Howard Stern

A couple weeks ago an article I wrote entitled “Mystery Meat” (http://www.t-nation.com/article/bodybuilding/mystery_meat&cr=) was published on T-nation.com.  The feedback was unbelievable!  Many people instantly heavily criticized the article, while others were intrigued by the unique idea.  For the record, my stance on the weight gained from that experiment is this:

The weight gain is almost definitely entirely water.  The reason the weight can be maintained over such a long period of time is because I (and others that have tried it with similar results) drink a ton of water everyday.  My bet would be that, in all instances, the cessation of adequate hydration would result in a significant drop in weight.  The significant gains in strength can be explained by a neural adaptation.  Performing that many repetitions throughout the course of a single-day will reinforce the neural connections associated with producing that movement, thereby strengthening it.  This is one of the reasons that physical therapists have their clients perform a few exercises several times a day throughout the rehabilitation process, opposed to just once.  So what is the point of writing an article discussing a weigh to put on a few pounds of water?  Simple.  I have encountered innumerable athletes and lifters that have become extremely frustrated by their inability to put on weight and discouraged with their training.  If they could perform a 12 hour protocol that boosted their weight noticeably, it may keep their motivation for training high.  Also, the strength is real!  Say what you want about the weight gain.  If you’re an athlete, relative strength (strength per pound of body weight) is typically more important than absolute strength.  12 hours to a noticeable increase in strength…I’ll take it.

While it seems that many did not appreciate my attempt to add another tool to their training toolbox, my newsletter subscriber list increased dramatically.  This reminds me of when Howard Stern first came on the radio and people that claimed to hate him tuned in anyway.  When asked why they responded “I wanted to hear what he’d say next.”  Stay tuned, articles on neural adaptations are coming soon…

Injuries

Athlete, lifter, or other-everyone gets hurts nowadays.  The injuries aren’t always traumatic.  In fact, they’re usually nagging aches and pains that flare up just enough to interfere with your training.  Unfortunately for me, I’ve had to deal with some sort of injury in almost every joint in my body.  Fortunately for you, the experiences have given me the opportunity to experiment with a ton of corrective exercises and stretching patterns to learn what’s most effective.  I’d like to add a question and answer section to these newsletters in the future.  If you’re currently dealing with some sort of injury and want some help in working around it or some corrective exercises to help alleviate some of the pain, and strengthen the associated weaknesses, send me an email at kn@prodigyperformancetraining.com describing your situation in detail and I’ll make an effort to answer your inquiries in upcoming newsletters.

Sharks

Today I spent a half hour on the phone with San Jose Sharks Strength and Conditioning Coordinator Mike Potenza.  We ended up discussing how certain movement patterns can be trained off the ice that lead to significant on-ice improvements.  One example was for defensemen that have to transition from backward skating to forward or lateral skating.  An off-ice drill would be to backpedal for 10 yards, then open up to a side (either left or right), and sprint 15 yards in that direction.  There are dozens of examples.  The take home: If you’re an athlete and you’re ignoring movement patterns, you’re sprinting on one leg.  You may get where you want to go, but you’ll be getting there in the slowest way possible.  Efficient movement and strength go hand in hand.  If you have strength without efficient movement, you end up expending a TON of energy as your muscles fight against each other to produce a smooth movement.  For instance, your adductors (the muscles on the inside of your thigh) internally rotate your femur.  Your gluteus maximus extends and laterally rotates the femur.  If you have tight adductors (as all hockey players and most other athletes do), the glute max has to work double time to resist excessive internal rotation AND extend the hip.  Almost invariably, this leads to a muscle becoming chronically tight, strained, or developing trigger points.  Learn to move effectively and correct any imbalances you have.  It will keep you injury-free and performing well for a long time.

Last, but not least, www.KevinNeeld.com is finally up and running.  Having no web design experience, it was quite a project to put it all together.  Check out the blog page.  While most of the posts will be hockey specific, they will almost all have implications for other sports and for lifters alike, since many of the injuries and training program pitfalls are the same among various populations.  Until next week…

This morning my alarm went off at 6:15, like it does every morning.  Unfortunately I had a HORRIBLE night of sleep so I did what any logical person would do and hit the first button that would make the noise go away.

At 6:30 I scrambled out of bed to prepare for my 7am lift and make breakfast.  I was able to throw down about 8oz of milk, a cup of coffee, and a banana with peanut butter on it right before I walked out of the door at 6:50.  I can’t overstate the importance of breakfast.  It’s by far the most important meal of the day.  It breaks an 8 hour (hopefully) fast (hence break…fast).  I once heard Alwyn Cosgrove say something like: Doing a workout on an empty stomach is stupid.  Doing an Alwyn Cosgrove workout on an empty stomach is suicide.  My workouts are similar.  I would NEVER go through one of my training sessions on an empty stomach.  However, since I also value sleep highly, I usually just grab something small before my lift and something much larger afterwards.  I also drink a simple protein and carbohydrate mix while I lift and immediately afterward so I’m getting some calories straight throughout.

I wasn’t looking forward to the workout because it involved a lot of volume, which isn’t my favorite.  Surprisingly, things got off to a good start.  I actually deadlifted 245 15 times, and still had a little gas in the tank.  Everything was going great right up until my second set of back-leg raised split squats.  I started to get a clouded feeling that I haven’t felt for quite some time.  I took my time, rested a bit, then did the other exercise in that pair.  Immediately after-I hopped up, put the weights back on the rack, and power walked out of the gym, in the middle of my workout.  I was able to make it about 15 feet outside the gym door to the nearest receptacle, where I forcefully redisplayed my breakfast.

I haven’t thrown up from a lift since high school when I cut a leg press workout short to visit the local YMCA bathroom.  Vomiting and leg pressing-two things I thought I’d never do again!

Why do I tell you this?  Because I’m an idiot, and I want you to learn from my idiocy.  OF COURSE eating right before a high volume/large musculature lift would cause me to vomit.  With all the blood going to the working muscles, very little can go to the digestive track.  We’ve all heard it-don’t go swimming within 30 minutes of eating.  We never hear why-just not to do it.  Well this is why!

Here’s the take home.  You need to plan.  Plan your meals.  Plan your workouts.  Plan enough time between the two.  Don’t make exceptions, EVER!  Ten more minutes of sleep will never be more beneficial than ten more minutes of digestion time.

For those of you that don’t know Eric Cressey, he is an experienced athlete and powerlifter and has quickly established himself as one of the most brilliant strength coaches in the country.  After spending a week at his facility, I realized that he and I share strong opinions on a few issues that may be of interest to you.

1.  The most effective way to warm-up is to do some foam roll work, mobility work, and a few dynamic movements.  If you aren’t familiar with foam rolling techniques, learn.  Essentially you spend 5 minutes before your training session working through all the knots in your body and basically improving the pliability and health of your muscles and the fascia that encloses them.  You can and should mobilize your ankles (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/wallanklemobility.html ), hips (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/wallhipmobility.html), thoracic spine (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/FRThoracicExtension.html )and glenohumeral (shoulder) joints (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/HockeyStickDislocation.html ) prior to training.  You should do activation and stabilization work for the muscles around your knees (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/SplitSquat.html ), core/lumbar spine area (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/BirdDog.html and http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/FrontPlankMarch.html ), and scapula (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/ScapPushUpElbows.html).  Ten minutes of work to improve the quality of your muscles, improve range-of-motion around the joints that need it, and activate the right muscles.  It seems like a no-brainer to me.

2.  If you want to get strong, you need to lift heavy weights!  90% of the people that I consult with that have plateaued in their training have never purposely done work in the 2-4 rep range.  Just to clear up any misconceptions, lifting very heavy weights 2-4 times is NOT dangerous and will NOT necessarily make you bigger (females, I’m talking to you here).  Cressey is a big proponent of low-rep lifting, as am I.  Both of us have gotten a lot stronger, quickly, working in this rep range, without putting on significant amounts of weight.

3.  We do not know the long-term effects of ketchup use.  Completely irrelevant?  One of the younger clients at Cressey’s facility wanted to discuss the safety and efficacy of creatine use because his doctor said it was unsafe for the liver and kidneys and that we did not know the long-term effects of creatine use.  For the record, research has shown, almost excessively at this point, that creatine supplementation is both safe and effective in improving lean muscle mass and muscular strength.  In fact, it is SO safe and effective, that current research is now being performed on various elderly and diseased populations in an effort to try to counteract some of the muscle wasting associated with these states.  I’m an optimist.  I’ll just assume that the doctor is blind and that the 10+ years of creatine research haven’t yet been transcribed in braille.  After Eric went on a 15-minute angry rant about the medical system’s expertise in the area of exercise and nutrition, he advised the young lifter to ask his doctor about the long-term effects of ketchup use, or salt use.  Ridiculous, yes.  But his point is obvious.  Just because we don’t know the long-term effects of creatine use, doesn’t mean it’s bad for you.  He’s been taking 5g/day for over 5 years.  I’ve been taking creatine off and on for about the same time.  We’re both alive!  Creatine is safe.  Creatine works.

4.  Building off of the last point, everyone should be much more proactive with their doctors.  Do the research yourself before you go to a doctor.  Eric cancelled a shoulder surgery years ago after rehabbing himself for a few months.  I was told by my hernia surgery doctor and a sports med doctor (following a brutal shoulder mangling) that I would never lift heavy again.  They were both wrong.  How many people are being told to take anti-inflammatory drugs when fish oil supplementation would be a healthier, more beneficial alternative?  Please do not just assume that your doctor always knows what is best for you.  It is your right as a consumer to question their advice.  To paraphrase a quote from Jerry Seinfeld, “somebody’s doctor is finishing last in their class at medical school!”

5.  Loud music makes you stronger.  Listening to Justin Timberlake has shown to decrease strength and testosterone levels by 10%.  Listening to Metallica improves these same measures by 20%.  You make the call.

6.  Pre- and post-training nutrition is essential.  I don’t care if you’re a man, woman, teenager, baby, whatever.  You’ll almost definitely get better results from your training if you consume a simple carbohydrate and whey protein supplement before/during your training and a whey/casein mix protein supplement IMMEDIATELY after your training.  Immediately doesn’t mean after you drive home, shower, change, etc.  It means as soon as you finish your last set you pull your pre-made shake from your bag and slug it down.

If you’re in the New England area, consider training at Cressey Performance.  In one week I saw some of the most unique, effective, and fun training programs I’ve ever encountered.  I saw a 165-pound kid that didn’t look like he lifted at all squat over 2x his body weight and bang out a set of 3 chin-ups with an 85 lb. dumbbell hanging from his waist.  I saw a 65 year old man do 8 chin-ups.  It’s a great place to get strong.  It’s a great place to get healthy.