Front and Back Squats: Crossed-Arm, Clean Grip, Low Bar, and High Bar:

Place the bar in front of your shoulders, resting it directly on top of your deltoids, just as you with clean grip version. You then will cross your hands over the bar, making an “X” when looked at from up above. Elbows will face forward and arms will be parallel to the ground

Why would you vary the grip? It’s a great question. There is less carryover to the clean with crossed arms. Also it’s not actually that easy to secure the weight like this. However, if you or your client has wrist issues, or other mobility or injury issues restricting him or her from performing a standard front squat rack, this is a useful way of facilitating the benefits of the front squat without rack position being the limiting factor in terms of weight.

If clean grip was the ultimate goal, then the root causes of the inability to get into a clean grip rack position must be addressed in parallel.

Left: Clean grip; Right: Crossed arm grip.

Two-Kettlebell Front Squat

This is an incredibly humbling movement. Strength and conditioning coach James Cerbie gives us an example of his client’s experiences with this movement in his article The 2-Kettlebell Front Squat: The Best Exercise You're Not Doing

“Well, that sucked.” My client un-racked the kettlebells and put them on the ground, still contemplating how in the world he got crushed by such little weight (comparatively speaking of course).

 

Here I was taking this guy who considered himself to be pretty strong (and to his credit he was - he could do a mid-300lb front squat relatively easily), and putting him on the struggle-bus with a pair of 24kg kettlebells.

James also lists some key reasons for performing this movement:

• Lower body strength – The increased instability of the kettlebells compensates for the lack of load.
• Core stability – This exercise puts your core on overdrive and forces you to maintain position.
• Grooving the pattern - The previous two points combine to make this movement an effective variation for grooving the squat pattern.
• Breathing into your back - By biasing a little flexion in the bottom of the squat, we can work on good breathing technique.

The article goes on to list how to perform the movement, possible technique flaws, modifications, and even programming – it’s well worth a read.

I hope this article has also been well worth your read. Now, read it again, pick out some points to practice, go do some front squats. Then come come back here and let me know how you got on.