Bench press leg drive

JL helps explain how to properly create leg drive in the bench press for people to get as much out of their bench as possible!  Check back every Friday for more videos

The Spot Athletics top 10 articles you should read this week

Here are a few articles picked out by our staff for you to read.  Take a look and let us know what you think, and what type of other articles you would like to see!

 

TRAINING

Not getting stronger?  This article may explain the reason.

http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/sports_body_training_performance/7_reasons_youre_a_weakling

Check out these 6 dumbbell exercises.

http://articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/six-dumbbell-exercises-you-arent-doing/

 

FOR THE LADIES

What could be the issue when you are doing everything right and you are still not seeing the fat loss results you want?

http://www.jensinkler.com/an-interview-with-jill-coleman/

Are you strong? Body and mind?

http://www.niashanks.com/2013/08/strong-new-beautiful-disordered-new-diet/

 

NUTRITION

Should we avoid eating at night?

http://articles.elitefts.com/nutrition/nysc-undercover-should-we-avoid-eating-at-night/

Eating tips regarding lunches and pre-made healthy meals with recipes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/28/dining/bring-your-lunch-to-work.html?ref=markbittman&_r=0

 

FOR YOUR STRONG MIND

How to craft an environment full of the habits you want to build.

http://zenhabits.net/immerse/

This article explains the basic key to success - willpower.

http://www.success.com/articles/2515-the-willpower-instinct

Here’s a little self-analysis on how you function best.

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2013/04/are-you-a-tortoise-or-a-hare-about-work/

This article explains why you need to get enough sleep and what happens if you don't.

http://breakingmuscle.com/health-medicine/how-sleep-deprivation-fries-your-hormones-your-immune-system-and-your-brain

 

College Prep Results and Understanding Movement Patterns

This summer we had a large amount of collegiate athletes train at our facility. Our athletes ranged from Elite division 1 volleyball players to football players to even rowers.  They came to us in order to properly prepare for their upcoming seasons at their respective colleges. Utilizing science, smart programming and world class coaching the results we got were off the charts.
Athlete #1 profile
Division 1 Volleyball Player

Assessment results:
Clean: 65lbs
Approach: 9’11”
Box Jump: 39”

After 1 month of training
Clean: 155lbs
Approach: 10’1"
Box Jump: 44”

This athlete also took first overall in all female sports in both conditioning and strength at an SEC school

Athlete #2 Profile
Divsion 2 football player

Assessment results
Vertical: 30.5”
Broad Jump: 9’1”
Pro Shuttle: 4.69s
3-Cone drill: 8.06
225 bench: 17 reps
40yd dash: 5.31

After 3 months of training
Vertical: 35.5”
Broad Jump: 10’7”
Pro Shuttle: 4.23s
3-Cone drill: 7.12s
225 bench: 23
40yd dash: 5.08

 

Athlete #3 profile
Division 2 Lacrosse player
Came to us with 2 slipped discs and a fx in the lumbar spine

Assessment results:
Vertical:21”
Box jump: 44”
Broad Jump: 8’1.5”
Pro Shuttle: 5.56s
T-Test: 11.71s

After 3 months of training
Vertical: 32.5”
Box jump: 55.5”
Broad Jump: 10’
Pro Shuttle:4.75s
T-Test: 10.38s

This is just a small pool of all the athletes that we trained this but we saw similar results with all of our college athletes. We were able to yield these types of results because the coaches here understand the way an athlete moves and understand that it's not looks that make the best athlete. As an athlete you must develop sounds movement patterns long before worrying about performance enhancement. Our coaches help our athletes to understand their bodies and the way they move to make sure that the best motor patterns are ingrained into the athletes nervous system in order to elicit the highest results. Most programs today are cookie cutter programs and not individualized for the athlete’s performance based on the individual athletes strengths and weaknesses. Having a coach who understands athletic movements, the human body and it’s systems is one of the most important tools in an athletes tool box. Just because an athlete works out and trains hard does not mean the athlete is in optimal shape. If an athlete has poor mobility and stability then results like this are not possible. We utilize an intense athletic assessment for our clients looking to become champions but while the assessment results above are a bunch of cool looking numbers what you don't get to see was the improvement in the way the athlete moved.

Our college athletes utilized special programing based on their results from the athletic assessment. What this special programs were attempting to do was excite higher threshold motor units within the body. These athletes served as test subjects for our future athletes. Based on their results you can guarantee this type of programming will be used for our athletes looking to gain an advantage on their opponents by increasing their speed, strength and power over their opponents. The most important aspect to the athletes training was their work ethic and diligence in the weight room. With intelligent science based programming, world class coaching and athletes putting everything that they had on the line in the weight room, champions were built.

We build champions. 

What are you waiting for?

Coach B

 

 

How Does Your Coach Stack Up?

In this article I am going to give parents, athletes and personal training clients a simple system that they can use as a tool to determine if someone is a good strength coach and/or personal trainer.

I have no idea how to tell you who the best mechanic is, just like most people don’t have the knowledge base to determine if someone is a good trainer or not.  The same way I pick a mechanic is the same way people choose personal trainers: 1. Do I feel like I can trust them, and 2. Do I like them.  Although these two things are important, they are an unreliable system for picking a good trainer.  I trust, and like my wife but I don’t want her working on my engine.  The difference is that if she messes up and ruins my engine, then I can just go to a real mechanic and have it fixed.  If you choose the wrong trainer and ruin your body or don’t improve your performance, you can’t buy another body or get back that lost time.  Unfortunately, we see a lot of clients that have wasted time or gotten hurt using other “certified” trainers.  This awful situation is something that we would like to put an end to, so we are giving you a system to judge trainers by.  With the base certification to be a trainer being so easy to obtain, anyone who wants to can do it.  Luckily, from now on you will have my system to use as a way to vet out whether you are talking to a good trainer or if you are just talking to a personable smile with a certification.  At the end of the day it doesn’t matter to me if you train at The Spot Athletics or somewhere else, but it does matter that everyone is seeing a good trainer.  This allows our profession to be viewed in high regard and it stops me from having to fix needlessly injured people.

I see how dreadful most of the trainers are when I travel and have to go to a big box gym.  I wonder how they have jobs or why people even listen to them.  These inadequate trainers seem to be busy and their clients don’t even know that they are getting worthless training.  These trainers should really be called entertainers and not trainers.  They just apply useless gimmicks to keep the client entertained and not focused on the real goal -- results.  This really bugs me as I have spent the last 20 years of my life becoming one of the most educated, intelligent and well-rounded strength coaches and personal trainers in the world.  Yet, some weekend certified guy down the road is training clients and telling everyone they are “good”.  With the following system, you will be able to determine if they are really good or not.  Hopefully, if you use this system and your current trainer doesn’t pass, then you will call us so you can start working with a good trainer and actually start getting results instead of entertainment.

The system has 3 qualifiers and 1 eliminator.  The qualifiers determine if someone can be considered for the good category and the eliminator determines if they are truly good.  If someone can’t get by the qualifiers, then the eliminator doesn’t come into play.  You cannot skip steps in this system or a bad trainer may end up training you or your athlete.   This mistake will mean little to no results or possibly getting injured.  The 3 qualifiers are: 1. Education/Experience; 2. Who did they learn from (coaching tree); and 3. Who have they coached/trained.

1. Education/Experience - This is number one in the qualifiers because it is the base for which everything is built.  Education can come in many forms and I regard time under the bar as much as letters behind a name.  Having lots of letters behind your name is impressive but it does not mean the person knows what they are doing.  It just means they can pass a test.  Although education isn’t everything, it does show that there is a base level of knowledge.  When I talk about education for a trainer I like to see a college degree in exercise science or a related field or I question their level of education.  Certifications are too easy to achieve, so I want to see that they have a degree.  If they do not have a lot of fancy letters behind their name then I look at the other qualifier which is experience.  If someone has been a trainer for a long time, it at least that shows that people like them.  If they have been training for a long time and I can’t find anything about them on Google, then I don’t regard their experience as valid.  If someone has been doing this for more than a few years and all you can find on them is their Facebook, Twitter or work webpage, then that means they aren’t very good at what they are doing.  So I put Education and Experience together because I know people without degrees that are genius trainers and people with Masters degrees who I wouldn’t let be an intern at The Spot Athletics.


2. Who did they learn from (coaching tree) - Every good trainer comes from a good coaching tree.  If you ask someone who they learned from and they can only tell you the certification that they have, then there is a big problem.  The people I learned from are people who are regarded as legends of the training business.  I did an internship with one of the top Sports Medicine doctors in the world.  The guys that I came up with are at schools like Utah and Wisconsin or working for professional football or soccer teams.  My coaching tree includes the best and the brightest that have been around training and because of this, I am one of the best in the world.  Without having the coaching tree that I have then I wouldn’t be near the trainer I am today.  If a trainer doesn’t have a great coaching tree, then they are not a good trainer.


3. Who have they coached/trained - If a trainer is worth their salt then they should be able to name several great athletes that they have trained or give amazing stories of personal training results.  Although these things do mean something, they don’t tell the whole story by themselves.  The great athlete they trained might have been great before they started working with them.  The personal training client might have been at a perfect storm of events where their results would of happened no matter who was training them.  That is why I also look at who they have under them in their coaching tree.  If someone can name people they have trained but they cannot name any trainers that they have helped develop, then I would seriously doubt their knowledge as a trainer.  Once you reach a certain level of knowledge it becomes a natural progression that other trainers will want to learn from you.  If someone doesn’t have anyone under them in their coaching tree, then they haven’t reached that level of knowledge and aren’t a good trainer.

The Eliminator:

Does the trainer/strength coach TRAIN on a weekly basis themselves?

If the person you are considering training with or are currently training with does not TRAIN on a consistent basis then they are not a good trainer.  I say train and not workout because working out is just hopping on a treadmill or randomly grabbing some weights and moving them.  This is what poor trainers do and have their clients do.  Training is exercising with a well thought out program and an end goal in mind.  If your trainer doesn’t train for goals, how will they be able to teach you to reach goals?  Most people state that they like their trainer because they keep things fun and parents like workouts for their kids where the kids stay busy.  Well a good trainer is neither an entertainer nor a babysitter.  The workouts should definitely be engaging but with the end goal in mind, not merely with the purpose to entertain or keep busy.  A movie is entertaining, but it will not get you in shape.  Neither will going to the gym and just randomly being entertained.  The same can be said for young athletes training.  Results and proper skills being learned should be the judge of their program, not keeping them busy.  Anybody can keep your kids busy by having them randomly running around but they will not become a better athlete.  None of this matters to a trainer who doesn’t train.  They never try to reach goals, so they can’t understand what it takes to get an athlete or a personal training client to a goal.  This is why the eliminator is so important in the decision making process.  My advice is that you ask the potential trainer or your current one “what they are training for”.  If they say nothing, then you need to make a switch.

So there you have it -- a system that allows you to decide whether someone is a good trainer or not.  Are there still people that can sneak through the cracks and not be good? Maybe.  But if you use this system then that is a lot less likely to happen.  Good luck and remember, choosing a good trainer can be a life changing decision.  Do not take it lightly.

Speed, Strength & Conditioning, Personal training & Fitness Class Training Video Montage 8/19-8/25

Another great week here at the Spot Athletics!  Our Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fighters went out and brought back some more gold!  They have to have strong necks for all the medals they have been bringing home!  Our personal training clients and athletes have been working hard and breaking records.  Great job everyone!

5 tips for endurance athletes

by Matt Barnauskus

Top 5 ways to stay healthy as an an endurance athlete.

 

The chronic repetitive motion of endurance sports lead to many debilitating overuse injuries such as runners knee, plantar fasciitis, and IT band syndrome; These injuries are written off as just part of the sport and aren’t appropriately addressed until its too late, causing the athlete to stop training. Here are some tips to keep you healthy and moving.

 

1. Stay Adequately Hydrated - You have heard this a million times but it is worth repeating. Drinking enough water is crucial to sport performance. Water is used to eliminate toxins from the body and even helps lubricate your joints. The average person is 1 - 2% dehydrated. If you are thirsty, you are already dehydrated. To avoid this aim to drink 1 gallon of water throughout the day.

2. Getting enough fat in your diet - Every cell in your body is made up of fat. Suffice it to say it is important that you are getting enough from the foods you eat. If you have achy joints try taking a fatty acid supplement.

3. Learn Proper Form for your sport - If you are going to continually pound your joints  for miles on end it would be beneficial for you to learn how to actually use good technique. Not only is this detrimental to your joints and soft tissues but you are also limiting how well you will be able to perform in your sport. Have someone video tape you running, swimming, or biking so you can see where your form is lacking.

4. Maintenance is key - #1 and 2 go along with this point. With all of the miles you are putting in it is wise to take time to take care of your body. Along with proper hydration and nutrition taking time to take care of your soft tissues will go along way to keeping you healthy. Take 10-15 minutes a day to foam roll and do some stretching/mobility work and you will be surprised how much better you will feel.

5. Strength Training - This ties in with #3 and it is the biggest thing lacking in endurance training. If you aren’t strength training as an endurance athlete you are missing a huge piece of the puzzle. Perhaps your form is terrible and no matter what you do you can’t correct it. Chances are you have muscle weaknesses/imbalances that are preventing you from getting into proper positions. The force of impact when you run is up to 4 - 5x your own body weight. Now compound this with the repetitive nature of endurance sports and you can begin to see why it is important to be strong enough to withstand this impact. When I say strength training I don’t mean doing db curls for 1000 reps, I mean actually picking heavy things up. With proper periodized training not only will you get stronger and feel better but believe it or not you will also get in better cardiovascular shape.

 

Try adding these five things into your lifestyle and you will start to notice the everyday aches and pains of endurance training will begin to diminish.

 

Comments and questions are welcomed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JL explains how to set up for the deadlift

This week, JL explains common mistakes that most lifters make when setting up on the deadlift and how to correct them.

10 Articles about fitness and training that you should read!

We have decided to start posting 10 articles every Wednesday that we feel are good reads and informational.  We take a lot of pride here at the Spot in furthering our education, so that we can better serve our clients and get the best possible results.  So take a look and enjoy!

TRAINING

This article provides criteria to help you determine if the person you are training with and seeking advice from is authentic and the “real deal” or a "pseudo" expert.

http://articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/who-do-you-listen-to/

Get your deadlift on....A great explanation of the benefits of the deadlift and the many varieties of the deadlift that can be performed.

http://www.girlsgonestrong.com/the-deadlift-your-most-powerful-weapon-in-your-lifting-arsenal/

Check out how to minimize risk to prevent injury so we can keep training and doing what we love to do.

http://breakingmuscle.com/martial-arts/injury-prevention-for-the-mixed-martial-artist

Get a few awesome tips on improving your bench press.

http://www.schwarzenegger.com/fitness/post/awesome-workout-tips-part-1?fb_ref=slider

DIET/NUTRITION

Great expose on the "carbs make you fat" myth sensation.

http://www.bornfitness.com/do-carbs-make-you-fat/

This is a little long but well worth the read to gain an understanding of the concepts of intermittent fasting and some of the arguments concerning it.

http://www.romanfitnesssystems.com/blog/intermittent-fasting-101/

Dave Tate lays out simple keys to practice so you can "get it done" and lose fat.

http://articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/programs/under-the-bar-21-days-to-fat-loss/

YOUR MIND

Ever wonder how to be happy? This article provides insight on why you may not be happy and how happiness can be a reality in your life.

http://addicted2success.com/success-advice/why-you-may-not-be-truly-happy-with-your-life/

Want to change your habits?  This article will reveal key ingredients to assist in successful change.

http://zenhabits.net

Visualization is all about controlling your thoughts - seeing in your mind’s eye the picture you want to create -  and this article lays it out clearly. Though powerlifting is the topic of this visualization article, the same principles can be applied towards whatever goals you are seeking.

http://articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/strong-mind-visualization/

Weight loss, strength training and results!

Weight loss, strength training and results!

If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say that they didn’t want to lift weights because they didn’t want to get big, I would be very rich man.  The funny thing is that this awful logic is never brought into other sports.  For example, I have never heard anyone say, I don’t want to play basketball because I don’t want to be really tall.

In this blog I will shoot down some common misconceptions about weight loss and strength training.

Lifting weights creates a high metabolic demand on a persons body that actually causes muscle breakdown.  Without the proper rest, recovery and nutritional program weight training will not yield muscle gains.  The professional lifters and bodybuilders spend their lives trying to gain more muscle.  They eat, sleep and lift to gain muscle and still with this as their primary focus they can only gain 3-7 lbs of muscle per year.  This compared with fat loss which really has an uncapped gain potential.  People can put on 50lbs of fat in one year but that is actually impossible with muscle gain.  Fat gain is much easier than muscle gain.  Yet when people eat one ice cream come they don’t say “I can’t eat this ice cream or I’ll turn into the 600lb person.”  This would be easier to do than gain a large amount of muscle but people aren’t logical and that is why I’m writing this blog.

Weight loss and “toning” are the primary focus for most adults who are training in a gym.   At The Spot Athletics we never focus on the “weight” loss but rather focus on body fat changes.  No one has ever looked at someone with abs and said “yeah, but what do they weight”.  We don’t judge looks on an arbitrary scale number, we base it off of how someone looks.  Their are three main factors that go into how someone looks, Lifting, Cardio and diet.  That is why with all of our personal training packages we deal with not just the time when you are training with us but the nutritional and cardio programs that you should be doing as well.  The diet is the most important factor as you cannot out train the fork.  You can train very hard but if you are eating like junk then you will never look your best.  Next most important is the lifting.  If you are trying to look better and you are not strength training then you are never going to look your best.  The least important factor in “toning” is the cardio.  It is funny that most people put this one 1st in their training.  This is probably why when you go to average gyms you see a bunch of overweight people on cardio equipment.  At our facility, we have some cardio equipment but it is not where we focus our program and a lot of our clients will never get on these never ending hamster wheels.

Training with light weights does not do anything for you!  All of our clients work with weights that are challenging for their skill level.  What this means is that some of our clients will use 100lbs and another might use 50lbs but the weights will be challenging for the individual client.  If you are only using 5lb dbs because you “don’t want to get big” then you should also say you are using 5lb db’s because you don’t want to work hard and you also don’t want to see results.  The only way to see body changes is to push your body.  These light weights will not create a high metabolic demand and thus you will not burn enough calories to matter.  On top of this the weight is not heavy enough to illicit a change from your body.  So basically if you are doing super high reps with really low weight then you are just wasting your time.  The Spot Athletics clients are busy people and don’t have time to waste doing things that don’t work.  That is why they come to us to train, to get results.

Hopefully you will use this information to either change your training or change your trainer.  Strength training may produce huge bodybuilders but it also produces bikini models and huge weight losses, but that’s not the picture people get in their heads when they think of weight training.  Our clients, however, see results because we challenge them, they get stronger, lose fat and look better because we don’t bend our training to fit some awful logic they come in with.  We try to educate our clients so that they understand that what most people hold as true is not.  Our system isn’t for everyone, a lot of people are happy just blaming their bad genetics, their lives or whatever for not getting results and hold on to awful logic like weight training will make them big.  Those are not the people that train here, only the people who want to get results train with us because we are not here to waste our time or our clients.  So next time one of your friends spouts out this awful logic, ask them why they eat ice cream, because that sort of activity is exactly what makes the american population “big”, not weight training.

Speed, Strength & Conditioning, Personal training & Fitness Class Training Video Montage 8/11-8/18

More records broken, more athletes getting stronger, and more personal training and metcon clients seeing results.  Another great week in the books.  We are sad to see the rest of our college athletes leave this week to go back to school, but we are excited to see them excel at their sports!  Good job everyone, and good luck to all of our athletes starting their seasons!

Speed, Strength & Conditioning, Personal training & Fitness Class Training Video Montage 7/29-8/3

Another great week at the Spot!  Records being broken and champions being built.  We think it is great that we have a father and son, Bob and Charlie, in this week's montage.  A healthy family is a happy family!  Great job to everyone this week!

Speed, Strength & Conditioning, Personal training & Fitness Class Training Video Montage 7/29-8/3

It's a bitter sweet week for us here at the Spot.  A lot of our college athletes are going back to school after a solid summer of training!  All of our athletes made great improvements, and we're proud of them.  We are excited to see how they perform at the next level.  Our high school athletes are still working hard in preparation for the upcoming fall season.  And, of course, our personal training and metcon clients are still killing it, sweating hard, and seeing results!