Issue 021

January 2007

By Alex Gold

Christmas is almost upon us, and just like the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future did to Ebenezer Scrooge, I am here to show you the error of your ways! This article will cover some of the most common mistakes that people make in the gym. Some of you may not be making any of these mistakes, but it is highly likely that most of you are doing at least one of the following. With that said, let’s get on with the learning!

Mistake 1: Working the ‘mirror muscles’

Here’s a quick attempt at being psychic. I bet you when you started training you did bench press, curls and sit-ups, maybe 3-4 times a week for 3 sets of 10. If you did, you’re not alone! People, especially men, seem to only want to improve what they can see in the mirror. Back and legs get forgotten; chest, shoulders and biceps are where it’s at. And not forgetting the abs (for which sit-ups are the only exercise!)

The problem with this approach is that not only does it makes you look ridiculous, it actually makes you potentially weaker! As you do more and more bench-pressing, the pectoral muscles will gradually shorten. Due to this, the shoulders will get rolled forward, stretching the muscles in the back. The lengthening of these muscles gives them less leverage, and combined with a lack of training, they get very weak. This puts your shoulders in a bad position and increases the chance of injury. If we add in the supposition that the person is working the upper traps (shrugs etc.), the same sort of problem occurs on a vertical plane, with the shoulders elevating towards the ears and the mid back muscles becoming lengthened and weak.

Now, if we suppose this person is going to do a bench press, or even worse throw a punch, we have a problem. As some of you may know, there are all sorts of feedback mechanisms within the body that protect you from hurting yourself. One of these is that your body will not want you to perform an action it cannot control. Related to our example, the body will not want you to throw a punch with more force than the muscles responsible for decelerating the arm can produce, therefore if the back/rotator cuff muscles are weak, the pressing/punching muscles will be inhibited.

The answer is to have a balance in your programming. Remember, if you are a fighter who throws a lot of punches, you will need even more shoulder retraction/depression and rotator cuff work than a normal weight trainer so as to keep a balance around the joint.

Mistake 2: Sit-ups for the abs

There has been a lot written about ab training, with various wildly differing opinions on almost everything! One thing most people agree on however, is that sit-ups are potentially dangerous, and due to there being much better ways to train the abs, the risk / benefit ratio is not too appealing.

The short story on the problem with sit-ups is as follows: The rectus abdominis (the ‘6 pack’ muscle) is what people are usually trying to work. This muscle is responsible for trunk flexion (amongst other things). Trunk flexion is one of the best ways to injure your back, as it puts great pressure on the disks in the lower back, which can eventually go ‘pop’, leaving you with the infamous slipped disk. The other problem is that most of a sit-up’s movement is hip flexion. Some of the hip flexors attach to the lower back from the inside, pulling on the spine for leverage. If you add the fact that the start of a sit-up is generally a jerky movement, throwing the shoulders forward, you have a lot of stress on the lower back for very little actual training effect on the abs. 

Better approaches to train the rectus abdominis are crunches (you will be surprised how little motion is actually possible when just using the abs) and even better is training the entire torso for stability using exercises such as bridges / planks, overhead squats, Turkish get-ups and the like. 

Mistake 3: Training like a bodybuilder

Are you a fighter? Stop training like a bodybuilder. Powerlifter? Then stop training like a bodybuilder. Rugby player? Stop training like a bodybuilder! Although it is still a common occurrence, hearing sportsmen coming out with phrases like ‘chest day’ still amazes me! There are many reasons why bodybuilding style training is not ideal for anyone apart from those whose only goal is to gain maximum possible muscle size.

When you are training for a sporting performance you will be engaged in complicated movement patterns using muscles all over the body. For instance, in a sprint one glute / hamstring will be contracting hard while the opposite leg’s hip flexors will be contracting. The torso will need to stay rigid and the arms will drive through to increase force and balance. This will all happen in a dynamic manner. Now, where do you think that training on a pec deck comes into this? How about a leg extension? The obvious answer is those movements are not even remotely similar and therefore will have very little carryover to a sporting endeavour. Better exercises could be a squat or deadlift, where the whole body is working together, either stabilising or performing the movement, or even better, lunge and single leg variations. A standing press would be a better choice of exercise for a fighter than a chest fly for similar reasons.

Another reason bodybuilding training is a bad idea is that the reps and rep speed are often vastly different to the ideal training stimulus. If we assume bodybuilding training to be sets of around 10 reps, taking enough rest to recover and repeating, all with a controlled tempo, this is not ideal for the sportsman. The reps are too high to stimulate good strength gains, but too low to improve muscular endurance. The rest periods are too short to enable maximum effort to be put in, but too long to work on lactic acid threshold. The rep speed is controlled, not explosive like many sporting movements.

The most important things that should be trained in the weight room can be simplified as a: making yourself stronger and b: making yourself faster. This should be the goal of most gym-based workouts. 

Stay tuned next month for part two!

Alex Gold is a trainer and therapist specialising in working with sportsmen to increase performance. He can be contacted on 07931 561 807 or via his website, www.hardcoresportstraining.co.uk