This Week on StrengthCoach.com

First up this week on StrengthCoach.com is Don’t Neglect The Minor Sports from Bruce Kelly. Bruce is a frequent contributor and always has great stuff to offer. Next up is a reprint of a Nick Tuminello article from T-nation called Big Gains with Active Recovery. Nick describes the way we organize all our workouts at BU and MBSC in this piece. Last up we have Is Coach Boyle Wrong not Training Children Between Ages 6 and 9 from our good friend Anthony Renna. This is a great thought article that examines a fundamental business and psychology issue that Anthony and I explored on the StrengthCoach Podcast.

Video of the Week

Video of the week is a pretty good set of a metabolic dumbbell complex performed by former BU captain and current Worcester Shark John McCarthy.

Also make sure you keep up with www.strengthandconditioningwebinars.com

Site Notes

Just a reminder, the articles and videos go up over the course of the week. Generally one each day.  Only one article mentioned on this post will go up on the day you receive this email.

Also, your credit card statement will show a charge from RylanLee.com, not StrengthCoach.com. Hope you enjoy the week.

Mike Boyle on Using the MVP Shuttle

I love the MVP Shuttle. It is always on my “must have” list of equipment. Even though it’s expensive I think it provides something that no other piece can for a wide range of clients and athletes.

Take a look

Bill Foran at MBSC

Just wanted to publicly thank Miami Heat Strength and Conditioning Coach Bill Foran for spending two hours at Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning.  This was just an amazing opportunity for my staff and I. They say their is no substitute for experience and Bill proves that. I was riveted for two hours listening to a guy who has trained top level athletes and worked with some of the world’s best coaches over his 22 years with the Heat. Bill’s presentation was a wonderful combination of wisdom and story telling that took him from high school footbal coach to NBA strength and conditioning coach. The best thing about Bill ( besides the fact that he is a strengthcoach.com reader) is that he has continued to grow while spending 22 years at the highest level of sport. My staff got a rare treat to hear one of the best guys in our industry in such a small setting.

My staff had a great week as they also got to hear four great presenatations at the MBSC Winter Seminar on Saturday. This was by far the best one as all the speakers ( Eric Cressey, John Pallof, Brijesh Patel) get better every year.

Last but, not least I want to say thanks to a great Mentorship Group. This was also our Winter Mentorship Week. The group was treated to a week of NFL Prep as well as Bill’s talk.

All in all, a pretty good week at MBSC.

It Really Does Matter if You Run or Walk

This is another repeat of an article I wrote for www.coreperformance.com

This is a great opportunity for me to correct an error. I had always been told that from a caloric expenditure standpoint running and walking burned the same number of calories over the same distance. In fact, I wrote a piece once called It Doesn’t Matter if You Run or Walk? In the piece I advocated running versus walking so you would burn more calories per minute. The premise was that by running you would obviously cover more distance in the same amount of time and therefore expend more calories.

Now for the good news. In the September/October 2006 issue of the ACSM’s Health and Fitness Journal Dr. David Swain wrote an article called Moderate or Vigorous Intensity Exercise: What Should we Prescribe? In the article Dr. Swain states that “running burns twice as many calories as walking”. Great news for those who want to lose bodyfat.  This is actually a huge difference, particularly when you do the math.

Swain states that a 136 pound person walking will burn 50 calories per mile and, proportionally more as the persons weight increases. In other words a 163 lb person would weigh twenty percent more and as a result burn twenty percent more calories. This means that expenditure goes from 50 to 60 calories, also a twenty percent increase. Swain goes on to state that running burns twice as many calories at 7 miles per hour as walking at 4 miles per hour. This means a runner would burn 100 calories in roughly eight and one half minutes or about 11 calories a minute. The walker at 4 miles per hour would burn 50 calories in 15 minutes ( the time it would take to walk a mile at 4 MPH). That’s less then 4 calories per minute of exercise.  That’s nearly three times as many calories per minute. As I said, that is great news.

In my previous article we theorized that you could burn twice as many calories by running for 20 minutes than by walking for twenty minutes. In reality based on Swains article it actually is somewhere between three and four times as many calories over a twenty minute period. Twenty minutes of running at 11 calories per minute  would expend 220 calories. Twenty  minutes at three calories per minute is only 60 calories.

What a huge bonus. Just remember it is not really about running versus walking, what we are really talking about is intense exercise versus moderate exercise. As I have said in my fat loss articles and on my fat loss DVD, the facts clearly support higher intensity exercise for fat loss. The nice thing is that science continues to do research that supports the value of high intensity exercise. The fact is, it’s not should you exercise harder, it’s can you. The key is to work as hard as your health and body allows. Don’t be foolish but, if you can interval train, you probably should.

Big week this week. Saturday was our MBSC Winter Seminar. Great presentations by everyone and based on the evals it was out best seminar yet. Today rolls into our Mentorship Week at MBSC. Tonight, game 1 of the famed Beanpot Tournament.So I’ll keep it brief.

We have another great lineup for this week. First up is Vertical Jump Methodology from Daniel Martinez. This is Daniels second article in two weeks and is excellent. Next up is a great Powerpoint Presentation on the hip from Evan Osar. Evan was kind enough to allow me to post this. Last up is  Does Obesity Lead to Increased Mortality?  A Closer Look at the Value of the BMI in Health Research by Max Prokopy. Again Max has an article two weeks in a row but, I am just working my way through a lot of contributions.

Video of the Week

Videos of the week come from the great Dewey Neilsen. I know great minds think alike as we have added these same exercises for many of our athletes. These are some carries from Dan John’s excellent warm-up DVD. ( you can order it at www.davedraper.com)

As always don’t forget to check out the StrengthCoach Podcast at  www.strengthcoachpodcast.com.

Last but not least, make sure you keep up with www.strengthandconditioningwebinars.com

Site Notes

Just a reminder, the articles and videos go up over the course of the week. Generally one each day.  Only one article mentioned on this email will go up on the day you receive this email.

Also, your credit card statement will show a change from RylanLee.com, not StrengthCoach.com. Hope you enjoy the week.

You Can’t Run to Get Fit, You Need to Be Fit to Run.

The title for this installment is stolen from a brilliant Canadian physical therapist named Diane Lee. I had the pleasure of listening to her speak in 2004 and this thought process was one of the many gems I took away.  This may be confusing to many as I’ve always advocated working at higher intensity to burn more calories and lose weight more efficiently. Here is the problem as Diane Lee so eloquently put it. Running is a poor choice for most people. I often talk about the group of people I like to call the “speed limpers”. They are the men and women you often drive by on the road that are running with a visible limp. Usually they have a knee sleeve of some kind on. When you ask them about their problem they will almost always reply “ it loosens up after a while and then I ice and take some Advil after”. What a lousy idea. Guess what, good exercise should make you tired but, shouldn’t hurt your joints. The discomfort should be limited to the muscles and should go away almost immediately after you are done. In my opinion running is only good for doctors and physical therapists. We have an entire cottage industry built up to take care of the injuries caused by running.

The reality is that most people are not made to run. More importantly, they are particularly not made to run long distances. Until the Cooper led aerobics craze of the seventies many of us didn’t know what a plantar fascia, iliotibial band or patella-femoral joint was. Most of us in the industry do now. We know because these are just a few of the litany of sites of injury afflicting runners.

More bad news. Running is even worse for women. Women runners seem to to sustain more running related injuries than men.

My recommendation. High intensity exercise is best done on a bike. The best bikes are the Schwinn AirDyne dual action bikes. They are the best work tools on the planet for fitness.  Not surprisingly most people who ever ridden an AirDyne hate it. Do you know why? Because it is really hard and nearly impossible to cheat. You can’t slump over or lean on the handle bars. I know this will anger the runners. The truth is I’m not trying to stop runners from running. I’m just trying to stop fitness enthusiasts from needlessly hurting themselves.

How to Win the Battle Against Aging

Every day, it seems, there’s a new study espousing the benefits of exercise. Exercise helps you lose weight. Exercise makes you smarter. Exercise cures cancer. What’s next? Exercise makes you immortal?

Well, not quite. But a new study has found that exercise actually reverses the aging process at the cellular level.

The study, published in an online journal called PLoS One, studied 25 people over 65 for six months. A research team led by Dr Simon Melov from McMaster University Medical Centre in Hamilton, Ontario  took biopsies of their thigh muscles. Then they put the group on a strength-training regimen that included two hour-long sessions in the gym per week. At the end of the six months, they were biopsied again.

The muscle cells were compared to the cells of a control group of young people (average age 22). At the beginning of the study, the older people’s cells were significantly different genetically from the younger people’s. But at the end of six months, a third of the genes within the cells had undergone significant changes. The cells that changed were involved in the functioning of mitochondria, which process nutrients into energy. And sure enough, study participants reported having more energy.

“The genetic fingerprint [of the elderly participants] was reversed to that of younger people — not entirely, but enough to say that their genetic profile was more like that of young people than old people,” said Simon Melov, director of genomics at the Buck Institute in Novato, Calif.

We’ve heard it before, but we’ll let Mr. Melov say it again.

“It’s never too late to start exercising.”

This study may be the most significant news for an aging population in the history. Although we cannot stop chronological aging, we can in fact reverse the cell change that comes with age. Take the time to go to the gym and start to turn back the clock.

“Resistance Exercise Reverses Aging in Human Skeletal Muscle.”

Simon Melov, Mark A. Tarnopolsky, Kenneth Beckman, Krysta Felkey, and Alan Hubbard.

PLoS ONE 2(5): e465. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0000465

Please Work Your Glutes

I had the wonderful experience of flying to LA last week. In the airport I’m always looking at peoples bodies. I can’t help it. I look at everyone as if they were an athlete or a client. The one thing I notice over and over again is that practically no one has glutes any more. World-renowned low back expert Stuart McGill coined the term gluteal amnesia a few years ago. I don’t think it’s amnesia, I think the real term is gluteal abduction.  It looks like a group of butt rustlers swept down and stole everyone’s ass.

Sir Mixalot said it best in his landmark musical work Baby Got Back. “I like big butts and I can not lie”. In truth, any glutes would be great. I can’t tell you how many pants pockets I see hanging where someone’s rear end was supposed to be. It’s sad, not only from an aesthetic standpoint but, from a physical standpoint. The absence of what should be the largest muscle in the body means that you are on your way to a bad back.  It also means you are not much to look at. Those gluteless wonders will always bend from the waist and flex the spine. The loss of glute strength, glute size and consequent hip mobility is in my mind the leading cause of low back pain.

To quote Sir Mixalot again, “you can do side bends or situps but please don’t lose that butt”.  Please, add some bodyweight squats to your routine if you go to the gym. Squat deep. Place a milk crate on the floor and sit back to it. Measure the quality of your workout by how sore you can make your rear end. Your back will thank you.

This Week on StrengthCoach.com

Just got back from a great Perform Better One Day Seminar in Los Angeles. Lots of fun.

As always we have a great lineup for this week. First up is Be Accountable from Daniel Martinez. This is another great perspective on coaching. Next up is  (Not so) Grand Opening! – Things I Would Do Differently from Jon Rimmer.  This is another great installment in what has become a series on how to open your facility. Last up is The Biggest Loser from Max Prokopy. Knowing my feelings on that show you can be sure it not loaded with compliments.

Video of the Week

Video of the week is the Slideboard Body Curl. This idea is so simple that I can’t believe we didn’t think of it before. It’s actually the brainchild of my brilliant assistant/ sister-in-law Karen Wood.

PS- It’s much harder than it looks

PSS- Please, if you blog this or YouTube this, give us credit. I hate to see our ideas turn into someone else’s so quickly.

As always don’t forget to check out the StrengthCoach Podcast at  www.strengthcoachpodcast.com.

Last but not least, make sure you keep up with www.strengthandconditioningwebinars.com . Anthony just posted three great new webinars over the last few days:

“Interval Training for Clients and Athletes” from me.

Learn the strategies behind how we use Interval Training with our clients and athletes.

http://www.strengthandconditioningwebinars.com/members/192.cfm

“Progressive Fat Loss Nutrition and Training” from Jimmy Smith

How to set up, implement and tweak a diet and training program to

burn body fat while avoiding common issues and roadblocks.

http://www.strengthandconditioningwebinars.com/members/193.cfm

“The Inside/Outside Edge on Agility” from Joe Bonyai

Joe will cover his principles and progressions for deceleration and multi-directional movement skills.

http://www.strengthandconditioningwebinars.com/members/195.cfm

Also, Anthony should have CEUs for some of the webinars soon.  He is just waiting on some of the quizzes from the presenters.

Site Notes

Just a reminder, the articles and videos go up over the course of the week. Generally one each day.  Only one article mentioned on this email will go up on the day you receive this email.

Also, your credit card statement will show a change from RylanLee.com, not StrengthCoach.com. Hope you enjoy the week.

More Real Life Intervals

Funny the things people are interested. I posted a piece about an actual Tabata workout my client Ken and I did a few weeks ago and go a lot of hits. Here is another workout for the masochists out there. This is our half mile day. We ride half miles on the AirDyne for time with recovery dictated by heartrate and or time. What do I mean, “and or time”? In this workout we went at 3:30 sec total elapsed time even if recovery was incomplete.

The Workout 8x.5 mi
Total Time 25 min
Exercise Time 10:40

Set 1 Work 1:22 Rest 1:10 HR 147

Set 2 Work 1:22 Rest 1:30 HR 157

Set 3 Work 1:19 Rest 1:46 HR 164

Set 4 Work 1:19 Rest 2:00 HR 167

until now I was resting until I hit 110 BPM

Set 5 Work 1:19 Rest 2:10 HR 169 incomplete recovery, 120 BPM

Set 6 Work 1:20 Rest 2:10 HR 171

Set 7 Work 1:24 Rest 2:10 HR 171

Set 8 Work 1:23  HR 171

As I said above, total time was 25 minutes with about 10 minutes of work. Work level is around 8.5 for the half mile. Enjoy.