Hope you’re enjoying your weekend!
This week’s edition has a ton of great new info:
The Angry Coaches: This is How Coaches Are Making it IMPOSSIBLE For Their Clients to Lose Weight!
Dieting does NOT need to be complex.
Your clients do NOT need to know about hormonal responses, chemical reactions, etc.
It’s irrelevant and will do NOTHING to help them achieve their goals.
Stick to the basics. Teach your clients how to make better food choices, eat appropriate portion sizes, and create a healthy lifestyle for future success.
All of this can be accomplished with simple, basic, and actionable steps.
The fancy terminology and other jargon is useless. Save it for the text books and research reviews.
Strength Tips
Monday: Choose your assistance movements based on what you need to work on.
Identify your weaknesses and sticking points and choose accessory exercises based on that.
Don’t choose your assistance work at random or based on what others are doing.
If you’re bench is weak off the chest, choose exercises like paused bench and pin presses to work on your sticking points. Don’t do a ton of board pressing because you see someone else doing it.
Learn from others, but make sure you address your specific weaknesses. Learn how to target and improve your own sticking points.
Tuesday: Quick tip for keeping your upper back tight during the bench press.
I’ve always struggled with the cue, “pinch your shoulder blades together”.
To me, that meant pinch my upper traps together. When you do this, it’s very hard to keep your lats tight and get any use out of them.
Try thinking about “tucking your shoulder blades into your back pockets”. This will keep your upper back tight and allows you to flex your lats and use them to pull the bar to your sternum.
This will build tension during the descent of the bench, which will give you nice a “pop” off the chest.
Wednesday:
Deadlift: 5 X 4 @ 475
DL from below knees vs short monster mini’s and short light bands: 245 X 15 X 3
GHR: 3 X 8 w/ DB Shrug: 3 X 25 @ 50
Ab wheel iso hold for 10 seconds X 3
Thursday: Master the squat, bench and deadlift.
Training the big three lifts is one of the most important things you can do as a powerlifter. It should be the primary focus of your training.
Try not to get too caught up worrying about choosing the perfect variations and assistance exercises before learning to perfect your squat, bench and deadlift technique.
Friday: “Either I will find a way, or I will make one.”
Recommended Readings
1) The cost of getting lean: Is it really worth the trade-off? via Ryan D Andrews & Brian St. Pierre
2) Personal Training: 4 Principles of Exercise Selection via Nick Tumminello
3) How to Lose via Jen Sinkler
4) 10 Things a Personal Trainer Needs to Know About Kettlebells via Neghar Fonooni
5) The Truth About Soreness via Christian Thibaudeau
6) Random Thoughts on Sports Performance Training – Installment 7 via Eric Cressey
7) Low Hanging Fruit and the Small Steps with Big Payoffs via Dean Somerset
8) 3 Isometric Exercises You Should Be Doing via Mike Perry
9) The Truth Is… Maybe You Just Suck? via Bryan Krahn
10) My Diet Home Base via Tony Gentilcore
11) Client Behavior Change (Understanding the transtheoretical model) via Mark Young
12) 3 Tips for Faster Strength Gains via Bret Contreras
13) The Lost Art of Self-Monitoring viaMike Samuels
14) Athletic > Aesthetic via Stacey Schaedler
15) 10 Rules of the Insanely Strong via Matt Kroc
