Exercises: Single leg squat

One of the most commonly prescribed and most popular rehabilitation and injury prevention exercises to improve stability and functional strength is the Single Leg Squat. This exercise strongly develops the quadriceps and gluteals, with a complimentary boost to the hamstrings. It’s an excellent exercise for runners and triathletes because it stimulates the running movement.

Lifting less weight more times is just as effective at building muscle as training with heavy weights

Lifting less weight more times is just as effective at building muscle as training with heavy weights, a finding by McMaster researchers that turns conventional wisdom on its head.

The key to muscle gain, say the researchers, is working to the point of fatigue.

“We found that loads that were quite heavy and comparatively light were equally effective at inducing muscle growth and promoting strength,” says Cam Mitchell, one of the lead authors of the study and a PhD candidate in the Department of Kinesiology.

The research, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, challenges the widely accepted dogma that training with heavy weights — which can be lifted only six to 12 times before fatigue — is the best avenue to muscle growth.

“Many older adults can have joint problems which would prevent them training with heavy loads,” says Mitchell. “This study shows that they have the option of training with lighter and less intimidating loads and can still receive the benefits.”

For the study, a series of experiments were conducted on healthy, young male volunteers to measure how their leg muscles reacted to different forms of resistance training over a period of 10 weeks.

The researchers first determined the maximum weight each subject could lift one time in a knee extension. Each subject was assigned to a different training program for each leg.

In all, three different programs were used in combinations that required the volunteers to complete sets of as many repetitions as possible with their assigned loads — typically eight to 12 times per set at the heaviest weights and 25-30 times at the lowest weights.

The three programs used in the combinations were:

1. one set at 80% of the maximum load
2. three sets at 80% of the maximum
3. three sets at 30% of the maximum

After 10 weeks of training, three times per week, the heavy and light groups that lifted three sets saw significant gains in muscle volume — as measured by MRI — with no difference among the groups. Still, the group that used heavier weights for three sets developed a bit more strength.

The group that trained for a single set showed approximately half the increase in muscle size seen in both the heavy and light groups.

“The complexity of current resistance training guidelines may deter some people from resistance training and therefore from receiving the associated health benefits,” says Stuart Phillips, a professor in the Department of Kinesiology and supervisor of the study. “Our study provides evidence for a simpler paradigm, where a much broader range of loads including quite light loads can induce muscle growth, provided it is lifted to the point where it is difficult to maintain good form.”

Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by McMaster University, via Newswise.

Strength Training: Benefits for Endurance Athletes

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Reposted by Trifuel

The topic of strength training in endurance sports is always a controversial one, with some coaches avoiding it at all costs and others praising it as the key to success. ironguides coach Alun “Woody” Woodward explains why and how strength training can be an extremely effective tool for endurance athletes.

The topic of strength training in endurance sports is always a controversial one, with some coaches avoiding it at all costs and others praising it as the key to success. Over the past few years strength training has really started to make a big comeback; almost every magazine dedicated to endurance sports will have a section on strength training. Articles in this section always relay the same message: functional exercises are the only type of strength work that will benefit endurance athletes.

Functional exercises are essentially movements that follow the movement patterns used in sport—they don’t work muscles in isolation. These typical articles predominantly look at exercises that involve the legs such as dead lifts, squats, split squats, one legged squats, and so on.

While these exercises are great, they are also extremely demanding and require a lot of recovery, which can significantly impact our sport-specific work.

This approach, I believe, is looking at strength training in the wrong way. Yes, we need strong legs to perform our sport but we must consider what we, as endurance athletes, need exactly from strength training in order to improve our performance.

The key things I am looking for when designing a strength program are:

• Stressing the central nervous system to stimulate hormone release.
• Improving core strength.
• Recruiting muscle fibres.

These are the 3 main benefits of a strength program; I will go through each one in this article and show how it will bolster your training.

1 – STRESSING THE CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM

When we perform strength training with heavy weights that force us to use a large amount of muscle mass and we also add an element of balance to activate our core, then we stress our central nervous system.

The load we have placed on the body is above normal, safe levels and the body does not like this. As a result, it tries to get stronger, which it does by releasing growth hormone and targeting strength in ALL the muscles activated.

This has numerous benefits for an endurance athlete, including that core strength is increased which I will go into more below.

The key, however, is the hormone release; our bodies are ruled by hormones. The more growth hormone we have circulating in our body, the more we can maintain or build muscle mass and burn fat. Reducing body fat is a great way to improve endurance performance.

Most athletes, though, will straight away fear lifting heavy weights, as we fear building muscle, and the associated weight gain. In reality, endurance athletes like us are never in such an anabolic (i.e. build-up) state that we’d be able to do this.

As endurance athletes, we use the increase in anabolic hormone production to counteract the negative catabolic (breakdown) effect of hard endurance training and to keep our bodies healthy and balanced.

Conventional wisdom tells us that endurance training will make us healthy and lean but the reality is that this alone is not the key. Watch any big-city marathon or major ironman event to see a fair proportion of athletes competing with excess body fat, despite extreme and hard endurance training.

The reason that larger endurance athletes remain heavy is almost always that the body is not balanced; adding some heavy conditioning training to their program would help them get leaner and improve body composition, and so performance.

Exercises

While leg exercises may be the most effective for stimulating hormone response, they are also very damaging and can affect our endurance training consistency, as I mentioned above. I prefer exercises that focus on the upper body and core. My favourite exercises are:

• Standing Military Press – Perform 3 x 5 reps at a weight you feel you would fail after 7 reps.
• Chin Ups – Perform 5 sets to one chin up before failure would occur.
• Bench Press – Perform 3x 5 reps at a weight you feel you would fail after 7 reps
• Renegade Rows – 5 x 5 slow and controlled repetitions.

Next time you’re feeling drained and are really suffering in training, go to the gym to perform a routine such as the above—you will be amazed at how energized you feel the next day.

2 – IMPROVING CORE STRENGTH

Core strength has been a major topic for a while now and we have seen many fitness inventions come to the market claiming to increase core strength. Many people believe that core strength is about doing 100s of sit ups, crunches and balancing on gym balls—while, in fact, the opposite is true.

True core strength is the ability of the core muscles to hold your body in a strong stance protecting your spine and allowing your major muscles to work more effectively in performing their task. If we have a strong core, we will move very efficiently and so save energy for any given activity—this is the key to performance in endurance events.

If we watch videos of the greats in our sport, such as Craig Alexander, we notice that their movement looks so easy and relaxed despite the speed and effort they are putting out. This is all due to a strong core and, essentially, movement efficiency.

As endurance athletes we look at the likes of Alexander, Chrissie Wellington, and the great runner Haile Gebrselassie, and we believe that their huge training volume is the key to their success. We may focus on Gebrselassie running 200km a week but we don’t recognize the other work he is doing—the time he spends in the gym to ensure he can maintain his great technique when tired.

Wellington has commented many times on the strength and core conditioning work she does in the gym with Dave Scott and how important it has been to her continued development.

So what exercises are core strength exercises? Well, they are the same exercises I outlined above. The military press is one of my absolute favourite exercises because you need your full abdominal muscles and glutes to be tight and activated to perform it. You will notice after a few reps that it’s not really the shoulders that are giving out, it’s your core that starts shaking first!

Push ups are a great core exercise, again as you need your full abdominals activated. Most athletes, on completing push ups after a layoff, will notice stomach pain the next day, rather than chest and shoulder soreness.

Pull ups also are an amazing core exercise. It has been said that 90% of the population, and also many top athletes, are unable to do these. That’s because you need good body position to be able to get into position for the correct muscles to work to lift up the body and the only way to get into this position is by having an extremely strong core.

I do not believe in separate core routines as I think they should be part of the strength program. As endurance athletes we do not have the time to be in the gym four or five times a week so we should get everything we need with two visits per week.

I suggest going through the above routine once a week, and once a week I like to throw in kettlebell work with some body weight exercises. I like a set which I call the 50’s challenge

• 50 pull ups – rest as needed to complete
• 50 kettlebell swings – start with double arm and progress to single arm
• 50 push up walk outs – from a push up position walk hands forwards and then back
• 50 kettlebell clean and press OR 50 kettlebell snatches
• 50 push ups

3- RECRUITING MUSCLE FIBRES

This is a key area where we can improve endurance performance. When we perform endurance exercise we tend to use a very, very small proportion of our muscle fibres. Typically we use as little as 20% of our quads, for example, when riding and we always use these same fibres every session. As a result, our other muscle fibres are not used to working and when our working fibres get fatigued, the body has nowhere to go and so we slow down.

One area of training that is coming to the fore now is working to improve muscle recruitment. Renato Canova, coach to top Kenyan runners, uses 100-metre max speed hill sprints at the end of easy runs in order to do this, In our ironguides programs we use ALL OUT sprints in the pool and on the bike regularly to do the same, i.e. using a larger proportion of our muscle fibres. By regularly training these muscles, the body has somewhere to go when our normal endurance-trained fibres start to fail.

While sport-specific work is good, I believe we can get an amazing training effect for these fibres in the gym by using isolated muscle machines! While most strength coaches try to avoid these machines at all costs, I think they do have their place in our training programs.

An example is the leg extension machine that isolates the quadriceps. This machine will have an endurance athlete in a lot of pain very quickly as the isolated movement and weight means all muscle fibres are activated straight away and after 8-10 repeats, your legs will be screaming! To get the most out of these exercises, it is important to make the weight heavy so that you can perform around 10-12 repeats before failure. Do not lift so much weight that you fail after 3-5 reps as this will place too much stress on your knee joint. The only machines I use for this work are the leg curl and leg extension.

Summary

Strength training can be an extremely effective tool in your endurance training. Just remember to lift heavy and be specific in what you’re looking to achieve, whether it be specific recovery work, core strength or muscle recruitment training.

Enjoy your training!

12 More Medical Studies About Exercise

The following medical studies will be of interest to those investigating the health benefits of productive exercise. Many of these studies also highlight the substantial benefits of strength training and of brief workouts.

 

Exercise Reverses Aging In Human Skeletal Muscle
Buck Institute for Age Research study gives credence to the value of exercise, not only as a means of improving health, but of reversing the aging process itself.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070522210936.htm

Changes in Lipid and Lipoprotein Levels After Weight Training
Both men and women reduced their cholesterol and triglyceride levels by weightlifting for 16 weeks.
http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/252/4/504

Brief, Intense Exercise Can Benefit The Heart
McMaster University study found that six weeks of intense sprint interval exercise training improves the structure and function of arteries as much as traditional and longer endurance exercise with larger time commitment.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080604101529.htm

 

‘No Time To Exercise’ Is No Excuse
The Journal of Physiology article shows that short bursts of very intense exercise — equivalent to only a few minutes per day — can produce the same results as traditional endurance training.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/09/060918142456.htm

 

For Insulin Sensitive Overweight Patients, One Session Of Exercise Improves Metabolic Health
This study shows that even a single bout of exercise helps obese individuals increase their body’s fat-burning rate and improve their metabolic health.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080925072428.htm

Varying Weight Training Intensity Increases Growth Hormone In Women
Women need to have heavy loading cycle or workout in their resistance training routines, as it helps to build muscle and bone.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061201105951.htm

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Articles highlighting multitude of exercise benefits, particularly in older adults.
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/physical/growing_stronger/why.htm

Best Bet For Boosting Brawn In Women Is Traditional Strength Training
Ohio University study of women shows the greater benefits of shorter, heavier workouts over longer, lighter workouts.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080520210700.htm

 

Weight Training Reduces Fat And Improve Metabolism In Mice
Boston University researchers demonstrated that an increase in type II muscle mass can reduce body fat which in turn reduces overall body mass and improves metabolic parameters such as insulin resistance.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/080205121740.htm

Journal of Applied Physiology – reference to studies of Morpurgo, Petow and Seibert
Muscle hypertrophy (enlargement) is caused by more work per unit of time, whereas total the total work done was without importance.
http://jap.physiology.org/cgi/pdf_extract/71/1/372

 

Both Aerobic And Resistance Exercise Improved Blood Sugar Control In People With Diabetes
The group that did both kinds of exercise had about twice as much improvement as either other group alone.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070917173157.htm

Moderate Exercise Yields Big Benefits
Studies have shown that simply walking at a brisk pace for 30 minutes or more on most days can lead to significant health improvements.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080104123421.htm

Leg Strength Test

The Wall Squat is a very simple but effective exercise to test the strength of the leg muscles, namely those of the quadriceps (upper thigh).

Prior to performing the wall squat leg strength test exercise, it’s worth doing a few minutes of warm up exercises and stretches.

As an example a man who is 43 years old, stayed in the squat position for 29 seconds. According to the chart, this would rate his leg strength as average.

Always remember to record your results so that you can monitor your progression.

Its good to perform this test with a partner who can assist with both timing and encouragement. At the same time your partner can make sure that your keeping good technique with your legs maintaining a 90 degree bend and your back fully against the wall.

On completion of this exercise, you may find it difficulty to stand, so either get your partner to help, or have a chair or suitable object to help you upright.

Spend a few minutes simply walking around so that you can get the blood flowing smoothly back through your legs before finishing with some simple Quadriceps Stretches.

MEN	POOR	AVG	GOOD	EXCEL’T
18 – 35	< 25	26 / 45	46 / 1 MIN	1 MIN +
35 – 50	<20	21 / 35	36 / 50	51 SECS +
50+	<15	16 / 30	31 / 40	41 SECS +

WOMEN	POOR	AVG	GOOD	EXCEL’T
18 – 35	<20	21 / 40	41 / 1 MIN	1 MIN +
35 – 50	<18	19 / 35	36 / 45	46 SECS +
50+	<14	15 / 30	31 / 40	41 SECS +

Upper Body Strength Test

This upper body strength test should be performed to help you see how your current training program is helping you achieve your desired goal – namely to increase upper body strength.

Men should aim to do the upper body test, with a full press-up and women either box or 3/4 press-ups. If you need to use another method, if you don’t have the strength to perform a full press up, this will influence your scoring.

Remember to always perform this test, working within your own limits, and record both the method that you used, and the number of repetitions that you achieved in 1 minute.

Always warm up your upper body muscles and give them a good stretch prior to performing this test, it may only be a 1 minute workout but you will certainly feel sore the following day if you forget to stretch.

As you become fitter you may decide to change your press up style, for example go from a 3/4 press up to a full press up, however you will clearly do less repetitions when you make the exercise harder.

If possible try and get someone to count the repetitions for you, making sure that only the good reps count – its easy as you become tired not to lower down as far as your first rep.

Focus on keeping good form throughout, there is nothing wrong with stopping for a few seconds to shake the arms out before continuing.

MEN	POOR	AVG	GOOD	EXCEL’T
18 – 35	< 17	18 / 29	30 / 39	40 +
35 – 50	<12	13 / 20	21 / 30	31 +
50+	<8	9 / 15	16 / 22	23 +

WOMEN	POOR	AVG	GOOD	EXCEL’T
18 – 35	<12	13 / 19	20 / 29	30 +
35 – 50	<10	11 /16	17 / 24	25 +
50+	<8	9 / 13	14 / 20	21 +

Triathlon:Disguise Your Strength Work

By Matt Fitzgerald

Most cycling and triathlon coaches consider strength training an essential component of a sound training regimen. Done right, it enhances cycling performance, reduces injury risk and slows the gradual loss of muscle strength that occurs after age 30.

Despite these benefits, most cyclists and triathletes don’t include strength workouts in their training. Who can blame them? It’s hard enough to fit time-consuming rides between work, family time and household chores. Making time for another type of training just isn’t realistic.

But who says your strength training has to be separate from your on-the-bike training? Not Tim Crowley. A Massachusetts-based coach to 10 elite triathletes, including 2008 Olympian Jarrod Shoemaker, Crowley has come up with creative ways to build strength work into the rides his athletes are already doing. And now you can follow suit.

Enhanced Indoor Intervals

Cyclists and triathletes often classify hill repetitions and high-gear intervals as strength work, but according to Crowley these things don’t truly build strength. “Even in a short, 30-second interval, you’re completing about 50 pedal strokes,” Crowley explains. “You wouldn’t expect to gain any strength from 50 leg presses using a load that is light enough to lift that many times.”

As an alternative to hill repeats, Crowley uses enhanced indoor intervals to develop strength in the context of bike workouts. Instead of pedaling at a low intensity to recover between high-intensity intervals on a stationary bike, hop off the bike and perform one leg exercise, one core exercise and one upper-body exercise. For example, between a warm-up and a cool-down, do 5×3 min at high intensity with a set of box lunges, a set of crunches and a set of pushups after each interval

What About Swimming And Running?

Do open-water paddle sets. “I find paddles are more effective in open water because you don’t have the wall to push off and give you a break,” Crowley says. Alternate 300-yard intervals with and without paddles. If you have a partner, hand off the paddles at the end of each 300.

Run with a drag sled. Crowley uses tire pulls instead of hills to develop specific strength. Make your own drag sled by attaching a 20-foot rope to a car tire. Twist an old bike tire tube into a figure-8 and slip your arms through to create a harness. Tie the other end of the rope to it and you’re ready to go. Run a few sprints of 50–100 meters once a week after an easy run.