Recently we were talking about longevity or sustainability in CF and clients in your gym. As Cf is currently i don’t think it is sustainable. Give me a shout out if you have modified your training from an all out CF model to something either more specific (sport focus) or more sustainable (lower intensity, or less frequent). In case you haven’t noticed, i have shifted to a more specific focus (weightlifting).
Sorry i got off the point for a second. back to our conversation. We were talking about what Matt is doing in his gym. He started talking about giving people abilities vs workouts. He said something to the effect that he wants people to walk out the door everytime they come in thinking “Damn i never knew i could do that.” In this way he is able to keep things fresh and exciting while developing abilities. He doesn’t just dose them up with a workout and send them home to lick their wounds, he teaches them something new…Every Day! Do you do this?

As a side note, and i totally agree with this, if his people want a body comp shift he directs them to nutrition and lifestyle advice instead of giving them a workout. If this is your goal, check in with the Whole 9 Crew.

Stay tuned for some cool down/stretching stuff.

Dallas and Melissa will be in the D/FW area on October 15 and 16th running two workshops. The first one is for everyone ( i already forced 3 people to sign up) and the second is for coaches and trainers to learn about implementing Nutrition with their clients and athletes. You can see the outline here.

As an additional treat to everyone attending, I will be presenting as well. My outline is also on their registration page so go there and check it out. My portion will be short (about 2 hours) and very interactive. As usual my outline is not set in stone and i like to have tons of group interaction and questions so please come prepared to contribute to a discussion.

Spend the first half of the day with Whole9, learning how to build good nutrition practices with your clients, gym community, friends and family members. Then, I will speak on goal setting, programming, scaling techniques and sustainability applicable to both a group and one-on-one setting, all designed to make you a better trainer, programmer and leader in your gym.

A full outline of Trainer’s Workshop materials (both from Whole9 and mine) is available on the registration page. Space is limited to only 20 people (and our Foundations workshop remains a pre-requisite), so register early and secure your seat for this special event.

Questions or Comments?? Post them here!

Not to worry, you all have the opportunity to experience Dallas and Melissa. In case you didn’t know they travel the country, much like i used to, spreading the good word one day at a time. Here is a link to their workshops. If you are local (D/FW) don’t fuck this up. They are coming to CF Denton County October 15-16. There is even talk of doing a joint event on sunday so keep your ear to the ground for that one. Sign up for the nutrition workshop here and the trainer workshop here.

See ya there!!

Since i have not had much to say i wanted to let you into my training recently.  Hope you enjoy it.  THis is the good, bad and ugly.

Additionally i will be teaching a weightlifting clinic at Crossfit Denton County Aug 21st. So if you are in the area please come check it out! Sign up here.

Lastly, we have finally started TexasWeightlifting.com. For now this will be a resource where you can find upcoming meets as well as USAW clubs in your area. Eventually it will be a more comprehensive resource for olympic weightlifters all over Texas.

As a weightlifter my goal is to lift as much weight as possible over my head in two different styles of lifts but only for a single effort. So by deductive reasoning you can imagine that doing high volume light weights would be a little counter productive. This does not let me off the hook from staying in decent shape. The question now is what is appropriate in terms of conditioning?

Looking a little deeper, but not too deep, you will understand the essentials of weightlifting… Explosiveness! With this in mind we can develop appropriate conditioning. I’m not going to get too crazy with this since i like simple things.
Basically, i will start this with the most basic of prescriptions…Sprinting. This can be anywhere from 3 seconds to 20 seconds but anything past that and i personally have to slow down or i might die…

Once you have decided the mode of exercise, and let me caution you to keep it freaking simple!, you can put together a simple plan. For me, i like to vary things a bit so i will be doing sets of 8-10 sprints with full recovery and varying the distance and in effect the time spent working. For a quick example i may do 10x 40m sprints with full recovery.

I am not sure how to make this any simpler. You can take this same approach to just about any sport specific training. Good luck and if you have any questions about this, just post them here.

In my post program assessment we asked what people enjoyed the most about having a written program. The number 1 response was having a goal oriented program followed by a close second of not having to think about your program. Before the program started we had everyone state a couple specific goals (ex: snatch 80kg and take 45 sec off my mile time) and then tested them at the beginning and the end of the program. Luckily we had a very motivated group which had very similar goals. This made our job much easier but also proved that people know what they want they just need a little help deciding how to work on it.
With this program we focused on the lifts, getting stronger and complimenting that with appropriate conditioning.

Looking forward we are going to get another group kicked off in the next couple weeks so if you are interested send me an email to coaching@DutchLowy.com Tell me what your goals are and we will either fit you into a group or start a new program just for people with your specific goals.

One thing we fell short on was getting the whole group involved in competition style activities. I thought the guys would be fired up to see each others results daily and start talking some friendly shit. In response to this, the new programs will have built in weekly competitions where you will either be working with or against others in the program. It should be loads of fun!!!

I want to start this piece with a reflection back on when i first became an official personal trainer. I was ACE certified and quite honestly felt lucky for even passing the test. I got my first job during a respite from college to test the waters in the training field. The one thing i knew when i went back to school a year later was that i didn’t want anything to do with that life. Fate does strange things i guess especially when i look at where i am now. The point of that story is that even when i first started training i felt inadequate about my knowledge. I was truly passionate about training and read everything i could get my hands on but more importantly i did my best to shadow the people that i perceived to be more advanced than me.
I still don’t learn very well from books. I am much more of a hands on learner.

Here comes the Rant…
I travel quite a bit and get to talk to many people about many different things. It always amazes me how much people read. I struggle to read and comprehend more than a couple short articles a day. As i mentioned above i prefer to go find people that know more than i do and just sit at their feet and listen. My issue here is that many of the people i speak to are educated in certain topics but its evident that they haven’t learned anything about the subject.
The simplest example of this is the squat discussion. Low or High bar? Quite frankly it doesn’t matter so long as you have a reason for doing what you do. You will find this reason by experimentation and observation. So, instead of sitting there and reading more about it, get up and test it on yourself, your buddies and your clients. They will give you the best indication of which one you should use.
Better yet, find someone that knows more than you and sit at their feet and listen. You can’t learn if your mouth is open right??

I will be posting an update on the status of my online programs as well as new groups and opportunities coming up for you to get involved.

Lastly, if you want to see an inadequate amount of pictures of my trip to Africa just check me out on Facebook. If you aren’t on facebook or friends with me, well, you know what to do. If my dad can get on the Book then anyone can figure it out. Let me know if you have trouble or questions about what is actually going on.

Dutch