“I don’t care if someone likes me or not, but I’m a human being first and people need to treat me with respect”.

Okay, I wasn’t expecting them to say that, but I wasn’t shocked to hear that they haven’t been treated with respect - given that many head coaches scream and yell, demean, criticize and question the effort of the athletes the fact that they treat their junior coaches the same way is not surprising.

They continued:

“They are not little soldiers” when referring to the athletes.

Again, I’ve been getting this feeling recently when watching some skills coaches. To hear this coach say it was great because I’ve been thinking that there is a better way to training young people than to treat them like soldiers going into battle.

Then the shocker:

“You can’t write someone off at 7″.

This did floor me. While I believe we can assess some athletic potential at a young age, it is true that many national champions didn’t even start training for their sport until 10 or 11 and in the case of some sports even later. Even if someone is training at 6 and appears to be utterly hopeless, there is no reason to believe that they cannot overcome a talent gap with effort to become a much better. And you can’t really assess talent at 6 or 7 because the individual may not have the body awareness to clearly demonstrate their talent.

It is said that getting a person involved in gymnastic or martial arts very early is a fantastic way to accelerate their athletic progress in all areas, and I’ve observed this to be true. But it isn’t necessary. It may speed things along, it may help an average athlete perform at a higher level early on, but it isn’t going to create a champion. Talent is talent, regardless of what has happened in the first 5-10 years of life.

1000’s of children do gymnastics when they are little and do not make the world stage in anything and 1000’s of world class athlete have never done any gymnastics or martial arts. But some skills coaches see the advanced performance, make the jump that it is because of talent and focus their coaching energies on these athletes. When the athletes true level of talent begins to show (usually around puberty), the coaches work them harder and question their focus as opposed to looking at the athlete and realizing that they are relatively good at their sport because of their head start.

Unfortunately they may have written off a number of 7 year olds how have what it takes to be world class but just didn’t get the same athletic start.

The reason I decided to start doing power cleans is because my starting strength is brutally slow - my first 3 steps or peddle strokes look and feel like I’m taking it easy when in fact I’m actually trying to make them really quick. Once I start moving my muscle are able to fire at a speed that gets me up to my top speed fairly quickly.

The initial learning phase takes about 6-8 weeks. During this time I learned the mechanics of the movement, improved the flexibility of my forearms to allow me to catch the bar and my nervous system became more efficient at firing the fast twitch fiber to allow me to get the bar moving and accelerate it to top speed. Once this happens, you can start to load on the weight and experiment with different rep and rest schemes.

Over the last month I have been doing sets of 5 with ~60 seconds rest between sets. The bar comes to a complete stop at the bottom and I may rest up to 10 seconds between reps; if the bar is moving slowly I will rest longer and if I’m still able to pull with max speed there will be about a second between reps. Depending upon how I am feeling, how quickly the bar is moving during the 4th and 5th rep and what else I am planning on training, I will do between 5 and 10 sets.

I like this approach because I think it carries over to cycling very well because 5 cleans is roughly the equivalent to 5 complete peddle rotations which is exactly what is needed to kick it into top speed to pass another rider or to blast into an open space to lead the group into the single track.

My starting strength has increased and I feel more force being directed to the peddles. I have also found that my 10 yard sprint time has improved.

John is one of these guys whose physiology is ideal for bike racing. He beat me at everything which is unusual. I worked hard to keep up and when we stopped to wait for the other guys, I was always winded while he just seemed to be breathing normally. I asked him about this and he told me that when he was last measured his max heart rate was 216 - which he has gotten his heart to. He is able to maintain a HR of 185 for extended periods of time and it recovers really quickly when he slows down. Compared to my numbers of 174 - the highest my HR has been in years - and my ability to sustain work at 157 and it’s clear why I was left trying to stick to his tire for the draft.

I asked him how his numbers compared to other people and he admitted that his cardiovascular system is in a league of its own - he’s in the same range as top professional cyclist. Being 10 years younger than me, the fact that I didn’t die trying to keep up with him was both lucky and a sign that my training is moving me in the right direction.

What I liked most about the ride is that it was a pissing match. He knew I wanted to beat him and he was pretty vocal each time he passed me, which only served to fire me up even more. It was good natured and it brought up my riding to a level I haven’t seen in years if ever. I’m not sure if he was being nice but he did make a few comments that it was good to finally have someone stick with him, but then he pulled away again so I’m not 100% sure he wasn’t mocking me.

Hopefully I’ll get to ride with them again. The guy who set-up the ride has just started back to cycling after a decade long break and he’s getting better each day. He’s picked the right group to ride with because they are forcing him to get improve much faster than he would if he was doing it on his own and his progress is fantastic; it’s even better considering 8 weeks ago he was still smoking.

The take home lesson - train up if you want to improve; and quit smoking today!

The human body is an amazing thing with a fantastic ability to adapt to its environment; it takes an average person about 6-9 weeks adapt almost completely to an exercise program. For this reason, people need to approach their training or gym time in phases that have a distinct purpose and end goal. For example, many gym goers are there to drop a few pounds of fat and increase or tone muscle – basically, they want to look good naked. I think this is a fantastic goal because it is going to help someone feel better about themselves and it is going to improve the quality of their life significantly. The issue with it is that very often, trying to tackle two goals at once will prevent you from making much progress in either one.

For those individuals looking to lose body fat and increase or tone muscle I would suggest that they separate these two goals into distinct phases – one for fat loss and the other for muscle building or toning.

For example, the first 6 weeks are for fat burning and will consist of metabolic workouts aimed at increase calorie burning and cardiovascular fitness through the use of interval training. During this phase you may do 20-30 minutes of varied speed and resistance (or incline) running, cycling or elliptical machine 3-4 times per week along with some strength training – 1 or 2 full body workouts per week consisting of 1 or 2 sets of 8-10 reps per body part. Your diet will be modified and carbs will be reduced. After about 6 weeks, your body will have adapted to the workout and the reduced carb diet and you will move to the next phase with is for muscle growth.

The next 6-9 weeks will be for muscle development. During this phase you may do 3-4 full body workouts per week consisting of 3-4 sets per body part. The rep range will be different on each day and will range from 6-8, 9-12 and 12-15. The exercises will change every 3 weeks and you will lower the amount of cardio you perform. In some cases you will eliminate the cardio to allow your body to become deconditioned to it so when you enter the 3rd phase, fat loss, you will find the movements taxing on your body again.

You will repeat this cycle of fat loss, muscle building over and over again until you achieve your fitness goals. The good thing about this approach is that you will rarely get stale or bored with what you are doing in the gym because it is changing constantly and when you start each phase, your body will be shocked into adapting to the new stimuli.

If this seems completely foreign to you or you do not know where to start, consider getting in touch with a good trainer to help you plan your workout phases.

Most of the conversations I have with coaches about a lack of progress focus on the athlete and not the poor program design. I hear things like “the athlete just isn’t getting it” or “they are losing focus” or “the athlete is weak and needs to work harder”. I have yet to hear a coach say “I’ve asked them to do more work than they can recover from” or “I don’t really know what I’m doing so I just get the athlete to do more” or “I train them the way I trained 20 years ago and don’t really feel like advancing my understanding by learning”.

I’m not implying that these coaches do not know how to make their athletes better at their sport because many of them do; they have an eye for the sport and can see things that more people can’t. In fact, many sport coaches are the only people who can coach the skills with their athletes. The issue is, they don’t understand the body well enough to understand that their athletes are failing to make progress because the brain cannot control the muscles to the precise degree needed to make the progress and instead blame the athletes will or focus.

Why are the athletes not progressing? There are two reasons, the muscles are not recovered enough to move as required and the nervous system is not recovered enough to coordinate the muscle fibers to move as required.

In the car racing world a driver can tell his mechanic that the car isn’t responding correctly when he press down the accelerator. The mechanic will then take a look, uncover the problem and fix it. A damaged spark plug for example will limit the amount of power that an engine is able to generate and once it is replaced, the engine goes back to full power. This is like the muscle not being fully recovered. A chef may find that he’s burning all of the items he tries to fry and when he looks at the stove realize that the gas dial goes from off to full with nothing in between. Once the dial is fixed to allow for precise heat adjustments the chef regains the ability to cook foods perfectly. This is like fixing neurological fatigue.

Cooking and car racing have one thing in common that most sports don’t have - a tool that acts as a medium between the individual and performance. This medium can be examined, shown to be malfunctioning and adjusted to function correctly. With most sports, the medium is the athletes body so it’s harder to figure-out the cause of malfunctions and since it’s harder to figure-out or see what is causing them, the first impulse is to blame the athletes will or conscious effort.

This is, when dealing with high level athletes, completely wrong. These individuals work hard, have greater focus than most people and are driven to perform better and better each workout. Their body’s however, cannot perform at a higher level each workout because of muscular and neurological fatigue and without sufficient recovery, their performance decreases. The coaches solution of making them do more reps, more cardio, more anything only serves to decrease their performance further, which will make the coach work them harder.

The good news is that body won’t allow this to continue for every long and the athlete will get sick well before they work themselves to death, which most high level athletes will do because of their work ethic. After about 6-7 weeks of over training, illness takes over and the athlete can’t perform at all. They take a few days off to recover from the illness which allows their body to recover and when they get back to their sport, they perform much better. The coach is happy and feels good knowing that they did a good job because of the improvement. They attribute the illness to a cold or flu and they start the cycle again - performance will begin to decrease after a few weeks as the athlete “loses focus” and the illness will return.

This pattern will continue until the coach smartens up, the athlete switches coaches, the athlete quits their sport or the athlete becomes aware enough to dictate the pace of training and lets the coach know that they are taking a few days off when they need to. Unfortunately, too many young and promising athletes will leave the sport and never actualize their potential because the fun leaves the sport due to this avoidable pattern.

If you are a coach and you notice in your athletes a pattern of decreased performance followed by sickness, a lack of focus following intense training periods, dramatic increases in performance following time off or if your solution for everything is more training, you need to get back to school and learn about neurological and muscular fatigue. If you allow your athletes to continue this cycle YOU are failing them and you may be chasing them out of the sport they love.

Oh well. Maybe when I get 500 I’ll feel something about it - probably “600″.

1) Bulgarian split squats. Similar to a back foot elevated static lunge except the focus is on moving forward and back vs. up and down. It’s a great movement because it works each leg equally. It focuses a lot on the VMO which is critical for both peddle force production and knee stability - remember, you are going to fall and usually the only thing saving you from hitting the ground is being able to quickly put your foot on the ground to catch yourself. Knee instability at this point is going to increase the chance of falling and injury to your knee. Having the back foot elevated recruits more of the hip flexor muscles which are critical for the knee drive that pulls the peddles from the bottom to the top.

I like to work with a rep range of 12-15 for this movement.

2) Bent over standing hamstring curls - the reason you are bent over is to mimic riding position so aim for 45 degrees of hip flexon. This movement is critical because many riders do not have good hamstring recruitment - in fact, most people do not. Unless someone is moving quickly, these muscles play a role in maintaining knee stability. The hamstrings are made up primarily of fast twitch fibers so you need to focus on explosive contractions and controlled eccentric phases. Given that half of the peddle stroke is made up of knee flexon, you will need to learn how to powerfully recruit the hamstrings if you are to generate the most amount of force.

I work with a rep range of 6-8 for this movement.

3) DB bench press. Strong pec and anterior deltoids muscles are critical for holding the upper body in the right position when riding the rough trails. This movement is good at building this type of strength.

I work with a rep range of 6-10 for this movement and will alter the angle of the bench to include decline and incline pressing.

4) Bent over pronated (palms away) BB row. With trail riding, you are going to have to pull the front wheel off of the ground to clear logs and other obstacles. To do this, you will need a considerable amount of back strength. Bent over rowing is ideal for developing this. It is also great because being bent over places the upper body in the same position it would be in when riding.

I work with a rep range of 8-12 for this movement.

5) BB squat (front and back). The BB squat is one of the best strength movements someone can perform because it recruits muscles from the entire body, particularly the legs and core. Squatting deep is a fantastic way to develop the strength of the VMO muscles and it’s one of the best ways to develop eccentric strength that is needed anytime you put your feet on the ground to catch yourself from falling.

I work in a variety of rep ranges for these movements. With front squats I’ll do 3-6 reps and with back squats the range will be between 2 and 25. I’ll never do front and back squats in the same workout and like to change them up to keep my body adapting to the different movements.

6) BB deadlifting. I perform this movement primarily to work the core, lower back and glutes, but is also works the legs and upper back so it is a fantastic way to develop full body strength. It is particularly good at teaching you to recruit your glutes as you drive your hips forward to complete the movement at the top. These muscles are particularly important for force production when standing and sprinting.

I work with a variety of rep ranges ranging from 2 to 20

7) Power cleans. This is a movement used to develop speed because it is extremely difficult to clean a weight slowly - it’s impossible to be completely honest. Hip drive is absolutely critical with this movement so it’s a fantastic way to train your glutes to contract quickly. It’s also a fantastic way to training the upper back muscles to be faster along with your legs given that you are lifting the weight of off the ground from a dead stop.

I work with a variety of rep ranges with this movement but do not go above 6 reps. The goal when performing power cleans it to make the bar move as quickly as possible. To ensure that it helps to build speed, it is critical that a set end as soon as the bar speed drops by 10%. While this may seem like a tough thing to figure-out, you can feel any slow down and catching the bar on your shoulders is really tough unless it’s moving quickly.

I encourage you to incorporate some of these movements into your strength training program if you are a cyclist. You will notice an improvement on the trails and you’ll be riding faster than you ever thought you could!

When I started working with SST, I was introduced to rotator cuff training because they have found that too many young athletes trained the way I used to - building up the glory muscles while ignoring the ones that keep the machine moving perfectly. To say that I was imbalanced would be an understatement. When I was tested on external rotations, I was only able to lift about 5lbs for 8 reps - to be considered balanced I should have been able to lift about between 17.5 and 22.5 lbs for 8. The consequence of this weakness is an unstable shoulder and pain - given that the rotator cuff muscles are the body’s primary way of adding stability to the shoulder.

Over the last few years I have trained the rotator cuff consistently through a number of different angle and positions so it is now more than 400% stronger than before. I would now consider myself balanced since I’m able to move 22.5 lbs for 8 reps. My shoulder pain disappeared and my other lifts have gone up dramatically - even ones I didn’t train - because my body is working the way it is supposed to.

I got cocky and stopped training rotator cuff thinking that now that I’m balanced, I don’t need to work at it anymore. It didn’t take long for the pain to return and the pain was as bad as it was in high school - a sharp stabbing pain that pulls you out of a deep sleep and leaves you thinking that maybe the shoulder is dissolving. It’s a pain that you cannot turn off by changing lying or arm positions. I put up with it for a couple of weeks hoping that by doing nothing to address it, it would go away. It didn’t.

So on Monday I go to the gym and before I train my shoulders and back, I train rotator cuff - 2 movements (low cable external rotations and elbow on knee external rotations) and 1 movement for the scapula retractors. My back and shoulder workout did suffer slightly - I wasn’t able to lift as much weight as I could when I didn’t train rotator cuff, but the pain went away. I slept right through the night without even thinking about my shoulders. The pain hasn’t come back either. Who would have thought that 15 minutes of work before my glory muscle work would have made me feel like new again?

Sadly, I should have thought about that. I wouldn’t let my athletes get away with not training rotator cuff. Structural balance is not a short term thing, it’s an always and forever thing because life does not provide enough opportunities to work these muscle in a way that keeps them stronger than they need to be.

Sure it helps my cycling - the stronger I am, the faster I will be able to climb hills. Being strong now is also going to help me age more gracefully - provided I do no harm to my body. I like that lifting weights burns calories so I stay lean, and I also like the muscle development that it promotes. These are all good reasons and if I lifted for just one of these, I think I’d have my motivation.

My primary reasons now are about personal integrety and optics.

I coach athletes of different ages and levels now and it is no longer enough to simply know what I’m talking about. I need to LOOK like I know what I’m talking about. We’ve all seen the fat personal trainer, the skinny strength coach, the gym at the gym with internally rotated shoulders who’s telling everyone what they are doing wrong - basically the people who consider themselves experts in something that they don’t look anything like - they may know what are talking about, they just look like they don’t follow their own advice so it’s tough to take them seriously. Given that I work with a lot of young people who couldn’t possible know if I’m knowledgable, I strive to LOOK like I am knowledgable. That’s the optics component, I try to make the visual impression that says to those who do not know that I do know.

The personal integrety component is more critical from my point of view. As much as I love coaching I need to be a sales man - if I can’t sell my services I’ll have no one to coach. I also need to sell my clients on my advice / programs. I know from my past experience that I have extreme difficultly selling things I do not believe in. Being an extremely passionate person, I can be very convincing. However, using this passion to convince someone to comply with a suggestion I know nothing about leaves me feeling kind of greasy, so greasy in fact that I have a tough time letting go of the interaction later. Basically, I’m blessed with the ability to convince others of things but feel good about myself only when I believe in what I’ve convinced them to do. This pairing means that I’m not going to be selling cars, sofas or cell phones.

Experience seperates wisdom from knowledge. This is what is critical for me. Until I actually dead lifted twice my body weight, I had no idea what it was like. Once I did, I realized a lot of things about myself, the movement and the potential for injury and progress. Having had these lessions, I’m in a much better position to coach others on how they should lift very heavy weight. I’m also in a position to speak with authority about the carryover benefits of lifting heavy - you’ll be faster, your other lifts will go up, you’ll enjoy going to the gym more, life will be a little easier than it was before.

It is only through doing that I can honestly coach other people on how to and why they should. Coaching from a place of no experience isn’t doing a service to your athletes, clients or yourself, so get out there and practice what you preach!

Those living on the planet now represent the best of the best when it comes to surviving on it. If they possess a trait it is because the trait helped them survive. Any traits we possess have been passed along to us through our ancestors for thousands of years. Human beings have biological tendencies towards certain behaviors and the expression of these behaviors is often unconscious.

Why humans eat fat and sugar: The basic reason is that these nutrients help us store fat in preparation for the next famine / winter. That is it. Our species used to need to have large fat store to get us through the tough times and having favoring eating the things that make use fat would help us survive.

Eating disorders (at least binge eating) are a survival mechanism. Okay, I’m probably going to get blasted for that but I believe it is true. I have spoken to a number of people who suffer from compulsive eating and almost all of them describe their binges in exactly the same terms I would use to describe my binge eating. Initially, there’s an awareness of the food. The cookies call to me, the cake makes noises in the fridge to remind me that it is there, the chocolate bar dances in my peripheral vision taunting me. If I’m able to ignore them, I am fine. The craving or awareness will go away and my day will continue.

However, if I eat a cookie, have a sliver of cake or sample a piece of chocolate, something very unusual happens. I have a sensation that I can only describe as an out of body experience. I watch, in almost horror, my hands grabbing the food and putting it into my mouth. I am only marginally aware of the sensation of eating, chewing and swallowing. Basically, I sit back and watch while my body just rips its way through the food. Through out the session I will think that maybe I should stop, that maybe 20 cookies is enough, but these are just thoughts that have no impact on the behaviour of the thing I become. I roll through the food, ALL of the food, regardless of any feelings of fullness. Even the crumbs get eaten and my fingers get licked clear to make sure nothing is wasted.

Others who gorge or binge report the same sort of feeling - like they are watching something unfold and are powerless to do anything other than watch. In fact, the reports are so similar that I am left with no option but to say that this gorging behaviour is a part of our genetic code and it is a trait that was critical for the survival of our ancestors.

Why the need to gorge? Simply put, if we stopped eating when we were full, we`d be much less likely to overeat and store fat. Everyone would be their ideal weight. However, when the seasons changed and food became scarce, we would have very little stored fat to help bridge the gap between the end of harvest season and the start of the growing season in the spring. This survival trait is antiquated in modern farming times given that there is never an interruption in the food supply. However, the consequences of the expression of this trait is becoming more and more common as high sugar and high fat foods become readily available to everyone.

I have talked to 100’s of people about the food they buy and I have yet to hear any of them convincingly tell me that they do not know what they should be eating. Without fail, they all say they should be eating more vegetables and less candy or junk food. They know that fresh foods that will rot quickly are better for them than anything they buy in a package yet their buying decisions indicate everything BUT good food awareness. Logic, it seems, has little impact on many people when it comes to what they eat.

I liken this to choosing relationship partners in that most people cannot tell you exactly why they fell in love with their significant others. Everyone is looking for something, they just don’t know what it is until they see it and they don’t know why they found it when they find, just that they knew. When I fell for Rachel, there were a number of logical reason why I shouldn’t pursue her which just didn’t factor into the decision making process. She matched what I was looking for even if I didn’t know what I was looking for and I was powerless to stop myself from falling in love.

I think of food in the same way. We are drawn to it for reasons other than logic given that most do not eat the perfect foods or eat the right amount of food for their needs. We eat that which makes us fat because we’re programmed to eat it.