Charles Staley, the developer of EDT in this article discusses the principles behind training.

The Principles of Progress

By Charles Staley, B.Sc, MSS
Director, Staley Training Systems

Trust me, we all have problems to overcome. I’d even go so far as to say that the most successful athletes are those who most effectively manage their bad workouts — not those who simply have great intensity and consistency when things are going well.

With that in mind, there is a set of principles that govern success in the gym, or during any attempt to acquire a new skill. Almost everyone reading this already knows what these principles are, but the more pertinent question is- do you comply with them when you’re under the bar? In other words, is your training always specific and progressive? Does it respect your unique individual peculiarities, such as age, genetics, leverages, and orthopedic history?

It’s one thing to cognitively understand the principles of specificity, progressive overload, and individuality, but it’s quite another thing to successfully apply them to your training, especially when you’re in a slump.

Let’s consider a problem that we all face from time to time — you’re not getting stronger. Despite your hard work 4 times a week in a well-equipped gym, and despite the confidence you have in your program, your numbers just aren’t moving. And it’s not like you don’t know what you’re doing; let’s assume that as well. So what gives?

During times like these you’ve got to go back to the bedrock principles. You need to look at your program through “beginner’s eyes,” as if you’re looking at someone else’s workouts with a critical, unbiased eye. It’s only then that clues begin to emerge.

(Incidentally, how many times have you heard trainers say something like “Man, my programs work great for all my clients but they never work for me!”? THAT’S a clue that you need a more objective analysis of what you’re doing. If you don’t think you can rely on yourself to do this, find someone else. )

Since a lot of you reading this are lifters, let’s tackle the issue of specificity for a moment. If you’re a powerlifter, you’re required to perform 3 heavy attempts each on the squat, bench, and deadlift. If you’re a weightlifter, ditto for the snatch and clean & jerk. And if you’re involved with highland games and/or throwing, a similar requirement holds true. The common denominator here is that you’re performing 3 or more single attempts.

This being the case, the principle of specificity demands that most of your training consistent of heavy singles- particularly when you’re close to a competition, but I’d argue that heavy singles should dominate the overwhelming majority of all your training.

Now that’s easy enough to understand, so let’s now turn to the flip-side of this question, which is “What circumstances (if any) warrant the inclusion of relatively non-specific work?” Because let’s face it — all of you do perform non-specific work, right? So the question is, “Why?” Some legitimate answers might include:

Some more questionable reasons might include:

Now be honest — just looking at these two lists, which category do you tend to fall under? And regardless of which category best describes you, are you becoming more clear about why you shouldn’t be coaching yourself?

The Link Between Specificity And Individuality

I hope it may have dawned on you that your individuality is at least the co-author of specificity. After all, your individual characteristics dictate, often in large part, what methods you should be using. For example, if you’re short, you have a lesser chance of sustaining lifting-related knee problems, as compared to your taller peers. This impacts your training protocol- if you’re tall, you may need to pay more attention to patellar tracking, hamstring length, and IT-band health. If you’re shorter, these decisions will be closer to the bottom of your list.

As another example, if you’re overly reliant on the stretch-shortening cycle, your training should reflect this through the inclusion of a pause immediately prior to the concentric phase of the lift.

No matter how many examples I choose to cite, it always comes back the the same inescapable truth:

“Exploiting Your Opponent’s Weakness Starts With Identifying Your Own.”

The Link Between Specificity And Weak-Links

If you believe that a chain is only as strong as it’s weakest link, you’ll be compelled to prioritize the identification and correction of weaknesses in your training. As we saw earlier, this cannot always be achieved in a highly-specific training context.

As a weightlifter, you need enough pulling strength to accelerate the bar high enough to rack in on your shoulders (in the case of a clean) and also enough squatting strength to stand back up after you catch the bar in a squat position. Whichever component is weakest will determine how much weight you can clean. If you can pull 275 high enough to rack it, only to become crushed in the squat because you lack enough squatting strength to stand up with it, no amount of heavy cleans will correct this imbalance. Instead, you’ll need to focus on front squats until your squatting strength matches your pulling strength.

If you’re an MMA competitor with poor hand-striking skills, no amount of competition-specific fighting will ever improve your weak-link, because under intense pressure, you’ll of course revert to your strengths in order to “survive.” Instead, you’ll need to spend time in drills that require you to solve problems with your hands. Such drills are less than 100% specific, yet they are necessary to overcome your weaknesses.

When To Be Specific; When To Be General

The training of boxers provides a useful analogy for those hoping to better understand the continuum between specificity and generality:

Hard, competition-intensity sparring for several 3-minute rounds, using regulation gear is the most specific form of training a boxer can perform. Add in some canned applause on the PA system and put a little money on the line, and it becomes even more specific.

Now, if you didn’t have a firm grasp on the foundational principles of training, you’d rightly assume that this would be the most productive type of training a boxer could do. Following that, you’d also assume that he should simply spend all of his time doing hard sparring. But you’d be wrong of course, and here’s why:

Understood By All, Mastered By Few

The principles of progress are like an abbreviated musical scale consisting of only 3 notes- you know what the notes are, you know what they sound like, you’ve figured out how to make a few chords, but you’re likely unaware of the almost limitless ways they can be applied in order to create a successful outcome. The best musicians work from the same notes that the worst ones do- it’s just that they find ways to synthesize them into amazing new compositions that inspire their les-skilled peers. Start thinking of training principles in this way, and you’ll be well on your way to strength-training mastery.

Remember to sign up for my 5 part Building Muscle and Strength e-course.
If you are interested in me personally designing your programs and helping you achieve your size and strength goals go to busy-fitness.com/online-personal-training/
Wayne

Here is the second part of Jason Ferruggia’s article on using the movements used by Olympic gymnasts and sprinters. Enjoy!

How To Build Muscle, Olympic Style – Part 2

By Jason Ferruggia

In part one of this series we discussed how to build muscle like the always-jacked-big-biceps-and-triceps sporting male gymnasts. In part two we are going to address the other most muscular athletes at the summer Olympics, the sprinters. If you took a survey of most average guys I am willing to bet that 99.9% of them would choose to look like an Olympic sprinter over just about any other physique option you gave them. Lean muscular and athletic looking; what could be better than that? I would even go so far as to argue that guys like Maurice Greene and Shawn Crawford posses the perfect male physique. Head turning both aesthetically and athletically

So how do you build that kind of functional, muscular physique? Well first of all you need to train with the intention of targeting the fast twitch muscle fibers. This can be done by using heavy weights for relatively low reps and lifting explosively. Stick with compound exercises like cleans, snatches, push presses, squats and deadlifts. Always accelerate as fast as you can on the concentric, or lifting portion, of every set and control the eccentric, or lowering portion, in one to two seconds. Never waste time with slow lifting speeds, especially on the way up. That limits the amount of weight you can lift and is completely unnatural. In real life if you bent over to pick up a box, would you take four seconds to lift it up off the ground and eight seconds to put it back down? Of course not. Muscles are made for speed; don’t force them to do something they don’t want to do by lifting slowly. Train slow, get slow. Remember that

Another key component in learning how to build muscle like an Olympic sprinter is to be sure that you are using the right cardio/ conditioning methods. Too many people waste their time doing regular cardio like riding a bike, using a treadmill, stairclimber, or elliptical machine at a steady pace for 20-45 minutes. While this type of activity will burn some calories and can help you get leaner, it is far from the most effective or time efficient method. You don’t think sprinters do that, do you? Sprinters, obviously, sprint. When you compare the sprinters physique to the marathoners physique it is readily obvious which form of activity burns the most fat, builds the most muscle and produces the most appealing physique

While excessive steady state aerobic or cardio training can actually burn muscle tissue, high intensity methods like sprinting can actually help you build muscle. You read that right; sprinting can actually have a double pronged effect of not only burning fat, but simultaneously inducing an anabolic state and helping you build muscle. I don’t know about you but that makes it a hands-down winner in my book, any day

I recommend that you vary your sprint workouts between regular, flat ground sprints, hill sprints, sled sprints and Prowler sprints. Just because you are not an athlete doesn’t mean you shouldn’t train like one in the effort to look like one. If you are training for speed, you will need a lower volume of training, longer rest periods and probably shouldn’t sprint all out more than twice per week. If you are simply training to get ripped you can sprint at differing intensities and durations 3-4 days per week. Be sure to warm up properly beforehand and then do about 15-30 minutes of intense sprinting with 30-90 second rest intervals. You could run several 40 yard sprints with a minute rest or a few 100’s and then walk back as your rest interval. There are a million different options, the important thing as that you do them.

Now you know how to build muscle like an Olympic sprinter and get absolutely ripped at the same time. Get ready to start turning heads in just a few months with your new physique. Good luck and train hard.

Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle fast. He is the head training advisor for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more great muscle building information, please visit musclegainingsecrets

Remember to sign up for my 5 part Building Muscle and Strength e-course.
If you are interested in me personally designing your programs and helping you achieve your size and strength goals go to busy-fitness.com/online-personal-training/
Wayne

Here is the first part of an article from Jason Ferrugia, author of Muscle Gaining Secrets on using the exercises that gymnasts and sprinters use to build their physiques.

By Jason Ferruggia

Every four years, while watching the summer Olympics, you would be hard pressed not to notice the great physiques possessed by many of the athletes. But by far and away the most muscular bodies always belong to the gymnasts and the sprinters. These guys certainly know how to build muscle more effectively than most average gym rats.

For years now I have been extolling the virtues of moving your body through space when you train, as opposed to simply moving your limbs around a fixed object. When you move your body through space, as the Olympic gymnasts do, you stimulate a much higher level of neuromuscular activation. In simple terms this means that you call more muscle fibers into play on any one exercise. And the more muscle fibers you activate, the more you will grow.

So if you want to develop an incredible physique, take a lesson from the Olympic gymnasts on how to build muscle, and start moving your body through space as much as possible while you train. Following is a list of exercises to start you on the path to getting huge.

1. Instead of triceps pushdowns do parallel bar dips.
   
   Have you noticed how many dips and how much work the Olympians do on the parallel bars? And have you noticed the size of their triceps? Need I say more?
2. Instead of barbell curls do close grip chin ups. Ditto what I said about the dips. Not only do you get incredible biceps development from close grip chins but you also get the added bonus of massive lat and forearm development.
3. Instead of bench presses do chain or strap suspended pushups. While the bench press can be an effective mass building exercise it can also be one of the worst for your shoulders. If you want to be safer and build a chest and pair of shoulders like you see on the Olympic gymnasts I would highly recommend some type of chain or strap suspended pushup. This movement will call far more muscle fibers into play and challenge the smaller stabilizers muscles as well. Not only that but you will get an outstanding ab workout from this movement as well; something that can’t be said for the bench press.
4. Instead of leg presses, leg extensions or leg curls do double and single leg squats. When you sit in a fixed machine and move weight with your limbs as opposed to moving your body the level of neuromuscular activation is quite low; no matter how much weight you use. And it is very unnatural. A leg press allows you to build strength in your lower body without additional gains in lower back and core strength. This is not normal and creates an imbalance that will lead to future problems. When you do squats you incorporate nearly every muscle from head to toe and will not only build tree trunk sized legs but will stimulate growth throughout your entire body.
5. Instead of crunches and sit ups do all of the exercises listed above. Isolation abdominal exercises like crunches and sit ups are not real life type movements. In real life your abdominals contract isometrically to protect your spine; they do not contract the way they do in a crunch or sit up.  Not only that, but by continually flexing your spine for hundreds of reps per week, you will surely be setting yourself up for long term back problems.

   If you follow a steady diet of chins, dips, suspended pushups and squats you will build an incredible set of abs. When you watch the Olympic gymnasts you immediately notice their rock solid abs popping right through their spandex and they never do crunches or sit ups. You simply can’t hide abs like that. That kind of six pack is built with full body movements like the ones listed above.

   But if you still want to do a little extra ab work you can add in exercises like planks and ab wheel rollouts; just skip the sit ups and crunches.

Now you know how to build muscle, Olympic style. Stick with these time tested exercises and the others listed in my Muscle Gaining Secrets course for the next eight weeks and be prepared add some massive slabs of beef to your physique.

Jason Ferruggia is a world famous fitness expert who is renowned for his ability to help people build muscle fast. He is the head training advisor for Men’s Fitness Magazine where he also has his own monthly column dedicated to muscle building. For more great muscle building information, please visit musclegainingsecrets

Remember to sign up for my 5 part Building Muscle and Strength e-course.
If you are interested in me personally designing your programs and helping you achieve your size and strength goals go to busy-fitness.com/online-personal-training/
Wayne