Category: Training

When I went to college to study exercise physiology, I was taught the rather standard idea that 8-12 repetitions at 75-85% of maximum was the hypertrophy zone.  Essentially this was the training range that would maximize muscle growth.  As you might expect, I took this at face value for quite some time.   And all of that would start to change at some point in the 1990’s.

Olympic Lifting Certification

At some point in the mid 1990’s, I would go to take the USWF Olympic Lifting Level 1 Certification.  Two oddities stand out from that. First was that the guy teaching it told me that his son had studied piano with my mother; and here I was, the son of two musicians taking a training certification.  I have no idea what that means but it must mean something.

The second point, that is actually relevant was that Wes Barnett (then one of the US’s top lifters and hopefuls) was there to demonstrate.… Keep Reading

Continuing from Part 1, I want to address other issues related to the topic of changing exercise technique.  This includes factors that go into deciding whether technique should be changed to begin with which will make up the majority of Part 2.  Finally I’ll give some practical strategies to change technique if you so desire.

Training Age

A factor that I think is often forgotten is the impact of training age and goals in the choice of whether or not to even consider changing someone’s technique.  If you’re unfamiliar with the term, training age refers to how many years someone has been training and this is in contrast to biological age which is who old someone is.  A 24-year-old who has been training since they were 4 has a training age of 20 years,  A 24-year-old who has been training since they were 22 has a training age of 2 years.… Keep Reading

A recent (note: 2011) article in Runner’s World magazine spurred me to write this guide to changing exercise technique.  In brief it looked at some of the recent debate over running form (along with the shoe issue).  Predominantly it was looking at the issue of heel vs. midfoot vs. forefoot strike and whether or not there is some “ideal” running style or technique.  This led into a discussion of whether or not runners should attempt to change their runnign technique.

Unfortunately, in the absence of much real data on optimal running technique or what have you (and anecdote is not data no matter how much people try to make it so), their only real answer to the question of “Should runners change technique?” was “It depends.”  At least they were honest and that’s certainly an answer I can get behind.

Changing Exercise Technique

Now I have no intention of addressing the running technique debate per se here, rather I want to talk more generally since the issue of technique, learning technique, optimal technique and changing technique comes up quite a bit in the training world.… Keep Reading

Even though I originally started out in exercise physiology, I seem to write more about nutrition than training.  For that reason I wanted to put something down on the topic of split routines, more specifically split routine sequencing.

What is a Split Routine?

For those not familiar with the term a split routine is any routine that splits the body into different muscle groups or body parts.    This distinguishes it from full-body routines where the entire body is trained at every workout.

But I don’t just want to write another generic article about split routines and how to set them up. There are plenty of those around already.  Rather, I want want to talk about an issue regarding split routines that I think is often overlooked which has to do with the sequencing of the actual workouts within a week and some issues that can crop up if people don’t take certain things into account.… Keep Reading

Today, I want to look at the issue of setting exercise intensity in the context of aerobic work, interval training and weight training.  It’s something I’ve been meaning to write about for a while (I think I actually started an article on it years ago) I have included it in other books (notably the Stubborn Fat Solution) and it is going in The Women’s Book.

Setting Aerobic Exercise Intensity

Traditionally, the intensity of aerobic exercise has been set with heart rate. The typical first step was to estimate maximum heart rate and an old equation of 220 minus age is commonly used. This equation was developed decades ago on a small sample of men and a better equation for women would be 227 minus age in the first place. But the problem is that maximum heart rate can deviate enormously from this value.

That maximum heart rate was then multiplied by various percentages (such as 60-75%) to set training ranges for aerobic activity.… Keep Reading