CST Free Weight Exercises By Scott Sonnon

In my last blog post, I talked about the professionalism side of things with respect to narrowing down our applicant pool for Cressey Performance internships.  Today, I want to talk about a few more things an applicant can do to separate himself/herself from the remaining pack at final cuts.
Mistake #6: Not reading - You can [...]
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This post links back to one I made in January:

your most recent workout is the most important….and stay low carb

in that one I pointed out research that each workout was important, each session had an immediate impact on making you healthier. It is not just an ongoing state that you are creating….but also you are benefitting from each time you train (with certain caveats).

Anyway I saw this study today and it seems to indicate similar things: the conclusion is that :

These results demonstrate an important mechanism by which each individual exercise session may incrementally reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in women.

It is there again, every session matters…everyone has an impact. As was pointed out in comments on the last post, this is motivational. What you do in this immediate workout will have a benefit…it will make you healthier.

Here is the abstract:

Plasma triglyceride concentrations are rapidly reduced following individual bouts of endurance exercise in women.

t is known that chronic endurance training leads to improvements in the lipoprotein profile, but less is known about changes that occur during postexercise recovery acutely. We analyzed triglyceride (TG), cholesterol classes and apolipoproteins in samples collected before, during and after individual moderate- and hard-intensity exercise sessions in men and women that were isoenergetic between intensities. Young healthy men (n = 9) and young healthy women (n = 9) were studied under three different conditions with diet unchanged between trials: (1) before, during and 3 h after 90 min of exercise at 45% VO(2)peak (E45); (2) before, during and 3 h after 60 min of exercise at 65% VO(2)peak (E65), and (3) in a time-matched sedentary control trial (C). At baseline, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) was higher in women than men (P < 0.05). In men and in women, total cholesterol (TC), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), HDL-C, apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I), apolipoprotein B (apoB), and LDL peak particle size were unaltered by exercise either during exertion or after 3 h of recovery. In women, but not in men, average plasma TG was significantly reduced below C at 3 h postexercise by approximately 15% in E45 and 25% in E65 (P < 0.05) with no significant difference between exercise intensities. In summary, plasma TG concentration rapidly declines following exercise in women, but not in men. These results demonstrate an important mechanism by which each individual exercise session may incrementally reduce the risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) in women.

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Leonardo DiCaprio’s personal trainer for “The Beach” tracked me down and asked if I wanted to do a Q&A session. What is cool about his story is that he was flown to Thailand and only had a little over 2 weeks to whip the entire cast into to top shape. This interview explains how he accomplished that.
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At Cressey Performance, we have a few interns in the spring (1/5 - 5/10), summer (6/1 - 8/30), and fall (9/1-12/23).  Over the past three years, this internship program has “kicked out” some coaches who are doing great things in the industry, including names you’ll recognize like Brian St. Pierre (who we wound up hiring [...]
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The other day Skyler mentioned a book he was reading. He said:

Lessons from “The Blue Zones.” I think there’s some good information here, especially for those who wish to impart a black and white view into diet and exercise.

I was intrigued. I looked around and found the relevant website, and also ordered the book from Amazon.

The book tries to pull out some lessons about living a long healthy life by looking at the factors which some really lon lived communities around the world have in common:

Here at BlueZones.com, we’ve organized these behaviors into four main categories:

Move Naturally – Make your home, community and workplace present you with natural ways to move. Focus on activities you love, like gardening, walking and playing with your family.

Right Outlook – Know and be able to articulate your sense of purpose, and ensure your day is punctuated with periods of calm.

Eat Wisely – Instead of groping from fad diet to fad diets, use time-honored strategies for eating 20% less at meals. Avoid meat and processed food and drink a couple of glasses of wine daily.

Belong to the Right Tribe – Surround yourself with the right people, make the effort to connect or reconnect with your religion and put loved ones first.

It is worth digging around the site, there are some fascinating ideas in there.

It is an interesting book. What it brought home to me is the importance of thinking multifactorally.

We often tend to think in terms of a single factor - diet, exercise, stress, sunshine vitamin D or whatever. It is however simplistic to think about a single factor. We don’t live like that - we are not in carefully controlled experiments with one variable at a time changing - there are lots of things at play. We need to think more broadly. It is not X or Y….usually it is X & Y & Z & A & B etc…..

The idea of there being lots of factors to bring into the mix came up in my interview with Keith and was raised in a recent comment by jleeger on this blog:

I’m always curious as to the value-judgments (and reasons behind them) that we place on things.

“Paleo” or “EV” is no different.

Were humans “freer” in a “paleo” tribe? Is one technology “better” than another? Does “paleo” as a practice extend the lifespan beyond basic, “simple-living?”

I’m still unconvinced that all or any of these “methods” we find today - from Xfit to Z-Phase to Paleo/EV to HIIT - are in any way “single” answers unto themselves.

They reveal the results a person can expect on their own basis, but also, necessarily limit development in other areas.

For instance, none of those hobbies asks its participants to become a better singer, or to learn to sew/knit, or carve wood.

Similarly, none of them teaches people how to be better at business, or how to make a living.

Taken for what they are, they all have value. But in the end, all of these “methods” are just different lenses through which to view a larger reality.

Restricting yourself to any one of them is madness.

Keep thinking……

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The 690Gym.com hosting the US Martial Arts Team tryouts for the 2010 World Martial Arts Games. Myself, Brandon Jones and Dennis Haggard teaching Sambo and Boxing.

www.flowcoach.tv,
Scott Sonnon

Friend me on Facebook,
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a2a_linkname=”690Gym.com MMA Boxing and Sambo”;a2a_linkurl=”http://www.rmaxinternational.com/flowcoach/?p=694″;

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I just got back from speaking at the NSCA Personal Trainers Conference in Las Vegas, so I’m a bit short on content as I play catch-up now that I’m back in Boston.  Luckily, Bill Hartman put together an excellent two-part series on femoral anteversion as it relates to hip mobility.  Check them out:
Hip Mobility: Femoral [...]
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Well some studies just make you go “eh?”

Exercise dependence and the drive for muscularity in male bodybuilders, power lifters, and fitness lifters.

Researchers have hypothesized differences in exercise dependence and drive for muscularity between bodybuilders and power lifters, while others have not found the predicted differences. This study assessed 146 weight lifters (bodybuilders, n=59; power lifters, n=47; fitness lifters, n=40) on the Exercise Dependence Scale, Bodybuilding Dependence Scale, and the Drive for Muscularity Scale. Results showed that bodybuilders and power lifters were significantly higher than fitness lifters on EDS Total, 7 EDS scales, and the 3 BDS scales. In contrast, power lifters were found to be significantly higher on DMS Total and DMS Behavior scales than bodybuilders. The regression results suggest that exercise dependence may be directly related to the drive for muscularity.

First of all it is surprising that there are three scales:

• Exercise Dependence;
• Bodybuilding Dependence; and
• Drive for Muscularity.

So the more muscular you want to be, the more addicted you are to exercise. No real surprise, but it does make you think about how much exercise is driven by body image…. It is like Keith Thomas said about body image, in the context of Americans, but I think it is generally true about Britain too:

American popular culture, more than any other, is obsessed with body shape and images on American websites are generally representations of the website owner’s ideal or of people in progress along a before and after sequence. One of the most popular search terms which brings people to my website is ‘ideal male body shape’, but they’ll be disappointed to find uninspiring but honest pictures of me there – plus a critical discussion of the recent obsession with male body shape.

I am all for looking good but surely there is more to it …… like health?

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When we were seven, my friends and I loved to eat spinach. Not because we liked the taste. God no. Raw spinach tasted like, well, leaves, and the goop we’d spoon out of the can was vile, smelly stuff. No, we ate spinach because Popeye ate spinach.
It made him instantly muscular and [...]
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So, it seems (for overweight women)

• Resistance exercise in combination with a ketogenic diet reduces body fat without significantly changing Lean body mass (LBM)
• Resistance exercise on a regular diet may increase LBM without significantly affecting fat mass.

So to lose fat and maintain muscle do weights on a low carb diet?

The full text is available:

Resistance training in overweight women on a ketogenic diet conserved lean body mass while reducing body fat

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