Are you lifting enough weight?

After a diccussion last night with Tammy about max weight lifting and potential, I found this gem…

Are You Lifting Enough Weight?

If you lift weights, have you ever wondered whether you’re doing it right? Specifically, are you lifting enough weight? According to a study done by the University of Michigan, many of us aren’t. Researchers took beginners (both men and women) through a series of moves, allowing them to choose their own weight. After assessing their 1 rep max (the general standard for choosing weight), they determined that most chose a weight well below what was needed to stimulate muscle growth.

Are you guilty of going too light? If so, you may not be seeing the results you’d like. Learn more about why lifting heavier weights could change your entire body.

Why Lifting Heavy is the Key to Weight Loss

You know that losing fat involves increasing your metabolism. What you may not know is that muscle plays a huge role in raising metabolism. A pound of muscle burns about 10-20 calories a day while a pound of fat burns 5 calories. That means any growth in your muscle tissue is going to help you burn more calories all day long. In fact, strength training has all kinds of great effects on your body like:

• Increasing resting metabolic rate so you burn more calories, even while at rest.
• Making you lean and slim–muscle takes up less space than fat so, the more you have, the slimmer you are
• Strengthening bones and connective tissue, which can protect your body from injuries in daily life
• Enhancing balance and stability
• Building confidence and self-esteem

However…this only works if you’re using enough weight to stimulate that muscle growth. In other words, if you can lift the weights you’ve chosen (for most exercises) more than 16-20 times, you might not see the kind of fat loss you would if you increased your weight.

So, why don’t we lift more weight? For some, lifting weights is scary, especially if you’ve never done it before. The machines…the dumbbells…the people who seem to know what they’re doing…it’s enough to make anyone skip weights altogether. Aside from that, there are other fears that invade our minds, such as:

• It feels weird. The goal of weight training, if you didn’t know, is to lift as much weight as you possibly can (with good form!) for the number of reps you’ve chosen. In daily life, we typically don’t push ourselves to fatigue in anything we do, so this idea may not only feel foreign, it may feel downright miserable. That’s one reason it’s best for beginners to gradually work towards that.
• Fear of injury. Because our muscles burn when we challenge them with resistance, people often feel they’re injuring themselves when they lift. And injury can be a real fear for beginners since injury can occur if you max out before your body is ready for it. Taking it slow while still challenging your body will help protect you from injury.
• Confusion. When you haven’t lifted weights before, you may not know what’s too heavy and what’s too light. It may take some time to get a feel for your body and what it can handle.
• Fear of getting bulky. There’s still a tired old myth running around that men should lift heavy and women should lift light to avoid getting big and bulky. Women hear this: Lifting heavy weights will NOT make you huge–you simply don’t have the testosterone levels to build big muscles. Lifting heavy weights WILL help you lose fat.
• Fear of pain. The other thing about lifting weights is the psychological factor. The discomfort level associated with training to fatigue is pretty high…if you haven’t lifted weights before, you may not be able to overcome that discomfort enough to lift as heavy as you’re capable of. Again, this is one reason it’s best to err on the side of caution (if you need to), while always working towards more challenge and more weight.

These fears often keep people lifting the same amount of weight for weeks, months or even years. Most of these fears are unfounded, if you take time to ease into a weight training program and work (slowly) towards the muscle fatigue that will make your muscles grow.

From: About.com

To chalk or not to chalk

Recently some people have been suffering from blisters.  They are are painful, especially when they tear.  Here is some advice from Freddy C. of Crossfit One World:

“1) Cut the chalk! All that chalk is not helping your pull-ups and is not going to make your grip stronger. Chalk serves a purpose, to dry the hands so you can get better grip. I occasionally put a little chalk on my hands, then I make sure to rub my hands together until I no longer see any chalk. My hands are then dry, and I can grip the bar. When you heavily chalk your hands, your hands stick to the bar. You start kipping and all that violent movement transfers to your hands. If your hands don’t slide a little you tear. People with a very pronounced kip tear even more when they use excessive amounts of chalk. I often hear people say that they have to chalk heavily because they sweat profusely through their hands. Try drying them with a towel and then lightly chalking them as I described.

2) Take care of your callouses! If you are building up huge callouses on your hands, at some point they are going to tear. Knock those callouses down! You can use a nail file, cuticle cutters, or my favorite: a Dremel tool with a grinding stone on it. Jolie turned me on to this good advice: buy a good pumice stone and use it on your callouses in the shower when your callouses are warm and soft.   And don’t forget- your significant other will appreciate the fact that your hands do not feel like a cheese grater when you give him/her a massage!

3) Practice pull-ups with no kip! Dead hang pull-ups are an excellent way to build the strength to do pull-ups without a violent kip and make your kipping pull-up more proficient. ”

Freddy C. CrossfitOneWorld

Post your thoughts or suggestions to comments.

“Core Training”

Gosh I love Mark Rippetoe! Read the attached article for a true understanding about “core” training.  Stick to the basics, ie. the lifts to build true “core” strength.  Then stick a knife in those Swiss balls, and turn off those infomercials promising a strong “core” with some silly device!  Oh yeah, the site is a keeper for great info…stay strong everyone!

Brian

http://startingstrength.com/index.php/site/resources

Keeping a food journal

Hey everyone,  I know we harp on keeping a journal about your training.  This is done so you can chart your progress, and see measurable results.  But how many of you record what you eat?  This is also important for self evaluation.  If lately you have been working hard, but spinning your wheels in weight loss, strength gains, etc.  Maybe you need to track what you put in your body, how it makes you feel after, and how you felt in the gym.  I think this is just as important as your training  journal.  I have spoken with a few of you recently about plateauing, and how to break out of it.  By tracking your nutrition, training, sleep patterns, etc.. you can map your way back on track!  I know this sounds time consuming, but maybe this investment of time in your health is worth a little sacrifice.  When lack of time is used as an arguement, I ask you this question; Who was voted off survivor last night?  If you know the answer, you have enough time to write your food consumption down!

See you all in the gym!

-Brian

Taping your hands for pull-ups

Hey everyone, here is some great instruction from Andy Petranek of Crossfit L.A., on taping your hands.  A little bit of time and effort can help with those ripped blisters.

See you all in the gym!

http://www.vimeo.com/4895278

Shoulder Pain Anyone?

Once again more useful information from Modern Forager!  I know a few of you have been experiencing shoulder pain, there is hope, read on!    (see original article here)

How To Improve Scapular Stability For Healthy Shoulders

Keeping the shoulders healthy is an issue that is near and dear to me because my left shoulder is anything but healthy. It’s an issue that I deal with on a regular basis, always having to be conscious of how my activities may affect my shoulder and always trying to make it stronger. (Unfortunately, I had another partial dislocation in my sleep last week…and do you want to talk about something that will take you from sound asleep to wide-freaking-awake in no time!) So today, I thought I’d discuss some of the exercises that I do to help strengthen and stabilize my shoulders.

But first…the shoulder, itself.

The Shoulder Joint

No other joint in the human body has as many ranges of motion as the shoulder. The blessing of this is all of the wonderful things you can do with your arms, from throwing a 100 mph fastball to hitting that same fastball, from shooting three-pointers to getting the rebounds when your teammates miss. Pressing and pulling movements can be undertaken in virtually any direction because of the ability of the shoulder to move.

The curse is that with great mobility comes great instability. The shoulder is one of the most frequently injured joints and is the most frequently dislocated (especially when we’re talking about my body!), due to its inherent instability. It is comprised of three bones: the humerus (upper arm bone), the clavicle (collarbone), and the scapula (shoulder blade). Technically, these three bones form three joints, not just one, referred to as the glenohumeral, acromioclavicular, and the sternoclavicular joints.

The glenohumeral joint is the ball-and-socket joint that most people refer to when discussing the shoulder. Here is where the upper ball of the humerus joins into the concave portion of the scapula. Unfortunately, the socket that the ball sits in is smaller than the head of the humerus and strong muscles, tendons, and ligaments are required to keep it in place.

The acromioclavicular joint occurs where the acromion (that raised bony part on top of your shoulder) meets the clavicle. The sternoclavicular joint is the point where the clavicle meets the sternum.

The Scapula

What we’re interested in today is the scapula and movements that help to stabilize the scapula. As you can see, it’s heavily involved in the working of the shoulder, being part of two of the three joints, including the major one. It’s also not directly attached to the torso, effectively hanging between the clavicle and the upper arm.

Instability of the scapula is a major cause of shoulder issues, so my goal is to teach the muscles to work together to make sure my scapula is moving within the joint as it should be. And there are a load of muscles that connect to this bone: deltoid, traps, biceps, pectoralis minor, rhomboids, serratus, and rotator cuff to name a majority.

So that means the shoulder has to be worked in quite a few ways. You can’t just go with standard pushing exercises like the bench press or pushups and hope for scapular stability. You have to incorporate various types of pulling, pushing, and rotation, as well as scapular retraction and protraction. Plus, you need to stretch the muscles around the joint to keep your range of motion. It’s like a full-time job!

Let’s get to the exercises.

Diesel Crew Pre-hab

The first video is one that I’ve been using since I had surgery in June 2007. These exercises have done an excellent job of getting my shoulder back to full strength and nearly full range of motion. I need to get back to doing these more consistently because they work very well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0ONHZmsFec&feature=player_embedded
I typically throw these in at the end of my workout to make sure I’m not exhausting my shoulder before going into full-body exercises like the squat and deadlift. They also serve as a nice cool-down.

RKC Arm Bar

A new exercise that I found is called the RKC Arm Bar. I really like this one because I can feel it working very well in my lats and scapular region. I started very low on the weights, using only a 5 lb dumbbell, and have worked up to using 20 lb dumbbells, working in a Turkish Get-up (see below) sandwiched between two 15-second holds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-gPymEdzYM&feature=player_embedded
As Adam mentions in the video, using a dumbbell is less effective than a kettlebell for this exercise because the ight doesn’t pull your arm back. I compensate for that by holding the dumbbell by one end instead of by the handle.

Kipping And Deadhang Pullups

I think everyone knows how to do a pullup. Overhand, underhand, mixed grip…doesn’t matter. I find both kipping and deadhang pullups to be beneficial, though I unfortunately don’t have anywhere to do kipped pullups right now. I think that may actually be slowing progress of getting my shoulder back to where it was a year ago before the first post-surgery dislocation.

Now, if your shoulders are messed up, you should be careful with kipping pullups. But the kipping motion does seem to help my shoulders loosen up and strengthen. Just be careful not to drop too quickly with any kind of pullup until you’re sure your shoulders can handle absorbing the extra force at the bottom of the pullup.

Kipping itself, without the pullup, can actually be beneficial, just by moving the arm through a range of motion while weighted.

Turkish Get-ups

This is an exercise that will get you funny looks, but works very well. As you can see in the video below, you just hold a weight vertically and stand up from a supine position. This forces your shoulder to stabilize the weight through a very broad range of motion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFBETOuHIDk&feature=player_embedded
Jeff Martone of Tactical Athlete has credited the Turkish Get-up, or TGU, with rehabbing his chronically dislocating shoulder. I’ve seen videos of him doing TGUs while holding people instead of weights…I’m a LOOOOOOONG way from that.

Use These For Pre-hab Or Rehab

Of course, you may wonder how well these exercises actually work when I still dislocate my shoulder. It’s unfortunate that I completely undid the surgery by getting the labrum anchors ripped out playing basketball, then fully dislocating playing volleyball (I have since given up volleyball and basketball). But until that fateful rebound, my shoulder was as strong and healthy as it was before the surgery.

So the exercises do work…I just happen to have retorn my labrum, so things that should be holding my shoulder in place aren’t. But that’s why I keep working all the harder to get the muscles where they should be, in hopes of staving off a second surgery.

What other ways do you know of to rehab your shoulders?

See you all in the gym.

-Brian

Source: http://lifespotlight.com/

Beginner or Veteran, please read this article on the Olympic lift starting position

Please take the time to read this article, and then race to the gym only to impress the heck out of George with your new found knowledge, and improved form!!

http://cathletics.com/articles/index.php?show=shorty&shortyID=49

See you in the Gym,

-Brian

Check this out!

I have been working the dreaded nightshift…blech!  Anyway, it’s over for another few weeks! Sorry for not posting much lately!  I try to provide everyone that checks us out with useful tips, info, and inspiration.  Here is something you guys should look into purchasing!  Mark Ripptoe is one of, if not the top lifting coach in the USA!

Stronger people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general – Mark Rippetoe

Mark Rippetoeand The Aasgaard Company have released on DVD Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training. The work provides detailed instruction in the five basic barbell exercises complete with fundamentals and corrections for the most common problems.

Plan your workouts

 

I have been trying to find a way to explain the importance of, and how to, ‘plan’ our workouts for a while now, so lets see how this goes.

First, what do I mean when I say plan your workout? Recently on the CrossFit One World site Freddy C. explained it well when he called planning workouts gamesmanship, it’s an intelligent approach to fitness, taking that regular workout to the next level, and getting better at understanding your body.

Rarely, if ever, will I come out of the gates during a workout at Mach 10. Instead I plan my attack on the workout, I know which exercises will be tougher then others, I know where I can move fast, and where I will have to slow down, and all of this I know before I ever pick up a weight or take a step onto the turf. So give yourself a rep count goal, or a time to reach, tell yourself you will use the first min or two to warm up then end the workout at a full sprint, or decide your second row will be where you catch your breath, etc, etc, etc.

Obviously this gets easier the more we practice, and the more we learn about ourselves, so start taking the time to think about the little things, and work to make your workout even better.

 Trav

Do you have delayed onset of muscle soreness (DOMS)?

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