IOL Strength and Conditioning

I’m afraid that this is going to be a rambling post, so if you’re not in the mood to indulge me…you might wish to look at other areas of the site. Due to a recently acquired shoulder issue, I’ve been forced to change my training and re-evaluate some of my thoughts regarding training, results, health, longevity and goals. Whew! Still with me?

Most of us train because we enjoy it. We look forward to our session with the Iron…if we don’t, something is amiss. Like any enjoyable activity, we engage in it frequently. Like any enjoyable activity, there is also a potential for abuse. If we engage in this activity so intensely and so frequently that it consumes an inordinate amount of our time and interferes with our daily lives…that is abuse. It goes without saying, that if it harms us, it is abusive.

For example, the first area where I found myself engaged in abuse was the quest for results. Like anyone else that is honest, I preferred that results from my training be quickly obtained, rather than slowly. To be totally honest, I wanted “overnight” results. In order to achieve this, I was willing to engage in some training “ideas” and protocols that upon later examination, harmed me rather than helped me. Let’s examine two of them – training in mechanically inefficient positions and training to failure of positive movement.

Vince Gironda is probably one of the best known proponents of modifying movement positioning and performance to target specific areas and obtain quick results – i.e. making a movement harder and training in a mechanically inefficient position. This causes the muscles targeted to work harder and grow quicker. Which sounds OK upon shallow examination…but in my case, it proved harmful. Any time you bypass the body’s natural patterns of movement, there is the potential for harm…and that is the “dirty little secret” of training Vince Gironda style.

Let’s examine some of his recommendations for pectoral development and specific movements – the V bar pec dip and the Neck Press. In the dip, you’re supposed to use vee shaped dipping bars with the ends spaced some 32 to 36 inches apart. You dip by holding your body concave and dip to the limit of your shoulder flexibility and then slightly “bounce” at the bottom. The wide grip and body positioning is supposed to minimize the contribution of the shoulders and transfer the stress to the lower pectorals. In an ideal world, this works…but in my world, it increased the stress on the shoulder attachments and elbows, eventually hastening injury. The same situation existed with the neck (bench) press.

The neck press is performed by taking a wide, thumbless grip on the barbell. The elbows are intentionally held wide and in line with the bar. The bar is lowered high on the chest, nearly to the base of the throat and then pressed back up. This really stretches the pectorals and directs the emphasis to the upper portion mainly…again minimizing the contribution of the triceps and deltoids from the positioning. If you have robust shoulders, this is exactly how it does work. If not, you are actually causing the shoulder to rotate in an unnatural manner and are again, stressing the attachments just as much as the muscles.

Herein is the problem. Your body is efficient, it seeks to accomplish a task with the least amount of effort. Usually, this is because many, many muscles are working together in planes of movements that have the most beneficial leverage. When you modify that, you cause multiplication of stresses in specific areas. One more example: Vince was big on the use of the sissy squat, to avoid the activation of the gluteus and to direct the stress to the lower portion of the quadriceps, just above the knee. This was done by rising up on the toes, leaning back and “hinging” the movement from the knees, with a straight body. This really minimized the gluteal contribution and really focused on the lower quads. The problem with that is that it changes what kind of lever your legs are and directs most of the stress to the knees. In a normal, naturally performed squat, you lean forward just slightly and this activates the lower back, the glutes and just about everything else. Rising is effortless, compared with a sissy squat and the knees aren’t stressed as much. Why? Because your body is working in the manner that is was designed to work.

When I was young and wanted instant muscles and results, natural movement didn’t matter to me. Now that I’m much older, the accumulation of dings and dents and numerous insults from less than natural training practices, has caused me to question the intelligence of how I trained as a young man. Were I to do it all over again, I’d work more along the lines of natural patterns of movement and let the chips fall where they would…and would probably have a lot less injuries and still be able to do various movements.

Have you had enough heresy? Stick around, there’s more.

Training to failure is another training protocol that appears to be very logical and well thought out upon surface examination. You want to work a muscle somewhere in the area of 60 to 80 percent of available output, to maximally stimulate the adaptive responses that cause muscle to grow rapidly. The problem with this thought is, how do you determine when you’ve reached this percentage of effort? The easiest way is to go well beyond that…and then you can be sure that in passing, you’ve reached it. Dig? If you train until you fail to complete the positive portion of a repetition, you can guarantee that you’ve reached 60 to 80 percent output. Simple.

However, training in this manner requires exacting attention to proper form. Since you’re trying to achieve literal exhaustion of the targeted muscle mass, you’re also going to exhaust stabilizing muscles as well. When these stabilizers exhaust, your ability to hold proper form is compromised and you’re likely to experience injury. If you’re like most folks, you’re also willing to sacrifice proper form in order to get a few more reps or use a few more pounds…again at the expense of potential injury.

This style of training is also hard on your body’s recovery system. As your strength increases and your ability to train intensely increases, your demand for recovery time and nutrients also increases. If you don’t provide both in adequate amounts…you harm your system, actually creating inflammation and other “emergency” responses. As a general, continuing practice, this is not good. Your training is actually creating a continuing series of “mini-emergencies,” and your body responds appropriately to the alarm. This is something that they are discovering with marathon runners – that they are burning out their systems and accumulating lots of repetitive stress injuries because what they are regularly engaging in is an “emergency” situation. You simply weren’t designed to run 26 miles with regular frequency.

To make a long story short…I try not to train to failure. (Although it’s tough, having trained that way for so long and having my head tell me it was “right.”) I try to leave a few reps in the tank, so that I leave a training session feeling well worked but refreshed, rather than exhausted and trembling. (Yes, I trained that hard…foolishly.) If I’m doing a final set of 8 reps…repetitions 7 and 8 are very hard but completed. I feel that if I really dig deep, I’m good for 9 and 10 but I stop at 8. Again, this is the way your body works. Your body and mind want to do just what is sufficient to accomplish a task. You’ll only contract the amount of muscle fibers that are necessary to complete a movement. Granted, results won’t come as fast training like this…but neither will injury or inflammatory responses.

If you’re still with me…I’ll wrap up my ramblings with this point. Your body is a machine. All machines are subject to wear, especially in response to the demands made on them. There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. Drive with your foot to the floor all the time and your motor will wear faster. Your body was “fearsomely and wonderfully” made to be self-repairing and long term useful…but it will still wear. Wouldn’t it make sense to moderate your training, move naturally and limit high level stresses, so that you could enjoy your body longer? Granted, when push comes to shove, I’d rather wear out than rust out…but I don’t want to unduly hasten the process, either.

I don’t pretend to know how to balance the desire for results with the desire for healthful longevity. I just wanted to toss the concept out to you so that you might consider it in the light of my experience. Good training to you.

as reported by Wayne Gallasch

September, 1970, I had the pleasure to be present at this very famous contest. Why was it so special? It was very special for two reasons.

The first was historical – it was Arnold’s last contest appearance in the British NABBA Universe. This was the contest which started in England in 1948 and where the first three winners were John Grimek, Steve Reeves and Reg Park. All legends of the sport of bodybuilding.

The second reason was personal. It was the first ever Universe contest I had attended on what was my first ever visit to England. I had heard that this would be Arnold’s last appearance in this event as he attempted to win his 4th NABBA Universe title. It seemed to be a perfect time to make the pilgrimage to London.

The Prejudging was held on Friday, 18th September in the Ballroom of the old Royal Hotel in London. It has since been demolished and rebuilt.

I arrived at the Prejudging and found that the audience mostly had to stand behind the judges as only a few chairs were provided. As I am not tall I found a chair to stand on, along with many others. A photo of the audience taken from behind Dave, Reg Park and Arnold appears on this site.

After the Amateur classes’ prejudging it finally got to the Professional Tall Class. To my pleasant amazement the class also included Dave Draper from USA, and 3 times former winner Reg Park. Reg was absolutely idolised by the British audience and even today is probably the all-time most popular British bodybuilder along with Dorian Yates.

As the class came out in front of the Judges, lead by a very confident Arnold, it was obvious that one man was missing. The contest organizer Oscar Heidenstam called for Dave Draper to please come out onto the judging stage area. Still no Dave. Then came a second call for Dave to please appear “immediately”. Finally a third and very testy final call for Dave to come out immediately or the judging would commence without him. Oscar said that Dave would be disqualified from the contest, and I was feeling worried for Dave. At the very last moment he came running out onto the stage to the great relief of everyone. The story I heard later was that Dave was left in the pump-up area a long way from the stage, and didn’t hear the subsequent calls that it was time to come out for the Prejudging. I believe there was only one call that Dave heard so I look forward to hearing Dave’s side of the story.

Dave was in superb shape and it seemed to be a battle primarily between Arnold and Dave for first and second. Dave Draper was the big, blonde, all-American guy; Arnold was the unbeatable champion and Reg Park was a great bodybuilder who first won the Mr. Universe in 1951. Reg was in his 40′s and past his peak and I noted from the Prejudging that most attention seemed to be focussed on Arnold versus Reg. Dave was hanging right in there too, but the audience cheered loudest for Reg.

Dave’s arms were absolutely outstanding with full round bicep peaks and nice balance in his triceps. Arnold’s arms in comparison were always great in their size and bicep shape but the complimentary triceps hang did not match the total shape of Dave’s arms. Chest was a close thing between Dave’s huge pecs with their deep, wide flair and Arnold’s thickness and shape. Dave clearly had the best back and lats in the whole competition and his lat spread had the rather conservative British fans whistling and screaming for more. A clear win for Dave in this compulsory pose. Abs and legs were both fine and in good proportion to the rest of the physique and certainly not a problem. Posing was a series of Dave’s trademark poses which were loved by the fans and his whole routine seemed to be over too quickly. Dave certainly left the fans begging for more.

The Prejudging came to an end with Arnold clearly the certain winner and in my opinion Dave in second place from Reg in 3rd place. The next day was the actual show, held at 1.40 p.m. at the famous Victoria Palace Theatre, London. To my amazement at the end of a wonderful show, Reg Park was announced 2nd and Dave placed 3rd. Boyer Coe won the short Professional Class with Arnold taking out the overall Professional title. Frank Zane won the overall Amateur Mr. Universe title.

I felt that if Dave had gone back to the Universe again the next year then victory in this class would certainly have been his. With his golden tan and shy good looks Dave was a hit with everyone.

There is an interesting side story to this event. I discovered at the Prejudging that cameras, both photo and movie, were not allowed. I was also warned that no filming was allowed at the show to be held at the Victoria Palace theatre the next day.

I duly arrived at the theatre with my super 8 film camera hidden in a brown paper bag with my sandwich! With ushers continually patrolling the aisles of the theatre looking for illegal cameras and unofficial photographers, I filmed what I could with my movie camera hidden inside the paper bag. Naturally the film is a bit jerky being shot from half way back in the theatre and with me hiding it when ever I saw an usher out of the corner of my eye. But a rare and classic piece of history was saved for posterity. As one of our local politicians said, “bad rules and regulations are meant to be broken”! This footage now on video constitutes the first contest video I ever produced and I am pleased to say it is now something of a classic (V-108). It also captures an image of Dave which although brief, is now a part of bodybuilding history.

Kind regards,
Wayne Gallasch, GMV Bodybuilding

What are the planes of motion and why do we care? Let’s sort this out, just between us gymrats. While it’s true that we don’t really *need* to know this stuff, it’s also true we’re going to bump into the terms more and more when reading modern training articles. It’s time we caught up with this generation of training lingo. We’ll take the simple route, I promise.

The main problem for most of us is that we weren’t introduced to the terms in our early training (today that reads: Who needs it?). Additionally, the actions along the planes don’t seem to match the describing terms; for example, the frontal plane motions are left to right, and our brains just kind of disconnect in a sort of “I can’t learn that” frustration when we see frontal associated with side to side.

At its simplest:

To picture the three planes, imagine slicing through the body, like so:

• First through the center, dividing the body from the left to the right to make up the sagittal plane
• Next through the body from the left side to the right, separating the front and back halves to create the frontal plane (front side and back side)
• Finally cutting straight through the hips to divide the top of the body from the bottom, the transverse plane

That’s not so hard. It starts to get a little more complicated when we begin to sort out which motions move along the planes. You want to think of the motion as moving along the surface of the plane, rather than visualizing the sectioned off body.

Planes of motion look like this:

Sagittal plane motion would include forward and backward motions, like sit-ups, back extensions or biceps curls. The sagittal plane cuts through the center of the body, so the motion is front to back or back to front, including straight forward running. Squats involve flexion (forward motion) and extension (backwards on the way up), so would fit into the sagittal plane.

Frontal plane motion would include leaning from left to right as in sidebends and lateral raises, or perhaps you might picture jumping jacks for a good image of movement along the frontal plane.

Transverse plane motion is the hardest to picture because the plane is horizontal as it divides the top from the bottom, so it’s hard to get our heads around it being a rotating action. The main thing to remember is rotation. An example of a transverse plane exercise would be floor to overhead diagonals with a medicine ball, and a transverse activity might be swinging a golf club.

Why would an average trainee need to know this? Two reasons, really. It comes up fairly often as we read the work of our favorite writers, because these folks know this stuff and it comes out naturally for them. It’s frustrating to have to skim sections because we don’t know the lingo, and in internet reading, skimming a section often means losing interest and clicking away before we get to the vital parts.

Secondly, what’s most important about the planes is to know they exist and to make sure our training programs include exercises along each. Our most common gym exercises are on the sagittal plane, moving forward or back such as in flat pressing, pushups, crunches or even squats and lunges.

When you create your training programs, be sure to add some frontal plane and transverse plane exercises to bring up your built-in injury prevention. That’s what’s going to help ensure good balance in your muscular body. Training only on one plane will pretty much do the opposite.

The way I figure it, the movement pattern and corrective exercise experts began their study of human motor patterns through the work of Moshe Feldenkrais. He’s the guy who started this trend back in the ’40s, although he didn’t live to see it hit the athletic world, or for it to trickle down to those of us on the fitness side. Of course the new generation of teachers expanded on his efforts to include strengthening weak areas and stretching tight ones, but the underlying idea of how the brain makes the body move began with Feldenkrais a long time ago.

Today’s rehab leaders probably don’t talk about the Feldenkrais influence much because most of their readers would think it sounds like some kind of voodoo magic; yesterday was my second class, where the six of us rolled around on the floor as the instructor pondered out how we first taught ourselves to crawl.

Pretty out there, but no less true, and the movement pattern guys who re-teach us to squat will often remind us of how a baby learns to squat, and how the body originally built stability on top of great mobility. Somewhere along the line, we lost it, lost the mobility and eventually forgot the movement pattern.

Here’s an example of both. Over the course of about 35 years, increasingly bad posture that began in my teens had my thoracic spine not moving, about as close as you can get to immobile while still moving around town. Daily effort on a tennis ball peanut, plus plenty of careful and consistent exercises brought my T-spine mobility from really poor to pretty darn good, so much progress that I was confident on that score. Yet the back pain remains solidly in place, and I’m still tinkering around with new ideas such as movement awareness.

During my first Feldenkrais class two weeks ago, as we were doing a sort of spinal wave movement, the instructor crouched in front of me and held my neck in her hands, immobilizing it. Suddenly I could no longer do the spinal wave… everything stopped. She told me later her effort was to trigger me to begin using the spine, that my upper back was moving as a block, rather than in smaller vertebral segments.

What had happened was over the course of my corrective exercise work, I’d gained exercise mobility, but not much natural movement. Mobility does not necessarily mean motion!

From the Feldenkrais point of view, and I’m certain most of the corrective guys agree with this, once mobility was compromised, the brain skipped over that area and found another way to bend and move the back. The other way is very likely one of the causes — probably the main cause — of the chronic back pain that triggered this whole rehab progression for me in the first place.

Not only do you have to regain mobility, flexibility and stability, you may have to relearn how to use it. This was quite a revelation to me as it occurred, made small today when put into words. The few readers who have made progress in the corrective arena, yet are still in pain may find it useful to ponder this the next time you’re lying quietly on a foam roller.

Introduction to Feldenkrais Movement Awareness Class: