| Your new free download: Stuff about the overhead squat |
| Since you last heard from me I have decided to release eBooks in installments instead of one long one. I don't think it is fair to my subsribers for them to wait around while I complete this thing. Let's face it, I work for a living and I have a great deal of other writing to do so it could take a while. I thought you'd rather receive some information often rather than a lot at some future but undetermined date. I hope I'm right.
To that end this issue of the GUS newsletter comes with a new pdf download concerning the overhead squat, the "deep squat test", motor schema and perceptual schema, and using images to learn lifts. About 30 pages or so considering page breaks. There is some older stuff included here as well as the overhead squat article I have just released called Tweaking the Overhead Squat. However everything has been expanded for my correspondants and most of it is original to this book. I hope it helps and please feel free to share it with your friends |
| What the heck is opening the hips? |
| During the overhead squat discussions I briefly mentiond "opening the hips". You may have heard that phrase before but wondered what it meant. Well it depends on who you ask. A Yogi may spout a lot of very sensible things for instance but then tell you that opening the hips "creates a space that encourages blood flow", which of course is meaningless.
But what the term basically means is the same as hip mobility. In a general sense it is allowing your hips more freedom of movement which should in turn benefit the alignment of your back and help your knees. You've heard all this before I'm sure. One of the major factors in "open hips" regarding general mobility is actually good hip extension. Loosening up tight hip flexors is one of the best things you can do for yourself. When we talk about opening the hips in regards to deep squatting however, we mean all that but specifically we mean allowing the pelvis and sacrum area to get down betweeen the legs. The first part of this letter's free download talks more about that aspect of squatting. |
| Getting Down to the Nitty Gritty |
| Next on the agenda is a series of three posts I wrote that are designed to break down seemingly complicated things to their simple essense.
A Bit About Specificiy and Transfer of Training Effect Defining Stress as Stress and Rest Between Sets Going to the Heart of Things: Break the "Advanced" Mess Down to Its Essence Sometimes we have to decide what applies to us specifically and just how it applies. One of those areas for maximal strength trainees is definitely specificity. Some of the discussions that strength and bodybuilding trainees have about specificity are downright silly. We like to lift heavy things. So what do we strength train for? To improve absolute force development. A Bit About Specificity and Transfer of Training Effect discusses some problems with this in detail. But I would like you to think about the kind of things we worry about regarding specificity. We worry, for instance if push ups help the bench press or vice versa. Specificity is more than the appearance of exericises or even just the specific mechanics. Think about what I said about absolute force production. You want to know the 'rule' of specificity that most strength trainees break? It's not exercise choice. They fail to produce enough force! They don't train heavy enough for various reasons. If GUS has a primary mission it is to teach people how to maximize force production safely (but we try to avoid 'agendas'). The next eBook will go into some of this further so stay tuned for that. You've probably seen plenty of Bruce Lee quotes in strength training articles but I'll bet you've never recieved strength training advice from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Did you know that those two guys are not so different? They thought along much the same lines they just approached it from a different direction. Going to the Heart of Things uses their words to tackle the "advanced training" mess. I put some words of my own in as well. Many people mistake stress for the things that stress them out. Stress is the thing that happens in reaction to our environment and the demands it places on us. The enviroment itself is not "stress". You may not think this distinction is important so that's why I talk about rest periods in Defining Stress as Stress and Rest Between Sets. See also: Should You Eat Fish or is the Risk of Mercury and Other Contaminates too High? Recreational Weight Training Makes You More Prone To Shoulder Injury? |
| Creating that Length! |
| I speak of creating length in the overhead squat article. Most people when they should be creating length are actually creating extension. No I don't mean extending as in lengthening. I mean hyper-extending the joints.
The typical way most try to loosen up their spine and just simply "stretch out" after sitting too long or what have you is the classic back bend. The arms go up and they sort of lean back trying to stretch the front of the body but creating some slack in the back! This is the classic reach for the sky pose except we miss the reaching part. Try this instead: 1. Stand up straight with your hands and arms in a clean position as if you were getting ready to do an overhead press. 2. Try to make your palms face the ceiling and bring your elbows as far forward as possible. 2. Now press your arms up while simultaneously trying to "float" your head by imagining that the top of your head is floating toward the ceiling. Also bring your chest up and attempt to actively lengthen your spine. 3. As you press your arms up bring them to a position over the top of your head just as if you were performing a military press. 4. Once your elbows have fully extended and you have "stretched" your torso and floated you head (I know that sounds silly) shrugh your shoulders so that your scapula elevate and the hands go a bit further up. Now try to lenghthen a bit more. Hold for about 5 seconds. 5. Rinse and repeat. Do this several times throughout the day and get into the habit of doing this stretch when you would normally do the old back bend. |
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