Bill Hartman

Author: Bill

  • Training notes

    When was the last time you reassessed where you were in relation to your training goals?

    If you’re not doing a regular assessment of your progress, do it now and every two weeks.

    If you are an you’re not progressing, why not?

    Sure you have rest and recovery to be concerned with and supportive eating is as important as any component of your training program, but here’s a quick thought…

    Maybe you’re on the wrong program.

    With the mass of training information available, many trainees will choose the program they want to be one rather than choosing or creating the program that they should be on.

    In many cases, driven by enthusiasm, many will select a program that is too advanced for their current physiology.  The complexity of your program should be at the minimum level that produces the maximum results.

    I’ve seen too many young athletes, bodybuilders, or fitness enthusiasts training on higher volume, complex, split programs that only provide exposure to each movement pattern one time per week.  More often than not, this will only slow progress.  Most of the volume in these cases is “junk volume” that because of fatigue is below the intensity threshold level to provide a stimulus for adaptation.  Then assuming there is a stimulus from the first couple exericses in the program, the muscle is ready for another stimulus in 48-72 hours, but because the program is based on a body part per day plan, detraining takes place and limits or even stagnates potential gains in strength or muscle mass.

    Think you’re an advanced trainee?  Maybe you are in some movement patterns.  You could have a big bench and lousy squat.  It may take you longer to recover from your horizontal pressing training than from your squat training.  If this is the case, how do you bring up a lousy squat?  Reduce the volume per session and increase the number of sessions per training cycle (week).  Try to make progress each session.  If you added 5 pounds per training session and squatted twice a week instead of once, wouldn’t progress be a helluva lot faster than squatting once a week?  No brainer, right.

    Not sure what you should do?

    Then take a step backward.  Drop your volume and focus on increasing frequency and intensity.  You may be happily surprised.

    Bill

  • Needs Analysis

    I had dinner last night with Jim “Smitty” Smith of Diesel Crew and Mike Robertson.  A mighty fine cow gave its life to sustain our bodies (my apologies to my vegan friends, but it was really good cow).  I think I got ripped off after ordering the large filet (medium rare, of course) and then being served what looked like a nickel-sized, but perfectly cooked, transected psoas (geek check).

    That’s not why I’m writing today.  Conversation covered just about everything you can imagine.  We even talked a bit of training (had to justify putting dinner on the business card).  One of the topics was how we went about a needs analysis for an athlete.

    Here’s a simple way to develop a needs analysis that will assist with determining your programming goals:

    1.  List all the possible physical characterists the athlete will need to participate in his sport (speed, power, agility, flexibility, strength, etc.)

    2.  Using a 1-10 scale, determine what would be the ideal representation of each physical characteristic.  For instance,  a “10” for flexibility would be a gymnast.  A “10” for maximal strength may be a powerlifter.  A “10” for linear speed would be a sprinter…and so on.

    3.  Based on the sport in question and the position your athlete will play, determine the ideal score that describes optimal performance for that sport (this is a sport analysis).  For instance, a linebacker doesn’t need a gymnast’s flexibility, but he doesn need some.  For the sake of argument, let’s say a linebacker needs a 6 compared to a gymnast.  Continue to score each characteristic to determine the ideal athlete in this sport.

    4.  Rate your athlete’s current abilities in each characteristic compared to the ideal for his sport and position.

    5.  The greater the difference between the ideal athlete and your athlete’s score determines how the athlete should be spending most of his training time.  For instance, if the athlete score a 9 in linear speed but only needs a 7, then spending a large portion of training time is unnecessary as trying to improve linear speed will not improve performance and would also be very difficult to do.  On the other hand, if the athlete scores a 4 on maximal strength and needs an 8, this would indicate that he should be spending adequate time in the weight room to bring up his strength.

    Bill

  • Three and Out!

    I’m trying to recover some strength that I’ve lost over the last couple months due to sporadic training.  I’ve also been really short on time lately, so I’m using an abbreviated program.

    The program is what I call “3 and Out.”  You can read about how to do it at the Men’s Health website.

    This brings me to the concept of full body training vs. body part training.

    If you’re really trying raise stength levels, then each time you train a specific movement pattern, the less fatigue the better.

    Let’s make a comparison of fatigue accumulated in a training session and volume.

    If I do a body part split and I’m doing 12 sets of pushing divided over 3 exercises, the second and third exercises for that movement pattern are starting from a deficit because of the accumulated fatigue from the prior sets already performed.

    It looks like this (weights are arbitrary here):

    Bench press 5 x 3-5 @ 225 pounds
    Inclined press 4 x 5 @ 185 pounds
    Military press 3 x 5 @ 155 pounds

    Now had I started with Military presses in a fully recovered state, I may have been able to use as much as 20 pounds more.  From a strength and even a muscle mass standpoint, wouldn’t the training effect be greater?  Of course it would.

    Now look at doing three full body training sessions per week and we divide those 12 sets over three separate training sessions.

    Day#1
    Bench Press 5 x 5 @ 225

    Day#2
    Inclined Press 4 x 5 @ 205

    Day#3
    Military Press 3 x 5 @ 175

    Can you see by direct comparison, which program (full body vs. split) will give me a greater training effect?

    Perhaps it’s time to reconsider your training program.

    Bill

    P.S.  Checkout Jason Ferruggia’s Muscle Gaining Secrets for outstanding real-world strategies to promote strength and muscle gains as well.

  • Improve your chin-ups for a bigger bench press

    Here’s a quick test of your lower trap strength.

    Do a full chin-up.

    Most will assume that if the chin clears the bar that they are successful.  Test passed.  Next exercise please.

    Not so fast.

    At the top of the chin-up, the scapula should be depressed (pulled down) and retracted (pulled back).  Most of the people will initially allow the scapula to elevate as they usually aren’t aware of correct chin-up performance or they’re just not strong enough in their scapular muscles…especially the lower trapezius which is an important depressor.

    The fix?

    Isometric holds in the proper scapular position at the top of the chin-up.  Question is…can you even perform the isometric hold correctly.

    If not, reduce the load of your body weight with jump stretch bands until you are able to perform the ISOs correctly.

    How does this assure a bigger bench press?

    The scapula need to be in a depressed and retracted position to be stable and thus, stabilize the shoulder joint to allow maximal effort to be generated by the prime movers in the bench press.

    By increasing lower trap strength via a proper chin-up, you get a carryover to your bench press.

    The additional incentive is that it will also improve shoulder health by improving scapular stabilization in other activities.

    Bill

    P.S.  don’t forget your Inside-Out warm-up before your upper body training.

  • Ass to the Grass

    It’s not uncommon to read discussions (or is it arguments) about how deep someone should squat.

    It never fails that someone says,”You should squat ass to the grass.”

    Well, wouldn’t it be nice if we could all possess such extreme hip mobility to do such a thing because it’s actually pretty rare. 

    Based on my experience in working with “normal people,” it’s rather rare to have someone demonstrate the ability to squat to even parallel effectively and safely let alone go “ass to the grass”.  Higher level athletes often don’t do much better.

    Here’s a couple of suggestions to get you more depth right away:

    Do front squats.  The anterior placement of the weight increases trunk stiffness that can overcome stiffness in the hip that would typically limit depth. 

    Widen your stance.  The wider stance reduces range of motion demands on the ankles and reduces tension in the stiffer or shorter muscles of the hips.  Increasing toe out in your stance may even give you a little more.  As you gain mobility, you can progressively return to your desired stance.

    So how deep should you squat?

    While it depends on several issues, let me give you some advice.

    Avoid squatting deeper than the point where your butt tucks under.  If you’re not sure what I mean, watch someone squat or video yourself.  Watch the tailbone (sacrum) during the squat.  At some point, you’ll see the sacrum tilt backward (counternutation).  At that point the stiffness of the hips have overcome the stiffness of the spine which places the spine at risk for injury.

    Bill
    www.billhartmanpt.com