When most people think of improving their flexibility, they immediately think of stretching. Static stretching to be even more specific. Secondarily, they might think of something like yoga, often touted as the best way to improve your flexibility.
When people think of weight training and flexibility, they often think of lifting weights as causing you to get all muscley and “tight”. This absurb and incorrect notion has been perpetuated by the mass media and people following poorly designed training programs full of poor exercise selections and partial ranges of motion.
However, many of us strength coaches have often advocated that when done appropriately and with a full range of motion, resistance training will improve your flexibility and mobility, as we have seen it time and time again. Well, research is finally coming around to investigate this issue, and what do you think they are finding?
“The results suggest that carefully constructed, full-range resistance training regimens can improve flexibility as well as—or perhaps better than—typical static stretching regimens,” said James R. Whitehead, Ed.D., FACSM, presenting author of the study.
The results showed no statistically significant advantage of stretching over resistance training. Resistance training, in fact, produced greater improvements in flexibility in some cases, while also improving strength.”
In addition to this study, there has also been some recent research showing that static stretching mainly increases our tolerance to the stretch, without actually lengthening the sarcomeres or increasing dynamic range of motion.
I am not saying that there isn’t a time and a place for static stretching, but let’s just keep it in mind as one tool in our tool box for improving flexibility and mobility, not as a panacea for those parameters.
While I tend to do most of my blogging about nutrition, I did spend almost 3 years as a strength coach working with and learning from Eric Cressey and Tony Gentilcore. I like to think I know a thing or two about training, even though I don’t write about it as much on here.
(obligatory video of me sorta-dominating 615)
Due to this background, I know a good training product when I see one. Conversely I know a crappy one when I see that too, and when I was at CP we got sent crappy ones all the time from people just trying to make a quick buck!
There are a ton of programs and products out there that can help you get lean, or get jacked, or get strong, but these programs often lack a lot of essential components to a thorough and complete training program. This often leads to poor tissue quality, poor movement patterns and generally a poor long-term prognosis in terms of training.
Unfortunately there are probably more poor articles and products on training than there are good ones, so when those rare good ones do come around (like AMD 2.0 or Show and Go), I like to let people know about them. These are training programs that I believe are not only effective, but are smart and safe.
They take into account soft-tissue considerations, proper warm-ups, exercise selection, exercise execution and more. In a nutshell they incorporate all of the things I talked about in Eating and Training for Health, Body Composition and Performance. While individual programs and products may emphasize one of these components more than others, it is not to the exclusion of the others.
This all leads me to the upcoming release of Lean Hybrid Muscle Reloaded from strength coaches Elliot Hulse and Mike Westerdal. While not officially being released until next week, they have provided a kick-ass and free report called The Muscle Shifting Doctrine that outlines some smart and straight-forward ideas on building a strong and lean body.
This is merely a taste of what the product offers, and I assure you it is of very high-quality, from two guys who actually train people for a living (you would be surprised at how many products are released from people who don’t actually train anybody)! So if you are interested, check it out!
Many of you have probably heard the phrase “When you all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” This is often used in reference to orthopedic surgeons. When people with knee or other joint problems seek them out for counsel on their pain, more often than not, they get surgery as the answer. Makes sense, surgery is what surgeons do, even if it is not the best course of action.
Recent research actually found even more damning evidence against orthopedic surgeons – If you see an orthopedic surgeon who also owns (or co-owns) a surgical facility, you are even more likely to get surgery. Awesome. While orthopedic surgeons most definitely have their place, see a good physical therapist first. They will let you know if physical therapy alone can solve the issue, or if surgery is the next step. Its worth a shot. Surgery should be the worst-case scenario, not the immediate solution.
In other interesting news, among the growing amount of research done on green tea it was found that EGCG, green tea’s major antioxidant, can actually raise your VO2 max. Your VO2 max essentially tells us how well your body uses oxygen – ie your cardiovascular fitness. We aren’t talking hugely dramatic increases (about 4%), but since we already know that green tea improves endothelial function and increases blood flow, it makes perfect sense. The study used EGCG pills, which were equivalent to about 3 cups of green (or white) tea per day.
On top of that a diet rich in flavanols (of which EGCG is one) found in tea, wine and dark chocolate improved blood vessel dilation up to 47%. This separate research only makes the above study make even more sense, and lend further credence to the idea that what you eat is just as important as how much.
Lastly a recent 12 week study looked at Norwegian cross-country skiers. They had half of them lift weight and do cardio, and compared them to the other half who did cardio only. Unsurprising to those who actually lift weights, but probably very surprising to those who want to believe that cardio is god, the group who lifted and did cardio were able to perform at a higher level for a longer period of time than the cardio-only group. Just one more reason to do cardio, and lift weights for your best performance.
Red Sox third baseman Kevin Youkilis is spending his second straight off-season at Cressey Performance, training to get ready for the upcoming season.
Kevin is a great guy, and he trains like an absolute beast. If possible, he sweats even more at CP than he does at Fenway!
On Monday, NESN (New England Sports Network) went in to CP and filmed Youk training and preparing for the season. Between EC’s training and a little nutrition support from yours truly, I think Youk is primed for his best season ever!
I am currently in the midst of the Precision Nutrition Certification programand I am greatly enjoying it. I figured since I am already in school this probably the best time to truly enhance my education overall. While me taking this certification program might surprise some people, it shouldn’t. No matter how much you may know, there is always more to learn.
Once you think you have all the answers is when you will have failed as an educator. John Berardi and his Precision Nutrition team have worked with thousands of people directly with their Lean Eating Coaching Program, which is far more people than I can work with myself. Think of all of the experience and information they have gleaned from those situations. Does anybody think we all can’t learn something from that?
If I pick up just a few tips and ideas to further improve my services and the results of my clients, why in the world wouldn’t I sign up for such a program? I am always looking for ways to improve my services and the results of my clients. Anyway, that was a slightly off-topic rant. Back to the point of what I have been enjoying in the program thus far.
One piece of advice that really jumped out at me was that Good Nutrition Achieves Health, Body Composition, and Performance Goals. While this is something that I try to hammer home to people myself, and something that I discuss quite a bit in my Show and Go Nutrition Guide, I like the way they worded their discussion on the topic.
People often eat and train with mainly their aesthetics and body composition in mind. They want to look good naked, and often need to lose quite a bit of fat, so they tend to do excessive amounts of cardio and high-rep/poorly executed weight training in conjunction with highly restrictive crash diets. These strategies can certainly work, and their can be a time and a place for rapid fat loss, in the long run these strategies will negatively impact your health and well-being (and often lead to binging and aggressive regaining of lost weight).
Instead, people should look to create a long-term nutrition and training lifestyle based on the intersection of these three goals:
Improving body composition
Improving health
Improving performance
picture courtesy of The Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition, pg 15
The same rule applies for long-term training goals. A lot of trainees, guys and girls alike, exercise with only their body composition in mind. Maybe they aren’t crash dieting or anything, but they train in a manner that is not conducive to improving their performance or long-term health. Without any focus on soft-tissue quality (ie – foam rolling), proper warmups, correct exercise selections or balanced training programs, they will run into problems in the long term.
Unfortunately these problems take a long time to unveil themselves, so often people will justify their current methods because it does not hurt at this moment in time. Newsflash for you Walter Cronkite, most injuries are of a chronic and degenerative nature that could have been prevented, not an acute instant-in-time occurrence. While training in the appropriate manner may not be as sexy, and it is certainly will not be what you read in bodybuilding magazines, it will allow you to train forever, and actually make you more resistant to injuries, not prone to them. While I know that most of us are not training for the Olympics, myself included, training to improve your performance can range from high-level athletics to simply improving your energy levels and ability to play with your kids.
When the focus is on a blend of performance, health and body composition the aforementioned issues do not arise. While this method may not produce results as rapidly as a single focus on any of the one areas, they lead to a balanced and healthy long-term approach that will reduce inflammation, blood lipids, diabetes risk, cancer risk, and body fat percentage as well increase lean mass, movement and tissue quality, strength, athleticism, and other health markers (good cholesterol, insulin sensitivity, etc). Sounds like a plan to me!
To wrap this up, focus your training and your nutrition on improving your health, body composition and performance and you get the best of it all. You get to look good naked, improve your quality of life and perform at your peak!
Today I wanted to do something a little out of the ordinary. With the New Year upon us and many people making their resolutions to improve their health, body composition and performance, I want to let you know that I am here to help.
I just recently wrapped up some consulting with a few clients, and had some spots open up. I figured with the New Year, that people might be interested in my online coaching services. To top it off, I have even decided to offer a 20% discount on my services, for anyone who signs up before Jan 31!
This is includes a discount on any of my online nutrition consulting services, as well as my online training services. Below is a general idea of what my nutrition and training services include:
Nutrition
Comprehensive Nutrition Questionnaire – this provides me with your likes, dislikes, allergies, intolerances, and more to help me customize the consultation specifically to you!
Complete Dietary Analysis – this provides me a snapshot of your normal dietary intake, and I provide you thorough and detailed feedback to maximize your results.
BSP Nutrition Tips & Guidelines Packet - you will learn the nutrition principles to guide you through your lifetime, and dispel so many myths and misconceptions along the way! This packet along with my feedback on your actual eating habits will teach you the skills to make you nutritionally bullet proof.
Personalized Meal Plans built specifically for you, no cookie-cutters here!
Unlimited Email Access to my personal account 24/7.
Training programs written by me to work synergystically with your unique nutrition program, all specifically designed for your needs and goals.
Training
Comprehensive questionnaire covering your health and injury history, prior training experience, your goals and your schedule. We will look at postural photos, any videos you can send of you performing exercises and more to ensure you maximize the effectiveness of the training.
Video demonstrations and/or pictures with descriptions of how to properly perform every exercise I program for you.
Personalized One-Month Training Programs built specifically for you, based upon all the information gathered in your questionnaire. Each program will cover proper warmups, soft tissue work, dynamic mobility, recovery modalities, corrective exercise and whatever training modalities your goals warrant; fat loss, strength, power, mass, athletic, general fitness, etc.
Unlimited Email Access to my personal account 24/7.
I bring the knowledge and the ability to put the whole package together. You just need to bring the attitude and effort!
Nutrition Programs written by me to work synergystically with your personal training program, catered specifically to your needs and goals.
If you are interested in my specific consulting offerings at 20% off, please shoot me an email at brian@brianstpierretraining.com.
For those of you skeptical of working with me online, I have worked with dozens of clients online, from all over the world, and here is what a few of them had to say:
“I can’t say enough good things about working with Brian! I will admit, I was a bit skeptical about working online/from a distance with someone for nutrition purposes, but Brian quickly put that skepticism at bay. I was most impressed with the amount of time he took talking to me in our initial phone consult and then all the subsequent emails answering any question I had in a very timely fashion. There was no cut and paste programs here–he really focuses on you as the individual. His feedback on all my nutrition logs was incredibly detailed and extremely helpful for making the necessary positive changes to reach my goals. I also loved all the recipes he gave me. I had a real issue eating unhealthy snacks because I lacked the knowledge/creativity to create healthier more interesting snacks. Brian gave me so many options for easy to create, healthy snacks that filled a real void in my daily diet. I highly recommend working with him!”
Jeanne Higgins, Seattle, WA
“In late March 2010 I contacted Brian St. Pierre for a nutritional consultation hoping that he could assist me in cleaning up my diet. At the time I felt as if my eating habits were “good” but I was certainly aware that they could be better. Brian was thorough and exhaustive in his evaluation and critique of my eating habits and provided me with the perfect ideas on how I could alter my diet to achieve my goals. What I liked the most about Brian’s services is that he didn’t try to totally revamp my current ways but instead offered ideas and insights into how I could do things better. He worked with my food choices and how I schedule my meals and provided me with a path to success that I am confident will last forever.”
Joe O’Leary, Brighton, MA
“After working with Brian, I can say, without a doubt, that it was the best decision I’ve made for my training in a long time. Being a facility owner, I found myself neglecting my own training, and when I did train, I only did the exercises that I favored the most. I decided to get in touch with Brian because of two reasons 1) having visited CP before, I knew how creative Brian could be with his programming, and 2) he had the nutritional knowledge to back it up!
The results speak for themselves – in 3 months of being a training/nutrition client with Brian I not only added 7.7 pounds of lean weight, but I also increased my Front Squat by 27.5 pounds, my 3RM Chin Up by 14.3 pounds and my Deadlift by 17.6 pounds – all this after I broke my finger the first week of the program, was put into surgery in the second week, and couldn’t do any grip intensive work until after the first month!
The best result, though, was that Brian showed me how to make quality food choices, and helped me develop solid nutritional habits – something that will last with me throughout my whole life. If you’re on the edge of deciding whether to use Brian or not, my advice is just do it – you won’t regret it.”
James Garland, Strength Coach, Australia
Again, this is a limited time offer, so if you are interested in hearing more about my services, please contact me at brian@brianstpierretraining.com. What do you have to lose?
I was able to visit CP yesterday for the first time since September. I gotta say, it was nice to train in that environment again, compared to my normal gym these days it was a nice change of pace. I brought a few friends with me who had never seen the place, I think they enjoyed seeing what a non-commercial gym actually looks like. Meeting Kevin Youkilis probably didn’t hurt their opinion either.
The renovations are looking great, and the space is going to kick even more ass. I have to admit that it is a little bittersweet every time I visit, as I greatly enjoyed my time there. It would be really nice to coach in the new set up too, as it allows for improved vision of the entire floor.
Anyway, I thought I would leave you guys with some interesting articles for the weekend. Some of these were inspired by my trip to CP, some were just awesome. Enjoy!
DeFranco Prowler Training – Joe DeFranco. This is a brand new T-nation article from Joe DeFranco on proper utilization of the infamous Prowler. When he talks about the love/hate relationship with the Prowler, I can totally relate. I mainly hate it though. Enough that I wanted nothing to do with it yesterday, so we did some sledgehammer swings instead. Regardless, Joe provided a quality article on some excellent ways to utilize the prowler.
5 Loading Protocols that Suck – Eric Cressey. First I want to state that EC did not choose that title, and it does not accurately represent the content, so keep that in mind when reading. This is another T-nation article inspired by my trip to CP. Eric takes a look at 5 common loading protocols and discusses their strengths, weakness, applications and times to try something else.
Wheat: In Search of Scientific Objectivity and New Year’s Resolutions – Chris Masterjohn. While many of you may know that I am not a fan of large amounts of wheat consumption, I do think that preparation makes a huge difference. Hence why I like sprouted grains. In this article Chris digs into the study that is often cited to support the idea that “wheat is evil”. It is excellent, and he pokes some serious holes in the study. I highly recommend reading more of his stuff, as he provides some fascinating and top-quality information.
Now that 2010 is almost completely in our rearview, I figured this was a great time to recap what I thought were some of the best resources of 2010. People often get frustrated at their lack of results, yet are unwilling to change their approach and try something new.
They often don’t know where to look for change, or which products and resources can actually help them reach their goals. Well I make it a priority to only recommend products and resources that I think can help you reach your goals, whether they be to improve your coaching ability, athletic performance, body composition or overall health.
I also try to make it clear to whom these resources are intended for, so you only purchase ones that are a good fit for you and your needs. This whole process allows me to continue to learn and improve, pass some of that knowledge on to you, and also filter the marketing so you can make informed decisions on which products and resources you actually want to spend your hard-earned money on!
Here are my Top 5 Products/Resources of 2010 that I reviewed. I will note that their are many more great ones out there that I have not yet had the time to review, though I will hopefully get a chance in the near future.
1. Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel and Move Better. This is my favorite of the year for many reasons. It is an amazing training program that also provides info on proper soft-tissue work, warm-ups and gives you access to over 175 videos demonstrating every exercise in the entire program. Not only that, you also have the ability to purchase my Show and Go Nutrition Guide, which I must say is pretty awesome in and of itself! Eric provided a complete resource to help you maximize your potential. Here is my Review of Show and Go.
2. Body By Boyle Online. This is an unbelievable resource for just about anybody out there. This resource provides over a year of ready-made programs, with new programs being added every month, covering athletic performance, rehab, fat loss ad more! It also contains over 280 videos of every single exercise done at Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning and more educational information than you could possibly imagine. Incredible stuff. Here is my Review for Body By Boyle Online.
3. Accelerated Muscular Development 2.0. Smitty outdid himself with this kick-ass program. He has totally revamped and improved his original Accelerated Muscular Development, adding in a ton more stuff on dynamic warm-ups, exercise progressions as well now providing over 199 exercise videos. Here is my Review of Accelerated Muscular Development 2.0.
4.The Single Leg Solution. Mike Robertson created an awesome product here. Let’s be honest, how many people actually train their legs, let alone one at a time? Well here Mike shows you proper single leg exercises, their execution, and their placement within a training program. It is well-researched and well-written, which is the norm for Mike. Here is my Review of The Single Leg Solution.
5. Optimal Shoulder Performance: From Rehabilitation to High Performance. Mike Reinold of the Boston Red Sox, and Eric Cressey of Cressey Performance joined forces to create one of the most educational resources of the year. This DVD set covers a seminar given at CP where Mike and Eric go over the anatomy of the shoulder, how and why things can go wrong, how to correct it and even more importantly, how to prevent it. There is also a bunch of exercise demonstrations at the end of the seminar to provide proper exercise technique, and yours truly was the demonstrator. If you have a shoulder issue, or work with a population prone to shoulder issues, check this one out. Here is my Review of Optimal Shoulder Performance.
Well there you have it, my Top 5 Resources of 2010. Maybe give yourself a nice little post-Christmas (or whichever holiday you celebrate) reward for being so awesome in 2010.
Cass has interviewed nine women and counting who stayed extremely active during their pregnancies. She wanted to shed some light on this topic because so many women are hesitant to exercise hard while pregnant, and so many people will criticize the ones who do.
Cass said she gets about an email every week asking her about this very topic, and she wanted to provide not only quality information on the topic, but real-life examples of women who have been active while pregnant and the impact it had on their pregnancy, labor and child.
I highly suggest youcheck these stories out, whether you are pregnant or not. These interviews are rather enlightening, though my opinion may be a little biased!
First off I just wanted to thank everyone for the well wishes and congratulations, they are much appreciated!
Today I wanted to direct your attention to some really quality content that I have come across lately that I think you might want check out for yourself.
Don’t Have Time to Train? – Tony Gentilcore. Tony pretty much lays down the law as to why there is always time to train. Not “having time” really means you are not making time. I even fell victim to this for a while, often only training 2x/week, but no more. I am back on 4x/week and kicking ass. Hell my best friend was able to train consistently (and very creatively) while being on the top of a mountain on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. If he can do it, why can’t you?
Low FODMAP diet has been great for my gut – Cassandra Forsythe. Cass discusses a very interesting concept on food and its effect on your GI tract. She is someone who has had GI problems for years, as she discusses, and this new strategy has done wonders for her. If you are someone who has struggled yourself, check it out.
Dr. Mellanby’s Tooth Decay Reversal Diet – Stephan Guyenet. I think when I post one of these blogs I always include a post from Stephan, his stuff is just that good. Considering that my wife is a dentist, this post was even more poignant to me. While the post does disparage grains a bit due to their phytic acid content, I will point out that sprouted grains have minimal phytic acid due to the sprouting process.
Posted on February 1st, 2011 by Brian St. Pierre
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