When Do We Bench?

This question came from Rob H - AKA "Sofa" in the comments.  Love this kind of thing.  Thanks Rob!

"Neil, today I got asked by one of the newer members how often we do chest focused work outs. I told him that we really didn't do them. It was more of a combination of push ups, burpees, etc. He asked is a bench really not necessary? I did not know how to respond. Just looking for your opinion on it."

We don't do a lot of specific chest development because you don't really use your chest muscles all that much in nature. When you do use them, the movements they perform are directly tied to support from your core and legs.  As in mowing your lawn.  While you are pushing your lawn mower, the only work the pec muscles can do are tied to your legs through your core.  I prefer to exercise your pecs at the same time as your core and legs, as nature intended.  So we do burpees, pushups and other multi-joint exercises for our main mode of pec development.  

Now, I'm not opposed to isolating a muscle group and doing specific exercises to develop and tone for aesthetic purposes.  I think this is a very healthy thing to do- in moderation.  This is one of the things that specifically differentiates us from other programs.  We are not afraid to use isolation techniques for effect, as you'll see on Friday. But I have found that we pretty much have the pecs covered.  We do lots of exercise for pec development throughout a week of programming at GPP.  We hit your pecs from every angle during a normal week.  And it shows. Bigger, more developed pecs are one of the first things you'll see changing on new guys (especially guys) who stay with it for a couple of months.  I get compliments from their wives all the time.

Plus, look at some of the guys walking around our place. You are a pretty intimidating looking group.  By your appearance alone, I wouldn't want to mess with any of you that have been with us for a year or more.  

That being said, I realize that guys have an affinity for even more chest work.  At some point in our lifetime most of us have had a coach who taught us that a man who couldn't rep 225 was akin to a 98 lb weakling.  And even though bench pressing is only comparable to bench pressing, and even though bench pressing has almost no other functional merit (seriously, it's a very poor predictor of a person's strength and/or athleticism, going overhead is a much better indicator), and even though the development you might get from benching and other specific chest work wouldn't lead to any more pec development than what we are already doing down at GPP- I get it.  It is important.  Hell, I even do it from time to time.  That is one of the reasons I've brought in a bench press.  

If you choose to do additional chest (and other muscle group) work, keep in mind that with our type of training, it is easy to overdo.  Overdoing it will eventually add up to injury. It may also take away from gains on both the GPP side as well as the shaping side. 

Keep extra credit stuff to 1x per week per muscle group.  Do the same exercise for up to 6 weeks at a time and aim for no more than 40-50 heavy reps per session (not including the warm-up).  That should keep you safe and injury free.  It will probably even increase your muscularity somewhat.  If you are really serious about increasing muscle size, take a month or two and focus on it.  Come a little early (20 min or so) for a session (as long as you don't interrupt the class- ask the trainer to be sure) and pound out your reps before the GPP daily workout.  During this period you will also benefit from dropping your GPP workout volume (not intensity) by 30%.  

But, be CAREFUL!

Although you'll see marked improvement in muscular development, you will lose a little fitness along the way if you keep at it for too long.  This will make coming back to full Rx status quite painful- as you already know. 

How to Undo All That Running

The response to my “three tips Thursday” guest post on the Meals and Moves site has been surprising.  First of all, that it garnered any response has been a surprise.  Second, I’ve been somewhat bombarded with questions from runners about my “efficiency” rant.  By “bombarded” I mean I’ve gotten a few emails and such.  

It turns out there is a real problem amongst runners who are only running for weight loss.  A bunch of you started running and loved what it was doing for you in terms of shaping your bodies.  So you just kept going and going.  Now a couple of years into your venture they have found that running isn’t doing what it used to for you.  And in fact you have to keep adding mileage and intensity just to keep your weight where it is right now.  This seems like a never ending loop and it is starting to take away from your quality of life.  So, what should you do?  

Try this.  Get dead on consistent with your training.  And reel back some of those miles.  Some of you need to reel back a bunch of your miles.  Your body needs to know you aren’t going to keep killing it.  If you are a long distance runner, your body is constantly preparing for when you are going to make it go for 2-4 hours at a stretch.  To prepare for this it knows it must store plenty of water, electrolytes, and fuel for when you spring your next kill fest on it.  The fuel it prefers, is the stuff the looks the worst on!  Carbohydrates.  We have found with our dancers that carbohydrates make you look puffy.  Especially around your middle and your face.  When we pull the carbs away from our dancers it cleans up their appearance greatly.  

But because you are running so much your body is starving for carbs to fuel it.  In fact, many of you couldn’t walk past bread, pasta, or sweets if your house was on fire.  And it is no wonder.  You have toyed with your system so much over the years that you have convinced your body that were you to walk by a carb, you’d probably die.  You need to realize that you are in FULL ON storage mode.  Unless you send the signals for your body to calm down.  You are just going to keep packing it on.  Year after year you will get bigger and more swollen looking.  

Consistency is key when reprogramming your body.  And know this - It will fight you.  When you start slowing down, telling it you are going to be kinder and gentler to it - It won't believe you.  It remembers all the hurtful things you’ve done to it in the past and it thinks any day now you are going to spring a ultra run at it, and it wants nothing more than to be prepared.  Self preservation is its job.  So this is going to take some real effort on your part.  

I suggest you find another line of exercise.  May I recommend GPP?!  Short, 20 minute workouts that hit you from every angle will keep your body in shape and spending calories.  It will also place new demands on your body that it is unfamiliar with.  If you are already doing GPP workouts, attack them harder.  Many times you have pushed through a workout at 75% while saving a little in the tank for your long run.  Pound a workout at max intensity and you’ll reprogram your body to allocate more energy to those specific workouts.  

Next, ground yourself.  You are no longer able to perform more than 30 minutes of cardio (running) per day.  Yes, make it 30 minutes.  I know you are used to running for miles, but remember, we are reprogramming here.  The more you reprogram the sooner your body will fall out of its bad habits and rhythms.  

Now, clean up your diet.  Start with water.  Lots of it will help flush excess storage of electrolytes and etc.  You’ll need to back off the carbs dramatically.  Proteins and raw fruits and veggies are the keys.  Raw fruits and veggies are not as calorie dense as your body is used to. It takes a lot more work to harness their energy than the breads, pastas and sweets you’ve been feeding it.  You want it to work for its energy.  It slows down the storage process.  Proteins will regulate blood sugar.  Your high carb lifestyle has been wreaking havoc with your blood sugar and insulin levels.  This is contributing to all the swelling around your midsection and face.  Take your protein consumption up to .9 g per lb. of lean body mass.  This will regulate blood sugar and calm insulin overproduction.  

That takes care of your physiology.  Now for some psycology.  All that running has been contributing greatly to one, or many of your personal payoffs.  By “personal payoff” I mean, you have been getting a lot more out of your running than just a good calorie burn.  Humans are funny.  We can take the most negative, hurtful and painful thing and turn it into a positive payoff.  Ever hear of Stockholm Syndrome?  

Running is very painful, at first.  But you get over it.  Soon you start associating the pain of a hard run with very positive attributes.  After a while this association might go from a mere pleasant experience to a need.  Eventually, this can escalate to a sickness for some.  Now, if you happen to be one of the lucky ones who hasn’t been rendered ill by the obsessive need to run/exercise - you are not completely out of the woods when it comes to reversing course.  You'd do well to keep that in mind.  

To take something as painful as running and turn it into a positive aspect of your life, will have taken some deliberate action on your part to accomplish.  Chances are, you have some healthy value statements in life wrapped up into your running.  In other words, you might think consciously or subconsciously, “I’m pretty good at running.”  “Running has made me more confident.”  “The confidence I gained while running helped me to get my new (fill in the blank, house, spouse, job etc.).”  

Careful now.  This is the danger zone.  This is often accompanied by the fear, that it was the running that did this - not you.   

If you let this train of thought seep into your actions, you are likely to blow it for yourself.  Blow it on a lot of levels.  Not just gaining weight through running.  If you find this mindset creeping up on you.  It might be wise to seek some counselling.  Professional help with a qualified individual will go a long way here.  You’ll want to steer clear of certain non-supportive spousal types, codependent friends and fitness hacks pecking on a keyboard.  Anyone with a potential agenda for helping/suppressing you should be avoided.  Just sayin...

What you need to do is re-channel that high you get from running into something more productive.  This has to come with the recognition that YOU are the kingpin here.  This running thing didn’t just happen.  You did it.  You became good at it.  You achieved great things inside and outside of your running.  Now YOU can take what you have done and learned and do more great things.  Take some of the energy you have put into running and begin putting it into other things that interest you.  Or put it into things that have been left on hold, due to your running.  The important thing is to keep DOing.  RE-channel your efforts.  You’ll find you get a lot more done.  It’ll be more rewarding, too.  

One last thing - going back to nutrition here - watch that appetite.  Once you stop running so much, you aren’t that much different from a collegiate or professional football player.  Ever see what happens to those guys after they get out of competitive sports?  Most of them blow up to the size of a house.  All that running had the effect of glossing over many of the mistakes you were making with your diet.  You won’t have that much leeway anymore.  You’ll need to be more careful, or you’ll end up looking like an old, retired NFL linebacker.  The very thing you were trying to avoid when you backed off the running in the first place.  

Please post questions to comments.  

GPP Stretching

We are lucky to have some of the finest experts anywhere storming workouts at our gym.  This week we asked Curtis Jolley P.T. MOMT of Performance West Physical Therapy to take us through some stretches we can use daily to improve our health and function. 

Some suggestions from Curtis:

1. Do these AFTER your workout.  Or ONLY after a complete and thorough warm-up.
2. If you have existing pain, or if these stretches increase your pain - don't do them. 
3. Take each stretch only to the point where it becomes MILDLY uncomfortable. 
4. Holding each stretch for 20-30 seconds is all that is needed.
5. Repeat each stretch 2-3 times for the most benefit. 
6. These may be done daily.

For the front of your torso.

triceps, shoulders & lats

mainly quads

hip flexors

hamstrings

assisted hamstring

glute, piriformis

calf (gastroc)

deep calf (soleus)

Upper vs Lower Abs - Myth?

by Neil Anderson

Body builders know a lot about abs.  They know about them on a level that science hasn't caught up to yet.  It's too bad that they do, because their whole spiel just seems so off.  We can get into that later.  For now, it's probably easier to say I just don't get the pursuit of muscling up, oiling up and prancing around on a stage in your underwear. To each his own, I guess. 

The thing is, bodybuilders spend an incredible amount of time getting to know their bodies.  Successful ones know every little thing about how an exercise or movement will effect them.  They become so good at knowing the effects of certain movements that often their techniques fly in the face of conventional wisdom.  Exercise scientists (mostly flabby ones) have been saying for years that certain bodybuilding techniques are flat-out wrong.  For example, the exercise scientists (mostly flabby) who taught my exercise phys classes at USU told me and my numerous classmates that there is no such thing as working the upper abs separately from the lower abs.  They said it was a myth!  Banged their fists on a pulpit (actually happened once) to emphasize the point.  Yet, bodybuilders (fit and muscled) have been working them separately and claiming it is the ONLY way to bring the top and bottom abs "out" for decades.  They have continued even after these (flabby) exercise scientists told them it was scientifically "hogwash."

What could be wrong with bodybuilders?  Can't they read?  Don't they believe in science? 

Are they THAT mired in tradition?  Have they just bought into bodybuilding so blindly that they will simply perpetuate stupid and inefficient movements as nothing more than religious dogma? 

Researchers from the University of Sao Paulo Brazil didn't think this sounded right.  Why take all your advice from a bunch guys who wouldn't be able to find their own abs without local anesthesia and a scalpel, right? So, they put bodybuilders' methods to the test.  With advanced muscle activation measuring equipment, they had male subjects perform crunches and reverse crunches.  These two movements are purported by body builders to work the upper abdominals differently from the lower.  Any guesses on what they found?

Body builders have been right all along. 

According to the findings, which were published in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, muscle activity data shows "definite" differentiation.  They also supported this finding with the fact that research in human cadavers shows that the different portions of the abs are innervated by different nerves.  That is big! 

Conclusion

Don't take all your ab building advice from pulpit thumping (mostly flabby) scientists.  Exercises that involve moving the upper torso (crunches, situps) work upper portions of the abdominals more.  Exercises that involve moving the pelvis and legs toward the center of mass work the lower abdominals more.  And also, although bodybuilders and their pursuits are completely foreign to me (we can get into it later), they know stuff.  And we can learn things from them that we can use in our own pursuit of optimal health. 

The Money Set

by Neil Anderson

There is a set of exercise that is more valuable than all others.  It is the set that counts.  It is the one where unless you do it exactly right, you will have wasted the greatest portion of your workout.

We call it the Money Set.

It is the set that comes last.  The one that is called for when you are most tired, least focused and in the most pain.  It is the one where you think to yourself, “hell, I’ve done a ton already.  I can skip the last two reps, right?” 

Bad idea, friend.

Squandering your Money Set will cost you the most in terms of stagnation, lack of progress and frustration.  If however, you pay the price by doing the hard stuff, it'll pay double your efforts in return.  But, that's not why we call it the Money Set. 

It is called the Money Set because - its the one that makes the most change.