Can someone please make a legitimate rationale why we don’t just make “Daylight Savings Time” standard time year round?
Granted this is rooted from a selfish place and is all about me being a cantankerous, sleep-deprived parent of a one-year old.
Seriously, why?
Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?
SIDE NOTE: Lisa and I are finally heading out to go see Black Panther tonight. Up until this point I still feel Winter Soldier is the best Marvel movie yet, but I’m expecting my face to be melted tonight for sure. Can’t wait.
I’ve got a bevy of speaking engagements lined up for 2018, and next week begins the madness.
I’ll be in NYC speaking at a few Equinox locations on March 16th and 17th, and from there on out I’ve got a place to be at least one weekend every month for the foreseeable future.
It’s a nice feeling to be in demand.
I’d encourage you to click the link above or THIS one for more details/insights into where I’ll be and when.
Events Just Around the Corner
Spurling Spring Seminar – Kennebunk, ME: April 14th
Coaching Competency Workshop – Sterling, VA: April 21st
The Fitness Summit – Kansas City, MO: May 4-5th (Dean Somerset and I are doing a special 4-hour PRE-CON for this event).
Registration for this highly competitive certification opens on April 4th. However, I’ve got some good, nay, fucking amazing news.
I’ve negotiated some awesome perks for you:
Early access to enroll on April 3rd (24 hrs before they open to the public), increasing your chances of getting in.
A huge discount (up to 33% off the regular price).
This is without question one of the best certifications any fitness professional can possess, offering incredible value and helps to separate you from the masses.
We all have bad days. Kid’s sick, spouse is angry, your favorite tv character died, whatever. It’s still imperative as a coach to show up and demonstrate to your athletes/clients that you WANT to be there.
All I have to say is that this article would have helped me tremendously if I had access to it the week I started my first personal training gig out of college.
Looking back I was such a mess.
Excellent guest post today by NY-based (Capital district) strength coach Mike Sirani.
As a student or aspiring professional, you’ll often hear that preparation is the key to success. If you put in the hours studying and practicing, you’ll surely reap the rewards later on.
Flash-forward a couple years later: you’ve graduated school and just finished your first session with a personal training client.
Do you still feel like the above statement rings true?
The answer is likely no. Nothing can prepare you for your first time training another human being — not all the anatomy, physiology, chemistry, or Call of Duty you spent hours on in college.
Why’s this the case?
You’re now being asked to combine the science with the art. You can write the perfect program and explain all of the physiological adaptations that will come from it, but what happens when your client steps into the squat rack for their first set and the first five reps look as coordinated as a Charles Barkley golf swing?
What you choose to do next will either make you look like a Jedi genius or make you seem confusing and unhelpful. In the above scenario, you have three choices to improve the client’s technique:
Cue the individual and see if it improves their technique
Regress the exercise and see if the movement improves
Use a corrective exercise to break down the movement and help the client get a better grasp on what they should be doing.
Below, we’re going to review these three choices and discuss when it’s best to use each of them, depending on the individual, their personality, and the setting they’re training in.
Choice #1: Cueing
This should always be your first option to correct an exercise as a strength coach or personal trainer.
Anyone can move around and sweat on their own. It’s your job to coach and educate clients on the correct way to do an exercise in order to help them reach their goals faster and stay healthy while doing so.
Good cueing is something that most clients will take note of and appreciate. A great coach will keep these short and sweet and cater to the client’s learning style, whether that’s:
Auditory
Visual
Kinesthetic
Understanding the client’s personality type can also make cueing more effective.
If a client has a Type A personality, they may want more details about the exercise and why you’re making certain corrections. Someone who’s more laid back may simply want to be told a correction and then left alone.
Remember, this is where the science and the art meet. The more people you train, the better intuition you’ll develop as to what amount of cueing is too much vs. too little, whether to give internal or external cues, or if a specific cue works or not.
Choice #2: Regress the Exercise
What happens when you’re cueing and what you’re trying to convey isn’t registering with your client? This can result in a frustrated client, but hopefully you don’t let it get to this point. If you sense it’s heading in this direction, there’s nothing wrong with regressing an exercise.
Regress the back squat to a front squat, or the push-up to an incline push-up.
When regressing, it’s important to put the regression into context for the client.
This helps keep their confidence up and set the stage for progressing back to the exercise you originally programmed. Let them know why you’re regressing it, how the regression will improve their technique, and what needs to be done to progress back to the original exercise.
Regressing an exercise is also a strategy that may be utilized more quickly in a group setting when you don’t have the same amount of time to cue someone, like you would in a semi-private or one-on-one setting.
Choice #3: Use a Corrective Exercise
Too often, coaches will skip choices one and two and move right into bringing clients through the gamut of corrective exercises.
If you feel like a client needs a laundry list of correctives, it’s more beneficial to refer them out to a physical therapist or another healthcare professional that can better handle their issues. That way, you can use regressions to ensure the client continues getting a training effect when they’re with you, while the physical therapist helps get them back on track towards progressing specific exercises.
I have found using corrective exercises beneficial in certain scenarios, such as speeding up a client’s motor learning of a specific movement via chunking (breaking bigger movement down into component parts).
Let’s say a client is having a hard time learning the deadlift.
You’re giving excellent cues and have regressed the client from the trap bar to a Kettlebell Deadlift. However, their technique still isn’t pretty. Here, I may break down the movement with two corrective exercises.
One is used to teach the client to extend through their thoracic spine, while the other teaches movement at the hips without movement in the lumbar spine.
Thoracic Extension on Foam Roller
Hip Hinge Teaching Tools
In Summary
Unfortunately, there’s not one quick fix to improve someone’s technique on any exercise. There are too many variables in play for it to be that simple.
Appreciate the science of a program and spend time in the coaching trenches making choices from the three options above. The more you’re forced to make that choice, the better artistic instinct you’ll develop, and the better you’ll be at quickly making the best choice with a client.
About the Author
Mike Sirani is the Co-Owner of Capital District Sport and Fitnessin Round Lake, NY. He’s an experienced strength and conditioning coach and massage therapist who has spent the majority of his career in Boston training professional, collegiate, and high school athletes of various sports, as well as helping general fitness clients of all backgrounds learn to move better and get stronger than ever before. He earned his Bachelor of Science Degree in Applied Exercise Science, with a concentration in Sports Performance, from Springfield College and completed a highly sought after six-month internship at Cressey Sports Performance. Mike specializes in teaching athletes and general fitness clients to get the most out of their bodies by enhancing their movement quality and creating exercises programs that allow you to get stronger, faster, and more powerful in a safe and effective manner.
In literature we see it all the time in the form of heroes (Beowulf) vs. villains (Grendel), good (Gryffindor) vs. bad (Slytherin), or real (Milwaukee) vs. imaginary (Minas Tirith).
We see it all the time in real life too:
Democrats vs. Republicans
Science vs. People Who Make a Ham Sandwich Look Intelligent
Autobots vs. Decepticons
The idea behind dichtomy is to demonstrate or showcase a contrast between two things that are represented as being opposed or entirely different.
Who’s right?, who’s wrong?, what’s better?, what’s worse?, bacon is delicious, no, fuck that, you’re going to hell…
The fitness industry sees no shortage of it either.
All you have to do is spend 17 seconds on Twitter before you want to jump into a shark’s mouth you witness people on both sides of the fence – low-carb vs. high-carb, CrossFitters vs. powerlifters, back squats vs. no squats – tear each other to shreds.
Both sides are adamant their position is the right position, “how can you not see it?,” and the dichotomous divide seemingly grows larger and larger.
I’m going to skip the mental gymnastics today, and instead focus my attention on something else that’s a liiitle less dramatic and less of a dumpster fire to talk about…
Training volume.
Disclaimer:This will not to be a deep-dive into the nitty-gritty, nerdtastic world of program design and volume. It’s a rabbit hole to say the least. I’m gonna get into some of the particulars, but not too much. Sorry.
My goal is to just offer a few talking points and ideas.
For a nice amuse-bouche on the topic, however, I’d recommend THIS article by Greg Nuckols.
Training Volume, Defined
For all intents and purpose training volume (as it relates to lifting things) can most easily be calculated as such:
Sets x reps x load
The final number can be labelled as total tonnage (or total amount lifted).
For example if someone performs 3 sets of 5 reps with 225 lbs on the bench press it can be broken down as 15 total reps x 225 lbs = 3,375 lbs.
Congratulations. You just benched a Volkswagen you savage.
The idea, then, is to adopt the concept of progressive overload (via performing more sets, reps, load, or any combination) to do more work in subsequent workouts.
Using the same example, lets say it’s a week later (or tomorrow if you’re a man under the age of 40) and you wanted to bench press again. To increase training volume you’d incorporate one of following scenarios:
Increase All Three: 4 sets of 6 reps @ 230 lbs = 5,520 lbs
Increase CrossFit: 24 sets of 17 @ Scaled # = Can’t feel the left side of your face
That’s a very watered down and simplified explanation, but should get the gist across.
In short: Ensure that you’re doing more work by tracking stuff and good things will inevitably happen.
As an umbrella theme, however, it’s important to understand that this approach does have limitations.
We’re humans, not Kryptonians.
There’s an inevitable “tipping point” that’s bound to take place. Adding more and more training volume (a poor periodization scheme in the long run) will eventually have deleterious effects.
I like what Mike Boyle has to say on the matter:
“Periodization might be the most overstudied subject in the training world. Tens of thousands of pages have been written detailing the complexities of microcycles and mesocycles. And this has only served to confuse what should be a fairly simple concept, as articulated by strength & conditioning legend Charles Poliquin in the 1988 article “Variety in Strength Training”: Phases of high volume (accumulation, extensive loading), high intensity (intensification, intensive loading) and unloading should be modulated within the program.“
In other words:
Higher volume, low load periods should be alternated with higher-intensity, lower-volume periods.
[Smoke bomb, smoke bomb, exit stage right]
To give a brief example I’ve always liked fluctuating training volume on a weekly basis, which is something I gravitated towards from my years as a coach at Cressey Sports Performance:
Lets use the deadlift as an example here with the main goal being to improve strength:
A. Deadlift
Week 1: 1×2 @ 83%
Week 2: 1×2 @ 85%
Week 3: 1×2 @ 87%
Week 4: 1×1 @ 90%
B. Deadlift – Speed(ish)
Week 1 (High Volume): 4×3 @ 70%, 1×5 @ 65%
Week 2 (Medium Volume): 3×3@ 70%, 1×5 @ 60%
Week 3 (High Volume): 5×3 @ 70%, 1×5, @ 60%
Week 4: (Low Volume): 3×3 @ 65%
To reiterate: taking into account sets/reps/load and trying to use any permutations you wish to ensure someone is doing more work is never a bad place to start.
It’s training volume 101. And it works.
HOWEVER
I’d encourage you to heed this Tweet from Eric Cressey from a few days ago:
Volume is one way to achieve overload in a training program. If it is the only progression option you have in your toolbox, though, it’s not going to work out well long-term.
When trainers/coaches place too much emphasis on overall volume and use that as their only metric to measure progress it can be problematic.
It reminds me of something strength coach and physical therapist, Dr. Quinn Henoch, has discussed on numerous occasions. We’re quick to pump the brakes and implement any number of corrective exercises when one of our client’s shoulders starts to hurt.
Okay, not the worst thing in the world. I’m not going to cry afoul if a trainer/coach wants to toss in a bit more soft tissue work on someone’s pecs or lats:
Been playing around with my new toy at CORE, The Ultimate Back Roller, via @ACUMOBILITY. It’s great for rolling the back, but I’ve been using it for other areas as well. Use the coupon code Gentilcore for 10% off. pic.twitter.com/qzh3143Zjq
I’ve even heard of instances where people are encouraged to get blood work done; as if finding out they’re allergic to grass-fed acai berries will miraculously cure their lack of scapular upward rotation.
The fuck?
Instead, what Quinn is quick to point out is this: Maybe you need to audit your program and adjust total training volume?
It could be as simple as you’re prescribing too much training volume compared to what someone is able to recover from.
That’s why they’re hurt.
Not because they need more Ipsilateral Birddog Balloon Breathing.
Which begs the question: What are some ways in which to increase overload that doesn’t entail just increasing volume?
Well, two come to mind.
1. Get People Into Better Positions
I’d argue the reason many trainees are unable to make much progress in the gym to begin with is because they’re unable to get into appropriate positions to express their “true” strength.
Take the squat.
I see something like this:
Any asshat coach or trainer can tack on more volume to the above walking (or, rather, squatting) ball of fail.
Physical Therapist Gray Cook would refer to this as “adding fitness on top of dysfunction,” which isn’t doing anyone any favors.
Rather, taking the time to actually coach someone so they’re in a better position to be successful is what’s going to make a difference.
Trainees are given a massive piece of humble pie when they’re getting sore from a load that’s 50-75% less than their perceived one-rep max.
2. Change the Center of Mass
Bringing a load closer to the ground makes an exercise easier. A prime example is any single leg variation where DBs are held at the side(s):
If I wanted to make this harder and as a result increase overload without necessarily adjusting training volume all I’d have to do is move the DBs to a higher position or maybe revert to something like a Barbell Reverse Lunge w/ Front Squat Grip.
That’s That
Training volume, too, has a very dichotomous vibe to it.
On one end of the spectrum there’s the “do more” mentality (which is a thing, and an important part of strength & conditioning). But on the other end there’s a delicate balance of what amount of volume a particular person can handle as it relates to their ability to recover.
And finally it’s important to have other tricks in your bag other than adding more of it in order to help your clients/athletes get better.
Like I said, I didn’t want to get too far into the weeds on the topic of training volume, but I hope this helped.
A few weeks ago I Tweeted something to the effect of “Don’t be afraid to let your clients figure things out for themselves. Not every rep has to be a pristine vision that makes the Virgin Mary weep tears of joy.”
I gave the example of the knees caving in during a squat. Many coaches see this and they start hyperventilating into a paper bag no matter what.
I keep it real.
There’s a stark difference between the knees caving in TO neutral and caving in to the point where someone falls into excessive valgus.
Anyways, my little rant inspired Baltimore based strength coach (and fellow Lord of the Rings nerd), Erica Suter, to write a guest post.
The Problems With Over Coaching (And Some Solutions)
Sit your butt back.
Keep your chest out.
Put your shoulders back.
Engage your lats.
Wait, pretend there are tennis balls under your arm pits.
Squeeze your glutes too.
Breathe.
Don’t smile.
Did you get all of that?
Does this sound like you as a coach? Let’s hope not.
Too many cues have their way of confusing and frustrating our clients. More often than not, they become overwhelming. Worse yet, they become too much information for people to process during a session, let alone, mid-lift.
Don’t get me wrong: correcting people is a good thing. We wouldn’t be coaches if we didn’t coach. To that end, we have to instruct people so they are executing pristine form and progressing.
However, too much instructing, over-coaching, over-cueing, or saying-shit-just-to-say-shit-and-hear-yourself-talk, is problematic.
Over-coaching is real and it permeates across the fitness industry as one of the biggest issues, besides perfectly staged selfies in yoga pants on a beach:
So why is over-coaching bad?
Problem 1: Too many Cues Confuses People.
Since clients are performing complex movements that excite the nervous system, the last thing they need is someone barking orders at them.
As an example, there’s already so much going on in a client’s mind during the deadlift:
Chest out, butt back, Megan Fox is hot, credit card bill due tomorrow, get kids from school, breathe, shoulders back, if only I could marry Megan Fox.
You see how stimulated their mind is already?
So a coach adding 5-10 things for them to fix is bound to go in one ear and out the other.
Solution: Focus on the most glaring mistakes.
Try and keep it to one to two cues, too.
You may find that one cue is what works the magic for multiple problems. As an example when you see a client with a “rounded back,” this happens because the client fails to engage their lates, sink their hips back, or keep their chest proud.
One magic cue could be “project your chest like Superman” or you can go as far to as to give them tennis balls to actually squeeze under their arm pits so they can adjust their posture.
Or to touch on a more tactile cue (no pun intended), for this pallof drag, the only thing my athlete needed in order to maintain and athletic stance was put a mini band above her knees:
Again, sometimes one thing fixes EVERYTHING.
Problem 2: There’s Nothing Worse Than Being Told How Wrong You Are.
And I get it. People fuck up. But over-coaching makes them to feel like failures.
As an example, I had a client unable to back squat. And no matter how many fancy cues, various demonstrations, correctives, and prayers to the squat Gods I threw out there, he couldn’t get it down and told me he felt like a failure because he couldn’t squat.
So instead of saying, “sorry, squats are off limits,” we had to change things up.
Solution: Realize some people need a variation on a basic movement in order to “get it.”
What my client needed to get more depth and hip mobility in his squat was front loading.
So we tried this gem from strength coach Joel Seedman:
Not only did it help him better groove the squat position, it also helped him not feel like a failure that is banned from squats forever.
Will he progress to back squats one day? I’d argue never say never.
Problem 3: Over-Coaching Doesn’t Give People Autonomy.
Sure, they hired you to hold their hand, but allowing clients to gain independence helps them gain confidence back in themselves.
People aren’t paying coaches to have a babysitter. They’re paying coaches to get strong, instill confidence back in themselves, and be able to go out into the wild alone at times, namely, do shit themselves.
Solution: It shouldn’t be a surprise that you should allow them to fix it themselves.
This much I know: people’s bodies are awkward.
But.
They’re also capable of amazing feats of strength and movement and exploration. The body plays mysterious tricks on us and surprises us with its abilities.
Oftentimes, I may have an athlete struggling with a movement like the dumbbell snatch on Day One. And saying coaches cues, sprinkling fairy dust on them, and performing wizardry still won’t work.
With that said, I’ll give them one cue, and if it still looks like shit, I’ll leave the facility, go get a burger, go to bed, and come back the next day, and boom….their snatch is flawless.
Again, the body is amazing and people can be capable of fixing themselves after they learn a movement, fuck it up and learn and feel what NOT to do, sleep on it, and come back with good form.
One More Thing: Please don’t toss out too many cues just to say shit. Sometimes, the best coaches are able to sit back, observe, drop one knowledge bomb, and exit stage right.
Let your clients work their magic and trust me when I say keep it simple.
After all, simplicity is the highest form of sophistication.
About the Author
Erica Suter is a certified strength and conditioning coach, soccer trainer, and fitness blogger who has worked with athletes and non-athletes for over 5 years. She is currently a strength coach at JDyer Strength and Conditioning, and also runs her own technical soccer training business in Baltimore, MD.
Her interests include writing, snowboarding, and reciting Lord of the Rings quotes to her athletes and clients.
I’m excited to be heading back to KC this year for The Fitness Summit. It’s always been one of my favorite fitness events of the year.
This year is a first, however.
Dean Somerset and I have been invited to do a Pre-Conference to get the festivities started that weekend.
We’ll be taking deep dive into squat and deadlift technique: discussing ankle, foot, hip and upper extremity considerations in conjunction with regressions/progressions, programming, and breaking down technique flaws.
It’ll be a four-hour glimpse into how we coach.
There’s currently a FLASH sale of $10 off for the Pre-Conference ($90), and then you get to listen to the likes of Bret Contreras, Alan Aragon, Mark Fisher, Susan Kleiner, Greg Nuckols, and many others for the next two days after that.
I’m excited to announce that both myself and my wife, Dr. Lisa Lewis, will be presenting at the inaugural Spurling Spring Seminar at Spurling Fitness in Kennebunk, ME in a few months.
If you live in New England and you’re a fitness professional you won’t want to miss it. Early bird special is currently in effect.
Here’s my thought: Almost always, the reason why most people fail to see consistent progress in the gym is because their sleep habits are piss poor.
It’s not because you’re not taking enough creatine laced with Raspberry Ketones dipped in Unicorn tears. Nor is it because you’re not adding chains to your squats.
The reason why you’re “stuck” is because you need to go to freaking bed.
The picture of Ron Burgandy will make sense. Promise.
I have a lot of clients who travel for work and don’t always have access to a barbell. This article will now be shared with all of them
Excellent stuff from Todd.
Social Media Shenanigans
Twitter
Nutrition Tip to Nutritionist (from a non-nutritionist): Stop saying cheese and peanut butter are good sources of protein. I LOVE both, and they do *have* protein, but calorically dense per/serving. Mediocre, nay, paltry, sources of protein at best.
What Does It Do? – In short, it’s an excellent introductory drill that trains explosiveness and power; albeit in multiple planes AND in a manner that’s very joint friendly and relatively easy to learn.
I’ve never been shy or reluctant to admit I’m a coach who’s not in any way, shape, or form competent in the OLY lifts.
When I was at Cressey Sports Performance we never prioritized them with our athletes – instead leaning very much on things like medicine ball throws, KB swings, bounding, and sprinting – and even now, at CORE, I still don’t prioritize them.
This is not to insinuate I feel the OLY lifts aren’t wonderful or that they don’t work. To speak candidly I’m at a point in my coaching career where I know what I’m good at and if someone I’m working with really wanted to learn them (or I felt they could benefit from learning them) I have many colleagues in the area I can refer to.
NOTE: If you’re interested you can read more about why I don’t use the OLY lifts HERE.
What I like most about using the landmine in this instance is that it kinda-sorta keeps things predictable; I.e., the barbell will more or less stay in the same path each and every repetition.
This makes the learning curve infinitely shorter.
What I also like about this variation is that it combines a lot of “good” things into one movement: Hip hinge, split stance, rotary stability, transverse (multi-planar) motion, and fake “overhead” pressing.2
The latter makes this an excellent exercise for those who play sports with a heavy overhead component (baseball, basketball, swimming) or for those who may lack the requisite mobility to go completely overhead.
Key Coaching Cues: This isn’t something a lot of people can perform on Day 1. Sure, you’ll get some athletes/clients who will be able to pick it up quickly, but typically I’ll first need to take the time to coach someone through a proper hip hinge, progressing them from a deadlift to a KB swing, KB/DB clean, and also pepper in a fair amount of anti-rotation movements (carries, for example) alongside landmine pressing variations.
In short: it’s important to master the “parts” of the movement before you train the whole enchilada.
Only then will the movement make sense or “click” with someone.
Once there, though:
The move should start with the plate “hovering” a few inches above the ground, with the inside leg (leg closest to the bar) staggered.
It’s important not to “lose” the shoulders; upper back stiffness is crucial.
They’ll then clean the barbell, rotate, and “catch” it in an extended squared-stance position. Like I said above it’s one of those exercises that’s best broken down into its parts. Once the novelty of those have been addressed it makes the actual exercise a bit easier to handle.
I tend to stick in the 3-5 reps/side range and take into account I want this to be explosive. For most people loading 25-45 lbs on the bar will be more than enough.
Mike Sirani is the Co-Owner of 
blogger who has worked with athletes and non-athletes for over 5 years. She is currently a strength coach at JDyer Strength and Conditioning, and also runs her own technical soccer training business in Baltimore, MD.
