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Iron Yoga

The Turkish Get Up (or TGU) is getting a lot of love recently. As is normal within the fitness industry, the ‘mainstream’ is finally catching up to what those of us on the ‘fringe’ have been doing to create success for the last 10 to 100 years.

get-up

Unfortunately it is also being horribly bastardised into some barely recognisable mutant sit up performed with a tiny 4kg kettlebell, also known in our gym as ‘The Earring’ or by my two year old daughter as “Mine! My want two!!!” Look, if a two year old girl wants to walk around the house with one in each hand, then I reckon that they’re probably too light for a grown up.

The TGU is a controlled roll, NOT a sit up! The idea is to pretty much keep your back straight as you ‘roll up’ into a seated position prior to standing up. Think of how you roll out of bed in the morning. Yes there is more than one way to do the TGU, but most of the variations are different expressions of the same principles.

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Five Misunderstood Kettlebell Cues

A swing is not a squat

Maximum hip bend, minimal knee. This is the mantra which has led many who will do exactly what you tell them to do to hit themselves in the butt with their own kettlebell. The fitness world now seems to understand that a swing is not a ‘squat-swing’, but the pendulum now seems to have swung to the opposite extent to where no knee bend is allowed.

You are allowed to bend your knees in a swing! But due to individual body mechanics (we are all unique butterflies) no two swings will look identical.

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The humble goblet squat

One of my female students who I see twice a month was training in a chain gym. It’s common for me to only see my clients twice a month, but I harass them a couple of times a week via email about training/dietary compliance. You see, I’m all about ‘teaching students’ rather than ‘working out clients’. My aim, is to get to the point where my students only really need me for training programmes, technique tweaks and accountability calls. One of the biggest scams in the Personal Training industry is that you actually need a Personal Trainer.

But I digress. This female, let’s call her Strong Girl, was doing goblet squats with a kettlebell as a part of her warm up. A member of staff tried to correct her and so began a debate about what the goblet squat actually is and what it does.

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Mud Racing

Probably the single biggest sporting event that people seek my help with recently is obstacle course racing, or as I like to call it, mud racing. I seem to have developed a reputation as a ‘performance enhancer’, but not the type you’ve been hearing about in the news over the weekend.

So, with regards to mud racing, what are the ‘big guns’, the things that seem to have the biggest impact on peoples performance?

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Inefficient Exercise – One of the two keys to fat loss

In a previous blog I stated that their were basically two keys to body composition change (aka ‘fat loss’). Those two keys being ‘caloric restriction’ and ‘inefficient exercise’. I can’t take credit for these terms as I stole them from Master Coach Dan John (all hail Dan John! Hail!) And that said, I doubt that Dan invented these either.

So the question arose on the Book of Faces:

“What do you mean by inefficient exercise?”

And my reply:

“Tends to be things with repeatable high peak power output or large workloads. Peak power examples are Hardstyle kettlebell swings (ridiculously inefficient), slam balls, well performed burpees, etc. High work load has to be balanced against fatigue/safety so you’re talking about the loaded carry family, which includes pushing/pulling sleds/cars, etc. ”

Quite succinct I felt, but maybe it needs fleshed out a bit. Read more

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The problem with Smith Machines

Every gym has one, no gym needs one. The most over priced hoodie holder in the gym, the Smith Machine was invented in the 1960’s by one of the fathers of modern fitness, Jack Lalanne. Quite possibly one of the few negative thing this fitness colossus did in his career. The intention behind the Smith machine (so named after Rudy Smith, the fitness club executive who mass marketed it) was to create a ‘safe’ way for the masses to have the benefits of free weight squat training without the ‘danger’ of having an unrestrained weight on your back.

The Smith machine is used to squat, shoulder press and bench press. The alleged benefit is that, because the bar just needs to be rotated to lock the bar in place, it creates an extra level of safety and removes the need for spotters and expert tuition.

Smith machine

This is a great idea in theory, but falls down in application.

  • You become locked into a two-dimensional plane of movement, which is pretty unnatural.
  • Squats (front and back), you can’t achieve a good set up because you can’t apply torsion to the bar.
  • Press (Bench and Military), again set up sucks due to lack of torsion and pull over.

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