Asian Squats: Exercise To Improve Body Balance

Asian squat is a deep squat that is performed exclusively and widely by citizens of Asian countries. This type of squat is traditional in the Eastern world, where it is practiced for cultural reasons. Asians are taught to sit in this position from the start, and it also replaces standing or sitting in a chair. It is also used in daily activities such as reading, eating, cooking, talking on the phone, and many other chores. This classic squat method allows you to keep your core going. This helps in maintaining proper body balance and posture.

Below is a helpful guide that provides information on everything you need to know about the Asian squat.

How To Do Asian Squats Like a Pro:

Asian squats are quite a strenuous exercise. There are many factors to consider if you are to really excel.
Fortunately, we have mentioned all the relevant information you will need to do this exercise more efficiently:

  1. Start by adopting a posture that is slightly wider than shoulder width apart.
  2. Then, spread your toes slightly outward.
  3. Now, beat your hips and knees together, and then start lowering your body towards the floor.
  4. Remember to keep your body perpendicular to the floor and avoid rocking back and forth.
  5. While keeping your heels on the floor and your torso vertical, bend down as low and low as you can.
  6. Let your arms rest on your knees.
  7. Remain in this position for a few moments, depending on how comfortable you are.

Benefits of Asian Squats:

In traditional Asian culture, Asian squats have special meanings and some significant benefits. These benefits include:

  1. This exercise activates and trains multiple lower body muscles such as quads, calves, hamstrings, and buttocks.
  2. This variation of squats allows you to increase your body awareness, which allows your body to do daily activities more efficiently.
  3. It is also known to help pregnant women during labor and delivery by opening the pelvis, thus lowering the baby.
  4. Asian squats allow you to maintain proper balance and posture by keeping your core moving. It is therefore always recommended to replace sitting in a chair with these squats.
  5. These squats also allow you to increase the efficiency of your waste disposal process. This helps in improving your digestive system to a great extent.
  6. It also allows for better and improved blood flow because your organs and genitourinary tract are in line on Asian squats.
  7. This exercise will help get rid of knee and back pain. This is because the body weight is evenly distributed across the legs as you squat.

Factors That Add To The Complexity Of Asian Squats:

  1. The lack of proper mobility often contributes to the inability to perform Asian squats efficiently. This is because these squats require adequate range of motion in the ankles and hips.
  2. Your lack of proper proportions to the length of your limbs prevents you from performing these squats correctly. You will automatically find it more difficult to do this exercise if:
    A. When you have a long femur versus a short tibia
    B. If you have long legs, including a short torso
  3. Not being able to squat deep enough proves to be an obstacle to performing Asian squats. Even if you crouch down deeply, you will have immense problems holding this position long enough. This is because you are not practicing squatting enough.

Frequently asked Questions:

  1. What are some exercises I can do to improve mobility to make Asian squats easy?
    To be able to squat easily, you need to improve your body mobility. Some exercises that will help you improve mobility include banded ankle dislocation, calf soft tissue release, and a one-legged dog facing down.
  2. How Many Asian Squats Should I Do?
    There is no limit to how many you can do. It depends on your level of comfort and preferences.
  3. Do I have to crouch deeply during Asian Squats?
    Yes, squatting as low as possible on this type of squat would help.

The Yin and Yang in Strength Training to Optimize Balance

I started writing for Breaking Muscle a few years ago and I had an agenda all along. In an attempt to establish myself as someone with some strengths, the good people on the editorial team thought it a better idea to loosen up the articles that revolve around the mysterious, esoteric, and unconventional.

"Help them understand that you know what you are talking about when it comes to training and then they will be more willing to listen to some of your fringe ideas."

I wrote an original piece: What does Daoism have to do with it? This was a first attempt to offer some of these ideas. This article was my sneaky throw to this community about some tough ideas.

Well, I've waited long enough and it's officially time for my freak flag to fly.

I am about to give you the cliff notes on a much larger project that I have been working on since doing clinical research for my medical qigong PhD over 13 years ago.

What you are reading is real.

Yes, some elements will feel awesome and whimsical and moments when you think I am assuming some form of artistic license with my claims. And you couldn't be further from the truth.

Much of what I'm going to present today has been proven in studies – if you tend to look.

This short dissertation is the exact formulation I use with my patients who visit me for help with a medical problem and who do not have a great understanding of Qigong or Chinese medicine in general.

But you can look at the world in which I live through the power lens and not through the healing lens: even if you will quickly find that they are not independent of each other. So sit back and listen to some ideas that you've probably never heard of before.

Everything is energy

Okay, most of you have probably heard this by now, but it is a basic concept that must be accepted if we are to make any progress with all of this.

The good news is that every high school physics book confirms this when you have to convince. The computer / phone screen you look at, the shoes you wear, the water in the ocean, and the stars in the sky are all energy. They are indeed energy.

Everything in this world that is material, everything that is not, and everything in between is, as you guessed it, energy differentiated by sound, vibration and quality.

Neo in The Matrix, the moment he is brought back to life by Trinity with the kiss and through the eyes of one, sees the world as it actually looks like a fantastic cornucopia of lights and colors that is indescribable.

Yin and yang

With that said, we can learn the most basic understanding of it through the image of yin and yang: you know, the two tears that have come together to represent duality, the cycle of life and the expression of opposites.

The Yin and Yang are created right around the first cell division after the moment of conception.

We Daoists believe that in many ways this moment is just as important, if not more important, than when the sperm meets the egg. In this department, the yin and yang take shape, where the virtues of each child are escorted and software of the divine mind begins to execute its program.

At this moment, and throughout pregnancy, the developing child is in a kind of nuclear nirvana that can only be disturbed by excessive stressors that the mother can endure.

I like to think that the yin and yang of this being are in complete balance and perfection (in almost all cases) has been achieved and sustained for nine months.

Before we go any further, we should probably give you a quick explanation of what this whole yin and yang thing is. But first it's yin, not ying with a G. And it's yang like yawning – not yang and dang. When was the last time you heard someone say daaaang and meant it?

Joe Dirt said it a couple of times and probably one of your hillbilly friends, right. Well, for those of us in this business who hear this, you will immediately see the hillbilly friend in you when we listen to you say ying and yaaaang!

Forgive me, but it had to be said.

In this article, yin and yang are defined as the quality of energy we are talking about:

  1. Yin represents feminine, calm, cool, the shadowy side of the mountain, the moon.
  2. Yang is masculine, aggressive, hot, the stars on the bright side of the mountain. These properties reside in every single atom of your body.

Gather all the atoms and we have you, and while you are in the cozy confines of your mother's womb, everything is in balance because the balance is individual to you.

My balance is different from yours, but it is understood and accepted that this balance exists to some extent in all of us.

Everything in the body works wonderfully in moments of true equilibrium. All systems are tuned to the maximum, and in these nine months the miracle of life is taking shape. And then you take your first breath.

it's a boy

These words are followed by one of the most blood-curdled screams you will ever hear. I know quite well. I've heard that scream three times.

I was in a position with our doctor when the whole process happened for my wife and children and I remember that sound. Many people think this is naturally reflexive, and it is the way the baby announces that it has arrived.

But I have a different theory.

If everything is energy, and energy cannot be destroyed, think about the space in which the woman finds herself in one of the most catastrophic events of her life. Then think of the woman who was there before her, and then the one before that.

Over time, this room becomes a petri dish full of emotions and electrical charges as these events penetrate the walls.

Think about how the dad feels (I can only speak for myself but I've been a nervous wreck with every delivery, probably more so than my incredible wife). Remember how jacked up the doctor and hospital staff are the moment the pushing starts.

Come back to the true love, elation, excruciating pain, fear, joy, terror and the most explosive emotions a person is capable of invading every square inch of this room.

The baby spent about nine months in the most wonderful environment it will ever know, and all the energy of the room for the first stage of life is absorbed in one breath.

At that moment, the same union of yin and yang is radically changed and the rest of that person's life is spent trying to find balance.

illness

think about it. According to the Alexa on my desk:

  • As a noun, lightness is defined as freedom from work, pain or physical annoyance, calm rest, comfort.
  • As a verb, it is defined as being free from fear or care.
  • Throw "dis" in front of it and off you go.

Now I don't bet Alexa is the omniscient fortune teller who only spits out truths, but if we can both agree that her definition is nearly correct, what is missing?

She never mentioned it::

  1. Right nutrition
  2. Eight glasses of water a day
  3. Take vitamins
  4. Don't live next to a power plant.
  5. With fluoride-free toothpaste

The things Alexa mentioned had to do with aspects of life that were perceived from within and the types of things we all want to achieve.

Your understanding of the second half of the disease right now has to do with calm, stillness, and contentment.

Good thing my Alexa and I are so close because a lot of the Chinese medical system is based on things like emotions, virtues, and the elements. Tie details to organs and what we have is an elegant view of disease and the root cause of anything that brings us to our favorite doctor's waiting room.

If the opposite of ease focuses on fear, discomfort, pain, and physical annoyance, can you compose the picture that much of our illnesses are due to emotional distress?

Take this one big step forward; When overbearing emotions flood you, especially one or two, the balance between yin and yang becomes upset.

The longer you stay imbalanced, the richer the soil is to grow something terrible. I simplify this by leaps and bounds.

If I had the absolute freedom to explain all the connections between this organ, this meridian and these emotions, I could paint a clear picture for you. Just trust that everything is there.

The noise of life

I used the word noise because it captures an idea that I hope you will understand in this section.

The most centered person in the world faces the challenges of living this life at this time.

  • Take every monastic person on this planet who has cultivated with decades of practice of meditation and prayer (something we will visit in the third installment) and drop them in downtown Los Angeles.
  • Then give them a cell phone, a company job, a poor diet, a new girlfriend, bills to be paid, and a problematic right knee, and then watch all of that work unfold before our eyes.
  • You see, believers, those who have dedicated their lives to service, especially service from a religious or spiritual point of view, these people go to monasteries and seminaries and are effectively imprisoned and removed from society as the noise of everyday life becomes filtered.
  • They can have the ideal conditions to do their craft. You are not anti-social. They create the best possible framework for deep introspection, study, and cultivation.

The best way to learn to fly is in an airplane. The best place to learn how to be a priest and be in the service of God is in a monastery, away from the everyday life of society.

Now if you buy the entire yin and yang position and we know that the only time in your life that balance is truly achieved is in the womb, then every second we are boots on the ground in this world that we pursue this balance.

I tell my patients that if they don't practice, they will likely never achieve this absolute balance again.

Our life is a yang thunderstorm.

Think about it for a moment::

  • The hectic pace of life
  • Our jobs
  • Our relationships
  • The rubbish that the media is constantly trying to shovel down our throats like our diets.
  • Everything we encounter in our waking hours is stress.
  • And in the case of this article, Yang-type energy is blasted on us and into our energy field around the clock.

If we don't have a solution to make up for this constant inundation, our tears should be the same and transform into something so one-sided that disease can occur.

I want to leave you with that.

And then we throw training on it. We intentionally add another yang activity to an already noisy day because we love it and we think we're doing ourselves a favor.

Yes, our fitness is good, our jeans look great, and I'm the first to say I go through a real posing routine in the mirror in the morning before brushing my teeth (stop lying, you do too ). . We love our time in the gym and we know it's good for us.

Or is it?

The Yin and Yang in Strength Training to Optimize Balance

I started writing for Breaking Muscle a few years ago and I had an agenda all along. In an attempt to establish myself as someone with some strengths, the good people on the editorial team thought it a better idea to loosen up the articles that revolve around the mysterious, esoteric, and unconventional.

"Help them understand that you know what you are talking about when it comes to training and then they will be more willing to listen to some of your fringe ideas."

I wrote an original piece: What does Daoism have to do with it? This was a first attempt to offer some of these ideas. This article was my sneaky throw to this community about some tough ideas.

Well, I've waited long enough and it's officially time for my freak flag to fly.

I am about to give you the cliff notes on a much larger project that I have been working on since doing clinical research for my medical qigong PhD over 13 years ago.

What you are reading is real.

Yes, some elements will feel awesome and whimsical and moments when you think I am assuming some form of artistic license with my claims. And you couldn't be further from the truth.

Much of what I'm going to present today has been proven in studies – if you tend to look.

This short dissertation is the exact formulation I use with my patients who visit me for help with a medical problem and who do not have a great understanding of Qigong or Chinese medicine in general.

But you can look at the world in which I live through the power lens and not through the healing lens: even if you will quickly find that they are not independent of each other. So sit back and listen to some ideas that you've probably never heard of before.

Everything is energy

Okay, most of you have probably heard this by now, but it is a basic concept that must be accepted if we are to make any progress with all of this. The good news is that every high school physics book confirms this when you have to convince. The computer / phone screen you look at, the shoes you wear, the water in the ocean, and the stars in the sky are all energy. They are indeed energy.

Everything in this world that is material, everything that is not, and everything in between is, as you guessed it, energy differentiated by sound, vibration and quality.

Neo in The Matrix, the moment he is brought back to life by Trinity with the kiss and through the eyes of one, sees the world as it actually looks like a fantastic cornucopia of lights and colors that is indescribable.

Yin and yang

With that said, we can learn the most basic understanding of it through the image of yin and yang: you know, the two tears that have come together to represent duality, the cycle of life and the expression of opposites.

The Yin and Yang are created right around the first cell division after the moment of conception.

We Daoists believe that in many ways this moment is just as important, if not more important, than when the sperm meets the egg. In this department, the yin and yang take shape, where the virtues of each child are escorted and software of the divine mind begins to execute its program.

At this moment, and throughout pregnancy, the developing child is in a kind of nuclear nirvana that can only be disturbed by excessive stressors that the mother can endure.

I like to think that the yin and yang of this being are in complete balance and perfection (in almost all cases) has been achieved and sustained for nine months.

Before we go any further, we should probably give you a quick explanation of what this whole yin and yang thing is. But first it's yin, not ying with a G. And it's yang like yawning – not yang and dang. When was the last time you heard someone say daaaang and meant it? Joe Dirt said it a couple of times and probably one of your hillbilly friends, right. Well, for those of us in this business who hear this, you will immediately see the hillbilly friend in you when we listen to you say ying and yaaaang!

Forgive me, but it had to be said.

In this article, yin and yang are defined as the quality of energy we are talking about:

  1. Yin represents feminine, calm, cool, the shadowy side of the mountain, the moon.
  2. Yang is masculine, aggressive, hot, the stars on the bright side of the mountain. These properties reside in every single atom of your body.

Gather all the atoms and we have you, and while you are in the cozy confines of your mother's womb, everything is in balance because the balance is individual to you.

My balance is different from yours, but it is understood and accepted that this balance exists to some extent in all of us.

Everything in the body works wonderfully in moments of true equilibrium. All systems are tuned to the maximum, and in these nine months the miracle of life is taking shape. And then you take your first breath.

it's a boy

These words are followed by one of the most blood-curdled screams you will ever hear. I know quite well. I've heard that scream three times. I was in a position with our doctor when the whole process happened for my wife and children and I remember that sound. Many people think this is naturally reflexive, and it is the way the baby announces that it has arrived.

But I have a different theory.

If everything is energy, and energy cannot be destroyed, think about the space in which the woman finds herself in one of the most catastrophic events of her life. Then think of the woman who was there before her, and then the one before that. Over time, this room becomes a petri dish full of emotions and electrical charges as these events penetrate the walls.

Think about how the dad feels (I can only speak for myself but I've been a nervous wreck with every delivery, probably more so than my incredible wife). Remember how jacked up the doctor and hospital staff are the moment the pushing starts.

Come back to the true love, elation, excruciating pain, fear, joy, terror and the most explosive emotions that a person is able to invade every square inch of this room.

The baby spent about nine months in the most wonderful environment it will ever know, and all the energy of the room for the first stage of life is absorbed in one breath.

At that moment, the same union of yin and yang is radically changed and the rest of that person's life is spent trying to find balance.

illness

think about it. According to the Alexa on my desk:

  • As a noun, lightness is defined as freedom from work, pain or physical annoyance, calm rest, comfort.
  • As a verb, it is defined as being free from fear or care.
  • Throw "dis" in front of it and off you go.

Now I don't bet Alexa is the omniscient fortune teller who only spits out truths, but if we can both agree that her definition is nearly correct, what is missing?

She never mentioned it::

  1. Right nutrition
  2. Eight glasses of water a day
  3. Take vitamins
  4. Don't live next to a power plant.
  5. With fluoride-free toothpaste

The things Alexa mentioned had to do with aspects of life that were perceived from within and the types of things we all want to achieve.

Your understanding of the second half of the disease right now has to do with calm, stillness, and contentment.

Good thing my Alexa and I are so close because a lot of the Chinese medical system is based on things like emotions, virtues, and the elements. Attach specifics to organs and what we have is an elegant view of disease and the root cause of anything that brings us into our favorite doctor's waiting room.

If the opposite of ease focuses on fear, discomfort, pain, and physical annoyance, can you compose the picture that much of our illnesses are due to emotional distress?

Take this one big step forward; When overbearing emotions flood you, especially one or two, the balance between yin and yang becomes upset.

The longer you stay imbalanced, the richer the soil is to grow something terrible. I simplify this by leaps and bounds.

If I had the absolute freedom to explain all the connections between this organ, this meridian and these emotions, I could paint a clear picture for you. Just trust that everything is there.

The noise of life

I used the word noise because it captures an idea that I hope you will understand in this section.

The most centered person in the world faces the challenges of living this life at this time.

  • Take every monastic person on this planet who has cultivated with decades of practice of meditation and prayer (something we will visit in the third installment) and drop them in downtown Los Angeles.
  • Then give them a cell phone, a company job, a poor diet, a new girlfriend, bills to be paid, and a problematic right knee, and then watch all of that work unfold before our eyes.
  • You see, believers, those who have dedicated their lives to service, especially service from a religious or spiritual point of view, these people go to monasteries and seminaries and are effectively imprisoned and removed from society as the noise of everyday life becomes filtered.
  • They can have the ideal conditions to do their craft. You are not anti-social. They create the best possible framework for deep introspection, study, and cultivation.

The best way to learn to fly is in an airplane. The best place to learn how to be a priest and be in the service of God is in a monastery, away from the everyday life of society.

Now if you buy the entire yin and yang position and we know that the only time in your life that balance is truly achieved is in the womb, then every second we are boots on the ground in this world that we pursue this balance.

I tell my patients that if they don't practice, they will likely never achieve this absolute balance again.

Our life is a yang thunderstorm.

Think about it for a moment::

  • The hectic pace of life
  • Our jobs
  • Our relationships
  • The rubbish that the media is constantly trying to shovel down our throats like our diets.
  • Everything we encounter in our waking hours is stress.
  • And in the case of this article, Yang-type energy is blasted on us and into our energy field around the clock.

If we don't have a solution to make up for this constant inundation, our tears should be the same and transform into something so one-sided that disease can occur.

I want to leave you with that.

And then we throw training on it. We intentionally add another yang activity to an already noisy day because we love it and we think we're doing ourselves a favor.

Yes, our fitness is good, our jeans look great, and I'm the first to say I go through a real posing routine in the mirror in the morning before brushing my teeth (stop lying, you do too ). . We love our time in the gym and we know it's good for us.

Or is it?

The Cossack Squat: Reclaiming Your Baseline Balance

This straightforward exercise not only strengthens the strength and coordination of each leg, but also removes the instability of the hips that inevitably creeps in after years of training heavy bilateral movements like squats and deadlifts.

We are not perfectly balanced machines. One side of our body has more prominent organs than the other side in different places. We have one dominant side that will always be a little stronger and more coordinated than the other.

So when we start doing heavy bipedal or bilateral movements like squats and deadlifts, it makes sense that we develop a tendency to push harder, toward our dominant side, or to prefer it.

It's part of the business to be human, and no amount of one-sided focused remedial action or exercise will balance us perfectly.

There is no point in thinking about it because we are naturally unbalanced.

We should always focus on the basics that are beyond any movement and practice. If you want to know what these core principles are, check out this new course I am offering.

When the imbalance is too great

However, sometimes the space between the sides and segments can get a little too big. In this case, we need smart exercises that train all of the variables to move the gauge back towards your baseline. This is a reasonable asymmetry.

The Cossack Squat requires you to move into positions that can be difficult at first, but the movement itself is simple and straightforward.

It can be done anywhere with body weight or loaded in different ways with whatever type of weight is available to you.

Why The Cossack Squat?

Any one-legged exercise can improve stability and physical awareness. What makes the Cossack squat valuable is that you have the slight support from your hind leg.

With this support, you can focus on controlled movement over the entire range of motion available to you, while building more mobility and strength at the end of your range.

The Cossack Squat: Restoring Your Basic Balance - Fitness, Fitness, Balance, Squats, Mobility, Strength Training, Range of Motion, Posture, Stability, Deadlifts, Hip Abduction, Levels of Motion, Movement Patterns, Coordination, Asymmetry, Cossack Squats, Imbalances, Adductors, Core Stability

If you fall, you are at the limit of your hips and ankles. Just look at the picture above. I crouch on one side of my body as low as I can.

We all tend to emphasize linear movements in which we move straight up and down. If you want a big squat and deadlift, that's fine. However, you need to make sure that you move in different directions and movement patterns, at least at times.

The Cossack squat is an exercise that you can add to the end of your workout to help you move in a different plane.

It is best if you move through these different patterns to avoid overloading the pattern (injuries to your soft tissues cannot move in just one pattern or restrict your free range of motion for too long).

It would be helpful if you moved in these different positions to keep all of the connective tissue in the body healthy.

The longer we've been training, the more we may need this.

The older we get, the more we have to move in every possible way.

And the more we sit for work, the more we should move in every possible movement pattern.

Use any movement pattern

  • Place your feet a foot or two outside shoulder width. You may need to adjust your feet wider. Play with your posture to find out what is comfortable and strong.
  • Ground the foot on the side that you will be crouching on first. Press your big toe firmly into the floor and apply pressure to the floor outside of your foot just below the outside edge of your ankle.
  • You can curl your toes out at first but eventually work towards keeping them straight as this will challenge your mobility and stability to new levels.
  • Use your other foot on the opposite side to help you and push you into a crouch.
  • Sink into a crouch without your heels or any part of your feet losing contact with the ground. With some variations, your toes may lift and twist up on your back leg. However, if you keep them down, it is better to question the mobility of your adductors.
  • Squeeze the foot you were squatting on to push your hips up and back, center.
  • Let yourself sink to the other side without a break, taking into account the same points of contact and ideas.

Weighted Cossack squat

To add weight to this exercise, you usually hold the weight in front of you to use as a counterweight to keep you upright, or you can hold it close to your body.

The Cossack Squat: Restoring Your Basic Balance - Fitness, Fitness, Balance, Squats, Mobility, Strength Training, Range of Motion, Posture, Stability, Deadlifts, Hip Abduction, Levels of Motion, Movement Patterns, Coordination, Asymmetry, Cossack Squats, Imbalances, Adductors, Core Stability

If you want to change it, try keeping a weight behind your head.

The Cossack Squat: Restoring Your Basic Balance - Fitness, Fitness, Balance, Squats, Mobility, Strength Training, Range of Motion, Posture, Stability, Deadlifts, Hip Abduction, Levels of Motion, Movement Patterns, Coordination, Asymmetry, Cossack Squats, Imbalances, Adductors, Core Stability

Holding a weight behind your head will test your dexterity to stay upright.

You will train the strength and flexibility of your upper back, and your core will work even harder to hold the posture and stabilize you. Win, win and win.

Watch your limit

This exercise is not about bending and creasing into a position that you cannot yet reach. It's about finding the edge of your flexibility and stability in this movement and slowly challenging it without losing posture and stiffness or compensating in any way.

If you practice it consistently you will get to this bottom position, but your adductors, knees, and ankles won't like you very much if you try to force it too soon.

Ready for more trouble?

There are several different ways to load this exercise to make it more challenging. Holding a weight behind your head, which I described earlier, is one of them. Keeping the weight above your head with your arms outstretched is another matter.

However, there is something else you can do to test your mobility and stability that doesn't necessarily require weight.

The Cossack Squat: Restoring Your Basic Balance - Fitness, Fitness, Balance, Squats, Mobility, Strength Training, Range of Motion, Posture, Stability, Deadlifts, Hip Abduction, Levels of Motion, Movement Patterns, Coordination, Asymmetry, Cossack Squats, Imbalances, Adductors, Core Stability

Choose the side you squat on and place a small plate or similar flat object under this foot. Do the number of repetitions you choose, then switch sides.

If you lift your foot just a few inches, you will struggle to hold the position as you lower yourself into a lower position.

The Cossack Squat: Reclaiming Your Baseline Balance

This straightforward exercise not only strengthens the strength and coordination of each leg, but also removes the instability of the hips that inevitably creeps in after years of training heavy bilateral movements like squats and deadlifts.

We are not perfectly balanced machines. One side of our body has more prominent organs than the other side in different places. We have one dominant side that will always be a little stronger and more coordinated than the other.

So when we start doing heavy bipedal or bilateral movements like squats and deadlifts, it makes sense that we develop a tendency to push harder, toward our dominant side, or to prefer it.

It's part of the business to be human, and no amount of one-sided focused remedial action or exercise will balance us perfectly.

There is no point in thinking about it because we are naturally unbalanced.

We should always focus on the basics that are beyond any movement and practice. If you want to know what these core principles are, check out this new course I am offering.

When the imbalance is too great

However, sometimes the space between the sides and segments can get a little too big. In this case, we need smart exercises that train all of the variables to move the gauge back towards your baseline. This is a reasonable asymmetry.

The Cossack Squat requires you to move into positions that can be difficult at first, but the movement itself is simple and straightforward.

It can be done anywhere with body weight or loaded in different ways with whatever type of weight is available to you.

Why The Cossack Squat?

Any one-legged exercise can improve stability and physical awareness. What makes the Cossack squat valuable is that you have the slight support from your hind leg. With this support, you can focus on controlled movement over the entire range of motion available to you, while building more mobility and strength at the end of your range.

The Cossack Squat: Restoring your basic balance - fitness, fitness, mobility, strength training, range of motion, posture, stability, deadlift, hip abduction, planes of movement, movement patterns, coordination, asymmetry, Cossack squat, imbalances, adductors, core stability

If you fall, you are at the limit of your hips and ankles. Just look at the picture above. I crouch on one side of my body as low as I can.

We all tend to emphasize linear movements in which we move straight up and down. If you want a big squat and deadlift, that's fine. However, you need to make sure that you move in different directions and movement patterns, at least at times.

The Cossack squat is an exercise that you can add to the end of your workout to help you move in a different plane.

It is best if you move through these different patterns to avoid overloading the pattern (injuries to your soft tissues cannot move in just one pattern or restrict your free range of motion for too long).

It would be helpful if you moved in these different positions to keep all of the connective tissue in the body healthy.

The longer we've been training, the more we may need this.

The older we get, the more we have to move in every possible way.

And the more we sit for work, the more we should move in every possible movement pattern.

Use any movement pattern

  • Place your feet a foot or two outside shoulder width. You may need to adjust your feet wider. Play with your posture to find out what is comfortable and strong.

  • Ground the foot on the side that you will be crouching on first. Press your big toe firmly into the floor and apply pressure to the floor outside of your foot just below the outside edge of your ankle.

  • You can curl your toes out at first but eventually work towards keeping them straight as this will challenge your mobility and stability to new levels.

  • Use your other foot on the opposite side to help you and push you into a crouch.

  • Sink into a crouch without your heels or any part of your feet losing contact with the ground. With some variations, your toes may lift and twist up on your back leg. However, if you keep them down, it is better to question the mobility of your adductors.

  • Squeeze the foot you were squatting on to push your hips up and back, center.

  • Let yourself sink to the other side without a break, taking into account the same points of contact and ideas.

Weighted Cossack squat

To add weight to this exercise, you usually hold the weight in front of you to use as a counterweight to keep you upright, or you can hold it close to your body.

The Cossack Squat: Restoring your basic balance - fitness, fitness, mobility, strength training, range of motion, posture, stability, deadlift, hip abduction, planes of movement, movement patterns, coordination, asymmetry, Cossack squat, imbalances, adductors, core stability

If you want to change it, try keeping a weight behind your head.

The Cossack Squat: Restoring your basic balance - fitness, fitness, mobility, strength training, range of motion, posture, stability, deadlift, hip abduction, planes of movement, movement patterns, coordination, asymmetry, Cossack squat, imbalances, adductors, core stability

Holding a weight behind your head will test your dexterity to stay upright.

You will train the strength and flexibility of your upper back, and your core will work even harder to hold the posture and stabilize you. Win, win and win.

Watch your limit

This exercise is not about bending and creasing into a position that you cannot yet reach. It's about finding the edge of your flexibility and stability in this movement and slowly challenging it without losing posture and stiffness or compensating in any way.

If you practice it consistently you will get to this bottom position, but your adductors, knees, and ankles won't like you very much if you try to force it too soon.

Ready for more trouble?

There are several different ways to load this exercise to make it more challenging. Holding a weight behind your head, which I described earlier, is one of them. Keeping the weight above your head with your arms outstretched is another matter.

However, there is something else you can do to test your mobility and stability that doesn't necessarily require weight.

The Cossack Squat: Restoring your basic balance - fitness, fitness, mobility, strength training, range of motion, posture, stability, deadlift, hip abduction, planes of movement, movement patterns, coordination, asymmetry, Cossack squat, imbalances, adductors, core stability

Choose the side you are on Crouch down and place a small plate or similar flat object under this foot. Do the number of repetitions you choose, then switch sides.

If you lift your foot just a few inches, you will struggle to hold the position as you lower yourself into a lower position.

Garmin Venu Review: A Great Balance of Sport and Everyday

Garmin Venu review 13

"The Garmin Venu is a solid fitness tracker, but its beautiful AMOLED display is the killer feature."

  • AMOLED display

  • Activity tracking

  • Training animations

  • Many sensors

  • Lack of detailed fitness indicators

  • Lack of space

The line between a smartwatch and a fitness watch continues to dissolve every day.

It used to be that if you are interested in fitness, you get a dedicated, nondescript fitness tracker with a super simple dot matrix display (I'm looking at you, Nike FuelBand). Then Apple came out with her watch and I remember how silly it sounded. I mean, I already had a smartphone – wasn't a smartwatch a little superfluous?

Oh, how times are changing, and there is no better example of watch development than the Venu from Garmin.

display

The Venu is basically the same as the Vivoactive 4 – a multisport smartwatch that still has all the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections required for Android and Apple notifications. However, the Venu has a significant difference in its display.

The AMOLED display of the Venu with 390 x 390 pixels blows the 260 x 260 MIP display of the Vivoactive out of the water. While their physical sizes are similar at 1.2 inches and 1.3 inches, respectively, the Venu's screen shows a much sharper picture with darker blacks and a range of colors that are surprisingly vivid.

The newly discovered vibrancy of the Venu is underlined by its active graphics and dials, which are far better than most Garmin wearables. The Venu heart rate chart alone is a rainbow of colors that made me do a workout just to make my metrics more fun.

Battery life

The only downside to the AMOLED display is its battery drain, and you will most likely be frustrated if you don't immediately change the dial setting to "always on".

I tried to live with the Venu in its default setting, which turns the display off automatically to see if the battery life information is correct. Garmin claims 5 days of battery life in smartwatch mode and 6 days in GPS mode, or up to 20 days when both modes are turned off.

Still, it only took me two days to get angry at shaking my wrist like a crazy person to make the display glow. As a result, I've set the display to stay on.

The penalty for switching is a longer drain on battery life, but I've still seen a little over 3 days of life with workouts a day, so this seemed like a worthwhile trade to keep my mental health.

design

The Venu doesn't want to weigh things down and has only 43 grams and a body of 43.2 x 43.2 x 12.4 mm. The size took a few days to get used to big clocks. This may be a deal breaker for some, but with the Venu's sharp display, I don't feel like I'm missing anything.

One of the best things about the Venu is that it has a touchscreen display. This makes for a more intuitive experience when scrolling through activities and daily statistics. With two physical buttons on the side, the Venu offers a satisfactory medium of universal usability and familiarity for existing Garmin users.

Venu's usability is enhanced by adding Garmin Pay for contactless payments and storing up to 500 songs. That number seems a bit low compared to Venu's competitors, but since you can stream Spotify, Amazon Music, or Deezer, that's not a big deal.

In addition to these features, the Venu has a calendar, weather, music controls for your smartphone and all the notifications you can ever request. While the usual "smart" features are covered, fitness tracking is where the Venu shines (and all of Garmin's previous experiences come into play).

Fitness tracking

Garmin loaded the Venu with sensors. On board are a GPS, a heart rate monitor, a barometric altimeter, a compass, a gyroscope, an accelerometer and a pulse oximeter. This is almost the same sensor array as the high-end Fenix ​​6 Pro, which also includes a thermometer.

All this sensitivity enables automated goals. The Venu learns your activity levels and begins setting daily goals based on your current activity. It can also record calories burned, climbed floors, minutes of intensity, VO2 max and estimates of energy and stress levels.

With all of these follow-ups, the Venu creates a fairly well-rounded view of your overall health and fitness. This is the metric ecosystem that die-hard Garmin fans have come to know and love over the years. With every firmware update they become more and more precise.

The core competencies of Venu are in the usual suspects when running, swimming and cycling. Running has pace and cadence tracking. While swimming, stroke, Swolf score, time and distance alarms are displayed. Cycling has triggers for distance, time, and calories burned, as well as the ability to connect to Garmin's Varia radar and lights.

I had no problems keeping track of runs or rides I did. However, when it came to connecting the Venu to my indoor cycling trainer, it made a connection, but never realized that I was pedaling. This wasn't necessary since the Venu still had my heart rate data and I was tracking the distance with Zwift. But there were some strange training logs that showed 0.00 miles.

Guided workouts

Venu is not just about tracking what you do. It can also guide you through training.

The most interesting are the animations available for yoga, pilates, strength and cardio. There are several training routines available, but you can also create your own workouts.

These animations are helpful because you are asked to try something different. It felt a bit awkward at first when I tried to keep an eye on the watch for the next yoga pose. Over time, however, I learned when to look at the watch and focus on my shape.

Once you have completed an activity, the Venu estimates your sweat loss based on the measurement data it has collected. I am a little doubtful of how accurate this value is, but after a little effort I thought about my hydration.

After a three kilometer walk, the Venu estimated that I had lost 201 ml. It's not much, but the memory that I could have a drink was a welcome piece of mindfulness.

Stat tracking

For the stat junkies, the Venu has the all-important VO2 maximum score. Your VO2 max is essentially a measure of how well your body uses oxygen and a relatively accurate way to measure your basic aerobic fitness.

Real VO2 max tests are done by putting maximum effort into it while monitoring your oxygen uptake and carbon dioxide emissions with lots of tubes and expensive looking medical devices. I am highly doubtful whether the Venu can keep up with the validity of a real VO2 max test, but most people will never do the utmost to do a real test, so the Venu estimate must be enough.

HR zones are what most people will look out for, but I've missed having more advanced metrics.

Unfortunately, the Venu lacks other key figures that will interest real fitness junkies. Are you interested in your current training or training status, whether you are doing basic or threshold training or monitoring your weekly training load? Then move on, because the Venu has none of it.

The Venu has heart rate zones to control effort during exercise. HR zones are what most people will look out for, but I've missed having more advanced metrics.

I also missed the route finding. Navigating the Garmin Fenix ​​6 Pro is one of the most powerful features. The Venu, on the other hand, only keeps track of where you went and has no idea how to say where to go. The only exception is golf, as the Venu has access to 41,000 courses that can be downloaded via the Garmin Connect app.

While the lack of navigation is kind of a mess, the Venu continues its list of features with elements like a sleep monitor to track your REM and deep sleep, and event detection that automatically sends your location to certain contacts when it detects a crash during a bike ride.

guarantee

Standard 1 year product guarantee.

Our opinion

The Venu has a solid list of features that are suitable for the vast majority of people who are fitness aficionados but not fanatical. While you may miss out on some navigation and detailed training metrics, the Venu's streamlined design and beautiful touchscreen is worth the $ 350 price tag, and if you find it for sale, it's all the more worth it.

Is there a better alternative?

The obvious alternative is the Apple Watch Series 5 for $ 400. When the App Store is available, the Apple Watch is extremely hard to beat if you're already an iPhone user. However, Garmin's experience with fitness and Venu's touchscreen makes it a viable option for anyone who isn't yet fully immersed in the Apple ecosystem.

How long it will take?

Garmin is robust as nail products, but the Venu doesn't have a raised bezel, so scratches on the Gorilla Glass Screen are more likely than usual. That means the Venu should last for at least several years.

Should you buy it

Yes, if you use an Android phone. If you already have an iPhone, you can raise the extra money for the Apple Watch Series 5 as it is a better choice by integrating it into the iPhone.

Editor's recommendations




The Importance of the Jerk Balance For Footwork

The split jerk is actually a two-step jerk in which the rear foot lands first and thus gains traction first. This has the effect of pushing the bar forward under the bar when it is locked over the head.

This exercise teaches the correct "dancing" action of the forefoot while the drive from the shoulders is strengthened in front of the neck. If this is a problem for you or one of your athletes, include the movement at the beginning of the session until the footwork is well anchored.

As more knowledge is gained, the exercise can be gradually moved back in training until it can be completely eliminated.

The Importance of the Jerk Balance For Footwork

The split jerk is actually a two-step jerk in which the rear foot lands first and thus gains traction first. This has the effect of pushing the bar forward under the bar when it is locked over the head.

This exercise teaches the correct "dancing" action of the forefoot while the drive from the shoulders is strengthened in front of the neck. If this is a problem for you or one of your athletes, include the movement at the beginning of the session until the footwork is well anchored. As more knowledge is gained, the exercise can be gradually moved back in training until it can be completely eliminated.

Individualizing Training: Structural Balance, Intensity and Autoregulation

Writing programs is easy. You only need to do between 1 and 20 sets of 1 to 100 repetitions per muscle group between 5 and 120% of your 1 rpm and rest between sets 1 to 300 minutes. It is science. This is obviously an exaggeration of what is written in most textbooks, but most textbooks contain general guidelines, but do not explain how you can customize these numbers for your customers.

Textbooks are intended for this. To give you a general idea of ​​how to write training based on what is effective for the majority of the population. So if you follow the guidelines listed, you are likely to get some decent results for your customer, but what's next? Are you just adding weight to the bar? Do you play more sets More repetitions? What happens if the performance doesn't get better or even worse? Just go back and repeat the previous program?

The reality is that most people respond similarly to different types of stimuli. If you lift heavily, they become strong. If you make a lot of volume, they will get big provided you eat enough (read the ultimate guide to building muscle and hypertrophy).

What differs is their starting point, how much volume / intensity they need to see adjustment, and their ability to recover from training. Implementing the concept of structural balance (INOL) and using a general training framework that takes fatigue into account can help you design an initial program and provide the data for successful writing of future programs.

What is structural balance?

Let us first define terms. Structural balance simply means that your entire body muscles are balanced. So the muscles on the front of your body don't overwhelm the muscles on the back of your body, and you don't walk around like a gorilla with a massive upper body and a lower-sized lower body.

There are two things you should do to determine if a client is structurally balanced. The first is a simple assessment of posture. Depending on how well you are familiar with the customer, you can determine how deep you can go. For example, an athlete you have worked with in the past and who is very confident may have no problem taking his shirt off so you can see his shoulder blade move.

An overweight 40-year-old woman who is already very afraid of training will likely feel a lot uncomfortable if you ask her to take off her shirt. Regardless of whether your customer puts their shirt on or off, you can generally see a large imbalance such as overly kyphotic T-spikes or twisted shoulders.

The second option is to perform different exercises and compare their or calculated maxima. It should be noted that you would only do this with a customer who has a certain level of training history, or with a customer who has gone through a block with a focus on movement like Block 0 with you. So if the customer is able to run maximum values, or rep maxes, you can see where their imbalances are.

The intensity number of lifts (INOL)

The next definition we have to look at is INOL. INOL is an abbreviation for the intensity of the lifts. The intensity is considered from the point of view of% 1RM and the number of lifting operations carried out at these percentages. The calculation actually used is (repetitions / (100 intensity)). This gives you a score for a particular elevator.

In his work "How to design strength training programs with Prilipens table", Hristo Hristov has recommendations on what score does not cause enough stress for adaptation, what causes enough stress for adaptation and what causes too much fatigue for effective adaptation. Even if you don't use their specific numbers, using INOL is an effective tool to measure how much volume and intensity your customer is most efficiently adapting to.

Autoregulation: adapt your training to your needs

The final definition is autoregulation. With autoregulation, you can adapt your program to things like your recovery and CNS readiness. There are several ways to use autoregulation, which we'll discuss later in this article.

The terms are defined. So what do we do with them? Let's first look at our structural balance. When considering the structural balance, I recommend using exercises that are relevant to your client's goals. For example, if it's a weight lifter, or if you have an athlete who regularly uses the Olympic lifts, you can test for snapping, cleaning, and jerking.

If you don't plan to use the Olympic lifts, there's no reason to include them in the structural balance test. In this case, I recommend testing the conventional deadlift, rear squat, front squat, bench press, overhead press, and barbell row.

Since maximizing or performing AMRAPs on multiple exercises is very stressful, I would split the exercises into 2-3 days with 1-4 days in between. After getting all of your maxima or calculated maxes from your AMRAPs, you can see how the correlation between elevators and your customer's possible imbalances is.

To determine how each elevator should be correlated, you can see the work of people like Charles Poliquin, Christian Thibedeau, and Travis Mash. They have all written about the importance of structural balance and the importance of structural balance.

Exercise selection and baselines

A possible example of a structural balance would be to use the squat as a reference lift. If your customer squats 100 pounds back, they should be able to squat 85 pounds, conventional deadlifts 110 pounds, bench press 75 pounds, barbell row 52.5 pounds, and overhead presses 45 pounds (see Know Your Ratios , Destroy weaknesses).

Now when you look at your structural balance assessment, you also need to consider the client's anthropometry. If you have a client who has extremely long legs and short arms, he will most likely not be able to lift 110% of his squat.

If you have a massive chest and super short arms, you may be able to do more than 75% of your bench press because you only need a shorter range of motion to move the bar. Therefore, use the numbers of your structural balance sheet assessment as a basis, but adjust them based on the anthropometry of your customer as required.

You can use your structural balance test to determine which exercises you want to highlight in your training block. The exercise selection can be determined in different ways. An easy way is to train each exercise category all three days of the week with your earliest primary weakness in training and your strengths later in training to ensure you get the highest quality reps for your primary weakness.

If we split our movement categories into deadlift / Olympic variation, squat / lunge variation, upper body push and upper body pull, we can include an exercise from each of these categories in the training. Since not all exercises are equal in terms of the stress they cause, it is a good idea to use descending stress exercises throughout the workout.

Instead of using the most stressful exercises in each movement category and including conventional deadlifts, squats, bench presses, and barbell rows, you can use descending stress exercises like traditional deadlifts, front squats, overhead presses, and pull-ups.

Determination of individual intensities with INOL

After you have selected your exercises, we can look at the intensities. Using INOL's concept and Hristov's numbers, we can see that in week 1 you want at least 0.4 points for a workout. Everything below does not generally cause enough stress to bring about positive adjustment.

0.4-1 is considered very feasible and optimal if you don't accumulate fatigue, and 1-2 is considered hard but good for charging phases. I am a big supporter of using the minimum effective dose to gain strength, and I think it is always better to go below and increase exercise stress than to exceed and possibly reset.

With this in mind, I would recommend using a score of 0.8 for your primary exercise first. Regardless of which loading parameter you are using, whether it is straight sets, wave loading, working on something heavy and performing back-down sets, the value in the equation (repetitions / (100-intensity)) should be 0.8.

This number can initially be increased by up to 10 to 20% for your primary exercise. However, you need to decrease some of your other exercise categories by the same percentage. Every week you can decrease the volume and increase the intensity. After each training block, increase the INOL from week 1.

If the previous training block was effective, increase Week 1 INOL to 0.88. If this is effective, increase it to 0.96. Continue increasing the value until you see no positive adjustment. If INOL gets too big in a single workout and you routinely cannot recover enough for another hard workout this week, it is better to reduce the volume that day and add another workout within the week.

At this point, look back at your training logs and see which week 1 INOL your customer has improved the most. Take advantage of this amount of training volume for most of the year, while occasionally going over to accomplish too much and recover, and you will set your customers up for the best chance of success as the volume is tailored to them.

It is important to remember that when you exercise, you are not exercising in a vacuum. What happens on day 1 affects day 2. With this in mind, we want to be able to automatically regulate our customers' training based on what we can do on a given day.

There may be days when your customer didn't get enough sleep, ate enough calories, separated from their partner, or the previous training session was too stressful so that they cannot achieve the numbers they suspect to hit that day . This can become very obvious once the customer starts training and you can then make an adjustment. Ideally, however, you want to be able to adjust the workout before you start training.

To decide whether or not to change the plan, you should use a CNS readiness measurement procedure. There are different possibilities. One option would be to test heart rate variability (HRV). There are a variety of tools that you can purchase to measure HRV, but they cost between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars.

Another possibility is to measure the bar speed at a reference percentage for a reference lift. The equipment would also cost you a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. These are great tools that you can use. So if you have the resources, I would recommend purchasing them as they provide you with a lot of training data.

However, if you don't have the money for HRV or accelerometer equipment, you can use cheaper methods like a handheld test bench. In Thomas Kurtz's book Science of Sports Training, he discussed measuring grip strength to test recovery, since grip strength correlates with CNS readiness.

He states that an athlete whose grip strength decreases by more than 2 kg is under-recovered. A handheld test bench can be purchased for just $ 20. It is important that you use the same hand test bench for every test. Using others will reduce the reliability and validity of your test.

Another thing to consider is that if you have a lot of exercise that puts strain on your grip, you may get a low score due to peripheral fatigue instead of systemic fatigue. For this reason, it is a good idea to do a secondary test like a countermovement jump height.

If your customer is not sufficiently rested and needs easier training, you can apply the "rule of 60" and reduce the burden on the training volume to 60% of your original plan (see super training). Instead of reducing the volume in the form of sets / repetitions, I would recommend reducing it by the training intensity (% 1RM) as the maximum under-regenerated athlete for that day is likely to be lower and this still offers a lot of exercise with the movement.

Continuous assessment and adjustment

Using INOL with your automatic regulation protocol will also help you plan for the future. At the end of each training block, review the adjustments you had to make and what the INOL your customer ultimately did based on those adjustments. In this way you get a better picture of the training volume to which your customer can actually adapt and you can plan future training blocks more efficiently.

Initial training programs for every customer are always a sound guess. However, if you use these tools in a bottom-up approach, you may be more likely to use a top-down approach for future programming for your customers. Seeing how they adapt to a specific program helps you understand them better and create more personalized overtime.

Everyone adapts to similar stimuli in a similar way, but the ability to customize a program for each customer increases their chances of consistently optimal results. Stand out from other trainers and use your tools to offer your customers the best program.

Individualizing Training: Structural Balance, Intensity and Autoregulation

Writing programs is easy. You only need to do between 1 and 20 sets of 1 to 100 repetitions per muscle group between 5 and 120% of your 1 rpm and rest between sets 1 to 300 minutes. It is science. This is obviously an exaggeration of what is written in most textbooks, but most textbooks contain general guidelines, but do not explain how you can customize these numbers for your customers.

Textbooks are intended for this. To give you a general idea of ​​how to write training based on what is effective for the majority of the population. So if you follow the guidelines listed, you are likely to get some decent results for your customer, but what's next? Are you just adding weight to the bar? Do you play more sets More repetitions? What happens if the performance doesn't get better or even worse? Just go back and repeat the previous program?

The reality is that most people respond similarly to different types of stimuli. If you lift heavily, they become strong. If you make a lot of volume, they will get big provided you eat enough (read the ultimate guide to building muscle and hypertrophy).

What differs is their starting point, how much volume / intensity they need to see adjustment, and their ability to recover from training. Implementing the concept of structural balance (INOL) and using a general training framework that takes fatigue into account can help you design an initial program and provide the data for successful writing of future programs.

What is structural balance?

Let us first define terms. Structural balance simply means that your entire body muscles are balanced. So the muscles on the front of your body don't overwhelm the muscles on the back of your body, and you don't walk around like a gorilla with a massive upper body and a lower-sized lower body.

There are two things you should do to determine if a client is structurally balanced. The first is a simple assessment of posture. Depending on how well you are familiar with the customer, you can determine how deep you can go. For example, an athlete you have worked with in the past and who is very confident may have no problem taking his shirt off so you can see his shoulder blade move.

An overweight 40-year-old woman who is already very afraid of training will likely feel a lot uncomfortable if you ask her to take off her shirt. Regardless of whether your customer puts their shirt on or off, you can generally see a large imbalance such as overly kyphotic T-spikes or twisted shoulders.

The second option is to perform different exercises and compare their or calculated maxima. It should be noted that you would only do this with a customer who has a certain level of training history, or with a customer who has gone through a block with a focus on movement like Block 0 with you. So if the customer is able to run maximum values, or rep maxes, you can see where their imbalances are.

The intensity number of lifts (INOL)

The next definition we have to look at is INOL. INOL is an abbreviation for the intensity of the lifts. The intensity is considered from the point of view of% 1RM and the number of lifting operations carried out at these percentages. The calculation actually used is (repetitions / (100 intensity)). This gives you a score for a particular elevator.

In his work "How to design strength training programs with Prilipens table", Hristo Hristov has recommendations on what score does not cause enough stress for adaptation, what causes enough stress for adaptation and what causes too much fatigue for effective adaptation. Even if you don't use their specific numbers, using INOL is an effective tool to measure how much volume and intensity your customer is most efficiently adapting to.

Autoregulation: adapt your training to your needs

The final definition is autoregulation. With autoregulation, you can adapt your program to things like your recovery and CNS readiness. There are several ways to use autoregulation, which we'll discuss later in this article.

The terms are defined. So what do we do with them? Let's first look at our structural balance. When considering the structural balance, I recommend using exercises that are relevant to your client's goals. For example, if it's a weight lifter, or if you have an athlete who regularly uses the Olympic lifts, you can test for snapping, cleaning, and jerking.

If you don't plan to use the Olympic lifts, there's no reason to include them in the structural balance test. In this case, I recommend testing the conventional deadlift, rear squat, front squat, bench press, overhead press, and barbell row.

Since maximizing or performing AMRAPs on multiple exercises is very stressful, I would split the exercises into 2-3 days with 1-4 days in between. After getting all of your maxima or calculated maxes from your AMRAPs, you can see how the correlation between elevators and your customer's possible imbalances is.

To determine how each elevator should be correlated, you can see the work of people like Charles Poliquin, Christian Thibedeau, and Travis Mash. They have all written about the importance of structural balance and the importance of structural balance.

Exercise selection and baselines

A possible example of a structural balance would be to use the squat as a reference lift. If your customer squats 100 pounds back, they should be able to squat 85 pounds, conventional deadlifts 110 pounds, bench press 75 pounds, barbell row 52.5 pounds, and overhead presses 45 pounds (see Know Your Ratios , Destroy weaknesses).

Now when you look at your structural balance assessment, you also need to consider the client's anthropometry. If you have a client who has extremely long legs and short arms, he will most likely not be able to lift 110% of his squat.

If you have a massive chest and super short arms, you may be able to do more than 75% of your bench press because you only need a shorter range of motion to move the bar. Therefore, use the numbers of your structural balance sheet assessment as a basis, but adjust them based on the anthropometry of your customer as required.

You can use your structural balance test to determine which exercises you want to highlight in your training block. The exercise selection can be determined in different ways. An easy way is to train each exercise category all three days of the week with your earliest primary weakness in training and your strengths later in training to ensure you get the highest quality reps for your primary weakness.

If we split our movement categories into deadlift / Olympic variation, squat / lunge variation, upper body push and upper body pull, we can include an exercise from each of these categories in the training. Since not all exercises are equal in terms of the stress they cause, it is a good idea to use descending stress exercises throughout the workout.

Instead of using the most stressful exercises in each movement category and including conventional deadlifts, squats, bench presses, and barbell rows, you can use descending stress exercises like traditional deadlifts, front squats, overhead presses, and pull-ups.

Determination of individual intensities with INOL

After you have selected your exercises, we can look at the intensities. Using INOL's concept and Hristov's numbers, we can see that in week 1 you want at least 0.4 points for a workout. Everything below does not generally cause enough stress to bring about positive adjustment.

0.4-1 is considered very feasible and optimal if you don't accumulate fatigue, and 1-2 is considered hard but good for charging phases. I am a big supporter of using the minimum effective dose to gain strength, and I think it is always better to go below and increase exercise stress than to exceed and possibly reset.

With this in mind, I would recommend using a score of 0.8 for your primary exercise first. Regardless of which loading parameter you are using, whether it is straight sets, wave loading, working on something heavy and performing back-down sets, the value in the equation (repetitions / (100-intensity)) should be 0.8.

This number can initially be increased by up to 10 to 20% for your primary exercise. However, you need to decrease some of your other exercise categories by the same percentage. Every week you can decrease the volume and increase the intensity. After each training block, increase the INOL from week 1.

If the previous training block was effective, increase Week 1 INOL to 0.88. If this is effective, increase it to 0.96. Continue increasing the value until you see no positive adjustment. If INOL gets too big in a single workout and you routinely cannot recover enough for another hard workout this week, it is better to reduce the volume that day and add another workout within the week.

At this point, look back at your training logs and see which week 1 INOL your customer has improved the most. Take advantage of this amount of training volume for most of the year, while occasionally going over to accomplish too much and recover, and you will set your customers up for the best chance of success as the volume is tailored to them.

It is important to remember that when you exercise, you are not exercising in a vacuum. What happens on day 1 affects day 2. With this in mind, we want to be able to automatically regulate our customers' training based on what we can do on a given day.

There may be days when your customer didn't get enough sleep, ate enough calories, separated from their partner, or the previous training session was too stressful so that they cannot achieve the numbers they suspect to hit that day . This can become very obvious once the customer starts training and you can then make an adjustment. Ideally, however, you want to be able to adjust the workout before you start training.

To decide whether or not to change the plan, you should use a CNS readiness measurement procedure. There are different possibilities. One option would be to test heart rate variability (HRV). There are a variety of tools that you can purchase to measure HRV, but they cost between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars.

Another possibility is to measure the bar speed at a reference percentage for a reference lift. The equipment would also cost you a few hundred or a few thousand dollars. These are great tools that you can use. So if you have the resources, I would recommend purchasing them as they provide you with a lot of training data.

However, if you don't have the money for HRV or accelerometer equipment, you can use cheaper methods like a handheld test bench. In Thomas Kurtz's book Science of Sports Training, he discussed measuring grip strength to test recovery, since grip strength correlates with CNS readiness.

He states that an athlete whose grip strength decreases by more than 2 kg is under-recovered. A handheld test bench can be purchased for just $ 20. It is important that you use the same hand test bench for every test. Using others will reduce the reliability and validity of your test.

Another thing to consider is that if you have a lot of exercise that puts strain on your grip, you may get a low score due to peripheral fatigue instead of systemic fatigue. For this reason, it is a good idea to do a secondary test like a countermovement jump height.

If your customer is not sufficiently rested and needs easier training, you can apply the "rule of 60" and reduce the burden on the training volume to 60% of your original plan (see super training). Instead of reducing the volume in the form of sets / repetitions, I would recommend reducing it by the training intensity (% 1RM) as the maximum under-regenerated athlete for that day is likely to be lower and this still offers a lot of exercise with the movement.

Continuous assessment and adjustment

Using INOL with your automatic regulation protocol will also help you plan for the future. At the end of each training block, review the adjustments you had to make and what the INOL your customer ultimately did based on those adjustments. In this way you get a better picture of the training volume to which your customer can actually adapt and you can plan future training blocks more efficiently.

Initial training programs for every customer are always a sound guess. However, if you use these tools in a bottom-up approach, you may be more likely to use a top-down approach for future programming for your customers. Seeing how they adapt to a specific program helps you understand them better and create more personalized overtime.

Everyone adapts to similar stimuli in a similar way, but the ability to customize a program for each customer increases their chances of consistently optimal results. Stand out from other trainers and use your tools to offer your customers the best program.