'Oh, How Sturdy Is Thy Lower Body?'

Alright guys! It’s time!

Time to get the ball rollin’!

I wanted to produce more content for you guys so in order to do that I reduced the amount of prep and research time to send this newsletter out more frequently for you!

Today, you’ll learn in 5 minutes or less . . .

1. How perform a sumo squat

2. How to train for power (short snippets)

3. BONUS: Putting it into a plan!

How to Perform the Sumo Squat

Okay, so the sumo squat is performed differently than your tradditional squat, and for this reason the muscles you activate during the exercise, are slightly different, like when you’re on the leg press and the angle of your feet or distance between your legs, will activate different muscles more so than the traditional leg press.

Exercise cues:

1. Load the plates and place the barbell on your back, just above your shoulders

2. Once bar unhooked from the rack, begin to position your feet.

3. Move your feet to a shoulder-width position and point your toes outward at a 45 degree-angle.

4. Begin to squat until your legs are paralel to the floor.

5. Once paralel to the floor, push through your feet to drive the bar back up, bracing your core (including your lower back).

6. Repeat the movent as many times in one set, that aligns with your goals (e.g. endurance: 15-20 reps, light bar).

How to Train for Power!

There are many combinations of exercises you can do to train your muscle fibres to achieve a greater power output. Right now, I’m going to share with you a combination of what I think are some of the better exercises to use together to train for power . . .

The first one I want to mention is barbell thrusters. Standing barbell thrusters are a great way to train power, because of the sheer, dynamic explosiveness of the movement.

To train this effectively I would strongly recommend you train in the 3-6 rep range for power, and trian 3 sets for a beginner or average level gym-goer. Train 3-6 sets for the more experienced person.

To perform this movement efficiently you need to position the barbell on your shoulders with a barbell clean.

1. Stand with your toes directly under the bar, as close as possible.

2. Use an over-hand grip to grasp the bar.

3. Drive your hips backward whilst keeping a neutral spine.

4. Have your thighs parallel to the floor and keep your shoulders back.

5. Roll your hands forward around the bar, an this will bring the barbell closer to you.

6. Push with your feet, lifting the barbell off the ground (similar to a deadlift).

7. As you stand up and straighten your body, you will find that you lean back ever so slightly (maybe on a 20-degree angle), also lifting your heels off the floor, plantar flexing your toes into the ground.

8. As you lift, bring the barbell to your shoulders.

9. When you bring the barbell to your shoulders, land in either a half-squat or a squat position to absorb the impact of catching th bar in your shoulders.

10. Once you’re in a squat position with the barbell comfortably on your shoulders, stand-up. That’s the barbell clean.

11. You ar now in a position to perfom the above barbell thrusters safley and effectively.

Box Jumps, or Weighted Box Jumps (with a weights vest).

Box jumps are a great plyotmetric, explosive exercise to use to help develop power, explosiveness and speed, depending on the type of event, competition, or exercise component, you are training for. Like anything, this type of movement takes practice, and one thing that I think is important to address is people’s fear of jumping onto a box to begin with. I have worked with clients who are scared of falling off, and who doubt their balancing ability once they’ve landed; so if you are scared of performing the box squat then bring a friend who will encourage you and support you to work through this barrier. Ideally, find a coach or a member of staff in the gym to help you overcome this mental barrier. If it is the ability to balance and stabilise yourself once you’ve landed, then practice developing your core strength and overall balance (I will go into this topic in another newsletter segment, but for now, let’s stick to the topic at hand).

Box jumps, in themselves, help develop your fast-twitch muscle fibres which means that you train for speed and explosiveness.

The final exercise I want to address on this list is the Pistol Squat.

The pistol squat is a fantastic uni-lateral (meaning, single-limb) exercise that helps develop uni-lateral power, you to identify if and what is your weaker side, power, and helps develop balance and stability. There are many progressions to this exercise and if you want to perform this exercise, then there are things you can do to support your progression through it.

1. Use a coach, or chair arm for support, as you are lowering your body down

2. Use a chair to perform the exercise. This means that you are only lowering your body down about half-way to sit down.

   

3. Use a weight. Now, this might seem like a bad idea on the surface, especially if you are just starting to practice this exercise, but it isn’t, and here’s why: 'The weight actually helps you balance the body when you hold it out infront you, and almost acts like ‘a counter-weight’. You do not have to have a heavy weight to achieve this.

This exercise can be performed in the 3-6 rep range for each leg, and if you are just starting out, I strongly recommend 2-3 minutes rest in between each set. This will help muscle recovery. What these types of exercises will also do, especially when done barefoot, is help you develop proprioception, which is your ability to be more aware of where your body is in space for each movement, which in turn, helps improve your balance.

Furthermore, training any exercise unilaterally will do another thing for your physique - Train Your Core! If you take a look at your body or even if you just stand up and do a couple of torso rotations, you will feel your obliques working. Your obliques are designed diagonally, which allows for torque such as tennis or golf swings, shooting in hockey, or even something like picking up your shopping with one hand. So any unilateral movement, such as pistol squats, one-handed shoulder press, or a single-arm bent-over row, will work your obliques, due to the nature of how we move.

Now, before I move onto the final segment of today’s neswletter I want to mention two important figures in the fitness world; one, is the five-time world’s fittest man, and the other, is arguably the world’s greatest (and potentially the most durable) ocealandic andventurer. Ross edgely swears by resistance bands for the development of muscular power, and Matt Fraser sometimes mixes power movements into his endurance sessions, is just a living example of how the human body’s capacity is so much greater than we think. Both of these men have challenged the narrative of fitness, and I thought it important to note the contrast between them:

Matt Fraser is the five-time world’s fittest man, who won the ‘Cross Fit Games’ five years in a row from 2016-2020.

Ross Edgely is the first man to swim around Great Britain. He did this in about 176 days and crossed 1780 miles plus.

One has proven time and time again, that the body can adapt to training in cross-modalities’, and the other, has stated that the body is it risk of the ‘interference effect’, and while he does use science to back this up, how do you exaplain the nature of ‘Cross Fit’?

The above also reminds me that ‘power’ can be used in different ways and be trained using different methods depending on the sport, event, or activity you are doing. Take ‘Power Lifting’ for example. Power Lifting is based around big, heavy, compount movements, as is ‘Strong man’. But ‘power’ in a sport such as ‘Sprinting’ is different, because you are training your fast-twitch’ muscle fibres in a different way. For example, broad jumps and banded lateral squats, with only some enphasis on heavy, compound lifts. This is when training specificity comes into play.

Now that we’ve addressed some of the benefits of traing power and given examples of these exercises and how to perform them correctly, it’s time to put this into principle to help you develop your own training plan . . .

Principles . .

1. ALWAYS warm up specifically to the type of training and movements that you will be performing in your main session.

2. Include activation exercises, such as banded internal and external reotations, dynamic stretches, and foam-rolling.

3. Make sure if you are performing any cardio-based exercises, whether it be long durations, or short bursts, that you include some form of cardio in your warm-up (e.g. rowing machine for workouts including shoulders and back).

4. Always PROGRESS through the exercises, especially if you are a beginner (e.g. I, Bradley, am a beginner in certain exercise, or exercise combo’s, even though I am experienced in other areas). I hope this makes sense? Because the truth is it doesn’t matter how experienced you are, there’s always more to learn, so you should open yourself to different methods, approaches and exercises and become adaptable.

5. Get your RECOVERY down! Make sure you plan for your recovery, including: hours and quality of sleep, amount of hydration needed for maintenance and exericse, nutritional quality of food, calories needed to recover and regain energy, and the ‘type’ of calories needed for full nutrient density and recovery without denting your health.

Note-Worthy Athletes that have achieved awesome physical feats . . .

Tia-Clair Toomy - CrossFit Champion, and Coach

Eddie Hall - World’s Strongest Man (2017), and Author

Resources

‘DuckDuckGo Picture search: ‘Pistol Squats’ and ‘Pistol Squats with a chair’. Cited: pistol squat with a chair at DuckDuckGo. Accessed: 30/08/2023.

Edgely R, (2021). ‘BLUEPRINT: Build A Bulletproof Body For Extreme Adventure In 365 Days’.

Fraser M, (2022). ‘Hardwork Pays Off, 5x Fittest Man On Earth, HWPO: Train, Eat, Sleep, Repeat’.