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More Frequent Exposures for Better Results

In my last post I talked about how training with a sibling can help push you further than many other conditions can. And one thing my brother started doing with his training lead to great increases in size and strength.When my brother and I trained together it was very competitive. So much so, that eventually my brother started doing part of his training at school during the day between classes. You see typically we would train together in the evening. But my brother would start doing part of the program at school when I wasn't around.And soon he started making great gains. Part of this was probably due to the fact that he didn't have his older brother trying to psych him out and beat him on every set. But a bigger part of the reason was that he was being exposed to more frequent training episodes.More recently I have started to notice this trend in other areas of training. And so it seemed appropriate to summarize the various ways we can enhance our training with more frequent exposures.#1 - More Training ExposuresIt may have John Broz who said something along the lines of 'Your family has been kidnapped. You have one month to increase your squat 100 lbs to get them back. Will you train once or twice a week? Or would you consider training everyday?'Even without knowing much more than that we know that we would train more than once per week. And as it turns out we may be able to train upto 5 days per week. When you consider that you could use a different stance, grip, tempo, intensity as well as change up many other variables we can start to see how more frequent training sessions might be beneficial.Another way of looking at this might be...

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Perform Better Long Beach 2013 Recap

So team Okanagan Peak Performance Inc has just returned from Long Beach, CA where we attended the Perform Better conference. This is an incredible event with many of the top experts in our industry presenting over 3 days in sunny California. Here are our take-aways from who we got the chance to see. Dr. Stu McGill - Mechanisms and Training Techniques Used for Elite Performance and Painful Backs: Cause, Corrective Exercises and Progressions to Performance Dr. McGill is one of the leading spinal bio-mechanists in the world and it's really cool that he's from Canada. Often times if you have the chance to see a presenter that is a leader in the field of research they are great at giving lectures where they present their findings. But put them in a fitness setting however and ask them to lead a hands-on where they incorporate their theory into actual demonstrations and they become lost. This is not the case with Dr. McGill. His lectures are excellent and his hands-on presentations match this quality as well. A few of the key take-aways from his presentations include: * lots of split stance lunges or squats may not be appropriate for everyone* when the core fires there is a double action which he described as 'setting the stone' and 'bringing the hammer'* the best athletes in the world are great not because they can activate a muscle faster than the rest but because they can turn it down faster than everyone else* with this idea of activating muscles McGill used the analogy of a dimmer rather than a regular light switch to indicate muscles being more or less activated rather than on or off Dr. Greg Rose - Developing Power for Rotary Athletes If you watch the Golf Channel you may be familiar with Dr....

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Don't Use Batman's Workout

Don't Use Batman's Workout

So have you seen the new Batman movie, The Dark Night Rises? If not you should check it out. From the special effects, to the story line and acting everything was very well done. But even though I'd recommend this one and say it was probably one of the best the series I wouldn't say it was perfect. There were three things that missed the mark on this one.  First of all it's hard to hear let alone understand the bad guy, Bane. And sorry ladies, if you had a thing for Tom Hardy who plays this character this movie might wreck it for you. What were the other two issues I had with this movie? Well one was how the other characters refer to Batman as 'The Batman'. It just sounded funny and made me think of all the football players from Ohio State who identify themselves as playing at 'The Ohio State'. It just sounds goofy, that's all. But my major gripe with this movie was how they dropped the ball with Batman's workout. You see after 'The Batman' fights Bane for the first time he is banished to well-type prison cell. This is supposedly a greater form of punishment because you can see the sky and your way out but only one person has every escaped. So while 'The Batman' is recovering from the older-brother style beating he got from Bane he starts to train to build up his strength in anticipation for a future battle with the bad guy. And you'd think with the popularity of obstacle-style races such as Tough Mudder they'd have him doing obstacles of some type. Or maybe with the new show 'American Ninja Warrior' you'd see a rip-off of some of the physical feats you see on this show. Heck, you could even...

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