Having watched the DVD a few times, I decided I’d tweak my own training programme now and incorporate some of the lessons learned from the DVD.  

The two main lessons I learned from the DVD were:

1. If it’s important, do it everyday
2. Focus on Janda’s phasic and tonic muscles for long-term health

So, let’s have a look at what I’m going to do about it…

***

#1: If it’s important, do it everyday

While talking about this, Dan also discusses the importance of training movements and not muscles.  So I came away with the idea that since I am concerned for long-term health reasons to have full facility of movement in my old age, I should be doing the basic movements everyday.

Now, Dan is at pains to point out that you don’t have to train the movements under heavy load everyday, you should just make sure you do the movements everyday.  I like this idea, as it doesn’t take long to pull together a few targeted warm ups that cover all the bases.

This is my current workout plan, based on a five-day split.  It started out as a full six-day split based on the DC training model of push-pull-legs-rest-push-pull-legs.  I then modified it to take out one of my pulling sessions because my body just doesn’t recover fast enough to make bi-weekly gains on pull ups.

So, as you can see, there are some big holes that need filling when it comes to covering all of the bases, especially on my pull and push days!  So, in the last week or so, I’ve been playing around with the following warm-up, using two sets of a few reps or one stretch on each side as appropriate.  It’s not a lot but I feel that it is making a different to my overall movement quality.

1. Goblet squat with kettlebell
2. Lunge stretch
3. One leg RDL
4. Press up
5. Inverted row

Now, the eagle-eyed amongst you will note that I have not included anything in respect of twist or gait.  For the twist, I still haven’t got my head around how this might be best trained.  I am still doing my own research.  I suspect I may come down on the anti-rotation side of the argument, which could be interesting.  As an aside, one of the most challenging anti-rotation drills I have done is the one-arm pull up…

***

#2: Focus on Janda’s phasic and tonic muscles for long-term health

Dan made a number of interesting comments about training on the back of a discussion about Janda’s phasic and tonic muscles, as follows:

• Phasic muscles get weak and so we should train them as fast twitch muscle fibres
• Tonic muscles get tight and so we should stretch them everyday

What are the phasic and tonic muscles, you ask?  Well, there is a long list but here is the table that Dan puts up on the board:

Now, I think I probably train everything as fast twitch muscle fibres so I’m probably covered on the first point.  As regards the second point, I think I might be a little lacking.  So I’m going to include the two stretches that Dan suggests after each workout, which focus on the pectorals, biceps and hip flexors.

As I see how they impact on my general movement quality and how I feel, I will do an update. I’ll also be writing more on Janda in due course, probably once I’ve read a book or two…

***

 That’s all folks.  For more on Dan, check out my selection of Dan John articles.

Do you make New Year’s Resolutions or does that aspect of traditional popular culture turn you off?  After all, most people who make them seem to lapse into their previous habits after only 5 or 6 weeks.

One look at the commercial gyms in January tells us how many people make the decision to start exercising as their New Year’s resolution.  One look in the middle of February tells us how many stick to that resolution.  Not many.

But this isn’t a blog for normal people, who do normal things like join commercial gyms on a whim because they are feeling a little chunky around the middle.  This isn’t a blog for people who *really want* to stop eating candy but just can’t seem to stop.  It’s not a blog for people who can’t already take control of their own life and health.

So if we are already taking control of our life and health, does that mean that New Year’s Resolutions are pointless for the dedicated garage gym lifter?

I don’t think so. 

I think that we garage gym lifters have other weaknesses.  We don’t fall into the same traps as the sheeple, this is true.  We have will-power and determination, we have the knowledge of how to achieve our goals.

But I think we still make mistakes and this time of year is as good a time as any to put them right.

 Garage Gym mistakes

These are the pitfalls I think I fall into in my garage gym:

• Not taking time off – as a highly motivated, dedicated garage gym lifter, I can always find an argument to do more work and take less rest.  However, at a point, this become unproductive.
• Not giving a programme enough time to work – I have training ADD and I am always messing with my programme to make it better, while accepting that the lack of consistency is actually making it worse.
• Chasing too many lifting goals – this has been the bane of my lifting experiences in 2010.  I have chased absolute strength goals at the same time as relative strength goals and I have chased fat loss and muscular gain goals too close together.  It doesn’t work.
• Not training with other people enough – I enjoy training on my own but having a lifting partner gives you motivation in the hardest sets.  I have been guilty of wasting a lot of mental and emotional effort psyching myself up when I could be doing it a lot more effectively with a partner.
• Taking too much time in the gym – I can always find a reason to do more in my workouts and, when I see something cool, I’m always looking for a reason to add it in.  This tends to expand my sessions longer than they should be.

Garage Gym New Year’s Resolutions

So my New Year’s Resolutions are going to be:

• Take time off – I’m going to take a couple of days off lifting after each holiday and certainly not squat or deadlift within 5 days of getting back from a long walk.
• Give the Hepburn routine time to work - barring any injury, I am going to run through until 30 June with the Hepburn routines that I have initiated.
• Focus on the press, squat and deadlift – in 2011, I am concentrating on my press, squat and deadlift.  If my other lifts go up (and they should), that will be great, but I’m only going to measure my progress by how much my big lifts improve.
• Train with Anna more – we have already started trying to train together more in the last month or so and it has definitely helped us to push through and make better gains.  We struggle with only one rack and with such different weights but where we can work in together, I think we will.
• Focus on two lifts – for most of my workouts, I am going to focus on just two lifts instead of three.  I’m still going to do three on leg day, as I really value the squat/hip/glute combination I am doing.  This should get me out within the hour.  Also, I’m just going to do five workouts per week instead of six.  This will give me an extra recovery day.

I hope if you make New Year’s Resolutions that they are successful.  I hope that you can look back at the end of the year and see the beneficial effect they have had.

Anyway, a year ago today, I wrote and published the first post, which later became the About page.  It was a welcome to anyone and everyone who decides that the garage is their best hope for a workout, whether that’s for training for a sport, losing weight or getting stronger.

 ***

So how have you managed to rattle on for a whole year?

Well, I’ve talked about lots of different things.  Hopefully, some of them have been interesting.  Here are some of the main categories:

***

Workout routines and training

My own goals have shifted only slightly in the last 12 months.  I’ve solidified my one-arm chin, hit a double-bodyweight chin and dip, pushed my deadlift up to 2.5x bodyweight and benched 100kg for a double.

I’ve tried a number of different training programmes, including total body three times a week, upper/lower split four times a week and legs/push/pull six times a week, high volume: both high reps and low sets and low reps and high sets, maximum effort training, using 5 reps, 3 reps, doubles and singles and Doggcrapp (DC).

I’ve not made all the progress that I wanted but I’ve jumped (most) of the hurdles that have appeared in my way and I’ve got a lot stronger and more muscular into the bargain.  And I’ve learned a lot about how I want to train from now on.

***

Mobility and stability

Mobility and stability have been big for me in the last 12 months.  I had a horrid time with my excessive lumbar lordosis, which was partly caused by sitting too much and partly because of lots of competitive swimming.  I also have a chronic recurring issue with my left shoulder, again caused by too much swimming.  It’s not helped by my desk job either. 

I’ve tried activation drills (of limited use), stretching (marginally helpful), soft tissue work (awesome) and strategic strengthening exercises (critical) to get myself into straighter shape.  I’m much less “S”-shaped now and my overhead pressing movements thank me for it, both in terms of my groove and my abdominal stability.  These days, I do 15 minutes of soft tissue work every single day and I feel so much better for it.

***

Exercises

Blogging has been brilliant for making me try lots of new exercises.  It’s made me get creative about devising new ways of doing things, including how to do glute-ham raises, which proved popular on the RossTraining forums, lumberjack squats, zercher squats, floor presses and viking presses.

***

Cardio

I don’t blog much about cardio because it’s fairly easy to get right.  Don’t do too much and don’t go too hard being the general rule… Anyway, during the last 12 months I’ve experimented with various types of cardio to help with the odd fat-stripping session, which allows me to spend most of the rest of the year eating…

***

Diet

I performed my first successful mass-gaining phase this year and gained just over 20lbs of scale-weight.  Unfortunately, I hurt my left shoulder just after finishing and lost a bit of upper body mass as I cut down again.  Ultimately, I think I managed to keep 10lbs of lean mass, which I wasn’t disappointed with.  I don’t think I’ll go all out for it again.  I’m going for a slower and steadier approach now.

***

Homemade gym equipment

I spent a fair bit of the summer banging around in the garden making bits of homemade gym kit.  Most ambitious was my sled, which I have used for pushes and pulls (which I prefer – I see myself as more like a miniature Jouka Ahola than any of the really big dudes).  However, I’ve also really enjoyed my farmers’ walk bars, my thick bar and my sandbag.

***

World’s Strongest Man

I was given the World’s Strongest Man 1980-1989 and 1990- 1999 for Christmas and I reviewed them in detail.  It was an amazing learning experience to see what the human body is capable of and the kind of strength that it is possible to attain.

***

Oldtime strongman

At some point in the year, I discovered the oldtime strongman resources that have been made available to us on the internet and I set out on a crusade to detail who they were and what we knew about them. 

***

Book reviews

Recently, I decided to start reviewing a book every Monday, which gives me the weekend to read it, if I haven’t already.  I started out with the amazing Biomarkers, which really made me sit up.  Since then, I’ve worked my way along my bookshelf, reviewing anything and everything training related that I can lay my hands on.

***

Personal Training resources

And finally, just in the last few weeks, I decided to take things further and get qualified as a personal trainer.  Please join me this coming year as I learn what I need to know to get myself qualified and set out on the next phase of my understanding of this strange thing we do… training.

You can read more about my journey towards being a personal trainer at my personal training page.

***

What is total fitness?

Total fitness is defined as everything that affects the overall health of a person.  This includes the mental, emotional, social and spiritual aspects of our (human) beings.  Some may scoff at the broadness of this definition but I was actually quite pleased to see all of these aspects considered.

Why is that?  Well, I’m not about to go all Paul Chek on you but I have a healthy respect for the interplay between the mind and the body.  At university, I read a little psychology and I was always impressed by the revelation that only a few decades before I started my course, it was widely mocked in scientific circles that a psychological stress could have a physiological impact.

However, it is now well-documented that stress can cause a reduction in the capability of the immune system.  Science did a complete u-turn in a matter of a few years.  And we keep learning more about this interplay between mind and body.  Conditioning Research posted a link only recently to a study that has demonstrated how stress makes you sore.  I can barely get my head around that.  Let me try and understand, someone can be rude to me at work and that could make me recover slower from my workout?  Amazing. 

We could be only on the edge of our understanding of how the mind and the body interrelate.

***

So what makes up total fitness?

Well, I made up this pictogram to show you:

As you can see, physical fitness is just a small part of total fitness.  Physical fitness can be broken down into smaller subdivisions (see below).  The other components of total fitness are as follows: 

• Medical fitness is defined as simply the absence of illness, injury or medication.  I guess some powerlifters would put it as “there is no such thing as strong but injured, strong but fatigued or strong but sick.  There are only strong and weak.”
• Nutritional fitness refers to the level of nourishment enjoyed and assesses whether the nutritional needs of an individual are being met.  I would add that there is definitely a difference between nutrition and calories.  Most people seem to get too little of the former and too much of the latter.  You can be obese and malnourished.
• Emotional fitness is the ability to manage the mental pressures of life.  I like this one because I have seen people make great gains when they are mentally in the right place but make little or no gains (with a lot of effort) when they are not.
• Social fitness is the ability of the organism to fit in within its community.  We are social animals and I think we underestimate just how big a role society and community play in making us healthy.
• Spiritual fitness is the extent to which the organism lives according to its values.  If you’re a people person and you’re doing an analyst’s job then you’re probably not achieving this goal.

Criticisms: I had the following criticisms of this analysis:

• Medical fitness is only as precise as medical science at the present time.  Given our track record on observing the effects of stress on mammals, you have to think that we’re not as clever as we think we are…
• Nutritional fitness is largely in the eye of the beholder.  Nutritional fitness will mean completely different things to Loren Cordain, Weston A Price, Brian St Pierre and the UK government

 ***

What’s physical fitness?

Hey, here’s another pictogram:

Physical fitness is analysed through a number of different qualities as shown above.  I’m guessing you don’t need me to explain them, though…

Criticisms: I had the following criticisms of this framework:

• Muscular strength and endurance are at opposing ends of a spectrum that encompasses a wide range of types of strength, power, strength-endurance, endurance-strength and endurance.  So within this framework, hypothetically, maximal strength and long-term endurance could be sound but power could be poor.  I know that’s unlikely but it’s possible.
• Cardiovascular fitness blurs the edge of muscular endurance and is strongly connected to muscle fibre type.  It’s also often developed to the detriment of speed and strength.  I’m also not convinced that cardiovascular fitness exists in isolation of the muscular system to which it is attached (but, hey, I get to learn all about that!).

Ultimately, these categories are just a framework for exploring the concept of fitness and fall a long way short of defining what it really is.

***

Why would you do that?

Well, I work at the sharp end of corporate finance at the moment.  I help people raise debt and equity funding and I help them buy and sell businesses.   For some it would be a dream job and don’t get me wrong, I enjoy doing it.  I just don’t see myself doing it ten years from now.

Late night completions are not uncommon and it’s routine for stressful problems come crawling out of the woodwork like lice during due diligence.  It’s never boring (which is why I got into it in the first place) but it can be pretty hard going.

***

OK, what are you expecting to get out of the qualification?

I am hoping to get:

1. a qualification that will enable me to work formally with people doing what I already enjoy helping people do;
2. a framework of understanding that will help me consolidate what I know about training and broaden my knowledge base; and
3. an idea of where my knowledge gaps are.

***

Point #1: A qualification

I am under no illusions that a personal training qualification is a pass into an industry and not an education.  The education comes with extensive reading, conferring with others and experimenting within the parameters that are available.  I’m actually really excited to be thinking about the whole new arena of learning opportunities that the qualification will open up to me.

Hopefully, Jake will let me learn what I need to…

***

Point #2: A framework

When I was exploring what training provider to use, I emailed my friend Rob Newman for his recommendations and he volunteered that the main benefit of the course was the formalisation of knowledge he mostly already had.

I think that is the main thing that I’m looking for: a framework to hang the knowledge that I already know and to hang knowledge that I want to develop in the future.

I want to understand the broader spectrum of training requirements.  What does that mean? Well, from training myself and Anna (and one or two other willing guinea pigs), I feel that I’ve developed some quite detailed understanding of certain specific areas.  For example, I feel that I have experience of how to:

• ascertain whether someone is very fast-twitch dominant (me) or very slow-twitch dominant (Anna) and programme accordingly in order to develop strength
• take a female trainee from doing no pull ups to being able to do half a dozen
• work up to a one-arm chin without getting tendonosis (or tendonitis, for that matter)
• work on back squat form to get from way, way above parallel down to parallel
• identify common indications of glute weakness and help develop strength there

But there are many things that I do not know how to do.  I have read about many of them but that doesn’t mean I fully understand them because I have never tried them.  For example, I don’t really know how to:

• put together programmes to support specific sports, such as time trial cycling (very popular in my area), rowing, rugby or football
• take the powerlifts above national qualifying levels
• train an obese beginner
• correct for muscular imbalances that I haven’t experienced
• assess someone more generally for weaknesses and immobility

***

Point #3: Knowledge gaps

Finally, I know that there are things that I don’t know that I don’t know.  I would like to make those things fewer.  I want to increase the things that I do know and the things that I know that I don’t know.  Confused?  Here’s Donald Rumsfeld to clarify it for you…:

“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

I love that quote.  I think Mr Rumsfeld is one of the great existential philosophers of our age.  Here he is in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RpSv3HjpEw

***

Here’s to making some of my unknown unknowns into known unknowns.

***

A little background

I wouldn’t describe us as “walkers” compared with the hordes that descend upon the Peak District and the Lake District every weekend between Easter and the end of September.  However, we do seem to rack up a fair weekly mileage.  Thinking about it, in a typical working week, we usually do a mid-week walk of around 5 or 6 miles, a walk on a Sunday morning of between 6 and 8 miles and a couple of walks around the block (1.5 miles) in between.  That’s about 16 miles a week.

On holiday, we usually go trekking and cover 15 or so miles a day in mountainous terrain, such as Scotland or the Alps.  Having said that, we’ve been getting more into the Lake District recently and I feel like we getting to know it well enough now to be able to stay away from the crowds.

When we started going on big trips, we started out using big leather boots but we soon switched to lighter weight fabric ones and then to mid-heel trainers.  Thinking about Vibrams was an extension of this progression in many ways.

***

So why did you wait?

We waited until we were happy with them for a couple of reasons:

• They are quite expensive in the UK (£99 for the model we wanted)
• We had read some conflicting reviews about them
• We had seen cheaper alternatives (albeit without toes) for minimalist footwear
• I am a late-adopter and I hate being part of a bandwagon

***

But you got them in the end?

Yes, we got some in the end.  Here you can see me trialling mine on an 8 mile walk that we did no less than 48 hours after I carried the shoebox in the front door. 

 My new Vibrams: any colour as long as it’s black

***

 And your first impressions are?

My first impressions are just that: first impressions.  I am sure I will feel completely different about them in a few weeks but here goes:

• They are a lot easier to walk in that I had been lead to believe.  I had been expecting to do a little walk in them (say 1.5 miles) and come home feeling like my feet had been run over.  As it was, I did the 1.5 mile walk and barely noticed that I was wearing them.  So I did 8 miles a couple of days later and I did feel them that time.
• Over long distances, they are much more painful on hard surfaces than on softer surfaces.  This is similar to wearing shoes but slightly more marked.  When wearing trainers or walking boots on hard surfaces for extended periods, your feet start to sting and then even once you go back to softer ground, they still hurt.  With Vibrams, the pain was greater on the hard surface but the relief was much greater once back on softer ground too.
• The soles are a lot thinner than I expected.  I had not been expecting to have trouble walking on very stony surfaces.  I felt like a kid at the beach walking down a stony footpath near the end of our 8 mile walk.
• I cannot imagine trying to run in them with my well-worn heel strike.  I would be in bits within a few hundred yards.
• They are a lot warmer than I anticipated.  If you are used to wearing sandals or very light and airy trainers, Vibran KSO’s will probably seem quite hot in the summer.
• The black KSO has the letters “VIBRAM” stitched into the left foot over the big toe knuckle.  Unfortunately, the stitching on the inside rubs slightly against your foot.  Nothing that a bit of climbing tape can’t handle but not great for such an otherwise well-made product.

***

Let me know if you’ve also bought a pair recently or if you’re thinking about it.  Let’s compare notes. 

The Graduate

So what?

Well, until he arrived, I thought I was pretty new to my line of work.  Looking around, I could see plenty of people who have been doing the same thing for a lot longer than me.  Then he turned up, saying, yeah, like I’m 22 and I’ve just graduated, what do I need to know?

Damn, I thought.  I’ve been doing this 10 years already.

Ten years of experience takes a while to relate

I discovered that a few weeks is not long enough to convey 10 years of experience.  So I boiled it down to a few bullet points for him:

1. Decide what you want most
2. Based on (1), have an ultimate career goal
3. Identify role models who have already achieved that goal and learn from them
4. Establish what you are prepared to do to get there… and what you are not
5. Plan your long-term progression
6. Periodically check progress against your ultimate goal
7. Have short-term goals
8. Identify blockers to your short-term goals and remove or go around them
9. Seek advice from people who have faced the same challenges
10. Frequently check progress against your short-term goals
11. If in any doubt, do as you’re told
12. If still in doubt, do what the most trustworthy people are doing
13. If doubt still unresolved, write everything down and proceed… slowly
14. Invest in your skills
15. Invest in your network
16. Invest in your family and friends
17. Keep challenging yourself to try new things
18. Don’t underestimate yourself
19. Don’t forget to take time out to rest and recuperate
20. Lighten up and have fun from time to time… no, really

And then I realised that was quite a good checklist for me when I’m thinking about my training…

Empty Bucket at Punta Del Este by longhorndave

***

I have limited myself to my top ten items.  In ascending order of awesomeness:

1. Complete “Enter the Kettlebell” – as many of you will have spotted by now, I am a very late adopter.  I don’t own a TV (I’m waiting to see how they work out for other people) and I tend to get most of my training advice from people who have been dead for some years.  However, given that kettlebells have now been around for a respectable length of time, I decided to give them a try.  So I recently bought two items that I am hoping will keep me busy over the winter months: a 16kg kettlebell and the book “Enter the Kettlebell”, by Pavel Tsatsouline.  I have every intention of spending October through December working on program minimum (with maybe a few presses here and there).  Then, I intend to work on the secret service snatch test of 200 snatches in 10 minutes with a 24kg kettlebell from January to March.
2. Learn how to walk (barefoot) - continuing in the theme of being a late adopter, I have decided to spend some time this winter getting used to walking in a pair of minimalist shoes i.e. almost barefoot.  The idea being that I should be able to do normal length walks by next summer.  We have spoken to a local stockist of Vibrams and a pair should be winging its way to me very soon.  Email me if you live in the UK and you want his contact details.
3. Do a personal training qualification - so I can take this site to the next level, I have decided to get my personal training qualification.  With a little help from my friend, Rob Newman, I’ve paid my money and I’ve made my choice (N.B. Rob helped with the choice not the money).  I should get through this by next Easter, all being well.
4. Fill out a Large T-Shirt – I am fed up of people not knowing that I lift weights.  I am going to fill out a “large” T-shirt before long if I have to eat an entire cow every day for the next 6 months in order to do it.  Wish me luck (and maybe some anti-indigestion pills).
5. Take a powerlifting class – I really need some technique work to take my powerlifting to a competitive level.  At a bodyweight of 75kg (165lbs), my best ever deadlift of 190kg (425lbs) isn’t pathetic but it’s not really going to make any waves.  And my deadlift is my strong point…
6. Meet Rippetoe’s strength standards – I have read Mark Rippetoe state somewhere that a good target for an average man is to achieve a military press of 200lbs (90kg), a bench press of 300lbs (135kg), a squat of 400lbs (180kg) and a deadlift of 500lbs (225kg).  For me, at 165lbs (75kg) that would be a seriously awesome achievement.  But if I could get my bodyweight up to 90kg (200lbs) then it would be possible.  At least it’s congruent with filling out a large T-shirt…
7. Get a perfect FMS score – I’ve been reading a lot of Gray Cook’s work recently and I am buying into the Functional Movement Screen.  I think that I would like to get a perfect score one day, once I’ve sorted out all of my niggling little issues caused by being chained to a desk all of the time.
8. Compete at lightweight strongman – I really enjoy the strongman workouts that I set up in my back garden but I’m short and I could never get the bodyweight up to compete at a proper strongman competition.  For reference, in height, I think I come up to Rob Russell‘s elbow.  Besides, I’m probably too old to do it even if I wanted to now.  However, lightweight (U90kg) strongman seems to be gathering some pace in the UK and if I can get my press together (I have a core stability limitation that I’m working on at the moment) then I should be able to take part in a year or two once I have some spare time.
9. Qualify for a national competition – I would like to compete at a high level again.  What sport I end up competing at is open to debate at the moment.  The silly thing is that I could rock up to the UK masters swimming nationals tomorrow and not look like I was a novice.  Similarly, I could go to the British Indoor Rowing Championships as a lightweight if I stay at 75kg and produce a decent enough 2,00m race such that I wasn’t too embarassed.  If I have to, I will go back to those sports but I would rather find a strength sport to suit me.   
10. Attempt a record or do something remarkable  – I’d like to get a small measure of immortality by finding a recently uncontested record and having a bash at it.  I guess it will end up being a weighted chin, one-arm chin or orang-utan hang type record: something involving chin ups or pull ups would play to my obsession strengths.  Also, it’s rare for me to go more than a few weeks without dreaming about Jasper Benincasa’s Close To Impossible or John Gill’s one-arm front lever.  You can read about such remarkable feats here (although take some of the reporting with a pinch of salt as they only claim a 110lbs chin for Jack Arnow, which is way too low given his one-arm chinning prowess).

Anybody else care to share?

It’s always fun to take our modern, twenty-first century brains off-line for a while.  It’s enjoyable to pretend that incomprehensible auguries matter and that the entrails of chickens can be used to predict the future.

Graffiti octopus with a hint of Cthulhu – image by cdsessums

 ***

PREDICTIONS FOR THE FITNESS INDUSTRY

For further amusement, then, I thought I would channel my inner psychic octopus and make eight (of course!) predictions for the fitness industry for next year.  I know it’s not really the typical time to make such predictions but we’ll all have forgotten about Paul by Christmas.

Next year, I’ll revisit and see how well it has done.

***

1-3. Fitness programme market shifts

This year has seen a breakthrough in the type of products being offered in the fitness market.  When Adam T Glass issued Grip and Rip, the fitness programme market was changed forever.  It was a tipping point.

Grip and Rip was marketed as the product to end all products, a product geared towards teaching the trainee how to train.  The idea being that if you give someone a fish then you can feed them for a day but if you teach them to fish them you feed them for a lifetime.  At least, until the world runs out of fish but that’s another story.

Markets shift for a reason.  They shift mostly because talented people spot what products are mature in a market, what is missing, and where new products need to go in order to be successful.  The rise of a product that teaches trainees how to train has shifted people’s perception of what a product should be able to achieve.

As always in a mature market, when a ground-breaking new iconoclast comes along, the market leaders get a bit grumpy.  They still have the big fire-power, the big email lists and the largest followings.  In time, however, their new recruits start to tail off.

But with the experience of being the market leaders for a long time comes a reluctance to evolve and they will continue to produce programmes that don’t meet the new expectations.  However, I do believe that they will see a marked reduction in the sale of old-fashioned, programme-based products.

OCTOPUS PREDICTIONS 1-3: I fully expect to see Adam’s Grip and Rip product go from strength to strength.  I expect the number of fitness products released that provide fixed programmes to decrease dramatically.  I expect that other enterprising professionals will start producing products that aim to meet the new perceived need of how to train effectively.

***

4. Bodybuilding for athletes

Several things have been battering away at my subconscious recently that have made me think that athletes are still struggling to gain the muscle mass that they want and that coaches are going to start addressing this with larger priority.  In no particular order:

• In the beginning, they say that bodybuilders, Olympic lifters and strongmen of all kinds trained together in the same facilities and using the same methods.  John Grimek represented the USA at weightlifting in the 1936 Berlin Olympic games, was a fair gymnast and beat Steve Reeves in 1948 at a bodybuilding competition in London.
• In the last couple of years, T-Nation has gone through a number of phases.  Most recently, it has changed direction sharply to reflect a requirement by its readers to include more bodybuilding material.  So what?  you ask.  It’s a bodybuilding site.  Well, yes.  But it’s also one of the main sites that young athletes go to when they are developing.
• A quick glance at the forums today will let you know that the single biggest problem that young people are struggling with is gaining muscle mass.  Where once it was a fairly simple equation of hard work + more food = huge, this seems to have got more difficult in the last few years.
• Some prominent strength coaches and writers, including the noted Charles Poliquin and Dan John, employ methods with their athletes that are difficult to distinguish from bodybuilding.

OCTOPUS PREDICTION 4: I expect to see some sort of reconciliation that brings bodybuilding methods back in from the cold and incorporates them into athletic programmes.

***

5. Paleo Diet going mainstream

In recent years, mainstream nutrition advice has been jumping around all over the place and it’s starting to confuse people.

When I was growing up, there was a fairly strong sense of what was healthy and what was not.  Saturated fat was bad for you.  Cholesterol (i.e. egg yolk) was bad for you.  Too much meat was bad for you.  Wholegrains and fibre were good for you.  Fruit and vegetables were good for you.

Now, people have been exposed the Atkins diet and the idea that fat may not be as bad as previously thought is starting to break into the mainstream.  So-called “good fats” have been identified, eggs have been given a clean bill of health and certain fruits and vegetables (with high antioxidants) have been held up as panaceas for all kinds of ailments.

There is now no real consensus in the press about what constitues a healthy diet.  The communication of nutrition information from scientists to the public is poor and disrupted by food and supplement companies funding their own research and muddying the waters.

There is definitely an opportunity for an enterprising nutritionist to push the simple solution of the Paleo Diet and people will grasp at it willingly because it presents an elegant solution to a mass of confused data.

OCTOPUS PREDICTION 5: At some point, we all know it, the Paleo Diet is going to go mainstream.   

***

6. Resistance training for seniors

In the Western world today, we have brainwashed ourselves into believing that our bodies decay and atrophy as we age.  We see our grandparents and parents gradually wasting away, doing less and less and it convinces us that this is what ageing means.  We are told that we will automatically get worse and worse at our sports and that we will lose muscle and our bones will get brittle.

However, Biomarkers makes it clear that even ageing populations can gain bone and muscle mass through resistance training and that this can reverse what was once thought part of the ageing process.  Yes, ageing does have certain effects.  Notably, the skin gets less elastic and fat deposits are stored differently.  But the loss of muscle mass (and therefore strength and balance) is not one of them.  Loss of muscle mass is caused by inactivity not age.

At some point, some brave soul is going to put their head above the parapet of health and safety and shout that resistance training is the single best thing that seniors can do to fend off the so-called symptoms of old age.  Someone is going to put together a case to convince a willing minority that they can reverse what they thought was the ageing process and become active again.

A minority will embrace it and we will have a revolution of active seniors running around having the time of their lives, while other less adventurous souls look on in envy and horror at what they are missing.

OCTOPUS PREDICTION 6: Someone is going to market a resistance training solution to seniors and a whole generation will suddenly realise that they have been lied to and they didn’t have to let their bodies atrophy like they had been told they would.  (I don’t really believe that this will happen but if a genie could give me one wish tomorrow, it would).

***

7. Computers hurt people

I am starting to realise how much difference the introduction of the computer into workplaces has made to people’s health.  Out of around 100 employees at my workplace, at least 5 have already had some sort of spinal surgery to take out bulging discs.  They had to take several weeks off sick while they had their operations.  It would also not be wide of the mark to say that pretty much everybody has lower cross syndrome.

However, if I look at the recently retired generation who resisted starting to use new-fangled machines during their final years at work, then I see a very different picture.  Despite having spent forty years attached to a desk, they are ramrod straight and have very reasonable posture.  The only thing that has changed is the introduction of computers.

Although there has been an awareness of correct posture in the workplace, nobody in the mainstream press has really hammered home the point that constant computer use leads to chronic postural difficulties.  At some point, there will be a movement to push this knowledge out to the public and not just to the fitness community. 

OCTOPUS PREDICTION 7: the connection between computer usage and spinal ill-health will be made (publicly) and rules and regulations will follow.  Too many sick days are being taken for it to go ignored much longer. 

***

8. Female-specific resistance training

This one is a bit cheeky because I think it is already happening.  As I understand from Anna’s friends, they are already starting to be introduced to resistance training by their personal trainers.  Kettlebells seem to be popular.  I imagine that’s because they don’t look like things that the typical male gym-user would use.

I am also told that women are starting to look for a more shapely look with some definition rather than the super skinny look that was overpoweringly popular until very recently.  Good luck trying to get that look without weights.

However, I still see plenty of women exercising as I’m driving to work in the morning.  They are all jogging or speed-walking.  I’m all in favour of people moving more rather than sitting around but I feel uncomfortable watching them for a couple of reasons:

• I’m not a specialist at gait analysis but even I can see that they are turning in their knees so much that it’s only a matter of time before they get joint pains.  I’m not an anatomy expert but I guess that they have weak glutes from sitting too much.
• They never seem to lose any fat.  I would be really disappointed if I put that amount of effort into getting up really early every morning without seeing any results from it.
• The ones who have been doing it a long time look a bit peeky.  Their muscles look atrophied and I suspect that they probably are setting themselves up in consequence for osteopenia.

OCTOPUS PREDICTION 8: Female-specific resistance training will go mainstream in some shape or form because it is the only thing that can deliver good results in the long-term.

***

Do you agree? Disagree? Let me know in the comments.

When I asked him what he had learned there this time, he replied “it’s not about the tigers and the bears, so don’t worry about them.”

Tiger by Koshyk

Bear by Marshmallow

“What on earth are you talking about?” I asked him.

“Forget, the tigers and bears,” he said.  “I’ve got something else to tell you.”

“What’s that, then?” I asked, feeling confused.

“As you’re going through a project,” he said, “there are always things that you do as a matter of course.”

“Of course,” I quipped.

“Yes,” he frowned.  “As a matter of course.”  He paused a moment.  “Each time you call a client, you might say hello and ask them how they are.  You might tell them something about yourself.  You might engage with them.  Or you might not.”

“OK…” I wondered where this was going.

“And while you’re on the project, you might choose to make yourself accessible to people or you might choose to put them through to voicemail when they call.  You might decide to email someone most of the time because they’re really annoying to talk to in person.  You might copy in not enough people on your round-robin emails or you might copy in too many.”

“So what’s the point?” I asked, feeling like I was about to be ambushed, Seth Godin style.

“It’s the little things that irritate clients and make the move on without telling you,” he said triumphantly.  “It’s not the tigers and the bears, like I told you.”

I groaned.  Ambushed.

“Like tigers and bears, you’ll see the big problems with clients coming miles down the road.  If you mess something up you’ll know about it because they’ll maul you.  It’s the little things, like regular human contact and the personal touch that clients miss.  And they won’t tell you they’re missing until it’s too late.”

Ouch.

OK, so what does that mean for The Garage Gym Online readers?

Tigers and bears are the big issues that we see coming and know we need to do something about:

• Binge drinking
• Eating fast food
• Aligning training with our goals
• Getting enough sleep
• Getting enough recovery
• Eating the right amount of calories 

 But it’s often the little, everyday or unsexy things that we need to keep our eye on.  Those can be things that make a big difference in the long run:

• Shoulder and hip mobility
• Sitting too much
• Eating that biscuit with our morning coffee
• Slouching on the bus in the morning
• Not doing ab work (because squats are enough, right?)
• Deadlifting without warming up properly
• Spending an hour on the internet before bed (it’s research!)

 There must be lots of little things that we overlook because we’re too busy keeping a weather eye out for the tigers and bears.  What do you think?