You have to watch this!  I've watched it three times already and still get a kick out of it.  Incredible fitness, coordination, agility, balance… you name it!

I've also got some really big news to share with you next week.  Some great things are happening at Athlon REAL SOON.

Click the picture or the link below and enjoy…

http://biertijd.com/mediaplayer/?itemid=22029

Have a great weekend,

Ryan

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Sure, golfers don't need to have cardio abilities like Lance Armstrong but that doesn't mean they shouldn't do a little cardio training now and again!

Here's a good workout "finisher" for you golfers to really get the metabolic system going and burn some body fat…

The Golfing Workout Finisher!

1.  Right rotational medicine ball slams
2.  Rope battling
3.  Left rotational medicine ball slams

:20 seconds as hard as you can go, :20 seconds rest as you transition to the next movement…

Complete the circuit 5 times.

Get in there and BURN some calories!!!

Take a look at athletes today… professional, Olympic, collegiate, even high school athletes.  There's a definite, even dramatic, trend of increasing muscularity in almost every sport.  It's no surprise to see well muscled track and field athletes, huge football and baseball players, and even the female soccer players now look like middle-weight boxers!

Everyone now knows the importance of muscle for sports performance.  Muscle is the engine of your body and typically a bigger engine makes a body go faster.  That said, there IS a limit to that simple equation, "bigger engine, faster performance."  But where is that limit?

WARNING: Veins DO NOT = sports performance…

When it comes to strength training and sports performance there are a few schools of thought, but basically you can boil those down to:

"it works,"  or  "it doesn't work."

The 'traditionalist-hold-outs' that still believe weightlifting "doesn't work"  think that it makes you slow, it adds muscle to your frame without the joint/ligament integrity to support it, and it adds a higher risk of injury to your training program.  They often think that body weight exercises and/or gymnastics exercises are superior for delivering real world strength, or like the wrestlers and MMA guys say, "Mat Strength."

Harder than it looks…

However, the weightlifting-for-sports-performance people say (in a nutshell):

• muscle adds strength and power,
• more strength and power in anything makes you perform better, and
• there is no better way to add muscle and strength than to add "overload" resistance through the use of heavy barbells and dumbbells (and maybe a few other cool things like tires and hammers, etc.)
  

Here's the deal…

They're both right!

Now days there is no question that more muscle mass and strength improves your general fitness, quickness and power.  And pretty much every sport benefits from those improved qualities (even finesse sports like golf).

Even Phil Mickelson has started building muscle…

Just about every university and high school has a weight room for its athletes to train in.  And every professional athlete now spends their off-season weightlifting and improving their STRENGTH and MUSCLE MASS for the upcoming season.

But weightlifting is weightlifting, right?  It's NOT the sport.  You have to get on the field or on the court and learn the strength needed for your sport.  The golfer needs to swing the club and do drills that improve "club swinging strength" on the course, the football player needs to do footwork and agility drills on the field to really improve his "football speed," right?  It's like my old Karate instructor used to say,

"you can't learn to punch unless you throw a punch!"

And unfortunately many athletes these days (especially younger athletes) are making the case for these "non-weightlifting" proponents.  They take up weightlifting to improve their performance but do it ALL WRONG, and hurt themselves and hence their performance in the process!

These novice lifters sacrifice good full range of motion movements to try and lift heavy weight, and fail to properly and slowly progress the amount of weight they're lifting so that they build the tendon and ligament strength as they build the muscle.  This inevitably sets them up for failure.

Are you systematically progressing your resistance training using scientific principles?  Or, are you just going into the gym and lifting heavy weights??  Let us help you know you are doing it right.

If the novice lifter survives this "hap-hazard" strength training program and add a little muscle and strength to their body without an injury they still fail to truly realize the improved sports performance on the field or court because they don't "teach" that new muscle how to move explosively with proper power movements (like Olympic lifting and plyometrics) and correct field drills.  Or they attempt to do some of the "power movements" with horrific form and cause injuries or set themselves up for a guaranteed future injury like the lifter below using bad low back posture.

How is your Olympic lifting technique?  If you're doing plyometrics are you staying within the appropriate number of ground contacts each session?  And then progressing them appropriately (here is a system to proper progression of plyometrics training).

So, back to the question…

Should athletes strength train to improve sports performance or just focus on sport-specific body weight drills for their sport?

John Cortese, our Elite Performance Camp lead trainer, recently finished a literature review of 15 peer-reviewed studies on weightlifting, strength and sports performance and found that improved strength is STONGLY correlated (no pun intended) to faster speed and hence sports performance.  Athletes that had a stronger squat (or even just started doing squats) had significantly greater speed and sports performance power than those that did not.  Heavy squats and heavy power cleans ARE significantly correlated with greater sports performance (e.g., running speed and quickness).

However, his review also found that combining "in-the-gym" strength training with "on-the-field" sports conditioning drills was FAR BETTER for improved sports performance than strength training alone.  And I don't mean just "practicing" your sport like you have to do everyday anyway, I mean real sports performance… body weight drills like form-sprinting, first-step starts, lateral agility, plyometric push-ups, etc.

So the answer IS "both."  An athlete needs to do both strength training using barbells and dumbbells (and tractor tires, and sledgehammers, and ropes, and straps, and chains, etc. like we do at Athlon), and they need to be doing some "body weight" field drills that are appropriate for improving their sports performance.

He said, "it was very obvious from the literature review that following a smart program that included both [strength training and field drills] at varying intensities created the fastest most powerful athletes, hands-down."  

(and the fastest, most powerful athletes are almost always the ones getting their hand raised in victory on the first place podium)

The reason for this is fairly intuitive… just because you add the muscle doesn't mean it automatically knows how to coordinate itself to run faster, or punch harder, or jump higher, etc.  You have to teach that new-found muscle and strength how to properly apply itself in a particular sporting environment or movement pattern.  This is right inline with one of the most common principles of biological systems (and skill improvement) that all physical therapists, personal trainers, strength coaches and physicians understand and use… the "S.A.I.D." principle:

Specific
Adaptation to
Imposed
Demand

"…if you want to learn to punch you have to throw a punch!"

The Take-Home Message

Strength and conditioning in the weight room following sound principles of safety and progression is an absolute must if you want to step on the field and compete with the average athlete these days.  However, you must also incorporate body weight skill training drills into your strength and conditioning program in order to truly realize and increase your performance (and hence realize the TRUE benefit of improved performance, i.e…

Athlon Elite has put together the most comprehensive, effective training program for Athletes in SLO County…

The Elite Performance Camp

Click the link above or go here: www.ElitePerformanceCamp.zreply.com and learn about this program and how it puts together ALL of the components of a performance enhancement program, both "in-the-gym" and "on-the-field" to GUARANTEE you're walking off the field with the "W" EVERY TIME!

Or,

Call us at (805) 440-0215 to get a free consultation about this program and how it WILL help YOU!

Until next time,

Ryan

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Your post holiday workout for Friday…

Athlon Elite will be closed Friday, the day after Thanksgiving.  However, the health club, Athlon Health & Fitness, will be open from 7 AM to 7 PM and below you’ll all have a workout to go in and do to make up for that "holiday glutony!"

Athlon Elite will re-open Saturday for our normal schedule.  Be sure and log-on and sign up for your session on Saturday.  George doesn’t like surprise visitors!!

Have an amazing, festive holiday with your friends, family and loved-ones.

Day After Thanksgiving Workout

1.  Start with 1 min. of front, side & reverse plane holds (planks)

2.  Then do 3 rounds as fast as possible of:

•    10 walking lunges
•    10 push-ups
•    10 jumping pull-ups (or 60 lb. lat pulldown)
•    10 sit-ups

3.  Rest 3 minutes, then finish with 30 minutes of Cardio

1.    10 min Bike
2.    10 min Stair Climber
3.    10 min Run/Jog

**Bonus**
**10 EXTRA minutes of Cardio for every extra serving
**25 EXTRA sit-ups for every alcoholic beverage

Happy Turkey Day!

  Posted by Travis Harwood, CSCS, Lead Personal Trainer at Athlon Elite

Many of you have performed kettlebell or dumbbell swings here at Athlon Elite…

Well the "Kettlebell snatch" is the swing’s very ugly, painful, amazing, cousin!

    The kettlebell snatch is similar to the barbell, or Olympic lifting snatch in hip movement but is very different in action.  While Olyimpic weightlifters intend to lift the highest amount of weight by maximizing efficiency, kettlebellers  use a concept called “Hard Style.”  Hard Style training will make the exercise as physically demanding as possible (sounds fun huh!  As you know, the more challenging your "practice" is the better prepared you will be for game time.)

If you remember from your high school physics class Work= Force x Distance, and in physical activity the more work you perform, the more you have to use your big muscles as well as your small stabilizer muscles to control the "Work."  This leads to a huge training stimulus that will prepare your body for battle.  (Plus, for you athletes needing to trim a little body fat this leads to more calorie consumption to fuel the activity.)

Now where the kettlebell exaggerates "Work" is with torque (torque = force multiplied by the distance of the weight away from the body’s center of mass). So to make a long story short, not only are you moving the weight through a large area of space, but it is getting heavier as you do it; in other words say hello to your new VERY strong core musculature as well as large "mover" muscles… and goodbye to those calories!!!

So, now you’ve heard the calorie burning potential of the kettlebell snatch, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg…

Exercise Scientists have written entire books explaining the benefits of performing explosive, total body activities for the musculoskeletal system and kettlebell training programs.

To hear more about all the benefits of Kettlebell Training and to learn the Swing, Clean, Snatch, Front Squat, Getup, Sit-up, Windmill, Press, Pistol, Pull-up, Single Leg Deadlift, and Single Leg RDL (the movements that almost all professional athletes are starting to use in their training programs)  contact Athlon Elite at (805) 440-0215 or CLICK HERE and schedule a

FREE private consultation with Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo County’s ONLY professionally certified Kettlebell Instructor

Travis M. Harwood CSCS, CPT, RKC!!!

Just because you can’t come into Athlon today, (Labor Day), doesn’t mean you can miss your workout.  You have to stay dedicated to truly create body transformation… or keep the transformation you’ve already created.

Set aside 30 minutes and slam through the workouts below:

"THE BACKYARD"

4 rounds for best time of:

• 10 Cross-over mountain climber push-ups

       (in push-up position touch your right knee to your left elbow and do a push-up, then your left knee to your right elbow, then do another push-up, repeat)

• Tuck Jumps

       Jump for maximum height and tuck your knees to your chest while in flight, then land it and repeat without pause

• 10 T-up Push-ups

       (do a push-up then come up onto one arm in a T position, drop down and do a push-up then go up onto other arm in a T position, repeat)

• 10 Burpees

       (you know this one… if you don’t just Google it and you’ll find millions of examples!)

• 20 Prone back extensions

       (lie face down with your hands laced behind your head, extend your spine and lift your chest as far off the ground as possible without lifting your feet, then return, repeat)

• 20 Walking lunges

       (lunge forward on one leg "kissing" your back knee to the ground, then step forward back to a full standing position, then lunge forward on the opposite leg and repeat)

• 20 Russian twists

       (sitting on the ground with your feet 6 inches off the ground, clasp your hands together and twist your shoulders as far as you can to one side and touch the ground with your hands, then twist to the opposite side, repeat)

• 10 Full Sit-ups

       Just like you did in high school gym class (arms across chest, knees bent)

Work hard and get it done early.  Then relax and enjoy your Holiday.

Here’s some pics from us doing the workout yesterday.  We did it in 19 minutes! (and trust me… I hate burpees just as much as you!)

See you tomorrow…

Cal Poly Football Player Training at Athlon Elite

There are debates amongst the sports performance training community as to whether resisted running, e.g., pulling a sled like the above & below pictures, actually helps improve an athletes sprint performance where it counts, in a game.

Run Dave Run…

Well the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research (a well respected scientific journal) has published a few studies on this topic as of late…

Their findings…

Well, pulling a resistance while trying to sprint changes your mechanics (namely your stride length, which is the distance you travel per step; and your stride frequency, which is how many times you stride in a given period).  No big surprise there, eh?

Some consider this a bad thing.

Rhett pulling a sled too slow!

But, they also found that you definitely experience an "overload" while doing it.

This means the resistance is greater than what it is normally there, thus, you’re body will adapt by improving its ability to tolerate that overload, i.e., get stronger and/or more powerful, build more muscle, etc.

So to the purists that say, "I don’t train with sleds because it changes my mechanics and its training me to move slower," I say…  basketball players do heavy squats to jump higher, right?… yet that’s going to make them move slowly through the jumping motion when they’re doing it, right?  But, after doing them and then "tapering-off" the volume of squats towards their season, they jump through the roof!

Well, the same goes for runners (which is all athletes)

Resisted sledding is going to make an athlete move slower and shorten their strides while pulling it, but it will also force an overload in a position as close to real running as you can get.  That will no doubt have lasting gains in strength and power in that position, leading to a faster athlete when they get to their actual season or event.

You have to realize there’s a time and place to train slower and build a better tolerance to resistance; then there’s a time to train fast and lower the resistance.  It’s called periodization, and we at Athlon Elite are experts in this…

…a real "think-tank" when it comes to this stuff.

There’s no better place in SLO County to get this kind of training.

Check out our Summer Elite Performance Camp at, www.SLOSportsPerformance.com, where you’ll be seeing quite a little bit of sled training.

All the Best,

Ryan

First off, just ignore all these ads you see of super-fit, lean individuals saying they got like this doing eight or ten minute workouts (“and you can too for just three payments of $79.99″).  They’re all ridiculous idiots (as evidenced by the picture above).  The fact is it takes hard work to get a super-fit, lean body.

But, you do have a life, I know… and, you can’t always build that life around coming into Athlon Elite… though we really think you should!

So, when you’re busy and don’t have time for a full 45-60 minute workout here is a quicky that will keep your metabolism going strong and you in shape…

8 Sets as fast as you can go of:

• 20 Kettlebell swings (or a 50 lb dumbell) (use a lighter one if needed but it should be heavy)
  
• 20 Push-ups

Technique:

Kettlebell (or dumbell swings)

Push-ups

And that’s it.  Slam through it as fast as you can and you’re done!