A Lesson From A Karate Kicking Fireman

Over the years as a coach you can’t help but develop a set of catchphrases.

When you hear clients saying your catchphrases to themselves and each other, you know that you've successfully created a gym or team culture.

Then a client says, “you should put that on a t-shirt”

So why the hell not?

If you go to wg-fit.com/shop you'll see a t-shirt emblazoned with “Last Set, Best Set”

But where does the catchphrase come from and is it simply another empty motivational slogan?

If I'm honest, this is a common shout from coaches across the world.

Why I adopted it is a tribute to one of the best lessons I ever received in training.

I spent my youth as Karate-ka.

This was an all consuming hobby throughout my teens. Especially my late teens.

I talk a lot about how important my instructor,  the late Jack Parker,  was to me growing up. But this is not about him.

This is about Gerard Burke.

Gerard was a legend. Every one of us revered this fella.

He was a black belt, so automatically had our respect.

He was a phenomenal fighter,  insanely fast with incredible timing.

He was a fireman

And he worked us as if we were already champions.

During one squad training Gerard was there and was taking the session.

Whenever he was there we knew it was going to be special. 

Hard hard graft, but he had a way of making us want to work harder, while also encouraging us to be smarter.

During the session he stopped us.

He said that we're all starting to get tired, fatigue is building. But we can't let this make us sloppy.

As we fatigue we have to tighten up the technique, be more efficient.

As we get more tired, we make it tighter.

The rest of the session was run around this simple, important concept. 

And it never left me.

I found myself saying versions of it to myself years later out running on mountains, during martial arts training in different clubs, in different countries. And variations of it worked its way into my coaching vernacular.

The last set then will be the best set because you’re dealing with fatigue.

This will be your best set because there are no following sets that you might be saving yourself for.

This is the set that will be tighter,  more efficient 

This is the last set of your life.

Everyone gets tired, everyone loses focus.

What Gerard was teaching,  I'm sure came from his experience as a fireman as much as it was karate.

Imagine running into a fire, that heat,  the smoke, the danger.

Imagine how fast you will fatigue with the temperatures, the weight of the kit, the adrenaline,  the stress.

And imagine if you allowed that fatigue make you sloppy?

The consequences don't bear thinking about.

So you double down.

You get tighter

You focus more

And only relax once that last set is done.

When we talk about the lessons learned in the gym spill over into real life, this is absolutely one of those lessons.

Focus.

Tighten technique.

Keep things sharp.

Until its over.

The last set is done.

Then we rest.

Regards

Dave Hedges

www.Wg-Fit.com

www.DaveHedges.net

High Effect, Low Tech Training

Today's newsletter is an expansion on a social media post I put up the other day.

It's about low tech, high effect training.

Kinda the Rocky 4 story……

It comes from Aaron, a county level GAA player who also does fitness coaching.

Aaron was into me for some injury management, but we got talking about a whole lot of stuff in the injury/fitness and training sphere.

When he told me how he been asked to coach a squad, but they're in Donegal, he's in Derry.

They have a very small gym, basically a converted shed.

There's no actual S&C coaching, or even anyone with a fitness instructor qualification to watch them. He'd go across to them every 6 or so weeks

And how would I run it if it were me.

My first thought was that it was fantastic that the team had reached out, it shows ambition and forward thinking.

And I was really happy Aaron was comfortable asking my opinion even though it was our first time meeting.

But I couldn’t help but smile.

These “substandard” conditions are bread and butter not only to me, but every martial artist, wrestler and boxer who grew up in the days before there being a gym on every street corner.

Before every man and his dog was a personal trainer

Before the Internet gave us access to all the information in the world.

And yet, in those analogue times, we still became tough.

I believe that my instructors generation were of a toughness my generation could barely touch.

But we do tend to look back with rose tinted glasses.

What makes the analogue generation so tough and how can we take this to a modern team training environment?

Old fighters, even many modern fighters, grew up making lemonade.

We often trained in cold, damp training halls.

Usually shared.

We had little to no kit.

But what we lacked in gear, we made up for in heart.

Just like Rocky 4, with Stallone hoofing Logs up a mountain side in contrast to Lundgren training in a hyper modern computerised gymnasium.

So often we'd turn up and have to sweep the floor, then get out any kit. Then we'd warm up, train, put everything away and go home.

We took ownership of everything because we did every ourselves.

It gave us pride

Pride built heart

Heart developed toughness

But what training did we do?

Outside of the specific martial arts stuff of course.

We, like almost all fighters had a steady diet of calisthenics.

Push Ups

Sit ups

Crawling

Every type of lunge variation possible.

We ran, jogging around for warming up.

Running games, such as bulldog, dodgeball, sprints and chases.

We bounced and jumped.

This part makes me smile as I've been looking into plyometrics a lot of late. And you know what some of the plyo experts often talk about?

The way martial artists and Wrestlers jump and bounce.

That's not to say we did it right, the plyo experts simply refer back to variety of movement we did, not necessarily to volume or rest periods.

Fighters are horrendous for overtraining, not taking adequate rest between sets or even sessions.

And for strength, we carried.

We used each other for weight.

And if kit was available, sandbags, kettlebells, dumbbells, medicine balls, punch bags, whatever. It was carried in a gazillion different ways.

It'd also be thrown (kit, not training partners)

How can we take this out of martial arts and into field sports?

Simple really, it's all about structuring these simple exercises to give the adaptations desired.

Start with the speed related stuff, plyos and a few sprints.

Do the skill work.

Then carries, lunges, push ups, throws towards the end.

Work movements, push/pull/hinge/squat & locomotion

Work attributes, speed, power, strength, endurance, agility

Don't worry about the small stuff, that'll usually take care of itself (especially if crawling and carrying is utilised)

Is it scientific?

Not really, but we can often get too tied up with being scientific.

In my experience humans respond better to encouragement and getting in touch with their human animal than they do with data sets and analytics.

Regards

Dave Hedges

www.davehedges.net

Develop And Maintain Mobility

Today I’m blending a few questions together.

We had one in from the community asking for a simple mobility routine, and I’ve had a few appointments in Dungannon Clinic where shoulder mobility has been the focus of conversation.

So lets discuss mobility, and then I’ll give you a few links to easy to follow youtube videos.

Mobility, in my mind, is best described as the range of motion the body can control and move through.

The problem with this definition and almost every other definition out there is that it doesn’t acknowledge why mobility changes so easily, and permanent mobility is tricky thing to pin down.

In short, our central nervous system runs the show. It’s like the CPU in the computer, the driver of the car and so on.

The CNS looks for safety and efficiency. It’s also not particularly interested in party tricks, and is more interested in staying alive long enough to get home and pass on it’s genes.

It’s not great at long term planning, or considering how cool we look on social media

So if raising our arms overhead is a painful, or we lack the intramuscular control to feel secure in an arms overhead position, the CNS can simply say no thanks, lets bring our arms to just over shoulder height and do the rest by extending the lumbar spine.

On the table where a physio may test shoulder range of motion, the arms may come to the overhead position with ease.

But when we stand you back up, on your feet, with the effect of gravity, the arms stop and the low back takes over.

The difference?

Context for a start, lying face down with a person moving you, versus standing and you creating the movement.

Muscle recruitment, lying down versus standing offers two differing force vectors so loading is different.

Active versus passive, I do to you versus you do to yourself.

And then, we have to think about the positioning of the entire rest of the skeleton.

How is the spine moving?

What are the knee doing?

Where are the eyes going?

And so on and so forth.

It’s a lot to think about.

Not all of which you can make great in roads with on your own, unless you have extremely high levels of body awareness.

So what do we do?

My bias says we need to train.

We need to ensure the muscles are stimulated and strong, as well as all joints can experience their full ranges of motion.

If no injury is present, we can train freely.

For the upper body, ie shoulders, we need to ensure the rib cage can expand and contract, the upper back can flex and extend, the scapula can move in all directions and that we challenge the muscles involved in all these actions.

Rib cage movement = breathing mechanics.

Upper back flexion and extension = breathing and lifting through various ranges

Scapula movement = move them! And have a rib cage they can move over

We can train this most efficiently in my mind by looking at joint mobility, Bent arm strength and straight arm strength.

Joint mobility can be simply wiggling around, it can be basic joint mobility (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwXX7kak0oA&t=70s ) it may “CARS” which is joint mobility done with a strained facial expression, or it may be the Anatomy in Motion inspired work you often see me doing in my instagram clips

Bent arm strength is what we generally think about in lifting, where the arms bend and straighten.

Think every type of press or row. There are gazillions of variations of presses and pulls in all directions. The issue that can occur with these is if we don’t have scapula or thoracic movement under control, we can load improperly and reinforce poor movement.

How many people feel pull ups in the elbow rather than the lats?

What about all those folk bench pressing and feeling shoulder pain?

The lifts aren’t bad, but they are potentially doing harm if the body creating the movement isn’t great.

Straight arm strength is less often thought about.

I first heard this term when looking into how gymnasts train, as they are, in my opinion, the gold standard of upper body strength.

Gymnasts to straight arm strength, which is the name suggests, is loading with the elbow remaining straight.

They have a stack of exercises they use, far more than I’ll go into here.

But in the WG-Fit methods it’s common to see Turkish Get Ups, Windmills, Scap Pulls (and pushes), Overhead carries and even crawling done with straight arms.

When we remove the option of using the elbow and the highly innervated elbow muscles, it makes us better use the shoulder, and load into the scapula.

So how can I make this immediately practical for you?

Light load bent arm - Arm circles, elbow circles, Indian Clubs, Press ups, Inverted & corkscrew rows.

Light Load Straight arm - Band pull aparts, scap push ups, straight arm scap inverted rows, some crawls

Heavier load bent arm - all standard strength drills

Heavier Straight Arm - Scap pull ups, Get Ups, Arm Bar, Carries (especially overhead), Windmill

The light load stuff warms you up and gets the movement nice and smooth

The heavier stuff makes you strong.

Doing either with less load allows volume for muscle building.

Full body mobility to ensure the chassis moves well enough to allow the free expression of mobility, I linked the basic joint mobility above. But also check out the “100 Rep” videos on the same YouTube channel, these are used in our Lunchtime sessions with great effect.

Here is a wee playlist with a few examples: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLksAltASjwfU398pnXYyq0sUAUxYJi71S&si=WK_06Ioag0OvauJQ

The key to all this, assuming there’s no injuries need taken care of, is routine.

Maybe not routine, but frequency of exposure.

If you want change, if you want genuine improvements in mobility, you have to think of it as a skill.

Imagine taking up tennis and trying to improve your serve.

If you only practiced the serve for 5 minutes on a Friday, you’ll not see much improvement.

But if you can get 5 minutes several times per week, that frequency will give the nervous system greater exposure and learning will happen much faster.

Mobility is a skill.

Find a way to ensure that spine moves, that rib cage expands and contracts, those scaps glide, and do it with high frequency.

Then in the gym, give the shoulders a high variety of stimuli to ensure the muscles and the nervous system experiences a lot of movement.

Ido Portal likes to say “Hips love load, Shoulders love variety” and I have to say, I can’t find fault in that statement.

Move

Move frequently

Move in with variety

Move with load

Move without load

Do all that, and you’ll move well.

Simple. Not easy

Now, as always, I want your questions.

This is your newsletter, so hit reply and let me know what you'd like me to write about in future editions.

I'm looking forward to hearing from you!

Regards

Dave Hedges

www.DaveHedges.net

www.WG-Fit.com