Plyometrics is a buzzword and everybody seems to want to do them, but how many people really understand what it means?  Plyometrics involves the eccentric stretch and elastic contraction of muscle (most often the hamstrings, though plyos can be done with a variety of movements).  Muscle can eccentrically load 140% of it’s concentric strength.  This means that when the foot strikes the ground and the hips drop, the hamstrings snap back and generate power through the hips.

As a learning drill (by learning, I mean teaching the Central Nervous System (CNS) to respond faster and more efficiently) one should not perform high volumes of excessive movement and repetition.  This becomes counterproductive to speed development and becomes simply a conditioning drill.  Also, as coordination degrades, the likelihood of injury increases due to poor form or control.  Plyometric movement should always follow good form for running, jumping, or similar triple-extension movements.

Jaime Gamache M.Ed., CSCS, is Owner and Head Strength Coach at The Way Human Performance Institute.  Follow us also on Facebook and Twitter.   Any questions or requests for future topics, please email jgamache@thewayhpi.com

Having worked in performance training centers for nearly 15 years and currently being the owner and head strength coach of The Way Human Performance Institute, the line that never fails to both crack me up and infuriate me to no end is: “Oh, I have to get in shape before I work out with you.”

This line staggers me.  Do we have high end clientele?  Yes.  We train professional athletes, special forces members, SWAT teams, nationally competing high school and collegiate athletes, and we’re very proud of our association with all of them.  But do we have the Average Joe doing all the same things they are?  NO.

Well, yes and no.  What they do are exercises that fit their level and ability, but comply with the philosophy all our coaches have.  While every workout doesn’t work for every individual, every individual can be trained to be stronger and healthier, no matter what age or background.  Any trainer worth their salt understands that people need to be treated on an individual level.  If they don’t, find one that does.

A line I always say to incoming clients is: “We’re all born perfect and screw ourselves up along the way.”  What this means is that we all have a unique training history, sports history, injury history, and genetic potential.  All of these factor into what we can and can’t do athletically.  What that also means is that everyone starts somewhere.  Training is about time and dedication.  ”Time under tension” is a term trainers often use to describe muscular growth.  There are no shortcuts or quick fixes (at least not lasting ones).  But the process can begin with anyone, at anytime.  All it takes is a decision to make a commitment.  Like the title says, get off your ass and get started!

Jaime Gamache M.Ed., CSCS, is Owner and Head Strength Coach at The Way Human Performance Institute.  Follow us also on Facebook and Twitter.   Any questions or requests for future topics, please email jgamache@thewayhpi.com

A common method of thinking about running is about pulling or “pawing” the ground. This is an outdated and disproven method that is unfortunately still employed by many individuals. Pulling the ground has a double edged sword effect of both using the hamstrings as an accelerant and plantar flexing the foot, exaggerating the stride and in effect, teaching the body to brake with the quads.
The forefoot strike should be done with the toes pulled up, where the leg action is a punch.  This allows full extension of the leg and the hips are pushed in front of the foot.  This also means that the quads and glutes are the predominant force generators and the hamstrings can be saved for deceleration and control.

Jaime Gamache M.Ed., CSCS, is Owner and Head Strength Coach at The Way Human Performance Institute.  Follow us also on Facebook and Twitter.   Any questions or requests for future topics, please email jgamache@thewayhpi.com

Many of you played sports at one level or another during the course of your life.  Hopefully at some point you experienced being “in the zone”, that feeling of playing completely fluidly and stress free.  It is a state that can be achieved with practice and confidence.

The flip side of feeling in the zone is to be playing out of control, where stress builds and there is a distinct lack of control.  Both situations are caused by stress, or rather the ability to regulate it.  Everyone who’s ever played sports has gone through some kind of pre-game ritual.  Putting on a uniform of any kind is not really different.  We listen to certain music, go through certain movements, get ourselves ready to do a job.  This process is about generating stress.  Good stress amps us up and gets us ready for action.  Bad stress is when we’ve lost control and have become too excited, for better or worse.  Our blood pressure, heart rate, focus, reaction time and all sorts of of physiological responses are out of control.  Want to know how to fix it?

Take a deep breath.

That’s it.  Simply re-regulating your breathing has a profound effect on returning all those responses back to tolerable levels.  When we’re under stress, whether from mental anxiety or as a reaction to physical activity, we tend to hyperventilate.  This causes a fight or flight response of increasing adrenaline in the body.  Adrenaline can have a detrimental effect on any movement requiring skill, focus or reflex (ie. shooting and fighting).  Self-hypnosis and mental practice can also help trigger this relaxation response with practice and control.

Jaime Gamache M.Ed., CSCS, is Owner and Head Strength Coach of The Way Human Performance Institute and here on Facebook.   Any questions or requests for future topics, please email jgamache@thewayhpi.com

Hopefully all of you have picked up, or at least seen someone jump roping in your life. Jumping rope is about rhythm, not speed. It is an incredible exercise that encompasses the entire body. It requires practice and can be frustrating. But work at your own pace! While you may aspire to be, you don’t necessarily have to be like this.

Remember that the rope is only so thick.  So jumping a foot off the ground isn’t necessary on every rotation.  Energy is often wasted with unnecessary motion.  Also, most people swing from the shoulder or elbow, rather than the wrist.  Swinging from anywhere but the wrist changes the speed of the rope on the downswing.  Most people believe their feet aren’t moving enough when they get the rope caught under them, but often it’s simply not controlling the speed of the rope to match the rhythm of the feet.

Jaime Gamache M.Ed., CSCS, is Owner and Head Strength Coach of The Way Human Performance Institute and on Facebook.   Any questions or requests for future topics, please email jgamache@thewayhpi.com

While I know that in some parts of the country the weather patterns may stay fairly steady, here in New England it has certainly been up and down. This has caused issues for many people who just last week began pulling out their summer attire and relinquishing the heavier, more winter suitable clothing to storage only to pull it out again.

In weather like this, that can prove difficult to plan for. One must be careful not to lose body heat too quickly. As core temperature increases (as during exercise), heart rate increases and blood rushes to the skin to dissipate heat. However, the body’s natural response to cold weather is vasoconstriction, or the reduction of blood flow to the skin to protect the vital organs by retaining internal heat. Also, sweating increases the rate of heat dissipation by as much as 70%. The combination of these factors can lead to varying levels of hypothermia (depending on the individual) and increased taxation of the heart. Dressing in layers and covering the extremities (head and hands) can aid in the regulation of body temperature to prevent injuries. While one must be careful not to overdress and in the process, overheat, care not to under dress is just as important.

Jaime Gamache M.Ed., CSCS, is Owner and Head Strength Coach of The Way Human Performance Institute and on Facebook.   Any questions or requests for future topics, please email jgamache@thewayhpi.com

A recurring theme, and some of the central tenets of my training philosophy are balance and deceleration.  But how do these become integrated in the day to day?

When most of us were children, we ran through the woods, fell out of trees, fell off our bikes (usually without helmets!), got up and kept going.  Why?  Because we learned to spread out the force of impact and control our bodies.  This is a skill that fades with time and lack of practice.  It’s a factor of life that we stiffen as we age and this can only be overcome by a conscious return to the fluidity of our youth.  The lack of this skill is also an epidemic among the youth of today and is at least partially responsible for the uprise of catastrophic knee and other lower body injuries in youth today.

The world around us is by its very nature, unstable.  In the gym, we try to recreate some of that instability in a controlled manner.  In places like The Way Human Performance Institute, there is specialized equipment to mimic and control the amount of instability in an exercise.  Some examples of these are half foam rollers, Airex Pads, disk pillows or BOSU all help create an unstable environment in a manner that is compatible with experience and relative to the exercise being performed.

Jaime Gamache M.Ed., CSCS, is Owner and Head Strength Coach of The Way Human Performance Institute and on Facebook.   Any questions or requests for future topics, please email jgamache@thewayhpi.com

As I’ve written about previously, warming up is a vital and necessary part of every workout.  However, proper cool-down and recovery are just as necessary.  This is where static stretching along with foam rolling comes into play.  Static stretching helps maintain proper muscle length, joint mobility and balance throughout the body.  The length of time spent in each position has been widely debated, from as little as 30 seconds to as long as 4-5 minutes per position.  This is due to the fact that muscle relaxation requires as little as 10 seconds to occur, the relaxation of the Golgi tendons (the mechanism that causes the muscle to snap back when overstretched) can take up to 4 minutes.

A bigger mistake more commonly made is only stretching front to back (ie. the quads, hamstrings, calves, etc.) and not taking into account the rotation of the hip and shoulder joints.  Static stretches should incorporate all ranges of motion.  A method I prefer is to use a 1″ Powerband to assist in stretching as it allows the user to adjust the degree of tension to a comfortable level while maintaining an adequate stretch.  Remember, stretching should never be painful, and should generally induce a sense of relaxation upon completion.

Jaime Gamache M.Ed., CSCS, is Owner and Head Strength Coach of The Way Human Performance Institute and on Facebook.   Any questions or requests for future topics, please email jgamache@thewayhpi.com

Do you jump right into your workout or sit and stretch for several minutes before hand.  Neither will really help you athletically.  Jumping directly into a workout is a bad habit formed in youth when the body generally can make up ground in warming up with less chance of injury.  As we get older, this is no longer the case.  While the real world doesn’t give us the opportunity for a proper warmup, risking injury before a workout is generally an unnecessary risk.

The solution to this is dynamic warmup.  While a static stretch depresses the central nervous system, blood pressure, heart rate and core temperature (generally, the opposite of a warm up), a dynamic warmup does the opposite.  A good dynamic warmup should encompass all the major movements and muscle groups.  It should adequately prepare the body for activity as well as create progression in functional flexibility.

Back pain has many root causes, I’ve talked about some of them here and here.  Generally, its related to either strength or flexibility.  However, sometimes its simple muscle activation or movement pattern.

What this means is that when doing a core stability exercise (such as planks), the low back activates as a stabilizer (which it isn’t).  This is not necessarily because of a lack of strength, but more because of a lack of coordination or muscle activation pattern.  This causes an overuse of the erectors, as well as a hyperextension of the spine.  And as I’ve said before, anytime the body uses certain muscles to do jobs they’re not designed to do, first there is pain, then there is injury.  The problem is that planks simply demonstrates or clarifies the pattern, it exists in all other movements as well.

By focusing on the activation of the correct muscles, the dysfunctional movement can be unlearned and replaced by the correct motion.  However, like any other new movement, practice is required.  It is estimated that it requires 10,000 repetitions of an action to make it a habit, therefor you have your work cut out for you.

Jaime Gamache M.Ed., CSCS, is Owner and Head Strength Coach of The Way Human Performance Institute and on Facebook.   Any questions or requests for future topics, please email jgamache@thewayhpi.com