If you are not offended, it is a sign of confidence earned through years of experience in the gym. For the rest of you pay attention...
- STOP LIFTING LIGHT WEIGHT
Lift heavy or you simply taking up valuable space at the gym. Lifting too light is extremely popular with women who refuse to lift a weight heavier than 10 or 15lbs. Reality check, most women's purses weight more than that. Your child's back pack weighs at least twice that. Your grocery bags are heavier than that. Your child weighs more. If you want your every day tasks to feel easier you must lift heavier than your every day tasks require. If you only lift light weight you can cheat and never learn what is wrong with your movement. By lifting too light a weight you run the risk of getting really good at moving the wrong way. When a weight is heavy enough it forces you to move the right way or fail the lift. A heavy weight teaches you to move properly. Heavy means something different for each individual, it does not mean everyone should try a 300lb-500lb bench press. It does not mean everyone should attempt to snatch a 106lb kettlebell. It does mean working just within the edge of your ability. The same mechanics that allow us to lift truly heavy weight are the same movement patterns that allow us to move safely and efficiently. To learn how to move safely and efficiently you must build up to lifting heavy weight. First learn the pattern without a load, then load it when it's correct. Loading a movement pattern with weight or performing a pattern over and over makes that pattern permanent. When the stuff hits the fan don't you want to know that your technique has been tested and proven to be effective sound? For example ladies doing lunges with 15lb dumbells can lean forward, twist and teeter and get away with it, but then they wonder why their knees hurt during high intensity exercise.... Hmmm maybe because you never learned how to move the right way and your bad movement patterns are now being loaded causing shearing forces against your joints and micro-trauma to your body.
Learn to lift heavy or go home and settle on becoming a fat or weak pile.
- NO MIRRORS, NO MAGAZINES
If you can watch yourself in the mirror, read a magazine or watch television while you lift, the weight your are lifting is not heavy. If you can read while sitting in a recumbent bike or jogging you are wasting space on a machine that someone else could actually be getting a workout on and you are more than likely using horrible posture and form as you look down.
- BOSU BALLS & SWISS BALLS
Just because you can perform an exercise on a bosu ball, indo board or swiss ball does not mean your training is functional. I'm so sick of watching people sit on a bosu ball doing curls with a 5lb weight. They think they are working their "core" because they are balancing as they do bicep curls.
If you're technique is correct some of the most intense core exercises you can do are deadlifts, swings, and presses. When the weight is heavy enough your "core" is forced to engage. Something you'll never experience if you use your 5lb color coated plastic weights. Remember that our muscles are not designed to work in isolation from each other, they are supposed to contract and relax in a team effort. Your "core" is your body's transmission which when working properly should be engaged in just about every athletic effort. There comes a time when bouncing a swiss ball might teach someone to re-activate or re-awaken their pelvic floor but this is the exception for a small segment of the population and should not be the rule.
- PERFORMING THE SAME EXERCISE DAY IN, DAY OUT, IN THE SAME WAY
If you are performing the same exercise in the exact same way with the same weight/load you are not progressing you are actually regressing. Good training steadily increases the intensity, load, density or volume of training over time. If you don't increase the difficulty of the exercise your body will become so efficient at the movement that you will expend less effort to perform the same movement. This means you expend less calories and use less strength. This means you are getting weaker and less fit. Get it? This explains the mystery of the fat martial arts master that can throw you across the room with absolute ease or the fat 50-something racquetball player that play a perfect game without breaking a sweat but couldn't last 5-minutes in your average aerobics class.
- YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT A TABATA IS
A whole ton of misinformed people out there slap any old exercise into a 20 second on and 10 second off interval and call it a Tabata protocol. Dr. Tabata's original protocol required participants to work for 8 sets of 20 seconds at a pace of around 170% of the pace which elicits a VO2 max response. For example most people could elicit a VO2 max response performing 24-40 kettlebell snatches a minute. In order to perform a true tabata protocol with a kettlebell you would need to perform 40.8 to 68 kettlebell snatches per minute. To date I know of no human being that can perform 68 snatches in a minute, it's simply impossible. Very few people can perform 40 snatches a minute. However, that does not stop all types of fitness "Experts" from posting and performing Tabata intervals with kettlebell snatches at a pace of about 10-20 reps a minute.
Question: How many guys are pressing hundreds of pounds overhead but can't hold a 35lb kettlebell steady overhead? How many people attempt deadlifts and cleans with a weight they could not hold on to without straps? Answer: Almost all of them.
Think about that for a minute, would you trust a crane that could lift several tons for a second, but could not hold that same weight for 30 seconds? Lifting weight requires stability first, strength second. Without stability your castle is made of sand and will come crashing down. It is pretty standard for RKCs to hold a much heavier weight overhead than they can press, in fact it's recommended. If you can't hold it, you shouldn't be pressing it.
- IF YOU TRAIN OR COACH YOURSELF YOU HAVE AN IDIOT FOR A CLIENT
How many people have actually take the time to learn proper form from a coach? Answer: Very few.
How many people can watch their form and catch their own mistakes while performing high intensity exercise? Answer: None? The best of the best use a coach or at least use video. Unless you are better than the world's elite lifters it is advised that you get a coach or least video tape yourself.
- 99.9% OF EXERCISERS DO PUSHUPS WRONG
It's the standard to see people at the gym do pushups with their shoulders shrugged up to their ears, their necks craned forward and their hips and midsection sagging. Garbage! A good pushup requires packing the shoulder, engaging the lats, a stiff stable midsection and keeping the neck neutral. It's a pushup not a chicken neck pecking or floor humping exercise!
- CRUNCHES SUCK
Most people simply do more neck exercise and neck damage than abdominal exercise while performing crunches. Besides your abs were not designed to curl you into a ball they were designed to support and stabilize. Want strong abs? Lift heavy. For example: grab two 80lb dumbbells and walk as far you can, then come back. Tell me how your abs feel tomorrow.
If you want to experience truly functional strength training come to my kettlebell class and discover how the RKC style swing and getup are quite possibly all you need. When done with specialized form the swing and getup will challenge your entire body in ways that benefit your posture and nearly every athletic movement you can think of. If you suspect your workout sucks give me a call.
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