Tips of the week Use skater squats

Skater squats(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC8a5nxz22w) are a support exercise for classic squats that has the advantage of building single-leg strength, stability and coordination. This variation is gentler on the knees than pistol squats and can be used as a substitute by exercisers with sensitive knees. The "countermovement" aspect makes the exercise easier by moving the center of mass forward, which increases the lever arm of the hip and reduces the lever arm of the knee.

Dumbbell skater squats with countermovement

• Stand on one leg while holding two light dumbbells in your hands. Bend one knee 90 degrees so that one foot is behind you.
• Shift your weight onto the heel of the supporting leg and lean slightly forward. Then start the downward movement. Go down as far as you can until the knee of the back leg touches the floor while simultaneously moving the dumbbells up in front of your body with your arms straight.
• Maintain a neutral spine position as you push your body back up to the starting position with the help of your supporting leg.

Common mistakes

• Using a weight that is too heavy and drifting the hips
• Rounding the back or leaning the upper body forward too much
• Drifting the back leg to one side, causing excessive rotation
• Touching the floor with the dumbbells instead of maximizing hip range of motion

Don't talk about your goals

Studies show that telling others about your goals makes you less likely to achieve them

By Chris Shugart

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/powerful-words/tip-shut-up-about-your-goals

The typical advice regarding goal setting goes something like this: set a goal and tell other people about it. This will keep you accountable. The problem? In practice, this rarely works. In fact, such an approach can have the exact opposite effect.

Why talking about your goals doesn't work

Several psychological studies, some dating back to 1927, support this - and here's the gist: when you tell others about your goals, you achieve a sense of satisfaction and even a sense of accomplishment. In a way, your mind believes that you have already achieved this goal. Announcing a goal gives you the feeling that you have already come closer to it, even if you have not yet done anything to achieve it.

Psychologists refer to this as a social validation problem. You have identified with a goal and become somewhat complacent when it comes to the things you haven't done yet. Now you are slightly less likely to do the necessary work. This is also known as a premature sense of completion.

Imagine the guy with the tapout t-shirt telling everyone he's going to be an MMA champion. This makes him feel like a badass. He's already taken on that identity in his mind and he's got the t-shirt! The problem is that he's never trained for it, doesn't know any martial arts and is horribly out of shape. Mentally and on a social level, he's a martial arts star. In reality, however, he's just a fan with the illusion of grandeur and bad taste in t-shirts.

A better method

The first thing you can do is keep your mouth shut. Resist the temptation to talk about your goals. Delay the feeling of reward. Be the person who achieves cool goals, not the person who talks about achieving cool goals but never achieves them. Or do what Derek Sivers says: talk about your goal, but do so in a way that doesn't give you much satisfaction. Here are two examples:

My goal is to stop drinking sugary soft drinks. That's going to suck.

My goal is to bench press 200 kilos. That will take a year or more of intense effort and smart workout planning.

Or maybe other people just suck

Another problem: people are a...holes. Or at least many of them are. They struggle with their own inner doubts and insecurities and when someone makes the decision to do something great, it hurts their feelings.

They usually won't overtly try to discourage you, but they will do so in more subtle ways: small comments or actions that will make you waver. Tell your colleague that your goal is to lose 5 kilos and she will almost certainly offer you cookies the next week because you deserve a reward - that fake snake.

It's better if you don't talk about it, do your thing and celebrate your real achievements - not your apparent good intentions.

Use Muscle Snatch to build strength and power(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ze3-UiuRT0)

This is the easiest Olympic-style weightlifting exercise to learn and will turn you into a badass

By Christian Thibaudeau

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-do-the-muscle-snatch-for-strength-power

Muscle snatch is the Olympic-style weightlifting exercise for exercisers who have no interest in performing the full Olympic weightlifting exercises. Muscle snatch is basically the bodybuilder's Olympic weightlifting exercise. In this exercise, we leave out everything that prevents many exercisers from using the Olympic weightlifting exercises.

There's no catching with your wrists bent backwards and no complicated technique such as a deep squat movement under the bar as it moves upwards. You simply pull the weight up from the floor, from a hanging position or from blocks. As it approaches your neck, simply move your elbows quickly under the bar while the weight is still moving and then push it up above your head.

How to perform muscle snatches

• Phase 1: Explosively pull the weight up towards your neck, focusing on keeping the weight as close to your body as possible.
• Transition: When the weight reaches its target (neck/chest), perform a lightning-fast transition to...
• Phase 2: The fastest overhead press you are capable of.

Unlike other Olympic weightlifting exercises, you don't perform an explosive movement with your legs - your feet stay on the floor. You push hard with your legs, but there is no jumping to generate momentum.

Mistakes you should avoid

• Letting the weight drift away from your body. If the bar is too far away from your body, then you can't possibly be in a good position to push the weight up after the transfer.
• Pulling the weight too far up (to face level instead of neck level) and finishing the movement as a loaded external rotation instead of a pressing movement.

Time your carbs to lose fat and maintain muscle

How to manipulate your insulin production to get hard and defined while still having enough energy for training and recovery

By Mitch Calvert

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/tip-to-lose-fat-and-keep-muscle-time-carbs-like-this

If you want to lose fat, you should keep your insulin levels in check during inactive periods. Of course, insulin promotes amino acid uptake and protein synthesis, which makes it key to building a muscular body, but insulin is also a double-edged sword.

Insulin is very effective at transporting carbohydrates into muscle and liver tissue (which is good), but it is unfortunately just as good at transporting carbohydrates directly into fat tissue (which is not so good). To get the best of both worlds, if you train later in the day or in the evening, you should avoid carbohydrates at breakfast and during the earlier part of the day. Instead, you should replace carbohydrates with healthy fats and keep your protein intake constant. This means eating something like an omelette with spinach instead of a carb-loaded breakfast.

Of course, we don't want to catabolize our muscles and end up like someone who just went on a Weight Watchers diet. When it comes time to train, you should therefore include carbohydrates in your diet to maximize your recovery.

The study

One study found that 50 grams of carbohydrates in a training drink consumed during a resistance training session completely eliminated the increase in cortisol levels compared to a control drink. The subjects in this study with the lowest cortisol levels - and the greatest gains in muscle mass - were all from the group that consumed the carbohydrate drink, while the subjects with the highest cortisol levels showed the smallest gains in muscle mass. (One subject from the placebo group even lost muscle mass over the course of the study).

The solution

You should use a training drink that contains fast-digesting carbohydrates and fast-digesting EAAs that activate protein synthesis. After training, when your muscles are most receptive to carbohydrates, you should consume complex carbohydrates - and maybe even some "fun carbs" in moderate amounts.

References

1. Tarpenning, K.M., Influence of weight training exercise and modification of hormonal response on skeletal muscle growth. J Sci Med Sport. 2001 Dec;4(4):431-46.1997.

Don't use muscle soreness to evaluate the effectiveness of your training sessions

You can get sore muscles but still not make progress - and you can make progress without getting sore muscles. Here are the facts

By Christian Thibaudeau

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-dont-use-soreness-to-judge-workout-effectiveness

The facts:

1. Getting sore muscles after a workout with weights doesn't necessarily mean you had a good training session that will lead to gains.
2. Even if you don't have sore muscles after a workout, it doesn't mean that your training session wasn't optimal.
3. However, if you don't at least have a tight feeling in the muscles you worked out, then it's quite possible that your training session wasn't as effective as it could have been.
4. Excessive muscle soreness can cause performance issues by reducing flexibility and/or strength. Excessive muscle soreness can therefore affect the productivity of a training session.

Can I train a muscle that is still sore?

There are varying degrees of muscle soreness. Sometimes a muscle will only feel a little tight without any muscle swelling. The muscle will just feel and look a little harder than usual. There may be some tenderness, but there is no real loss of flexibility or strength.

At other times, the soreness can be so debilitating that your mobility and strength are seriously limited. In this case, the soreness becomes limiting and it would be a mistake to train this muscle hard in this condition.

If the soreness is not so intense that it impairs your capacity to train at an adequate level, it is entirely possible - and even advisable - to train the muscle intensely. Why? Because increased blood flow and nutrient transport to that muscle can accelerate recovery. Performing an active recovery training session the day after an intensive training session is very effective.

By active recovery training session, I mean a pump workout for the muscle where you feel soreness - a light workout that focuses on the quality of the contractions and achieving a pump. This will not further damage the tissue, but will speed up the rate of recovery and repair by increasing nutrient uptake and protein synthesis. In addition, such training has a variety of other benefits that include cytokines and the repair process.

One idea is to do a hard strength workout with a basic exercise one day and then do some isolation training for the same muscles at the beginning of the next day's training session.

Test yourself with Renegade Rows (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTqlJ0aoJlM)

This will tell you a lot about your strength and athleticism

By Joel Seedman, PhD

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-test-yourself-with-the-renegade-row

Having the right balance of strength between the front and back of your body is crucial for performance, posture and power. Renegade rows can help you test this.

How to perform renegade rows

Renegade rows are one of the few all-in-one exercises that require such fine balance. When performed correctly, this exercise is a combination of back strength, core stability, anti-rotation, shoulder stability, lumbar spine-pelvis control and hip stability. Renegade Rows eliminate the ability to use excessive momentum, rotation and forceful movements from the back commonly seen in rowing movements.

Your score

If you are unable to perform this exercise with 80 to 90% of the weight you use in single arm dumbbell rowing, or if you are unable to use a weight that matches your bodyweight (a 90 kilo exerciser would use two 45 kilo dumbbells), then you are likely lacking strength and function in the areas mentioned previously.

If you need to significantly reduce the weight compared to what you typically use in rowing, then you should improve your technique in rowing and learn to control the weight

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-do-the-skater-squat-to-get-stronger

By Bret Contreras