I feel your pain.

Training in hot dry weather is not always fun. I apologize for this being so long. Hopefully there is some information here that [...]]]> This is in response to a aussieluke at Davedraper.com in regards to training in hot, dry climates (and it will be that soon enough here in AZ) :

I feel your pain.

Training in hot dry weather is not always fun. I apologize for this being so long. Hopefully there is some information here that can help someone or even save their life. Don’t take everything I say for granted or as gospel truth. It is merely what I have learned from others. Be sure to read more on this subject and use good judgement.

Some days are just too hot to train on.

It regularly hits 105-110°F here in Tucson, AZ in the summer. Depending on where you live here it can hit 115°F or 120. Even going out into the desert you can feel the temperature drop of climb depending on elevation and whether you’re in a lower, flat area or on a hillside or near large rocks or a wall that reflects heat back at you.

Once the monsoons hit around the beginning of July the humidity starts to climb also. Though it is nowhere near as bad as back east in the US.

In a dryer climate you loose more moisture without realizing it because the sweat evaporates so fast you don’t think you are sweating. Also every breath you take in a dryer climate wicks more moisture out of the body than a more humid climate.

Thus, even while you sleep you are using more water through regular respiration than someone in a more humid climate. This will be the same where you live if it’s hot and dry.

Also, in more humid, hot weather, once the humidity reaches around 70% or higher, the evaporation process of losing body heat is severely restricted. People die every year in the northeastern and eastern parts of the US because of this and lack of knowledge concerning it.

Little side note:

Interestingly enough, in a cold, dry environment, the process of respiration can suck as much as 2 quarts (about 2 liters) of water out of you daily. That is why we get so thirsty even in the winter here in AZ. Same in Australia?

Objects and ground surfaces can heat up to 150°F in the summer. Sometimes people have egg frying contests on the hood of vehicles here in AZ.

So, even later in the day or evening the objects around you can radiate heat back onto your body. Wind heated by such objects in the middle of the day will suck water out of your body at an insane rate. Add some work, which creates metabolic heat on top of it and you have a ticket to dehydration, hyperthermia and death.

Once you become dehydrated the blood thickens, the heart works harder to pump the blood and thus hinders the body’s ability to lose excess heat. A vicious cycle has started.

Current studies suggest 75% of people are in a state of mild dehydration. Start your day like that and you are already in the hole as you start training. In high heat conditions, coupled with strenuous physical activity, it is possible to lose a gallon of fluid in an hour or so.

Next time you train in hot weather, weigh yourself before you begin training. Write it down. Weigh yourself after you are done training. You may lose 2-6 pounds of body-weight. That is all water lose. A gallon of water weighs close to 8 pounds. So a 2 pound drop (which is very typical) would mean you lost a full quart or almost a liter of fluid. Not good.

Same between your evening body-weight and your morning body-weight. If you check it you will find you probably weigh several pounds less in the morning. It is largely due to water lose. If you weigh yourself evening and morning, weigh yourself in the morning after you have done the morning duty (that fluid wasn’t being used for hydration anyway, otherwise you wouldn’t be peeing it out) and before you drink your first glass of the day.

This can let you know how much water you are losing during a night of sleep. You may need to drink water during the night whenever you wake up.

At just a 2% loss of hydration your overall judgement is compromised by 25%. You will not perform as well and could make critical mistakes. All of this information is available with a little research.

So, imagine some person out running or training somewhere away from others and they get dehydrated just by 2%. Should they stop training? What sort of judgement call do you think they would make? “I feel fine, I’m gonna push harder!” Then they drop with no one around to help them. Hopefully those around us know the symptoms of dehydration. If not, educate them. Any trainer should be fully aware of such things.

Train smart. Be aware of the effects of dehydration on yourself and others. Be prepared.

There is no way to adapt or acclimatize to dehydration. The military learned this the hard way. You can, however, become more acclimated to hot weather (same as you can to cold weather) by intelligent training, manipulating you internal and external environments and hydration.

Be aware:

Thirst is not a good indicator of when to drink water. It has been noted in several studies that if a person feels real thirsty they are already a quart and a half low on water in their body.

This is not meant to scare people, it is meant to educate. Knowledge is power only when applied.

How I cope with training in hot weather:

In a hot, dry climate you will be slightly dehydrated upon awakening in the morning. Don’t start your day that way. So:

First thing upon arising, even before you eat food, drink a couple of large glasses of water. You’ll want to slam down about a quart or liter of water.

From:

Cody Lundin’s book: “98.6° The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive!”

{I cannot recommend this book enough for those who hike, bike, run, play, train, hunt or work or travel in the great outdoors. Best book I’ve ever read on the subject. His other book on preparing for an urban disaster (think hurricane Katrina or earthquake) is great too.}

There are four factors to faster hydration:

I’ll summarize this:

1.) Adequate volume. Drinking a quart or so pushes the water past the stomach (the stomach does not absorb water) through the pyloric sphincter and into the small intestine (which does absorb water).

2.) Drinking cool water in a hot environment helps the body absorb the water faster and also has a cooling effect on the body. However, drinking very cold water too fast can cause stomach cramps or barfing, so be careful.

3.) Electrolyte replacement can help you absorb water, but too much is not good. A sports drink may help but too much sugar delays absorption.

4.) Carbonation can help force the water into the small intestine faster. A sparkling water drink  works good (non-alcoholic, of course). Look for something with no added sugar. Even an Alka-Seltzer tablet (non-aspirin type) can be used in a pinch.

End of summary.

Be aware that chugging too much water can cause hyponatremia, a condition where the fluid volume has created a low sodium volume in the blood. This is usually more the problem with ultra-endurance runners.

But if you don’t use table salt, avoid salty foods, never drink sports drinks or use electrolyte enhancers and train in extreme heat or work in such, it is a possibility. It can kill you as dead as dehydration and symptoms are similar to dehydration. So, eating salty foods can help or using an electrolyte replacement drink with some sodium and potassium in it can help, but be sure to stay hydrated with that extra salt intake.

So, with this in mind:

Train earlier in the morning.

Train in the shade. Be aware of the angle of the sun: a wall can reflect heat back onto you even if you are in the shade. Maybe set up a tarp in a open area away from walls and such if you don’t have shady trees to train under.

Avoid direct UV radiation from the sun while training. Wear loose cotton clothing. It absorbs sweat and evaporates at a slower rate so your sweat doesn’t evaporate too fast. Drops of sweat that hit the ground as they roll of you are not cooling the body. Remember, in dry, high heat conditions the sweat evaporates so fast it doesn’t have as much of a cooling effect.

If I train later in the evening, best to wait for the sun to go down, but that means training after 9 at night. May be too late for some. Of course, earlier in the day is the coolest part of the day.

Stay hydrated! Use water and a sports drink or electrolyte replacement drink. About 15 minutes before you begin training drink a quart or so of water. Weigh yourself (you need an accurate scale for this) Write it down.

Weigh yourself when done training. That poundage is how much water you lost. Be sure to have on the same clothes you were wearing when you first weighed yourself. If you lost several pounds or a kilogram or more of body-weight, be careful not to try to chug that much weight in water all at once. Drink a large glass of water and then over the next hour or so continue to hydrate. You may need electrolytes at this point, especially if you did not drink any while training.

A bottle of water that you can spray yourself with can help cool you down. It helps replace the sweat that is evaporating too fast in a hot, dry climate. Spray it on your neck, head and face, on the arms and other hot areas of the body.

Having a fan blowing can help if the air movement is still. However, this will evaporate sweat even faster, so having a spray bottle handy can help wet the body and the fan can help cool you down a little faster as the water evaporates. If you try this, be sure to keep yourself fairly moist with the spray bottle.

If you experience cramps at night (or during the day)in the legs, calves, forearms, stomach, etc. you are probably not hydrated enough and are probably low on electrolytes too. I have found staying well hydrated and taking a a cal-mag-zinc tablet along with a potassium tablet with a large glass of water shortly before going to bed can help a great deal.

If you stay inside where it is cooler and drink some cool or cold water before you train, you have a jump start on keeping the body cooler at the beginning of your training.

If you feel any signs of dehydration while training:

STOP TRAINING!

Cool down and hydrate. Build up to training in hot weather gradually.

Hot weather is a good time to do endurance type training earlier in the morning. Endurance type training is usually done for a longer period of time and raises the metabolic output and thus, body heat fast and for far longer than quick bouts of strength training.

It might be good to knock back the amount of endurance type training you do in the summer. Just strive to maintain and not improve on it. Perhaps training endurance at a lower rate of overall exertion would be good.

Hot dry weather is the perfect time to do strength training and to practice block training. Pavel Tsatsouline mentions block training in his book “Return of The Kettlebell” (excellent book!). It is a form of alternating conditioning vs strength in two week blocks.

However, we can do block training throughout the day. Break your training down into one lift or time segment of 10 minutes. In warm weather use warm-up sets for just that: to warm up. Your body is already warm from the heat of higher temperatures so why spend a lot of time warming up. Use the lift you are going to train as the warm-up, thus, conditioning the groove or pattern of movement with the lift.

So, 10 minutes in the morning doing a strength move, 10 minutes late afternoon and maybe 10 minutes in the evening gives you three 10 minute blocks to play with. This forces a person to really focus on one lift or movement and get it done. And it doesn’t raise the body’s temperature up as much since the work done is in a short time period. You recover quicker. You could experiment with various time blocks of 10-20 minutes to see what works best for you.

So, maybe a press in the morning, a pull in the late afternoon and a loaded carry in the evening.

You get the picture, break your hour long session up into shorter training sessions spread throughout the day. Training becomes more fun because you are not dreading training for an hour or so in the heat.

You can also take longer breaks between sets if you must train once a day. This longer break gives the body more time to cool down slightly before the next set.

You can use a nasal wetting spray to help hydrate the nasal passages in the dry summer. Or try hanging a wet bandana over the nose and mouth. AS you breath in air through the wet bandana it hydrates the dry air so  you lose less moisture from breathing dry air. Try breathing out the nose also while training, it helps reduce moisture lose.

Don’t push as hard. Pay close attention to how you feel. Drink water and stay hydrated DURING the training session. A gulp or two is far better than little sips.

You might try training for 10 minutes, taking a break as you chug a large glass of water, stand before your fan to cool down some for 10 minutes and then train for another block of 10-15 minutes. Repeat several times. This has the benefit of streamlining how much you do and forcing a person to focus on the bigger bang-for-your-buck exercises. So in a hour long session you might only be training for 30 minutes or so, but you might find you lift more productively.

Also, a nice cool shower after the workout can help a great deal to lower the body temperature. Although, if it is anything like Tucson, AZ, the water does not get cool at all in the summer!

So, just a few, well maybe a lot, of thoughts for those training in hot dry climates.

Be safe and train hard!

There are many variations of squatting movements: hip-belt squats, back squats done powerlifting style or Olympic lifting style, front squats, overhead squats, hack squats, Zercher squats, dumbbell and kettlebell squats with one or two DB’s/KB’s, all kinds of odd [...]]]> Let’s take a look at squats. Everybody should be doing them for a variety of reasons.

There are many variations of squatting movements: hip-belt squats, back squats done powerlifting style or Olympic lifting style, front squats, overhead squats, hack squats, Zercher squats, dumbbell and kettlebell squats with one or two DB’s/KB’s, all kinds of odd object squats, goblet squats, bodyweight squats, pistols (one leg squat) and so on.

What you decide to use or implement in your training should be dictated by your goals.

For instance, if you are competing in Olympic lifting, you may do back squats but focus more on front squats to help you recover from a heavy clean. You would probably also include overhead squats to work on recovering from a snatch.

A powerlifter may use a few other forms of squats but would focus on back squats with a wider stance and the bar held low on the upper back.

Someone more interested in body-weight training would probably focus on Hindu squats, body-weight squats done conventionally and on pistols.
Someone with a previous injury that aggravates them from time to time might opt for hip-belt squats and goblet squats.

First off, we have to decide what results we are looking for from our squatting. Is it to become as big as we can? Then higher rep back squats are probably the order for the day.

Are we looking to compete in powerlifting? Then train the competitive lift more frequently than other forms of squatting.

Are we just looking for a strong pair of legs that we can cut and run with over varied terrain? Well then, we might look at incorporating more squatting variety into our routine.

So, first, determine what you need from squatting, what are our goals? What is the priority we need from our training? What kind of results do we need from squatting? Bigger body, bigger total weight lifted, assistance work to complement another lift, a different stressor to the leg musculature and joints to bulletproof them from injury?

Then once we know that, we can explore what we want to incorporate into our training.

Now, just because we might compete in Olympic lifting, for example, does not mean we don’t back squat or we won’t work on goblet squats. But those exercises would not be the main focus of our training. They would probably be cycled in and out depending on how close we were to a competition, how long we had been lifting (as in years of experience) perhaps as part of a pre-hab or rehab routine, etc.

Now lets say we don’t compete in any form of lifting but do like to focus on a particular type of training. We might gravitate to powerlifting or Olympic lifting, for example, but never try out a competition. Maybe we  just like lifting that way.

Hey, nothing wrong with that. Some people enjoy following the routines for strongman training or Highlands Games type training and others like just focusing on powerlifting, even if they never compete. Whatever floats your boat. The important thing is you are trying to improve yourself through training.

So, for those of us who don’t compete in any particular competition, (even if we gravitate to training as if we were going to compete), we can usually benefit by branching out a little more in the types of squats we do, since we are not looking at setting any records in a particular competition.

Now, personally, I don’t back squat with a barbell that often anymore. I used to years ago. But for me I found back squats hard on my back. But that is me, you may be different. You have only one body and it is built a certain way. You can’t change the length of your arms, torso or legs. So a particular body-type will be more comfortable squatting a certain way.

Me, I hate power-lifting style squats, you know:  real wide foot placement and the bar half-way down the back with a huge forward lean. I much prefer an Olmpic style squat: bar high on the back sitting on the traps, a deep butt to the ground squat and a more vertical spine. It just feels way better to me.

I have followed the Super Squats routine by Randall J. Strossen and worked up to a 315 lb. squat for 20 reps. I took every rep deep! I set up in a power rack and set the pins purposely low and would take every rep down until I pinged the bar on the pin. I’d pause and then shoot back up. It was killer for me as I have long legs. But it put a couple of inches on my legs and packed some meat on my bones in just a few months.

I have also worked on heavier squats, going for 425-450 lbs. doing 5 reps and taking each rep deep. Again, this may not be heavy by some people’s standards, but for me it was pretty dang good. I also dabbled with quarter squats, (though I took them a little deeper, probably more like a third of a squat), and used around 600 lbs,  for 10-15 reps.

I was in my late twenty’s and early thirty’s when I did this, so it wasn’t exactly like I was a spring chicken just out of high school or college. Some of it was also after a pretty bad back injury.

At the time I was also riding a mountain bike back and forth to work 2-3 times a week (9 miles one way) hiking nearly every other day, doing sprints on hills or bleachers, and doing heavy carries with a timber beam up and down hill twice a week  (long before loaded carries hit everyone’s must-do list).

No doubt, I probably would have fared better lifting heavier weights had I not been doing all the other stuff. But I always liked being able to do many things more than above average than  just one or two things way above average.

I think back squats are a great exercise to build a good solid foundation of strength that you can tap into for years to come. You must decide how to fit them into your training. You must decide whether you need to do barbell back squats or not.

Now, back to that “you can’t change how you are built” thing. This really does affect the results you get from training various exercises. Years ago, when I was a teenager, one of my best friends and I would train with weights. We had read Arnold Schwarzenegger’s book  “Arnold: The Education of a Bodybuilder” and were training on information from that book. My friend was short and I was much taller. We would lift the same weights on some exercises, but he got bigger way faster than me. Also, I noticed in some lifts he excelled and I couldn’t lift as heavy or do as many reps and sets, but on other lifts I could lift more.

See where this is going?

Depending on how you are built (and don’t forget to take into account other factors like age, injuries, other training obligations, diet, etc.) back squats may be just the ticket for you to hit your stride, or they may be the ticket that blows your back out.

Generally, and this should be taken with a grain of salt, but generally it is true that shorter people and shorter broad shouldered people will find back squats for low reps to be a great results producing lift. Whereas taller people with long arms and legs will find low rep heavy squats to be a back killer. For taller individuals, higher reps at a lighter weight will probably be easier on the back and give better results if you are trying to build more muscularity and bulk.

I think Dan John’s book “Mass Made Simple” has excellent advice for the majority of people who train lifting weights and want to use the back squat and are interested in bulking up, that means putting on some good muscular body-weight. In that book he mentions weights to be lifted based on the persons current body-weight that I agree are very realistic numbers for the majority of people.

If you are going to try high rep back squats (reps in the range of 20-50) you would be far better off in not going too heavy. I know that doing over 300 pounds in good form is not easy.

When you are back squatting a weight around 50 pounds or more than your body-weight, maintaining proper form as the reps keep climbing is not easy. It takes great form locked in from more than just a few months of focused squatting. It takes laser-beam focus on your technique and an ability to block out all distractions. One slip up with a heavy load for high reps on your back and you will be a hurtin’ unit!

Too many will blow the back out at that weight. I agree with Dan when he says 225 lbs. is a good top end weight for that many reps for a man who weighs over 200 pounds.

Basically, you would work up to squatting your body-weight for reps in the 30-50 rep range. The details are in the book, which I highly recommend for those interested in following a great program all laid out for you.

I have had an alternative pick Olympic lifter train me on squats so I know my squat is good, yet I always seek to lock it in and improve on it no matter what implement  I am squatting with and with what style.

Currently, I do not back squat a lot. I am working more on front squats, overhead squats and goblet squats. Also, some pistol training. This is not to say back squats are bad. They can be a great method to train with. I’ve put my time in with back squats and I do touch back with them from time to time.

So, do you need to back squat with a barbell?

Probably.

It depends:

On you and your goals.

Ask yourself:

What are the end results you are looking for from training a particular lift or loaded movement?

Will that lift, weight, set/rep scheme get you that result?

Will another movement work better?

Would one exercise or a combination of similar movements get you better results?

What is safer for your body in the condition it is in?

I think working up to a barbell loaded to your body-weight squat for high reps is realistic for those who have been training for awhile. If you haven’t, then learn how to lift properly and get some time and experience under your belt.

Remember, fatigue makes form break down, unless you focus and have built up the required enduring-strength over time to keep that technique locked in even under duress of high rep squats with a barbell on your back.

Let’s face it, doing a back squat with your body-weight loaded on a barbell for reps in the 30-50 rep range is not easy. Building up to that standard will build a strong, tough body and a tough mental outlook. It builds fortitude. I doubt that most trainees in a gym can even do this even though they may have been training for years.

But, this goal may not be for you depending on age, injuries, etc.

Does this mean you shouldn’t squat?

Well, maybe not back squats with a barbell, but as already noted, there are plenty of alternative choices when it comes to squatting.

We’ll touch on squats more in another article, and on goblet squats in particular.

Until then,

show that you do know squat about squatting by doing them.

I really like this definition of agility, taken from Wikipedia at this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agility

It’s funny, though, when you think about it. [...]]]> “Agility or nimbleness is the ability to change the body’s position efficiently, and requires the integration of isolated movement skills using a combination of balance, coordination, speed, reflexes, strength, endurance and stamina.”

I really like this definition of agility, taken from Wikipedia at this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agility

It’s funny, though, when you think about it. All of the above qualities, taken in isolation, still require several of the other qualities to perform. For example, you can’t display the quality of balance without using strength, coordination and reflexes.

So, what’s the point?

None of the above qualities can exist without the other. As Dan John says, the body is one piece. Don’t focus on any one attribute, thinking it is the missing piece of the puzzle to greater agility. That is why merely focusing on things like stepping drills (such as running tires or ladders) will not give you the boost in agility you seek. I touch on much more than just agility in this article. Perhaps some one point may help you in your training.

So, how can you become more adept at changing your body’s positioning more efficiently and I might add, more effectively?

I think of moving efficiently as moving smoothly whether walking or running or swimming, etc.

Moving effectively means you actually achieve the goal the movement is meant to accomplish. I can move efficiently like a ballerina, but if it doesn’t help me throw a hammer further, it was wasted movement, no matter how efficient and smooth. It may have looked pretty but it probably lacked power.

I want to effect a result on the hammer, in other words, throw it farther than before. To do this, my movement must be efficient but also cause an effect on the hammer, it must be effective movement.

So, how might we train for better agility?

How might we train for efficiency and effectiveness of movement?

As a dancer, a ballerina moves a certain way to effect a certain result.

So, what is the result you want from your movement?

Block a kicked soccer ball? Catch a line drive on first base?

Block a punch? Blast through an opponent while running the ball? Catch a Frisbee and land to twist and sprint away from an opponent?

When we move we don’t think about each individual step of the movement. Sure, we might break things down to learn how to do an Olympic Clean and Jerk:

We might train front squats, hang cleans, high pulls, jerks off a rack, etc, to isolate a particular part of the complete movement to strengthen a weak area. But the actual practice of the full movement is what wires the body to perform it in competition.

So, trying to isolate the key components of agility by focusing on one part is usually not good, unless there is a glaring weakness there. Better to focus on performing a full movement.

So if we need to catch a Frisbee while another guy tries to jump and grab it from us, how about getting a few guys and practicing that?

Try something like this:

One guy throws the Frisbee to his teammate. The other guy tries to intercept it. Have another man or two ready to try to block you once you land and run with the Frisbee.

This will train you to run, jump, catch the Frisbee under pressure, land and spin or twist away and dodge or slip an opponent or two immediately after. Repeat this several times. Change roles with each other.

Don’t play an entire game, but take some time to actually practice a snapshot of some part of game play. This little scenario happens all the time in sports. A certain chain of events repeats itself throughout a game. Many games are won or lost on these little spots of play during a game. So, take that little part of the game out and practice it until you can effectively complete the mission. In this case, out run, jump and catch the Frisbee and then sprint away from a few opponents.

This is actually what pro teams do. A volleyball team may practice a set-up and spike of the ball many times in practice. This makes actual game time more productive and effective. Do you think they merely get together and practice playing an entire game every time they train?

So, think about your sport. Where is the opportunity for the other team to best  capitalize on your mistake? Practice getting smoother at that part of the game. What is the crunch point of your sport? Prepare that. Practice that.

You might play a entire game and then when you are tired, practice this particular point of the game. This teaches you to perform under duress.

If you don’t have time to play an entire game, engage in some form of training (squat thrusts, burpees, kettlebell swings, etc) until you are winded and then immediately try practicing the agility standard you are trying to meet for that particular point of play.

Smart wrestlers do this: One guy stays on the mat. Others step on the mat and wrestle with him for two minutes. They get off the mat and another guy steps up to wrestle the first man. Every two minutes a fresh man steps up to wrestle the first guy who is getting more and more tired because he has no rest. He is forced to move more efficiently but also effectively if he wants to continue. This idea can be used for many sports to train greater stamina and create the ability to perform better under the duress of competition.

It also means you will have to express greater agility than your opponent while tired. You will learn to rely on your body knowing what to do rather than trying to think through it.

But this idea needs to be used occasionally, not all the time. It is a way to test how other parts of you training are coming together.

Remember, too much of a good thing is not good!

Too much O2 and not enough nitrogen would kill you. Too much water drowns you, too much training under duress will burn you out or worse.

So, for agility, train what you need for your sport. Get better at training the crunch points of your sport, but don’t forget to drill the basics too.

For those who really don’t compete in a sport, here are some ways to train agility so you will be able to do many things easily without thinking, choking or freezing up:

Lateral lunges under a stretched out rope. Lower the rope as you become more adept at ducking under it to lunge laterally side to side.

Walk down the length of rope tied between two points as you also duck and stand to each side of it.

Try running in sand, on rocks, up trails, through trees, bushes. This is more random than running cones. Running cones you move feet around object but not the body. Good for dodging rocks but not people. Need to get feet and body around trees, poles, bushes, tables, and other people trying to tackle you. This trains quick feet, getting traction in multiple surface conditions, lifting feet and legs over rocks, branches, logs, etc. Track and roadside running does not do this as much. It will be a more intense run.

Also, running through bushes, trees, etc, forces you to get your body around objects. Cone running drills do not do that, as the body is usually leaning over the cone as the feet go around it.

Get a group of guys and run through each other. Try to hinder the man running through. You might have shirts made up with several hang tags (use Velcro) on the sides, front and back. Run through the group and try to avoid getting a tag ripped off.

Try running a set line while others try to push you off course. This trains you to resist falling or stumbling too much when bumped just before you make a shot at a hoop, throw a ball or jump to catch something.   Not every bump is a foul.

Have a bunch of guys’ (5-10) line up in front of a soccer goal or a wall. Have one man face them. Each man has a ball held at chest level. He will pitch the ball forward with two hands and the lone man will try to catch or block the ball. Pitching from the chest relays less info to the blocker than throwing one handed. You don’t need a wind up to throw with two hands from the chest, it’s just a quick forward thrust, with or without a step forward. Thus the blocker can’t “read” who is going to throw the ball next. He will be forced to react faster than if you throw the balls with one hand. This will train agility as he has to move from side to side to stop the balls from hitting the wall or entering the goal. It will train reaction time, speed, etc. You can vary how close the men stand away from you. Closer will, of course, reduce the time the blocker has to react.

Run through swinging sand bags.

Run a gauntlet. Set up an area you have to run through while people throw water balloons, snowballs or some other object that won’t hurt too bad, and run through the gauntlet without getting hit.

Build up your ankles, knees and hips. Get flexible. Stretch. Work on Turkish Get-Ups, windmills, pistols, one leg dead-lifts, tumbling drills. Get stronger: dead lift, over-head press, pull-ups, pushups, carry things, etc.

Play what we used to call Russian Bulldog. Set up two lines running parallel to each other, about 50’ apart or so. Get a bunch of guys. Select one hit man and put him in-between the lines.  He is the Bulldog. The turf between the lines is his. Outside the lines it is safe. Everyone, except the Bulldog, is standing behind one of the lines all on one side. He yells:

“Russian Bulldog!”

It’s Go Time!

Everyone rushes for the safety of the other line. As they try to run to safety, the Bulldog or hit man attempts to tackle one of them. He must be down. You can determine what you consider to be down or tackled. Sometimes we would go so far as to say if you can crawl on hands and knees with ten guys on your back and cross the line you were safe, but that gets pretty rough, ha ha! So, you might say if you are on one knee or no longer vertical and running, you are down; its up to you, you can make it as hard or as easy as you want too.

The man who got tackled stays with the Bulldog. He is now a recruit. Everyone who got to the other line is safe. Once everyone else crosses the line the Bulldog yells:

“Russian Bulldog!”

Everyone now runs back to the safety of the other line.

But:

Now there are two guys who can tackle! They can team up on one guy or they can each try to make their own tackle.

Repeat until one guy remains to cross the line. In the final round he has to run through/by everyone to make it to safety. If he does, he is the man! You buy him a beer.

If you play another round, the first guy who got tackled is the new Bulldog of the next game. Be prepared to get roughed up! This game will teach you to take hits, dish them out, break tackles, sprint, dodge, juke, slip, spin, it’s got it all. It will develop agility or you will get hammered a lot. I think this should be a professional sport, ha ha!

You can play a form of follow the leader:

Set up an obstacle course or pick a path through a bunch of trees or, in an urban setting through a bunch of rooms in an empty building or through a park, etc. Run through it and the person behind you tries’ to tag you or pull a tag off your back.

Practice tumbling drills and coming up to either run or jump. So, try doing a somersault or shoulder roll and as you roll back to your feet jump up and run or jump up and catch a thrown ball or Frisbee, etc. Somersault and roll back to your feet and block a thrown ball.

Do shoulder rolls off both left and right shoulders. You will find you have a particular side you favor to roll off of. Practice both sides until you can roll off either shoulder easily and comfortably. You can even roll backwards and as you come up to your feet sprint to your front, right or left or even spin around and run to the back.

Go into your somersault or rolls from a low position, gradually work up to doing a roll from standing and then walking and finally from a run. If you play a sport, depending on the sport, you will at one time or another find yourself tripping for one reason or another and if you can roll with it and come up running you can still effect a play.

Anyway, this is just a few things out of the box, so-to-speak, that you might use to develop agility. I’m not saying you must do these things. That is for you or your coach to decide. Whatever you do, think about it.

Use your head. However you decide to train, you must assume the risks inherent in that form of training. Let’s face it, no form of training is ever always safe.

Don’t blindly follow everything a trainer might tell you to do. That includes me. I don’t know everything and am constantly learning. How I train works for me. It is constantly evolving in some ways. It may work very well for others. If the risks seem to high for you right now, a better course should be followed. You’ve only got one body.

Does the risk out-weight the returns of the training? In other words, if you play ping-pong professionally do your really need to train to be tackled?

Well, maybe you do if you live in a rough neighborhood or work security as a side job.

So be ready to accept the risks of the training.

Agility should include training for when things don’t go as planned. Plan and train for the the usual and the unusual. Thus, when the unexpected happens, you react as if it is a normal expected event. When the unexpected happens, it does not surprise you, you take it all in stride. You are way less apt to freeze or choke.

Falls happen, your feet lose traction and slip at inopportune times. Someone happens to be in the way when you didn’t expect it or they react in an unusual way. By putting yourself in various forms of movement in varying circumstances, environments and terrain, you will be forced to adapt to changing conditions that do not always give you a favorable advantage.

When under stress we revert to our training. Or to our lack of training.

Prepare for the unexpected and it will not surprise you when it happens. Greater agility helps us react in a more favorable way and enhances the possibility of a better outcome.

Agility requires strength, speed, explosiveness, flexibility, mental acuity, spatial awareness, strong core, hips, shoulders, back, knees, ankles feet, situational awareness, ability to read and preemptively move, etc.

The best bet to develop agility is to get out there and MOVE!

Run, jump, zig and zag, chase and be chased, bump and run, get bumped and run, catch on the run, get mobile!

Strength training, gym training, etc, is great. Training flexibility and balance is awesome. Training reaction time is cool. Everything helps, but to put it all together you have got to move your body under varying circumstances and through various environments.

That is part of the reason I train many different things. I train certain things all the time, but other things I change up frequently.

Re-read that. There is a great secret here. I train certain attributes pretty much the same way. But other attributes I train with much more variety.

Create the expected in your training but also add in  a little chaos or unexpected training. Agility training can be a great place to do this.

Agility is really many things, and any form of training may be used to improve this attribute. Really, swinging a 56# hammer around to throw  takes agility. Running a football takes agility. Don’t sweat it too much. Practice your sports’ skills and particular hot-spots of your sport. If you compete you must drill your sports particular unique skills.

If you don’t compete, you can have more variety in your training and become more rounded in what you can do. A man taking a car to the drags every Sunday is going to build his car differently than a man who rides a motorcycle in heavy traffic.

The first is only concerned with straight line speed and launching correctly. He has to get the power to the pavement to accelerate the car. He has to read the tree and react correctly to the lights and the input he feels as he launches his car. He is competing under set rules and fairly  controlled conditions. A few things can go wrong. Medics are probably on standby right at the event.

The motorcyclists has to worry about many more things from many more sources of input and be prepared to deal with them or avoid them all-together before they happen. There are rules of the road but few follow them. He can’t count on others following laws they are probably not even aware of or choose to ignore. There is no medic waiting right there for him. Many things can go wrong.

The two men would train differently, but spending a little time in the others world could benefit them too. Small amounts of cross training done safely can help an off-season athlete. But that is for a coach to plan, incorporate  and monitor if he so chooses.

So, if competing in a sport, focus on your sport and it’s required agility parameters.  A tennis player doesn’t have to worry about training to take a tackle and hang on to a ball. But learning how to fall from a slight run could help the tennis player avoid a broken wrist.

Sometimes we need to really focus on our agility and other times don’t worry about it, just let it happen. Planned insertion of variety can help with agility, mobility, the whole spectrum of end training results.

So, where does you agility need to take you? To the winning circle and a trophy?

Or daily survival in traffic, on a hike, on a rescue team?

Agility for me is more than just an ability to play a sport. It should encompass how you move throughout your life. Lack of agility can even cost you your life.

For the average person, too much emphasis is placed on training for sports. As has been said by others, “Health ends where competition begins”. You will give up certain things to be competitive.  If you don’t earn money from whatever sport you are competing in, if you don’t support your family playing a sport, if it isn’t how you make a living, you are one of three things:

1.) An up and coming athlete who may soon make his living as a professional athlete. In that case focus on your sport but have a backup plan. Follow your coach and other athletes who have made it.

2.) An average everyday guy or gal who focuses on a sport and has no hope of ever making it to the big league of a paid professional athlete (no matter how serious you are and no matter how high you rank in your amateur sport).

Now this is Ok and I am not saying this to  tick people off, but you would no doubt benefit from more variety in training  and though you should train for your sport it should not be the only  focus of your training.

Become more rounded in your abilities and you will no doubt actually do better in your sport. At first, as you learn a sport, you will need to focus on learning it, but as the skills become more readily available to you, broaden out in your training. It doesn’t take as much time to keep or improve on your sports skill as it does to learn it in the first place.

3.) Someone like me who doesn’t compete in any sport but desires to do many things well and wants to be well prepared for anything.

This reminds me of a friend years ago who would do no strength training whatever because he felt it would throw off his shots in basketball. He worked a full time job, played pick-up games when he could and had no hopes of ever making it to the NBA. He would have benefited greatly from some variety in his training. All he did was practice dribbling and making shots.

A year after we met, a group of us  traveled to another town to meet some friends  of his. While there, the guys decided to go play some basketball.

Now, I’ve never been great at dribbling a ball. I grew up in the country with a rough dirt driveway and no basketball courts around. But I could shoot pretty good as we did have a hoop set up. So, here I am, now living in a city and still never really playing basketball or practicing dribbling. So we started playing one-on-one and winner stayed on court while loser walked and the next man came up to play. I don’t even recall what they called the game. First man to 5 points won. At the change of the ball you had to take it past half court.

We went through the rotation (6 men) and the winner changed every few guys. I was up 5 or 6  times but usually ended up losing by a point or two cause I couldn’t dribble that well. But my speed and strength kept them from winning by too many points and I could get their rebounds usually if they missed a shot.

But a funny thing happened. Everyone started getting more tired. It was a very hot day, typical for AZ.  But I had more strength I could still use. As they tired they did not have the strength to keep using what skill they had. My speed and agility seemed to stay the same even as I got tired. But they were getting slower, stumbling at times and making more mistakes and missing shots, some of the shots falling short and bouncing off the rim. And I would get those rebounds.

They played games but not too often did they play one-on-one which is very intense, almost like sprinting intervals.  So when they came up to bump me or block me I could move them and get in a shot or create some space (and thus time) and dribble away enough to shoot. I could jump higher and block their shots. I could jump and shoot over them. Sweat was pouring off me. It was 100 degrees outside. I’d sneak a quick drink as the men changed to face me on the court. I kept my bottle by the upright.

I went through two guys, then three. Four.  Some of the guys began cheering me on. “Dorey! Dorey! Dorey!” I was on that court and faced down 10 guys in a row until finally one of them beat me. I played against my friend who was worried strength training would ruin his shot, and beat him several times.

No one else stayed continuously on the court for that long. Most of the guys knew I was more of a football player than a thump hoop kind of guy. I was heavier than most of them by about 50 pounds. I could move way faster than they thought I could, but not being able to dribble at that speed did me no good until they got too tired to move fast enough to block my slower attempts at dribbling.

Most of them  practiced B-ball but I was the only one who trained all types of stuff. Olympic lifting, power-lifting, heavy bag, speed bag, hiking, sprints, odd-object lifting, weighted throws, body-weight, etc.

No doubt, some variety in their training and they would have did even better than me as I had no real skills in basketball. Their sports skill would have remained high even as we all tired because they would have had the ability to still express strength.  You see, strength lies at the bottom of speed, explosiveness, agility, etc. It is a part of the foundation off which everything else is built.

I was use to doing strength moves while winded. I was used to running up a rough trail while carrying a pack and dodging rocks and tree roots, remaining agile.  I would move over 20 tons of metal everyday by hand and then train for about an hour nearly every day, maybe Olympic lifting and then riding a Mountain bike home 9 miles and taking a swim or power-lifting and then pounding on a heavy bag and finally a speed bag. Some days I would move the metal all day, then work overtime digging a trench with a pick-axe and shovel for another few hours and then go lift after that.

The various attributes I had trained came together under the stress of continuously playing 10 rounds on the court against ever changing opponents.  This is just one story of where variety has helped me.

To reiterate:

Everything builds on everything else. It can be as complicated or as simple as you want.  A few strength moves coupled with a few days of variety coupled with some sports skills training is pretty easy to do.

Or a few days of strength training and a few days of variety training (if you don’t play a particular sport) and you are good to go.

What is your goal for training agility?  Is there a specific focus? How much agility do you need?

Train for that.

Become a man of action.

As someone once said (Jeff Martone? Steve Maxwell?), quick feet are happy feet.

In this case they were talking about using kettlebells. Because if you drop one and it lands on your foot, you will be a hurting unit.

So, in this case, situational awareness (I just dropped a KB) knowledge of what is [...]]]>  

As someone once said (Jeff Martone? Steve Maxwell?), quick feet are happy feet.

In this case they were talking about using kettlebells. Because if you drop one and it lands on your foot, you will be a hurting unit.

So, in this case, situational awareness (I just dropped a KB) knowledge of what is going to happen if I don’t move my feet (It’s going to impact my foot and hurt!) and immediate action (I jump my feet out of the way) leads to happy feet.

Quick foot and body movements lead to happy outcomes while playing sports or when engaging in other activities where a fast movement gets us out of harms way or saves someone else some pain.

As mentioned in an earlier article, many things come into play when a person moves with agility. Picture a big cat, like a lion, running down its prey. To survive, the prey animal had better be fast and agile. To eat, the lion had better be faster and more agile than its prey.

If you have ever seen such a large animal run down prey you realize the lion is strong, powerful, extremely fast and agile. It explodes into motion. It twists, the rear digging in for traction to power the body forward at nearly any angle as the front of the lions body digs in and reaches forward to grab its’ prey at even a different angle. Repeatedly the lion reacts to its prey darting about in front of him. If he is faster and more agile he reacts to his preys movement and their paths cross in an explosion of force or the lion jukes to the left, sort of anticipating the animals move an instant before it darts to the left and the lion is there to meet it.

So, herein lies part of the equation to getting faster and more agile:

Running hard and moving with agility while doing so requires an ability of the body to absorb and redirect huge loading forces. The feet land at less than optimum conditions, landing with forces many times your bodyweight. The torso twists, the arms pump or reach and grab or block, the body may duck low or dive, twist or jump and many things are happening that requires a strong but flexible body.

blasting through the brush

Now, think about that lion again. Watch how fluid and smooth that lion is moving. It doesn’t move in a herky-jerky way. It flows.

So, in order to move with agility we need to move smoothly, fluidly.

Most of us at one time or another can recall an instance where we moved explosively and did something without seemingly any effort. It just happened in the blink of an eye and we felt in the zone, as people say, and we accomplished something that made others say: “WOW! How did he do that?!”

If asked about it we generally say we didn’t think about it, we just did it. And we usually realize it felt effortless. Smooth, like it was meant to be.

The smoother we can do something, the faster we will be able to do it. So practicing a movement until we can do it with fluidity, smoothly without seeming effort, then we can begin to execute that movement faster than ever before.

That is why we can move so fast when we don’t think about doing something. Our brain doesn’t get in the way. We don’t have time to over-think the situation and what and how we should act or react. We just move. We just do.

Case in point:

I’ve dropped a water filled glass before that I had hanging from my fingertips at my side. It slipped and fell straight down (the direction things seem to always fall, ha ha) and without even thinking I dropped down and caught the glass with the same grip before it hit the floor.

Now some will say this is just a reaction and not really agility. But, agility has to include our reaction time or ability to act quickly.

If you are playing football and suddenly the guy in front of you darts to the left, your reaction to that movement and your agility will determine whether you catch him or not. The quicker your reaction and the more agile you are the greater the chance of success.

In catching that glass of water, many things came into play and that was possible because of previous training. I had done countless reps of tactical lunges. I had done countless reps of Olympic lifts where you drop and pull yourself suddenly under a weighted bar. I had done countless reps of speed bag training for quick eye hand coordination. All of these things and more let me drop my body down suddenly in an instant to reach for and grab that glass before it hit the floor and shattered.

Even though I had not practiced that particular movement of dropping into a squat to grab a glass, the larger movement pattern had been drilled repeatedly from various angles using different exercises and movements.  Thus a basic pattern of movement had been drilled, practiced but also expanded on into other similar movement patterns based of the act of squatting down.

rocks and sand

Agility also includes pre-emptive action. You react based on a perceived notion of what may occur, so you move in an attempt to be a step ahead of the situation.

Interestingly enough, you are still reacting. For example, you sense, without even thinking, that the man trying to block your play with the basketball is about to block you to your left and make a play for the ball, so you react to something that has not occurred yet and you spin out to the right away from him to create distance (which equals time) to try a jump shot.

You moved without really giving it any thought. But you in all likelihood practiced this maneuver many times so that you could do it smoothly. So when the opportunity presented itself, you merely stepped up into that smooth movement pattern you had practiced and you make your shot.

So, training situational awareness  (SA) can help us become more agile.

Training SA can speed up our reaction time. Its just common sense:

If I can sense something quicker than before or sooner than the next guy, I can begin movement sooner. Now he has to play catch up.

If I can begin to move smoother, then more energy is directed at my goal and not wasted in motion that will not help me in achieving my goal.

If I can do all of this without thinking, over-analyzing, then I can move faster.

If I have trained my body for flexible strength, for expressing mobile strength and power, then I will move with greater agility, greater speed of movement.

My body will intuitively know that I can do this or that without threat of injury to myself, because my body knows it has the needed strength to not only initiate the movement but also to slow it down safely. Thus, all brakes are off. If I am too weak in some area, my body will slow the movement down so I am less apt to injure myself. My body will put the brakes on somewhere in this movement so I don’t go too fast.

This is what happens when guys try something they haven’t done before or haven’t done in a long time. They try it and get mediocre results. This is because their body is smarter than they are and won’t let them perform at a high rate of speed or agility because it knows they will get injured. So, our man decides to try harder (especially as his friends cajole him about swinging the bat like a girl) and he swings with all he can muster, overriding his bodies built in common sense and he ends up pulling a muscle. Or if he is running trying to catch a friend playing ball, he pulls a hamstring.

Another problem comes from overanalyzing a move. This will slow us down. Imagine a guy teaching us how to slip a tackle or block in football or soccer or Ultimate Frisbee. He demonstrates what he wants us to do. Then we practice it. But we keep getting beat. So he breaks it down for us a step at a time and we practice it step by step. Then we string it all together.

We repeat the practice and as we do so we think about each little step:

“I have to step to the left, plant my foot, drive off the right foot, duck my shoulder, spin on the left foot, stand as I drive off the right foot and throw my left arm up and back and down to slip his arm and drive off the left foot…”

We still get beat.

So we practice at a slower speed. We begin to get it a little better. We start getting smoother.

So we try it again at a faster pace and we get tackled again. “Dang! I’m getting confused, it’s too much to think about.”

Then our coach says something like:

“You’re doing well. You know how to do it. Just stop thinking about it and do it. It’s like a dance. Just pretend you are dancing and running by a sprinkler that gets suddenly turned on and you are trying to dance by it without getting wet.”

“Cool”’ you think, “I can do that”.

So you practice the move again at a higher rate of speed and BAM! you slip the tackle and sprint away like never before and all you did was think:

“Dancing.”

dancing

Make sense?

To get agility:

Get strong. A strong body will let you move faster.

Get flexible strength. This will let you move with more fluidity. You will have a greater range of motion in which you can express your strength and speed. Thus, you will take the “brakes” off. Your body will “let” you move better.

Practice movements at a slower pace. Look for the smoothest transition from one foot to the other. Try to flow with the movement like wind through tress or water down a hillside. Seek out the easiest flow of movement. Practice that. Gradully increase your speed. Just let it happen.

Increase you situational awareness but avoid becoming hyper attentive. Hyper alertness will wear you out quickly. Practice calm awareness like a lion sleepily lying there but ready to explode into action with the flip of a switch. He is calm but aware.

Develop greater reaction ability. Seek to get closer to your reactive time potential.

Master basic patterns of movement with one implement  and then later gradually expand that movement pattern with other forms of training implements.

That is all for now. In another article we will look at more specific ways to actually improve these various attributes. I will give you ideas for developing these qualities through training.

Until then:

Quick feet are happy feet.

However, we can tense our muscles up, making [...]]]> Think of tension in the muscles as being generated by loading the muscle or moving the limb or body through a range of motion.  Movement or the initiation of movement causes tension in the muscle. It is actually the contracting of the muscle that creates the tension.

However, we can tense our muscles up, making them contract or tense up without movement.

Straighten your arm out either at your side or out in front of you. Now, without bending it, tighten up your arm muscles. All of them.  Take your other hand and feel your arm. It should be tight or hard with tension.  With practice you will be able to create greater tension in the arm muscles through contracting the arm muscles even without movement in a joint.

Contraction and therefore tension in the muscles is accomplished by many factors:

Consciously tensing up the muscles with no outside force or load acting upon the muscles (as in the straight arm tensing), initiating any type of movement with just body-weight, lifting or absorbing any kind of load or force, etc.

We can actually train our body to create more tension.

Of course our muscles have to also relax and lengthen.  Relaxation and contraction or tension in the muscle are really two sides of the same coin.

If you can’t create tension in a muscle through contraction of it, then we couldn’t move, run, jump, throw, lift and even  live. We would not be able to land from a jump. When we jump in the air and then land on our feet the body tenses up to receive the shock of landing, absorbing the forces through tension. Otherwise, if our muscles did not contract, get tense, to absorb the landing of our jump, they would simply relax and we would fold up like a dropped sack of potatoes. We’d get hurt and never jump again.

So, what is the point of all of this?

If you want to get better at any sport or physical endeavor:

Create greater tension.

Do this by lifting weights of any kind.  A weight is a weight. Two hundred pounds of barbell verses 200lbs of sand bag still weighs the same, however, the mechanics of lifting the two will be vastly different and lifting the sandbag will take even greater tension and mobility to lift than the barbell.

So now you have an idea of why using different training tools is of benefit.

Another example of creating tension is a sprint from a stop. Whether initiated from a standing, kneeling or prone position (where you lie down and have to quickly get on your feet before you begin sprinting) your body will undergo rapid transitions of tension and relaxation in the muscles.

So it stands to reason if you can create greater tension in the muscles it will lead to greater propulsion of either your body or some other object you are attempting to move. It takes greater strength (and skill, technique) to throw a baseball faster and farther.

Thus, for most people looking to improve their athleticism, getting stronger, (i.e. learning to create greater tension), leads to better performance in life and in sports. However, if we can’t relax the muscles enough between contractions of tension, then we wouldn’t move very well either. It must be balanced between the two.

We can’t slow our body down without creating tension. We can’t initiate any type of movement without creating tension. And it has been found that if you can create tension, you can actually relax the muscle more after the tension  has been released.

One of the ways we can get ourselves to relax to fall asleep entails alternatively tensing up and then relaxing muscles, starting with the feet and working up the  entire body. Just a quick tensing and then a relaxation.

Funny thing is, this happens naturally when we go to sleep. It is called hypnic or myoclonic jerks. It is that sudden twitch or sometimes an almost violent jerking of a limb or the body that makes you almost jump in bed and kick the covers off, kick your mate or it wakes you up just as you start dosing off. It is simply a sudden contraction of the muscles followed by immediate relaxation of said muscles.

The harder we can tense the muscle the more strength we can exert. Pick up a light box and have someone squeeze our arm. It’s probably tight but not real hard or tense. Now pick up a real heavy box (you know, the large one that some friend loaded with a ton of books and wants you to pick up and move for them).

Now have your friend squeeze your arm. It will be much tenser and harder in response to the load. It takes more strength to pick up a heavier object and thus creates more tension in the contracting muscles. It takes more strength and thus greater tension in the contracting muscles to jump three feet in the air verses one foot into the air.

So, do you get the point?

If a greater load or force acting on the body elicits a greater response in the muscles leading to greater strength being demonstrated due to the greater contraction and tension in the muscles it stands to reason that we can create greater tension first leading to greater strength.

What??

Teach your muscles to contract harder with more tension.

How?

We do it all the time  without thinking. (More on the no thinking part later, and it’s not what you think

OK, you’re helping someone move (oh no! not again!) and as you begin picking boxes up or someone hands you a box to carry to the truck, you simply take the box and move it. No biggie.

Then as you go to pick up the next box or someone hands it too you they say:

“Careful with that (this) one! It’s real heavy.  It’s full of books (yup, why not in a smaller box, instead of one big enough to bury a Ford Fiesta?) “.

So what do you do?

Without thinking you get all tense, tightening up the muscles (literally contracting them) in anticipation of the coming load.

Why?

Because our body knows it will make us stronger and keep us safer in handling that heavier load. We didn’t even think about it, we just did it.

So why don’t we use that bit of knowledge in our training?

Tense up before you lift a weight. Get tight and then grab the weight and lift it with tension. This works great for slow heavy lifts. Even lighter lifts can be done this way. Things like dead-lifts, squats, bench presses, over-head presses, etc.

By tensing up that muscle even harder than is needed, we can create greater tension and thus get the muscle to contract even harder. Now we don’t need to do this on every set or rep. Definitely on the heavier sets and reps to keep ourselves tight for a safer more controlled lift.

Lighter weights can be lifted with a little more tension than is needed just to train ourselves to create that tension at will rather than create the tension only in response to the load or weight lifted.

Of course, when a person is first learning how to do this, it is good to use more tension than is needed on even lighter sets until they have become adept at creating the tension and then lifting the weight with tension.

It is good to relax and shake the muscles out between sets. High tension lifting is tough to do. Thus, lower reps and fewer sets are in order until you have acclimated to it.

Tensing the muscles and the body up for a lift does not mean we move jerkily throughout the movement because of the great amount of tension we are using. It’s not like that.  Tense up and get the body tight and lift with control but also with skill of movement, lifting smoothly.

Once you can create the tension and control it during your lifting, you can vary how much tension you use for various weights and lifts.

If you step up to a loaded bar and get tight before you lift it, you are teaching your nervous system to prepare for a load first, rather than merely responding to a load once it hits you.

Which do you think would be easier on your body?

Picking up a heavy suitcase and as you begin lifting it you realize

“This thing weighs a ton!” as your body tweaks sideways and you feel your muscles get strained.

Or:

You get tight, grab the suitcase handle and squeeze it hard and begin lifting with way more tension than you need. You think “This thing is heavy, but not too bad. I can handle it.” and you safely load it into the trunk of the car.

Be aware of your environment. Be aware of what you are lifting. Create tension first and adjust it as you begin the lift. Creating tension in response to the mental thought of lifting something before you actually lift it is feed forward tension or a feed-forward loop. You put your hands on the bar, grip it tight and tense every muscle in your body  and then pick up or accept the load.

Responding to a load with tension after you have accepted the load is feed-back tension or a feed-back loop. You grab the bar, get under it or accept the load as you begin lifting it and you think “This thing weighs a ton!” and then you start trying to get tight.

Sorry! To late to get tense!

Once a heavy  load is accepted or lifted, so the weight is fully supported by your body, it is very difficult, if not impossible to tighten up properly for the load.  You are already pushed out of good mechanical advantage, losing  your form and on your way to an injury or dumping the load.

Use the feed-forward loop when lifting anything. Get tight first. Then lift.

And then, once the load is felt, use the feed-back loop to adjust your tension, either decreasing the tension (as in the case of a box you thought was heavy but it only has Tupperware in it) or use the feedback of  “this thing weighs a lot, but I’m ready for it. Yet, still,  I’m going to get even tighter to control it better” to create even more tension as you begin to move.

Such pre-tensing of the body works wonders in keeping you injury free, not only in the weight room, but also at work or anytime you lift something that might shift, is awkward or you have no clue as to how much it weighs (like a closed box full of you -don’t-know-what).

As you get better at using this tension thing, (paying attention to tension), you will notice that running and jumping and other movements become easier, faster.

Why?

Because any movement starts with tension in the contracting muscles.

If I can contract my muscles harder, faster than the next guy, I will jump higher, run faster than someone with my same physical proportions. This is why people get fooled by big guys that look like they are slow. If you are strong, from heavy lifting of anything, then your initial movement will come from all that strength or tension you can generate and you will explode over a short distance.

That is why a huge 6’5″  350lb NFL lineman can cover a few yards faster than some 5′ 9″ 150lb marathon runner.  The NFL lineman has huge amounts of potential strength or tension in his body he can unleash. Whereas the 150lb marathoner has little strength, little tension he can use.

Lift heavy for low reps and few sets. Learn to create tension. Learn to use the feed-forward loop. Learn to manipulate the feed-back you get from heavier weights. Become a master of your body.

Relax between heavy sets. Shake out the tension so you learn to tense up but also to relax. We need both to move well.

Practice movements with body-weight and other implements you might swing, throw, etc.  This will help you meld the new found strength into other movements so you get faster at recruiting your new levels of contracting strength induced tension and relaxation.

Think of it this way:

If a certain person (A) who weighs 150lbs can squat  or dead-lift 100lbs, when he begins running, his reserve of strength or tension he can use is 100lbs more than his body weight. Yet many runners don’t lift weights (B) and if they do, they never go heavy, not that 100lbs is heavy.

So, let’s just say he (A) can propel his body with an extra 100 pounds of tension as he begins a sprint or jump. He will jump higher or start his sprint off faster than another guy (B) who weighs 150lbs but never lifts anything.

Now put them both up against a guy (C) who weighs the same 150lbs. But this guy dead-lifts 300lbs. When he takes off in the sprint or he jumps he has a reserve ability to create enough strength or tension in his body to lift 200lbs more than the first (A) guy and 300lbs more than the second (B) guy who doesn’t lift at all.

Do you think his body is going to feel way lighter to him?

I’ve experienced this in two ways. For a year I played around with a weight vest. Built up to doing various things with an added 60bls on my body. When I took it off I could run faster and jump higher. I also, at one point in my life, got very ill and weighed 295. I lost 60lbs within about 6 months. When I lost all that weight, same thing: I could run and jump faster and higher.
I had the strength and ability to create the tension needed to move me plus another 60lbs in both cases. So when that weight wasn’t there, that reserve capacity of strength let me exert more force when I did something.

It’s like this:

Two cars weigh the same.

One car puts out 100 ft.lbs of torque and 120 horsepower.

The other car has a motor that puts out 300ft.lbs of torque and 350 hp.

Which do you think will be faster?

I know which one I would buy!

Get stronger.

When you engage in athletic movements, running, jumping, tumbling, throwing, etc, we don’t think about tension, about tensing up and relaxing our muscles. It just happens. So continue to do things that help you move smoothly and effortlessly to blend the strength and tension with relaxed movements.

Remember, the body has to tense up to move. There is no way around this.

But you also have to relax between the explosive contractions of tension to move. People that are really strong but are tight or carry around too much tension, are stiff, they can’t move very well.

Lifting 1,000 lbs is impressive, but if we can’t dig a ditch all day long without 40 breaks to catch our breath, we are in pretty sad shape for life, though not for power-lifting. To get strong enough to create the tension needed to lift 1,000 lbs we would need to focus on getting bigger and on pure strength training. In this case, something is gotta give. And that would be generally our endurance and flexibility.

Strength or tension has it’s limits before it gives diminishing returns.  But that is way higher than the average person ever gets too.

For a professional athlete, say a MXer (professional motocross, you know, the guys who ride dirt bikes for a living) being able to lift 1,000 lbs would not be advantageous. It takes too much bulk and size to lift that much.

But, being able to dead-lift 300-400lbs would definitely help them throw their bike around better, and if they wipe out, picking up that 230-300 lb bike (MX or open desert bikes)  will be a lot easier. And they could gain the strength to dead-lift 300-400lbs, in all likelihood, without gaining much body-weight, if any.

Too weak and we will not have enough capacity to create tension. We will be a  slow moving person, we would not be able to generate enough muscular tension at high enough loads and fast enough to jump or sprint well.  We would have little  strength endurance also, because there is no reserve of strength to draw upon to repeatedly move an object heavier than our own body-weight repeatedly.

Marathoning does not take great levels of strength or even medium levels of strength. Try pitching hay bales all day if you never do anything but run or bicycle and you will see what I mean. It will kick your butt even if you can run 26 miles.  You don’t have reserves of tension producing capacity in your body to pitch 80lb bales all day. Most people who run or bicycle long distances usually weigh quite a bit less than an average person of their same height.  It is not just because they have low body-fat. It is also because they have low muscle mass for their body-weight and height.

We need balance in both.

Train to be in between the power-lifter and the marathon man.

Get strong.

Learn to manipulate tension in your body.

Get fast, mobile and agile. Learn to move your body.

Learn to manipulate other objects that you carry, throw, swing, etc.

If you get stronger through generating tension in your lifting and you develop a faster more flexible body, you will do everything else with greater ease and enjoyment, even as you get older.

After-all, would you rather have the body of a 20 year old or an 80 year old?

When you reach your upper years would you rather get there with a non-trained body or one that is physically (not genealogically) 10-20 years younger due to smart training and lifestyle?

What’s the difference in the two strength, endurance and mobility wise and how did they get there?

I rest my case.

Get strong and learn to manipulate  tension.

Learn to relax  physically, mentally and athletically.

Get mobile, agile and flexible.

The fastest guys in sport are strong and very smooth, even appearing relaxed in their efforts.

Learn to move with speed, strength and smoothness without thinking and you will be awesome.

We could all use a little more awesomeness in our life.

Go get some.

The first has to do with Step 2:

Horizontal Pulls (HzP’s), as found in Convict Conditioning page 124 – 125,  performed  from a table or some other set-up like rings hanging at about waist height.

The Progressive standard Paul Wade sets is 3 x 30, [...]]]> We are going to address two things in this article.

The first has to do with Step 2:

Horizontal Pulls (HzP’s), as found in Convict Conditioning page 124 – 125,  performed  from a table or some other set-up like rings hanging at about waist height.

The Progressive standard Paul Wade sets is 3 x 30, which is, a bunch of reps.

This puts the focus on the development of  displaying your strength over a longer period of time than building pure strength.

For some people, this standard of 3 x 30 will be very hard to meet. It requires strength endurance. Let’s face it, that is 90 total reps. The worlds strongest men do not train a single lift for 90 repetitions in a single training session. That is not how they got strong.

Also, a pullup or chin up on a bar or rings set overhead is much different than pulling your body upward while it is laying back as in the HzP in Step 2 of CC.

HzP’s and chin/pull-ups may seem similar, because you are pulling your body weight up, but they are actually very different in many ways.

If you are more interested in building strength with body-weight exercises, I would suggest working up to 3 x 10 on Step 2 HzP’s and then start with the next exercises, steps 3-6. But even as you progress through steps 3-6, I would continue to work on meeting the Progressive standard Paul Wade sets out for Step 2 HzP’s, which is the 3 sets of 30 reps.

You might even break up those 3 sets. In other words, build up to doing a set of 30 in the morning. Then build up to doing another set of 30 later in the day and finally add in another set of 30 in the early evening.

Then, begin to merge those 3 sets all together in one training session.

If you really feel you must hit the 3 x 30 standard, start off more upright, hit the standard in a few weeks to a month or more and then gradually lower the bar or your rings an inch or two at a time. Thus, you progressively make the exercise harder while maintaining your reps.

At the first lowering, yeah, your reps might drop to 30, 25, 17, for example, but you will build them back up pretty quick:

Because you have not changed the loading all that much by lowering the bar an inch or two. It’s not that big a jump. It is sort of like adding one pound plates to a barbell.

Basically you are following a progressive movement training style.

Paul Anderson did this by digging a hole, laying a heavily loaded barbell across it, climbing into the hole and doing squats. This limited the range of motion. Then he would throw in a few shovels-full of dirt the next day or two and then squat again. This way he artificially shortened the range of motion and then progressively made the movement longer by adding dirt to his hole to stand on. Then eventually, there was no hole, and he was doing a full body squat all the way down.

This is what we are doing by starting HzP’s with the bar or rings set higher and progressively lowering them. But for this to work, you need to meet a certain set and rep standard before you lower the bar. This might take you a week or a month or two. Then once you lower the bar a little, it is good to drop the reps down and build back up your sets and reps at that new depth.

Notice in the picture that as you lower the bar you may have to shift your feet under the bar more so your arms and body are in a more optimal position to pull from.

Make small changes in lowering the bar and it will be much easier to maintain your sets and reps.

Once you meet the set/rep scheme you want to follow, get comfortable at that height for several training sessions before you lower the bar again. For example, if you make the 3 x 30 at a certain bar height, repeat that workout for a couple of training sessions before you lower the bar again.

Thus, you know you did the 3 x 30 for sure, you “own it” as some like to say. You know it wasn’t a fluke or just a real good training day that allowed you to get those numbers.

Then when you lower the bar, lower your reps for the first week by about half to two-thirds what your best set was last workout. So if you got 3 x 30, once you lower the bar a few inches, start with 1 x 30 and 1 x 15, for example. Or do 3 sets of 15. Then gradually build your sets and reps back up at this new lower height. This builds in a back-off week for you to de-load and come back stronger next week.

Also, there is nothing wrong with doing more sets for lower reps, something like 4 x 20.

There is nothing magical about doing 30 reps versus 20 reps. It is still a lot of reps to do.

Part of the problem with doing the 30 rep sets for many people is that they will attempt the next set too soon after the last set.  That is why breaking those three sets up and spreading them throughout the day works so well, You have plenty of time to recover before you do the next set.

Once you get those three sets of 30 just start moving them closer together.

For example, if you did 30 in the morning and 30 when you got home from work and then 30 reps 3-4 hours later, start bringing them closer together.

The cool thing about this is that you have proven to yourself that you can do a set of 30 good reps and that you can do 3 sets  with enough rest between the sets. So now it is simply a matter of reducing the rest periods between the sets. Do it this way:

Skip the 30 in the morning and do 30 when you first get home. Two hours later do another set of 30 and two hours after that do your final set of 30. Now at first, this might be hard. You might have to drop to 20 reps or so. That is OK. Build back up to 30 reps done every 2 hours apart. Once you get 30 good solid reps for 3 sets (with 2 hours between each set), gradually, over the course of weeks, subtract 5 mins from between each set.

There are twelve – 5 minute blocks in each hour. So a two hour decrease between sets would take 24 training days to reduce. And, since we want about 5 minutes between each set (so we can recover for the next set), it will take us about 23 training days to work down to 3 x 30 with a 5 min break between sets. So if we train HzP’s twice a week, it will takes us about 11-12 weeks to get from three seperate 30 rep sets done two hours apart down to 3 x 30 in one session.

Time to knock this thought out of the ballpark...

Now the second thing I want to address has bugged me for a long time and I have heard this from various people over the years.

And that  is the thinking of some people who believe that body-weight training is somehow more natural or inherently safer for people to engage in.

We should not make the mistake that since we can train with body-weight anywhere without equipment it somehow makes it a more natural way to train.

Keep in mind that if you are doing pullups off anything: rings, a bar, a tree limb or you are doing push-ups with your feet elevated on a chair a rock or handstand push-ups with your feet supported by a wall: you are using other forms of “equipment” to help you get more out of your training.

Any exercise or movement is unsafe if it is performed incorrectly or in a highly fatigued state or if you have the attention span of a lab-rat jacked up on the latest energy drink.

Just because we may train with body-weight only, we should not assume it is safer. There is nothing inherently different about training with your body that makes it automatically safer.

And body-weight training is not any more natural than lifting objects to get stronger.

First off, your body is an object.

Second, watch any baby as it grows and explores it’s environment. It will pick up anything and everything ( heavier and heavier objects as it gets stronger) as the child examines everything it can get it’s hands on.

Third, how do we think people picked up and carried rocks, logs, firewood, full water containers, that deer they just killed and gutted and what about carrying babies, children, injured companions, building shelters, etc, before the advent of machines?

Even if using a horse, mule  or whatever, it required lifting things to the back of the animal. How about portages with a canoe?

I do not think people were so dumb they couldn’t notice the effects such lifting and hard work had on their bodies.

Don't believe the nonsense

Fourth, stop believing the nonsense. Body-weight training is not anymore or less natural than lifting anything else. Your body responds just as readily to lifting “things” as it does to lifting your own body. What is more natural than lifting something?

There is nothing, and I repeat this:

There is NOTHING magical about training with only your body-weight. How people look and develop from training is a result of genetics, food quality and quantity, hydration, supplementation, technique and training systems followed. Or the lack of any of the above.

Fifth, in all cases, lifting your body or lifting an object other than your body: you are using the effects of gravity. Gravity acts no differently on a 100kg body versus a 100kg rock. The resistance is still 100kg that must be moved.

In body-weight training, leverage is changed or momentum is used to effect a greater load on the body. The same is true when lifting an object outside the body. Plus, the added affects of lifting something outside the body changes the leverages and force loadings throughout the body, which is a good thing.

For those that feel lifting anything other than your body is an unnatural way to train, then you need to get a hard physical job and work that for a good year and notice the changes to your body. You WILL lift all kinds of objects, and lo-and-behold:

You will actually lift objects over your head!

So, if you think body-weight training is the be-all-end-all method of training:

Get the toughest job you can find, get away from that plush office job and the treadmill and the push-ups and work that job honestly giving it your all.

And then call me in a year. I guarantee you will be way stronger than you imagined. And all that from moving and lifting objects. From digging, from throwing rocks or debris over a wall or up and over and into a metal roll-away dumpster,  from lifting sheets of plywood, roofing rolls, elastic roof coating in 5 gallon buckets, etc up onto a roof, from carrying all types of wood, bags of concrete, 5 gallon paint buckets, ladders, tools, throwing hay bales, carrying baby calfs, slamming post-hole diggers into the ground, etc.

Yeah, lifting and carrying things is unnatural…

My gluteus maximus it is.

Here’s a thought:

Here is a nice progression:

HzP’s. Master them and pull-ups then learn how to do one arm rows. Then various bent rows.

Learn how to deadlift a barbell. Learn a wide variety of deadlifts: one arm, one leg, suitcase, etc.

Learn how to do a zercher lift from the ground.

Learn how to do a tire flip.

Learn how to pick up and carry large, heavy rocks, sandbags, sand/water filled kegs, etc.

Learn how to put a wide variety of things overhead.

Learn how to swing a sledge and throw things from various angles.

Maybe even learn to play around wrestling with a friend, even if you don’t want to train MA’s. Just have fun wrestling around.

When you train with objects separate from your body, you learn to manipulate and control the constantly changing  center of balance between yourself and the object you are lifting or throwing. You get exposed to a much greater variety of  loads and forces and movement patterns than if you trained with body-weight only.

Most body-weight exercises are not very dynamic, meaning they are not performed at fast speeds unless you get involved in gymnastics. But that is not realistic for most people. It takes a lot of experience and equipment to teach people how to perform gymnastics. And it has its’ own risks.

Performing a one arm handstand or two arm handstand push-up is way more unnatural than lifting something over my head with one or two hands.

How many babies or children do you know who start trying to walk upside down on their hands?

Compare that to how many babies and children you know who pick things up, carry them, throw them, lift them up overhead, etc.

When, in a workplace or survival situation or camping or hiking or a rescue operation, would I have to walk or stand upside down?

Outside of gymnastics or training we don’t walk upside down on our hands.

But I can think of a whole bunch of things I might have to lift overhead or pick up and carry on my shoulders, my back or lift up to someone on a roof, for example. How about helping someone climb up a high wall, fence, tree, onto a roof or reaching up to help lower a swamp cooler being lowered down a ladder or help a kid down from a tree?

This is not to say that handstand pushups and hand walking are bad, they in fact can be excellent forms of training. Yet, they are not safe for all people to perform, for a variety of reasons. But the point is, body-weight training is no more or less natural than any other form of training.

I am not knocking Paul Wade for his excellent book on body-weight training. I feel it will open up this form of training to many more people who otherwise may not be sure how to go about getting into it. I will continue to recommend it to people, I think it is that good.

But, as trainers and authors, we need to be careful that we don’t over-emphasize one form of training as being highly superior, safer or more natural to other forms of training. We need to be careful that we don’t lead others to believe that any one tool is the best. It may develop certain qualities very well in a particular area, but not in other areas.

For example, kettlebells are great for conditioning and strength development, but for ultimate one rep strength we need to use a barbell. Even the average person can benefit greatly from   learning  how to deadlift properly and getting stronger in that lift.

It is like firearms. A 9mm or .45 ACP might be great for a tactical officer, but for a guided hunt, a .375 H & H would be much more effective in stopping a charging bear. And proficiency at using one will not make us proficient at using the other. Though we could learn to use both extremely well if we wanted.

So, for me, I do not allow the artificial limitations of sports, competition or the thinking of some that believe such things as “Only body-weight training is natural”  or “All you need is club bells to train with” limit me in how I train, exercise and move or what I train with.

I have seen the same thing in other camps, where some people think a particular “object” or training program is the best thing to train with. All objects you can lift have their benefit in  getting us stronger and faster and tougher. Different programs can bring different benefits to your body and mind. Extremes are usually the danger. Singular focus on few things is a greater danger than learning and trying multiple training systems and tools over the course of years of training.

It’s like eating. Limit yourself to just a handful of different foods or eat a wide variety of vegetables, meats, fruits, berries, nuts, etc?

I will not limit myself to just a particular diet, Warrior Diet, Vegan, etc? It’s all bunk. One diet will not work for all people as medical concerns, etc, enter the picture. Even work loads (office worker versus farmer) has a great effect on when and how much to eat.

Variety from healthy sources is the best way to eat. It is the best way to train for the person not looking to medal at the Olympics or win at a professional competitive sport.

In professional sports a person has to focus on one goal: that of getting the edge to win under that particular sports regulations. That narrows things down a bit.

However, life is different.

Life involves picking things up and moving them. A wide variety of things under a wide variety of conditions.

Fun in the sun

I’ll use and train with whatever I can and enjoy the many benefits it brings me. At times I may focus on one thing for awhile, but I always comeback to a wide variety of training implements, as the benefits are too great to be overlooked.

Our brains sort out billions of  bits of input every second just fine.

Neurologists adjusted their thinking on the human brain and suggest we only use, not ten percent, but only a tenth of one percent of our brain.

Not that we don’t use our whole brain, but the capacity we do use is only one ten thousandths of its actual capacity. They have learned that the brain does indeed grow new cells, even in old age and it is not a static organ, it makes more and more connections and grows in capacity as we use it.

It is limitless.

Think about that.

So, I don’t think I will have any trouble learning and performing new exercises. I am not worried that technically I can’t handle performing Olympic lifting as well as kettlebell lifting and sprinting and body-weight training too. Plenty of people can play a wide variety of musical instruments much better than the average Joe learning how to play one instrument.

So, I don’t ever worry about learning something new in training, learning and correcting the technique  and putting it to use. The more things I do and learn the stronger and more connections I create in my brain.

Sure, I could focus and  become the worlds best pastry baker who specializes in cream filled pastries or I could become the worlds greatest chef who can cook a 5 course meal.

I don’t worry about not being able to handle the mental and physical input of training with and learning new things.

My brain and body just aren’t that dumb.

How about you?

Are you limiting yourself artificially in some way?

Are you allowing someone else to do that to you?

The funny things is, in the real world, every one is a specialist in a way. But everyone is also highly diversified. We can walk, run, talk, sing, throw, lift, carry, etc, etc, etc. We don’t simply walk and never learn how to sit in a chair. We don’t simply sleep on our back and never move. Even in sleep the body moves.

Loaded for bear...

Spec Ops (Special Operations), we’ve all heard of them. It is sort of a catch all term for the most elite military forces of the world. And many people see them as specialists, which in a sense they are, but:

What makes them specialists is that they are actually highly diversified in what they know and can accomplish. They are actually much more diversified than the average soldier who just went through boot camp.

How did they become so diversified and capable of performing so many tasks extremely well?

By extensive, in-depth training in a wide variety of disciplines. It took many months of training, experience, the knowledge that they could learn and do it all. They learned which tool was best for which job and how to improvise if needed.

Now, I’m not a Spec-Ops soldier, but I do try to follow that mentality in my training. I want diversification. That is what makes me a specialist.

Barbell, running, body-weight, sledge, tires, rocks, sand, kettlebells, etc?

Diversified specialization or is it specialized diversification?

I don’t worry about it, I just do it.

Anyway, that’s my rant for the day.

We use to call my Dad that.

Pops.

But only when we were out of arms reach and he was in a good mood. Or we’d get popped upside the head.

Do you have it? Do you need it?

It is that explosive ability some people just seem to have. Not only can they [...]]]> Carbonation.

We use to call my Dad that.

Pops.

But only when we were out of arms reach and he was in a good mood. Or we’d get popped upside the head.

Do you have it? Do you need it?

It is that explosive ability some people just seem to have. Not only can they explode into action they have the timing down.

Some people play a sport and their explosive moves seem more like a push. Not too effective. Not too explosive.

Other guys can hit pretty hard. Or smack a ball real good. Or hit a tackle hard.

But there are some people that,  at impact, seem to completely obliterate the object or person, sending it into orbit. They literally seem to explode into whatever they are doing at just the right moment to effect the greatest result.

Having that elusive “pop” can make the difference in winning, in setting a personal record or world record or just making it though a situation, whatever it might be.

It can be taught if you don’t have it naturally.

So, in no particular order, I will set out some ideas for you to try and some thoughts on getting this perfectly timed “pop” of explosive energy. Hopefully there will be something here that you can use.

First off, if you are heavy footed, or slow of feet, you will have a difficult time getting more explosive. You have to be able to move your body. It all starts with the feet. Explosive power comes from the hips, but starts with the feet.

If you don’t believe that, just put an Olympic weightlifter (very high hip power and explosiveness) on a sheet of ice and have them try to explode the bar up at just the right moment. It won’t happen without solid footing to drive off of.

So work on your foot speed. Rope jumping is good for this. Learn to skip rope fast and in various foot patterns. Drilling the first 10 meters of the sprint is good. Driving off the line just for 5 meters works good too. So does learning how to do split jerks.

Before anyone can really explode at just the right time, they have to have the technique down very well before their body will let them explode into an implement or object.

Let’s face it, our body is not stupid. If you don’t have the technique right and you don’t have a certain amount of strength developed to go along with the technique, your body will NOT let you move explosively no matter how hard you try.

As soon as you pick up the weight, shot-put, discus, etc, your body will sense the load and as you begin to move, if the technique is not there you will not move effectively enough to input or transfer power and mass and energy into the implement.  Your form will break down. The body senses that and thus you can’t, you literally cannot move as fast as you would be able too if your technique  was rock solid.

It’s like someone who never runs and suddenly they try to sprint. They hit a wall and can’t run very fast. Their body won’t let them because it is foreign to them, their body does not know how to perform at that level.

So, practice your technique. Drill it. Focus on getting “smooooth”. Make it flow.

You may need to break the steps of a movement down into more manageable segments at first. But as you string them together, you want to flow smoothly through the entire dance with whatever object you are manipulating and transferring your mass and energy into.

If necessary, start off slow and gradually build your speed, as long as your form does not break down.

Next, you have got to be strong enough to support the technique and loads experienced throughout the movement. Throwing a shot or stone or hammer or discuss loads the body with some very high forces.

It is one thing to throw a fast punch barehanded at a speed bag. Next try it at a 40lb heavy bag. Then try it again against a 80lb bag. Finally try it against a 110 lb bag. The final moment of impact is getting progressively greater and if you have not trained for it, the timing of your technique and the strength of the bones, muscles and ligaments of your body won’t let you hit as fast and hard as you could.

Your body knows this even if you don’t. It will slow you down.

It is one thing to move fast and explosively with a PVC pipe practicing the Olympic lifts and quite another to do the same with a heavily loaded bar. Even if the technique is there, yet the strength is lacking to support the loads or forces encountered during the movement, we won’t be able to move fast and pop the bar up at just the right time. If we force it we get injured.

Once again, your body knows this even if we try to ignore it.

And if you try to force the issue, trying to get more explosive, at this stage, you will generally end up moving slower, with too much tension and/or injuring yourself as you override your bodies protective mechanisms.

Every sport has a technique to it. There are leverages you need to learn, body and foot positioning, timing, rhythm, when to accelerate and then explode, etc.

Learn that.

Get stronger.

Apply the strength to the technique of your sport. Gradually getting faster and more explosive. Some times it will suddenly “click” and you will pop one out there. Other days it just won’t happen. Don’t try to force it into happening. That almost never works.

Think of it like waves on a sea. They are sort of random, various heights but every 7th wave is higher. This is true. Google it.

So, as you practice your technique, vary the intensity with which you explode. You can’t maximally explode on every rep, hit or throw. You would run out of steam pretty quick.

Why do you think powerlifters and Olympic lifters have opening lifts they make before the big one?

Why do you think a boxer feels out his opponent and hits “pop, pop, pop,    BOOM!”

So, ramp up your throws or hits, etc. Start easier, ramp up a little in explosiveness and then hit a good one. Think about how it felt. Better yet, “feel” how it felt to go through the motion and then explode into the implement. Close your eyes while you do this mentally. Replay it.

Then settle your waves back down, practice some smooth technique runs through your movement and when the moment is right, that 7th wave will hit and “BOOM!”, you launch it. Learn to feel it, to build up to it and let it happen.

If you try to continue to “Pop!” every rep or hit or throw, you will lose that explosiveness real soon. You have to cultivate it.

At first, it might only be a few reps that you really explode on once per week or maybe only a couple of times in a month may feel like “Wow! I nailed that one!”

But as you learn better technique, get stronger and learn the timing of when to pop at the end of an explosive move, you will find it easier to repeat that when you want.

And you will be able to vary the intensity of that “pop” for each throw, lift or hit.

Then, to outsiders or those not as advanced as you are, all your efforts will appear to be max efforts no matter how far the implement goes. They don’t see the  waving of intensity that you are using. To them, whether you throw a 35lb hammer 30′ or 60′, the intensity was the same. They can’t differentiate.

Think of that explosive pop at the end of a movement as sort of a pulse of power.

Face a wall or shed or heavy bag (or your training partner if he is willing). Put your hands on that object and push against it. How did it feel? Was it effective? Did you feel explosive?

No?

Good for you!

Now do the same thing again, with your hands on the wall. Relax and then suddenly tighten up and drive from the feet, hips and  body into the object. It is like a wave running up your body, starting at your feet that accumulates in intensity and power as it passes through you into the object. Pulse into the wall or heavy bag. If using a bag, you will need someone to brace it from behind so it doesn’t swing away from you.

Pulse, relax, pulse, relax.

How did that feel? Did you note the differences in tension? When you tried to force it did you notice it wasn’t as effective as when you sort of let it happen without thinking?

Now get your hands several inches away from the wall or heavy bag. Suddenly drive into it slamming your hands into the object. But do so in varying degrees of intensity. Do several fast but lighter smacks and then when it feels right, “BOOM!” into that object. Just be sure not to injure yourself.

You should be able to see a difference in how fast and hard you can hit or explode. You need to learn to control the rate of force development you are applying, the speed and intensity, as you vary how hard and explosive you hit or throw.

Next, do this again after you rest for a minute or two.

But this time we are going to add another element. You will jump your feet a little.  This is going to take more timing.

Face the wall or heavy bag with your feet about shoulder width apart. Relax.

Explode as you jump and  shift your feet to a staggered stance (one foot forward and one back) . As you do this your feet come off the ground slightly.

As they land into their new position, ram your feet home at the same time as you hit or “POP!” into that wall or bag. Add in a good grunt at that moment also.

When you get the timing right you will know it.

This is what you are after when you throw an implement, hit something or tackle someone. You may be already moving quickly or be  starting from a relative position of calmness.

But you have accelerated into movement or exploded into movement and near the end of that movement you add in that “POP!”

It is an explosion at the end of the initial explosion of movement that got you into the final position to apply your maximal energy.

You suddenly moved, jumped your feet, slammed them down and “gave” all that stored and rebounded energy and force into the other object at the moment of impact, with interest.  You multiplied all that energy to pass it into the other object.

Years ago, a friend, Bud, was teaching me how to spin and throw a 35lb Russian hammer, as he called it. He wanted me to explode into the implement with a loud grunt at the right time. He wanted to hear me do that. He said it makes you more aggressive on your hardest throws. Don’t do it on every throw. Only on those that you put that maximal pop into. He felt if you didn’t do that, you weren’t putting everything you had into the throw.

It is sort of like a power breathing crunch. When you do Janda’s and come up near the end of the movement, if you grunt out a short blast of air, it magnifies your power, among other things.

Bud would give a “hup” every time he lifted a weight or threw the hammer. But when he lifted real heavy or threw particularly hard, it was a much louder “HUP!”

So, try putting some grunted breath into that pop. It’ll tighten you up more and transfer more energy.

Now, in some movements or sports there is more of a whip like action going on. In other activities it is more like a punch.

Shot put, punch.

Discus, whip.

There is follow through in both.

When we talk about exploding into an implement, various sports require varying degrees of acceleration to get the implement to that point where we give the final pop. But the point is:

We are trying to accelerate the object throughout its range of movement with us (before we release it) as fast as we can and then add in extra force from our combined mass and speed, like a explosion right at the final release.  We can’t move at maximum speed right from the start or we would rip our arms off, but we try to go from zero to 60 as smoothly and as fast as we can.

Smooth is a big thing.

But in both cases, there is a “POP!” at the final release. You are trying to transfer all  the energy and mass of your body that you can into the object.

Throwing through the object helps accomplish that.

In boxing, set-up punches are “pop, pop, pop” with a definite pull back of sorts. They sting and hurt but there is an emphasis on getting the hand back quickly to protect and cover up your own body. Thus, maximal energy is not transferred. The final “BOOM!” of the series of hits is the hit that is thrown with a complete follow through and punching through the target.This is the truly explosive punch.

This is similar to many other sports like tennis, for example. You send the ball back with fast, explosive hits, but are trying to get the racket (and your body) back into position fast to hit the returned ball, setting up your opponent for the “BOOM!” hit, that pop they can’t react fast enough to return. That hit has a greater follow through.

Same with throwing.

Practice throwing. “Pop, pop, pop”, just practice getting it out there. Don’t worry about the distance. Feel the movement. Dance with the implement. Become one with it.

Then when the time is right:

“BOOM Baby!” you’ll nail it and send that thing flying farther than you ever had.

Don’t get too excited. Relax. Think about how it felt. Smile and know that 7th wave will come around again.

In time you will find it gets easier and easier to do this.

My thought is if you can’t feel this in your sport, if you can’t seem to get explosive from practicing your throws or puts, then you need two things:

Lots of technique practice and learning how to POP! from outside your sport.

In other words:

Learn how to do a power clean and split jerk (PC & SJ).

Or learn how to throw a power punch.

Or learn how to slam a sledge into a tire with your whole body into it.

The point is, you don’t need to learn to box, or learn the Olympic lifts or how to chop a gnarly piece of wood. You just need to step outside your sport, learn how to pop;  and when you can do that consistently, take that knew-found skill and plug it into your chosen sport.

Now, just to set this matter straight, it is not like a person explodes into action and then literally resets somehow while in motion and explodes again. But that is sort of how it might feel. For example, we can do a PC fast, but not get too much pop on the bar.

Or we can move fast in the PC and at just the right spot: POP! that bar up and catch it in the rack position.

I really like the power clean and the split jerk for teaching this pop. Doesn’t matter if it’s with a dumbbell, kettlebell or barbell initially. But I think learning to do them with a barbell is the best way. You can learn the technique with a bar and gradually add weight as you get the technique down and the timing of that pop just right.

If you’ve never done PC & SJ before and get to the point where you can handle at least 225 pounds in this move, couple that with continued practice on your throws and you will be throwing farther than you ever have, with more explosiveness.

So:

Learn how to PC or you might try PC’s  from the hang.

If that seems like too much, you could opt out and just take a barbell from a rack or stands and practice the split jerk. But I really think the full PC & SJ is better.

Now, I picked the PC & SJ for a reason:

A power snatch is good, but there is not opportunity to do a jerk after. Both the PC and PS help drill that explosive pop (among many other things) but the PC allows a person to drill transferring energy through a rigid torso into the weight when we perform a split jerk immediately after the clean.

I like the split jerk better than the squat jerk style mainly for one reason:

We are doing this to drill that explosive quality during greater movement:

In the squat jerk, we merely jump the feet very little and squat under some to receive the bar overhead.

In the split jerk we have to move the feet over a much greater distance, splitting them, one forward one back. More movement to synchronize  in a short period of time. This is more like stepping through the spinning dance to deliver the final explosive pop to drive the implement. Swinging or snatching a kettlebell does not teach this delivery of force or transferal of energy after replacement of the feet simply because the feet do not move while doing swings and snatches.

With putting a shot or stone or throwing a hammer or discus, we begin the movement and start accelerating through it and as we come to the final step right before we launch the object we try to give it an extra blast. The hammer goes low high low around us and we try to go faster through the spins adding more momentum to the hammer with each revolution. On the last spin we come out of the hammer dipped low position and try to explode it up and out of the spin with an explosion of force.

The put is similar, with a low position (from spin or glide) and then a final drive into the put/stone which takes us from low to literally jumping into and through the implement to put it, to throw it.

And the discus comes out the spin where we accelerate (maintaining that “X” position of the shoulders and hips) and we explode out of that “X” to release the discus with a blast of power.

We might also try moving through the entire sequence of the spin or glide more slowly than normal and then when we hit the power point where we would explode: EXPLODE!

At whatever point in your movement you need to blast off, think to yourself: BOOM! right at that instant you hit that point in your movement. Grunt, yell, whatever and get aggressive right then. Then step it down a notch or two, relax for a few throws and ramp it up to another BOOM!

Throwing or putting into some sort of wall can help using only the last step right before the release. This leaves out any concern for how far the implement goes and leaves out more confusing steps before the release, so you can focus on exploding. Then after this, follow up with a few nice throws and  a few explosive ones to set the full technique. Sort of like deadlifting and then doing some jumps right after.

Doing a heavy PC followed by a split jerk takes a lot of technique, timing, tension, relaxation, smoothness, etc. There is a whole series of athletic movement packed into this one exercise. Highly underrated movement for those seeking that elusive “POP!”

If you are an athlete, listen to your coach. He knows better than me.

If you are an average Joe or Jill looking for some added POP! to your sport or just because, follow this:

Get stronger overall. Basics baby.

Get stronger with your implement.

Drill your technique. (Fast, slow, always smooth with and without your implement, learn the leverages, the timing, the footing)

Drill your explosiveness using various means. (Sport specific practice, non-sport specific practice, learn the timing of the pop)

Blend it all together.

Become awesome.

On practicing technique:

You have to focus on your technique.  Become one with the implement you are throwing or putting or lifting explosively. It takes a lot of repetitions to learn the technique of a particular move until it becomes first nature. You want it to become like another of your bodies senses, so that when you perform the movement it is completely natural to you.

Most people who have this explosive ability can apply it to any sport or even to certain “situations”. You might not be the biggest or the strongest guy around on your field of play. But if you can hone the timing of this “POP!” and apply it at will, you will be way more effective in what you are trying to accomplish. And you will surprise a few people along the way.

So, if this helps you get more explosive, just thank Pops.

Just make sure you aren’t within  arms reach or be prepared to duck

Control of our body-weight  or some outside object comes from manipulating many factors.

I'm not counting rep speed here...

At times a thought of:

“In this movement I need [...]]]> The more we can tune into what we are doing, get the feel of the movement, the more we will get out of our training.

Control of our body-weight  or some outside object comes from manipulating many factors.

I'm not counting rep speed here...

At times a thought of:

“In this movement I need to step one two throw” can help, such as initially learning a sequence of moves,

but the point is to move from one point to the other and feel the flow of the movement, whatever it happens to be.

Changes of direction should not be exclamation points, they should be V’s with a tight curve at the bottom or point of change of direction.

Though at times the point of change of direction may have a faster or slower or sharper or more gradual or flatter turn-around.

Smooth comes from learning to feel what’s going on in the movement and then going with it and amplifying and controlling it rather than counting rep cadence.

or here...lift, move! Feel it!

Like comparing a dancer that dances versus one that counts his steps.

Maybe initially count but then quickly get away from that and feel it. I think in one session with a client or when teaching ourselves a new move, we can get away from counting our rep speed fast.

We need to ask:

Which one will be smoother, (whether they are moving fast or slow)?

Which one will have better balance and control throughout the entire exercise or movement?

The person counting their rep speed or the person who has learned to feel the movement and control it by spatial awareness, balance, force input and manipulation, leverage, etc ?

Of course, pause reps have their place for certain applications, but that is another story.

Running as if I'm chasing dinner...

The more the general trainee who is looking to merely “get in shape, lose weight” (as they themselves say) , can learn to feel what is going on with their body while exercising, really getting into the moves, the more feedback they will get from their environment, their training.

They will learn when to root or plant themselves, when to move fast and touch and go, when to glide or when to move slower.

We should guide them in this learning process by helping them get into the movement, not by counting rep speed.

I’d much rather see a guy learn to control a weight, for example in bench pressing or dead lifting, by focusing on doing the move correctly and feeling the load and forces  as he does it and learning how various inputs from him: speed, minute adjustments, muscular tension, breathing, etc can change the exercise rather than relying on counting rep speed to try to teach that.

This gives them a greater sense of control and input as to how things affect their body.

And that can help them as they develop that awareness and apply that to other habits in life:

Like what they eat and how they live and sleep and how those things impact their recovery, their strength or endurance, the composition of their body, their overall quality of life.

It’s all about balance and control and moving smoothly through a movement, a rep,  a set,  a routine, a job, a life.

Smoothness creates stability and control. This gives confidence in a exercise or movement. Rep speed counting does not.

Rep speed or cadence counting: what happens if it gets thrown off somehow, like from fatigue or a slight loss of balance or loss of focus?

Side bends...think I'm counting rep speed?

We, the coach or trainer will not always be there for them or even be 100% focused on every inch of a  movement during a rep. Injuries happen fast, many times.

Feeling the movement itself, when fatigue sets in or as one maybe losses control of the bar, for instance, I think the person who is focused on feeling the action of his body in the movement, feeling the object they are lifting, will adapt and complete the movement safely or bail out if needed without injury, versus the rep speed counter who isn’t aware of what is about to happen because he’s focused on:

“Up, one thousand one one thousand twelve,  pause one thousand one, down one thousand one one thousand two, pause one thousand one, up one thousand one one thousand…man this is getting hard, where was I? oh yeah two thousand one or was that two?…down one thousand…what rep was I on?”

as they perform the next few reps in some sort of mentally induced counting rep cadence stupor.

We don’t ask a trainee how their rep speed was after they completed a set of movements.

We ask how it felt to them.

BINGO!

How it FELT.

Did you feel strong? In control? Did it feel too heavy? Too light? Did you feel you were losing your balance?

Do we think they will be able to tell us much if they are counting their rep speed or we are counting it outloud for them? Do we think they will focus on the movement if they are counting or they hear us counting?

Better to say:

“Try doing that a little faster or slower.”

“Try slowing down that initial pull off the floor  a little more. Try to squeeze it off the floor”

“Pop it up once it reaches here…”

“Slow down a little”

“Faster”

“Stay tight”

“Loosen up”

Or:

“Man, that didn’t feel right to me. I need to drop with my feet a little closer as I catch the bar.”

Not:

“Well, it looks like to me in the first second of that pushup you were going too fast but in the second second of your pushup you slowed way down. Try to keep both seconds the same speed.”

“You’re counting too fast. Count like this…”

“Well, maybe if I shave a half second off my rep count as I pull the bar up I can drop under it better.”

We seek their input so we can adjust the movement, to make it safer, more effective and get them stronger, faster, etc.

They/we can’t provide that input if we are focused on counting rep speeds.

As a coach or trainer will we notice form flaws as readily if we are counting rep speed? Try switching from counting rep speed outloud for the client and then suddenly saying:

“Drop it!” or “Let the kettlebell go!” or “Stop that push-up!” on a rep going bad or getting too out-off balance.

Do we really need to count rep speed? The rep or movement either felt strong, controlled, balanced or it did not.

I think counting rep speed is a crutch for us when we are not sure what to focus on when teaching movements.

Imagine a dance instructor who teaches students to dance not only by counting the steps but also the speed of each step.

Now the student has to think about each step but also think about:

“Is my step too slow, too fast?”

Just teach them the steps.

The steps make up the movement.

Each movement or exercise has various steps to it and also has a rhythm to it, a flow of movement from each individual step. Once all the steps of that movement are being performed correctly, then we can begin to change the speed  of that movement.

So once the rhythm or cadence of a particular exercise is learned, we can speed it up or slow it down.

Better to teach proper form, on a push-up for example, and then when we or our client can do it properly, make adjustments in the speed of each rep to create differing variables to get the results we are seeking from performing that movement at that speed.

Such as:

A Plank, pausing at various points of a push-up,  a push-up done slow,  a push-up done fast, a clapping pushup. Various speeds creating various results to our body. All based off a basic posture held during varying degrees of zero to explosive speeds.

Endurance, strength, explosiveness? Adjust the speed, leverage, weight or load, etc, accordingly, depending on the movement.

As Miyagi said in one of the Karate Kid movies:

“Move faster.”

And we don’t need to count the rep speed to do that. Let the client feel the changes on their body from making subtle changes in speed of movement by verbally giving them cues, not counts.

Or have them do a set and vary the rep speed as they see fit during that set and note how each rep feels.

Or do a few reps super slow, rest, try a set slightly faster, etc.

Get their input after each set. You might ask:

“How did it feel? Did you notice this _____ happening  at that speed?”

The most athletically inclined people, and those who seem to pick things up quickly when learning new exercises or movements are those who put themselves into the move and feel it.

Don’t stutter step through learning movements strung together.

If it must be broken down a section at a time, like in the TGU,  as each section is learned, make those two sections flow together before going on to the next section.

Seek to teach seamlessness in movements.

learning to fly...

The more we, or those we teach, learn to feel movements and exercises, the more we can pick up new movements safer, faster and with better results.

Watch a good dancer, gymnast, sprinter etc,   learn martial arts or the kettlebell swing versus some  guy who counts his rep speed all the time to make sure he gets whatever he thinks that rep speed is going to give him.

We should teach those we train to feel and move rather than count.

Tune them in to the music of training and movement, not to the amount of frequency waves in a particular beat.

Teach them to run, to jump, to fly.

Give them wings, not a calculator.