Tip: Should Kids Specialize In Sports?

Some parents want to get their kids devoted to one sport early on. They point to Tiger Woods as an example of how it works. But does it really? Let’s get into it. For the first 12 years of my career I trained athletes exclusively. I worked with pro athletes, Olympians, and also kids from ages 9-18 as the head strength coach of a sport-school program. I’ve also coached high school and college football (defensive coordinator and running back coach). For team sports where you have to interact, react, and play as a team, early specialization is one of the biggest mistakes parents can make with their kids. It will severely limit their potential and what we call “talent.” The best young athletes in team sports all played at least two sports as kids. For individual sports with a repetitive skill that needs to be done without having to adjust to an opponent’s play (like golf, gymnastics, figure skating, diving, swimming, cycling) it likely doesn’t have as much negative impact. That’s why you can’t use Tiger Woods as an example for sports like hockey, football, or basketball. Let’s first examine what makes a great athlete and where a lot of parents screw up. I divide it into two main categories: What we call “being gifted or naturally talented.” What we call “being a talented athlete.” In the first case we’re referring to someone who naturally picks up pretty much any skill easily and is good at most sports right away. He’s the 7 year old kid that kicks ass in soccer, then goes and plays flag football, basketball, or hockey. He’s also dominant without much practice or coaching. In the second case we’re talking about someone who excels at a specific sport, outplaying his competition. He shows a high level of technical mastery and a great knowledge of the game. What we call “natural talent” is in large part due to what you do during your early childhood, even very early, like a few months old. It comes from a combination of being great at moving and adapting to your surroundings. Good coordination, balance, and precision of movement are all part of it. This depends on the efficacy of three key systems: Visual system (eyes) Vestibular system (inner ear) Proprioceptive system (hands and feet mostly) The foundation of these systems is laid out during very early childhood. What you do with your baby can have an impact on how well these systems develop and represent the foundation on which talent is built. You must present your child with a lot of different stimuli. For the visual system: Show him different shapes, colors, and various objects. Have him play with many things to develop both eye-eye and hand-eye coordination. For the vestibular system: Put the baby in various positions and move him in the air (e.g. doing the airplane) so that he has to rapidly adjust muscle tone to changes in body position. For the proprioceptive system: Have him touch and handle many different objects and textures. Have the baby spend a lot of time barefoot, doing drills to have him assume a supported standing position. (My kid could stand up, grabbing only one of my fingers, at three and a half months.) Can You Compensate for Late Development? Sure. But a kid who develops very efficient visual, vestibular, and proprioceptive systems will always be a step ahead of someone who’s been parked in front of a TV all day. Have you noticed how most babies will stop crying when you put them in front of a TV? That’s in part due to the dopaminergic overstimulation from the blue light. The problem is that the baby’s brain isn’t equipped to deal with this intense signal, and in large doses it can lead to problems with the dopamine receptors. Parents who rely on TV as a substitute for parenthood are doing the worst things to help their kid develop optimally. When I see a hockey dad scream at his kid’s coach, telling him to play his kid more, I can’t help but think, “Shut up, you’re embarrassing your kid, and your kid doesn’t play because he’s not that good and has no real interest in it. And that’s most likely your fault because you preferred to drink beer and watch TV instead of spending time with your baby.” That’s the first part of talent and it comes from the parents… not only their genetics, but in large part how they interacted with their child. Athletic Creativity This is where early specialization becomes a problem. In team sports, where you have to instantly come up with solutions to rapidly developing problems during play, creativity is what separates the good players from the great ones. Hockey, soccer, football, basketball, and rugby all require an athlete to quickly analyze the situation in front of him and come up with a strategy to solve the problem. When you look at truly talented athletes rarely will you hear, “Wow, look at how he applied the system!” It’ll be more like, “Wow, how did he do that?” Or “Where does that come from?” Early specialization, and especially forcing young kids to play according to a rigid
Origin: Tip: Should Kids Specialize In Sports?

Tip: You’re Still an Ego Lifter

When you hear the term “ego lifting” you probably think of one-fourth squats, curls that use everything but biceps, and bench presses that double as the spotter’s deadlift workout. As a T Nation reader, you know better. However, you can easily fall prey to a more subtle version of ego lifting where you train at or too close to your 1RM. This is especially common with the bench press and deadlift. A lifter trains hard and can eventually hit a plate milestone. It might be a three-plate bench press or a four-plate deadlift with proper form. Now he’s hooked. Each time he trains that lift, he wants that feeling again (and wants everyone in the gym to see him). As a result, his training session consists of working back up to that 1, 2 or 3RM. A typical deadlift workout might look like this: Set 1:5 x 135 Set 2:3 x 225 Set 3:2 x 315 Set 4:1 x 365 Set 5:1-2 x 405 The problem with subtle ego lifting is that the intensity is too high. This can easily lead to burnout, plateaus, and injury. The other problem? The volume is too low to actually build muscle and achieve long-term strength gains. If you’re serious about results, swap subtle ego training for true strength building. True strength building is when you… Check your ego at the door Come to the gym to build strength, not to demonstrate it Lift heavy, but not maximal, weights Train hard, but leave a rep or two in the tank each set Use a moderate, repeatable amount of volume (3×5, 5×5, 4×6, 3×8, 5-8×3) Work on your weaknesses A true strength training deadlift workout might look like this: Warm-up sets Set 1:5 x 135 Set 2:3 x 225 Set 3:2 x 275 Set 4:1 x 315 Set 5:1 x 345 Work sets 2-3 sets of 5 reps with 365 This may not seem as cool at first, but this is a very easy way to add 5-10 pounds per week for quite a while. Before long you’ll be doing a perfect set of 5 with your old
Origin: Tip: You’re Still an Ego Lifter

Tip: Why Evening Training is the Worst

People often ask why training in the evening is such a bad thing. Wait, is it? Yep. It has to do with cortisol production. Training spikes cortisol. So let’s look at what cortisol does. Its main function is putting your body in the best possible state to face danger or stress. It mobilizes stored energy, increases wakefulness, and shuts down the immune system momentarily so you have more energy for the muscles and organs, which are needed to face the stress. It also amps up the brain, mostly by increasing the conversion of noradrenaline to adrenaline. The ideal cortisol cycle is high in the morning and low in the evening. The cortisol spike in the morning is what makes you wake up (when you wake up on your own). The cortisol spike also increases adrenaline levels, which assist in waking you up too. Then, as your cortisol decreases in the evening, it puts your autonomous nervous system in parasympathetic mode – also known as rest-and-recover mode. That allows you to fall asleep more easily, recover better, get more time in deep sleep, and have a higher production of growth hormone. If your cortisol stays elevated in the evening, it’ll be much harder to fall asleep and get quality deep sleep. That’s why training in the evening isn’t the best choice. Let’s say you do train at night regularly and have restless sleep as a result. This may lead to chronically elevated cortisol, which is bad for your gainz, bro. First because cortisol increases protein breakdown. The amount of muscle you build is a function of the difference between protein synthesis (anabolism) and protein breakdown (catabolism). If you break down more it’ll be harder to add muscle tissue, especially if you’re a natural lifter. Then there’s the impact on myostatin. Myostatin is a myoprotein that plays a role in how much muscle your body will allow you to carry. The more myostatin you have, the less muscle you can build. Well, cortisol can increase myostatin and inhibit muscle growth. It also decreases the rate of muscle glycogen resynthesis – storing glycogen in the muscles after you used it up during training – delaying recovery. For all of these reasons, the more you can spike cortisol from training in the earlier part of your day, the more you can respect the natural cycle of your body and the better you’ll recover. Enhanced lifters have fewer problems because steroids decrease the action of cortisol significantly. But natural lifters need every advantage they can get. Who Can Get Away With It? Now, some people can actually pull evening training off: those who fall asleep easily even if they’ve had a killer workout two hours prior. Normally these guys have either a high level of GABA or a high level of serotonin, allowing them to shut their CNS down as soon as the workout is over, putting them in parasympathetic mode. Ingesting your carbs in the evening (post-workout) can also help lower CNS activation and decrease cortisol if you train at
Origin: Tip: Why Evening Training is the Worst

Tip: Test Your Stability in One Minute

There are three things you need to know: Most lifters skip crucial developmental exercises. Having range of motion doesn’t matter if you can’t control it. Chasing numbers before stability is a fast track to injury. I’ve lost count of the number of lifters I’ve met over the years with back and knee problems. Why so many? Because people can’t control themselves without using weight. Wait, what does that even mean? It means that most lifters get so caught up with increasing their numbers and getting stronger on paper, that they completely neglect the strength it takes to control their own body weight. This takes stability, and they have no idea they lack it because they never test it, which isn’t that hard to do. The Lunge Test Now, I’m not inventing some new-fangled “one exercise to fix all” here. This is a lunge, done slowly. So what’s the significance? All the lifters that come to me with long-term back or knee issues can’t do it. Even with impressive totals on their main lifts, they struggle to do one controlled rep on each leg. Can you do it? The Steps Set up by doing a lunge first so you know where to comfortably keep your feet. Extend both your knees so your legs are straight. Over 30 seconds, lower yourself down to the bottom of the lunge, keeping a consistent speed. Tap your knee gently to the ground while maintaining tension. Rise up slowly, taking another 30 seconds until your legs are straight again. Repeat on the other side. Tips and Reminders If it’s not challenging, increase the range of motion required by elevating both feet on plates or boxes. Remember, the purpose of this exercise is to have full control through complete range of motion. If you suddenly speed up a bit to avoid a certain position then that’s where your weakness lies. You may not completely lose balance or drop all the way to the floor, but if at any point you lose the consistent slow speed you can’t count that as a completed rep. Now take it a step further. Aim for 5 reps minimum on each side with no problems. If you can’t complete them, you’ve got your work cut out for you. Just add it to your warm-ups for a while and you’ll master it. Advanced Version The elevated version isn’t essential but it’s a nice way to improve your overall hip mobility and push that stability further. Don’t be afraid to push your body with more stability exercises. You’ll get that same satisfaction of being able to do something a lot of others
Origin: Tip: Test Your Stability in One Minute

Tip: Take This to Stay Lean After Dieting

Being lean, really lean, is usually a transient state as all severely restrictive diets eventually come to an end. On one hand, the end of a diet is good. You get to laugh deliriously as ice cream dribbles down your chin. Plus, it gets easier to put on muscle. But the bad side is that your V-taper starts to soften, blur, and spread out until it’s kind of a U-taper, which really isn’t a taper at all. Recent research, though, suggests that taking curcumin after a calorie-restriction diet is over might limit the amount of fat you regain, even if for some reason you stop training, too. What They Did This was a rat study and before you say anything, rat studies are just fine, thank you. Their physiology is similar to ours and you can carefully monitor their every waking and sleeping moment because they live in cages with wheels and are housed in scientific institutions. You can’t do that stuff with humans. They’d object. And they’d probably turn their noses up at the exercise wheel and insist on one of those stupid, over-priced Peloton bikes where some virtual coach who’s likely impotent from riding so much browbeats you to pedal faster. Anyhow, scientists took rats and split them into two groups. One group was on a calorie restriction diet and had 24-hour access to one of those rat-iconic running wheels. The other group didn’t have a wheel and they got to eat as much as they wanted. After 3 weeks, the trained rats were divided into three groups. The first group was terminated immediately and the second and third groups had their running wheels locked and were reintroduced to ad libitum (as much as they want) feeding for a week. Additionally, one of these groups received a daily gavage (force feeding) of curcumin (200 mg/kg) while the other group received placebo. What They Found When the rats no longer got to exercise and were given as much as they wanted to eat, body mass naturally increased, accompanied by a 9 to 14-fold increase in epdidymal, perirneal, and inguinal adipose tissue. In other words, they got tubby in all the places one doesn’t want to get tubby in, but all of these increases were attenuated in the curcumin group. Furthermore, the curcumin-fed rats had a much more favorable insulin curve and much lower C-reactive protein (a measure of inflammation) than the non-curucmin group. The researchers concluded that, “…results indicate the curcumin has a protective effect against weight regain and impaired metabolic control following a successful period of weight loss through diet and exercise, perhaps via inhibition of glucocorticoid action and inflammation.” How to Use This Info Most people, upon cessation of a diet, probably don’t abruptly revert back to previous bad eating habits. Instead, they’d gradually relax their previously Spartan diet and slowly start to put the pounds back on until they woke up one morning and found that they’re not just pudgy again, but have a renewed sense of self-loathing. Even so, there’s ample reason to think that curcumin would work equally well in preventing post-diet fat gain in humans. Of course, the human evidence on this particular aspect of curcumin is largely unexplored, but empirically speaking at least, curcumin does seem to keep the pounds at bay. One eyebrow-raising aspect of the rat study was the amount of curcumin administered. The dosage was 200 mg/kg, which translates to 18,000 mg. for a 200-pound person. That’s about thirty-six 500-mg. capsules per day. An amount that large would cause your tears, sweat, urine, and feces to be colored a kind of initially pleasing but ultimately frightening Day-Glo orange. Don’t freak out, though. There’s an easy solution. Plain old unadulterated curcumin is notoriously hard to absorb for rats and humans alike, so the researchers had to overdose the rats to ensure they got a therapeutic dosage. If the researchers had instead added piperine (a black pepper derivative) to the curcumin, they could have increased absorption by up to 2,000 percent, thus negating the need for such humungous doses. In fact, you’d only have to take a couple of Biotest® curcumin/piperine capsules a day, which is quite a bit more manageable than 36 a
Origin: Tip: Take This to Stay Lean After Dieting

Tip: Bodybuilder Cheesecake – The Recipe

Cheesecake isn’t the most physique-friendly of foods, but we can fix that. No, this recipe isn’t really low carb or low fat, but it’s a huge improvement over the conventional version. Think of it as a cleaner, gains-building treat. With a base made from oats, and a filling sweetened by Metabolic Drive® Protein what more could you want? Here’s how to make it. Ingredients For the base 1 Cup rolled oats 2 Tablespoon natural honey 2 Tablespoon softened grass-fed butter 1 Heaping tablespoon natural crunchy peanut butter 1/2 Teaspoon cinnamon Few pinches of salt For the filling 3 Scoops vanilla Metabolic Drive® Protein 2 Whole eggs and 1 egg yolk 21 Ounces light cream cheese 5 Ounces fat-free sour cream Topping 1 cup raspberries or strawberries Zero-calorie strawberry syrup, or no sugar added strawberry jelly Extra peanut butter if desired Directions Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius). Line a 9-inch springform pan (see photo) with baking paper or foil. In another pan over low heat, gently melt the butter, peanut butter, and honey. In a bowl combine the warm syrup with the oats, cinnamon, and salt. Mix well. Pour the oat mixture into the springform pan and press firmly to the edges. Place in the freezer to help it set fast while you make the filling, or keep it refrigerated for 30 minutes. Add all the ingredients for the filling to a food processor, a good blender, or just use a hand mixer until smooth and creamy. Pour the filling mix into the now-set crumbly base. Throw in half the raspberries or strawberries. Leave some for topping. Bake for around 40 minutes. This cheesecake will cook a little darker than a traditional version, so look for a golden top with some wobble left in it. Allow it to cool fully before finishing with the jelly and a few more berries. Add a drizzle of peanut butter if you’d like. Refrigerate for at least a few hours to allow it to set fully before enjoying. If you’re counting, here’s the macros and calories for the whole thing: Calories:2724 Carbs:193 Fat:122 Protein:136 Fiber:26 Try to divide that up into more than two
Origin: Tip: Bodybuilder Cheesecake – The Recipe

Tip: The Strength Test Real Lifters Can Pass

Lead Photo Credit: Daniel Bernhardt The 1RM Trap-Bar Deadlift Test As a serious lifter, you should be able to pass this test: Set up a trap bar with 2.5 times your bodyweight. Now, get one good rep. That’s it. So, a 200 pound man should try to hit a 500 pound trap-bar deadlift. Trap-bar deadlifts aren’t inherently “better” for testing strength than traditional squats or deadlifts, but they have a number of unique benefits. Squats are mostly knee-dominant, with some help from the posterior chain. Deadlifts are mostly hip-dominant, with some help from the anterior chain. There’s definitely overlap between the two, but it’s hard to determine who’s stronger: a guy with a 500 pound squat and a 400 pound deadlift, or a guy with a 400 pound squat and a 500 pound deadlift. A trap-bar deadlift can settle the debate. It’s a hybrid movement that combines the best of the squat pattern with the best of the hinge pattern. Rather than focusing on one side of the body, it requires a great deal of strength from both the posterior and anterior chain. On top of recruiting the entire musculature of the lower half, trap-bar deadlifts require significant upper back and grip strength. Plus, no lift translates more directly to overall athleticism and performance like the trap-bar deadlift. For example, a vertical jump requires exerting maximum force into the ground, which is exactly what it takes to lift a maximally loaded trap bar off the floor. Can’t Do It? Make trap-bar deadlifts your primary strength focus on lower-body days. Squats and conventional deadlifts obviously help, but nothing boosts your trap-bar deadlift more than the lift itself. Heavy singles, sets of 3-5 reps, and dynamic effort sets with bands or chains will go a long
Origin: Tip: The Strength Test Real Lifters Can Pass

Tip: The Body Fat Percentage Factor

Don’t Bulk Until You’re Ripped Ideally, you’d want to start a bulking cycle when you’re incredibly lean – single digit body fat. Working from an environment with less adipose tissue means less inflammation and usually a better hormonal profile – better nutrient partitioning due to insulin sensitivity and less estrogen (fat cells are highly estrogenic). But most people don’t want to do that in the real world. Guys get a hint of upper abs first thing in the morning, swear they’re at 9% body fat, and want to start “packing on the gainz!” Well, gear down there, big rig. The difference in being kinda lean and being truly peeled is like the difference between whizzing around the local go-kart track and being on the Nuburgring in a Viper ACR. Yeah, you’re on a track in both, and technically in a “race car,” but it’s just not the same. Since most guys never truly get ripped, they often end up in Skinny-Fat Land. This is where the majority of confusion about whether to bulk or cut comes from. When you’re skinny-fat, the scale usually says “runt” but the mirror says “doughnuts.” If you’re a total newbie (or have less than a year of really intelligent training experience) and you’re more than 18-20% body fat, then you’re in luck. No really, you are. Because then you’re in that rare period of time where you can lose fat while building a decent amount of muscle at the same time. Get into a minor caloric deficit and focus on banging out rep PR’s on the big lifts. If you’re skinny-fat but in the 12-15% body fat range, then focus on eating a maintenance intake of calories or a very slight surplus, and then bang out the rep PR’s. The common denominator? Getting stronger in the growth-producing rep ranges (8-20), and putting on more muscle. The underlying problem with looking skinny-fat really isn’t the degree of body fat. It’s the lack of muscle underneath it. A guy that’s 16% body fat who has a lot of quality muscle underneath will look fairly jacked. And that’s the difference between him and the guy suffering from skinny-fat disease who weighs 177 who’s also 16% body fat. Muscle cures a lot of
Origin: Tip: The Body Fat Percentage Factor

Tip: 200 Pound Man, 100 Pound Dumbbell

The One-Arm Dumbbell Bench Press Test You should be able to perform 5 reps per side with 50% of your bodyweight. That would be a 100-pound dumbbell for a 200 pound man. Before you throw a tantrum, yes, the barbell bench is absolutely valuable. The problem is, you can get away with pushing heavy weights even if you have glaring weaknesses and faulty mechanics. When you become “efficient” despite these issues, it’s only a matter of time until your strength reaches a glass ceiling and you get hurt. Once you refine your pressing mechanics and eliminate or decrease imbalances, you’ll stay healthy and build more strength over the long haul. The one-arm dumbbell bench press exposes any weak links and gives you immediate feedback on strength discrepancies between sides. With this info, you’re able to train each side individually and bring up weak points in your shoulders, pecs, and triceps. As a bonus, the unilateral load forces your core to work overtime to avoid the humiliation of falling off the bench. Can’t Do It? Take a brief hiatus from the barbell, dust off your dumbbells, and get re-acquainted with them. Perform the exercise with one arm or alternate sides on each rep, focusing on slowing down the eccentric (negative) portion of the movement and mixing in iso-holds at various
Origin: Tip: 200 Pound Man, 100 Pound Dumbbell

Tip: The Purpose of the Leg Press

“The Leg Press is Useless!” The coaches and trainers who make that claim remind me of this saying (attributed to Albert Einstein): “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it’s stupid.” In the leg-press-is-useless scenario, the coach is probably looking at the leg press’s ability to serve a very specific purpose, like improving the barbell back squat. In other words, he really doesn’t understand how it could be useful in the proper context, like for pure bodybuilding purposes. First, we need to establish some guidelines about proper leg pressing, and then we can talk about the usefulness (or uselessness) of it from there. Proper leg pressing is a thing. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do it. It’s not quite as simple as just lowering the weight and pushing it back up. 1. Establish your active range of motion. This is done by lowering the weight, but not so far down that your butt comes off the seat or your lumbar spine goes into flexion (rounded). This is especially important as loading increases. Your discs don’t approve of your ass coming off the bench and your low back rounding. They end up eating a metric butt-ton of tension and torque. They weren’t made for that. So stop doing it. 2. Choose an appropriately challenging weight. Don’t train with your ego and load the leg press up with eleventy billion pounds, or have other clowns sit on top of the machine to garner more attention as you do two-inch range of motion reps. Or if you do, at least get it on video so we can watch. The interesting point about the excessive loading and partial range of motion is that you actually end up with less internal loading. A full range of motion with less weight will increase the internal loading on the muscle in comparison to a partial movement done with more weight. 3. Don’t fully lock out the knees. I know the knees and joints are actually made to lock out, but not with 1,000 pounds on top of them. The reason a non-lockout is important is because when you lock out, the tension will shift from the quads to the joints and connective tissue. After all, that tension and weight distribution has to go somewhere. Once you lock the knees out fully, then the quads are in a somewhat relaxed state in contrast to if the knees were in a small amount of flexion. You want a soft-knee, slightly bent at the top. Now, intelligent leg pressing involves an active range of motion that’s deep enough to create superior internal loading, but not so deep that you risk injury by invoking lumbar flexion. Then, of course, a soft knee at the top of each rep. So How is the Leg Press Useful? If you’re trying to make the claim that leg pressing is great at building a squat, then you’ll lose that argument. But here’s where it CAN be helpful: Starting Deadlift Strength The leg press helps to improve a deadlift that’s weak off the floor. The key is to make sure you’re using the same foot placement that you use for deadlifts. From there, mimic the start of the deadlift and do paused leg press reps instead of piston-style reps. The Sumo Leg Press This has been a longtime favorite of mine for loading up the glutes and hamstrings. Simply put your feet as high and wide as you can (comfortably of course) on the platform. This is a great movement for the glutes and hams in the lengthened position, but if you add bands and stop quite a bit short of lockout, you’re going to come to a real understanding of what a massive booty pump really feels like. Pour these on for high-rep sets, like 25-30. Quad Development Getting the feet very close together and low on the platform will cause a significant degree of knee flexion, forcing the majority of the tension directly onto the quads. Progress Evaluation John Meadows recently made this point: the leg press is on a fixed plane, so your form is very consistent with it. You can’t get all cheaty outside of reducing the overall ROM. So long as you’re training with some personal integrity on the range of motion, you get consistent feedback of your progress and will be able to track your progressive
Origin: Tip: The Purpose of the Leg Press