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Notoriously Neglected Elements of Training

Lesson 6 from: Achieve Ultimate Human Performance

Ben Greenfield

Notoriously Neglected Elements of Training

Lesson 6 from: Achieve Ultimate Human Performance

Ben Greenfield

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Lesson Info

6. Notoriously Neglected Elements of Training

Next Lesson: Mobility

Lesson Info

Notoriously Neglected Elements of Training

We're gonna be launching right into the notoriously neglected elements of training I mentioned I believe it was in the last talk about like the marathoner who it was really good at endurance but who looks lean or a massey ated or doesn't have a lot of muscle strength, speed, power, that type of thing and I mentioned that that's fine if that's what you get paid to do, you know similar to if you are an offensive lineman in the nfl and you get paid to be big and strong and powerful and you know something like endurance might actually work against you, then you might be that person who needs toe have perhaps what I might call imbalanced fitness but for ninety nine percent of us we want kind of every component in place ideally if we want to achieve ultimate human performance if we want to kind of kind of be that mix of the hulk and wolverine and who are the other avengers, I forget the name captain america, you know you take them all together in the role in the one like that's. What we're l...

ooking for when we're trying to get the ultimate combination of human performance is to have that body and have that ability so there are a few parameters that I would consider to be part of the ultimate human performance ideal skill set that if we can achieve each of these components we're going to have that ability that I speak of and also that body look that we're going for strength, power, speed, mobility and balance, and today we're going to talk about how to optimize all of them. Now you may wonder why endurance is not something that I listed there's two reasons for that number one human beings have inherently built into us vast amounts of endurance. I've talked about the mitochondria already and how we have these powerhouses in ourselves that are able to take oxygen and to take water and to form a teepee or usable energy and our motto, condra are actually very, very efficient at doing that we're one of the more efficient animals on the planet. When it comes to endurance, you could actually take a human being, and we could run down just about any animal on the face of the planet as long as we had enough gatorade on hand or fuel toe kind of keep us going, so endurance is typically not a weakness that we need to tackle quite a cz muchas these other witnesses, the other reason that I'm not talking about door it so much is that in the face? First session I showed you guys some of the some of the best ways that you can increase endurance using those zones that I talked about in those intervals that I talked about, and I didn't want to return and kind of kick that horse to death again, so endurance is important, but a you've got it naturally built in and be we've kind of hit on the most important components of how to build endurance, so we're going to jump today right into strength, and I define strength as the ability of the musculoskeletal system to generate high amounts of force. Now, for each of the different skill sets that we go over today, I'm going to give you guys, tips and tools and tricks for maximizing your performance in each of these different skill sets. Um, so for strength let's, just jump right into some of the best ways to use strength. First of all, I used to be a body builder and to get big, most body builders would going to the gym and do isolated movements. So you do like bicep curls and inclined bicep curls and declined bicep curls and bar bell bicep curls and bicep curls until you're blue in the face and then you move onto the next body part and that's traditional style bodybuilding training it's called body split style training, where you're going to take just like one specific body part and destroy it and then let it recover for forty eight hours or seventy two hours or weaken the return and hit that body part again that works well if you are a professional body builder with tons of time on your hands but ultimately to build strength or to build muscle or to get what we call hypertrophy there are faster, more efficient ways to get to that same kind of look. Now, when I was a bodybuilder, I found that with my limited amounts of time is a college student, I could achieve a similar look to that and a similar amount of muscle by doing full body moves and just lifting three or four times a week doing full body lifts and doing that so doing isolated, you know, biceps here chest their legs there of that type of thing. So when I say full body moves these air some of them or important movements that I like to include in a program first of all ah squatting movement which would basically involve squatting down. I think most people know what a squatting movement looks like weight behind you just like so oppressing movement or an overhead press or oppressing movement out of this way a lift which would mean actually lifting an object off the ground, whether that be a bar bell or whether it be similar to the the rigorous training session that my wife and I went through yesterday in which peter who's, a member of the audience, met us with sandbags outside of our hotel had us lifting sandbags off the ground so lunges and steps those air also important components of movement that would be considered a full body move that should be included in a program polls I mentioned that I keep a pull up bar installed on the door of my office, and in most people, especially people who have shoulder trouble, one of the biggest issues is they're not pulling at the gym, so seated rose or pull ups or pull down should be a component, the gym and your rule whenever you're you're at a gym or you're outdoors or doing any kind of work out is that for as much as you're pushing, you should also be polling and again returned the example of our park workout yesterday, we're doing lots of push ups, and every once in a while I was just grabbing the bars and doing some whole ups, so that could balance out that polling motion and that's really, really important that you pull. As much as you push at the gym that's a big hole that I see in a lot of people strength training programs, they don't pull as much as they push and then finally hinging movement and a hinging movement would be like our classic kind of kettle bell swing type of motion where you've got this weight and you're actually going to hinge at the waist line. I like to think about it like if you saw a snake right in front of you on the ground, like what you do if you're going to jump away from that snake. But it's basically ah hinging motion of the hips, typically involving like a thrusting motion of the hips or powerful motion of the hips. I did take off my coat for this for this particular presentation, so I don't get too warm appear throwing around kettlebells, so that strategy number one is to use full body lifts when you're training for strength strategy number two is to period eyes now when you're trying to get stronger period ization is a concept that I talked about earlier and one that I want to return to real quick. This is kind of a perfect period ization scheme that I'll use for someone who, for example, wants to get really strong or put on a lot of muscle. Or get really lean and tone, you know, I know some females he'll hear the term put on a lot of muscle and they run for the little scared because they don't want to get all bulked up, but in fact, lean muscle is tight, it's toned. It makes your clothes fit well, but this is a strategy that all use so, for example, will period eyes by having a training period that starts off with what's called a muscular enhancement phase where you're doing three to five sets of ten to fifteen repetitions sixty five to seventy five percent thirty to sixty seconds rest between each exercise or doing each of the exercises that you do is a circuit with minimal rest in between each exercise at two to four sessions per week. So that's something that I might use, for example, that would be like during the summer that I might use something like that during the fall, I jump into something like foundation strength. We're doing the same number of sets, but a fewer number of reps at a higher weight, with longer rest periods at a similar number of sessions per week. This is really a plug and play program that you could use if your goal is to get stronger to build muscle. Then we move into progressive strength phase, where you dropped the number of sets that you're doing. You drop the number of reps that you're doing, but you increase your weight and you increase your rest period, and you want to make sure that you never start off lifting heavy and doing few sets like that without having done the first two phases first and then finally reach that peak or that maintenance phase where you just do a short number of sets short number of reps you lift a low wait at a really fast what's called kind of powerful phase, and this is a perfect example of a strength training or muscle building type of protocol that a male or a female could use during the course of the year to really get a nice put together kind of like that that look good naked type of look on dh this is the type of set rep scenario that you'd use now. A lot of people ask about thes rest periods and wasting time at the gym, and I'm a big stickler for productivity, like if there's a ninety second or a two minute rests between some kind of a set that I'm doing like a dead lift or squad or something like that. What I'll do are some of the mobility drills that I'm going to teach you during this session as well to make sure that I'm killing two birds with one stone so I'll do like foam rolling all do dynamic leg swings and arm swings I'll take like I know that that my shoulders are prone to get injured all roll out the area underneath my shoulders with something like a lacrosse ball that will demonstrate later on there's all sorts of things that you can do to hit neglected areas when you're training during your rest periods for example, a lot of people are super duper locked up in their hips and it's because they're glued ius mediaset's type it's a muscle intends to get tight when you sit a lot which we tend to do in our lifestyle it's far too is set with a kettle bell I can literally in between my rest periods find the glute media's on the kettle bell sit on top of it and it's actually kind of a teeth gritting lee uncomfortable in position to get into but I can literally put pressure into this area work that fashion and the area around the globe media's and then repeat on the other side and do something like that during a rest period at the gym so I maximizes many of my rescuers as possible so I'm getting as much done well in there is I can so when you see periods of time you know where you're spending just two minutes sitting around you really don't want to just sit around another strategy is to throw curveballs that your body for strength these are little things that that I kind of picked up when I was body building that worked really, really well when you're trying to take a specific area and make it look better or trying to take a specific area and build more muscle in it. So bouncing is one technique that you can use where right before you start a lift like let's say, for example, a squat you drop down to the bottom of this squat you'd load the muscle with lactic acid a few times and then you come up out of the squad so that's one way that's called a bouncing technique you can build muscle explosions this would be similar using the squad is an example again rather than simply standing out of the squad you would actually stand, you'd stand at a faster pace and explode up into the air as you do the squad quarter reps that's another example with a quarter rep you actually stop in the middle of the set about right here and you do a rep right in the middle didn't keep going through and then complete the set so you do in a quarter rep right in the middle of the actual set latter reps latter reps would be basically doing an exercise and doing two reps of it four reps of its six reps of it a rips of it ten reps of it and basically laddering up stripping is very similar except you're stripping weight off is you go, um not articles of clothing is some people think stripping is, for example, I would start on the dumbbells and I would do seventy pound dumbbell dead lifts and work my way down the rack and do sixty pounds fifty pounds, forty pounds, thirty pound strange pounds, etcetera, but these air cool little strategies that you can use to build strength more quickly and these are all things that I that I took from kind of the bodybuilding world when I was doing doing exercising in that in that arena that worked really well. Strategy number four is to have a plan so endurance you begin to lose your endurance after about seventy two hours so your vo two max, you're maxygen oxidant your maximum oxygen capacity if you were working to say like, run a five k a run a ten k or do a triathlon, if you don't do any endurance exercise at all and you're going for that peak level oxygen utilization if you don't actually do a training session, it takes about seventy two hours for you to start to lose that fitness strength is not like that. Unlike endurance strength, you only need about one time a week for maintenance, so I actually have a friend who does basically like a like a one time a week strength training routine and he's huge, and he actually his goal is to put on muscle and get stronger, and he does it very successfully by doing just a few very heavy, full body lifts one time a week, so you only need one time week to actually maintain strength. If you want to build muscle, it takes about two to six times a week to actually build muscle in terms of the number of times during the week that you're actually building some good modes for building muscle. One is that full body modi like this? If someone comes to me and they say, ok, I've got two to three times a week that I'm able to get into the gym and train, then each of those training sessions that you do it, the gym it's, a full body strength training session where you're doing, you're pressing your lunging, your hinging, you're squatting, you're pulling all of those different emotions that I that I referred to earlier, you're working all of those into a single session and doing that session two to three times during the week. If again you have just two times a week to train another really good scenario is to do like upper body on mondays and lower body on fridays that's another really, really kind of nice split that allows you to focus on one specific section without actually isolating specific muscle groups and you can still do full body moves for upper body and lower body for example, squats for the lower body presses for the upper body pushing and pulling that's a really good routine that I get really good results with with people who have four times a week to train like monday's they'll push and tuesday's though poll and thursdays they'll push and friday's their poll so monday's being a push they would be like all overhead presses and presses out like this and squats and all pushing type emotions with lower body and the upper body. And then tuesday you'd use all your polling muscles that's another scenario that works really well again if you really wanted to get into the body building world and and you want to just live at the gym and you love the gym and you love to lift weights really good split that works well for bodybuilders who have more times to do chest and back one day to do shoulders, biceps and triceps the next day to do legs and core the next day to rest the next day and then to repeat that be called a six day a week body parts split and if you want to do um or bodybuilding style program that actually works really well now as far as lifting twice a day some people find that they can get really strong if they actually visit the gym twice a day there's two considerations if you're gonna lift twice a day one is you need to take at least every ten days to de load and by de load I mean you take five to seven days of full recovery and easy work if you're lifting twice a day the other thing that you've got to bear in mind is if you're gonna lift weights twice today you need to give your muscles glycogen levels or your muscles storage carbohydrate levels at least four hours to refill so those are some of the strategies that you want to have when you're training for strength and finally when it comes to eating for strength you need to understand and this is kind of gross I knew to some some people who eat a plant based diet and I'll talk in another session about customizing your diet but meet if you think about it even though it's kind of gross is just muscle fibers and so when you eat meat you are eating what you are trying to build or what you're trying to tone or what you're trying to gain or what you're trying to repair when you are focusing on strength so it's important to include me in a strength based diet, or to incorporate many of the kind of supplementation issues that I'll talk about when I talk about customizing your diet for a plant based diet, I did raw vegan once for about six months, and I could not keep muscle on to save my life it's really difficult to gain strength and have muscling be raw vegan, but there are some body builders, and there are some people that do it. A testosterone supporting diet is really important, and what that means is your diet includes inc cholesterol b vitamins and something called a racket danek acid, which is a component of, for example, grass fed beef, some of the best foods that are high in those type of compounds or grass fed beef, oysters, air really good eggs, garlic and broccoli, two things that can lower testosterone levels or soy and excessive intake of caffeine. Those are also really horrible for women's estrogen levels, so you'd want to be really careful with those if you're eating a high fat diet or that kiddo genic diet that I referred to that's okay, but for people who want to actually add significant muscle who are eating a high fat diet, you need to get about zero point five five grams per pound of protein if you want to maintain muscle and about zero point seven grams per pound of protein, if you want to actually build muscle that's a lot less than many of these popular magazines would have you to believe, but it's enough to build muscle without putting undue stress on your kidneys. So that's what you'd be looking for us faras protein intake if you're also trying to get in like a high amount of healthy fats, and then finally you need to eat at least as many calories as are in your metabolic rate to maintain. But I'm working with some skinny guys right now where I'm helping to actually put on muscle, and I've got them eating in excess of five thousand calories per day for them to actually put on that muscle that they want, and I know that there are some people that are more lean they'd like to be. In many cases, this would be like skinny guys who want to put on muscle. High school athletes need to get bigger, stronger, faster that type the thing aa lot of times you need to eat in excess of one thousand calories over and above your basic metabolic rate. Now, if you want a metabolic rate calculator to figure out what your metabolic rate is, and you don't want to go to a lab to get it measured I have free metabolic rate calculators over get fit guy dot com if you go there and click, I believe it's on the tools section there's there's, some really good metabolic rate calculators out there that can help you out and then as far as some other things for for strength. When it comes to eating for strength, you don't want to train for strength without amino acids in your bloodstream and what that means if you're trying to put on muscle, if you're trying to get stronger, you either take an amino acid supplement before you lift or you make sure that you've had a high protein containing meal before you actually go to the gym. Strength training uses a lot of carbohydrates it's, highly what's called ge like elliptic, so if you're going to eat a lot of carbs, even though they can cause blood, sugar fluctuations and it's, not that healthy did a lot of carbohydrates. We're gonna lift weights either before during or immediately after a strength training session is one of the best times of day time your carbohydrates if you don't want them to wreak havoc on your blood sugar level. Lt's strength training is way more glad colette iq than endurance training for building muscle and for recovery spreading your protein in small segments throughout the day twenty to twenty five grand portions of protein throughout the day works much better than like a lot of protein for breakfast and a lot of protein for dinner this is all based on research and then pre and post workout nutrition plus four to five additional meals if you want to actually build on this again refers to those people who might be skinnier than what they want to be they want to put on curves they want to put on muscle you actually not only need to eat a lot but in order for your digestive system not to become distressed while you're doing it you also have to split those meals up now it's a complete myth that's snacking boosts your metabolism does not boost your metabolism eating any more than three meals per day is not necessary for anybody aside from the people who want to put on muscle oh and get stronger and for those folks eating multiple meals per day can be helpful assed faras protein powders we'll talk a little bit more about protein powders during the during the supplement section but it's important to think about bio availability of your proteins the size of a goat is actually the closest animal in terms of its proportionality to a human being into a goat based way protein is actually far more far better absorbed and mohr what's called thermo dynamically available to the body compared to the protein from a cow susan like a goat based protein is better than a cow based protein on both of those arm or highly absorbed and readily utilized than a vegetable based protein that's. Why when I talked about mixing proteins like you need to mix rice and p and hemp that type of thing if you're doing a vegetable based protein so you get a complete amino acid profile when you're using a protein powder if you are using it for strength make sure to look up for added ingredients they had a lot of soy corn mouth and extra and things of that nature to protein powders these days they also add things like sucralose assets philipsel family, potassium you just want to be really careful with a lot of added ingredients and the fewer the ingredients, the better and most protein powders some have added digestive aids there's one brand that I really like called deep thirty that has digestive enzymes and probiotics and stuff like that added to it and it's a goat based way protein on dh that's an example of adding digestive aids to protein. A lot of people get gas and bloating and stuff like that when they start using way protein and when they start incorporating protein shakes that gets rid of that issue on ben, a cold process based protein powder is always going toe have less damage to the proteins that contained fewer free radicals compared to heat processed protein powder. So ideally, look for something that's organic that's from like a goat based source or a mix of vegetables and it's cold process and hasn't been treated to a lot of heat. And then finally, you want to have strength gear around, you'll see I have a lot of stuff here, like my personal home gym consists of a kettle bell. I have one set of forty pound dumbbells, I have a bo su ball and you put all this stuff together for less than two hundred fifty bucks. By the way, I have a suspension trainer, which we'll talk about a little bit during the balance section this one's called the most fit suspension strap I have a weighted vest that's, another addition to my home gym on dh then I've also got ah, matt, the only things that you don't see pictured that I have in my home gym are also have a stability ball and something called a jim stick, which is basically like a stick attached to elastic bands and that's it. So I can get strong with that equipment without actually stepping foot into a gym now there's also an electro stem device it'll show you during the bio hacking session that can get you stronger without you lifting a single way, but we'll save that for later, but basically as many heavy things is you can have around the better I'll show you this mouthpiece to that works really, really well for building strength when we get into the into the bio hacking session as well, but you just want to make sure you have lots of good heavy stuff around if you want to get stronger as far as what's realistic, if you want to put on muscle of your complete beginner, usually you can gain one and a half to two pounds per month or about one toe, one and a half percent of your total body weight. Ok, if you want to put on muscle and you've been training for about two to four years that slows down in a realistic rate of muscle gained zero point eight to one point five pounds per month and then for an advanced trainee like a bodybuilder or someone who's been like playing football for a long time, lifting weights for long time zero point five to zero point eight pounds per month so the magazines that tell you that you can gain fifteen, twenty pounds a month most of that is complete bowl when you start into like a mass gain program like that a lot of its water retention, carbohydrate retention, that type of thing but this is what's actually realistic when it comes to muscle gain based off of data ok, so that's strength um questions about strength or building muscle or anything like that you guys have before we jump into power on one of the past slides it mentioned infrared saunas is there differentiation in terms of the health benefits of, say, a steam sauna versus dr drew that slide pretty quickly but infrared saunas or something that you can actually purchase for your home? You could buy portable infrared saunas? There are nicer versions you can actually have built and those there the evidence is somewhat weak but there's some there's some suggested evidence that infrared exposure can cause an increasing growth hormone. And so if you're able to spend time in an infrared sauna at the same time that you're doing a strength training protocol, it can actually help now I use all showed during the bio hacking session I used an infrared device to help muscles heal faster to improve blood flow to a muscle area to warm a muscle area, but as far as an inference on it's definitely different than like a dry sun or wets on it and that there's actual infrared light so good question something better between body weight exercises versus using equipment or dumbbells marble I actually I got a question on facebook earlier today that I need to respond to and I get this question a lot especially from women were doing like pallotti's yoga a lot of body weight stuff the bar method is really popular these days like all these moves that really aren't exposing the body to a heavy enough load for it to have a fat burning hormonal response to that work out or for there to be like a metabolism boosting lean muscle response and so I find that a lot of times for women who've plateaus and we're doing like body weight stuff you just have to start to lift heavy things and that it's it's scary a lot of times I run into more resistance to that idea with females just because you think you're going to bulk up but you gotta have enough enough cement mixer to build cement you could have a lot of testosterone on board in order to actually build a ton of muscle and there's there's very few females words that's gonna it's gonna be an issue so we have a question here from a gore and they want to know is it better to focus on weight loss first then mass gain or can you do both at the same time you can you can gain muscle and lose fat the same time both will occur more slowly because you need to eat a certain number of calories to sustain muscle mass and that will impede that loss slightly, but you can build muscle in loose fat simultaneously. It actually kind of naturally happens in a lot of people who just get into a muscle building protocol, but if you go after hard core fat loss and muscle gain at the same time, you usually just simply you get subpar results in both, but I mean you could do it as long as you know that you'll progress a little bit more slowly so let's jump into power the ability to generate high amounts of force over a short period of time, riel weakness in a lot of people and there are some strategies that are left out of a lot of folks training programs that can help you to build power jumps, hops, skips push up slams all of these are examples of plyometrics each of your muscles has built into it what's called a gto aura golgi tendon organ and what that organs responsibility is is to sense that a muscle is under force or under stress and send a signal to your spinal cord, which returns with what's called in inhibitory reflex, which means that it causes that muscle to not be able to produce the force that you wanted to produce it's a protective mechanism so that we don't tear a muscle and it's a mechanism that gets turned off when you hear about like the mom like pulling a burning car off her baby or like, you know, gorilla bending the bars to get out of the zoo that's a dis inhibition of the goldie tenant organs and you can actually hack your body to inhibit your goal g ten in organs or plausible to allow the muscles to produce a higher force by using plyometrics. Now your main goal when you're doing hops skips bounds jumps class push ups anything like that is to minimise the ground contact time or to minimize the amount of time spent between reps so it's just land and go land and go land and go on when you're doing those type of things, you're training your body how to have a faster stretch shortening cycle which causes that goldie ten in order to basically be overridden so it's a way to get your muscles to produce more force than they would normally produce if you include plyometrics in your program even as little is once per week, it can have an enormous effect on your ability to produce strength as well. So even for like endurance athletes in runners and marathoners, I'm a huge fan of including these type of moves and they're sorely neglected a lot of people's training programs just don't see people moving fast at the gym and it's a neglected component you leave a lot on the table, we're not doing that type of stuff. I also like complex training as a great way to build power. Complex training means that you lift something heavy like you would do like a front squat. So you do three reps of a heavy front squats let's say this were really heavy dumb bell I would hold it to my chest. I would do three reps of a heavy front squat and then as soon as I finished those three reps, I would do depth jumps where I would, for example, hop off of this platform jump is high as I can into the air. Step back up and repeat that a number of times. Now when you do a resistance training exercise to a power exercise like that, it has an enormous improvement in your power. And again, you can use the rest period between complex sets like this to actually work on mobility or work on other neglected areas. So complex training really, really cool way to increase your power quickly. So the next strategy is to eat for power. Now I've hit on this a little bit about how nerve mile a nation is really important, and when we have fat deficits or cholesterol deficits aa lot of times we get meilin chief degradation and an inability of our nerves to properly communicate with one another now when we're talking about power the ability to produce a muscular contraction really quickly we want to make sure that our neural muscular system is really optimized on one of the best ways to do that is to put two supported through proper diet omega three fatty acids the ones that I talked about when I talked about that omega three index test or not only anti inflammatory but they're really crucial for the lining of your nerves and for proper neural muscular system coordination and nerve health cold water, fish, fish, oil krill oil can see a lot of seeds and nuts are listed. Their eggs are a good source of omega threes you technically wants sources of omega three's that have really, really ready live readily available content of what's called d h a and d h a is going to be most available in either an animal base omega three fatty acids source and also like an lg base like if you do like lorella and spiraling a supplementation, that type of thing those air also really, really good ways to get usable d h a. So another thing that's really important for your nervous system strengthened for powers green tea extract before power and speed workouts it's a great supplement to use would be like like an edible green tea or a green tea powder usually like a cup of green teas and that high in the active component of green tea that's necessary for assisting with nerve transmission. But if you can use like one of these green tea supplements, there's one out there called edible green tea that I really like that's, like a really dense green tea that's really good before power speed workout, and then your entire vitamin b complex is really important for power, speed and nerves. So making sure that if you're especially if you're not eating meat that you're using like a full multivitamin, that includes the full vitamin b complex or you're getting vitamin b's in on a regular basis, so finally for power, having power gear around is really important. One of the one of the things that that I have here is a fit ten, and this, for example, is something that I'll use for plyometric workouts in my office, where I can do very short plyometric sprints. Uh, if I had a door, I would be able to demonstrate this, but you can just imagine one end of this goes into the door knob and he closed the door. The other end goes around your waist, and you can actually do resisted sprints literally in a space the size of like a bedroom or in office at as highest speed and its high rate of turnover as you want. There's a perfect example of something the innkeeper on your house to help you to build power so you don't just have heavy stuff to help you to build strength, but you also include the type of things that are going to help you to build power. I can also do something like where my weighted vest and do jumps and hops and skips with weighted vest swings, work well medicine ball I did not mention I actually do have a medicine ball, but doing like slams and throws with the medicine ball pretty much anything that you can throw around you can hop with you could be explosive with those should all be components of your home gym if you want to make sure that you include power and your training or you should be hunting those down of the gym when you go to the gym. So powers that second missing component questions about power or nerves off the internet or from you guys, can you talk a little bit about the differentiation between strength and power specifically as it relates to sacral plas mick hyper trophy in my o fibula? Because I think that there's those play a role, but if you could show it on, the main difference is that you're going to get both forms of hypertrophy with strength training, but when you're doing power training it's primarily an increase in motor unit recruitment so essentially your training your your neurons to grab more motor units to actually be able to generate a contraction as far as the type of hypertrophy that occurs like which type of fiber that occurs in or where it occurs? I can't really speak to that, um aside from the fact that you're mohr training your neural muscular system when you're doing power versus strength and you're gonna get both forms of my bird feeder strength, so we have a question from photo girl and in regards to strength training, she asked specifically any recommendations for strength building for those of us who are physically disabled or wheelchair bound she's wondering in particular what your thoughts are and recovering from injuries, she says that she's, a recurring injury, thinks it's a strained muscle on one of her forearms that she is it a function due to the disability and she'd like to find a way to heal it and then strengthen it so it doesn't continue to be injured over and over. Yeah, I give to recommendations for something like this number one is the concept of contra lateral training, meaning that when you train one side of your body, the other side gets stronger even if it doesn't do anything at all and this is something that will use a lot of times like if I've had five sustained an ankle injury on my right side I can still do leg presses or single leg squats with my left side and experience strength improvements or a decrease in that strength loss on the right side so doing contra lateral training for the uninjured side can be useful or even do an upper body training to maintain lower body strength, you're going to get some benefit from that. The other thing is electro stimulation and I'll demonstrate this device called the compacts a little bit later during the bio hacking session, but you can actually use electro stimulation to cause a muscle to contract without you actually lifting a wait and that can that can be enormous for improving strength that actually having to train so great yeah let's talk about speed it which I define is traveling a set distance over a short period of time as possible now with speed it's it's a little bit different than power because rather than for example, like moving ah wait from point a to point b as quickly as possible with speed. I like to think of that as taking your body and getting it from point a to point b as quickly as possible. Okay, so speed would be like me running from here you know to that tv as fast as I can and it really is not your muscles that limit you when you're trying to build speed it's your nerves that limit you very, very similar to power and in many cases the ability of those nerves tio turnover quickly the your ability to to engage in contractions very, very quickly okay contraction after contraction after contraction so it does kind of go hand in hand with maximum power production but there are some considerations when you're trying to build speed that you want to bear in mind. First of all, I like things like short hill sprints stare sprints I like water running I like turning on the treadmill way faster than you normally run on it just tryingto hang on for dear life for ten or twenty or thirty seconds when you're trying to build speed, but a lot of people make the mistake of doing something like taking a weighted vest like that and wearing that try and build speed that's going to be better for something like power or strength usually speed training doesn't involve much of an external load at all it's simply getting your muscles to turn over at a very, very high rate in the absence of much of an external load so I don't recommend you use more than ten percent body weight when you're doing like resistance for speed you want to do speed fresh meaning you want to challenge your your neural muscular system and your neuro muscular system is very fatigue prone so for example, there are some people that trained for marathons and they want that final kick. They want to be faster, they want to be able to run across the street really quickly or go, you know, rescue a child from a burning building and have that kind of speed and not have the sluggishness, but what they'll do is like a set of, you know, track repeats or something after their long run, or when their body is already fatigue. It's best if your training, if you're training for speed, to do it very, very early in the day. So if you want to increase speed not not necessarily very, very early in the day, but early in the training cycle, meaning before you fatigue other parts of your body, so you start off the work out with your speed training or you do you're you're like high speed treadmill at the beginning of the workout, or you do like your water running at a high high rate, which we'll talk about in a second at the beginning of your workout before you're fatigued and all my track career, I was always told that you are to finish your work up our you're running workouts with, like a sprint so that you have the mental know how to do it at the right right now, there's a difference between having like a finisher at the end of the workout that builds up a lot of lactic acid and like tolerance to pain in that type of thing and going into work out with the specific goal of having your muscles be able to turn over at a faster rate than they would normally. So for example, if you can let's say, you're going to run a marathon and you just want to increase the number of strides that you can take during that marathon, like your turnover like we all here are perhaps you haven't heard, but but the most ideal cadence for runners is ninety rpm. But you know, it's, a lot of people run, and they just have a hard time even getting up to, like seventy five or eighty in terms of the number of steps that they take per minute incorporating like a weekly speed training session where you're doing very short, fast efforts on a treadmill downhill upstairs. That type of thing with the very high turnover and doing it fresh, is how you would train your body to have that high turnover, that high cadence. Um, I've also heard, like, doing like he said, doing a fast treadmill is is came pretty hard on your back because most people cannot actually keep up with it, they compromise there. Form so ideally you use an overspeed treadmill in which you hang from a harness and a lot of athletic facilities have these and that belts actually moving underneath you, but those can cost in excess of ten thousand dollars, and they're not really necessarily like a like a home unit that you can use. So yeah, it can be hard on your back. You don't want to overdo like high speed treadmill running, but putting the treadmill like at an incline of zero point zero and like bring up to his faster raise, you could go and just doing a few repeats like that. I also, and in the next slide, I'm going to show this like water and I'll talk about water in a second. But again, you don't need much volume for speed. It's really not for conditioning it's not going to make you fitter, it's just basically to train your nerves. You only need to do something like a speed workout once a week if you want that kind of missing component of fitness so similar to power in terms of the type of gear that you have around in terms of stuff you can jump on and off etcetera and do plyometrics with. But I like upstair repeats and down stair repeat, so I like to go to like stadium steps into super fast short, you know, ten second sprint ups and then you walk to the top of the stairs kind of slow and then you do fast feet all the way down that's a perfect way to build up your cadence to train your body how to have those fast feet that you want for speed I like water because it allows you to run in a very, very high cadence with a low impacts you could do shallow water running. I'm a bigger fan of deep water running because it's like zero impact you can get your legs moving really, really quickly and train those nerves to turn over and not experienced like low back issues like you might experience on a treadmill. So doing a weekly workout like that can be really, really helpful is well on and then, like I mentioned treadmills but again, you got to be careful unless you you might have access to an overspeed treadmill. They also make water treadmills, zero gravity treadmills, that's a really cool, which actually suck all the gravity out and you actually where this belt looks really, really kind of dumb but your legs are running completely weightless, they're very cool if you ever had a chance to run a zero gravity treadmill should do it ast faras eating for speed same rules is eating for power okay, we eat to support the nerves so fish omega three's things of that nature questions about speed, development of speed, it's pretty straightforward my the issue is that a lot of people just neglected they just don't do like a weekly speed work out where you just training your body to move fast but again, when it comes to getting ultimate human performance and everything put together, this is an important one. I know, I know for myself that, um just the years of running and doing track and field you you actually almost get the speed in your mind. Even now I can still go run a you know, a five k in under twenty minutes because I know the speed from way back very similar to what you said point for wait that your body can read like I'm actually trying to gain weight right now and gain muscle mass because I've decided I'm not going to iron man triathlon for a little while. Unfortunately, my body right now has a set point at one seventy five because I've kept it at one, seventy five for a long time, so I have to raise my set point similar for speed where if you've done speed workouts in the past, etcetera, you kind of give yourself a a step up when it comes to running at a high kids and vice versa. If you've never done speed workouts ever, and you want to be a marathon, or you wanna run a five care, you want to really get really good adventure racing, or whatever it is you want, tio. And you want to be able to move faster and have better nerves. A weekly speed workout comes in really, really handy.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

10 Human Performance Meals
7 Day Done
creativeLIVE Home Detox
Health vs Performance Slides
Become Superhuman Resource Guide
Body Products and House Cleaners
Enrollment Page
Ultimate Human Performance Exercise.mp4

Ratings and Reviews

Jeff
 

Ben delivered an exceptional three-day seminar at creativeLIVE that I was lucky enough to attend. His expertise in all facets of health & wellness was on full-display -- and his presentation was clearly articulated & engaging He was friendly and responsive to feedback and gave actionable recommendations which are already paying dividends in my life -- especially in the areas of energy, mental clarity & sleep quality I strongly recommend Ben -- he walks the walk & talks the talk -- genuinely cares about helping other people and possesses a real gift to teach & inspire

a Creativelive Student
 

This is one of the best courses I have ever seen! So much value for money and so many amazing bits of information jam packed in. What a brilliant guy! Geeky information presented in a down to earth way. I can not recommend this course enough. I don't think I have ever been bothered to write a review for anything (EVER) but this was SO good I had to share. Well done Ben and thank you Creative Live!

Valentine
 

Ben Greenfield has a lot of information, best course I have taken in regards to Nutrition and Fitness. There is a lot of knowledge and their a great couple and both have a lot of information to offer, I even like the lame jokes that he makes. Very nice and knowledgable couple.

Student Work

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