New Tricks #5 - The Human Flag

Brother Damien teaches us a supremely awesome calisthenics staple - the Human Flag.

Get a good grip and hold tight with the top arm, and lock the bottom one in while still keeping the elbow slightly unlocked (we wouldn't want to arm-bar ourselves in front of everyone). This was my first time giving it a go and mine definitely needs work. You can that i started sticking my legs straight up in the air in an attempt to reduce the amount of weight (in my flag?). The hope from there would be to slowly and gradually bring the legs down until they are in a completely horizontal position.. Thats the hope..

Damo can be seen hanging off both parallel and vertical bars around Bondi Beach. Its rare to see him break a sweat or show signs of exertion. He is a good man.

Enjoy!

Noosa Training Adventure

Danny, myself and the Crossfit Noosa combi

Last month i took a couple of weeks off work, keen to take a break and get out of town, and very keen to learn something new while i was at it. I was thinking that a course overseas would be awesome but i couldn't find anything appealing on during the time that i had available. I came up with a close second-best option - my buddy Danny has a gym up in Noosa, Queensland where I knew i could get my fix of education and training! I emailed to check if he was going to be there, which he was, and then googled 'jiu-jitsu noosa' - i found an academy literally around the corner from Danny's gym. Crossfit Noosa and Noosa Mixed Martial Arts - the location had been found!

Yoshi Hasegawa - Noosa Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

I arrived on Saturday morning, grabbed my rental race-car, and headed out to Sunset Beach where i had booked a cheap little private room out of the back of a nice young family's home. It took only a couple of hours to acquaint myself with the local area and find a good coffee (Organika Cafe FYI). Sunset beach has an awesome old water-pipe that has been reused as an under-road walkway. Its also awesome for pull ups.

'Suns out guns out'

On day 2 i took a run through the Noosa National Park. I am not a fan of running for a distance longer than 400m, however the only other option was walking and i found that to be a less-appealing option than the run, so running it was. I only ever have the urge to run when i'm travelling, and like i always seem to do when i run, i took off at a motivated pace in my barefoot shoes (New Balance Minimus) mackin' it through the shrubby trails and cliff-top pathways. As always happens when i do that, both of my achilles and calf muscles kicked my ass for the next 8 days (note to self - practice running barefoot, before actually hitting a 5k trail). That aside, the national Park is lovely and the run was quite enjoyable. I arrived at an awesome point called 'Hells Gates' where there is some serious water moving around below the cliffs. I watched a bunch of Pied Cormorants' peering down into the water from the cliff tops, zeroing in on fish. They would dive down into the crashing waves and hang on the surface dodging the craggy rocks before snatching a fish from underneath them. Quite awesome..

BJJ lifestyle rule # 2: you will spend lots of time hanging
out at the laundry while travelling and training BJJ

Day 3, 4 and 5 i followed a pretty consistent schedule. 0900 class at Crossfit Noosa, and then 1830 class at Noosa BJJ. In the middle was plenty of time for eating, swimming, laundry, and catching up on emails. Danny and Woogie at Crossfit Noosa are awesome dudes, and there's a bunch of legends training at their gym. It was good to hang out and catch up with Danny again and pick his brain on all things training. Yoshi over at Noosa BJJ was super cool and very welcoming. He has a team of beasts training in there who were also very open to newcomers. Danny and Woogie were in at the BJJ class on Wednesday so i was able to exact a little revenge on them for having kicked my ass at the gym over the few days prior. A fair deal..

Food wise i found a bunch of good options. Holy Mackerel down at Noosaville had some awesome wild barramundi on hand that i ate a bunch of. Moondoggys Cafe just a few doors down did awesome poached eggs, and then there was a late night post-training trip to a Chinese noodle bar where i got some beef noodles - you wouldn't be missing anything by not eating there, i still enjoyed it however (it ticked some rudimentary macronutrient boxes for me - noodles for carbs and beef for protein). My room had access to a BBQ so i cooked up some organic beef sausages and raw veg on a couple of occasions. Sometimes it can be tough to find decent food options when you arrive in a new town, however i feel it worked out OK.

some kinda food montage

I arrived back in Sydney suitably sore and well recharged after the 5 days. I had gotten what i was after there - some relaxing time to myself, some quality training, and some new tips and tricks for my own training and coaching. Noosa is a lovely town and i definitely found some places and people worth going back for.

Next training adventure - Rarotonga part II!

Why do we lift weights?

"The iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds."

Henry Rollins - The Iron and The Soul

Recently at training a client of mine expressed to me how he really enjoyed the training we were doing, in particular the bodyweight exercises, but how he wasn't so sure that "all the stuff with weights" was for him.

This feller his feller has made substantial gains in recent months - he is way stronger, has less belly fat, improved posture, and i would guess that he is sleeping better and feeling better all round. He is on the lightweight side and has a natural propensity to be good at lifting his own bodyweight - pull ups, push ups, dips etc. so naturally he loves that stuff. However when we get him under the barbell, or picking up a car or whatever,  he still performs like a legend though he seems to have less enthusiasm in doing so. It was at this point that he voiced his concern, so it was important that we discussed the reason why we do all of 'that stuff with weights'.

There are many reasons we lift weights, and some have different reasons to others. I will outline a few of the main reasons that i like to lift weights and why i have all of my clients do the same.

1) DEALING WITH AN EXTERNAL LOAD IS PART OF LIFE
Life constantly demands that we touch, hold, move and control all forms of external load. Pick up your backpack from the floor, carry the shopping home, take the bins out, hold your baby, judo throw your girlfriend onto the bed - all tasks such as these involve an object (load) that is outside (external) of our body. It is indeed a necessary skill to be able to safely control your own body, but it is equally necessary to be able to safely control another body of weight.

2) LIFTING WEIGHTS UNCOVERS INSTABILITY
Moving well with your own bodyweight is necessary and a cool thing. If we are aiming to get a little better at life, we need to add some weight and find the point that we can no longer demonstrate sound movement. Squat, press, deadlift - all functional human movements that we need to be able to execute daily to some degree (to a much larger degree in sports and physical activities). If you can execute said movements correctly with a bunch of metal balancing on top of your spine (as in a back squat), then you are looking good. On the other hand if your left knee dips in a little as a you drive up out of the bottom of that squat, we've just found your go-to weak spot - the point that is most likely to sustain damage when you find yourself needing to execute the movement under stress (think 70 minutes into a football match, or 15k into a mountain race, or jogging around the block after work).


3) LIFTING WEIGHTS IS HEAPS OF FUN

This is where we need to draw the distinction between lifting to be a bodybuilder and lifting to be strong. Lifting to be strong will generally involve big multi-joint movements that our bodies are designed to do, as opposed to smaller movements that will focus on stressing a specific area. Strength training as such is more complex in its application and thus requires more skill. In my opinion, developing a skill while training is a must as it gives us something to focus and progress on, besides the feeling of burning our muscles out with repetitive movements. Kettlebell clean and press, barbell snatch, Turkish get-up - are all great examples of this. Once you have started to grasp the basics of any of the complex lifts you can start to take pride in refining your technique and improving your movement. I still take great pride in a most basic body-weight squat.

4) LIFTING WEIGHTS IS INSTANT REALITY
Check out the awesome quote from Henry Rollins at the start of the post - the weights don't lie (link to quote at bottom). From an outsiders perspective one would assume that the nature of repeating the same movement week-in and week-out would be highly monotonous. However, weighlifting has this awesome way of being the complete opposite. It is progress in its most simple form. Continually refining your technique, striving for perfect execution, all while working at the margins of what your body is capable of is anything but mindless. Its a simple and engaging pursuit. You may leave training feeling like the winner who overhead-pressed a new PB (personal best!), or you may leave training feeling like the loser who pressed less than last week - either way it will make sure you have no doubt about exactly where you stand and what you need to work on next time you're there.

As mentioned before, there are a million other reasons one may choose to lift weights - these are just a few of my favourites and are the driving reasons behind all of my clients dealing with something heavy on a regular basis. 

Check out the full essay by Henry Rollins here. Its freakin' awesome and has become a classic and well know article amongst dudes, and dudes (and dudettes) who like to lift weights. Really, read it.

Camp Trip with The Girl

Storyboard

Trail-mix, surfboards, a pair of gym rings and some awesome camp spots to check out. The girl and I took a killer road trip down south last summer to Wilsons Promontory, one of the coolest national parks i've been to. Great company too.. Photos courtesy of Nikki To (her photos here!)

Paleo man discovers first gas stove

Breakfast burrito - ham, salsa and eggs. Boom!

Food was a major priority, ensuring that stocks of fresh delicious eggs, meat and vegetables were always at hand. Coffee was left to that of the local skilled baristas that inhabit the small towns and communities of southern NSW and Victoria - i would like to take this opportunity to thank those guys (assuming they have internet?). Dinners were usually left to the RSL's and local pubs. I remember a very decent schnitzel had somewhere at Mornington Peninsula. 

Nikki in gymnastic-domination mode (has the advantage of Chinese genes)

Like our breakfasts built of solid fundamentals, so to was our ring training -  L-sits, rows, dips and inversions - just enough of them to build up an appetite and keep the holiday-no-training blues away.

Mandatory surf expedition at Wilsons Promontory. Damn cold water but nice waves for a couple of learners. Nikki got up on her first go!

And of course, we did some natural-gymnastics and calisthenics in the natural environment. Probably the coolest type of training when you're on the road is getting out onto the rocks, into the bush, the sand - whatever is available to you - and coming up with some fun movements and workouts. Don't take it too seriously, and also try to remember that one of the reasons we spend so much time pressing kettlebells and doing planks is so that we CAN do fun stuff with your body!

I didn't actually make it beyond this point..

Summer will be here again soon friends.. Start planning your adventures. 

Joe

Don't forget to stop and smell the flowers!

How Do We Get Stronger?

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger"

- Freidrich Nietzche

In its most basic explanation, lifting weights makes us stronger. What exactly does that mean? By lifting weights our muscles get better at doing their job (moving our bones around), our tendons and ligaments get better at supporting our skeleton, our central nervous system becomes more efficient, and our bones become more dense, just to name a few.

How does it do this? The Adaptation* process has a few distinct parts - Progressive Overload, Recovery and Supercompensation. Put simply, we lift something heavy and our body (a very general term for our entire being) is challenged and sustains a small amount of trauma - this is Progressive Overload, as we are progressively overloading our body. In the time proceeding this, our minutely damaged body goes into Recovery mode where it repairs itself to be able to complete that given task the next time around - leading into Supercompensation. This means your body is now capable of more than it was before the Progressive Overload stage, and can now be overloaded again thereby inducing further supercompensation.

In theory, if i pick my mum up and do 10 squats to failure with her draped across my shoulders on Monday, i will be sore for the next two days, but hopefully and just maybe, i will be able to do 11 squats to failure on the Thursday.

Progressive Overload, Recovery and Supercompensation.

Why does this occur? Because our body is so awesome! We are an adaptive organism and as such our system needs to respond to the demands which are placed on it. Without it, we would have perished a long, long time ago. Its how we can hold our breath underwater for minutes on end, run 100km marathons, deadlift 500kg, and run 100m in under 10 seconds - at least some of us.

The timeline of the process will differ depending on the experience of that individual. If we take an untrained individual, the timeline over which their body will complete the adaptation process will generally be quite short. If you've never done a bodyweight squat before then chances are you will be very sore after doing 10 of them for the first time, but a few days later when the pain has subsided and you return to train, you will most likely exceed this number without much trouble - if you did 12 squats 3 days later, thats a 20% performance improvement in a matter of days!

This graph shows the adaptation process dependant on athletes experience.

In a highly trained individual, the adaptation process can take much, much longer and encompass a much more complex approach to supercompensation. Using a well experienced weightlifter as an example, an increase of 10kg for a back squat in one year would be a considerable improvement. If the given weightlifter can squat 200kg for a single repetition, then 10kg in the space of a year would represent an improvement of 5%. Relatively slow going in comparison...

This is Pisarenko

Besides experience, what can affect this process of adaptation? Rest, nutrition, stress levels, injuries - all of these things will have an influence on how quickly and effectively you are able to, or not able to adapt. Getting good rest each night, eating plenty of clean food and making sure you manage the stress of life as best you can will put you in the best position to adapt fast and come back stronger!

What can you take from this? A brief understanding of how we adapt to things, and something to help you gauge your personal improvement. If you're new to strength training then you should revel in the fact that your body will be making gains in leaps and bounds. If you are a more experienced athlete then your expectations of your body's ability to adapt should be more realistic, and you should understand that you probably wont be breaking records at every single workout. That doesn't mean you shouldn't try..

Joe



* There are other factors that determine our relative strength, notably skill development. If i don't know how to squat, then i will undoubtedly become infinitely better and stronger at doing it as i learn the skill of the movement. This is mostly due to the neurological adaptation of acquiring a new skill and will also be a period of rapid improvement. Very well summed up by Pavel Tsatsouline when he said that "strength is skill".

Young Buck, Old Bull

A few years ago i was in Brazil, holidaying and visiting various Jiu Jitsu academies. When i was in Rio - know as the epicentre of BJJ - i managed to find my way to the famous De La Riva academy (de-la-hiva). It was hidden inside a small doorway off the main drag in a gymnasium called Equipe 1 (eh-ki-pi-um). De La Riva is a famous BJJ player from way back, well known for developing his own complex form of open guard, appropriately called the De La Riva guard. He also was and still is an instrumental part of keeping BJJ alive between Japan and Brazil.

I was met by De La Riva, a gentle and experienced man, wearing spectacles and crisp gi. The dojo was  a rectangular room covered in vinyl mats, with a massive AC unit pumping crisp, cool air into the place. The current class was wrapping up so i sat to the side and waited to be invited onto the mats. Once that class ended, i was invited onto the mats along with the other Jiu Jiteiros waiting to train. The class was small and informal. DLR ran us through an escape technique for when an opponent had taken your back. Control the arm and scoot the butt out on to the floor, before turning back into their guard. Old school basics. Classic.

After the technical drills we went into rolling (sparring, for those who don't know). I matched up with another blue belt, as was i at the time, and we had a competitive and mutually beneficial round against one another. Following that i was matched up for a round with a black belt who i had noticed doing some hard rounds previously, and appeared to be tired. We slapped hands and the guy fell straight onto his back allowing me to pass his guard. This was too easy. I worked for the mount, and got it. Next thing i had a collar choke on him and the guy tapped out. I was pretty stoked with myself. The black belt was gassed, hard. I asked him if he was OK, and he said - "man i am exhausted, i haven't trained at all for about 8 years, its my first class back today!". I was deflated..

Helvecio Penna

Next round, i was approached by a gentle older guy also with a black belt. He looked friendly and passive, but definitely strong with that typical old man strength. We slapped hands and engaged, and i felt a gear change from the previous round. This guys was strong, and his positions were tight. I managed to open his guard and fall back for a foot lock. I threw it on quick, and he tapped - though i felt he had tapped early. He said to me in broken English - "here we don't use footlocks in training, just competition". I felt like i had pissed him off a little, in having taken that opportunity. We slapped hands again, and that was it. The dude jumped up about 4 gears and continued to pass, dominate the position and tap me out with one submission after the next. He didn't lose his cool, but he made sure to let me know that i had used up my chance of a gentle roll, and now i was being exposed to full scale domination. The guy was a beast! Helvecio was his name. It took me a while to get that..

In my subsequent training sessions at Equipe 1, i got to know Helvecio and another couple of beasts that trained there. Helvecio told me one day, "i am 50 years old and i still compete and win in the adults division!" he laughed. The other beasts hanging around nodded in agreement, confirming that he truly was a beast. He said the masters and seniors division didn't have much to offer him in the way of good fights anymore and he preferred to go against the younger opponents. They were a lovely group of guys, very encouraging and complimentary of my BJJ. A bunch of animals.

Metabolic Finishing!

Finishing with the double KB swing for 2mins of Max reps @ 24kg/28kg

What is it? One or two exercises (or more) executed at high intensity over a short period of time to ensure you've left nothing in the tank!

If you've just pushed yourself through a massive sweat session then this is most likely not needed. However, if you've been working your heavy lifting with juicy rest peiods, or cruised through a workout with your Sunday run buddy, then a nice little metabolic finisher could be just the think to turn your mediocre workout into a great success!

The benefits are many - mental fortitude, fat incineration, metabolic ramping, neuroendocrine stimulation - but basically we are looking to walk away from the joint feeling like a legend. Bring on those endorphins! 

The combinations are endless, but simplicity is the key. The main principles to stick to are: keep it heavy, try to 'sprint' through the workout, and challenge yourself. A multi-joint movement is going to give you the greatest bang for your buck. Choose exercises that you can demonstrate great technique over reasonably high repetitions. 

Using my double KB swings as an example - my swing technique is pretty good, however I knew i would not be able to swing those two badboys for the full 2 minutes without stopping. This made things simple - go until i cant do anymore, rest a little, then go again. Count the reps, and try to beat it next time!

Some quick & basic examples

2 minutes max reps of:

- squat press

- KB swing

- box jumps

Some nastier and more complex examples

3 rounds for time, of:

- 20 swing / 20 push up / 100m run

- 5 pull up / 10 push up / 15 burpee

Enjoy.