thepathofstrength.com This is from ThePathofStrength.com, a Substack that we sponsor which presents monthly writing about physical training and practical philosophy. Subscribe if you like it and you will receive articles right in your inbox. This piece is by Al, owner of Terminal City Training. High Intensity Interval Training Over 50From Silas: HIIT over 50, bad idea? Answer: Well Silas, I don’t think it’s a good idea, but not necessarily a bad one either. It’s a matter of proportion and prioritisation. First of all, context is important here. You are in your early 50s, in good general health, and you want to continue to be healthy and capable and build upon your healthspan. I am going to advocate for three things before we think about HIIT (which, for our readers, means High Intensity Interval Training and basically consists of multiple bouts of short and very intense exercise sandwiched between periods of recovery). The first thing is strength. You will want to train your musculo-skeletal system through barbell, dumbbell, kettlebell, or other types of weight training. The second thing is endurance. You will want to build up your ability to put a lot of time into cardiovascular training, mostly at fairly low intensity. Thirdly, you will want to put effort into improving the quality of your movement by working on mobility, flexibility, and a variety of movement types. Let’s call these three things your foundation. HIIT can come in once you have established a solid foundation. It should not replace the first three things but can be seen as an adjunct. Let’s think of it as the fourth thing. HIIT has its benefits, which can be quite seductive, such as providing fast results, being very time-efficient, and sometimes fun. And, it also comes with risks. It can lead to injury, burnout, and can lack a long term arc of improvement. To do HIIT without the other elements in place is like building your fortress with a deck of cards. Neurodivergence and Type Two FunFrom Michelle: Do you think there is a connection between neurodivergence and type two sport enthusiasts? Answer: First for the reader, I believe that Michelle is referring to “type two fun” i.e. “it completely sucked while I was doing it but it felt freaking amazing after I was finished, or maybe a couple of days after I finished.” Type two fun, and therefore “type two sports” are generally associated with long endurance efforts and extended bouts of suffering. To address Michelle’s question: this is purely anecdotal, but I suspect that high focus pursuits such as rock climbing often attract people with ADHD. Many recommend climbing as a form of self-management or even “therapy” for those with the condition. Rock climbing, however, isn't really a Type two sport, at least not typically. So who does type two sports? Anecdotally again, as I have no stats on this and have never really thought about it before, I am going to venture to say nerds and people with autism have a prevalence in type two sports. Are nerds neurodivergent? I would hazard a guess that many are but I am the wrong person to make any pronouncements on that. As far as autism goes, there are many who write on the benefits of endurance sports for people with autism. When I looked around I found an article entitled “The Rise of Autistic Ultrarunners.” So, I think that my gut response to your question, Michelle, has some merit… Starting Powerlifting With a StentFrom Vincent: I am a male 61 yrs old, seem to be in ok shape, had a stent in an artery but otherwise had ran in times past ( longest was 13 miles and some 10Ks ), but interested in powerlifting and gaining some weight. Pretty active in terms of 10,000 steps walking at work or outside. Would be great to get your input. Thanks Al. Answer: Especially with that stent, I would advise you to talk to your doctor or a trusted medical practitioner. Explain that you are interested in taking up powerlifting and what the training might involve. Explain that powerlifters use the valsalva manoeuvre and experience elevated blood pressure during their lifts. Really listen to what the practitioner has to say. Follow the practitioner’s guidance. If they give you the go ahead and do not provide specific direction, then I would be inclined to give the following general advice about getting into powerlifting training:
Beginning Strength Training with a Herniated DiscFrom Adam: I'm wondering whether it makes sense to start some kind of weight training exercise. I'm 57 and am starting to feel it, for the first time. I guess this is when you lose muscle unless you do something about it. I have a chronic lower back issue, a herniated disc from decades ago. I keep this well under control with a clinical pilates routine at home, a series of core exercises that (when things are going well) I do three times/week, along with daily stretches. I haven't had a serious back incident for a few years now, and I certainly would not want anything to flare up if I start with weights and don't know what I'm doing. I have a pretty sedentary work life: I'm a professor and spend much of my time sitting at a desk. I used to swim regularly but the pandemic put a stop to that, and I have not found my way back to the pool with any regularity. I used to have a pretty serious tai chi practice but the teacher I used to go to has vanished. Answer: Thanks for reaching out. A herniated disc...I have a few thoughts. Have you spoken to your physician, physiotherapist, or other specialist about their thoughts on you beginning strength training? I have worked with a few people with serious back injuries but rehabilitation is certainly not my specialty. I tend to take a cautious approach but I mostly work with barbells and free weights. If your practitioner thinks it is a good idea for you to begin strength training I would suggest that you discuss with them the idea of beginning with cable exercises and machines to help isolate and protect your back for at least the first while. Though I am generally not an advocate for machines, in your case it may make sense. I think that beginning to build some strength that way, while also testing how your back does under those conditions, would be pertinent if your practitioner agrees. Thanks to Silas, Michelle, Vincent, and Adam. If you have a burning question about fitness, philosophy, books, or whatever, send it in anytime, or leave a comment. thepathofstrength.com This is from ThePathofStrength.com, a Substack that we sponsor which presents monthly writing about physical training and practical philosophy. Subscribe if you like it and you will receive articles right in your inbox. This piece is by Al, owner of Terminal City Training. The Perennial Protein QuestionQuestion from Michelle: How many grams of protein should I eat in a day? Every single one? Most of them?
Answer: Nutritionists and dieticians are allowed to make dietary prescriptions. Strength coaches and trainers are expected to promote the official guidelines from their federal or regional government. When they strictly follow these rules you know what you get. What follows is not intended as a recommendation for how you should eat. Also, this discussion is intended for adults. Children have different nutritional needs than adults. Now that I have gotten that out of the way: you ask a simple question, Michelle, and instead of giving you a simple answer I am not really going to give you an answer at all. Instead I will suggest a way to think around the question. To me that’s better than an answer I know Michelle. She is pursuing mountain sports and powerlifting. Since she is planning to take a run at some powerlifting meets in the coming months, I will address her question in relation to strength athletics. I will explore a few different approaches to the “how much protein should I eat?” question. A few points to keep in mind as we kick this off:
Before experimenting with how much protein you should aim for, you will want to figure out how much protein you eat currently. To find your starting baseline, track the amount of protein that you consume, in grams. Do this for two days each week. Switch the days of the week up and track for three weeks, or one month if you have the patience. Average it out to find a daily average. This is your starting point. I am going to throw out four protein standards to explore. They represent common benchmarks that you hear thrown around in the strength world. It is important to note up front that one tier is not necessarily better than another. You can test these different approaches and get a sense of what kind of commitment they take, how each serves you, and how they make you feel. Here are the four standards for adults. I have provided examples for the sake of comparison using Michelle’s bodyweight of 220 pounds (100kg) as a reference:
Abdullah the Butcher eating raw chicken. Wikimedia CommonsSome Thoughts on Each Tier Standard one: If you are not hitting at least this standard then I think that, as a strength athlete, we have some problems. Standard two: This is really not much protein to speak of for someone who trains. Standard three: For a lot of people, who are not used to a high protein diet, this will be a tough to maintain on a daily basis and may take some time to adjust to. It is close to double the typical government standard yet still some way from standard four. Standard four: Yes, it has been advocated by many strength and physique athletes over the years and there are also limits to this standard. I coached a large male who weighed in the 360+ pound range. At one point he decided to try and eat one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. He spent all of his time eating and crapping. For his quality of life it made more sense for him to bring this down to standard three. It will be easier to pull standard four off if you weigh less, or if you are quite lean. Ultimately the point with all of this protein experimentation is to find what makes you feel good, serves your goals, and allows you to live a fulfilling and healthy life. Training for performance and training for health are not the same thing. This is true when it comes to eating too. If you eat like a typical heavyweight powerlifter or elite road cyclist then there will be consequences to your health. You will want to be very clear about your priorities and choose your standards and role models carefully in order to make good decisions about your diet. If you can afford it and can find a great nutritionist who knows about the realities of physical preparation and sports performance, then consider yourself lucky. Otherwise, get ready for some trial and error and honest self-assessment. Be willing to reassess and change as you go through different periods in your life. And, most importantly, eat your protein. From thepathofstrength.com
Last month I asked readers to submit questions for a long form question and answer segment. Here they are. “I wanted to ask you, my son has been begging me to take him to the gym. He’s a fit soon to be ten year old. Is he too young and if so or not can you recommend some exercises he can do for increasing speed and explosive first steps? He’s a soccer player. Is he too young to lift? If we do it together that would also help me.” - Mike He’s not too young. He can start to learn good training habits now. I think that weight training should not be the focus yet but we’ll get into that. The gym can be useful if you make it a special environment for serious focus. You can start taking him to the gym to work on building lifelong habits, focus, and technique. This is also a great opportunity to get yourself healthy and be a solid role model for your son, and to build that all important bond with your kid. Priorities at his age and experience:
Make sure he becomes proficient at all of these exercises before he gets into more complex movements and begins to use weights. He will need constant supervision, and most gyms will require it. Have him work on his running outside of the gym. For now, don’t worry so much about his speed and explosiveness. That will come as he develops his strength and efficiency. Depending upon his maturity and commitment to good technique, at some point, using your judgement, you can start introducing him to light weights for high repetitions. Stick to simpler tools like medicine balls, dumbbells, kettlebells, and a stick or pvc pipe. Begin by having him apply these weights to the fundamental movements that he has already been practising. Let him develop further maturity, experience, technique and strength before introducing him to more complex movements. Throughout this process the focus should remain on lifestyle, learning, and his relationship with you. Keep the sessions short, varied, and fun. Take the opportunity to teach him about nutrition and sleep. This simple approach can take you both a long way. —-- “Is collagen in a supplement nonsense or real life?” -Michelle I am not a big supplement user, so I went to my four go to nutrition guys to see what they had written. Neither Peter Attia nor Andrew Huberman seem to have much to say on collagen. Nor does Lonnie Lowery. I looked on John Berardi’s site and found one article, which wasn’t positive on collagen. The article did present a few points to ponder, which I outline below. If you are considering taking collagen for connective tissue health, keep the following points in mind:
There are some lifestyle steps to take care of and I think that these should be considered before supplementation:
If you are taking care of all of the above, and you want to delve into collagen or other supplements, then keep abreast of the research and proceed with due consideration. Thanks to Mike and Michelle for sharing questions this month. Training and programming can become very complex, very quickly. It can be fun to immerse yourself in the complexity for a while, even when it’s confusing and unproductive. At a certain point, though, you might start to yearn for simplicity.
Complexity fatigue Sometimes we are unconsciously drawn into complexity. After all, we live in an information-rich environment. Videos, in particular, are optimized to compete for our attention while we scroll websites. For the intellectually curious who is newer to training, it is likely that they are indulging in a disparate collection of competing training approaches. It has been my observation that young men in particular can suffer from a fear of missing out on the greatest, latest, or most optimal combination of programs. Odds are that they are creating their own hybrids using two or three systems at a time. At the very least they may be choosing a time-proven program, and then making their own bold changes to it. They are probably doing this without having a thorough understanding of any of these systems. This rarely works out well. After delving in like this for some time they may come out the other side. They get to the point where they experience some kind of complexity fatigue. Irrepressible questions arise: Do I need to consume endless videos and articles about what I am missing out on in my training? Can’t training be simple? It doesn’t have to be this way. You can simplify the structure of your training. You can reduce the complexity of your decisions when you make your training plans or make training decisions in the moment. However, before you can have simplicity, you need clarity. Clarity can come through experience, but experience takes time. Clarity can also come by asking yourself questions. So, start asking some questions. Large, medium, & small questions What kinds of questions do you ask? Let’s keep this simple and think in terms of scale: large, medium, and small. Start with the large scale. What big concept questions can you ask yourself? Begin with considerations like:
Big questions like these will lead to more moderate-sized questions. To generate medium questions, you might go through various physical qualities and ask yourself the relative importance of each, in relation to the goals and needs that you have already identified. General qualities might include:
After going through general qualities, you can then move to the small questions. Examine each quality that you’ve identified as important and put it under the microscope. Analyze in greater detail just how you need to use it. Some examples might be:
Methods Finally, once this three part needs analysis is done, move on to considering the methodsof how you will train. You can apply the same principle of asking good questions to this step as well. As one example, reflect on your conditions for training. What are your personal parameters? You will want to consider such things as:
Once you have asked the right questions and have developed some clarity, it will then be time to either choose a program or develop one to meet your needs. Remember what you learned during your self-questioning, and stick to your plan. As the philosopher of strength, Dan John, has said, “The goal is to keep the goal the goal.” The simpler the approach, the more likely that you will execute on it well. Training can be made too simple. It shouldn’t be too simple, just simple enough. So, ask good questions. —-- For related thoughts, please see my piece on efficiency vs resilience: https://thepathofstrength.substack.com/p/how-to-find-balance-in-training In my experience, the best personal standards have been daily ones. They serve as regular orientation points in my life.
I formally review mine at least annually, around the New Year, and revise them occasionally. I do not always meet my standards, in fact I rarely hit them all on a given day. Sometimes, days or weeks at a time, I lose my focus and have to bring myself back to the list. As the great strength coach and amateur philosopher Dan John once said, “The goal is to keep the goal the goal.” My daily standards are fairly general, not overly ambitious, and are more about process than outcome. They are oriented around the idea of consistent achievable goals that I can hit every day and therefore accumulate good things over years. Here they are, in no particular order:
Solstice Odyssey Challenge Hourly Recap.
Character is a choice. December 21st 2023. A sunrise to Sunset endurance event. Walk. Run. Ruck. Keep on Moving. My primary goal: continue moving from sunrise to sunset. 8 hours and 11 minutes. Secondary goal: hit 50 km. Running. Rucking .Walking . The most important thing was to keep moving. Thanks to everyone who joined me, for a long time or a little time: Catherine, Amanda, Christina, Heather, Jenn, Su, Erin. Also, thanks for the moral support from those who couldn't make it out in person. #fitness #rucking #walking #endurance #mentaltoughness #mentalhealth #stoicism #discipline #solsticeodyssey #pathofstrength #terminalcitytraining “I wanted to ask you, my son has been begging me to take him to the gym. He’s a fit soon to be ten year old. Is he too young and if so or not can you recommend some exercises he can do for increasing speed and explosive first steps? He’s a soccer player. Is he too young to lift? If we do it together that would also help me.” - Mike
He’s not too young. He can start to learn good training habits now. I think that weight training should not be the focus yet but we’ll get into that. The gym can be useful if you make it a special environment for serious focus. You can start taking him to the gym to work on building lifelong habits, focus, and technique. This is also a great opportunity to get yourself healthy and be a solid role model for your son, and to build that all important bond with your kid. Priorities at his age and experience:
Make sure he becomes proficient at all of these exercises before he gets into more complex movements and begins to use weights. He will need constant supervision, and most gyms will require it. Have him work on his running outside of the gym. For now, don’t worry so much about his speed and explosiveness. That will come as he develops his strength and efficiency. Depending upon his maturity and commitment to good technique, at some point, using your judgement, you can start introducing him to light weights for high repetitions. Stick to simpler tools like medicine balls, dumbbells, kettlebells, and a stick or pvc pipe. Begin by having him apply these weights to the fundamental movements that he has already been practising. Let him develop further maturity, experience, technique and strength before introducing him to more complex movements. Throughout this process the focus should remain on lifestyle, learning, and his relationship with you. Keep the sessions short, varied, and fun. Take the opportunity to teach him about nutrition and sleep. This simple approach can take you both a long way. thepathofstrength.comWhile there is no correct way for a grappler to do strength training, there are certainly a lot of good and bad ideas out there to choose from. Over the years I have experimented with many methods, hitting on good ideas and sometimes spending too long using bad ones.
Here I will outline a model of training which can be applied to any sport or task. With experience, my approach to training grapplers has evolved. It now includes basic strength exercises, special exercises that develop key qualities of particular value to grapplers, and finally the more individualised exercises which each athlete does to address their specific needs. For the sake of this discussion, I have named these three categories of strength exercises Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary. Though we will have a look at all three categories, this discussion is primarily focused on the Secondary exercises, which develop what I call Python Strength, the isometric strength important to grapplers. Primary Exercises These are the main strength building exercises that apply to most people and most sports. These movements should generally have priority when in the gym. They can include:
These exercises should be done in the spirit of moderation. They are foundational, but do not train like a lifter if you are focused on being a grappler. There is a trend amongst strength coaches with a powerlifting or weightlifting background to promote basic heavy barbell lifts as the way to develop yourself for grappling. I have used this approach, but have since changed my mind. Powerlifting and weightlifting are linear sports; grappling is not. That kind of training does not cover all of our bases. This is why we use Secondary exercises. Secondary Exercises (Python Strength Exercises) These exercises are chosen specifically to help develop key qualities for grapplers. Here is what we are trying to achieve:
What follows is by no means an exhaustive list, but these exercises give an idea of how we approach Python Strength:
This third category covers all other lifts and exercises that address your personal needs or that simply interest you and will make training enjoyable. These should be thoughtfully chosen in the context of training demands, recovery, injuries, and injury prevention. Sometimes you want to challenge yourself mentally. We make a little room for all of these needs and wants within this group. Some Thoughts Beware the seductive power of the tool. A barbell guy will look for barbell solutions to every problem. A kettlebell gal will always favour the kettlebell. In terms of tools, it is best to be agnostic. Strength training is secondary to skill practice. It is primarily by grappling that you will become a better grappler. Do not become distracted or fall to the allure of strength training for its own sake if your primary goal is to improve as a grappler. There is a point of diminishing returns with strength training for martial artists. In general:
Where I would like to develop this line of thinking My ideas about physical preparation for grappling, and other sports and tasks, are an ongoing project. For grapplers, I am now really interested in the concept of developing strength at the end range of motion. This relates to the idea of training outside the groove mentioned earlier. My initial influences in this area are the work of Michael Blevins and Grayson Strange. Check out their stuff. Questions for the Reader What does your approach to physical preparation for grappling look like? What changes do you want to make? How do you see your thoughts on this developing? Drop me a line. Thanks for reading this initial post on The Path of Strength. Stay tuned for more pieces on physical and mental development, philosophy, combative arts, preparedness, and related topics. I look forward to the conversation. Physical fitness. Strength of character. Capability. This is what we seek.
|
Archives
April 2024
Categories
All
|