While my blog reading has been lagging a little bit lately, I was able to read a few gems recently that I wanted to share with you guys. Check them out!
Success Tips From Cressey Performance – by Jay Bonn. This is an excellent piece by Jay about the how successful people in all walks of life (though in this case CP and Precision Nutrition) tend to do things in similar fashions. He finds the common threads among these successful places, and shows how success really boils down to simple actions. Great stuff.
Oblique Strains in Baseball: 2011 Update – by Eric Cressey. I think this one of Eric’s best posts ever. While that is a bold statement as he has written probably close to 1000 blog posts, I found this to be a quick and easy read with tons of really interesting information. While I worked for him for 3 years and know his core training philosophy like the back of my hand, this was an enlightening refresher that applies even if you are not or do not train baseball players.
3. While not an article, I thought I should note that CP client Tim Collins has officially made the Kansas City Royals major league roster. Tim is a 21 year old reliever who went undrafted out of high school. He walked into CP right when I first started as an intern there. He was 18 years old and all 5’5″ and 135lbs throwing mid-80′s. He now stands 5’7″ and 170lbs, and throws low to mid 90′s.
This is a testament to good training, good nutrition (ahem), and Tim’s tremendous work ethic. He practically lived at CP in the off-season, as he would be there the day after his season ended ready to begin anew. I couldn’t be happier for him and wish him all the best this season.
There are always interesting new developments in the research world, and I wanted to share a few fun ones with you guys today.
Many of you know how I dislike unstable surface training – ie. training on a Bosu ball or physioball, etc. EC’s Master’s thesis showed that unstable surface training actually decreased strength in athlete’s who were only using it for a very small percentage of their training.
Bosu for the Core?
Well, many people argue, these exercises are not about strength, they are about increasing the activity of your core and improving balance. However, Spanish researchers recently tested this theory and they found that performing total-body movements on an unstable surface (Bosu in this case) actually worked the core muscles less than doing the exercises on the floor. This was due to the fact that doing the exercises on the Bosu ball forced the exercisers to use less weight, requiring the core to work less hard.
EC sent me a Pubmed link to a pretty interesting study recently performed at the Human Performance Laboratory at The University of Alabama.
In this study they took six highly trained endurance athletes and had them carb load for several days prior to testing.
First the group was given its extra carbs for the loading from Gatorade. Then a few weeks later they were given half of their loading carbs form chia seeds, and the other half from Gatorade. Both of the treatments had their carb-loading based on subject bodyweight, so that their intakes were isocaloric.
Everybody knows that the first rule of a post-training shake is that it has to be fast. You must drink it as soon as you are done or you won’t get jacked. You must drink the fastest protein on earth with only the fastest carbs, no fiber or fat allowed! This usually entails people drinking whey protein, either in the form of isolates or hydrolysates, because concentrates are just too darn slow. The carbs are usually from maltodextrin or dextrose, and maybe even that fancy new waxy maize starch. Anything with fiber , fat or fructose is terrible and will decrease absorption time. Right? We know all of this because that is what we have always been told. No one denies that this is effective, as it has worked for millions of people, but does effective equal optimal? What are we actually trying to accomplish with this shake?
Cressey Performance has recently gotten some love on NESN for the way it trains baseball players of all levels. I personally worked with 4 of the 5 guys interviewed in both of these videos, so it is pretty cool to see.
The first video is a look at Kevin Youkilis’ training at CP, which is pretty sweet.
The second video is a look at CP and the training of some of its minor league players. Makes me miss it a little bit.
Training for power is imperative as we age. In fact it is the first thing we lose as we get older. However there is a bright side. This is a quality that can be retained from proper training, and being to maintain it or at least drastically slow down its loss our quality of life would improve drastically.
(this is a 68 year old CP client whom I had the privilege of training many times)
Lets back up for a second though and actually define power. Power is Force x Velocity.
In terms of exercise the force is your strength, so strength training will most definitely help you to maintain your power output. However people not only lose their strength, or ability to produce force, they lose their ability to produce this force with any type of explosiveness, or velocity.
While looking over an online client’s food log recently, I came across a mention of a homemade vegetable dip (he wasn’t a fan of hummus). I asked for the recipe, it was his wife’s by the way, and he was gracious enough to send it to me. I must say, it looks delish!
Another big plus for those of you who may lack serious kitchen skills, it is as simple as it gets. Without further ado, here is the Fage Vegetable Dip.
First, I want to remind everyone that today is the final day of the introductory sale price for Lean Hybrid Muscle Reloaded. I have only done 1 session so far, but it is a killer! I have heard some more really great things about the program from Tony and EC as well, as they are a little farther along in it than I am.
If building a leaner, more functional and athletic physique is your goal, then this would be an absolutely fantastic resource for you. It balances strength, hypertrophy, power and conditioning, and allows you to tweak the parameters to emphasize one of those elements over the others, without neglecting any of them.
Plus, you risk absolutely nothing. If you’re not thrilled, simply return it within 30 days and Mike & Elliott will refund every penny – no questions asked! The sale expires at midnight tonight, so don’t wait!
Secondly, as some of you may know I am a big fan of youbars.com. This is a website where you can design your own protein bars, and the ingredients are real food, not loads of sugar alcohols, maltodextrins or artificial sweeteners. Instead you get things like peanut butter, almond butter, raisins, coconut, cacao, chia, flax, whey protein and so much more.
For those of you who own the Show and Go Nutrition Guidethere is a bar I designed that I put in the Recommended Recipes section. It is awesome. I highly recommend these bars, and now to sweeten the deal even more, if you type in the coupon code “bspbars” you get 10% off!
Pretty sweet huh? Well that’s it for today guys, two cool announcements, so check them both out!
I am very pleased to announce the newly available BSP Training & Nutrition Newsletter!
To sign up simply fill in the info on your right, and you will have immediate access to some cool stuff. I plan on this newsletter functioning as my RSS feed, as at the end of each week I will provide a small recap and link to each blog post so you can catch up on anything that you may have missed. This will also allow me to see which content and blog posts people read the most, and the least, allowing me to greatly improve what I write and cater the content better to you guys!
It will also provide exclusive content and cool new updates that may not appear on the blog itself. In addition by signing up I will send you my 20-page report “The Truth About Saturated Fat & Cholesterol.” In this report I really dig into the data and showcase how off-base the mainstream recommendations truly are.
All of that combined will clearly make you so much more awesome, how could you not sign up! This is a completely FREE service, and you can unsubscribe at any time if you wish (though who would want to?), so feel free.
If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email. Enjoy!
I hope you guys enjoyed my little talk about reclaiming some of my youth yesterday. Not that I am old, but there is definitely a difference between being 22 and playing rugby everyday, whether it be practice or games, and being 26 with a baby on the way and a whole lot more responsibility!
Between life, work, school and my thesis work there is definitely a lot less time for me to train these days, and taking the time to write my own programs is pretty much not going to happen. Plus I will just modify it by week 2 anyway! While I don’t train quite like I did in college, I am definitely a much smarter and more efficient lifter, and I get in high quality sessions in about 45 minutes. I don’t mess around!
However it is absolutely awesome when I get to utilize a program written by some strength coaches that I trust. Obviously I have done many a program by EC and Tony, including Maximum Strength and Show and Go, and it is incredibly refreshing to do a program written by someone else. It keeps the training much more interesting and varied, and forces you to do some things that you might not program for yourself.
Another perfect example of this is Mike Westerdal and Elliot Hulse’s Lean Hybrid Muscle Reloaded. I have had a chance to look over an advance copy from them, and I liked it so much that I am going to put it to the test starting today! I like being an able to go to the gym and not have to think “what I am going to do today?”, but instead think “I am going to dominate what I am doing today!”
For those of you who don’t know Mike and Elliot, they are guys who not only talk the talk, but walk the walk. While many people in this industry are like real estate professors giving you advice when they don’t actually own any real estate, Mike and Elliot actually train people for a living.
Mike has competition bests of a 640 squat, 630 bench and a 600 deadlift at 242lbs, and has worked with thousands of clients. Elliot is a professional strongman, and runs his own gym in Florida. These are guys who have put their theories to the test.
I will admit that the program is a little higher volume than I am used to, but I think this will actually be a nice change of pace from the brief and intense sessions I generally program for myself. New stimuli will lead to new growth and results.
I also think that one of the best parts of this entire program are the video demonstrations of every single exercise you are asked to do. While I certainly know my way around the gym, there are a few new ones that even I had to check out, and they do an excellent job with the video content.
They also provide a quality nutrition component to coincide with the training programs, including some meal plans to simplify the process for you. In the end I would highly recommend this program to anyone looking to change their body composition, improve their health and increase their performance. In addition they are offering a great introductory sale price from today through this Friday at midnight, so check it out.
Posted on March 30th, 2011 by Brian St. Pierre
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