IOL Strength and Conditioning

At first glance, you may think agility training is not for you. That’s sure what I thought the first time I tried it; I’m no athlete and perhaps neither are you. Yet, agility training is hugely beneficial to the non-athlete because not only will the hips become stronger, the ankles will become both more mobile as well as more stable, and overall balance will increase.

After agility training, if you take a stumble over a curb, it’s extremely likely you’ll catch yourself with no more than a second’s hesitation. Without agility, that stumble may become a swollen ankle with a two-month recovery period, and we might even tack on a broken wrist to finish out the picture.

Earlier we learned how to make your own agility ladder. Now let’s figure out how to use it.

Lay out your ladder on a flat surface, outdoors, indoors… wherever you have a little space to move. You’ll be running or jumping through the ladder openings and to the outsides, so make sure you have side-to-side space in addition to ladder length.

You’re looking for light footsteps for quickness and balance, as opposed to an upright jogging style. Lifting your knees higher than normal jogging is going to work your hips in a way you probably haven’t done in awhile, and cutting back and forth between the sides of the ladder will work lateral movement, another lost ability for must of us. Take it easy at first, because you’ll probably be a hurtin’ puppy tomorrow.

Run through your movement prep or activity mobility warm-up before you get near this thing. Include in that some upright walking/running mobility such as toy soldiers, heel kickbacks, high knee runs and the like.

Use your arms – pump your hands and keep your elbows high with your shoulders and hands relaxed. Keep your torso controlled and your head steady.

Examples of basic agility drills

Agility drills can (and should) be done both forward and backward. Repeat the drills, making sure to alternate between the left and right as lead foot. Drills can also be done hopping with both feet held together.

• One ins – run forward, light and low to the ground, one step in each square.
• Two ins – same as above, but stepping twice in each square.
• Hop scotch – One foot in the first square, two feet in the second, and repeat, alternating sides on the single-foot squares.
• Out, Out/In, In - Left foot outside, right foot outside, left foot in square, right foot in square.
• Shuffle – Start at the left side, step into the first box with your right foot, then with the left. Shift your weight so you can stop out to the right side with your right foot, then step into the second square with your left foot and head back to the left. Think in-in-out, in-in-out and you’ll get it.
• Shuffle.Stick – This is done the same as the shuffle above, only you’ll “stick” in place on the outside step before shifting off in the opposite direction.
• Lateral feet – Step twice in the first square (left/right), then twice outside the first square toward the right (L/R). Step twice in the second square (L/R), then twice outside the second square toward the left of the ladder (L/R). Continue forward through the ladder, then repeat, changing the lead foot to right/left.
• Lateral Shuffles – Turn to the side and shuffle through the ladder to the right. Repeat the shuffle to the left.

What you’re working on with agility ladder training is control of your feet using your hip strength, as opposed to more leg and glute strength as seen in the momentum of forward full-stride running. At the same time we’ll be cutting from side to side, working the lateral hip muscles, as well as sticking in place to practice stability and deceleration with the landings.

Here’s a link to some quicktime movie clips of agility ladder drills from University of the Pacific.

At last weekend’s Power Systems strength and conditioning workshop, Jay Dawes did a session “Developing Total Athleticism,” which included about an hour on agility ladder drills. This part was an audience participation bit, and being a bit of a klutz I seriously considered standing to the side as the rest of the hundred or so personal trainers went through the ladder training.

I was startled to discover how fun it was, and that I wasn’t quite as terrible at it as expected. Heck, I didn’t even fall! So, after the session I popped over to the Power Systems sales booth to pick up an agility ladder just for the fun of it. What’s twenty bucks, right?

Wrong. Those things cost $70 and up, and I’m not kidding. I yanked my hand back off that goodie and backed away thinking, jeez, I can make one of these.

Turns out I could. Total cost in money, $5.43. Time invested, about three hours because of fumbling fingers. (Reminder to self: Add finger mobility to joint mobility sessions.)

Here’s how to make an agility ladder for under six bucks.

The material you’ll need is 20 yards of fabric trim and a spool of outdoor canvas thread. The trim needs to have a little heft to it because it needs the weight in order to lay well. Too wispy and your ladder will flutter with the breeze.

Measure out two lengths of 15 feet of the trim. This is your ladder length.

Depending on the material chosen, you may need to address end frill. The trim I got started unraveling at the cut, so instead of simply making cuts, I instead marked the cut and wrapped a piece of scotch tape around it. Then I cut in the middle of the tape, making a ravel-proof end on both sides. Cloth athletic tape would have been better, had there been any handy.

Lay the two lengths together, outstretched. Measure 17-inch lengths, beginning the measurements 3-4 inches from the end, and mark both lengths with a Sharpie. These will be your openings, the ladder boxes.

Cut the remaining yardage in 36-inch strips, again taping before the cuts if there’s any potential for end frill.

Line up the 36-inch strips and mark at the 10-inch and again at the 26-inch points.

How you’ll put the ladder together depends on your work space. Once you have the trim measured and cut, this will make sense and you’ll organize yourself without instruction. I started with the intention of laying the entire piece out and wrapping the joints while in place on the floor, but quickly realized I’d be fully incapable of any agility whatsoever after hunching over the project for the duration.

Using about 20 inches of the canvas thread, knot the center of the thread around the first junction, carefully lining up the Sharpie marks. Wrap the thread over and over the junction points using a figure-8 wrapping to heavily secure each section.

We’re in a bit of a dispute around here over the last bit. Dave thinks I should fasten a dowel to one end to enable rolling it up. I like the rolling-up part because this thing is nice but could easily slip into a tangled mess. On the other hand, I’m not so keen on making any part of it less flat and may just use a dowel roll up, unattached. Dave thinks that’s silly, that I’ll never trip over it. I think he said, “what was I trying to make, something froofroo, or an aggressive training tool.” You’ll have to work out the roll-up attachment issue on your own.

Calculating and cutting took about an hour; the thread work took another couple hours. If you or a willing accomplice has agile fingers, this part will go much quicker. No duh.

Side note: In looking for a link to agility drill videos for the “using your agility ladder” guide, I happened upon a 15-foot ladder for $39.95 over at jumpusa. If a DIY project is beyond your interest level, this one’s close to half the price of the strength and conditioning models.

Next we’ll talk about what a beginner might do with this goodie: Using an Agility Ladder.

I’m a big fan of attending seminars and workshop weekends on topics that have my attention — website work, book publishing, software, stuff like that.

Since the early ’80s, I’ve been going to day-long or several-day conferences on weight training, including several trips to the big IDEA conferences, which formed much of my thinking, built on my enthusiasm and helped open my eyes to training methods I hadn’t seen here in the gym.

In fact, I went to one just last weekend and learned more of the structural assessment stuff we’ve been talking about over in the rehab/prehab section, and am eying one of the upcoming Perform Better Summits.

Alwyn Cosgrove sent a note this morning to tell of a workshop weekend he’s contributing to, featuring many of our favorite training educators, and it’s to be live ONLINE.

One of the downsides (aside from money, it’s probably the only downside) of attending big conference weekends is that you’re forced to chose between multiple sessions taking place at the same time. Alwyn and his partners have this remedied by archiving the sessions, giving “attendees” access to all the sessions for three months. We don’t have to miss a word!

They’ve got a terrific presenter line-up and a really great plan going here. It’s 50% off right now, $99. I wish I had the cutoff date for the discount, but that hasn’t been disclosed yet. I’ll letcha know when I hear.

Right now there are 102 55-minute sessions lined up… yes, that says one-hundred-two sessions. This is the bargain of the decade, no kidding. If you have any interest in this field at all, can spare the bucks, and will actually take the time to watch the seminar videos online, this is a no-brainer.

After I signed up for the conference, I signed up for an affiliate link, which I’ve never done before, but as long as you may be signing on anyway, I can use the affiliate bucks to pay for some bandwidth.

Here’s the link to check out the online conference, and here you’ll find the expo calendar pdf that shows the sessions to be archived.

Body alignment starts at the ground and works its way up the body via the fascia beginning at the toes and moving through each joint. Over time and for a variety of reasons, we develop weakness and tightness in various muscles around the joints, which will need to be addressed for good body function. However, if foot problems aren’t fixed, the structure will never be fully sound.

Most shoe-wearing adults pronate at the heel (tilt toward the inside) on either one side or both, and some people pronate on one side and supinate (tilt toward the outside) on the other.

This sets off a pattern causing problems of the foot such as bunions (a bony protrusion grown to help balance the tilt) and plantar fasciitis (irritation of the fascia sheathing under the foot).

Moving upward, foot positioning other than neutral pulls on the calf muscle, twisting it, which in turn torques the knee, causing knee pain, faulty wear and eventually arthritis or worse.

Crossing behind the knee and moving up the other side, the IT band along the outside of the leg gets tight, yanking at both the knee and the hip at the other end.

Now we’re at the hip and discover, because of the calf twisting and knee torquing, a pronating foot on one side leads to a functional leg length discrepancy on the other. The bones of the legs don’t actually measure different; the abnormal function of the other side causes a tilt in the hip.

We can then cross over the body and expect to see a lower shoulder on the other side, one that if nothing else, loses mobility and aches as the years go by.

Ligaments in this body lengthen over time (and these do not regain the normal length even after the problem is fixed, which is to say, fix this as early as you can); muscles and tendons lengthen or tighten; muscles weaken or stop firing entirely.

Additionally, this body is a mess of triggerpoints and sensitivity as over time it reacts to disfunction that begins in one or both feet.

For about 85% of adults, this can be fixed by foot and ankle exercises and a flat shoe with a $40 orthotic such as the green Superfeet insole. Begin wearing the insole about a half hour a day, because you need to retrain your body to handle the neutral position.

You’ve been training for 20 years, maybe 30. You’re strong, in much better shape that your co-workers. But where’s the payoff? Your back hurts as bad as the next guy’s, heck, maybe worse. You know it’s been worth all the effort, you just know it. I mean… right?

We’ve been talking about steps needed to take to bring things back to the upside. One of the ideas that’s floating to the top is that after decades under the bar, without doing anything to strengthen the smaller muscles, the big movers are strong and they sort of take over and do all the work. The smaller stability muscles weaken and sometimes stop firing entirely. We need to fix that.

Then, in a lot of cases with us doing the same exercises over and over, we’re building a case for decreasing joint mobility.

Even more likely these days, it’s a case of plain old sitting too much. Hey, what are you going to do? You have a job that requires sitting at a desk, right?

Here’s what you’re going to do; you’re going to find the problem areas and fix ‘em. You don’t have to get a new job—hopefully. You just need to strengthen what’s weak and loosen what’s tight, get the joints back in full range of motion and when you do, it’s pretty likely that nagging ache will fade into a memory.

We’ll be talking about this stuff a lot more in the coming months and years. In the process, we’ll introduce and link you up with some of the guys doing remarkable work in this fascinating new field, guys who do hands-on work, who’ve written books, articles and dvds, and who give seminars on this emerging field of structural assessment. During the course of the past few years, and projecting ahead another year or two as the dust settles, we’re getting to the place where the common person can sort this out without memorizing anatomy. It’ll tax you a little, but won’t push you over the edge.

Meanwhile, John Izzo has started a great thread in the forum with his article “5 Exercises Everyone Should Perform.” In it he describes the foundation you can use to fix a broken body that works well in the gym, but flounders through the rest of your daily life.

The thread then goes on to develop the thoughts of how and when to train spinal rotation, and provides an introduction to faulty movement patterns. That’s going to be the base of a whole lot more conversations that will set your brain afire. Until then, join us in the forum to develop the discussion, and feel free to ask your questions there.

Bumping against a genetic ceiling (again and as usual) after 25 years under the weights can make a person lazy in the gym. Once a person gets fairly close to the top of the strength curve, the return on workout investment is tiny. And many of us back off because maintaining 80% is simple, and seems like enough… in fact, is enough for most.

But guess what. Last week in the gym turned up a couple of PR sets. Nothing spectacular — I haven’t gone to low reps, heavy work on anything — but notable after not seeing any gains for years, and while not working toward them.

Why do I think this is happening? A few contributions:

The stabilization work is strengthening weaker muscles, so there are more overall muscles firing. The cardio fitness gets me past the reps where perhaps the muscles would have been strong enough before, but gasping for breath stopped the set early. Core strength adds an extra percentage of oomph that can’t be measured, or even noticed to the uneducated. Ballistic kettlebell work is contributing to fast-twitch muscle fibers not used in bodybuilding or powerlifting.

It’s a big picture effort that will take attention. Speaking as one a few months down the road, it’s worth it, folks. What I’m saying here is this stuff is for everybody. You young folks, dedicate a few minutes a day toward this now and you’ll never have to drop back to basement-level rehab. Youth will compensate for weakness for a while, but eventually the weaknesses will get your attention. Oh, man, will they get your attention.

If you’ve been nursing an ache forever, address it now. Unless you remember a specific injury, it’s likely there’s a weakness showing itself, or you’re doing something wrong — either at work or in the gym — or, very likely, it’s posture-related.

Overcompensating with the stronger muscles works for awhile, and the stronger you are, the longer this may work, but when the weakness shows through, you’ll be at the least slammed to the ground, and at worst, doing rehab not only on the underlying weakness, but also on your newly injured compensating muscles. The longer you ignore it, the more complicated it becomes to sort out the mess.

But. There’s a huge upside: Rehab works astoundingly fast. A month, two months… the progress can happen so quickly it’s hard to remember what the bad times felt like. Some of the things I tried didn’t work, or other solutions were perhaps unnecessary for me; others are still on the template for next efforts.

Perhaps there was a little waste of energy and money, but not much, and compared to what might have eventually been spent on doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists, physical therapists — mental therapists! — well, hey, not bad. Not bad at all.

What worked, in order of presentation, but not necessarily importance:

Back extension exercises to strengthen posture muscles

Foam roller and myofascial release ball to release spasming muscles and break down trigger point knots

Attention to upright posture, five minutes at a time, hour after hour and day after day

Heart rate monitor, spin bike with good bike pedals, mp3 player to propel aggressive interval cardio work

Back stabilization and fundamental core work

A few minutes daily of joint mobility and muscle stretching

Kettlebells, three types of workouts in support of the above (cardio conditioning, core strength and back strengthening)

To catch up with us, this is where the back rehab story begins.

You’ll have to put yourself and your physical wellbeing at the top of the priority list for a few months to pull this off. Once finished (knowing, of course, that we won’t be completely finished until that final day), you’ll be in a much greater position to affect your family and friends, your work and your projects because you’ll feel good — excellent even — and you’ll be strong and hearty. Things that were difficult or impossible will seem effortless. Go for it!

This is a reprint from a forum post of 2006. The conversation continues with more ideas to further your journey, here.

If you’ve followed this series of posts, you’ve understood that I have some very definite preferences regarding home gym equipment. Lest I be considered an “armchair trainer,” following is a description of the equipment (most of it, not all) in my home garage gym and my feelings about the equipment.

I have a power rack…which is not currently seeing much use. Since I don’t do the barbell bench press anymore and my squatting is currently confined to the use of a leverage squat machine, there aren’t too many movements that require the use of the rack for safety. It occasionally sees use for partial deadlifts and I’m in the process of cobbling together a T-bar rowing attachment…but it doesn’t really see much use right now. I still consider it a valuable piece of safety equipment, especially if you train the bench press and the squat alone.

Next to the power rack, I have a leg extension/leg curl bench. Despite the crowd that says leg extensions are bad for the knees and that the leg curl is useless for the hamstrings, this piece of equipment gets a fair amount of use. I use several sets of leg extensions as a warm up for squats, mostly. I’m finding that my hamstrings are worked more directly by Romanian deadlifts and good mornings, rather than leg curls but that doesn’t invalidate the machine for me.

I have a seated lat pulldown machine. This unit gets a lot of use and allows for a lot of different movements. Sadly, I can’t do low rowing with the unit but when the price is considered ($40 used at Play It Again Sports,) that little inconvenience fades away. As described in my gym set up articles, I use a single revolving lat bar with angled ends. I also have a triangle handle attachment and a single handle. Both of these items do “double duty” in other applications, as well.

I have a vertical leg press machine (yet another steal from Play It Again Sports.) Although the placement of the machine in my garage is rather inconvenient, I use this item rather frequently. It seems to work my quads and hamstrings in a way quite different than machine squats.
My most often used machine has to be my leverage squat unit by PowerTec. I can do three variations of squats, calf raises and shrugs/Hise shrugs with this machine. Since the machine has built in spotting stops, I can work the squat into the ground (should I desire) and do so in complete safety.

I purchased a hyperextension bench but I’m using it less than I thought I would. More than likely, this is due to the inconvenience of needing to move the machine in and out of a storage position in my cramped garage.

I have a fairly study and well padded flat bench and a cinder block or two for when I need it to be an incline bench. Not getting a lot of use right now. I’m eschewing most seated work and lying work for standing…just because I feel that standing work involves a lot more of the body. Why throw out the benefit of ancillary work for a little comfort?

Regarding various bars, I have the usual items and one or two specialty bars. I have both a five and six foot exercise bar and one Olympic bar, as well as a bent bar in both exercise and Olympic trim. I recently acquired two specialty bars, (guess where from?) a shrug bar and a two inch diameter “thick” bar. The shrug bar is being used at least once a week and is one of my favorite pieces of training gear.

Eleven pairs of fixed weight dumbbells occupy a three tier rack. Combinations other than what I have are constructed with plate loading dumbbells. Three plate trees with one inch pins hold almost all of my plates. I have a pretty fair mix of Olympic and standard plates and more than enough iron to accommodate my present (and future) level of strength.

Those are probably the major players in the Wicked Willie Garage Gym. I have lots of other “specialty” toys and homemade items but the above list comprises the staples…the “work horse” items, if you will. I guess it could be said that I practice what I preach.