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Training for Middle Age and Beyond

About two years ago, I was asked to comment on growing old gracefully. Or powerfully. I reread this and added a point or two and I still think it passes the test of time. I added a few points, but it is still worth the discussion.

A couple of quick suggestions: first, the role of hypertrophy needs to be addressed. One of things that starts to mellow out is the “passion” to train. Honestly, I don’t have the answer there, but a few years ago, DHEA was argued to be the answer here. So, whatever it takes to reignite the spark, do it. I suggest camps, workshops, seminars, or any kind of full leap back into whatever lights you up. Relearn everything. I think that might be part of the reason things like the RKC really got me going again. Call it immersion.

Now, health is the optimal interplay of the human organs, but you have had an effect on your health. On my list, the first eight are health related and the last two are what people want from me.
1. Don’t Smoke
2. Wear a seatbelt or a helmet
3. Learn to fall AND recover
4. Eat more protein
5. Eat more fiber
6. Take more fish oil
7. Drink more water
8. Floss your teeth
9. Build some muscle
10. Improve joint mobility

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Quadrant III and the Baby

The problem with the Quadrants System, besides its brilliance, is the interesting fact that nearly everyone thinks they elite, collision living QIIs. How do I know this? I am dumb enough to read my emails!

We have guys who want to learn the Olympic lifts that do them once every two weeks and the other thirteen days are filled with cardio busting workouts, bodybuilding, and circuit training. Trust me, putting the bar overhead with 400 is NOTHING like doing 95 pounds for fifty reps. I know, if you do the math (!!!), you will find that 400 for one is only 400 pounds of total work but 95 for 50 is like, well, a lot more, but, somehow, 400 still feels heavier.

I get emails from people who want to lose some fat and spend time doing plyometrics. I just don’t get that either. I also get emails from people who watch a one-minute clip of my DVDs on youtube and ask if I can just send the rest to them. I always wonder if they want me to cook and clean for them, too, because they think I am their mother.

The problem is this: most of us are QIII. I embrace it. I love it. The greatest moment of clarity in my life came a few years ago when I had two full-time jobs, high school teacher and college instructor, two little girls at home (Kelly and Lindsay) and a wife on the road all the time. When I discovered, at best, all I could squeeze in each day was an hour of training, my career exploded. Oddly, it is the same advice I give my athletes, but there is no way I can possibly hear my own sound advice.

When you only have an hour to train a day, and to be honest you should consider what you would do with only an hour a week, you have an opportunity to scrape away the excess and decide (from the root “to cut” remember) what is important to you. It is a life changing, and in my case, life illuminating, moment.

True, QI, that wonderful time where you really should learn every skills, sport, game and movement, is a period that can be formative and informative for a lifetime. I learned how to Power Clean, Military Press, Front Squat and Bench Press as well as play golf, volleyball, soccer and dozens of other games and skills. I still drink deeply from this well of knowledge.

It is this beginning that develops this concept that the Greeks called: “Arete.” Now, sadly, when someone is discussing Homer and the twin epics, we often just sum this term today as “ethics.” It’s much more than this: it is more the notion of being good at things. I can only be a footnote here to the great work of George Leonard, but the concept of “Mastery” is being lost in many fields. Sadly, in fitness, mastery has been taken over by the idea of “Look, look at me. Look! I can do this and this and this and this and this and this. Look. Look!! Look at me!”

Arete is what Achilles had going for him. I never liked Brad Pitt until I saw “Troy.” The movie is an unwatchable, badly acted, over the top, “what the hell?” movie save for one part: the part that has Brad Pitt in it. I don’t have a man crush on him, but he nailed the qualities of Achilles. He was simply good at everything.

Quadrant One develops the tools and fundamentals to build this quality. I always argue: if not now, when? I feel the same, by the way, about reading Great Books. My shelves are lined with books from Homer to Harry Potter (Thank you J. K.). I also have “Jurassic Park,” the complete “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” “Dune,” and “The Godfather.” When I kept raging on last year about Paul Murray’s “Skippy Dies,” some of my friends thought I was crazy. (Crazier?) Yet, in this delightful book, we see the epic discussions of love, lust, death and God with fully played out characters.

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Checklists, Rituals and Practice

There are three Technical Tools that every coach and trainer (and parent and teacher) should use for every situation and setting. They are simply:

Checklists
Rituals
Deliberate Practice

Occasionally, due to overlapping qualities and needs, you might find it hard to distinguish between these three and I will do my best to highlight some examples.

If I could tell you one “secret” to success, it would be in making checklists. I’m not sure how I first came across them, but I know that I was developing them in the mid-1990s. Paul Northway, the great Judge Memorial Catholic High School discus thrower, had a laminated checklist for meets. As I recall, he had:

Discus
Shoes
Towel
Jacket
Water
Sunscreen
Snack Food
Money
Sunglasses
And many more little items, including a measuring tape as many high school track meets in Utah are so bad there isn’t always a tape for the discus.

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Warriors, Kings and Mental Set

There was a moment at lunch where I couldn’t believe how my education, career choice and need for community all blended perfectly. We had just finished a good solid workout with the Coyote Point Kettlebell Club. I had this idea to experiment in a group setting the Double KB Clean and Presses by building the skills up over many sets. Of course, I woke amazingly sore the next day, so I know it worked for me.

By the time we got to Peter’s Café on Millbrae Avenue and El Camino Real, I was famished. One of the signs that your training is working is your ability to toss into your mouth everything in sight for a few minutes. I ordered three items. Yes, it was a vegetable filled delight, but I was starving.

Joe Lightfoot, a young medical school graduate from Manchester, England, had joined us for the past few weeks. Wisely, he is taking a few months off to work at Stanford University, sometimes known as the “Utah State of the West Coast,” and, even wiser, spend days with me. I made a joke and realized that my only British accent is a falsetto mature woman’s voice from “Monty Python.” He asked about why Americans enjoyed “The Flying Circus” so much. My argument is that after watching “My Mother the Car,” “That Girl” and “I Dream of Jeannie,” many of us were ready for a new kind of humor in America at the time.

From there, we turned and talked about education and, before you know it, I asked about Beowulf. Joe had read it, but didn’t remember much. Now, my first Masters degree (in history) was this and that and this, but my focus was on Beowulf. I still love it and, yes, I hated the recent film.

I began to describe one of the two great insights of the book that I discovered. I noted on my twentieth or so reading that the Warriors in Beowulf speak in a certain manner: Pure Present. When Beowulf is asked about his past exploits, he seems to ignore the question and press on. When asked about the future, he barely acknowledges that he will have one…maybe.

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Clarity: My New T-Nation Article

I’m glad the readers liked it. So often, it is hard to write an article that isn’t just “Five sets of Five…till you puke!” I’m honestly trying to walk people through this maze of conflicting information that we find in the industry…and I am part of the problem a lot of the time!!!

Enjoy.

The Mental Set Triads

A. J. Jacob’s new book, “Drop Dead Healthy” begins with something that just made me happy. He asserts that his past adventures, reading the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica and living year by following (as best he could) the Bible, prepared his mind and soul. Now, he is preparing his body. I love the book, but I’m an easy sell.

My whole “being” revolves around threes. In practically everything I do, I slide my thought process into Triads, 1-2-3, or “Three Points.” I applaud Jacob’s books and I am looking forward to my review on Amazon as I don’t always do this kind of thing there, but when I do, I tend to write a few volumes.

When I look at most athletes, I try to break down their needs into three things. Almost universally, it is Strength, Technique and the Mental Set. Now, I want to really explore Mental Set in this offering here, but as I look at the first two, I remind myself that I have made my career based on three concepts:
1. Put heavy things overhead.
2. Pick heavy things off the ground
3. Carry things for time or distance

Yes, it’s that simple. And, a generation of people have learned “Stretch-One-Two-Three” at my camps, clinics, and training sessions in the discus. I also tend to have my magical workout around three days or three big movements. I am in love with Olympic lifting workouts that are:
Snatch
Clean and Jerk
Front Squat (Lather, rinse, repeat!)

Now, with Easy Strength and the Quadrants, don’t get too mixed up here. Yes, “Mental Set” is another quality, true, but I think the strength coach is uniquely qualified to teach the three basic points. For most people in sport, it comes down to two things:
Technique (Make it better!)
Strength (Get Stronger!)
The mystical aspect of these two points is that you will find that if you have appropriate levels of strength matching your technique you will do best. What do I mean?

Well, you can get really, really strong. In fact, it is probably the easiest thing I know how to do and teach. If your technique is low level, perhaps you just do a standing throw in the discus or only run like a soccer player when you are trying to win the 100 meters (oh, how many times have I heard that Edna is the fastest girl on the field in soccer, then she runs at a track meet blazing back and forth in the lane, but not going straight ahead!), but you have jaw dropping strength, you won’t really compete at a high level.

I had the opposite issue as a thrower. I had beautiful technique. I’m not bragging here. Opposing coaches used to film me as an example for their athletes. For years, I got my technique more and more beautiful, but ignored my legs and back. Once I started O lifting with Dick Notmeyer, I shot past everyone who had the big engines with subpar technique.

So, one of the things a group of us have been working on for a few years is “appropriate” strength levels for Quadrant III athletes. Using what I know from football helped. Basically, a high school girl who deadlifts 275 can do just about anything at a high level in sports. Boys really can help at the Varsity level when they clean 205. There are lots of other numbers, but the point is simple: basic levels of strength will support the high school athlete. Now, this boy could get up to a 300 pound clean and not be able to wrestle well or play football because of other issues, but, by and large, a 205 pound clean indicates enough strength to play at this level. Tom Fahey’s famous numbers for discus thrower at the elite level (250 snatch, 300 clean, 400 bench press, and 450 squat) are all reasonable and, it could be argued, even low. But, we also expect this elite thrower to throw 10,000 times a year for about a decade or so.

There are three parts to what I call “Mental Set.” They are all continuums in my head and if you read my work, you will know that is how I tend to think about most things. As you begin to explore this concept, you will see that the Quadrant II person, collision sports and collision occupations, will need to be able to slide back and forth from the extremes in all of the qualities. That is just another reason why it is a rare person that can be an elite warrior or NFL player. It’s not just the genetic gifts of size and speed, but the abilities to change focus, for example, in an instant.

The important thing to remember about the triad in the Mental Set is that they interact with each other. Well, of course they do. It’s a rare sport or person who can afford to narrow beam into one quality. In my system, we call this Quadrant IV, the rear air occupied by 100 meter sprinters and single lift powerlifters. So, as I go through, just remember that there will be a bit of spillage in this basic concepts.

For no particular reason, let’s start with my little continuum I call “Etching and Reaction.” Etching is my favorite term in sports psychology. It is the way you get names and pictures on glass by etching the marks on the plate. It tends to stay in place and if it is done wrong, it’s probably best to throw it away. Everyone has been etched by life and learning. Commercials do a great job here. If you are of a certain age and I say: “Winston takes good,” you WILL respond “Like a cigarette should.” Our City Fathers have just added a stop sign and people shoot past it every day as they have etched their approach to the freeway for years and this new stop sign isn’t yet being seen. Oh, it’s there, but etching is etching.

My favorite etching story involves Eric Lindquist, 2003 3A State Champion in the discus. He was having a tough season as he was throwing well, but couldn’t break his personal record. On the morning of the state meet, he called and woke me up and told me he was state champ with a massive new personal record on his first throw. I asked him what he did and he responded:

“I was so nervous, I could only remember the very first thing you taught me. Stomp and pick up the right foot. Next thing I know, the discus is just flying way past anything I had ever done.”

That’s why early teaching is so important: under stress, you fall back into what you etched. Often, it’s the first lesson you learned. This is the problem, in my humble opinion, with these tackle youth football leagues. Nobody tackles! They wrestle, maul, grab, reach and lurch, but nobody tackles. Later, we have to etch in a new pattern but the youth league superstars never seem to pick up the correct way to do this.

Discus Throwing and probably lifetime adherence to clean eating would be on the far end of the Etching Continuum. The opposite end would be something that is pure Reaction. I read once about a professional football coach discussing coaching defensive backs: “It’s like working with seals…nothing but reactions.” He meant the kinds of seals who bark at me in the bay and enjoy baitfish. There are sports, I imagine, that are nothing but reactions. I swear, I know some people who live just reacting to everything and anything.

So, on the far end, maybe, we put NFL defensive backs. I was taught that defensive backs also need very short and weak memories as they have to forget that they just got burned and just play and react. Most readers have probably already picked up the issue with reaction and etching: most sports demand that you react to something then do a movement or skill that must be etched. Right, exactly. That’s also why you hear great coaches discuss over and over the fundamentals. Fundamentals involve those few or dozens of skills that determine success in sports and battle. I sat with a warrior not long ago and he told me that he checks to make sure he is loaded with ammo literally every few seconds before getting off the helicopter. Once the firing starts, it’s too late to try to reload.

So, one could also argue that habits are etching. Jon Berardi’s “Precision Nutrition” is based on approaching diet and exercise from a habits base. I like it and I suggest that most people EITHER:
1. Have parents who insist on clean eating, exercise, no TV, and exposure to a variety of sports and games and you are forced to have excellent habits for a lifetime,
2. Or, try Berardi’s approach to slowly ratcheting up new and better habits.

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Some fun links from around the web

First, I think this is my first Spanish Language review of Easy Strength.

Next, another Spanish language discussion of the Southwood Program.

My good friend, Jeremy Lawson, up at Marin Catholic, has been doing some great strength work for high school kids. He is also pretty good at making videos, as you can see.

Here

And Here

and, finally, here.

Jeremy, like Jay Beito who is also in the East Bay, are a new generation of strength coaches that “really get it.” There programs aren’t just hung up on the wall from a suspect magazine and the weight room is part of the school, not a subculture. Enjoy.

Yes, Even Parenting is a Q Activity!

As I swim deeper into the depths of the Quadrants, and if don’t know them, you can find more by viewing “Intervention,” I’m amazed to realize that these tools also carry into the real world. I have been using this simple model to work on things from teaching arousal control to athletes to understanding the impact on diet for most people.

It invites enthusiasm. Today, at breakfast, Chris Frankl, a good friend and the man who introduced me to TRX and the Rip Trainer, opened my brain about something I hadn’t even considered with the Quads: parenting. Now, don’t run off if you don’t have kids as I think the concepts here tie into just about anything in life.

I have discussed the notion of “Managing Options” versus “Managing Compromises” before here on this blog. At this site, you can also hear me talk about this in a goal setting vision. The hardest thing to get across is that something like Fat Loss is very simple. Here is my two-part formula:

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A Great Top Ten List…Pay attention!

Just an excellent read…enjoy!