Healthy Eating is SIMPLE (but not easy)

That statement may sound a bit paradoxical but it’s true. All you need to know about eating healthy can be summed up in the following way:

• Eat 80% whole and minimally processed foods you LIKE
• Eat 10% whole and minimally processed foods you don’t necessarily like but DON’T HATE
• Eat 10% whatever you want

–Alan Aragon (I’m not a Star Wars guy but pretty sure he is what you would call a Nutritional Yoda – did I use that right?)

See. Simple enough right? Then why do so many people have issues eating well? That’s because like most things, it is easier said than done. To do this requires a lot of preparation. That is why you always see fit-geeks walking around with Tupperware and posting pictures Sunday night of their meal prep for the week.

Okay, so it is a little over-simplified above so let me break it down further and give some more guidance on how to properly plan your meals effectively.

There is a hierarchy of importance when it comes to eating for body composition goals. Here is a diagram of it that I found off of Matt Ogus’s Instagram (@mattogus).

Numero Uno:

Energy Balance. This means if you are looking to lose weight you must expend more calories than you consume, and vice-versa if your goal is to gain weight. Over the quality of food, this is the most important factor in body composition. Just remember that a lean body composition does not automatically mean you will be “healthier” than someone who has a higher body fat percentage, and the quality of these calories does come into play in long term health.

Numbero Dos:

Macronutrients. This refers to the proportion of Carbohydrates, Protein, and Fat in your diet as a percentage of total calories. This has been cause of pretty much every nutritional debate in the last quarter century and each one of these three macronutrients has been demonized at some point. I’m not going to argue which is better high fat or high carbohydrate because the truth is it depends. Aim for a gram of protein per pound of body weight and experiment with the other two. If you are fairly active, a higher carbohydrate proportion will probably be best. If you just do not feel full with a higher fat diet and are looking to lose weight, again that may sway you towards a higher carbohydrate diet. The fact is, it is dependent on the person’s physiology, training, personal preference, and logistics. The quality of these macronutrients is also important. While the “IIFYM” (If It Fits Your Macros) extremists may have you believe that a calorie is a calorie; where you are getting these calories from will affect health, appetite, energy, hormones, and much more. On the other end of the spectrum are the “Clean Eating” extremists who are far less concerned with the macronutrient ratio and far more concerned with the quality of food. Do not be fooled by this group either, the amount of energy you are consuming is the number one factor in controlling body weight. As with pretty much everything in science and life, taking an extreme view on either end is equally as stupid.

Numero Tres:

Micronutrients. Again, this is where quality of food comes in. It will be hard to hit your daily recommendations of micronutrients when your sole goal is to “hit your macros” and you do so mainly by eating McDonalds and protein shakes. This is where Alan Aragon’s 90% rule will help you reach this goal. So long as you are eating adequate calories (not starving yourself) and getting 80% of those from whole, minimally processed foods, and 10% from really healthy foods you can tolerate, then you shouldn’t need to worry about tracking anything here. If you are still deficient in a micronutrient, a simple daily vitamin or supplement can help make sure that is not a problem.

Numero Cuatro:

Nutrient timing. When you eat your calories has been a vastly overrated factor in weight control by many. Does it make a difference? Yes. But to a much smaller degree than many would have you believe. You’ve probably heard adages such as “don’t eat carbs after 6” or “eat a high protein, high fat diet in the morning to set your metabolism to burn more fat”. While some of these claims may have some validity, and be based on scientific literature, the degree to which they affect results is usually overblown. I will not dwell too much on this at this time, just know that if you have not met the above criteria, then do not waste time worrying about this one.

Numero Cinco:

Supplements. As the name suggests these should be supplemental to your diet, not the main part of it. Whey Protein shakes are a perfectly healthy source of protein, but should not be the majority of where you are getting your daily protein intake from. Again, vitamin and mineral supplements can ensure you are not deficient in any major micronutrient but a well balanced diet with adequate calories and a variety of fruits and vegetables and rich in whole, minimally processed foods will probably do the trick. Omega-3 supplements will probably not be necessary if you are eating a diet with fish and healthy oils but are probably not harmful either. Certain supplements may be recommended in certain cases (ie. vitamin D and Calcium for middle ages women at risk of osteoporosis) but that is outside the scope of this post. As for the fluff like fat burning supplements, do not even go there. Changes to any of the above factors will have a much more profound impact on your goals (and be much safer). When people have body composition goals the first question I often get asked is “What supplement should I take?”. The message here is that should be much lower on the list of priorities in where to spend your money, time, and energy.

Planning a Healthy Diet:

The best diet is the one you stick to.

You could have the world’s cleanest diet with macronutrient ratios perfectly suited to your profile and goals, but if you cannot stick to it long-term, then it is useless.

Precision nutrition uses the following guide for how to eat based on your body type. If you hate entering food into a calorie counting app such as MyFitnessPal, then you can stop reading after these images below. Their “myplate” suggestions are a very simple way to plan a healthy diet, also pictured below. (Click HERE to link to Precision Nutrition Page).

The myplate picture above varies based on your body type and goals, so enlarge the top picture to see more details about what your meals should look like.

Flexible dieting is a term that describes the original meaning of IIFYM. It has gotten blown out of proportion by extremists but the original idea was exactly the points outlined at the start of this article and that was that most of the food you eat, should be whole, minimally processed, generally “healthy” foods with that 10 percent of calories coming from wherever you want. Extremists will brag about how unhealthy they can eat and make it “fit their macros”. I am not condoning that. I am going to say that the Flexible dieting approach is what I have found works best for me. As stated earlier, the diet you stick to is the best one.

A couple points I want to make from my experiences with this. Do not let it get too obsessive. It is very easy to develop disordered eating habits especially if you have OCD tendencies from trying to stay too strict on the daily goals. Give yourself some leeway. Also, there is the tendency for many to make poorer health choices in a trade-off for less calories (ie. using margarine instead of butter, egg whites instead of whole eggs, processed sugary dressing instead of olive oil, or leaving out healthy items such as flax seeds from their food in fear of adding calories). There is a trade-off when choosing this method but I have found it has worked best for me personally.

When downloading a calorie counting app you can use their algorithms to find out your daily recommended caloric intake and macronutrient ratio or you can use the system outlined at the bottom of the page to calculate it for yourself and personalize your goals on the app.

Before we get to the Calculations let’s review the take-home points:

• Eat 80% whole, minimally processed foods you LIKE, 10% really healthy ones you can tolerate, and 10% junky goodness you LOVE (to keep you sane and make you stick to your eating habits)
• Energy Balance and Macronutrient intake are the two most important factors when controlling BODY COMPOSITION
• You can lean towards a more “Clean Eating” approach which places more emphasis on the quality of food, or a “Flexible Diet” approach, which places more emphasis on amount of calories, but do not go to either extreme and food quality will always be important when it comes to health.
• Eat 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight
• Eat approximately 14 grams of fiber per 1000 calories consumed
• You do not need to eat a pumpkin seed kale salad with lentils and organic free range pink Himalayan sea salt, or go on some crazy Tom Brady-esque restrictive diet to eat healthy

Now onto the math:

Standard formula for calculating daily calories:

Target Body Weight x (9-11 + average weekly hours of training)

That is 9 to 11 not 9 minus 11. If you train insanely hard then give yourself an 11. If you are training at a pretty casual level choose 9. Somewhere in between, chose 10.

Example:

Target Body Weight of 170. Train hard in gym 4 hours a week plus men’s league hockey 1 hour a week = 5 hours of training at a training factor of 11.

170 x (11 + 5)

= 170 x 16

=2,720 calories per day

Now to calculate your Macronutrient ratios:

1 gram of protein per pound of target body weight (TBW). 1 gram of protein is 4 calories so we will need to calculate calories from protein.

So TBW = 170

= 170 grams of protein

(170g of protein x 4 calories per gram = 680 calories from protein)

For fat use a factor of 0.4 to 0.7 grams per pound of TBW. Each gram of fat has 9 calories. So if you prefer a higher fat diet let’s say 0.7g/lb.

TBW = 170

0.7 x 170 = 119 grams of fat

(119 g of fat x 9 calories per gram = 1071 calories from fat)

For Carbohydrates we will now work backwards from calories. There are 4 calories per gram of carbohydrates.

Our total daily caloric consumption is 2720 calories. 680 from protein, 1071 from fat.

2720 – (680+1071)

=969 calories from carbohydrates

969 calories of carbohydrates/4 calories per gram of carbohydrate

=242 grams of carbohydrates

So our daily caloric and macronutrient goals should look like this:

2720 calories

170 g Protein

119 g Fat

242 g Carbs

Last point! Fiber is important. We should eat about 14g of fiber per 1000 calories consumed. This should again come mainly from whole foods not fiber supplements. So…

14g/1000 calories x 2720 calories

=38 g of fiber

That 10% of junky goodness would be approximately 270 calories of junk per day (about 1 tall beer perhaps), You do not need to take in 10% from junk, the idea is to keep you sane enough to stick to your eating habits.

Always come back to measuring progress. These calorie algorithms are not going to work perfectly for everyone so if you are not reaching your goals, you will need to adapt the numbers and re-measure progress after a couple weeks.

Please comment below and provide constructive feedback as I am trying to get back on this whole blogging thing.

A Short Rant on Motivation

Last week on Hockey Night In Canada they did a piece on Tyler Toffoli. It showed he visited his old team, the Bantam AAA Jr Canadiens this season, and told them to “do ONE thing a day to make themselves better”. 

Don Cherry with John McFarland, Zach Shapiro, Ryan O’Connor and Tyler Toffoli

I really liked that piece of advice and I bet if you asked most NHLers they have that mindset.

Just one thing a day adds up. It is about making a conscious decision to improve everyday of your life. This does not necessarily just apply to hockey, but any goal you wish to achieve. You would be amazed with how much you can achieve with just accomplishing one thing per day that takes you a step forward towards your goals. In the same vein, time flies, so you must make the most of it because you do not want to look back and regret time wasted that could have led to you achieving your goal.

In the case of my athletes, this one thing can be anything from how they are eating, to working hard in our sessions, to doing recovery work such as foam rolling or stretching between sessions. You should instill that idea in your heads of doing one thing a day, consciously, to make yourselves better.

 

I sent this to my kids the other day because we are 1/4 of the way through the off-season, and I do not want a single individual to look back on this summer with regrets that they could have done more.

It is important to approach the off-season with the attitude that “there is no tomorrow”

This means that it is important that each day be a step towards improving. Mindset is extremely important. In Malcolm Gladwell’s ‘Outliers’ he talks about deliberate practice and how going through the motions will not result in improvement. So whether it be in the gym or on ice you must approach it with focus and the goal to improve everyday.

I’m gonna finish this post with a little re-post that is 10 life lessons from a NAVY SEAL i saw going viral recently. Good little read and some nice take home points.

http://www.lifebuzz.com/10-lessons-from-navy-seal/#!UX9Lo

Thanks for listening. Hope it didn’t come off as too preachy, or like I am beating a dead horse, just want to hammer home the point of constantly challenging yourself to get better.

7 Secrets to Training Great Skaters

Paul Kariya

“Fast skaters have wide strides, quick recorvery after push-off, deep knee flexion prior to push off, and significant forward lean. A wide stride (using hip abduction) with quick recovery is characteristic of a fast skater” -Michael Bracko

There are many things that contribute to making players great skaters. Below I have listed the most important fitness qualities to skaters and a few ideas on how you can train these qualities in ways specific to hockey players.

1. Muscle Balance:

I put this one first as it is important to establish a strong base before building strength. This is of mega-importance to injury prevention as we tend to see a number of imbalances, instabilities and mobility issues in hockey players. The first phase of a strength program should ensure that the athlete’s movement quality and muscle balance is good before loading up the athlete with heavy weights or doing high-intensity plyometrics. The industry standard is to use the FMS movement screen during the intake process to determine any imbalances or instabilities in movement patterns that need improvement. This should be accompanied with other fitness tests during the athlete’s original assessment to gather baseline information. If there are any other mobility or stability tests that you as a strength coach feel are valid to your population I encourage you to use them. The FMS is great but it is definitely not the be-all end-all. It is also important to note that, by convention, hockey players tend to be quad dominant. This predisposes them to a range of lower-body injuries. Therefore balancing strength front to back (ie. quad to hamstring) is as important as symmetrical strength and stability to preventing injury.

2. Mobility

Mobility is not only important as preventative therapy for injuries but can also help players skate faster by increasing stride length. This is important to the “Stride and Glide” style skater such as Scott Niedermayer. To watch him skate was a thing of beauty as he seemed to glide effortlessly along the ice and his speed was deceivingly fast due to his long stride. Besides a great stretching program and dynamic mobility routine a great exercise for skaters is the lateral squat or lateral lunge.

This will develop strength through this range of motion similar to a hockey stride. It will be more of a power movement if performed as a lunge as seen in this video vs a squat (sliding side to side). It is important to note that you should never load your body heavy in end-range of movements. In other words, if you are stretching as low as you can go with the bar loaded heavy; you are asking for injury. So make sure you are nice and loose and go a little less deep than you maximally could stretch down to.

3. Leg Turnover

Leg turnover rate refers to the number of strides a player takes during a given unit of time (Stride Frequency). During the acceleration phase this will be quick as the strides will be short and choppy and at full-speed the rate can differ between two equally fast skaters. For the skater with a nice powerful stride but low turnover rate, overspeed training may be beneficial. Overspeed training can be accomplished using bungees used to assist runner rather than resist as they accelerate. It is important to note here that stride frequency in hockey players is partially due to the stretch reflex of the hip flexors, so as it is important to have good mobility in the hip flexors, too much stretching will actually decrease their ability to recoil the leg for the next stride. This should be taken into account during warm-up. Static stretching during warm-up will decrease power and attenuate the reflexive ability of muscles.

4. Acceleration

Acceleration refers to the first few steps when starting to skate from a stopped position. Obviously this is very important to a hockey player’s speed and is often referred to as “first step quickness”. It is the quality that often wins the puck battles. There are many ways to train acceleration. It is important to teach both on ice and dry land mechanics of accelerating and getting a powerful push into the ground, with the body leaned forward. This can be taught by doing wall sprints and practising driving force into the ground. As the player masters that movement, then you can get into sled pushes as the resistance will help develop that power on the stride. Sprinting and sled pushes will only have so much transfer to the ice so it is important to do some on-ice power skating as well to develop quickness off the get-go.

5. Strength

The ability to stay low with knees bent and lean over, especially while gliding on one skate are characteristics of a strong skater. Sidney Crosby is a great example of how strong legs and a low centre of gravity can be beneficial for a wide-track style skater. His strides are not super long but he keeps his centre of gravity low which not only gives him balance while skating but makes him damn hard to knock off the puck, just ask Jason Spezza. One of the best lower body exercises for developing strength for hockey players is the Bulgarian Split Squat (aka the Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat).

6. Power

This is one of the most sought after strength qualities when players enlist in training programs. It will help with getting the most distance with each stride. Driving that force into the ground as quickly as possible will not only develop quick acceleration but also quick top end speed. Triple extension through the hip, knee, and ankle will help produce that power in each stride which will maximize stride length. One of the best ways to develop power through that triple extension is through plyometric drills such as box jumps, lateral single leg hops, or broad jumps.

7. Agility

Agility refers to the ability to change direction quickly. This is achieved through the ability to decelerate your body and transfer all that force into the ice to rapid stop and produce force in another direction. Deceleration is an important part of agility and it is important to train that “eccentric” strength to slow absorb that force to stop momentum. One way is through plyometric drills that require landing and changing direction. Another is to do agility drills such as the 30 yard shuttle run seen here performed by Steven Stamkos.

So there it is, the tip of the iceberg on how to train great hockey skaters. I hope you found this informative and maybe even learned a thing or two.

Healthy Shoulders: Shoulder activation in warmup

In a recent blog post I talked about how regular people can incorporate athlete training into their everyday workouts. As part of the warm-up muscle activation examples were briefly touched upon. Muscle Activation means recruiting certain muscle groups, that, when are not firing, can be problematic for movement quality. This is a more comprehensive protocol for muscular activation that anyone can use without fancy equipment as part of their warm-up. Last week we looked at the glutes. Today’s focus is healthy shoulders!

Almost everyone who has lifted heavy weights has had either some kind of shoulder pain or discomfort. This is due to poor shoulder mechanics and weak intrinsic muscles. What you are about to read will serve as great “prehab” as we say in the Strength & Conditioning world, or more simply, help prevent shoulder injuries.

There are many muscles surrounding the shoulder which help support and stabilize the most moveable joint in our bodies. No need to delve into great detail about the names and anatomy of the area as that is beyond the scope of this article what is important are the movements they create and proper mechanics.

The shoulder flexes/extends, abducts/adducts, and internally/externally rotates. It moves in all three planes of motion. Movement in the shoulder girdle is not the only thing affecting shoulder health, the shoulder blades must also move in coordination with the shoulder to promote good shoulder mechanics. The following will give some great shoulder activation exercises to help promote proper rotator cuff activation and improve posture. This is not a comprehensive list of exercises but a few that you can use during your warm-up. I would recommend one or two of the isolation exercises, alternating which ones you do every week, and one or two of the scapular control and stabilization exercises.

Rotator Cuff Exercises

External/Internal Rotation

Here are a couple cable exercises that simply isolate the external and internal rotators of the humerus.

Flexion & Abduction

The Empty Can, Open Can and Side Laying Abduction exercises isolate the supraspinatus rotator cuff muscle.

Scapular Control Exercises

Shoulder health is affected by scapular control as much as it is by glenohumeral movement. This means that the shoulder blades must move in correct sequence to promote proper shoulder mechanics and prevent impingement issues in the shoulder.

Retraction and Depression

Stability

The following stabilization drills are great at recruiting deep intrinsic shoulder muscles and developing stability in the shoulder girdle. When the shoulder works in conjunction with the core it helps proper mechanics and can help maximize the weight you push during the workout while minimizing risk for injury.

This concludes part two of the activation series. The next article will focus on core activation exercises, so stay tuned and go to my blog for more great reads

Aerobic and Anaerobic Threshold: What are they and how do they apply to training?

In a recent two-part post I gave a detailed description of what VO_2max is. I stated that VO_2max tells us an athlete’s endurance potential, however performance will depend on a number of other factors including Anaerobic threshold. Today I will teach you more about aerobic and anaerobic threshold and its training and performance implications.

Nerd Alert! If the VO_2max article was too sciency for you then you may not enjoy this, but if you are someone who hunts down education like its Ice-T in ‘Surviving the Game’ then this will expand your exercise physiology knowledge and help with your endurance exercise prescription.

What are the Aerobic and Anaerobic Thresholds?

There are two thresholds that occur at two separate points of discontinuity in ventilation and blood lactate response during an incremental exercise protocol. These are Aerobic and Anaerobic Thresholds. The aerobic threshold represents this first discontinuity and occurs at a very low blood lactate (2-2.5 mM). As a frame of reference, the maximum blood lactate values you will see in individuals at maximal anaerobic intensities sustained to exhaustion will be around 20 mM.

Anaerobic threshold occurs at approximately a blood lactate value of about 4 mM and represents the second non-linear increase in ventilation. Below anaerobic threshold, an individual uses glycogen approximately 18 times slower than above for the same ATP yield. Therefore above anaerobic threshold, glycogen will be the main source of ATP replenishment and lactate will be produced at a far greater rate. Lactate accumulation will increase exponentially above anaerobic threshold, as rate of lactate accumulation exceeds the rate of disappearance. In unfit individuals anaerobic threshold typically occurs at 50-60% of VO_2max and at approximately 85% or higher in athletes.

Why does blood lactate and ventilation increase above these thresholds?

When exercise intensity increases, the body recruits more type II muscle fibres which depend more on glycolysis, which, in anaerobic conditions (lack of oxygen) results in Lactate production. At these high intensities the rate of ATP replenishment needed is too high for the slow process of aerobic (oxidative) metabolism. This increase in lactate will cause a decrease in pH due to the increase in H⁺ ions. An increase in H⁺ is buffered through the bicarbonate system which will increase CO₂ production in the manner that follows:

H⁺ + HCO₃^– ↔ H₂CO₃ ↔ CO₂ + H₂O                                                           

At aerobic threshold respiration rate will increase linearly with VO₂ and heart rate. The increase in CO₂ production, due to the right shift in the above equation and from aerobic metabolism, will increase ventilatory drive to rid the body of excess CO₂. The increase in ventilation to offset the increase in CO₂ buffers the pH decrease. Once it can’t buffer anymore, there is another increase in ventilatory drive, and this occurs at anaerobic threshold.

Four reasons lactic acid increases past anaerobic threshold:

1) increased utilization of carbohydrates; 2) decreased utilization of free fatty acids due to inhibition; 3) increased recruitment of type II muscle fibres due to increased intensity; 4) occlusion of muscle blood flow due to contraction of muscle.

Training and Anaerobic Threshold (The part you probably skipped to anyways)

 Aerobic Threshold and Anaerobic Threshold can serve many purposes and are a better indication of endurance fitness than VO₂ max. In fact, there is a higher correlation between Anaerobic threshold and performance than that between VO_2max and performance. Therefore, we can use our knowledge of these thresholds to predict performance and prescribe exercise. We can use Heart Rates correlated with these thresholds (determined in testing) to prescribe training zones. It will be a more individualized prescription than simply using arbitrary heart rates.

For training aerobic capacity, individuals should train at intensities approximately equivalent to aerobic threshold for very long sessions. This will help build an aerobic base.  Anaerobic thresholds are good to know for middle distance runners, who will be running at a speed slightly higher than this for the duration of the event. Anaerobic threshold intensity can be held for 45-60 minutes in very fit individuals. Training at or above anaerobic threshold will not only give us aerobic adaptations but also muscular adaptations to increase speed and efficiency. Therefore it is important to polarize training for any athlete with aerobic needs to build both an aerobic base as well as the ability to sustain higher intensity exercise and buffer pH.

Even sports with repeated high intensity intervals (such as hockey) can benefit from sub-anaerobic threshold training. Low intensity training will help with recovery between high intensity intervals through the increase in aerobic enzymes, capillarization, blood volume, heart adaptations and other adaptations that arise from low intensity training. High intensity is obviously important as well as it is more specific to the demands of the sport and will help increase tolerance to lactic acid buildup, muscular adaptations, and help clearance of lactic acid as well. When prescribing conditioning to hockey players immediately post season would be the best time to incorporate long slow distance training if the athlete needs it and as the offseason advances start doing more training similar to the metabolic demands of the sport.

Hive Health Article: Glute Activation

In a recent blog post, I wrote about how “regular people” can incorporate pro-athlete training techniques into their everyday workouts. For example, muscle activation techniques were briefly touched upon.

Muscle Activation means recruiting certain muscle groups, that, when are not firing, can be problematic for movement quality. This article I wrote for Hive Health Media presents a more comprehensive protocol for muscular activation that anyone can use without fancy equipment as part of their warm-up.

Self-Created meme

How to incorporate athlete training into your everyday workouts

Ever see videos online or actually witness an athlete working out and think to yourself that you wish your workouts were more like that? Well here are some simple techniques that top Strength & Conditioning coaches employ with their athletes that everyday people can employ in their regular routine.

Warm-up

If you only take one thing away from this article and use it in your workouts, integrating a proper warm-up would be the most beneficial. A good warm-up should consist of the following components to ensure your body is adequately prepared for the workout.

General warm-up

First thing is to release the muscles. There are a couple links posted later in this article which show you how to foam roll. Follow this by at least a 3 to 5 minute general warm-up to get the heart rate elevated and get blood flowing to working muscles. This can be skipping, running, biking, or any activity that you enjoy.

Activation

Secondly, activation is important. This means recruiting certain muscle groups, that, when aren’t firing, can be problematic for movement quality. An example of this would be activating the glutes. Often underutilized during certain squatting and lunging patterns this causes other muscles to compensate that can lead to injury. By doing work with mini bands or some glute bridges for example, we can get the glutes firing so that they will help contribute to proper muscle recruitment patterns during a squat.

Other important areas for recruitment include “core” and intrinsic shoulder muscles such as the rotator cuff muscles and lower trapezius.

Mobility

Static stretching before a workout is generally not recommended but dynamic mobility moves, that take the muscles through a range of motion repeatedly and controlled can help improve range of motion without sacrificing the elastic energy in the muscle, or risking injury. You will want to focus on all major muscle groups or movement patterns that will be worked during the workout.

Here is a great article by Eric Cressey that demonstrates the essentials of a great warmup.

Movement preparation

If there is going to be a speed or power component to your workout, doing drills such as a skips, lateral shuffle and high knees are good to further warm up the muscle and get them firing in proper sequence to re-enforce movement patterns you are about to do so that the execution of those movement patterns is efficient.

Exercise Selection and Order

Exercise Selection

Athletes tend not to use a lot of isolation work in general. Biceps Curls are rarely an integral part of a pro hockey player’s workout. Use compound movements as the meat and potatoes of your routine and supplement them with smaller isolation movements or more corrective exercise work (assuming you may need some). An example of this may be doing a Superset of Squats, followed by band-resisted clamshells.

Speaking of corrective exercises, that raises an important point. You wouldn’t build a house on a shaky foundation so make sure you master the skills before loading them. If you think as your fitness journey as a highway, and you want to get to the destination you would love to go straight. It is fastest right?  But if there is a road block (dysfunction) a detour (corrective exercise) will be the quicker way to get you there.

This is why we perform movement screens on our athletes to make sure that their movement quality is good, so that when we load them up with heavy weight or do high impact plyometrics, the risk of injury is substantially lower.

Power athletes use a lot of Olympic lifts and plyometrics in their workouts but general population should stray away from these lifts unless properly taught and supervised as they increase risk for injury. This is why a crossfit class in which you are doing 25 reps of improper “cleans” may not be the best idea.

This is an example of how to hurt yourself doing “cleans”.

It is also important to chose exercises that target the body in a range of directions (multi-planar) and train unilaterally as well as bilaterally (include single arm or single leg exercises). A good guide of movements to train (not classic body-part training that is common in body building) are: squat, lunge, hip hinge (aka lower body pull), vertical push, horizontal push, vertical pull, horizontal pull, and a rotation or anti-rotation. Try to incorporate a balanced approach and do equal amount of pushes and pulls.

Exercise Order

Generally a workout is structured so that multi-joint compound movements are completed first as they are the most fatiguing. These include lifts like squats, lunges, presses, and pulls. These are your main lifts as in the meat and potatoes of your workout.

Any power work should also be done early in your workout. Isolation exercises are best saved for later as you are generally lifting lighter weight than during compound movements and therefore are less intense. A good guideline for exercise order is multi joint -> single joint, fast -> slow, hard -> easy.

Recovery and Regeneration

Recovery techniques are very under-utilized by most training populations. There are a vast span of recovery methods but the most important is nutrition.

Nutrition

If you are not eating properly you are wasting your time in the gym.

There is no one diet that works for everybody. It is not important what your diet is, so long as you are conscious of what and how much is going into your body, and making smart choices, you are ahead of the game. The challenge is most people do not know what is healthy and what is not.

To learn more on nutrition you can visit Precision Nutrition .

Release and Relengthen

Other important recovery techniques include release and relengthening of the muscles and fascia through foam rolling, massage, and stretching. Foam rolling can be done before or after a workout and here is an article by Dean Somerset to teach you more about foam rolling and stretching that can help get you started.

 Testing and Goal Setting

Athletes are training with a purpose — to become better at their sport. Why are you training? Figure it out and plan your workouts towards meeting those goals. Set realistic goals, short and long term, and monitor your progress. Athletes constantly undergo exercise testing to make sure they are improving. Track your progress and it will hold you accountable and let you know if your plan is working.

Part 2. VO2max: What Every Coach Should Know

Part 1 recap:

VO2max is the product of cardiac output and the difference in venous and arterial oxygen concentration.

Part 2: arteriolar-venous O2 Difference

The best way to break down what will affect a-v O2 difference is to break it up into two factors: Muscle Blood Flow, and Metabolic Oxidative Potential.

Muscle Blood Flow (MBF)

Think of MBF as a gym. The more people passing through the more members the gym can acquire. The more members it can acquire the more personal training sales the gym can make. So if people are the red blood cells, members are oxygen molecules taken up by the muscle (gym) and personal training clients are the oxygen molecules being used to create energy.

So the first limiting factor would be traffic coming through the gym. In the body this is controlled by the cardiac output centrally, but there are limiting factors peripherally that will limit the amount of blood flow to the muscle. One of these factors is capillary density. Relating this back to the gym analogy, if your gym is in a mall, and 3 hallways lead to the gym, naturally you will see more people than if 2 hallways do. Well, with training, we can actually increase the amount of capillaries in skeletal muscle through a process that is beyond the scope of this article.

Now the second factor is peripheral resistance. It would be a stretch to use the gym analogy here as it is a lot more complicated. Peripheral resistance is influenced by 2 factors: a) Blood Viscosity and b) Arteriolar Radius.

Blood viscosity is affected by the ratio of red blood cells to plasma. Increasing red blood cells through training or altitude will increase viscosity and create higher resistance, making it harder for blood to flow as smoothly but also increase the oxygen carrying capacity of the blood. Increasing plasma through hydration and long slow distance training will decrease viscosity via increasing blood volume. Ideally a large blood volume with a relatively high, but still safe hematocrit level (percent of RBCs in blood) will help with oxygen delivery and transfer. This is part of the reason why it is important to train at both ends of the intensity spectrum instead of focusing on purely aerobic steady state or high intensity. 

Arteriolar Radius is manipulated by nervous and hormonal control as well as local factors. Sympathetic vasoconstrictors and vasodilators can direct blood to the working muscle and away from non-working tissues. During maximal exercise the amount of blood flow to skeletal muscle increases by over 20-fold. Hormones that will affect arteriolar radius are epinephrine and angiotensin. Finally local factors such as O2, H+, K+ and CO2 molecules that are increased during exercise will affect capillary dilation in skeletal muscle during exercise.

Metabolic Oxidative Potential

Muscle Fibre Type will be the main determinant of the oxidative potential of a given muscle group. For our purposes, we will use a dichotomous division of muscle fibre types, characterizing them as:

Fast Twitch (FT): are high force and high fatigue
Slow Twitch (ST): low tension but very fatigue resistant

ST Muscle fibres will have a higher oxidative potential and therefore individuals with a higher percentage of ST muscle fibres will be able to uptake more oxygen from the blood and have the potential to have a higher VO2max. What gives ST muscle fibres this higher oxidative potential? One is the capillary density of these muscle fibres is higher. In addition, the diameter of the fibres are smaller. Therefore, the proximity to the capillary network helps with oxygen uptake. Also, slow twitch fibres have higher levels of mitochondria and all the mitochondrial enzymes that help with aerobic metabolism; therefore the oxygen dissociation from hemoglobin (O2 uptake by muscle) is higher than in FT muscle fibres. Thus, by increasing number and size of mitochondria and aerobic enzymes (hormone sensitive lipase, phosphofructokinase, citrate synthase, etc.) through training we will also increase the metabolic oxidative potential of the muscle.

Oxygen Dissociation curve, depicted below, represents the uptake of oxygen from the red blood cells to the muscle. During exercise, a change in pH and body temperature shifts the curve to the right allowing more oxygen to be dissociated at high partial pressures of O2. Essentially what this means is the offloading capacity changes with exercise to make it easier for the muscle to uptake more oxygen from the blood and therefore creates a greater a-v O2 difference. Now, maybe that gives more reason to warm up? The potential to remove more O2 from the blood actually increases through aerobic training.

Hb Dissociation curve and shift with exercise. Notice more will unload at a given PO2 when the curve shifts.

If you’ve made it this far, good for you. You’re almost there. The final thing that determines the Metabolic Oxidative Potential of the muscle is the availability of substrate. During low intensity aerobic exercise we mainly use free fatty acids in oxidative metabolism to form energy. This is the most efficient way to create energy in presence of oxygen however it is also the slowest. With low intensity training we become better at freeing up and using fatty acids as energy supply during oxidative metabolism. At higher intensities we tend to use glucose to create energy both aerobically and anaerobically. During very long periods of exercise (not an hour long workout as Gatorade may have you believe) the availability of substrate (glucose or fatty acids) may be a limiting factor in longevity of exercise. However at the VO2max intensity this will most likely not be the limiting factor for exercise unless one is severly glycogen depleted. For sports with long periods of repeated spurts of high intensity exercise availability of glucose may become more limiting so it is important to get adequate carbohydrate intake for athletes during hard periods of training or competition.

Hope this helped with your understanding of VO2max and how to manipulate training.

Still to come… How the average Joe can incorporate athlete’s training into their routine

Part 1. VO2max: What every coach should know

Intro: VO_2max

All trainers/coaches have heard of it and can give some definition of what it means. “It is how much oxygen your body can take in and use, and is a measure of your aerobic endurance.” But do the majority of trainers and coaches really know what it means? A more scientific definition is VO_2max is the maximal rate that oxygen can be received, transferred, and utilized to perform muscular work over a period of time (Fox et al. 1993). It is the product of cardiac output and the difference in venous and arterial oxygen concentration.

So what does it all mean? The higher your VO_2max the higher your MAXIMUM capacity to perform endurance exercise. Does this mean that if two individuals have different measures of VO_2max that the one with the higher value will beat the one with the lower value on an endurance test? Maybe, but not necessarily. Another major factor is Anaerobic Threshold, which will be explored in greater detail in a later blog, but basically means the ability to work at a higher percentage of your VO_2max is massively important to endurance performance.

Factors Affecting  VO_2max

There are 2 main factors that affect VO_2max:

(1) Cardiac Output – amount of blood the heart pumps out per minute
(2) Arterial-Venous Oxygen Difference – amount of oxygen the muscles extract from the blood.

This sounds simple but here’s where it gets complicated. From a training perspective we want to know what to do to affect these two factors, so let’s break it down.

Part 1: Cardiac Output (Q)

This is the combination of two factors: Stroke Volume and Heart Rate. In untrained individuals SV is anywhere between 20-25 litres per minute whereas in trained individuals it is between 30 -35 litres per minute when exercising at maximum intensity.  Maximum Heart Rate generally decreases with improved endurance performance so this will not lead to greater VO_2max. HR is controlled by the nervous system and increased relative parasympathetic stimulation accounts for the slight decrease in maximal Heart Rate with training. This makes SV the major variable that can increase cardiac output.

Stroke Volume is affected by 3 main factors: a) Blood Volume, b) Ventricle Size, and c) Myocardial Contractility. With an increase in blood volume (that is possible to achieve through training) more blood can return to the atria, which causes more stretch on the atria walls. This in turn creates a stretch reflex on the wall of the atria, making it dispense more blood to the ventricles than it would under a normal contraction. As we train, the heart, like any other muscle grows. Strength training can increase the thickness of the ventricles (due to the high levels of resistance in the peripheral arteries that the heart must work against) whereas endurance training can increase the thickness but mainly affects the volume, expanding the size of the ventricles. This will allow it to fill with greater blood volume, which will cause it to dispense more blood with each contraction. Under stressful exercise the amount of sympathetic stimulation increases accutely which will lead to greater contractility thus forcing more blood out with each contraction. These are the main factors affecting the stroke volume aspect of cardiac output, but peripheral resistance (resistance in the blood vessels), respiratory movements, and blood viscosity will all have an effect on stroke volume as well.

Part 2 will discuss a-v O2 difference… stay tuned.

References:

Fox, E., Bowers, R., and Foss, M. 1993. The physiological basis for exercise and sport. 5th ed. Madison, Wisconson: Brown and Benchmark.

Changing Clients Lives: One Hour Per Week

This one goes out to clients and trainers alike. Many clients expect to lose weight but cannot afford to train with us more than 1 hour a week. This is not nearly enough for us to help them meet their weight-loss goal right? Wrong. The key is two things. Motivation and Nutrition.First, Motivation. Too many clients only train when they are scheduled to meet with you and cannot schedule in time to come on their own. Our goal is to get them to do something, even if it is a half hour walk per day, to get them active most days of the week. It’s our job as trainers to educate the client on what they need to do to meet their goals and their responsibility to themselves to put in the work.

Secondly, Nutrition. The ratio that nutrition and training contribute to our weight-loss goals is debatable till the cows come home but in my opinion nutrition is AT LEAST 50% of the equation. When exercise and nutrition are part of a weight-loss plan the results are exponentially greater than either one of those on their own. So if we are only seeing our clients one time per week what’s the best thing we can do to help them reach their goals? Educate them about proper nutrional choices, set them up with a nutritionist, and continually stay on top of them to make sure they are practising good dietary habits.

Okay, I know I may sound like captain obvious to some people but saying it is the easy part, applying the above is the hard part, and in order to do so you must have a true investment in your client and actually care to help them, not just view them as a paycheck. If you do so, you will find that not only will they enjoy the process more, but you will also enjoy working with them more.

Sport Performance blogs coming soon…

Till next time, deuces