Gym Lingo: Tempo

Tempo is a prescription for speed. Typically coaches will use this to designate a slow portion of the lift or a deliberate pause, though we can also use it to work on acceleration and moving fast.

Tempo builds skill. It requires you to get to know the movement, and understand it more throughly. It makes movement flaws more apparent and demands better breathing mechanics.

It makes things you’re good at more challenging.

It’s a great way to get stronger without adding more load. Can you squat 135? What about squatting 135 with a 4 second lowering, and a 2 second pause before exploding back up to the top? This will make the same weight feel much heavier, eliciting strength adaptations.

Tempo can challenge bodyweight movements too. It can build strength in the push up and ring row, provide variety and for something like a pull up, create a more challenging movement without adding more reps.

If you want to play around with tempo today, try doing a 1 minute squat. Lower for as along as you can, and come up as slowly as possible. Let me know how it goes!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Mobility Class Drop-In Now Available

Single class passes for our 5-Week Mobility Course are now for sale on the Member’s App (under “Plans”) and by following this link for members, and this one for non-members

Both members and non members can purchase the pass and use the Member’s App to reserve their spot for any mobility session over the 5 weeks.

You’ll be able to purchase the pass and register for the class up to 1 hour before the start time.

Each week will have it’s own theme, and we’re kicking things off this Sunday with a class all about mobilizing your feet and ankles.

Get involved!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Walk to your VO2 Max

VO2 max is a measurement of the maximum amount of oxygen you can use during intense exercise. It’s an indicator of high performance for athletes. Last spring, I headed to exercise physiology lab at UNH to get my VO2 max tested.

I was on a treadmill, with all sorts of stuff stuck to me. A mask with a tube was on my face to measure the composition of the air I was exhaling, I had a heart rate monitor, blood drawn from my finger every few minutes and had (at least) 6 grad students standing around the treadmill watching me run. It was a very challenging test, especially in the stuffy laboratory.

For most people, going into a lab to find out your VO2 max is completely unnecessary. Last week I was reminded of a much simpler way to get your VO2 max while listening to Dr. Andy Galpin on the Huberman Lab Podcast.

The Rockport Walk test is a way for you to calculate an estimated VO2 max needing nothing but a place to walk and fingers to check your pulse at the end.

Here’s how to do it:

Warm up first! Walking an additional 5-10 minutes before starting your mile is crucial.

Start your mile. Walk quickly but avoid running. Push it faster than your regular walking pace.

At the end of the mile, make note of your time and immediately measure your heart rate. You could use a heart rate monitor (I would only recommend a chest strap, not a wrist HR monitor). Or you could use you fingers, find your pulse and count for a minute.

After completing the test plug your numbers into this formula to get the results.

VO2 max = 132.853 - (0.0769 x your weight in pounds) - (0.3877 x your age) + (6.315 if you are male or 0 if you are female) - (3.2649 x your walking time in seconds) - (0.1565 x your heart rate at the end of the test)

An important aside that I heard during this conversation was that a VO2 max of 18 ml/kg/min is the bare minimum elderly people needed to live alone. We often think of VO2 max as an indicator of high performance, which it is. However, we can’t forget that these basic performance markers aren’t only important for high-level athletics, but they also have a greater meaning in our everyday lives.

Get to walking!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Praise for the Split Squat

I’ve got nothing but good things to say about the split squat.

It’s versatile exercise, builds stability and strength, gives you a bit of a stretch, it’s easy to load (or unload) and most everyone can do at least some variation of it.

It looks a lot like the shapes we make while playing sports and closely resembles the shapes required to get up and down from the floor unassisted. In other words, it scales easily and everyone from high level athletes to elderly people training for independence can get something from it.

Along with squats and deadlifts, make sure split squats, and the many variations, are a staple in your training program.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Nine Physiological Adaptations to Exercise

Last week I shared a podcast episode of Andy Galpin on the Huberman Lab Podcast. In the conversation Dr. Galpin lays out the nine physiological adaptations to exercise.

• Skill/technique - moving better, better positions, precise timing sequence, more efficient movement.

• Speed - moving at higher velocity or rate of acceleration.

• Power - speed x force.

• Force - aka strength, maximum force produced once.

• Muscle hypertrophy - how much muscle mass do you have?

• Muscular endurance - how many repetitions in a row can you do? Localized muscled fatigue.

• Anaerobic capacity - how much work you can do at maximum heart rate. 30-120 seconds all out work. Global failure.

• Maximum aerobic capacity - 8-15 min, reach maximum heart rate and vo2 max heart rate.

• Long duration - sustain sub maximal work for long period of time with no breaks or reduction.

What’s interesting about this list is that two big reasons people workout aren’t even mentioned. It’s because they’re only a byproduct of training for some of the adaptations mentioned above. Those are improving overall health and weight loss.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Building Strength is Easy, What's Hard is...

Building strength is easy. Staying strong is even easier.

It’s hard to stick with your training and be consistent.

It’s hard to showing up when you don’t feel like it.

It’s hard to get right back to it after a vacation.

It’s hard to prioritize when new things come up.

Having a gym like GAIN is a refuge to your fitness habit.

You always do something appropriate for you. We modify as needed based on how you’re feeling, and it’s one of the only places you’ll go that everyone has a single goal that unites them; improve themselves through physical fitness.

What to do is easy. Continuing to do it is the real challenge.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

What's Mobility Class?

What’s Mobility Class?

Our 5-Week Mobility Course starts on Sunday February 12 at 8:30am.

In this class, you’ll use a variety of techniques to help you feel better, move better, create more awareness around how you move and breathe, and gain a better understand of your body. It’ll help you get more out of your training, feel better throughout the day and help your body unwind after a hard week.

Mobility work is about feeling less stiff, improving range of motion, and having better stability and control through that range of motion. It’s not just stretching. Rather, stretching and different techniques of stretching fall under the umbrella of mobility work.

You’ll use a variety of techniques like:

Soft tissue massage with a ball or foam roller.

Static and dynamic stretching techniques.

Using bands to help mobilize into a better positions.

Positional breathing drills to improve range of motion.

Controlled movements to load and own any new positions.

These classes will be full of information to help you stick with a mobility routine, or find a couple of new drills to add into your training. Members and Nonmembers can sign up for all 5 weeks HERE..

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Why (and How) I Trained 47 times in My Son’s First 50 Days of Life

My son Nolan was born 50 days ago. I’ve managed work out 48 times in those 7 weeks and 1 day.

I’m not training for a specific event. There’s no race on the calendar.

What I’m training for is being better. When I work out, I have better days. When I move more, I feel better and think more clearly. My whole day is enriched when I prioritize time for myself.

Now that we’ve established why someone would workout so much with a new born and a toddler, let’s look at how I did it.

Two key factors set me up for success. Listening to what my body needed. Knowing it would be running off a less-than-optimal sleep schedule. And making sure my discipline was firing on full steam to get going when I didn’t feel like it. Which was way more frequently than you think.

I had 15 total rest days. Thirty percent! Keep that in mind. I trained in the morning before anyone (and I mean anyone) is awake for 36 of the days. On 12 days, predominantly in the past two weeks, I trained early in the morning, and again for 45-60 minutes in the afternoon at the gym.

For the first few weeks I only ran (easily), did push ups and air squats, or walked with a 20-pound weight vest. I needed it to be simple and quick to the point. The 4th week I added in some more bodyweight movements like pull ups and dips, and started back with light barbells and kettlebells on week 5. I continued ramping up the intensity (effort, load, volume) and the last 5 days have been hard training, back to normal.

Training for the specific purpose of feeling better is underrated. If you told me my body wouldn’t change, my strength would only decline and I’d only get slower for the rest of my life, I’d still get out in the cold garage and train every morning because it makes everything better.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Discipline Over Motivation

Each year as January winds downs people start abandoning their New Year’s resolutions.

If you’re one of the few who has continued to stick it out with yours, congratulations, keep it up!

Here is a simple concept that will help you keep going when motivation is starting to dwindle. Which, of course it will run out eventually.

You don’t need motivation. It’s finicky and unreliable.

Instead focus on building discipline. Discipline is what gets you do to stuff when you don’t want to. It checks the box when motivation is no where to be found.

There’s this funny thing about discipline too. It eventually creates motivation for you. After you get some reps in, of getting yourself to do the thing that is good for you but you’re not motivated to do, you’ll feel better and become motivated once again.

Don’t want for more motivation, it isn’t coming. Create your own through discipline.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Just 5 Minutes

Are you a procrastinator like me?

I always wait until the last minute to do something. However, taking 5 minutes the night before to set up the following day makes a big difference for how the morning goes.

It’s the difference between a frantic morning, feeling overwhelmed with the tasks that need attention and a morning I can ease into, get some work done and a workout.

Making mine or Elliot’s lunch.

Laying clothes out for a workout.

Packing my bag for the gym.

Making sure the dishes are done and the kitchen is clean.

Plugging in my computer to make sure it’s charged for the day.

Writing out my to-do list.

Whenever I take 5 minutes to make sure I’m set up, the start of the day is less chaotic, smoother and easier to get going.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Weekly Podcast Recommendation

Here with another podcast recommendation for you this week.

Checkout out this episode of the Huberman Lab podcast with Andy Galpin.

It’s a (very) deep dive into all aspects of fitness. Check it out

Huberman Lab Podcast with Dr. Andy Galpin: How to Assess & Improve All Aspects of Your Fitness

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Grip Strength and Longevity

In college I was participating in a peer’s research study and they needed 20 strong college-aged people.

They determined who was strong by using a hand dynamometer. This device measures one’s grip strength by pounds of force you can create while giving it your best squeeze.

Grip strength is a well-known predictor of total body strength. This was a simple low skill way to get the right participants for their study. And it was the first time I learned how grip strength can be used as a predictor for total body strength.

Last week a couple GAIN members sent me this link, What grip strength can tell you about how well you’re aging.

“A wealth of research already tells us that strength is good for us. People who lift weights are substantially less likely to develop heart disease, high blood pressure and many other chronic illnesses than those who skip resistance exercise.”

Grip strength can tell us how strong we are, and how strong we are can be a predictor for longevity.

This gave me the push to get our own dynamometer for the gym. We’ve been having fun with it over the past few days.

We’ve started calling it the truth-o-meter. It’ll tell you if you’re strong or not, and some people even said they didn’t want to know after reading the article.

Next time you’re in the gym give it a squeeze.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

New Class Coming Soon

We’re bringing you a 5-week mobility class starting on February 12th. That’s right, on a Sunday.

Many of you are hitting the slopes, or preparing for a spring race, so we thought a Sunday class focused on improving mobility and recovery would be the perfect end to a week.

Each week will concentrate on a specific area of the body, with the final session dedicated to you having a few specific drills to take away and continue to work on.

More details later this week.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Halfway

We’re halfway through the Mobility Challenge today!

The first week is easy. The second week gets a little harder to continue making the time, and this week is where it all happens.

If you win the mental battle this third week to keep going, you’re well on your way to developing a new habit that will stick around.

If you drop off, you’re like a lot of other people who give up on something far too soon.

Get through this week and the next week will be a breeze. Better yet, you’ll start developing the discipline to keep this habit going.

If you don’t feel motivated just remember - you don’t need motivation, you need to get reps of discipline in.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Gym Lingo - AMRAP

AMRAP - As Many Rounds and/or Reps As Possible in the time limit.

This is a style of density training - how much work can you complete in the allotted time?

Let’s take the following workout as an example to understand this concept.

AMRAP 6 max reps of (excellent technique) deadlifts @ 135.

You complete 50 reps.

There are a couple ways we can measure the density of that workout. One being just counting the total reps, 50. We can also look at total pounds moved, which in this case would be 135 pounds x 50 reps = 6750 pounds moved in 7 minutes.

To then get a training effect the following week, you have a couple options on how to progress.

You could complete more than 50 reps, add load to the bar, or try to complete 50 reps in less time.

Any of those scenarios would make the workout more dense.

AMRAPS are a way to get you to cram as much work, whatever that is, in a time period. By doing this, you’ll learn about pacing and get a conditioning effect while lifting weights - the best of both worlds.

When doing an AMRAP, you need to find a sustainable pace to work at, no standing around!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Simple not Easy

I was at my parent’s house the other day and a friend of my dad’s was there.

I hesitated when I walked in because I thought I knew who’s truck was outside, but I wasn’t totally sure once I saw them inside. It had been a year, maybe 18 months since I had seen him over their house talking shop with my dad.

My dad noticed the look of confusion my face and said, “he’s lost 100 pounds.”

I was shocked! What an accomplishment. I asked him how he did it.

He said, “I focused on eating the good stuff like getting enough protein and eventually I didn’t want the bad stuff anymore.”

Not easy, but simple.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Habits with James Clear

If you’re losing steam with any goals or resolutions you made at the beginning of the year, I can’t recommend reading Atomic Habits by James Clear enough.

A close second would be listening to this episode of The Drive Podcast where Peter Attia interviews Clear about all things habits, habit formation and how to make new habits stick.

Check it out here.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

How to Get Strong - Reps in Reserve

If you want to get stronger you’ve got to pay attention to reps in reserve or RIR.

RIR is a way to identify how many more reps could you do AFTER completing your prescribed reps.

When chasing strength, your reps in reserve should be low.

Here’s a scenario:

You’re goblet squatting 4 sets of 10 reps.

You pick the 26 pound kettlebell because that’s what you always use. You do your 10 reps concentrating on excellent form, breathing and everything else. Suddenly, I run up to you and offer you $300 for 10 more reps. You grind them out and eventually complete the 10 additional reps for a total of 20.

The last 3 reps took everything you had. You have no reps in reserve. However, if you finished that set at the preserved 10 reps, you left a lot on the table. You had 10 reps in reserve!

The sweet spot of getting strong, and not trashing your body, is leaving 2-3 quality reps in the tank. In this scenario, the kettlebell weight was too light for the rep scheme of 10. You should never be able to double the reps with the selected weight. That’s a clear indication you won’t create the stress stimulus required to make strength adaptations.

If you do push ups with your hands elevated on a box or a bar, this is another way to check and see if you’re being properly challenged. If you normally use a certain height for a set of 10, but could easily crank out 15 or more reps, it’s time to lower the bar.

The general goal with strength training is to create stress that our bodies will adapt to. Make sure you’re hitting the right stimulus by checking in and seeing how many reps you have in reserve.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

How to Get Better at Push Ups

Push ups can be frustrating. On one hand they’re a simple exercise, no equipment required and something that many people believe they should just be able to do.

You can get away with bad push ups for a long time too.

Eventually, poor technique will halt your progress.  Whether your shoulder starts to feel aggravated you’ve plateaued and can’t tack on many reps, it’s likely that both strength and technique are your issue.

Here’s a checklist to make sure you’re doing everything to build the strength and technique required for big set of perfect push ups.

They should be hard but not too hard.

Reaching failure is a sure fire way to slow progress down. We want you to use variation that is challenge to get the reps done, but not impossible leading to frequent misses. When you train your body to fail, it doesn’t adapt as well. Whatever the goal reps are, always try to leave one or two more reps ‘in the tank.’

Frequency

If push ups are really on your mind, talk to your coach and add in an additional day to get the reps in. One day should be hard, grinder reps and the other day should be an easy volume building day. Maybe on Monday you do eccentric only reps, building up some time under tension and on Friday you do hands elevated push ups to get some smooth reps in and groove your technique.

Place a premium on accessory movements.

A push up is just a plank where you bend your arms. Really lock in your plank technique, grip the ground, engage your glutes, breathe purposefully and realize that the more robust you are here, the better transfer over to push ups.

Mobilize those wrists.

If your wrists are really stiff, it can place more pressure on your shoulder while doing push ups. Stretching them out prior to your set can make a significant difference. Sometimes this is all it takes to unlock better technique.

Even if you were to never get a push up on the floor, chasing one is a worthwhile training pursuit to build total body strength, awareness and control.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Fundamental Movement Patterns

The fundamental movement patterns are basic movements that are crucial to being a human.

When creating a training program, I use the fundamental movement patterns to help guide exercise selection.

As a general framework I aim for clients to hit most movement patterns in every workout.

The movement patterns make it simple to train around an injury and customize for a goal.

Pressing aggravates your shoulder? Let’s dial that knob back, maybe once per week is enough with the right variation, or maybe we cut it all together for a period of time.

Lunging bugs your knee? We can work on more hip dominant single leg movements instead.

Want to hit a big bench press? We can turn up the pressing volume and press 4-5 times per week.

Keep in mind, theses are not exercises, but classifications of movements, and specific exercises are derived from these patterns and shapes.

Fundamental Movement Patterns:

• Squat

• Hinge

• Push (horizontal / vertical)

• Pull (horizontal / vertical)

• Single Leg (hip dominant / knee dominant)

• Core/Carry/Locomotion/Throw

Justin Miner

@justinminergain