CST Free Weight Exercises By Scott Sonnon

This week’s list of recommended reading:
Build Your Balance - This article at Experience Life Magazine is based on a series of interviews with me in light of my research on unstable surface training.  For the more in-depth background and practical applications, you’ll want to check out my e-book, The Truth About Unstable Surface Training.
Pasteurization: Awesome [...]
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Seth has some good thoughts on animal fat:

for best health I need much more animal fat than I usually get — is plausible:

1. As Spector said, butchers cut the fat off meat. The odds that our Stone-Age ancestors, living when food was sometimes scarce, did the same thing: Zero. Perhaps our meat is unnaturally low in fat. If for a long time in our evolutionary past we ate a lot of animal fat it makes sense that our bodies would be shaped to work best with that much fat.

2. Many video games, which boys enjoy, resemble hunting. I think this reflects an evolutionary past in which men hunted. If so, for a long time humans ate meat. That they ate a lot of meat is suggested by the fact that when big game went extinct (probably due to hunting) human health got worse.

3. American culture demonizes animal fat. The conclusion that animal fat is bad rests on epidemiology. Once something becomes heavily recommended or discouraged, a big problem for epidemiologists arises: the people who follow the advice are likely to be different (e.g., more disciplined, better off) than those that don’t (the healthy-user bias). As I blogged yesterday, an example is vaccine effectiveness: Those who get vaccinated are different than those who don’t.

4. Fat tastes good. Which implies we need it. We like whipped cream, butter on toast, milk in tea, and so on. Butter vastly improves toast even with my nose clipped. Long ago, when this fat-pleasure connection evolved, dietary fat was mostly animal fat and fish oil.

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Your basal metabolic rate is the number of calories your body burns, not including calories burned from daily activity…

Related posts:

1. Gaining Muscle Doesn't Increase the Metabolic Rate a Significant Amount
2. Fat Loss Momentum…The Secret to Rapid Fat Loss
3. The Power of Salad for Rapid Weight Loss

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1.Just a quick heads-up: today is the last day you can get the new Functional Strength Coach 3 DVD set from Mike Boyle with all the sweet bonuses he’s offered as an introductory special.  Definitely check it out (here).
2. There’s some great new research out in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research that compares [...]
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So what do the biceps do?

fasciating stuff from Bill DeSimone

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There has been some debate here in the past on “functional training” - e.g. Luke’s Carlson’s interview here.

Rob from Mountain Athlete has some good comments today:

QUESTION
I have started your 2 weeks of strength training for skiing… pretty cool!!

I would have maybe one recommendation/question. I got an ACL reconstruction about 18 months ago and the quad on which I had surgery is still a little smaller than the other one (on the inside side of the leg). Now, I can do everything I was doing before without even thinking about it, but sometime it feels like something is still not moving right (a lot of “poping” and tendonitis feeling). One exercise that I discover recently is the “pistol” (single legged squat). It is a great exercise for me because it trains each leg separately, it is surprisingly hard and it works a LOT on the balance and the stability of the knee. Furthermore, I found that it improved the way my injured leg is now absorbing the impact after jumping…

Anyway, I think it could be a great exercise to include in your ski workout program… Do you have any thought on this exercise?

Also, if you have any thought on getting the muscle mass of my injured leg back, please let me know?

Regards!

- A.

ANSWER
I think the pistol exercise is mostly a circus trick …. what I mean by that is it’s not strength dependent. Once you “figure it out” balance wise, or through bunches of practice, the athlete can do it. But I question its transferrabilty. In other words, does doing pistols make you good at doing anything other then pistols?

I don’t argue that it takes bunches of balance and stability, and I’ll have athletes with injuries do single leg squats…. but only if they can’t do double leg.

Also, I question the single limb theory in general — that somehow training single limbs individually increases overall strength.

Finally, I don’t believe in training “balance” in the gym using pistols, BOSU balls, foam pads, etc. I feel this is an inefficient use of gym time. First, again, I question the transferability of gym balance skills to the real world.

Skiing balance, in this case, is very sports specific - it’s really a technical skill that is most efficiently “practiced” by skiing.

The gym is best used, in my opinion, for strength and conditioning. I want to send my athletes to the slopes strong, with the understanding that their technical skiing skills will be rusty. But if they are strong, they won’t need to use those vital first few weeks of ski season just getting in ski shape - they can get right to working on their technical skills. The earlier they can work on their technical skills and wash away the rust, the faster they can begin to improve those skills…. and thus become better skiiers.

Just like the gym is an inefficient place to “practice” technical skills, the ski slope is an inefficent place to “train” strength and conditioning. The best use of the slope is to practice technique.

Add mass to your legs? Lift heavy. Drink 2-3 protein shakes/day.

- Rob

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There has been some debate here in the past on “functional training” - e.g. Luke’s Carlson’s interview here.

Rob from Mountain Athlete has some good comments today:

QUESTION
I have started your 2 weeks of strength training for skiing… pretty cool!!

I would have maybe one recommendation/question. I got an ACL reconstruction about 18 months ago and the quad on which I had surgery is still a little smaller than the other one (on the inside side of the leg). Now, I can do everything I was doing before without even thinking about it, but sometime it feels like something is still not moving right (a lot of “poping” and tendonitis feeling). One exercise that I discover recently is the “pistol” (single legged squat). It is a great exercise for me because it trains each leg separately, it is surprisingly hard and it works a LOT on the balance and the stability of the knee. Furthermore, I found that it improved the way my injured leg is now absorbing the impact after jumping…

Anyway, I think it could be a great exercise to include in your ski workout program… Do you have any thought on this exercise?

Also, if you have any thought on getting the muscle mass of my injured leg back, please let me know?

Regards!

- A.

ANSWER
I think the pistol exercise is mostly a circus trick …. what I mean by that is it’s not strength dependent. Once you “figure it out” balance wise, or through bunches of practice, the athlete can do it. But I question its transferrabilty. In other words, does doing pistols make you good at doing anything other then pistols?

I don’t argue that it takes bunches of balance and stability, and I’ll have athletes with injuries do single leg squats…. but only if they can’t do double leg.

Also, I question the single limb theory in general — that somehow training single limbs individually increases overall strength.

Finally, I don’t believe in training “balance” in the gym using pistols, BOSU balls, foam pads, etc. I feel this is an inefficient use of gym time. First, again, I question the transferability of gym balance skills to the real world.

Skiing balance, in this case, is very sports specific - it’s really a technical skill that is most efficiently “practiced” by skiing.

The gym is best used, in my opinion, for strength and conditioning. I want to send my athletes to the slopes strong, with the understanding that their technical skiing skills will be rusty. But if they are strong, they won’t need to use those vital first few weeks of ski season just getting in ski shape - they can get right to working on their technical skills. The earlier they can work on their technical skills and wash away the rust, the faster they can begin to improve those skills…. and thus become better skiiers.

Just like the gym is an inefficient place to “practice” technical skills, the ski slope is an inefficent place to “train” strength and conditioning. The best use of the slope is to practice technique.

Add mass to your legs? Lift heavy. Drink 2-3 protein shakes/day.

- Rob

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Today’s a really exciting day for Mike Robertson, Bill Hartman, and I - and hopefully for you, too!

You see, after months of planning, filming, and editing, our new product, Assess and Correct, is now available at www.AssessAndCorrect.com.  And, for the first week ONLY, we’re making the product available for $30 off what will be [...]
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