How to Warm-up

In general, warming up for 5-10 minutes on a piece of cardio equipment is a waste of time (unless it is for special populations, injured client, overweight, etc). If this is your warm-up, stop now. If your trainer warms you up this way, find a new trainer. If you are a trainer warming up your clients this way, SHAME ON YOU!! I hope you are not charging them for those 5-10 minutes. If you are, your a thief.

People need to move, stretch, and activate the muscles they are going to be using in their workout and in their sport. Warm-ups should start with slower movements that are a bit more static in nature. Progressively the movements should become more dynamic. Really, with a good warm-up, you should not be able to tell when the warm-up ends and where the workout begins.

Here is how we warm-up our athletes and clients:


Activation: We spend a few minutes with some mini-band walking and small exercises to turn on muscles that tend to be asleep. For most, this is the hips and scap stabilizers.




Movement Preparation: From activation, we get a little more dynamic and will roll right into some movement prep. This consists of lunging, squatting and crawling variations.





Movement Skills: Again, we get even more dynamic and progress into things like skipping, shuffling, cariocas, speed ladder work, etc.



That is pretty much what our warm-up consists of. From there we move into power work, with plyos, med balls, olympic lifts and variations of the olympic lifts. And next would be our strength work.

Warm-ups should always have a rhyme and a reason. Ask yourself, what, why and how. What needs to be warmed up? And what would be the best way to accomplish that? Hopefully your answer is not a treadmill.

DN

Flying Humans (A.K.A Someone bought the wrong hemp seeds)

It's 1:30 am. Insomnia is back. This is what I found on this sleepless evening. These guys are absolutely out of their mind!!


wingsuit base jumping from Ali on Vimeo.

DN

Scap Stability

I thought I would post some of our favorite scap stability exercises. Many of our athletes tend to be a bit screwed up in the shoulder complex (and our normal clients due to sitting at the computer) when they first come in. We use a lot of different exercises but here are a few that we use very often:

YTLW - This is a version with a dowel that I adopted from Mike Boyle. With the dowel, they should actually be call IYLW. The dowel makes the athlete maintain a consistent arm position.


Scap Pushup - A nice one for the winging scapulae


Wall slide - A great "bang for your buck". Active lat/pec stretch while you turn on the scap stabilizers. I have posted this one a few times and I will say it again, the seated version is a progression. Begin standing.


Wall Crawl - Sue Falsone (head PT for Athletes' Performance) showed me this last year. Make sure your elbows don't flare as you crawl up the wall.


DN

Hemp Seeds?

Yes, hemp seeds rock!! This is my new favorite thing to throw in my shakes. I know what your thinking...... Dewey has become a complete reefer head and walks around all day saying "You wanna get high"..... (that was said in my best Towlie from South Park voice). But seriously, these things are very healthy!! Check out what is in a serving:

10 grams of Protein
3,000 mg of Omega 3
7,000 mg of Omega 6
1,750 mg of Omega 9
Essential Vitamins and Minerals

DN

"Grappling With The Truth": A Mike Robertson interview with Dewey Nielsen

I just recently did an interview with Mike Robertson. Mike is the President of Robertson Training Systems and the co-owner of Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training (I-FAST) in Indianapolis, Indiana. Mike has made a name for himself as one of the premier performance coaches in the world, helping clients and athletes from all walks of life achieve their physique and sports performance goals.

It was a real honor to do an interview with him.

Exclusive Interview: Dewey Nielsen

MR: Dewey, thanks for being with us here today! Please take a moment and tell my readers a little bit about yourself.

DN: I am a strength coach from Oregon. I am also an MMA/BJJ coach. I co-founded the Newberg Impact Jiu-jitsu and I am the co-founder of Impact Performance Training. I currently hold a brown belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

MR: What got you into strength and conditioning? Were you an athlete yourself in the past?

DN: In High School I was actually more of a skater kid. I was really more drawn towards the extreme sports at that time. Although high school is actually where I fell in love with weightlifting. So, ever since then it has been a big passion of mine.

MR: How did you end up in your current niche of training fighters?

DN: I think the big reason is that because I am actually an MMA athlete and coach, I can really relate and understand the sport differently than many strength coaches. I know what it feels like to feel like crap by the end of the week and to have the bumps and bruises that come along with the sport. It is a great sport and some of the training demands are so much different than other traditional sports. Continue reading......

Power Endurance (offically the 100th post of this blog)

Q: You have emphasised the importance of power endurance for mixed martial arts. How do you train this component of strength?

A: This is an interesting one. The term "power endurance" is actually an oxy-moron but at the same time it is something that exists within combat sports.

Athletes first need to become proficient at the basics. They need to really be dialled in on their form, because as we get into training power endurance, form can deplete quickly. Once we have a solid strength and conditioning base, we will have athletes doing power endurance circuits which will be one exercise after another with almost no rest period. The circuits will be specifically put together to mimic the fight time, rest periods and rounds (ex: 5 minute circuit with 1 minute rest). We will combine power and strength exercises with some metabolic stations (ex: Airdyne sprint), use complexes along with specific drills like shooting, etc. Depending on how long the fight round is scheduled for, we would also use some active rest exercises. For example, many amatuer fights are 3 minute rounds, so the need for active rest would be less than a fight that is 5 minute rounds. So if the athlete has 3 minute fight rounds, it is going to be 3 minutes of hell!

There must be a logical progression to get athletes to train like this. It’s something that guys should not just jump into. If form gets too ugly, you increase the risk of injury and decrease the effects of training.

Here is a video of my friend Jon Chaimberg putting Denis Kang through and acyclical circuit. Our circuits look very much the same.



DN

IPT Beaverton

Thats right!! Another IPT location!!! Bigger and badder (is that a word?)!!

Over the holiday break, the fitness elves (big thanks to all that helped -- Carole, Phil P, Forrest, Phil S, and Bill O) snuck into IMPACT Beaverton and did some remodeling.

Here is what they added:

650 sq. feet of weight lifting area
two Olympic lifting platforms
over 375 kilos (825 lbs) of weights
dumbbells and kettle bells ranging from 5 lbs to 115 lbs.
3 plyo decks
20 ft long pullup bar
4 airdyne conditioning bicycles
over 30 ft. of med ball throwing wall
1150 sq. feet of multi-purpose training mat
LOTS more training gear will be added over the next few months ... so be sure to come and check it out!!!

Tom Oberhue and myself are very excited about the new facility. I will be at both locations in the near future........ so if you are in the Beaverton/Portland area, give us a call.

Here are some pictures of how it is looking so far:







IMPACT Performance Training - Results Driven Performance Training ... taking athletes to the next level! '09 is going to be a defining year!!!


DN

Random Stuff You Should Have

Here is a list of random things that I think everyone should have:

The Magic Bullet


This thing is a God send for blenders! It is small enough that it doesn't take up to much space in the kitchen but has enough power to blend up anything you throw in it. It also comes with some many different cups that you can make any size protein shake. Its not just for protein shakes though (although that is all I use it for)...... You can make salsa, peanut butter, grind coffee beans and a million more things. I don't know how I existed before the Magic Bullet!!


Gourmet Nutrition

Speaking of protein shakes....... once you get the Magic Bullet, make sure you pick up a copy of John Berardi's Gourmet Nutrition. It has some killer recipes for shakes that taste amazing. It also has a ton of recipes for meals that are healthy.


Lumbar Support


Here I go again, LUMBAR FLEXION SUCKS BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH!!! If you know me, then you already know my opinion on crunches, situps, etc. I won't go on a rant. I think EVERYBODY should have a lumbar support in there car and if you have a "sit down" job, get one for your work too. This is a must!!! The best one I have used is one that Stuart McGill gave to me when I was in Montreal. It is called the LumbAir. Here are the specs:

"The LumbAir is a lumbar support that also promotes ideal posture and posture changes. It is easy to carry for use in cars, airplanes, theatres, or for home use.

The LumbAir is made with exclusive fabric that is immune to bacteria, fungus and body odour. It is guaranteed for one year against defects in materials and workmanship. The valves are guaranteed for life. The foam is engineered to last 15 years."

You can order a LumbAir here



Foam Roller


I know that most of my readers use a foam roller at the gym but I think everyone should have at home. Why wait to go to the gym roll out your aches and pains? Keep it in front of the tv and roll out when you are watching your favorite show (hopefully nothing that has Tyra Banks on it). A PB Elite Foam Roller will last much longer than a regular roller.

DN

Featured Gimmick: P90X

I have had numerous people ask me about P90X and I have to be honest....... I didn't know what the hell it was. I thought it was a new type of motorcycle or 4 wheeler. I just finally got around to checking it out and I cringed the whole time I was watching!

They use the science of "muscle confusion"...... (yes that is the sound of crickets you are hearing). Let me give you the scientific definition of "muscle confusion"

mus-cle con-fu-sion
A made up term that an uneducated trainer uses to cover up the fact that they don't understand periodization.

They are literally selling people on this "muscle confusion" word. Basically it is a bunch of exercises thrown together with no rhythm or rhyme and no thought process in the program design. High class garbage. Beyond that, I had a chance to check out the plyometric workout. This is where I stopped watching. I wrote about this before but I think the P90X plyo workout is a way better example of how NOT to train plyos.

Of course some people are going to say, "I lost this many pounds doing -insert gimmick here- so it has to work. Sure, you can lose weight and get stronger doing many things BUT realize it doesn't make it right and there is a better/safer way of doing it. I could burn a ton of calories doing forward rolls without a shirt on down a gravel driveway........ this doesn't make it a GOOD way to burn calories.

Whats next?

DN