As I noted earlier in the week, I’m two weeks in to the new Lean Hybrid Muscle program and really enjoying it. It’s a pretty significant change of pace from what I might call my normal programming that’s geared toward predominantly increasing strength and overall athleticism – but it’s working extremely well. As the saying goes, “The best program is the one you’re not on.”
This temporary paradigm shift got me to thinking that it'd be a good idea to bring in the LHM creators, Mike Westerdal and Elliott Hulse, in for an interview to talk about whether this kind of cross-training is necessary in a strength and conditioning program. Here goes...
EC: Whenever you see people who are successful across multiple disciplines, you look for commonalities in the way that they prepare themselves. Mike, you’ve done well for yourself in powerlifting, and Elliott, you’re an accomplished strongman competitor. What do you believe to be the most important factors governing one’s success in strength sports? I figured that before we talk about what might need to be changed from time-to-time, we ought to talk about what should always stay the same.
EH: In my experience there are only a handful of tired and true principles that govern success and achievement in all areas of life. Whether you are a strength athlete or a stay-at-home-mom, the same principles apply. Like Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “methods are many, but principles are few.” So, instead of spouting off some of my training methods here, I will share three foundation principles that I tend to value and refer to most when taking aim towards any particular goal - strength or otherwise.
The first is CLARITY. It is paramount that we know exactly what effect we would like our actions to produce. You cannot hit a target that you can’t see.
The next is COMMITMENT. Most people have a vague and fuzzy idea of what they want, but even worse is that most think of these things as “nice-to-haves,” as opposed to “I-WILL-haves.” The difference between someone who is “trying” to win because it would be nice and the person who DOES win is commitment. Winners commit 100% to reaching their goal. They never have a backdoor to escape and never take “no” for an answer.
The third principle governing one's success is DISCIPLINE! I once heard that discipline is, “doing what you have to do, whether you feel like it or not.” I like to think of myself as a robot. Once I set my mind on a particular target, I must then put fickle emotion aside and continue to do everyday what I set out to do from the get-go...whether I “feel like it or not.”
MW: Elliott is a tough act to follow when it comes to success. A lot of people - myself included - like listening to him not only because of his strength and conditioning knowledge but also because of his general leadership when it comes to personal development in other areas of life as well.
Eric, this a great question. I’ve actually had the privilege of interviewing hundreds of different athletes for a book I published at Critical Bench. It included in MMA fighter, powerliftes, strongman competitors, bodybuilders, pro athletes and industry experts. I’ve thought a lot about this and really tried to figure out the common denominators when it comes to excelling in sports.
It almost never has to do with an exact training method or style. Guys get huge with heavy lifting and guys get huge with volume training. Powerlifters have attained world class status having trained with Westside as with Sheiko training. What it really comes down to is a few other factors that I’ll list below:
-You have to surround yourself with other successful people: people that are already in a place where you want to go. If you hang around with a bunch of lazy deadbeats you’re going to get dragged down with them. Instead, find people that are the best at what they do and try to make them a part of your life.
-To take this a step further you have to visualize yourself or imagine yourself becoming what you want before it’s ever happened. If you don’t already think you can bench press 600 pounds there’s no way that will ever manifest itself in real life until you brain can accept it as reality.
Now you may think this is hocus pocus talk, but when they asked Joe Montana what it felt like to win the Super Bowl. He said it felt like the other 300 times I won it. The reporter said, “300 times?” “That’s right” Montana replied, “I’ve been winning the Super Bowl in my backyard since I was 12-years old.”
-The next thing I see from a lot of successful strength athletes is sacrifice. Many things in life are possible, but you have to decide if what it takes to reach that goal is worth the sacrifice. The energy you exert on a certain sport may affect your energy levels for other areas of your life. During a heavy powerlifting cycle, I’m toast even when I’m not training. I find myself resting a lot more. So you have to ask yourself. What exactly do you want and are you willing to do what it takes to achieve the goal? So guys who get to the very top level often sacrifice things like certain social events, for example.
-My cousin is a successful business owner and recently gave me a valuable lesson that I believe can be applied not only to business, but also to strength sports. He told me to just keep showing up. It sounds pretty simple but most people don’t have the consistency to just keep showing up and stick with something until the end. Lots of small steps over a long period of time add up. Unfortunately, it’s very rare that you’ll find a secret shortcut or magic bullet. Just keep showing up and over time you’ll get better.
-My last point is similar to my first point. I mentioned surrounding yourself with successful people. You also need to eliminate negativity from your life and your training. If people are complaining about bad luck, aches, pains, circumstances and a host of other problems, you can’t let that stuff get into your head. I swear these things happen to these people because that’s what they think about and talk about all the time. Why not spend your time with people who are focused on where they are going and what they want?
EC: Great points - and definitely a lot of stuff that I've seen in my successful clients and training partners, too. Back to the subject at-hand, though: "cross-training" within a strength training program. How often do you guys intentionally deviate from your “normal” programming – whether it’s to shake things up for specific physiological reasons or just to get a little mental break?MW: As a competitive powerlifter I trained the same way for several years straight. This is not the fault of the sport, but I was doing the same kind of training for too long. I believe that the lack of conditioning and doing the same strength exercises for too long eventually led to me gaining some unnecessary weight and even contributed to a lower back and shoulder injury.
Now, I love powerlifting and if your only goal is one-rep max strength, it’s the way to go. I wanted to drop a weight class, heal up some injuries, and get some of my athleticism back, though, so it felt good to try a more hybrid program. If you compete in any specific sport you need to train for that sport. However, at this stage of my life I have multiple goals and feel that training for them at the same time is working since I’m not trying to be the absolute best at any skill set. I do want to compete again and when I do I’ll have to cut back on the conditioning and hypertrophy work and focus more on nervous system training again. For now, though, I’m really enjoying the feeling of being more well rounded and athletic.
EH: As a professional strongman I had followed a pretty similar program of power-building mixed with strongman implements for about 3 years straight, never “mixing it up.” This not only led to weaknesses in some areas of overall health and performance, but also created the muscular imbalances that caused me to tear my biceps tendon last spring.
Now, I am committed to working towards multiple performance goals within 12-24 month periods so as to avoid the lopsidedness that caused my injury. For example, I have gone from competing as a pro strongman to running a 10 mile “psycho race” called the Tough Mudder this spring. Next, I am going to qualify for the Crossfit games before building my lifts back up to compete in a raw power lifting meet in the winter.
This may sound crazy to most people, but I’m going to give it a try. It doesn’t mean that my new approach is the right one for everyone, but I’d like to see if it is possible to excel in multiple fitness qualities at once. And I do recognize balance as a foundational principle as well.
EC: How long do these “cross-training” periods typically last?EH: If you mean “periods” as in using hybrid training for only a portion of time during the year, then I would say “forever” – unless you are a professional athlete or bodybuilder who needs to excel in one fitness quality over another in order to compete in your sport.
If building a leaner, more functional and athletic physique is your goal, then I invite you to use this type of training all the time. The beauty of hybrid training is that you can adjust your parameters in order to emphasize one quality over another. For example, if building muscle mass is your goal, then you would continue to use more strength and hypertrophy work over conditioning – but without totally ignoring the latter.
MW: That would depend on who you’re asking. If you compete in a sport with a specific skill set like powerlifting this would be more an off-season conditioning program to do for a couple months. I see a lot of powerlifters train 12 weeks for a meet followed by two weeks completely off. Of course, there are deload weeks in the meet cycle as well. I’ve seen guys throw together three of these 12-week cycles back-to-back. After that, they usually know they need a break or their body forces them to slow down. Adding in some cross training workouts or hybrid training could be beneficial at this time for a couple months.
Now if you don’t compete in a specialized sport I truly believe you can train “Hybrid Style” all year long. You’ll feel good, look good and have great conditioning. If you decide to compete in any one area of fitness you’ll need to focus more on that area, though, to be competitive.
EC: How about when you return to your “conventional” programming? What kind of favorable adaptations (or unfavorable de-adaptations) have you seen?MW: The biggest advantage I can see when returning to powerlifting would be injury prevention. With the different programming, I get a chance to work on any imbalances and heal up any nagging injuries. The health benefits are there too. The reduction in body fat and the cardiovascular conditioning helps me perform better on dynamic training days.
The down side is that my one-rep max strength takes a bit of a hit and I have to get the nervous system re-adjusted to doing really heavy weights. I am really glad that Lean Hybrid Muscle has powerbuilding days so that I can maintain some strength.
In my case, coming from a powerlifting style of training, strength was down a bit. However, for someone that has never trained with triples, doubles. or singles they could absolutely increase strength while following this program.
EH: The fact is that if you are working toward excellence in one particular fitness quality and you incorporate too much training from a contradictory quality, your performance will suffer. I make no claims otherwise and my experience tells me it’s true.
So, the leaner more conditioned Elliott Hulse no longer has the strength to log press 365 lbs over head, I can no longer front squat 455 lbs. So, strength has been lost.
However, things are far more balanced, where now I can only front squat about 365, I can also run a mile under seven minutes and I don’t bend over panting for air after climbing a flight of stairs, like the bigger, stronger version of me did. Ha!
EC: Not a bad tradeoff at all! Thanks so much for your time, fellas.For more information on Mike and Elliott's strength and conditioning programs, check out Lean Hybrid Muscle.
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I've written quite a bit in the past about how diagnostic imaging (x-rays, MRIs, etc) doesn't always tell the entire story, and that incidental findings are very common. This applies to the lower back, shoulders, and knees (and surely several other joints). The scary thing, though, is that we see these crazy structural abnormalities not just in adults, but in kids, too. Last month, I highlighted research that showed that 64% of 14-15 year-old athletes have structural abnormalities in their knees - even without the presence of symptoms. Just a month later, newer research is showing that the knee isn't the only hinge joint affected; young throwers' elbows are usually a structural mess as well. In an American Journal of Sports Medicine study of 23 uninjured, asymptomatic high school pitchers (average age of 16), researchers found the following:
Three participants (13%) had no abnormalities. Fifteen individuals (65%) had asymmetrical anterior band ulnar collateral ligament thickening, including 4 individuals who also had mild sublime tubercle/anteromedial facet edema. Fourteen participants (61%) had posteromedial subchondral sclerosis of the ulnotrochlear articulation, including 8 (35%) with a posteromedial ulnotrochlear osteophyte, and 4 (17%) with mild posteromedial ulnotrochlear chondromalacia. Ten individuals (43%) had multiple abnormal findings in the throwing elbow.
For me, the 35% with the osteophytes (and chondromalacia) are the biggest concern. Thickening of the ulnar collateral ligament isn't surprising at all, but marked osseous (bone) abnormalities is a big concern.
Also, as a brief, but important aside, this study was done at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota - which isn't exactly the hotbed of baseball activity that you get down in the South. Recent research also shows that players in Southern (warm weather) climates have decreased shoulder internal rotation range of motion and external rotation strength compared to their Northern (cold weather) climate counterparts. In other words, I'll be money that the numbers reported in this study are nothing compared to the young pitchers who are constantly abused year-round in the South.
The next time you think to yourself that all young athletes - especially throwers - can be managed the same, think again. Every body is unique - and that's why I'm so adamant about the importance of assessing young athletes. It's one reason why I filmed the Everything Elbow in-service, which would be a great thing to watch if you're someone who manages pitchers.
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The baseball off-season is a lot of fun for me, but it also means crazy long hours, loads of competing demands, and quite a bit of stress. To take it a step further, though, most of my long hours are spent on my feet on the floor at Cressey Performance, which isn’t exactly conducive to making progress in a training program. Topping it off, we've gotten about 470 feet of snow in the Northeast this winter, which makes us all want to simply go into hibernation!
While I’ve gotten all my gym sessions in during this time, the reality is that in many cases, they were a lot more like “working out” than they were “training.” And, although I haven’t wasted away, it’s never a good sign when someone you haven’t seen for a few months asks you if you’ve lost weight when you haven’t been trying to do so – and that happened a few weeks ago.
The end result? I’m under 190 for the first time in over two years – and sadly, I’m not really any leaner (or stronger, for that matter).
Something clicked two weekends ago, though. Since the gym is closed on Sundays, I find it’s the best day for me to go in refreshed and get in a good lift. Thanks to a little rest, loud music, and a good training partner, I sumo deadlifted 500 for a set of five. And, it felt damn good!
It also made me realize how much of a pansy I’d been in the gym for the two months prior. With that realization, I headed home to put a program for myself on my to-do list.
The next morning, I woke up anticipating writing that strength and conditioning program (along with about a dozen others!), but before I could get to it, I found an email from Mike Westerdal waiting for me. And that email included an advanced copy of the new product he created with Elliott Hulse: Lean Hybrid Muscle.
For those who don’t know of Mike, he’s a strong dude, with competition bests of 640 squat, 630 bench, and 600 deadlift at a body weight of 242. And, through his website, criticalbench.com, he’s helped thousands of guys bust through their bench press plateaus, not to mention interacted with and programmed for a lot of experienced lifters. Elliott is no quack, either; he is a professional strongman and runs a hardcore gym in Tampa, FL.
I’ve often reminded my readers that that if you need a contract written, you’d go to a lawyer. If you needed your taxes done, you’d go to an accountant. Well, I’m also here to say that if you need a program to kick you in the arse when you’ve been training like a sissy, you go to qualified lifters and coaches who have consistently helped people get strong, burn fat fast, and put on muscle. And that’s what I did.
And, I’ve definitely received that kick in the arse. The past 10 days of training have been some of the more challenging I’ve encountered in over a decade of lifting. And, just as Westerdal assured me, it has been a nice change of pace from the powerlifting-oriented work I’ve done in the past. Here’s what I like about the program:
1. Concurrent Periodization – it might be high volume, but that doesn’t mean that you won't be able to increase strength. If your goal is changing body composition – and not just dropping fat or building muscle exclusively – it’s a great resource. Anybody can get you to lose weight with a high volume program, but not everyone can help you maintain or even increase strength and build muscle mass in the process.
2. Video Demonstrations – Mike and Elliott have links to every exercise featured in this strength and conditioning program, so if you don’t recognize one, you can quickly and easily check it out. I know my stuff in this regard, but it was helpful when I came across a few new ones that these guys must have invented themselves.
3. Versatility – I’m fortunate to have quite a few extra goodies – sledgehammers, farmer's walks handles, tires, turf, kettlebells, sleds, slideboards, kegs – at my fingertips, and Mike and Elliott are all about incorporating what you’ve got into the strength training program. I’ve used it to modify the interval work included in the program. They also give you a wide variety of strength exercises from which to choose so that you can work around injuries or specialize on your weak areas.
The benefits certainly go well beyond these three points (the nutrition component/meal plans are excellent, for instance), but in the interest of brevity, I’d highly encourage you to check out Lean Hybrid Muscle. It actually makes for a great follow-up to Show and Go, for those of you who are just wrapping up that program.
For more information, head over to the Lean Hybrid Muscle Website.
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I just got back from a fun weekend in Orlando, but am a bit behind as I return to the office, so today's post will be a quick list of recommended reading for the day. Check these out:
The Importance of Ankle Mobility - We hear this mentioned all the time, but I go in to a bit more detail in this post and relate it in the context of my realm of expertise: training baseball players.
The Fragility of Whey Protein - Great blog post from Brian St. Pierre, for those of you who are looking for a bit of nutrition to kick off your week.
What I Learned in 2009 - I'm in the process of wrapping up this year's "What I Learned in 2010" article, so I thought it'd be a good time to rekindle last year's version.
More to come tonight....
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The other day, I received an email from a Show and Go customer who noticed that the scapular wall slide and the doorway slide were two similar, but not identical shoulder mobility drills included in the program. He asked if I could talk a bit more about the differences between the two - and when to use both.
First, let's have a look at the two exercises. Here's the scapular wall slide:
And, here's the doorway slide:
As the voice-over on the video above notes, the scapular wall slide is an acceptable fit for just about any workout routine. The only exceptions would be those who have upper extremity pain with overhead motions (rotator cuff tears, etc.).
However, we can utilize the doorway slide in certain folks to get to where we want to be a bit faster. More specifically, these folks are the ones who are REALLY immobile in their upper extremity and wouldn't even be able to get their arms back even close to the wall on the wall slides. So, in addition to not making them feel bad about their "tight shoulders", the doorway slide actually allows us to use the doorway as a stretching implement to get a gentle stretch across the anterior shoulder girdle (predominantly pec major and minor). There are three very important coaching points:
1. Don't let the head poke forward, as a forward head posture is simply a substitution for not retracting/depressing the scapulae or horizontally adducting the humerus.
2. Don't crank too aggressively on the shoulders; it should be a subtle stretch. And, it shouldn't be used with those (particularly overhead throwing athletes) who already have increased external rotation and, in turn, more anterior laxity.
3. Make sure to focus on pulling the shoulder blades down and back as the elbows are lowered. You shouldn't have movement of the humerus without movement of the scapula.
Can I just add some sets and reps of direct arm work?
How about cardio? Would a few 30 minutes interval training sessions work?
What if I did extra rotator cuff stuff every day? Just a little tubing, you know?
I’m going to add two extra days of calves, abs, and forearms. It shouldn’t be a problem, right?
These are just a few of the common questions I receive from people for whom I write strength training programs (plus all the other components of a comprehensive program). And, it's these kind of questions that make me appreciate just how challenging it is to teach someone how to effectively write strength and conditioning programs - and why everyone gets all flustered when they first start writing training plans.
Very simply, most people don't understand the concept of competing demands. Everybody wants to add something to their weight training program - but not everyone is willing to take something away in order to do so.
How many elite powerlifters or Olympic lifters do you know who regularly do interval training as part of their quest to get strong?
How many elite triathletes do you know who just want to add a few sets of biceps curls along the road to improving endurance performance?
The answer is, of course, none. And, it's because - whether they appreciated it or not - these high-level athletes were effectively managing competing demands.
In some cases, different fitness qualities compete with one another; an example would be extensive aerobic training while trying to increase strength. You can't get strong quickly if you're doing hours of cardio each week. Somewhat similarly, in an overhead throwing population, it's challenging to regain shoulder internal rotation and flexion range of motion (ROM) and pec minor length when an athlete is throwing - so you have to do your best to get the ROM during down-time in their training year.
In other cases, you may have multiple qualities that contribute to an overall training effect, but you can't prioritize all of them at once. For example, my professional baseball clients need a host of different qualities to be successful, but the body has limited recovery capacity, so their training programs have to target their most readily apparent weaknesses - and do so at the right time of year. We cut back on the medicine ball and upper body strength exercises and volume when their throwing volume increases.
And, we can't do as much lower body strength exercises when guys are doing more sprinting and change-of-direction work. Stress is stress, so you have to apply it judiciously.
Taking this into consideration, I think that one of the best drills for someone looking to get better at writing programs is to take a full-on comprehensive weight training program with supplemental conditioning/movement training where someone is training 6x/week - and then cut it back to 3x/week. Assume that there is a whole lot of of "other" stress in this athlete/client's life - whether it's work, illness, family issues, or just being an in-season athlete - and figure out how to scale a program back in order to make it productive and safe for that individual.
Lots of factors have to be taken into account: the volume and intensity that individual can handle, how long each session can last, and what specific factors one needs to address most. A good example to check out would be the differences between the 4x/week, 3x/week, and 2x/week weight training programs (and accompanying optional supplemental sessions) in The High Performance Handbook.
There are loads of factors you have to take into account when you write a comprehensive training plan - from the weight training program, to soft tissue work, to mobility work, to movement training, to energy systems training. The most important consideration, though, is how they all fit together synergistically to make the program as a whole effective.
So, try the challenge I listed above and see how you do; I think you'll find that it's a lot harder to subtract than it is to add to your weight training programs.
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