Mobility Vs Flexibility

For the purpose of this post, we are going to define flexibility as the end range of motion a person can reach. For mobility, we’ll define it as the end range of motion a person reach while remaining stable throughout. For example, flexibility is the absolute lowest a person can squat while mobility is the lowest a person can squat while keeping their back flat, their knees out, and all that good stuff. Why does this matter? There is a spectrum from stability to mobility/flexibility. We would like to be balanced in the middle to stay healthy and prevent injuries. Simply put, if we are overly stable then that puts us at risk for muscular injuries, such as pulled muscles, tears, and strains. If we are overly flexible, that puts our joints at risk for ligament tears and sprains. How do we apply this to our training? A progression to stability and balanced mobility must begin with flexibility. We need to first gain the ability to go into a range of motion before we can go there while remaining stable. As a progression, certain stretches and mobility drills are only appropriate for people at a specific stage in the progression. For example, the forward fold is a stage in this progression. This stage involves an overly stable person who lacks the ability to touch his toes. That person’s next step is to gain flexibility in his hamstrings until he can touch his toes while being relaxed. Only after that should the person perform a forward fold with a flat back entirely through a hinge at the waist. If that person tried to maintain a flat back at the start, he would not receive much benefit from the stretch. He must first learn to get there before he can learn how to be stable there.

Importance of Play

The act of play is critical in the development of children and animals. We have a biological need to play. Play occurs when we learn how to manipulate an object or a new movement pattern. During play, we learn the limits of our abilities in a controlled environment. This prepares animals for survival in tough situations where they need to know their limits. Luckily, we live in a time in which we aren’t likely to have to fight a wolf on our way to work. But on a much lighter side, the survival situations animals need to be prepared for can act as an analogy for a competition. Knowing what we are capable of allows for a better strategy and higher levels of confidence going into a workout. If we never play around and try new things, then we will never be able to implement new skills during our training. This fact becomes clear when considering gymnastic skills. We need play to build body awareness to learn the necessary minor adjustments inherent in a handstand walk, muscle up, butterfly pull up, or double under. It’s important that this play takes place in a controlled environment and not on game day. Play works great as a warm up or a cool down or as just a fun challenge between friends. Play is important to make progress, but it’s also flat out fun.     

“Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for a child, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood.” - Mr. Rogers

Breaking a Plateau

Hitting a plateau can be one of the most frustrating things in training. As a beginner, the gains come so fast. You’ll become accustomed to constant progress, but as you become more advanced those PRs are fewer and further between. So, how can we smash through these plateaus? First, we need to identify why are we stuck. Is it a strength, technical, mental, or program issue? For a strength issue, it’s simple. As we become more advanced, we require more training to advance. We need more volume to build the muscle to lift more. This is typically done in a hypertrophy block of training – essentially building our potential for the next block of training. Next up, if there is a technical issue, we can address it with variations of the main lift to specifically target that weak spot. For example, if we get stuck in the bottom of the squat, we can do pause squats to make that position stronger. We could also do quad work to target the muscle responsible for that part of the lift. We wouldn’t want to drastically change technique hoping to see a huge improvement. It’s about small improvements over time. Having a mental block can cause a plateau, usually around a milestone lift (200, 225, 315, 405). My first suggestion here is to treat all reps, regardless of weight, as if it were a max. This will take out the thought of needing to change something to get a PR. You’ll have done it a thousand times. It will also be a great way to get more out of your warm ups by training that speed aspect. Another way to get past mental barriers is to start lifting different weights. This could mean lifting in kilos or just small changes to take away expectations of how the weight should feel. If you always work with 45s and 25s try lifting 390 instead of 405 or 230 instead of 225. For the programming issue, one problem in particular is managing fatigue. As we become more advanced, our training will put a lot more stress on our body. So, we need to dissipate the fatigue before testing. It becomes more important that we are fresh to be able to make a PR, so if you go to test and are stuck at a plateau, look back at your previous week and see if you were fresh going into it. 

When to Test

How often should we test? The simple answer is:  it depends. But probably less often than you think. As a beginner, you can show up and PR pretty much every workout, but that doesn’t last forever. As we get better, progress will come harder, so we need to spend more time building. On top of that we are more likely to have had a good day the last time we PRed, so unless we are peaked and feeling good when we retest, it’s even harder to see that progress show up. Imagine we are building a wall. Our goal is to build it as high as we can. Every day we are laying brick. Every set is adding to that wall. On days we test, we show up to the wall and break out the tape measure, see where we are at, and then go home. No bricks were laid. On days we test, we are not building and our wall doesn’t get any higher. As that wall gets bigger, it will become harder to test. As we become more advanced, testing will require more prep leading up to it and more recovery after. Now instead of not building for that day, it’s weeks of not building to test one time. The goal again is to build the biggest wall possible, so we don’t need to always know where we’re at, just where we’re going. It is important to know where we are to help dictate our training, but we can use indicators to still allow us to build while testing. This can be through rep maxes or variations or even just how it feels. If I see my 5 rep max squat or my power clean goes up then I know I’m getting stronger, and I can keep doing what I’m doing.

Finding a Max

How do we max out? When we max out, we are testing ourselves. In general, the shorter the test the longer we will need to warm up. A one-rep squat will last only a couple seconds and needs a long warm up, as opposed to a marathon, which would require a much shorter warm up. For powerlifting and weightlifting movements, we will get generally warm and then progress up in weight and feel the load. For these movements we will follow the principle of decreasing increases. As we get closer to our max, we will make smaller jumps. To go from 45lbs to 135 lbs is not a big deal, but 315lbs to 405lbs would be a huge jump if 405lbs would be a PR. For powerlifting movements, once we are warmed up we’ll do the weights as fast and as tight as we can. This will progress up fast. For the Olympic Lifts (Snatch, Clean, Jerk), we’ll do a fair amount of empty bar work because the Olympic lifts are far more technical. Even after we are generally warmed up, we will need to dial in the technique with those lighter weights, doing multiple sets with the empty bar and 40kg to 70kg.

10 Rep Max (RM) vs 1 Rep Max (RM)

As we build up for a 1RM, once we warm up and do a few reps with some of the lighter weights, we will build in singles. For a 10RM, we will start off similarly but working with a higher rep range. The key difference is we don’t want to do sets of 10 the entire warm up. That would burn us out for our top set. Use your goal weight and the same process of weight selection. The few sets before your goal weight should just be 1-3 reps to feel the weight. Finding a rep max can make it harder to decide on that goal weight if you don’t have a previous max for that rep number. We could use a max calculator to come up with a goal, or we could go from feel. For example, if you’re finding a 10RM Squat, and your previous 10RM was 275 but that was a year ago, you should be thinking of either 300 lbs or 315lbs. Do 1-3  reps at 275 lbs, then do 1 at 300 lbs. If it felt easy and strong, rack it and go up to 315 lbs and try for 10. If 300lbs felt not as smooth, then complete the remaining 9 reps.

Dealing with Injuries

Injuries suck! As much as we try to avoid injuries, they will happen. Injuries are a part of all sports and fitness. If you’ve never had any, you’re not working hard enough. Injuries are bound to happen when you are toeing the edge and pushing your limits. We are going to talk about what to do when you get hurt. First, you should seek a medical expert. Professional sports teams have team doctors and athletic trainers to help in the prevention and treatment of injuries. You should find people that understand the sport you are in, the needs of the sport, and the stresses that it puts on your body. Ideally they do/ have done it too. Our injuries will vary in severity – from being chronic (“My elbow always bothers me when I snatch”) or acute (“Shit! Something popped”). Dealing with acute injuries is a little clearer – you need to go to a doctor, do rehab, and listen to what they tell you. Simple. But it still sucks. Chronic injuries can be harder to deal with because you can get by with making compromises. Before you know it, you’ve gone six months with not going overhead, squatting to depth, etc. It’s better to have a month of being bored than to have six months of poor training and still be in pain. We can and should train around injuries; we just need to get creative. We can use specialty bars and movement variations that take out the use of the injured body part. If you blow out your knee, you better get rid of that poverty bench. Once we are cleared to get back into regular training, after either an acute or chronic injury, a general phase is needed to build back lost muscle and work capacity. Essentially, we need to do some bodybuilding to become more durable. But it’s not all bad. Recovering from an injury can be a great time to address other issues that you’ve been ignoring.  

Strict Gymnastics as a Base

The height of a pyramid is the width of its base. This is a popular analogy in fitness, and it is used to show that the greater general fitness base an athlete has, the more potential he has in his top-end performance. This is easy to see in weightlifting. If an athlete wants to clean 200 lbs, he needs to first be able to deadlift and squat more than 200 lbs. The higher his base (deadlift and squat), the more potential he will have to clean a heavier weight. In gymnastics, our base is our strict movements. Having stronger strict gymnastics movements will allow us to have more control and be able to adjust ourselves when kipping is inefficient. If we have a stronger base, we also drastically reduce the chance of injury during kipping movements. For example, when we try to learn how to move better for a barbell movement, we use lighter weights. It is much easier to learn barbell movements with a low percentage of our max. When you lift at lighter weights, you are adding to your efficiency by increasing the amount of reps you can lift at higher and higher percentages of your max. As your squat goes up, so will all of your other lifts. People often forget that this same idea carries over to gymnastics. For gymnastics, we don’t get to choose the weight that day. Similarly, as our strict pull up strength grows, our body weight becomes a lower percentage of our max. Your strict pull up strength can be viewed the same as your back squat. If, for instance, you can only manage one strict pull up, you would have to be 100% efficient in kipping muscle ups to be able to perform one, which would be impossible. If you can increase your strict pull up strength, then performing a single muscle up will require a smaller percentage of your strength. When trying to learn or improve on a gymnastic skill, approach it from both sides. Perform strict gymnastic skills while also practicing kipping efficiency – just as weightlifters still squat to increase their base. 

Pull Up Progression

Pull ups are hard. Getting your first pull up may seem impossible, but once it happens, progress gets much faster. Here is a little progression to get better at strict pull ups. Lets start at zero – the furthest away we could be from getting a pull up. We need to build our strength in relationship to our body weight. The first obvious way to improve that ratio is to lose weight, and we can work on that outside of the gym. Oh wow, the answer again is diet and exercise. In the gym, we need to build those pulling muscles. We can do that with any pulling exercise. Try it all. Bent over rows, lat pull down, band pull down, ring rows, T bar row, face pulls, pull up negatives, scapular pull ups, banded pull ups, pull up negatives, jumping pull ups, or anything else along those lines. The main way we build muscle is through time under tension. That means volume – whether it is through reps or time (as in a negative done much slower or a static hold in a position). When we do any of these movements, we should do them for higher reps and with control to get the most out of it. Once we start to build that muscle we need to learn how to use it. Later, we’ll get more specific to the pull up. Performing a chin up will be a little easier than a pull up, so that will come first. Once we can do one strict chin up, awesome, things get much easier from there. We’ll do a bunch of sets of one chin up and accumulate those reps doing one or two a day until we start doing maybe five to ten a day throughout our work out, and before we know it, that adds up to 200 a month. On top of that, we can still continue with the other pulling we were doing. We’ll be able to do more and start doing sets of two or three. We can mix pull ups and chin ups into this as we get better at them. That’s the basic idea – to making progress on pull ups. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated and structured to a T. Just pull a bunch and you’ll get better at pulling. If you can’t seem to make progress, try other variations that you may not have tried before. Along with that, if there is a pulling exercise you don’t like and don’t feel a benefit from, then don’t do it. There are plenty of other exercises out there. Don’t be afraid to keep attempting strict pull ups and failing them each time. You might find you get a little closer until you surprise yourself.

Counting for Olympic Weightlifting

For those of you thinking about doing your first weightlifting meet, you’ll need to learn how to count. Counting for an Olympic lifting meet is critical for timing your warm ups and making sure you’re ready when your name is called and the bar is loaded. For those who don’t know the way a weightlifting meet works, each athlete gets three attempts to snatch as heavy as possible and the three attempts to clean and jerk as heavy as possible. The bar is always going up in weight. You must go when the bar is at the weight that you want to attempt. If two or more athletes want the same weight, the one with the lower attempt will go first. When the bar is loaded, an athlete has one minute to start the lift. If an athlete is following himself, he is given two minutes instead of one. For example, say there are three athletes named A, B, and C (their parents were super weird to name them that), and A is opening at 100 kilos, B is opening at 105 kilos, and C is opening at 115 kilos. The bar is loaded to 100 kilos and A goes first and makes it, and he wants 105 kilos for his 2nd attempt. The bar is then loaded to 105 kilos and since B is on his first attempt, he goes first, followed by A. They both make it, and A goes to 110 kilos and B goes to 112 kilos. They both miss – B missing his 2nd and 3rd attempts at 112 kilos. So, A and B are finished before C has even started. This is why counting is so important. C might have been thinking that two people are before him, and that he would be up in two minutes, but that actually took seven minutes. When there are more people at the meet, this time can add up quickly and you may have 45 minutes before you start. So, to count attempts, you look at the judge’s table and make assumptions about other athletes’ attempts to see when you’ll be up. Each attempt roughly works out to one minute. Now you know when to start warming up and you’ll check back periodically to see if the timing changes and adjust your warm up accordingly. There are a lot of other aspects to “meet day” that deal with the counting system and manipulating attempt selection to be successful, but now you know the basics to get started. 

Weight Ratio

Not all double bodyweight squats are created equal. Someone that weighs 100 lbs and squats 200 lbs is not as impressive as a 200lb person squatting 400lbs. It does not increase linearly. In the 56kg weight class, people have clean and jerked triple bodyweight, but no true super heavy weight has clean and jerked double body weight. For this reason, equations have been made to compare athletes of different weight classes. In powerlifting, it’s called a Wilks, and for weightlifting, it’s called Sinclair. For Wilks, there is a long equation that will give you your Wilks total based on your total of squat, bench, and deadlift using your weight. Sinclair uses your total from snatch and clean and jerk as well as your body weight. Your Sinclair number will tell you how much you would total if you weighed the same as the person holding the world record for highest total ever. But why is the strength to weight ratio not linear? This concept is explained by the Square-Cube law. Put simply, as an object grows, it’s surface area and volume don’t grow at the same rate. A cube that is 1in in height has a surface area of 6in^2 and a volume of 1in^3. If the cube was 10x taller (10in), the surface area increases 100x (600in^2) and the volume increases 1,000x (1,000in^3). So, the volume (the athlete's’ weight) increases much faster than the surface area (cross sectional area of their muscle). This is overly simplified, but it is the core concept that explains why weight ratios don’t scale. They can be great as a goal to get to a bodyweight snatch or a double bodyweight squat, but that means little in comparing or assessing athletes.

Beltless Work

One common idea is that going beltless will help you build core strength. This comes from thinking that the belt is doing the work of stabilizing your core. But all a belt does is give your muscles a cue to push against something to activate the muscle you already have. Going without the belt makes it harder to activate those core muscles. Going beltlesstrains your core differently but not in the way you think. Beltless work still definitely has a purpose. It can be used very well during a deload week or a lighter workout to limit the weight even more. If we are trying to build the best squat possible, we need to train the squat as we would in competition. Practice how you play.

Variation

A common idea in sport is to make practice harder than the game. That works well most of the time, so  it’s often also applied to strength sports like powerlifting, weightlifting, and CrossFit. There are many ways this is usually done, including using a different type of bar, using a different stance, using a variation of the main movement, or by going beltless or wearing different shoes/ bare foot. All of these options can be appropriate in the right circumstance, but for the most part, they are way over-used. We, as lifters, need to become masters of these movements. Any change on the movement makes it a different movement, and it will have slightly less transfer back to the main lift. That’s fine if we use these variations to work on specific parts of the lift. Typically in powerlifting, variations are used to address a weak area of the movement, and in weightlifting, it’s used to address technical issues of the lift. Another great use for lift variations is to give your body some rest by moving less weight than you normally could in the main lift. So, the variations of the movements are very useful, but the main lifts are still the main lifts. The goal is to be a master of the lifts used in competition. Before you go for a three rep max beltless paused sumo stance front squat with reverse bands during high tide with a full moon on a Tuesday, ask yourself if that’s what you’re trying to be good at.