| Hi Friend!
And then the cold came back. I guess it's winter so it's no big deal.
Yesterday, a star client who moved away, enthusiastically shared a recent workout she did in her new program and I found myself thinking about it more than I needed to, so I asked her if I could write the pros and cons of what I saw and she said, "sure".
The Workout "Today's workout, ... was self paced so as soon as you were ready to move on, you just went.. sip of water, and keep working..
Warmup: 6 min. continuous row, progressively faster minute over minute. Not my favorite kind of warm up, but I was definitely warm in the shoulders, arms, quads, and core..
Workout: 3 accessory stations
Station #1 - 3 exercises, 3 rounds
12 roll outs with the ab roller
12 hallow rocks
12 Russian twists with slam ball ~15-20lbs
Station #2 - 3 exercises, 3 rounds (choose dumbbells that are a challenge, but that you can perform the rounds with little to no rest) I used 20lb dumbbells, based on keeping pace and feeling like I could barely do all of the reps after the first round.. I did, but it was challenging..
12 bicep curls
12 strict overhead DB press
12 bent over rows
Station #3 - 3 exercises, 3 rounds (same dumbbell load as the prior set)
12 reverse lunges
12 weighted squats
12 alternating lunges
1 min rest, sip water
50 singles (jump rope)
50 sit ups
40 singles
40 sit ups
30 singles
30 sit ups
... and so on.. down to 10
Although this was a workout that was as hard as you wanted to make it, it left me continuously breathless and challenged."
Other Important Things To Know This woman is fit, strong and athletic. She trains 5x/wk in her new program. She trains in the morning.
What I saw - Facts The clients roll out of bed, sit in their cars and drive over to the gym and sit on a rowing machine for 6 minutes to warm up their bodies.
Beach Muscles They do abs first,
then upper body (biceps, shoulders and back), then lower body (single leg quads stepping backwards, 2-leg squats (quads) and alternating sagittal plane quads stepping forward). and finally a finisher of cardio (jump ropes) and more abs (sit ups).
No mention of a cool down.
The warm up was a set time with escalating intensity (every minute, increase the stroke rate). The abs, upper body lower body and finisher circuits were finish as fast as possible (AFAP) circuits.
I don't know the demographic of the group.
What I saw - Pros This was definitely a fun workout, a hard and challenging workout and both a muscle building and body fat decreasing workout. It hit a lot of beach muscles, abs, arms, shoulders upper back and quads and finished with some more abs and low level plyometrics (jump rope / cardio) mixed in to help cut you up. Doing the abs first is always smart for many populations, especially those with weak cores, sedentary populations, people with history of low back pain, people who don't do core, etc...
- The escalating intensity warm up, gets your attention real quick and your body warmed up quicker as it gets harder every additional minute you do it.
- Pairing 3 exercises together in a circuit gives each exercise or movement pattern a rest of 1-2 minutes before you do the same exercise again, which is a good amount of time for that movement pattern to recover.
- Using the same dumbbell load for the whole workout makes it super efficient and fast.
- You don't even need interval timers for this one, only a chrono count up timer, and that's optional.
- The pre-selected reps of 12, is a hypertrophy-endurance rep range, which means it pumps your muscles up good, making your muscles feel tight. This is great for shape.
- The jump rope and sit ups finisher is a nice compliment to this workout because your pairing jump rope, which is a great skill that requires hand & foot coordination, is very anaerobic and is great at leaning out the body, with sit ups, which hit the six pack muscles. Plus, this pairing has is my favorite for weight loss, which is up and down. Anytime you pair up and down exercises together it's calorically expensive. Anaerobic, aerobic, conditioning and cardio finishers are great for helping you get more cut muscles. Hypertrophy training is like putting clay in all the spots you target to make them have more shape, pump and curves to them and the cardio finisher, is like taking a chisel to the clay and giving it better definition.
- This is a body part split style workout even though it's total body. You've got quads (and glutes), abs, traps, rhomboids and biceps.
- They use pre-fatigue body building techniques by starting with the ab rollouts to pre-fatigue your anti-extensors, then put you in the hallow hold and russian twists which require you to hold a flexion position after you've already fatigued those muscles.
- They use it again with the biceps curl before the shoulder press and rows.
- And again with the reverse lunges before the squats and alternating forward lunges.
- And finally with the jump rope, that makes you super winded, and the sit ups, which targets your core where your diaphragm is located and trying to help you recover.
- The downward pyramid of the jump rope + sit ups finisher is super fun and motivating because it gets easier as the workout progresses and you get more tired, because you do less and because you're doing less, its exciting and encouraging to push harder and faster even though you're tired, because you get little psychological boosts with each level down the pyramid.
What I Saw - Cons What I saw really depends on the target demographic that's following this gym's programming and what they do the other 4 days a week.
The Warm Up - A rowing machine warm up is not sufficient and not ideal for my clientele (busy, 30-60 year olds who either sit too much or stand too much and don't have a nice balance of each). You sit in your car. You sit at your desk. You lie on your back when you sleep. Then you sit on a machine that goes forwards and backwards.
- When do you wake up your glutes if you're always sitting on them? How do you protect your back if you're always sitting on your glutes, a major low back & core protector?
- How do you wake up your glutes a major performance enhancer for sprinting and jumping and lunging and squatting if you're sitting on them?
- How do you fully activate your metabolism if your sitting on your major metabolic booster?
- There was no addressing the frontal plane or transverse plane in this warm up.
- It made me think of inexperienced trainers, lazy coaches and uninformed exercisers that have their clients or theirselves warm up on the treadmill before strength training. No, no, no! That's not enough.
- You have to warm up the movement patterns you're going to train
AND - you have to get the body to a state besides just sweaty and warm (which are very important) to be able to train. DON'T BUILD MUSCLES or TRAIN PATTERNS on a BAD FOUNDATION.
- Sitting for long periods of time causes you to round forward. To hunch forward.
- A rowing machine reinforces this pattern because you're still sitting. A rowing machine is good for people who stand a lot or row. It's a great tool. I've used them many a years in my programming. It's not my first, second, third, 4th, 5th, 6th....choice for people who sit for a living or sit too much.
- Where is the ankle mobility, hip mobility and thoracic mobility of the warm up?
- Where is the knee stability, lumbar stability and scapulothoracic stability?
- With all the science that's out there, this is backwards.
Abs First - Addressing the core first vs. last is very smart for busy people, people with large & soft waists, people with low back pain and people who sit too much.
- Not necessarily abs. Ab training reinforces the postural pattern of sitting. Research shows that repeated trunk flexion leads to low back pain. We used to do 300 reps of abs EVERY DAY when I worked in pro baseball. We didn't know any better. I'm sure they don't do that anymore.
- Ever notice when you stand up from sitting for a long period of time at a desk, in a car or on a plane, that you're hunched over and it takes a couple seconds or minutes to straighten out? Doing this much direct ab training only pulls you into a hunched over posture even more.
Biceps + Shoulder Press + Bent-Over Rows - I'm a bit anti-beach muscle training because of the population I've targeted, but I absolutely love beach muscles because I like to look good and when you look good, you feel good. And of course my clients want to look good too, but most if not all would choose health first, looking good second.
- The reason I don't start with beach muscles in our program is because arm curls train the biceps and biceps tendon, which gets short on its own with rounded shoulders, which happen with too much sitting. Making a biceps tendon shorter, only makes your posture worse and the likelihood of shoulder pain greater.
- The shoulder press following the biceps curl, could lead the person to building muscle on top of a bad shoulder posture. Wanna know why you have shoulder pain? Here's why.
- The rows after the biceps and press, could be o.k., but it really depends on your technique. If you're doing rows with rotation, in which your hand & arm externally rotate at the finish, your shoulder blade retracts, depresses and posteriorly tilts, then I'm cool with it, but most coaches don't know to do this or even how to coach this correctly, plus their was know hinge pattern warm up for the posterior chain, only repeated flexion with the rowing machine and ab work, so bending over holding dumbbells, makes me cringe at the possible low back pain or compounded rounded shoulders that happen with the rowing.
Reverse Lunge + DB Squat + Alternating Forward Lunge - Quads, quads + more quads.
- All sagittal plane / all linear, forwards and backwards.
- Most people are quad dominant to begin with because they sit too much.
- Hamstrings and glutes are inbalanced because they're being sat on all the time.
- Hamstrings and glutes are your jump, sprint, low back and knee stabilizing muscles.
- Overtrained quads could lead to increased anterior knee pain because the muscles and tendons shorten. If you sit a lot, this increases immensely.
- More quad training gives you great looking legs from the front (for some people) and for others they don't want their quads to get any bigger. They want curves on the back side.
- Since the warm up didn't address the posterior chain (glutes and hamstrings) adequately because you're still sitting, the exerciser isn't going to get as much benefit from the lunges and squats, which are great glute and hamstring exercises because they haven't been warmed up. Plus because dumbbells were added to non-warmed up movement patterns, the risk of injury (muscle strain) increases.
Jump Ropes + Sit Ups - I love skipping rope. Reading this pairing makes me want to add something similar to my personal routine because the idea is solid and it's fun.
- When did the coaches warm up the ankles, the calves, the feet to handle low level plyometrics? People who sit AND stand too much get tight plantar fascias, tight achilles tendons, tight soleus and tight gastrocnemius muscles. Jumping on top of tight muscles can lead to strains, tendonitis, stress fractures and tears.
- Sit ups aka repeated trunk flexion, aka the pre-cursor to slipped lumbar disks aka training the hunched over posture of sitting, so you can get a really hard and maybe defined six pack if your nutrition is on point, to show off with your hunched posture No, no, no!
No Cool down? - The majority of strength & conditioning programs don't do cool downs, so I'll give them a slight pass here, but I do. It's great for accelerating recovery, grounding people so they're not too high and transitioning from fight or flight (sympathetic) to rest and digest (parasympathetic).
Weight Loss - You could lose weight on this program if you're nutrition plan was solid and you had a lot of weight to lose, but if you've been training consistently and regularly it'd be less likely because in my opinion this workout would help build muscle and decrease body fat, leaving the participants with the same body weight, only leaner, which for many would be o.k., but not for the people who are determined to see the scale go down a lot. This would leave them a little frustrated.
- I drastically cut my arm training when I was trying to lose weight and win a sprint triathlon back in the day because I didn't want to carry around the extra weight my guns were packing. Direct arm training will help you have nicer arms and get stronger but they could indirectly hold the scale steady or increase it.
Foam Rolling? - No foam rolling? Hello? Every program that doesn't foam roll its clients before training makes my program and clients look better and their program and clients look like they're still training in the 20th century. It's inexpensive, instant, effective and requires little time.
- Then again, maybe they massage all of their clients before sending them to the rowing machine. If that's the case, where do I sign up?
What I Saw That I Don't Know - Since this is a 5 day program, it could be o.k. to have days of split routines or train beach muscles as long as you train the antagonists (opposite muscles and movement patterns on the other days).
- Napkin Workouts aka Workouts Of the Day (WOD). I'm not a fan. Where's the mastery? What profession does something different everyday? How do you get good at something if you don't practice it? You're always training in a state of mediocrity because you can't go all out if you don't have the technique down. I mean, you can go all out, with crappy form, and earn all the costs that come with it, but if you're practicing good form, you can't go all out, because you're being too conscious and thoughtful.
- I don't know the demographics of their people doing this routine.
- This might be o.k. for 20 year olds. This is the style of training similar to what I did in my early 20's. Lots of beach muscle training.
- I don't think it's ideal for 30-60 year olds who sit too much or stand too much and aren't training all 5 days a week, because if this program addresses the opposite muscles and movement patterns on the other days and you miss the workouts, then you're building up greater postural imbalances at a faster rate, increasing your risk of getting injured.
- This is why I love and dislike Barry's Boot Camp. They do so many things right, but having a high membership rate and training beach muscle split routines, absolutely requires the members to not miss workouts otherwise they build imbalances.
- AND even if 30-60 year olds who sit too much or stand too much participate in training programs of split routines that train beach muscles not movement patterns, and never miss workouts, it still might not be good for them because there are other more important things you need as you age.
Summary At the end of the day its better to move vs. not move. To get out there and risk doing the wrong thing, than sit on your butt and do nothing, atrophying away. If this program is getting my former client to train there 5 days a week, then they're lucky and doing more than enough right because she's a star, makes good decisions and will make that program better. I certainly didn't know everything when I was training beach muscles in my 20's and I certainly don't know everything now. If I walked into the gym and saw that workout, I'd of done my own warm up to prepare for it and I'd have done my own cool down. My technique for the most part would have been close to perfect on all the exercises except maybe the rowing machine, because that's not a strength. But that's me and that's why I trade short term aesthetics for my clients for long term health, body transformation and performance.
Feeling passionate,
Coach Mike
p.s. Saturday we'll be doing private measurements for our clients and if you're interested in a Custom Corrective Cardio program, that's a great day to get measured and movement screened. Reply and let me know.
p.p.s. what did you think of this pros and cons email?
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