Training For Dad Strength

In my previous post, I showed off my abstract thinking skills and presented "Coach Stevo's Real World Model for Strength." It was such a huge hit that I had literally a person ask me, "hey Coach! How do I train for that?" Well good news, everyone: here's the follow up! Coach Stevo's Rules for Training Dad Strength.

Lift Heavy

This is the simplest rule and therefore the one most people will ignore. If you want to be strong, you need to pick up, move, carry, and throw heavy things. How heavy? Heavy enough that you notice it on the first rep, but no so heavy you can't do two. I am a big fan of autoregulation for people that can handle being consistently in tune with their bodies, but for those with other, more interesting hobbies, just stick to 10 total reps between all your sets.

Consistently but Infrequently

Training Dad Strength means moving your body every day, but rarely with enough force to produce grunting. How rarely? 3(ish) days a week. You should be going heavy on those "on" days, but listen to your body and lift as heavy as you feel you can. The "off" days? You should still work up a little sweat pushing, pulling, squatting, hinging, thrusting, pressing, or hell, just get-upping. I like doing 3-5 Turkish Get Ups and a set or two of bodyweight exercises. That combined with a long walk with a pretty girl should be good enough for any man looking to train for Dad Strength.

Complex but Simple

The movements you pick to train matter. They should should involve your whole body, the floor, your hands, and something heavy. In "the biz" we call those "complex exercises" because they involve multiple joints, but I personally think they are the simplest exercises. At least to remember anyway. It's hard to forget a squat. You go down; you come up. It's when you break that exercise down into the single-plane, single-joint variations that people have grown accustomed to (knee extension, hip adduction, ankle dorsiflexion, bla bla bla) that things get really complex and Dad Strength deteriorates. The reason is that our brains work this way. Our prefrontal cortex tells our reptile brain, "I wanna squat." It's up to the reptile brain to do all that multi-planer math that turns the sack of meat we call a body into a tool. So leave the math up to it. Just squat.

Grab It and Stabilize It

I am convinced the single most important factor in Dad Strength is stabilizing weirdly shaped weight and holding it there while the body moves around it. That means two things: 1) you're gonna have to use your hands and 2) you're gonna have to prevent it from moving you. Someone told me once that, "there are no strong people without strong hands." Until I started swinging kettlebells, I didn't know what that meant. But look around and you'll see that nearly every human endeavor that involves strength involves grabbing hold of something and applying force to it. So train with stuff in your hands. But it's moving that stuff in your hands when you're gonna notice that bowl of jello between your pelvis and your shoulders. Stabilizing weight means holding it there and preventing it from crushing you or folding you in half. A decade ago, trainers called that "core strength," but now we are getting smart enough realize that it's really just strength. And Dad Strength is using your whole body as a single tool.

The Dad Strength Pantheon of Movements

Firstly, I should say that all you need to train for Dad Strength is a Squat, a Hinge, a Push, a Pull, and a Loaded Carry that you like. But here are the ones I like, organized by tool.

Kettlebells

• The Swing: Duh.

• The Split Squat: This exercise requires stabilizing your hips, shoulders and spine with an asymmetrical load through most of your range of motion. Nice.

• The One-Arm Press: Stay rooted to the ground and press weirdly shaped weight in one hand over your head? Dad Strength, ho!

• The Push Me-Pull You: Do a push up with one hand on a bell, then pull it up to your armpit while still in the push up position. Now tell me that doesn't require strength in just about every way.

• The Rack Carry: Heavy weights that make you want to tip over every which way while you hold onto them for dear life. Isn't that just what your Dad felt like carrying you?

Barbell

• The Overhead Squat: The granddaddy of all strength movements and the inspiration for the term "Dad Strength." Yeah, it'll take you a few weeks to build up the shoulder and hip mobility to do it right. But the moment you can, you should. If you have access to a barbell, some rubber plates, and train on the ground floor that is.

• The Deadlift: Picking heavy stuff off the floor with your hands? Yeah, you've figured this out by now.

• The Clean & Jerk: Explosively throwing weight off the floor, catching it with your body, stabilizing it, then split-squating it and stabilizing it over your head? Damn. If Dad had done these, maybe he wouldn't have needed your help every time he went to the dump.

Why Am I Doing This Again?

A lot of my clients don't care about being strong... at first. Most of my clients come to me wanting to be hotter, but try to hide their vanity by telling me they want "to be more toned and have more core strength." But no matter what your goal, even if it's fat loss, getting stronger is the name of the game. When you are stronger, your posture is better, your body is harder, your booty is shaplier, and you can recruit more muscle into every movement which means that you burn more calories doing stuff that isn't working. That extra buffer means you can eat a pie every now and then and not freak out. It means more hotness with less work! So go pick up some heavy stuff and throw it around.

Real World Model for Strength

I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be "strong." There are as many kinds of strength as there are kinds of exercises; it really all depends on how you think about things and categorize them. A very popular model that a lot of people smarter than me will tell you about is the "speed-strength continuum." This is a pretty cool way to think about a lot of kinds of strength and goes a long way to explaining why powerlifting and sprinting seem so different. Crossfit guys will tell you that there are "10 fitness domains: cardiovascular/respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, speed, agility, balance, coordination, and accuracy." This is a handy model too, and you'll see some overlap with mobility and conditioning in there as well which is helpful in explaining why a strong strongman is different than being a strong olympic weightlifter or a strong gymnast. But like the speed-strength continuum, this model seems incomplete and based on a particular worldview (the founder of Crossfit was a gymnast). So based on my thinking, I'd like to throw another conceptual model of strength into the fray. This model is the same as other models in that it is completely arbitrary, but superior in every other way because it's mine. I therefore call it: Coach Stevo's Real World Model for Strength

• Picking Up Heavy Stuff: Heavy stuff is lazy and gravity is a bitch. Heavy stuff isn't gonna get up and walk over to where you want it to be. You're gonna have to hinge over, grab hold of it and pull it off the damn ground. You might even have to put it over your head if you want to get it into your truck or over your fence. Sometimes heavy stuff is really low and you have to squat down to pick it up. And sometimes you can only get one hand on it. You never know where or in what condition you'll find heavy stuff, but heavy stuff is always gonna need to be somewhere else and it's you that's gonna have to get it there.

• Moving Heavy Stuff: Sometimes stuff is too heavy to pick up but you still need it to be somewhere else. But heavy stuff, that bitch gravity, her sister interia, and her sister's no-good-boyfriend friction are gonna conspire to keep that heavy stuff firmly planted in place. You're gonna have to push it, drag it, pull it, rock it, twist it, yank it, and heave it in order to break it loose from the Newton family affair of physics that's keeping it in place. You may even need a running head start. 

• Carrying Heavy Stuff: After you've picked it up, heavy stuff is cumbersome to hold and always puts up a fight. But you're gonna have to fight back against it, gravity, inertia and fatigue if you want that heavy stuff to be where it belongs. You're gonna have to hold it longer, carry it further, and keep it higher off the ground than you'd like. Your hands are gonna hurt and it's gonna be hard to breathe. But staying upright with heavy stuff is the only way it's gonna move.

• Throwing Heavy Stuff: Sometimes picking up, moving or carrying heavy stuff is too good for it. You're sick of friction, your hands are tired, you just wanna be done with inertia and you'll deal with gravity later. Besides, heavy stuff is usually hard and you're pissed off at it now anyway. So you muster all you've got left in the tank, plant a foot, twist your hips and let that mother fly. Throwing is everyone's favorite thing to do with heavy stuff because dammit, it had it coming.

What Have We Learned?

In the real world, we come across heavy stuff sitting around where we don't want it all the time. Part of life is getting it to be where we want it to be. I don't care if you can bench press three giggling Victoria's Secret models, if you can't help me move my couch or get my car out of a ditch, I don't think you're strong (jerk). "Training" implies that you're trying to do something better, and I'd like to hope that something is going to take place in the real world (where I have couches that need moving). As people who use our bodies as tools, we need to consider the applications of our strength training in the real world and make sure that the movements we select to progressively overload carry over. We need to think in a way that rewards not just bigger kettlebells or more weight on the bar, but improves on what Dan John ingeniously refers to as "Dad Strength." Because for almost everyone reading this, the Real World Model for Strength is our Dad. And even though we may never have seen him do a 3x bodyweight bench, he always seemed to be able to get heavy stuff where it needed to be.

Update on Tuesday, May 17, 2011 at 12:19AM by Stevo

I posted a follow-up called "Training for Dad Strength." You should read it. It's kind of useful.

Every. Damn. Day.

How often does Melanie Roach perform the snatch? How often does Haile Gebrselassie run? When do writers write and musicians play? Every. Damn. Day. How often do you do the things that you want to be good at? Skills are just habits multiplied by time. And hotness is a skill that you can chose to master if you put in the work. Every. Damn. Day.

The Serial Accumulation of Habits

Go to someone who does what you want to do at the highest level you can find. Whether it's professional football or just someone who turned their life around and took control of their body. Ask them the five most important things that it took to get to where they are; these are the five habits that they needed to have in order to meet their goals. In the case of the latter person, it might have been portion control, getting an enjoyable fitness routine, finding a trainer they liked, putting down the soda, or finding a sport they liked. Ask them to rank those habits from most effective to least effective. Now wake up tomorrow and start doing #1. Every. Damn. Day. In three weeks, start doing #2. In 6 weeks, start doing #3, and so on. I promise that if you can dedicate yourself to this simple "habit accumulation plan" for 12 weeks, you will not recognize yourself. The secret is doing them one at a time. Every. Damn. Day.

I can't make this more complicated because it isn't. I can't sell you something here because the only thing it takes is you. If you don't know what to do, just ask. If you know what to do, do it. 12 weeks. That's three months and everyone in your life will ask how you did it. And the only thing you will have to tell them is, "I just got up and did it. Every. Damn. Day."

Deeper and Wider

My clients often note the bizarre sound I make when I demonstrate a movement. It's a sharp "TSSST!" sound that many have never heard before. I force air out between my teeth at the completion of every rep and many claim it sounds like I have suddenly sprung a leak. This is diaphragmic breathing at it's finest and something everyone who wants to be strong, faster, hotter, or just more pain free needs to learn.

What's Going On

Let's review the concepts of tension and your core. If you recall, your body is just a bag of meat with some internal scaffolding. The place on your body with the least scaffolding is the area from your pelvis to your ribs that coincidentally houses your lumbar spine. It's your "core" and it's really just a ball of Jello with your spine going through it like a bendy straw. Your body depends on the coordination and strength of your core muscles (pelvic floor muscles on bottom, transversus abdominis, multifidus, internal and external obliques, rectus abdominis, erector spinae (sacrospinalis) especially the longissimus thoracis, and the diaphragm on top) to protect your organs and delicate spinal chord. And because this job is so important, it has left your conscious brain mostly out of it. That's right, the majority of the muscles in your core are not under not under your direct control. Breathing deep by engaging your diaphragm is the way that we have to trick the deep musculature of the core, especially the pelvic floor, to engage and the create tension when we need to pick up something heavy.

How You Breathe

When I tell people to "take a deep breath," 99% of them puff up their chest, raise their shoulders, suck in their gut, and inhale a little oxygen. This is called "panic breathing" and it mostly utilizes the trapezius, sternocleidomastoid, scalene, external intercostal muscles. These are the muscles that most people say they "feel tension" in. The chronic result is pain, shallow breathing, and a locked up thoracic spine. You looked puffed up and immobile. Not hot. But there's a cure!

Deep and Wide

Lie down on your stomach with your face resting on your hands. Take a deep breath and fill your stomach with air. You will feel your tummy push down on the ground, but should not feel your chest push down. That's breathing deep. Now take another breath, filling you stomach and try to push it out the sides of your tummy. I place my fingers on a client's sides and ask them to "push out." That's breathing wide. Now repeat 50 times.

What Will Happen

If you integrate diaphragmic breathing into your every day life, a lot of great things will happen. You will get more general core engagement when you need it (like lifting heavy things or running quickly). You will begin to relax those "panic breath" muscles reducing the pain and cramping that generally occurs in that area. You will stand up straighter. You will be stronger. You will be hotter. You will be taller. I'm serious about that last one. On top of looking taller, you will actually be a few centimeters taller. What other exercise can promise that?

Tension and Intensity: It's All in Your Head

The Greatest Pole Vaulter of All Time: Yelena IsinbayevaA lot of my clients want to know how they stack up to my other clients. This is easy in my "Booty Camp" and "Kettlebells to the Wall" classes (they just have to look around) but even they want to know how they stack up to the professional-level athletes and Marine Officers that I have had the privilege of coaching. Sure, the pros can lift more and go faster with less recovery time, but it's taken me a while to figure out why. And it turns out, it's two things: Tension and Intensity.

Tension

If you've never lifted anything heavier than a keyboard and you come to me looking to get hotter, stronger, or more fit, then the first few months of our time are really going to be dedicated to teaching you what to understand what tension is. Because no matter who you are or where you come from, if you are a mammal then you are really just a sack of meat with some interior scaffolding. Your ability to stand up-right, squat, hinge, press, or pull all depends on your brain's ability to coordinate your skeletal muscles into a complex ballet of tension (agonist, antagonist, global and local stabilizer muscles contracting in harmony) and relaxation (the same muscles periodically going atonal to allow for movement in that plane). Strength is not the ability to generate more force in a particular muscle in a single direction; strength is generating more tension and more relaxation in the all muscles at the proper times so that you develop more force in the direction that you want it to go.

Let's say you and a friend are ice skating. You go out to the middle of the pond and she wants a push back to shore (your friend is very lazy). If you just put your hands on her butt and give her a shove, then you are both going to wind up on opposite sides of the lake. Thanks, Newton. Your brain has to coordinate movement in the same way. Muscles (meat on scaffolding) have to be tensed in opposing directions to generate stability and if you want to direct a force outward, then it has to be counter balanced with force in the opposite direction, usually the ground via your skeletal system (the scaffolding). So when you press a weight up over your head, your unconscious brain has to not only control the muscles pushing up, but all the muscles pushing down against the ground to generate the force and all the muscles stabilizing you under the weight. Not bad, eh, meat-bag?

People who have experience with lifting just get this tension stuff intuitively. Elite athletes relearn it consciously and spend a career mastering it. At my RKC, Pavel asked Mark Reifkind if he was thinking about the weight when he bench pressed 2.4 times his bodyweight. He responded, "No, I think about getting my body as hard as I could so I could push against the weight."

I want my clients to be thinking about the same thing. The harder you make your body, the less force leaks out in directions you don't want it to (we call those "injuries"). Plus for you fat-loss clients, the more you can recruit your entire body into a movement with all the muscles applying as much counter-balancing force as possible, the more calories said movement will burn. Which brings us to the other secret of the elite.

Intensity

Speed and strength are objective (10lbs is more than 5; 10mph is more than 2), but everyone can be intense. Intensity is how much of your total available speed or power you can recruit when called upon. I like to think of it on a scale of 10 and most of my beginning clients would struggle to give me a 3. And remember, I'm talking about their individual available speed or power. Here is a conversation that usually happens in session #3:

"I want to you sprint back to the truck. On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is you ambling and 10 is an ax murder behind you, I want a 9. Go."

[Clients briskly jogs to truck]

"That was a 3. Congratulations, you're dead."

As people get more used to using their body as a tool, they begin to understand its capabilities and get more comfortable letting off the brakes when they go to hit the gas. And just like tension, this is a matter of subconscious coordination. Not just of muscles, but of fuel systems. Slowly but surely, your central governor (the part of your brain that governs your feelings of fatigue) lets you go faster for longer. Yes, there are biological changes as well like an increase in VO2 MAX and OBLA, but these are mostly genetically predetermined and can only change very slightly with training. The majority of "cardio" gains are in your head, specifically training your central governor to learn that you aren't gonna destroy your organs with a lack of fuel (oxygen, glycogen, and phosphates). Athletes have trained their central governors to back off and let them push harder for longer. The more you work on bringing your body to the limit of what your brain thinks it can do, the higher the ceiling will be for what actually is possible. Just remember to refuel and recover! Otherwise your central governor would have been right about you all along, smart-ass.