Are Your Shoes Causing Your Balance Problem?

Put your shoe on a table or flat surface and look at it from the side.

Does the toe of the shoe sweep upward? So that the the tip of the shoe is no longer in contact with the ground?

If that’s happening to your shoe, that is not a good shoe to workout in.

This is called toe spring. As soon as you put them on your feet, they shift your balance backwards. Over time, chronic use can lead to stiff muscles and fascia your foot and lower leg.

If you stand on the ground barefoot, do your toes naturally slope off the floor like that? Probably not.

That, combined with the fact that those same shoes likely have thick and cushy bottoms, with the heel raised above the rest of the foot, are why shoes like this shouldn’t be in the gym.

All that extra padding desensitizes your feet, shifts your center of mass and makes it more difficult for your body receive feedback, or rather, makes you more likely to lose your balance.

Balance will deteriorate as you age. There a lot of things you can do to continue challenging your balance and help it stick around. Getting appropriate gym shoes, ones with stiffer bottoms, a minimal heel drop and space for your toes to spread out is an easy place to start.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Constraints, Creativity, and Motivation

One of the best ways I get creative with my workouts is to simplify my choices.

There are a lot of things to choose from, and I have them all easily accessible to me at my house and the gym.

When I don’t have a clear goal I’m striving for, I come up with constraints to get my training going.

Right now I’m only using kettlebells. It’s been about two weeks.

The classic kettlebell moves are the snatch, the clean, the swing, the press and the get up. There are no other movements I’m doing. Each day, I focus on one or two, and do the others as accessory movements or warm ups.

It’s really simplified my training routine and I’m coming up with unique workouts due to the lack of choices I have.

It’s also creating more opportunities for me to tune into my body and really focus on how it’s moving. I can compare how certain movements feel day to day, and even compare how the weights feel throughout the week.

When getting to the gym becomes more difficult, many people blame it on lack of variety in the gym, claiming a workout with more variety would be more motivating. Perhaps it’s the other way around though, maybe you don’t need more choices and variety in your routine, but less.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Stay in the Game

It’s almost two weeks after my big day in the mountains. I took 5 days off from training, and for the past week or so, have been getting into a new routine. It’s one of my favorite times of year for training. I can bask in all the aerobic fitness I built all summer and start tuning up in order to break some PRs in the winter.

I think of my training in big, year long chunks. Last year, at this time, I spent a lot of time doing rope climbs, ring dips and handstands. This year, I dusted off my kettlebells and am sharpening old skills with focus. Basically, I ride the momentum of what’s fun to do in the gym before stating a more regimented plan in September or October.

May, June and July were spent building up my running and hiking fitness. I rarely touched weights. In April, before starting all the running, I did a lot of biking and rowing to get my musculature and lungs ready for long repetitive workouts. Now, in August, I’m prepping my body for some heavy lifting this fall and winter.

My kettlebell workouts focus on moving with intention, getting my body connected while breathing and bracing. After a summer of wearing a heart rate monitor and really pushing myself on a variety of running workouts, these sessions feel chill. And they should, that’s the goal, to move around and make sure things are firing on all cylinders.

It’s hard, and actually detrimental to your progress, to go at full effort year round. When I used to try and go full speed all year round, I always missed more workouts than I finished. Try to zoom out of your training plan and realize there will be peaks and valleys, periods of higher effort and lower effort, and that’s all part of staying in the game.

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.

This was a simple low skill way to get the right participants for their study. It was the first time I learned how grip strength can be used as a predictor for total body strength.

Recently 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.

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

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Gym Lingo: Goblet

Have you ever wondered why it’s called a goblet squat when you hold a kettlebell in front of you chest and perform squats?

A few years ago we had a large number of clients referring to kettlebells as goblets. Along the lines of, “I dropped my marker and it landed over there near the goblets.” I always got a kick out of that, and it is a little confusing.

The goblet designation doesn’t have to be with a kettlebell though, you can goblet hold and dumbbell as well.

It’s not named after the implement itself. Instead, it’s due to the position of holding a weight in front of your chest like that. Legendary strength coach, Dan John, created the goblet squat around 2002.

He was holding a kettlebell in the front of chest position, did a squat and he said it was like he squatted the holy grail, or a big goblet. The name stuck.

And just like that, this simple, highly effective loading strategy, for both beginners and advanced trainee, was created.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Pushing Up is Weak

In college I studied to become a kettlebell master.

I remember the day, sitting in my beach house off campus, when I read this passage about a door frame from Pavel Tsatsouline in Enter the Kettlebell. I wanted to be able to pass the RKC snatch test, 100 reps with a 53-pound kettlebell in less than 5 minutes. I couldn’t fathom that test at the time. I didn’t think I could snatch the 53, and I didn’t even have access to one to find out.

The brand new set of kettlebells at school topped out at 44 pounds, and the gym I had been training at had the same. Kettlebells weren’t easily available like the are now.

This passage, about strict pressing a kettlebell, clicked in my brain and taught me how to brace, be strong and push weights (not just kettlebells) away from me.

“Stand inside a doorway, raise both arms overhead, and place your hands on the supporting beam as if you are military pressing… Grip the ground with your toes. Flex your quads and pull up your kneecaps. Cramp your glutes. Brace your abs for a punch (don’t suck them in). Breathe shallowly throughout the exercise, but without relaxing your abs…Breath behind the shield.”

“Now, push up against the top of the doorway with moderate effort. Note what it feels like. Relax. After a brief rest, gather the tension in your body from your feet up, and this time, instead of pushing up, focus on pushing yourself away from the doorway down into the ground. Try to leave foot imprints on the carpet. Note that your knees must remain locked and you back must be braced with a muscular corset.”

Try this drill and think about it the next time you’re pressing something at the gym!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Exactly What I Ate During a 14-Hour Run

Last week I took on a big day in the mountains. It covered about 26 miles with over 11,800 feet of elevation gain, climbing New Hampshire’s highest mountains, Mount Washington, Jefferson, Adams and Madison, over some of the most rugged and wild trails around. It was awesome, and what I’ve been training up for this summer. While there were others out there on the course, this was a self-support effort. Here’s exactly what I ate (and carried with me) during this 14 hour endeavor.

• Cinnamon raisin bagel (before starting) [270 cal, 3g fat, 51g carb, 12g protein]

• 1 Clif Builder protein bar [290 cal, 11g fat, 29g carb, 20g protein]

• 3 packs of Clif blocks - salted watermelon flavor [3x 90 180 cal, 48g carb]

• 1 Clif chocolate peanut butter bar [230 cals, 11g fat, 26g carb, 7g protein]

• 1 honey stinger waffle [150 cal, 7g fat, 19g carb, 1g protein]

• 2 awesome sauce gels [2x 180 cal, 45g carb]

• 1 snickers [250 cal, 12g fat, 32g carb, 4g protein]

• 1 20oz coke (summit of Mount Washington, drank 80% of it) [240 cal, 65g carbs]

• 2 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (the GOAT trail snack) [2x 407 cal, 19g fat, 51g carb, 13g protein]

• 1 Clif Bar - white chocolate macadamia nut [260 cal, 7g fat, 42g carb, 9g protein]

• 1 bag of dried mango [316 cal, 80g carb, 6g protein]

• 16oz of lemonade (from Madison Spring Hut, best money ever spent 11:30 hours into the day) [140 cal, 36g carb]

I’m not sure how much water. Most of the day it was readily available for filtering, so I crushed a lot of it when I could. I carried 1-1.5 liters most of the time.

I tried to map this out on a timeline, but honestly, I have no clue when I ate most of this. The only plan I had was to eat the protein bar before/during summiting the first mountain. A strategy I successfully used one time on my Hut Traverse and have stuck with it on big days ever since. Other than that, I just take what sounds appealing, or as the hours tick by, the least offensive choice in the moment.

Here are the totals, and I know what you’re thinking. Did you run the entire time? No. Not at all. The trails of this route didn’t allow for much running. I was scrambling with my hands, balancing on rickety boulders and every single rock was completely greased up and slippery. I ran when I hd the opportunity, but most of it was the last few miles of the day. The rest of the time was spent hiking at a deliberate pace.

Total calories: 3590

Total Fat: 89g

Total Carb: 717g

Total Protein: 72g

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

How Does the 3-Session Trial Work?

Potential members at GAIN start with a 3-session trial. This serves as an opportunity to meet the coaches and see how we do things at GAIN. Our individualized, feels-like-a-group, but isn’t a group vibe is different, and unlike any other gym you’ve been to.

On the first session, you’ll work closely with a coach doing our Intro Workout. This gives us an opportunity to go over some finer details like bracing and breathing and seeing how much range of motion and stability your body has. We talk about injuries, training history and what you want to get out of your gym time.

Regardless of your fitness level and experience, we want you leaving the gym after that first session feeling as though you could have done more. Our saying is, we can write hard workouts, but don’t need to prove that one day one. We want you to build a new habit you can stick with, easing in is key.

You’ll learn a whole bunch of new movements and lingo, if you’re a newbie to the gym it can be a bit overwhelming. Just know that we’re aware of this, and try to take it slow and not overload you with gym jargon. Day one primarily focuses on learning and breaking down the squat pattern, body weight upper body movements like the push up and ring row, and some of our core training drills.

By the second workout, we’re ready to introduce some more movements. This workout focuses on pressing and pulling with the upper body, along with some single leg movements. You’ll do some conditioning (cardio) at the end and get introduced to some of our favorite cool-down mobility drills.

On the last workout of the trial focuses on on the hinge pattern. This can be a tricky one, but is important for everyone to learn. We revisit some movements from the previous two workouts if needed. This will feel like a bigger workout for most, because we usually give you more to do on the third day as your body is starting to adapt to some new movements.

All in all, the 3-Session Trial is a crash course in all things GAIN. Learn our favorite exercises, get your movement broken down by an experienced coach and learn how to move better, feel more connected and get a plan that unique to what you need and want to accomplish. GET INVOLVED.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

GAIN Get Together

Join us this Friday night for a GAIN Get Together at Liar’s Bench Beer Co.

Head there around 5pm to have a beer or snack, and some quality time with your gym friends.

See you there!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Loading Push Ups

I write a lot about getting your first push up, or how to properly scale push ups to get the best training stimulus. Today, I am shifting gears and talking about progressing push ups, specifically, how to load them using a variety of techniques.

Band Resisted: a method of putting a band around your band, and anchoring it to the ground using your hands. This adds more difficulty at the top, which is the easier range of motion, and provides less resistance on the bottom.

Weight Vest or Ruck: using an external load the make the reps more challenging. Historically, we could put a plate on someone’s back, but the ruck, or even the weight vest, are much more secure, easier to set up by yourself, and it gives you more loading options.

Feet Elevated: not a technique we use often, but lifting your feet off the ground, say 14-20 inches, will increase the amount of your body weight you’re pressing each rep.

Honorable mention: increased range of motion push ups. Using plates, dumbbells, kettlebells or parallettes can increase the difficulty because they require more stability and time under tension. Going deeper make the press out of the hole more demanding.

If you’re ready for a push up challenge, load them up and see what you’ve got!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain   

Muscle Mass and Hydration

I read this blog post the other day from Peter Attia. It caught my attention because it was about how dehydration affects you as you age. It’s a nice primer on dehydration, and how it can impact your body and how it performs.

There was a  really interesting take a from it that I didn’t expect. It’s another point for the column of having more muscle, especially as you age. Older individual’s response to dehydration can become more severe due to their lack of muscle mass.

From the article:

“Lean mass typically decreases while fat mass increases, and because muscle cells contain far more water than fat cells, this transition results in a substantial reduction of total body water. With less total body water, the effects of any deviation from optimal fluid balance are magnified, such that even mild water deprivation can cause clinically significant dehydration.”

There’s obvious benefits from having more strength as you age. I had never considered how having more muscle mass could affect dehydration though. It’s a good reminder to keep lifting weights and drinking water!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Deliberate Practice

We've all heard the saying practice makes perfect. Have you ever thought about how to practice though?

Surely, you’ve heard of the 10 thousand hour rule. It states that it accumulating that many hours to your craft will make you a true master. The type of practice that you accumulate matters though, you can’t just go through the motions. Deliberate practice is the most effective way to carve and hone your skills and abilities.

Deliberate practice requires three criteria.

A clearly defined stretch goal. The task must be clear and challenging to achieve.

Immediate informative feedback. Success or failure in the task must be clear and provide new information.

Repetition. The task must provide an opportunity to alter our effort for a better result.

Deliberate practice methods are found in all of the worlds top performers routines. It requires focus, intensity, and commitment over time. If you want to improve at something, build some deliberate practice into your routine to fast track your progress.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Target Times

When preparing for a tough workout or a challenging race, I have a three goal system to create realistic expectations. I’ve used this system for a long time for a variety of conditioning workouts, races and ultramarathons.

Let’s use a race as an example. I’ll come up with three distinct time targets.

1. No matter what - This is my safe target, I’ll finish here no matter what.

2. Safe pace - I’ll finish in this time with a sustainable pace I’m confident in.

3. Stretch goal - If I go all out, and things go smoothly, I’ll strive to finish in this time.

This simple drill can help set realistic expectations and outcomes to strive for before you start.

Give it a shot.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

GAIN Get Together

Summer is winding down, which means it’s time for us to have another GAIN Get Together!

Here are all the details you need to know to hang out with your gym friends:

When: Friday August 18 at 5pm

Where: Liar’s Bench Beer Co.

Why: To have fun

Mark you calendars. Cheers!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

A Brief Visit in 2015

The photo below was my instagram memory this week from 2015.

GAIN was less than a year old and my mom took my grandmother, Gram, 84 in this photo and her Auntie Carlene, out for lunch, a drive and a tour of the gym.

I coaxed Gram into some inverted rows, box squats and push ups on an elevated bar. What I remember most from that day is how different GAIN was than her interpretation of what a gym is.

She’s wearing her purse because she didn’t want to take it off and leave it in case gym patron would steal it. I explained to her that is impossible around here, and that it’ll be safe in the office. She opted to hold it, and proceeded to go crossbody style for added security.

She asked where the sauna was, if there were locker rooms and if members have 24/7 key access like some gyms she has heard of. She asked a couple times where all the people were and why no one was working out.

As she marveled in the strangeness of this warehouse gym, she kept saying, well as long as you’re happy and paying the bills, this is great.

Gram passed away this year, which is why I’m reflecting so much on her brief visit to, from her perspective, a strange gym, nothing like any she had heard of before.

The gyms my grandmother was familiar with are going extinct. They didn’t produce results or make real, long-lasting changes for people.

Gyms like GAIN are more and more common. People are realizing they need real training, real weights, informative, professional coaches and a strong community to belong to.

While it’s still a strange concept, it’s becoming more normal because more people are becoming aware of the positive impact small, strength and conditioning gyms can make in peoples’ lives. They don’t look like a traditional gym from the past, and that’s a good thing, they weren’t as effective anyway.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Pick One of the Following

I’m getting better at writing workout programs.

It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise, it’s literally one of the things I’m most obsessed with.

I should mention I’ve written a lot of them. When I was day dreaming about owning a gym in chemistry class, I would write out programs for imaginary people instead of practicing formulas, or whatever it is you learn in chem class. Since then, I’ve had many years of practice, 8 of them at GAIN.

One thing that always comes up, and I have always mentioned it in initial consultations over the years; I can write a great 4-week long program, but I can never predict how you’ll actually feel on the 4th Wednesday from now.

You could have a bad day, a good day, an extra cup of coffee or be heading out on a work trip. It’s impossible to predict how you’ll feel. Unrealistic to expect everything to go smoothly.

Over the years, I’ve defended against the unknown in a variety of ways, but no other way has been more effective than what I’ve been doing the past 6 months.

Once a week, on experienced trainees programs, I have a section of “Pick one of the following.”

Having some options with your training helps tune you in. What do you like? What do you need? How are you feeling? It may seem silly reading this, but most people don’t stop to reflect on questions like that in the gym. The more thought you can put it, the more you can get from it.

As your training age increases, your program can come with more options, and more of a choose your own adventure style. Use these opportunities not to always take the easiest, or hardest, option of what’s available, but rather to pause, reflect and ask, what does my body need today?

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Monday in August

August can be a tough month for gym-goers everywhere.

It’s hot and muggy, you’re probably going on vacation or taking a few days off work, going to concerts, birthday parties, hiking trips, you name it. We’re smack in the middle of one of the busiest times of year. It can be easy to let your gym habit start to slip up, with a little planning ahead, you can stick wit your gym habit and head into the fall feeling fit and strong.

Here are a few ways to keep up with the gym during this busy time of year.

Get it done

My workout sweet spot used to be 2 in the afternoon. All my coaching responsibilities are done, I had time to get some food and shift gears. Not these days though. There’s too much to do. If I don’t get my workout done earlier, around 9am lately, the likelihood of other stuff needing to happen, like mowing the lawn or picking up kids, is too high.

Not to mention it isn’t as hot.

In other words, the later I start, the harder it becomes to get started.

Stick to the Schedule

Each week on Sunday I dump all the things I’m thinking about on to paper. As part of this process, I write out when I’m going to workout each day. This is a rough draft before I actually put it in my phone as a reminder. This process helps me carve out the time I need and be efficient about when I’ll train. Especially when planning more time consuming things, like a trail run.

I schedule the rest of my day around these training windows. Plan your workouts in advance and stick to it!

Reset

I’m planning a full week off for my body this month. I’ve been training for a big day in the mountains and after that, I won’t be in any rush to get back. A week off is the best motivator. Usually after 4 or 5 days I’m itching for some movement and craving my normal routine. If you’ve got a lot on your plate this month, skipping a couple workouts won’t negatively impact you if you’re playing the long game. The key there is that you have to be playing the long game. If you’re just starting out, it isn’t the time to skip workouts, you still need to build the habit.

A little planning can go a long way in keeping up your habits. Keep up the hard work!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

New Hats

If you have ever looked at Coach T, and thought, wow that’s a nice GAIN hat he’s wearing.

I’ve got some good news for you.

Not only can you purchase the same hat as Coach Taylor’s GAIN Hat, we also have two other varieties available. A new all, never been done before, navy blue trucker hat and we have one visor still up for grabs.

Grab one today!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Team Cupcake

If you’re ready to train up for a run and want a good cause to go along with it, look no further.

The Seacoast Cancer 5k is on Sunday September 24th. The route runs through Pease, starting and ending at the Wentworth Douglass Portsmouth Outpatient Center.

Even if you aren’t interested in running, I encourage you to keep reading and get involved with Team Cupcake.

Why Team Cupcake?

If you’ve been at the gym for a while, you may have been lucky enough to have one on Kendra’s fantastic cupcakes. She always seems to cram in more flavor than you ever thought possible. Around the gym, she’s also known for exceptional dog pets (plus homemade treats, obviously) and wildly impressive feats of strength. Kendra crushes pull ups, is a straight up kettlebell master and has run more marathons than you have fingers.

In December, she was diagnosed with a rare form of breast cancer. She’s been getting treatments at the Seacoast Cancer Center, the host of this race. Kendra created the team, and I asked her if I could share it here to get GAIN Community involved.

Use this link to sign up for Team Cupcake. If you can’t run, you can still sign up for the team and make a donation. Kendra is having Team Cupcakes shirts made too, if you want to purchase one, let me know and I will pass it along to Kendra.

Get involved!

Justin Miner

@justinminergain

Step Ups

Step ups don’t get a lot of love in the strength training world. They’re not that complex and they are overshadowed by more impressive things people do on boxes, like jump on them.

It’s too bad, step ups can teach us a lot about how we move, how to create tension and where our movement faults may come from.

Here are some coaching point to consider when performing at step up of any variety.

Once you have your foot planted on the box, don’t let it cave inwards, towards your big toe. A good cue is knee towards your pinky toe. It’s almost overcorrecting it, so if it  falls in a bit, you’re still in a good position.

That knee may also want to push too far forward, lifting your heel off the box. Don’t let that happen either! Imagine your foot as a tripod, big toe, pinky toe and heel. They should all be firmly planted when doing a step up.

One more cue to think about, a slight lean, when starting the rep, will aid in keeping your lower body organized. If you have knee pain when doing step ups, this slight adjustment can make a world of difference.

These tips will help you whether you’re doing step ups for conditioning, with some load for strength work or if you find yourself outside the gym stepping up on things.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain