Praise-correct-praise (PCP)

Picking one cue

An important part of coaching is getting your client to learn all the many parts of correct movement without overwhelming them with information. Too many cues is as bad as no cues because the client will get frustrated quickly on a complex movement pattern if there are too many things to concentrate on.

In general, you need to pick out the single most important cue for an exercise, explain it, demonstrate it, and then cue it for all the reps. For instance, when I am teaching a new exercise, I pick this ONE cue for each of the following:

1. Squat - shoving the butt out (”butt out!)
2. Deadlift - keeping the back flat (Show them how to set the back and cue “set it!”)
3. Lunge - keeping the torso vertical (”chest up!”)
4. Shoulder press - keeping the bar path vertical (”Keep it close!”)
5. Bench press - keeping the feet on the floor (”feet!”)

And so on.

Then do as many sets as necessary to make sure they have go this one part of the movement down. Then move on to the next most important thing to focus on. If I had to choose the next thing to focus on it would be:

1. Squat - keeping the eye gaze on the floor (”look down”)
2. Deadlift - keeping the bar close to the body (”pull it in”)
3. Lunge - keeping the back knee down (”touch knee”)
4. Shoulder press - pushing the head forward (”head!”)
5. Bench press - being aggressive (”push hard!)

And so on.

Praise-correct-praise (PCP)

After a certain amount of time, the trainee will know most of the cues you use for the exercises. Now, your job is to focus on their individual weakness as you introduce difficulty (higher loads, etc.) PCP is a concept my TKD instructor taught me, and it is a sound method for getting people to do the right thing without getting frustrated. After you watch a set, you first pick out something that they did correctly - anything. Good speed, good depth, nice flat back, etc. Then, you give them one thing to work on from the cues that you have already shown them. Then, you give one more word of praise to let them know they are overall doing well. I tend to give specific praise, specific correcting, and then general praise.

For example, after watching a set of five heavy squats, you might say. “OK, client, you did a great job pushing the butt back on every reps. You need to work on opening up the hips at the bottom. But overall the squat depth has been improving. Now let’s do another set and work on opening the knees.”

After a little speech like that, you would only cue the knee opening on subsequent reps, because you need to focus their attention. Remember, any time the work gets hard, a person can only concentrate on ONE thing at at time. The heaviness of the weight tends to fog the brain. After a few weeks of PCP-ing only one or two important cues, their overall form should improve.

Cueing the Lunge

Who shouldn’t do it

First of all there are some who shouldn’t be doing traditional lunges at all — very overweight people, people who are frail and/or have very bad balance, and people with orthopedic concerns like knee replacements. You can do some version of a lunge with these people, but not the long-stride, knee to the ground version. See the scaling section below for what to do with these people.

Why do it

Most people can benefit from the lunge because it provides good stabilization work for the hips. You are asking them to keep one leg flexed and one leg extended and them to move in and out of those positions. Very useful for opening up hips and just general hip conditioning. Lunges go well with running and squats because the movement patterns in all three exercises are pretty similar.

Common faults and their corrections

Here are the errors I see in lunges:

1. Rear knee not touching the ground.
2. Upper body leans forward as trainee tires.
3. Front heel lifts off the ground.
4. Insufficiently long stance.
5. Front knee hyperflexing to achieve depth.
6. Banging the rear knee on the ground.

Here’s what to do about it.

1. Rear knee not touching the ground. This is pretty easy. You tell them, “knee touch” after you explain that the rear knee needs to gently, gently brush the group in order for the rep to count. If you don’t count reps where the knee doesn’t touch they will get the idea quickly. This cue simply reinforces proper range of motion.
2. Upper body leans forward as trainee tires. If they absolutely cannot keep the trunk upright and perpendicular to the ground then you need to scale it back because the exercise is too hard. After you explain that they need to keep the shoulders above the hips, cue them with “chest up.” Watch especially the last few reps as they reach failure because this will be one of the biggest form breaks that happens. Keep on them about this because it really changes the exercise to have the weight of the trunk deviate from perpendicular.
3. Front heel lifts off the ground. This is due to a weak posterior chain. Just say “heel down” and point to the front heel. This will also drop of pretty badly in trainees with no posterior chain (i.e. most trainees). Not an egregious error but still one that needs to be addressed.
4. Insufficiently long stance. Again, not a huge deal but they do need to keep the stance pretty long; maybe about as long as they are tall. Say, “step forward more.”
5. Front knee hyperflexing to achieve depth. The first few times a true novice does a lunge, they will hyperflex the front knee to get depth. We don’t want that. We want them to flex the rear knee to achieve depth because the rear leg has to get into hyperextention for the exercise to have value. The knee can be in front of the foot, that’s fine. But don’t let them hyperflex it like eight inches in front. You would cue the rear knee down and that will bring the front knee back some.
6. Banging the rear knee on the ground. I don’t know why people do this. It hurts. Tell them, “light touch with the knee.” They might bang it near the end as they tire, but don’t let them. And don’t let them rest the knee on the ground in fatigue. They rarely come back up in a graceful fashion.

Scaling down and scaling up

You can modify the lunge by having them  reduce the length of the stride.  This works for people  whose balance doesn’t allow them to go for the long stance. Just have them take a tiny step forward and touch the rear knee down to the ground, to a pillow, or to some other standardized depth. Have them alternate left and right and stepping back instead of forward to make it easier (alternating lunge). I would also have people who would be best served by not falling hold on to something like a machine or bar when they lunge. Here are the progressions:

1. Short stance lunge to pillow, alternating
2. Short stance lunge  to pillow, one side only
3. Short stance lunge, full depth, alternating
4. Short stance lunge, full depth, one side
5. Long stance lunge, limited depth, alternating
6. Long stance lunge, limited depth, one side
7. Long stance lunge, alternating
8. Long stance lunge, one side
9. Long stance lunge, walking (stepping forward every time)

Progressing them up from the long stance lunge means just adding reps and weight. You can put a barbell across the shoulders, but I find this to be totally impractical. If I had to give a progression for scaling up, I would say:

1. Increase the number of continuous reps
2. Add dumbbells at the sides
3. Add short barbell across the shoulders
4. Go overhead
5. Go overhead with a sled drag

So there you have it. Use the lunge wisely because if it goes wrong it can go really wrong. e.g. falling, broken kneecaps. etc. But used properly it can be a valuable addition to the toolbox.

How to Not Panic If You Gain Weight While Strength Training

From time to time, we all have little periods in our lives when we gain weight. For me, whenever I work exclusively on strength and do little conditioning, I tend to put on 3-5 pounds pretty reliably. Those of you doing StrongLifts 5×5 or Rippetoe’s program will almost certainly put on fat weight as you put on muscle. It’s a normal thing to happen and is preventable with a pristine diet.

Here are some things to think about if you put on fat weight:

•  First of all, unless you are a fitness model, does it really matter if you gain five pounds of fat in the context of a muscle-building program? Sitting in front of the tube and getting fat and eating lots of good food and lifting are significantly different activities, right? You are still healthy if you’ve gained fat from lifting/eating, but not if you’ve been sitting and eating crap.
• Why are you working so hard to get bigger/stronger? Be honest with yourself. If you’re lifting to look better, then just admit the belly bothers you because it disrupts your image of yourself as a GQed-up guy, or whatever. If you think that lifting heavy objects makes the body function normally, then a little extra temporary fat shouldn’t bother you.
• You can always do a bunch of GPP/metcon work and get rid of the extra fat in a hurry. Keep your fat intake up and go do a bunch of running workouts. Shouldn’t take more than a week per pound if you’re already fit. Cut some of the sugar/starch out of the diet and you should be good to go.
• Keep tabs on your weight gain and start to take evasive action if it goes above a certain point. I’m 5′9” and was between 150-55 for most of my life, so I’m used to being a little guys. I never wanted to be that big. My healthiest weight is about 165 now, so I tend to ramp up the metcon if my weight goes above 170. This is just me. Many people who strength train want to be bigger, so their ceiling for fat gain would be higher.
• Lastly, if you gain some weight please do not panic and try to undereat, and go around hungry all the time. Guess what? Your body is smarter than you. If you run too much of a caloric deficit, your body will FORCE you to eat eventually. You can’t win this game, so don’t even play it. You need to eat enough food to satisfy all of your energy/nutrient requirements. This is the whole point of eating — to give your body energy. If you deliberately undereat to the point of continual hunger you are opposing a biological imperative. You must eat enough food to satisfy your hunger completely, even when you want to lose weight. If you fail to eat enough, your body slows down. But we want it to speed up and metabolize extra fat. I can’t emphasize this point enough: exercise, and eat a lot of quality food - veggies, lean meats, and fats, such that you are full- and you will be at a healthy weight.

Everyone gains a little extra fat sometimes in the course of training. It’s part of the normal ups and down of training, so don’t go radically changing your eating and fitness plans if it happens. Either accept it as part of what you’re doing or go check your diet and add some more metcons to your program.

What I Tell My Clients About Diet

I am not a dietitian or a nutritionist. Please do not construe this post as professional nutrition advice.

Diet for weight loss is very easy to understand. Here are some things I tell my clients:

• Eat whole, unprocessed food and avoid anything in a box or can.
• Your meals should be based around meat and vegetables.
• Eat a little whole wheat grains and fruit at every meal. Berries and melons are good.
• Corn, potatoes, carrots, iceberg lettuce, celery, and cucumbers don’t have the best nutritional bang for the buck. Try darker vegetables, legumes, and sweet potatoes.
• You don’t have to go crazy on the water, just drink when you’re thirsty.
• Make sure you’re eating enough fat in the form of nuts/seeds, avocados, olives, and olive oil.
• Make sure you don’t undereat. Do not try to run a caloric deficit.
• Do not keep a food log. If you feel compelled to record what you eat, note only the type of food, not the amounts.
• You already know what’s wrong with your diet. Fix it.
• Stop eating fast food.
• Cook protein at home on the weekends so you have the base of a healthy meal during the week.
• You don’t have to be perfect. Some crap is OK, but try to eat crap moderately.
• Sugar is very addictive. It’s hard to eat just a little. Keep this in mind.

Having a good diet is pretty simple to understand. The hard part is implementing it. Look, a simple, healthy meal is a can of tuna on a bed of spinach with olive oil and avocado and some berries. Eat 500 meals like this and you will have no problems with your weight.

Workouts Advanced Trainees May Follow

Sometimes you don’t want to plan your own workouts. These guys will do it for you.

Coach Rut does one lift and a short metabolic conditioning (metcon) workout. The metcon usually involves dumbbells.

Catalyst Athletics does heavy Olympic lifts and assistance lifts and metcon.

Try a couple months of the workouts from one of these sites to emphasize strength a little bit more than conditioning.

Have a workout site that posts daily workouts? Need to find more sites like these? Post to comments.

How to Train Hips If You Have Knee Pain

I have a couple of clients who because of their large size and various injuries cannot squat. The question is, how can they exercise such that they can satisfactorily train the lower body? They are not ready to perform more than a very shallow squat or lunge.

Here’s how they (and you) can train the squat/lower body with bad knees.

1. Dumbell swings. I love these because they get the hips flexing and extending without requiring much depth. As the weight gets heavier and the arms are unable to lift the weight by themselves, the hips have to “snap” (extend) in order to generate enough momentum to get the weight overhead. If you are older/injured take the the time to work up to a decent weight. Make sure you lean over a little forward, keep the heels on the ground, and don’t go lower than necessary.
2. Push-press. Again, we are able to flex/extend the hips without much risk to the knees, because the depth is minimal. Bend the knees a little with weight on the shoulders and push the bar overhead.
3. Bridges and wallsits. Usually I use these as warmups but for many clients they are work sets. Wallsit depth should be about 135 degrees at the knees, but it might have to be more depending on the individual situation. Hold for time. When bridging, emphasize squeezing the glutes and lifting the hips high.
4. Step-ups. Not ideal, but better than not doing anything for hips. Doing these depends on the client - some people feel pain going up stairs, some don’t. Start low and work on speed, then gradually increase height.
5. Dumbbell deadlifts. Have them grab the top of a dumbbell that has been set on the ground with a vertical handle. You might have to put a plate under the bell to get it to the proper height. Just go for a little bend to the knees. You should be able to use a fair amount of weight even for a deconditioned client because of the extremely short range of motion.
6. Glute-ham raises.Do not do these with anyone over 40 unless you have conditioned them first. Otherwise they will not be able to walk. This exercise is perfect for people who are coming off a knee injury but already have a base of fitness.

Keep in mind that if you are a trainer and someone comes to you with knee pain, you are not a healer. Your job is to make them stronger or lighter. Send them to someone who knows how to fix their problem.

How to Make and Use a Cheap and Simple Home Gym

To make a functional home gym, you only really need a pullup bar (~$10). If you want, you can add the following items for more versatility:

• Speed rope (<$10).
• 10 to 55 pound dumbbell (~$20-$65)
• dowel or broomstick ($1)

A simple way to exercise for health and weight loss would be to use the following protocol:

Pick five exercises that you can do with the equipment you have. If you have a pullup bar and a speed rope, you could choose from the following exercises:

• Pullup or jumping pullup
• Pushup or pushup on knees
• Situp with feet anchored
• Single or double unders
• Squats, no weight
• Lunges, no weight
• Dumbbell swing
• Overhead squat with dowel
• Overhead lunge with dowel
• Thruster with dowel
• Push-press with dowel

(The protocol is CrossFit’s Fight Gone Bad, for those who care.) Simply perform as many reps as you can with good form in a minute for each each exercises, then rest a minute. Do it three times.
For example, in the first minute, do as many pullups as you can. Record the score. Immediately do as many pushups as you can and record the score. Continue until your reach the squats, then rest exactly one minute. After the minute is up, begin again with the pullups. Keep going until you have reached three rounds, or 15 minutes of work.

Record the number of reps for each minute. Total all your reps, and you have your score.

Vary the exercises, keep moving during the work minutes, and your fitness should improve over time. Periodically repeat workouts so you can see your improvement.

How to Work Out When You Get Injured

Steady, hard training inevitably produces three things: results, soreness, and injuries. Tweaking a back or hip flexor is a normal part of training. If you are not getting occasional tweaky little injuries, I will go ahead and say you are not working hard enough to produce superior fitness.

For those of you who do not aspire to high levels of fitness and are working out moderately, you should basically never get hurt. If you are, there is something wrong with your body and/or program. We need to talk, because odds are your posture or your exercises are not optimal.

When you do get hurt, you must rest the injured area. Go see a doctor if it hurts bad enough.

But you must continue training if you are able. Here are some ways to keep working hard when you are hurting:

1. Knee/shin/ankle/hip pain. Looks like you’re working upper body only. Work on endurance in strict pullups, pushups, and dips. Get your overhead press numbers up. Get your bench up. Knees to elbows and L-sits are great, too, if you can do it pain-free.
2. Lower back/abdominals. This is a tough place to be in. You are going to lose fitness if the injury is bad enough. If you have really tweaked your lower back, just go rest until the pain is tolerable, then go work out normally but with much lighter loads. Please go see your doctor if the injury is bad enough or comes with tingling/other weirdness. If you think you might have a hernia please go see your doctor.
3. Shoulder/elbow/neck. You can work on front and back squats, but the load might have to lighten up because all your muscles work pretty hard isometically during squatting. Back squatting can exacerbate elbows, so watch out for that. Watch out for your neck/upper back in deadlifts, if you decide to do them. Work on lunges, situps, back extensions.

The best advice I can give you as far as injuries are concerned is to back off if you feel an injury coming on. What good is getting a personal record on deadlift if you have to take 4-5 days off afterwards?

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How to Jump-Start Fat Loss by Using Track Work

Losing weight should be done gradually, I know. But sometimes we just want to jump-start weight loss just so that we can be motivated by the loss of a few pounds. There’s nothing inherently unhealthy about trying to lose fat quickly as long as you know what you’re doing. Here’s a quick guide to losing a few pounds in a week or two. Please keep in mind that this is not a long-term program by any means. It’s all on the track, so the variety your body needs to stay fresh is lacking.

Before I lay out the program, please realize that fat loss is about making your diet better. Make SURE that you are eating large servings of vegetables, and sufficient protein and fat. Do not try to undereat on this plan, it will only decrease your energy levels. Eat a lot of healthy food so that you have the energy to bang out hard workouts. (These guidelines are true generally, but especially when you are trying to lose fat.)

The Program

Day one:

Run 800 meters, rest 4 minutes. Repeat three times.

Day two:

Sprint 100 meters. Rest 5 to 7 minutes. Repeat for a total of ten times.

Day three:

Rest.

Day four:

Run 5k (12.5 laps).

Day five:

Run 400 meters. Rest exactly two minutes. Repeat for a total of four times.

Day six:

Rest.

Day seven:

Rest.

Day eight:

Repeat from day one.

A couple training tips:

• Arms should swing vertically up near your chest. Don’t cross the arms in front of the body and don’t swing your arms too low, near your waist.
• Stretch the hip flexors by doing a lunge-type stretch for a couple minutes beforehand. This allows your hip muscles to contribute.
• If you have not exercised for a while, do not run your hardest. Just try to complete the runs. Sorry, but if this is you, you are not fit enough to drop weight quickly.
• Relatedly, the fitter you are, the faster you should be able to drop weight.
• Please don’t go hurt yourself. Warm-up, do mobility, take care of yourself on off days, and stop the program if you get hurt.
• If this program seems to be too much for you, then cut all the distances in half.

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10 Creative Ways to Get Yourself to the Gym When You’re Sad

Being melancholy or depressed can lead to extra spending, drinking, or other destructive behaviors. Going to the gym is a healthy way to deal with the stress of being sad.

However, when you’re feeling down the last thing you feel like doing is working out, even though working out is probably the best thing for you.

How do you motivate yourself to get to the gym in these situations? There are two ways to deal with this dilemma. The first answer is plan a workout to emphasize the “fun” aspect of exercise instead of the “work” part of it.

The second answer is to use physical pain to overshadow your emotional pain. Never underestimate the cleansing power of exercise-induced physical discomfort. It is a powerful cathartic mechanism. This is the method I personally use. It is not for everyone.

Here are five fun ways to get yourself in the gym:

1. Do a workout with all static holds for one minute each. Plank (top of a pushup), L and R side plank on the elbow, plank on the elbows, bridge on the shoulders or hands, wallsit, flex-arm hang, single leg wallsit. One round is 10 minutes. Repeat 1-2 times.
2. Do all jumping exercises for 20 reps. Box jumps, jumping pullups. jumping dips, burpees. Repeat 1-2 times.
3. Do the whole workout with one dumbell and one arm switch. With the right hand, use a 35lb dumbell to do 10 snatches, 10 overhead squats, 10 swings, and 10 overhead lunges with the left leg. Do 3 rounds on the R, then switch. Time each side separately.
4. Do a workout with the arms overhead (OH) the entire time. OH Walking lunges x 10, pullups x 10, push press with 95lbs x 10. Repeat 3-5 times.
5. Do a grip-intensive workout. 21-15-9 reps of 95lb or 135lb deadlift and pullups.

And here are the workouts that will cause you enough pain to forget all your problems. Do not attempt unless you are very fit. If you aren’t sure if you qualify as very fit, then you’re not!

1. 150 burpees for time.
2. With 95 pounds, do max reps of shoulder press, then max reps of push press, then max reps of push jerk. Do not put the barbell down in between exercises. Rest five minutes, then do 2 more rounds.
3. 400 walking lunges for time.
4. Reps of 21-15-9, 135 pound thruster and 50 pound weighted pullups for time.
5. Run one mile. Tabata pullups. Run one mile. Tabata pushups. Run one mile. Tabata situps. Run one mile. Tabata squats.

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