Training Age and Program Change
Q:
Is it true that the more gym experience you've had and the longer
you've been lifting that the more often you need to change your
program? Would long-time vets want to never perform the same workout
twice?
A: Yes, it's true. It's as true as the law of gravity. The very
experienced athlete or bodybuilder may never do the same workout twice in a row.
For example, when Adam Nelson won the world championship in shot put,
he did an eight workout cycle where he'd perform eight workouts before
he'd train the same body parts the same way. The
average lifter should focus on the 2% rule: you should be able to add
2% more weight or an extra rep from workout to workout. If you can't,
then you need to do something different.

The #1 Strength Imbalance
Q:
You've written a lot about strength imbalances and how to fix them.
What's the most common strength imbalance you see that's holding people
back? A: For athletes I've had
the most success correcting weak VMOs (vastus medialis).These are the
teardrop-shaped quadriceps muscles that cross the knee and are
essential for helping the kneecap to track properly. This
weakness is caused from not squatting low enough. I believe that you
should leave a stain on the floor when you squat. If you don't squat
that low you'll never get to the VMO. If you want to run fast or jump
high, you need good VMOs, and that means you need to squat deeply. With the publication of their controversial 1969 book, The Knee in Sports,
authors Karl Klein and Dr. Fred Allman, Jr., started a nationwide
paranoia about deep squats. Although the controversy over squats has
finally subsided, many coaches are still reluctant to have their
athletes do anything deeper than a parallel squat. Just from an
empirical standpoint, if deep squats were so bad, then Olympic lifters
would have higher rates of knee injury. But this simply isn't true.
Weightlifters have among the lowest
injury rates of any athletes. And they not only squat deep but often
bounce out of the bottom position. The second most common imbalance I
see is the external rotators. I've
seen a lot of guys coming into our performance centers, and when we put
them on a rotator cuff program, their bench press, their incline press,
and their chins all go up just because the external rotators don't
inhibit the internal rotators anymore. One of the primary
reasons that athletes, especially bodybuilders, often avoid exercises
for the external rotators is that they have to start with
embarrassingly light weights. Jim McKenzie is a professional hockey
player who went from a 280-pound close-grip bench press to 380 pounds
in less than four months. For
the first three months we did no bench pressing. Because his external
rotators were so weak, he had to start with five-pound dumbbells when
performing many of these exercises! He swallowed his pride, and the
results speak for themselves.

Mood and Overtraining
Q: What's the best predictor of overtraining? A:
Your mood is by far the best predictor of overtraining. It's actually
better than any hormonal parameter known to man. This is because the
nervous system overtrains long before there are signs of muscular
overtraining.
As far as what kind of moods, depression is usually the best indicator.
The athlete just doesn't want to go train. What
we've also found with national teams is that morning body weights are
closely associated with depression caused by overtraining. In other
words, you come to my gym and train twice per day, like in my Super-Accumulation Program, your body weight may drop six to eight pounds overnight. When
I worked with the national swimming team, one of the things we did was
buy everyone a digital scale. The athletes had to weigh themselves
every day. If we saw a drop of four pounds or more, we'd cut training
that day for that athlete.

Training for Coordination
Q:
Can I do anything training-wise to improve my coordination? A: By the
age of about 12 (plus or minus two years for you hair-splitters) you've
acquired 90% of your coordination. That's
why in gymnastics, if you're born in the wrong year as a female, you'll
never go to the Olympics. If you're born where you're going to be 10 at
the next Olympics then you're going to be too young. If you're 14, then
great. If you're 18, then you're not going to make it — you have tits
and you're too tall and you want to have a social life. As a
rule of thumb, it takes seven years to make the national team. For
example, in Canada if you're not on the national ski team by the age of
18, then you're never going to make the Olympic team. If you don't know
how to ski by age 11, you're never going to make it. Coordination is specific.
There's no such thing as an all-around athlete. Michael Jordan couldn't
play baseball. About the only athletes who can transfer to other sports
are pole vaulters.
But to become a world class pole vaulter, you need a pair of balls the
size of Swiss balls. It's a high risk activity. One
of the top female pole vaulters was a girl who was simply too tall for
gymnastics. She was born at the wrong time. She had the basic
coordination of running and planting from her gymnastic vaulting
background and she could transfer that to pole vaulting. Pole
vaulters are a combination of sprinters, gymnasts, and weightlifters.
They are about the only athletes who can switch sports and be
successful. For example, swimmers can't walk and chew gum at the same
time. Ask any good strength coach. Swimmers lose all proprioception on
the ground. Try to show a national team swimmer how to do a lunge. Send the video to America's Funniest Home Videosand you will win. Penguins having an epileptic fit do better than that. Again, coordination is specific. I've
worked with athletes from 23 different national teams. In the summers
we sometimes do cross-training activities, and hell, it's funny! I
remember with the national speed skating team we were doing leap frogs
outside as a warm-up. They couldn't even do it! They could skate a
world record, but couldn't play leap frog. So
if you're a professional ice hockey player and you retire and decide to
take up karate, you might be good. But you could never be as good as
someone who started karate before they were 12, even though you're a
world class athlete. In 27 years I've only coached one
athlete who had the coordination to excel to high levels at two
different sports. He was the Michael Jordan of volleyball. At 6' 4" he
could do a back flip on a high beam. The day he made national team in
volleyball he was also called to be on the national basketball team. He
could basically choose which elite sport he wanted to play. He was that
coordinated. Bo Jackson too, was a freak of nature, but again
he was probably a kid who was exposed to both football and baseball at
a young age. It's
important to expose your kids to as many sports as possible before the
age of 12. At age 12 or so, they'll be old enough to decide what's best
for them. But until age 12, you should never specialize kids. My own
daughter does kempo karate, but she's done figure skating, gymnastics,
ballet, and swimming, too. The Hungarians have done the most
research on this. The most important skills for kids to learn are
running, jumping, throwing, and swimming (but don't train like a
swimmer) along with having some gymnastics. If you give that to your
children by age 12, then they can choose whatever they want.

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