Strength, Elegance and Hotness

The Turkish Get Up is an amazing movement. A lot of people way smarter than me have said a lot about it and all the best coaches, physical therapists, and trainers have been incorporating it into their programs. But after teaching the Turkish Get Up to a few dozen people over the years, I want to talk about what I have learned from this old technique of getting a weight off the ground and over your head that should apply to every exercise you do.

Progression is Earned

There are 9 or so steps to the TGU, each step bringing you further off the ground with a weight over your head. Each step is progressively more complex, with less of a base of support. In essence, it gets harder as you get higher. One of the epiphinal moments that came at my RKC certification was when a student asked, "what happens if you can't do that step?" My Team Leader looked at us all puzzlingly and replied, "well, you sure as hell don't do the next one!" We live in a culture that tells us we can all be rock stars and super models if we take this pill or buy that DVD. But that's not real life. Progression to the next step is earned by mastering the steps below, and nothing teaches you that faster than dropping an iron ball on your skull.

Functional Mobility is Functional Strength

The TGU doesn't just require strong "this-muscle," or "that-muscle." It's more than a "strong core" or great glutes (although you need both). Performing the TGU demands that you be strong throughout the entire range of motion in all of your major joints. When I first tried the Get Up, I couldn't bridge because my hips were so dysfunctional: a problem I didn't even know I had. Hell, before the TGU, I didn't know I had hips. But after experiencing the embarrassment of being unable to get up off the floor, the most basic adult movement, I learned that strength without mobility is just not useful.

Form is More Important than Weight

My clients all learn the TGU without weight. I learned the TGU balancing a shoe on my fist. When I was at the RKC Cert, someone asked Dr. Mark Cheng how much weight he used for the Turkish Get Ups he practiced every day, and he responded, "I use an empty paper cup." The TGU is not about throwing big numbers up. Sure, if you can perform an ugly one holding a 56kg bell or some woman, that's pretty impressive. But trust me, it's not nearly as impressive as doing it perfectly with an empty paper cup. There is more to be gained from performing a move so masterfully as to make it seem elegant than in performing a move poorly but with more weight. Anyone who doubts that should watch Barry Sanders run. He wasn't the fastest or the strongest; he was the best.

Mastery Has Benefits

People ask me why the Turkish Get Up is so important, and the best way I can describe it is that "if you can do a perfect TGU, then I am fairly certain you can do any exercise and get crazy strong at it." Old school strong men would demand that potential weight lifters perform the TGU with 48kg before they even learned to bench press. If you have taken the time to master the TGU then I know that you are A) strong, B) dedicated, C) patient, and D) capable of doing nearly anything with your body. Mastery has benefits: strength, elegance and hotness.

Life Specific Training

There are a lot of movements people like to do in the gym. They push weights, pull at machines, crunch on balls, and elliptical on ellipticals. But how many times in your life will you encounter an elliptical in the wild? Can you imagine a scenario when your awesomeness will be put the test on a balance ball? The majority of the movements you do in the gym will never cross over into the tests of you daily life. At best, most people are hoping to glean some situational strength during their quest for general hotness. But there are a few moves that tick off both boxes: a move you can do that will make you hotter and get you fit for the every day tasks of being human. And in my mind, the most human of strength moves is picking up heavy things and carrying them.

The "Loaded Carry"

Go pick up something heavy. Walk around with it until you can't hold it any more. What hurts? If you actually did it, you would find that well, everything hurts. That's because it takes a lot of muscles to stay upright under load and a lot of calories to fuel those muscles and keep you from falling over. It really is that simple. And how often do you think you'll be expected to pick up heavy things and carry them around? Every time you move apartments, buy groceries, run through an airport with an overnight bag, move a cabinet, rescue a supermodel from a burning building, or when your spouse throws all your belongings onto the curb, you will be performing a loaded carry. This is as "sport specific" to life as any move I know.

How to Do Them

Anything where you are carrying something heavy counts as a loaded carry, but here are a few that you can do quickly and easily in just about any setting. And as you might guess, I prefer doing them outside.

With Weights:

Farmer Walks, Suitcase Carry, Waiter Walk, Rack Carry

With a Buddy or Reasonable Facsimile:

Duffle Carry, Fireman Carry, Buddy Drag

With a Sled

Sled Duck Walk, Sled Drag, Sled Push

And of course, you could slap on a 150lb backpack, throw a 150lb bag of sand over your shoulder, and hook 150lbs to your belt. And walk. In the snow. In Utah. That'd be cool, too. Dan John cool.

The Holy Grail of Hotness

What if I told you there was something you could start doing now that would make you burn fat, build muscle, prevent disease, extend your life, and make you smarter, hotter, and better in the sack? What if I told you that this "Holy Grail" was backed by every scientific study on the above mentioned attributes, and recommended by even the most ancient texts, scriptures, tomes, and scrolls? What if I told you that it is something that you already know how to do, requires zero effort and costs literally nothing; it will actually save you millions of dollars in your lifetime. Would you be interested?

How much money would you pay me to tell you this secret? And would you still pay me if I told you that after you know the secret, an act that is proven, easy, and free, you won't do it. You'll laugh like it's a joke and then go on being fatter, weaker, dumber, and less hot than you want to be. Because that's what you will do after you read this article. That's what you will do when I tell you that the Holy Grail of Hotness... is sleep.

During the first six weeks of this year I did an experiment in hypertrophy (putting on muscle). I put on 8lbs of muscle in that brief time and did it with less than 45 minutes per week of actual "lifting." To be sure, those were the hardest 45 minutes of my week and by the end of the 6 weeks, I needed two full days of rest between sessions. So I had the consistency; I had the intensity; but what did I do to guarantee my results? I slept between 9-10 hours a day.

I know that this seems counter-intuitive. We Americans tend to think that more is more. If we want to be hotter, then we need to work harder! But physiological change takes place when your body has time to focus on it. And when is your body most free to convert fat to energy and build new muscle? When it's not coordinating the demands of your brain telling it what to do. When your muscles are atonal and your energy demands are constant. You get hotter when you are asleep!

All fitness goals need three things. Consistency, Intensity, and Recovery. The more you do of any one of these, the more important the others become. The harder you work out, the more rest your body needs to recover properly for the next workout. This goes double when you are trying to lose fat. In a caloric deficit, your body's recovery times are seriously compromised (because it takes more time to convert fat to energy than Snickers Bars to energy). If you start working more and more or harder and harder without also increasing the recovery time, you will get stuck in the dreaded "Overtraining Death Spiral." The Death Spiral is where people are working harder and harder, eating less and less, and going to the gym more and more in an effort to lose that last 10-15lbs. They get weaker, slower, sicker, and will never see a change because their bodies are being stressed to the breaking point. Their cortisol levels (stress hormone) go through the roof and their metabolism drops more and more in an effort to keep pace with their drastically increasing levels of activity and caloric deficit.

How do you reset the clock on your gains? How do you kick-start your metabolism? How do you steer clear of the Death Spiral?! Get some freaking sleep. Here's how:

• Tell yourself "it's OK." You aren't being lazy, you're challenging yourself to become more efficient with your time.
• Start going to bed 10 minutes earlier every night. You aren't gonna miss anything. That's what TiVo is for.
• Don't do anything else in bed other than sleep (and that other thing).

Cardio

Hey Coach Stevo, I'm sick of running on the treadmill for my cardio. Any suggestions?

Yes, stop running on the treadmill. That'll be $100, please. 

Cardio is a 6-letter word with a lot of baggage. It's also used interchangeably to mean a lot of things to people in different contexts. Even people in my profession throw it around with equal parts disdain and annoyance as they imagine millions of gym-goers trying to hamster-wheel their way into Jessica Beil's ass. But professional posturing aside, what most of my clients mean when they say, "what cardio should I be doing?" is "what should I do when I don't see you that will keep me from getting fat?" Of course, what I hear is, "what can I do on days I don't see you that will give me the illusion that I'm losing weight so that I can binge on empty calories and tell myself it's ok?"

 First, some biology. Aerobic cardiovascular conditioning is a very real, very important part of any training program. Your heart is a muscle and it needs training, too. The benefits of consistent, moderate stress on the heart via exercise is increased stroke volume (more blood whooshing through per pump), a heart that has to work less to pump the same volume of blood, better lung capacity, lower blood pressure, and a lower risk of everything that kills most Americans (heart disease, diabetes, etc.). And yes, it also burns some calories.

But did you know there are other kinds of cardiovascular conditioning? Anything that puts your heart rate under 80% of max (220-[your age]) is considered "aerobic" but when your heart rate is between 80% and 100% of max you are burning more calories than your lungs can provide oxygen for. You are undergoing "anaerobic conditioning." This taxes two completely different fuel systems than pounding out hours on the elliptical. When you have dialed the intensity up to 8 or 9, your "high energy phosphate" and "anaerobic glycolysis" systems are being stressed. And with proper fueling and recovery, these systems adapt and improve. That means faster recovery time, better fatigue resistance, higher V02 Max, and later onset of blood lactate accumulation. Oh, and it burns more calories.

Which type of cardio should you be doing? Well, "both" and "it depends." That'll be another $100.

If your goal is hotness, then first and foremost make sure you get in 2-3 sessions of resistance training per week. Then make sure your nutrition is dialed in. Because I'm about to break your heart and tell you that no matter what cardio you choose, you aren't gonna sweat off those extra cookies. Both aerobic and anerobic cardio training burn calories and can help you maintain a caloric deficit, but the heavy lifting of your deficit has to be through proper diet because both types of cardio have a serious downside: they both make you hungry and require refueling (eating calories in the form of food) to work as proper training.

Here is the breakdown:

Aerobic (Jogging, Elliptical, Biking, Swiming)
Pros: Easy. Lower hunger response. Quick recovery time (less than 24 hours).
Cons: Boring. Less calories burned.

Anaerobic (Metabolic Circuits, Interval Training, Swings, Tabatas, etc.)
Pros: Not Dull. Burns slightly more calories.
Cons: Hard. Huge hunger response. Very long recovery times (more than 48 hours).

Coach Stevo's Top Tip

If you are really good about sticking to a diet and getting plenty of sleep (and I mean really good) then 1-2 metabolic circuits a week might spice things up. But be very, very honest with yourself. I do this for a living and I don't do more than 3 of those a month unless I'm in training for a specific event. And I certainly don't do them in a caloric deficit. I coach my "Ticket to Hotness" clients to do 2-3 sessions of moderate cardio and throw in metabolic circuits during our sessions so I can monitor them. My absolute favorite low impact cardio?

Crank the treadmill up to 15% incline, set the speed at 3.3 miles per hour and just walk for 40 minutes. This is very low impact, hard as hell, useful for your entire life, and probably won't make you ravenous. Plus it places the hip in full extension so you have to use your glutes. Booty!

New Kettlebell Class!

How much can you change your body in only 6 weeks?

Are you feeling a little chunky? A little weak? Maybe you're sick of the damn elliptical or would like a hot, new booty to show off this spring. Well Coach Stevo's Sophomore Class in Strength is the answer you're looking for! Starting on Tuesday the 22nd, he will be taking a whole new class of people a whole new class of hotness. Just 30 minutes per session, twice a week, for 6 weeks and you will know why Coach Stevo's Freshman Class declared it, "the best thing we've ever done for our body."

When: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 6-6:30pm
Where: LaFayette Park
How Much: $150.00

Today is the day you decide to do something different. To do something that works.

Call or text 415.504.BURN, email, or tweet @coach_stevo to RSVP.