What's a Bad Exercise?

Recently I got asked if deadlifts were a bad exercise for someone with osteoporosis. The question was sparked by someone’s doctor who told them loading is always bad for someone with osteoporosis. The answer I gave was, well, it depends. Everyone is different and can handle different things. What I’m not a fan of is blanket statements proclaiming an exercise to be bad, or good for that matter.

It’s a challenging pursuit to become healthier and stronger and more fit. Saying this is the best exercise for everyone or no one should do this exercise makes these decisions more difficult for the individual. That’s where having a coach or trainer comes in.

Individualized workouts allow you to do the best exercise for you based on movement assessment, health history, goals and training experience. It avoids this is bad and this is good, it lets us figure it out for each person.

So what is a bad exercise? Something that won’t be effective in getting the job done or puts you at too great a risk of injury.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Gain Holiday Party

This week! Can you believe how fast December is flying by? I

Clear your schedule for Saturday night. We’ll have beer, wine and a taco bar from Las Olas. Come hang out with your gym friends and coaches for a good time.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Technical vs Adaptive

Earlier this year, I wrote a few blog posts about the difference between technical problems and adaptive problems. I first learned of these terms at a business seminar. Many business owners try to solve adaptive problems with technical solutions. That means they need to overcome something in order to change, i.e., adapt but instead of adapting, they learn or take on more information, which is a technical solution.

Technical problems have known answers. How to fly a plane, rules of a diet and how to squat are all technical problems. Adaptive problems don’t have known answers, you’re in new territory. Examples include how to treat a rare cancer patient, how to stick to a diet for the long term and how to keep coming to the gym after the honeymoon phase is over.

Many of us try to solve adaptive problems with technical solutions. An example, you want to start eating healthier so you watch the latest Netflix documentary about health and you decide going vegan is the right choice for you to become healthy. You follow all the vegan Instagram accounts, buy the books and slap a bumper sticker on your car. Two weeks later, you’re off your whole food vegan diet and you’re not sure why, you had all the information you needed after all.

This is a classic example of an adaptive problem, how to make a significant lifestyle change to eat healthier and stick with it, trying to be solved with a technical solution. We think that having more information will solve the problem, but more times than not, it isn’t the case. In order to change, we need to learn how to adapt, create new habits, bust down walls of what we thought was possible and preserve when it gets tough.

As we head into 2020 and you start thinking about goals, be careful of trying to solve adaptive problems with technical solutions.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Vitamin D

Winter is fully here and you may be thinking about adding a vitamin D supplement since we’re not going to have a lot of sun exposure for the next few months. Proper vitamin D levels can lower your risk of a host of diseases and keep your body functioning optimally.

If I’ve piqued your interest, you can check out this article breaking down what vitamin D does and how you can optimize your levels this winter:

How to Optimize Your Vitamin D Levels for Maximum Athletic Performance and Longevity

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Shoveling and Exercise, a Comparison

Last night I finished cleaning up the snow around the house. Front door steps, a couple walkways and the back deck. As I was shoveling the back deck, a thought came into my head that shoveling is just like working out in the gym. Everyone has written a “Proper Shoveling Technique Guide,” or “How to Warm Up Prior to Shoveling.” What I mean is different.

As I was moving snow from one side of the deck to the other, I thought, this is just like a workout in the gym. I’m moving weight, for no real reason other than to move it. The thought of completion is motivating and inspires me to keep going at the pace I’m holding. I’m working up a sweat under my layers and it feels good. Technique is important, just like the gym. We want to shovel efficiently to keep our energy, but also to stay safe.

If you go too fast, your shoveling will be sloppy and you won’t have a nice finished product afterwards. Too slow, you’ll never finish in a reasonable time. There’s a sweet spot for pacing, just like at the gym. Zip through everything too fast, it wasn’t difficult enough or you probably made some errors. Move too slow and you don’t accomplish much.

So the next time you have to shovel, shift your perspective. Treat it like a session at the gym. Move stuff around, get sweaty, watch your mechanics and feel accomplished.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Small Sets

For the past month I’ve been obsessed with ring dips. They’re a difficult move that require tremendous shoulder stability, mobility and strength. In fact, I started doing some just to get a nice shoulder stretch when I was feeling stiff one day.

I was drawn to them partly because there’s a lot of variations I can play with. I could do them frequently and limit the amount of stress. Long pauses, slow tempos, band assisted, eccentric only... There are a lot of possibilities. Last night, for the first time, 3 reps felt easy.

Over the past month, I’ve only done more than 3 reps once. Small, frequent does of high-quality-only reps were exactly what I needed to improve. If this sounds familiar, it’s probably how you built up the capacity to do push ups, because I used the same method.

High reps are often poorly executed with the primary focus on completing the set, not moving with sound mechanics. If you’ve got push ups on pull ups on your mind and they feel really far off, remember, quality is of the up most importance if you want to improve without injury. It’s practice. Keeping practicing and you’ll improve, it might take awhile, but once you get there, the improvements will be there to stay.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

December Slump

December is a hard month for fitness. It’s inevitable that you have several parties to go to, shopping, cooking and traveling. It becomes easier to put things off to the new year, to get a fresh start in 2020. This fresh start is romanticized to make us all believe holding off making impactful changes for a month will be what we really need. To be a Monday morning downer, I’m reminding you that putting things off doesn’t help. If you’ve got some changes you’re ready to make, start thinking about them now, now waiting a few weeks.

The further off the rails you get during December, the more difficult it becomes to bring it back on January 1. We talk to a lot of people about goals and habits and waiting til a fresh start date is never the make or break of the goal.

So what can you do?

Prioritize gym time. Sure, you’re busy and I understand. What you can do though is block out at least one session per week that you will not miss no matter what. Work the rest of your schedule around that one gym time and guard it. Getting in that one time will build momentum to hit the gym and second and maybe third time.

Ease into some big changes and use December as a buffer month. Want to start eating better? Start cleaning it up now for a easier transition. Sure, have a couple drinks and don’t shy away from the cookies, but get some vegetables everyday and don’t forget to drink some water every now and then.

Focus on one thing. The freshness of the New Year is appealing. It’s why people pile goals on top of goals. Choose one thing you can really focus on, bonus points if it positively effects other goals/habits too. Make it clear, set some time aside to really nail down what you want to accomplish.

SNOW DAY HOURS:

Open from 8am-1pm

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Thankful

I’ve got a lot to be thankful for. I have a great family and friends, I just got married and bought a house and Gain is about to hit it’s 5 year anniversary. It’s been a year to remember. Today though, I want to thank you.

Thanks for reading this blog and chatting with me about it. Thanks for coming to the gym and being a part of the community we’re building. Thanks for trusting me and the coaches. Thank you for taking time out of your day to spend it with us.

I hope you have a great Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving hours:

Wednesday: Closing at 6pm

Thursday: Closed

Friday: Opening at 7am

Saturday: Regular hours

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Travel Unwinding

We’re going to keep the holiday travel theme going today. If you’re going to find yourself in a car or on a plane within the next few days, pay attention.

Long hours of travel is tough on your body. Awkward sitting positions, poor food choices and travel delays add up to be a stressful situation. On Sunday, we spent 8 hours in the car. We drank too much coffee and not enough water. Once we got home I felt tired and stiff, although I knew I needed movement more than another nap.

I hit the gym and moved around for 15 minutes. I practiced some olympic lifts with just the barbell, I hung from the pull up bar, did some squats and push ups and dips. I felt myself coming back to life after I started moving around.

You might not have access to a full sized gym where you’re traveling to and that’s okay. You can reap all the benefits without needing to pack anything extra in your suitcase. Once you reach your destination, or bonus points if you do it while you’re traveling, do some bodyweight squats!

Squats are a nice way to move your hips through a large range of motion, they’ll get you heart rate up a bit and it will unwind your cranky travel hips. Pair it with some downward dogs and shoulder CARs and you’ll be feeling yourself in no time

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

EMOM - Your Thanksgiving Travel Workout Guide

You’ve probably seen “EMOM” written on the white board or your sheet by now. If you’re not familiar, EMOM stands for Every Minute on the Minute, it’s a simple way to cram an effective workout in a short period of time.

Let’s say you’re driving 8 hours this week to get to your aunt’s house for Thanksgiving. You get out of the car, you’re stiff, sore and can’t believe you decided to drive instead of fly this year. You have a great night and wake up early the next day itching for some movement, enter the EMOM.

The most simple formula is a lower body exercise on the even minutes, and a core exercise done on the odd minutes. You pick a rep scheme you can complete within 20-40 seconds. Once completing the exercise, you rest the remaining time in the minute before starting the next exercise. If the first few rounds are easy, good. You’ll appreciate those easy rounds as the workout catches up to you on round 8, 9 and 10.

Here’s a workout you can use this week:

EMOM 10 minutes

Even minutes: 10 bodyweight squats

Odd minutes: 10 breaths in low plank

At the end, you’ll have completed 5 rounds of each exercise. Nothing crazy, but the compressed time frame gets you a bit of a cardio boost and you’ll be sure to break a sweat. Give it a shot.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Rome

Thursday is my favorite day because of James Clear’s email newsletter. He always sends something that makes me think for a few days. The first idea he shared this week:

"Rome wasn’t built in a day, but they were laying bricks every hour.”

Be patent with your habits, they’re not going to change over night. At the same time, you better be working towards new goals and habits all the time, bit by bit.

Reading this reminded me of a training analogy: building fitness and health is about moving dirt from a big pile to another pile. Some days, you’ll move a truck load, other days a spoonful, regardless, move some dirt everyday.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Gain Holiday Party

Mark your calendars, people. Each year, this party get more fun. Its our favorite thing we do all year and I hope you can make it.

Saturday December 14th at 5pm.

We’ll be serving food and drinks, just be sure to leave your gym clothes at home!

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Practice

What if instead of working out, or hitting the gym, we called it movement practice. Practice to develop skills to help you outside the gym - to build a better understanding of your body. Practicing building strength and learning different techniques and most importantly, practice building habits and routines.

I know, its a little out there, but we need to work towards changing what most people in society think workout out is. Most people imagine, and perhaps are only exposed to, high intensity drastically beyond their abilities. Framing it as “practice,” takes the pressure off the intensity and instead focuses on the quality.

An NFL team doesn’t practice at in-game intensity. They work on fundamentals, refine technique and get in quality reps. If we’d all focus on doing the same instead of needing to redline and burn more calories, we might just have more lifelong fitness enthusiasts.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Productive

All weekend I was thinking about this question from James Clear’s newsletter:

“If you were forced to work for just one hour per day, what would you work on during that hour to be most effective?”

He asked the reader this question after sharing this quote:

“If you’ve reached a certain age then you know what works for you. You should know by this point in your life what time of day you’re ‘good’ — like what time of day is your brain at its best. Because the reality is we all get, maybe two good hours a day where were actually feel awake and alert.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

For me, I’m an early morning person. If stuff needs to get done, my best chance of doing it well is to do it pretty much first thing in the morning with some coffee. When I was a kid, I loved doing my homework the morning it was due, Sure, most of that was procrastination, but looking back, and seeing how I am as an adult, I probably was always able to concentrate better early in the morning.

What’s your best time of day? And more importantly, what do you do with that time?

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Garage Gym Experiments

I’ve always wanted a home gym. I love the thought of being able to have everything you need for an effective workout in your garage or basement. We’ve been hitting the garage gym for the past couple weeks and it’s been great. After a workout slump the latter half of October, the garage gym workouts were perfect to break my slump and shake things up a bit.

We’ve been working out early in the morning, which means we’re a little crunched for time. With 10-20 minutes, you can really get an effective training session in. We often think that more is better or longer is better, and sure, there’s a time and place for that. However, it’s been refreshing know that I can get a lot done in a short period of time.

For each workout, we jumped roped (or danced to Lizzo in Hannah’s case) and did bodyweight squats. The goal, try to break a sweat, because it’s cold in there! After that, we pair and upper body movement like pull ups or chin ups or push ups with a lower body movement like a squat variation or a deadlift. We keep an eye on the clock a try to do a round of each every minute or two.

We get a lot done in a short time period. We get out of breath, increase our heart rates and practice full body movements. Even if you don’t have a full gym set up, you can get a great workout in doing bodyweight squats and holding planks. Give it a shot this weekend!

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Fall Nutrition Program Meeting #4

Tonight is our 4th meeting for the Fall Nutrition Program. This challenge is all about flexibility and maintaining consistency. It’s funny, in the previous meetings, we’ve barely talked about food, and instead talked about our habits, the tricks our mind can play on us and when it’s worth diverging from the plan to have some fun and enjoy yourself.

There’s always going to be that battle of, "I should stay strong and not break," vs “Screw it, I deserve a break.”

I don’t think that ever goes away, it just gets easier to deal with. See you tonight at 6:30!

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Data

For the past couple months, I’ve been tracking my resting heart rate (RHR). My watch takes a reading as soon as I wake up and charts it in a line graph so I can see any deviations day to day. While this is really nice, and I enjoy watching the number and seeing it move up and down, it doesn’t tell me anything I don’t know.

On nights that I get less than 6 and a half hours of sleep, slight increase. On nights I have more than two beers, slight increase, and much worse sleep quality FYI. If I’ve been training really hard without a day off, increase in RHR.

There are other signs of my RHR, my baseline increasing from the norm. Poor sleep quality, no desire to train or just needing to take a day or two off to let my body recover. The technology is nice to correlate, to figure out where I’m at and learn what a rising baseline feels like. After a while though, you can tell if those things are happening without the technology telling you.

If you’re a smart watch person, check that resting heart rate when you’re unsure if you should work out or skip the gym and take it easy. The key though, learn from the data, don’t rely on it.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

I can't vs. I don't

I was reminded of James Clear’s use of language yesterday during a conversation about habits. In Atomic Habits, he makes the case that the way you talk about habits you’re trying to change is a big difference maker in sticking with it. The bigger point is that you must be willing to change your identity as it relates to that habit. This change in language will help get you there.

Let’s say I’m trying to quit drinking Diet Coke.

I come to a party and meet you there. You offer me a Diet Coke and I say, “No sorry, I can’t.”

You’d probably ask, “why?” And convince me to have one, my stance on if I drink Diet Coke or not is on the fence and you can sense it.

Let’s try again.

“Here’s a Diet Coke for you.”

I reply this time, "No thanks, I don’t drink Diet Coke.”

I can’t and I don’t mean two different things. I don’t implies you’ve made a stand, it’s your choice. I can’t makes it seem like you want to, but can’t… It’s a weaker statement. Be careful of how you talk about things you’re trying to improve.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Painting and Breathing

I spent a good chunk of Sunday painting our living room and kitchen. As a perpetual rusher, painting can be hard, I want to finish fast and end up making a mess. Yesterday, I did a good job of not rushing and I have a secret weapon I’m going to share with you today.

I paid attention to my breathing.

Sounds simple, and it really is, but each time I was stretching the paint on the roller a little too far or reaching off the ladder too far I noticed I was holding my breathe, I’d take a big one, relax and slow down. It kept happening over and over, but towards the end I got into a nice painting groove, didn’t make too much of a mess and the walls looks good!

Our breath can tell us a lot. If we’re breathing quickly, shallow or holding it, if we recognized that, we can slow down, get some deep breaths in and feel a lot better.

Many of you are workout rushers. You have a hard time remembering sets and reps, it’s hard to count and you’re thinking about all the other stuff you have to do that day. I get it, we all have full schedules and busy lives. The next time you’re in the gym and you catch yourself not paying attention to what you’re supposed to be doing, take a few deep breaths, slow down and get back to it.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach

Is That the Answer?

I saw an Instagram ad yesterday about a tech-savvy weighted bar that syncs with your phone and TV to provide a guided workout. Pelotons, the bike with virtual spin classes are making their way into everyone’s home and you can find endless follow along yoga videos on YouTube.

The convenience of this in home health-tech is the draw. It’s the, I don’t have time to workout, but if I had a way to workout at home without having to think, that will do the trick! Don’t get me wrong, you will build serious fitness suffering on those Peloton bikes. The issue is how do you progress? How do you get better?

The bike’s answer is do more. More rides, more speed, more watts, longer duration. That’s the only way to progress, there isn’t any skill involved. In our world, the strength and conditioning gym, we can always progress by improving the quality of movement. We can add tempo, range of motion, speed and load amongst many other variables. We can adapt on the fly, call an audible and most importantly, focus on quality.

The in home tech doesn’t know what quality movement is. It wants you to progress by doing more. Which, will work until you eventually can’t do more and the Peloton collects cobwebs becomes a clothes hanger. These new at home workout modalities are great tools to supplement your training.

You still need full range of motion, mobility work, functional exercise, community, accountability and someone in your corner cheering for your success. Until the at home fitness tech can do that, I’d hang on to my gym membership.

Justin Miner

@portsmouthcoach