Speed, Strength & Conditioning, Personal training & Fitness Class Training Video Montage 2/10-2/16

It's been a big past few weeks at The Spot!  Athletes are starting to commit to colleges, our volleyball clubs are in full swing with club season, and our personal training and metcon clients are absolutely crushing it!  Check it out here and make sure you share with friends!

Speed, Strength & Conditioning, Personal training & Fitness Class Training Video Montage 12/23-12/29

Check out this week's video montage!  Christmas break didn't stop us or our clients.... they were still working hard and seeing results.  Have a happy and safe New Year! Can't wait to see everyone in 2014

Lifting Heavy Is...Good? - An Intern's Blog

As some of you may know, I am from Houston, Texas, and as the holidays are approaching, I decided to head home for a couple of weeks to get some much needed family time. For some unexplainable reason, I thought it was a good idea to head up to my old gym after a 20 hour drive and running on minimal sleep. Now my tolerance for idiocy is already low as it is, but factoring in sleep deprivation, let's just say that this was not the ideal day to spout off broscience in my face. Sure enough, within 10 minutes of me being there, one of the guys that has been a regular at this gym for at least the last 4 years (yet you wouldn't know it) came up to me and told me that I was lifting too heavy to make any serious hypertrophy gains and that using light weight while utilizing "time-under-tension" is the best way to gain mass...WHAT?!?!

I thought I had heard it all until this. The most basic principle of any kind of weight lifting whether it be bodybuilding, powerlifting, cross fit, etc is to pick up HEAVY things! And now just because some people are lazy and don't want to load up a bar and crank out heavy sets, this fad of lifting light and "squeezing" is gaining momentum.

I'm in no way saying that "time-under-tension" methodologies should never be used in a program. I'll be the first person to admit that I've tried just about everything while trying to put muscle on including TUT, and it has it's merits as an intensity technique. It will get you sore the next day, it will give you a nice pump in the gym, and yes you can make some progress using it, but nothing, I repeat, NOTHING will ever replace good old heavy weight.

Building a physique forged by heavy deadlifts, squats, and bench press will always look more impressive than one built with lighter weight and contraction training. Some people will say heavy weight is a great way to get injured or they don't feel the muscles working properly. Well lift with proper form while taking necessary precautions and you won't get hurt. You can't feel the muscles working? I guarantee if you're squatting 500 pounds that your quads, hamstrings, and glutes are all working pretty darn hard.

There are tons and tons of techniques out there meant to be added to your programs in conjunction with heavy weight not as an alternative. If your goal is to be big and strong then throw some weight on the bar and get focused on moving it up and down rather than avoiding a little strain.

Bryce Calvin- Strength and Conditioning Intern

Controlling the Crowd

When coaching groups, whether it be 10 year olds or adults in a MetCon class, the most important thing that a strength and conditioning coach has to realize is that YOU are in charge, not them.

Admittedly, this is one of my biggest faults as a coach, and I am working on improving myself by learning to project my voice, bring energy to the situation, and have the attitude that "I am here to make you better not to be your friend." It's the easiest thing in the world to tell a group of 20 young girls to squat, but what do you think the probability is that a) they will squat correctly or b) they were actually listening when you told them what to do? You MUST have a commanding presence when speaking and you MUST keep everything a simple as possible. Don't let the group run itself. You must run the group!

So far, during my time at The Spot, we have started training club volleyball teams consisting of groups of up to 12-15 per coach! For the older kids it isn't too much to handle most of the time, but sometimes the younger kids can be a bit more tricky. This is where I, as a coach, have to make my explanations easy to understand and force the athletes to pay attention. If I need benches moved, direct which kids I want to move them rather than just saying "these benches need moved" and having everyone stare aimlessly at me. If they have three stations to work at, make them rotate as groups rather than just wandering around and creating traffic jams at every exercise station.

It isn't hard to control large groups as long as they respect you as their coach and you don't allow them to run rampant and do whatever they want. Just remember that you're the coach. If they don't listen, make them do burpees. If they talk back, make them do burpees. If they are goofing around, make them do burpees. They may think you're mean and a dictator, but it is your job to make them better and you must take that job seriously.

Top 10 articles of the week for 11/20/2013

How to stay sharp and on point with your deadlifts.

http://articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/tips-to-help-five-common-deadlift-mistakes/

These 2 articles are together and direct specific change in your life.

http://the-strength.com/5-changes-to-make-this-week/

http://the-strength.com/5-changes-to-make-this-week-part-2/

Is it discipline or is it passion?

http://articles.elitefts.com/training-articles/just-sayin-who-defines-discipline/

How to get CLEAR on your intentions and what you want out of your life.

http://www.dailycupofyoga.com/2013/11/13/what-will-you-do-with-your-one-precious-life/

Health is not a given...stay thankful for what you have.

http://experiencelife.com/unedited/

How to be spontaneous.

http://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/11/07/when-was-the-last-time-you-did-something-spontaneous/#more-20711

Some great items to put on your daily training "to do" list.

http://bretcontreras.com/5-things-you-should-do-everyday/

Which is better? Fresh or frozen food?

http://lifehacker.com/the-science-of-nutritional-differences-between-fresh-an-1460202541

How to get rid of jealousy. Poor emotional/mental habits keep you from being healthy mentally and physically.

http://zenhabits.net

Speed, Strength & Conditioning, Personal training & Fitness Class Training Video Montage 11/10-11/17

Check out this week's video training recap!  Another great week at The Spot Athletics.  Keep up the good work!

Speed, Strength & Conditioning, Personal training & Fitness Class Training Video Montage 10/29-11/3

Check this week's video montage.  With volleyball club season starting soon, we are getting busy and in full swing! We also have started our Ultimate sand training (http://thespotathletics.com/sand/), and have more and more athletes coming in to get the best training in central Ohio! Make sure to check in every week and see what we're doing at The Spot! Don't be shy,  share with your friends!

Friday technique video 10/18: how to do Romanian deadlifts

This week, JL goes over the Romanian deadlift and why he likes it for building hamstring strength in his athletes, and lock out power in the deadlift.

Speed, Strength & Conditioning, Personal training & Fitness Class Training Video Montage 10/7-10/13

Well here is a glimpse of another great week at The Spot Athletics!  Our Olympic hopeful wrestlers and Jiu Jitsu black belt continued to work hard and get better.  All of our Personal Training clients continue to work hard on their way to accomplishing their goals and becoming champions, and our Met Con Clients are loving their classes! The Spot Athletics Coaches are even getting after it with their own training as well. Great Job to all of our clients!

The Spot Athletics first Open House was a lot of fun!

We would like to thank everyone who came out to our first ever Open House!  We were celebrating two years of being in the Ultimate Sport Center and we had a great turn out.  Not only were there clients in attendance, but friends and family as well.  The Thomas Inch dumbbell and blob challenge were particularly intriguing for our guests.  No one except JL and Brad Ardrey, fellow Mighty Mitts competitor, could pick up both the blob and the Thomas Inch dumbbell.  We would like to extend a special thanks to Dave Tate, Josh & Christina Murphy, Chad Simmons and Erica Cushion for coming out and answering questions for all of our quests.  In total there was a hundred people in attendance and if it had not been on a girls volleyball game night, I'm sure it would have been a lot more.  We look forward to an even greater event on October 19th when we have our first ever tailgate for Ohio State vs. Iowa.  We are within walking distance of the stadium and will be giving away a pair of tickets to one of our lucky guests.  Speaking of give aways, Darci Campbell won the big prize of a free month of Met Con Class at the Open House.

Thanks to all of our clients, friends and families for making our first two years a big success and we look forward to building even more champions in the future.

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

Personal Training to prepare children for sports - What skills should they be learning

Personal training, or more specifically strength & conditioning, for children is not about keeping them busy.  It's about teaching critical skills that improve performance and more importantly, prevent injury.

Every program should have:

1. Great coaching 2. provide a good assessment before the program begins.

Skills every program should teach are:

3.Pelvic Tilt

4.Hip Hinge

5.Deceleration/Landing

6.Posterior Chain training/awareness

7.Jumping/Running form

8.Jumping rope/hopping

9.Crawling/Tumbling

As parents, it's almost impossible to know what your child should be doing in their training to improve performance and prevent injury.  Most parents are happy when their child's training has met two qualifications: 1. They worked hard and/or are tired  2. they had fun.  Although I agree that a child should enjoy their training, I think that being tired is an awful judge of what kind of workout your child is getting.  Some of the most important skills that we teach involve drills that do not make the children tired at all.  I love analogies and examples and the example I always use for this is:  If you offered a bum on the street $50 to make your child tired, I guarantee he would run your kid around and get them exhausted to earn that $50.  The question you have to ask is:  do you want a bum training your kid?  Of coarse not, no one would, but if you judge your child's training based on your child being tired then any bum can meet that qualification.  It takes experience, vast knowledge, research and a great strength coach to be able to actually make your child improve their performance and prevent injury.  Above I gave the list of skills your child should be learning/doing if you want them to improve performance and reduce injury and below I will elaborate on these skills.  I don't care if your child trains with us or somewhere else, but what I do care about is that your child is learning these skills so that they are not wasting their time and opening themselves up to injury.  Most kids from other facilities, or kids that aren't training, start training at The Spot and cannot perform these basic athletic movements and/or come to us with needless injuries.   The purpose of this blog is to educate parents so this stops.   If the training your child is receiving does not include all of the below elements then please take them to another facility or you will regret it later on.  If your child is not training then take them somewhere that ensures they learn all of the below skills.  Do I think that our strength & conditioning program is the best, yes, but as long as the below skills are being met then you are taking your child to a quality facility and they will be better for it.  This is not an all-inclusive list but it is somewhere to start so that you know if your child is receiving quality training.  The first two are requirement for any quality program but the last 7 are skills that must be taught in that program.

1. Learning, not babysitting - The most important thing on this list is: IS YOUR CHILD BEING TAUGHT PROPER PATTERNS?  We coach every rep our athletes do.  On top of that, we make our athletes coach each other, every rep, so that they are learning as they are teaching..  If your child is just running through drills or cones, over and over again, or doing exercises with little to no supervision, then they are not learning.  Simply throwing some cones and ladders out and having kids run around is just babysitting, not learning.  If the athletes aren't being taught proper patterns then they are learning bad patterns and these patterns lead to injury.  So even if they include drills/exercises to work the below skills, if they aren't coaching the kids up properly, then it doesn't matter.

2.  Assessment -  If you take your child somewhere and they just throw them in with a bunch of other kids, without first doing an assessment, then you are wasting your money and your child's time.  The assessment sets the base for the whole training program and it gives you a measurable way to track progress.  With our semi-private athletes we do an extensive assessment that gives a very tailored program for the athlete.  Even with our large team training we still do a more basic assessment so we can direct training for the team as a whole.

3. Pelvic Tilt -  If an athlete does not possess pelvic tilt control then their control over their body will be very limited.  On top of that they will lose out on precious speed and jumping ability.

4. Hip Hinge - The most basic of all athletic movements is the hip hinge.  From the golf swing to tackling in football, if you can't hip hinge, then you can't play at a high level.  If your child can't touch their toes, 99% of the time it's not a flexibility issue, it's that they don't know how to properly hip hinge.

5. Deceleration/Landing - Most injuries in sport happen during deceleration.  This is usually expressed as a torn ACL in landing jumps or in slowing down to change direction.  If proper body positions are not taught for these activities then you are playing with fire and asking for an injury, especially for female athletes.

6. Posterior Chain training/awareness - The muscles of the back of the body are what makes an athlete good.  Strong hamstrings, glutes, and lower backs are what professional athletes have that make them special.  Ignoring this area is asking for less performance and more injuries.  I put this before jumping/running form because although form is very important and will make big changes in the novice or poor athlete, it will only take you so far.  An athlete must strength train to get faster and jump higher and that strength training must be focused on the posterior chain.  Many facilities don't do strength training with young athletes and just have them repetitively jump or run, calling it "speed" or "jump" training.  Some even add bands to make it seem like they are doing something.  Bands alone are not strength training and without the strength training component the program is doing something - wasting your athlete's time.  If just running and jumping made athletes faster or jump higher then all they would ever have to do is play their perspective sports and they would keep getting better.  We all know this isn't true,  yet parents keep taking athletes to these "speed" and "jumping" places that provide no real strength training component.

7. Jumping/Running form - Speed ladders do not make you faster!  No sport moves your feet in tiny little patterns.  Coaching jumping/running form and doing form jump/running drills should not just be an afterthought of an athletes program but a cornerstone of the young athletes program.  If jumping/running drills are not taught and coached then your child will not be able to maximize their potential speed or vertical.  Simply telling athlete to do a drill is like giving a kid a math book and not teaching them anything.  Having information is different then learning information and thats where a good strength coach comes in.

8. Jumping rope/hopping - Speed ladders don't give athletes better footwork but jumping rope does.  Jumping rope is a lost art, but not at The Spot.  It is a critical part of any of our young athletes programs.  Jumping rope involves hopping(two feet jump,two feet land,which is a basic skill that must be mastered) hand eye coordination, timing, body awareness, joint durability and conditioning(once they can do it without messing up).

9. Crawling/Tumbling - Body awareness or proprioception(if you like big words) is one of the biggest things being lost with the specialization at such young ages with athletes.  When I was a kid I might play 3 different sports in one day but now kids are only doing one sport year round. This gives them very limited motor pattern exposure and limits their overall athleticism and body awareness.  Crawling/Tumbling are two of the best ways to fix this problem.  My 2yr old daughter can do a better front roll then a few of the Division I athletes I've worked with for the first time.  These athletes also, not surprisingly, have had an issue with injuries due to poor body awareness.  We incorporate special crawling/tumbling exercises, that we coach well, to illicit great body awareness changes in our young athletes.

An athletes window to play college or professional sports is very small.  If they waste their time training at a facility that is not teaching them these skills, that are essential for athletic success, then they are risking injury, not getting a scholarship or potentially being cut from a professional team.  We want to see every athlete reach their fullest potential and that is why we view our young athletes as the most important part of The Spot Athletics.  We know that we have the chance to effect what happens the rest of their life and this is not a responsibility we take lightly.

Flowrestling Stone- JD Bergman - Strength and Conditioning

Fresh off his domination at the World Team Trials, JD Bergman is back training as hard as ever at The Spot Athletics.  This Atlas Stone was imprinted with the FloWrestling logo off the screen print on his shirt.  He was so soaked with sweat the whole rock was covered except where the screen print was.  Look closely and you can read Flowrestling.  Also, just so people know, the reason JD can can man handle people is the stone he is throwing around here, repetitively, is 215lbs or roughly the weight of one of his unfortunate opponents.

Better Personal Training is a Choice

by Sandy Schluep NSCA-CPT
Take a look at all of these photos of normal people. These are clients who are not top athletes that are out there winning first place, or young athletes competing for college scholarships. Why?  Well, The Spot is for us “normal” people too.  Take me for example. Yes that’s me with her arm in a sling.  I started as a client; then became an intern; and now I'm a certified trainer here at The Spot.  Why in the world would I be training at The Spot while still recovering from rotator cuff surgery?  Answer: Because I choose to.  I choose to move forward and be stronger today than I was yesterday; not with recklessness, but with proper training, precision and safety.  I choose to not let excuses stop me.  I have a lot of other muscles that still need conditioning and The Spot is the best place for an athlete (including us normal people) of any age (from 6-76) to train and get results.  Why?  Because The Spot Athletics was designed with the individual in mind …. to do one thing, get results.



 

The Spot Athletics is the best place to train in Columbus because we are the best at what we do.  It’s a choice.  We choose to be the best.  We practice what we preach, and we choose to help each individual client with their goals and not let their excuses, injuries, or age prevent them from being in the best shape of their life.  You will always get results at The Spot, because that is what we are experts in.  So, be wise, be smart, and take the right step in accomplishing your fitness goals by choosing to train with us at The Spot!

 

To be the best you have to train with the best!

JL is recovering from his bicep surgery but this does not stop him from training.  This never quit attitude is something that we instill in our athletes and lead them there by example.  Here JL deadlifts 315lbs with just one hand.  If your strength coach doesn't have strength, then isn't it time for a new coach.  [youtuber youtube='http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wn4bxZF3w5w']

Easter training at The Spot Athletics

Today was about family, friends, celebrating our faith and of coarse training.  I came in at 8 am to train today and Robbie had his dad bring him in so that he wouldn't miss his Sunday workout.  Champions never rest and our athletes are champions.  Come train at The Spot Athletics and become a champion!

My 2yr old daughter trains harder than you!

Check out my 2 year old daughter killing it in the weight room today.  At The Spot we deal with a lot of young female athletes but number one in my heart is my little Avery.  My 2yr old daughter loves to train.  If we go to The Spot Athletics to train without her she cries.  I hear many parents say that they don't want their kids weight training until they are 15, but the American Medical Association & American Pediatrics Association both recommend children to be weight training from as early as 5 years old.  Studies show that motor patterns are best developed from 3-9 years old, and I want my daughter to excel in sports.  It makes no sense to give kids no training and throw them in competitive contact sports.  These sports are so hard on the body and yet parents choose not to get their kids ready for the sport with training.  Training is a controlled environment and competition is not, which is why so many injuries occur in sporting competition.  I want my daughter to be prepared when she starts competitive sports and training is the best way to get her body ready.  Ask any parent if they would strap on football pads and go play today and they will say you are crazy.  But then they will say maybe if I trained hard for it first.  So what kind of logic is it for a parent to throw their kid into these sports and deny them the same training they say they would need to even try the same sport.  Yeah, and I'm crazy for preparing kids properly so they can excel and not get injured in their chosen sports.

Kids lifting, competing and talking trash

I feel that our society has demonized being aggressive, competitive and rough for young boys.  This is discerning to me as I have a young boy who is 7 years old and I don't want him growing up in a world where he is looked down upon for having the traits that make men, well men.  The skills to grow and be a productive member of society whether male or female take aggressive, competitive and sometimes rough personalities.  I feel that schools and society as a whole are trying to punish the very behavior that will make young boys and girls successful as adults.  At The Spot Athletics one of the biggest joys  we get working with young children is seeing the confidence that is built from training with weights and competing with one another.  This confidence is seen even more so in females than in the males.  Usually when a young girl first enters the weight room she is timid and unsure of what to do.  After a few weeks they want to show their friends who aren't training how to do the things that they have learned.  In the end I feel that not only are we building strong, faster athletes but we are helping to mold young people into better, more confident human beings.

Gold Medal for The Spot Athletics Athlete

Vinicius Tavares Marinho won gold at the No Gi Pan Am games this past weekend.  Vinicius is part of GFTeam(Grappling Fight Team), one of the best Jiu Jitsu teams in the world.  Vinicius lives in Brazil but has been training at The Spot Atheltics for his strength and conditioning while in the US.  He made great strides in both strength and conditioning in his time here and will be missed as he is heading back to Brazil this week.  We will post up an interview with him about his training at The Spot soon.  Our motto is "Sweat Hard, See Results" and Vini sweated a whole lot while he was here and at the Pan Am games he saw the results.  Good luck to Vini as he heads back to Brazil and keep training hard.