HOW TO BOOST COMPETITIVE PERFORMANCE – DROP THOSE OUT-OF-DATE EXERCISE ROUTINES

In this report you'll find how, by moving away from out-of-date training routines such as static stretching (see below for more about this first, easy step) and selecting the right exercise, it's easier than you think to boost your performance to previously unattainable levels.

You won't find theories or conjecture, no matter how wonderful they appear. In the following pages you'll discover proven methods of improving your general fitness and competitive performance.

The often astonishing results described have all been monitored, validated and documented by internationally respected research bodies and universities. In a nutshell, we show that the more you use our specific training methods, the greater the impact on your performances.

Amazingly, many of these breakthroughs have gone unnoticed by the general sports fraternity – simply because they are not reported in the general media.

This report is based on hard-won knowledge – and explodes a few popular myths.

You'll discover how carrying out great training is not just a matter of tough, long workouts. If reaching your potential depended solely on training very hard, all dedicated athletes would be in top form. But they're not; in fact, just a small percentage of them actually reach their highest attainable level.
If you want to improve performance, the cardinal rule is: be more specific

Your best gains in performance will be achieved when key parts of your training closely mimic what you do when you compete. The more specific your training, the greater the impact on your performances.

This is true in running and strength training, for example. Scientific studies have shown that when individuals train their arm muscles at a specific angle, they achieve major gains in strength, but there are almost no improvements at other angles, even though exactly the same arm muscles are involved.

Expressed another way, the performance of slow, heavily loaded strength training helps strength but not speed or power. On the other hand, doing explosive stuff makes athletes great at developing muscular force quickly, but maximal strength doesn't budge.

From our observations of hundreds of training sessions, it's clear that most athletes and sportspeople are simply doing the wrong training!
Why most athletes train the wrong way

When runners go to the gym, for example, they usually focus on the usual, traditional, tried-and-true exercises that they've read about in magazines, heard about from other runners, and/or know how to do.

These include bench presses, squats, power cleans, leg extensions, leg flexions, biceps curls, abdominal crunches, and calf raises. Such exercises are great for developing generalized strength, but there is one small problem: none of them has anything to do with running.

Basically, squatting makes you a better squatter. Bench presses improve the strength of your pectoralis and triceps muscles. Ab crunches help you get better at bringing your shoulders toward your hips and may make you look prettier at the beach. Leg extensions increase your quadriceps-muscle strength when you are in a seated position. None of them helps you run faster.

Our recommended training regime closely mimics the overall body posture and muscle mechanics of running. And once you're good at doing such specific exercises, we recommend that you move on to strength routines that will help you exert muscular force in a rapid manner in a horizontal direction, i.e., toward the finish line of your race.

Okay, you say, that all sounds plausible enough, but where is the proof that such training is better than the traditional fare of leg extensions and bicep curls?
How the right kind of training increased strength and power by 21%

Thanks to work carried out at The Center for Exercise Science and Sport Management of Southern Cross University in Lismore, Australia, the proof is at hand. At Southern Cross, scientists divided 30 exercise-science students who had been engaged in weight training for a period of at least one year into two different groups.

One group, the control subjects, continued their normal training over an eight-week period. The second group also trained normally but added in two additional strength sessions per week. Only two exercises were used in the training.

At the end of eight weeks, both groups were assessed on a variety of tests of strength and power.

After eight weeks of the specialized sessions the athletes' strength and power improved by 21 per cent!
Why common exercises don't work

Now here's the big one: cyclists and sprinters taking typical squat exercises to increase knee-extension power showed no improvement at all, even though they worked on the key muscles involved in knee extension – the quadriceps muscles.

Why wasn't there an increase in knee-extension power? Even though exercises focused on the quads, the muscles are used in a totally different way.

Warning: Doing too much hard training can devastate your muscles, harass your hormonal system, and implode your immune system.

Ultimately, nervous-system recruitment of the various motor units within the quadriceps muscles is totally different in the two activities, so we shouldn't expect squat training to benefit knee-extension power.

The study showed that knee-extension exercises don't improve running ability. Yet knee extensions are among the most popular exercises carried out by the running community!
The upper body

The story for the upper body is pretty much the same. Athletes didn't improve at all on the maximal press-up test, even though press-ups involve the same shoulder and arm muscles utilized during bench pressing. The difference, of course, as the squatting case revealed, is not in using the muscles, but how you use them.

Training a particular muscle to be more powerful won't make that muscle more powerful in competition, unless the precise movement patterns used in training are very close to those used in competition.
How to enhance power, speed and stamina

So what's the bottom line? If you're a runner, for example, the strength exercises that most runners utilize are not specific to the body postures or neuromuscular patterns employed during running and therefore won't help your running very much. If you really want to improve your running, you should focus on resistance exercises that are more specific to the act of running.

Whatever your sport or event, you'll find our training program will progressively enhance your power, speed and stamina.

You'll quickly move far ahead of the people doing the usual non-specific exercises such as leg extensions and bench presses in the gym. And you'll be on your way to some truly amazing results! For your free report on selective training, click here.

Why these exercises fail
By now, you know the reason for the failure of these exercises: they are specific only in the muscles used, not in the way they are used.
Dynamic Mobility exercises to boost competitive performance

What you do just before your workout begins has a big impact on what you are able to do during your workout. Many athletes prepare for a training session by carrying out routine stretching exercises, but it's important to remember that stretching helps to improve your static (non-moving) flexibility and may not do such a good job at preparing your body to move quickly and efficiently.

That's why I recommend that you focus on ‘Dynamic Mobility' exercises before every workout.
Dynamic Mobility exercises

Dynamic Mobility training is for injury prevention and performance improvement. Mobility exercises during your pre-workout warm-up period prepare your body for the vigorous movements that make up the main part of your workout. Most sports involve forceful, strenuous activity, and mobility exercises and drills stimulate your nervous system, muscles, tendons and joints in a very dynamic manner.
Exploding the myth of 'hard training'

Carrying out great training is not just a matter of conducting tough, high-quality workouts. If reaching one's potential depended solely on training very hard, all resolute athletes would be in top form. But just a small percentage of them actually reach their pinnacle of fitness.

The reason is not that athletes are lazy; most work very hard. The real problem is that high-quality work is a double-edged sword: it can lead you to your highest-possible level of performance, or it can destroy your ability to perform as well as you can.

Doing too much hard training can devastate your muscles, harass your hormonal system and implode your immune system. Strenuous training must be balanced optimally with rest and recovery in order to reach the mountain-top.

Unfortunately, identifying the right balance of hard work and recovery is the most difficult part of serious training. If your training program has too much recovery, you won't be able to carry out enough quality work to reach your peak. If your schedule has too little recovery, muscles won't be able to repair themselves properly after workouts. Performances actually worsen instead of getting better.

The leading training newsletter Peak Performance reports that recovery should be so well understood and actively enhanced that it becomes a determinant component in training.

Peak Performance explains that recovery must do more than simply rest the muscles; it must actually move fitness upward.

For that to be true, you must completely understand recovery. You must know exactly what recovery is and precisely how long it takes.

You must learn techniques for increasing your speed of recovery, so that the amount of quality work you do can be progressively expanded.

Click here for information on recovery techniques
What about the usual stretching exercises?

Static stretching exercises, in which you're not moving around at all but are simply elongating a particular muscle or group of muscles, do have a place in your training program, but their value and proper usage are often misunderstood.

It's probably best to place your static stretches at the end of your workout as part of the cool-down, not at the beginning of a training session. Static exercises help bring your body back toward a state of rest and recovery and allow you to relax and lengthen the muscles that you have put under stress during your workout.

Placing static stretches at the beginning of a training session, on the other hand, tends to interrupt the natural flow of an optimal warm-up and fails to prepare you fully for the dynamic movements that follow.
Improve your workouts – and your competitive efforts
HOW TO BOOST COMPETITIVE PERFORMANCE – DROP THOSE OUT-OF-DATE EXERCISE ROUTINES

In this report you'll find how, by moving away from out-of-date training routines such as static stretching (see below for more about this first, easy step) and selecting the right exercise, it's easier than you think to boost your performance to previously unattainable levels.

You won't find theories or conjecture, no matter how wonderful they appear. In the following pages you'll discover proven methods of improving your general fitness and competitive performance.

The often astonishing results described have all been monitored, validated and documented by internationally respected research bodies and universities. In a nutshell, we show that the more you use our specific training methods, the greater the impact on your performances.

Amazingly, many of these breakthroughs have gone unnoticed by the general sports fraternity – simply because they are not reported in the general media.

This report is based on hard-won knowledge – and explodes a few popular myths.

You'll discover how carrying out great training is not just a matter of tough, long workouts. If reaching your potential depended solely on training very hard, all dedicated athletes would be in top form. But they're not; in fact, just a small percentage of them actually reach their highest attainable level.
If you want to improve performance, the cardinal rule is: be more specific

Your best gains in performance will be achieved when key parts of your training closely mimic what you do when you compete. The more specific your training, the greater the impact on your performances.

This is true in running and strength training, for example. Scientific studies have shown that when individuals train their arm muscles at a specific angle, they achieve major gains in strength, but there are almost no improvements at other angles, even though exactly the same arm muscles are involved.

Expressed another way, the performance of slow, heavily loaded strength training helps strength but not speed or power. On the other hand, doing explosive stuff makes athletes great at developing muscular force quickly, but maximal strength doesn't budge.

From our observations of hundreds of training sessions, it's clear that most athletes and sportspeople are simply doing the wrong training!
Why most athletes train the wrong way

When runners go to the gym, for example, they usually focus on the usual, traditional, tried-and-true exercises that they've read about in magazines, heard about from other runners, and/or know how to do.

These include bench presses, squats, power cleans, leg extensions, leg flexions, biceps curls, abdominal crunches, and calf raises. Such exercises are great for developing generalised strength, but there is one small problem: none of them has anything to do with running.

Basically, squatting makes you a better squatter. Bench presses improve the strength of your pectoralis and triceps muscles. Ab crunches help you get better at bringing your shoulders toward your hips and may make you look prettier at the beach. Leg extensions increase your quadriceps-muscle strength when you are in a seated position. None of them helps you run faster.
Our recommended training regime closely mimics the overall body posture and muscle mechanics of running. And once you're good at doing such specific exercises, we recommend that you move on to strength routines that will help you exert muscular force in a rapid manner in a horizontal direction, i.e., toward the finish line of your race.

Okay, you say, that all sounds plausible enough, but where is the proof that such training is better than the traditional fare of leg extensions and bicep curls?
How the right kind of training increased strength and power by 21%

Thanks to work carried out at The Centre for Exercise Science and Sport Management of Southern Cross University in Lismore, Australia, the proof is at hand. At Southern Cross, scientists divided 30 exercise-science students who had been engaged in weight training for a period of at least one year into two different groups.

One group, the control subjects, continued their normal training over an eight-week period. The second group also trained normally but added in two additional strength sessions per week. Only two exercises were used in the training.