Month: July 2017

I mentioned that my son was my new workout partner in another article and I also mentioned that he got injured just a few weeks after we started working out and the he needed to take a week off before coming back to workout.

The injury my son has was a pulled muscle in his back and it is an issue that lots of people run into.

Heres what happened.

Jaiden was using a full machine type squat. So this is a squat in a rack where the weight will go straight up and down so that you don’t have to worry about balance. Using a very low weight he did a set, had a bit of tightness in his back, and then on the next set something pulled and he had to stop.

As you can imagine, when I got home with Jaiden my wife was pretty mad. Immediately blamed me for letting him do too much weight, but really something seemed strange to me. Jaiden is careful with form and the weight he was using to squat was low with the reps isolated by the machine and speed controlled by him.

Doctor and Referral to Physio

We went to the doctor, he knew what the problem was right away with spasming muscles on one side in the lower back and sent us to Physio.

Jaiden and I went to Physio which was probably about 5 days after the injury. It was a real wake up call as to how we treated form, core, and the levers of our joints.

When you do leg press or squats you tend to push with your quads and try and keep you back straight. This is really important as a hunched back doing squats can really cause a lot of stress on the back that it can’t handle.

What we really learned from our super Physio guy is to instead look at the muscles that are involved with the hinge points of the exercise.

As you can see from the image below, the hinge in your hips is where you are doing the work of the squat, therefore it is not just the quadriceps on the front of the let that are involved but also the Glutes (your butt) that have to do most of the work.

 

The trouble with relying on the glutes for an exercise is that we tend to not activate the glutes at all and instead run into a problem where on one side of the hip the quads are doing work and on the other side of that hinge in the hips your lower back is trying to do the work of the inactive glutes. Your poor back can not do that work itself at all!

Another problem that the physio guy found was that Jaiden was much stronger on one side of his body than the other and so over time he unconsciously compensated by relying on the weak side for the strong side.

So you can imagine how bad this set of squats was for Jaiden. He would go down, then as he was coming up his back would be doing a lot of the hinge closing instead of his glutes, and then one side of the back was taking the work of the other side of his back. His poor back didn’t stand a chance, even, or maybe especially, with a low weight.

So each visit the physio guy gave Jaiden a new exercise. The first ones were clamshells, which involved lying on his side and pulling a knee up with a band holding his knees together. This works the hip abductors on the outside of the thigh

Next was an exercise that involved squeezing a ball between his knees to strengthen the hip adductors muscles on the outside of the thighs.

Next we had an exercise that is a lot like the fire hydrant that you can see below. The difference is that instead of having the leg go straight out to the side, the knee was further down about 6 inches or so. Also the idea is to hold it for a long time instead of just doing reps with this. This means that instead of simply activating the glutes it will strengthen as well.

 

Here are some more exercises for activating the glutes. These have really helped me and I am sure they can help you as well

So after this Jaidens back was feeling a lot better and we were able to move on to making sure that the motion was good. The fourth appointment was mostly checking to see if his strength between left and right side was evening out and then doing leg presses.

With the leg press there is a trade off between pushing with the quads and pushing from the heels to make the glutes active and take up more of the work. Jaiden did a few sets of this with the Physio guy giving tips on keeping knees at a consistent distance apart and pushing through with the glutes to make sure that they were taking much of the power of the exercise.

Finally we waited two more weeks until we went back. This was the last appointment and Jaiden found out more about doing unweighted squats, front squats, and very very deep squats to make sure to be strengthening the butt instead of the quads as much.

All of these exercises focus on using the body correctly and doing squats in a way that Jaiden will be able to relieve the pressure on his lower back and instead work with the quads and glutes instead.

This type of training will be interesting over the next few months. Most people look at squats as being a very good exercise for building quads and we will see a bit of that. More though we will be getting the whole chain correct from the lower legs up. The exercises that will help us with quads more will likely be the leg presses and leg extensions.

Hopefully I have been able to give you a much better idea of the role of glute activation and glute exercises to help protect your back.

I have a new workout partner, and he is kicking my ass.

Late last year my 13 year old son Jaiden decided he wanted to join a gym. My wife took him for his first workout and then I went with him a few times after that. Then one weekend we took a couple days off and that was it. Sadly he never went back to the gym until a couple months ago.

Suddenly a couple months back Jaiden decided that it would be great to get “ripped”. I am still not sure if ripped mean losing all his body fat or gaining lots of muscle but I guess I will find out eventually.

Our Original Workout Schedule

We started working our whole body in one workout and working out three days a week; Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and then Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday. Never more than one day off.

The workouts are really one exercise for 3 sets, 2 of which are to failure for each muscle group. The workouts are dragging up to about an hour and a quarter which is a bit longer than I would like.

The reason for this three full body workouts a week is that I wanted to make sure that Jaiden was getting the hang of the workouts and I didn’t want him pushing too hard and hurting himself.

For a 13 year old this is great. For his 50 year old dad maybe not so much.

New And Improved 2 Day Split Workouts

So, we have now started a 2 day split where we work half our body one day and the other half the next. This is much easier for me and we can hit each muscle group a bit harder. So Monday and Thursday are legs, back, and biceps, while Tuesday and Friday are chest, shoulders, and triceps.

We are also now trying to do two exercises per muscle group for 4 sets each including that first warmup set.

So far my old body, with old bones, because I am an old man (as my 17 year old daughter say) is holding up ok, but On Thursday I also played street hockey so I am still recovering on this fine Saturday.

It is funny to watch my wife and daughter plead with Jaiden to take it easy on me like I have no say on my sets. But really I am just fighting against my own biological clock. Not sure if I am winning yet?

And I whine like a little baby. My wife and daughter hate it. With our original workouts I was just not recovering fast enough and Jaiden would keep pushing me so I was sore for a few weeks. Jaiden hurt his back and was out for a week (more about that in another post) but made sure that I didn’t miss more than 1 workout.

I Have Had To Adjust A Lot And Am Loving The Gym Again

Having a training parter is great. So far only some spotting from Jaiden although I am comfortable spotting him a lot whenever he needs it. I am much more focussed in the gym and enjoying my workouts more than I have in a long time. Especially good because Jaiden is so excited about working out and seeing the changes in his body.

I have to teach him everything about form, weights, muscle groups, recovery, nutrition, set pacing and length, and reps per set. He challenges me a lot and I have to make sure I am doing my homework and not just using old wisdom that has since changed with research.

I know that we are still in the honeymoon phase of this new workout regimen, I have not told Jaiden anything about hitting plateaus, or going weeks without gains, but there is no way I want to discourage him at this point. I just guide him along and make sure he is eating right and training well without cheating and using the proper form.

Eating Schedule – Like a Man Obsessed

As for eating Jaiden is hardcore. He eats 6 or 7 times a day, portions his food and macros so that he will get 30 grams of protein and 60 grams of carbs or so per meal.

Jaiden is shooting for 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight and 2 grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight a day. Lots of chicken, eggs, tuna, brocolli, spinach, Multigrain bread, and brown rice. He is eating pretty clean but when he falls off and has a chocolate bar he will tend to have three. I am amazed how much a 13 year old can eat.

I myself have upped my protein but probably not enough yet. Just an extra serving of maybe a protein shake or a can of tuna over what I was eating before.

Jaiden is getting lot of sleep as well. He had some ADD and OCD, and anxiety issues so for some reason he needs a lot more sleep than most kids his age. Anywhere from 10-12 hours of sleep a night but never tired during the day.

So here I am on the couch on Canada Day. I rode down to see a parade this morning. I will be hanging out at our neighbors house this afternoon and will not be back to the gym until Monday. I am feeling great about the improvements in my body and with this two days off will make sure that I rest and sleep plenty so I am ready to get back to the gym with my very very tough training partner.