Training
Ripped Abs
Contrary to the idiotic recommendations of most current ab training books, courses and group class instructors, it is neither necessary nor beneficial to perform dozens of high rep sets of a wide variety of abdominal exercises. You also don’t need different exercises for your lower and upper abs, and you don’t need stability balls, special slings, benches, or any other gimmicky crap. In fact, you don’t need any direct abdominal exercise at all to get ripped abs. All that is necessary is to reduce body fat to very low levels, and that has far more to do with diet than exercise.
Drew Baye
Regardless of the strength or development of your superficial abdominal muscles, if your body fat level is low enough they will show good separation due to the muscle being divided into distinct “blocks” by lines of connective tissue. I performed no direct abdominal exercise for over half a year prior to the photo to the left being taken, yet had extremely good abdominal definition simply due to having reduced my body fat to the low single digits. My routine during that time was very basic, especially compared to the kind of unnecessarily complex routines being promoted by the internet ripped abs “experts”. It consisted of of only one set each of stiff-legged deadlifts, leg presses, pulldowns, chest presses, rows, and calf raises, along with occasional barbell curls and cable tricep press-downs. No crunches, sit ups, leg raises, knee raises, planks, twists or bends of any kind.
Indirect Effect
If you regularly perform chin-ups, pull-ups (especially with additional weight), heavy pull-downs, pullovers, standing presses or even just very heavy cable tricep press-downs, your abdominal muscles receive quite a bit of indirect work stabilizing the body during those exercises. Little additional abdominal work is necessary, and the primary benefit of any additional direct abdominal work is improved trunk strength for being able to better handle weight in those other movements and for protecting the back, not the appearance of your abs. Abdominal muscle development makes absolutely no difference at all if body fat levels are not low enough. Your primary purpose for training abs should be performance and spine health, and not appearance. › Continue reading
Effect of Hand and Shoulder Position On Elbow Flexor Involvement During Curling and Pulling Exercises
This morning during a phone conversation with Greg Anderson the subject of the previous post on the effect of hand position on triceps involvement came up.. Greg mentioned, and I agree, hand position makes little difference to arm flexor involvement during curling and pulling movements as well.
Articles on arm training in bodybuilding magazines and web sites often make claims of different hand or shoulder positions or grip width having the effect of isolating or emphasizing one head of the biceps or a particular arm flexor (i.e. incline curls to target the long head of the biceps, hammer curls to target the brachioradialus, reverse grip curls to target the brachialis, etc.). While there is some truth to this - changes in hand or shoulder position affect the relative length and thus the ability of some of the elbow flexors to produce force - the effect on muscular development is greatly exaggerated. › Continue reading
Q&A: Neck and Head Pain During Barbell Squats
The previous workout when performing squats I was close to failure when i started to get a intense pain in my neck and the back of my head ( I had this again last night during squats). My training partner believes my head and neck position is too far back causing me to tense my upper back and neck very hard on the eccentric part of the squat causing pain where the neck tendons attach to the skull. Has any of your clients had this problem? What do you recommend?
Hyperextending the neck is a common fault during barbell squats and may be a large part of the reason you are feeling the pain in your neck. As you descend and the hip angle decreases, if you continue to look straight ahead your neck will extend significantly by the time you reach the bottom position. The head and neck should remain in a neutral position relative to the body throughout the exercise. The chin should be just slightly down. Imagine you are holding a tennis ball between your chin and sternum, and maintain that position.
The bar may also be positioned too high. During barbell squats, the bar should be positioned just over the spines of the scapulae, on the lower traps and rear delts, and not higher on the traps on the back of the neck. When the bar is placed high on the traps, it tends to place a lot of pressure on the spinous processes of the seventh cervical or first thoracic vertabrae, which can cause serious damage over time. While the higher bar position may place more of the load on the quadriceps, since a lower bar position will allow a greater load to be used overall, in the long run it should result in better overall thigh development.
In short, keep your head in a neutral position, the bar on the lower part of the traps/back of the rear deltoids just above the spines of the scapulae, and you should no longer feel any pain in your neck during squats.
Effect of Hand Position on Tricep Involvement During Extension and Pressing Exercises
I recently read an article on a bodybuilding web site about arm training that recommended performing various tricep exercises using both underhand and overhand grips. While different hand positions will have an effect on the involvement of the muscles in the forearms due to differences in the demand on grip and wrist stabilization, they will have no significant effect on triceps involvement.
Hand pronation and supination are accomplished by rotation of the radius at the elbow, crossing over the ulna during pronation and returning to a position parallel to the ulna during supination. The triceps, which extend the elbow by pulling on the olecranon process of the ulna, are not affected by this. › Continue reading
Physique Versus Function - A False Dichotomy
Bodybuilding and training for performance need not be mutually exclusive. In fact, a training program and diet geared towards performance - specifically building as much strength as possible throughout the entire body while maintaining a low body fat percentage - will result in a physique that is both highly capable and impressive.
A major reason for belief in the physique versus function dichotomy is probably the greater use of isolation exercises in bodybuilding, which are often erroneously considered “non-functional” by many in the functional training crowd. They believe that an exercise must be performed in a manner that mimics how the body moves during activities of daily living, work, or sport for the strength or other aspects of fitness gained in that movement to effectively transfer to those activities. However, it is not necessary to work the muscles involved in a particular movement using a similar movement for the strength gained to transfer. Regardless of how a muscle becomes stronger, the greater strength can be applied to any movement involving those muscles, and any program that effectively addresses all of the major muscle groups will improve function, even if it includes isolation exercises. › Continue reading
Workout Chart Nomenclature
The Importance of Workout Charts
Workout charts enable repeatable equipment settings and objective evaluation of exercise performance over time. This is extremely helpful in determining the effectiveness of different applications of training principles for accomplishing an individual’s goals. Keeping detailed, accurate records of your workouts and goal-specific measurements will help you fine tune your training.
The amount of information I recommend tracking may seem excessive, but it is necessary for long term evaluation. You may not forget the repetition speed and range, machine settings, or type of bar you used to perform an exercise last week, but you might not remember months or years from now when you are reviewing old workout charts. › Continue reading
Fat Loss Myths Part 2: Cardio Is Necessary For Fat Loss
Myth: It is necessary to perform cardio on a regular basis to lose fat.
Truth: Cardio is not necessary for fat loss, and contributes relatively little to a fat loss program compared to high intensity strength training.
To lose fat it is necessary to create a calorie deficit - you must consume fewer calories than you expend so the body obtains the difference from your fat stores. While overall activity level has an effect on daily calorie expenditure, additional “cardio” (steady state or interval training) burns relatively few calories even if performed for an hour or more at moderate intensity daily. A greater calorie deficit can be achieved by simply restricting calorie intake, with little time investment other than the few minutes required for planning and recording meals.
The most important benefit of exercise to a fat loss program is not the calories expended during workouts, but the maintenance of muscle tissue while fat is lost. This requires strength training. There is a direct relationship between lean body mass, particularly muscle mass, and metabolic rate - more muscle equals a higher metabolic rate. If calorie intake is reduced significantly without regular, consistent strength training, muscle tends to be lost along with fat resulting in a reduced metabolic rate. Cardio does nothing to prevent muscle loss and may even accelerate it. › Continue reading
High Intensity Strength Training: More Aerobic Than “Aerobics”
The following article is published here with the permission of the author, Greg Anderson, owner of Seattle’s home for high intensity training, Ideal Exercise.
The most common question asked by our new personal training clients at Ideal Exercise is: “Where are the treadmills and stationary bicycles?”. Most have never heard that great benefits to the cardiovascular system, commonly referred to as “aerobic fitness”, can be had through a program of high intensity strength training with no additional steady-state activity. And while I do certainly spend a great deal of my time explaining why such benefits are certainly possible (and more desirable as it is much more efficient to achieve muscular and cardiovascular benefits in a single program) it usually takes a few workouts before the client understands the depth and magnitude of cardiovascular involvement possible from strength training. As one of my trainees remarked recently (after a set of squats to complete failure followed by 20 seconds of effort against the bar in the bottom position): “My God! (gasp, gasp…) this is more aerobic than aerobics…”
Although (as I shall explain) the statement that high intensity strength training is “more aerobic than aerobics” is not entirely correct, such an observation on the trainee’s part does underscore the profound effect of intense muscular contractions on the cardiovascular system. The current mania for “aerobics” in the fitness industry stems from a misunderstanding of two factors: The function of the cardiovascular system, and the identification of skeletal muscle as the window through which optimum loading of the entire metabolic system(s) - including the cardiovascular system - takes place. › Continue reading
Q&A: What is Metabolic Conditioning?
What does metabolic conditioning mean? Is it necessary? Does high intensity training provide it?
When most people think of training to improve endurance, they think of conditioning the cardiovascular system to improve transport of blood to the working muscles. Metabolic conditioning is the other side of the coin - conditioning the muscles to better use what’s being delivered to them by improving the efficiency of the different metabolic pathways. › Continue reading
More Modified CrossFit Routines
Since the CrossFit post I’ve received several requests for more “CrossHIT” routines - CrossFit routines modified to be more consistent with high intensity training principles. The difference between these and more bodybuilding-oriented HIT routines is a greater emphasis on metabolic conditioning and incorporation of more bodyweight and gymnastic exercises, which I believe are of considerable value. While there may be no positive transfer of skill from bodyweight or gymnastic movements to different movements, regular performance may improve general kinesthetic sense and proprioception as well as awareness of and confidence in one’s physical abilities.
CrossFit’s Greg Glassman has described the method as “constantly varied functional movement executed at high intensity” . Although an exercise is commonly considered to be “functional” if it mimics a movement of daily living, work or sport, since only the strength gained from an exercise will transfer to other movements and not any specific skill, any exercise that effectively strengthens the body and contributes to improvements in other general aspects of fitness could be considered functional. By replacing the Olympic lifts and certain other movements with exercises involving the same muscle groups you do not sacrifice any functional benefit. It is unnecessary to move fast during exercise to develop speed and power in other activities and there is no transfer of skill from an exercise to a different movement. For example, the skill of performing power cleans will not positively transfer to the different although superficially similar movement of a football lineman exploding off the line any more than the skill acquired performing football blocking drills will positively transfer to swimming. › Continue reading