Unorthodox

Recently a member of the Sports Center approached me and acknowledged that he has been watching how I train my clients and the things I have them do. He proceeded to let me know how "unorthodox" I am. My response. Yeah I am. And the results we get are "unorthodox" too. Lose 5 pounds in a week. Lose 20 pounds in 4-6 weeks. Clients losing 60 pounds in 4-6 months. Adding over a foot to vertical jumps. Decreasing sprint times in terms of percentages. Doubling & tripling strength. 0 pull-ups to 3 in 3-4 months. Flexibility increase. Injury decrease. Confidence through the roof by looking, feeling & performing better.
It's just what I do. I am good because I have passion for it. It's my life. I like changing people's lives for the better because I can.

5 Consecutive Long Jumps

I do the jumping knee tuck or hops before I perform any explosive or fast movement. Reason is to lay down muscle motor neuron pathways related to the activity to be performed. Basically telling the body, "Ok we're gonna go hard and fast! Be ready!"
You will never see me hold a stretch before an activity like this. I would be sending the wrong body readiness message as in, "Relax, go easy."




This idea of performing 5 consecutive long jumps (5CLJ) came from a coach at the University of Wisconsin- Lacrosse. The average person should be able to broad jump their own height in distance. He has sufficient data that correlates one's long jump ability to speed. He had a group of world class time 400M sprinters at the time I discovered him. They were jumping around 11 feet. Which is amazing!



But we do 5CLJ's because it brings in a bigger athleticism challenge. The ability to land from an explosive jump, re-coil the muscles and spring forward again repeatedly requires: coordination, the exploitation of the plyometric effect on muscles and tendon and overall body strength (think armswing, core muscles to re-align the body mid-air and obviously legs & glutes).

Those studs from UW-L were jumping 55 feet in the 5CLJ. The end of the tape in my videos was at 45 feet. I have some work to do I guess.

Side Plank Combo

Can you hold a plank from every basic angle? Are you bored holding forever? What's the point if you can hold a plank for 2 minutes or more? Move on you've graduated to challenging yourself with more difficult variations.




First off, a plank is simply holding your body straight as a board. Think when you are at the top of a push-up movement and arms are straight. That's a plank. Most common mistake is letting the mid-section droop (which is a sign of weak core or abs, back and hips) or over compensating and rounding the back or piking the body up. Most common measurement of progress is how long you can hold the position.

Ok, so here's what's going on this video.

Shaun is holding a side plank on one elbow with one foot on a bosu ball, while holding his other leg up in the air to create more instability. With his other arm I have him doing a row with a light jumpstretch band.

Effect: With the progressive resistance from the band and the fast explosive pull, he's training to be powerfully fast as swimmers need. And being put into a position of instability, many various muscle groups are firing to maintain balance and control. Something to think about as when you are in the water there is nothing to brace you besides the water.

Remember this is only one aspect of a complete training program, don't just do these types of exercises. Be sure to incorporate strength, muscle stamina, cardio for heart and lungs, balance and coordination. Eat right and sleep well. Perform phenomenally!

Hanging L-Raise

So you think you have abs?
I mean you can do 50 sit-up crunches right? Yeah that's pretty awesome. Congrats!
Now get real.
Mikael gets bored doing full hanging leg raises- where her feet touch the bar she is holding onto with her legs straight the whole time. So we upped it a notch. Stop half way back down and go back up. Is it cheating or easier? Phhht! Hardly! The strength it take to reverse the downward motion and lift back up from an "L-shaped" or 90 degree angle is phenomenal. You won't see many people be able to do this. Probably 5% of your gym's population or less. The other 90% are still doing their killer 50 crunches on the floor. Oh and the remainder 5% can do hanging leg raises and are working on L-raises.

Bad Cardio vs. Good Cardio

Many fitness professionals and medical doctors prescribe low to moderate intensity aerobic training (cardio) to people who are trying to prevent heart disease or lose weight. And usually, the recommendations parallel the common statement, “perform 30-60 minutes of steady pace cardio 3-5 times per week maintaining your heart rate at a moderate level”. What is the reasoning? Simply because it’s deemed as a safe start for extremely de-conditioned or extremely overweight individuals. This workout is not difficult; it’s attainable- meaning the odds of “staying with it” are good and a step above the completely sedentary lifestyle. Plus, prescribing this fitness regime covers the professionals’ butts. Who wants to be responsible for someone collapsing because the fitness program they recommended was too intense?

Fast-forward to you being able to achieve steady state cardio workouts (i.e. walk or jog for 20 minutes). I think 30-60 minutes is a little excessive without feeling like the “hamster on the wheel” doing endless hours of boring cardio. So what’s the next step? Consider some recent scientific research that indicates that steady pace endurance cardio work may not be all it’s cracked up to be.

First, realize that our bodies are designed to perform physical activity in bursts of exertion followed by recovery, or stop-and-go movement instead of steady state movement. Recent research is suggesting that physical variability is one of the most important aspects to consider in your training. This tendency can be seen throughout nature as animals almost always demonstrate stop-and-go motion instead of steady state motion. In fact, humans are the only creatures in nature that attempt to do “endurance” type physical activities. Most competitive sports (with the exception of endurance running or cycling) are also based on stop-and-go movement or short bursts of exertion followed by recovery. To examine an example of the different effects of endurance or steady state training versus stop-and-go training, consider the physiques of marathoners versus sprinters. Most sprinters carry a physique that is very lean, muscular, and powerful looking, while the typical dedicated marathoner is more often emaciated and sickly looking. Now which would you rather resemble?

It’s not about aesthetics entirely either, the internal effect of various forms of exercise on our body can make all the difference when we realize what’s really happening. Scientists have known that excessive steady state endurance exercise (different for everyone, but sometimes defined as greater than 60 minutes per session most days of the week) increases free radical production in the body, can degenerate joints, reduces immune function, causes muscle wasting, and can cause a pro-inflammatory response in the body that can potentially lead to chronic diseases. On the other hand, highly variable intermittent training has been linked to increased anti-oxidant production in the body and an anti-inflammatory response, a more efficient nitric oxide response (which can encourage a healthy cardiovascular system), and an increased metabolic rate response (which can assist with weight loss). Furthermore, steady state endurance training only trains the heart at one specific heart rate range and doesn’t train it to respond to various every day stressors. On the other hand, highly variable intermittent training teaches the heart to respond to and recover from a variety of demands making it less likely to fail when you need it. Think about it this way -- Exercise that trains your heart to rapidly increase and rapidly decrease will make your heart more capable of handling everyday stress. Stress can cause your blood pressure and heart rate to increase rapidly. Steady state jogging and other endurance training does not train your heart to be able to handle rapid changes in heart rate or blood pressure. Steady state exercise only trains the heart at one specific heart rate, so you don’t get the benefit of training your entire heart rate range.

The important aspect of variable intermittent training that makes it superior over steady state cardio is the recovery period in between bursts of exertion. That recovery period is crucially important for the body to elicit a healthy response to an exercise stimulus. Another benefit of variable intermittent training is that it is much more interesting and has lower drop-out rates than long boring steady state cardio programs.

To summarize, some of the potential benefits of variable intermittent training compared to steady state endurance training are as follows: improved cardiovascular health, increased anti-oxidant protection, improved immune function, reduced risk for joint wear and tear, reduced muscle wasting, increased residual metabolic rate following exercise, and an increased capacity for the heart to handle life’s every day stressors.

There are many ways you can reap the benefits of stop-and-go or variable intensity physical training. One of the absolute most effective forms of variable intensity training to really reduce body fat and bring out serious muscular definition is performing wind sprints or hill sprints. Also, most competitive sports such as football, basketball, racquetball, tennis, hockey, etc. are naturally comprised of highly variable stop-and-go motion. In addition, weight training naturally incorporates short bursts of exertion followed by recovery periods. High intensity interval training (varying between high and low intensity intervals on any piece of cardio equipment) is yet another training method that utilizes exertion and recovery periods.

For example, an interval training session on the treadmill could look something like this:

Warm-up for 3-4 minutes at a fast walk at least 1.5 incline

Interval 1 - run at 8.0 mi/hr with the incline at 10 for 20 seconds

Interval 2 - walk at 3.0 mi/hr with the incline at 3 for 1.5 minutes

Interval 3 - run at 10.0 mi/hr with the incline at 10 for 10 seconds

Interval 4 - walk at 3.0 mi/hr with the incline at 3 for 1.5 minutes

Repeat those 4 intervals 4 times for a very intense 15 to 20-minute workout.

Remember, the idea is to train your body at highly variable intensity rates for the majority of your workouts to get the most beneficial response in terms of heart health, fat loss, and muscle maintenance.

Raise Your Workout Intensity… Go Ahead and Throw the Weights

By: Monty Moran

High intensity training bouts have now been shown to be more effective than steady state traditional cardio training for improving body composition. So what is high intensity training? What exercises are involved? What's the difference?

Take a look at Track & Field athletes, in general most people would say that, aesthetically, the sprinters and all around athletes (e.g. heptathalon through pentathalon) look to be in the best shape. What do they do? They run as fast as they can, jump as high or as far as possible and they throw for distance. Their efforts are high intensity. What do the distance athletes do? Run at a manageable pace, which hopefully will be faster than the others. Their efforts are limited to a pace or steady state cardio.

High intensity training or as some of my younger clients say, "hardcore training," involves activities such as sprinting, heavier weight lifting, jumping and throwing objects.

When training at a steady state (or a traditional "cardio" workout), the heart increases from its baseline rate to an elevated rate of generally 55-70% of maximum beats per minute. By doing this, the metabolism increases and more calories are burned during the workout session compared to not working out. However, as soon as the workout session is over, the heart slows down and metabolism returns to normal.

When incorporating high intensity training the rules change. 80-95% maximum heart is achieved but for short time periods (varying from six to sixty seconds). Rest between bouts is required because of the inability for the majority of people to sustain such a pace. The heart rate will climb towards a peak or maximum rate and then will (if in shape) quickly fall to 45-60% of max heart rate. This series of fluctuations requires greater quantities of oxygen and burns a greater amount of calories than steady state cardio training for any period of time. In addition, when the workout is finished the body goes into recovery mode; during which the metabolism stays elevated for at least 4 hours after the training session.

Make your next workout an intense experience. Run faster, jump higher and / or farther, lift heavier, throw farther. Talking during your workout should be the last thing on your mind, while trying to catch your breath may suddenly take top priority.

About Monty Moran

Monty Moran is the Director of Training for Cormax, a fitness consultant, entrepreneur and business coach. Visit www.cormax.us and see how he actually has his clients throw the weights when lifting.