Training is a treadmill

By Pete Ryan

I believe that exercise has a good analogy with the person on the treadmill. If you slowly walk forward, you stay about the same, if you stop, you are going backwards. To move forward you have to run! It takes some effort to actually stay still, let alone move forward.

I believe training is the same (once you reach adulthood). As a trainee if you plod along, doing the same old pace, you will achieve the same old results.  You have seen the people in the gym who look the same after months or years doing the same things.  They often have ridged, set routines and do not focus on goals or plan their training. Let’s look at some ways you can plan your yearly training cycles.  First off a lot will depend on what you do and your goals, some people may need to lose weight, some may need to add muscle, others may use exercise to improve a sporting or leisure activity? So, your first chore has to be to decide why you want to exercise, what is the end goal?

After you have the final goal, the next is to break up your training into mesa cycles throughout the year.  If you want to look buff, you might want to break the year into 3 or 4 mesa cycles.  This will include a strength cycle, a hypertrophy cycle, a conditioning cycle and a peaking cycle (usually the peaking cycle will be just before summer, so you look your best topless on the beach).  If you are someone into a sport, you split it into off-season exercise, pre-season exercise and during the season exercise. These will probably be strength focused off-season, adding in conditioning as the season approaches and then minimal workouts to hold strength during the season (depending on the sport). Strength athletes like powerlifters or weightlifters will focus on specificity, so they will have more non-specific exercise during the off-season, then focus on their actual sport more and more as the contest approaches, then a peaking cycle leading into the contest.  This does not mean not doing the lifts off-season, but it does allow for doing variations, conditioning and other exercises to be included.

Now we have an idea of what we want to do, we now need to find ways to really push forward. A lot depends on your goals, but if you are looking at 100 pound weight loss, set intermediate goals. Celebrate every pound lost, buy yourself something nice when you lose 5 pounds.  Learn to enjoy the process, the goal is always anti-climatic, but enjoying the process continues as long as you are doing it! If you want to lift 100 pounds, but you are only lifting 50 pounds, lifting 51 pounds may not seem like much, but it is that step closer to the 100 pounds you want to get, so celebrate that. A PR (personal record) of 1 pound is as valid as a 50 pound PR, enjoy the moment. To go back to the treadmill analogy, every little PR, whether it is an extra rep, an extra pound or doing something with a few seconds less rest is just upping that pace on the treadmill a little, you started jogging instead of walking.  The only sprinters in this analogy are people new to training (or possibly people who begin taking anabolic steroids).  Those are the 2 times a person would be sprinting in this allegory, the rest of us will be walking, jogging or stopped. Throughout life we will go through times of each, will have times we move forward, times we ‘go through the motions’ and times of injury or distraction where we regress. Our goal must be to maximise the times we move forward and minimise the times we regress. You can do this by finding things you really enjoy doing, that way you will be keen to actually do the work, secondly set short term goals, so you will actually move forward slowly and not stagnate.

The final point to remember is that this is a process, so there may be goals along the way, but there is never a finish line, every goal is just a stepping stone to the next challenge, never be satisfied and never stop striving!

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Ever forward

By Pete Ryan

You often hear the quote “I want to maintain”, or “I just don’t want to lose any strength/size”.  This might be a reasonable sounding goal and it can often be the outcome in the older trainee, but I do not believe it should be a goal. I will give my reasoning below.

The human body is a dynamic organism. It is not like a car or a bike. If you store it carefully, it will not maintain its abilities. What happens is a body is in two states.  The body is either anabolic or catabolic, so it is either growing and rebuilding, or it is consuming itself and destroying unnecessary parts of itself.  This is an on-going process that occurs all the time. Being catabolic can be health promoting by removing old or damaged cells, but it can also have a negative impact by removing hard fought for muscle, bone density, tendon durability or fascia strength. Meanwhile we have anabolic effects which involves adding tissue, this can be muscle and lean tissue, but adding fat is also an anabolic event. So, our goal is to create methods that heighten the positive effects of both the catabolic and anabolic processes in the body. We want to remove old and damaged cells, while also promoting the creation of new lean tissue with minimal increases in fat storage.

The best way to achieve these goals is through progressive resistance exercise. This can be bodyweight, or using equipment. Note the name of this type of exercise. PROGRESSIVE resistance exercise. That is the goal, but why is it important to progress, and what do we mean by progression?

Let us look at progression, or to be more precise, let’s look at non-progression. Let’s say you reach a point where you believe 10 reps of 100 pounds in an exercise is ‘strong enough’. So, you always do 10 reps or 100 pounds.  If you never go over that your body will adapt to it, you will become more efficient at the movement and you will end up with the very minimum you need to do that 10 reps of 100 pounds. Any issue, ANY problem that increases stress or stops you training will drop you below that level. As you age, it will become progressively harder to get those 10 reps. If you reached 10 reps of 100 pounds with ease at 30 years old, by 50 you will be struggling to get it, by 65 years old you probably won’t have it any more…and you will blame old age. It will not be aging that took that lift away from you, it will be the lack of progression.

Now let us look at what we mean by progression.  When we talk about progression most people think of ‘intensity’ the actually weight lifted, but that is an oversimplification of progression.  Yes if you lifted 90 pounds and later lifted 100 pounds then you have progressed, but there are other options. The amount of reps done during an exercise, a harder variation of an exercise, taking less time between sets, even trying new forms of exercise that stimulate the body in novel ways and develop new skills, all of these are forms of progression.

Most people realise that you cannot keep adding weight to an exercise (or repetitions).  There is a limit, most people will never lift 1,000 pounds or do 1,000 pull-ups in day, but you can progress by cycling exercises so throughout your life you continue to progress and move forward.

Let’s return to the person who believes 10 reps of 100 pounds is ‘strong enough’.  My argument is they should be aiming at higher numbers (let’s say 125-150 pounds for 12-15 reps), but not do it every week. They should do a mesa cycle working up to that peak and then move on to other exercises, then return again regularly and aim at equalling or ideally bettering that goal. So suppose you have four mesa cycles in a year (3 months each). Mesa cycle 1 would be get to 12-15 reps of 125-150 pounds doing the exercise, mesa cycle 2 could be doing a variation of the same exercise or working the same muscle groups using other exercises, mesa cycle 3 could be working up to 3-5 reps with 175-200 pounds of that exercise, mesa cycle 4 could be another variation that works the same muscle groups.  You can also do variations other than increasing weight or reps, think about the rest time between sets, what you do before this exercise.  So, you could cut your rest time between sets from 1 minute to 30 seconds, or if you are doing a curl, do a chin up before you do the curl.  All these things will change the results and create new demands on your body.  You have more than a lifetime of tweaks to play with. No one will ever have time to try every variable or even every type of exercise available. So, progression is possible throughout life and expect to set goals and repeatedly conquer them throughout your life, go forward, ever forward.

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Why learning to coach is important for everyone?

By Pete Ryan

There are several stages to learning within the exercise sphere.

1.      You realise you know nothing
2.      You learn a little and believe you have the answer
3.      You learn a lot and most answers are “It depends”

This post will try to explain the reasons you should aim to reach level 3, why being a ‘guru’ with a definitive answer is not the goal (& why people are fooled by them). Also why, even if you only coach yourself, reaching the third level of understanding is desirable.

Firstly, let’s look at someone new to exercise or coaching. They will go and find figures of authorities to follow (magazines, youtube personalities, online coaches, books etc), they will learn a method or methods that prove most enjoyable or effective for themselves. This maybe after failing at several other protocols?

This moves them onto the second phase. They now know a little bit and have often found a protocol that is effective for them (for example HIT training, intermittent fasting, DC training, Paleo, Matrix training or whatever). They now become a zealot about this style or methodology and so tout this as THE method. When asked they have an exact protocol and a method that will fit everyone and suit every goal. People become generic and everyone reacts the same to the same stimuli. This is the realm of the ‘guru’, where they suggest one style of training or diet suits us all and one answer will be beneficial to everyone.

Many people stay at the second level throughout their training/coaching life. They have one system, and it works for a percentage of the population, but if you are lucky you will pass through that level and almost come full circle, you realise that the more you learn, the less you know, there are no definitive answers and experimenting is the best way to discover what works best for an individual. Eventually you will come to the conclusion that making one or 2 small changes and monitoring the effects is the ideal way to find the best working methods. Add to that the concept that often nothing works indefinitely and you get an interesting mix for a coach to digest and utilise.

There are definitely certain truths

1. You need to progress   
2. You need to exercise consistently   
3. You need to work all the relevant muscular systems
4. You need to avoid injury
5. You need to be motivated
6. You need to be able to recover

      These things and many more are proven facets of exercise, but within those foundations there is a world of diet and exercise protocols for you to explore. Most will be dead ends, either not enjoyable, or not as productive as other methodologies, but some will yield amazing results.

This is not to knock cookie-cutter programmes, such programmes can work and be tremendously effective, but ideally, a tailored routine will give you the biggest returns over time. Many people can reach a good level of health and fitness following many of the standard template systems out there, but if you have issues, or wish to reach higher, then moving towards a more tailored exercise, diet & recovery routine will improve results.

I promised to look at gurus and why you don’t want to fall into the trap of ‘one size fits all’. If you ask an actual expert, the answer “It depends” will often be their answer, often it will sound like they do not know anything, but the truth is they know enough to know that the answer is not simple. A guru however will sound immensely confident, “The answer is to do A, B & C!” this answer will be the same for everyone. Often a guru and an expert will offer similar starting points, but from there a guru continues to offer fixed methodologies whereas an expert will begin the tailoring process, so it is not always simple to weed the guru out from the experts. Your aim is to be able to start 2 people on the same programme and then work with them until those routines are tailored towards their goals and their preferences. So, you could start 2 people off with a routine based on 3 sets of 10, but after some time, one is doing 1 set of 20 reps, while the other is doing 5 sets of 5 reps, they may also be working out different amounts each week for different duration and be eating very different diets.

This should be your goal (even if you only train yourself). Learn to try small changes, monitor these changes and either discard that change or move on to the next small change. In time you will find a selection of protocols that work for yourself and others and you will understand why the term “It depends” is so common within the training world.

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Health and fitness misconceptions

By Pete Ryan 

 

Listen to any advert or guru and health and fitness is easy and fast. 4 weeks to a 6-pack, eat what you like and get thin, just 5 minutes a day…these are just a few of the myths that surround the health and fitness industry.  In truth health and fitness are a long, slow, on going process that you can begin at any age, but need to be continued throughout your life to be effective.

I will look at just a few of the common myths and walk you through why they are wrong and what the reality truly is.

Let’s look at one that specifically affects the vegan or plant based arena. It is the ex-vegan. The story usually goes like this:

I went vegan, I became very ill. I usually had a lot of soul searching, then I ate meat.   In most cases that first bite was amazing and suddenly they felt well and full of vigour.

So, that is the scenario. Think about that story for a moment. I am a clinical nutritionist, but you do not need to have any formal training to see the flaw in this argument. You are arguing you developed a serious deficiency due to a diet, then you cured a major deficiency with one bite of meat, immediately. This is not a deficiency, look up the treatment of scurvy or any other deficiency based disease and see that not only does recovery take a long time, but you also suffer lasting issues.  What they are describing is a psychological issue, not a nutritional condition. For some reason they have convinced themselves that they need meat and so exhibit symptoms. I am not saying you cannot suffer deficiencies on a vegan diet, that is possible eating any diet, but if you get immediate relief then the issue was not a nutritional issue, it was a psychological one.  I have worked with people who suffer from many eating disorders; binge eating, inappropriate food choices, and many other food -centred issues.  I always insist these people also work with the relevant mental health care worker as the issue is very deeply joined to early life trauma and other issues as it is to simply poor food choices. Let me reemphasise, you can suffer real dietary issues on any diet, including a vegan diet, but immediate relief of symptoms after a bite is a red flag that there are deeper issues involved.

What I would finally say about this is that anyone who has a concern, whatever their diet, should go and seek some form of help. Firstly consult a nutritional expert with some experience and if necessary seek counselling from a trained professional as these can really help you understand the condition.

Let’s move on from there to the “Reach your goal in X weeks”. We are talking diet challenges, mass gaining contests etc etc. These are all not ways to achieve long term success.  I haven’t got the exact percentages to hand, but it is over 90% failure rates for diet success over time, muscle building cannot even be done that quickly without heavy usage of “supplements” (steroids, HGH, insulin, SARMS or whatever the new flavour of the month is). Your actual goal is to build a new lifestyle, one where you are naturally leaner &/or one that adds to your muscle mass over time. You can diet hard and lose weight (and lose a lot of muscle along with the fat), but this will not stay off unless you adopt a new way of eating and living. You will not build muscle without spending years in the gym. Look at the extreme, Mr Olympia is usually a guy in his mid-30s, they have trained hard for decades and taken heavy doses of drugs. So, they are the genetic elite (in terms of muscle building potential) and they still took decades WITH drugs! Many people see this as a bad thing, but really it is actually a good thing, it means that we can continue to build our bodies, slowly for decades, so in 20 years time you can look better than you do now! Imagine I promised you a pill that would slowly improve you every month for the next 20 years…how much would you pay for that?  Well, I am offering you the “iron pill”, lift for the next 20 years, in a safe, progressive manner and you will look better in 20 years than you do right now!

Let’s briefly touch on the 5 minutes a day gadgets. Do not waste your time.  You can get fit and toned up using weights, using bodyweight exercises, using kettlebells or even odd objects.  The only rules are that the exercises are progressive over time.  So, they get heavier, you use a harder or novel variations, plus you need avoid anything that causes injury or injury type pain (you want the lactic acid burn feeling and the feeling you are working hard, but not injury type pain, these are very different).  Follow that and you will succeed in improving over decades, not just months and years.

If you need help getting started pop over to https://payhip.com/veganbodybuilding and download “An introduction to vegan fitness and health” (it is by donation, so give anything you like to help us build the site) and feel free to use the resources below.

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