shirespeedandstrength.com.au

Today the gym turns 3 in barbell years, which are the same as regular years actually. Everyone is invited to come along and lift ‘something’ today, even if its not a scheduled training session day for you.

Before you ask, no it hasn’t gone fast, its taken 3 years. It seems like a long time ago to me. A lot of weight has moved a very long distance in that time and people have gotten a lot stronger.

Athletes have gone on to play for their state and country and compete overseas. Regular recreational lifters have gotten stronger, leaner and happier. Exercise Science students, practicing Personal Trainers and Physiotherapists have gotten smarter; as have I. Friendships have been forged, lifting competitions have been run and won, social interaction has taken place and trivia has been shared. Jokes have been told, practical jokes have been played and I’m proud to say that only one person has ever vomited from training; but still one to many, because Coach Pete thinks that its stupidly masochistic.

The first weeks of the gym when all we had was space.

So many thanks need to go around. To my lovely girlfriend Su, who has been there from when the gym was barely even an idea. To the guys who really made the gym something in those first few weeks, Bondy, Lee, Ben, Brandon, Joel and Daniel. To those who helped us out with equipment, Adrian and Lily See at Gym Direct, and big and little Paul Graham at Muscle and Fitness who have been so generous.

A HUGE thanks needs to go to Scott Lawrence who has come on board at Shire Speed and Strength this year as a partner and breathed new life into the gym and given it more backbone and stability, and to Geoff and Chenye with all their help and good ideas for the future.

I hope that everyone has gotten something positive from the gym and that we can continue to do that for you in the future. Its not easy forging a different business model and organizing a push back in the other direction against a Fitness Industry that does not provide skills or beyond-novice capabilities.

I have posted before about the prevalence of poor shoe choices people make when first coming to the gym.

So below is the evidence of how easy it is to find a pair of old shoes at your local second-hand store. I went to a St Vinnies in both Miranda and Engadine and found suitable shoes for the new lifter who isn’t ready for his or her own lifting shoes yet.

Bargain. $8.00; and a free piece of old gum on the sole too.

At Shire Speed and Strength. We’re not only stronger than you, we’re also smarter. We do quadratic equations between sets.

Its what we do between sets.

You want pseudo-science? You’ve got it.

The unrelenting onslaught of snake oil, potions, powders, magnets, inflatable shoes, hypercolour shirts and ab roller-rocker-2000-fold-away-under-the-bed-then-onto-the-nature-strip-for-council-clean-up products are perfectly placed to meet what the exercise consumer REALLY wants.

We’ve changed to meet your needs. We’re corporatizing, we’re adding hype, we’re adding apostrophes!!!!!!! (we’d add more but it would screw the HTML code) We’re making big claims and distracting you from the reality of the outcome.

Yesterday, we fixed a new lifter’s back squat. He didn’t need coaching, he didn’t need to do any mobility work, he didn’t need to know what he was doing inefficiently. What he needed was for us here at Shire Sorcery and Barbell Witchcraft to identify the REAL problem. Some desert djinns had infested his hips, and they were restricting his squatting ability. Using special techniques known only to employees of Shire Sorcery and Barbell Witchcraft, we cast these evil djinns out of his body and into the carpark.

“Demons GO!!!”

A pesky Djinn can screw up your lifting. We'll show you how to cast them out.

Problem solved, and excellently efficient squatting mechanics resulted.

So if you’re looking to improve your lifting and athletic skills, Come and check us out here at Shire Sorcery and Barbell Witchcraft. We’ll do a tarot card reading and use our necromantic powers to contact the dead through a séance using a SSS ouija board.

Competitive lifters can get an edge by summoning demons, casting spells onto competitors and making deals with the Dark Lord. The best thing is, there’s nothing that ASADA can do! All those fools wasting their time in drug tested competitions trying to get ahead, going to great lengths to cheat and not get caught…. There’s a better way.

The dead have special knowledge of how to improve your training.

Being a contrarian, is characterized by taking diametrically opposed points of view. Sometimes this is done merely in order to be heard, sometimes it is a genuine response to an outrageous comment or publication.

I have been consistent in my ridicule of various recommendations of exercise, and their supporting education streams; justifiably and in some cases unjustifiably. One of the main concessions that I have made, is in regards to the difficulty for the consumer in identifying quality exercise prescription; be it from a Doctor, Physiotherapist, Exercise Physiologist, Personal Trainer or Coach. We have no way of knowing, based on credential, whether the person is ACTUALLY any good or not.

From time to time I will have correspondence with someone who is ‘in the industry’, and the conversation will turn to the fact that, “we’re not all like that“. Its a whisper, its a small final defense and claim for some self respect after conceding the overwhelming personal discontent with how they got to where they are the long way.

Stop whispering to me and start YELLING at the people who are making a living running these scams and discrediting those who are genuinely efficient in their practice.

Here’s some clips of our experimental Anzac Day lifting comp.

We hosted Justin from 70′s Big.com for a repeat of his Barbell Workshop and Programming Day from last July.

This year Justin expanded on his highlighting of mobility work for assistance in barbell mechanics and efficiency. As per usual, the Squat was an area of need for many lifters as well as the Power Clean. A lot of mobility and technical homework came out of the Barbell workshop day.

After the Saturday Workshop, the group headed down the road to the Australian Gridiron League National Championship game between New South Wales and Western Australia. At half time, a tug-o-war was scheduled so of course, we got into that. It included players from the new Ladies Gridiron League (LGL) plus people from the crowd.  Josh had come all the way from Perth for the Workshop and ended up competing for Western Australia in the tug-o-war.

Its very simple. Being a newbie isn’t about just how much you have on the bar.

The below plainly visualizes ways that the newbie announces to us that he is not thinking about what he or she is doing and instead is angering the lifting gods.

This will anger the lifting gods. Too many plates for too little weight on the bar.

It should be like this instead.

This kind of strength training blasphemy is only tolerated so long. Keep your eyes peeled for other ways that people, not just newbies who dont know any better, blaspheme in the gym with their actions. May I point out, that a day after these pics were taken there was a tremendous amount of seismic activity in the world; coincidence?

Dont forget, the 70′s Big Workship is next weekend. Book online here and Justin will also be available for private coaching sessions while he is in town. Contact details are on the link.

The barbell complex is an efficient use of equipment and time that can be varied to stress the lifter in various energy systems and aspects of general capacity.

Crossfit did not invent the barbell complex, they have been around for as long as barbells have and they have never gone away. Below are two clips that show vastly different ends of the spectrum in terms of strength and strength endurance.

Complexes are usually the sort of thing I might add in as a finisher or as the first increments of conditioning focus when a lifter starts moving their training to emphasize work capacity over absolute strength.

Programming, programming; can you write me a program? Will you write me a personalized program? How much to provide a personalized-individually-taylored program? because I am a special and unique snowflake.

It is clear, that the pluralism of strength training programs underlines the fact that getting stronger for the vast majority of people is actually very very easy to do. This is due in-part to the novice or intermediate level ability of the majority of athletes and gym users, so much so, that precise programming has not yet become necessary. If the exercise prescription contains progressive overload, and time for recovery and adaptation, then progress is essentially certain.

The in-season collision sport athlete has a much tougher job in exercise prescription.

For the in-season collision football player however, additional other stresses compound the problem of progress through over-stimulus and the inability to gain sufficient rest. Once the stress of the game and the tactical-technical practice becomes great enough, general capacity adaptation will no longer take place. The question ceases to be, can I get stronger and faster? but, can I maintain my strength and speed. The specific conditioning and technical skills will rise through the season but the general capacities will plateau or decline.

I will postulate here that there is a point that can be labeled to describe the transition between several phenomena. For the low training age of general capacity athlete, there is an ability to continue to get stronger as the technical-tactical work increases and continues. This is due to two reasons. a) Their general capacities are poorly developed, eg their strength capacity may have been undeveloped and this progress may only have started when the new season began. So there is a long way to go in terms of their potential. b) The technical-tactical work may not contain very much volume. Think of a low level football player and he may only practice once or twice a week and play once a week. That is not a great deal of stress, so strength development may continue for some time.

For the athlete of greater training age, there will be a point where the technical-tactical work has now inhibited further progress in general capacities. At this point, probably before the first game of the season, the athlete will have ascended his or here highest level of general capacity. This too can be for two reasons. a) Their general capacities are well-developed and the new influence of the competition season will stunt the optimal environment for further development; this is ok, because getting better off the field is not as important than winning on the field. b) The stress of the competition season is so great, that even though the athlete’s general capacities are intermediate and far from their genetic potential, recovery from technical-tactic stress makes progress impossible.

What does this do for in-season programming? In my opinion this is where things get difficult and require real time adjustment. There is no point planning a specific strength maintenance program when the athlete comes in and cannot complete the exercise due to acute injury. If the athlete’s knee is banged up you may not be squatting again for some time, you might only be able to deadlift. Twisted ankle? Back extensions and GHR’s might be the only method of keeping posterior strength up.

Some general tips…… rows, deadlifts and back extensions might be the last few things you can still doing terms of strength work. Squatting and pressing might be off the table when joint inflammation is taken into account. Closed chain work, in both strength training and conditioning might be all the options that are available. Forget running when coping with lower body joint injury, you might be forced into rowing and cycling or this is finally where the eliptical machine is useful. Conditioning in season may start to appear less and less coherent with the work to rest ratios of the sport. League and Union will have an aerobic component that makes sense for left ventricle work to be prescribed. Recovery work of 15-20min in the 120-140bpm range is useful for normalizing sympathetic to parasympathetic dominance and active recovery that brings blood to the damaged tissues of the body has always made sense to even the ancient athlete.

Justin Lascek from 70′sBig.com is returning to Australia to host another Barbell Workshop and Programming Seminar.

Dates will be Saturday April 14th and Sunday April 15th.

Information and online bookings can be made here.