By Josh Bryant

Strong men throughout history have struck a chord of admiration amongst men and desire in the hearts of women.

For millenniums, human beings have been fascinated by the acquisition and display of strength!

To add icing to the cake, strength is the basis for all athletic endeavors and human movement.  If the goal is surviving or thriving, strength is at the nucleus.

Because strength so important, it behooves me how few people understand how to appropriately train for strength.

Having been one of the strongest in the world and currently training a number of the strongest men in the world, across multiple disciplines, I want to share with you two things I have learned about strength.

Train More Sets & Less Reps

Unless you train in a judgment-free zone at Planet Fitness, your strength will be judged by your one-repetition max (1 RM).

Endless miles of road work won’t get you ready for the 100-meter dash; similarly, endless repetitions of an exercise won’t optimally prepare you for a 1 RM.

To get strong for one rep, in training, you need more first reps; so instead of thinking three sets of eight reps, think of eight sets of three reps. This equates to the exact same amount of volume, but you get over three times as many first repetitions, the one you’re strongest on.

More sets equal more first reps and more practice to build and display the skill of strength. Furthermore, laboratory settings have demonstrated this type of training allows for greater force and power production.

Make sure to explode maximally on each rep and set and watch
strength gains sky rocket.

Warm-up Properly

Besides the flat earth society and a few fringe HIT zealots and Arthur Jones hold overs, folks in the iron game acknowledge the fact that higher volume protocols catalyze greater gains in size and strength.

One of the best ways to increase training volume without adding time on to your workout is with warm-up sets.  Instead of riding the bike for 15 minutes and then doing a 15-minute dynamic warm-up, do more warm-up sets.

This is far from a pre-exhaust technique, it’s an activation technique.  Strength is a skill, warming up with lighter weights with proper form will help build that skill. Recent studies have confirmed what seasoned iron game veterans have known for years, the best warm-up is the actual exercise with submaximal loads.

If your specific goal is to get stronger, nothing beats the specificity of warming-up with the exercise you are training to get stronger in.

Josh Bryant

Books by Josh Bryant

By Coach Wolfgang Unsoeld

None of my clients and athletes are allowed to chew gum…

Why?

Increase of Suprailiac Bodyfat

Regardless whether the chewing gum is sugar-free or not, it will affect your blood sugar levels and hormones such as insulin and cortisol, which in turn regulate blood sugar.

Why does that happen?

The sweet taste is crucial. What emerges is a neurochemical reaction. If we taste something sweet our brain responds to it by telling the body that sugar is on its way to the stomach, intestines and afterwards to the blood. To taste sugar has less impact than actually eating it but in my experience it´s not insignificant. From an empirical standpoint it´s enough to taste something sweet to slow down the progress in fat loss, especially the bodyfat on your hips, which according to BioPrint correlates with blood sugar management.

Activation of the digestive tract

The sweet taste and the chewing will stimulate the flow of saliva. This is the first step of our digestive system. Stimulating digestion has an effect on our autonomic nervous system. It lowers the sympathetic nervous system and activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which means it shuts down the system and relaxes us.

Like the standby mode on our computers. Everyone knows the energy hole following a larger and/or highcarb lunch. Relaxation is important, especially in the evening but during the day, before and during workouts it decreases performance.

Decrease of Hip Mobility and Power Output of the Posterior Chain

The constant chewing causes adhesions and tension in the jaw muscles, especially in the Masseter, Pterygoids and Temporalis. Besides attention and concentration deficits, adhesions and tension in these muscles can also lead to decreased physical performance.

Dr. George Goodheart, an American chiropractor who defined the field of “Applied Kinesiology” more than 50 years ago, discovered a neurological link between muscle performances of the jaw and hip muscles, ie. the more tension in the jaw area, the more tension in the hip area because the nervous system controls these two areas partially coupled together. In strength training and with all sports in which running and sprinting play major roles, the hip muscles – especially the posterior chain – are crucial.

Constant gum chewing can therefore lead to a loss of hip mobility and a reduced power output of the Posterior Chain – which increases the potential for injuries and makes you slower.

Reduction of sleep quality

Tension in the jaw muscles is inversely correlated with sleep quality. Excessively chewing gum can even lead to and/or facilitate Bruxism, which is the clenching of the teeth other than in chewing and is associated with forceful grinding or rubbing the teeth together, mainly during sleep. Bruxism is one of the most common sleep disorders.

From experience, releasing the jaw muscles can increase sleep quality. Not chewing gum is an easy way to keep the jaw looser and ensure great sleep.

Conclusion: Don´t chew gum.

Wolfgang Unsöld is the Founder and Director of the Your Personal Strength Institute in Stuttgart, Germany. He is known for producing outstanding Before’n’After Results and has worked with over 100 athletes in many disciplines, including:

• Romy Korn, Ju Jitsu World Champion

• Slavo Polugic, 2 time K1 World Champion

• Victor Knoch, Shorttrack Speedskating 500m Jr World record holder

• Patrycja Maliszewska, Shorttrack Speedskating 3000m European Champion 2015
• Peter Sobotta, UFC Fighter, with a current 8-fight winning streak as well as multiple athletes in UFC, track & field, rugby and football.
• 13 of his clients competed at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sotchi.

I get a lot of demand for routines for the posterior chain. This is a great program to target that area.

A-1

Lying Leg Curls  Feet Inward 4 x 6-9 reps on a 20X0 tempo, rest 10 seconds

A-2

Drop Lunges 4 x 8-12 reps on a 10X0 tempo, rest 10 seconds

A-3

Dumbbell High Bench Steps 4 x 8-12 reps on a 10X0 tempo, rest 2 minutes.

Do for 6 workouts, then switch to part 2 that will come in a few weeks.

Enjoy the results,

Coach Charles R. Poliquin

Squat – A natural movement

Crouching down is a natural movement. Almost all of us did it as infants to pick something up and it is common in many parts of the world as a waiting position or for food intake. By the way, those are part of the world, where back disorders are not the number one disease of the population! Also, nobody there is walking on crutches because he has damaged his knees by spending too much time in a crouched position.

For thousands of years this has been a typical position for the human and his ancestors. When an adult crouches, it looks – if there are no impairments of the involved joints or other movement restrictions – approximately like this:

Can everybody do squats?

Provided that a person is healthy and has normal flexibility, he can do a squat – as he could when he was an infant. Many people, however, lose this ability as their life goes on. As kids start school, most of the day will be spent seated., This leads to movement restrictions in the range of motion below the seated position, often resulting, over the years, in knee and back pain. This has reached a point where doctors say: Sitting is the new smoking!

Depending on flexibility, length of the torso and the relation of thigh to lower leg, the squat looks different from person to person. Like you can see on the previous pictures,you have to push your knees over the toes –this is the only way to get into the deep squat position and bend and train the knee over the full range of motion.

Understanding the squat as a strength exercise

A Squat is a strength training exercise, its eccentric component includes the complete bending of the knee joint and a partial bending of the hip joint and the ankle joint. In other words: a Squat is a movement that includes the natural crouching and standing up again.

For some people, the own bodyweight provides enough resistance in this exercise. For people with very little musculature or those who are very obese the bodyweight might even be too much for a single repetition. As soon as the own bodyweight doesn’t provide a sufficient training stimulus for the given goal, though, you do what defines strength training: you increase the resistance, which means you add weight progressively.

In the case of the most common Squat in strength training (the Back Squat, which this article is about) this is achieved by placing a barbell on your upper back:

A crouch with weight on your back = lower position of the Back Squat

The difference between the natural movement and the strength exercise therefore is the additional weight.

But it is bad for the knee joints to push your knees over your toes, isn’t it?

Poorly educated trainers, doctors or physiotherapists who have not understood the biomechanics of the knee properly or people who train but are not able to perform deep squats themselves often spread the following myth: „It is harmful to push the knees over the toes.” That is complete nonsense! As we have learned so far in this article, it is a completely natural motion sequence. You can`t walk stairs up or down in a normal way without pushing the knee over the toes. The knee joint is made to get flexed and extended.

In a study about this subject, researchers from the University of Memphis, Tennessee, compared Squats with the thighs parallel to the ground while pushing the knee over the toes with Squats in which pushing the knees over the toes was limited by a wooden board (see picture):

As you can see it is not a deep squat, as this is not possible if the knees have to stay behind the toes. But even with the parallel Squat (thighs parallel to the ground), huge differences occurred.

This were the results of the study:

As you can see, the knee torque during the unrestricted Squat (A) was slightly higher than when performing the restricted Squat. The hip torque however was over 1000% higher during the limited Squat compared to the Squat in which the knees were pushed over the toes. What does that mean? Either the stress is on the knees or it will be put on the lower back/ the spine through the excessive forward lean (which transfers the center of mass forward to balance the backward shift of the bottom). Biomechanically this is fundamentally more unfavorable than the slightly higher stress on the knees and a clearly worse position for the intervertebral disks. In an optimally executed Squat the stress will be distributed on knees and back. As the world’s most successful strength coach Charles Poliquin explained in his Advanced Strength Program Design Seminar: crucial for the compression of the lumbar spine is the horizontal distance between the barbell and the fifth lumbar vertebra (L5). As the study showed as well this means: the more upright someone is during the Squat the better it is for his back and his hip.

Why is it bad if you perform Half-Squats only?

Because you destabilize the knee by doing them! You only train in the upper part of the range of motion. This way you lose, as illustrated in the saying “Use it or lose it“, mobility, strength and joint-health in the part that is not being trained, while the strength in the trained part increases. This is a guarantee for muscular imbalances and in the worst case degeneration and injuries. More on this later.

But don’t deep Squats harm the knees?

Healthy knees will not be harmed by a correctly executed Squat, which means a Squat so deep that the hamstrings preferably cover the calves completely – so the exact opposite is true!

Deep Squats are necessary to:

• stretch the soft tissue in the lower body and to improve flexibility.
• ensure gristle health in hip, knee and ankle joint.
• improve ankle joint mobility and thereby knee health.
• train the VMO and thereby increase knee stability and sprinting and jumping performance.

The gristle in our joints is supplied with nutrients by compressive stress, similar to a sponge after being compressed in the water. If such compressive stress is not being applied in specific ranges of motion it impairs the gristle, making it brittle and thereby more prone to degeneration and injuries.

In the same way, our musculature is only getting strong in the areas where we are stressing it. In the case of the Squat, the muscle which is most active in the first 15% of extension (so the lowest part of the Squat) is the Musculus Vastus Medialis Obliquus (short: VMO). This muscle is very important for sprinting and jumping performance and a crucial factor for knee stability.

It is a sign of weak VMOs when the knees drive inwards during a Squat (middle picture).
If the VMO can’t stabilize the knee during high external forces, serious injuries can be the outcome (right picture).

By the way, thigh and shank do have the least contact in the knee joint at 90° and hence are stressed most at this point. Below 90°, thus in a deep squat, the stress starts to decrease. Also you can use less weight in this position and thereby relieve the passive structures.

But heavy weights are no problem either, if you train over the complete range of motion. Provided that you get used to those heavier weights step by step within an intelligent strength training program, there is absolute no harmful stress on the body. The healthier the knee joints are the higher the potential performance in the Squat is. Not without reason Olympic weightlifting belongs to the sports with the lowest rate of injuries – knee injuries included! And this despite the fact that the lifters move weights that are unachievable for the average Joe. Think of soccer in comparison…

Dimitry Klokov, Russian weightlifter, World Champion and Olympic Silver Medalist performs a Squat. As you can clearly see, his knees are far in front of the toes and his torso is very upright.

By the way, the most frequently injured joint in weightlifting is the shoulder, not the knee.

Why are so many people at commercial gyms doing Half Squats nevertheless?

The most “Squats” you can observe in a gym look something like that:

Why is that so? The people who train properly (there are not many of them) don’t do Half Biceps Curls or a Half Bench Press. Why, of all things, should the knee joint be the one single joint that you do NOT have to train over its full range of motion? In my opinion, people don’t do deep Squats…

• out of ignorance and because they are misinformed. Many fitness and bodybuilding magazines contain bad or even wrong information, the internet can be curse and blessing at the same time. Since anybody can call himself an expert here and falsehood is rampant it is difficult for the layperson to distinguish. The same is true for advice you get at the gym. A big arm or the fact that someone can bench press a lot does not necessarily mean that this guy has expertise in intelligent strength training or knows how to train other people beside himself.
• out of ego. The deeper the Squat, the smaller the weight you can use. Often the technique gets sacrificed on the altar of weight. Something similar can be observed for almost every other exercise. The bar is not touching the chest during the Bench Press, the arms are not fully extended during the Chin Up, the pad is not being touched with the forearms during the Scott Curl. “Range (of motion) before load“ should be the guideline to get optimal results regarding gains of strength and muscle and to stay free from injuries.
• out of lack of flexibility and lack of knowledge about how to improve and compensate it. Often there is a lack of well-trained staff in gyms and sports clubs.

And what about the Powerlifting Squat?

Powerlifting consists of lifting the most possible total weight in the three exercises Squat, Bench Press and Deadlift. It is not about joint-friendly exercise execution, muscular balance or the largest ranges of motion possible. All movements are aimed to move as much weight as possible over the shortest possible distance. According to the rules, while performing the Squat, the athlete must bend the knees and lower the body until the top of the legs at the hip joint is lower than the top of the knees. The barbell is placed much lower on the back to keep the leverage for the hip extending muscles as short as possible. For the hip is the joint moving the major part of the weight and getting stressed the most. So regarding this sport it is the correct execution because it allows you to move the most weight over the given range of motion. But this execution is not optimal in terms of health or the athletic transfer on other sports, as the attentive reader of this article should know by now. In this sport, the knee extending musculature is being trained only partly and also never being trained in the lower range of motion.

This will lead to the problems mentioned above like too much stress on the back and hip as well as destabilization of the knee joints. Many powerlifters develop hip pain because of the unidirectional training of the musculature. Do I have something against powerlifters for this reason or would I refuse to train one? Of course not! But I would train him in a way that ensures full range of motion and muscular balance before starting with the more specific training and the Powerlifting Squat.

Conclusion:

• The only Squat that is healthy long-term is the deep Squat.

• The knee has to be pushed over the toes when you perform a Squat.

• The more upright you can stay while performing a Squat, the less stress on the spine.

• Deep Squats make you more flexible und provide healthier joints in the lower body.

• Deep Squats improve knee stability and prevent injuries.

• Deep Squats improve sprinting and jumping performance.

This article is supposed to educate. The more people know how to train intelligently, the better for all of us. Switch your egos off and common sense on and do deep Squats or look for a competent trainer who teaches you how to do them. And the next time someone tries to dissuade you from doing deep Squats show him this article – you know better!

Philip Schmieder has a Diploma in Sports Science and works as a self-employed Personal Trainer at the Urban Athletes Gym in Cologne, Germany. Following his academic career, he continued to educate himself by taking courses with, among others, Charles Poliquin (Advance Program Desijng, Bioprint Practitioner) and Wolfgang Unsöld in the Your Personal Strength Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, (all Seminars, YPSI A-License). You can contact him on his Website: www.schmiedertrainer.de .

Guest post by Wolfgang Unsöld

The statement is simple – Endurance is the most overrated of all sports specific qualities.

Why?

Because endurance is neither necessary nor the limiting factor in most sports.

Conditioning is. Where is the difference?

Definition of Endurance and Conditioning as follows:

Endurance is the ability to maintain a certain effort with minimal fatigue – A classic example is a marathon. At a marathon it´s crucial to run 2+ h in one go with minimal fatigue.

Conditioning is the ability to repeat a certain effort with minimal fatigue – Classic examples are team sports like Soccer, American Football, Basketball and Ice hockey. In those sports it is crucial to keep fatigue between the first and the last sprint (and all the others in between) as minimal as possible.

Most Olympic, Team- and Combat Sports are cyclical, that means certain efforts must be repeated. A 100m sprinter has to repeat his performance in heats, semi-finals and finals. A thrower has 6 attempts per competition and an olympic weightlifter has 3 per discipline.  If the performance decreases too much from attempt to attempt then his conditioning is the limiting factor.

A more extensive example is soccer. Depending on the position of a player he runs about 8-12km per game. From which he runs 400-1200m above 85% of his top speed. The remaining 8-10km are walking, trotting and hardly relevant for the game.

These 400-1200m are crucial. The average sprinting distance is about 17m. Sprints over 30m, that´s the distance between mid- and penalty line, are very rare.

The critical distance is 0-5 m. That´s the famous “one step faster”. Based on player statistics of the English Premier League, players with the highest salary, regardless of their position have one thing in common, they are the fastest over 0-5m.

At an average sprinting distance of about 17m and a game-relevant total distance of 400-1200m those are about 24 to 70 sprints per game. Assuming a uniform load density, it is a load of 2-3 seconds followed by a 1:20-4:00 minute break. I sprints are repeated with minimal rest its more than 3 in a row before the ball is out of sight.

So what is critical for a game in this case in terms of physical qualities?

Endurance or Conditioning?

Critical are those 24 to 70 sprints in under 90 minutes game time and their repetition with minimal fatigue, not endurance. Endurance isn´t relevant in soccer because of the short bursts of sprints they do.

To run 10-60 minutes at once has very poor correlation with the ability to repeat 24 to 70 sprints in 90 minutes with minimal fatigue.

100m Sprinter and YPSI Athlete Sven Knipphals is the second fastest German this year and placed 4th in the 100m relay at the Track & Field World Championship in Beijing this year. He needs the conditioning to sustain his performance in a multi-race event and he needs speed-endurance to maintain his topspeed from 60m till the finish line…

2 forms of Endurance

Endurance at high intensity – that is the ability to maintain a stress of high intensity upright with minimal fatigue. A good example is a 100m sprinter. A sprinter reaches his top speed after 60-70m. From 60-70m the critical factor becomes maintaining the top speed as long as possible without getting tired. In this case we speak of speed endurance. Usain Bolt is a great example for this. His greatest advantage over his opponents, and the reason why he is even more dominant over 200m than over 100m, is his exceptional speed endurance, the ability to maintain his top speed with minimal fatigue and leave all his opponents behind after 60-70m.

Endurance at low intensity – that is the ability to maintain a stress of low intensity upright with minimal fatigue. A good example is the marathon. In a marathon it´s crucial to maintain a performance for 2+ h with minimal fatigue. In one go and without interruptions.

Intensity – definition: Intensity is the load of a performance in relation to the maximal performance. A performance at high intensity for example is a sprint over 50 meters at maximum speed or BB Back Squats for 3 reps with 90 % of 1RM. In contrast to this, a performance of low intensity is a run over 10000m at maximum speed or squats for 25 reps with 50 % of 1RM. That means intensity is not defined on the subjective level of effort but correlates performance with maximum power/effort.

Both forms of endurance, especially the last one, are not relevant in most Olympic-, Team- and Combat Sports because the duration of the load in those sports is far lower.

In most Olympic-, Team- and Combat sports conditioning is critical. The ability to repeat a performance with minimal fatigue.

UFC Fighter and YPSI Athlete Peter Sobotta in action. Especially in Combat Sports like MMA it´s crucial to differentiate between Endurance and Conditioning, because the duration of the effort is very short and the effort density is very high. Peter Sobotta is unbeaten for 8 fights and won his last 7 fights of which 6 were all TKO via Rear Naked Choke (Photo ©Tomasz Radzik)

2 forms of Conditioning

Conditioning at high volume – the ability to repeat a certain performance very often with minimal fatigue.  The best example is soccer, where depending on the position of the player the average sprinting distance has to be repeated up to 70 times per game with minimal fatigue.

Conditioning at low volume – the ability to repeat a certain performance a few times with minimal fatigue. Best example is Olympic Weightlifting. There you only have to repeat an attempt 3 times per discipline and competition – so 3 Reps of the Snatch and 3 Reps of the Clean & Jerk, thats it.

The lower the volume, the more critical becomes the performance during the attempt itself. It is not that crucial to repeat that performance often.

The higher the volume, the more critical is the ability to repeat it. Therefore in weightlifting the ability to repeat a performance is less important than the absolute performance, namely to move maximal weight. In comparison with weightlifting soccer players need lower maximal- and explosive strength level than weightlifters – but higher levels of conditioning. As the ability to repeat maximal Sprinting Speed for the 90 minute game is critical.

Training Endurance vs. Conditioning

The training for Endurance and Conditioning is obviously very different.

The Training of Endurance basically includes a higher volume of total work, a lower -if any – number and duration of breaks and lower average intensity of effort. While the training of conditioning basically comprises a lower total volume of work and an increased number and duration of breaks at higher average intensity of effort.

Shorttrack Speedskating European Champion 2015 and YPSI Athlete Patrycja Maliszewska training at the YPSI in Stuttgart. On this picture you can see her going through a combination of a Strength- and Conditioning Workout. Heels elevated Back Squats 10 sets of 6 reps.Last year she had the fastest first round on the planet. Her current standing broadjump is 2,70m.

Sample training program for Endurance in Shorttrack Speedskating

51 rounds divided into 3 blocks á (9 rounds, 3 minutes pause, 5 rounds, 3 minutes pause, 3 rounds) with 10 minute pauses between the blocks. The rounds have to be executed with minimal 85% of world record time.

That´s a solution for a 1500m short track speed skater whose limiting factor is endurance over 1500m. That means he fatigues too much in the last 3-5 rounds of the 1500m race which is 14,5 rounds.

This is a program written by the legendary short track speed skating Coach Yves Nadeau, whose athletes won 204 medals at World Championchips and the Olympic Games since 1983.

Sample training program for Conditioning in Soccer 

This is a modified strongman medley used to condition a soccer player

A1 Forward Sleddrag, 20m, 5s rest

A2 Prowler Push, High Handle, elbows extended, 20m, 5s rest

A3 Sprint, 20m, 120s rest

Repeat 4-10 times depending on the current Conditioning Level of the Athletes

This is a solution for a player or a team whose physically limiting factor is fatigue in the latter part of the game.

The ability to repeat multiple blocks of three 20m efforts with minimal rest has clearly a higher correlation to soccer-specific performance than 10-60min straight jogging. To train the sprinting power, speed and conditioning at the same time a combination of strength- and condititoning training in the weightroom can also be utilized. To see how it looks in detail, here is an example of a squat training program for conditioning in Ju Jitsu.

Sample training program for Conditioning in Ju Jitsu

 12 sets of 4 reps of BB Back Squats with a 30X0 tempo and 60s rest.

From workout to workout increase the average- and maximal weight used.

That´s a solution for a fighter whose physical limiting factor is fatiguing from effort to effort. The higher intensity and resistance on the squats allow for training conditioning and power of a single action at the same time.

This is the program I´ve used for preparation of YPSI Athlete Romy Korn for the Ju Jitsu World Championship 2014 in Paris where she became World Champion in the 70+ kg weightclass at a bodyweight of 71,2kg with all her opponents outweighing her by 15+kg.

Conclusion: For a coach it is crucial to identify whether endurance and/or conditioning are necessary for a certain sports and disciplines. And to assess which the limiting factor of the individual athlete is. So the training program can be specifically tailored to the needs of the individual sport and the limiting factor of the individual athlete. To maximise the efficiency of training and therefore increase pPerformance on the field, court, ice or mat.

Coach Wolfgang Unsöld is the Founder and Head Coach of the Your Personal Strength Institute in Stuttgart, Germany.

Over the last 8 years he got known for producing outstanding Before’n’After Results in recordtime and has worked with over 100 high level athletes in multiple disciplines, including:

•  Richard Adjei – Olympic Silver Medalist and World Champion in Bobsled
• Romy Korn – Ju Jitsu World Champion
• Ibrahim Karakoc – Three Time Kickboxing World Champion
• Slavo Polugic – Two Time K1 World Champion
• Swiss Bobsled Nationalteam
• Victor Knoch – Shorttrack Speedskating 500m Jr World Record holder
• Patrycja Maliszewska  – European Champion Shorttrack Speedskating 3000m
• Hungarian Shorttrack Speedskating National Team
• Peter Sobotta – UFC Fighter, currently unbeaten for 8 fights
• Sven Knipphals – 4x100m 4th Place Track & Field World Championship 2015
• Martin Gratzer  – 12time National Champion in Shotput
•  And multiple Athletes in UFC, Rugby and Football National Teamplayers from 6 different countries.

 He has coached 13 Athletes for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sotchi, Russia

Training on vibration plates is one of the most popular trends of the last decade. I´m continuously asked what I think of them.

The short answer is:

If training on vibration plates would lead to great results, I would have one in my gym. And I don’t have one in my gym.

The long answer is:

Lack of Resistance

The main factor that determines the training effect is the tension on the muscle during exercise. Tension is generated by resistance. The resistance with bodyweight exercises is low and has small potential for progression – unless you put a 1kg lean mass on every single week. For this reason, external resistance such as bars and dumbbells are indispensable for fast training progress. Tension – in volume and height (intensity) – is the crucial variable that influences neural adaptation, hypertrophy, maximal and explosive strength and increases fat loss.

Conclusion: Without tension there´s no maximum training effect.

Instability that can´t be stabilized

One of the base concepts to train stability on an unstable surfaces is the ability to stabilize the unstable surface.  Dr. Dietmar Schmidtbleicher from The University of Frankfurt / Main in Germany has done excellent research on this topic, which has shown that the frequency of commercially available vibration plates, is too fast for the human nervous system. The nervous system and thus the muscles are not able to respond to the vibration stimulus and to stabilize the unstable base. Thus, the training effect is void. The University of Frankfurt / Main has also published a study on professional football, which showed that rehabilitation of an injury increased threefold the risk of  reinjury if rehabilitation training was done on unstable surfaces.

The training of relevant stability

Stability in daily life and sports is crucial to prevent injuries and to maximize exercise performance. The higher the stability, the higher the power output – You cannot fire a cannon from a canoe – and the less wear and tear on fascia and muscles.

Basically stability is divided into two categories: Stability at low loads and stability at high loads. Standing on one leg on a vibrating plate or unstable surface, trains stability with a light load, the body weight. If you start sprinting away, decelerate from full speed or just go for a run (the load per leg per step is about 4-6 times the body weight) very high forces/loads are acting on the body. To be able to stabilize the knee while standing on one foot, has nothing to do with stabilizing high forces like sprinting, running, decelerating and changing direction. That’s like if Porsche tests the brakes of a GT3 at walking speed in order to predict how much breaking power they will produce; if the car has to be slowed down on the track before a curve in 3s from 180km/h to 50km/h, that test is not relevant.

Conclusion: Stability at high loads must be trained with high loads. Classic strength training with bars and dumbbells and progressive resistance is the most efficient and safe method.

Lack of potential for progression

In training you progress by increasing the load. The base of successful strength training is progressive overload – primarily by resistance. Bars and dumbbells are excellent training equipment to allow for progressive resistance. At the YPSI we have weight plates ranging from 0.5kg to 25kg, an ideal tool to ensure that even the smallest steps are possible. Example: If you only pack on 1kg more per week on the barbell, you move 52kg more at the end of the year. That´s quite some progress.

The first stories of strength training with progressive resistance come from the ancient times, from the most successful olympic athlete at this time, Milo of Croton

“Milo took a newborn calf in his arms and carried it around the family farm several times. Although initially it took a lot of effort for him, he kept up with it and repeated these “run-arounds” daily. Over time the calf grew and Milo grew with it, so that after a year of progressively increasing the resistance he was strong enough to carry a full-grown ox around the estate of his parents.”

Conclusion: Training on vibration plates is a trend – and like most trends a waste of time.

A little anecdote: When I opened my gym 5,5 years ago, I had a client whose company had a partnership with the largest and best known manufacturers of vibration plates. He offered me to take a vibration plate, which has been placed in his office and to put it in my new gym since he did not really use it. I was pleased with the gesture, but had to refuse the kind offer. I could use the place for more useful equipment. Like the three power racks, 4 hip extension pieces and two leg curls that we have in the YPSI and which are excellent for optimizing the stability of the knee.

Featured Picture: YPSI athlete Richard Adjei, Olympic Silver Medalist and World Champion in Bobsled training stability performing barbell squats with elevated heels in the YPSI in the offseason of 2015.

Coach Wolfgang Unsöld is the Founder and Head Coach of the Your Personal Strength Institute in Stuttgart, Germany.

Over the last 8 years he got known for producing outstanding Before’n’After Results in record time and has worked with over 100 high level athletes in multiple disciplines, including:

• Richard Adjei – Olympic Silver Medalist and World Champion in Bobsled
• Romy Korn – Ju Jitsu World Champion
• Ibrahim Karakoc – Three Time Kickboxing World Champion
• Slavo Polugic – Two Time K1 World Champion
• Swiss Bobsled Nationalteam
• Victor Knoch – Shorttrack Speedskating 500m Jr World Record holder
• Patrycja Maliszewska  – European Champion Shorttrack Speedskating 3000m
• Hungarian Shorttrack Speedskating National Team
• Peter Sobotta – UFC Fighter, currently unbeaten for 8 fights
• Sven Knipphals – 4x100m 4th Place Track & Field World Championship 2015
• Martin Gratzer  – 12time National Champion in Shotput
• And multiple Athletes in UFC, Rugby and Football National Teamplayers from 6 different countries.
• He has coached 13 Athletes for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sotchi, Russia

Band training has been a staple of the training of elite powerlifters for the last 25 years.

Louie Simmons has to be credited for popularizing it in the Iron Game.

However, the first time I saw was in a French book by Lucien Demilies written in the thirties… Attaching bands to curling implements also known as the Jettison technique also gained popularity in the seventies. Here are five things you need to know about band training:

In the sporting world, maximal strength is pointless in most cases, if not applied in the shortest amount of time.  The exception being the sport of powerlifting, which is in fact a misnomer. For this reason, athletes in other strength and power-dominant sports are more concerned with power which we know is  the product of strength times speed.

In biomechanical terms, it is known as the rate of force development (RFD).  Attaching bands to barbells in extensors lifts helps match the strength curve by accommodating the resistance for the stronger joint angles. In other words, the bands provide extra resistance where the shoulder flexors, and elbow extensors are at their strongest in the range of motion.

It basically teaches the trainee to keep accelerating with the load, which is not the case with a simple loaded barbell.  Bands are therefore great at teaching the concept of acceleration which is key in improving power.

That means band training is best for movements such as squats, presses, and deadlifts as these exercises have an ascending strength curve in the concentric range. Meaning, that the more you displace the load, the greater your mechanical advantage. For example, you are much stronger at the end range of a squat/press/deadlift than at the bottom range.

They also work very well when combined to dumbbells in training all the forms of chest flyes. Josh Bryant is a big fan of those.

Example of extensor chain exercises

Chins and curls share an ascending-descending strength curve, hence, it makes no sense to use the bands for the full range. You are weak in chins and curls at the top range, where the bands exerts the most resistance. Therefore, you would use bands for these movements only at the bottom range.

Both John Meadows and I have made this observation, hence we agree to only recommend them for one workout out of two for the same body part.

John Meadows doing banded presses

Bands attached to hack squats, pendulum squats and leg presses units can be very beneficial to overload the strength curve.  Especially in rehab cases, for example terminal knee extension is the hardest to regain after a quadriceps tendon tear.

In conclusion, band training when used wisely will accelerate gains in strength, power and hypertrophy.

Enjoy the results,

Coach Charles R. Poliquin

Trainees tend to spend most their training what they can see in the mirror.

Hence, pecs and biceps get plenty of attention.

That works for a while, until shoulder pain sets in because of improper muscle balance between the agonist and antagonists.

Since I shot this video on face pulls, I have been asked to expand on it:

I became aware of this exercise in the late seventies, through the writings of John Parillo, who to the best of my knowledge, is the one who promoted it the most. I immediately incorporated it in the training of my athletes, from swimmers to football players, with obvious dividends in health and performance.

It highly benefits the scapulae retractors, which in turn keep the shoulder in proper alignment. Not training the scapulae retractors effectively leads to plethora of shoulder issues from cartilage degeneration, labrum tears, osteoarthritis to name a few.

Tips on how to make them more effective:

Have a partner stick the fingers of one hand in the center of your spine, so that you don’t succumb to using your posterior chain to hoist more weight.

As you retract the scapulae , aim a squeezing your partner’s fingertips.)

Make sure to pull the center of the rope slightly up towards the face.

Concentrate pulling the ends of the rope apart, not simply pulling back.

As you near your face, bring your hands upwards so that the knuckles face the ceiling..

Hold for up to  6 seconds if you are a beginner, and/or your scapuale retractors are weaky weak in the shortened position.  Lower the weight under control.

Stretch your pec minor muscles statically between sets, that will increase the load you can use on facepulls.

So here is a video on making sure the range is respected.

Note the use of the fingertips  between the shoulder blades to make sure that the form is good, as mentionned in tip # 1 and 2.

You can also use a neutral grip where the index fingers make contact with the wooden stoppers, this allows for greater external rotation of the humerus. From experience, most people need 3 weeks of the pronated version before they can move on to this one.

Do face pulls and keep your shoulder girdle balanced and healthy

Stay strong,

Coach Charles R. Poliquin

by Moritz Klatten, Champ Performance, Hamburg, Germany

When it comes to improving kicking power, many football coaches today are missing the mark by focusing just on improving technique. Certainly, kicking technique is essential to optimal performance, but it will only take you so far.

Power is an equally important factor in kicking ability. The definition of power isforce x distance/time, and force is another word for strength. This equation explains why athletes such as weightlifters are able to run faster and jump higher as they become stronger, even if they do not run or jump as part of their training.

While getting stronger and improving technique are both essential in developing a powerful kick, there are other areas requiring your attention. Here are seven tips that can make a difference:

Train for structural balance. While the best way to improve kicking power is to work the specific muscles used in the sport, achieving structural balance is also important. For one thing, structural imbalances can lead to injuries that prevent players from competing and even practicing.

A paper published in 1983 in the International Journal of Sports Medicine examined how football injuries could be avoided. The study followed 180 male footballers for one year. The researchers concluded that 42 percent of the injuries that occurred were due to factors such as joint instability, muscle tightness, inadequate rehabilitation, and lack of training. Such factors can often be easily assessed with a structural balance assessment. Let’s look at a structural balance test for knee stability, as this athletic quality can affect kicking biomechanics.

The purpose of the Klatt test, designed by Lois Klatt, PhD, is to determine weakness in the muscles that support the knee. Strength coach Charles Poliquin expanded the test to assess weaknesses in many other muscles, including the glutes, hamstrings, adductors and abductors of the thigh, and quadratus lumborum. The test involves hopping forward off a low platform (starting about 3-4 inches high), and observing how the athlete lands. For example, if an athlete’s knee buckles inward upon landing, this suggests a weakness in the vastus medialis oblique (an inner thigh muscle), a condition that increases the risk of knee injury. With such information, a strength coach can prescribe the appropriate corrective exercises to achieve muscular balance and thus increase knee stability

Perform explosive work. Plyometric training shows promise as a way to increase kicking power. A study on female football players published in 2011 in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Researchfound that the subjects whose training included plyometrics “had significantly greater kicking distance after 14 weeks.” Because Olympic lifting movements also have plyometric components, these lifts can also be considered valuable to footballers. I strongly recommend that athletes be taught these lifts by a qualified weightlifting coach.

Strengthen the abdominals. Trunk stability plays a major role in producing force. Any shift in balance due to weakness in these core muscles can affect the ability to generate force. Further, an imbalance in abdominal development can affect the ability to generate force.

Although from an anatomical standpoint there is no such thing as the “lower abdominals,” overdevelopment of the section of the rectus abdominis above the bellybutton (supraumbilical) with partial-range movements such as crunches can contribute to excessive forward rotation of the pelvis. This posture causes the section of the rectus abdominus below the bellybutton (subumbilical) to become stretched, which diminishes the ability of this muscle group to produce force and contribute to trunk stability. There is evidence that imbalanced development of the abdominals could be a factor in the increasing rise of sports hernias among today’s athletes.

Developing these core muscles with a variety of exercises is essential to kicking power. Because the lower back muscles are also considered core muscles for this purpose, they should be trained along with the abdominals.

Train the hamstrings. In their efforts to improve kicking power, strength coaches often concentrate on the large quadriceps muscles and neglect the hamstrings. This is a mistake, as the hamstrings are essential for improving control of the kick.

Hamstring training requires more than leg curls, which work knee flexion. The hamstring muscles also contribute to hip extension, so exercises such as back extensions and deadlifts are valuable. Glute-ham raises give even more bang for the buck because they work hip extension at the start of the movement and knee flexion at the finish.

Warm up properly before kicking. Athletes are often anxious to get right into playing or practicing their sport, but neglecting the warm-up can lead to injury. For example, researchers in the 1983 study advised that footballers should avoid shooting at a goal before a warm-up, as this practice was associated with quadriceps strain.

Lift in-season. Although footballers necessarily cut back on weightroom work during the season, cutting back too much will make players weaker and unable to produce as much power. For example, in a study conducted on the Norwegian national soccer team during a 12-week season, the group of players who trained once a week were able to maintain strength and sprint speed gains achieved during the preseason, but players who trained every other week lost leg strength and sprint speed (study published in 2011 in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research).

Don’t overdo aerobic training. Because aerobic training can compromise strength and therefore kicking power, this type of training should be performed conservatively. The aerobic energy system only contributes, at most, 20 percent of the type of energy needed for football, according to Interval Training: Conditioning for Sports and General Fitness, an athletic training textbook by Edward L. Fox and Donald K. Mathews. For goalkeepers, players who are often required to make especially long and accurate kicks, the contribution is zero.

As a coach, you’ll be contributing your expertise to help footballers reach the highest levels of performance. While they need to work constantly on developing great technique, they also need direction in developing strength and control. Help make that happen by using these seven tips to add more power to their kicks.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Coach Moritz Klatten’s knowledge and experience as a football strength coach has enabled him to attract an international clientele that includes numerous national team players. Among his success stories are Zlatko Junuzovic, Werder Bremen; Tolgay Arslan, Besiktas; Piotr Trochowsk, Augsburg; Levin Ötztunali, Leverkusen; Assani Lukimya, Werder Bremen; Patrick Owomoyela, BVB; Oliver Hüsing, Werder Bremen; Tomás Rincón, FC Genua; , Raphael Wolf, Werder Bremen; Robert Tesche, Nottingham Forest; Izet Hajrovic, Werder Bremen; Mattia Maggio, HSV; and Michael Gregoritsch, HSV. Coach Klatten is also an accomplished strength coach for boxing. In that sport he has trained four professional world champions, including Juan Carlos Gomez, Yuriorkis Gamboa and Jack Culcay, and three Olympic champions.

www.champperformance.de

If you’ve been following the Strength Sensei for long enough, you know he’s not a fan of steady-state cardio.  And neither am I.

Largely because aerobic capacity is an inferior health and performance biomarker compared to strength and muscle, but also because it’s extremely inefficient.

In a world where time is money, and we always complain about never having enough, it’s quite ironic that anyone still jogs.

Purposely taking part in moderate intensity endurance training seems to only make sense for those competing in an aerobic sport.  And despite what you’ve been taught to believe, this doesn’t include a whole heck of a lot of sports.

Although it’s common to train soccer, hockey, and basketball players for endurance, they’re far from aerobic sports.  Sure, they need to have some endurance capacity, but clearly not the kind that makes them ‘go far.’

The sad part is, training them to go far is actually making them perform worse.  As training aerobically harms anaerobic performance:

“The consequences of aerobic exercise are too detrimental to be considered an effective training modality for anaerobic athletes; let alone a necessary one.” – Charles Pfeiffer, Strength and Conditioning Journal, 2013.

Conversely, training anaerobically improves aerobic performance.  Meaning short-intense bouts of speed, strength, and power improves our ability to go far.  And athletes training with sprints instead of long runs will perform better on the field, ice, and court, while still having the stamina to complete extended bouts when necessary.

A study from 2005 in the Journal of Applied Physiology saw participants double their endurance capacity from 26 to 51 minutes in 2 weeks by performing only 6 sessions of 4-7 sprints (30-seconds).

When looking at the difference in power output for sprint protocols (tall skinny bars), compared to traditional steady-state cardio (solid striped block) one has to wonder why any serious athlete (or coach) would purposely select it to improve vo2max.

Not surprisingly, it’s the same story when it comes to regular human beings.  With short-intense bouts of activity improving vo2max, anaerobic threshold and other endurance biomarkers to the same degree.  Without having to join the running room, drive a bicycle up your ass, or buy a banana-hammock for mind-numbing laps of the pool.

If you enjoy these activities, I guess you can have at it.  But, it’s important to understand that this behaviour is not getting you any closer to the strength and muscle necessary to fight the negative effects of aging.  And when done to the extreme (which has become common with the universal goal of ‘running a marathon’) it’s probably accelerating the process.

If you’re currently doing strength-training and still want to maintain a level of aerobic capacity, I direct you to HIIT (High-Intensity Interval Training) or SIT (Sprint Interval Training).  Which not only gives you all the benefits that marathon man is acquiring without the excessive stress and free radical damage, but requires less than a fraction of the time.

In 2010, researchers from the Journal of Physiology found equal aerobic and health improvements from 8-12 sets of 60sec sprints, compared to an endurance training group exercising almost 98% more.

By exercising for speed or intensity instead of distance or duration, we experience tremendous improvements in both anaerobic and aerobic performance.  With results that are equivalent to those training longer and more often.

In 2006, researchers in the Journal Physiology found equal improvements in aerobic capacity when comparing 90-120min of continuous cycling at 65% intensity, with 4-6 intermittent sprints of 30-seconds and a 4min recovery between sets.

Over 2 weeks, that’s 8hrs (10.5 vs 2.5) less time exercising for the HIIT group!

Sadly, the typical reaction to this information (usually from those new to exercise) is a lack of confidence regarding the ability to go fast or with intensity.  Which is unfortunate, as these are the same folks that usually get hosed for a brand new pair of $200 Asics, go gang-busters ‘yogging’ everyday, and quit a few weeks later because they’re injured, bored to tears, or not seeing results.

What they should have done, is started with interval walking (in addition to resistance training), worked there way up to some bodyweight HIIT, and then gone for a short 60-80% sprint once their leanness, strength, and mobility warranted it. As HIIT has proven successful for the very old, very obese, and very sick (diabetes, heart disease), at whatever intensity is ‘all-out’ for them.

For instance, researchers in the journal Diabetes Care split a group of participants with type 2 diabetes into an ‘interval walking’ or ‘continuous walking’ group.  The interval walkers alternated every 3 minutes between high-intensity and low-intensity, while the continuous walkers moved at a moderate pace for the full 60 minutes.  After performing the protocol 5 days a week for 4 months, the interval group saw a 16-19% increase in Vo2max, compared to no elevation in the continuous group.  They also saw significant reductions in fat mass, visceral fat, and fasting glucose, while the continuous group showed no significant improvements in glycemic control.

The other interesting thing about HIIT, is that people LIKE doing it.  Probably because it’s short and sweet, and gives them an instant endorphin spike.

Recent evidence (2015) from the Journal Sports Exercise and Psychology suggests that individuals prefer interval training over continuous, and shorter work intervals (30sec) over longer (120sec).

To learn more about the benefits of HIIT, and how to incorporate it into your weight-training routine, check out Mike’s newest book, 1% Fitness.

In many sports people want to  increase maximal strength without increasing their bodyweight.

The reason could be aerodynamics, hydrodynamics, weight class sports, or aesthetics (figure skating, syncro-swimming etc..). Even though it is not in the rule books, artistic sports athletes get marked down if they are too muscular.

This workout is rather severe – we will use 100 kg as the 1 R.M. to illustrate the rep/set/load scheme

Enjoy the results,

Coach Charles R. Poliquin

As many of you know, I’m not a big fan of traditional long slow distance aerobic cardio, especially if it is done in the totally imaginary “fat burning zone.” 

I’ve already explained why I think it is a waste of time and energy, but the arguments against cardio are more numerous than that.

Here are just two more reasons I don’t waste my clients and my own time doing traditional cardio

#1 It is very poor at improving body composition or fitness level

Optimal body composition: low body fat and appreciable quantity of muscle mass. Everybody can agree with this, even though there is bound to be some disparity in the amounts of both. Traditional cardio has been used since the ‘60s, when Dr. Kenneth Cooper launched the fitness craze with his books titled ‘Aerobics’, ‘More Aerobics’ and ‘Aerobics for Women’, based on his research.

He is the originator of the jogging movement and maintained that optimal body composition and fitness could be obtained solely through cardio.

The rationale behind that was that cardio increase mitochondrial density and thus, the capacity to burn fat in the cells. The mitochondria are tiny little organelles in the cell that are responsible to produce energy by burning fat in the presence of oxygen, a process known as cellular or aerobic respiration (aero- means air in greek).

So the more mitochondria, the more fat burning, the better your capacity to produce energy and the better you look and perform, right? Absolutely.

The problem is, research has shown that sprinting, or anaerobic activities (anaerobic means without the use oxygen) are way better at upregulating mitochondrial biogenesis. Short sprints and short rest intervals done in a repeated fashion have consistently out-performed long distance aerobic activity in the ratio of productive results vs. time invested.

One study even looked at 4 seconds treadmill sprints with 20 seconds active rest.  That’s less time than most people take to lace their shoes to go out jogging!

As a bonus, it leaves plenty of time and energy to develop your muscles through another anaerobic activity: serious weight training! Talk about looking good, performing well and not spending your time in misery in a hamster wheel.

#2 There is limited return on investment for your time

As mentioned in the previous point, to have any measure of results past the first few weeks, you need to do long distance cardio precisely in this way: long. And I mean lllooonnnng!

Sure, people will say that building muscle takes a long time too. But that’s only true for the intermediate/advanced trainee. A novice who trains right and eats right can often gain enough muscle mass to transform his physique in a few months.

Of course, the keywords in my previous sentence were: train right and eat right. Big caveat when conventional wisdom says that a banana equals a steak and that chocolate milk is enough post workout carbohydrates and proteins to make optimal gains.

The answer is NO, not even if you train with the intensity of a snail on valium. Otherwise I would advise proper nutrition and training and I’ve seen plenty of young and not so young beginners gain plenty of muscle mass.

But cardio?

If you want to keep using mostly aerobic energy system, or V0₂max in the parlance of the field, the intensity of the exercise is limited. If you go more intense, you’ll start using the other energy systems of the body: the anaerobic energy systems. Those systems produce energy more rapidly than the aerobic system, but they do not use fat to do so. However, the process of using them during exercise triggers greater fat loss via increases in many of the body’s metabolic pathways.

This is where the traditional cardio myth is even more useless; it prevents people from using other energy systems properly in order to stay in the so-called ‘fat burning zone’, thus promoting longer and more frequent cardio sessions, promoting a vicious cycle: want to lose more weight (unfortunately not just fat)? Then you have to run/pedal/swim longer.

This is in spite of the fact that short sprint intervals and burst-type activities have been demonstrated as more effective for fat burning, and they take only a few minutes of actual work each time. The most famous protocol for this is the 20/10, invented by Professor Izumi Tabata. His methodology became so famous that these sprints are now simply known as ‘Tabatas’. They consists of 20 seconds of all-out, balls to the wall cycling, with 10 seconds of active recovery. Do this 8 times in a row, for a total of 4 minutes.

The biggest problem I see right now, is that people are very, shall we say, ‘conservative’ when it comes to the definition of ‘balls to the wall’. In my book, your face should be turning a pastel type of green and your spleen coming out of your left eye socket on each of the rounds. Otherwise, you’re cutting corners and preserving energy for latter rounds. Of course, there are other less extreme protocols, especially since this one was tested on Japanese Olympic athletes, but the results for only 4 minutes of work were dramatic: every markers of energy system performance, including aerobic power and capacity, when up.

So even though you might choose a different sprinting methodology, you can increase your aerobic power and capacity and lose more body fat in a much shorter time span.

So the lesson is this: ditch the hamster wheel and start sprinting…. Repeatedly. You’ll look and feel much better, and be able to demonstrate it too.

Stay healthy,

Coach Charles R. Poliquin

P.S. Remember Dr. Cooper, founder of the Cooper Institute and founder of the jogging revolution? Fast forward to the 90’-early 2000: his new books now preach against overdoing aerobic work and implementing a weight training regimen. Food for thought!

References

Ismail, I., Keating, S., et al. A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Aerobic Vs. Resistance Exercise Training on Visceral Fat. Obesity Reviews. 2012. 13, 68-91.

Irving, B., Davis, C., et al. Effect of Exercise Training Intensity on Abdominal Visceral Fat and Body Composition. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. 2008. 40(11), 1863-1872.

Macpherson, R., Hazell, T., et al. Run Sprint Interval Training Improves Aerobic Performance but Not Maximal Cardiac Output. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. 2011. 43(1), 115-121.

Meckel, Y., Nemet, D., Bar-Sela, S., Radom-Aizik, S. Hormonal and Inflammatory Responses to Different Types of Sprint Interval Training. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2011. 25(8), 2161-2169.

This is one of my favorite exercises for the last weeks of preparation in grappling sports such as wrestling

This one is demonstrated by Victoria “Mangoose Ninja” Anthony, winner of a few international wrestling tournaments such as the Klippan Cup

Basically, you pull up to 30 degrees or so, paused there for 2 seconds to increase intra-muscular tension, then concentrate on finishing the movement explosively. Teach the combatant to keep the intent of explosiveness after encountering resistance during the upper body motion of a take down.

Works best using at least 6 sets of 1 to 3 reps.

Enjoy the results,

Coach Charles R. Poliquin

There are many legends in the sport of boxing, and the ones who get the most attention are usually the big hitters: Tyson, Foreman, Marciano, Hearns, Durán, and most recently Golovkin. Some sports writers and coaches would say that devastating punching power is a gift. Yes, talent does prevail, but the fact is that punching power can be developed, much more than you might believe.

Surprisingly few boxing coaches and trainers know the most effective ways to develop this power beyond hitting a heavy bag. Lifting weights is an obvious solution, but often the strength developed from heavy bench pressing doesn’t translate into knockout power.

One reason for disappointing results with strength training to improve punching power is a lack of understanding of the concept of sport specificity. Using bands in simulated punching movements is a terrible idea, invented/promoted by people who have no clue on how to train.

Bands provide the most tension at the end of a movement, and as such they will affect coordination patterns. More precisely, the bands decelerate the arms towards the end of a movement rather than the biceps; when the fighter goes back to trying to punch without the bands, often they decelerate too late or too early. Decelerating too late cause harmful hyperextension of the elbow, and decelerating too early reduces punching power, and give the opportunity to the opponent to serve you a McGregor special.

Another type of sport specific issue is shadow boxing with 1-to- 2-kilo dumbbells. Yes, I realize Mayweather does this, but my opinion is he has become a champion despite using these weights rather than because of it. There are literally hundreds of thousands of people who will back up this statement. Let me explain.

In the 1970s, walking and running with dumbbells was a fitness fad. Due to a physics principle commonly referred to as Newton’s Second Law of Motion, the dumbbells increase the momentum of the arms and therefore force the joints beyond their range of motion. The fad faded away as people discovered that the ballistic exercise caused overuse injuries in their shoulders and elbows. So this exercise makes no sense for a boxer; using dumbbells in this manner increases the stress on the upper body (and on the lumbar spine as well, from the excessive torque such training causes) and adversely affects the fine-movement patterns of a boxer’s punches.

    Use with moderation (the punching bag that is).

  What about spending extra time on the heavy bag to develop “Hands of Stone” like Durán? Yes the heavy bag does improve punching power, but it has to be used intelligently. First, a fighter shouldn’t use the heavy bag every day, as it places extremely high levels of stress on the shoulders. Here is scientific support from a review of research studies on boxing injuries published in the sports medicine textbook Epidemiology of Sports Injuries (Human Kinetics, 1996): “The second most common site of upper extremity injuries [the first being the hand and wrist] involves the shoulders. As expected, the repetitive and forceful delivery of punches is responsible for the relatively high frequency of extremity injury.”

  I prefer to focus on heavy bag training in the early stages of training, in what strength coaches would refer to as the preparatory phase. As a fighter’s competition approaches, I prefer that they focus more on double-end bags (which are attached to both the ceiling and the floor with tight coils). This type of bag snaps back rapidly when punched, simulating the action of an opponent and thus enabling the fighter to practice counterstriking and defensive movement skills. It also has less impact on the shoulder. In contrast, standing bags – although convenient because they don’t take up much space and can be moved – are generally heavy and stiff and convey too much impact to the shoulder. I must also mention that the week before the fight I like to stop all heavy bag work so that the athlete is fresh for the fight.

  Another mistaken practice is trying to develop punching power by training like a bodybuilder. Bodybuilders often perform their exercises with 12-15 reps, which not only gives them a “pump” in their muscles but also prolongs the time the muscles are under tension, which is critical to muscle growth. Research shows, however, that this increase in muscle bulk does not transfer well to boxing.

Support for this phenomenon can be found in a study by Dr. Andrew Fry published in Sports Medicine in August 2004, which looked at the muscle fiber types of bodybuilders, powerlifters, and Olympic-style weightlifters. Powerlifters in the study performed the bench press, squat, and deadlift in competition; weightlifters performed the snatch and clean and jerk. Dr. Fry found that the predominant muscle fiber type in bodybuilders is the slower and weaker Type 1, whereas the more powerful Type II fibers are predominant in the powerlifters and weightlifters. How do weightlifters and powerlifters train? Heavy weights and lower reps – in fact, weightlifters (the group that had the highest percentage of fast-twitch fibers) seldom performed more than three reps per set!

In terms of what types of weight training exercises a boxer should perform…

… I believe squats are a great exercise, but full squats tend to add too much bodyweight and could move a boxer up a weight class. So what types of leg exercises are best for a boxer?

  For training the legs, I prefer to do split squats and lunges, as they better recreate the movement patterns that are used in a fight. I also like Romanian rhythm squats to develop explosiveness. With this exercise you alternate between 10 reps of the regular quarter squat and 10 reps in a quarter squat where you come up on the balls of your feet – you continue in this manner until you have performed a total of 50 reps.

  As for Olympic lifting movements, power cleans and jerks are great exercises for developing the muscle fibers used in boxing. However, these exercises are complex and should be taught by someone experienced in coaching these lifts; when beginners learn these exercises incorrectly, it is difficult to correct these errors as they get older.

  Although bands are not a good idea to use for simulating punching, they can be used with good results in many weight training exercises for boxers; likewise chains. For example, one of the best upper body exercises to increase punching power is the incline bench press. I would use chains on this exercise in the preparatory phase, and then switch to bands as a competition neared because their effect on the barbell in increasing eccentric (lowering) load is more sport specific to boxing.

  I would also combine incline presses with medicine ball work, a training method called contrast training, which is based upon the neurological phenomenon called post-tetanic facilitation (PTF). PTF refers to the training concept that a more powerful muscular contraction can be achieved if that contraction is preceded by a strong muscular contraction. For example, a boxer might perform a heavy set of three reps in the incline bench press with bands, followed immediately by about a dozen medicine ball chest passes. I find that although medicine ball training is overrated as a single training method, it becomes much more effective when preceded by heavy weight training exercises. I learned this from Charles R. Poliquin back in 2002 and applied it with excellent results since then.

  Another valuable exercise for boxers is the chin-up. Just as it’s important to train the primary muscle groups used in punching, such as by performing incline presses and dips to strengthen the pectorals, anterior deltoids, and triceps, it’s equally important to train the opposing (antagonist) muscles. I do several variations of chin-ups, but the key is to make the exercise progressively more difficult by performing them with additional resistance. Take, for example, Yuriorkis Gamboa, the 2004 flyweight Olympic champion and WBA super featherweight champion, with a professional record of 23-1 that included 16 knockouts. I got his upper body strength to the level where he was able to perform chin-ups with 55 kilos (121 pounds) attached to his waist!

  It’s best to outfit your gym with thick-grip barbells and dumbbells rather than conventional weight training equipment. You can’t punch hard with injured wrists and hands, and working with thick-grip equipment is one of the best ways to strengthen these areas.

  Finally, it’s important for fighters to avoid long duration steady state aerobic work because this type of training will cause fast-twitch muscle fibers to behave like slow-twitch fibers. Energy system training is important, but the type of endurance a fighter needs is best developed with interval training, not steady-state aerobics.

A powerful punch is essential in boxing. By using the ideas in this article you will ensure that your training programs help fighters achieve the highest levels of physical superiority in the ring.

As a strength coach for boxing, Moritz Klatten has trained three Olympic champions, four amateur world champions, and five professional world champions, including Yuriorikis Gamboa, Juan Carlos Gómezs, Herbie Hide, and Jack Culcay.

Among the boxing coaches he has worked with are Ismael Salas, Orlando Cuellar, Fritz Sdunek, Michael Timm, Freddie Roach, Joey Gamache  and Jimmy Montoya.

Coach Klatten is also an accomplished strength coach for football (soccer), and has attracted an international clientele that includes Zlatko Junuzović, Werder Bremen; Tolgay Arslan, Beşiktaş; and Piotr Trochowski, Augsburg.

Coach Klatten works primarily out of Champ Performance, his own gym in Hamburg, Germany, where he offers strength coaching internships and operates a satellite training service to work with athletes worldwide.His book about strength and conditioning for fighters, The Klatten Power Boxing System, will be available in April at amazon.co.uk. He can be reached at klatten@champperformance.de

Five Lessons from Chuck Sipes

People who have taken my seminars know that I always give credit where it is due. Today, I will tell you what I have learned from Chuck Sipes. (’59 IFBB Mr. America, ’61 Mr. Universe , ’66 Mr. Olympia 4th place and ’68 Mr. World) . He was particulary known for his Herculean strength in all lifts. For example, he bench pressed 570 pounds raw at a bodyweight of only 220 lbs.

I have used many Sipes training methodology gems in coaching my athletes over the last 38 years.

Sipes used to work as a youth counselor at a reformatory school which allowed him to train up to three times a day. Once I adopted this training philosophy with my athletes and myself, velocity and magnitude of gains skyrocketed

Sipes liked to used a system that used a combination of pyramid and step approach to determining the load. So for example, a bench press workout would look like

2 x 8

2 x 6

2 x 4

2 x 2

Sipes liked to be able to do two sets with a certain weight at a give rep number before increasing the load. I believe that his approach allowed him to overload his musculature without overtaxing the CNS. He called this set/rep scheme the tonnage system.

He would use a variation this approach at the beginning of every workout to recruit high threshold motor units, which would be followed by high rep work.

You can overcome your training plateau by using the technique called « Heavy Supports » . it was popularized by Chuck Sipes, a Mr. America known for his amazing strength in all lifts. Strength legends like Dr. Fred Hatfield later on use adaptations of this concept to set world records in the squat.

He claimed it built ‘tendon strength » for a lack of better explantion. The truth of the matter is that it helps heighten the shutdown threshold of the Golgi Tendon Organ (GTO), which is a tension/stretch receptor located in the tendon. The GTO inhibitory effect can be seen when two people of uneven strength levels arm wrestle. The weaker person when losing will look like he is suddenly quitting and gets his wrist slammed to the top of the table. What really is happening is that the GTO is perceiving a rapid rate of stretch during the eccentric contraction, and yells to the brain « Better shut down the contraction, or my biceps tendon is going to roll up under my tonsils». The brain sends a rapid message to inhibit the contraction in order to prevent a muscle tear.

Now you can raise that threshold by interspacing 8 seconds heavy isometric holds a.ka. supports in between regular sets. So my approach of making use of the “heavy supports” in your bench press routine may look like this:

Set 1: Bench Press 5 R.M. @ 85% of max

Set 2:   Heavy supports of 8 seconds @ 120 % of max

Basically it is a 1/16 th of a the range, you just unrack the weight and hold with your elbows just short of lock-out. The weight should be heavy enough that your upper extremities will look like they are suffering from a Parkinson attack.

Set 3: Bench Press 5 R.M. @ 85% of max

Set 4: Heavy supports 8 seconds @ 125 % of max

Set 5: Bench Press 5 R.M. @ 85% of max

Set 6: heavy supports 8 seconds @ 130 % of max

Don’t be surprised if your heavy supports loads climb up dramatically. Don’t be shy to use even greater percentages for the heavy supports than the ones suggested.

Make sure that you train in a power rack for this routine, and set the range limiting bars 2-3 inches below your lock-out position to prevent any free instant plastic surgery…

By using heavy supports, I would not be surprised if your bench press goes up 20-25 pounds in only 4 workouts.

This method allows to target a high per
Do 3 sets each position – supinated, hammer grip Do both hand positions while seated and bent over like in any classic concentration curls. Triceps is resting on forearm stretched across leg. The third type of concentration is done bent over a table with forehead on forearm and with palm facing you touch dumbbell under the opposite arm’s armpit.

Load one-dumbbell to usable poundage that you can get 20 reps with. Place the dumbbell at the foot of the bench.

Sit down with the dumbbell on the bench with one haand, resting the wrist extensors on the padding, and the hand and dumbbell extended off the edge of the bench. Use a supinated grip, with an off-set grip.(thumb set firmly against the inside plate), palm up grip, on the dumbbell handle.

Lean yourtorso forward and to the outside until the upper arm & shoulder of the working hand is as close as parallel to the floor, . Stay in this position as you prepare to perform to do the Sipes Wrist Curl.

Now, contract the forearm muscles by flexing the wrist, curling the dumbbell up as high as possible Pause for a 2-second count at this peak contraction position. S-L-O-W-L-Y lower the hand downward so that it hyper- extends below the edge of the knee.

By leaning the shoulder and upper arm of the working hand to an almost parallel position to the floor position you’ll notice a much more intense muscle contraction in the forearm flexors, compared to the conventional way.

Since the body has not dramatically evolved since the 1960’s these tips/methods will certainly bring you amazing results.

Try them out, and let me know how they work you.

Enjoy!

Coach Charles R. Poliquin

Boxing may just be the last frontier in strength and conditioning. You could describe what passes for training in this sport by the children’s game Follow the Leader. Whatever the current champions are doing, especially the popular heavyweights, the contenders are sure to copy.

The problem with that approach is that some boxing champions are champions not because of their unique training methods but in spite of them. Mike Tyson at his best didn’t lift weights, but he had tremendous muscle mass that gave him devastating punching power. As such, we still see boxers running long distance, exercising in sauna suits, and using Spartan training methods to the point of overtraining. As for nutrition . . . well, many fighters see no problem preparing for their training and bouts by consuming a Snickers bar and a can of Red Bull.

It’s impossible for me in one article to clarify all the myths about training boxers, but I can give you an overall perspective based upon my extensive work with professional and amateur boxers. Let’s get started with these 10 common mistakes made in the training of boxers:

1. Overemphasis on easy work. Jumping rope and jogging can certainly be used as a warm-up to prepare a boxer for intense training, but too much of it increases the risk of injury and makes fighters slower. On this first point, a study on American boxers published in 1990 concluded that an association could be made between lower body overuse injuries and the jogging and rope jumping the boxers did to prepare for boxing. On the second point, if you combine too much slow training with fast training, the body will not understand what it is supposed to adapt to, and this can affect speed and power.

2. Focusing on quantity vs. quality. The body can only recover from so much training. Boxing bouts seldom last more than an hour, so workouts (after warm-up) should not take more than an hour if you expect an athlete to perform quality work. Further, workout sessions that are too long can cause a fighter to enter a state of overtraining.

3. Overworking sport specific work. Although the most sport specific activity for boxing is boxing, there are many exercises that are valuable for boxers – but it’s easy to overdo it. One example is hitting large tires with sledge hammers to train the oblique abdominal muscles. These dynamic exercises are hard on the shoulders, so they should not be used too frequently in training. Why should you be concerned about the shoulders? In four research studies that looked at boxing injuries, 313 total upper body injuries were reported. Of this total, 100 of these injuries involved the shoulder, a number second only to injuries to the wrists and hands.

4. Shadow boxing with dumbbells. I see many fighters shadow box with 1-to- 2-kilo dumbbells – even Mayweather does this. This type of exercise ruins fine-movement patterns and places harmful stress on the shoulders and even the lumbar spine. I heard that one of my former boxers started doing this type of exercise and eventually suffered serious shoulder injuries. To strengthen the arms and shoulders for punching, a general exercise such as the incline bench press is a wiser – and safer – choice.

5. Avoiding the weightroom. Many boxers and their coaches still believe weight training will slow you down and make you less powerful. Power is defined as force x distance ÷ by time, and to achieve high levels of power you have to have strength. Mike Tyson was 5-foot-10 and weighed as much as 230 pounds, and most of that mass was muscle. Tyson’s exceptional genetics endowed him with a powerful punch, so he wasn’t compelled to lift weights until his later years, Nevertheless, to develop muscles the fastest and most effective way is weight training.

If lifting slowed down athletes, then we wouldn’t see the most powerful track athletes, shot putters, and discus throwers lifting weights. I should add, however, that to stay fresh it’s not wise to lift heavy shortly before competitions, and that when athletes train they always need to lift with the “intent” of moving fast. Even if the weights they are using force them to move slowly, as long as they have the intent of moving quickly, they will activate the fast-twitch muscle fibers that contribute the most to boxing performance.

6. Lack of grip work. The most commonly injured body parts in boxing are the wrists and hands, and this has been confirmed in many research studies. Knowing that these are vulnerable areas, it makes sense that you should find methods to strengthen the forearms and the grip. For this reason, my gym is outfitted with thick-grip barbells and dumbbells that develop a strong grip and add muscle to the forearms. To reduce the stress on the elbows, this equipment must have revolving sleeves. However, be aware that athletes who use thick-grip apparatus can quickly reach a state of overtraining with additional exercises.

7. Too much nonspecific ab work. Ab training is overrated for boxing, and I’ve found that the ab training most boxers perform is never balanced. Performing 1,000 crunches may be hard, but this results in structural imbalances in the abs – what I like to call “short abs.” Further, although many coaches consider core training to be simply ab work, I’ve found that to create balance in the trunk – a muscular corset, if you will – boxers also need to perform exercises for the lower back muscles. You should consider that multijoint exercises such as deadlifts and squats work the “bracing” function of the abs. Also, I found overhead squats are great ab exercises for balancing out the development of these muscles.

8. Imbalanced neck training methods. Neck training in boxing is life insurance. Although boxers and boxing coaches often perform neck training, they usually don’t use a wide variety of exercises. One of the most popular is using a harness attached to the head while the user performs neck extensions. This is fine, but the exercise involves only one plane of motion of the neck – you also need to work the forward and lateral flexion of the neck, horizontal rotation, upward and downward diagonal rotation, and downward diagonal rotation. Further, exercises for the trapezius muscles will help support the neck, and these can be trained with power cleans, shoulder shrugs, and even deadlifts.

As a bonus, research shows that training the neck can significantly reduce the risk of concussions – a major concern in the boxing community – and facilitates the growth of all the muscles in the upper extremities. Research in such prestigious journals as Neurosurgery shows that increasing the strength and size of the neck muscles may decrease the frequency and severity of concussions. In fact, one college football team reported 50 percent fewer concussions in just one year after focusing on neck training in their workouts.

Because the neck is capable of moving in so many different directions and angles, you need to use a variety of exercises, methods, tempos, and ranges of motion when developing the neck muscles.

9. Insufficient stretching. Boxers, especially heavyweight boxers, are often tight. Such structural imbalances increase the risk of injury and performance. Boxers often are not shown how to stretch, and even then they typically spend only a few minutes a day on mobility work. I have my boxers perform dynamic stretching before a workout as a warm-up; after the workout they do static stretching or a specific type of partner stretching called proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF).

10. Misguided nutrition. Nutrition is unfortunately a neglected part of the training of many boxers. A common belief is that a fighter needs sugar before training or competing – I actually witnessed one boxing coach give his fighter a piece of cake shortly before he stepped into the ring for a bout that determined the intercontinental title at state! Even though this fighter won the title, he didn’t perform well due to lack of energy. Fighters whom I’ve worked with on their nutrition, including recommending pre-workout brain supplements such as Alpha-GPC, have told me they can really feel the difference that optimal nutrition makes in their performance.

Rather than blindly following the training trends of leading boxers, it’s better to look at the requirements of your sport and design your training programs appropriately. To use a popular expression, “Train the way you are going to fight!”

As a strength coach for boxing, Moritz Klatten has trained three Olympic champions, four amateur world champions, and five professional world champions, including Yuriorikis Gamboa, Juan Carlos Gómezs, Herbie Hide, and Jack Culcay.

Among the boxing coaches he has worked with are Ismael Salas, Orlando Cuellar, Fritz Sdunek, Michael Timm, Freddie Roach, Joey Gamache  and Jimmy Montoya.

Coach Klatten is also an accomplished strength coach for football (soccer), and has attracted an international clientele that includes Zlatko Junuzović, Werder Bremen; Tolgay Arslan, Beşiktaş; and Piotr Trochowski, Augsburg.

Coach Klatten works primarily out of Champ Performance, his own gym in Hamburg, Germany, where he offers strength coaching internships and operates a satellite training service to work with athletes worldwide.His book about strength and conditioning for fighters, The Klatten Power Boxing System, will be available in April at amazon.co.uk. He can be reached at klatten@champperformance.de

Squat – A natural movement

Crouching down is a natural movement. Almost all of us did it as infants to pick something up and it is common in many parts of the world as a waiting position or for food intake. By the way, those are part of the world, where back disorders are not the number one disease of the population! Also, nobody there is walking on crutches because he has damaged his knees by spending too much time in a crouched position.

For thousands of years this has been a typical position for the human and his ancestors. When an adult crouches, it looks – if there are no impairments of the involved joints or other movement restrictions – approximately like this:

Can everybody do squats?

Provided that a person is healthy and has normal flexibility, he can do a squat – as he could when he was an infant. Many people, however, lose this ability as their life goes on. As kids start school, most of the day will be spent seated., This leads to movement restrictions in the range of motion below the seated position, often resulting, over the years, in knee and back pain. This has reached a point where doctors say: Sitting is the new smoking!

Depending on flexibility, length of the torso and the relation of thigh to lower leg, the squat looks different from person to person. Like you can see on the previous pictures,you have to push your knees over the toes –this is the only way to get into the deep squat position and bend and train the knee over the full range of motion.

Understanding the squat as a strength exercise

A Squat is a strength training exercise, its eccentric component includes the complete bending of the knee joint and a partial bending of the hip joint and the ankle joint. In other words: a Squat is a movement that includes the natural crouching and standing up again.

For some people, the own bodyweight provides enough resistance in this exercise. For people with very little musculature or those who are very obese the bodyweight might even be too much for a single repetition. As soon as the own bodyweight doesn’t provide a sufficient training stimulus for the given goal, though, you do what defines strength training: you increase the resistance, which means you add weight progressively.

In the case of the most common Squat in strength training (the Back Squat, which this article is about) this is achieved by placing a barbell on your upper back:

A crouch with weight on your back = lower position of the Back Squat

The difference between the natural movement and the strength exercise therefore is the additional weight.

But it is bad for the knee joints to push your knees over your toes, isn’t it?

Poorly educated trainers, doctors or physiotherapists who have not understood the biomechanics of the knee properly or people who train but are not able to perform deep squats themselves often spread the following myth: „It is harmful to push the knees over the toes.” That is complete nonsense! As we have learned so far in this article, it is a completely natural motion sequence. You can`t walk stairs up or down in a normal way without pushing the knee over the toes. The knee joint is made to get flexed and extended.

In a study about this subject, researchers from the University of Memphis, Tennessee, compared Squats with the thighs parallel to the ground while pushing the knee over the toes with Squats in which pushing the knees over the toes was limited by a wooden board (see picture):

As you can see it is not a deep squat, as this is not possible if the knees have to stay behind the toes. But even with the parallel Squat (thighs parallel to the ground), huge differences occurred.

This were the results of the study:

As you can see, the knee torque during the unrestricted Squat (A) was slightly higher than when performing the restricted Squat. The hip torque however was over 1000% higher during the limited Squat compared to the Squat in which the knees were pushed over the toes. What does that mean? Either the stress is on the knees or it will be put on the lower back/ the spine through the excessive forward lean (which transfers the center of mass forward to balance the backward shift of the bottom). Biomechanically this is fundamentally more unfavorable than the slightly higher stress on the knees and a clearly worse position for the intervertebral disks. In an optimally executed Squat the stress will be distributed on knees and back. As the world’s most successful strength coach Charles R. Poliquin explained in his Advanced Strength Program Design Seminar: crucial for the compression of the lumbar spine is the horizontal distance between the barbell and the fifth lumbar vertebra (L5). As the study showed as well this means: the more upright someone is during the Squat the better it is for his back and his hip.

Why is it bad if you perform Half-Squats only?

Because you destabilize the knee by doing them! You only train in the upper part of the range of motion. This way you lose, as illustrated in the saying “Use it or lose it“, mobility, strength and joint-health in the part that is not being trained, while the strength in the trained part increases. This is a guarantee for muscular imbalances and in the worst case degeneration and injuries. More on this later.

But don’t deep Squats harm the knees?

Healthy knees will not be harmed by a correctly executed Squat, which means a Squat so deep that the hamstrings preferably cover the calves completely – so the exact opposite is true!

Deep Squats are necessary to:

• stretch the soft tissue in the lower body and to improve flexibility.
• ensure gristle health in hip, knee and ankle joint.
• improve ankle joint mobility and thereby knee health.
• train the VMO and thereby increase knee stability and sprinting and jumping performance.

The gristle in our joints is supplied with nutrients by compressive stress, similar to a sponge after being compressed in the water. If such compressive stress is not being applied in specific ranges of motion it impairs the gristle, making it brittle and thereby more prone to degeneration and injuries.

In the same way, our musculature is only getting strong in the areas where we are stressing it. In the case of the Squat, the muscle which is most active in the first 15% of extension (so the lowest part of the Squat) is the Musculus Vastus Medialis Obliquus (short: VMO). This muscle is very important for sprinting and jumping performance and a crucial factor for knee stability.

It is a sign of weak VMOs when the knees drive inwards during a Squat (middle picture).
If the VMO can’t stabilize the knee during high external forces, serious injuries can be the outcome (right picture).

By the way, thigh and shank do have the least contact in the knee joint at 90° and hence are stressed most at this point. Below 90°, thus in a deep squat, the stress starts to decrease. Also you can use less weight in this position and thereby relieve the passive structures.

But heavy weights are no problem either, if you train over the complete range of motion. Provided that you get used to those heavier weights step by step within an intelligent strength training program, there is absolute no harmful stress on the body. The healthier the knee joints are the higher the potential performance in the Squat is. Not without reason Olympic weightlifting belongs to the sports with the lowest rate of injuries – knee injuries included! And this despite the fact that the lifters move weights that are unachievable for the average Joe. Think of soccer in comparison…

Dimitry Klokov, Russian weightlifter, World Champion and Olympic Silver Medalist performs a Squat. As you can clearly see, his knees are far in front of the toes and his torso is very upright.

By the way, the most frequently injured joint in weightlifting is the shoulder, not the knee.

Why are so many people at commercial gyms doing Half Squats nevertheless?

The most “Squats” you can observe in a gym look something like that:

Why is that so? The people who train properly (there are not many of them) don’t do Half Biceps Curls or a Half Bench Press. Why, of all things, should the knee joint be the one single joint that you do NOT have to train over its full range of motion? In my opinion, people don’t do deep Squats…

• out of ignorance and because they are misinformed. Many fitness and bodybuilding magazines contain bad or even wrong information, the internet can be curse and blessing at the same time. Since anybody can call himself an expert here and falsehood is rampant it is difficult for the layperson to distinguish. The same is true for advice you get at the gym. A big arm or the fact that someone can bench press a lot does not necessarily mean that this guy has expertise in intelligent strength training or knows how to train other people beside himself.
• out of ego. The deeper the Squat, the smaller the weight you can use. Often the technique gets sacrificed on the altar of weight. Something similar can be observed for almost every other exercise. The bar is not touching the chest during the Bench Press, the arms are not fully extended during the Chin Up, the pad is not being touched with the forearms during the Scott Curl. “Range (of motion) before load“ should be the guideline to get optimal results regarding gains of strength and muscle and to stay free from injuries.
• out of lack of flexibility and lack of knowledge about how to improve and compensate it. Often there is a lack of well-trained staff in gyms and sports clubs.

And what about the Powerlifting Squat?

Powerlifting consists of lifting the most possible total weight in the three exercises Squat, Bench Press and Deadlift. It is not about joint-friendly exercise execution, muscular balance or the largest ranges of motion possible. All movements are aimed to move as much weight as possible over the shortest possible distance. According to the rules, while performing the Squat, the athlete must bend the knees and lower the body until the top of the legs at the hip joint is lower than the top of the knees. The barbell is placed much lower on the back to keep the leverage for the hip extending muscles as short as possible. For the hip is the joint moving the major part of the weight and getting stressed the most. So regarding this sport it is the correct execution because it allows you to move the most weight over the given range of motion. But this execution is not optimal in terms of health or the athletic transfer on other sports, as the attentive reader of this article should know by now. In this sport, the knee extending musculature is being trained only partly and also never being trained in the lower range of motion.

This will lead to the problems mentioned above like too much stress on the back and hip as well as destabilization of the knee joints. Many powerlifters develop hip pain because of the unidirectional training of the musculature. Do I have something against powerlifters for this reason or would I refuse to train one? Of course not! But I would train him in a way that ensures full range of motion and muscular balance before starting with the more specific training and the Powerlifting Squat.

Conclusion:

• The only Squat that is healthy long-term is the deep Squat.

• The knee has to be pushed over the toes when you perform a Squat.

• The more upright you can stay while performing a Squat, the less stress on the spine.

• Deep Squats make you more flexible und provide healthier joints in the lower body.

• Deep Squats improve knee stability and prevent injuries.

• Deep Squats improve sprinting and jumping performance.

This article is supposed to educate. The more people know how to train intelligently, the better for all of us. Switch your egos off and common sense on and do deep Squats or look for a competent trainer who teaches you how to do them. And the next time someone tries to dissuade you from doing deep Squats show him this article – you know better!

Philip Schmieder has a Diploma in Sports Science and works as a self-employed Personal Trainer at the Urban Athletes Gym in Cologne, Germany. Following his academic career, he continued to educate himself by taking courses with, among others, Charles R. Poliquin (Advance Program Desijng, Bioprint Practitioner) and Wolfgang Unsöld in the Your Personal Strength Institute in Stuttgart, Germany, (all Seminars, YPSI A-License). You can contact him on his Website: www.schmiedertrainer.de .

Guest post by Wolfgang Unsöld

The statement is simple – Endurance is the most overrated of all sports specific qualities.

Why?

Because endurance is neither necessary nor the limiting factor in most sports.

Conditioning is. Where is the difference?

Definition of Endurance and Conditioning as follows:

Endurance is the ability to maintain a certain effort with minimal fatigue – A classic example is a marathon. At a marathon it´s crucial to run 2+ h in one go with minimal fatigue.

Conditioning is the ability to repeat a certain effort with minimal fatigue – Classic examples are team sports like Soccer, American Football, Basketball and Ice hockey. In those sports it is crucial to keep fatigue between the first and the last sprint (and all the others in between) as minimal as possible.

Most Olympic, Team- and Combat Sports are cyclical, that means certain efforts must be repeated. A 100m sprinter has to repeat his performance in heats, semi-finals and finals. A thrower has 6 attempts per competition and an olympic weightlifter has 3 per discipline.  If the performance decreases too much from attempt to attempt then his conditioning is the limiting factor.

A more extensive example is soccer. Depending on the position of a player he runs about 8-12km per game. From which he runs 400-1200m above 85% of his top speed. The remaining 8-10km are walking, trotting and hardly relevant for the game.

These 400-1200m are crucial. The average sprinting distance is about 17m. Sprints over 30m, that´s the distance between mid- and penalty line, are very rare.

The critical distance is 0-5 m. That´s the famous “one step faster”. Based on player statistics of the English Premier League, players with the highest salary, regardless of their position have one thing in common, they are the fastest over 0-5m.

At an average sprinting distance of about 17m and a game-relevant total distance of 400-1200m those are about 24 to 70 sprints per game. Assuming a uniform load density, it is a load of 2-3 seconds followed by a 1:20-4:00 minute break. I sprints are repeated with minimal rest its more than 3 in a row before the ball is out of sight.

So what is critical for a game in this case in terms of physical qualities?

Endurance or Conditioning?

Critical are those 24 to 70 sprints in under 90 minutes game time and their repetition with minimal fatigue, not endurance. Endurance isn´t relevant in soccer because of the short bursts of sprints they do.

To run 10-60 minutes at once has very poor correlation with the ability to repeat 24 to 70 sprints in 90 minutes with minimal fatigue.

100m Sprinter and YPSI Athlete Sven Knipphals is the second fastest German this year and placed 4th in the 100m relay at the Track & Field World Championship in Beijing this year. He needs the conditioning to sustain his performance in a multi-race event and he needs speed-endurance to maintain his topspeed from 60m till the finish line…

2 forms of Endurance

Endurance at high intensity – that is the ability to maintain a stress of high intensity upright with minimal fatigue. A good example is a 100m sprinter. A sprinter reaches his top speed after 60-70m. From 60-70m the critical factor becomes maintaining the top speed as long as possible without getting tired. In this case we speak of speed endurance. Usain Bolt is a great example for this. His greatest advantage over his opponents, and the reason why he is even more dominant over 200m than over 100m, is his exceptional speed endurance, the ability to maintain his top speed with minimal fatigue and leave all his opponents behind after 60-70m.

Endurance at low intensity – that is the ability to maintain a stress of low intensity upright with minimal fatigue. A good example is the marathon. In a marathon it´s crucial to maintain a performance for 2+ h with minimal fatigue. In one go and without interruptions.

Intensity – definition: Intensity is the load of a performance in relation to the maximal performance. A performance at high intensity for example is a sprint over 50 meters at maximum speed or BB Back Squats for 3 reps with 90 % of 1RM. In contrast to this, a performance of low intensity is a run over 10000m at maximum speed or squats for 25 reps with 50 % of 1RM. That means intensity is not defined on the subjective level of effort but correlates performance with maximum power/effort.

Both forms of endurance, especially the last one, are not relevant in most Olympic-, Team- and Combat Sports because the duration of the load in those sports is far lower.

In most Olympic-, Team- and Combat sports conditioning is critical. The ability to repeat a performance with minimal fatigue.

UFC Fighter and YPSI Athlete Peter Sobotta in action. Especially in Combat Sports like MMA it´s crucial to differentiate between Endurance and Conditioning, because the duration of the effort is very short and the effort density is very high. Peter Sobotta is unbeaten for 8 fights and won his last 7 fights of which 6 were all TKO via Rear Naked Choke (Photo ©Tomasz Radzik)

2 forms of Conditioning

Conditioning at high volume – the ability to repeat a certain performance very often with minimal fatigue.  The best example is soccer, where depending on the position of the player the average sprinting distance has to be repeated up to 70 times per game with minimal fatigue.

Conditioning at low volume – the ability to repeat a certain performance a few times with minimal fatigue. Best example is Olympic Weightlifting. There you only have to repeat an attempt 3 times per discipline and competition – so 3 Reps of the Snatch and 3 Reps of the Clean & Jerk, thats it.

The lower the volume, the more critical becomes the performance during the attempt itself. It is not that crucial to repeat that performance often.

The higher the volume, the more critical is the ability to repeat it. Therefore in weightlifting the ability to repeat a performance is less important than the absolute performance, namely to move maximal weight. In comparison with weightlifting soccer players need lower maximal- and explosive strength level than weightlifters – but higher levels of conditioning. As the ability to repeat maximal Sprinting Speed for the 90 minute game is critical.

Training Endurance vs. Conditioning

The training for Endurance and Conditioning is obviously very different.

The Training of Endurance basically includes a higher volume of total work, a lower -if any – number and duration of breaks and lower average intensity of effort. While the training of conditioning basically comprises a lower total volume of work and an increased number and duration of breaks at higher average intensity of effort.

Shorttrack Speedskating European Champion 2015 and YPSI Athlete Patrycja Maliszewska training at the YPSI in Stuttgart. On this picture you can see her going through a combination of a Strength- and Conditioning Workout. Heels elevated Back Squats 10 sets of 6 reps.Last year she had the fastest first round on the planet. Her current standing broadjump is 2,70m.

Sample training program for Endurance in Shorttrack Speedskating

51 rounds divided into 3 blocks á (9 rounds, 3 minutes pause, 5 rounds, 3 minutes pause, 3 rounds) with 10 minute pauses between the blocks. The rounds have to be executed with minimal 85% of world record time.

That´s a solution for a 1500m short track speed skater whose limiting factor is endurance over 1500m. That means he fatigues too much in the last 3-5 rounds of the 1500m race which is 14,5 rounds.

This is a program written by the legendary short track speed skating Coach Yves Nadeau, whose athletes won 204 medals at World Championchips and the Olympic Games since 1983.

Sample training program for Conditioning in Soccer 

This is a modified strongman medley used to condition a soccer player

A1 Forward Sleddrag, 20m, 5s rest

A2 Prowler Push, High Handle, elbows extended, 20m, 5s rest

A3 Sprint, 20m, 120s rest

Repeat 4-10 times depending on the current Conditioning Level of the Athletes

This is a solution for a player or a team whose physically limiting factor is fatigue in the latter part of the game.

The ability to repeat multiple blocks of three 20m efforts with minimal rest has clearly a higher correlation to soccer-specific performance than 10-60min straight jogging. To train the sprinting power, speed and conditioning at the same time a combination of strength- and condititoning training in the weightroom can also be utilized. To see how it looks in detail, here is an example of a squat training program for conditioning in Ju Jitsu.

Sample training program for Conditioning in Ju Jitsu

 12 sets of 4 reps of BB Back Squats with a 30X0 tempo and 60s rest.

From workout to workout increase the average- and maximal weight used.

That´s a solution for a fighter whose physical limiting factor is fatiguing from effort to effort. The higher intensity and resistance on the squats allow for training conditioning and power of a single action at the same time.

This is the program I´ve used for preparation of YPSI Athlete Romy Korn for the Ju Jitsu World Championship 2014 in Paris where she became World Champion in the 70+ kg weightclass at a bodyweight of 71,2kg with all her opponents outweighing her by 15+kg.

Conclusion: For a coach it is crucial to identify whether endurance and/or conditioning are necessary for a certain sports and disciplines. And to assess which the limiting factor of the individual athlete is. So the training program can be specifically tailored to the needs of the individual sport and the limiting factor of the individual athlete. To maximise the efficiency of training and therefore increase pPerformance on the field, court, ice or mat.

Coach Wolfgang Unsöld is the Founder and Head Coach of the Your Personal Strength Institute in Stuttgart, Germany.

Over the last 8 years he got known for producing outstanding Before’n’After Results in recordtime and has worked with over 100 high level athletes in multiple disciplines, including:

•  Richard Adjei – Olympic Silver Medalist and World Champion in Bobsled
• Romy Korn – Ju Jitsu World Champion
• Ibrahim Karakoc – Three Time Kickboxing World Champion
• Slavo Polugic – Two Time K1 World Champion
• Swiss Bobsled Nationalteam
• Victor Knoch – Shorttrack Speedskating 500m Jr World Record holder
• Patrycja Maliszewska  – European Champion Shorttrack Speedskating 3000m
• Hungarian Shorttrack Speedskating National Team
• Peter Sobotta – UFC Fighter, currently unbeaten for 8 fights
• Sven Knipphals – 4x100m 4th Place Track & Field World Championship 2015
• Martin Gratzer  – 12time National Champion in Shotput
•  And multiple Athletes in UFC, Rugby and Football National Teamplayers from 6 different countries.

 He has coached 13 Athletes for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sotchi, Russia

How and Why we use the Safety Bar Squat

Today I am going to demonstrate the Safety Bar Squat and explain why we use it.

Filmed at Clean Health Performance Centre, Sydney, Australia

By Josh Bryant

Strong men throughout history have struck a chord of admiration amongst men and desire in the hearts of women.

For millenniums, human beings have been fascinated by the acquisition and display of strength!

To add icing to the cake, strength is the basis for all athletic endeavors and human movement.  If the goal is surviving or thriving, strength is at the nucleus.

Because strength so important, it behooves me how few people understand how to appropriately train for strength.

Having been one of the strongest in the world and currently training a number of the strongest men in the world, across multiple disciplines, I want to share with you two things I have learned about strength.

Train More Sets & Less Reps

Unless you train in a judgment-free zone at Planet Fitness, your strength will be judged by your one-repetition max (1 RM).

Endless miles of road work won’t get you ready for the 100-meter dash; similarly, endless repetitions of an exercise won’t optimally prepare you for a 1 RM.

To get strong for one rep, in training, you need more first reps; so instead of thinking three sets of eight reps, think of eight sets of three reps. This equates to the exact same amount of volume, but you get over three times as many first repetitions, the one you’re strongest on.

More sets equal more first reps and more practice to build and display the skill of strength. Furthermore, laboratory settings have demonstrated this type of training allows for greater force and power production.

Make sure to explode maximally on each rep and set and watch
strength gains sky rocket.

Warm-up Properly

Besides the flat earth society and a few fringe HIT zealots and Arthur Jones hold overs, folks in the iron game acknowledge the fact that higher volume protocols catalyze greater gains in size and strength.

One of the best ways to increase training volume without adding time on to your workout is with warm-up sets.  Instead of riding the bike for 15 minutes and then doing a 15-minute dynamic warm-up, do more warm-up sets.

This is far from a pre-exhaust technique, it’s an activation technique.  Strength is a skill, warming up with lighter weights with proper form will help build that skill. Recent studies have confirmed what seasoned iron game veterans have known for years, the best warm-up is the actual exercise with submaximal loads.

If your specific goal is to get stronger, nothing beats the specificity of warming-up with the exercise you are training to get stronger in.

Josh Bryant

Books by Josh Bryant