Thursday, April 30, 2009

Deadlifting makes you happy, but too much deadlifting can make you sad!

Earlier this week, my client Ken told me how deadlifting seems to give him a feeling of healthy euphoria. I experience the same and especially so when I first started to deadlift. Ken has been deadlifting for 4-months, with an increase in weight and volume over the last two.

This amazing feeling comes from the release of hormones like testosterone and human growth hormone plus the rush of endorphins triggered by a relatively strenuous effort. Our increased confidence from a personal best does not hurt either! Of course, we want to make sure not to train overly long and hard, where we see these levels start to decline. This is why I advocate shorter, high-intensity workouts with the emphasis on form and safety. This allows you to stay within the accepted 30-40 minute high-hormone zone and still get all the workout you need.

Even with careful adherence to workout time and intensity, it is even more important to know when to slow down; when to allow time for recovery. We will not be able to maintain our optimal hormonal (happiness) levels if we are tired, moody and generally overtrained. We will also not be able to make significant gains in our training. This is something we all have to watch out for. The better we manage our fatigue and recovery, the longer we will continue to feel great, make gains AND stay injury-free!

This next part comes from a great podcast I listened to today at http://ironradio.org/ .
The podcast is titled Recovery While Training and can be found HERE.

The ironradio.org coaching group is: Dr. Lonnie Lowery (host), Exercise Physiologist and licensed sports nutritionist; Mr. Charles Staley, celebrity athletics coach and author, Mr. Robert Fortney, fitness industry journalist; Mr. Phil Stevens, fitness industry speaker, trainer and technician. All have successful competitive histories in power sports.

The host and guests put together an informal list of ways to monitor your fatigue levels and therefore identify when it is time to back off and return stronger on another day.

1. Keeping track of your level of perceived exertion for each workout. The host uses a scale of 1-20. Watch out if you see the numbers steadily declining!

2. Keeping track of your mood and motivation to train. This includes your emotional state both IN and OUTSIDE the gym.

3. Are you sleeping for 7-8 hours a night? Is it quality sleep, throughout the night? If your sleep is disturbed, your nervous system is telling you it needs a break!

4. A suggestion was made to quietly fill in your workout log right after you train. This gives you time to cool down and decompress from the intense mental and physical focus of your session. This way, you will be ready to take on the rest of your day feeling calm, as you should : )

5. Getting the most results with of the least amount of effort/exercises. No, this does not allow you to be lazy, just efficient in your exercise choices. A good example would be doing weighted pullups instead of separate pull, reverse-fly and bicep exercises. The same muscles get worked, but in less time.

6. "Every rep has a cost, but not every rep has a benefit"

7. Growth, Recovery and Progress happens outside the gym. Inside the gym is where we destroy ourselves so that we may recover stronger.

Some great advice from some top names in the game!

The moral of this story is, train hard, train well, and most importantly, TRAIN SMART!

Monday, April 20, 2009

Revisiting an old post with a new video...

Last November I posted an article called Keep Training? But I'm Injured!

In it, I discussed the fact that you can always find some part of your body to train, even if one part is injured. The injury I spoke about was bruised ribs. Well, my ribs were bruised again in a similar fashion by my Wing Tsun Instructor, Sifu Ralph Haenel. I had to again make adjustments to my training, as this time I was unable to do pullups or rows for 4-weeks.

During this time of "injury", I hit a Personal Best in the Deadlift AND VO2Max Snatch Protocol!

To read the November 2008 article again, click HERE.

And this time, I have the genesis of the injury on video : ) Enjoy!

Dr. Ram's Deadlift Personal Record!

On Thursday April 9th, Dr. Ram deadlifted a personal best 310lbs. This is just the beginning for the good Doctor as his strength-potential lies well beyond this weight.

Just look how easily it went up!

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