THE FIT PIT WILL BE CLOSED FOR ALL SESSIONS ON THE FOLLOWING DAYS:

FRIDAY - JULY 3 - ALL MORNING AND EVENING SESSIONS

SUNDAY - JULY 5 - ALL MORNING SESSIONS

Sheryl and I appreciate your hard work and would like to give everyone a couple of days to recover from Angie.

The workouts for July will be based on your personal 1 rep max’s that we determined in June and this will eventually lead to greater fitness and faster times. t will be important to immediately dig up your 1 rep max for whatever exercise we are doing and then begin assimilating your weight progression. We will post the progression on the board and we will help get you started. Its probably a good idea to buddy up with someone that is comparable in the lifts. That keeps the weight changes to a minimum.

On another note, I have been recertified by USA Weightlifting as a club coach and renewed my membership in USAW so that I am sanctioned to teach. Just in case that was important to anyone.

The Stones couldnt have done it better.

100 Pull Ups

100 Push Ups

100 Sit ups

100 Squats

A couple of people got overheated due to this grueling workout. I advised those that felt sick, to go home and place an ice bag on the back of their neck and one on the inside of each wrist. This will cool down their body very quickly and should take away that sick feeling. At our house we have a number of the old fashion ice bags with the screw on top. You can easily make your own by getting a plastic baggie, placing ice and water into it, sealing the top, and place it on the spot that hurts or in this case the 3 points to cool down.

Again, its necessary to maintain your hydration throughout the day and because you are hydrated you should feel better during your workout.

Props to Keith Friedlington who lowered his Angie time to 16:00 minutes from 19:00 minutes and he told me before the workout that he was not feeling it. Well I guess he got proved himself wrong. A;so I think our female with the lowest time was Keegan Williams. She was around 20:00 minutes. She told me that her best time was in the 19:00 minute range but she has only been back to fit pit for 1 month. Her effort was VERY commendable.

We have a number of new people in the gym. I know that they are seeing consistent improvement and everyday they are able to do a little more. For those that are really new, we try to modify the workouts for the 1st couple of weeks and then they can slowly progress into going full speed. These workouts are grueling and if a brand new person was to attempt to do all of the workout, they wouldnt be able to go to work the next day.

Has anyone ever played golf? Even if you are a very good golfer and shoot par golf, you alway remember the putt you missed, or the drive that hooked into the rough costing you strokes. You are never satisfied.

Well, some people in the fit pit want to do the same thing. They focus on what they didnt do rather than what they did do. Just by being at the gym, you are making a tremendous committment. Think positive and about what you do. Tom, one of our new members, couldnt do one pushup when he initially came. Today he proudly told me that he did 20 pushups and then finished off the remainder of his 100. It took a number of sets, just like everyone, but the fact remains that he was able to do it. THAT is the kind of thing that makes me proud. It should also make everyone else proud , not only for Tom, but for yourselves. You are doing things now that you couldnt a couple of months ago. After a couple more months, you will be able to do even more which is an exciting option.

But Coach, the workout was only 2 minutes long.

The Fastest FRAN time is under 2 minutes. What was your FRAN time last time. I think our fit pit record is 5 :15 or something like that. Why such a big difference? Thats exactly what Sheryl and I wanted to know. So we came up with a different approach to our training.

My mentor, Coach Michael Rutherford, developed an exercise protocol 4 or 5 years ago called MEBB ( or maximum effort black box). This protocol called for the use of lower reps for a number of different exercises and then using this protocol you would be able to begin adding weight to your reps , while still keeping the intensity. THe 3-3-2-2-1 effort seemed to work the best. I thank Mike for allowing me to rip this off from him.

We had watched our athletes using heavier weights, but their times had not changed much as they had to take breaks, put the weights down, struggle through not locking out their arms, having lousy form, all in the name of posting a time. THats not what we want to accomplish. We want the fastest time with the best form throughout.

To squat 300 lbs, you cannot put 300 lbs on the bar and just squat. You have to build up slowly. It might take a number of years to get there, but if you consistently follow the correct protocols and do all your reps and sets correctly, eventually you have an opportunity to get there.

Its like this with all our other exercises. You have to work up to it. Risking injury, you dont want to go too heavy.

I will try to put into laymans terms what power is. Power is the ability to generate velocity. Power + Speed = Watt which is the measurement of the work you are doing. The more watts you produce, the more power/speed you are generating. The erg(rowing machine) has a watt measurement on it. You can determine the number of watts when you row.

This is the official description of a WATT.

The SI unit for power is the watt. A watt breaks down into other units that we have already talked about. One watt is equal to 1 Newton-meter per second (Nm/s). You can multiply the amount of torque in Newton-meters by the rotational speed in order to find the power in watts. Another way to look at power is as a unit of speed (m/s) combined with a unit of force (N). If you were pushing on something with a force of 1 N, and it moved at a speed of 1 m/s, your power output would be 1 watt.

Jason Morris brought this to my attention last week. He mentioned that calculated his wattage during one of our 3-3-2-2-2-1 sessions. He then looked back to an earlier time when he had used a heavier weight to perform the session. He mentioned that his wattage at the earlier workout was something like .7 and his wattage for the later sesssion was 70. THAT IS A MASSIVE DIFFERENCE.

So when COACH, the workout was only 2 minutes comes up. Grab a tire, a bar, some dumbbels, a jump rope, some slam balls, etc, and go do more. Work on your pullups. If you cant squat deep enough, then practice squatting using the post to steady yourself. If you have weak shoulders, practice military or push press with a bar so you can get better. Work on your development needs, not your strengths. If you are a pushup or pullup stud, then do something that you are not so good at. Do dips using the dip bars or ring dips. Do decline pushups using the exercise ball. If you arent so good at situps, do situps, bicycles and tucks until you are proficient. Its all about working on what you need to get better at in addition to not allowing your strengths to slip.

Front Squat - 3-3-2-2-2-1 to determine your 1 rep max - please record in book

Rest

25 Situps

25 Bicycle Forward

25 Bicycle Backward

25 Tucks

NO AB MAT FOR BICYCLES AND TUCKS

For those of you who attended Sheryl’s AWESOME “Performance Eating” seminar, you learned that SUGAR is the devil and that Gatorade and other energy drinks/goo, taken outside of the in race/competition/workout are counter productive. After an intense workout, you have a 90 minute window in which to repair the damage that you have done to your body and provide a foundation for new muscle growth. Ethan Reeve, the strength and conditioning coach at Wake Forest University, told me one time that the easiest thing to injest in that window is chocolate milk. It has protein, fat and carbohydrates. Renee, who trains at our gym , still drinks chocolate milk after her workouts. This is an easy, safe , no brainer way to nutrition without spending an arm and a leg on $50 per lb designer protein.

> 50% BW

15 thrusters

15 RDL

x3

Recover

Off Clock

Ring Pull Ups 3 x 5

Rope Pull Ups 3×5

Are you drinking enough water? Water is the fuel that makes your engine run. Are your muscles, nerves, etc fire because of water. When your body is dehydrated, especially in weather like this, you can really put yourself in peril. When I ask people how much water they drink they usually tell me a lot, but dont give me a specific number.

The specific number that you should strive to hit daily is 1/2 oz. of water per pound of body weight. If you weight 200 lbs. then you need to drink 100 oz of water. The response is easy- take with you everywhere you go a measured container. Divide your body weight by 1/2 and determine the necessary ounces per day needed to stay hydrated. Then determine the volume of your container and [ OH MY ] you now know how many containers you have to drink.

Now you have to have a strategy. Lets take me for instance. I weigh about 260 which means that I should drink at least 1 gallon - 128oz per day. So heres how I do it. I get a 1 litre bottle. I fill it with water the first thing in the morning and try to drink both it and 1 more before lunch. Then I do the same thing in the afternoon and BINGO - I have injested the correct amount of water. I feel better and my body functions better.

If you have a strategy, it makes it easier to get the water you need.

One of the most beneficial , yet misunderstood, skills in the gym is spotting. Spotting , pure and simple, is watching the other person lift , prepared to assist them to make the weight when necessary or preventing them from hurting themselves when they cant. I intend to provide a class on this but in the interim wanted to let everyone know what and how to do it. No one in our gym is using ridiculous amounts of weight which would require spotting stands. Here are the rudimentary elements of a proper spot:

1- ensure that the weight to be lifted is correct- - coaching point - total up both sides and make sure the weights are the same on both sides.

2 - make sure the area is safe and clear for the lift.

3 - you may have to provide assistance with the lift off. Make sure the lifter is ready to go before letting go of the weights

5 - provide positive reinforcement so the mental state of the lifter stays positive. Things like ” Big Lift”, “Stay Tight”, “You can do this” etc work wonders

6 - DO NOT TOUCH THE WEIGHTS unless the person has stalled and then only apply enough pressure for them to continue moving the weight in a positive direction. Dont grab or jerk the weight which can throw off the balance of the lifter.

7 - Help/physically guide the lifter to replace the weights safely on the squat racks. The idea is for the lifter to never try to find the J HOOKS, but rather walk the weight into the rack and have it touch the tall portion of the stand and then slide it down safely into the J HOOKS.

8 - Congratulate the lifter on their effort and leave them feeling positive whether they were successful this time or not.

9 - You have to recognize when the lifter is in trouble and take the appropriate action. The lifter also assumes a resposibility for this in saying ” Take It” or I Got it, giving you, the spotter, verbal cues on what to do.

I realize that many of our athletes are not that well versed in the weightlifting side of the fitness game. Spotting is a very serious duty and it takes a while to determine how people like certain things. I remember hurting my shoulder because the spotter, who was new, didnt follow my instructions on how I wanted my spot.

The new direction that we are moving in is going to pay huge dividends to all our athletes. You will notice that not only are you systematically stronger, but the other 9 attributes of an elite level athlete will be more pronounced.

Maximum Push Press (dip-drive) 3-3-2-2-2-1

Rest then

15 Pull Ups

15 - 1 arm db snatch (weight you can handle for 15 on each arm)

Sprint to end of parking lot and back x 2

As many of you have noticed, there has been a subtle change to our workouts over the past several weeks. You may or may not know why we did this, but Im going to explain anyway. There are 3 metabolic pathways that need to be engaged in order to become the fittest that we can be. The phosphogenic engages when we use heavy weights , the glycolic engages when we do things fast, and the oxydative is when we do things long. Up until a few weeks ago, everything we did, although intended to serve multiple metabolic pathways, turned into a phosphogenic workout. We would grab heavy weights and a workout designed to take 7 minutes would turn into 12. We would have to stop and rest multiple times during the workout, grab a drink, have a couple of water breaks and the entire concept of high intensity was lost because we used too much weight. We recognized that we could do better. So this is what we are doing. We are using maximum weight for 3-3-2-2-1 to determine your 1 rep max in a variety of exercises. You should record these in the book. To allow us to maintain the proper intensity we will be using a percent of 1 rep max in the exercises that we put together. We also have some charts , developed over many years, that will assist us in putting together the proper % of 1 rep max and the number of repetitions that should accompany them. The entire key to our program is consistently varied functional movements performed under high intensity. Every time we rest and are not able to perform the entire workout as prescribed, we lose the high intensity factor. This past Wednesdays workout was a good example of our new strategy. We worked in teams of 2, and performed the following exercises - 7 burpees - 7 db squat clean - 7 box jumps x 7 with each team member completing one set and then the 2nd person completing the set until all 7 were completed. We used lighter weights and every one was able to complete the entire thing without stopping. After completion, and a bit of rest, we did 1o:oo minutes of 7 pull ups, 7 KtoE, and 7 pushups. At the end of this I saw a NUMBER of people laying on the floor trying to get their breath back. THIS IS THE KIND OF INTENSITY WE ARE LOOKING FOR. Anything less is outside the spirit of the program. I totally get that people , including myself have limitations. In that case we need to do the best we can. For everyone else, your FRAN time improvements will be noticeable if we continue down this path.

Coach Dean

Contact me at 913-369-5005 if you have questions