Strength Conditioning and Nutrition 101

Please Share, Like, and Comment to support us
This is where the fun begins!!!
This article will help improve the performance of every athlete.

Over the 24 hour day, your muscles go through a constantly changing growth cycle, there are times when they are actively involved in producing energy, times when they are recovering, and other times when they are growing. In order for your muscles to function at their peak ability, we need to cater to each of these scenarios, to do this we need to provide the muscles

with the adequate and proper nutrients at the appropriate time.

In every scenario we can guide our muscles metabolic pathways to produce and replenish our muscle glycogen (stored glucose) and synthesize muscle protein. By providing the body with the right nutrient mixture to the muscles at the right time, you can greatly enhance your rate of recovery (18-24+hours) and improve muscle growth, strength, and power. This all adds up to making one deadly warrior

Please Share, Like, and Comment to support us
Note: Understanding that a great deal of people may read this series who have not been following this blog, I am going to attempt to create a fairly in depth series. For those who have been following, I will attempt to provide new information to make them worth your while. Also, I will attempt to go through this stuff at mock speed, so we can get to the fun stuff.

Combat sports in recent years have exploded with the start of the UFC TV series. MMA has become the world’s fastest growing sport. With so many people having the dream of being the next great MMA fighter, boxer, kick boxer, etc. We need to start with having proper nutrition and hydration.


Nutrition for combat fighters is unique. In order, to bring your performance to the next level, we need to work on creating a nutrition plan that enhances skeletal muscle skeletal recovery from the high intensity training associated with your sport. In order to deal with this intensity, we need to provide your body with adequate energy and protein consumption.

Please Share, Like, and Comment to support us
Traditionally, when a woman becomes pregnant, it seems like their freedom for the nine months of pregnancy has disappeared. However, this old school thought should be thrown out the window. No more locking yourself up in the house and trying to avoid all forms of labour.


Since 2002 the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has been in support of regular exercise during and after pregnancy for both healthy and sedentary women. It is time for the public to throw out their out beliefs and see what the research is telling them.  The changes that women experiences during her pregnancy should not be viewed as a limitation. Instead we should all be encouraging them to participate in exercise and practice healthy habits.

Pregnancy is a beautiful time in a woman’s life. But, pregnancy does not come without its issues. One of the  most common problems that women experience is lower back pain.


In order to deal with this issue very few exercise recommendations have been offer to those who suffer from it.


On top of this every mother is worried about maintaining their figure as close as possible during the pregnancy and returning to their sexy body as quickly as possible.


All of these issues can simply be resolved by training the core.  Currently there is very little information available to personal trainers and pregnant mothers on how to safely and appropriately train the core.

Please Share, Like, and Comment to support us
If you only had enough time to do a few exercises, these would be the go to exercises.
There are no better exercises then these for building muscle, strength, and losing weight!
As you know, I am a massive advocate for exercises that involve free weights and moving your body through space.

Please Share, Like, and Comment to support us 
Whey protein is probably the biggest supplement purchased.  Most people go to the supplement store and purchase whey because that’s what everyone does. But, is it the right choice and are you using it properly? Could you be using your protein more effectively and see significant improvements?

Written By Vincent St. Pierre
Hypermobility screen


Almost everyone today is extremely inflexible. With all the desk jobs today, it can sure cause your muscles to shorten and tighten. Research has shown that from holding a position for 20 minutes can cause your muscles to begin shortening and we sit around at work for 8 hours.

Before assessing ones shortened muscles and lack of flexibility, we first need to check areas of too much flexibility and double joint. You may be thinking, how can you be too flexible? How can being overly flexible be a problem?

Written By Vincent St. Pierre

• Everyone has asked the question when starting creatine: how should I take it? 
• I have heard about loading, should I, and how much?
• Is there a difference for athletes or general public?

We will attempt to answer all these questions through the course of this article.

I have gone through all these questions myself and have received a million and a half answers: “You should take this much for loading”.....“no, this much”...”no, loading isn’t important it’s just marketing”.... etc.
I found this so frustrating trying to find the true answer, yet no one could supply me with one. They would just tell me what they did. However, I don’t care what they did, I care about what the most effective way of using creatine is; in order to get the full benefits and my money’s worth.

The most common and effective way of increasing your creatine stores is through loading. So, what is the best way to load? How much should you take? And for how long should you load?

Now as previously mentioned the best form of creatine to take is creatine monohydrate; for why please refer to this article. don’t fall for the sales pitch that you don’t need to load with this form of creatine or this new mix..... It’s not true!!!

I’m sure many of you have walked into your local supplement store or online site looking to purchase some creatine. You walk over to the section and see a vast quantity of different forms of creatine. In total and utter confusion, you turn to an employee and ask what creatine you should be taking. Being on commission or having no knowledge at all, they spew out information based on what the supplement companies claim and try to influence you to buy the most expensive one.

This article is meant to help you understand what research has to say on this topic. To help you avoid being scammed by your local supplement stores and the supplement companies propaganda.

Throughout the academic world, there has only been one consistently reported side effect associated with ingestion of creatine which is weight gain.

Brain Health

Written By Martin Ng

According to Yahoo News, one recent article suggested that sugar can make you dumb; however, is this really the case?  In the study, rats were fed with omega-3 fatty acid diet (n-3 diet) with and without fructose; another group that was n-3 deficient was fed with and without fructose as well.  It was found that high levels of fructose were associated with cognitive dysfunction.

Written by Martin Ng

Introduction
Running barefoot has recently become increasingly popular.  In the United States, there is a Barefoot Runners Society consisting of 2000 international members and growing.  Some believe that barefoot running decreases injuries compared to shod (wearing shoes) running, but is this really the case?

All personal trainers and strength coaches should put their clients through the FMS prior to training in my opinion. If you have a personal trainer or strength coach who does not know what the FMS Test is, run away. Your coach clearly does no additional reading and is far behind the times, since this has been around for a significant amount of time and is considered the gold standard.

Written By Vincent St. Pierre

Intro
When you think weight training, power lifting, or hardcore meat heads, someone squatting with hundreds of pounds on their back probably comes to mind.

Squats in there variety of styles (back, front, dumbbell, goblet, jump, split) are commonly used in every gym as a viable form of training. I myself view this as one of the big 6 exercises (great idea for a future post). The squat is used from your athletic to your everyday meat head, to the general public and the elderly to build strength, balance, functionality, hypertrophy, and bone density. However, in the training community there is a great deal of debate on how low you should go.

Athletes, especially high level athletes often have played their sport as the sole form of exercise. They train, train, and train. However, they forget to hit the gym; the weight room. This ends up creating athletes who are very skilled at their sport, but don't have any foundation.

Written By Vincent St. Pierre

After learning about how to do a proper chin-up /pull-up in the last post, I am sure many of you are at the point where I can’t do any or only 1. This post is meant to teach how to progress to a proper chin-up.

As I have stated many times, any form of training that involves your body moving through space is a superior form of training. Since this is the case, I am going to work backwards through the progression. Basically, you should only go down the progression if you truly can’t maintain proper form at least three chin-ups using the suggested alternative.

Table of Contents

• Intro 
• Research
• Practical application (If you are not interested in understanding why you can skip to this section)
• References

The greatest training exercises involve moving the body through space. The exercise that may be the single greatest exercise for measuring upper body strength is the pull up.

Beyond this, it is an incredible exercise for developing your muscles and creating wings that you could fly with. It is such an incredible exercise that it is commonly known as the upper body squat. The US military service academies have traditionally used the pull-up to assess the degree of physical fitness. Further, in terms of rehabilitation and the avoidance of injuries, it is so important to balance in push and pull exercises.

Today, people tend to be mirror trainers and forget completely about the back side of the body and become extremely disproportionate in strength. When ones upper body push and pull strength is disproportionate it has been found to increase the likelihood of shoulder complex trauma such as rotator cuff injury or strain.

When I am training athletes and the general public, I ask them if they know how to do a chin-up, they laugh and always say “yes!” However, on only one occasion have I ever worked with an athlete who knew how to truly perform a proper chin-up.

How this all comes together will be shown in a video at the end of the post 

Two articles will be released tomorrow at 8 PM pacific

1. Tips on how to improve your chin ups/ pull ups 
2. How nutrition can play a drastic role in avoiding and curing acne (guest writer) 

This is just a bit of an intro to a future article on how to deal with anemia from a nutritional standpoint.

Over 2 billion people worldwide suffer from anemia with most people having not been diagnosed. This health problem is typically found in women. It is so common and significant in women that on average women have 10% lower blood volume then males; this is purely due to anemia. This issue is so significant and affects the daily lives of so many (symptoms):

• Fatigue
• Organs not functioning properly
• weakness
• twitching, flinching
• restless legs syndrome
• pale skin
• tongue problems 
• reduced amounts of saliva
• brittle nails 
• Pica desire to eat non food items
• Headaches, dizziness, drowsiness, shortness of breath, and loss of consciousness
• Rapid heartbeat and chest pain

After looking at the health risks of using stimulants let us consider how to use them appropriately. I believe it always preferable to understand the risks in order to avoid going overboard when you hear the possible benefits. In case you missed the last post here is the link 

Do not abuse?
As Kelly Baggett wisely said “Low grade stimulants like caffeine can give you an extra boost if used intermittently and judiciously.” When selecting the stimulant to use, there are a few considerations:

• Select one that does not make you feel jittery 
• Avoid ones that contain significant amounts of sugar
• Consider additional benefits associated with the stimulant
• Side effects of the stimulant