Strength Training MEGATHREAD

The exercises & techniques to keep your body healthy for footbag.
User avatar
Colin
Flower Child
Posts: 1698
Joined: 05 Jul 2002 13:28
Location: Montreal, QC, Canada
Contact:

Strength Training MEGATHREAD

Post by Colin » 17 Jan 2008 14:23

About This Thread

THE MOTIVATION AND TARGET AUDIENCE

Many freestylers are in pain, but are nice people, so deserve to be in less pain. I believe this information can help that cause.

Many other freestylers aren't in pain, but could still benefit from an effective strength training program. Athletes at the top of every sport - gymnastics, sprinting, chess, soccer, hockey, basketball - all strength train. This isn't generally true in footbag, but it will be by the hypothetical time that footbag is an ultra-popular Olympic sport. This thread contains all the information that a freestyler needs to cross train for his or her game.

In the interest of saving time, I'm going to leave out what I know about how all this relates to fat loss and weight management, as the majority of footbag players are thin as rakes already. If there's apparent demand, I might get around to it later.

THE PERSONAL ANECDOTE

I had generalized joint health issues for several years, with problem areas being my hands (from piano/computer), first my right, then both of my knees (footbag), and my back (EVERYTHING). I saw doctors. Several of them. X-rays and bone scans and bloodwork failed to diagnose me. Physical and acupuncture therapists provided no relief. I'd basically given up on the idea of living without chronic pain, let alone playing footbag regularly.

In September of '07 I started to lift weights according to what I felt was good information I had taken in from a lifting forum and a couple of fantastic books. Well, within a couple of weeks my knees and back felt noticeably better. By the time a month passed, neither gave me any significant grief. Two months in I got on a piano kick. I played and played and played, way past my old thresholds. No Pain. I was floored.

My first action of every day used to be to adjust myself out of the pain I woke up in. Straighten those legs, roll to the other side, tuck your wrists in the other direction. Now when I come to I can just lay there rested and comfortable. It's a different world to wake up to. I understand now how a healthy young man is supposed to feel - and it feels good.

MY QUALIFICATIONS

None. I'm an expert in physical fitness the same way I'm an expert in footbag. But let me tell you - there's every bit as much misunderstanding about how to train your body as there is about how to have fun with a bean bag. Any one of us can tell the difference between a freestyler and a circle kicker from 200 feet. Well, I see two separate classes of gym patrons just as clearly. The sad thing is that the circle kickers are the vast majority in the gym as well.

FAQBusting

My friend, Johnny Buff, does the exact opposite of everything you recommend in this thread and is fitter than God.

OK, so I mentioned that these are commonly misunderstood topics. This is one reason why. Lets put this out there - in beginner weight training, everything works, some things just work better. With a little luck in the genetic lottery and dedication to lifting regularly, Johnny Buff will indeed get significant beneficial results from even the crappiest of weight training programs. That doesn't mean that he's doing as good as he could be. Progress is progress, but gym time is a precious commodity, and we should strive to make the very most of the time that we can spend there. Anything less is wasteful.

I don't wanna look like Ales!

It's insane to worry about this. A build like that does not happen by accident, and cannot possibly 'sneak up' on you. It takes years of focused effort and expert attention to approach that kind of size. Lets make this point here too - lifting for size and physique is a different task than lifting for strength and power. That's not to say that Ales isn't strong as fuck, it's just that a powerlifter at the same bodyweight would be even stronger, but with a much less impressive physique.

I'm a girl!

To my knowledge, everything in this thread applies equally to you. The exception being my answer to the previous question of this section, which applies doubly to you. Women very commonly balk at the type of program I'm advocating here out of fear of looking like one of those crazy figure models or (shudder) female bodybuilders.

This absolutely, positively cannot happen to even a slight degree by accident. It's a small percentage of women who can pull that stuff off with years of dedicated work AND with regimented steroid use.

A wonderful site dedicated to women's lifting: http://www.stumptuous.com/cms/.

This women has some pretty disgusting legs, huh?

This week's Men's Health magazine said ...

Oh God no. These magazines are advertisements from cover to cover. Half of them are honest ads, trying to sell you cars or clothes or condoms or grapes or something. The other half, the articles, are trying to sell you next week's issue.

Think for a second. People have been running the 100 in ten seconds for fifty years now. Effective training doesn't get reinvented every month. These magazines sell idiotic hope and laughable schemes bought into by the same type of mentality that pours his welfare check into a slot machine. Too lazy to do any actual work, and too proud and stupid to do the research that will force a change in strategy.

These articles are as useful as Cosmo's monthly bit on exactly how and when to put a finger up your man's ass.
Last edited by Colin on 19 Jan 2008 21:25, edited 18 times in total.
Colin Kennedy
ckennedy@footbag.org

User avatar
Colin
Flower Child
Posts: 1698
Joined: 05 Jul 2002 13:28
Location: Montreal, QC, Canada
Contact:

Post by Colin » 17 Jan 2008 14:23

About "Strength"

I'm going to steal some passages from a very good book here. This first quote is most relevant to the chronic pain crowd.
Starting Strength wrote:As the nature of our culture has changed, our relationship with physical activity has changed along with it. We previously were strong as a function of our continued existence in a simple physical world. We were adapted to this existence well, since we had no other choice. Those whose strength was adequate to the task of staying alive continued doing so. This shaped out basic physiology, and that of all our vertebrate associates on the bushy little tree of life. It remains with us today. The relatively recent innovation known as the Division of Labor is not so remote that our genetic composition has had time to adapt again. Since most of us now have been freed from the necessity of personally obtaining our subsistence, physical activity is regarded as optional. Indeed it is, form the standpoint of immediate necessity, but the reality of millions of years of adaptation to a ruggedly physical existence will not just go away because desks were invented.

Like it or not, we remain the possessors of potentially strong muscle, bone, sinew, and nerve, and these hard-won commodities demand our attention. They were too long in the making to just be ignored, and we do so at our peril. They are the very components of our existence, the quality of which now depends on our conscious, directed effort at giving them the stimulus they need to stay in the condition that is normal to them. Exercise is that stimulus.

Over and above any consideration of performance for sports, exercise is the stimulus that returns out bodies to the conditions for which they were designed. Humans are not physically normal in the absence of hard physical effort. Exercise is not a thing we do to fix a problem - it is a thing we must do anyway, a thing without which there will always be problems. Exercise is the thing we must do to replicate the conditions under which our physiology was - and still is - adapted, the conditions under which we are physically normal. In other words, exercise is substitute cave-man activity, the thing we need to make our bodies, and in fact our minds, normal in the 21st century. And merely normal, for most worthwhile humans, is not good enough.
I only really grasped the truth in this after I started lifting regularly. The reason that half a dozen doctors and specialists failed to diagnose me through the years is that there never was any particular ailment. My muscles and joints ached because they were flat out underdeveloped. It is my strong suspicion that most people suffering from undiagnosed pain are hurting from atrophied muscles.

This could be especially true inside footbag, given it's propensity for turning previously sedentary teens into crazy shred maniacs overnight.

DEFINITIONS OF TWO IMPORTANT WORDS

Lots of words get misused, and this causes confusion. To make sure we're all on the same page:

Strength: The amount of force you can produce. How much you can bench, how much you can squat, how much you can deadlift, one rep maxes. 100 push-ups is an example of something which is not a demonstration of strength, but is often understood as one. Strength is slow. There's no strength in footbag.

Power: Scientifically speaking, work divided by time, where work is defined as force across distance. For our purposes, power is the ability to generate force quickly. Your vertical jump is a power movement. A boxer's hook is a power movement. 100 push-ups is, again, not a power movement. Power is fast. Footbag is all about power.

ON THE BENEFITS OF STRENGTH FOR FOOTBAG

It might seem a little odd that I just said that there's no strength in footbag in my own strength training for footbag thread. Well, sure.

Thing is, power is made from strength. Strength comes first both in terms physiological terms of muscle development, but just as importantly, it's important to be well grounded in the big strength lifts before learning the power lifts. As mentioned, power is fast, and there's inherent danger in moving heavy things quickly.

The other thing is that strength is a huge determining factor when it comes to injury prevention. Sad fact is, we all occasionally land or pull in ways that stress our joints unpleasantly. All else being equal, a stronger joint will resist injury under greater strain than a weaker one. Resilience is half the motivation for this whole thing, performance being the other.

ON STRESS AND ADAPTATION (HOW WE GET STRONG)
Last edited by Colin on 19 Jan 2008 14:31, edited 4 times in total.
Colin Kennedy
ckennedy@footbag.org

User avatar
Colin
Flower Child
Posts: 1698
Joined: 05 Jul 2002 13:28
Location: Montreal, QC, Canada
Contact:

Post by Colin » 17 Jan 2008 14:24

ON COMPOUND vs ISOLATION LEFTS

Compound Lift: A movement involving two or more joints. Examples are the squat, where the ankles, knees, and hips move, or the pull-up, where the shoulders and elbows move.

Isolation Lift: A movement involving a single joint. Examples are curls, which isolate the elbow, or leg extensions, which isolate the knee. Note that a barbell curl is still considered an isolation movement, despite using two elbows.


Any strength training program, especially any program for a beginner, should be based around compound lifts. Why?

By involving more joints, compound movements automatically involve more neural units per exercise (a neural unit is a neuron and its associated muscle fibers), and thus encourage greater overall gains in musculature. The use of multiple joints also puts much greater stress on the central nervous system - it is much harder to exert several muscles than it is to exert a single muscle. This CNS overload is an important part of strength training, and while the very difficult training provided by the biggest lifts carries over to the smaller lifts the opposite is not true.

Compound lifts also produce more 'practical' strength than isolation lifts, as nearly every movement in day to day life and especially in sport is a compound movement. An illustrative example of this concept is the leg-extension exercise mentioned above. In nature, it is near impossible for the quadriceps to activate in any serious capacity without being actively opposed by the hamstrings. So why would we train our quads isolated from the hamstrings? Because someone built a machine that allows it?

This leads naturally enough to the next topic.

ON FREE vs MACHINE WEIGHTS

Lifting free weights is, in general, far superior to machine based lifting. Some of the reasons are similar to the above.

In life and in sport, everything we move is a free weight. Couch? Free weight. Baseball bat? Free weight. Our own bodies (we move these in footbag)? Big ol' tangly free weights. The heaviest machine-like lift that you'll commonly encounter in real life is opening a door. If that's what you're training for, then by all means, stick to levered machines. There's nothing wrong with that, certainly. Some doors are a lot heavier than they need to be.

To flesh this out, lets consider some mechanical differences between these categories, considering a barbell vs a machine bench press. People arguing for the machine press will say that it's a better exercise because they can lift more on the machine than they can with the barbell. Well, certainly they can. But remember that we're in the business of producing practical strength here and that your numbers are a system of measurement to gauge this progress. Numbers are not the goal in and of themselves.

Why is it that you're able to push so much more weight on a machine anyway? A barbell bench press primarily involves the pecs, anterior deltoids, and triceps pushing straight up. A fine compound exercise, yes. But that's not the end of it by a long shot. Aside from the up and down motion, muscles too numerous to list are working isometrically to keep that bar from moving to your left or right, or moving up and down relative to your body (head to toe). Manipulating heavy, free, weight is a balancing act. A heavy, hard, balancing act. This is the factor eliminated from machine lifts that makes them so much easier, and also so much less effective in producing practical strength, not to mention potentially serious problems caused by muscle imbalances when stabilizers are neglected.

The other problem with machine lifts is that they determine the path of the weight, rather than the personal mechanics of the lifter determining the path of the weight. 'Correct form' is not universal - differences in anthropometry (a fancy word for personal body dimensions) result in differences in performing a lift. Machines cannot account for this.
Last edited by Colin on 19 Jan 2008 21:28, edited 6 times in total.
Colin Kennedy
ckennedy@footbag.org

User avatar
Colin
Flower Child
Posts: 1698
Joined: 05 Jul 2002 13:28
Location: Montreal, QC, Canada
Contact:

Post by Colin » 17 Jan 2008 14:25

oldensplaytor
Colin Kennedy
ckennedy@footbag.org

User avatar
Colin
Flower Child
Posts: 1698
Joined: 05 Jul 2002 13:28
Location: Montreal, QC, Canada
Contact:

Post by Colin » 17 Jan 2008 14:26

shibblequar

Five will be way more than enough, but better safe than sorry, y'know. Hopefully this whole thing will be put together over the next day or so.

e: did I say day? I meant three years.
e2: I now figure I'm on pace to finish inside a week.
Last edited by Colin on 19 Jan 2008 19:51, edited 1 time in total.
Colin Kennedy
ckennedy@footbag.org

User avatar
Pengu
think pink
Posts: 982
Joined: 05 Oct 2005 12:57
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Contact:

Post by Pengu » 17 Jan 2008 16:30

I'm glad you're writing this Colin.

I also believe very strongly in strength training and the vast array of benefits it provides. My major is actually health and kinesiology so I've always known about the benefits, but was always too lazy to do anything. I gave myself excuses like school, life, etc. making me too busy, but in the end, I just had to bite down and MAKE time for it.

I have been immensely happy with the results I've had in the past 4 months of functional strength training and it has now been set as a routine. I too suffered from back and shoulder pain. My back pain is virtually gone and my right shoulder pain has decreased to the point where it's negligible.

I hope people make good use of the information Colin provides. I hope I can help some as well. After all, footbaggers are athletes. They should train and condition their bodies like athletes.
Pengpeng Du

hacksterbator
Washed-Up Child Star
Posts: 4141
Joined: 12 Jul 2003 18:33
Location: Winterpeg, Manisnowba
Contact:

Post by hacksterbator » 17 Jan 2008 21:50

Pengu wrote:After all, footbaggers are athletes. They should train and condition their bodies like athletes.
exactly!!!! I can't think of another serious sport where athletes do not do supplementary strength, power, muscular and cv endurance and lactic acid training. I had been thinking about this for a couple of months and just recently started working on a tentative 5 month program to condition my body for peak performance this summer.

i stopped checking this forum because it really frustrated me when i read it, but i saw the post you made in erik's blog. Good job on getting this started.i hope we can keep it full of accurate information.........

I'd like to point out that Peng is Certified Fitness Consultant (unless she has already updated to the Certified Personal Trainer classification. If you haven't you should. CSEP is getting rid of the CFC certification in march i believe) and has alot of information regarding general health and fitness, weight, cv, and lactic training, so if people have any training questions feel free to pick her her brains. I'm also a kin student, and am working towards attaining my Personal Trainer certification, so i'm also in the know as far as training goes, so feel free to question me as well.

again, good job on getting this started.
A.G.

User avatar
Wasabi
Amatera-Sewing
Posts: 4249
Joined: 26 Aug 2005 11:24
Location: Queens, NYC, NY, USA
Contact:

Post by Wasabi » 18 Jan 2008 17:35

I'm really excited (and relieved) to see a thread like this. I really need to start, and consistently follow, a strength training regimen so that I can improve the quality of my footbag sessions. It is one of my New Year's Resolutions, to get better at footbag, that I plan to follow wholeheartedly.

I'm really anticipating to read this thread in full. I have it saved in my browser.

Thanks for starting this, Colin. I'm in your debt (when you finish posting everything, that is. :roll: :)).
Waylon Lew - maker of Wasabi bags
NYFA represent.
"Footbag can be pretty frustrating when it's supposed to be fun. I was partly driven by this forum - practice, practice, practice... As that is true, I think someone can be too focused on progressing and training that they miss the fun aspect of it." - Bander87

User avatar
jon
Foosebag God
Posts: 2299
Joined: 10 May 2003 23:33
Location: Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Contact:

Post by jon » 18 Jan 2008 18:02

I have heard good things about "Starting Strength".
Jon's FootBlog
MSN: jon.haber@gmail.com
"It was clean enough to be thin..." - Andrew W.

fidottio
Shredalicious
Posts: 104
Joined: 17 Sep 2004 20:24

Post by fidottio » 21 Jan 2008 06:10

^^ His sources are unreliable :P
"Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow." -Hans

User avatar
Pengu
think pink
Posts: 982
Joined: 05 Oct 2005 12:57
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Contact:

Post by Pengu » 21 Jan 2008 12:07

Yes Andrew, I've updated.

::BUMP!::

MORE MORE MORE COLIN!! You're doing a great job btw.

I've now read all of "Starting Strength" and it is a great book to draw upon for reference. If you're too cheap to buy it, at least borrow it from the library!

I want to add to this, but I'll wait until you've said everything you have to say.
Pengpeng Du

LEGOMAN
Egyptian Footgod
Posts: 1171
Joined: 20 Dec 2006 21:00

Post by LEGOMAN » 22 Jan 2008 12:13

tl;dr
People that like LEGOMAN - 10
People that hate LEGOMAN - 1000
LEGOMAN´s posts - Priceless

User avatar
Colin
Flower Child
Posts: 1698
Joined: 05 Jul 2002 13:28
Location: Montreal, QC, Canada
Contact:

Post by Colin » 22 Jan 2008 14:57

lolled.

I've been harpooned by some real life commitments. I think I'll have a chance to get at this over the weekend. If this comes true, I hope to finish what I've got to say, after that it'll be easier for others to jump in with stuff they know more about, and to tear up my own mistakes.
Colin Kennedy
ckennedy@footbag.org

hacksterbator
Washed-Up Child Star
Posts: 4141
Joined: 12 Jul 2003 18:33
Location: Winterpeg, Manisnowba
Contact:

Post by hacksterbator » 24 Jan 2008 21:45

i have some things to add in defence of machines, but i have no time to write about them now. argh. maybe next week...
A.G.

User avatar
Drew
Fearless
Posts: 615
Joined: 25 Sep 2006 09:49
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Contact:

Post by Drew » 25 Jan 2008 18:04

This should be stickied!!

I agree with most of the information above, lifting weights has increased my overall progress in footbag and other sports.

You mention both machines and free weight lifting, I think that a balance between the two has been working out best for me. You can isolate muscles with machines that you want to particularly strengthen, then move on to free weights, working more muscles and, like you said, balance.

lookin forward to reading more...

User avatar
Pengu
think pink
Posts: 982
Joined: 05 Oct 2005 12:57
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Contact:

Post by Pengu » 29 Jan 2008 17:10

Oops, posted this by accident. Didn't mean to. :P

Someone sticky this.
Pengpeng Du

crazylegs32
Egyptian Footgod
Posts: 1341
Joined: 02 Sep 2005 19:45
Location: Palatine/Chicago Burbs

Post by crazylegs32 » 08 Feb 2008 22:49

Do research, make program, and stick with it= progress

User avatar
gMoney
Think Pink
Posts: 1210
Joined: 10 Sep 2006 14:17
Location: Chicagoland Suburbz
Contact:

Post by gMoney » 24 Feb 2008 21:10

Colin, are you done with this thread? Just wondering, because I'm still wondering stuff about like what kind of workouts would be beneficial for me and stuff, and I don't feel like what I'm doing right now is working, and I didn't know if you were still going to edit those two filler posts or not. So yeah. I'm reading through some stuff on the internet, and theres so much crap out there, I just want straightforward information and not many sites seem to have that. But you definately changed my views on lifting from what you've said so far, and I really feel the need to do more.
Grant Mooney
Footblog
Challenge

User avatar
Colin
Flower Child
Posts: 1698
Joined: 05 Jul 2002 13:28
Location: Montreal, QC, Canada
Contact:

Post by Colin » 28 Feb 2008 14:20

Argh. No, I'm not done. I'll sacrifice a small animal over the weekend for a new burst of energy.
Colin Kennedy
ckennedy@footbag.org

Guest_1
BSOS Beast
Posts: 471
Joined: 24 Aug 2006 21:15
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Contact:

Post by Guest_1 » 29 Feb 2008 10:17

I've been working out for the past month! Freestylers getting ripped!!!

I've been mostly endurance training, but now I'm going to start doing some strength training next week! YEAH!

Post Reply