Wild Geese Fitness Training

I’m just back from visiting my friend Kieran Dolan at his gym in Tullamore.
The reason for todays visit was that he was hosting Irish bodybuilder, winner of class 2 in the Irish Nabba Bodybuilding Championships and The U80kg class at the RIBBF Bodybuilding Championships, Patrick Lowbridge.

Patrick, or Pa as he’s known, gave an informal Q&A where he shared his knowledge and experience of the murky world of bodybuilding, the training, the dieting, the drugs and the tan. All very, very interesting.
A few things he said stood out to me in particular:

• Lift heavy, 3 sets of 6-8 reps, ideally just 6 to failure.

• Stick to big compound movements, forget the fancy stuff
• Get your workouts done in around 45 minutes
• Cycle between 6 weeks of all out training effort and around three weeks lighter, high rep work, around 8-12 reps per set.
• Don’t be afraid to take the week off occasionally, rest is vital.
• Building mass and reducing fat is all about food.
• Eat clean, eat your veggies and get plenty of water into you.
• All good advice, regardless of whether you are a body builder, athlete or simply a fitness enthusiast.

The best result I ever had from a body building program followed similar lines, big exercises performed for 4-6 reps, even with my martial arts practice I still built size and strength. This was way before I started training with Kettles and during a time I was solely focused on mass building rather than athleticism. When my training switched to a more athletic focus again for martial arts conditioning I lost some size but found that I’d built an excellent foundation to build strength and explosiveness onto.
Body building, done in the manner prescribed by Pa, training that follows the old school of Dorian Yates, Arnold and the like, it works. It’ll get you big, it’ll get you strong and it’ll lay a foundation upon which you can base your athleticism.

Pa is very open about the short comings of his training though. We talked for a while about my martial arts and the differences in training practices. Pa and his fellow body builders, in Pa’s own words “we’re not into training those deep (core) muscles, we’re more about superficial, stuff you can see.”
So while he does train his Abs daily, he doesn’t want to thicken his waist so it’s all high rep sets for various styles of crunch, great for aesthetics, not great for power.
Saying that, so long as he squats, deadlifts and performs standing overhead pressing, he should still develop decent strength through the core.

All in all today was a interesting and enjoyable, it’s always a pleasure to hear from high level athletes, regardless of their sport, there’s always something to be learned.

If you’re ever in Tullamore, be sure to check out Dolan Fitness, you’ll find Pa there most evenings as he is preparing for the Worlds.

Regards

Dave
www.wg-fit.com

Hi All,

My blogging has been a bit below par this last couple of weeks, January has been a mental month so far, pretty much every training session I run is at capacity and I’ve several on a waiting list. While this is great, it means I’ve little time for writing at the moment, something I mean to rectify.

So today I’m going to cop out a little and pass you over to a top bloke who always has the best articles on offer. His name is Bret Contreras and while he made his name talking about Gluteal hypertrophy (building big booties) he is actually a training geek of the highest order, he has a brain the size of a planet.
Fortunately he writes in a way we can all understand and often his writing is pure gold. His latest T-Nation piece is one of these. It’s a collection of short pieces covering:
Kettlebell Swings, Strongman Training and Stretching.
Well worth a few minutes reading, click this image to open:

Speaking of Kettles, we are placing an order with our manufacturer, this means we get Kettles at a below market price. If you’re an instructor and are looking for a batch of Kettles for your gym, let us know quick sharp and we’ll ensure to include you in our order. be quick though, the order is going out in about 2 weeks.

I’d also like to let you know that my latest eBook “WMD – Strength & Conditioning for Martial Artists” has been picked up by the guys over at Fitedia.com and added to their list of great titles.
I’m flattered to be listed alongside the likes of Mike Mahler, Al Kavadlo and the entire Human kinetics library.

Fitedia are offering WMD at a 25% discount for a limited time only, if you want a copy (and why wouldn’t you) click this image and take your time to browse their other titles while you’re there:

Thats all today, I’ll be back later in the week with a tutorial on the One Arm Push Up, look out for that one.
Regards

Dave
www.wg-fit.com

Apologies guys, I have to postpone the Level 1 and 2 kettlebell workshops scheduled for the 5th Feb.

I’ve been double booked that weekend and will actually be out of town that weekend. Poor planning I know, but there’a a lot going on at the moment.

I will announce fresh dates very soon.

Good news:

I’ll be in Tullamore presenting a workshop in March, dates are just being finalised.

Steve Cotter will be at Wild Geese on the June Bank holiday weekend.

Mike Mahler has just announced he’ll be visiting dublin for the first time later this year.

JC Santana and I are planning to run his MMA Strength & Conditioning Certification in the second half of the year.

We are also putting together a large kettlebell direct from the manufacturer, if you want kettles for cheaper than the going rate get in touch asap, I’ll post again about this tomorrow.

it’s been a mad busy day, so I’m signing off.

Dave

People love categories, everything pigeon holed into neat boxes.

I have to say, I like categorising things too, it makes life simpler.

To this end I categorise many of my students and clients. I have three main categories, I’ll admit, I stole them from another coach, I heard John Hinds founder of the Monkey Bar Gym talking about it in a presentation.
He was describing the loading parameters for a particular workout and said that “Stability level use Xkg, Strength Level use Ykg and Power Level use Zkg”

Apart from the workout being one that I use with my Lunchtime fitness guys, it was his three categories that got me thinking.

John’s system of categorisation seems so efficient, and I love the simple nature of it. I’m sure his system is much larger than he gives away in these short speeches, but it’s a great reference point.
The thing is, the human body just doesn’t fit neatly into boxes. So our categorisation methods have to account for this.
Obviously we want our members to work through from the basic level (Stability) to the more advanced (power), but we ned to think about how this occurs, how previous training history, injuries and goals all affect the person.

Most beginners, those that come to us with either no training experience or those that are coming from the commercial gym environment, require stability.

What does this mean?
We need the body to be able to hold itself before we can effectively load it. We need to develop the structural integrity and coordination of the body.
We need to develop efficient movement patterns.
We need to  strengthen to core unit.
We need to coordinate movement.
The body must be developed according to the alternating joint theory, which will allow them to progress onto the strength level.

The strength phase can 0nly really begin as the body becomes stable enough to support external load.
The commercial gym’s obsession with weight training machines allows many to bypass the stability stage and start developing muscular strength, however when faced with real life scenarios, these machine built muscles very often fail to deliver, this is because time was never spent stabilising the body and instead allowing the machine to provide a false sense of stability. No stability, no foundation and a house without foundation will topple.

Once a foundation of strength is achieved people can then move onto the power stage. This is where exercises become explosive so require a good solid structure to work from. The muscles and connective tissues all need to have strength and stability, movement patterns must be well coordinated and the athlete is in good all round shape.
Many never get to this stage either through choice or poor training.

Sounds simple eh?

Here’s some progressions:
Stability -> Strength -> Power
Plank -> Push Up -> Plyo Push Up / 1 Arm Push Up
Squat -> Weighted Squat -> Jump Squat
Low Kettlebell Windmill -> Overhead Kettlebell Windmill -> Side or Bent Press
2Handed Kettlebell Swing -> 1 Handed Kettlebell Swing -> Kettlebell Snatch

You see how it works.

The problem then arises when people start to drift between categories.
Many of the female athletes that start out here are already in the strength category for the lower body but the shoulders are way back in stability.
Conversely, lads are often the other way round.

Those that join us from a commercial gym background have strength in the limbs but their core / torso is way behind in the stability area.

And then there’s the injured crowd. Take Linda for example, she was moving rapidly towards the power category until she had a cycling accident.
Now she is stuck in the strength category for around 80% of her body and her injured shoulder is way back in the stability category playing catch up.

Now, I’m starting to lose the point of this post so I’ll wrap up.

The inspiration for this load of babble came from a conversation on progression.
Progression means many things, it can be more reps with a given weight, it can be the same reps with a higher weight, it can be less rest between sets, it can be more complex movement patterns.
But it is essential that the athlete doesn’t progress before he or she is good and ready. This is where having loose, arbitrary categories come into the equation.
Never forget that people drift between the categories on a near daily basis and allow for this in your programming.
Never try to get a stability level client to do power moves, that’s just ridiculous and a recipe for injury.

If you’ve attended my kettlebell workshops, you’ll have noticed that you don’t learn the Jerk and Snatch until the third workshop in the series. First we build stability with Power Breathing, Military Presses, Squats and 2 handed Swings in Level 1, move to strength with level 2′s push press, Turkish Get Up and 1 handed Swing before we even think about teaching the power based moves of Snatch and Jerk.

There will be a Workshop covering Level 1 and 2 on February 4th, details are in the side bar or contact us for more info.