Loaded Stretches – How Only 30 Seconds of Added Work can Skyrocket Your Gains!

by Michel Klann | Jul 2, 2019 | Training

Loaded Stretch Article

It has been vouched time and time again that static stretching is terrible when it comes to both hypertrophy and athletic performance.
“It will make you weaker”
“It puts the muscle at an increased risk of injury”
While these are both true statements, it really depends on both the application, execution and timing of stretching.

By no means is static or passive stretching bad, but in a performance based setting there are number of cons we quickly approach.

Negatives of Static Stretching:
– Perceived improvement of flexibility as opposed to mobility
– Static stretching improves your body’s ability to sit into that given stretch, not improve whole bodily movement

– Stretching can temporarily decrease the strength, endurance and force potential of given muscle.

With this being said, these negatives only really arise when passive stretching is all pre-training. Save those static stretches for post workout to calm yourself, drop the heart rate and bring you in to that para-sympathetic state.

Now seeing how detrimental passive stretching can be on our performance, here is where loaded stretching really takes the cake. Once applied, I guarantee you’ll be left asking yourself why you haven’t been doing this all along!

The premise behind loaded stretching is that our muscle is constricted by fascia, if that fascia is not gliding well over the muscle, movement will be restricted, optimal mobility is harder to achieve and we cannot optimize given muscles’ performance potential. Loaded stretching itself aims to loosen the grip fascia has, allowing the muscle more room to glide, lengthen and contract forcefully.

But why does this work in making us bigger, stronger and more mobile?

Benefits of Loaded Stretching:
Occlusion Effect:

When muscles are contracted blood is restricted within, the same thing occurs when the muscle is stretched out in the fully lengthened position. So, during a loaded stretch, you are contracting as hard as you can, in the fully stretched position, you’re trapping all the blood inside the muscle and causing 2 incredibly positive outcomes.

1) It prevents the clearance and disposal of metabolites in lactate and hydrogen ions,

2) Deprives the muscle of oxygen.

Both conditions lead to the release of local growth factors (IGF-1), which can increase potential for local muscle hypertrophy.

Increased Recovery:

Due to the blood flow restriction nature of loaded stretches, once we release the stretch, the muscle is supplied, very quickly, with a fresh source of blood, delivering nutrients directly to the muscle as the body works to clear the build up of metabolites.

Increase Muscle Size:
When in that fully lengthened position and we are contracting incredibly hard, the body is recruiting all potential muscle fibers it has in that local area, hitting both fast and slow twitch muscle fibers (Type I & Type II), with the potential of increasing both density and size of given muscle

The method of Loaded Stretching has been tried and test by many coaches originating with Chuck Sipes hanging from a bar to grow his lats in the 60’s, Bodybuilding programing “DC Training” from Dante Trudel and Hypertrophy experts like Dr. Scott Stevenson and Jordan Peters being major advocates of loaded stretching for maximal results.

Personally, seen in myself and clients, loaded stretching rapidly improves recovery and mobility. In a matter of a single training cycle you will begin to notice significant improvements with how your body can move in lifts as well as building your neural connection (mind-muscle) to areas you apply these techniques. Then applied across the course of 3,6 and 12 months of solid, progressive training and we see the growth benefits.

It’s all well and good having this knowledge but now the application.

What we want to do is focus on isolating a single muscle group, getting it into it’s fully lengthened position, under load ,in a safe manner and both stretch and contract simultaniously. We want to think, where is the origin and insertion of the muscle and how do I put them as far apart as possible and squeeze it like it owes me money!

Chest (Pectoralis Major/Minor)

My preferred go to is a cable stretch on these. Strap up to a D-Handle, walk out and brace against something, from here, pull your shoulder blades back and down allowing your humerus to pull away from sternum

Front Shoulder (Anterior head of Deltoid)

Set a barbell up at chest height in a rack, spin around and place both hands as close together as you’re able to WITHOUT PAIN. Don’t over-crank this one as you walk your feet forward

Side Shoulder (Lateral head of Deltoid)
Put a cable down to the bottom attachment, grab it so the cable is running behind you and walk out slightly. Maintain the shoulder blades back and shunted down

Vertical Back (Latissimus Dorsi)
Grab a single D-Grip handle and attach that to the lat-pulldown machine. We want to slightly supinate, as the lat is an internal rotator, tuck the pelvis underneath you and reach up, leaning back slightly. Think reaching and contracting.

Horizontal Back (Rhomboids, Posterior Delts)
Prop a bench up on a 45º and we’re going chest supported by the bench. Grab a dumbbell in either hand, internally rotate and allow the dumbbells to “spread out” your back

Glutes (Gluteus Maximus/Medius/Minimus)
If you don’t have access to a 45º extension you can hang over the edge of a bench, but we want to think about dragging the heels down and pushing your ass to the roof the whole time

Hamstrings (Biceps Femoris/Semitendinosis/Semimembranosus)
Knees locked and come down by shifting your weight back as you come into the bottom position. Your foot placement will dictate where about in your hamstrings you feel this most, so play around with it based on your needs/wants

Quads (Vastus Lateralis/Medialis/Intermedius & Rectus Femoris)
Best bet is doing these in a smith machine setting the bar at hip height, walk your feet slightly forwards and swing your hips under. Focus on trying to keep the hips extended. These are nasty.

Calves (Gastrocnemius & Soleus)
Hopefully you are training your calves properly, if you are doing so, bodyweight will suffice for these. Elevate the feet on something lean over like we’re in a Donkey Raise position and then drive the heels down while pulling the toes up.

We want to hit these stretches when we’re done training that group while there’s lots of blood within the muscle and we can “feel” the area.
1-3 Sets, 30-60seconds – Accruing a total time of 2-3minutes in that loaded stretch position. Overload the movement by small increments in time or weight. By nailing these stretches once finished training a muscle group, we’re in a primed state to reap all the benefits surrounding loaded stretches.

From here, work these into your sessions next time you train and make them a staple in your programming, the potential benefits you will be awarded with far outweigh the brief period of discomforted that arises from the loaded stretch.

I look forward to seeing your progress!
– Brady

If you want help with building muscle, losing body fat or just improving your overall health and fitness get in touch

Brady Curtin

A | 99 Murphy St RICHMOND

P | 0458 957 686

E | bradycurtinfitness@gmail.com

The 3 keys to maintaining progress over winter

by jonathan | Jun 30, 2019 | Training, Training and Nutrition Advice

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Quick Tips for Big Results – what your training and nutrition might be missing!

by Michel Klann | Jun 16, 2019 | Nutrition, Training, Training and Nutrition Advice

Low Hanging Fruit Article

So, coaching out of a gym and even online, I get talking with a lot of people. Often when I speak with others, both guys and girls, we get onto the topic of what they’re trying to achieve and discuss what they’re doing to get there.

They want to be bigger, fitter and stronger

They want their ass to look like (insert instagram fitspo’s) ass

They’re prepping for a comp, event or holiday

Or they want to progress themselves because they loving pushing themselves, gain fulfilment through the health and fitness life-style and it makes them a better person.

These are all awesome, achievable and common goals that I’m sure you reading this can relate somewhat to.

We want our goals badly, often those I speak to vouch that they’re doing “everything they can to get results”. They’re training incredibly “hard” 6-7 days per week, getting their cardio in, eating all the “right” foods, eating 1 “cheat meal” per week. But the results are not coming quite as quickly as they’d like.

Dig a little bit deeper, in only a couple of questions, and it turns out they’re really missing a lot of the very low hanging fruit that pay off massively when tracked, monitored and then progressed!

Training Sessions & Log Booking:

Are you progressing week to week across your lifts, adding load, gaining reps. If yes, keep going, if not why? Something isn’t working, so it may be time to rotate an exercise out, drop or increase volume, change your weekly set-up, look at your exercise execution, push bodyweight up, if dieting introduce a refeed and the list goes on.

If we are not measuring this, via a logbook, each session you train you don’t really know if you are progressing from the session prior.

You’ll be standing at the rack thinking, “oh I hit the 30’s last week, or was it the 32’s. Not sure but my warm-ups felt hard, I’ll go with the 30’s”.

We want to eliminate that doubt and go in with a plan of attack to push forwards from the last time, as the body needs that stimulus to grow.

Yes, you’ll look at your book and think “fuck last week was hard, how am I meant to beat that” but you can. You push and you challenge your body to respond!

Programming:

Many either do one of two things, they go in and go by “feel” or they run the same session they’ve always done that they learnt from a magazine, an intro session from a gym attendant or what they did at football training.

Think of this; they don’t build Lamborghini’s by just throwing the pieces together, they have a plan and execute upon that. So how can we expect the build our greatest body without a direction to go.

This is where programming comes in. This is our blueprint to ensure you progress, we start where you are now and progress over time to where you want/need to be, it takes us from A to B then right through to Z and then onwards to every other potential.

Following a plan and progressing it will also show us how you’re responding and then adjustments can be made accordingly so you continue to progress.

Exercise Execution & Technique:

If we’re not performing a movement pattern properly, we’re not going to reap the benefits the exercise is meant to give. If some reps we sling the weight up, others we control and some we just go through the motions, how can we be for certain, that we are progress? We can’t, plain and simple.

We want and need precision in every single set and with every single rep so we know, with 100% conviction that we’re gaining what we’re after from a given movement.

It then becomes a simple matter of gradually adding weight to the bar over time.

Intensity:
The aforementioned Programming and Exercise Execution are absolutely nothing, without intensity. If you want really, really good results, and I’ll assume you do because you’re here, we need to really get after it within our sessions. It’s all well and good to check “train” off the to do list but to progress yourself forwards and get to where you want to be you must apply yourself.
Imagine you were only able to do one rep for a movement and then weren’t allowed to do anything else until the next session, one single rep…

How much effort would you put into that?

You would contract as hard as you can, squeeze it senseless and lower, resisting against it with all your might to make sure you made it count.

Now do that.

Do that for every single rep of every set, for every movement, for every training session. That is how you get stronger and that is how you get results. Don’t come in and half ass your sets and then put your hand out and complain.

Earn it.

Nutrition:

Whether you’re working to gain muscle, lose fat or improve performance, going by feel and eating intuitively doesn’t really cut it if you’re looking to really improve. Start by logging everything you eat in a food tracker app over the next 7 days. Now we have a baseline and from this point we can make adjustments up or down, backwards or forwards based upon what you really need, if you’re at your perceived maintenance. It’s quite a simple formula to work this out based on you Bodyweight (BW):

BW x 30 to 35 – This is your total calories
BW x 1.8g to 2.5g – This is your protein intake, multiply by 4 for calories

BW x 0.5g to 1g – This is your fat intake, multiply by 9 for calories
Take your total calories minus protein calories minus fat calories and divide that number by 4 and you have your carbohydrate intake

e.g – 100kg Male

100kg x 32 – 3,200 calories
100kg x 2.2 – 220g protein, 880 calories

100kg x 1 – 100g fat, 900 calories

3,200 – 880 – 900 = 1,420 calories divide by 4, 355g carbohydrate

There is your intake sorted so we have targets to hit. From here we want to get protein in from a variety of sources, same thing with fats and the same with carbohydrates. Avoid things that upset your digestion or do not sit with you, eat whole foods, eat your fruits and vegetables and drink your water.
That’s quite a simple breakdown, but using that information you can get yourself quite far, especially now that we have some numbers to work from.

Sleep, Recovery & Stress Management:

Now this one is a massive one, many monitor their training and nutrition but falter here. This is where we grow, get lean and restore our body to attack the sessions, along with our daily life ahead.

If your sleep and recovery isn’t at the forefront of your mind and being pushed to progress, just as hard as you push in the gym, you’ll find yourself spinning your wheels.

Sleep – With your sleep we want to aim for an average of 8 hours per night high quality sleep and there are a few things we can do to ensure we’re getting that.
Get your bedroom to a cool temperature 16º C or below and get it as dark in there as possible.
Turn your Wi-Fi off and mobile phone to flight mode so we’re not exposing ourselves to the Electro-Magnetic Fields (EMF) that they emit, which have adverse effects on our health.

Finally, the hour before you go to bed, spend time winding down in low light, reading, meditating, playing with your dog or watching a TV show.

Whatever it is you do, do so in a way that soothes your whole body and is preparing it for a restful sleep

Recovery – This is a broad brush that’s going to cover several things, but we want to think of stress management as our main factor here. We have so many stressors already going on in our life, then we add training on top of that, we must balance that out.
Going for walks with your dog, spending time with loved ones, favourite TV shows or comics, meditating, massage, float tanks and the rest, all these things benefit our recovery.
You don’t miss your gym sessions and you put effort into those, so do the same with the things that are going to improve your life and recovery!

These are all things that are very do-able and really make a world of difference. Put a bit more effort into tracking, progressing/regressing training, ensuring your sleep and recovery and you’ll start to notice incredible improvements, not just in your training pursuits but wholly your life experience.

I can’t wait to see your improvements!

– Brady

If you want help with building muscle, losing body fat or just improving your overall health and fitness get in touch

Brady Curtin

A | 99 Murphy St RICHMOND

P | 0458 957 686

E | bradycurtinfitness@gmail.com

How to not break your back when Deadlifting

by jonathan | Apr 14, 2019 | Training

The Deadlift is often regarded as dangerous and the cause of all back pains, but is it really? Are you someone that is suffering from bad posture, sitting at an office desk all day or want to build muscle whilst gaining crazy strength? Famously known as the “king” of all lifts, the Deadlift is one exercise that you should be implementing into your program if you aren’t already doing it.

What are the benefits?

Well, one of the many benefits of performing deadlifts is it targets multiple muscles in your body at once. This one exercise will target your hamstrings, glutes, lower and upper back. You will also build a core of steel due to your abs and erector spinae being engaged. When that many muscles are being engaged and utilised, from the thigh to the core to the neck, it will release hormones such as testosterone, endorphins and growth hormones which means you will be in building muscle, burning fat and in feeling in a better mood.

Dangers of Deadlifting…

Without learning the proper technique, you risk the chance of injuring yourself. The deadlift is a hip-hinge movement which means you should avoid rounding your back, which is the cause of most back pain that people experience when performing the exercise. No other lift is as devastating on your Central Nervous System as the deadlift, which means you should avoid trying to go heavy each workout or doing high amounts of reps as it could burn you out for up to 5 days. You can often get away with a bad deadlift, but it will be very straining on your body and recovery may take a few days.

Things that you should avoid…

Make sure you are not creating flexion at the trunk, which will result in rounding of the back. Don’t start the lift with the bar away from your shin as this will not engage your hamstrings and glutes properly and could cause your hips to rise too fast. Don’t lean too far forward as this will allow the bar to swing forward, creating momentum to cause your whole body to shift forward and increase the risk of injury.

What you should remember…

Always remember to engage your Lats by retracting your scapula as this will ensure that you are in the starting position with a straight back. Keep the bar close to your body from the start of the lift to the end as this will allow you to maintain control throughout and reduce the chances of injury. Learn how to brace your core properly by breathing deep into your diaphragm and not your chest. When you feel your stomach expand instead of your chest, you are doing it right. Bracing will allow you to stay tight throughout the whole duration of the lift and engage your muscles properly.

How often should you Deadlift?

Since the Deadlift is such a demanding exercise on your nervous system, it only needs to be performed max 2 times a week. If you are doing high reps, stick to a low weight to ensure that your technique is spot on and that you don’t reach exhaustion on one exercise. If you are an intermediate to advance lifter, doing 2-3 sets of good quality reps is the sweet spot.