Archive for November, 2010

Top 10 Tips For Good Trainers

Guest Post by Jim Smith, CSCS

As a student of strength athletics, I always try to keep the "beginner’s mind".  When I go to seminars, take a course or talk with other coaches in the industry, I want to open my mind and never let my own pre-conceived notions stand in the way of a learning opportunity.  I also realize that I don’t know everything.  It is my responsibility to gain as much knowledge as I can to make sure I can provide the best training for my athletes. 

Over the years, I have learned a great deal and I hope to share with you some important tips so that you don’t make the same mistakes I have made.

listening 300x199 Top 10 Tips For Good Trainers

Tip #1:  Listen to Your Athletes
You not only have to listen, you have to poke and prod and get them to talk!  I figured that if something was hurting, something didn’t "feel" right or they were having problems, they would tell me.  That is not always the case.  They are stubborn and don’t want to show you their weaknesses.  So it is always a struggle and constant dialogue to get them to understand the importance of communication so they can provide you with essential feedback about how they are responding to the program.

Tip #2:  Care About Your Athletes
When you really show your athletes that you care, they will give you 110% each and every workout.  Ask them how their day was.  How was that test?  How is their mom doing?  Are they getting enough rest?  Tell them and show them that you care and it will go a long way in how productive the training sessions will be.

Tip #3:  Competition = Intensity
Athletes thrive on competition, so why not bring that competition into the weight room?  There isn’t a workout that goes by where I don’t pit one athlete against another, or challenge the athletes to reach new goals or new levels of intensity.  When you get inside their head, they will forget that they are training and just go all out for the competition.  Place these competition "finishers" at the end of the workout and you will see how great they are not only for jacking up the intensity, but for bringing the athletes closer together.

Tip #4:  Warm-up is the Key
Only recently have I began to understand the importance of a good warm-up.  I’m not just talking about crossing your arms in front of you and then benching, I’m talking about a real warm-up.  A 10-15 pre-workout set of flowing movements; some loaded and some unloaded.  This pre-workout routine sets the tone for the entire workout and charges the CNS.  You can also use these same activation, mobility and dynamic exercises for an off-day recovery workout.

Tip #5:  Don’t Believe the Hype
There is no one best tool.  In any one workout, I might use kettlebells, dumbbells, thick ropes, barbells, axles, tires, weight vests or just bodyweight movements.  They are all great, and assuming you teach good form, all very effective. Don’t get caught up in one group or one company saying their equipment is the best or their equipment is all you need.  It is a combination of various implements that is most effective when training a variety of different types / levels of athletes.

Tip #6:  Throw the Workout Away
Well, you don’t have to be that extreme.  What I mean is, auto-regulation is very effective for adjusting each individual athlete’s workout depending upon their current state of recovery.  When you walk into the gym with the workouts you wrote up for the day, you might notice something during the warm-up (remember that everything the athlete does is an assessment).  The athletes aren’t really moving quickly, or they might be a little sluggish.  They might not be recovered from the last workout or they just came off a game.  This is when you throw away the workout you had for them; this is auto-regulation.  You need to make real-time adjustments by not forcing the athletes to do a certain workout or certain exercises at a certain intensity when they’re not ready for it.  If you do this, you will ensure continuous progress in their routines.

box 300x199 Top 10 Tips For Good Trainers

Tip #7:  Box of Chocolates
Athletes are like a "box of chocolates", you never know what you’re going to get.  Some athletes have had effective high school training programs before coming to you.  Some athletes have never touched a weight.  Some athletes have injuries from bad form and / or bad coaching.  Some athletes are superstars with explosive genetics and all the potential in the world.  Don’t treat each athlete the same way.  One athlete’s weakness might be another athlete’s strength.

Tip #8:  Stalk the Hot Chicks
I never would have thought I would be calling the good strength coaches in the industry "the Hot Chicks".  I mean, have you seen them?  A pretty motley group of guys.  But yeah, you should stalk them.  Read their blogs, watch their videos, read their articles, buy their products and email them.  Reinvest in yourself each day by setting aside time to read their stuff and interact with them.  This is an amazing way to accelerate your learning curve.  Remember, keep learning with a beginner’s mind.

Tip #9:  Respect
Too many coaches out there don’t walk the walk.  This means they don’t train themselves.  Also (and more importantly) they program blindly.  Programming blindly means they sit in their office and write programs with exercises, volumes and intensities that they themselves have never tried out.  How can you write out a program sequence if you don’t know how one exercise affects the other.  Fatigue changes the entire game.    I come from the old school where your actions speak louder than your words.  You need to train and you need to train with your athletes.  Showing your athletes that you are willing to do what you are asking them to do will be HUGE in developing a mutual respect for one another.

Tip #10:  Focus on Quality
Quality in strength athletics could mean; quality programming, quality form, quality relationships, quality recovery, quality warm-up, quality intensity¸ quality "setting an example" and so on.  Everything you do reflects upon your character and be very aware your athletes are always watching.  Be a good example for your athletes and give them respect.  They will respect you in return and always work hard for you.

I have learned these 10 tips only from years and years of experience.  If you take them and really apply them to your life and to your program, you will not make the same mistakes I have made.

You can check out Smitty’s brand new FREE video where he shoots holes in common programming and shares a bunch of killer information guaranteed to make you a better trainer or coach.  Check out here:

http://acceleratedmusculardevelopment.com/launch/dirty-little-secret/

 

 

home gym equipment?

I recently started taking interest in getting in shape about 2 months ago.. i’ve mostly did body weight exercises and anything i could do with dumbbells and so far managed to drop 25 pounds.. but now I want to focus on building muscle and push ups and pull ups by themselves just arent cutting it.. now here’s my question.. I live in a rural area and its 45 minutes one way to the nearest gym so thats not an option, i do however have a decent space at home to make my own gym. what equipment should i get to start out with weight lifting? as ive said i have the dumbells and i know i need a bench press, what else? i dont want to go super expensive but at the same time i wanna get bigger lol.

Crazy Dreams.

:o hyeah:I’ve just started taking Clen to cut some unwanted fat. I can only take it after work as my type of work needs steady hands. If I shake someone could be seriously injured. Anyway I don’t mind the sides to much & I get SOME sleep. But my dreams have been crazy as, Aliens, U.F.O’s, Time Machines, disappearing hotties. Its so cool, I love those mad arse dreams, keep em coming. Anyone else experience that type of thing on Clen? Also will the shaking stop so I can take it before work or will the shakes always be there as long as I take Clen?:ohyeah:

home gym equipment?

I recently started taking interest in getting in shape about 2 months ago.. i’ve mostly did body weight exercises and anything i could do with dumbbells and so far managed to drop 25 pounds.. but now I want to focus on building muscle and push ups and pull ups by themselves just arent cutting it.. now here’s my question.. I live in a rural area and its 45 minutes one way to the nearest gym so thats not an option, i do however have a decent space at home to make my own gym. what equipment should i get to start out with weight lifting? as ive said i have the dumbells and i know i need a bench press, what else? i dont want to go super expensive but at the same time i wanna get bigger lol.

WTF: No need to supplement Vit D?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/30vitamin.html

The very high levels of vitamin D that are often recommended by doctors and testing laboratories — and can be achieved only by taking supplements — are unnecessary and could be harmful, an expert committee says. It also concludes that calcium supplements are not needed.

Lawrence Lool/European Pressphoto Agency

A vitamin D pill.

Enlarge This Image

The group said most people have adequate amounts of vitamin D in their blood supplied by their diets and natural sources like sunshine, the committee says in a report that is to be released on Tuesday. “For most people, taking extra calcium and vitamin D supplements is not indicated,” said Dr. Clifford J. Rosen, a member of the panel and an osteoporosis expert at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute.
Dr. J. Christopher Gallagher, director of the bone metabolism unit at the Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Neb., agreed, adding, “The onus is on the people who propose extra calcium and vitamin D to show it is safe before they push it on people.”
Over the past few years, the idea that nearly everyone needs extra calcium and vitamin D — especially vitamin D — has swept the nation.
With calcium, adolescent girls may be the only group that is getting too little, the panel found. Older women, on the other hand, may take too much, putting themselves at risk for kidney stones. And there is evidence that excess calcium can increase the risk of heart disease, the group wrote.
As for vitamin D, some prominent doctors have said that most people need supplements or they will be at increased risk for a wide variety of illnesses, including heart disease, cancer and autoimmune diseases.
And these days more and more people know their vitamin D levels because they are being tested for it as part of routine physical exams.
“The number of vitamin D tests has exploded,” said Dennis Black, a reviewer of the report who is a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco.
At the same time, vitamin D sales have soared, growing faster than those of any supplement, according to The Nutrition Business Journal. Sales rose 82 percent from 2008 to 2009, reaching $430 million. “Everyone was hoping vitamin D would be kind of a panacea,” Dr. Black said. The report, he added, might quell the craze.
“I think this will have an impact on a lot of primary care providers,” he said.
The 14-member expert committee was convened by the Institute of Medicine, an independent nonprofit scientific body, at the request of the United States and Canadian governments. It was asked to examine the available data — nearly 1,000 publications — to determine how much vitamin D and calcium people were getting, how much was needed for optimal health and how much was too much.
The two nutrients work together for bone health.
Bone health, though, is only one of the benefits that have been attributed to vitamin D, and there is not enough good evidence to support most other claims, the committee said.
Some labs have started reporting levels of less than 30 nanograms of vitamin D per milliliter of blood as a deficiency. With that as a standard, 80 percent of the population would be deemed deficient of vitamin D, Dr. Rosen said. Most people need to take supplements to reach levels above 30 nanograms per milliliter, he added.
But, the committee concluded, a level of 20 to 30 nanograms is all that is needed for bone health, and nearly everyone is in that range.
Vitamin D is being added to more and more foods, said Paul R. Thomas of the Office of Dietary Supplements at the National Institutes of Health. Not only is it in orange juice and milk, but more is being added to breakfast cereals, and it now can be found in very high doses in supplement pills. Most vitamin D pills, he said, used to contain no more than 1,000 international units of it. Now it is easy to find pills, even in places like Wal-Mart, with 5,000 international units. The committee, though, said people need only 600 international units a day.
To assess the amounts of vitamin D and calcium people are getting, the panel looked at national data on diets. Most people, they concluded, get enough calcium from the foods they eat, about 1,000 milligrams a day for most adults (1,200 for women ages 51 to 70).
Vitamin D is more complicated, the group said. In general, most people are not getting enough vitamin D from their diets, but they have enough of the vitamin in their blood, probably because they are also making it naturally after being out in the sun and storing it in their bodies.
The American Society for Bone and Mineral Research and other groups applauded the report. It is “a very balanced set of recommendations,” said Dr. Sundeep Khosla, a Mayo Clinic endocrinologist and the society’s president.
But Andrew Shao, an executive vice president at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group, said the panel was being overly cautious, especially in its recommendations about vitamin D. He said there was no convincing evidence that people were being harmed by taking supplements, and he said higher levels of vitamin D, in particular, could be beneficial.
Such claims “are not supported by the available evidence,” the committee wrote. They were based on studies that observed populations and concluded that people with lower levels of the vitamin had more of various diseases. Such studies have been misleading and most scientists agree that they cannot determine cause and effect.
It is not clear how or why the claims for high vitamin D levels started, medical experts say. First there were two studies, which turned out to be incorrect, that said people needed 30 nanograms of vitamin D per milliliter of blood, the upper end of what the committee says is a normal range. They were followed by articles and claims and books saying much higher levels — 40 to 50 nanograms or even higher — were needed.
After reviewing the data, the committee concluded that the evidence for the benefits of high levels of vitamin D was “inconsistent and/or conflicting and did not demonstrate causality.”
Evidence also suggests that high levels of vitamin D can increase the risks for fractures and the overall death rate and can raise the risk for other diseases. While those studies are not conclusive, any risk looms large when there is no demonstrable benefit. Those hints of risk are “challenging the concept that ‘more is better,’ ” the committee wrote.
That is what surprised Dr. Black. “We thought that probably higher is better,” he said.
He has changed his mind, and expects others will too: “I think this report will make people more cautious.”

A version of this article appeared in print on November 30, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

Crazy Dreams.

:o hyeah:I’ve just started taking Clen to cut some unwanted fat. I can only take it after work as my type of work needs steady hands. If I shake someone could be seriously injured. Anyway I don’t mind the sides to much & I get SOME sleep. But my dreams have been crazy as, Aliens, U.F.O’s, Time Machines, disappearing hotties. Its so cool, I love those mad arse dreams, keep em coming. Anyone else experience that type of thing on Clen? Also will the shaking stop so I can take it before work or will the shakes always be there as long as I take Clen?:ohyeah:

home gym equipment?

I recently started taking interest in getting in shape about 2 months ago.. i’ve mostly did body weight exercises and anything i could do with dumbbells and so far managed to drop 25 pounds.. but now I want to focus on building muscle and push ups and pull ups by themselves just arent cutting it.. now here’s my question.. I live in a rural area and its 45 minutes one way to the nearest gym so thats not an option, i do however have a decent space at home to make my own gym. what equipment should i get to start out with weight lifting? as ive said i have the dumbells and i know i need a bench press, what else? i dont want to go super expensive but at the same time i wanna get bigger lol.

WTF: No need to supplement Vit D?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/30/health/30vitamin.html

The very high levels of vitamin D that are often recommended by doctors and testing laboratories — and can be achieved only by taking supplements — are unnecessary and could be harmful, an expert committee says. It also concludes that calcium supplements are not needed.

Lawrence Lool/European Pressphoto Agency

A vitamin D pill.

Enlarge This Image

The group said most people have adequate amounts of vitamin D in their blood supplied by their diets and natural sources like sunshine, the committee says in a report that is to be released on Tuesday. “For most people, taking extra calcium and vitamin D supplements is not indicated,” said Dr. Clifford J. Rosen, a member of the panel and an osteoporosis expert at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute.
Dr. J. Christopher Gallagher, director of the bone metabolism unit at the Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Neb., agreed, adding, “The onus is on the people who propose extra calcium and vitamin D to show it is safe before they push it on people.”
Over the past few years, the idea that nearly everyone needs extra calcium and vitamin D — especially vitamin D — has swept the nation.
With calcium, adolescent girls may be the only group that is getting too little, the panel found. Older women, on the other hand, may take too much, putting themselves at risk for kidney stones. And there is evidence that excess calcium can increase the risk of heart disease, the group wrote.
As for vitamin D, some prominent doctors have said that most people need supplements or they will be at increased risk for a wide variety of illnesses, including heart disease, cancer and autoimmune diseases.
And these days more and more people know their vitamin D levels because they are being tested for it as part of routine physical exams.
“The number of vitamin D tests has exploded,” said Dennis Black, a reviewer of the report who is a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco.
At the same time, vitamin D sales have soared, growing faster than those of any supplement, according to The Nutrition Business Journal. Sales rose 82 percent from 2008 to 2009, reaching $430 million. “Everyone was hoping vitamin D would be kind of a panacea,” Dr. Black said. The report, he added, might quell the craze.
“I think this will have an impact on a lot of primary care providers,” he said.
The 14-member expert committee was convened by the Institute of Medicine, an independent nonprofit scientific body, at the request of the United States and Canadian governments. It was asked to examine the available data — nearly 1,000 publications — to determine how much vitamin D and calcium people were getting, how much was needed for optimal health and how much was too much.
The two nutrients work together for bone health.
Bone health, though, is only one of the benefits that have been attributed to vitamin D, and there is not enough good evidence to support most other claims, the committee said.
Some labs have started reporting levels of less than 30 nanograms of vitamin D per milliliter of blood as a deficiency. With that as a standard, 80 percent of the population would be deemed deficient of vitamin D, Dr. Rosen said. Most people need to take supplements to reach levels above 30 nanograms per milliliter, he added.
But, the committee concluded, a level of 20 to 30 nanograms is all that is needed for bone health, and nearly everyone is in that range.
Vitamin D is being added to more and more foods, said Paul R. Thomas of the Office of Dietary Supplements at the National Institutes of Health. Not only is it in orange juice and milk, but more is being added to breakfast cereals, and it now can be found in very high doses in supplement pills. Most vitamin D pills, he said, used to contain no more than 1,000 international units of it. Now it is easy to find pills, even in places like Wal-Mart, with 5,000 international units. The committee, though, said people need only 600 international units a day.
To assess the amounts of vitamin D and calcium people are getting, the panel looked at national data on diets. Most people, they concluded, get enough calcium from the foods they eat, about 1,000 milligrams a day for most adults (1,200 for women ages 51 to 70).
Vitamin D is more complicated, the group said. In general, most people are not getting enough vitamin D from their diets, but they have enough of the vitamin in their blood, probably because they are also making it naturally after being out in the sun and storing it in their bodies.
The American Society for Bone and Mineral Research and other groups applauded the report. It is “a very balanced set of recommendations,” said Dr. Sundeep Khosla, a Mayo Clinic endocrinologist and the society’s president.
But Andrew Shao, an executive vice president at the Council for Responsible Nutrition, a trade group, said the panel was being overly cautious, especially in its recommendations about vitamin D. He said there was no convincing evidence that people were being harmed by taking supplements, and he said higher levels of vitamin D, in particular, could be beneficial.
Such claims “are not supported by the available evidence,” the committee wrote. They were based on studies that observed populations and concluded that people with lower levels of the vitamin had more of various diseases. Such studies have been misleading and most scientists agree that they cannot determine cause and effect.
It is not clear how or why the claims for high vitamin D levels started, medical experts say. First there were two studies, which turned out to be incorrect, that said people needed 30 nanograms of vitamin D per milliliter of blood, the upper end of what the committee says is a normal range. They were followed by articles and claims and books saying much higher levels — 40 to 50 nanograms or even higher — were needed.
After reviewing the data, the committee concluded that the evidence for the benefits of high levels of vitamin D was “inconsistent and/or conflicting and did not demonstrate causality.”
Evidence also suggests that high levels of vitamin D can increase the risks for fractures and the overall death rate and can raise the risk for other diseases. While those studies are not conclusive, any risk looms large when there is no demonstrable benefit. Those hints of risk are “challenging the concept that ‘more is better,’ ” the committee wrote.
That is what surprised Dr. Black. “We thought that probably higher is better,” he said.
He has changed his mind, and expects others will too: “I think this report will make people more cautious.”

A version of this article appeared in print on November 30, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

ladies only

pm.. if intrested.


Attached Images

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Crazy Dreams.

:o hyeah:I’ve just started taking Clen to cut some unwanted fat. I can only take it after work as my type of work needs steady hands. If I shake someone could be seriously injured. Anyway I don’t mind the sides to much & I get SOME sleep. But my dreams have been crazy as, Aliens, U.F.O’s, Time Machines, disappearing hotties. Its so cool, I love those mad arse dreams, keep em coming. Anyone else experience that type of thing on Clen? Also will the shaking stop so I can take it before work or will the shakes always be there as long as I take Clen?:ohyeah: