All too often you’ll pick up a health and fitness magazine with a feature on the latest training technique used by an elite athlete or an article raving about a new fat loss supplement. The problem is for most people it’s really not worth bothering! Whilst that may sound harsh the reality is that the ‘fancy stuff’ is like some decorative icing on a cake. Unless you’ve gone to the effort of getting all the right ingredients and following the recipe for the actual cake there isn’t much point in getting carried away with the icing just yet!
I’d love to say that I came up with the snappy title for this post but it comes from reading an article by an American coach Dewey Nielsen and you can read a copy here. The basic premise is the same – there’s no point doing all the fancy stuff when you haven’t taken the time to master the basics.
Here are my thoughts on a few topics clients commonly ask me about:
Training
My philosophy has been shaped a lot by the work of Kelvin Giles. Kelvin has worked with some of the top sporting organisations in the world and a lot of his work now is devoted to improving standards of ‘Physical Literacy’. His view is that everyone should be able to master the basics of mechanical efficiency i.e. being able to squat, lunge, push, pull and brace. Once you’ve developed the ability to put the body parts in the right place at the right time you can then work on mechanical resilience and from there you have the foundations laid for more specific work. The problem nowadays is that there are fewer opportunities to develop these physical skills with most of us spending the majority of the day sat down at a desk.
All this talk of mastering mechanical efficiency might sound ridiculous if you’re someone who has always kept themselves pretty active but I’ve worked with high level athletes who can’t even perform a proper bodyweight squat! So before you get carried away with plyometrics, Olympic weightlifting or the Russian Squat programme you read about on the internet it’s probably worth asking yourself (honestly!) whether you can perform the following movements correctly:
– Squat (single and double leg)
– Deadlift
– Lunge
– Horizontal row
– Push up
– Pull up
– Overhead press
There’s probably a couple more you could argue that might go in the list but my aim is to get my clients firstly to the point where they can perform these movements correctly and then be able to do so under fatigue.
Nutrition
Millions of pounds are made each year by supplements companies and it’s hard to ignore advertisements when they’ve got endorsements from top level athletes. Whilst there is some good evidence that a small number of supplements may be useful in particular circumstances, for the vast majority of people it’s far more productive to nail down the basics of good nutrition before getting into the intricacies of whether you need to be taking ‘x’ grams of ‘y’ supplement. The best advice in a nutshell I’ve picked up on nutrition is to ask yourself whether your diet mainly consists of “real food” i.e. stuff you can pick from the ground or catch in the way our ancestors had to. If the majority of what you eat comes from a packet, is highly processed and has a list of ingredients longer than your arm then your diet needs a re-think!
All the supplements and fancy techniques you may hear about, like intermittent fasting, are pretty pointless if you haven’t yet grasped these basics.
Recovery
Ice baths, compression clothing, recovery shakes are all far more sexy than advising people to get adequate amounts of sleep! The reality is however that sleep is the number 1 method of recovery, all the other stuff pales into insignificance if you’re someone who’s burning the candle at both ends. Lack of sleep is correlated with a number of problems such as weight gain, reduced function of the immune system, poor cognitive skills and reduced reaction time. A small study conducted on collegiate swimmers at Stanford University found that a lack of sleep impaired athletic performance.
Researchers believe the optimal amount of sleep is 7-9 hours and there are a number of simple things you can do to help get a good night’s sleep:
– Set a regular bedtime and try to keep to it even on weekends.
– Get into a pre-bedtime routine to wind down but try to avoid using computer/TV’s/mobile phones which may interfere with your sleep.
– Make sure the room you sleep in is comfortable and free from distractions (e.g. mobile phone)
– If you’re someone who frequently worries about work or tasks that need to be completed the following day do a ‘mind dump’ before you go to bed and write down a list of priorities.
– Aim to get up at the same time every day, if you’re always finding you wake up with your alarm try to go to bed slightly earlier.
All this probably sounds like I’m stating the obvious but it’s very easy to overlook the basics when there is so much hype surrounding all the “fancy stuff”. There is a simple mantra that a lot of coaches are fond of repeating: squat, eat, rest and repeat! I think it sums this all up very well.
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