News

How To: Lunge W/ Single Leg Deadlift

Krista from Rep1 recommends this combination of a lunge, right into a single leg deadlift to fire up the backside and challenge your balance! 10-15 reps, then switch legs. #FocusFriday

Tuesday Tips: You Can Do It!

We know as you near your next race that things can get nerve-wracking. #Rep1 challenges you to find a new positive mantra that you can use to encourage yourself! (Or share yours in the comments!!)

 

Client Spotlight: Ted Steiner

Meet Ted! He’s been training with Dave for 8 years (working out at #Rep1 for 6!) His goals are to improve his health, increase his strength and aerobic performance, and to shed some pounds. He took up running 2 1/2 years ago and has completed numerous races. His pro-wrestling name would be “Uncle Pit Viper”! #WeAreRep1

How To: Ab Wheel Rollout

An Ab Wheel Rollout perfectly executed by #Rep1 Trainer, Jamiel! Work those abs and keep your core strong with this exercise! #FocusFriday

5 Peaks Trail Running Race – Golden Ears

On May 9th the Rep1 Fitness Raptors took to the trails in Golden Ears.  An amazing, sunny day saw 20 Raptors busting their butts and enjoying the 9km or 14km courses.

Highlights of the day:
  • Morgan K doing her first trail run race!
  • Gui Spiteri rolling in at 49 min on the 9 km course
  • David Moloney running the 14km course in 1 hour and 10 min
  • Scott Simser coming 8th in his category!

Foam Rolling

If you are a gym rat and have been for the past decade, you’ve noticed a change in the gym. People have been starting to use this weird roller and grimacing while sitting on it. You are probably aware of the name of this practice: foam rolling or self myo-fascial release (SMR). But why are people doing it if it hurts so much?

WHAT IS FOAM ROLLING?

  • Foam rolling, or SMR, is a fancy term for self massage to release muscle tightness or trigger points. It can be performed with rollers, Theracane, trigger point balls or even your bare hands.
  • Trigger points are “knots” (a bunch of overactive muscle fibres) that can be found in the muscle. It is very easy to find them: they hurt under pressure. A common example is the tenderness you feel when you put pressure on some specific area of your IT band (side of your thigh).

WHY SHOULD YOU SPEND TIME ON THE ROLLER?

There are many reasons why, here are the most common:

  • foam rolling can assist in releasing trigger points and breaking up adhesions and scar tissue.
  • foam rolling increases the blood flow in the muscle.
  • foam rolling forces the muscle to relax. It stops the overactive muscle from starting the movement and allowing the under-firing muscle to work properly. This gives you a short window of time where you can teach your body a proper movement pattern. As you probably guessed, this is my favourite reason.  An example would be the client that performs push-ups with a shoulder shrug: chances are the upper trapezius are overactive, and start before the rhomboids can kick in, releasing the upper traps with SMR and stretching allow you to perform a proper push up (article coming soon).

  • I like to use rolling as a compliment to stretching. Imagine an elastic band with a knot in the middle, if you pull on it, the elastic stretches but the knot doesn’t. Foam rolling allows you to “untie” the knot before stretching, making your stretching session more efficient.

HOW NOT TO DO IT

  1. do not simply roll back and forth. It takes longer to get the relaxation that you are going for
  2. Make sure not to roll the same body part every day: you will be rolling your muscle/tendon to a pulp, creating dysfunction, and increasing the chances of injury.

HOW TO DO IT

There are two techniques that I like to use:

  1. find a tender spot and hold for a while (usually 30 seconds). You want to hold the tender spot until the pain disappears. I don’t like to give a number because it adds tension/stress to a practice that is designed to actually relax you. I like to tell my clients to breathe deeply while rolling, inhale through the nose, and exhaling completely through the mouth. This helps with the relaxation. The more relaxed you are, the quicker the pain will go.
  2. find a tender spot, and then stretch/contract the muscle. This is a more “aggressive” technique. Yes, it is my pick! One example of this method is rolling your quads (front of the thigh), then curling the leg as you would do in a hamstring curl 3 times.

A few muscles that could typically use some SMR love:

  • Calves
  • Quads
  • Hip external rotators
  • Lats
  • Rhomboids
  • Pecs

Let’s recap:

  • make sure you spend some time rolling before or after your work out, it can really help you stay injury free
  • roll out different muscle groups, and make sure you don’t always do the same spot.
  • do some stretching after to make sure the knot is completely released

Rest and Recovery

STOP WORKING OUT!! Yes you! You over-caffeinated, push-yourself-to-the-limit, closet A-type personality, fitness disaster-in-waiting. Stop it! Is this a weird thing for a personal trainer to say? Not really, and here’s why. We all love to push ourselves to the limit, in life and in fitness. But we seem to forget about the maintenance that goes along with the thrill of pushing it to the edge. This is the equivalent of taking an extremely expensive race car and racing it without a pit-stop. They do it for a car, but we can’t do it for our own bodies? Pushing yourself to the limit every day without upkeep is going to lead to injury. Period. Maybe not tomorrow, the next day, or even a year from now… but that major, or nagging, injury will come to haunt you. Unless you are one of those freak individuals (you’re not) who never seems to get injured, the Ghost of Fitness Past can stick around for a long time. So stop ripping the race car around the track and pull into ‘pit-lane’ for a tune-up. Here’s how:

Periodized Training: Have a plan and chart your plan. Recovery is important… PUT IT INTO YOUR PLAN! Your periodization should:

1. Progress things harder every week… gradually (how this is done is a 10 page article on its own) .

2. Have on ‘off week’ every four-five weeks. This off week is goal dependent, of course, and does not mean you do nothing. It just means you dial it back a notch. After this down week is over you progress through another 4 hard weeks again — just slightly more intense this time.

3. Have recovery days as well as hard training days put into your plan every week. I have put some suggestions below (yoga, massage, foam rolling) in regards to what I mean by a recovery day.

Yoga (stretch): Plan these days as part of your periodization. Can yoga be a training day? Why not?? If you are so OCD that you can’t take a rest day, then go to a yoga class. This will not only force you to stretch, but actually breathe and slow down for an hour.

Massage: The only Canadian Cyclist to ever win a cycling grand tour, Ryder Hesjedal, randomly thanked the team’s massage therapist twice in his post-race speech after winning the Giro d’Italia. That says it all right there regarding massage… go get one! I give you permission. You need it and deserve it!

Foam Rolling: The poor man’s massage. Buy a foam roller and google what to do with it. Use it pre-workout or post. It’ll hurt but you’ll love it after! (note to you A-types… you have to relax into it) Check out Gui Spiteri’s foam rolling article coming next week.

Cross-training:  Cycle,cycle, cycle; run, run, run; and lift, lift, lift. We do what we like and we keep doing what we like. Your body needs change. Not only to keep from overtraining (a very nasty word, this one) but to shock the body and progress. It also gives those overused, beat-down fibers a chance to rally because you are using them in a different way. After several months of doing your favorite sport/training, switch to something new for a short period. Cycling season is over and you still have the itch? Go hit the Grouse Grind… that’ll scratch that for you!

Sleep and recover: There is a reason that major sports teams chart all their players’ sleep patterns: the studies on recovery and performance have been backed up a million times. So you’ve done three awesome workouts this week but you are only getting six hours sleep a night? Well, we all know that isn’t enough. Your results will not progress and quite possibly will regress. Your ride time up Cypress isn’t improving but you’re training hills like a dog? Check your recovery and sleep times.

At the end of day it comes down to balancing the fine line of fitness and living the rest of your life without injury. If you choose to be the manic fitness person and just ignore the preservation of your body it will catch up with you. Honestly, this is the hardest advice to follow. It seems tough to do, but personally I try to get to my yoga on Fridays here at Rep1 and I get a massage bi weekly (schedule permitting).  Schedule the time and stick to it… your body will thank you with the results.

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