J&H ARTICLES
Environment is Key to Success:
Does your environment affect how hard you workout; how you feel when you workout; or your motivation to workout? The answer is, YES. Environment is a major component to all three of these questions! When choosing a gym or a group of people to workout with, these all impact your long term fitness goals. The first thing that affects your environment is who you workout with. Whether you’re a mother or father of three kids just trying to stay in shape or a competitive athlete at the highest level, choosing the right training environment for yourself is crucial to staying consistent and motivated. If you’re the type of person who needs to workout with a group of people and the people in that group are flaky, the likelihood of staying consistent can be slim to none because you’ll find yourself mimicking that behavior. So, find people you enjoy working out around and keep each other accountable. Also, be honest with yourself in how intense you want your workouts to be. If you want to go in and get a good workout to stay in shape, it’s likely you don’t need to seek out a gym with high level athletes or powerlifters who are squatting over 500lbs. Going into an environment like that may demotivate you because you may feel out of place, thus getting a poor workout. It is equally important for the elite athlete to find the right training space. If you’re trying to compete at a high level in any sport, it’s unlikely you’ll be getting everything out of your workouts by going to a cheap commercial gym. Find a hardcore gym with a buddy or two and throw down hard whenever you go in. Secondly, consider the equipment. Now most of us, if not all of us, can get by with a minimal amount of equipment, but that doesn’t mean that’s the best thing for you. If you enjoy simplicity, then maybe a garage gym with a barbell, plates, bench and some dumbbells is all you need to get a kick ass workout in every time. Just about everything that can be done on machines can also be done with a barbell and dumbbells, so don’t make the mistake of thinking you need every cool piece of fitness equipment under the sun to get a good workout in. Bench, squat, deadlift, row, pull up, push up, burpees and many other movements that require minimal equipment go a long way in building the body you want, intensity is the key and a training environment builds that intensity! On the other side of the coin, if you get bored easily and enjoy lots of variety, it will more than likely not elicit the results you desire from having minimal equipment. Find a commercial gym or possibly functional fitness gym that provides all the different equipment your heart desires and get after new stuff every training session. Third, do you need a plan? Many gyms nowadays will provide you with a workout plan to take the guesswork out of it. If you’re someone who goes into the gym and has no idea what to do and doesn't want to take the time to learn all the intricacies of programming, getting a personal trainer, going to a functional fitness gym and contacting an online coach to write you up a plan is going to be your best bet. Any one of those can get you the tools to go in, not have to think about anything except for the exercises that are already laid out for you. TAKE THE GUESSWORK OUT OF IT! Lastly, where are you located and how far are you willing to go to be at the right gym? Sometimes convenience is key and other times you have to be willing to make a longer trek to be at the right gym with the right people. An extra 10 minutes to your commute each way can be well worth it when the training environment is exactly what you need. Everyone has an optimal training environment for them. Figure out what yours is and go find it to kick ass in every workout you do! - Tyler Smith, Strength and Conditioning Coach
set your lifts up for success:
Let’s talk about one of the best ways to warm up for a heavy lift. It's called "Post Activation Potentiation"... in layman's terms, moving explosively! This can mean a couple different things, but in short you’re trying to recruit the most amount of muscle fibers possible to give you the potential to lift more weight. When lifting a heavier weight, you can’t lift it slowly. Yes, the heavy load itself may be moving slowly, but I bet you are pushing as hard as you can to get that bar up. Guess what, if you learn how to move light loads fast it will teach your body how to move heavy loads fast! Explosive movement is one of the best ways to teach your body to move faster. It can be as simple as jumping or moving the barbell or weight as fast as you can. Personally, I prefer jumping for lower body movements and banded push ups or banded bar press for upper body pushing movements, such as bench press. For the deadlift, squat, clean, jerk, and snatch: in between each warm up set (with the bar) do three to five jumps of any variation to get your body ready to move the weight faster than ever before. I recommend doing four to five warm up sets with anywhere from 12 to 25 total jumps. Remember, more isn’t always better. Sometimes 12 total is sufficient enough to get what you need out of it if your body is already feeling primed and ready to go. Other times taking more warm up sets with more jumps is necessary. These jumps can be anything from simply jumping onto a box that is somewhat challenging, jumping with weights in your hands/on your back, or jumping from your knees up to your feet. For the overhead press, incline press or bench press: your warm up sets should include moving the barbell as fast as you can for 10 to 20 reps for two to three warm up sets. Another way is to throw a band over top of the barbell and follow the same process. The band will get heavier as it stretches and lighter as it descends forcing you to press fast through the entire movement and “tricking” your body into moving heavy loads fast. If you move slow, you’ll always move slow. Learn to EXPLODE! - Tyler Smith, Strength and Conditioning Coach
EMOMs and What you need to know:
What is an EMOM? “Every Minute on the Minute”. This style of interval training can be used for getting in high volume, on a specific movement, in a short amount of time. This allows for progress from week to week. EMOMs can be used for practicing skill movements, developing strength movements or conditioning. These don’t have to be limited to just doing a particular movement each minute for, maybe 10 minutes. Get creative with it! This style of training can be done every 30 seconds or even something like every 10 minutes. The possibilities are endless and sometimes frustrating to navigate the correct way, so the following is a blueprint for EMOMs to progress your training to the next level. In my opinion, practicing skill movements in an EMOM style is one of the best ways to develop skills. A skill movement is a particular exercise that requires high levels of coordination. This can be a body weight or skill based barbell movement such as, a pistol squat, kipping pull-up, kipping handstand, bar muscle up, handstand walking, toes-to-bar, snatch, or even clean and jerk. Choose one of these movements or another you need to practice and try choosing a number of repetitions (reps) you can complete for the entire EMOM. I suggest doing 10 sets of that movement. Say you complete a 10 minute EMOM, or 10 sets of 5 toes-to-bar. This is going to give you 50 reps total in 10 minutes. The level of difficulty is going to dictate what the next week looks like. If completing it was difficult, try doing a set every 50 seconds the next week, rather than increasing reps. Once you’re able to complete 5 toes-to-bar for 10 sets every 40 seconds, then the next week bump the reps up to 6 and go back to accomplishing a set every minute. Once you increase reps per set try going every 2 or 3 minutes. At its hardest, the work to rest ratio should be about 1:1 or more rest for skill practice. Be smart about your rest periods so you can complete the same amount of reps. For example, if you’re doing 15 bar muscle ups, that may take about 45 seconds. The likelihood of completing another set in the next minute is basically zero. When using EMOMs to develop barbell skills, keep the weight moderate and the reps between 1 to 5 at the most. It should be heavy enough that you have to try, but not so heavy that you forget technique and are only focused on pulling as hard as you can. EMOMs for strength work are actually fairly simple and can be used to raise intensity. If you’re back squatting at 80% of your 1 rep max for sets of 5, doing a set every 3 to 5 minutes would be appropriate, every 2 minutes if you’re a novice lifter or your conditioning is incredible! A unique way to keep progressing your lifts each week is to keep reducing rest periods. If you do 5 sets of 5 reps, every 5 minutes, on week 1; on week 2 try staying at the same weight, but going every 4 minutes and then every 3 minutes the following week. This is a good way to increase intensity without increasing weight. Utilizing EMOMs for conditioning is probably the most complicated, but can be the most effective of the three. This is where you can be more creative and increase work capacity for certain movements. I highly recommend doing movements that raise your heart rate and movements that you need to work on. Now, these can be anywhere between every minute on the minute for 60 minutes to 5 minute EMOMs. My personal favorite is every 3 minutes for between 5 to 10 sets. This allows you to group 2 to 3 movements together that need work, but allow for at least 50 seconds of rest. We would like to make progress every single week in some way. Following this style of planning will keep progress fairly consistent. For more information about how to develop skills, strength, and conditioning, contact me at tylersmith@jekyllnhydennp.com. -Tyler Smith, Strength and Conditioning Coach