As many of you know I have a sizable commute to work everyday, usually averaging 1:10 to 1:15 each way. Needless to say I spend a lot of time in my car every week, a stunning 1999 Ford Taurus. I listen to a lot of podcasts, sports talk radio, and now I am starting up on audio books. I most recently just finished the book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall (audio version here).
I have been wanting to read it ever since it came out, but considering that I have been working on the incredible Good Calories, Bad Calories (review coming eventually) for several months now it was destined to not be read for a while. Fortunately EC picked it up in the unabridged audio book format, and I was able to toss it on my iPod and give it a listen.
This book is absolutely fascinating. It intertwines stories of fantastic ultra-marathons with facts and theories about human evolution in a riveting, multi-layered approach. McDougall tells much of the book from a first hand account, and he just brings his story to life, making it so vivid and real you feel as if you are running along side him.
There is even some nutrition info in the book. Some is decent, some is absolutely terrible and false, but that is one of the few stumbles. When he gets to the theories about humans having evolved to be the greatest running machines on earth, with our ability to persistence hunt, it is utterly spellbinding.
I urge anyone, whether a runner or not (I am as far from one as is humanly possible) to give this book a read, or as in my case, a listen. It will capture your imagination.
Posted on September 22nd, 2009 by Brian St. Pierre
I get a lot of questions from people looking to get into the fitness industry. They want to know what books to read, where to begin, and how to avoid the pitfalls and unnecessary crap that inevitably gets in the way. I also remember when I was that guy, trying to figure what I needed to read, what I needed to learn, and how to go about doing it.
Well fortunately for me I more or less lucked into an internship at CP and things just kinda took off from there. I also busted my butt reading and learning everything I could so I wouldn’t look like an uneducated idiot in front of Eric and Tony. For those of you not yet fortunate enough to have had an experience like that, or for those looking for an experience like that, here is a list of educational materials that will greatly help you along that path:
1. Starting Strength by Mark Rippeltoe. This book will help to provide a fundamental understanding of basic movement patterns. It is also straightforward and no-nonsense, really getting to the foundation of strength training.
2. Functional Training for Sports by Mike Boyle. This book lets you into the thought process of one of the greatest strength coaches of our time. Now Mike has changed a lot of his methods since his book came out, but his thought process is still the same. This book will provide a nice template for learning how to train athletes.
3. Athletic Body in Balance by Gray Cook. Gray is a genius, plain and simple. He takes really complex concepts and material, and is able to simplify them to their most basic components. This book will really teach you to start looking at your athlete’s movements patterns, and learn how and when to correct them.
4. Building the Efficient Athlete by Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson. This might be the most comprehensive product in the industry. This 8 DVD set will teach functional dynamic anatomy and kinematics, assesment tools and practices, and proper training protocols for specific circumstances. Once you have mastered some of the basics, this product will take you to a whole new level of understanding as a coach.
5. Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes by Shirley Sarhmann. Shirley has created a masterpiece with this book. This book changed the game for strength and conditioning coaches, physical therapists, and so many more. It is maybe the single most influential book in the entire industry. It isn’t for the faint of heart, but if you have gotten this far, you will be ready.
This is a great start for anyone looking to get into the industry, or for those weekend warriors who just like to know too much. There are certainly a ton more that can be added to this list, and if you are interested, Mike Reinold, the rehad coordinator and athletic trainer of the Red Sox, has a comprehensive list he posted on his site here.
At CP, and through my online consulting, I get a lot of questions from clients and parents about the use of creatine. Is it safe? Is it steroids? Does it just make you gain water weight?
There are a lot of misconceptions about this rather innocuous substance. Let’s start off by defining what creatine is, and what creatine isn’t.
What is creatine?
Creatine is an amino acid made by the body on a daily basis. It is made in the liver from 3 different amino acids (arginine, methionine, and glycine) taken in from our diet. Creatine is also taken in directly from meat as animals contain creatine in their skeletal muscle as well. The sources are split quite evenly, unless you are a vegetarian, in which that you case you may be creatine deficient. Creatine is an energy substrate used for high-intensity activities – such as sprinting, jumping, throwing and lifting weights. Basically supplementing with creatine has been shown to safely allow athletes to work harder, longer by maximizing their skeletal muscle stores.
Is creatine safe?
Creatine is the most studied supplement in the history of the world. If you go to pubmed and type in creatine into the search engine you will get over 42,000 responses. That is a lot. The definitive answer is if taken according to recommended dosages (ie – 3-5 grams per day) creatine is completely safe. No study, long or short term has shown adverse effects of creatine. The most widely accepted side-effect of creatine supplementation is the gain in lean body mass. For athlete’s and recreationally active people, a little extra muscle is usually a good thing.
The key things to keep in mind here are that there is no need to load (ie – 20 grams per day), regardless of what the label tells you. 3-5 grams per day is completely acceptable and has been shown in research and with thousands of athletes to be effective and safe. Also make sure you are purchasing a highly pure creatine monohydrate. It should say it is either micronized or Creapure brand. These are highly pure and held to the loftiest of standards.
According to the European Food Safety Authority, “Provided high purity creatine monohydrate is used in foods for particular nutritional uses, the Panel considers that the consumption of doses of up to 3g/day of supplemental creatine, similar to the daily turnover rate of creatine, is unlikely to pose any risk.”
As perhaps the greatest testament to its safety, it is completely legal in the NCAA, International Olympic Committee, FIFA (soccer), and ATP (tennis) -traditionally the four most stringent governing bodies in sports when it comes to supplement use. The NFL, NBA, and MLB all permit it as well.
Is creatine steroids?
Steroids are anabolic exogenous hormones injected or swallowed. These are not substances consumed in large amounts in our natural enviorment and they have drastic effects on the endocrine system. Creatine is none of those things. It is not a hormone in anyway and does not affect our endocrine system. We consume creatine on a normal daily basis, we do not consume large amounts of steroids on a daily basis.
Does creatine make you gain water weight?
In short, yes it does. Creatine does cause the body to hold more water due to increased water uptake by skeletal muscle. This is a good thing, as volumizing the muscle cells can help increase their size, and it is only a few initial pounds. In the long term though, the added weight from creatine is not just from water, as the supplementation helps athletes to gain lean muscle tissue. The key oint is the added weight is not just from water.
Do you need the newest, fanciest, and most expensive form of creatine?
Creatine ethyl-ester, Kre-alkalyn, conjugate creatine and who knows what else are completely unecessary and may contain harmful ingredients. They are also significantly more expensive with a complete lack of extra benefits. Speed of absorption of creatine is irrelevant. Once you take 3-5 grams per day for a month your muscles will be saturated, and from there it is just maintaining that saturation. These products may help you saturate sooner (or they may not) but overall they do not increase benefits whatsoever. You need pure, simple inexpensive micronized or Creapure creatine monohydrate.
Interesting benefits of creatine.
Besides the physical performance enhancing benefits of creatine, it has some other studied and documented benefits. Creatine has been shown to improve cognitive abilities. Studies have shown that it can increase performance on tests of cognitive abilities. In one example the researchers concluded that “supplementation with creatine significantly increased intelligence compared with placebo.”
There have also been several successful studies on animals in the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders such as: Parkinson’s, Huntingson’s, ALS, and muscular dystrophy. Due to the success of many of these animal trials, human trials for many of these diseases are underway. Pretty impressive stuff.
Conclusion.
Creatine is safe when taken properly from a pure source. You do not need some crazy new version that they will try to push on you at many supplement stores. Take 3-5 grams per day everyday for greatest results.
Everyone knows the saying “work smarter not harder”, and it is often translated in lifting circles to “train smarter not harder”. OK, great saying, but people have taken training smarter as training so carefully they aren’t even breaking a sweat. Even worse, people have taken to believe in the crap put out by so many tv “experts” and pseudo-celebrities to be training smart. Watching some of the exercise videos put out by pseudo-celebrities and even worse, those trainers of celebrities, makes me embarrassed to even be associated with that aspect of the industry.
In one recent video the demonstrator was wearing high heels! Tell me how is that working smart or hard? It is dumb, dangerous and also completely useless as a training methodology. The training smart part of the equation means having sound technique, training for your goals, and knowing your limits and when to back off. It does NOT mean training with 2lb pink dumbbells.
There are also the people who think training hard trumps everything. While it is true that I will take someone busting their ass on a crappy training program over someone training at a moderate intensity to the greatest designed program of all time, intensity isn’t everything. I’ve seen people train superhard that are just all over the place. Their technique is piss-poor, their exercise selection is atrocious and they generally just look like they are going to hurt themselves at any moment.
It doesn’t matter what training program you are doing, Cross-Fit, Warp Speed Fat Loss, Maximum Strength, etc, you need to find that balance between training hard and training smart. Long term health isn’t just about working hard and making yourself sweat. It is about doing the exercises properly, utilizing them for their intended benefit and making yourself sweat in the process. A perfect example is any type of rowing variation. Rows are awesome not only for back development, but for postural correction as well. With our always-seated, forward-head position and kyphotic upper back posture population, proper rowing can go a very long way to improve that posture, but only if properly executed. Go to any commercial gym and you will see all types of people working really hard on rowing way more weight than they can possibly handle with good form, or people just going through the motions. Neither will elicit the intended effect. Eric has some awesome videos demonstrating how NOT to row:
Doing a row with technique like these will not actually improve proper scapular function or upper body posture, it could actually exacerbate it. For muscle heads out there, it won’t develop the back properly either. Learning how to properly depress your shoulder blades is essential for long-term shoulder health. Doing it incorrectly with far too much weight is only going to cause problems (I am looking at the men reading this). Doing it correctly with an appreciable amount of weight, relative to the lifter, is also the only way for it to work, as it actually has to be difficult (yes I am looking at you ladies). I am not trying to be sexist or stereotypical, but I have been in enough gyms and trained enough people to know that those stereotypes do apply to the majority.
The correct technique for a cable row (and all rowing really):
Chest out, chin straight, squeezing the shoulder blades together down and back. The point is that people need to learn to harness that intensity (or find it) and apply it with control to a well thought out long-term plan to maximal results for health, weight loss, muscle gain or athletic performance. I say rather than training smarter not harder, do both.
For those of you who have been long time readers of my blog, you will know that I am pretty good friends with Kevin Larrabee, the host of the FitCast, one of the highest rated fitness podcasts. Kevin was one of the first people to do Warp Speed Fat Loss, and he had tremendous results from that program, losing close to 10lbs. He is back at it again with the help of the great Leigh Peele and her Fat Loss Troubleshoot.
Kevin has had tremendous progress, which you can follow along with right here, with the code name Destination: Abs. Leigh is one of the best at what she does, has helped hundreds of people get the bodies they want, and has one of the best programs on the market. So what do you have to lose?
Another interesting article brought to my attention by former CP client Gregg Taliercio about the lack of support for running shoes in keeping people healthy, whether cheap runners or loaded to the gills with the newest technology. One of the most interesting quotes from the article was this:
Every year, anywhere from 65 to 80 per cent of all runners suffer an injury. No matter who you are, no matter how much you run, your odds of getting hurt are the same. It doesn’t matter if you’re male or female, fast or slow, pudgy or taut as a racehorse, your feet are still in the danger zone.
The painful truth, especially hot on the heels of the Boston Marathon (nice work Steph and Aimee) is that long distance running beats the shit out of you. Long distance runners are usually either injured, or recovering from an injury, and it is a repetitive vicious cycle. And it appears, the shoe choices do not help.
In a paper for the British Journal Of Sports Medicine last year, Dr Craig Richards, a researcher at the University of Newcastle in Australia, revealed there are no evidence-based studies that demonstrate running shoes make you less prone to injury. Not one.It was an astonishing revelation that had been hidden for over 35 years. Dr Richards was so stunned that a $20 billion industry seemed to be based on nothing but empty promises and wishful thinking that he issued the following challenge: ‘Is any running-shoe company prepared to claim that wearing their distance running shoes will decrease your risk of suffering musculoskeletal running injuries? Is any shoe manufacturer prepared to claim that wearing their running shoes will improve your distance running performance? If you are prepared to make these claims, where is your peer-reviewed data to back it up?’
Dr Richards waited and even tried contacting the major shoe companies for their data. In response, he got silence.
It’s not really that big of a surprise is it? Big companies are about big business, telling people to run barefoot or for thousands of miles in old thin shoes is not conducive to big business. Having strong feet can go a very long way to keeping you ankles, knees and hips healthy. One of the reasons we have people do their warmups in their socks, along with all deadlift variations and box squat variations, helping people grip the floor and learn to use the intrinsic muscles of the feet.
Of course, the article had it’s share of duds:
Humans need aerobic exercise in order to stay healthy,’ says Lieberman. ‘If there’s any magic bullet to make human beings healthy, it’s to run.
If that isn’t a line of complete and utter bullshit, then I don’t know what is.
At Cressey Performance I get used to seeing people performing lifts quite well, and get used to teaching people proper training technique and execution without them already having developed bad habits. We do get adult clients though, who have been training on their own, and no matter how well they think they have trained, or how many articles on T-nation they have read, need work. It is infinitely worse when I venture into a commercial gym, where the stuff I see going on blows my mind. With all that said, here are 5 tips to (hopefully) improve your performance inside and outside of the gym.
1. Keep your arch.
When you do any type of deadlift variation, the most important thing you can do is not lose neutral spine. If your back rounds, you are either lifting too heavy, or you lack mobility in your ankles/hips/thoracic spine. For info on how to improve mobility, check out Magnificent Mobility by Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson.
2. Keep your chest up and out.
When performing any rowing exercise, deadlift variations, squat variation, pushups, bench press, you name it, it works. Keeping your chest puffed out like a pea cock will allow your scapula to either stay depressed and retracted to keep them in the safest position, or allow you to pull them into this position. Do not let your chest cave and shoulders round forward, we do not want shrugging or your shoulder blades elevating and sliding forward. Specific example of a poor row.
3. Tuck your chin.
Cervical hyperextension will catch up to you. What you don’t want is to be looking straight up or straight down, you just want to give yourself a double chin to keep your cervical spine in line with the rest of your spine. To read more about this one, Eric wrote a good article about it here.
4. Lock out your hips.
At the top of squat, deadlift, and lunge variations it is important you finish that final range of motion by squeezing your glutes and getting your pelvis flat. This will help to ensure you are getting optimal glute development for back and knee health, and not being quad dominant. For a good example, Eric yet again comes through in this article here.
5. Deload.
Taking some time where you either go lighter, do less volume, rotate out a CNS intense movement, whatever it may be, and you will feel that much better for it. Taking a step back for a week will allow you to take two forward. You can’t make continual linear uninterruped progress forever, and your connective tissue and joints will thank you. To learn more, EC comes through again with his Art of the Deload e-book. Man, he pretty much has covered this all.
While not being a comprehensive list, putting these 5 tips into practice will greatly improve your training efficiency.
I had quite a few thoughts bouncing around my head that I wanted to share this week, so I am just going to cram them all into one beautiful post.
1. The FitCast host, and renowned misser of bench press attempts, Kevin Larrabee, is currently undergoing an interesting transformation. He is having Leigh Peele (more on her in a minute) be his nutritionist for a while to help him get ripped. After just one week Kevin is down 5.5 lbs and you can follow his fat loss experiment at www.thefitcast.com.
2. The great Leigh Peele, author of the Fat Loss Troubleshoot, has just launched a brand new website, www.FLzine.com, dedicated to providing unparalleled, spin-free fitness information. Along with some top-notch strength coaches, trainers and nutritrionists, yours truly will be writing for the site. I am pumped and look forward to really seeing this thing take off.
3. For those of you who read Eric Cressey’s blog, you may have seen the sled relay that we have had going on recently. Well yesterday I decided to join in on the action for the first time. I knew it was hard, I knew people had puked doing it, but that was simply the hardest thing I have ever done in my entire life. Seriously. Just watch.
I laid in that spot for 35 minutes and did not move. I have never felt so terrible, it felt like my legs were getting gnawed off by rabid hyenas. I know I looked like a pussy, but in all fairness that was all their 3rd time doing that God-forsaken relay, and my first. It seriously made me question whether I ever wanted to train again.
4. I don’t have anything that can top #3, so I am putting in a video of some of our high school baseball guys getting dominated by 3 plates and a 10. Lucky for them I wasn’t there to ridicule their performance. Just kidding, I am proud of them. Seriously though, weak effort. Alright folks, have a great weekend, enjoy the videos.
This weekend I had the pleasure of attending Mike Boyle’s Winter Seminar for the second consecutive year. I always look forward to seminars, as it’s amazing how much you can learn in a few short hours.
Here are some examples of my continuing education:
1. Jonathan Fass is dangerous. I had the pleasure of finally meeting the brilliant Fass this weekend, but he is dangerous to sit next to at a seminar. He has a great sense of humor, and has an uncanny ability to make you laugh when everyone else is quiet and listening.
2. I have to stand up at seminars. If I sit for an extended period of time in a dark room listening to someone speak, I tend to get a wee bit drowsy. I highly recommend standing up, and walk around a little bit. Keeping that blood flowing is of utmost importance.
3. John Pallof is really really smart. Hearing him speak is incredible and anytime any of you get chance, do not miss out. You walk away from his presentations feeling a lot smarter about that area.
4. When you go to a seminar, whether you are up and coming, or a veteran, network, network, network. Developing a network is of utmost importance. It was talked about ad nauseum by some of the speakers, so you have the ability to refer out to high quality chiropractors, ART practitioners, physical therapists, nutritionists, etc. Meeting people in the industry is one huge step in that direction, allowing you to have experts whom you can contact to answers questions that may be outside your realm, but right in theirs.
5. Mike Boyle is my favorite speaker. I can listen to him talk anytime, anywhere. He just has a remarkable capacity to engage an audience, even if you don’t agree with him, you certainly respect where he is coming from.
6. I need to attend more seminars! Eric is always telling me if I find something I want to go too, just let him know. I just don’t like to take the time off, but I think I will attend a few more this year than last.
7. Though not related to the seminar, it is something I have really learned recently. As all of you probably know, I did a fat loss program in January, which called for a huge caloric deficit, a small amount of strength work, and tons of metabolic work. I lost 11lbs on the program, so it was clearly successful. Since its conclusion I have upped my cals and carbs to what should be maintenence levels for my current bodyweight. I have somehow managed to lose another 2.5lbs. I believe this to be due to my reintegration of lots of heavy strength training 3-4 times per week. I think people underestimate the caloric demand of high intensity strength training. There is also probably something to do with upregulation of hormones (ie leptin) from the diet break and my increased recovery capacity to keep training intensity high, but I don’t believe that can account for all of it.
To sum up that long paragraph, when you are trying to lose weight: train hard and heavy (though not too much volume) and put yourself in a caloric deficit. That is obviously a very general statement, but if more people actually lifted heavy when dieting, and performed less cardio, they would maintain lean mass and actually improve results.
Ride the Wave. Just watch this bullshit video and then keep reading.
This is almost as bad as the Bender Ball, which was a disc herniation waiting to happen. This is just a joke.
“We recommend you not exceed 3, 5, and 8lb weights for this workout. You’ll get better results if you concentrate on the moves with lighter weights.”
Can someone please explain that to me. How does using lighter weights, causing less muscular stimulation improve results? I really want to know how this shit continues to be perpetuated. Why can we not rid the industry of this crap? Why don’t people realize if that statement were true, then they would have gotten all the results they ever wanted from Tae-Bo. There is a reason why workout products don’t survive, and new products like this continue to come out almost daily, each one replacing the previous and sucking just as badly.
They don’t work.
So people just keep coming back for the newest gimmick, which is the same useless shit, sold in a new shiny box. That’s it. It’s sad to see people get continually suckered into purchasing and trying these “new” methods and not getting the results they want. Then make all these excuses about how they can’t lose weight, its all genetics, they do everything right, blah blah blah. Don’t delude yourself, your results are in your own hands. I realize that it is not “all” their fault, since they at least continue to attempt to lose weight, just with the wrong tools and mindset. The problem is that people need to educate themselves more. Stop getting your fitness info from the same sources that have always failed you. Branch out. Try new things that are a total departure from what you may have always done, because if what we have always done has gotten us where we always are (obesity and diabetes epidemics), then obviously we need to do something different.
In conclusion, if I hear of anyone purchasing anymore garbage like this, I am going to send Billy Blanks over to pop you in the mouth. Sincerely, Brian St. Pierre.
OK, so I get a lot of questions from friends/family/random people on the internet about proper exercise execution. It can be tricky. You walk into any commercial gym setting and you will see just loads of atrocious form, rounded spines, and just general tomfoolery. Well fortunately for all of you brilliant enough to read my website, we have a solution. Kevin Larrabee, Tony Gentilcore and I have put together a rather large database of most of the main movements that people have trouble with. These videos were shot in HD at 60 frames per second (this was apparently really important to Kevin, he mentioned that damn camera of his being 60 frames per second every day we filmed). We think they came out pretty awesome. If you are interested in checking out more, look HERE.
For a quick example, here is me doing a beautiful barbell deadlift. This is one I commonly see done poorly (if being done at all!).
Subscribe to us on YouTube. We will periodically add more as we find the time to film them. Enjoy.
Posted on September 22nd, 2009 by Brian St. Pierre
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