Doing It Right

If you're going to take the time to do a particular exercise, please do it right. What's the point of doing something if you're just going to half ass it and show a total disregard for form? What benefit are you going to get out of it? Take a golf swing for example. If you're not going to focus on swing mechanics, chances are you're going to be spraying the ball all over the golf course and have other golfers running for cover. Now, apply the same concept to the exercises in your training routine. Sure you're moving and sure you're burning some calories. But you're not going to get the complete benefit of the exercise and may be even setting your self up for injury. And I love it when someone tells me how easy a particular exercise is and then I watch them execute the exercise without any emphasis on performing the movement properly. You can make any exercise easy if you don't focus on parts one, two and three of the exercise and move at warp speed. Two examples are step ups and push ups. Two exercises that seem fairly simple, right? I'll watch 10 people do a step up and I bet 9 of them do it wrong. In fact, I bet these 9 people are launching off their down foot and back leg in the bottom position, when they should be pulling the toes of that back leg up. Pulling those toes up will negate a push off from that back leg and place all the emphasis on the front or up leg, where it should be. And you'd think it be pretty hard to screw up a push up, right? Wrong. I watch hips sag and I watch hips hike in the air. I'm not referring to third graders either. I'm talking about 30 year old men. If either of those issues is happening, it tells me your core is to weak to stabilize your spine in a neutral position and or maybe you're just to lazy to execute the exercise properly. I actually hope it's the form rather than the later, so at least we can work on exercise progression. It's not as hard to get someone to work on exercise progressions as it is to stop someone from being lazy.

Around the Corner

Hard to believe that spring is around the corner, especially when the temp is down in the mid 20's during the morning hours. But it is. And with the start of spring, comes the start of my outdoor bootcamps. Right now, the plan is to start running these outdoor sessions the first week of April, whether it's still 20 degrees in the morning or whether it's in the 70s. Participants will be in either hats and gloves or shorts and tank tops. But whatever you're wearing, you're going to get in a grueling 45 minute workout consisting of dynamic flexibility, medicine ball work, strength training and may be even a little sled dragging.

If you are interested, please call (617)835-0564 or send an email to rich@richruffing.com for more information. The final details are being worked out, but it's not to early to sign up. And the more that sign up, the better. In fact, if you refer a friend who signs up, you'll receive $50 of your first 6-week session.

More to follow in the coming weeks.

Dr. John Berardi's Bi-Weekly Nutrition Tip

Tip #2
The Sunday Ritual
by Dr. John Berardi

To ensure that good foods will be available when you need them, use the Sunday Ritual. This is performed by setting aside three hours every Sunday to write out your menu for the week, shop for the week, and prepare your meals for the week. Cook all the meat, chop all the vegetables, measure out all the yogurt and/or cottage cheese, and distribute all the powders. Have them ready and set aside so that you can grab them in the morning and bring them with you regardless of what your day holds in store for you.

This tip is sponsored by Precision Nutrition - my pick for the best nutrition and supplement resource currently available. Containing system manuals, gourmet cookbook, digital audio/video library, online membership, and more, Precision Nutrition will teach you everything you need to know to get the body you want -- guaranteed.

My Top 5....

......things I wish people would be doing more often in the gym:

1. Less cardio and more strength training for weight loss purposes.
   
2. More single leg training (lunges, step ups and split squats for example).
3. Warming up properly through dynamic flexibility/joint mobility type of routines.
4. Working through a full range of motion with each exercise. Either that or people are employing partial rep training techniques that I'm not aware of.
5. More foam rolling or other types of self myofascial rolling techniques. The density of your tissues is just as important as the length of the tissues.
   

RichRuff Training Exercise of the Week: Single Leg RDL

Great exercise to develop single leg strength, posterior chain strength and hip mobility. Important thing here is to focus on hinging at the hip rather than rounding at the lumbar or thoracic spine.

Random Thoughts

• Was anyone really surprised by A-Roid's admission that he used steroids from 2001-2003? The only two things I'm surprised about are, one, that he used them only over a three year span. And, two, he seems to think you have to wear lip gloss when you're on the stuff.
• Do you know the same people who are always sick or always complaining about being tired? May be, even worse, you know people who are both sick and tired all the time. I'd bet a good amount of cash, $1, that these people have poor nutritional habits. They may think there's some bug going around or they have to much work to do, when the truth is they're not supplying their bodies with the nutrients it needs to fight off illness or feelings of being tired. They're protein intake is probably way down. They're probably not getting enough fruits and vegetables in. And they're probably relying on processed foods for a good portion of the day. If they cleaned up their diets they'd have a much better chance of not getting sick and having higher energy levels.
  
• Another question. Haven't you heard people say before that the reason they do machine based training instead of working with free weights is because they don't want to get injured? From what I see at the gym, I think people have a far greater chance of incurring injury through the use of machines. You'd think it be hard to screw up a machine based movement. Wrong. Tempos become too fast. Ranges of motion become shortened. And too much weight is usually being used. Today, I saw some guy doing things with a lat pulldown machine that I thought weren't even possible.
  
• Kind of tying into the last thought, I haven't used the leg press (seated, 45 degree, or whatever other one you can think of) in nearly two years with a client. To me, I'd rather have people working on their squat or deadlift techniques, doing some single leg work and strengthening the posterior chain (glutes, hamstrings, lower back).
• Here's a good principle to apply to your training strategies. Stength coach Charles Staley refers to it as the 180 Principle. Look at what most people are doing in the gym and do the complete opposite. For instance, if most people are doing machine training, work with free weights. If most people are doing long, slow, steady state aerobics, do some high instensity interval training. If most people are working in high rep brackets (15-20) , work in low rep brackets (3-8). The idea is that most people in the gym don't have a clue as how to go about their training and are doing the opposite of what they should be doing. Makes sense to me.
• I'm off to London next week and may actually attend my first professional soccer game. That being said, I will never refer to soccer as football and football as American football. Got me?
  

The Truth About Splenda

How many of you switched to using Splenda as a sweetener a couple of years back? I did. I used to drink my coffee with a couple of sugars. Wanting to cut back on my sugar intake I then switched to Equal. Zero calories with Equal but studies have shown a ton of chemical side effects linked to this sweetener. Once I was aware of this I switched to Splenda. A lot of other people did the same thing because it was marketed as a natural sweetener since it claimed to be made from sugar itself. It was basically marketed as sugar without the calories. Well, some studies over the last couple of years have put the makers and marketers of Splenda in their place. It's actually no different than any other artificial sweetener. Consumed in large quantities it can have some serious side effects on your health. Click on the link below to find out the real truth about Splenda.

Potential Harmful Effects of Splenda

RichRuff Training Exercise of the Week: Push Up Death

Here's a high rep push up method to use to finish off a workout or use on your repetition day. You're going to take feet elevated push ups 1-2 reps short of failure. Rest 10 seconds. Take regular push ups 1-2 reps short of failure. Rest 10 seconds. And then take bar push ups to failure. Here my client gets about 30, 7 and 7 reps from each position for a total of 44 reps. The goal of the next workout is to get more than 44 reps.

Berardi's Nutrition Tip

Every other week or so, I'll be bring you a nutrition tip from Dr. John Berardi, founder of Precision Nutrition. So what is this weeks tip? Take a look below:

Eat Pasta... Carefully
by Dr. John Berardi

As a God-fearing Italian, I have to admit that I love pasta. But, as a gut-fearing weight lifter and athlete, I definitely have to choose the lower GI, nutrient dense whole-wheat variety. During training phases that require or allow for higher carbohydrate intake (higher volume training) I'll eat one whole-wheat pasta meal per day. During other phases (like where I'm trying to lose fat), the pasta stays on the shelf in favor of a higher lean protein, good fat, and fruit and veggie intake.

This tip is sponsored by Precision Nutrition - my pick for the best nutrition and supplement resource currently available. Containing system manuals, gourmet cookbook, digital audio/video library, online membership, and more, Precision Nutrition will teach you everything you need to know to get the body you want -- guaranteed.

False Propanganda

This is the kind of stuff that drives me crazy:

Buff Guy Exercise Moves that are Bad for Women

I'll counterpoint each of the ridiculous points made in this article:

1. A forward lunge done correctly is no worse for you than any other single leg movement. The key phrase here is "done correctly". I cringe when I see most people doing forward lunges, no matter what gender. I wouldn't use the forward lunge in the initial stages of of a training program with any individual. I'd probably start with a split squat, progress to a reverse lunge and than graduate to a forward lunge. Also, the forward lunge is not purely a quadriceps movement as this article states. It's a multi joint movement that also brings the hamstrings and glutes into play.
   
2. Okay ladies, men have more relative upper body strength, so just forget about ever doing a chin up. What kind of reasoning is that? I'd love to see all of my female clients be able to do a chin up because it's usually going to tell me two things: they are strong and they are lean. And the article states that you should place inverted rows into your program instead. I'll tell you this, inverted rows are not that much easier.
3. With plyometrics, again the key is progression. Do you just want start to doing depth jumps from a four foot box? No. But what is wrong with some low level plyometrics done with low volume. Women having a greater Q-angle is probably a reason to work in some type of plyometric exercise in order to teach landing mechanics and deceleration patterns in the hopes of keeping knee injuries at bay.
4. I won't argue with the notion that the Russian twist is an exercise that can be potentially harmful to the lower back. But it can be just as harmful to a male as it is to a female. It has nothing to do with the joint laxity of a female as it does that the lumbar spine is not designed to rotate. It's designed for stability. Get your rotation from the thoracic spine, not the lumbar spine.
   
5. "Stick to girlie push ups". If I ever told a client that, I think one of two things may happen to me: get smacked in the face or get fired. In fact, I think if I ever said that to a client, I would actually fire myself. I hate prescribing "girlie" push ups because they take your core out of play. If you can't do a straight leg push up, go find a low step, bench or bar to place your hands on and work from this inclined position with your legs straight out. Don't assume because you're a female that you can not be strong.
   

Usually I can find some things within an article that make sense to me or I can agree with. This is not one of those instances.

RichRuff Training Exercise of the Week: Swiss Ball Pike