Your gym routine may be holding you back. Find out if it contains these simple—but essential—movements
I started coaching in 1979. Since then, I've trained MLB, NFL, and NBA players, Olympians, collegiate athletes, military personnel, and average Joe's. But no matter who I'm coaching, I always create a workout based on 5 human movement patterns: pull, push, hinge, squat, and carry.
Pick
exercises that fit these patterns, and you'll get an effective total-body
workout. Choose not to, and you're missing out. That's because you're not
Frankenstein. Your body isn't a collection of single muscles; it's a single
muscular system. So if you ignore one muscle group during your workout, the
others won't work as well. Over time, your strength will suffer.
Whenever
I explain this concept, there's always one guy who asks why I don't separate the
push into a vertical press and a horizontal press, and the pull into a vertical
pull and a horizontal pull. The answer is easy: If I added them to the list,
most guys I know would do workouts consisting of bench presses, single-arm
presses, lat pulldowns, a set of leg curls, and...that's it. It defeats the
purpose of the list, which is to give you a comprehensive total-body workout.
(Plus, no guy who lifts weights needs to do even more bench presses.) You must
get the tough—but necessary—training out of the way first. Trust me, there's
always time for bench pressing and curls later.
You
can incorporate the five movement patterns into almost any workout. For
instance, my training group—which exercises in my two-car garage at 9:30
a.m.—is currently doing a daily 500-rep kettlebell swing workout. We finish
covered in sweat with stronger grips and smoother hip hinges.
Now,
I'm sure you're scratching your head and thinking, The swing is a hinge
pattern, so where are the other four movement patterns? We put our
"rest periods" to good use. Here's an example of a swing circuit that
we repeat twice for a total of 500 reps. In this case, the "rest"
lasts about one minute and we use the getup as our loaded carry.
1.
35 swings
2.
Single-arm press (right side)
3.
15 swings
4.
TRX single-arm row (left side)
5.
35 swings
6. Single-arm
press (left side)
7.
15 swings
8. TRX
single-arm row (left side)
9.
35 swings
10.
TRX "Y" pull
11.
15 swings
12.
Hip flexor stretch (right knee on floor)
13.
35 swings
14.
Goblet squat
15.
15 swings
16.
Hip flexor stretch (left knee on floor)
17. 35
swings
18.
Turkish getup (perform one on right side, and one on left side)
19.
15 swings
20.
March in place
Don't
feel like adding all the movement patterns to your workout? Do one exercise in
each category as your warmup. You don't have to do a lot of reps or add a ton
of load, just get the movements in your program every day. If you do, I promise
that you'll increase your gains and move like you were designed to move. If you
don't, you'll eventually look and feel like Frankenstein.
Dan
John has taught and coached for more than 30 years. As a coach, he's helped
hundreds of athletes pack on double-digit pounds of rock-solid muscle. As an
athlete, John broke the American record in the Weight Pentathlon. He is the
author of several books, including intervention.
menshealth.com
0 التعليقات: