Link Recommendation: 5x5

Lyle McDonald wrote an excellent article on the 5 x 5 approach to lifting weights. History, different applications, and how it all works.

Highly recommended.

5 x 5

MMA Conditioning book preview

Over on 8 Weeks Out, you can get a free, 18-page preview of the new book by the site's author.

You do need to register and fill in an order form, but the book is free. If you're training for MMA, it's a useful bit of information and worth checking out.

Link Recommendation: Stumptuous.com

The best, hands-down, website for women's training is Stumptuous. It's written by Mistress Krista.

The advice is all no-nonsense and direct. It's written with a female audience in mind, but the advice (like all strength and conditioning advice) applies equally to men. She demolishes myths about weight training from a woman's perspective. She's a firm advocate of going heavy and getting stronger with real exercises. Not so much three pound pink dumbbells for 12-15 tricep kickbacks per arm as heavy deadlifts for 5-8 reps...

You should go to this site because...

...you're a woman and you want advice aimed directly at you.

...you're a trainer, man or woman, and want to learn more about training women.

...you know any women who want to train, and you want to better understand their concerns and needs when it comes to training.

...or you're a man or woman, and you want to know how to squat.

For any of those reasons, I'd suggest checking out Mistress Krista's sight. It's not overwhelming to new lifters but it doesn't water down the advice.

Basics: Overload

More training terms.

The overload principle is simple - your body will adapt to handle the load its given. To be effective, a workout must provide a stimulus greater than your body can handle without adaptation.

If you do the same workout and same exercises, your results will be the same each time. Once your body has adapted to specific weights, reps, sets, etc. you can't get better results by repeated it. You must provide overload, not a repeat of the same load. This overload can be provided in a variety of ways.

More weight. If you do the same workout and same exercises with more weight than the previous time, you've provided a weight-based overload. Your adaptation will be mostly strength oriented, because the stress was to your strength level.

More reps. If you do the same workout and same exercises with more reps than the previous time, you've provided a volume-based overload. This overload also changes the nature of the adaptation. As you are able to complete more reps with a given weight, you are changing the demands on your strength - from more neural adaptation and pure strength to muscular size and then endurance. See Basics: Rep Range for more details.

More sets. You can also provide a volume-based overload with more sets. Like adding more reps, there is a limit to how far this can go before your initial sets are providing a smaller and smaller stimulus. But some workout programs demand very high reps - the "German Volume Training" bodybuilding program uses 10 sets of 10 reps!

Less rest. Instead of adding, you can subtract. Take away some rest time between sets of exercises or between exercises. This forces your body to adapt to doing the same workload in less time. Instead of resting for 2 minutes between each set, try 90 seconds or 1 minute. This generally works better if you're not doing maximal strength exercises - it's hard to rest only 2 minutes and then do another set at your limit of strength! This idea of less rest is part of the reasoning behind some forms of circuit training, such as the barbell complex. The difference between 3 sets of 10 with 1 minute rest and with 30 seconds rest is huge, it's the same work in half the time, or double your workload! Remember that cutting down the rest drastically can affect the load, so cut it down a little at a time.

Less recovery. Add more workout days, for the same load. Instead of training 2x a week, train 3x a week. This is easy to quickly overdo, however, since it's tempting to get to "train 6-7 days a week." That's draining if you stick to the schedule, and disheartening if you don't. But it's still a form of overload.

You can mix and match these, but in general, it's easier to track your results if you just change one at a time. If you do 3 sets of 5 reps of back squats for 135 pounds with 3 minutes rest between them, you can overload next time by doing one of the following:

- Add more weight, perhaps doing 3 x 5 x 145 or 155.
- Add extra reps, so you do 3 x 6.
- Add a fourth set, so you do 4 x 5.
- Cut the rest time to 2 1/2 minutes.

All of those will represent a different form of adaptation. All of them call for more stress on the body. It would be a huge increase to go from 3 x 5 x 135 with 3 minutes rest to 4 x 6 x 155 with 2 1/2 minutes rest, and unless the 3 x 5 x 135 was well below your strength level, you would be unlikely to match it!

Of course, you should try to match your overload to your goals. If your goal is more raw strength, adding weight for the same reps, sets, and rest is probably the way to go. Need more endurance? Add reps for the same sets and weight, or add some sets. Need to cut down your workout time and still get in a good workout? Cut down the rest time between sets.

When in doubt, rest more

A common error of beginners and more advanced athletes alike is to rest too little.

It's tempting to think that training 6-7 days a week is better than 3-4 days a week. It's tempting to think that adding a few extra workouts here and there, or using "active rest" that consists of intense or long-duration sports, will burn some extra calories or improve your strength.

But really, all it does is take away from valuable rest. Your body doesn't improve during exercise, it doesn't get stronger in the gym. It gets weaker in the gym, and it runs down during exercise. The more intense your exercise, the more rest you need to recover from it.

You get stronger resting afterwards.

If your performance is dropping, your endurance is lower, your strength is fading...rest more. Add a little more sleep, a little more time off. Your body might just need the extra time to recover.

Book Review: Fit to Fight

By Jason Ferruggia
208 pages, April 2008
$19.95

Jason Ferruggia's Fit to Fight is a strength and conditioning book aimed at MMA fighters. It's meant to be a complete guide to the right way for a combat athlete to trainer. Let's see how it does.

The first chapter outlines the characteristics of a successful MMA fighter - strength, speed, flexibility and mobility, skill, mental toughness, and anaerobic endurance. The last one is especially interesting. The book is pretty firmly anti-aerobic training for combat athlete. No jogging! Hill sprints are fine, dragging sleds is even better, jogging and distance work is out. I largely agree, so no problem there - if you want to make me run a mile you'll have to chase me that far.

Assessments - tests of flexibility, strength, and mobility are next up. These include overhead squats, flexibility tests, and strength. The strength tests are interesting, and include both a prescribed method and a suggested goal. The goals are presented as optimal, not minimum requirements! It's suggested you do these every 8-10 weeks to see how your workout is progressing. Here are the tests and goals:
- Box Squat 1RM (Goal 2 * bodyweight)
- Vertical Jump (Goal 33")
- Chinup 1RM (Goal bodyweight + 0.5 * bodyweight)
- Chinup Reps (Goal bodyweight x 12)
- Pushup Reps (Goal bodyweight x 60)
- Plank Time (Goal 180 seconds)

All seem pretty reasonable - high, but doable.

Next injury prevention and pre-hab exercises are covered. This includes a warmup, and bodyweight mobility drills. All are clearly explained, and are sufficient for an MMA athlete looking to learn a solid basic program for this sort of work.

Conditioning work is next. It's mostly bodyweight exercises - mountain climbers, squats, jumps, lunges, bear crawls, etc. done in circuits. He includes a wide selection, two example circuits, and an easy-to-follow explanation of how to put a new circuit together. But sprinting intervals are described, and several barbell complexes are also covered.

Strongman training. There is a big emphasis on the importance of strongman training for the MMA athlete, both for strength (low-rep, heavy work) and endurance (higher-rep conditioning work). Sandbags (including a DIY sandbag), sled drags, tire flips, sledgehammer swinging (into a sandbag, that's new to me), water-filled keg training, ropes, and other similar exercises are covered. It's thorough, and although not exhaustive it's comprehensive and an excellent start. Because MMA involves so much grappling and uneven loading, it's important to train to handle it...and strongman training plays a big part of the workouts here.

Strength training is next. The workouts are built on a modified Westside Barbell template - conjugate periodization. Workouts are broken out into maximum-effort days (to develop limit strength), repetition method days (to develop endurance and muscular size), and speed/strongman days (to develop speed/power and endurance). A lot of exercises are covered, each with one or more pictures and text to describe them. Almost all require only a plate-loading barbell or one or two dumbbells, plus a bench or power rack. No machines, except for two apparatuses - a 45-degree back raise (which is really optional) and a Glute-Ham Raise (also optional, but less so). Some call for blast straps, as well, and one (face pulls) for cables, but they're merely nice to have. He gives you sufficient exercises for just the barbell and dumbbells. The book does fall down a bit here, though - the pictures aren't terribly effective at conveying technique, and the text could be clearer. But the exercise choices are excellent - get-ups, deadlifts, squats, bench presses, blast-strap pushups, glute-ham raises, hang cleans, swings, Russian twists, towel chinups...it's a gold mine of useful basic training for an MMA fighter.

The workouts themselves close this section. They're excellent, combining a logical progression of exercises and appropriate rep ranges for the goals. They are done 3 days a week, Monday/Wednesday/Friday, and are built to drop into a skill-centered (MMA-training day centered) training program. However, they are divided into phases without much explanation made about how to use those phases. How to set the weights is glossed over, as well. This information isn't terribly hard to find, but it would have been better if it was explicitly covered. If you're such a beginner that you're starting here, not just coming here after other workouts failed, you need a little more guidance. It's really not clear if each phase is a week, or if you're meant to do each phase for several weeks. Looking at them, it's certainly doable to have each Phase be a week, and then cycle them though, but it's not clear if that's the intention or not.

The nutrition section is pretty good. It emphasizes multiple small meals a day, a healthy amount of protein and fat and carbs, lots of fruit and vegetables, and a reliance on whole foods over processed foods and supplements. It's a good guide. But it has two faults. One is that it lumps saturated fats in with trans fats as "bad for you." They aren't, and even fairly conventional advice is that you'll 1/3 of your daily fat calories to be from saturated fat. They aren't an enemy to be avoided. The second is that it retains the old complex vs. simple carbs fallacy. That's largely been thrown away because the chemical complexity of carbohydrates doesn't usefully describe how your body processes them. So it becomes a distinction without a difference. The information it contains on cutting weight safely and re-hydrating after weigh-in but before a fight is excellent, and matches advice I'd been given by very knowledgeable pros.

The section on supplementation is good - it clears a lot of cruft out, and emphasizes whole foods and using protein, creatine, and vitamins as a supplement. There is no magic pill, and the author makes that very clear.

A few math errors creep in here or there - for example, a 200 pound athlete eating 18 calories a day is rated at eating 3960 calories, which calculates backwards to a 220 athlete. The same 200 pounder is used for post-workout drink calculations - earlier the book says 0.25g of protein and 0.50g of carbs per pound of bodyweight, and then later says a 200 pound athlete would need 40 grams of protein and 80 grams of carbs post-workout. Small errors, but easily spotted on a read-through.

Rating:
Content: 4 out of 5. A complete guide to MMA training and nutrition, but it lacks some details you'd want for executing the lifts, and some of the nutritional advice is a bit outdated.
Presentation: 4 out of 5. Well presented and easy to read. The pictures of techniques aren't very easy to follow, however, especially the jumping and explosive lifts.

Overall: If you're into MMA, this book is well worth reading. It's got a solid training program and good nutritional advice, and it would be a fine basis for a training program. I'd recommend it to any MMA athlete or would-be MMA athlete over a less MMA-centered program. If you're not into MMA, it's still interesting and can be a fun way to train without training "like everyone else."

Scapular Mobility video

This is a somewhat old video - about 2 years old as I post this - but it's got a number of useful moves for improving shoulder mobility and health.



These kinds of moves are best done prior to, or interspersed within, your workout. For more shoulder work like this, check out my review of Inside-Out