The Biggest Reason to Stay in Shape May Surprise You!

The emphasis for most fitness articles, blogs, professionals, and television spokes-people with bad hairstyles is getting in shape.  They are forever showing pictures of normally attractive, but overweight men, women and children in the most unflattering clothing, poses and situations next to photos of, in theory, the same people ripped out of their minds standing next to supermodels on private yachts.  It is as if these people lost 20 pounds and were immediate showered with cash and became the most popular people at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition photo shoot.

But very rarely does anyone talk about the importance of staying in shape.  

Let's be clear.  Staying in shape is important for your heart health, cholesterol levels and all of those critical things.  But the other thing staying in shape does is help prevent injury!  And I am talking about really fun injuries like ruptured ligaments, sprained ankles and pulled muscles.  These are all things that can take you out of work, out of sports and out of day to day life for a very long time and are also quite expensive!

What does staying in shape have to do with this?  I will tell you!  When a person is out of shape and overweight, their body gets used to moving a certain way.  Over the years the body has learned its limitations and moves appropriately.  As a person starts to get in better shape, the body starts to move more efficiently.  It can run faster, move more quickly, lift more weight and do things it never used to do.  These abilities start to happen gradually as progress is made.

When a person stops working out, eating correctly, running or otherwise, gets out of shape, it can happen very quickly.  In two to three weeks of inactivity a person can lose virtually all the work they did.  However, the memo does not get to the body right away.  It will still try to move as if the person were still in shape.  So when a person tries to round second base and accelerate toward third, they can pull a hamstring, or when cutting to get to a soccer ball can rupture an ACL or sprain an ankle stepping off a curb.

So do yourself a favor.  Get your butt in shape, and stay there!  Give your body a fighting chance to stay in-tact and help you do the things you want to do.  For more information on getting and STAYING in shape contact tom@canyonptandf.com or duebersports.com.

The Trick to a Stronger Chest, Work on Your Back

I feel like I can hardly walk 5 feet without running across someone talking about how much they can bench, some "newest secret the experts don't want you to know" to make your chest stronger, or some reference to your pecs.  If you were visiting from a distant planet you would think being able to bench 225 is critically important to our survival, seconds only to breathing, consuming all meals in under 5 minutes and rock hard abs.

First, let's clear something up about experts.  We WANT you to know our "tricks."  We go out of our way to demonstrate our ticks in such a way as to show we ARE EXPERTS!  If all we did was run around announcing we are experts and then scurry under rocks you would be much less likely to believe us or pay us large wads of money!

Okay, as for your chest, and its strength.  I would like to mention, by the way, your chest is probably strong enough as it is.  If you can push the door open, or push yourself up off the ground you are probably all set in the chest strength department.  That is, of course, unless you are a professional athlete, or your job requires you to regularly push rocks up hills.  Then you need to constantly increase your chest strength.  So yes, to get a stronger chest you need to move heavy weight in the form of dumbbells, your body, large rocks, etc, but that is only part of the equation.  The other part is your back.  Let me explain.

Your body generally works best when you have balance between opposing muscle groups.  The closer in strength your quads are to your hamstrings the greater overall leg strength you have.  The same holds true for your upper body.  If all you do is chest exercise your chest tends to get tighter.  You might notice your shoulders are starting to wrap around forward a little and your palms are facing the front of your legs.  They should be facing the sides of your legs.  Your chest is now in a constant state of flexion.  And, because of this, can create less force.  Think of it as only being able to partially cock the hammer on a gun.  When the trigger is pulled it can not travel as far and cannot create as much force when striking the round.

If you have been neglecting your back and start to spend a little time on it you will likely notice two things: 1. Your back is nowhere near as strong as your chest.  Can you row as much as you can press?  Probably not.  Second, your chest is tight enough it is not allowing your shoulders to travel back as you pull an object back.  Start doing a ratio of 2:1 back exercise to chest exercise and stretch that chest!  Focus on squeezing your shoulder blades and keeping your shoulders low. Your chest will start to loosen up and your shoulder will start going back to where they belong.  Now you can fully cock that hammer and BAM!

For more on strength and muscle balance e mail Tom at tom@canyonptandf.com or visit canyonptandf.com.  Oh and for those of you following the story of my research assistant, she is two weeks post op, and doing very well.  With a little luck, today we lose the Cone of I Don't Know Why You Hate Me But I am Sorry for Whatever I Did and if You Take it Off I Will Stop Doing It And Love You Forever.

The three secrets to CRUSHING your vertical jump!

Okay, okay improving your vertical jump is not a secret.  There are no heavily armed, stern looking men standing alertly by the Black Book of Sports Performance keeping away everyone except the "experts."  And by experts I mean anyone with $20, a WIX account and the ability to take selfies of him or herself leaping, almost magically on to a plyo box.  And for only $29.95 they will share the secrets with you, risking harsh scowls from the Protectors of the Book.  There ARE, however, several logical steps you can take to improve your explosive power and thus, your vertical jump.

1. Start spending a little more quality time on you butt!  When a person jumps, every muscle in the lower body fires.  Yep, every one of them.  However, most people are so focused on the "Core Lifts," like squats, they end up over-developing their quadriceps, vastus lateralis, vastus medialis,intermedius and rectus femoris, which end up doing all the work.  Meanwhile our friends the gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, and hamstrings end up sitting back watching the show.  Start giving those guys some very specific attention and watch the vertical improve almost immediately.
2. Stop worrying so much about "Explosion!"  Don't get me wrong, explosive exercises are good, nigh, essential to improving athletic ability of all kinds.  But they are only one component. To understand why, you have to understand a little about muscle fibers.  There are essentially 3 types of muscle fiber: Type I, or slow twitch, Type IIa, fast twitch a, and Type IIb or fast twitch b.  Keeping it simple, Type I Fibers are responsible for slow movements like standing and walking.  Type IIa are responsible for jogging and a little sprinting, and Type IIb, mostly jumping.  So naturally people assume, work the Type IIb and they will be more explosive.  WRONG!  Well sort of.  They muscle fibers are a bit like the transmission in a car.  If you start a car in 3rd gear it will stall.  You start in 1st, then shift to 2nd, 3rd, Etc.  Well your muscles do the same thing.  First Type I fires, then type IIa then IIb.  Your body has to go through the entire sequence before you jump!  So yes, strengthen those fast twitch guys.  But to really CRUSH your vertical, give equal attention to the other two types of muscle fibers and work on reducing the time it takes to work through the firing sequence.
3. Change it up.  One of my favorite fitness rules: There is no magical exercise done a magical way that produces a magical result.  Your body needs variety.  If you do an exercise long enough, usually about four weeks, your body simply learns the firing pattern for that exercise. Once it does, your potential to improve using that exercise is essentially over.  When you do the exercise your brain says, "Oh yes!  We know how to do that under this load.  Here we go!"  and then you add weight at your brain says, "Um, no, we know how to do it at that other weight, not this weight.  I'm hungry.  I need a sandwich."  If you change the exercise regularly the brain never quite figures out what you want it to do so it has to keep working to get better and your body might even try to help your brain out and add addition muscle mass to get the job done.

So there you go!  These really are not secrets, just logical steps.  If you pay attention to these steps your vertical jump will improve!  For more information on improving sports performance please e mail tom@canyonptandf.com and check out my page canyonptandf.com. Happy jumping!