The 10 Best Moments From Last Night's WWE 'Royal Rumble'
http://bit.ly/2sQiWpL Fitness via Muscle & Fitness http://bit.ly/2zjtGBz January 28, 2019 at 08:45AM
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Take Your Trap Bar Deadlift from Good to Great
http://bit.ly/2S6sCee The trap bar deadlift is an incredibly effective exercise. It is a kind of squat/deadlift hybrid lift. Obviously, you deadlift the bar off the floor with it in your hands but the movement pattern is closer to a squat. This allows you to create a deeper knee angle than conventional deadlifts.
As a result, the trap bar requires the quadriceps to work harder than they would with a straight bar. This means that you can train the quads, hamstrings, glutes, abs, lower back, forearms, and traps with the trap bar deadlift. This makes it arguably the most efficient exercise out there.
I love the trap bar deadlift and often program it in my client's training programs as well as my own. Most often the trap bar deadlift is used as the main lift one day per week, and we use this exercise as a indicator lift. If your numbers are going up week to week then it’s a pretty good sign the program is working.
Benefits of the Trap Bar DeadliftIf you haven’t tried the trap bar deadlift before then, I urge you to include it in your training regime.
Here is a quick overview of the benefits of the trap bar deadlift:
The trap bar deadlift is awesome, but it can be even better with one small adjustment.
Matching up the resistance profile of an exercise with the strength curves of the working muscles increases the effectiveness of an exercise. It allows you to challenge the muscles throughout the entire range of movement. This causes a greater stimulus across a greater range—and that adds up to more gains.
The trap bar deadlift is an extension movement pattern. This movement pattern has an ascending strength curve—you get stronger throughout the range.
You are weakest at the bottom and strongest at the top, so the hardest point in a squat is at rock bottom. Likewise, the hardest part of a deadlift is moving it off the floor. Once it’s past your knees, locking it out is generally easy the easy part.
Consequently, the total weight on the bar is limited by what you can move off the floor (your weakest position). This means your muscles have to work maximally to initiate the lift, but for every inch thereafter they are more mechanically advantaged. This means the muscles don’t have to work as hard. So, you are only working them maximally in the early part of the lift.
There is a simple fix to this issue that allows you to make the entire range of the lift equally demanding. Try adding a band to the bar and as you lift, the tension on the band increases.
By modifying the lift to match your capablitites helps you challenge your muscles across the entire range and makes it a more effective muscle builder. On a rep by rep basis you get a much higher stimulus. It makes every rep harder, but it also means you get a far higher muscle building stimulus.
The video demonstrates how to set up the bands and perform the lift:
Fitness via Breaking Muscle http://bit.ly/1GxgPEe January 26, 2019 at 07:30PM
The Perfect Squat for Tall Lifters
http://bit.ly/2G0u9fi The back squat is a great exercise, but it’s not great for everyone. In many cases, the front squat is a better choice for most tall lifters. Having the bar front loaded allows you to maintain a more upright torso position and sit deeper into the lift.
Unfortunately, back squats can easily become ugly when tall guys try and force themselves to hit depth. A combination of unfavourable leverages and poor mobility result in a back breaking squat-goodmorning hybrid. All this does is place undue stress on the lower back, reduce the quadriceps recruitment, and put you at an increased risk of injury.
This problem is especially common in lifters with long limbs relative to their torso. There are many tall people who can squat just fine, but if your torso is short you have to lean forward a lot to hit depth. Just look at Layne Norton’s squatting style to see this in practice.
You can lift big weights this way, but you also can get hurt. If you find yourself having to lean forward excessively to complete your squat then you would probably benefit from switching to an exercise better suited to your structure. The front squat fits the bill perfectly for tall/long-limbed lifters.
The front squat means the weight is front loaded (duh!). The weight acts as a counterbalance. It shifts the centre of mass slightly—this is what allows the more upright body position. It also acts as an instant technique feedback. If you lean forward you will dump the bar.
The front loaded positon is almost an auto-correcting way to load because you instinctively know there is no way to retrieve the situation if you lean forward. With a back squat, however, you can compensate and it is this compensation that causes so many back injuries.
More than the Sum of Its PartsPaused reps are an incredibly useful training strategy to build strength, muscle, technique, and stability. So, to make your front squats even more effective pause your reps at the bottom of each lift for a couple of seconds.
A bit like the front-loaded position being a great technique cue, paused reps help increase body awareness and reinforce where you need to be in space to execute the lift optimally. Tall guys often lack stability at the bottom of a squat.
For want of a better phrase, there are too many moving parts as they hit depth. Because their torso is constantly shifting forwards it gives them a lot to control. Shorter, more natural squatters don’t have to deal with this to the same degree. Their torsos are almost bolt upright and rigidly controlled.
Tall lifters, however, tend to find their weight shifting forward or back. As you can imagine, this limits the weight they can lift. It also increases the risk of a missed lift and worst of all, injury.
Spending a block of training dedicated to paused reps can massively increase stability, reduce missed lifts, and injury risk. Paused front squats are a phenomenal tool for boosting stability. Spending a few seconds at the bottom of each rep improves your ability to stay tight at full depth. In time, this means you will be able to transmit more force to the bar, lift more weight, over a greater range of motion, and with better form.
I have also found the loaded stretch they offer in the full-depth position to be an effective mobility drill. As previously mentioned, one of the biggest problems with squats for tall guys is hitting depth. It’s no secret that tall guys tend to struggle with mobility.
Like any other training outcome specificity rules. Mobility issues can only be solved by training for increased mobility. This doesn’t mean you have to do a laundry list of mind-numbing physical therapy style exercises though.
I find that stuff boring! I’m sure you are the same. I’m not motivated to do it, so guess what? I half-ass it (or skip it all together) and I don’t make progress. Instead I prefer to use a more time efficient strategy which also helps boost my strength and muscle mass. That’s why I program paused reps.
Incorporating them into your training means you can get an effective stimulus for the muscles, improve technique, enhance mobility, refine your form. Even better, it means you don’t have to do much (if any) of the fluffy “prehab” drills.
Paused squats are a particular favourite of mine. I am a tall, long-limed, naturally skinny guy. So are most of my clients. Paused squats can do wonders for people built like us. To illustrate this point, I’m going to take the example of a lanky guys squatting with an empty bar or with a weight around their 10 rep max.
With the empty bar squats often look really ugly for tall guys. As they progress up in weight, however, their form tends to improve. Why? Because the weight on the bar forces them into a loaded stretch. To take advantage of this, I find having them pause gets even more technique improvement. It is a fantastic mobility, stability, and muscle building technique.
In light of all these factors, I believe paused reps are a superb tool for tall guys. Combined with the advantages of the front squat I think it’s a no-brainer to incorporate them into your training!
Wait, There Is MoreSo far, I’ve listed several different benefits of paused front squats. I’ve got one more for you. The pause reduces momentum. Less momentum means the muscles have to work harder. That’s what we want. The harder a muscle is trained, the bigger the magnitude of response. In short, this creates a bigger growth signal to the body.
In the video below my client, Ahmed, demonstrates how paused front squats can work for tall guys.
The front racked position requires the upper back to work hard to stabilise the shoulder girdle. The added time under tension created by pausing means these muscles will fatigue on high rep sets and mean your form breaks down.
To deal with this I suggest you keep your reps in the 4-8 range for these and pause for anything from 1-4 seconds in the hole. Use this as the main lift of the day and then do higher rep work on exercises like leg presses or hack squats to supplement your heavy paused squats. Fitness via Breaking Muscle http://bit.ly/1GxgPEe January 26, 2019 at 07:30PM
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The State of Our Union's Children
http://bit.ly/2FXVAGA Our country is a tribute to freedom and the human pioneering spirit. America is an idea as much as a country—the land of opportunity—the dream of building a better life for yourself. We believe in human ingenuity, strength of will, conviction, and that freedom is worth fighting for—or at least we did. Somewhere between storming the beaches at Normandy and posting a selfie of us storming Best Buy for a Nintendo Switch, we lost ourselves.
America! Land of the buy one get one free. Home of the Big Mac.
We’ve immersed a generation in distraction, smothered them in comfort, celebrated every mundane indicator that they are human, insulated them from adversity, blunted any form of authentic feedback, and created the expectation that the world will do the same. We’ve removed all pains, sanitized all risk, and entrenched them in patterns that virtually ensure they live a passive, unhealthy, and superficial existence.
We can complain about the kids today, but it is us adults who create them and it is us who must be different if we want them to be. First, let's consider how this picture became our normal.
The 1950s: The Birth of Religious ConsumptionThere have been a few watermark transitions that brought about our current state. World War II turned us into the preeminent manufacturing giant. The war effort that employed all citizens behind a common purpose—that required all of us to ration gas and groceries, grow victory gardens, and either enlist or work on the production lines—this war left us the world’s capitalist superpower. We felt compelled to keep pace by changing modern material expectations and deifying consumption. This transformation is spelled out for us by Marketing Consultant Victor Lebow in the Spring 1955 Journal of Retailing:
Over-consumption is perhaps the most distinguishable quality of modern America, adapting to take on as many expressions as commerce allows. Most literally normal Americans now consume previously inconceivable types and quantities of food.
For over 99% of the human experience, our diets consisted of real, whole foods available in nature. Industrialization brought new chemical combinations, but our staple meals remained largely the same. General Foods and the other food giants worked hard to change this, however, in the '50s and ’60s.
By funding scholarship programs for prospective home economics teachers, they were able to shift the curriculums from a vital course in family nutrition, thrift, and home stability to indoctrination into consumerism. Betty Crocker was created to be the spiritual head of the convenience food movement. Pretty ladies were deployed all over America to promote the merits of the convenience kitchen: just heat and serve.
In 1999, the heads of all the major processed food companies met at Pillsbury headquarters to discuss the growing health crisis and the healthy changes it would dictate. Stephen Sanger, the CEO of General Mills, ended this fretful rumination with his defiant insistence that everyone should just keep selling as they always had. Americans would keep eating. He was right. When Frosted Mini-Wheats were marketed as a means to help your child’s attentiveness, their sales increased substantially even after they were forced to take down the dishonest ads (and even despite the obvious connotation of the word "frosted"—it means they’ve added lots of sugar).
Today, sugar is infused into every low-fat option for calorie counters. For the rest, chemists hack our bliss point while chemically altering food to create the most addictive possible nutrient delivery. A new generation grows up in a world hardly able to conceive of meals without packages or a life without frequent fast food stops.
The 1960s: The Birth of Lawsuit CultureThe 1960s brought the counter-cultural movement. We exposed some bad values: racism, sexism, pollution, and the like. In an attempt to eliminate the possibility of these bad values, we created an environment where people were no longer entrusted with common sense. In order to prevent any authority from abusing its power, we created overly complex legal systems that promote inflexibility, complication, and social isolation. By trying to remedy every minor short term pain, we invited a litany of far larger unintended consequences.
Lawsuit culture ran amok, as society tried to eliminate the possibility of anything bad ever happening. Every mishap required blame, punishment, and a pay-out. Seesaws, monkey bars, and sprinting became hazardous. Physical education classes eliminated climbing rope and dodge ball. Teachers lost the ability to hold students accountable or dictate their own lessons. Human judgment was outsourced to complex rulebooks which only serve to add inertia and anxiety to every action.
The 1980’s: The Birth of Self-Esteem CultureThe confluence of religious consumption and lawsuit culture turned our society inward. Rather than consider the common good or the broader ramifications, we began to conceive that the point of life was to protect our children from any harm while providing excessively. Provide and protect swung to dangerous extremes that were only exacerbated by the failed self-esteem movement.
The goal of youth development became oriented around eliminating honest feedback and instead creating artificial pomp and circumstance for every breath a child took. Bulldozer parents, intent to clear the path of any challenge or strife, have become the norm. Of course, you can only fend off reality so long. These children eventually had to contend with their real capabilities in a world that never allowed them to grow from failure.
The 2010s: Smartphone Culture Throws Fuel to the FireAll of these trends have been magnified to impossible extremes by the latest cataclysmic change: smartphone ubiquity. By 2015, 73% of US high schoolers had smartphones. This number only continues to grow, along with the number of elementary and middle-schoolers who have a smartphone. Walk down any high-school hall and you’ll pass silent droves of kids trudging by, headphones in, and eyes down, lost in the scroll.
It’s starting earlier than ever. Despite, the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics, there is hardly a 3-year-old in America who can’t easily navigate games and YouTube on a tablet or smartphone. Car rides are quiet, as are family dinners, but that’s not a good thing.
iGen, as they have been dubbed, is the generation born around 1995. Coming of age immersed in smartphone use, they traded free-play for Snapchat. Social interactions were rarely practiced and uncomfortable situations were entirely removed as social pressure pulled them to an artificial world of commenting, posturing, and frantically scanning to “keep up.” Young kids are less likely to go outside to play and teenagers, averaging nine hours of daily screen time, spend the entire school day sitting before sedentary evenings immersed in their screens.
Dr. Jean Twenge has been studying generational characteristics for over 25 years. Typically, distinguishable characteristics for any generation are already rising in the previous one. By charting character traits from generation to generation, she would see gently rising and falling slopes. All of that changed with Generation Z (iGen).
Around 2012, she noticed the newest generation was demonstrating drastic changes from the Millenials. In attitude, worldview, and life experience, these youths were a stark mutation from all those that preceded them. Today’s teens are less likely to date, go out, get a license at age 16, or leave home. There is a startling lack of desire for freedom and self-reliance as more kids than ever seem to content and entitled to live endlessly dependent on mom and dad. Lobotomized by their devices, they drift along the superficial, never acting to create their own life.
Lawsuit culture, the self-esteem movement, and smartphones have provided a perfect cocktail for the insidious “safe space” culture currently being indoctrinated across coastal universities. Budding adults who have always been led to value safety and security are immersed in a culture where prestige is given for tantrums of public outrage only made possible by the smartphone. Unfortunately, these dogmas program the victimized neurotic mental patterns of our most depressed and anxious.
Contrary to popular belief, we aren’t made of glass. As psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains in his book, Stumbling Upon Happiness, the phenomena known as absent grief is actually quite common. We are anti-fragile beings who need the struggle to induce growth. This is the foundation of our immune system and the first principle of any resistance training program. By removing any strife, we eliminate the essential fuel for strength, personality, and purpose.
You Are the SolutionDespite their frustrating worldviews, the kids today are not the issue. Young kids still come out the exact same. Go to the park and you’ll see three and four-year-olds are still running around like crazy. Their parents, conversely, are now either incessantly buffering them from free play or on the park bench scanning their phones for distraction. If we want to change, it is we adults who will have to change.
Strong parents make strong kids. If we want our children to break free of the cycles of dependency and create meaningful lives, then we have to model it. Your example speaks far louder than anything you could ever say.
Youth will never understand what healthy eating looks like or how it could be made enjoyable if parents don’t value it. Kids whose parents lift, run, practice handstands, and continue to exude a joyful spirit of play will be far more likely to embrace a physical existence of connection and energy. Adolescents who have seen their parents put the phone away after work will be more likely to opt out of smartphone passivity in favor of real experience. Parents who have projects, interests, and enthusiasms outside of their children create children who yearn to discover, explore, and craft similar passions.
Life is too short to be normal. Be strong instead. Strong parents make strong kids.
This Week’s MissionDo something really hard. Farmer’s walk a mile. Bear crawl 800 meters. Try a benchmark Crossfit workout like Chelsea (30-minutes AMRAP of 5 pull ups, 10 push ups, 15 air squats), Nicole (400-meter run and max rep pull-ups for AMRAP in 20 minutes), or Fran (21-15-9 thrusters and pull-ups). Go to that hard workout class your brother has been badgering you to try. Just decide to reasonably extend your limits.
Pushing ourselves past discomfort has a way of connecting us to others while revealing a latent inner strength dying to be tapped. It is a portal of discovery that we will want for our children as we seek to make them capable, rather than incessantly comfortable.
Fitness via Breaking Muscle http://bit.ly/1hdUh1E January 25, 2019 at 09:53AM
The 20 Minute Total Body Workout
http://bit.ly/2B3fUmt Time seems to be the most important thing in one’s life, only behind family and religion. Being a coach, I see time and time again various things come up. From the kids getting sick, to work keeping you late day after day. Regardless, there is always a way to get a workout in. Consistency will beat perfection every time. Even if the workout isn’t what you normally do, that’s not the point. The point of these workouts is to stay on track with your fitness, rather than making up an excuse to why you can’t do it.
The WorkoutsOne workout will be based on assuming you have access to a gym, and one will be assuming you just have your living room floor next to the couch.
Both workouts will be a total body workout, with circuit style interval training included. The workout will be three sets of each exercise, with a set being 35 second work time and a 15 second rest time. After you complete three sets of the exercise, you will move on to the next exercise. Follow the exercises in order as they’re listed.
Those who are curious, there is a method behind this. There is always at least one push movement, one hip dominant movement, one quad dominant movement, one trunk movement, and one full body movement. This makes up most of the major movement patterns, contributing to the total body circuit. In the workout including the gym, there is a pull movement (the dumbbell rows). If you are home, you can use bands for this to get a pull movement if you have them. If not, again this is just to stay on track, so no need to stress.
These workouts will not only work your total body but also get your heart rate up as well. They can act as a bit of cardio, so you’re killing two birds with one stone, all in 20 minutes.
1. Workout with Gym Access
2. No Equipment Needed Workout
You Can Find the TimeWhether you are not able to get to your favorite class because your meeting went late, or you are home with a sick kid, your workout can still go on. Use tools like the workouts above to keep you moving and build consistent habits.
Fitness via Breaking Muscle http://bit.ly/1GxgPEe January 25, 2019 at 09:18AM
Three Planes of Motion Training for Masters Skiers
http://bit.ly/2CDjlAg Lately, I have been reading about masters cross country (Nordic) skiers who are engaged in strength training for improving ski performance. What I found to be missing in their training plans is any mention of the “three planes of motion.”
The Three Planes of MotionUnfortunately, it seems that masters athletes are focusing primarily on the sagittal plane—for perhaps as much as 70% of their training. The sagittal plane trains the left and right sides of the body—single leg lunges, bicep curls, etc. Another plane of focus is the coronal (frontal) plane—jumping jacks, side steps, etc. The plan that is rarely trained, but in reality should be as much as 30% of training, is the transverse plane—whole body chopping motions, medicine ball throws, etc.
Neglecting the transverse plane is often responsible for many of the injuries that older skiers experience. Neglecting this plane is responsible for deteriorating agility and balance. If a skier becomes stiff and inflexible in the upper and lower parts of transverse motion, moving smoothly through fast turns, and through the snow conditions that tend to throw a body off balance will become more difficult.
Use a Comprehensive Strength ProgramMany masters skiers that I work with have been on strength programs, but their activities have mitigated against flexibility, agility, and balance in their effort to increase muscle mass. This is because they are afraid they are losing muscle development in advancing years, yet often that mass doesn’t lend itself to anything other than bulk. In fact, muscle mass can overpower tendons and ligaments. It is a strange and confusing situation for an athlete when he or she has been working hard on strength and then while doing something relatively insignificant, pulls a tendon, tears a rotator cuff, snaps an Achilles, or develops lower back problems.
Strength training has to include all three of the planes of motion capable within the human body. Ignoring the planes of motion can exact a very high price, even while working with the best of intentions to remain healthy and strong. I have seen many “strength focused masters athletes” who have lost flexibility, agility, balance, and even speed though they trained religiously with what they perceived as an intelligent strength program.
A comprehensive strength program focuses on balance between muscle groups. Appositional strength is another type of physical balance that prevents injury. For example, someone focusing on arm curls and develops massive biceps is actually neglecting the triceps, which can cause injury. The appositional strength between biceps and triceps should be in balance, as that balance also affects shoulder strength and lat strength.
Discover What Training Planes Can DoAs I am now in my late 70’s, I have focused on cross training and the three planes of motion throughout my athletic life. I have played many sports at fairly high levels and have been injury-free. I have friends who have been on similar training programs and they are also injury-free, with good joints, balance, agility, and flexibility.
We are all “experiments of one” and we need to figure out what works for us. We can do this by following good research and listening to intelligent mentors. Unfortunately, we may think we are doing the right thing and only when something breaks or fails do we realize we were on the wrong path toward physical fitness and health.
Fitness via Breaking Muscle http://bit.ly/1GxgPEe January 24, 2019 at 11:21AM |
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