Training & Conditioning Mumbo Jumbo – Mark Hatmaker

Athletes want results. Athletes want a leading edge that might spell the difference between razor thin victory and razor thin “Oh, what was the name of the guy who came in second?” To cater to these results countless tips and tactics have been offered to experienced athletes and novice athletes alike to gain this leading edge.

The problem, obviously, is that some, if not much of the “wisdom” reeks of superstition, some of which I wager is rooted in market dynamics [turning a buck.]

Today let’s tiptoe through just a few piles of manure we all might encounter on the road to honing that leading edge.

[ BTW – These are all simply Mark’s opinion, I make no claim to being the tallest reed in the field, so if I step on your pet pile of poo and call it poo, assume I’m pathologically unable to distinguish between genius and bullshit and leave me to my ignorance. Any arguments to convince me of the error of my ways will simply confuse me, so keep ’em to yourself. You don’t want a confused old man on your hands, have a heart.]

THE PLANK

Holding the body in a fixed position seems to occasionally take the athletic world by storm. Whether that fixed position be the Plank, the Wall-Sit/Hercules Chair, the Horse Stance, the Wanky-Doodle [Editor’s Note – One of those positions is a fabrication] we are led to believe that by staying stock still we are preparing ourselves for a sport or activity that I would assume requires movement.

When I see avid stock-still advocates I am reminded of the character George Michael in the terrific television show Arrested Development and his proud achievement of being able to hang from a bar. [More on bar-hanging in a moment.]

Yes, I can see the utility of holding the plank as a training step for those unable to perform a push-up.

Yes, holding a plank for an extended period is difficult.

Yes, I hear the argument that you can foster mental toughness by “muscling through” an extended plank session.

But…

You know what else trains a push-up? A push-up.

You know what else is difficult? Functional movement under load that mimics the specificity of your sport. The last I checked “Humans As Poor Substitutes for Furniture” was not a sport, and I check often.

You know what else can foster mental toughness? Hardcore functional movement and participating in your sport.

My guess is that the plank-mentality started assuming a role of primacy for three reasons.

1. It is egalitarian, everyone can hit a plank for a wee bit.
2. No gear required.
3. A way to fill time in a group training session.

As coaches, trainers, athletes, why would we allow such a base level static position to occupy so much time?

It’s not even a sensible “active recovery.” It simply seems to be a thing that we have adopted for no good reason.

Stock-Still Side-Bar: There are two static exercises that pass the functional smell-test.

1. The Dead-Hang: Paramount for rock-climbers and aspiring Ninja Warriors.
2. The Neck-Bridge: A must for wrestling sports still using a pin.

CARDIO/FITNESS SESSIONS FOR FIXED TIMES

I still occasionally run into this “You know for cardio I need to do this activity this long.”

Leaving behind the obvious, well, what sort of event/sport activity are we preparing for? The human body responds to specificity, if anyone doubts that, let’s assume we have a pro soccer team and let’s picture their needs—beaucoup running. Should we train their “cardio” like an NFL defensive lineman?

Or vice versa, do we want to see the defensive line-up of your favorite NFL team skip the sprints, power sled, and ballistic lifting and opt for fantastic 5K times?

If you honestly think these are equivalents put your money where your mouth is and bet on teams that ignore specificity. Oh, wait, you can’t because pro sports is a business and they won’t allow such a useless training plan to intrude in marketability.

I suspect that much of this “cardio for this long” is a schedule-match ploy. That is, fitness-aerobics classes, spinning classes and the like use a “cardio lasts this long” model that matches not some scientifically established MaxO2 threshold training formula, but rather it matches a gym’s hourly schedule or a fitness trainer’s billable hours.

There’s no percentage in being a “cardio” personal trainer who gets a client gassed in 8-minutes of hardcore sprint work. The wallet dictates that we must dole out our “cardio” to “earn our keep.”

A side-observation regarding “timed cardio” sessions is that of those who time their workouts and are also vociferous evangelists for “Our ancestors ate and trained like this.”

Do these people honestly think that Caveman Thag Reynolds and his hunting buddy Crag Sullivan were ever persistence hunting a gazelle, checked their sundial and said “Better knock it off for the day, don’t want to overtrain”?

SPOT-REDUCTION/TARGETED “TONING”

We’ve all heard or uttered variations of the following:

“What do I need to do to get rid of this gut, a buncha sit-ups?”
“What exercise gets rid of love-handles?”
“My butt is a little heavy will lunges help?”

This is an easy error to make as it seems to fit a cause and effect relationship, that is, “Hmm, my gut is getting bigger, I need to focus my activity on my gut to make it smaller.”

When we think this way we are ignoring the flip-side of the spot/targeted line of thought. Can anyone point to a specific activity or lack of activity or a single food that caused one to pile fat on the gut, or the hips, or the butt?

Nope.

Doesn’t work that way.

If a general overall lack of activity is the cause of these specific deposits of fatty tissue why didn’t they distribute evenly?

The answer lies in a combination of genetics and hormonal profiles, but let’s stay out of the wonky-science weeds here and just say that in general men deposit fat around the middle, and women have a disposition to deposit fat around the hips and thighs, with variations here and here.

What we need to keep in mind to reverse these deposits is that the fat deposits were not due to a targeted activity but rather an overall pattern of behavior.

With this in mind, spot-reducing and targeted-toning simply does not exist in the real-world of human physiology.

To reduce the size of these “trouble” areas one must skip the targeted mindset and aim for overall exercise. The more the body works the quicker it will reverse course on these “targeted” areas.

In other words, you wanna lose the love handles? Skip the twisting sit-ups, and opt for multi-joint big movement exercise that burns calories/fat overall.

Do not assume that just because you have performed crunches until your stomach is sore that you have burned fat from that specific area—chances are you have merely fatigued a muscle and have done very little to burn fat. You will do more to burn fat in that area by opting for a series of sprints, barbell thrusters, several sessions of jump-rope than you ever will with countless sit-ups.

One last way to think of the targeted nonsense. If we seriously think that exercising a single body part will reduce its size why do we not see right-handed professional tennis players with itty-bitty right arms?

The human body simply does not work in this simple manner, it requires an overall fitness attack to eventually hone in on these “problem” areas.

I could go on and on with the mumbo-jumbo, just as I’m sure you could as well, but let’s call it a day and never forget that lurking in all of us, more than likely is a bit of mumbo-jumbo we would defend to the end with no good reason.

I’m outta here, gotta go carbo-load wearing my lucky headband and hit some iso-lateral kettlebell exercises so my bilateral symmetry doesn’t suffer.

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