Pain & Pleasure: 1 Hour with Alwyn
by Chris Bartl
Editor's Note: Chris Bartl was one of the most successful
participants in our Physique Clinic, losing over 60 pounds of fat. Soon after he completed his Clinic, contributor Alwyn
Cosgrove sent us a note that basically said, "That f***ing guy did
f***ing great! Tell him to f***ing come by and see me and I'll
f***ing show him how to take it to the next f***ing
level!" We passed on the f***ing note, Chris went to see Coach
Cosgrove, and this is how it all went down. Don't Call It A Gym
Ever wonder what it's like to train with one of the
world's foremost strength coaches? What about training with
two of them?
Well, not only have I been blessed to have been coached by
Christian Thibaudeau, but for one Saturday morning I got to
experience what it would be like to work with another foreign
dignitary: Alwyn Cosgrove.
After driving for over an hour I arrived at
Results
Fitness, the aptly named training facility owned and operated
by one Alwyn Cosgrove. I brought my friend Courtney with me since
she was in town visiting. She couldn't believe it when I told
her who we'd be training with, but she had no clue what she was
really in for.
Results Fitness isn't your ordinary, run-of-the-mill "gym."
It's a place where you come to train and get exactly what the
title entails: results. From the minute you walk in, you know
you're in a special place. Every employee is friendly and there's a
genuine sense of caring toward their clients and their needs for
physical enlightenment.
The facility has pretty much everything a person would want in a
place to train: a few pieces of cardio equipment, an area
designated for core and "pre-hab" exercises, and of course a
free-weight section that includes throwing stations for Olympic
lifts like power cleans and snatches.
According to Alwyn, there's nothing that they don't or
can't do in this facility. "One day it will look like a
powerlifting meet is going on with all the football players in
here, and the next it'll look like a yoga studio with all the
people on Swiss balls."
Alwyn doesn't have one philosophy regarding training; he
has
hundreds. "There's just too much good information out
there to ignore any of it," he tells me.
His goal is to provide the client with a customized program
that'll not only achieve the results they're looking for, but will
prevent injury and/or increase mobility. Before a client even hits
the gym floor, they're put through a series of three different
screening activities:
Step 1: Assess static posture
Step 2: Assess a range of motion passively
Step 3: Functional movement screen, using both static and
dynamic movements
Alwyn explained, "The idea is that tight muscles and weak
muscles will demonstrate their presence in different ways.
Sometimes posture and range of motion are okay but a movement
pattern is screwed up so that stability/mobility in a
'co-contraction' screws up the pattern." Once the client has been
assessed, the training begins.
The 7 Areas of Focus
He started us off with five minutes on the treadmill to get the
blood flowing. During this little jaunt, Alwyn described the
training that each client receives, which consists of seven
different areas of focus:
1. Mobility
2. Pre-hab
3. Core
4. Elasticity (a.k.a. plyometrics)
5. Resistance
6. Energy system development
7. Soft tissue regeneration
Hearing him talk about having equal balance in all aspects of
training is like listening to an artist talk about a painting. You
can hear the passion in his voice and you can tell he loves
training people.
After the five minutes is up, we went over to a mini indoor
track that's set up for mobility work. "People don't care
about mobility until they're no longer mobile," he said as he
described the first set of movements. The mobility portion was a
down-and-back of the following exercises:
Long step lunge to hamstring stretch
Lateral lunge to drop-step lunge
Reverse lunge with a reach-around (
that's going to
get a response)
Band walks
While going through these there's nothing that escaped his eye.
"A little longer step there, Chris, drop that leg deep. Courtney,
get those hips loose," he encouraged from the side.
By the time we finished this phase I was breathing at a good
clip and sweating pretty good, while Courtney was ready to charge
onto the next portion: pre-hab.
Alwyn has written about this before and his theory is simple:
why wait until it's broke to fix it? You should work to
prevent injury, not work to recover from one.
For our pre-hab he had us focus on shoulders. "If I have a jiu
jitsu client in here we focus more on neck and shoulders. If we
have a football player or endurance athlete we focus more on knees.
It all depends on the athlete."
He sets me up on a mini-incline bench going through a series of
five motions while facing down on the bench. He calls it
"Y-T-W-L-I" and it seems like memorizing that acronym is a
requirement for training because every other trainee in the gym
could recite it at a moment's notice.
The movements were designed to help increase mobility and
function of the shoulders while ensuring that I checked my ego at
the door. "These aren't ego exercises," he reminded me as he
handed me 7.5 pound dumbbells, then with a chuckle hands me the 5
pounders. "You're going to need these too," he said with a wry
Scottish smile.
For the Y movement, it's just like the letter Y looks.
Start with your arms hanging in front and raise them up toward your
head at a 45-degree angle, making sure to really focus on pinching
the shoulder blades together.
Next was T, which is a lateral raise with your thumbs facing
each other.
The W movement starts with your elbows bent at 90 degrees and
arms in front of you. Do another lateral movement but make sure to
really focus on pinching together your shoulder blades at the top
of the movement. L is a rotator cuff movement. You end with the
letter "I" which is a military press style movement.
Meanwhile, he had Courtney on the floor doing a version of hip
thrusters, really focusing on squeezing with the glutes and not
pushing with the quads. Once we both finished, he had us switch and
I got the pleasure of the thrusters and Courtney got her shoulders
going.
Up next was core work. Courtney got the privilege of doing two
minutes of mountain climbers using a Swiss ball while I was doing
push-up variations.
Accueil 
