Table of Contents
I. Introduction
II. How tendonitis develops
III. Corrective measures
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I. Introduction
To the top
First off, I am not a doctor or a physical therapist. Any "advice" you take from this post herein is at your own risk. Remember, this is the Internet, so always check your facts if you're doubtful of their veracity.
Secondly, having browsed many injury forums throughout the past couple of years + working part time in a PT clinic + seeing different things from docs has given me some perspective on how some injuries develop. Thus, this is probably going to be the first a couple different posts on various topics. Again, take any "advice" at your own risk.
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II. How tendonitis develops
To the top
For all intents and purposes this is going to be brief and simple (as I know some of you like my explanations better than dense material). The more in depth coverage is provided by the link in the above section.
Tendonitis, in general, is an overuse injury. This is generally seen from doing too much that your body cannot handle. Since our muscles have better blood supply than our tendons and bones, they often are able to adapt to the stressors of exercise placed on them faster. This leaves bones and tendons vulnerable to overuse since they cannot heal as fast. If excessive stress is placed on them, they start to break down and become painful.
Tendonitis starts out as an inflammation injury (hence the -itis ending). If this situation persists into chronic degeneration, it turns into "tendonosis" which is characterized by a lack of inflammatory degeneration of the tendon. Hence, if one backs off right away from an overuse injury, the overuse will generally heal itself because of the body's natural inflammatory process. However, if this process is pushed through into a chronic state over weeks into months, then the inflammatory process goes away leading to the chronic degeneration. In these cases, rest is often not beneficial at all because the body will not heal the injury.
You can find more details about this (as well as many more details about etiology and physiology) here.
Common places where tendonitis is easily developed are with excessive pulling exercises at the medial epicondyle (inner elbow -- aka tennis elbow). Similarly, with golfer's elbow at the lateral epicondyle. Patellar and achilles tendonitis with overuse in running, plyometrics, or weightlifting, triceps tendon soreness with excessive pressing, hamstring tendonitis down at their insertion on the tibia, and a couple other places.
Often if you have sore joints or tendons are starting to become sore, this is when you should know that you should back off from exercise. This is often a sign of excessive volume. Continuing to train through this may often lead to more detrimental overuse, and if continued beyond that chronic overuse which is very difficult to get rid of. This will also hinder your training significantly, so it is not advisable ever to push through any type of pain.
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III. Corrective measures
To the top
I am going to be writing these in order of importance on what you should be doing. Thus, I am going to be integrating some explanations into the advice on what to do. If anything in unclear, please comment and I will probably update and clarify that for you.
1a. Stay away from painful exercises. Period. It hurts, don't do them. Should be obvious but people don't listen. Pain = your body telling you that something is wrong. Listen to your body.
1b. Rest. Especially if it's mild overuse. 1-2 weeks of total rest should clear up tendonitis totally because the initial inflammation will promote healing. If it does, work your way back into exercise slow as it's very easy to aggravate again.
If it's chronic then pure rest may not help. If it does not clear up after 2 weeks of total rest then you probably have a chronic condition. This is to be treated different than just mild tendonitis with prehabilitation exercises to stimulate the inflammatory process (along with massage) to promote healing.
2a. Self massage. Cross friction and myofascial release the whole area inbetween both joints that surround it (shoulder to wrist for medial epicondylitis; ankle-hip for something knee; etc.). ART, graston technique, etc. may also help. As much as possible... at least 30 minutes a day. Also, tennis ball/golf ball areas & foam roll may help.
For structuring massage according to type it really does not matter. All that matters if that you're getting into the tissue and helping it reorganize through mobilization plus breaking up any scar tissue or adhesions. For time you can do as much massage as you want at anytime during the day. If you have a couple minutes here and there during the day hit it with some massage. I often hit up my soft tissue while I'm on the drive to work and driving back home from work as that car time is basically "dead" time for anything. Simple way to make your day more effective. I suggested the 30 minutes total as a minimum -- the more you can do the better.
The purpose behind massage is to promote blood flow to the area for healing as all tissue needs nutrients and waste products carried to and from the area. Also, massage helps improve tissue quality through helping to release and reorganize the tissue through the body's natural inflammatory processes plus break up any scar tissue or adhesions.
2b. Ice after any use & when sore. 10-15 mins per sessions 2-5 times a day (or every hour on the hour). Direct ice massage on the skin tends to work the best, but be careful of giving yourself frostbite. Like massage, icing helps limit some pain and excessive inflammation (characterized by edema/swelling) especially immediately after exercise or prehabilitation work + promotes good blood flow to the area afterwards as the body tries to warm up the area.
3a. Light stretching that is not painful for agonists + strengthen antagonists. So stretch forearm flexors, strengthen forearm extensors *until* pain subsides for medial epicondylitis (opposite for lateral epicondylitis).
Reason behind this is to help correct muscle imbalances, and tightness/shorteness of agonist muscles which may contribute to systemic overuse. Both of these tend to put more stress on the joints and supporting structures such as the tendons and ligaments, so loosening and correcting the imbalance should help get the tissue to function properly. Also, eccentric nature of stretching creates small microtears which will stimulate the body's natural inflammatory process for healing.
3b. Light eccentric exercises tend to help especially if the muscle(s) aggravated cannot smoothly do it. This is important with chronic overuse from 1a as pure rest may not help anymore. Eccentric exercises that are anymore than slightly painful (preferably not painful) will probably be detrimental.
Eccentric exercises are important because they help induce small amounts of microtearing which is part of the inflammatory process to promote healing. Too much is obviously detrimental which is why you want to have no pain or just slight amounts of pain. If you can only use 1 lbs or other microloading features without significant pain then so be it.
Exercises selection depends. If the injury is chronic it is probably best to start with very light weights which is best with open chain exercises such as eccentric flexion wrist curls or eccentric leg extensions (can use the other arm/leg to help the other arm/leg up for the concentric phase). The reason for this is because it's easy to microload with light dumbells or ankle weights or other small incremental weights. As you progress, you can move on to more closed chain exercises such as the eccentric of walking down stairs slowly or negative pullups. Close chain exercises tend to use a larger portion of bodyweight, so progressing to them too soon may be detrimental to the healing process if they are too difficult and aggravate the injury.
After it starts improving significantly you can add in concentric work but be careful not to overdo it as again an injury is very easy to reaggravate. For something like mediali epicondylitis you should strengthen everything in the forearm... for example, rice bucket exercises.
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4. Other methods
Most of these modalities below have been proven ineffective in peer reviewed studies, but some help depending on the person. If you have exhausted the options above (as well as done physical therapy) then it may be a good idea to try some of the below in conjunction with the above #1-3 if you want to avoid surgery. They may work for you even if they don't work in controlled studies.
Joint/tendon/cartilage health supplements: glucosamine & chondroin sulfate, MSM, shark, etc. Might be a good idea to start eating the cartilage and tendons off your meat too.
Other modalities: Platelet rich plasma (PRP), prolotherapy, ultrasound, electric stimulation, autologous blood injection, dry needling.
I've seen some good testimonials with the PRP and prolotherapy because they're supposed to help with natural inflammatory healing process, so I would recommend checking out those options first.
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5. NSAIDs/pain relievers/cortisone injections will only help with the pain and not with healing. If your pain is this bad it may be a good idea to see a professional anyway.
Systemic anti-inflammatories such as fish oil are good to be taken anyway for overall health (and do not factor into this consideration). Systemic inflammation can hinder recovery because of poor blood flow to the tissue leading to poor tissue quality and slow healing. Thus, it is important to overall limit inflammation from dietary sources (too many carbohydrates), as well as take health systemic anti-inflammatories like omega-3s from fish oil.
The reason I advised against the above NSAIDs like ibuprofen other medicinal anti-inflammatories because once the healing process starts for the tendon with above modalities, there needs to be some inflammation to promote tissue quality improvement. Bombing yourself with too many may hinder this process as well as other gains associated with muscle growth/repair from workouts. You can read more about this on Kelly Starrett's blog.
Systemic anti-inflammaries tend to be not strong enough to interfere with normal health especially from natural sources like fish oil.
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6. Planning prehabilitation sessions
Exercises, massage then ice. Or you can do massage, exercises, ice. Doesn't really matter.
You can do massage at any point during the day so if you get in 2-3 sessions or more that's great. Same with the ice.
Integration with regular workouts is the same. Do your workouts, then prehab work. If the workouts require use of the injured limb (it had better be light work if any at all) then make sure the tissue is sufficiently warmed up before doing anything.
If this needs more clarification feel free to suggest it.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Monday, June 8, 2009
Why speed work is necessary for elite endurance
Initially, I was planning to have a short article, but as I got into the details it just ballooned up. Oh well, hope you learn something.
Table of Contents
I. Deconstructing the physiology of speed
II. The problem with LSD
III. The necessity of speed work
IV. The focus of an endurance program at different ability levels
V. Extra analysis regarding energy pathways
All of the stuff I am about to talk about is not new. You can find it on the Internet on sprinting sites pretty much anywhere; however, we are going to go through it all anyway. And I know some of you like my explanations because I try to keep things simple most of the time.
First, I am defining endurance to be anything at 800m all the way to marathons and beyond. Obviously, some are categorized as "middle distance" and "long distance" respectively, but they all bear some resemblence as you will see later.
Second, I am defining "LSD" as the accumulation of high mileage without a purpose ON the assumption it will make you faster. You will see clearly in section 4 when I use examples what I am talking about.
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I. Deconstructing the physiology of speed
To the top
Let's start out with an analogy that I am sure many of you are familiar with.
For example, if I work my way up to a 100 lbs weighted pullup, I will also have the strength endurance to do 15+ pullups. This is because the unweighted pullups are only 60% (for a 150 lbs male) of my 1 rep max and therefore "easy" for my body to do.
In essence, the stronger we are the higher our active and latent potential is for endurance. We can also train to express the latent potential through specific endurance work like longer runs or high intensity exercise such as metabolic conditioning, intervals, etc. On the other hand, training for higher repetitions (or longer runs solely) do not confer the same benefits towards strength or power.
Now, speed development in running has a very important equation which works at all levels of ability.
This equation tells us that our stride rate (how much time each stride takes) multiplied times our stride length (how much distance each stride covers) gives us our speed (distance covered per amount of time).
This is very useful information, but there is one catch.
At the top levels, stride frequency is similar for all competitors; therefore, improvements are made only in stride length.
Novices should focus only on improving stride length (through strength and speed work) even though they do not have optimal stride rate either. This is because optimal stride rate is developed through sprinting technique, so as improvements are made by increasing speed the stride rate will developed optimally as a side effect.
Thus, the question becomes "how do you improve stride length."
The force exerted on the ground must be specific to your bodyweight because that is what you are trying to move. This is called mass specific force (MSF). Here is some further reading with a more detailed explanation if you prefer. Another such article.
So going back our first example, our analogy comes full circle. We know that high amounts of strength translates to increased active and latent potential for endurance. And that strength improves stride length which improves speed.
After we have developed a high speed through strength and speed work, we need to develop the capacity to maintain it (which is developing the latent endurance potential from the side effect of high strength). This is where the specific interval and endurance work comes into play.
Thus, if we are running distances competitively, we can logically conclude that:
For middle and long distance we can think of our ability to run faster like a car. Our increased strength (neuromuscularly) is a more powerful engine, and our increased muscular endurance (metabolically/energy pathways) translates to a bigger gas tank. We can also think of our cardiovascular system as the carburetor, fuel line, and exhaust system.
All of these systems must be "upgraded" and worked in concert to improve middle and long distance speed.
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II. The problem with LSD
To the top
LSD (long slow distance) has recently gotten a bad rap and for good reason. If your goal is to improve your distance times there are quite a lot of problems with using LSD only to facilitate improvement.
As we discussed in the previous section, there's 3 things that need to be improved concurrently in order to improve speed at long distances.
The glaring error with LSD is that it does not improve strength much. Thus, our stride length never improves much, which leads to very little increases in speed.
If you take your average person who competes in 5k/10k/marathons and test their strength it will be abysmal. Of course, if you also take a look at their training program they do no speed work or strength training as their whole program probably only consists of LSD with maybe some tempo runs.
While LSD does improve muscular endurance and cardiovascular endurance, we know that high intensity exercise such as intervals produce equal or faster adaptations. One such study is here. It's easy to find these in PubMed by searching for 'high intensity lactate endurance' (no quotes). You will find hundreds of studies showing that high intensity exercise as compared to traditional endurance training shows equal or greater improvements in variables such as lactate threshold, VO2max, and the most important factor which is performance which is shown by improved times.
The same is true of improvements in body composition (losing fat/gaining muscle) as I've mentioned in previous posts. Anecdotally, it doesn't take a genius to see that most middle and long distance runners do not have as good a body composition as their short distance counterparts.
I've ripped on LSD for good reason as you'll later see in section 4, but it is useful in some cases. For example, there are a lot of elite distance runners who on their off days go out for longer "leisurely" runs. This is known as active recovery and should not be misconstrued as actual training to improve their times. (You will see these runs are not actually "LSD" and not really "leisurely" either)
In conclusion, LSD is for the most part worthless except for active recovery as an "enjoyable activity." LSD does not show any appreciable improvements in strength, and high intensity exercise shows equal or more improvements for muscular endurance and cardiovascular ability than LSD especially in novices.
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III. The necessity of speed work
To the top
If you read the dragondoor sprinting article in the first section, you know that mass specific force (MSF) is improved with strength but to translate this to sprinting the muscles need to be trained to apply this force within the very short ground contact times. Application of this force can be done in various ways. The two most common are sprinting itself and plyometrics.
This is why to improve running times, athletes of all distances often have (1) strength training coupled with plyometrics, (2) speed work to improve maximal speed.
In case you are skeptical of the above analysis, here is one study which shows that increased strength allows the user to operate a longer stride length over a longer period than no strength work. Recognize that these are experienced runners, so a periodized strength program is necessarily for them to make the best improvements as opposed to the non-periodized strength and no strength programs. Of course, the non-periodized strength also showed improvement over the no strength program because some strength work is better than none for not-so-strong endurance athletes.
You can find many more studies like this in PubMed.
This is why high intensity exercise, especially interval work aimed at increasing maximal speed, helps improve longer runs especially quickly in the novice or intermediate athlete.
Thus, we have our answer for why.
Strength and speed work should be an integral part of an athletes program from novice to elite.
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IV. The focus of an endurance program at different ability levels
To the top
As stated, for the novice and intermediate the main focus of an endurance program should be first to increasing strength and speed while concurrently developing the ability to run distances. Thus, we aim for a program focused on:
We plan according to this because strength and speed are the attributes that take longest to develop. High intensity intervals also confer aerobic benefits of increased muscular and cardiovascular endurance so we don't need such a large focus on longer runs just yet.
The importance of longer runs is because of increases in running economy. Basically, the more running you do, the body gets more efficient at the movement. Thus, running economy seeks to measure this improvement for how much "effort" it takes to run which is measured in oxygen consumption per distance covered. This does not need to be developed as thoroughly yet, since stride length improvements and decreasing the intensity of running quickly take longer to develop and yield better times.
There is the point at which an athlete starts to improve their times into the advanced and elite range. As these times improve, the law of diminishing returns starts to rear its ugly head until you hit the ceiling over which you get negative returns on effort investment.
For example, a runner's primary focus is improving their running times. As strength increases it is harder to improve to get more strength; similarly, stride lengths will increase as slowly as the strength does. There is a point in time where too much strength will decrease the times of the athlete (because strength and endurance are at the opposite ends of the spectrum). Thus, if such a point occurs then it may be necessary to scale down the strength work to maintenance level, and focus more on other attributes to improve.
Thus, at this point we start scaling down the strenth work to maintenance level (usually 1-2 times per week) and start increasing the amount of longer distance running we do to improve running economy and increase muscular and cardiovascular endurance.
For instance, let's take a look at the training of one of the elite runners of the past, Hicham El Guerrouj (currently holds WR in 1500m, won some 5k golds). In his program he has:
Looking at his training cycles which resulted in some world records let's look at the proportion of work he was doing:
This corresponds to what I said earlier. He has a small amount of strength/power work to maintain strength and speed, and the majority of the running tends to focus on intervals + longer recover runs + fast pace work which allow him to improve running economy and muscular and cardiovascular endurance.
My point with looking at all of this work is that he always has a fair amount of interval/speed work or strength/power work in his training. Most of the longer distance runners you and I know that may even be competitive barely have any of these types of training sessions if any at all. This is a huge mistake.
Also, for reference, his slowest "recovery" work listed is 18-19s per 100m (which is the 3:00-3:10 pace over 1km). This is most definitely not LSD. Consider that a "decent" time for 5k is 20 minutes. This corresponds to 24s per 100m. His "recovery" work is 25% faster than a decent 5k time.
In conclusion, like strength training or any other type of sports training, novices/intermediate runners have no business training like the advanced/elite runners. We put novices on linear progression strength training while leaving more complicated periodized work for the elite athletes. The same is true of running as to improve times we have different focuses at different levels of ability.
The amount of strength and speed work needed for an endurance runner is proportional to your ability level. Novices need the most amount of strength and speed work, but as your times decrease you need proportionally less. When you're elite endurance runner, you're aiming just to maintain strength and speed, and run a huge amount of miles for the running economy and further gains in muscular and cardiovascular endurance.
If I were to structure a novice's training I would probably start with 50% strength/power, 40% intervals/speed work, and 10% longer runs. As they get more advanced, you can slowly phase down the strength/power work and turn it into more sessions of longer running. Interval distance will also increase to suitable lengths in proportion to the race distance as speed increases.
The above is just a general idea. However, most of the elite endurance runners can run under 11s 100m. If you're not there you need to be prioritizing your strength/power and speed work to get there at the very least. Then can come the increased focus on longer runs.
Notes:
1. For extra resources on developing improved sprinting/speed ability go here.
2. Bastardization of speed work such as that which is thrown into CrossFit metabolic conditioning does not really improve speed although you do get muscular and cardiovascular endurance benefits. Throwing them together in this fashion leads to mediocre results as evident by most of the best CFers only getting 18-20 min 5k times (although it's true they are not aiming for much better results than that). The focus needs to be specifically on speed work and strength transitioning into longer runs and run specific intervals.
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V. Extra analysis regarding energy pathways
To the top
First, let's review a bit of the background with metabolic aspects of different distances of running as I have mentioned before in "How to Construct..."
1. <=300m is primarily phosphagen & intramuscular glycolytic for energy. After that you hit the "aerobic wall"
2a. In a marathon, total glycogen depletion "wall" = mile 20-22 = ~90-100 minutes worth at WR pace (Haile Gebrselassie 2:03:59). This is approximately maximal sustainable aerobic pace for this distance.
2b. One thing I neglected to mention in previous energy systems analysis is that total body glycogen depletion is limited only by liver release of glucose, and muscular uptake of glucose. Now, if we are an elite runner and our muscles are sensitive enough to uptake glucose at an extremely high rate, it is possible to deplete total body glycogen in a very short period of time.
3a. The energy pathways are themselves separate functions. Glycolytic/anaerobic pathway has it's own set of enzymes and fuels, and the oxidative/aerobic has it's own set of enzymes, fuels, and mitochondria. Since these functions are independent, improvements in one will not affect the other.
3b. However, the benefit of high intensity work that spans past the 30-60s mark is that it stresses both the glycolytic and oxidative pathways heavily leading to significant adaptations in each. This is why interval work, tabatas, metabolic conditioning, circuits, and other such method of training yield good results over all of the energy pathways.
These two points are the important concepts that most people are missing. Please reread 3a and 3b until you understand clearly.
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Now, let's take a look beyond the metabolic analysis to some real world times (world record times) and see how they correspond to what we've looked at. These are the average speeds for each of the distances.
100m = 9.69s = 100m/9.69s = 10.32 m/s
200m = 19.30s = 200m/19.30s = 10.36 m/s
300m = 31.31s = 300m/31.31s = 9.58 m/s
400m = 43.18s = 400m/43.18s = 9.26 m/s
800m = 101.11s = 800m/101.11s = 7.91 m/s
1500m = 206.00s = 1500m/206.00s = 7.28 m/s
5000m = 757.35s = 5000m/757.35s = 6.60 m/s
10000m = 1577.53s = 10000m/1577.53s = 6.34 m/s
21097.5m = 3513s = 21097.5m/3513s = 6.01 m/s
42195m = 7439s = 42195m/7439s = 5.67 m/s
These are very interesting results indeed. But let's take a look at a graphical representation of log10(distance) vs. speed. And let's see some of the interesting tidbits.
1. 100m time is constrained because you start at a dead stop. In reality top speed is hit approximately 30-40m and only maintained 30-40m max until approximately 70-75m at which point your goal is to slow down less than the other person.
2a. Total intramuscular glycogen depletion occurs within this range depending on the intensity of the runner (shorter distance = higher intensity b/c of higher speed). The shorter the distance, the faster this glycogen depletes because of higher intensity drains the reserves faster.
2b. As you can by the speed values the graph starts leveling off at approximately 1000m. If we look up above and approximate the amount of time that it takes to run 1000m we end up with something around 120-130s or 2 minutes. This is probably where the general term of "total intramuscular glycogen depletion" is extrapolated from. However, as we examined in the previous point it does not take into account the intensity of the run.
Interlude: In between 2-3 shows a major transition from primarily intramuscular glycolytic into mass oxidative capability as shown by abiilty to utilize and mobilize hepatic glycogen, and fat stores from adipose tissue.
3. As the slope of the line starts to level off at approximately 2500m and beyond, this is the sustainable oxidative capacity of the world record holders. As we know, glycogen depletion occurs depending on the intensity of the exercise, and at all these distance we tend to have total glycogen depletion besides the marathon which occurs a bit earlier. In reality this concept doesn't even apply to the elite runners at that point anyway since they have massive fat utilization to cover the extra energy stores -- hence why they don't hit "the wall" and just keep on running fast).
4. World record holder for 5k and 10k distances is Kenenisa Bekele.
5. World record holder for the marathon, and second best WR times in 5k, 10k, AND half marathon is Haile Gebrselassie.
As we can see from points 4 & 5, if we develop the oxidative capacity (the gas from the car analogy) we can pretty much run any of the "long distances" well.
If we ignored the starting from a standstill and actually could get an accurate graph of human speed (if we were able to start at top speed), it would look something like this (pink line).
Note: NOT accurate values for speed.
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Bonus material
Q: Why is speed work necessary?
A: Look at the below times.
400m - average time per 100m = 10.80s
800m - average time per 100m = 12.64s
1500m - average time per 100m = 13.73s
5000m - average time per 100m = 15.15s
10000m - average time per 100m = 15.78s
21097.5m - average time per 100m = 16.65s
42195m - average time per 100m = 17.63s
1. Looking at 400m, you have to be VERY fast running 10.80s 100m.... 4 times in a row.
2. Checking out the middle distances 12.64s and 13.73s for 800m and 1500m respectively is a very fast pace to maintain for 8 100m and 15 100m runs respectively.
3. 5k and above confirms why LSD is useless except for recovery work. Again, a "decent" time for 5k is 20 minutes. This corresponds to 24s per 100m. People run marathons at a 7s faster pace than this.
How the hell are you supposed to get faster without actually running faster? Strength and speed work are very important. Running slowly over long distance doesn't do much.
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In the end, I hope you learned something from this. It was a HUGE project to type up all of this and organize it coherently.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.
Table of Contents
I. Deconstructing the physiology of speed
II. The problem with LSD
III. The necessity of speed work
IV. The focus of an endurance program at different ability levels
V. Extra analysis regarding energy pathways
All of the stuff I am about to talk about is not new. You can find it on the Internet on sprinting sites pretty much anywhere; however, we are going to go through it all anyway. And I know some of you like my explanations because I try to keep things simple most of the time.
First, I am defining endurance to be anything at 800m all the way to marathons and beyond. Obviously, some are categorized as "middle distance" and "long distance" respectively, but they all bear some resemblence as you will see later.
Second, I am defining "LSD" as the accumulation of high mileage without a purpose ON the assumption it will make you faster. You will see clearly in section 4 when I use examples what I am talking about.
--------------------------------------------
I. Deconstructing the physiology of speed
To the top
Let's start out with an analogy that I am sure many of you are familiar with.
- High strength translates to some increased endurance and a higher capacity for endurance.
For example, if I work my way up to a 100 lbs weighted pullup, I will also have the strength endurance to do 15+ pullups. This is because the unweighted pullups are only 60% (for a 150 lbs male) of my 1 rep max and therefore "easy" for my body to do.
In essence, the stronger we are the higher our active and latent potential is for endurance. We can also train to express the latent potential through specific endurance work like longer runs or high intensity exercise such as metabolic conditioning, intervals, etc. On the other hand, training for higher repetitions (or longer runs solely) do not confer the same benefits towards strength or power.
Now, speed development in running has a very important equation which works at all levels of ability.
- Speed = Stride rate x Stride Length
This equation tells us that our stride rate (how much time each stride takes) multiplied times our stride length (how much distance each stride covers) gives us our speed (distance covered per amount of time).
This is very useful information, but there is one catch.
- Speed improvements are governed by increasing stride length.
At the top levels, stride frequency is similar for all competitors; therefore, improvements are made only in stride length.
Novices should focus only on improving stride length (through strength and speed work) even though they do not have optimal stride rate either. This is because optimal stride rate is developed through sprinting technique, so as improvements are made by increasing speed the stride rate will developed optimally as a side effect.
Thus, the question becomes "how do you improve stride length."
- The way to increase stride length is exerting more force on the ground in every stride.
The force exerted on the ground must be specific to your bodyweight because that is what you are trying to move. This is called mass specific force (MSF). Here is some further reading with a more detailed explanation if you prefer. Another such article.
So going back our first example, our analogy comes full circle. We know that high amounts of strength translates to increased active and latent potential for endurance. And that strength improves stride length which improves speed.
After we have developed a high speed through strength and speed work, we need to develop the capacity to maintain it (which is developing the latent endurance potential from the side effect of high strength). This is where the specific interval and endurance work comes into play.
Thus, if we are running distances competitively, we can logically conclude that:
- We need a high strength to increase our ability to run faster through increased stride length, and
- We also need to work our endurance specifically to improve our ability to sustain the lengthened strides
For middle and long distance we can think of our ability to run faster like a car. Our increased strength (neuromuscularly) is a more powerful engine, and our increased muscular endurance (metabolically/energy pathways) translates to a bigger gas tank. We can also think of our cardiovascular system as the carburetor, fuel line, and exhaust system.
All of these systems must be "upgraded" and worked in concert to improve middle and long distance speed.
--------------------------------------------
II. The problem with LSD
To the top
LSD (long slow distance) has recently gotten a bad rap and for good reason. If your goal is to improve your distance times there are quite a lot of problems with using LSD only to facilitate improvement.
As we discussed in the previous section, there's 3 things that need to be improved concurrently in order to improve speed at long distances.
- Increased strength (neuromuscularly) = more powerful engine, and
- Increased muscular endurance (metabolically/energy pathways) = bigger gas tank, and
- Increased cardiovascular ability = improvements in carburetor, fuel line, and exhaust system
The glaring error with LSD is that it does not improve strength much. Thus, our stride length never improves much, which leads to very little increases in speed.
If you take your average person who competes in 5k/10k/marathons and test their strength it will be abysmal. Of course, if you also take a look at their training program they do no speed work or strength training as their whole program probably only consists of LSD with maybe some tempo runs.
While LSD does improve muscular endurance and cardiovascular endurance, we know that high intensity exercise such as intervals produce equal or faster adaptations. One such study is here. It's easy to find these in PubMed by searching for 'high intensity lactate endurance' (no quotes). You will find hundreds of studies showing that high intensity exercise as compared to traditional endurance training shows equal or greater improvements in variables such as lactate threshold, VO2max, and the most important factor which is performance which is shown by improved times.
The same is true of improvements in body composition (losing fat/gaining muscle) as I've mentioned in previous posts. Anecdotally, it doesn't take a genius to see that most middle and long distance runners do not have as good a body composition as their short distance counterparts.
I've ripped on LSD for good reason as you'll later see in section 4, but it is useful in some cases. For example, there are a lot of elite distance runners who on their off days go out for longer "leisurely" runs. This is known as active recovery and should not be misconstrued as actual training to improve their times. (You will see these runs are not actually "LSD" and not really "leisurely" either)
In conclusion, LSD is for the most part worthless except for active recovery as an "enjoyable activity." LSD does not show any appreciable improvements in strength, and high intensity exercise shows equal or more improvements for muscular endurance and cardiovascular ability than LSD especially in novices.
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III. The necessity of speed work
To the top
If you read the dragondoor sprinting article in the first section, you know that mass specific force (MSF) is improved with strength but to translate this to sprinting the muscles need to be trained to apply this force within the very short ground contact times. Application of this force can be done in various ways. The two most common are sprinting itself and plyometrics.
This is why to improve running times, athletes of all distances often have (1) strength training coupled with plyometrics, (2) speed work to improve maximal speed.
- Improving maximal speed translates to better endurance running because of the same exact principle of how increased strength translates to be increased endurance lifting weights or bodyweight.
- In other words, high maximum speed gained through strength allows the body to operate a longer stride length. With endurance specific training, this longer stride length can be maintained much longer leading to faster times.
In case you are skeptical of the above analysis, here is one study which shows that increased strength allows the user to operate a longer stride length over a longer period than no strength work. Recognize that these are experienced runners, so a periodized strength program is necessarily for them to make the best improvements as opposed to the non-periodized strength and no strength programs. Of course, the non-periodized strength also showed improvement over the no strength program because some strength work is better than none for not-so-strong endurance athletes.
You can find many more studies like this in PubMed.
This is why high intensity exercise, especially interval work aimed at increasing maximal speed, helps improve longer runs especially quickly in the novice or intermediate athlete.
Thus, we have our answer for why.
- We want to improve our strength to translate it to maximal speed. This increases our stride length, and if we can sustain it with muscular and cardiovascular endurance then we can run faster times.
Strength and speed work should be an integral part of an athletes program from novice to elite.
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IV. The focus of an endurance program at different ability levels
To the top
As stated, for the novice and intermediate the main focus of an endurance program should be first to increasing strength and speed while concurrently developing the ability to run distances. Thus, we aim for a program focused on:
- Large focus: Integration of strength work such as deadlifts and plyometrics
- Large focus: Improvement of speed work through high intensity intervals
- Small focus: longer runs to develop running economy, and muscular and cardiovascular endurance
We plan according to this because strength and speed are the attributes that take longest to develop. High intensity intervals also confer aerobic benefits of increased muscular and cardiovascular endurance so we don't need such a large focus on longer runs just yet.
The importance of longer runs is because of increases in running economy. Basically, the more running you do, the body gets more efficient at the movement. Thus, running economy seeks to measure this improvement for how much "effort" it takes to run which is measured in oxygen consumption per distance covered. This does not need to be developed as thoroughly yet, since stride length improvements and decreasing the intensity of running quickly take longer to develop and yield better times.
There is the point at which an athlete starts to improve their times into the advanced and elite range. As these times improve, the law of diminishing returns starts to rear its ugly head until you hit the ceiling over which you get negative returns on effort investment.
For example, a runner's primary focus is improving their running times. As strength increases it is harder to improve to get more strength; similarly, stride lengths will increase as slowly as the strength does. There is a point in time where too much strength will decrease the times of the athlete (because strength and endurance are at the opposite ends of the spectrum). Thus, if such a point occurs then it may be necessary to scale down the strength work to maintenance level, and focus more on other attributes to improve.
Thus, at this point we start scaling down the strenth work to maintenance level (usually 1-2 times per week) and start increasing the amount of longer distance running we do to improve running economy and increase muscular and cardiovascular endurance.
For instance, let's take a look at the training of one of the elite runners of the past, Hicham El Guerrouj (currently holds WR in 1500m, won some 5k golds). In his program he has:
Looking at his training cycles which resulted in some world records let's look at the proportion of work he was doing:
First cycle - 21 days
Training sessions: 35
Strength/power work: 10 = 28.6%
Physical preparation: 2 = 5.8%
Aerobic work (intervals + longer runs): 23 = 65.7%
A relatively huge proportion of strength/power work at 28.6% considering what your average runner does which is 0%.
Second cycle - 21 days
Training sessions: 37
Strength/power work: 6 = 16.2%
Race pace (intervals): 5 = 13.5%
Aerobic work (fast pace + recovery): 70.2%
Still a significant amount of strength/power work + intervals. Aerobic work is up to 70% which is to be expected of a distance runner in 1500m and 5000m.
Third cycle - 21 days
Training sessions: 38
Race pace + speed work (intervals): 8 = 21.1%
Warming up + aerobic (recovery + fast pace): 30 = 78.9%
No strength/power, but increased work with speed and intervals to improve race ability. Still a significant margin at 21%.
This corresponds to what I said earlier. He has a small amount of strength/power work to maintain strength and speed, and the majority of the running tends to focus on intervals + longer recover runs + fast pace work which allow him to improve running economy and muscular and cardiovascular endurance.
My point with looking at all of this work is that he always has a fair amount of interval/speed work or strength/power work in his training. Most of the longer distance runners you and I know that may even be competitive barely have any of these types of training sessions if any at all. This is a huge mistake.
Also, for reference, his slowest "recovery" work listed is 18-19s per 100m (which is the 3:00-3:10 pace over 1km). This is most definitely not LSD. Consider that a "decent" time for 5k is 20 minutes. This corresponds to 24s per 100m. His "recovery" work is 25% faster than a decent 5k time.
In conclusion, like strength training or any other type of sports training, novices/intermediate runners have no business training like the advanced/elite runners. We put novices on linear progression strength training while leaving more complicated periodized work for the elite athletes. The same is true of running as to improve times we have different focuses at different levels of ability.
The amount of strength and speed work needed for an endurance runner is proportional to your ability level. Novices need the most amount of strength and speed work, but as your times decrease you need proportionally less. When you're elite endurance runner, you're aiming just to maintain strength and speed, and run a huge amount of miles for the running economy and further gains in muscular and cardiovascular endurance.
If I were to structure a novice's training I would probably start with 50% strength/power, 40% intervals/speed work, and 10% longer runs. As they get more advanced, you can slowly phase down the strength/power work and turn it into more sessions of longer running. Interval distance will also increase to suitable lengths in proportion to the race distance as speed increases.
The above is just a general idea. However, most of the elite endurance runners can run under 11s 100m. If you're not there you need to be prioritizing your strength/power and speed work to get there at the very least. Then can come the increased focus on longer runs.
Notes:
1. For extra resources on developing improved sprinting/speed ability go here.
2. Bastardization of speed work such as that which is thrown into CrossFit metabolic conditioning does not really improve speed although you do get muscular and cardiovascular endurance benefits. Throwing them together in this fashion leads to mediocre results as evident by most of the best CFers only getting 18-20 min 5k times (although it's true they are not aiming for much better results than that). The focus needs to be specifically on speed work and strength transitioning into longer runs and run specific intervals.
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V. Extra analysis regarding energy pathways
To the top
First, let's review a bit of the background with metabolic aspects of different distances of running as I have mentioned before in "How to Construct..."
1. <=300m is primarily phosphagen & intramuscular glycolytic for energy. After that you hit the "aerobic wall"
2a. In a marathon, total glycogen depletion "wall" = mile 20-22 = ~90-100 minutes worth at WR pace (Haile Gebrselassie 2:03:59). This is approximately maximal sustainable aerobic pace for this distance.
2b. One thing I neglected to mention in previous energy systems analysis is that total body glycogen depletion is limited only by liver release of glucose, and muscular uptake of glucose. Now, if we are an elite runner and our muscles are sensitive enough to uptake glucose at an extremely high rate, it is possible to deplete total body glycogen in a very short period of time.
3a. The energy pathways are themselves separate functions. Glycolytic/anaerobic pathway has it's own set of enzymes and fuels, and the oxidative/aerobic has it's own set of enzymes, fuels, and mitochondria. Since these functions are independent, improvements in one will not affect the other.
3b. However, the benefit of high intensity work that spans past the 30-60s mark is that it stresses both the glycolytic and oxidative pathways heavily leading to significant adaptations in each. This is why interval work, tabatas, metabolic conditioning, circuits, and other such method of training yield good results over all of the energy pathways.
These two points are the important concepts that most people are missing. Please reread 3a and 3b until you understand clearly.
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Now, let's take a look beyond the metabolic analysis to some real world times (world record times) and see how they correspond to what we've looked at. These are the average speeds for each of the distances.
100m = 9.69s = 100m/9.69s = 10.32 m/s
200m = 19.30s = 200m/19.30s = 10.36 m/s
300m = 31.31s = 300m/31.31s = 9.58 m/s
400m = 43.18s = 400m/43.18s = 9.26 m/s
800m = 101.11s = 800m/101.11s = 7.91 m/s
1500m = 206.00s = 1500m/206.00s = 7.28 m/s
5000m = 757.35s = 5000m/757.35s = 6.60 m/s
10000m = 1577.53s = 10000m/1577.53s = 6.34 m/s
21097.5m = 3513s = 21097.5m/3513s = 6.01 m/s
42195m = 7439s = 42195m/7439s = 5.67 m/s
These are very interesting results indeed. But let's take a look at a graphical representation of log10(distance) vs. speed. And let's see some of the interesting tidbits.
1. 100m time is constrained because you start at a dead stop. In reality top speed is hit approximately 30-40m and only maintained 30-40m max until approximately 70-75m at which point your goal is to slow down less than the other person.
2a. Total intramuscular glycogen depletion occurs within this range depending on the intensity of the runner (shorter distance = higher intensity b/c of higher speed). The shorter the distance, the faster this glycogen depletes because of higher intensity drains the reserves faster.
2b. As you can by the speed values the graph starts leveling off at approximately 1000m. If we look up above and approximate the amount of time that it takes to run 1000m we end up with something around 120-130s or 2 minutes. This is probably where the general term of "total intramuscular glycogen depletion" is extrapolated from. However, as we examined in the previous point it does not take into account the intensity of the run.
Interlude: In between 2-3 shows a major transition from primarily intramuscular glycolytic into mass oxidative capability as shown by abiilty to utilize and mobilize hepatic glycogen, and fat stores from adipose tissue.
3. As the slope of the line starts to level off at approximately 2500m and beyond, this is the sustainable oxidative capacity of the world record holders. As we know, glycogen depletion occurs depending on the intensity of the exercise, and at all these distance we tend to have total glycogen depletion besides the marathon which occurs a bit earlier. In reality this concept doesn't even apply to the elite runners at that point anyway since they have massive fat utilization to cover the extra energy stores -- hence why they don't hit "the wall" and just keep on running fast).
4. World record holder for 5k and 10k distances is Kenenisa Bekele.
5. World record holder for the marathon, and second best WR times in 5k, 10k, AND half marathon is Haile Gebrselassie.
As we can see from points 4 & 5, if we develop the oxidative capacity (the gas from the car analogy) we can pretty much run any of the "long distances" well.
If we ignored the starting from a standstill and actually could get an accurate graph of human speed (if we were able to start at top speed), it would look something like this (pink line).
Note: NOT accurate values for speed.
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Bonus material
Q: Why is speed work necessary?
A: Look at the below times.
400m - average time per 100m = 10.80s
800m - average time per 100m = 12.64s
1500m - average time per 100m = 13.73s
5000m - average time per 100m = 15.15s
10000m - average time per 100m = 15.78s
21097.5m - average time per 100m = 16.65s
42195m - average time per 100m = 17.63s
1. Looking at 400m, you have to be VERY fast running 10.80s 100m.... 4 times in a row.
2. Checking out the middle distances 12.64s and 13.73s for 800m and 1500m respectively is a very fast pace to maintain for 8 100m and 15 100m runs respectively.
3. 5k and above confirms why LSD is useless except for recovery work. Again, a "decent" time for 5k is 20 minutes. This corresponds to 24s per 100m. People run marathons at a 7s faster pace than this.
How the hell are you supposed to get faster without actually running faster? Strength and speed work are very important. Running slowly over long distance doesn't do much.
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In the end, I hope you learned something from this. It was a HUGE project to type up all of this and organize it coherently.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
The when and why of static stretching
Let's take a short look at the "rules" for static and dynamic stretching. Physiologically of course.
First, let's establish what the "common" rules are (although this may be new to some of you):
1. Save static stretching until the end of a workout
2. IF there are hip dominant athletic movements, then it is a good idea to stretch your hip flexors.
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Q: So what occurs during static stretching?
A: Your muscles lengthen, dummy!
Okay, that was fairly obvious. Now why is this important?
The quick physiology...
Static stretching basically forcibly lengthens your muscles and inhibits the muscle spindles which are located in the belly of the muscle. These muscle spindles are sensory receptors that send feedback to the central nervous system. If the muscle is lengthening too rapidly, the CNS will send motor feedback (reflex) to the muscles telling them to contract. This is the body's protective mechanism often called the "stretch-shorten cycle" which is there to prevent the muscle from straining or tearing.
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Let's take a look by examining the etiology of strained/pulled muscles.
All strains/pulls are pretty much the same so let's take a look at one of the more common ones -- the hamstring strain.
Now what happens often in kicking sports and sprinting is that the hamstrings get fatigued very quickly. This is because the hamstrings do double duty as primary movers with the glutes in hip extension, and also act as an eccentric control for the the lower leg in the knee drive forward (image 1-6 for the left hamstring).
This physiological data has a two implications:
1. Without stretching, as the muscles fatigue, if they do not have enough strength-endurance to contract to prevent lengthening you get a strain. This is what happens with kicking sports and sprinters if their hamstring strength-endurance is not well developed regardless of static stretching or not.
2. With stretching, the muscle spindles act to reflexively activate the muscle to keep it from elongating too quickly too far in the ECCENTRIC phase. If the strength-endurance of the person is too low (novice runners) or the person is extremely powerful (extremely fast runners) or somewhere inbetween the addition of static stretching may increase the chance of a hamstring strain.
As we can see the potential for injury may increase especially in sports or exercises with a large eccentric component if we static stretch the muscle before exercise.
P.S. Groin strains are similar to hamstring strains because of their dual nature in kicking and sprinting sports as well.
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Energy conservation
This manifests itself in 2 ways.
1. Static stretching before a workout decreases the ability to exhibit maximum power or strength up to approximately 25-30 minutes after stretching. So it is not a good to static stretch before workouts.
2. If the resting muscle length is too long (too much static stretching overall), then one of the problems you encounter is that the stretch-shorten reflex does not work as well. Excessive flexibility such as the splits may be counterproductive for sports that do not require it because it will decrease your ability in power or strength movements.
For example, the stretch-shorten cycle is also used for energy conservation such as "bouncing" out of the bottom of the squat with the hammies (Oly lifting, weightlifting, etc.) as they lengthen under tension, or in the plyometric moment on the calves/hamstrings during sprinting.
----------------
Examining the hip flexors exception
The one exception is stretching the hip flexors before any explosive hip extension movement. We know that as a muscle lengthens rapidly the stretch-shorten cycle sends feedback to the CNS which relays the message to tell it to contract. In hip extension, the hip flexors are performing the eccentric component (as well as the rectus femoris) resisting against the extension and hyperextension of the hip.
We want to static stretch them to inhibit the stretch-shorten cycle so that we can increase the power of our hip extension/hyperextension allowing us to sprint faster, squat more powerfully, or anything that requires power or strength in a hip extension movement (which is almost every lower body exercise).
----------------
In conclusion
Thus, we come to the few conclusions we arrived in the introduction (underlined) with a little bit added on as clarification, plus an additional rule.
1a. Save static stretching until the end of a workout.
1b. BUT only static stretch if you need the flexibility for your sport. Flexibliity that is sufficently developed for sport is fine where it is, and OVERdeveloped flexibility may have to be remedied with strength/power training without any static stretching.
2a. IF there are hip dominant athletic movements, then it is a good idea to stretch your hip flexors.
2b. Most people's are too strong and short because we sit a lot. But if you're a lucky person where yours are underdeveloped and weak then be wary of static stretching them until they are sufficiently strong because of the potential for groin strains.
3. If our sport requires flexibility in it (such as gymnastics and the splits), then clearly static stretching before it may be beneficial to hit the positions.
Similarly, with novice lifters if flexibility is limiting their ability to hit technically correct positions (aka bottom of the squat has butt winking with tight hamstrings), then use static stretching so they can improve their form for their lifts. This is something that must be addressed both before and after lifting to improve their ability to do the lifts technically correct.
----------------
Hope this was clear to everyone. If you're confused leave me some comments.
First, let's establish what the "common" rules are (although this may be new to some of you):
1. Save static stretching until the end of a workout
2. IF there are hip dominant athletic movements, then it is a good idea to stretch your hip flexors.
----------------
Q: So what occurs during static stretching?
A: Your muscles lengthen, dummy!
Okay, that was fairly obvious. Now why is this important?
The quick physiology...
Static stretching basically forcibly lengthens your muscles and inhibits the muscle spindles which are located in the belly of the muscle. These muscle spindles are sensory receptors that send feedback to the central nervous system. If the muscle is lengthening too rapidly, the CNS will send motor feedback (reflex) to the muscles telling them to contract. This is the body's protective mechanism often called the "stretch-shorten cycle" which is there to prevent the muscle from straining or tearing.
----------------
Let's take a look by examining the etiology of strained/pulled muscles.
All strains/pulls are pretty much the same so let's take a look at one of the more common ones -- the hamstring strain.
Now what happens often in kicking sports and sprinting is that the hamstrings get fatigued very quickly. This is because the hamstrings do double duty as primary movers with the glutes in hip extension, and also act as an eccentric control for the the lower leg in the knee drive forward (image 1-6 for the left hamstring).
This physiological data has a two implications:
1. Without stretching, as the muscles fatigue, if they do not have enough strength-endurance to contract to prevent lengthening you get a strain. This is what happens with kicking sports and sprinters if their hamstring strength-endurance is not well developed regardless of static stretching or not.
2. With stretching, the muscle spindles act to reflexively activate the muscle to keep it from elongating too quickly too far in the ECCENTRIC phase. If the strength-endurance of the person is too low (novice runners) or the person is extremely powerful (extremely fast runners) or somewhere inbetween the addition of static stretching may increase the chance of a hamstring strain.
As we can see the potential for injury may increase especially in sports or exercises with a large eccentric component if we static stretch the muscle before exercise.
P.S. Groin strains are similar to hamstring strains because of their dual nature in kicking and sprinting sports as well.
----------------
Energy conservation
This manifests itself in 2 ways.
1. Static stretching before a workout decreases the ability to exhibit maximum power or strength up to approximately 25-30 minutes after stretching. So it is not a good to static stretch before workouts.
2. If the resting muscle length is too long (too much static stretching overall), then one of the problems you encounter is that the stretch-shorten reflex does not work as well. Excessive flexibility such as the splits may be counterproductive for sports that do not require it because it will decrease your ability in power or strength movements.
For example, the stretch-shorten cycle is also used for energy conservation such as "bouncing" out of the bottom of the squat with the hammies (Oly lifting, weightlifting, etc.) as they lengthen under tension, or in the plyometric moment on the calves/hamstrings during sprinting.
----------------
Examining the hip flexors exception
The one exception is stretching the hip flexors before any explosive hip extension movement. We know that as a muscle lengthens rapidly the stretch-shorten cycle sends feedback to the CNS which relays the message to tell it to contract. In hip extension, the hip flexors are performing the eccentric component (as well as the rectus femoris) resisting against the extension and hyperextension of the hip.
We want to static stretch them to inhibit the stretch-shorten cycle so that we can increase the power of our hip extension/hyperextension allowing us to sprint faster, squat more powerfully, or anything that requires power or strength in a hip extension movement (which is almost every lower body exercise).
----------------
In conclusion
Thus, we come to the few conclusions we arrived in the introduction (underlined) with a little bit added on as clarification, plus an additional rule.
1a. Save static stretching until the end of a workout.
1b. BUT only static stretch if you need the flexibility for your sport. Flexibliity that is sufficently developed for sport is fine where it is, and OVERdeveloped flexibility may have to be remedied with strength/power training without any static stretching.
2a. IF there are hip dominant athletic movements, then it is a good idea to stretch your hip flexors.
2b. Most people's are too strong and short because we sit a lot. But if you're a lucky person where yours are underdeveloped and weak then be wary of static stretching them until they are sufficiently strong because of the potential for groin strains.
3. If our sport requires flexibility in it (such as gymnastics and the splits), then clearly static stretching before it may be beneficial to hit the positions.
Similarly, with novice lifters if flexibility is limiting their ability to hit technically correct positions (aka bottom of the squat has butt winking with tight hamstrings), then use static stretching so they can improve their form for their lifts. This is something that must be addressed both before and after lifting to improve their ability to do the lifts technically correct.
----------------
Hope this was clear to everyone. If you're confused leave me some comments.
Friday, May 1, 2009
the relationship between diet and exercise
I figured I'd post a little lesson explaining the relationship between diet and exercise since it comes up a lot.
I. Diet modulates weight.
II. Exercise modulates body composition.
Everything can be derived from these two statements. Let's look at a couple of common examples.
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1. You are obese and want to slim down.
Diet is the most important because you need to lose a lot of fat WEIGHT. This is also why six packs are said to be "made in the kitchen."
A. If you are eating too many calories and/or junk calories, your body is not going to want to drop any weight at all.
B. SIMILARLY, if you are eating too FEW calories your body does not want to drop weight as well because it's going to enter starvation "energy saving" mode. This is a critical mistake that many people who want to lose weight make.
In this case, exercise here is going to help modulate body composition while the pounds come off. For example, if you end up not exercising, your body will indiscriminately drop muscle mass as well as fat mass. However, exercising will help keep muscle mass and maybe even gain some while letting the body drop off fat mass which will improve body composition.
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2. You are at a "healthy weight" for your height, but want to "tone up" and gain muscle mass while losing fat.
Exercise here is the most important for any significant body composition change. Depending on the different types of exercise, your body may see fit to increase muscle mass and/or burn off excess fat mass (in conjunction with diet).
Diet is still very important in the context that a good diet will produce good changes much faster than a junky one, but as far as overall weight maintenance it doesn't matter as much. This depends a lot on genetics (hence why elite athletes can generally eat crap and get away with it), but even with good body composition changes with junky food may be at the expense of overall long term health.
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3. The underweight person looking to "bulk up" with muscle.
Diet is the most important. This is a weight issue, and the person is looking to gain weight. Thus, they need to eat more. Period.
This time around adding body mass will be variable according to the exercise (or lack thereof) because it affects body composition.
A. Lifting weights with a hypercaloric diet will tend to put on more muscle mass than fat.
B. Eating more without exercising tends to put on all fat as seen by the obesity rates in America.
Onto the details.....
I. Regarding the quality of diet
Quality of diet is highly dependent on the genetics of the individual. On the other hand, the one thing we can say is that improvements in the quality of diet directly leads to results in weight (maintenance, gain or loss) as well as quality of HEALTH. Since we literally are what we eat, if we take in junk food all the time our health is probably going to decline, and the body will probably gain weight as junk food has a high caloric value.
Healthy bodies operate better mentally, physically, and emotionally so it is VERY important to get high quality nutrients.
There is a simple rule you can follow. Here's the link from the previous posts' nutrition section.
Here's a more detailed post by one of my friends if you're curious beyond the above link.
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II. Regarding the quality of exercise
High intensity or high power output exercise -- heavy lifting, intervals, metabolic conditioning, etc. -- produce the fastest body composition changes. In response to stress, your body produces a neuroendocrine response in which it releases a lot of anabolic hormones to help repair your tissues to adapt to the stressors. The stronger the stressors, the more hormones are released. Hormones will modulate your body composition through nutrient partitioning.
Damage to your muscles and their growth/adaptation require energy to repair which will be provided by through diet. If the energy need exceeds than of which the diet provides (hypocaloric diet for the obese & isocaloric diet for those who want to maintain weight), then the body tends to metabolize adipose tissue to supply the energy.
The regulation of body composition operates according to the law of diminishing returns (aka logarithmic scale). This means that the improvements will be much greater the higher the body fat percentage & with less muscle mass, but much lower as the body fat percentage drops & with more muscle mass. Many people say that you cannot add muscle and lose fat at the same time; this is wrong and occurs frequently in obese individuals who are losing weight while doing high intensity exercise. However, as the BF% drops into the teens and single digits, it does not occur as much if at all.
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III. Regarding the reliance of diet and exercise to each other
In general, we would tend to say that overall improvement of weight and body composition is 80-85% diet and 15-20% exercise. This is because we are eating almost 21 times per week (maybe more) and only working out about 3-5 times a week.
These are the times that you will be affecting your weight and body composition, so they need to be used wisely. We often taking eating and exercising (or not exercising for that matter) for granted, but if you want to make any significant weight or body composition changes these times must be taken seriously. Both quality and quantity matter.
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That's all folks... hope you learned something.
Also, I would appreciate some feedback for the question in the previous post!
I. Diet modulates weight.
II. Exercise modulates body composition.
Everything can be derived from these two statements. Let's look at a couple of common examples.
------------------
1. You are obese and want to slim down.
Diet is the most important because you need to lose a lot of fat WEIGHT. This is also why six packs are said to be "made in the kitchen."
A. If you are eating too many calories and/or junk calories, your body is not going to want to drop any weight at all.
B. SIMILARLY, if you are eating too FEW calories your body does not want to drop weight as well because it's going to enter starvation "energy saving" mode. This is a critical mistake that many people who want to lose weight make.
In this case, exercise here is going to help modulate body composition while the pounds come off. For example, if you end up not exercising, your body will indiscriminately drop muscle mass as well as fat mass. However, exercising will help keep muscle mass and maybe even gain some while letting the body drop off fat mass which will improve body composition.
------------------
2. You are at a "healthy weight" for your height, but want to "tone up" and gain muscle mass while losing fat.
Exercise here is the most important for any significant body composition change. Depending on the different types of exercise, your body may see fit to increase muscle mass and/or burn off excess fat mass (in conjunction with diet).
Diet is still very important in the context that a good diet will produce good changes much faster than a junky one, but as far as overall weight maintenance it doesn't matter as much. This depends a lot on genetics (hence why elite athletes can generally eat crap and get away with it), but even with good body composition changes with junky food may be at the expense of overall long term health.
------------------
3. The underweight person looking to "bulk up" with muscle.
Diet is the most important. This is a weight issue, and the person is looking to gain weight. Thus, they need to eat more. Period.
This time around adding body mass will be variable according to the exercise (or lack thereof) because it affects body composition.
A. Lifting weights with a hypercaloric diet will tend to put on more muscle mass than fat.
B. Eating more without exercising tends to put on all fat as seen by the obesity rates in America.
Onto the details.....
I. Regarding the quality of diet
Quality of diet is highly dependent on the genetics of the individual. On the other hand, the one thing we can say is that improvements in the quality of diet directly leads to results in weight (maintenance, gain or loss) as well as quality of HEALTH. Since we literally are what we eat, if we take in junk food all the time our health is probably going to decline, and the body will probably gain weight as junk food has a high caloric value.
Healthy bodies operate better mentally, physically, and emotionally so it is VERY important to get high quality nutrients.
There is a simple rule you can follow. Here's the link from the previous posts' nutrition section.
Here's a more detailed post by one of my friends if you're curious beyond the above link.
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II. Regarding the quality of exercise
High intensity or high power output exercise -- heavy lifting, intervals, metabolic conditioning, etc. -- produce the fastest body composition changes. In response to stress, your body produces a neuroendocrine response in which it releases a lot of anabolic hormones to help repair your tissues to adapt to the stressors. The stronger the stressors, the more hormones are released. Hormones will modulate your body composition through nutrient partitioning.
Damage to your muscles and their growth/adaptation require energy to repair which will be provided by through diet. If the energy need exceeds than of which the diet provides (hypocaloric diet for the obese & isocaloric diet for those who want to maintain weight), then the body tends to metabolize adipose tissue to supply the energy.
The regulation of body composition operates according to the law of diminishing returns (aka logarithmic scale). This means that the improvements will be much greater the higher the body fat percentage & with less muscle mass, but much lower as the body fat percentage drops & with more muscle mass. Many people say that you cannot add muscle and lose fat at the same time; this is wrong and occurs frequently in obese individuals who are losing weight while doing high intensity exercise. However, as the BF% drops into the teens and single digits, it does not occur as much if at all.
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III. Regarding the reliance of diet and exercise to each other
In general, we would tend to say that overall improvement of weight and body composition is 80-85% diet and 15-20% exercise. This is because we are eating almost 21 times per week (maybe more) and only working out about 3-5 times a week.
These are the times that you will be affecting your weight and body composition, so they need to be used wisely. We often taking eating and exercising (or not exercising for that matter) for granted, but if you want to make any significant weight or body composition changes these times must be taken seriously. Both quality and quantity matter.
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That's all folks... hope you learned something.
Also, I would appreciate some feedback for the question in the previous post!
Monday, April 13, 2009
A call for KISS
I do want to take this time to say KISS. Keep it simple, stupid.
I like this rule, and the more I train the more I realize that's how it should be.
One of the things I was thinking about as I looked over the whole “How to construct...” is that it's getting insanely long and probably insanely overwhelming especially for people newer to exercising.
Basically, the gist of KISS is keeping everything simple enough. There's generally I'd say 4 things that you need to be doing to have good results with your training namely (1) training, (2) nutrition, (3) sleep, and (4) low levels of stress.
1. Training is best kept simple. Workout hard and rest hard. Put your best into your workouts, and they will give their best back to you. But when it's time to rest, make sure you really rest. Don't try to unnecessarily complicate things with so many exercises or so many varying repetition schemes – just work hard and you'll get results. As you learn about your body and understand more then you may need to vary it up, but by then you'll generally know enough that it shouldn't be complicated.
If you ever find yourself thinking about programming for more than 10-20 minutes, you're probably overcomplicating things.
Define goals -> Select exercises -> organize them into workouts -> Go do it.
2. Nutrition... keep it simple.
I think this article says it best:
http://lifespotlight.com/health/2008/06/04/nutrition-101-the-one-rule-to-remember/
3. Sleep is simple. Get 7-8 hours per night. Maybe a bit more or a bit less depending on your body's needs. No exceptions. Make time if you have to.
4. Low levels of stress. Self explanatory. Don't worry so much. Training and sleeping help alleviate stress definitely, but don't get all worked up about anything going on in your daily lives. Just step back, take a few deep breaths and deal with it.
Try to schedule some you time every week – massages, learn new sports or do other activities, meet new people, etc. Chronic levels of stress will beat you down hard and be disruptive to your training so try to stay as stress free as possible.
I like this rule, and the more I train the more I realize that's how it should be.
One of the things I was thinking about as I looked over the whole “How to construct...” is that it's getting insanely long and probably insanely overwhelming especially for people newer to exercising.
Basically, the gist of KISS is keeping everything simple enough. There's generally I'd say 4 things that you need to be doing to have good results with your training namely (1) training, (2) nutrition, (3) sleep, and (4) low levels of stress.
1. Training is best kept simple. Workout hard and rest hard. Put your best into your workouts, and they will give their best back to you. But when it's time to rest, make sure you really rest. Don't try to unnecessarily complicate things with so many exercises or so many varying repetition schemes – just work hard and you'll get results. As you learn about your body and understand more then you may need to vary it up, but by then you'll generally know enough that it shouldn't be complicated.
If you ever find yourself thinking about programming for more than 10-20 minutes, you're probably overcomplicating things.
Define goals -> Select exercises -> organize them into workouts -> Go do it.
2. Nutrition... keep it simple.
I think this article says it best:
http://lifespotlight.com/health/2008/06/04/nutrition-101-the-one-rule-to-remember/
3. Sleep is simple. Get 7-8 hours per night. Maybe a bit more or a bit less depending on your body's needs. No exceptions. Make time if you have to.
4. Low levels of stress. Self explanatory. Don't worry so much. Training and sleeping help alleviate stress definitely, but don't get all worked up about anything going on in your daily lives. Just step back, take a few deep breaths and deal with it.
Try to schedule some you time every week – massages, learn new sports or do other activities, meet new people, etc. Chronic levels of stress will beat you down hard and be disruptive to your training so try to stay as stress free as possible.
Thursday, December 18, 2008
How to construct your own workout routine
Before we go any further I want to emphasize that training itself is *NOT* the main “method" to put on any muscle mass or burn off fat. A good diet coupled with training is the ONLY way to lose fat, gain muscle mass, or any of the other body composition options. Here is a post detailing the relationship between diet and exercise.
Regarding diet, here's little more on one rule to remember for diet composition. Here's a more detailed post by one of my friends if you're curious beyond the above rule. Anyway, moving on.....
I've recently been asked by a lot of people advice on how to build their own workouts according to their specific goals. It's not a hard process, so I feel that this article will be helpful to everyone on how to construct a routine to focus on your goals. Anyway, let's get started.
Table of Contents
I. Goal setting
II. The terms of exercise
III. A slightly more in-depth look at body physiology
IV. Exercise selection
V. Hierarchy of a routine
VI. Routines for power and strength
VII. Routines for endurance & metabolic conditioning
VIII. Specific programs
IX. Q&A to specific questions
Note 1: Blue links are active. You can click on them to navigate around. Leave comments and suggestions if you want something changed.
Note 2: Many people have asked me specifically about bodyweight exercise programming. I will be including an additional section detailing my preferences for how to do this; however, this will be in the next edition (v1.3). So I guess you could bug me if you really wanted me to do this sooner. Again, eave comments and suggestions if you want something changed.
I've decided to rewrite and add to some of the guide as apparently some people still don't get it. This will be an even more comprehensive version including new sections on explosiveness/power work as well as further elaboration into my recommendations for newer trainees. I am going to be providing a Q&A at the end to reasonably common questions such as soreness, overtraining, and other things of this nature so hopefully this will expand as more common questions are asked as I will probably not discuss a lot of these within the article itself.
Please note I will include links if I feel I need to. As I am writing from primarily memory there may be a few mistakes so call me out of it if you know of any. If there's a few concepts you want some elaboration on then feel free to Google them first before you post to try to ask me. Since this is not a paper or anything that is getting published I don't feel compelled to source any or all of my information as this thing is already 15 pages long at the time I am writing this introduction.
v1.1 – 2008/04/16
~Added sections for III. (indepth look at muscles/CNS), V. (hierarchy of a routine), IX. (Q&A)
~Elaborated more on goals section as people were having problems
~40-50% completion of hierarchy of a routine
~25-33% completion of muscle/CNS
~Added parts on warmup in hierarchy
~Added Power to the strength category; 0% complete
v1.2 – 2008/12/18
~Added more on goal setting specifically on aligning goals with an overarching “aim"
~Breaking up CNS/muscles topic into two topics... CNS/muscle interaction & energy pathways.
~Finished energy pathways section – brought in previous material to complete it rather quickly
~Finished hierarchy of a routine although will probably add in more later. It's bare bones at the moment IMO.
~Minor editing to be more concise in some sections though still long winded, sorry!
~Added overtraining & soreness to the Q&A.. probably the most common two, heh
~Revamped a bit of the strength and power section. Did not add any power yet though.
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I. Goal Setting
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First, you need to determine your goals. Good goals are tangible feats that you want accomplish. For example, being able to do 10 dips and run 400m in 60 seconds are both good goals. An example of bad goals would 'gaining muscle mass' or 'improving broad jump' or 'improving fitness.' They are bad goals because they are not defined – gaining 10 lbs of muscle or improving your broad jump 6" would be good goals. Anyone can say they want to gain muscle mass, but it takes commitment to write down to accomplish that particular feat. Good goals are tangible ones that you can cross off your list like you would a grocery list. Making good goals is not only critical to developing a routine, but it keeps your motivation up which you need to succeed.
Here are some examples on what are good goals versus what are bad goals:
Bad goals: get toned, gain muscle mass, lose fat, work my pullups and dips, work my precisions, do more dashses, handstands
Good goals: gain 10 lbs of muscle, lose 10 lbs of fat, do 40 pushups, 10 muscle ups, deadlift 400 lbs, 100 precisions, 100 rolls, do 1 minute of handstand work a day
As you can see, they generally all include NUMBERS. They are able to be obtained in the sense that you achieved a status and then you can move onto another new and harder goal. These are the types of goals we want because then we can begin to construct a routine around them. For most goals that can be quantified, one can see the logical progression in obtaining them – if my goal is 10 pushups and I can do one, then I need to work my pushups capacity so that I can get 2 then 3 then 4 and so on until I hit that 10. For others such as planche work, for example, there needs to be some creativity to sufficiently strengthen the muscles using multiple different exercises. Mostly, this just comes into play with tough bodyweight exercises though and a lot of them have been answered by people like Coach Sommer's planche and front lever progressions, beastskills.com, drillsandskills.com, and places like these so check there instead of asking questions that have been asked thousands of times already.
One good model if you are still having trouble is SMART:
Specific
Measurable
Action-Oriented
Realistic
Time and Resource Constrained
Make sure that your goals are specific for what YOU want to do. I have seen numerous times where someone puts one of their goals as 100 pushups. Really? What do you expect to achieve with that if your “main aim" is to increase your strength? That is significantly endurance work and is not oriented with strength work.
One of the ways to ensure your SMART goals are within your overarching aim is to break down each into components. For example, the “top out" Parkour movement is very similar to muscle up which is also very similar to working pullups and dips. Thus, it is a good idea to set goals along the lines of each of these movements working both strength and explosiveness. Similarly, with strength skills such as handstand pushups, they can be broken down into different mini-skills such as feet-inclined-pushups, band assisted handstand pushups, headstand pushups, etc. Generally, you want to do something that mimics the movement you are doing IF NOT TRAINING THE MOVEMENT ITSELF! If my goal was working up to a one arm chinup, I would work one arm negatives/eccentrics, assisted one arm chinup concentrics, weighted pullups. ALL of these movements work the pulling muscles similar to what the main goal is. I will talk about this more a bit later in the hierarchy of a routine.
KEEP YOURSELF ACCOUNTABLE. I would strongly suggest keeping a log whether in a notebook or online. Make it prominent. If it's a notebook then put it next to your refrigerator or computer. If you've realized you haven't done a workout GO DO IT before you eat or get online. Similarly, if it's an online log tell other people to keep you accountable and set it as one of your homepages. One of the hardest things to do is get into the habit of working out, but once you do you'll find that the habit is fairly awesome (as long as you don't overdo it). It's a nice way to get rid of stress and build up your strength, endurance, or whatever else your goals are. Form good habits.
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II. The terms of exercise
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Now, let's define some terms so that you are familiar with what I will be talking about. These will be VERY important and are critical to understand (1) how to construct a routine, (2) understand how your body works, and (3) how other routines work even if you are using another template or programming methodology.
~The repetition continuum has strength at one end and endurance at the other. At one end, we have strength which is gained at low repetitions and heavier weight where a 1 repetition max (1 RM) elicits the most strength. On the other hand, endurance occurs with less weight and more repetitions where being able to do hundreds of pushups would be an example of extreme endurance. There are three VERY important point to take away from the repetition continuum:
1. Strength and endurance cannot OPTIMALLY be developed at the same time since they are opposite of each other. This is why if you can do 50 dips and you start working weighted dips, your 50 dips will probably be a lower 30 or so the next time you try.
Developing maximal strength increases the potential for maximum endurance. This is why cyclists often work maximum strength work in their off season. However, the potential for endurance must be realized by actually doing endurance work after strength is developed.
Strength takes longer to develop than endurance/conditioning.
More details here. Here is th eupdated (current) one since Mark Rippetoe took the other one down.
~Intensity (how 'intense' an exercise is) is how tough an exercise is for you. This is generally defined in RM such that 1 RM is the highest intensity while 20 RM will be at a lower intensity.
~Volume or Load can be defined as the total amount of weight lifted in a workout. 10 dips and 10 handstand pushups at the bodyweight of 100 would exert 10*100+10*100 = 2000 lbs on your triceps for the whole workout.
~Frequency is how often you train or workout. Pretty simple.
~Failure is when you cannot complete an exercise with good form. I feel this is necessary to define mainly because much of optimal training especially strength requires that you stop short of failure most of the time. Although failure can, at times, be used effectively, it should be the exception not the rule.
~The Central Nervous System (CNS) stimulates muscle contractions. Initial gains in strength for the first 2-3 weeks that beginners often see are based upon increasing neural connections and efficiency of the CNS to stimulate muscles to contract. CNS fatigue from going to failure early in workouts often leads to a decreased capacity to lift heavy weights later which results in less stress being placed on the muscle to force it to adapt to become stronger.
~The Energy pathway systems power your muscles and are composed of the phosphagen pathway, glycolytic and aerobic pathway. The phosphagen pathway encompasses the ATP-creatine phosphate (phosphocreatine) pathway which is used to rapidly supply ATP from used ADP. This system is one of the initial ones your body uses especially for short term energy needs like sets in weightlifting. The glycolytic pathway is the biological catabolism of glucose to pyruvate/Acetyl-CoA. This system is used to produce energy when the phosphagen pathway is depleted. If the demands for energy from the muscles are too much for the glycolytic system to provide, the oxidative phosphorylation system takes over which utilizes the citric acid cycle, mitochondria and oxygen to produce ATP. These pathways, like the repetition continuum, do not switch on and off when one is exhausted. They are all always running at the same time, but one is emphasized over the other at certain times. I will be providing significant more information in the physiology section. Here's a simple illustration of the process in two different activities (it's a bit off scale...).
~Metabolic conditioning (metcon) is a form of workout which exhausts the body's muscles as well as energy pathways. Generally, metcon exercises are performed in a row one right after the other to exhaust the body fairly quickly. A workout done for time to push the participant to go through it as quickly as possible with as little breaks as possible can be considered metcon. Circuit training is a form of metcon. The CrossFit program utilizes many metcon exercises in its WOD.
~Programming will both be encountered as you become stronger. Generally I wouldn't worry too much about these terms and what they mean for you now as you will come to understand that the complexity of training needs to increase as your strength increases to near its max potential. More on this will be forthcoming in sections VI and VII.
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III. A slightly more in-depth look at body physiology
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This section is actually going to be very brief look at (1) how muscles and the central nervous system interact on a macroscopic level, and (2) how the energy systems of the muscles work. Obviously, I cannot be in-depth as needed as chapters are written in anatomy books on these topics; however, I can provide a decent background beyond the terms discussed above.
The CNS, muscles and their interactions
The physiology of the body's energy pathways
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The CNS, muscles and their interactions
Here is a very short summary of how muscles are organized. This will be elaborated more later, but this knowledge is imperative to know as we will go from the CNS where everything begins to the innervation of muscles and how they respond.
Muscles are organized down to a cellular level. A muscle is made up of many fascicles. These fascicles are made up of muscle fibers. Then the muscle fibers are organized from structures called myofibrils. Myofibrils are composed of long chains of the smallest type unit of the muscle that can provide a contractile force called a sarcomere. In short:
Muscle -> fascicles -> muscle fibers -> myofibrils -> sarcomere
The central nervous system (CNS) is composed of the brain and spinal cord and is primarily responsible for handling sensory input, information processing and decision making and the primary thing in training which is obviously motor output. Once the brain makes a decision, it stimulates the primary motor cortex in the brain to send action potentials down to motor neurons which innervate specific muscles.
Along these lines, the motor neurons innervate specific muscle fibers. Each motor neuron has approximately three to thousands or so muscle fibers it innervates. The less fibers that a motor unit has, the more precise and fine movements you can get. Therefore, the dexterity of your hands comes from many motor units with fewer numbers of muscle fibers in each unit as opposed to the quadriceps which have few motor units with many more muscle fibers because its movements are on a larger scale. A motor unit innervates RANDOM fibers without each muscle (so they can be on different fascicles).
These motor units are grouped according from high to low depending on the force production needed. If the force production needed is low, the first motor units recruited are “low threshold" which are primarily composed of slow twitch (type I oxidative) fibers. This is primarily because slow twitch fibers have very strong endurance qualities and can sustain contractions because of the energy produced by oxidative phosphorylation for hours. Secondly, we have our “medium threshold" motor units which are composed mainly of fast twitch (type IIa oxidative-glycolytic) fibers which contract with a higher force (and speed) than the slow twitch fibers. These derive energy from glycogen and then through oxidative phosphorylation as the energy need exceeds the muscle's glycogen stores. Lastly, we have fast twitch (type IIb glycolytic) fibers which contract the fastest out of all of the fibers. These fibers use energy from glycogen only and therefore tire very quickly as their glycogen stores run out.
In progress still, sorry! A little more on the CNS.
If you are interested in learning more about muscles and how they operate, this is the best book I've found on the subject that is exceedingly comprehensive. Unfortunately, it is expensive BUT check out the chapter summary for it because it is extensive covering application as well.
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Essay(s) on the physiology of the body's energy pathways.
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Physiology of energy pathways (posts 1,2,3,14,15).
SUMMARY of the thread provided below (more than enough for average layperson):
1. At the current moment, the aerobic system is your main source of energy. This is why we breathe. Oxidative phosphorylation produces something like 34 net ATP compared to glycolysis' 2. This is EFFICIENT (however not as quick as glyco/phosphocreatine (PCR)). Phosphocreatine/Creatine phosphate system is a temporary storage requiring as much ATP to produce as it can use for energy making the net production 0.
2. The key to recruiting the other energy systems (fully) is mainly based upon INTENSITY. This is important, and most of the other points I will be making come back to this.
3. When you start to do something like a high intensity (max effort) sprint, the body recruits first PCR because it is an easy energy store to use. After this has run out, glycolysis is able to produces ATP faster than the oxidative system (although inefficient compared to oxidative system) and is recruited. After this is "burned out" (aka intramuscular glycogen stores), the body switches mainly into aerobic/oxidative energy generation. This is why at max effort we have PCR -> glycolysis -> oxidative/aerobic.
4. Now let's say we're running a 10k for example. Obviously, we can't run ALL OUT because we'd use up our PCR and glycogen stores. Thus, we run at a sustainable pace (depends on the person.. probably about 75-85% sprinting intensity is sustainable for 10k) for the body to move glycogen from the blood/liver into the muscles for limited glycolysis and most of the energy is coming from the aerobic/oxidative system. When most of these runners hit the last lap, they start to run fast (to win obviously) and that's when most of their glycogen stores are going to be burned up.
5. As you can see from 3 and 4, recruitment of glycolysis for the MAJORITY of the energy is only during unsustainable paces for the oxidative system to deliver the required energy. ALL of these systems are ALWAYS working at the same time regardless; just the majority of the energy depends on intensity.
6. At 100% intensity, PCR tends to burn out in less than 10 seconds. Glycogen stores and glycolysis can last about 100 minutes at sustainable aerobic levels or they can burn out at approximately ***30*** seconds at the least. I know a lot of you are confused by this most likely because of reading BS in textbooks or online. I will explain it all:
1. Marathoners run at a sustainable aerobic/oxidative pace so they can run the full 26.2 miles obviously. However, at approximately mile 20-22 they hit a wall where there is total depletion of ALL glycogen reserves.This is approximately at 100 minutes of the highest intensity of sustainable aerobic activity.
2. Run a 400m you burn out approximately 300m into the race. Why is this? And the answer is.. you just ran out of INTRAMUSCULAR glycogen reserves and your body is struggling to power your body mostly with the oxidative system.This is approximately 300m or 30s at max intensity.
7. See this study -- 400m ends up being about 40/60 aerobic/anaerobic (45/55 for women). This indicates that the aerobic pathway is running all the time. Since we run out of glycogen at ~300m we would expect that the last ~100m or so would contribute about 25% of the energy. Since this is not the case, an we are breathing the whole time during the 400m, we can logically conclude that the aerobic pathway is on from the start of the race contributing energy. One such study is here.
I know this may be a departure from what you previous thought, and I admit it does sound a little weird. I've seen values of 50/50 anaerobic/aerobic for MILE runs. My only question is.. did they have TRAINED track athletes running the distances as FULL speed. Anyone who has run a 400m race knows your anaerobic system dies at approximately 300m and the last 100m are aerobically painful (until you train up your resistance to that). Heck, here's another example. Our 1500m world record holder Hicham El Guerrouj is also runs 5000m. MOST of his work is based on distance. If the "mile" (well, 1500m and mile are close enough for now) was 50/50 then why would El Guerrouj spend most of his time working aerobic pathways... and then we could ask but why is he also soo good at 5000m (he won double gold in 1500m and 5000m in Athens).
Logically, if you think about it the numbers must always add up compared to PERFORMANCE in real life. This is something a lot of science fails.
8. HIIT, tabata protocol and metabolic conditioning or circuits have the tendency to overload PCR and intramuscular glycogen fast because they are performed at unsustainable intensities. THUS, this puts significant stress on both anaerobic and aerobic pathways. Hence, why it's used for great GPP work.
9. Fat stores. I have not talked about this before but FAT comes in as glycerol and acetyl-CoA to metabolism. Glycerol goes in approximately halfway into glycolysis and acetyl-CoA goes into kreb's cycle which is fully oxidative in nature (derives most energy from NADH and FADH2 electron transport in mitochondria).
As we know, glycolysis is running all the time (from stores in the liver and intramuscular glycogen IF intensity is high enough), and so is oxidative (because we are breathing). The sympathetic nervous system stimulates the body to produce catecholamines (adrenaline, noradrenaline from adrenals) during high intensity exercise. These stimulate both glycogenolysis in the liver AND lipolysis in adipose tissue. Both of these materials are CONSTANTLY being uptaken by muscles during exercise to provide fuel for energy.
If the pace is sustainable aerobic (think of our 10k example again), then the body can run primarily on these energy sources. If we are unsustainable such as during sprints, our body MUST start burning up our intramuscular glycogen stores for energy. After that, these sources are what is fueling the remnants of glycolysis with the majority of that energy coming from oxidative (each glucose provides 2 ATP anaerobic, 34 aerobic plus the contribution of acetyl-Coa from fatty acids = huge majority oxidative energy).
10. Last but not least, these systems are separate from each other, but work together in conjunction. For example, someone with the ability to run a world class 10k speed will not have the anaerobic capacity (or muscle fiber type) to run a world class 100m. They both utilize different enzymes to function, fiber types and aerobic has the tendency to increase mitochondria while anaerobic tends to increase intramuscular glycogen stores. This is pretty obvious.. but needs to be said.
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IV. Exercise selection
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This is not a hard concept, but it can be difficult if you want to do more types of bodyweight exercises. These will mainly be dependent on what type of goals you choose.
Generally, full body training is the most effective way to gain both strength and endurance especially for beginners, and this guide will mainly be focused on such. Therefore, compound movements like squats, deadlifts, bench press and others will for the most part be emphasized much more than isolation exercises like triceps extensions and biceps curls. This is not to say that biceps curls are useless especially if your goal is to gain 18" biceps. However, they are not usually particularly useful when you can work multiple muscles at the same time instead of just one.
Let's say our goals were to hold a straddle planche (strength), 100 pushups (endurance), run 3 miles in 18 minutes (cardiovascular endurance), and to increase our broad jump from 6' to 8' (power). Choosing exercises to fit your needs should have two basic things in common which are (#1) exercises that work the movement of the exercise you want and (#2) exercises that work the muscle groups or capacity that you need to develop.
For planche, we would have isometric strength holds like tuck planche holds and advanced tuck planche holds. These would fall under working the specific movement. There are other exercises that work the same muscle groups (deltoids, chest, biceps) required for planche as well such as pseudo planche pushups or tuck planche pushups. Exercises that work the deltoids hard as well like handstand pushups are also viable.
For 100 pushups it is critical to work the movement a lot. This is where #1 would be emphasized a lot. Doing a lot of work with the triceps is critical to develop both the CNS and energy system pathways to allow for proper muscle contraction to do all 100 pushups. Corollary exercises like handstand pushups (HSPUs) which also work the triceps are needed less because HSPUs are more strength based as they are more intense, and therefore one would be able to do less of them (working energy systems less). The CNS is also not worked on the pushup movement while doing HSPUs obviously.
For cardiovascular endurance basically you just need to run a lot. Start by working up to running 3 miles and then start shaving off time by pacing yourself for each ¼ mile and such. Mixing up aerobic runs with high intensity interval training (HIIT) is particularly effective at working the cardiovascular component needed. Fartlek is also another viable option.
For increasing the broad jump, practicing broad jumps are needed. Technique is definitely one thing that many people (including myself) need to work on to optimize the distance gained. However, beyond that strength and power need to be developed which is often the most important part. Power, which is the most critical component, can be developed through explosive movements like Olympic lifts. Strength can be developed from exercises like deadlifts, squats and other leg exercises. Plyometrics can then be used, if necessary, to turn the strength developed into explosiveness.
As you can see, a certain blend of actual movements and related movements or training can be used to work towards goals depending on the situation. Strength or power goals like improving jumps or speed often will focus on explosive training with only a little emphasis on actual movements. Endurance goals often focus on doing the actual movement a lot to get the CNS and energy pathways up to par to complete them. And last but not least, isometric strength holds benefit most from doing the movement itself and related movements.
Here's some pictures/links to exercises:
Coach Sommer's planche/front lever
HIIT from mindandmuscle
HIIT from musclemedia
HIIT from powerrunning
fartlek wiki
Broad jump and posterior chain analysis
ExRx exercise resource
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V. Hierarchy of a Routine
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Building a routine should follow a few simple rules namely to maximize the amount of training 'ability' you have in a single workout. For example, if I had to do a 2 mile run, do a 1 RM of squats, test my vertical leap and hold a handstand as long as I can which order would I do it in to maximize my results? This is precisely what this section aims to accomplish. Mainly, I am going to outline the general structure and then explain. Here is the structure:
1. Warmup
2. Skill or technique work (handstands, flips, L-sits, gymnastics tumbling, breakdancing work, etc.).
3. Power, isometrics, eccentrics, concentric strength work.
4. Endurance, metabolic conditioning, tabata method, interval training, gauntlets, circuits, etc.
5. Static flexibility work, prehabilitation, & cool down.
Warmup is first. This should be quite obvious and if you do not agree you should just stop reading. Basically to get in optimal mode to do work a couple things need to happen. The core temperature needs to be higher which means that the chemical reactions in the muscles will take place faster leading to better contractile function of the muscles. Also, heart rate and blood flow should be elevated to provide oxygen and nutrients to the muscles and to export the waste generated by said muscles. A fairly light sweat is a good sign that you are warmed up enough to start working out.
Here's a couple of examples: CF warmup and APK warmup.
Skill and technique work should ALWAYS be second. There is very little fatigue as just the warmup has been performed as well. Once your muscles and body is warmed up and primed to go, this is the optimal time for the body to learn new skills or movement patterns.
Good skill and technique practice should be emphasized here. If you are practicing poorly such as sloppy form handstands with loose legs that are flopping all over the place, the body memorizes such patterns and will remember them. Therefore, when you go to practice them right it will be that much harder to change your ways. If you're too fatigued to practice just stop. Do not give a half effort to practice. This is the easiest way to get hurt and just learn poor movements.
Power work, isometrics, eccentrics and other concentric strength work are solidly in third place. The reason I would put these here is because they all require a very large stimulus from the central nervous system (CNS) to operate effectively. With this because we are recruiting maximal or near maximal numbers of muscle fibers it is important to perform these at the beginning to get the full benefit out of them. For example, if you did your strength work at the end after your conditioning, you'd probably would not be able to lift the same amount of weight as you could have in the beginning because of fatigue.
Endurance and everything else with it is next. These exercises are mainly aimed at taking advantage of the energy systems of the muscles. Most of these exercises, unless done at extremely high intensity, are not as rough on the nervous system and muscular structure as the power, strength, eccentrics, etc. This means that you can still have a fairly good conditioning after strength work whereas it is not the case doing more endurance related activities before power and strength. For instance, most athletic tests for various physical attributes such as vertical leap, 1 RM squat, 100m sprint, mile run, etc. will be done EXACTLY in that order because the more tired the body (nervous system mostly) the less it can express the power and strength.
Finally, the static flexibility, prehabilitation work and cooldown are at the end. I would do these at the end of every routine. They are important to help the body relax after an intense workout and work other aspects of physical ability or injury prevention. Basically, the body is already warmed up and with pliable muscles you can get more work done with flexibility. My personal preference for flexibility is at least 30s on each movement done in 3 sets of 10s each – relax the first 10s then push further, relax another 10, push further and then hold for the last 10s. Do this 3-5 times. It is often effective to rotate through a couple of movements doing this. So for the right leg forward, left leg forward and center/straddle splits will all be done in order and then the sequence is done 3 times. This takes a total of 4 minutes and 30 seconds which is barely any time and you will see great flexibility gains in your lower body. No one can say they don't have time for flexibility work especially if you are very inflexible.
Prehabilitation refers to basically any work that is focused on injury prevention. Rehabilitation work can be done here as well although it depends how much the body part itself it hurting. If you are not using the body part in your workout it might be a good idea here otherwise do it in the beginning. In any case, the example here would be if your shoulders need to be stabilized it's a good idea to do specific rotator work or other exercises such as turkish get-ups here. Fatiguing our shoulder stablizers before our power and strength work is not such a great idea as if they are tired doing exercises it is much easier for them to just fail and you to get injured more. Thus, do them here.
Notes – Attention beginners!
To be straight out frank here, for beginner lifters I recommend Starting Strength by Mark Rippetoe (discussed later in specific programs – BUY THE BOOK!). This program is famed for its success in adding strength and mass in the core lifts and is imperative for ANY person wanting to be in ANY way athletic. This goes for any sport or recreational activity. After this if you're looking to get stronger in the weightlifting game I would strongly suggest a 5x5 intermediate linear routine such as Bill Starr's 5x5 intermediate (information available in specific programs as well).
Of course, you didn't come here to hear me lecture about trying other programs. My specific preference is a *FULL BODY* routine which incorporates approximately 1-3 exercises for legs, 1-3 for pushing and 1-3 for pulling per session. Quite a few of the examples of routines I will go over are variations off this. Do not be fooled. It is generally best for beginning lifters to follow a full body routine for each workout because this will be THE most bang for your buck especially if you have time constraints on working out. Initially, a M,W,F setup will be effective and it is imperative that you are improving EVERY workout because your body will adapt very quickly as you are new to exercise.
Beyond this, my experience is that adding frequency is the most important factor to getting stronger. Over the past year or two I have had multiple examples where this is the case. Let me discuss a few:
One arm chinup. I worked this skill 5x a week Mon-Fri with low reps per day (5-15) depending on how I was feeling. I tested my weighted pullup max on Friday. Over the course of 6 weeks I went from 1RM 55 lbs to a 3x90 lbs weighted pullup. I also achieved my first OAC a couple weeks after this period was over. Another example is with my OAC that I recently (Aug-Sept '08) took from 1 rep up to 4 full ROM within about 3-4 weeks worth of work.
Multiple times I have raised my 1 RM dip up significantly. The most recent was during a 3 week period where I took it from 155 lbs to 170 lbs. However, I was detrained earlier and my 5 RM was about 80 lbs when I started (estimated 1 RM of about 115 lbs). Strength comes back very quickly, but working it very frequently took it up very quickly past my personal best fairly easily.
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VI. Routines for power and strength
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I am mainly grouping this together because they are very similar in how they are trained as opposed to endurance. Power and strength are not one in the same. Strength is clearly the amount of force you can exert while power is the amount of force you can exert over time. Power is interesting because working it gives some benefits towards strength while the vice versa (strength to power) is not always the case. For example, olympic weightlifters who use power for clean and jerk and snatch often have very strong deadlifts and squats while, on the other hand, powerlifters often have very poor power output.
Power is in progress... this is mostly just previous strength stuff from before!
As you may know from part II, constructing routines on strength relies on working out with low repetitions per set and heavy weight or tough progressive strength bodyweight exercises. Generally for people that are newer and even intermediate in weightlifting 5 repetitions works pretty well to build strength with some endurance (credit to Starting Strength). 2-3 RM are much like 1 RM and can be used with training albeit the sets need to be pretty high to get enough volume in the workout the stimulate muscle growth. With that said let me say a couple general rules on certain exercises you are putting in your routine:
1. NEVER go to failure. Always stop 1-2 repetitions short of failure or a couple of seconds with isometrics. Failure puts a lot of stress on the CNS and will therefore prolong recovery time both during the workout and possibly for days afterwards. This does not allow you to adequately put enough stress on your muscles to grow stronger which limits the effectiveness of your workouts.
2. Always rest at least 2-3 minutes between sets. Sometimes with strength you want to rest up to 5-7 minutes between sets. Resting a lot gives the muscle enough time to recuperate so that you will be working muscular strength. If you do not allow them enough time to recover then you are going to start working the energy pathways in your muscle cells rather than the contractile strength of the muscle. The shorter the rest time, the more the exercises become like metabolic conditioning and endurance. So keep your rest times at least above 2 minutes if not more.
I think the first concept with a strength routine that should be learned is how to manipulate volume correctly. Since I post on a bodybuilding board as well as many others, tons of people are concerned with overtraining and soreness and what they all means. Managing volume with a strength routine is one of the most important aspects to keep you progressing but to not do too much or too little. I like alternating day strength routines like m,w,f so I'll go over the general concept for that, and then I'll discuss multiple day in a row routines such as m,tu,th,f and other variations.
So with a simple alternating day routine such as a m,w,f or 3x a week routine the volume should be somewhere around 25-50 total repetitions per muscle group. What I mean per muscle group with compound movements is for the upper body push/pull exercises. For example, handstand pushups and dips both work chest, triceps and anterior deltoids. Pullups and rows both work biceps, lats and back. If you are well conditioned to handle a large amount of work, the numbers may be even higher to somewhere around 50-75 repetitions or maybe even more. Isometrics are interesting in particular because how long you do them influences how many “repetitions" they could count as. If you were doing Coach Sommer's 60s planche and front lever progressions, then I'd count it as anywhere from 15-25 reps depending on how many sets you did it in. For example, if you were able to do the 60s in <= 3 sets, the exercise itself is not that intense for you and therefore will count as probably about 15 repetitions. If you were between 4-7 sets then it will probably count about 20 repetitions, and anything more than 8 sets would probably count as 25 repetitions or even more. The more sets, the more intense the exercise is for you so the above is just a general guideline/suggestion, but it gives you an idea of how to equate isometrics to total repetitions to construct your own routine. Going on the previous paragraphs, an overview of constructing a routine would be something like this:
1. If we are doing 5 repetitions per set then it could be 3 sets of exercises for 3x5 or 2 exercises for 4x5 or 5x5. You can even mix it up with one 3x5 and one 5x5 or whatever you want to do depending if you need more repetitions for a particular exercise (for CNS adaptation), on how you are feeling or if you're short on time.
2. Another option is Pavel's 3-5 rule which is 3-5 exercises for 3-5 sets of 3-5 repetitions. It works particularly well here. If you are newer, you probably want to be doing 3ish exercises for 5x3, 4x4 or 3x5. If more advanced add in another exercise or two.
Now that you have an idea of how to construct one let me go over a sample routine. This will give you an idea of how to put one together if the above was not clear or if you just want an example. Let's say our goals were to obtain a planche, front lever, increase broad jump 12" and deadlift 2x bodyweight.
The exercises you might have chosen could look something like: cleans (broad jump), snatches (broad jump), deadlifts (deadlift), squats (deadlift), planche isometrics and progression pushups (planche), front lever isometrics and progression pullups (front lever), weighted dips (planche) and weighted pullups (front lever) and/or rows and HSPUs. For simplicity since we have 2 isometric moves we are working towards, we will break our routine into 2 different workouts.
Workout A would be done Mon, then Workout B on Wed, Workout A on Fri, Workout B Mon, etc. Instead of two rest days on the weekend you could continue alternating days if you want. A sample routine would look somewhat like:
Workout A – do not forget to warm up for each exercise
1. 60s of appropriate planche isometric
2. 3x5 power cleans (DLs and cleans are too similar so we separate them)
3. 3x5 appropriate front lever progression pullup
4. 3x5 weighted dips
5. 3x5 weighted pullups
6. 1x5 deadlifts***
Workout B – do not forget to warm up for each exercise
1. 60s of appropriate front lever isometric
2. 3x5 cleans (big power movements before heavy compound)
3. 3x5 squats (can be DLs again if DL is really being emphasized)
4. 3x5 appropriate planche progression pushup
5. 3x5 weighted pullups (could also be rows if you want)
6. 3x5 weighted dips (could also be HSPUs if you want)
*** One important exception here is deadlifts. This exercise is one of the most intensive exercises and will be extremely fatiguing and should generally always be placed last in a routine (unless you're specifically working deadlifting). Since the quality of work degrades and deadlift is extremely taxing, placing it near the beginning of a routine will tend to have a negative effect on the rest of your workout even moreso than squats or the Olympic lifts.
If you feel like your strength is progressing really slowly with 3x5, perhaps add more weight or increase the volume by adding more sets. This is just one setup of how to implement a routine with tangible strength goals. As we can see the legs are getting two 4x5 which is 40 repetitions and the push & pull muscles of the upper body are getting two 3x5 each which is 30 repetitions. One final note is that if you are going to add in conditioning afterwards, you will probably want to drop exercises 5 and 6. For routines that go consecutive days such as m,tu,th,f, there are a number of ways to set up this. One of the most common is push-pull days or light-heavy days.
1. With push-pull, all of the exercises would be categorized into push and pull. So Workout A would contain say deadlifts, power cleans, planche isometrics, dips and HSPUs. Workout B would contain cleans, squats, front lever isometrics, weighted pullups and rows.
2. With light-heavy you could keep the same setup as the sample workout above, but on Mon you would do a light day where you used light weights and did 3x5 or even higher repetitions such as 3x8 or 3x10. On Tues you would go heavy which would be what is posted above. On Thurs you would go light with the workout you did on Tues. On Fri you would go heavy with the workout you did on Mon. If you only have one workout and not two like the example above, you can modify it so you go light with 3x8 or 3x10 the first day and then 5x5 the second day. The general theory behind light-heavy days close together is that the light day will hit slow twitch fibers because they are geared towards endurance (higher repetitions) while the heavy day will hit the faster twitch fibers because they can exert more maximal force (low repetitions, heavy weight).
The possibilities with push-pull and light-heavy days are pretty much endless. You could even combine light-heavy with push-pull. The great part about consecutive day workouts is that they generally allow you to hit the muscles with a lot more frequency during the week which, if you manage your fatigue correctly, you will be able to make faster strength gains. Optimally strength is gained by training with high frequency, not-to-failure with heavy weight and low repetitions. A lot of what you do will depend on your conditioning level. If you make the routine and it is too hard for you, then scale back the amount of repetitions or add in an extra rest day. You will inevitably have to work up to the capacity to perform a lot of these routines especially if you are new. If you are advanced and have tons of free time, you can be working out 4-6 times a week and even twice a day if you manage fatigue correctly. For example, two sets of 3x4 in the morning and then the same in the evening for a muscle group. High frequency stimulates very rapid CNS and muscular adaptation, so if you do not burn yourself out you can make very quick strength gains. This example is, of course, at the extreme end of the spectrum.
More Examples
A few questions were posed to me as to how to program multiple workouts into a week. One question was based on integrating 6 total workouts into a week. The other was about 6 total workouts 4 of which were 2 heavy push and 2 heavy pull while the other two were 1 light push and 1 light pull. Let's take a look at some specific examples (the ones above) to give you an idea on how to program these right.
1. Let's say you are trying to integrate 6 workouts with low-medium volume into a week. Putting one everyday of the week such as Mon-Sat would be pretty rough on the body because it is indeed 6 weeks in a row. It can be worked up to (like elite gymnasts and olympic weightlifters do); however, it generally takes a while to do this because a higher conditioning level is needed. On the other hand, we can integrate them easily if we do 2 in a day. In this case, the question was posed to be as to which would be better for a Mon-Fri workout – A) 2/0/2/02 or B) 2/1/0/2/1 to which I responded that C) 1/2/0/1/2 would be best. C would be best due to the fact that from a fatigue management standpoint we want to plan our routines such that the days with the heaviest amount of work are before a day off to give the body ample time to recover. The gains you would get from each would probably be similar, BUT you would be able to sustain C longer without overreaching/overtraining which would lend itself to increased frequency over a couple of weeks and thus better strength gains.
2. Alright, so let's look at the example of 4 heavy (2 heavy push, 2 heavy pull) and 2 light (1 light push, 1 light pull). In my opinion, this is actually very sustainable routine, and, due to its high frequency, you will make strength gains very rapidly on this type of routine as light days will help out a TON if not just for CNS efficiency and motor coordination. The question originally posed to me was whether a routine of Mon-Sat (Sun off) of heavy push/heavy pull/heavy push/heavy pull/light push/light pull would work. Well, it could since you are working opposing muscle groups you technically have 48 hours between each workout. However, constant repetitive stress as a whole on the body isn't that great from a fatigue management standpoint. A better option would be to combine light push with heavy pull and heavy push with light pull. This would cut down the workouts to 4x a week with more rest days. An example of how this would look is:
Mon - heavy pull
Tues - heavy push
Wed – Rest
Thurs - Heavy pull, light push
Fri - Heavy push, light pull
Sat – Rest
Sun – Rest
Light should generally go before heavy because lighter days don't fatigue muscles & CNS as much (and hence less chance for burnout the next day), but in this case it is not possible so we alternate them instead. Consecutive days of light-heavy/heavy-light is not a big of factor for fatigue as 4 consecutive heavy days in a row is, *and* there is ample time to recover from fatigue on Sat and Sun instead of going straight into more workouts like the 6 consecutive workouts had. Adding in light days on Mon-Tues is also not as of a big deal as well because of the rest day on Wed, but that type of volume would probably have to be worked up to by increasing your conditioning level.
Here is another good example of how to do this (page 46 is main post but read the others for a good background). Another example with two more constructions.
Ending Notes:
At 85-90% of 1 RM *all* muscle fibers in the large muscles are being recruited which means approximately 3 RM will recruit pretty much all of the muscle. Therefore, 3 RM is probably the lowest amount of repetitions in a set you want to go. Add to that the fact that it is hard to get enough volume to successfully continue strength gains (as 15x2 to get 30 total reps is wayyy too many sets) and 3 RM is appealing for near optimal strength gains. In this sense, 5x3 is the same volume as 3x5 and 8x3 is nearly the same volume as 5x5. The trade off comes in the fact that even though with 3 repetitions you can use more weight, it will take more overall time because you have more sets and have to rest between sets. Still, the lower RM will elicit better strength gains. Keep this in mind if you are working on particular difficult exercises especially bodyweight ones because sometimes those 3 RM will help out quicker than subbing an easier 5 RM. Also, switching between 3 RM and 5 RM like in the light-heavy days (like switching from 5 RM to 10 RM) is a good way to change your program if you are plateauing. This is another example of programming incorporated into a routine. Here's some information if you're interested in some more in-depth material (with studies) on muscle fiber recruitment and rate coding (rate of muscle fiber firing).
Thus, for beginners and intermediates 3 RM is the highest you should go generally speaking:
1. It recruits all available motor units which is the one thing you're aiming to do with lifting heavy.
2. Your motor patterns aren't solid enough where you won't see significant breakdown in form which is dangerous.
3. Your CNS is not efficient enough to get much out of maxing out a couple times at 1 RM. It's very likely, especially in women, that your 1 RM is only barely above your 3 RM. With the lowered volume that you do when you max out you won't see much adaptation to the load which is going to give you that extra strength/power and muscle mass.
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VII. Routines for endurance and metabolic conditioning
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I grouped endurance and metabolic conditioning into the same category because they work similarly on the biological level. High repetitions that work endurance require a high amount of CNS adaptation as well as energy pathway efficiency to constantly produce ATP. Metabolic conditioning requires the exact same adaptations, but is a bit heavier on the energy pathway efficiency since you are going to be doing more exercises and somewhat lighter on the CNS. So, in summary, endurance work requires very high CNS adaptation and high energy pathway efficiency while metabolic conditioning medium CNS adaptation and very high energy pathway efficiency. One of the most important attributes of these workouts besides reaching your goals is that they both work towards increasing your work capacity. This means that if you suddenly decided to start strength training (or even if you're combining strength training and endurance/metcon) your muscles and CNS should be able to handle more work during a workout which allows you stress them more for increased growth without overtraining.
Building a routine is pretty much exactly like strength training except without the exceptions. The only general thing to note with both of these is that failure is fine to go to some of the time and in some cases most of the time. The biggest instance of where failure is fine most of the time is metabolic conditioning which has such a high energy requirement because of the different exercises done that it does not put as much stress on the CNS as it does on the energy systems. Therefore, it will not burn out the CNS that much while it will stimulate your muscle cells to make their energy producing more efficient thus increasing your work capacity for the next workout. Doing this “through the burn" is akin to pushing your lactic acid threshold (glycolytic pathway). On the other hand though not going to failure can also be utilized well with endurance and metabolic conditioning. Again, with metabolic conditioning, if one stops short of failure, their work capacity for the workout will be increased and therefore allow them to complete it sooner. This increases the amount of work per the amount of time (e.g. total power output is higher). This is akin to a higher intensity because although it is not like a 1 RM exercise, the total intensity is distributed throughout the body more by different exercises instead. This is one difference where metabolic conditioning is more like strength than endurance.
Metabolic conditioning workouts are not that hard to make. Basically you want to pick anywhere from 2-5 exercises that you normally do more than 10+ repetitions of them. Then you can arrange them however you want and set an arbitrary number of repetitions for each exercise to do usually somewhere between 25-75% of your max ability. Then pick a number of rounds you will do each one like 3-5 and then go through all of the exercises as fast as you can. That's just a simple form of a metabolic conditioning workout. There are also other various forms of metabolic conditioning with different protocols. I'm just going to outline two of them, but you will see the point:
1. High intensity interval training. We've gone this before with picking exercises but HIIT (along with fartlek) are good ways to work all of the energy systems in your body because it depletes them very fast. These are generally composed of full all out sprints for a short period of time like 15-30 seconds followed by jogging (or walking if not conditioned) for the rest of the 45-30 seconds. This will build up both the aerobic and anaerobic pathways in the body very quickly which lends towards good metabolic conditioning as well as cardiovascular health. The links are still above if you want to go check them out now.
2. Tabata protocol is very similar to HIIT except it is done with exercises instead of running in jogging. For instance, let's take a look at bodyweight squats. Basically with the tabata method utilizes a period of on and off activity. Generally cycles run on 30 or 60 second intervals where you go all out and then rest. So with bodyweight squats in a 30s interval you would do as many squats as you can in 20s and then rest for 10s. After that time is up, repeat the process for multiple rounds usually 5 or more. The 60s protocol works on the scale of 45s on and 15s off. Again, pretty much a different type of metabolic conditioning workout that works all of the energy systems in the body very rapidly. Go to here for some more information.
CrossFit has a whole host of different types in their FAQ where most of them are based on completing them in the least time possible. I would suggest looking at them to see what you can do if you want to create your own. If not, you can just use CrossFit workouts for metabolic conditioniong. Examples of metabolic conditioning workouts from CrossFit.
Now, endurance is pretty simple and has one added benefit when transferred to strength training. Since endurance promotes a large amount of CNS adaptation this carries over as strength to *the specific exercise*. So if you were working endurance dips for 50 repetitions, this will also help your weighted dips should you decide to do them. It will NOT, however, lend strength to other triceps, deltoid and chest exercises like pushups or handstand pushups at all. I refer to this phenomena as “specific strength" which is pretty much strength related to that exercise from doing it a lot. Usually there's a couple of exercises that people want to improve to high repetitions like pushups or pullups or dips. These are fairly easy exercises to accomplish without weight given you come in with a good base of strength. Increasing endurance can be completed in a couple of ways:
1. One of the general ways to do endurance exercises is to go to your max obviously. Failure is optional as it can help, but failure on the first set is often not encouraged as it decreases the maxes for subsequent sets. The total amount of repetitions for the whole workout will usually be higher if failure is not hit on the first few sets. So, for example, if I could do 20 dips and want to increase my numbers up to 50, then one workout for endurance could be 3x18. If I only did 15 then a 5x15 would probably be possible. The higher number you pick, the less sets you will probably be able to do so be wary. Generally, the best workout is one that maximizes the amount of repetitions per workout so 5x15 would be better than 3x18 since it is 75 repetitions versus 54. Some people are more naturally inclined to endurance exercises than others (e.g. more type I slow twitch fibers), so they might be able to do closer to their endurance RM for more sets than others. Find out what your body can do, and go with that.
2. Grease the groove (GTG) method is basically a way to increase your endurance and specific strength in an exercise very fast. Basically what you want to do like 5 times interspersed throughout the day (say, before breakfast, brunch-ish, after lunch, right before dinner and right before you sleep) is to do submaximal sets of pullups and dips. So, for example, you do 8 pullups and 4 dips. 5 times during the day you would want to do 5-6 pullups and 2-3 dips for one set each and then just stop and go about the rest of your day. Here is some more information on GTG.
3. Ladders are a fairly simple concept. Basically, you start a timer and do 1 repetition of the exercise then wait until the minute is up. Next, you do 2 of the exercise and rest until the minute is up. Continue this progression until you cannot complete the ladder any longer. A minute is an arbitrary amount of time so if you want it to be 30 seconds instead or 2 minutes you can make it as short or long as you want. Also, if you want you can increase the amount of repetitions you do by twos or threes or whatever you want.
4. Pyramids as basically the same thing as ladders except without a time requirement. After you “climb up the ladder" you also climb back down. For example, if you got up to 7 repetitions with pullups and failed on the set with 8, then you could do 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 to finish. Like with ladders you can also do it by twos, threes or whatever.
There's tons of other methods to increase endurance; however, I have just outlined 4 of them. Creating a workout isn't that hard as generally you are probably only going to have one exercise per the muscle group you are working. For instance, if you are working up endurance dips, it is probably not a good idea to try to do endurance pushups or handstand pushups as well because your triceps will be pretty much burnt out afterwards. You can generally do about 4-5 types of exercises in a totally endurance workout – legs (squats, pistols, jumping squats, etc.), core (abs and back), a pull exercise (inverted pullups, rows, pullups, etc.) and a push exercise (dips, HSPUs, pushups, etc.). This general rule applies back to if you are trying to combine strength and endurance/metcon at the same time.
Addendum
I wrote this for a couple of fitness boards, so I feel I must comment on this specific topic since Parkour has skills and techniques like gymnastics or any other sport. Parkour and its techniques are generally considered skill training and/or in the endurance/metcon category. For example, quadrupedal movement is an excellent technique for body awareness and coordination, and I would consider it more as a skill technique unless you are walking more than probably 200-400m with it. Vaults and wall climbs are all considered considered techniques/skills rather than under endurance unless you are doing absurd amounts of them and getting exhausted. Demon's skill training and conditioning gauntlets, WHEN you use them, are considered endurance because you are exhausted your body performing different skills. Therefore, plan your workouts with these things in mind accordingly.
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VIII. Specific programs
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I'd like to note that a lot of programs are out there that can fit some of the goals you have (links provided at the end).
Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength is an excellent program for beginners to increase their strength in a number of core lifts with emphasis on the squat. I highly suggest this program for anyone looking into increase their muscle mass significantly, or anyone who is going to be doing any high impact activities in the future such as football, basketball, track and field, Parkour, etc.
Bill Starr's Linear 5x5 Intermediate is an excellent strength program designed for the intermediate lifter to keep pushing the envelope on strength gains. Many people off of Starting Strength go to this program because it includes includes some programming to keep the strength gains coming. There is also an advanced version as well.
CrossFit is a good example of mostly metcon program suited towards improving 10 components of fitness. While it is not specifically geared towards strength related goals, the conditioning level improvements it provides (specifically from metcon) is great for people like law enforcement or military where you need to be ready to go at all times. Conditioning level is important for increasing the volume of workouts as well which lends towards better strength training.
There's other programs out there and some are good for particular training, but others are not so good. Based on the concepts about training I outlined in part II and how you found out to apply them in parts IV and V you should be able to determine whether a particular routine will be effective. A program like High Intensity Training (e.g. HIT a la Mike Mentzer) would obviously be suboptimal because it involves 'obliterating' your muscles once every week and letting them rest until you do it again. As we know, that would not be a good way to train either strength, endurance or metcon at all so it is not particularly effective unless you're on steroids. That's just one case, but if you look at the principles behind each program you should have no trouble figure out if it works or if it doesn't.
Here are some recommended books on topics above as well as trength training, programming, olympic lifting, training for different sports, etc.
Other links:
1. Starting Strength (the book costs money, but I would recommend getting it):
BB.com megathread
Comprehensive SS Wiki
2. Bill Starr's 5x5 Intermediate
3. Crossfit – Crossfit.com
Good elaboration on the important of conditioning level from rosstraining
Some other links...
4. Gant's Hybrid Programming (blend of mostly strength + short, heavy conditioning
5. Westside for Skinny Bastards
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IX. Q&A to specific questions
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Q&A Table of Contents
I. Overtraining
II. Soreness
III.
IV.
V.
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1. Overtraining
How do I know if I'm overtraining (or undertraining for that matter)?
Overtraining is actually a prolonged state of “underrecovery" in which the body does not have the ability to repair itself. Generally, it takes weeks or even months to recover from. However, this state can ONLY be reached through chronic overworking. This means that unless you've done months upon months of training in a row or years for that matter, you will NEVER hit an overtraining state. Depending on the relative intensity of the exercise you are doing, you may never even hit an overtraining state even IF you are training for years on end.
Here is a list of symptoms and a fairly decent article. Read it.
Basically, before an “overtraining" state is reached there is a period called “overreaching" in which body performance is decreased as body tissues are injured with training with simultaneous increases in fitness (google “dual factor theory" or any of the other training models). If the body is allowed sufficient time to rest, the body undergoes a supercompensatory effect whereby the abilities of the individual are increased in the next training session. This is synonymous with progress or the ability to lifting increasingly more, have more endurance, etc.
That said, here's my “mantra" on this subject:
1. If your abilities are increasing each workout, you're not overtraining/overreaching. You could be doing more OR less than your body can handle though so experimenting with the volume, intensity or frequency of workouts to increase the gains or recovery is possible, but if you don't know much about programming yourself I would say don't mess with it.
2a. If you're plateauing or regressing and you have not taken a break from working out in a while (see generally 3-5 days off or even 5-7 days off if it's been more than a couple months) then I would advise taking a break.
2b. Similarly, examine your sleep schedule, diet and stressors in your life and make sure they are consistent. These all effect recovery so it might not be that the training is too much but the simple fact that your body's ability to recover from that training normally is blunted.
3. Look specifically for the symptoms listed in the above article. If you are experiencing some of those it may be due to overworking yourself or underrecovery such as in 2b. Don't be afraid to take an extra rest day or two if you need to. Missing one workout won't kill you... wasting your time in a chronic plateau or regression from an overreaching/overtrained state will. When in doubt take a couple rest days.
Basically, overreaching and overtraining aren't something that you should be worrying about too much. As long as you have your goals and are progressing towards your goals you are fine. If you are not, then you need to evaluate your training, sleep, diet, or other factors to see if you're doing too much work or blunting your recovery. If you need advice from plateauing or regression, don't hesitate to ask someone with experience on how to break through that. Also, don't be afraid to take a couple days here and there for rest.
I personally plan 3-7 day rest breaks every ~4-8 weeks of training depending on how intense it is. Generally, that will come out to approximately ~8 or so breaks per year. If you're training very intensely (with heavy weights or very hard bodyweight strength progressions) I would strongly suggest that you format your training along this line with planned rest to let your body recuperate fully. This will also help stave off overuse injuries, and the rest time can be used to do prehabilitation or rehabilitation work if you're close to injury.
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2. Soreness.
What does soreness mean?
Soreness is a common topic because everyone who has and ever will exercise has experienced this phenomena. Delayed onset muscle soreness generally occurs approximately 24 hours after exercise and is the most intense about 48-72 hours. It can also last up for a week or a bit more if you put a lot more strain on your body than it was previously used to.
Generally, you only get it when you (1) try new exercises, (2) do increased volume or frequency, or (3) excessive amounts of eccentric exercises.
However, when examining soreness and its relation to progress, it is simply not necessary. The body is able to progress both in strength and hypertrophy or any other aspect without having to go through the pain (or pleasure if you like it) of soreness. As long as you are increasing your strength or gaining muscle mass or meeting any of your goals do not worry about soreness. If, however, you are not progressing, then maybe it is time to modify your routine, take a break from working out or something along those lines. Soreness need not be involved with any of these events as it is not a good indicator a good workout.
As far as training with soreness, my "mantra" on the subject is:
1. If you're too sore to move you should at least exercise lightly to get blood flowing = faster healing. You should also be hydrating, self massaging, foam rolling, or whatever else you can do to alleviate it anyway.
2. If you're not too sore to workout.. go for it. But DO NOT overdo it.
3. Otherwise, don't worry about soreness. If you're training ENOUGH it should start to go away as you become more conditioned.
4. If you ALWAYS get sore then you're not doing enough (such as 1-2x a week bodypart splits). In these cases, it's probably hindering your workouts. Those who increase frequency to say 3x a week full body have the tendency to see their body adapt to the stressors and soreness starts to go away. All in all, soreness is not something to worry about. Generally, it will be more of a hindrance to training than anything so if you plan to do a workout that is higher in volume than you usually do or has a lot of eccentric movements, plan on being sore. But don't make it a priority. Stay in line with your goals and aiming for progress. Progress can and always will be made without soreness.
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In progress... although submit some Qs to me if you want
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