[badchad]

JeffWard, on Jan 23 2009, 04:09 PM, said:

First of all, I'm a 13-year experienced Master Personal Trainer

What's a "Master Personal Trainer?"

For what it's worth I think anything beyond a good but largely general fitness program will take up time that would be better spent practicing the sport itself if optimal performance in competition is the primary goal.

[JeffWard]

badchad, on Jan 23 2009, 07:09 PM, said:

JeffWard, on Jan 23 2009, 04:09 PM, said:

First of all, I'm a 13-year experienced Master Personal Trainer

What's a "Master Personal Trainer?"

For what it's worth I think anything beyond a good but largely general fitness program will take up time that would be better spent practicing the sport itself if optimal performance in competition is the primary goal.

Thanks for asking…

I'd say a good anology would be: "Gunsmith" vs "Master Gunsmith"...

"Master Personal Trainer" is someone with 13 years in the Personal Training business, who has been certified through 7 different organizations, worked with hundreds of clients, for everything from weight loss/gain, bodybuilding, senior functional fitness, post-rehab follow-on fitness, sport specific conditioning (from recreational athletes, up to and including professionals), published writer, national level fitness and nutrition web-forum moderator/contributor, corporate wellness provider/consultant, and organizer/facilitator to a network of fitness, nutrition, chiropractic, physical therapy, and mental health professionals in Venice Beach, CA for 3 years. I have approximately 170 hrs of continuing education under my belt, and continue to accumulate more each year. I now TEACH continuing education, and I'm an instructor at the biggest, most successful, and widest-spread Professional Fitness Training School in the country. I teach a 500 hour class on anatomy, physiology, human performance, nutrition, rehab, program design, special populations training for diabetics, hypertensives, cardiac patients, pre/post-natal, and training athletes... I teach the business of the business, liability, business structure, marketing and sales... When I have time, I work with a few of my own select clientele.

That's what a Master Personal Trainer means.

I respect your opinion about general fitness, but there are now specialized targeted training protocols for almost every sport in the world.

Your opinion was widely held on the PGA Tour 10 years ago... (exercise generally, and practice a lot), until a few specific people tore the whole game wide open, and MADE it a sport...

I believe there enough people in this "GAME-TURNED-SPORT", that would also like to take their fitness routine to the next level, to improve their stage performance.

That's why I'm asking.

JeffWard

[badchad]

JeffWard, on Jan 23 2009, 05:30 PM, said:

I'd say a good anology would be: "Gunsmith" vs "Master Gunsmith"...

Does that mean it’s a self designated title like “I’m a Master Gunsmith, while my competitor across town is just a Gunsmith, as opposed to something earned like a Masters degree in Physical Education or Exercise Physiology?

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"Master Personal Trainer" is someone with 13 years in the Personal Training business, who has been certified through 7 different organizations, worked with hundreds of clients, for everything from weight loss/gain, bodybuilding, senior functional fitness, post-rehab follow-on fitness, sport specific conditioning (from recreational athletes, up to and including professionals), published writer, national level fitness and nutrition web-forum moderator/contributor, corporate wellness provider/consultant, and organizer/facilitator to a network of fitness, nutrition, chiropractic, physical therapy, and mental health professionals in Venice Beach, CA for 3 years. I have approximately 170 hrs of continuing education under my belt, and continue to accumulate more each year. I now TEACH continuing education, and I'm an instructor at the biggest, most successful, and widest-spread Professional Fitness Training School in the country. I teach a 500 hour class on anatomy, physiology, human performance, nutrition, rehab, program design, special populations training for diabetics, hypertensives, cardiac patients, pre/post-natal, and training athletes... I teach the business of the business, liability, business structure, marketing and sales... When I have time, I work with a few of my own select clientele.

That's what a Master Personal Trainer means.

I don’t mean to be skeptical but I’m still somewhat connected to the industry and I know that becoming a personal trainer often means you read such and such organizations $150 book. Then you took their $350 test and sometimes you agree to pay them $200 per year to keep your membership current, in addition to money spent on continuing education that very frequently either teaches you stuff that's good but stuff you should already know or just the newest fad in exercise. The fad exercise usually being considerably less effective than the good stuff. To be a certified thru 7 organizations might only mean that you did this 7 times over.

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I respect your opinion about general fitness, but there are now specialized targeted training protocols for almost every sport in the world.

I’ll agree that there are many specialized and targeted training protocols for various sports, but generally the more specialized and targeted they become, the less effective they are at improving overall fitness and do little to improve sporting performance either. A perusal of the coaches science abstracts linked below will show numerous examples of such. In contrast what has a big effect on sporting performance (pretty much always) is practicing that sport. As such I believe fitness programs, while important, should be designed primarily with efficiency to allow the athlete more time to direct towards perfecting their skills.

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Your opinion was widely held on the PGA Tour 10 years ago... (exercise generally, and practice a lot), until a few specific people tore the whole game wide open, and MADE it a sport...

See, but that’s not necessarily true. Before shooting became my passion I a gave golf a 2 year effort and read numerous books one the topic and in Tiger Wood’s 2001 book “How I play Golf” he describes his exercise program which includes running 3-5 miles at a time, riding a stationary bike, some stretching, and a fairly standard weight training routine including lat pulldowns, seated rows, overhead presses, bench presses and flys, triceps pushdowns, dips, overhead triceps, wrist curls, crunches, leg extensions, leg curls, squats, hack squats. All that stuff is as general as it comes. And what did Tiger do that was tricky? He swung a weighted club before practice sessions, which if it is anything like a baseball player swinging a weighted bat, evidence suggest it is ineffective for performance enhancement:

http://www.ncbi.nlm....Pubmed_RVDocSum

The coaching science abstracts is IMO a decent source of information pertaining to a lot of this with regards to how specific exercise and sporting performance is, and how a lot of activities done to improve performance often fail to live up to the claims. Check it out if you interested:

http://coachsci.sdsu.edu/mastable.htm

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I believe there enough people in this "GAME-TURNED-SPORT", that would also like to take their fitness routine to the next level, to improve their stage performance.

Besides being fitter in general I just don’t think this can be done. For example, can you come up with a gym based exercise that can improve a competitor’s performance at firing an accurate shot in box A, then sprinting 7 yards to box B to fire another accurate shot? Probably you can, but will that exercise be anywhere near as effective as equal time spent putting a couple of shooting boxes 7 yards apart at the range and practicing the actual skill, or doing the same in your backyard with dryfire? I doubt it, but I'm open to hearing some specifics.

[hk_mtbr]

It is funny to me how "my exercise is best while 'yours' is lame."

I see this in cycling all the time. "You didn't do 3 days of hill repeats...you'll never win"..."you ONLY did 3 days"

And I do have a few ideas/routines that ARE shooting specific...but I think I'll not share them...

PM inbound...I'm always open to new ideas

[XRe]

badchad, on Jan 23 2009, 09:21 PM, said:

For example, can you come up with a gym based exercise that can improve a competitor's performance at firing an accurate shot in box A, then sprinting 7 yards to box B to fire another accurate shot? Probably you can, but will that exercise be anywhere near as effective as equal time spent putting a couple of shooting boxes 7 yards apart at the range and practicing the actual skill, or doing the same in your backyard with dryfire? I doubt it, but I'm open to hearing some specifics.

The answers are "Yes" and "No... to a point". Yes, you can do gym (or outside the gym) exercises that will improve your box to box time (as well as many other aspects of the sport). No, building the strength, flexibility, coordination, balance, and power combined with sprint skills will not take the place of doing the actual shooting specific work. You could not hand an Olympic sprinter with no shooting training a gun and see them shoot that test faster than a GM.

For most shooters, skilled shooting instruction (and PRACTICE) will improve their games a lot more quickly than an improvement in fitness - this is because most shooters can be made hugely more efficient by simply changing a few things about how they shoot, move, etc. However, improvements in general fitness, and improvements in sport specific fitness (which is a pretty wide target for our game) will show some improvement, presuming the shooter is using appropriate techniques. You can gain that benefit at any level.

Chad, you're not an out of shape guy Look around who you typically see on the range, though - if those folks were say, just 25% fitter, do you think they'd shoot better across the course of a match? A little bit faster from spot to spot, better able to negotiate props and obstacles, better stamina throughout the course of the match...???

Yes, shooting skill and technique outweigh fitness. If you can't shoot, or you can't keep your head together through the course of a match, no level of fitness is going to save your bacon. However, all other things being equal, the fitter shooter is going to win, especially in the US version of the game...

[badchad]

XRe, on Jan 24 2009, 09:14 AM, said:

For most shooters, skilled shooting instruction (and PRACTICE) will improve their games a lot more quickly than an improvement in fitness - this is because most shooters can be made hugely more efficient by simply changing a few things about how they shoot, move, etc. However, improvements in general fitness, and improvements in sport specific fitness (which is a pretty wide target for our game) will show some improvement, presuming the shooter is using appropriate techniques. You can gain that benefit at any level.

Dave, I think we are in agreement and I’m elaborating my points for the benefit of everyone else. I have read earlier stuff from you regarding fitness and from what I recall I think it all sounded right, so bare with me. If a guy is grossly overweight, losing it will help him to some measurable degree. I think increased strength will help too, which is probably more important for women in our sport. When I was at NAU I competed in Olympic weightlifting and at that time performance enhancement and exercise were pretty much my life and when I wasn’t in the gym I spend a lot of time on Medline and in the library pouring over original research journals looking for those little things to gain an edge that other people didn’t know about. I was able to learn a lot in the process, but one of the things that stood out was that in study after study, is that it is very hard to carry over what you gain into the gym into increased performance on the training field. Specificity is often grossly under appreciated and the tricky exercises some come up with in the name of “sport specific,” that really seems like it should help, almost never does. This isn’t really an opinion matter but a matter of fact tested over and over in randomized and controlled studies. A good many of those studies have been summarized in the coaching science abstracts I linked earlier.

So if I can be more clear I think fitness helps people a lot in general. The degree that it will help you in sports is largely to the degree that it is needed in that sport (which varies a great deal) and the degree that you are out of shape to begin with. For a guy who is really out of shape a general exercise program will probably help him a great deal to make him fitter in general. However a “highly specialized fancy pants” routine will probably do less for him with regards to losing weight or gaining strength/power.

So if your talking about an exercise program that includes running to help lose weight, then I’m all for it. Some springing drills ok. Basic multi-joint free weight or cable exercises, and maybe some Olympic lifts, and yeah I think that’s great. However once you start bringing out weighted implements, tying Theraband on to the end of your golf club, doing single arm curls while standing on one leg, exercising while balancing on a wobble board, foam rolls, Swiss ball, or whatever. Now you are getting in the range of gimmicky stuff that when researched generally shows 0.0% transfer of improvement into the sporting activity.

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Chad, you're not an out of shape guy Look around who you typically see on the range, though - if those folks were say, just 25% fitter, do you think they'd shoot better across the course of a match? A little bit faster from spot to spot, better able to negotiate props and obstacles, better stamina throughout the course of the match...???

I totally agree. It’s just that sport specific exercise ranges the spectrum from good ideas to absolute and complete wastes of time. It just sounds to me like the program being proposed is being oversold, and while specifics haven’t been given I get the impression that in contains at least some of the latter. Why PM the exercises and ideas anyway? Why not just post them?

This morning I set a gal up on an exercise program who said she played a lot of golf and tennis but was most interested in toning up her thighs. The exercise program I have her was…

Back squats
RDLs
Lunges
Standing Cable Rows
Standing Cable Presses
Ab wheel

…and that was it, 3 sets of 8-15 reps, with instructions to increase the weight when she can do 15 reps. I’m scheduled to see her again in 3 weeks and I’ll check her technique and probably add a combination dumbbell curl and press and maybe some lat pulldowns. This is pretty much the program I give to anyone looking for general fitness. Now if a shooter came to me and wanted a program to make him a better shooter, I would probably give them the exact same exercises. To make it sport specific to USPSA I would add wrist curls and reverse wrist curls and that would be it. Being me, and if I saw them often enough, I might later give them some Olympic lift variants, but it would be hard for me to demonstrate from a scientific perspective that the latter would make much difference in shooting.

The above exercises are all very basic, very good, and stuff that any trainer should be able to teach. Unfortunately if personal trainers let people know it was that simple, a lot of them would be out of business. So the entire industry is ripe with scam artists who knowingly make this stuff appear much harder than it is, teach methods that are unproven, or worse proven ineffective all in an effort keeping their client confused so they have to keep coming back. What’s unfortunate is a good many of the personal trainer certification mills encourage the spread of poor information, so a lot of trainers are innocent, and really don’t know what they don’t know.

As an aside, I recent had a lesson with Eric Grauffel and his dad GG. Eric was asked what he did for his exercise. He said he just worked out about an hour a day doing normal stuff, and that he liked wind surfing too. Nothing special, nothing tricky, but he practiced shooting 2 hours per day. That sounded about right to me.

Speaking of training, I have to go to the range. Get me started and I can talk for hours on this stuff.

[XRe]

badchad, on Jan 24 2009, 03:07 PM, said:

So if I can be more clear I think fitness helps people a lot in general. The degree that it will help you in sports is largely to the degree that it is needed in that sport (which varies a great deal) and the degree that you are out of shape to begin with. For a guy who is really out of shape a general exercise program will probably help him a great deal to make him fitter in general. However a "highly specialized fancy pants" routine will probably do less for him with regards to losing weight or gaining strength/power.

Ok, I'm with you there, and in agreement

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So if your talking about an exercise program that includes running to help lose weight, then I'm all for it. Some springing drills ok. Basic multi-joint free weight or cable exercises, and maybe some Olympic lifts, and yeah I think that's great. However once you start bringing out weighted implements, tying Theraband on to the end of your golf club, doing single arm curls while standing on one leg, exercising while balancing on a wobble board, foam rolls, Swiss ball, or whatever. Now you are getting in the range of gimmicky stuff that when researched generally shows 0.0% transfer of improvement into the sporting activity.

"Tie Theraband to pistol..."

I honestly hadn't imagined anything that gets into stuff like that. I will say that Olympic air rifle folks will practice dry fire standing on a wobble board to help increase their balance and steadiness with the rifle. I don't know that there's a corollary for us - dry fire on a wobble board might be interesting for a few minutes, but I think I can come up with better ways to develop those skills.

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I totally agree. It's just that sport specific exercise ranges the spectrum from good ideas to absolute and complete wastes of time.

Some of that stuff you listed sounds like the latter, possibly

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It just sounds to me like the program being proposed is being oversold, and while specifics haven't been given I get the impression that in contains at least some of the latter. Why PM the exercises and ideas anyway? Why not just post them?

I think that's up to Jeff - perhaps he'd like to get some thoughts cohesive and get some opinions before he posts it out there somewhere. I don't know what his intentions are that way.

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Back squats
RDLs

You're a PT guy, right? I'm kind of surprised at these (but in a good way)... Every PT I've spoken to claims that back squats and DLs of any sort are the devil's work and should never be attempted.... (not that that stops me, but I'm super super super careful about form on them, these days...)

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To make it sport specific to USPSA I would add wrist curls and reverse wrist curls and that would be it.

Farmer Carry is good stuff for us, too, FWIW...

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Being me, and if I saw them often enough, I might later give them some Olympic lift variants, but it would be hard for me to demonstrate from a scientific perspective that the latter would make much difference in shooting.

Hmmm... I certainly haven't stuck to one single modality, and I'd have a hard time telling you which exercise made the most difference for me. I think switching them up through a mix of various exercises seems to make a good difference. Its been demonstrated that Oly lifters actually make extremely good sprinters - ostensibly because Oly lifting tends to develop explosive power (which is related to, but different than raw strength). Its not a good option, though, if you can't see the person often enough to insure they've learned good form and are using it. If you have an appropriate surface, plyometric jumps seem to be really good stuff, too.

I like a couple of additional things - I'll throw them out there for you to digest Agility ladder drills (foot speed, balance, coordination, proprioception improvement), medicine ball work (especially rotational stuff, throws, etc), sprint work that involves stopping and starting (Suicides being the quintessential drill, but there are many others). And, for our game, short interval, high intensity stuff that builds anaeorbic capacity - being completely in control and "in breath" after a hard sprint is the difference between having trigger control and not having it. Nothing magical at all, and no Therbands attached to magazines or anything

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As an aside, I recent had a lesson with Eric Grauffel and his dad GG. Eric was asked what he did for his exercise. He said he just worked out about an hour a day doing normal stuff, and that he liked wind surfing too. Nothing special, nothing tricky, but he practiced shooting 2 hours per day. That sounded about right to me.

You'll find various stuff amongst the top shooters, and it seems to depend on their temperment. No doubt, the shooting practice improves the shooting more than anything else possibly can, though. Of course, I'm playing this game against guys that are 15+ years younger than I am - I need any advantage I can get!

[badchad]

XRe, on Jan 24 2009, 03:09 PM, said:

I honestly hadn't imagined anything that gets into stuff like that. I will say that Olympic air rifle folks will practice dry fire standing on a wobble board to help increase their balance and steadiness with the rifle. I don't know that there's a corollary for us - dry fire on a wobble board might be interesting for a few minutes, but I think I can come up with better ways to develop those skills.

Yeah, I agree. I haven’t seen any research done to see if the wobble board stuff helped the rifle shooters but I would not be surprised if it didn’t help them either.

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You're a PT guy, right? I'm kind of surprised at these (but in a good way)... Every PT I've spoken to claims that back squats and DLs of any sort are the devil's work and should never be attempted.... (not that that stops me, but I'm super super super careful about form on them, these days...)

Yeah, I’m a PT but I have to admit that most physical therapists don’t know very much about exercise beyond quad sets, and shoulder internal and external rotations. When I go to a conference and hear them talk I am often embarrassed by my profession. Remember above where I bashed continuing education hours with personal trainers, well it’s exactly the same thing in physical therapy. That and very few therapists take the time to read any research and learn anything, they just go to work, collect their checks and that’s it. Regarding squats and deadlifts, I not only use them in training normal folks and athletes, I use them in the rehabilitation of the vast majority of my knee and back patients. Though in that case I work up to the exercises rather then start with them, and usually progress just to light dumbbells. Most patients are discharged before they get to where I would put a bar on their back. I can go into intricate detail about why therapist who malign squats and deadlifts are incorrect and can cite a plethora of research in the process but would get lengthy. But it’s my opinion that done correctly squats and deadlifts are not only safe, but considerably more effective strength builders than any alternative I can think of. I’m big on keeping bodyweight centered over the rear of the foot and maintaining a neutral spine throughout the movement.

I should point out that I was very lucky in my education in contrast to a lot of other therapists. When I went to NAU I was still bodybuilding and was finishing up my BS degree in Exercise Science and it was a very competitive process to get enrolled into the Masters Physical Therapy program. The Dean of the health department was a former Olympic style weightlifter and coached a local team of weightlifters. The head of the physical therapy departments kids were on the dean’s weightlifting team as were some of the other profs children. So I started Olympic weightlifting at first with a primary intention of networking and sucking up, and as you can see it worked. But with the unique set of circumstances my PT program was very open to the beneficial effects of heavy weightlifting and I don’t think I would have gotten that if I had gone to any other program in the world. Also my weightlifting coach (different from the Dean) was the strength coach of all the sports teams in the university, and he used to win the NSCAs strength coach of the year award over and over, so I was lucky to learn from him in how he trained me, the other lifters, and every team sport we had.

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Farmer Carry is good stuff for us, too, FWIW...

Yeah, I would say so. Also those wrist roller things with the rope, IronMind’s grip stuff, and that gyro ball thing I have tried and all seemed effective grip strengtheners. But having all that stuff in my office nothing gives me as quick and easy a burn as wrist curls and reverse wrist curls.

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Hmmm... I certainly haven't stuck to one single modality, and I'd have a hard time telling you which exercise made the most difference for me. I think switching them up through a mix of various exercises seems to make a good difference. Its been demonstrated that Oly lifters actually make extremely good sprinters - ostensibly because Oly lifting tends to develop explosive power (which is related to, but different than raw strength). Its not a good option, though, if you can't see the person often enough to insure they've learned good form and are using it. If you have an appropriate surface, plyometric jumps seem to be really good stuff, too.

I think there is some importance to switching things and variety but I think it is often overstated and it kind of depends what your goals are. In Olympic weightlifting the west got a hold of the old Russian training models using periodization of different exercises and intensities over time. This has since become very popular over here in some degree because at the time the Russians were the best weightlifters by a good margin. What puts a bit of a damper on the idea is that later on the Bulgarians under the coaching Ivan Abadjiev started winning the Russians with a radically different training programs using hardly any variation and just the same 6 exercises done twice a day 6 days a week over and over and over. When the Greek team the most medals in weightlifting the 96 Olympics, they were using only 5 exercises.

That said, I’ll change things up for a person if they want, or if I think it will help, but only if I can change from one great exercise to an equally great exercise. So I might progress them to Olympic lifts, or I might change my standing cable row to a bent over barbell row or from a back squat to a front squat, but aside from my rehab exercises (where I often have to make things up on the spot) I probably only think there are 20 or 30 weightlifting exercises that I think are worth the time to do. I think it’s like shooting “always train the fundamentals.”

I see others doing other exercises all the time and I often think they are very good, just not good enough for me to change from what I’m already using which I think is at least as good. However I read the spine researcher Stuart McGill’s books and from that I have removed all conventional crunching types of exercises from my programs in favor ab-wheel type exercises that keep the spine neutral throughout.

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I like a couple of additional things - I'll throw them out there for you to digest Agility ladder drills (foot speed, balance, coordination, proprioception improvement), medicine ball work (especially rotational stuff, throws, etc), sprint work that involves stopping and starting (Suicides being the quintessential drill, but there are many others). And, for our game, short interval, high intensity stuff that builds anaeorbic capacity - being completely in control and "in breath" after a hard sprint is the difference between having trigger control and not having it. Nothing magical at all, and no Therbands attached to magazines or anything

Some of that stuff I think is good, some I’m agnostic on. I think the agility stuff will likely be better than nothing, but I think it will be inferior to equal time practicing shooting drills. Sprint work I think is good, but our sport generally involves really short sprints where we just don’t get up to full speed hardly ever. So I think we want to be explosive out of a box but also quick to shut it down, and I think that is best trained through movement/shooting drills on the range, or box drills in the backyard rather than conventional track and field type activities. I do think you have a good point about doing it hard enough to lessen and learn to control your breathing as well as the anaerobic aspects of our sport.

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You'll find various stuff amongst the top shooters, and it seems to depend on their temperment. No doubt, the shooting practice improves the shooting more than anything else possibly can, though. Of course, I'm playing this game against guys that are 15+ years younger than I am - I need any advantage I can get!

I hear you on the age thing. I’m on the tail end of my youth, and I figure this is my last athletic hurrah, so like you I’m looking for every advantage I can find as well. I just think most of the gain will come from working on developing correct and consistently applied techniques in movement and shooting fundamentals as opposed to trying to be the fittest guy out there. In the 2005 Limited Nationals DVD Robbie commented something to the effect of “Hell these kids can run circles around me, but there not shooting as good, and that’s why I still win.” When I trained with Eric he seemed in pretty good shape and he looked like he could run pretty fast and shoot pretty fast but none of those things blew me away because I hear open shooters send shots down range real fast all the time. What amazed me was that he shoots about 89% Alphas. I was thinking “Jesus, 89% Alphas, nobody else does that, nobody else comes close.”

Maurice2, on Jan 24 2009, 02:31 PM, said:

I guess if I could get to the range (which is farther than the gym),..I would just go the range and practice the movement drills.

I have limited time,..so going to the gym will have to do until I can get to the range in the spring. I still think it will help improve my overall times, if I work on specific movements. Hopefully it will help me lose some weight as well.

I think that’s important. If you can’t get to the range, then you have to start looking at what you can do in a less than optimal situation.

Maurice2, on Jan 24 2009, 03:33 PM, said:

I just recall watching a pro tennis player sprinting back and forth at explosive speeds. It seemed this could be usefull in running short distances between shooting positions,..they start and stop in extremely fast movements.

I think you are correct on this but here is how I would look at it. Practicing our sport 3 hours a week will help us a lot. Practicing our sport 3 hours per week plus playing tennis 3 hours per week will help us considerably more. However practicing our sport 6 hours per week, without the tennis, would be better still. Kind of on the topic, here is a short write up on cross training, which I pretty much agree with:

http://www-rohan.sds...a/vol12/loy.htm

[LPatterson]

I would love to have a personal trainer to work with for even the basic of exercises because I have never heard of most of the exercises.

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Back squats
RDLs
Lunges
Standing Cable Rows
Standing Cable Presses
Ab wheel

Of these the only one I know is the ab wheel from a tech school 40 years ago. At 68 I would love to have a structured program that would improve my general health/fitness as I have time just not will power because there are no goals to meet. A few years ago a trainer set a cardio goal of a heart rate of 130 for 30 minutes 4 times a week guess how long that lasted. Just because I haven't smoked in 20 years doesn't mean it didn't hurt my lung capacity or all the chemicals I had to use before the Air Force decided they might be as harmful as the EPA said they were.

If I had a program that didn't leave me a basket case that I could work into I would love to try it.

Reason for edit fixed some whoops spelling mistakes.

This post has been edited by LPatterson: 25 January 2009 - 08:38 AM

[badchad]

LPatterson, on Jan 25 2009, 08:36 AM, said:

I would love to have a personal trainer to work with for even the basic of exercises because I have never heard of most of the exercises.

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Back squats
RDLs
Lunges
Standing Cable Rows
Standing Cable Presses
Ab wheel

I just did a quick search on youtube and these all look pretty good. During the standing cable rows, I keep my legs in more of a square in a semi squat than the guy in the video, but I dont' think it makes much difference. If you wanted to be tricky you could put your feet in your shooting stance, same with the presses. Anyway here you go:

Back squats
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=Hyjpz4jkjSQ

RDLs
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=PnBREGM7pE0

Lunges
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=PqGmIW1IERM

Standing Cable Rows
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=VRCCPApoWU0

Standing Cable Press
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=-WcNDpyEpN4

Ab-wheel
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=g3laF2XjZ0g

This post has been edited by badchad: 25 January 2009 - 09:34 AM

[badchad]

dirty whiteboy, on Jan 25 2009, 08:55 AM, said:

Some things I have noticed that I think would help shooters improve their game.
#1) If you are over fat(excess body fat) lose some of the groceries.

+1 to that especially. It will really eat into your practice time if you try to lose weight be exercise alone.

[d5357]

badchad, on Jan 25 2009, 09:33 AM, said:

LPatterson, on Jan 25 2009, 08:36 AM, said:

I would love to have a personal trainer to work with for even the basic of exercises because I have never heard of most of the exercises.

Quote

Back squats
RDLs
Lunges
Standing Cable Rows
Standing Cable Presses
Ab wheel

I just did a quick search on youtube and these all look pretty good. During the standing cable rows, I keep my legs in more of a square in a semi squat than the guy in the video, but I dont' think it makes much difference. If you wanted to be tricky you could put your feet in your shooting stance, same with the presses. Anyway here you go:

Back squats
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=Hyjpz4jkjSQ

RDLs
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=PnBREGM7pE0

Lunges
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=PqGmIW1IERM

Standing Cable Rows
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=VRCCPApoWU0

Standing Cable Press
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=-WcNDpyEpN4

Ab-wheel
http://www.youtube.c...h?v=g3laF2XjZ0g

What kind of weight is being used for the Back squats, RDL's and Lunges?

[XRe]

badchad, on Jan 25 2009, 09:27 AM, said:

I'm big on keeping bodyweight centered over the rear of the foot and maintaining a neutral spine throughout the movement.

IOW... good form

I'm pretty sure that most of the denegrating of squats and DLs is because the PTs and related docs see all kinds of junk that results from folks doing those exercises improperly - but confusing bad form or execution with a dangerous exercise doesn't seem very informed. I guess the other side of the coin, though, is that sending people out there to do those things unsupervised (when they obviously don't understand how to do them) isn't a smart thing, either, so... Not an easy position to be in, I suppose...

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But having all that stuff in my office nothing gives me as quick and easy a burn as wrist curls and reverse wrist curls.

Heck, pullups, lifts w/ BBs or DBs, etc, all do a pretty nice job of working grip, too, for that matter.

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In Olympic weightlifting the west got a hold of the old Russian training models using periodization of different exercises and intensities over time. This has since become very popular over here in some degree because at the time the Russians were the best weightlifters by a good margin. What puts a bit of a damper on the idea is that later on the Bulgarians under the coaching Ivan Abadjiev started winning the Russians with a radically different training programs using hardly any variation and just the same 6 exercises done twice a day 6 days a week over and over and over. When the Greek team the most medals in weightlifting the 96 Olympics, they were using only 5 exercises.

I see a distinction here, but I'm not sure its that important - you're actually talking about sport specific fitness for a very limited number of activities. Obviously, I don't have an scientificly gathered data that suggests that a wide set of exercises provides a specific positive impact to practical shooting, right? I don't think anyone has that data, one way or the other. In many ways, our desired skill set begins to resemble other sports more so than weightlifting - football, tennis, raquetball, stuff like that. The skills required are somewhat predictable, but are varied in their application, so it would seem to make sense to develop them in similar fashion. Like I said, no data, of course, and maybe it makes no difference in terms of where the rubber meets the road, but.... at the very least, it keeps the training a little more interesting

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I probably only think there are 20 or 30 weightlifting exercises that I think are worth the time to do. I think it's like shooting "always train the fundamentals."

That sounds reasonable to me - someday, I'd be interested in your thoughts, when you feel like writing them down...

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I see others doing other exercises all the time and I often think they are very good, just not good enough for me to change from what I'm already using which I think is at least as good. However I read the spine researcher Stuart McGill's books and from that I have removed all conventional crunching types of exercises from my programs in favor ab-wheel type exercises that keep the spine neutral throughout.

The ab-wheel is good stuff... I need to pick one up, actually... can't believe I've been forgetting about that little monster...

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I think the agility stuff will likely be better than nothing, but I think it will be inferior to equal time practicing shooting drills.

Again, we're still in agreement that the shooting needs shooting to improve... That said, I definitely feel more solid on my feet with those drills in the mix - my technique has not changed in terms of, say, entering or leaving positions, but I'm more agile about it, more efficient about it, and I have a better sense of where my body is at... Also, when things go wrong (foot slip, stuff like that), I seem to be in better control over the outcome... Just FWIW...

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Sprint work I think is good, but our sport generally involves really short sprints where we just don't get up to full speed hardly ever. So I think we want to be explosive out of a box but also quick to shut it down, and I think that is best trained through movement/shooting drills on the range, or box drills in the backyard rather than conventional track and field type activities.

Exactly why I like things like suicides - I didn't list an exhaustive set of drills, obviously, just that one is one most folks know. It requires you to accelerate short distances, slow yourself down and then stop at a certain point, and touch a spot on the ground, then reverse direction accelerate, and repeat over several distances. You can do them sideways or backwards, as well. This resembles quite a bit what we do in the game. You can also do a lot of drills with boxes, cones, towels on the ground, whatever, that develop this sort of control, acceleration, deceleration, etc. Boxes certainly aren't a bad way to do it, no doubt - but for physical development, I do find it useful to separate the raw physical skill from the technical points of the game (ie, learning how to accelerate and sprint separate from working foot placement, and that sort of thing) - you put them back together, too, of course.

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I just think most of the gain will come from working on developing correct and consistently applied techniques in movement and shooting fundamentals as opposed to trying to be the fittest guy out there.

Again, I'm in agreement.

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What amazed me was that he shoots about 89% Alphas. I was thinking "Jesus, 89% Alphas, nobody else does that, nobody else comes close."

Pretty well known that you need to be shooting 95% of available points to be competitive, and more like 97% to win. That falls right in line w/ that principle... (97.8% of points, if assume no mikes, no Ds...)

[JeffWard]

Wow... You walk away from the computer for two days, and look what you get???

BadChad,

I agree with you entirely... Suprised?

It IS simple. The difference between a "sport specific" routine and a basic "hypertrophy" or body building routine, IS the introduction of some instability. Primarily by getting basic exercises up off the benches, and performing them in a position (standing) similar to the position of the sport. Enforcing core stability, and training one side of the body at a time is far from "gimmicky" or bizarre. Less so with shooting, than with sports like golf that are very one-sided, training the body for unilateral balance, and rotational balance, limits the possibilities from overuse injuries. Introducing a BOSU ball, or foam roller, or wobble board forces an athlete to focus on generating power, while using his her core muscles, and leads to, in the long run greater daynamic stability, ie. power, WITH control. As oppoes to many body builders, with huge muscles, and little functional strength.

Specific to shooting, that's why I was taking suggestions...

An exercise routine, like what I currently do with pro golfers, is not perfect for shooters, nor is it perfect for defensive backs, or basketball players. There are small differences.

Also, Personal Training is not for everyone for sure... I agree, that a frightening percentage of current "Certified" Personal Trainers, with a weekend seminar, and a $350 Cert Test under their belts, are minimally competent to do their jobs. I understand you distrust for the average muscle-headed gym-rat, who calls himself a fitness professional. I am SURELY not him. That's why we now teach 500hr (4-6 month), hands on training classes... No, my degree is not in Exercise Science... Shocking. It's mearly in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineeering. Fitness is my second career, after a stint designing heavy-lift propulsion systems and test platforms in the USAF. Now the new Atlas and Delta systems...

Getting back to Personal Training NOT being for everyone. It is for the people who either wish to learn more than the "nothing" they already know, or worse, what they think they know from reading FLEX or SHAPE magazine... It is also for the people who know what they should be doing, but won't do it unless they have an appointment... It is also for the people who NEED exercise and nutritional support, and need supervision in the process. In the rare instance (I'd say 2-3% of clients), it is the competitive athlete, who desires and additional edge, and wants to go above and beyond the "meat and potatoes" exercises that have gotten them to the level they are at, but need/desire more. That's what I do. All of the above.

Regarding Tigers exercise routine in "How I Play Golf", which I'm looking at as I type (I'm a 5-handicap, and my Dad played professionally. I shot a 77 today). That book was ghost-written, for Tiger, in 1999-2000, and published in 2001. I have met Tiger's Trainer, personally. I lived for almost 2 years in Windermere, FL. I've trained clients IN the Isleworth Clubhouse Gym... Yes, 10 years ago, Tiger's routine was as basic as basic gets... I think you'd find today, his Post-Rehab/Strength/Speed program has moved a bit beyond that...

Are you using shooting techniques/training from 1999? Some, I'm sure are just as good today. Has the practice of the top shooters in USPSA/IPSC changed in ten years? I don't know. But I'm guessing it has evolved.

If you're happy with Cross-Fit, good. If your Bow-Flex is working for you, good. If you run 3 miles a day, and do barbell back-squats and RDLs, and deadlifts, and power-cleans... and those improve your performance, fantasic. If your current fitness routine of 3 laps per night, to and from the fridge for fresh beers, while watching 24 is working for you... ah... fine. I'm not saying my routines are the end-all-be-all of fitness. I'm not even saying the routines I design are the BEST IN THE WORLD!!!! I'm saying I'd like some inputs from shooters who either DO currently train for fitness to make them better, or would be interested in training their body for the sport, in the best way that I can get it done, and done right...

The sales pitch???? There is none. Conversation is free. Questions are free. Inputs are not paid for... This is not an infomercial... LOL

Thanks for you time.

And thank you, the 20+ guys who have PMed or emailed... I'll get back with you this week!

Jeff

[badchad]

XRe, on Jan 25 2009, 03:20 PM, said:

I'm pretty sure that most of the denegrating of squats and DLs is because the PTs and related docs see all kinds of junk that results from folks doing those exercises improperly - but confusing bad form or execution with a dangerous exercise doesn't seem very informed. I guess the other side of the coin, though, is that sending people out there to do those things unsupervised (when they obviously don't understand how to do them) isn't a smart thing, either, so... Not an easy position to be in, I suppose...

Yeah, I’m sure all that applies. With squats particularly there used to be a big stigma. A guy by the name of Klein wrote a paper that squats (particularly deep squats) overstretch the ligaments of the knees, and the “squats are bad for your knees” mantra has been with us ever since. Klein was unaware of the anatomy of the knee and how the ligaments are actually at their tightest at full extension and slack in flexion, and later research found no increase in ligamentus laxity after squats. Then I heard people talk about increased patellofemoral force as you do deep squats, but when measured research showed patellofemoral forces drop off sharply after the knees are flexed past 90 degrees. I think squats are just hard and some people will look for any excuse to avoid doing them. For what it’s worth over the last few years the “squats are bad for you” bit doesn’t seem as bad as common as it was in years past. The top spine researcher I am aware of “Stuart McGill recommends them, as well as RDL like exercises.

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I see a distinction here, but I'm not sure its that important - you're actually talking about sport specific fitness for a very limited number of activities. Obviously, I don't have an scientificly gathered data that suggests that a wide set of exercises provides a specific positive impact to practical shooting, right? I don't think anyone has that data, one way or the other. In many ways, our desired skill set begins to resemble other sports more so than weightlifting - football, tennis, raquetball, stuff like that. The skills required are somewhat predictable, but are varied in their application, so it would seem to make sense to develop them in similar fashion. Like I said, no data, of course, and maybe it makes no difference in terms of where the rubber meets the road, but.... at the very least, it keeps the training a little more interesting

What you say about the increased variability of skills for IPSC is for sure true and I think our training in general should be more varied to a degree. Weightlifting only has the two lifts, the snatch and clean and jerk, but what I think the Bulgarians showed was that variability isn’t very necessary to make continued gains as opposed to the Russians and their very formal periodization models. So for strength training I don’t think you need a great variety of exercises (even for most sports) but for IPSC I think you do need to train to develop a large variety of skills. The problem I have with greater variety in weight training is that it tends to make training programs overly complex, and many start to dilute their programs consisting of great exercises for program consisting of pansy exercises in part or in whole.

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That sounds reasonable to me - someday, I'd be interested in your thoughts, when you feel like writing them down...

Off the top of my head here’s my list for training healthy people. I don’t recall going go beyond that in a long time. If I’m dealing with an injury then the sky is the limit and I often have to make up exercises to strengthen something without exacerbating the condition. For bodybuilding I would increase the number of exercises as well. FWIW, I think there is something to the strong man, dinosaur training types of movements, I just don’t have much experiences with that kind of training.

1. Olympic lifts and variants: clean, jerk, snatch, power clean, power snatch, pulls, push press, push jerks.
2. Standing Cable Row
3. Standing Cable Press
4. DB Curl and Overhead Press combo
5. Lat pulldowns
6. Back squat
7. RDL
8. Lunge
9. Ab wheel roll out
10. Front squats
11. Conventional deadlifts
12. Standing cable twist (thru the hips)
13. Bent over barbell row
14. Bench Press
15. Seated row.
16. Wrist curls
17. Reverse wrist curls
18. Medicine ball side throw (only if thrown so hard nobody would want to catch it)
19. Step up
20. Saxon side bends (maybe)
21. Calf raises

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Again, we're still in agreement that the shooting needs shooting to improve... That said, I definitely feel more solid on my feet with those drills in the mix - my technique has not changed in terms of, say, entering or leaving positions, but I'm more agile about it, more efficient about it, and I have a better sense of where my body is at... Also, when things go wrong (foot slip, stuff like that), I seem to be in better control over the outcome... Just FWIW...

Exactly why I like things like suicides - I didn't list an exhaustive set of drills, obviously, just that one is one most folks know. It requires you to accelerate short distances, slow yourself down and then stop at a certain point, and touch a spot on the ground, then reverse direction accelerate, and repeat over several distances. You can do them sideways or backwards, as well. This resembles quite a bit what we do in the game. You can also do a lot of drills with boxes, cones, towels on the ground, whatever, that develop this sort of control, acceleration, deceleration, etc. Boxes certainly aren't a bad way to do it, no doubt - but for physical development, I do find it useful to separate the raw physical skill from the technical points of the game (ie, learning how to accelerate and sprint separate from working foot placement, and that sort of thing) - you put them back together, too, of course.

That all got me thinking. The suicides would help for sure with speed, but it seems to me the distances are a little far apart to be an ideal IPSC drill. I played around with the idea yesterday in dryfire and put a target up, with 5 cones lines away from it placed to yards apart. Shoot, spring forward 2 yards and shoot, back 2 yards and shoot, forward and back 4, 6, 8, and finish 10 yards forward for a 10 shot drill. Then like you said I did it sideways and diagonal and I really liked it. I’m going to try it in live fire later this morning. I think the above would give you the best of both worlds, being a drill that has the quickness components of your suicides but forcing you to take good shots at each distance. I’m not sure if there is any increased benefit from separating out the quickness drills from the actual shooting. From a specificity perspective it would seem to me best to keep it together whenever possible, but it’s a good question and I’ll try to look and see if anyone has researched the subject. At my stage in the game I have trouble turning everything on, and exploding from place to place, and then making then shifting gears and turning everything down to taking the time for a good shot, so for me the combo drill would be an ideal way to blend the two.

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Pretty well known that you need to be shooting 95% of available points to be competitive, and more like 97% to win. That falls right in line w/ that principle... (97.8% of points, if assume no mikes, no Ds...)

Yeah, I did the math on what Eric said; 10% Charlies, 1% deltas, and the rest alphas “with hopefully no mikes” and it came out to 97.4%, which is plus or minus 1% of what he shoots in most matches. I think when most people say they want 95%, but it seems pretty rare that they do so and rarer still that it’s consistent.

[badchad]

JeffWard, on Jan 25 2009, 03:33 PM, said:

The sales pitch???? There is none. Conversation is free. Questions are free. Inputs are not paid for... This is not an infomercial... LOL

Great, since you’re not selling anything, how about you post your program?

I have more to say, but I think I can comment more accurately when I see what you are actually proposing.

[XRe]

badchad, on Jan 29 2009, 08:12 AM, said:

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Exactly why I like things like suicides

That all got me thinking. The suicides would help for sure with speed, but it seems to me the distances are a little far apart to be an ideal IPSC drill.

Actually, I completely forgot to mention that the actual drill I run is a lot shorter So, synergy there.... I generally run to 5, 10, and 15 yards with them, not ending up baseline to baseline per the official basketball drill. This biases a lot more toward what we need in our game. Of course, it means you better be doing more of them than the basketball ones, but...

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I played around with the idea yesterday in dryfire and put a target up, with 5 cones lines away from it placed to yards apart. Shoot, spring forward 2 yards and shoot, back 2 yards and shoot, forward and back 4, 6, 8, and finish 10 yards forward for a 10 shot drill. Then like you said I did it sideways and diagonal and I really liked it. I'm going to try it in live fire later this morning. I think the above would give you the best of both worlds, being a drill that has the quickness components of your suicides but forcing you to take good shots at each distance.

2 yards is almost not far enough - but this sounds a lot like some of the ad hoc stuff I'll do in practice and with my students. I keep these types of drills random-ish, much of the time - and don't run them more than a couple of times before I change them up.

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I'm not sure if there is any increased benefit from separating out the quickness drills from the actual shooting. From a specificity perspective it would seem to me best to keep it together whenever possible, but it's a good question and I'll try to look and see if anyone has researched the subject. At my stage in the game I have trouble turning everything on, and exploding from place to place, and then making then shifting gears and turning everything down to taking the time for a good shot, so for me the combo drill would be an ideal way to blend the two.

I've personally noticed a difference from doing some of both. Its easier to learn how to accelerate, sprint, and decelerate, for me, by breaking those things out. Also, I can work on improving that part of the integrated whole better without a gun in my hand. And, as you said before - I can do that anywhere, even if I don't have a gun range at my disposal (something is better than nothing). When I'm on the range, I will work the exit and entry portion (the shooting specific parts of the integrated whole), and work the whole thing. If I discover a weak point, I'll break that part out and work it, then put the whole thing together again. Further, I've found that, if I try to do that exercise on the range, I don't seem to get enough of it in - I've hammered in the shooting stuff, but not done enough work to fully tax the body enough to get noticeably better at the movement part.

Now... on short movements, I can prove to you that efficient entry and exit trumps fast movement every single time (unless the fast mover also has efficient entry and exit). 2 yard movement is purely a shooting skill specific test. The longer the distance in between, though, the more important speed of movement becomes relative to the shooting specific skills.

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I think when most people say they want 95%, but it seems pretty rare that they do so and rarer still that it's consistent.