The arm experiment...the beginning

I've been reading Coach John Christy's book "Real Strength Real Muscle”. He advocates micro-loading for a long time, using the same exercise. As a challenge he offers you a chance to prove for yourself whether his system works, by using the humble barbell curl. His challenge was simple pick a weight you can get 3 sets of 7 reps (3x7) with, but only do 3x6 (for week 1). Rest 5 full minutes between sets. Next week add 1 pound. That’s it! The trick is you do that every week for 1 whole year (52 weeks), & if you’re still gaining after that move down to ½ a pound a week, then continue on until you stall. He believes you’ll gain anything up to 2 inches (or more!) on your arms by following this simple formula.
OK what about illness, we all get sick, right. Well that’s covered. Any minor illness that makes you miss a session simply drop the weight to 80-90% what you were doing, then add 5% each session until you’re back up to 100%, then back to the pound a week.
I not completely convinced (or completely disbelieving) about this system, but I thought, I’ve never done very long term micro-loading & keeping to one bodypart means I can see how that fares against the rest of me & how I have been growing (I didn’t fancy the idea of being stuck with EVERY exercise being long-term micro-loading as I get bored with any exercise & like some variation, but I can do a curl with a barbell once a week no problems for a year, so we’ll see how it goes (you could use an EZ bar or similar if you prefer, but stick to the one you choose as bar weights differ).
If anyone else wants to jump onboard with this let me know (as accountability is a real aid to motivation) & I will need the odd reminder to stay with one exercise, without variation, for a whole year!
So barring any illness or injury you’ll be looking at me adding 1 pound per week until I stall or the 52 weeks end.
Bring it on!!!!

Fantastic Elastic?

We’ve all seen them, maybe you’ve used them? People love them or hate them. I’m talking about the resistance band. Resistance bands can be used for a host of things. Rehab, activation work, adding resistance to bodyweight training, used in place of weights, mimicking strand pulling moves, right up to adding substantial resistance to heavy squats, deadlifts, shoulder press or bench press work.
I’ve personally found bands to be great for dynamic work (improving acceleration of certain moves) & for certain rehab. Although certain conditions like chronic fatigue syndrome & fibromyalgia don’t usually respond so well to band work, for many conditions it’s a real boon! (with any medical condition consult your doctor before trying them out)
Most of the activation exercises I’m presently working with I’ve learnt from reading the works of guys like Mike Boyle & Eric Cressey, if anyone is particularly interested I can bring someone in to film a couple moves, but both these guys cover his stuff much more fully than I do. I have found activation exercises useful for preparing to lift & although I don’t agree 100% with these guys about everything, I’d say the case for learning to activate the right muscles at the right time does help with lifting & I do use it myself. So, if you want a few activation protocols let me know & I’ll drag a camera person over to film a few basic activation moves using bands & bodyweight.
I have found some use for dynamic training of various exercises both to improve acceleration & just for a change of modality while still focussing upon a particular movement. Here I’ve pictured a couple of set-ups I’ve used with some success. One is the dynamic box squat using a safety squat bar (you could use a straight bar, but I prefer the SSB for this exercise);


The other is the dynamic dumbbell shoulder press (in this case using a jumpstretch platform). This is actually quite a challenge for the core as well as the delts & triceps.


Unfortunately, being a somewhat reclusive trainee I often train alone, so therefore you can only see the set-up, not the bands in action, but I’m sure the idea is clear enough, the bands stretch & so as you lift the apparent weight increases, so you are forced to accelerate harder to achieve you goals, by doing this you learn to accelerate HARD, which is what you need to improve your lifting. By the way ‘accelerating hard’ will not translate into moving quickly when you get heavier, sure with lighter weights you’ll move relatively fast, but once a heavier weight is lifted the extra acceleration you’ve learnt will really help you get a lift you previously failed to master.
If you’re interested in other moves using bands before you rush out & purchase some leave a comment & I’ll see what I can do about doing some of those (photos or maybe youtube if you don’t mind crumby stills camera video quality), so any band questions let me know & hopefully this will be another tool in your training box you can have fun with over the colder months.

Strength or cardio for health

The argument between high intensity work & aerobics still rages as to which does the best job for weight loss, but here’s a new twist.

If you do duration training or weights which do you think will lower your ‘bad’ cholesterol in the blood? Do you think it will be the duration training, an activity that due to its low intensity causes the burning of fat as its primary fuel source? Or do you believe it will be resistance training, an activity that burns primary carbs as fuel as it is so intense?

OK you know it’s going to be controversial, so I’ll get straight to it:
A study released July 08 entitled “Acute exercise-induced changes in basal VLDL-triglyceride kinetics leading to hypotriglyceridemia manifest more readily after resistance than endurance exercise.” Has the conclusion that while resistance training lowers ‘bad’ cholesterol & speeds up its removal from the blood, duration exercise does virtually nothing to the ‘bad’ cholesterol in the blood...that’s right NOTHING!

I was pretty shocked by this as I honestly expected duration to come out the winner by a mile.

This is only one study & I’d like more done on the subject, but the message has to be considered that maybe, from the point of view of cholesterol control duration isn’t the way to go, while weights & maybe interval work cardio should be considered as doing a better job of lowering ‘bad’ cholesterol.
Of course anyone starting an exercise program with cholesterol issues should consult a medical professional first & for goodness sake start off light & short, then slowly increase duration & intensity of your sessions in the gym as your conditions improve – I’d also consider a dietary overhaul as well if you really want to beat cholesterol back down to healthy levels.

New research about protein synthesis during training

Research out this month once again re-enforces the earlier blog post that taking carbs AND protein during training is the best choice.
In the American journal Physiological Endocrinol metabolism 2008, Apr 22 Beelen et al from Maastricht University in the Netherlands conducted studies on the effects of muscle protein synthesis during training while taking either a carb only drink or a carb/protein drink during a 2hr resistance session. They drank every 15 minutes during the training.
The conclusion was that even in a fed state eating protein with carbs stimulated whole-body & muscle protein synthesis rates during resistance type exercise. So, you can grow during training, if you use the right nutritional approach.

Here’s a link to the research on Pubmed