What Makes Up Good Workout Routines?

What Makes Up Good Workout Routines?

by | Aug 27, 2024 | Training

Good workout routines are difficult to find and, ideally, are individualized and structured based on your injury and medical history, your experience levels, and your goals for training. There is never a “one size fits all” approach, and for good reason.  As a society, we love fads. Clothing, haircuts, music and…exercise. 

Over the years, we’ve seen many transitions in the fitness worlds: from calisthenics to weightlifting to crossfit to soulcycle to barry’s to orangetheory. Some may call it an “evolution” of fitness. But in reality, they are really just making a corporate structure for what people want out of exercise. They are a place to socialize, to create a community environment around getting healthier and a place to hold you accountable. This communal training helps many people to stay structured, to stay consistent, and to stay goal driven.

But what they don’t do well is cater to you as an individual. And there’s nothing wrong with that if you’re just looking to get healthy and you want to find a group of like minded individuals to support you on your journey. The instructors are intentionally going to design programs that incorporate a generalist approach. A bell curve strategy. Appeal to the middle of the pack where 60-70% of people will get what they need. But that leaves a big percent of the training groups either training above or below the necessary training stimulus for results. The ones at the bottom are at risk for injury from training above their current level, and the ones above are probably investing more time and energy into a system that isn’t going to yield much in the ways of progress.

We’ve established that ideally, a good workout routine should be individualized. But in general, there are certain factors that should be fundamental for nearly all workout routines. Exceptions to this might be injury limitations or a specialist athlete training for a very specific goal. Strength is mandatory. The approach by which strength is gained can vary, but strength is paramount to any good program. Tissues need to be strong for performance, injury prevention, and durability. Endurance should also be included. Being able to handle activity for longer durations and to reduce fatigue is an important thing to incorporate into any good training program. Mobility is also very important. We should be incorporating movements that are large ranges of motions and spend extra attention on deficits and limiting factors. We should also have elements of speed work, power work, control work and some cross-training.

Because a good workout routine should at least touch on most of these factors, you can see why an individualized program is so important. Having trouble building a workout routine for you? Let us build a program for you to help improve or begin your fitness journey (link)

References:

https://www.healthline.com/health/fitness-exercise/calisthenics#:~:text=Calisthenics%20are%20exercises%20that%20rely,levels%20of%20intensity%20and%20rhythm.

https://www.britannica.com/sports/weightlifting

https://www.crossfit.com

https://www.soul-cycle.com

https://barrys.com

https://www.orangetheory.com/en-us?utm_medium=sem&utm_source=gg&utm_term=tombras&utm_campaign=10199120119–FreeClass–NationalPromotion–Orangetheory-PPC-Brand&utm_content=:&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw8rW2BhAgEiwAoRO5rAJTmMljjTStCu4lUZM5KWJ56vR99BAp0telPB4nwDIoRvmY9gWH8xoCpAoQAvD_BwE

Is Perfect Form Really Possible? And Does It Matter?

Is Perfect Form Really Possible? And Does It Matter?

by | Jul 15, 2024 | Training

Perfect form does not exist. We get so obsessed with the idea that we know the “right” and “wrong” way to do things.

We need guidance, structure and a general framework for movement in the novice populations, but at the end of the day, some of the greatest to ever do these movements have strayed from what was “correct”. We see innovation and creativity in competition in all realms of movement. They didn’t get there by following a structured methodology for how to do it.

Our bodies know far more about the most efficient way to perform a movement pattern than any device or coach can tell us. We all have different anatomies and body types. The only thing that matters is repetition and hard work. We all move differently and if we have aspirations of being elite at any one thing, then the things that make us unique should be promoted.

Examples:

*Basketball – Dame Lillard talked this week about his unique shot release, Rick Barry shot underhanded free throws

*Baseball – Ichiro and Pujols are hall of famers and had unique swings…look at any sidearm or knuckleball pitcher

*Boxing – Muhammad Ali and Roy Jones Jr had uncharacteristic fight styles

*Golf – Jim Furyk or Matthew Wolff’s swing would never be taught anywhere in a golf clinic

*MMA might be one of the best examples because we see different fight styles compete against each other to determine who is the best (and there is none!) – there are Judo champions, Karate champions, Wrestling champions, Boxing champions, Kickboxing champions, Jiu Jitsu champions…

*Strong man competitors, the pinnacle for strength athletes, often have very “poor” technique when lifting heavy objects because the strategy or the shape of the object demands it

There are competitors of every type of movement that excel. Every athlete should begin with a general framework, and every athlete should always be looking to improve. But we as coaches spend too much time trying to make our athletes fit what’s “right” or “wrong” instead of embracing and encouraging the idea that we all move differently

Is Core Training Really As Important As We Think?

Is Core Training Really As Important As We Think?

by | Jul 13, 2024 | Healthcare, Training

One of the first things I wanted to talk about are the ideas surrounding “Core”. What is it, what is it’s relationship to pain especially in the low back, and is it as important as we believe for reducing injury and enhancing performance?

So what is it? In it’s simplest form, core refers to a lot of the smaller muscles that attach to the spine and help to control movement and provide support. We have lots of other muscles that attach to the spine that are designed for power and large movements, like our “6 pack ab” muscles in the front or our Lats in the back.

Some of the biggest issues I find clinically that I want to try to touch on is that for one, conceptually, patients and practitioners really don’t have a good understanding for what it is. Providers like PT’s, Chiros, Trainers, Doctors can often recite some of the textbook definitions of what muscles are a part of the core, but do a poor job with the application -or training part, which is ultimately the most important part. It doesn’t matter how well you know what muscles make up the core if you can’t train them appropriately. And on the patient or athlete side, they typically think that it means you need strong abs. I’ll touch on that in a minute. The second part that I wanted to address is the core’s relationship to pain and injury. There are some really outdated philosophies that continue to be perpetuated in the clinic and in the mainstream media platforms that are really not true.

So first, how do we train “core muscles” and how can we maybe do a better job of training them effectively. One of the biggest problems with our current philosophy is that we train core muscles in isolation. Over and over again, I see clients being trained in spinal neutral. Exercises like dead bugs, bird dogs, planks…these are very good exercises for a lot of reasons that I will still use in my practice. They all have a purpose, especially for the novice movers that need introduction, the sedentary clients who don’t do a lot of moving, or the patients who are suffering from extreme and debilitating pain. But we are doing our clients a disservice if they are used to moving even a moderate amount. People who run, go to classes, or use the gym regularly need more. For the elite movers, athletes, and gym goers I’d argue that we really shouldn’t be using these much at all.

Core muscles are designed to work during movement, not in isolation. They also turn on and off when they are supposed to. We don’t have to bring that out of them by trying to train certain muscles to “turn on”. These muscles don’t just shut off when we are injured or weak. We would fall apart if that were true. We need to spend more time focusing on movement based core strengthening. I would argue that our perception of people like trainers with these ripped abs do not have the strongest core. Some of them maybe, depending on how they train, but I’d argue that the individuals who have really strong core muscles might be athletes you don’t typically think of because they don’t have a six pack. Powerlifters and olympic lifters, for example, tend to have some fat on them but they handle extreme amounts of load when pushing them, pulling them, lifting them from the floor or catching them overhead. Golfers or baseball players aren’t always shredded, but they can rotate extremely powerfully and accelerate and decelerate very quickly. Dancers or Gymnasts who can control their bodies through extremely large ranges of motion. Core is far more complex than our current basic understanding of “strong abs”.

The next part I wanted to address is the core’s relationship to pain. I still see providers in mine and related fields talking about a weak core and it’s correlation to low back pain. Lots of this stems from studies in the late 90s and early 2000’s that linked weak transverse abdominis muscles to individuals with low back pain. But so many more recent and quality studies disprove what we once believed to be true. Even one of the pioneers of this concept retracted his opinions of it’s relationship! A STRONG CORE WILL NOT FIX LOW BACK PAIN AND IS VERY RARELY THE CAUSE OF IT.

A strong core is important for many different reasons, but very little of it has to do with preventing or solving low back pain. Low back pain can come from so many different sources and reasons, physiological reasons, genetic reasons, even emotional or psychological reasons. So saying or assuming that all of these sources for low back pain can be fixed with stronger core muscles is a joke and needs to be thrown out. 

The average, every day person needs to understand that core is really not related to back pain and that it needs to be trained differently than how we often think it does. And PT’s, chiros, trainers and doctors, people in my field, need to stop perpetuating false concepts and links to low back pain and outdated methods for fixing them. Everybody is built differently, and a good practitioner understands that back pain, and pain in general, is incredibly complex and individualized. We are all unique. We need to stop being part of the problem and start being part of the solution. Don’t give lazy diagnoses and treatment plans centered around core. Hopefully, we all can continue to grow in our understanding of the core and how we can use it more effectively.   

  • Core is poorly understood, even by experts!
  • Core muscles are NOT your six pack ab muscles
  • Traditional Core exercises are great for novices or when in large amounts of pain, but often poor for regular exercisers and athletes
  • Core muscles REQUIRE MOVEMENT to be effective
  • Core is very poorly linked to low back pain and injury
  • A stronger core, by itself, is NOT very likely to fix back pain
  • Low back pain can come from physiological, environmental, genetic, emotional or psychological reasons (to name a few) – stop using a weak core to define something so complex!