- shoveling,
- ice skating,
- skiing,
- snowboarding,
- cross country skiing,
- snow shoeing
- snowman making
- and basketball
We do this by choosing exercises that help enhance performance for these particular sports as well as exercises to address common injuries experienced during participation in these sports.
Examples
- Medicine Ball (MB) Chest Pass > Basketball chest pass and bounce pass
- MB Hockey Scoop Throw > Hockey pass, slap shot and snow shoveling
- Linear Hurdle Jumps - Stick Landing > 2-leg jumps in skiing, snowboarding & basketball, but more importantly landing from those to reduce injury risk
- Lateral & Medial Hurdle Hops - Stick Landing > 1-Leg power for moving fast in running, skating & snow shoeing, when you're on 1-leg and the ability to decelerate safely and efficiently to reduce injury risk.
We also help you peak for year end and fight holiday season weight gain by considering what you're going through generally speaking during the months of October, November and December. What I see is in October life stress goes down a bit for most people and Halloween candies show up. To me this is a great time to start over and rebuild or rework on your foundation of strength with Hypertrophy training. Hypertrophy means the opposite of Atrophy, so think of old people who've lost their muscle mass and they're weak and frail. Then think of strong, vibrant & youthful looking people. That's hypertrophy. We'll use primarily a rep range in the 8-12 range and resistance and dumbbell loads (25-45% BW) that correspond with that rep range goal. This will help you build muscle, decrease body fat and put you in an anabolic state. You're muscles will tingle and vibrate afterwards. They'll sometimes be sore and you'll feel your metabolism increase and your muscles crave nutrients to recover. This last part is part of the reason I chose Hypertrophy training for October. What better way to make lemonade from the lemons of Halloween candy than to put your body in a state of craving glucose. This way if you chose to participate in the fun Halloween treats, your body will first top off your muscle stores. Eat too much and well, you'll get expected results.
November used to be an endurance training month because endurance training in my experience kind of makes you less hungry and being less hungry is a nice state to be in during Thanksgiving and the days after when the opportunity to participate in a lot of joy foods presents itself. I've since changed this because I think it made us weaker going from Power Endurance in September, Hypertrophy in October, Endurance in November and Power Endurance again in December. Collectively we had great increases in endurance over the last quarter, but its indirectly discouraging to get weaker doing body weight strength exercises like pull ups, push ups, 1-leg squats, etc...
So November will be a strength month. DB Load will be 35-55% body weight and we'll aim for reps of 6 and sets of 3-6. We should all get stronger during this month. Then, if you're local, we'll do our annual Thanksgiving workout and I'll aim to either put you in a state of not hungry or put you in an anabolic state of super hungry. This depends on who RSVP's.
December is an endurance month. Life stress goes up (shopping, long lines, end of the quarter #'s for business, holiday parties, travel planning, travel, school vacation, etc...), training stress goes down. I'll make things more simple, we'll train fast, with insufficient recover, we'll decrease the resistance and DB loads (20-40% BW), you'll do 15 reps, you'll run more and you'll leave feeling energized. This is a nice compliment to reduced sleep if you find yourself burning the candle at both ends, or not having enough recover from participating in libations. It'll indirectly help your skin look great and you to feel great while helping you peak your fitness for the start of Winter.
Core 2: Down (Stability) & Up (Dynamic Locomotion)
Core 2 is when I like to add a ground based stability exercise and pair it with a standing, get you out of breathe, sport specific movement pattern.
One day will be body saws paired with 5 yard shuffles.
The next day will be Naked Get Up Progressions paired with Lateral Skater progressions.
The body saws are to reduce injury risk (anti-extension to spare the lumbar spine), target the lower abs and postural stability (neck, scapular and lumbar stability). It's also a great reproductive exercise in that it helps moms target the abdominal wall that got weak from pregnancy and delivery and anybody that finds them self in a plank position during intimacy. (I wrote this a few times to not be too racy and scandalous yet still get the point and benefit across).
5 Yard Shuffles are a frontal plane pattern you have to do in basketball if you want to be great. Of course if you're James Harden, you can make $30+ million a year and not play any defense, but if you want to win like the Celtics do, you gotta be able to play defense and move laterally and this helps with that. I've added some fun patterns like squat jacks, foot fires and burpees to the shuffle to make it feel more sport like.
Naked Get Up progressions are great if you fall down in the snow. The naked part means there's no dumbbell as most get ups usually involve a dumbbell or kettlebell. If you're a snowboarder, you're doing lots of sit ups and get ups are a way to help you get up. This is also the way you'll get up if you're old and fall down, so let this movement pattern sink deep for if that day ever comes and you find yourself on the ground and its difficult to get up.
Lateral Skaters are super fun and mimic the pattern of ice skating, cross country skiing and skiing. A skater is a bound from 1-leg to the other in the frontal plane or mid-sagittal plane. It has the similar push off as the sports mentioned early in the paragraph so we'll train both the push off and putting force into the ground and more importantly for injury reduction the landing by decelerating softly & quietly.
Power
Here we'll start to use Dumbbells again (P11=25-45%BW, P12=35-55%BW and P13=20-40%BW). We'll mix between:
1-DB Swings & Scapular Stability
and
DB Squat Jumps & Vertical Pushes
The DB Swings are a great hip extension, hinge exercise that'll make your backside and core (abs) look great and become strong and carryover to fitted pants, skirts and dresses as well as shoveling and any sport you need to go fast in or jump high. It's an explosive exercise so it'll also train your neuromuscular system to fire at a higher and more excitable rate and help train you to put more force into the ground.
The Scapular Stability Exercises will rotate. Most of life is anterior / front of the body & mirror muscles dominated. Gravity pulls & rounds us forward, making the front of our bodies short and the back of our bodies long. Some of our favorite exercises like pushes (push ups, bench press, overhead presses and pike push ups) and pulls (inverted rows, dumbbell rows and pull ups) are internal rotation dominant, so we need to counteract all of this by training external rotation, backside of the body (posterior chain), opening up exercises. This will help your shoulder feel stronger from a health & functional point of view and your posture to look better.
DB Squat Jumps train jumping under resistance, which means you have to put more force into the ground to get off the ground, which will have a Post Activation Potentiation effect of helping you to jump higher when you take away the resistance. We'll also focus on landing and decelerating because its nice to be able to jump high, fast & explosively, but its more important to be able to land softly, quietly and gently to reduce your injury risk.
Vertical pushes train the traps and lifting things overhead. If you build a giant snowman, you gotta be able to lift and place a heavy & big head on the top of it. Sometimes the good serving platters are on the top shelves. If you want to get rebounds and be able to shoot jump shots you gotta be strong in the vertical plane. Plus this helps your body look more symmetrical from a horizontal to vertical point of view and traps are hot! To do vertical pushes however you need to have healthy shoulders. If you're stiff, we'll work on shoulder mobility, so we can address this over time and get you back to doing fun & challenging overhead strength exercises.
The Power Training will be delivered in a team training format, in which everyone is at their mats, doing the same thing at the same time. We'll use short work to rest intervals (e.g. 20:10). It'll go by fast and we'll get a lot done. It'll feel challenging (during) and energizing (after).
Strength & Conditioning
We'll do a conditioning sandwich for P11 and P12 and I'm still undecided for P13. I'll either do a conditioning sandwich again (strength, conditioning, strength) or alternate between S&C for 2 circuits.
The reason for this is because Christine K (aka CK) thought a longer conditioning circuit felt more effective vs. the shorter conditioning circuits repeated twice. I'm always soliciting feedback, so I thought I'd give it a try. I know that most if not all members like alternating strength & conditioning, so once we get through the learning periods of a phase, we'll be able to get the 2nd strength circuit in, which will make it feel more alternating.
We'll do a 5 minute strength circuit, followed by a 30 second rest, then a 4 minute conditioning circuit followed by a 75 second rest and when we're efficient, we'll get 1 more 5 minute strength circuit in for P11 (Oct) and P12 (Nov).
December P13, is looking like a 45:15, 4 station, 1 round, 15 reps per exercise, strength circuit, followed by conditioning.
The Strength Exercises will compliment are sports, except for DB Bench Presses, which are only in there for variety in the horizontal plane.
The Single Leg Dead Lifts are for 1-leg hip extension (hinging), posterior chain training, single leg stability, injury reduction, booty lifting. It'll help with hip separation and stride length. This exercise will contribute to getting you faster.
The 1-Leg Hockey Squat Progressions will prepare you for the forward shin angle of wearing ice skates and ski boots, and train you to be stronger on 1-leg. You'll develop a great butt from this and strong looking thighs and lower legs. It'll help reduce your lower leg injury risk.
DB Rows train 1-arm horizontal pulling for the upper back. They'll teach you a flat back pattern while hinged which will indirectly reduce your risk for low back injuries, while the actual rowing itself will help you to reduce injury risk in the upper body from falls and help you to be and look stronger.
Pull Up progressions will help you to become more bad a**. Don't go home or leave the gym until you finish 4 sets. I hypothesize you'll progress faster with your vertical pulling strength if you get 4 sets. Your arms will look awesome. You'll fit your clothes better. You'll recover from falls better and you should have less shoulder pain. Being able to do push ups is important. It means your strong. But being able to do pull ups, means you're really strong and that you'd pass the high school physical fitness test.
Here are our pull up grip progressions: chin up, neutral grip pull up, alternate grip pull up and pull up.
Here are our pull up progressions:
Aim to get 4 sets of 2 reps for Level 1 and 4 sets of 1 rep for Level 2. When you can get 4 sets in a workout, you'll better be able to progress to a thinner band or no band if you're holding; to negatives if you're doing bodyweight. To assisted pull ups if you're doing negatives and when you get 4x4 with a 1/2" band on your knee, you'll most likely be ready for body weight pull up progressions.
Example 1: Holds (with bands on foot = Level 1a; w/ bands on knee = Level 1b and w/o bands = Level 1c)
4x2 (5:10) = 40seconds of holding
Example 2: Negatives (Level 2a)
4x1 (20sec: 5 @ top, 5 @ 1/3, 5 @ 2/3 and 5 @ full hang) = 80 seconds of holding body weight and controlling it eccentrically
Example 3: Assisted (Level 2b = bands on foot, Level 2c = bands on knee)
#1: 4x1
#2: 1x2, 3x1
#3: 2x2, 2x1
#4: 3x2, 1x1
#5: 4x2
#6: 1x3, 3x2
#7: 2x3, 2x2
#8: 3x2, 1x2
#9: 4x3
#10: 1x4, 3x3
#11: 2x4, 2x3
#12: 3x4, 1x3
#13: 4x4
#14: either go to thinner band on foot or knee, use same band on your knee if it was previously on your foot or progress to body weight and start over at step #1.
Note: its possible you could leapfrog this schedule if you're having a strong day or you've had multiple days of consistency. If you feel like you can do more reps than you're scheduled for, go for it. Do as many as you can and leave 1-2 in the tank. Then do 1 less for the next 3 sets.
E.g. You're supposed to do 3 reps on your 1st set, but you get 5 reps. Then do 3x4 for your remaining 3 sets.
Example 4: Chin Ups, Neutral Grip Pull Ups and Alt. Grip Pull Ups (Level 3)
Put yourself on the chart above.
Note: In all 4 examples find away to get 4 sets before you leave. This means use any available time to get the extra sets in. Use the time during transitions, after clean up, after stretching or after class as examples to get the extra sets in. When you do, you'll progress faster. When you get to 10 reps, start over at 1 rep, while holding a dumbbell between your knees or wearing a belt with weight suspended between your legs. This is when you become more bad a**.
DB Bench Press is an open chain, horizontal pushing pattern chest exercise. The open chain means your arms are free to go in any direction, which helps to develop shoulder stability. You can also press a whole lot more weight because you don't have to push your body weight.
Conditioning.
We'll rotate between full court and sideline to sideline ladder drills aka suicides, aka line drills. These are fun, anaerobic, conditioning drills that are sport specific. They're extremely expensive calorically and help to change your body & performance fast. These are the drills that bring out the smiles, though during our first week there were no smiles. These drills will help you with basketball conditioning & performance directly and other winter sports indirectly.
Our 3rd day will include band relays while holding the superband. This will help you train your grip for holding a hockey stick, while also training the patterns, you'll work in hockey. Forward, backward, crossover step and for basketball a shuffle. The band is awesome because it trains force into the ground against resistance. Take the band away and notice how fast you become. It's so popular Tom Brady's been using them for a number of years too, though I've been using them since college during my Red Sox days.
Speed, Agility & Quickness (SAQ)
We'll practice new basketball ready position, tennis ball drops to train explosive first steps. We'll do forwards, sideways and backwards.
The agility ladder drills will continue to train deceleration, footwork and change of direction in all 3 planes.
That's the bulk of the 4th Quarter Overview. We'll roll during the first 5 minutes, stretch & breathe for 3 minutes, doing correctives to address common injuries and postural imbalances for our population and do movement prep to prepare you for each days activities.
You can see the workout cards below to get an idea of what we'll be doing for P11, workout A & B in class.
