Dynamic Strength and Conditioning is....

Even though we've been doing this for 4 years now, I sometimes forget that we are still a relatively small gym in Southern NH and, just maybe, not everybody out there knows who we are and what we're all about. I'm writing this because one of the biggest issues we run into with 90% of the public is an initial misconception of what it is we do. Once a person comes in to check us out and talks to one of our coaches, or comes in for their initial consultation and movement screen, it becomes very clear what it is that we do. But before that happens a lot of people don't really understand what it is that we do. 

First, let me just say what we're not. We are not P90X, Insanity, Boot Camp, Crossfit, Aerobics Class, Cardio Kickboxing, Body Pump. All of those are different varieties of conditioning-based group sessions that rely on non-structured, aerobic capacity workouts of varying intensities. Some of them are focused on doing as much "work" in as little time as possible regardless of form and without any clear purpose other than trying to ensure that the client is left in a heap on the floor, and is sore for the better part of the week, if not outright injured. This is the opposite of the goals and training philosophy at Dynamic. We strive to make people stronger, help to improve body composition, increase energy levels and metabolism, in a structured, progressive strength and conditioning program while ensuring that our clients can move through a full range of motion pain free.

Let's start with the first thing that makes Dynamic unique. Every incoming client into our small group or semi-private training programs, as well as any athlete into our athletic development program will go through a comprehensive movement screen to identify any mobility or flexibility issues as well as any asymmetries that may need corrective exercise built into their training program. As I mentioned, our goal is to have every client moving through a full range of motion, pain free so if there are any existing limitations we will address that straight away before trying to add strength onto dysfunction.

Then the client enters a training program. This could be a small group, semi-private, or private program based on the goals and needs of the individual. These are not "fitness classes". These are coaching-based personal training programs in groups of anywhere from 1 to 8 people to a coach depending on the program. In a "Small Group Program" there could be as many as 8 people training with a coach. The program is a performance-based strength and conditioning program that includes dynamic movement prep, linear and lateral movement training, plyometrics, progressive-resistance based strength and power programming, and high intensity energy system development. Each client receives a program that they use to track and monitor progress, and a new progression is written every 4 weeks to avoid plateaus. Every client is brought into a program at the exact level that they are capable of with the necessary amount of customization to ensure success.

Promo Video for our Small Group Training Programs

In our athletic development program we deal with athletes from every sport from middle school through professional levels. We even do some customized programming for kids as young as 7. In addition to being different ages, genders, and playing different sports, every athlete also has different needs, goal, and levels of training experience. For that reason, every athlete receives their very own, customized program to address their exact needs and goals, balanced with the requirements of their individual sport. You will never see a group of athletes of different ages, genders, and playing different sports come into Dynamic and all do the same "Workout of the Day" on a white board. We won't even do that with athletes on the same team because on any given team there are going to be athletes that play different positions, have different levels of training experience, different injury histories, and different needs and therefore require different programming. As an example, we worked with the North Middlesex High School Football team over the Summer. There were seniors who could perform a perfect back squat with over 300lbs, and there were incoming freshman who couldn't touch their toes. Needless to say, these athletes had different needs and we programmed them accordingly. We can condition teams together as a mental toughness and team camaraderie builder, but if an individual athlete is going to reach their greatest potential they need the level of programming that is appropriate for them. That's what we give them at Dynamic.

Promo Video for Athletic Development Program

If you want to train in a performance-based, progressive strength and conditioning program, or if you are a competitive athlete looking to achieve your maximum potential and take your game to the next level, Dynamic Strength and Conditioning is THE place to train.

Something to Read While Hunting and Gathering Your Next Meal...

Let's start with a quiz. 
Q. How do you know when somebody is on the Paleo Diet?
A. They won't shut up about it. 

So I've been asked, "how do you feel about the Paleo Diet?", enough times now that I feel I have to say something about it.

What is it about dieting that brings out the overzealous fanaticism in people? Dieters adopt a cult mentality and have a black and white answer to what's right and what's wrong. They shave their heads and inscribe the name of the diet on their forearms. At the head of every "diet" is the Jim Jones-ian leader handing out the kool-aid with the type of charisma that could talk a dog off a chuck wagon. 

To sum up the Paleo Diet, it's based on the idea that since the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago, mankind has started to eat too many unnatural foods which our bodies have not been able to properly adapt to (because evolution takes, like, millions of years). This causes us to die of diseases like cancer, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes.

First of all, the Paleo Diet is based on false pretenses and wild-ass speculation without any scientific evidence to back it up. Considering the geographical variability of where our pre-historic ancestors may have evolved from there is no way that anybody can say with any degree of certainty what the cavemen ate and apply a set of rules that Paleo cultists must follow. If this is wrong, show me the study that doesn't include the words "probably" and "likely". What is "likely" is that our pre-historic ancestors just ate whatever they were able to kill or gather that day and didn't even bother with protein shakes or fish oil pills.

Second, do you really want to base your diet on a population that had a life expectancy of 27yrs old? "Oh, but that's because they got killed by dinosaurs and other nasty animals while they were out hunting and gathering". Or maybe it was because their diet sucked and they were constantly sick and unable to outrun or outsmart predators. 

Despite the lack of credibility, my biggest issue with the Paleo Diet, and any other "diet" for that matter, is the militant rejection of certain food groups. In the Paleo Diet, it's no dairy, no legumes, no grains, no alcohol and no meat that wasn't raised on a pasture. Presumably hunted down and killed within the confines of its pen. Of course, for people who care about performance, Dr. Cordain was good enough to release the "Paleo Diet for Athletes" which allowed us more carbs. It also allowed him to sell another million books once people stopped buying the original Paleo Diet book. I'm still waiting for the "Paleo Diet When Convenient" book for 95% of the current hypocritical, "bro, I'm so freaking paleo I have a sloped forehead", crowd who eat supplements, drink alcohol, and secretly eat a turkey wrap (no cheese) for lunch when it's too difficult to find a salad (no dressing).

You can tell this is really Paleo because the "C" couldn't actually make the "K" sound until about 500 years ago, so all the Kavemen had available to them in Paleo days was the "K".

As you are aware by now, I am not "Paleo". In fact, I am so non-Paleo that I completely lack back hair (or even chest hair). I eat peanuts, I eat beans, rice, and potatoes, Once or twice a week I eat ice cream which not only has dairy, but sugar. I eat loads of fruit, which as everybody knows contains FRUCTOSE (gasp!). While we're on the issue of fructose, if you are one of the carbophobic lemmings that avoids fruit because of it's fructose content I would like you to call your mother and apologize for wasting the brain that she gave you at birth. According to most of the heavily marketed diets out there right now, I should be over 30% bodyfat, type 2 Diabetic with my sclerotic arteries slamming shut at such an alarming rate that I will probably be dead by the time you're reading this. Assuming I can even get it posted. Hell, I just had bread with my dinner.

Carbophobe

Look, diets are stupid. They are based on an inherent desire to avoid accountability. It is so much easier to believe that we are victims of our own environment than to admit that we spend too much time in front of the computer or TV eating crap. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if you are overfat then it's because you have spent too long eating too much and not moving around enough. Too many calories in, not enough calories out, the rest get stored. It's the First Law of Thermodynamics and it applies to everything. It even applied to cavemen, though they were hardly aware of it. If you're one of the ones that believe a calorie is not a calorie, and this universal law does not apply to you, well, I'm sorry. You're not that special. You probably also believe that rhinos are just fat unicorns. How the calories get burned and stored is largely dependent on how your hormones regulate your bodily functions, the nutrient density of your food, your activity levels, etc. But at the end of the day, if you're over-eating and under-active you will end up with a positive energy balance which means you will become overweight. Once you become overweight your hormones get all screwed up, your metabolism stops working properly, and it becomes difficult and frustrating to undue the damage. Especially since most people take about 10-30 years to do the damage and want it to be undone in 30 days.

Luckily for all I have decided to jump on the "Diet" bandwagon and start my own diet. I am going to give this to all for free!! I am calling it the NRD, which stands for Non-Retarded Diet and it goes like this. If it's natural, and you're not allergic to it, then eat it. Every time you eat, make sure there is a protein source along with the carb. If you want to gain weight, eat more of the NRD. If you want to lose weight, eat less. If you want to maintain your weight, then eat just the right amount. "But that sounds hard, Kevin, how will I know what the right amount is?". Easy, see how it goes for a couple weeks, it will become fairly obvious if you're going in the right direction and you can adjust accordingly. Other common questions that come with the NRD:
Q. What if I increase my activity?
A. Eat more (unless you want to lose weight, then eat less)

Q. What if I decrease my activity?
A. Eat less

Q. What if I'm sedentary?
A. Get at least 5 hours of activity per week, 3 of it with high intensity strength and/or interval work.

Q. What about cheat meals?
A. Great question! Go by the 90% rule. If you adhere to the NRD for 90% of your intake, you can have what you want for the other 10%. I'm good for one or two bowls of ice cream a week, and a Thursday night feast at Tacos Colima. This accounts for less than 10% of my intake. The rest of the time I adhere to the NRD. I haven't been above single digit bodyfat in 6 years. I exercise between 7 and 10 hours a week, most of that on the weekend. I haven't been sick since well before I started Dynamic 4 years ago, in light of the fact that I am regularly around people that come in when they have all kinds of nasty ailments so they can "sweat it out" at the gym.

It sounds simple and it really is once you've developed the right habits. But it's not easy, because it actually takes some effort and commitment. Look, if this were easy then everybody would be fit. But if you're not willing to commit to being healthy and put in the necessary effort then don't blame the DiGiorno's pizza you just jammed down your throat while you're watching people move around on TV. Blame the brain controlling the body attached to the hand that did the jamming. Maybe the Paleo Diet is the answer for you, but I'm assuming that it won't be the answer any more than the South Beach Diet was before that, or the Atkins Diet was before that, or the Zone Diet was before that. Once you get the right habits in place, the NRD is all you'll ever need. And you didn't even have to buy a book for that!

But apparently you can buy a t-shirt?

Coming soon. A 30 Day Challenge with a complete NRD intervention for 2 lucky Dynamic members.... Stay tuned :)

You Get 168. Choose Wisely...

I don't have time to eat right. I don't have time to workout. I don't have time to help you with that. I'm soooo busy......

I was in the mall the other day finding a store that could upgrade a computer a friend gave me because I didn't want to take the time to do it myself. I can't even put into words how much I hate the mall. But spending 2 or 3 hours on upgrading the computer myself was not on my list of "ways I am willing to spend my time". Notice here that I didn't say, "I don't have time to do it.", I could have made the time. This is the point of this entry and I will come back to it, but I have a short tangent I need to go off on..... I end up in a mall once or twice a year and I always make it a point to walk through the Food Court, mostly out of morbid curiosity, partially because that's where the bathrooms are. The Food Court is a microcosm of the obesity epidemic in America. Old, young, male, female, entire families, if you don't give a shit about what you're putting in your body then the Food Court is for you. At this time of year it is easy to imagine failed New Year's resolutions embodied by Burger King wrappers, 32oz soda cups and Chinese food containers scattered around tables. One look around at the people eating there should be enough to make you think, "If I don't want to look like that, then I shouldn't eat here.". Similar to the thought process that tell you that you shouldn't smoke if you don't want to get lung cancer. For some reason, though, many people don't think like that. It's the same logic I use when I shop for food. When I go to grocery stores I look at what's in fat people's carts and I make sure I don't buy the stuff that's in their carts. I don't buy English Muffins, Cap'n Crunch, or Doritos. I also don't buy 2 liter bottles of diet soda, Low-Fat Columbo Yogurt, or Weight Watchers Frozen Dinners. Ironically, the most out of shape people in the supermarket always have carts loaded with "low-fat" and "diet" products. (pssst, shouldn't this send up a red flag?). I was at the supermarket recently and an obese woman in front of me has 2 loaves of Wonder Bread, a bag of Fritos and a bag of potato chips, boxes of spaghetti, jars of Ragu, 4x 2 liter bottles of soda, boxes of Kraft Mac-n-cheese, English Muffins, and 3 bananas. Think about that for a second. She actually ripped 3 bananas from a full bunch and placed them in her cart amongst the rest of the garbage that she considered food. I felt so bad for the bananas that I immediately started to plot a way to rescue them before they made it to her car. If you're keeping score at home, the final score of this shopping cart was: Processed Crap - 99,  Bananas - 3. But this isn't about nutrition, it's about time, so in the interest of time, I'll leave the nutrition rant with one final comment. If you're in a supermarket reading a package, thinking about whether it's healthy or not, just put it down and go buy something that doesn't come in a package. Oh, and don't eat in Food Courts...

If the one on the right actually served panda, seared in olive oil and sprinkled with some fresh pepper, then you may have a healthy option here.. Otherwise, sorry, keep moving....

Time. We are each allotted 168 hours per week. Tom Brady is allotted 168 hours per week and he has become one of the best quarterbacks of all-time, while at the same time fertilizing supermodels and shilling for furry boots and manly fragrances. Steve Jobs was allotted 168 hours per week and built the most successful company in iHistory while battling iCancer following an iLiver transplant. Though I would argue that the way he chose to use his 168 probably had a hand in him contracting the iDisease in the first place, regardless, he got a lot done with his time. We all get the same 168 hours, and make no mistake about it, what we do with them is our choice. I don't believe I've used the phrase "I don't have time to......." in quite a while because it's not accurate. If I don't have time to do something it's because I've placed a higher priority on something else. I've made a choice. If it's important enough to me, then I find the time. My health is important to me so I find the time to eat right and exercise. My time with my daughter is important to me so I find the time to coach her soccer team. Providing the best gym and training experience to people that I possibly can is important to me so I find the time to study, read, research, and experiment to make myself the most knowledgeable coach I can possibly be. "I don't have time" is one of the most popular excuses I hear from people who are out of shape, don't eat right, and don't exercise, yet they have favorite TV shows, active facebook accounts, and spend hours a month at bars and restaurants. If posting pictures of your pub crawl on facebook is more important to you than keeping yourself in shape, then please don't tell me you don't have time to train. I'd much rather you tell the truth and say "partying and social networking is currently a higher priority to me than taking care of myself, and I have to know what happens on the next episode of Jersey Shore".

I've never seen Jersey Shore so it's hard to say what's going on here. My guess is the cameraman said "OK, try to look like the biggest douchebag possible.". I think the 2nd in from the left nailed it the best.

Old time strongman George Hackenshmidt once said, "Find the time to be healthy, or you will be obliged to find the time to be ill.". What you do with your 168 hours is your choice. I don't really think any of us is any busier than the next person who is successful, happy, and in really good shape. We all just choose different ways to spend our 168 hours. To really be healthy and fit you need to be active at least 5 or 6 hours a week. You need to spend 4 hours per week, planning, purchasing, and preparing the right foods to eat. Sleep 8 hours a day, and you still have over 100 hours left. 

I think in many cases the priorities get screwed up and people put lower priorities on health, activity, and sleep then they do on the other things. People take their health for granted right up until it's gone. You want to watch your time disappear, get incapacitated by injury or illness and watch your hours build up on the couch, in the doctor's office, and in line at CVS. At least you'll have more time for facebook and tv. Without your health it doesn't matter what you want to do with your 168, they will be dictated for you. 

One of the things that made my priority list for 2012 is to do some rock climbing.

I can tell you one thing for certain, I haven't missed a day to sickness in as long as I can remember. People are dropping like flies around me with stomach bugs, flu viruses, colds and debilitating injuries. I've placed top priority on eating right, getting my workouts in, and sleeping 8 hours at least 5 nights a week (even if it means getting in bed at 8pm). Because I've made these my top priorities, I honestly believe that everything else falls in place. Especially since I get to determine exactly what I'm going to do with my other 100 hours. If you don't have that freedom, if you find yourself getting sick sometimes, if you're fatigued and not at the fitness level you want, take a quick look at what ranks highest on your priority list. Maybe a simple re-ordering of your 168 will fix a lot of issues for you. I highly recommend doing it now, rather than letting a doctor dictate it for you later.

Are You Training, or Just Exercising?

Training is a results-based process. It all starts with a goal. What is it that you are looking to achieve? Do you want to run a 5k trail race or a marathon? Do you want to complete a century on your bicycle or maybe become a competitive racer? Do you want to play Division 1 college hockey or football? Maybe you're not interested in competition and your goal is simply to be strong, lean, fit, and energetic. Once the goal is in place, achieving that goal comes down to planning and execution. This is true for anything in life. Without planning and execution any "goal" simply becomes a "wish" and like a friend of mine used to say, "Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which one fills up first.".

Most of the people, if not all them, that come to Dynamic or read my blogs, know that I race cyclocross. My goal is to be one of the top masters racers in the country. I have a singular, year round focus on achieving that goal. I do off-season strength training when the cross season ends. I work with a coach year round who designs a program for me. I have a race schedule that starts with road races in the Spring, mountain bike and road races through the Summer, and the cyclocross season starts in September. Everything that I do from January through August is in preparation for my cx season from September through December. This is my 4th season of cross and I have improved each year to the point where I am now challenging for top 10 spots in the most competitive series in New England, arguably the most competitive in the country. This is not a fluke and it is not because I exercise and eat well. It's because I have a goal, I have a plan, and I execute.

planning and execution has led to my best season yet

So what does this mean to the average person who has no competitive aspirations, rather, their goal is a bit more ambiguous? For many, the goal is "I want to be strong, lean, fit, and energetic.". This goal can mean many things, but in all honesty, if it's important enough to you then it should mean that you want to get in the best shape possible. To get in the best shape possible requires being involved in a comprehensive, well designed, strength and conditioning program that allows you to consistently continue to get stronger, more powerful, and better conditioned. Whether you are training in a program at Dynamic with our professional coaches, or if you are sweating over a barbell in your basement with a program from a trainer, or strength coach that you diligently follow on your own. If you are not in a program, then you are not training, you are merely exercising. Training is the proper path to excellence, exercising is the proper path to mediocrity.

This isn't meant to sound harsh, it's more of a reality check. Look at it this way.. The human body was designed for activity. Most people today are slightly active at best, sedentary and morbidly obese at worst. To even achieve an average level of fitness, which could be considered the fitness level of the modern day manual laborer who is using the body in a way it was designed to be used, most people need to significantly increase their level of activity from what has become the norm. For many, the path to this level of fitness is through conditioning based, bootcamp-style workouts with lots of variety, no progression, no structure, and no programming. That is not training, it's exercising. This will get you fit, sure, but you will only ever achieve a level of fitness that is average at best. To the sedentary or morbidly obese person, this level of fitness would be an astounding, even life saving achievement. Regardless, it's only gotten you to "average". So now what?

Now you have to decide if average is good enough for you. Let's take a quick test. At your job, do you strive to get "met expectations" on your review? When your son comes home with a report card that has all C's on it, do you run out and buy that bumper sticker that says "My son is an average student at Union Middle School!"? When you head out to climb that 4000'er in the Whites, do you get halfway up and say, "This is good enough, I'm heading back."? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, then please stop reading this and get your fat ass down to McDonalds before the McRib sells out. If you're still reading, then obviously you are not one who strives for mediocrity, so why should something as important as your health and fitness be different?

With respect to your health and fitness, here's what I feel is the most important thing about having a specific training goal and being involved in a training program to achieve that goal. Simply, it puts a much higher priority on it when you deeply invest yourself in it. When that happens, it becomes so much more than just training for a goal, it becomes a lifestyle. Almost everything you do and the choices you make are weighed in a different context as you start to look at things from the perspective of how it will affect your ability to achieve your goals. You adopt a lifestyle that is conducive to achieving the goals that are important to you. You eat better, you try to get more sleep, you watch less tv, you don't waste a second of time or energy on things that are going to take away from your ability to achieve your goals. If you're just exercising, then it's really just part of a routine. You get up, you workout, you go to work, you eat like crap, you go home, you watch tv, you go to bed. You get up and do it again. Your swinging the same kettlebell today as you did two years ago. You run 30 minutes in the treadmill at 6.0 pace and you can't remember when it wasn't that way... When you don't feel good or things get a little tight, you blow off your workout because, "what's the difference, it's not like I'm training for anything...".

When you're training, you keep track of your progress towards your goal. You continue to get stronger and faster. You plan your meals for the week, especially when you know your schedule is going to be crazy because you know that eating like crap is not an option, (I've been eating dinner out of tupperware for 3 years now and I am in better shape, faster, stronger than I have ever been at any point in my life.). You haven't a clue who is on "Dancing with the Stars" because you're in bed getting the proper amount of sleep so you can recover properly and continue to make progress towards your goals. You are not satisfied by mediocrity, you are achieving excellence, and when you're 75 people will be shocked that you're a day over 60.

So yeah, that's the difference between training and exercising. If it's not important to you, then keep renting space on that treadmill or doing your "muscle confusion" bullshit with the latest greatest Shaun T dvd set from that late night infomercial. Enjoy average. If it is important to you then TRAIN for it and achieve EXCELLENCE!

Evolving...

We're coming up on our 3rd Anniversary from the day we opened up in a small space in an old mill building at 100 Factory St. We had about 1600 sf of workout space in the mill and I would say we made the best use of it that we could. As our training programs evolved it became very apparent how limited we were in a space that small which prompted our move into our current facility with over 7000sf of workout area. In business, just like in life, if you don't evolve you die. Dynamic is in a constant state of evolution, consistently improving our offerings and really dialing in the things that we specialize in.

Jake has been at the gym every day since Day 1!

Looking back at when we first opened we were completely focused on high intensity interval training. Circuit based, metabolic conditioning workouts with a focus on bodyweight exercise and kettlebells. Nobody else in the area was doing it like we were at the time. Sure there were a couple "bootcamps" out there, but nobody had a facility dedicated to the type of training we were doing, and to this day, nobody has the level of kettlebell training expertise that we provide.  The workouts had high energy, people were getting in great shape, and they were having fun working out. Finally there was a gym that provided another option to the globo gym where every member is merely a number and you rent their outdated machines for as little as $9.99 a month. People that came to us worked their asses off, got results, and had fun doing it. Even more importantly, most of our members would adopt a new healthy lifestyle that made an impact on their quality of life that went far beyond just the workouts at Dynamic. 

As time went on, the inherent limitations of our programming, or lack thereof, started to show. The underlying problem was the lack of structure in the training. People loved the variety of the workouts and the fact that they never did the same workout twice, but the problem with this is that eventually everybody hits a plateau that is very difficult to break through without added structure to the program. Additionally, if all you ever do is conditioning work, then all you will ever get is conditioned. This may be the goal for some people, but in most cases people want to get stronger, more powerful, and increase their lean body mass. If you want to get stronger, more powerful, and increase your lean body mass, then you need to do progressive resistance-based strength and power work. So we added the Dynamic Performance program which added progressive strength and power training, primarily using kettlebells and bodyweight exercise. Due to the space limitations of the old mill space we were in we were pretty much limited to these modalities. These programs were a step in the right direction and people definitely increased their strength, power, power endurance, and lean body mass much more than they did in the old format of the drop-in based interval training. But once again, there were limitations to our programs. The primary problem was that we were trying to do everything with kettlebells and bodyweight. The fact is, while both have their advantages for certain aspects of performance enhancements, there are better ways to solve some problems. To paraphrase Maslow's Hammer, "if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail". So it was time to expand our toolbox.

In January of this year we opened our current facility. With 3000 sf of artificial turf we were now able to add sprinting, plyometrics, agility, and sled work. With another 4000 sf of open workout area we were able to add dumbells, barbells, squat racks, and power racks. We still had plenty of room to do all of the kettlebell and bodyweight exercise that we had been doing. Now, we are a premier strength and conditioning facility that is better equipped than most colleges in the country. The best part about the move was that the new space really allowed us to put our expertise to use with comprehensive strength and conditioning programs for athletes of all ages and levels, the weekend warrior, and the general population.

In addition to the comprehensive strength and conditioning programs we offer, we are now integrating a Functional Movement Screen into our clients programs as a way to detect asymmetries, imbalances, and weaknesses that need to be addressed with some form of corrective exercise. We feel strongly that it is wrong to try to build strength onto dysfunction. In order to maximize performance, the whole body must be functioning properly. The FMS gives us the means to identify and resolve any weak links in our clients' fundamental movement patterns. This is just another example of the level of service that sets Dynamic apart from the competition. 

Far and away the most popular programs that we started this year were the small group training programs and the athlete programs. The small group training programs allowed people with similar goals to receive a comprehensive strength and conditioning program that includes speed and agility, strength, power, power endurance, and high intensity anaerobic conditioning, effectively training them just like an elite level athlete would train. Members of these programs are in a structured program with progressive resistance strength and power training that enable everybody to continue to make gains on a consistent basis. The results have been outstanding. People sometimes question, "why would I need to train like an athlete?". The answer is because our bodies are built for performance and should be trained that way. And face it, when you step into the gym you have an ideal in mind that you are trying to achieve. That ideal is not the fat dude stuffing Big Macs down his throat at McDonald's, it's the person that is strong, lean, and powerful with an athletic build. If that's what your ideal is, then you need to train like an athlete. 

Just recently we started to evolve our programs again based on what we've seen with our athlete programs. When we started our athlete programs earlier this year we found that most of the kids coming to us had never had any structured strength and conditioning program in the past. I wrote about this here. Due to our athletes relatively young "training age", (the length of time the athlete has spent strength training), we found that they all responded well to a general strength and conditioning program with a relatively broad focus, regardless of the sport they were in. In fact, this is exactly what they needed. As time went on and our athletes got stronger and faster, we were able to start customizing programs for the athletes on an individual basis depending on their needs, goals, and the requirements of their sport. Now, there is a wide range of athletes coming to us, all at different training levels, playing a multitude of sports. No longer are we putting a workout up on the white board for all the athletes to do when they come in because, in most cases, they are no longer in a position where they will get the best results from the same program that another athlete is doing. Now, every athlete that comes to us gets a Functional Movement Screen and a customized strength and conditioning program focused specifically on their goals, needs, and the requirements of their sport.

Armond McRae spent his offseason with us and has gone on to post amazing numbers this season for Nashua South. Armond is currently the 2nd ranked football player in the state by ESPN!

This has had a direct carryover into our programs for the general population. We are now offering semi-private personal training programs where you receive a Functional Movement Screen and a complete custom strength and conditioning program based specifically on your goals and needs. We can offer this at a much lower price point than 1 on 1 personal training because we can effectively coach up to 3 people per coach in this setting where everybody has a custom program and still gets all the attention and motivation they could ever need from the coach.

We still feel that the small group training programs of 8 people or less to a coach with a general strength and conditioning program is an excellent option, and the most cost effective means of getting a true personal training program. I am always improving upon these programs as well, and in the next 8 week block which starts in a couple weeks I am adding new programming to allow for people at different strength levels to get a more targeted routine based on the level they are at. These levels will also serve as benchmarks for others to aspire to. I know of no other training facility that provides anything close to the level of structured strength and conditioning programming that we offer in a small group setting, and we continue to make it better on a regular basis.

One of our new athletes last week asked me "How bad can it be, it's just an exercise bike?". She won't ask that again....

We have also recently introduced the Dynamic Foundations program which is a low cost, 30 day trial period for new members to check out the small group training with absolutely no commitment. And for those in the small group program who have a specific goal they would like to train for, but enjoy the camaraderie of the small group, we are offering a semi-customization option. Basically, we'll slightly modify your workouts to work on your specific goal within the framework of the general strength and conditioning program that the small group receives. For a higher level of customization you would want to do the semi-private training. Of course we still offer 1 on 1 personal training as well. 

Our strength lies in our ability to design and provide a premium level of comprehensive, customized, strength and conditioning program for everybody from the general population to the elite professional athlete. On a daily basis we are expanding our knowledge base and skillset, looking to improve our services and programs with the singular goal of developing into the top strength and conditioning facility in the country. 

To all of our members who have been with us over the years I can't thank you enough. My promise to you going forward is that when you train at Dynamic you are guaranteed to get the best we have to offer with a commitment that we will continue to evolve so that you may continue to evolve.

What Every Athlete Needs

1976 was a great year for sports movies, featuring the first Rocky movie and the original Bad News Bears. The Bad News Bears enhanced my expansive vocabulary while the Rocky movie made me want to "eat lighting and crap thunder", as Rocky's legendary trainer Mickey put it. We'll get back to the impact Rocky had on me in a moment... When we were kids we played every sport, mostly on our own, and once we got older we would play organized sports. We had tryouts, not "evaluations", and if we weren't good enough we got cut. If our team didn't come in first we didn't get a trophy. I remember in the Fall after football season was over, before the ponds froze for hockey (and before "chauffeur" was added to every mother's resume), I'd ride my bike over to my buddy Paul's house and we would play basketball all afternoon. About 3 or 4 times a week we would lift weights. This is when we were 10! He had his brother's set of those old plastic encased concrete weights and I had my father's set of barbells, dumbells, and a bench. I remember one afternoon in my basement lifting weights by myself when I got the idea that I would drink some raw eggs, because if it would help Rocky go the distance with Apollo, then it would no doubt help me dominate on my Pop Warner football team (the Pepperell Tigers!). I cracked 4 eggs into a glass and just stared at it for a good 3 minutes, similar to standing on the 40' cliff at Mason quarry looking down at the water trying to get the balls up to jump. Finally, I got up the nerve to drink it, took a couple big swallows and immediately chucked them up across the basement. I decided Rocky was tougher than me, and I really didn't need to go the distance with Apollo anyway. 

If I had only known then what I know now about how Rocky got so strong I could have saved myself having to clean up raw eggs off the cellar floor. 

Regardless, the point of this story is that I was 10 and I was lifting weights so that I could get stronger, because I knew that if I was stronger, then I would be better at the sports I liked to play. At 10 years old I knew one of the most fundamental aspects of what it takes to excel at sports. For some reason this has changed and now kids are encouraged to play their sport year round and maybe go for a few runs once in a while for "cardio", instead of spend any time in a true strength and conditioning program.. I don't know why that is. Let me ponder that for a second as I watch the founder of one of those residential lacrosse camps hook his boat trailer up to his Cadillac Escalade....

The building blocks to elite athletic performance and reaching your maximum potential are, in order, General Physical Preparedness (GPP), Specific Physical Preparedness (SPP), Sports-Specific Preparedness (SSP), and Mental/Emotional Preparedness. Each block is a foundation for the subsequent building block, like in a pyramid. GPP is the foundation of general strength and conditioning that translates to all sports. In the GPP phase, the athlete works on absolute strength, speed, conditioning as well as joint mobility and flexibility. Power and speed are expressions of strength and are required in all sports. Not having met certain standards of strength, insufficient power and speed will be developed which leaves the athlete not only well short of his or her potential, but also at an elevated risk of injury. It is vitally important to understand that playing your sport does not make you stronger, it makes you more skilled at your sport. Doing strength work makes you stronger. 

With a solid foundation in GPP developed, the athlete will benefit from SPP training. SPP is strength and conditioning training that is specific to the athlete's sport, essentially preparing the athlete to perform the specific movements of their sport with more precision, power, and speed. This leads to SSP, which is sports-specific skill training, essentially practicing and playing the sport. The top of the pyramid is the mental and emotional preparedness. As important as an athlete's conditioning and skill levels are, it is often an athlete's mental toughness that will determine the outcome at crucial moments in competition.

It is no coincidence that a pyramid is chosen to illustrate the building blocks. The lower the point on the pyramid, the bigger part it plays in providing a solid foundation for everything above it. The weaker the athlete is at any point in the pyramid, then the building blocks above it will also be limited by that weakness. 

An athlete with an inadequate amount of General Physical Preparedness will never reach his or her true potential.

An athlete that spends all her time playing the sport and no time on the strength and conditioning falls far short of her true potential and sets herself up for a higher risk of overuse injuries. Each of the building blocks in the pyramid are essential for an athlete to reach maximum athletic potential. None of the building blocks are stand-alone entities and there is overlap depending on which training phase the athlete is in. For example, an off-season strength and conditioning program will be heavy on GPP. As the athlete moves into pre-season, the volume of GPP is reduced and the SPP is increased while also introducing the SSP. Even during the competitive season there is a maintenance level of GPP strength and conditioning work in an athlete's program to maintain strength levels during the season and set them up for long term strength gains in subsequent training phases.

The biggest problem we have today in the era of the year round competitive athlete is that they either spend little or no time on GPP, or they just flat out do it wrong. If you are doing a bodybuilding routine, or some program focused primarily on conditioning whose specificity is that it lacks specificity like P90X, Insanity, or Crossfit, then I am talking to you. GPP is a comprehensive strength and conditioning program with progressive overload and structured programming with the singular purpose of increasing all strength and conditioning qualities needed to achieve your goals. It is not 20 muscle-ups, 40 handstand pushups on rings, 100 kipping pullups, run 400m, do 30 thrusters with an 85# barbell, puke in a bucket, and writhe around on the floor because you just worked so hard for 13 minutes.

If you look like this at the end of your workout then you need to get on a better strength and conditioning program, and more importantly, stop being a drama queen and act like it's not the first time you've worked hard.

If you are a competitive athlete or if your son/daughter is a competitive athlete, it can't be stressed enough how important a solid strength and conditioning program is to performing at maximum potential. At Dynamic Strength and Conditioning we develop individualized training programs for every athlete. Every athlete that trains with us receives a comprehensive Functional Movement Screen and a customized training program focused on their goals, needs, and the requirements of their sport. We will create a program with exactly the right level of volume and intensity depending on the training age of the athlete and the time of year relative to their competitive season, whether it's in-season, pre-season, or off-season. Check out DSC Athletics for more info on our Athletic Development programs. If you (or your son or daughter) are serious about being the best you can be, then Dynamic is THE place to train. 

Your Best Will Never Let You Down

In a previous post I offered 3 principles that I live my life by. The first, and the topic of my previous post, is "do what you say you're going to do". The second one is "do your best". Your best will never let you down. It can't possibly let you down, because if your effort is truly your best effort, then, win, lose, pass or fail, you gave it your best shot, and that is something that will always make you better and it is something that you can always be proud of. Similar to "do what you say you're going to do", "do your best" also seems like a no-brainer, right? Why wouldn't you do your best? But in all honesty, do you always do your best? How often do your best intentions become just good enough? 

Your best effort is going to be doing the task at hand to the absolute best of your ability with the singular purpose of advancing closer to achievement of your goal. When it comes to training, don't make the mistake of equating "best" to "hardest". Granted, some days a max effort may be exactly what's required, but in most cases it is some other level of intensity that is going to best help you achieve your goals. Whatever the level of intensity that is prescribed by your program, the key is to do your best to meet the required level of intensity. Additionally, when talking about exercise, doing your best means achieving perfect form every rep for the prescribed number of reps, or the amount of time in a timed set. Every rep you cheat on your form is holding you back from achieving your goal. Here's a common example that I see almost every time we have pushups in our workouts at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning. I'll use a fictional character here as not to call anybody out specifically. I tell Conor Nordengren to keep a solid plank position during his pushups, elbows in, lower the chest to a couple inches from the ground and extend fully at the top. But Conor drops his head, flares his elbows out, sags at the lower back, and only gets halfway to the ground because his ego won't allow him to regress the exercise to a simpler modification that he can do with perfect form. I correct his form, offer him a simpler modification so that he can progress at the level he's at. Once I turn around Conor goes right back to the way he was doing it because, again, his ego won't let him do pushups from his knees. Does he really think cheating his form is going to get him closer to perfect form? Is it going to help him achieve his goal better than perfect reps at a slight regression of the same exercise? In reality, he is probably well on his way to requiring PT for a shoulder impingement. 

With perfect practice, Conor, someday you too will be able to pull off the headband and knee-high striped tube sock look.

I have coached hundreds of athletes and adults over the past 20 years and in every case, whether it's in the weight room or on the field, the person who checks their ego and practices perfect form achieves at the highest levels. The saying, "Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect" applies.

Consistently doing your best takes a lot of practice, concentration, and dedication. It is easy to not do your best. It is easy to settle for "good enough". For me, it is constantly at the front of my mind. I am always asking myself "are you doing your best". I am not lying when I say that I do this at least 10 times per day. When I am on my bike and my training session calls for hard efforts I continually ask myself if I can go harder. If the answer is yes, then I pedal harder. If the answer is no, then I keep going at the pace I'm going. The other day I had 13:00 threshold intervals and I asked myself this question at least a dozen times. It's easy to let yourself back off as the pain tends to take over and the brain is telling you to let up a little. Asking myself if I'm doing my best keeps me in the moment and keeps me focused on doing the task to the best of my ability. In the gym, when I'm doing pushups, pullups, squats, deadlifts, kettlebell swings, every one is perfect. I refuse to cheat a rep and it's because I always have the self-awareness of whether I am doing my best or not. I ask myself the question, and if the answer is no then I immediately make the adjustment. This is the only way that I will continue to improve.

But this goes well beyond what I do on the bike or in the gym. Doing my best is paramount to my success as a coach. When I am running sessions at the gym I am constantly aware of whether I could be doing a better job, providing better instruction and feedback, paying proper attention to form. When I'm designing programs I am always striving to put the best program in place to to give our clients the absolute best training experience possible. In my research I read the books and attend the seminars that I feel will help me become the best coach I can be. 

I find that how I approach training in the gym or on the bike translates very well to how I approach things in life. I believe this is probably true for most people. In training you are in the perfect environment to do your best and be rewarded with qualitative results. If you don't do your best, you don't get the results. Same in the gym as it is in the real world. When I coach soccer teams I have always told them that their goal for each time they step on the field is to step off a better player than they were when they stepped on. Each and every time. If you approach everything you do with this attitude there is no question that you will achieve at the highest levels. I approach everything in life on a personal and professional basis with this simple principle. Do your best. I have learned from years and years of experience that my best has never let me down.

Every once in a while your best may actually be THE best!