Should we teach resistance training instead of sensitivity training?
"If we do not keep the barbaric virtues, it will be of little use to win the civilized ones."
– Theodore Roosevelt
The First World War began in 1914. The glorious war, which was to be over by Christmas, turned into the bloodiest four years the world had ever seen (until then, anyway).
Continue reading
Should we teach hardness training instead of sensitivity training?
"If we do not keep the barbaric virtues, it will be of little use to win the civilized ones."
– Theodore Roosevelt
The First World War began in 1914. The glorious war, which was to be over by Christmas, turned into the bloodiest four years the world had ever seen (until then, anyway).
Continue reading
Robert Linkul is the National Strength and Conditioning Associations (NSCA) 2012 Personal Trainer of the Year. Robert runs Be Stronger Fitness, a strength and conditioning facility focused on training an older clientele. With their skills and experience, Robert and his team are uniquely qualified to provide adequate strength training for the older adult.
Read Next To Exercise An Older Adult At Their Original Breaking Muscle Source: https://breakingmuscle.com/fitness/how-to-train-an-older-adult
Because of my email inbox and Instagram DMs, post workout recovery is a hot topic. I get all sorts of questions about recovery techniques.
I'm glad people are paying some attention to their recovery. Unfortunately, I think they are paying their attention to the wrong pieces of the recovery puzzle. In this series of articles, I'm going to help you maximize your recovery and results by focusing on what really matters.
I will explain::
This trend towards paying more attention to recreation is admirable.
In part, this is not surprising I like to remind people that instead of lifting bigger and stronger weights, they are recovering from lifting weights.
I have tried many times to illustrate the importance of recovery by presenting progress as a simple equation:
Stress can be both good and bad. Good stress, or what psychologists call eustress, is the type of stress we feel when we are excited. Exercise is a burden on the body. With sufficient dosage, it is undoubtedly useful.
Bad stress comes in two forms:
Your tolerance and ability to cope with stress are different from mine.
Our tolerance also fluctuates over time. There is only so much stress to deal with. When you are under too much pressure you become overwhelmed. Your recovery from exercise will suffer during times of high stress.
Managing your stress level improves the quality of life.
It improves your digestion, rest, mood, and productivity. It will also improve your muscle building and fat loss.
Note that I am calling it stress management – not avoiding or reducing stress.
The fact is, you can't completely avoid stress.
However, you can improve management. The better you deal with stress, you will be happier, fitter, leaner, and more muscular. In short, life is getting better.
The body's control center is the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS regulates the involuntary functions of the human body. The stuff that happens without you consciously thinking about it, like breathing or digestion.
The ANS has two branches::
These two work like a seesaw. Whenever one of the modes is activated, the other is not activated. When one is up, the other is down.
Unfortunately, your body cannot differentiate between different types of stress.
When the sympathetic nervous system is upregulated, it can't tell the difference between the stress of a life-threatening event, challenging workout, or the asshole that just cut you off in traffic.
To deal with stress, we want to spend most of our time in a parasympathetic state. However, the reality is that we spend too much time in a personable state. The uninterrupted flood of stress adds up when we face daily challenges.
This sympathetic state has many negative health effects and inhibits our ability to build lean muscles and reduce body fat.
In my experience, so many hard-gainers have difficulty seeing progress because they are chronically stressed and are working to manage stress, which increases their anxiety and creates a downward spiral.
Instead of winning hard, I refer to these people as easy losers.
Their stress levels cause them to lose profit at an alarming rate at the slightest change in a routine or a life circumstance because they handle stress badly.
With this in mind, it is time to identify strategies that can be used to control stress as much as possible.
A good indicator of your stress level and your parasympathetic versus sympathetic dominance is your waking heart rate.
By monitoring your heart rate, you can get useful data that can help you assess your general stress status and determine when it is increasing.
Significant increases or decreases in your waking heart rate indicate when you are experiencing higher periods of stress. I suggest you get a decent heart rate monitor to assess this. You can also examine heart rate variability apps to add another tier of rating.
Cal Newport talks about how the autopilot can help you be more productive and less stressed. He says that there are two types of work in his world:
Regularly occurring tasks
Tasks that do not occur regularly
Being autopilot applies to almost everyone.
The problem with tasks that occur regularly is that they are so numerous that if we try to manage them on the fly, we get left behind and overwhelmed.
I believe that feeling of being overwhelmed is one of the main drivers of stress in people's lives. It is certainly a major cause of mine.
To cope with this, Newport assigns a specific time slot to each regularly occurring task. He calls this his autopilot schedule. He found that he doesn't waste time or energy prioritizing and planning tasks on a daily basis. You're on autopilot.
Once you've assigned this stuff to specific times and made it a routine, you can assign any other available times to other things that interest you. This method requires some advance planning, but it pays off.
The last point is to understand that it will take time to refine and adjust this process.
Fortunately, you're so much more efficient that you have the time to make adjustments as needed.
When you have a morning routine to start your day, you are on the right foot and set the scene for the rest of the day.
You can run the day instead of the day you run.
I am a supporter of the Miracle Morning Routine. I'm doing the express version, which takes less than 15 minutes and has six steps.
The six steps are::
remain silent
Affirmations
Visualizations
exercise
read
Write
Various apps are available to walk you through the process.
If I stick to the Miracle Morning routine, I will be more productive and feel in control.
Meditation is a great way to combat stress. I haven't gone full muesli yogi yet. When I get a little older, I may fully embrace Zen.
I am aware that the word meditation has negative connotations in some people (my cereal yogi reference is a case in point). So if you're not ready to think about meditation, call it silence, chillaxing, mindfulness, or whatever makes you comfortable.
Instead of fully meditating, I sit quietly and concentrate on my breath for a few minutes.
Abdominal breathing, breathing deeply through your nose and slowly exhaling through your mouth do the trick.
If you want a guide, the Headspace app is excellent. I did some of the 5-10 minute guided meditations and it definitely calms you down. Those few minutes a day have a remarkable effect on managing your stress levels.
Being mindful or present is all the rage these days.
There's a good reason for that. We live in an always connected, yet very distracted world. The sheer amount of input competing for our attention is mind-boggling.
Living in this always distracted state is stressful and is similar to attention deficit disorder (ADD).
Try to fix this:
It doesn't matter whether you keep a diary in your leather-bound notepad while you have a coffee, hang out with friends over a barbecue or write the sales pitch in front of your laptop in the office.
When you are fully in the moment, you will become more productive, efficient, and effective in everything you do. It will help improve your mood and filter out potential external stressors.
Cheesy quote alert:
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift – that's why it's called the present.
– Eleanor Roosevelt
In his book The Chimp Paradox, Dr. Steve Peters on our chimpanzee brain and how it can control us. When the chimpanzee takes over, the logic evaporates and the emotions take over.
Too often when we are under stress we act emotionally. The chimpanzee in us becomes irritable and can wreak havoc before we know what happened.
When we get an emotional reaction to something, it usually wears off after about 90 seconds if we don't respond to it.
Pema Chodron talks about it in the book "Living beautifully: With uncertainty and change".
Emotions will drain and drain. In stressful situations, they can rise up inside you like a tsunami. It's only natural. The best way to deal with stress and keep it under control seems to be to accept the emotions. To feel it. But don't act on them. If you act on them, you add fuel to their fire. They will rage higher and longer. Instead, let them burn themselves. Then, when you are calm and the logic has returned, think about how you can avoid repeating the situation that put you in a position of stress and brought up negative emotions such as fear, worry, hate or fear.
– Pema Chodron
While feeling the emotions, it may be a good idea to inhale deeply through your nose, hold for a few seconds, and then exhale through your mouth.
This deep breathing has an incredibly calming effect on your body. In my experience, it can help speed the reduction of negative emotions when they occur.
A side effect of stress is shallow breathing.
Shallow breathing interferes with proper oxygenation to cells and reduces your body's ability to recover.
Given that I love to say, "You don't get heavy weights, you make a big recovery from lifting weights."
I've said it twice in this article, so it should be obvious why I believe that if you get stuck in a stressed, shallow state of breathing, it will limit your gains.
Tip for recovery after exercise: With a few simple breathing exercises you can switch from combat or flight mode to rest and digestion mode after training.
This breathing immediately reduces stress, increases the oxygen supply to the cells and accelerates the recovery processes. Exercising in the evening will also help you relax and fall asleep.
Sleep is the most powerful recovery tool available to you. It is therefore of vital importance!
Breathing exercises can also be useful as a proactive stress management tool when done daily. As I mentioned before, I try for a few minutes every morning. It creates a wonderfully calm feeling. I would never claim to be calm, but this is probably the next thing I feel.
Is it that bad what challenges you? Most of the things we worry about are not that important. It is rarely life or death, or it leads us to financial ruin.
Sit back, take stock, and ask yourself, "What's the worst that can happen?"? "
Often you can gain perspective, look at the stressor objectively and place its meaning appropriately in the hierarchy of events, needs, desires or stresses in your life.
Then nine times out of ten you will relax and find that you unnecessarily twisted your knickers.
Bonus tip::
Step away from your phone – no, not this second – continue reading this fascinating article 🙂 Then step away from your phone.
What do you instinctively do while waiting for a train or a queue? Most of us reach for our cell phones. This dependency for our phone wasn't the case 10 to 12 years ago.
We'd have to wait – just preoccupied with our thoughts or maybe the conversation has started with a stranger waiting next to us (conversations with real people, in person – that's strange).
We have lost the art of patience, waiting and thinking.
Boredom is a thing of the past. There's always a notification, something on social media, YouTube, or Netflix to keep us entertained. We are still joining the matrix and we seem unable to extract ourselves.
Smartphones have many advantages (don't get me wrong, smartphones are amazing). The downside is that we have become slaves to them.
Our phones increase our stress and anxiety and help us achieve a personable state.
Try to take some time – some kind of digital detox. Turning off / on airplane mode can reduce stress and anxiety. It can also enable you to achieve the mindfulness and presence that I discussed earlier.
It is not easy to take time for our phones. Smartphones are addicting! I have problems with this, but I know that when the phone is out of sight, when I'm at work or out with family, I'm less stressed, more productive, and happier. This struggle also applies to those I am with. Start small and build time.
Some ideas to control the usage of your phone are:::
Don't check for the first 30 minutes of your day.
If you are doing important work, please switch it to airplane mode and set a timer for how long the work task should last. Don't look at your phone until the time is up.
No smartphones with meals
Put your phone in a different room at home so you don't get distracted by it.
Are you watching TV with your wife, girlfriend, husband, boyfriend, friends, family, cat or dog? Keep the phone out of sight. Enjoy doing what you do and the fact that the phone doesn't distract you.
Set up restricted areas. Whether it's physical (e.g. not in the bedroom) or time zones (e.g. not using the phone for the first hour after getting home from work), this rule improves the quality of your relationships to important other people.
Set a good example. If you want to be less distracted when spending time with your partner, the first thing you should do is consciously be less distracted. Then, when you suggest that they do the same, they are more likely to respect and value your opinion. Trying to impose it on them before you have achieved it will meet with resistance.
Hope the stress management tips above are helpful to you.
If you can use some of these to help manage your stress levels, you'll be a happier, more productive, and focused person. You will also benefit from rigorous exercise programs and translate your training into noticeable gains in strength, size, and body composition.
In the second installment in this series, The Importance of Structured Training Programs in Recovery, I explain why significant recovery begins with excellent program design.
In it, I outline the four key concepts you will need to understand how to optimize your training and maximize your recoverability.
Because of my email inbox and Instagram DMs, post workout recovery is a hot topic. I get all sorts of questions about recovery techniques.
I'm glad people are paying some attention to their recovery. Unfortunately, I think they are paying their attention to the wrong pieces of the recovery puzzle. In this series of articles, I'm going to help you maximize your recovery and results by focusing on what really matters.
I will explain::
This trend towards paying more attention to recreation is admirable.
In part, this is not surprising I like to remind people that instead of lifting bigger and stronger weights, they are recovering from lifting weights.
I have tried many times to illustrate the importance of recovery by presenting progress as a simple equation:
Stimulus + recovery = adjustment
Stress can be both good and bad. Good stress, or what psychologists call eustress, is the type of stress we feel when we are excited. Exercise is a burden on the body. With sufficient dosage, it is undoubtedly useful.
Bad stress comes in two forms:
Your tolerance and ability to cope with stress are different from mine.
Our tolerance also fluctuates over time. There is only so much stress to deal with. When you are under too much pressure you become overwhelmed. Your recovery from exercise will suffer during times of high stress.
Managing your stress level improves the quality of life.
It improves your digestion, rest, mood, and productivity. It will also improve your muscle building and fat loss.
Note that I am calling it stress management – not avoiding or reducing stress.
The fact is, you can't completely avoid stress.
However, you can improve management. The better you deal with stress, you will be happier, fitter, leaner, and more muscular. In short, life is getting better.
The body's control center is the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS regulates the involuntary functions of the human body. The stuff that happens without you consciously thinking about it, like breathing or digestion.
The ANS has two branches::
These two work like a seesaw. Whenever one of the modes is activated, the other is not activated. When one is up, the other is down.
Unfortunately, your body cannot differentiate between different types of stress.
When the sympathetic nervous system is upregulated, it can't tell the difference between the stress of a life-threatening event, challenging workout, or the asshole that just cut you off in traffic.
To deal with stress, we want to spend most of our time in a parasympathetic state. However, the reality is that we spend too much time in a personable state. The uninterrupted flood of stress adds up when we face daily challenges.
This sympathetic state has many negative health effects and inhibits our ability to build lean muscles and reduce body fat.
In my experience, so many hard-gainers have difficulty seeing progress because they are chronically stressed and are working to manage stress, which increases their anxiety and creates a downward spiral.
Instead of winning hard, I refer to these people as easy losers.
Their stress levels cause them to lose profit at an alarming rate at the slightest change in a routine or a life circumstance because they handle stress badly.
With this in mind, it is time to identify strategies that can be used to control stress as much as possible.
A good indicator of your stress level and your parasympathetic versus sympathetic dominance is your waking heart rate.
By monitoring your heart rate, you can get useful data that can help you assess your general stress status and determine when it is increasing.
Significant increases or decreases in your waking heart rate indicate when you are experiencing higher periods of stress. I suggest you get a decent heart rate monitor to assess this. You can also examine heart rate variability apps to add another tier of rating.
Cal Newport talks about how the autopilot can help you be more productive and less stressed. He says that there are two types of work in his world:
Regularly occurring tasks
Tasks that do not occur regularly
Being autopilot applies to almost everyone.
The problem with tasks that occur regularly is that they are so numerous that if we try to manage them on the fly, we get left behind and overwhelmed.
I believe that feeling of being overwhelmed is one of the main drivers of stress in people's lives. It is certainly a major cause of mine.
To cope with this, Newport assigns a specific time slot to each regularly occurring task. He calls this his autopilot schedule. He found that he doesn't waste time or energy prioritizing and planning tasks on a daily basis. You're on autopilot.
Once you've assigned this stuff to specific times and made it a routine, you can assign any other available times to other things that interest you. This method requires some advance planning, but it pays off.
The last point is to understand that it will take time to refine and adjust this process.
Fortunately, you're so much more efficient that you have the time to make adjustments as needed.
When you have a morning routine to start your day, you are on the right foot and set the scene for the rest of the day.
You can run the day instead of the day you run.
I am a supporter of the Miracle Morning Routine. I'm doing the express version, which takes less than 15 minutes and has six steps.
The six steps are::
remain silent
Affirmations
Visualizations
exercise
read
Write
Various apps are available to walk you through the process.
If I stick to the Miracle Morning routine, I will be more productive and feel in control.
Meditation is a great way to combat stress. I haven't gone full muesli yogi yet. When I get a little older, I may fully embrace Zen.
I am aware that the word meditation has negative connotations in some people (my cereal yogi reference is a case in point). So if you're not ready to think about meditation, call it silence, chillaxing, mindfulness, or whatever makes you comfortable.
Instead of fully meditating, I sit quietly and concentrate on my breath for a few minutes.
Abdominal breathing, breathing deeply through your nose and slowly exhaling through your mouth do the trick.
If you want a guide, the Headspace app is excellent. I did some of the 5-10 minute guided meditations and it definitely calms you down. Those few minutes a day have a remarkable effect on managing your stress levels.
Being mindful or present is all the rage these days.
There's a good reason for that. We live in an always connected, yet very distracted world. The sheer amount of input competing for our attention is mind-boggling.
Living in this always distracted state is stressful and is similar to attention deficit disorder (ADD).
Try to fix this:
It doesn't matter whether you keep a diary in your leather-bound notepad while you have a coffee, hang out with friends over a barbecue or write the sales pitch in front of your laptop in the office.
When you are fully in the moment, you will become more productive, efficient, and effective in everything you do. It will help improve your mood and filter out potential external stressors.
Cheesy quote alert:
Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery and today is a gift – that's why it's called the present.
Eleanor Roosevelt
In his book The Chimp Paradox, Dr. Steve Peters on our chimpanzee brain and how it can control us. When the chimpanzee takes over, the logic evaporates and the emotions take over. Too often when we are under stress we act emotionally. The chimpanzee in us becomes irritable and can wreak havoc before we know what happened.
When we get an emotional reaction to something, it usually wears off after about 90 seconds if we don't respond to it.
Pema Chodron talks about it in the book "Living beautifully: With uncertainty and change".
Emotions will drain and drain. In stressful situations, they can rise up inside you like a tsunami. It's only natural. The best way to deal with stress and keep it under control seems to be to accept the emotions. To feel it. But don't act on them. If you act on them, you add fuel to their fire. They will rage higher and longer. Instead, let them burn themselves. Then, when you are calm and the logic has returned, think about how you can avoid repeating the situation that put you in a position of stress and brought up negative emotions such as fear, worry, hate or fear.
Pema Chodron
While feeling the emotions, it may be a good idea to inhale deeply through your nose, hold for a few seconds, and then exhale through your mouth.
This deep breathing has an incredibly calming effect on your body. In my experience, it can help speed the reduction of negative emotions when they occur.
A side effect of stress is shallow breathing.
Shallow breathing interferes with proper oxygenation to cells and reduces your body's ability to recover.
Given that I love to say, "You don't get heavy weights, you make a big recovery from lifting weights."
I've said it twice in this article, so it should be obvious why I believe that if you get stuck in a stressed, shallow state of breathing, it will limit your gains.
Tip for recovery after exercise: With a few simple breathing exercises you can switch from combat or flight mode to rest and digestion mode after training.
This breathing immediately reduces stress, increases the oxygen supply to the cells and accelerates the recovery processes. Exercising in the evening will also help you relax and fall asleep.
Sleep is the most powerful recovery tool available to you. It is therefore of vital importance!
Breathing exercises can also be useful as a proactive stress management tool when done daily. As I mentioned before, I try for a few minutes every morning. It creates a wonderfully calm feeling. I would never claim to be calm, but this is probably the next thing I feel.
Is it that bad what challenges you? Most of the things we worry about are not that important. It is rarely life or death, or it leads us to financial ruin.
Sit back, take stock, and ask yourself, "What's the worst that can happen?"? "
Often you can gain perspective, look at the stressor objectively and place its meaning appropriately in the hierarchy of events, needs, desires or stresses in your life.
Then nine times out of ten you will relax and find that you unnecessarily twisted your knickers.
Bonus tip::
Step away from your phone – no, not this second – continue reading this fascinating article 🙂 Then step away from your phone.
What do you instinctively do while waiting for a train or a queue? Most of us reach for our cell phones. This dependency for our phone wasn't the case 10 to 12 years ago. We'd have to wait – just preoccupied with our thoughts or maybe the conversation has started with a stranger waiting next to us (conversations with real people, in person – that's strange).
We have lost the art of patience, waiting and thinking.
Boredom is a thing of the past. There's always a notification, something on social media, YouTube, or Netflix to keep us entertained. We are still joining the matrix and we seem unable to extract ourselves.
Smartphones have many advantages (don't get me wrong, smartphones are amazing). The downside is that we have become slaves to them.
Our phones increase our stress and anxiety and help us achieve a personable state.
Try to take some time – some kind of digital detox. Turning off / on airplane mode can reduce stress and anxiety. It can also enable you to achieve the mindfulness and presence that I discussed earlier.
It is not easy to take time for our phones. Smartphones are addicting! I have problems with this, but I know that when the phone is out of sight, when I'm at work or out with family, I'm less stressed, more productive, and happier. This struggle also applies to those I am with. Start small and build time.
Some ideas to control the usage of your phone are:::
Don't check for the first 30 minutes of your day.
If you are doing important work, please switch it to airplane mode and set a timer for how long the work task should last. Don't look at your phone until the time is up.
No smartphones with meals
Put your phone in a different room at home so you don't get distracted by it.
Are you watching TV with your wife, girlfriend, husband, boyfriend, friends, family, cat or dog? Keep the phone out of sight. Enjoy doing what you do and the fact that the phone doesn't distract you.
Set up restricted areas. Whether it's physical (e.g. not in the bedroom) or time zones (e.g. not using the phone for the first hour after getting home from work), this rule improves the quality of your relationships to important other people.
Set a good example. If you want to be less distracted when spending time with your partner, the first thing you should do is consciously be less distracted. Then, when you suggest that they do the same, they are more likely to respect and value your opinion. Trying to impose it on them before you have achieved it will meet with resistance.
Hope the stress management tips above are helpful to you.
If you can use some of these to help manage your stress levels, you'll be a happier, more productive, and focused person. You will also benefit from rigorous exercise programs and translate your training into noticeable gains in strength, size, and body composition.
Stay tuned…
In the second installment in this series, I'll explain why significant recovery begins with excellent program design.
In it, I'll outline four key concepts you will need to understand how to optimize your workout and maximize your recoverability.
Short answer? Yes.
Before you rush into the weight room, we need to take a step back.
Even if you are still exercising, exercising, and are generally able to move around with a herniated or bulging disc, There are a few precautions and steps you need to take to keep the Owie from kicking your butt hard.
First of all, you need to understand your injury. Know your enemy and all that.
Your spine is made up of small sections of bone called vertebrae. There is a disc between each of these bones.
These guys are there for three reasons.
Oh, and to make you angry when you try to lift something way too heavy for yourself.
A disc bulge or a herniated disc occurs when one of these fluid-filled discs is injured.
It can either stick out or burst, usually causing nerve constriction and severe pain.
On the other hand, most adults have disc bulges and no effects at all. In general, it's completely natural.
Many people receive MRIs and decide they're done when they have a herniated disc or bulging discs.
But if you've ever had a herniated disc, you know what kind of pain it can cause.
When I had three herniated discs, I couldn't move at all without a lot of pain. I mean, really couldn't move, and if you're in such pain this minute, I sympathize with you. I understand because it's a lot of fun.
It may not seem like it, but there is.
You can come back just as badly from herniated discs if you take the right steps.
It's about getting the right support to rebuild your spine and convince your brain that it is safe and does not need to produce that pain action signal.
There are four main steps to getting you back into action.
It would be best if you reinserted your trunk and spine in hinge movements.
Slowly!
Just the hinge at the hips can be too much for your spine to drop straight off. So you need to find a way to hinge, but keep in mind the initial weight and range of motion.
Next, you need to gradually increase the weight.
It's best if you build control of your spine and the muscles that support it.
If you cannot control and support your spine, you will never fully recover from a herniated disc.
Try out the all-fours-spinal wave in the video to build the controls you need to move about well.
If you can't control the car you drive, you can't expect it to stay on the road, can you?
It makes perfect sense when it is landscaped, but sometimes it's difficult to see the forest for the trees.
Short answer? Yes.
Before you rush into the weight room, we need to take a step back.
Even if you are still exercising, exercising, and are generally able to move around with a herniated or bulging disc, There are a few precautions and steps you need to take to keep the Owie from kicking your butt hard.
First of all, you need to understand your injury. Know your enemy and all that.
Your spine is made up of small sections of bone called vertebrae. There is a disc between each of these bones.
These guys are there for three reasons.
Oh, and to make you angry when you try to lift something way too heavy for yourself.
A disc bulge or a herniated disc occurs when one of these fluid-filled discs is injured.
It can either stick out or burst, usually causing nerve constriction and severe pain.
On the other hand, most adults have disc bulges and no effects at all. In general, it's completely natural.
Many people receive MRIs and decide they're done when they have a herniated disc or bulging discs.
But if you've ever had a herniated disc, you know what kind of pain it can cause.
When I had three herniated discs, I couldn't move at all without a lot of pain. I mean, really couldn't move, and if you're in such pain this minute, I sympathize with you. I understand because it's a lot of fun.
It may not seem like it, but there is.
You can come back just as badly from herniated discs if you take the right steps.
It's about getting the right support to rebuild your spine and convince your brain that it is safe and does not need to produce that pain action signal.
There are four main steps to getting you back into action.
It would be best if you reinserted your trunk and spine in hinge movements.
Slowly!
Just the hinge at the hips can be too much for your spine to drop straight off. So you need to find a way to hinge, but keep in mind the initial weight and range of motion.
Next, you need to gradually increase the weight.
It's best if you build control of your spine and the muscles that support it.
If you cannot control and support your spine, you will never fully recover from a herniated disc.
Try out the all-fours-spinal wave in the video to build the controls you need to move about well.
If you can't control the car you drive, you can't expect it to stay on the road, can you?
It makes perfect sense when it is landscaped, but sometimes it's difficult to see the forest for the trees.
When you start building explosiveness with weights there is always someone chirping about Olympic lifting moves. However, learning to ride Olympic lifts is a slower and more arduous process than anyone who has never tried it would think. There are more setbacks than breakthroughs. I should know that I've dedicated a decade of my life to Olympic weightlifting.
When you have the time and energy to devote yourself to it, it can be rewarding and spiritually engaging. If you want to train explosive skills now, there are better options. The dumbbell power shrug is one of your best options.
To train explosiveness, stick to basic movements and learn to train them remarkably well.
If you want to learn more about the principles that form the basis of any movement, check out my two-week, in-depth online course that teaches the immutable principles of all barbell lifts. How to restore your body's resilience and control is about to begin.
You don't need a lot of equipment or coaching for an exercise like a dumbbell power shrugand you can customize it to suit your needs and make it harder over time.
You can create a foundation of athleticism, coordination, and explosive potential in the gym for any other physical hobbies you enjoy, but you need to understand how first.
The dumbbell power shrug builds athletic strength.
There aren't many exercises that will work out these traits in the gym except when throwing or hit heavy med balls.
Unless you're doing a sport that requires explosive movements, you may not be interested in an exercise that develops that skill.
The ability to move quickly, move, or catch when you trip, or change direction is an explosive move. It's a physical ability that we often overlook. However, this is not only important for younger people trying to participate in physical exercise.
With age, the ability to explode decreases before other physical traits such as strength, flexibility, and even muscle mass. Unless you're very explosive at first, that drop will be an even bigger problem.
One of the greatest risks of injury in old age is the loss of this explosive reflex.
If we trip and you cannot move your feet fast enough to catch yourself or reach out your hands, you will be injured. Knee, hip, and back injuries from falls can be reduced as you age by adding explosive workout to the mix.
If you are younger and want to be more capable, this is a great tool that doesn't involve learning new or complicated skills. If you want to train that hard, all you have to do is crouch properly and remember how to jump.
The best part about this exercise is that almost every muscle that starts in the lower body and moves up the chain has forceful contact.
The sequence of movement teaches coordination, which in strength training can generally only be learned by engaging in Olympic weightlifting.
A group of trainers close to me call this coordination the chain of command.
The idea is that large muscles should fire before smaller ones during complex explosive movements. For the power shrug, the largest and strongest muscles in the lower body fire when you crouch and stretch up.
When you reach the top of the movement and deploy, the traps should twitch at the same time as your ankles deploy. However, these smaller muscles only work after the larger muscles initiate the movement.
You need a dumbbell or kettlebell in each hand.
When you're comfortable, change it up by starting from the floor. Touch the dumbbells to the floor on each rep.
This deeper squat is harder than you think. It would be helpful if you had enough hip mobility to squat so low with good posture and so you can train the hip muscles differently.
A big mistake is to let your entire foot off the ground and bounce. Use light weights and it's no big deal, but start grabbing heavier bells and it could hurt you.
When you ride hard like you should, your heels will leave the ground, but always keep part of your foot in contact with the ground.
One off-balance landing after an actual jump and you see a foot or ankle injury.
Once you have trained the movement and gradually gained weight, you can challenge yourself at various tempos.
You can eccentric (lower) the weight into your squat position before extending it as quickly as possible. Or you could do something like a 3 count eccentric, with a break down below for another 3 counts.
A basic move like the power shrug makes it easy to modify and more challenging so you can keep training hard.
When you start building explosiveness with weights there is always someone chirping about Olympic lifting moves. However, learning to ride Olympic lifts is a slower and more arduous process than anyone who has never tried it would think. There are more setbacks than breakthroughs. I should know that I've dedicated a decade of my life to Olympic weightlifting.
When you have the time and energy to devote yourself to it, it can be rewarding and spiritually engaging. Now, if you want to train explosive skills, there are better options. The dumbbell power shrug is one of your best options.
To train explosiveness, stick to basic movements and learn to train them remarkably well.
If you're interested in learning more about the principles that form the basis of any movement, check out my two-week, in-depth online course that teaches the immutable principles behind all barbell lifts. How to restore your body's resilience and control is about to begin.
You don't need a lot of equipment or coaching for an exercise like a dumbbell power shrugand you can customize it to suit your needs and make it harder over time.
You can create a foundation of athleticism, coordination, and explosive potential in the gym for any other physical hobbies you enjoy, but you need to understand how first.
The dumbbell power shrug builds athletic strength.
There aren't many exercises that work out these traits in the gym, except when throwing or hitting heavy med balls.
Unless you're doing a sport that requires explosive movements, you may not be interested in an exercise that develops that skill.
The ability to move quickly, move, or catch when you trip, or change direction is an explosive move. It's a physical ability that we often overlook. However, this is not only important for younger people trying to participate in physical exercise.
With age, the ability to explode decreases before other physical traits such as strength, flexibility, and even muscle mass. Unless you're very explosive at first, that drop will be an even bigger problem.
One of the greatest risks of injury in old age is the loss of this explosive reflex.
If we trip and you cannot move your feet fast enough to catch yourself or reach out your hands, you will be injured. Knee, hip, and back injuries from falls can be reduced as you age by adding explosive workout to the mix.
If you are younger and want to be more powerful, this is a great tool that doesn't involve learning new or complicated skills. If you want to train that hard, all you have to do is crouch properly and remember how to jump.
The best part about this exercise is that almost every muscle that starts in the lower body and moves up the chain has forceful contact.
The sequence of movement teaches coordination, which in strength training can generally only be learned by engaging in Olympic weightlifting.
A group of trainers close to me call this coordination the chain of command.
The idea is that large muscles should fire before smaller ones during complex explosive movements. For the power shrug, the strongest muscles of the lower body fire when you crouch and stretch up.
When you reach the top of the movement and deploy, the traps should twitch at the same time as your ankles deploy. However, these smaller muscles only work after the larger muscles initiate the movement.
You need a dumbbell or kettlebell in each hand.
When you're comfortable, change it up by starting from the floor. Touch the dumbbells to the floor on each rep.
This deeper squat is harder than you think. It would be helpful if you had enough hip mobility to squat so low with good posture and so you trained the hip muscles differently.
A big mistake is to let your entire foot off the ground and bounce. Use light weights and it's no big deal, but start grabbing heavier bells and it could hurt you.
When you ride hard like you should, your heels will leave the ground but always keep part of your foot in contact with the ground.
One off-balance landing after an actual jump and you see a foot or ankle injury.
Once you have trained the movement and gradually gained weight, you can challenge yourself at various tempos.
You can eccentrically (lower) the weight into your squat position with 6 counts before extending it as quickly as possible. Or you could do something like a 3 count eccentric, with a break down below for another 3 counts.
A basic move like the power shrug makes it easy to modify and more challenging so you can keep training hard.
How to be an athlete forever.