Warm Up Outline (10-20min)

Just a heads up I wrote yesterdays blog.  It was an article that I wrote for school.  So it is a super-nerdle paper and yes lots of prof reading!

In 1967 Fitts and Posner wrote and article called “Human Performance.”  They find that and suggest that the learning process happens in sequential phases.  They also found that we move through specific phases as we learn.  Their are 3 phases we go through as we learn a new skill, and they are cognitive, associative, and autonomous.  The Cognitive Phase is phase 1 of the learning stages.  The athlete just dose not get it.  This ties in too my 3 strikes your out rule and most of the time if you are striking out its just that you are in this stage of learning.  The athlete is learning what to do and has a lot of trouble with the task and cannot carry out the movement the way you asked them to.  Treats of the cognitive phase are jerky movements, hesitation, shakiness, lack of control, inconsistent repetitions, slow movements, limited range of motion.  Phase 2 is the Associative Phase this is when the athlete is beginning to get it.  The athlete is challenging themselves to put the component parts of the skill into a smooth action.  You are out of the 3 strikes your out rule mostly because the athlete is practicing the skill, using feedback to perfect it and correcting the movement.  Traits of the Associative Phase are minimal shakiness, increased range of motion, increased speed, deliberate movement, and better adjustment.  The 3rd and final stage of the learning phases is The Autonomous Phase.  This is the “They got it phase!”  In this phase the athlete has learned the new skill.  The skill becomes automatic and involves little or no conscious thought or attention while performing the skill.  At this point you are ready to be coached.  Traits of the Autonomous Phase are effortless movement, client doesn’t to need to pay attention, client talks during exercise, and no muscular failure.

Test the learning phases.
Test 1: Walking Lunges
Test 2: Reverse Walking Lunges
Test 3: Walking Lunges and signing the ABC
Test 4: Reverse Walking Lunges and singing the ABC
Now the fun begins…
Test 5: Walking Lunges and signing the ABC backwards
Test 6: Reverse Walking Lunges and singing the ABC backwards

Most people can not pass test 5 unless they know the ABC backwards.  Now that we know what the 3 phases of learning are we can begin to understand if we should progress or regress a movement.  The progression criteria for a movement should be to evaluate the movement outcome and decide if this is the appropriate exercise for our you.  When you reach the autonomous phase and only than should you progress the movement.  If you are starting a movement and you are in the cognitive/associative phase than that’s a good start.  If you see to many of the cognitive traits you should regress the movement and create a bridge between the movement and the learning phases.  The sooner we understand these principles the faster the learning curve will happen. It is important to understand where we are at in the learning phase.  So if you tend to be a “Hot Mess” you might want to check your egos and regress the exercise.  Same thing goes for if you are an SB^2 (Sand Bagging Son of a Bitch!) this means you need to grow a pair and start progressing you exercise.

Tomorrow I will look at Adaptation, Accommodation, The SAID Principle, The Overload Principle and the Rest Principle.

 

 

The 2013 Worldwide Survey of Fitness Trends done by the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) showed educated, certified, and experienced fitness professionals to be the number one trend of the industry for the last six years.  This is amazing, yet a very scary trend.  According to the ACSM having educated, certified and experienced fitness professionals “is a trend that continues and drives the need for education and certification programs that are fully accredited by national third-party accrediting organizations for health and fitness and clinical exercise program professionals.”[1] What is scary is that some of the third-party organizations that are accrediting these certifications are doing so more for the money in the industry and not the education and professionalism.  This is unfortunate due to the fact a person can become a certified personal trainer in the matter of minutes.  This alone will at some point require the government to set up some type of standards to regulate nationally accredited certifications, which would still allow for the consumer to feel confident in hiring a personal trainer.

 

The question is “what and who are highly educated and experienced professionals and how does the consumer identify them?”  This question has become more and more important as the industry grows at a rapid pace.  The BLS says, “as businesses and insurance organizations continue to recognize the benefits of health and fitness programs for their employees, incentives to join gyms or other fitness facilities will increase the need for workers in these areas much faster than average (their highest rating) as an increase of 20% or more, with the health and fitness profession expected to increase by 24%. The BLS estimated that, in 2010, there were approximately 251,400 fitness trainers employed and projects that, by 2020, that number will increase to 311,800 (a difference of 60,400 workers, a 29% increase in the workforce in just 10 years). It has become clear that in this still sluggish economy, as the market for fitness professionals becomes even more crowded and more competitive, some degree of regulation either from within the industry or from external sources (i.e., government) seems to be growing as several states and the District of Columbia have considered legislation to regulate personal trainers just as it does physicians, lawyers, and pharmacists.”[1] This shows us the importance and the need of some type of regulations in the industry.  “Recent nationwide legislative activity might make the health/fitness professional or clinical exercise physiologists think that licensure is right around the corner, but in reality, for many professions, state-by-state licensure may take 20 years or more.”[2] It is unfortunate that we are so far away from the government getting involved but if the government began to govern the industry there would be a more constant and higher standard for personal trainers.  It would also increase the value of personal training.  If an individual that has been in the industry for twelve years and has a masters in kinesiology can be considered at the same level of someone who has a certification that was acquired in forty minutes, something is wrong and needs to be fixed.

As the industry stands now, a highly educated and experienced fitness professional is one with multiple accreditations from certifications to higher education and has a desire to continue to educate themselves through more schooling, certifications, workshops, and fitness conferences.  A real professional should never stop educating themselves and must stay current with the times.  This allows the fitness professional to improve their skills, experience, and professionalism.  Another trait of an educated and experienced fitness professional is their work experience.  It is important to have real life experience in the fitness industry.  The longer one is in the industry the more empirical data they collect and the better they become.  Lastly and the most important part of being an educated and experienced fitness professional is the level of professionalism that comes from their work ethic, business practices, professional boundaries, client confidentiality, and conflicts of interest.[3]  A highly educated and experienced fitness professional will not cross these lines and will up hold these standards to the fullest.  When looking to hire a professional in any industry you always need to do your own research and find out if they fit these criteria.

 

Reference

1. Thompson, R., Walter, Ph.D., FACSM. (2012, November/December). Worldwide Survey of Fitness Trends for 2013. ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal. Vol. 16 (6), pp.8-17. Retrieved February 13^th, 2013, from http://web.ebscohost.com
2. Paternostro-Bayles, Madeline, Ph.D., FACSM. (2010, March/April). The Future of Health/Fitness and Clinical Exercise Professionals. ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal. Vol. 14 (2), pp.40-41. Retrieved February 13^th, 2013, from http://web.ebscohost.com
3. Peterson, A., James, Ph.D., FACSM. (2010, May/June). Take Ten: Ethical Issues Facing Health/Fitness Professionals. ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal. Vol. 14 (3), pp.45-46. Retrieved February 13^th, 2013, from http://web.ebscohost.com

I am not going to talk about diet even thou I really like that topic.  I am going to talk about my “three strikes you’re out” coaching rule.  Let me start with I will never and I mean never give up on an athlete or member or client.  I will always give them 110%, I will always try to insure there safety and encourage them to improve.  However I do have a three strikes you’re out rule when it comes to coaching exercises.

If I am cuing an athlete and I cue them once, twice and then a third time I will stop you mid-set and look you in the eyes and tell you.  Than I will let you go at it again I will use a different cue for the same correction.  After the next three strikes and as long as it looks close and there not going to hurt them self I let them fet at it.  I am looking for and hoping that a light may shot off over your head and you get it.  The reality is if you have only been training in CrossFit for a year or two and did not just get done with your collegiate career or in the Pros you sure as shit are not just going to pick up a front squat or push press right out the gate.  Not saying your not going to get it, it just take time to acquire a skill.

In Malcolm Gladwell contently mentions the “10,000-Hour Rule” in his book “Outliers: The Story of Success,” he claims that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.  The Russians, “Program and Organization of Training by Verkhoshansky,” had a very similar view on the “10,000-Hour Rule” for the mastery of sports.  The rule states that if you put 10,000 hours in to anything you will be good at it.  I do believe that some times you can get good at something a little faster however even if your gifted it takes a shit load of time to be great!

Back to three strikes you’re out idea and thinking now about the 10,000-Hour Rule athletes need to just train and keep working on that skill.  Also all the cuing in the world can not equal time in training.  Now if you have great cuing, than it will make it easier to speed up the learning g curve.  The learning phases take time to go through as well.  Keep in mind that people learn different and at different speeds.

Different was athletes learn are:
Verbal: Listening to cues
Visual: Watching demonstrations, watching themselves in the mirror
Kinesthetic:  Feeling the movement in their body, tactile cueing.
When I coach I use all methods of teaching skills and find out which one(s) work best for that particular athlete.

Tomorrow I will talk about the learning phases and how to use them with the learning styles to speed up the learning process.

 

 

I am on a diet Vs. actually being on a diet! What is a diet and what is its goal… Is it a life style or is it a way of life? Is it a short term goal or a long term goal? You have to ask yourself what do I really want and how long am I willing to work for it. That shit just got deep! Haha… Now don’t over think it. Like an addict start slow. One day to one hour at a time. Go over your habit check list (HCL).

Let’s say your goal is to lose 20lbs. You got to know that if you lose a pound or 2lbs a week, it would take you 10 to 20 weeks to lose that weight, and that’s if your real fucking good at dieting!!! Age too, the older you are the slow the metabolism and if you have had kids… Don’t get scared yet you can do it! It all comes down to time. 10 weeks is under 3 months, easy. 20 weeks is 5 months almost half the year. Can you dedicate 6 months to a year to dieting?

Am I on a diet? That is a question for one self. Are you on the diet 100%? Are you giving it 110%? Are you doing everything it takes to get to your goal? If you say yes to this I would say your 50% their.  The reality is we are doing something that is not allowing us to get to our diet goals.  The other 50% is finding what that is!  If it takes 30 to 120 days to build good habits that means in that time you don’t fall off of what the diet rules are.  If you were addicted to crack and did heroin it would still be a relapse.  You would not say you were clean or would you say I am clean on crack but I did kinda break my sobriety for heroin and that’s OK…  That is a little extreme but you get my point sober is sober and being on a diet is the same to me!  Like an addict you most be willing to change and stop old habits.  So if the diet your own makes you count points and you guesstimate that would mean your not on the diet.  If it says to eat clean and no sugars and your drinking or having dry fruit… Your not on the diet!  If you don’t eat on a schedule and time it or if you miss meals your not on a diet.  If it says not to eat grains but you have a little oatmeal in the am your not on the diet.  You do not get to pick and choose when your on the diet or what parts of the diet work for you and what parts do not!  After the first cycle of 4 months of dieting than and only than you may have good data to start altering your diet and what it is doing to you.  Now the down side to that is you have to have been 100% compliant to really now if its working or not.  The biggest thing I see is people following the diet 100% and then going out on a Thursday and having a “clean” meal.  I say this cuz do you really know what the chief put in or on the food?  Do you know who much food it is?  Let’s say you do, I still feel if I do not make it I really don’t know what I am eating.  Also do you count how many times you fall off the diet?  It is important to understand what is keeping you off the diet and unless we get a 3rd party involved sometimes it hard to see.  Back to that idea of going out on a Thursday and lets say I drink a beer, its only one beer, well that is me off the diet.  Than lets say I go on Saturday and have a bite of my wife’s burger or sandwich… Again that is a fuck up and in most peoples mind that dose not even register as not following the diet.  So find your slip ups and fix them and be honest with yourself!

Now it is real RUFF, not rough, but RUFF is real F’n RUFF to follow a diet plan to the “T.”  If you are honest with yourself and you realize you are not on the diet 100%, and X, Y, & Z is how I am missing it up I would say your really close to reaching your goal!!!  It dose not matter what diet you do.  Most of them work because you cut something out.  So a low carb, low fat, low protein, or low calorie diet is just that a low-low diet!  So if you jump on a diet to cut weight and you cut something that was once in your diet and is no longer in it you should loss weight.  If you are not losing weight unfortunately you have replaced one with another!

Remember “Diets don’t make you lose weight, you dieting makes you lose weight.”  Do not blame the diet!

I was going to talk about “thinking I am on a diet Vs. actually being on a diet!”  But I really think I need to talk about the actual mental fortitude that is required to diet.  So yesterday I made it clear that you need to be accountable in your diet and have some type of data of what is happening to accomplish your goal.  So clearly you need to weigh yourself or your food, but you need to know what you are doing on a daily level.  Also consistence over a long amount of time is key in accomplishing your goal.  As a CrossFiter I have made a sport of everything and when looking at the sport of dieting the best out their are the bodybuilders.

Bodybuilders are all show and no go!  I got that… Yes, they are strong and look great but they would get crushed in any type of sport that requires multipole plans of motion movements.   It would be great to see Ronnie Coleman heads up with any basketball player, I think Ronnie would break an ankle!  Yeah, buddy!!!  Ronnie is an amazing athlete in is own right.  Strong as shit and has his diet looked up!  In the Off-season male bodybuilders go from 4% body fat up to 12 to 16%.  Some can get big like +20% body fat and will cut back down to 4% for a show.  Think of the mental discipline to let your abs go away hopping you can get them back again.  When they cut down they cut calories, water, everything!  Than to gain wait they do the opposite.  So if you had to start a diet tomorrow that you had to eat 5,000 to 6,000 calories a day for 3 to 4 months you might get excited.  Than you would have to go 3 to 4 months of eating 1,800 to 2,800 calories you would tell me to “Go Fuck Yourself!”  I wouldn’t blame you.  Think of the condition response that is created in each phase of the diet.  If you did this cycle for 2 to 4 years it would no longer be a battle.  You would have condition your mind and body to handle it.  Which is my topic for today, CONDITIONED RESPONSE TO HUNGER!

The Conditioning of Hunger:
“Conditioned Hunger (CH) is developed when a Conditioned Stimulus (CS) is followed by the occurrence of a deprivation condition, such as hunger, the CS acquires the ability to elicit hunger and feeding responses.”

So I ask have you conditioned yourself to fell hungry or are you really hungry?  I feel that 90% of the time that I am hungry is just a Condition Response (CR) to something.  Example is after dinner I want a desert.  Why because I am fat and I like eating sweets and want more.  So do I really need desert after a 20oz porterhouse?  Probable not.  If its someones birthday go for it!  Same goes for appetizers, I like pre-food or warm-up food, food that is going to get me ready to eat my meal.  Yeah I do not need to eat an appetizer but again its a habit.  The worse one is between the hours of 7pm to bed time.  I have conditioned myself to snack and snack aggressively!  If you know me I can eat a 1,000 to 2,000 cals in trail mix in a seating!  When I don’t care I will buy 1.8lbs of frozen yogurt and eat it easy!  I even have conditioned myself to sleep eat. Now the battle starts…  How do I get rid of these awful habits?

10 Steps to get rid of bad habits:

1. Realize the habits
2. Recognize the habits you want to break
3. Realize how dedicated you are to breaking the habit
4. Log Everything and Track when you do the habit
5. Break down the habit when you do it.  Write down when, where, and why.
6. Reflect on what you wrote and what you could have done different to avoid the habit.
7. Replace the habit with another one.  Not always the best thing but may make it easier to achieve your goal.
8. Stop yourself!  This is the mental game I was talking about…  It all comes down to this, can you stop yourself?
9. Practice these exercise AMAP!!!  Build a new routine, which builds new CS, and will change the CR.  Good practice makes for good habits.
10. Believe!!!  Know that it is going to talk the same amount of time to break a habit that it took to make a habit.  Give yourself time!  Let yourself fuck up and let it go!  Believe that if you keep working on it will happen.

Do you have the mental fortitude to fight?  Do you really want it?  All the coaching in the world can not help you if you wont help yourself!  Fuck I feel like I just rambled for a few paragraphs but I hope you understand that I believe in everyone I just wish they believed in them self and fought that little voice fucking them up!

Some Ronnie Videos:

Reference:

http://highered.mcgraw-hill.com

Long time blogger… First time blogging!!!  I have had a blog now for over or close to 10 years now, and a very relay write my own thoughts on it.  I have made a challenge for myself that I will blog every day about something for the next 8 weeks.  Wish me luck!  Not sure what time I will be posting but I will try to post before noon or a recap of the day.  I do not know yet.  Just know that my spelling sucks and if you think that should discredit what I am writing about you can go FUCK YOURSELF!  HERE WE GO…

I will start with talking about dieting since that is what I am struggling with right now in my life.  I have been working on it for a year now and have gone from 272lbs at 24% body fat, down to 225lbs at 9% body fat.  My over all goal is to get down to 206lbs, but that is going to be a sacrifice.  I would say it will take me a total of a year and a half and up to 2 years to get to my goal weight and body fat.

This brings me to my point!  When looking at dieting and consistence for most people there is none.  Look at the Paleo diet most will get on it eat all this clean food but eat too much of it.  The other one is drinking…  I’m pretty sure that even if you drink wine or mead paleolithic man was not doing it every Friday and Saturday.  So yeah you should be allowed a cheat day or cheat meal, but again you have to weigh and measure something.  Shit, if you look at Greg Glassman “World-Class Fitness in 100 Words,”  the very first thing he talks about is “Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar.  Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.”  So again lets look very closely to what his opening statement says, “Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat,” how do you know that unless you weigh your food or yourself every day?  Us as CrossFitters will log and quantify everything but never the diet!

Did you know that if you train 3 hours a day, 5 days a week, that’s 15 hours a week, which is only 9% of the week.  So the other 91% of the time is Nutrition and recovery.  As an athlete you watch your sleeping habits, why wouldn’t you watch your eating habits.  I am no talking about a 30 day challenge!  I am challenge you to watch what you eat for 6 months to a year.  Think about it, if you fall of the diet 5 to 10 times in the month that is 15% to 33% of the month.  That means in one month you only dieted 3 out of the 4 weeks.  That is a very scary number!  If you do that in 3 months which is a quarter of the year you only where on the diet 2 out of the 3 months and in one year that would mean you were off the diet for 3 whole months.  That is a quarter of the year off the diet and the sad this is the whole time you think you are crushing or following the diet.

Dam… Guess I do have a lot to talk about!!!  Tomorrow I will talk about thinking I am on a diet Vs. actually being on a diet!

The MTR Matrix

This is basically a system of volume/intensity progression that was used by the old Bulgarian regime that has not fallen out of favor. You can play with and rearrange the weeks as you like, but my preference is to go A-B-B-C-A. Some people can handle A-B-C-D. Try different things and see what works for you.     Also, to start with a lifter is probably best off basing the entire mesocycle on the MTR that was used during the first week. So, the weeks will just build upon each other.

As the lifter becomes more comfortable with the system and his own capabilities, however, he will become more in tune with what his true MTR is on any given day, and during weeks B and C, respectively, will basically just do a second wave and a third wave back up to that weight irrespective of what MTR was used during week one.

 

“A” Week:

Predicted MTR -20kilos for 2 reps.

Predicted MTR -10 kilos for a single.

MTR for 3-4 singles.

“B” Week:

Perform A week progression.

MTR -10 kilos for a double.

MTR -5 kilos for a single.

MTR +5 kilos for 2-4 singles.

 

“C” Week:

Entire B week progression performed.

Double with MTR -20 kilos.

Double with MTR -10 kilos.

3-5 more singles with MTR plus 5 or 7.5 kilos.

“D” Week:

Predicted MTR -30kilos for 2 reps.

Predicted MTR -20 kilos for a single.

MTR for 1-3 singles.

 

So, if you were doing a simple A-B-B-C-A progression over 5 weeks, and you found that your snatch MTR was 100kg on the first Monday, for the next 5 weeks your Monday snatch workouts might be as follows:

 

Week 1: 80/2, 90, 100 (3-4)                            Week 2: 80/2, 90, 100 (3), 90/2, 95, 105 (2-4)

Week 3: 80/2, 90, 100 (3), 90/2, 95, 105 (3), 80/2, 90/2, 105 (2), 107.5 (2)               Week 4: 80/2, 90, 100 (3-4)

At this point, the lifter would start over, this time likely using 105 as the MTR for the first A week in the mesocycle.

 

Maximum Training Resistance.

Now, one of the important concepts here is that of “Maximum Training Resistance.” This is what some of you may have heard referred to as a ‘daily max’ before.

The definition of the MTR is “the maximum resistance that can be overcome one time without a strong effort of will or emotional stress.” This is key in this program; at least as I have it structured to work for the individual.

We want to use the MTR so as not to burn out the nervous system. Thus, on Mondays and Wednesday, the singles in the classical and power lifts must NOT be ‘balls to the wall.

Of course, you have to toe the line. Also, you have to learn whether you are missing lifts because you are actually working above your MTR, or because your form sucks.

For me, it is an issue of pulling in the snatch and clean and the drive in the jerk. If I am pulling the bar high enough to snatch it or clean it, and driving it high enough to jerk it, I don’t feel that I have exceeded my MTR, whether I am making the lifts or not.

If I am missing my snatches out front, it is likely just because of my crappy first pull and lack of a full shrug, and not because I am going too heavy. As a lifter progresses, he will learn exactly where that line is.

At the start of the program, Mondays and Wednesdays only will be done using the ‘MTR Matrix’.