I found out that I had a few free personal training sessions from when I joined my gym, so I figured I’d see if one of the trainers could help my improve my cleaning form. I got a lot of advice, mostly unrelated to olympic lifts, I think. Even worse, I’m thinking that a bunch of it is crap. So what do you guys think of the following (I’ll mix in what I think his good advice was as well, to be fair):
My Chuck Taylors are bad for deadlifts and squats. I need something with arch support, such as cross trainers.
ATG on squats is not a good idea - you should only go to parallel.
Keep a shoulder-wide stance on squats, even if you can’t go down very far. This is better than a wider stance (like I see olympic lifters jumping into for squat cleans).
Not everyone can do a squat clean, and I should be fine with power cleans.
A better way to gain strength in my bench press is to decrease the weight and do 5-count down, 3-count up lifts. 3 sets of 10-12 reps. I’ll go up faster and in better shape than ‘normal’ benches with 3 sets of 4-6 reps.
In general, the best way to gain strength and power is 3 sets of 10-15 reps (including squats, benches, deadlifts, and cleans).
A good way to fight buckling knees in a squat is to do leg presses with a medicine ball between your legs, just above the knees.
There’s nothing wrong with curls.
There is such an exercise as a snatch-clean (is there?).
When (power-)cleaning, the bar needn’t be supported on the front delts; holding it up or resting it on your chest is fine.
Those are the ones that stand out the most. So, is most of this kosher? My goal is to gain power and strength, not to look pretty when I’m oiled up.
Whoever this “personal trainer” was, they are freaking retarded. And I mean like 6 sheets to the wind retarded. Like, they masturbate to guns and ammo while sitting in a pile of their own feces retarded.
When someone is giving you advice, you always need to find out where that advice is coming from. If they learned everything they know from reading Muscle and Fiction, they don’t know what they are talking about. If they learned it through peer reviewed journals, a reputable school or college, or from people who were experts in the field, what the say will probably hold some weight, or at least be open to discussion.
Alright, Chuck Taylor’s are bar none the best shoe for squatting. You want to push your feet out against your shoe, and in a cross trainer or a running shoe, your ankle will roll. This doesn’t happen in Chucks. Furthermore, you want the best possible base of support. This happens with a flat surface only. Chuck’s are a flat surface. Now, I don’t wear Chuck’s for deadlifting, as a compete and every inch counts, so I pull in deadlift slippers which take me 2-3 inches lower to the ground.
What’s wrong with ass to grass on squats? I personally wouldn’t, but again, I compete, so parallel is all that’s needed of my squats.
A wider stance requires many more muscles to be used than a narrow stance, and again, you want the best base of support possible. Watch a linemen in football. How do they stand? Straight up and close footed, or bent over a little with a wide stance? Now think about why?
The best way to gain strenght in your bench press is to bench press. If you really want a bigger bench press, you need to train very specifically for it. Exercises for the triceps, the delts, and the lats, will up your bench press tremendously. Floor presses, JM presses, Board presses, all forms of Row, OH presses, etc. Also, don’t be afraid to train in triples, doubles, and singles. These are the strength rep ranges. 3 sets of 10-12, talk about a bodybuilding routine.
Ok, the curls thing. Now, I don’t do curls, cause I don’t give a shit about the peaks on my biceps. I have big arms cause I bench and deadlift a lot. If you want biceps, train the curl. What’s so hard about that? Keep your elbows in and don’t use your back so much so you keep the activation on your biceps. If you want functional arms, don’t train the biceps in the curl exercise. Train them in the deadlift, the row, and the pullup.
To be perfectly honest with you, information like this that this “personal trainer” gave you make me ashamed to be one. I have a B.S. in Exercise Science from Florida State and I am a Certified Trainer with a CPR and AED Certification. Who the hell was this “personal trainer?” This is why personal training is such a fucking frowned upon field. You the perpetuation of misinformation. This makes me so angry I can’t even put it into words.
Look, mathboxers, read all you can on this website, and find people stronger then you and with more experience who can give you advice. And never see this “trainer” again…
He is wrong on every count except that there is nothing wrong with curls. You could actually build a pretty solid workout by doing the exact opposite of everything he has told you. Ditch the trainer.
Wow! I’m with OneDay in that it’s trainers like this one who give those of us who actually have a clue what we’re talking about a bad name.
[quote]mathboxers wrote:
I found out that I had a few free personal training sessions from when I joined my gym, so I figured I’d see if one of the trainers could help my improve my cleaning form. I got a lot of advice, mostly unrelated to olympic lifts, I think.
Even worse, I’m thinking that a bunch of it is crap. So what do you guys think of the following (I’ll mix in what I think his good advice was as well, to be fair):
My Chuck Taylors are bad for deadlifts and squats. I need something with arch support, such as cross trainers.
[/quote]
Absolutely nothing wrong with Chuck Taylors (or even going barefoot, which I know you can’t do in most commercial gyms) for squats and deads.
Absolutely incorrect. There is nothing wrong with going ATG on squats, olympic lifters do it all the time and they don’t have an unusually high rate of knee injuries. Also, if you want to learn how to squat clean or squat snatch heavy weights, you’d better believe that you’re going to need to do ATG squats.
There are a lot of different variations of squats. Powerlifters like to use a really wide stance because it provides maximal stability while also shortening the distance that they need to move the bar. Olympic lifters simply need a stance that is wide enough to provide stability and yet close enough to allow them to get ATG.
There is nothing wrong with squatting with a narrower than shoulder width stance or wider than shoulder width stance. All variations have their purpose and all can be useful if intelligently applied.
Probably true. But aside from individuals with medical limiting factors, the majority who can’t simply have never learned how. If you train how to squat clean correctly and don’t have any existing or previous injuries or medical conditions that would stop you from being able to perform the movement, then you will be able to do it with practice.
Bullshit. Personally I don’t have any problem with slow or controlled negatives, but 3 count concentric lifts is ridiculously slow. Basically he’s going against what we know of in terms of fiber recruitment and fiber physiology for that matter. If you wanna get strong take a look at Westside’s approach.
They either lift a heavy (maximal) load, lift a submaximal load at maximal speed, or lift a submaximal load at submaximal speed for a maximal number of repetitions.
There is nothing wrong with doing 3 sets of 10-12 reps, but I honestly don’t think that it will be even close to the quickest way to improve your bench. Now, it will add some muscle to you, which will improve your strength. But working with maximal loads will probably be a much quicker route to strength increases.
Really? And where is he getting this information from? I’ve never heard of any reputable strength coach prescribing doing sets of 10-15 cleans. Power is the ability to generate force quickly. In order to do that you need two elements; strength and speed.
You’re not going to get really strong doing sets of 10-15 reps, and even though you may be able to develop some decent speed strength using a weight that you could lift for 10-15 reps, there are much more efficient ways (once again check out Westside’s approach).
Once again, wrong. Using a medicine ball between the legs is simply going to teach you to contract your hip adductors, while at the same time making it impossible for the knees to actually travel inwards.
While it’s true that “buckling” knees is usually a sign of weak hip adductors (so I’ve actually gotta give him some points for at least knowing that), the best way to prevent this is to simply learn how to squat correctly and then keep doing it.
Finally, he gets one right.
No, there’s not.
Honestly, I don’t even know how it would be possible to rest the bar on your chest when doing any kind of cleans. And you most certainly wouldn’t want to try to hold it up. It does need to be supported on the front delts.
[quote]
Those are the ones that stand out the most. So, is most of this kosher? My goal is to gain power and strength, not to look pretty when I’m oiled up. [/quote]
First, I personally think it’s great that you want to gain power and strength and I’m sure that others here will also respect those goals. But, to be honest coming onto a bodybuilding site and making a snide comment about not wanting “to look pretty when I’m oiled up” doesn’t make much sense.
Honestly, I highly doubt that most of the bodybuilders on this site are going to look down on your goals, why look down on theirs?
Yeah, I take back that ‘oiled up’ comment - it was a lot less sarcastic-sounding in my head. Of course there’s nothing wrong with bodybuilding - just a different set of goals from power or weightlifting, right?
Thanks for all the advice, guys - I’ll be turning down his next freebie and keep my eyes fixed on stuff like Dan John’s. My god, this guy was actually asking $80 a session, 4 session minimum at first.
Any advice on identifying good personal trainers? For example, since I want to improve my squat clean, is it wrong to ask a potential trainer to do a few reps? I thought about only looking for people who compete in amateur weightlifting, but I imagine that narrows down the selection a bit too drastically.
Those are the ones that stand out the most. So, is most of this kosher? My goal is to gain power and strength, not to look pretty when I’m oiled up.
First, I personally think it’s great that you want to gain power and strength and I’m sure that others here will also respect those goals. But, to be honest coming onto a bodybuilding site and making a snide comment about not wanting “to look pretty when I’m oiled up” doesn’t make much sense.
Honestly, I highly doubt that most of the bodybuilders on this site are going to look down on your goals, why look down on theirs?
Good training,
Sentoguy[/quote]
He was just poking fun at bodybuilding contests…no big deal. Honestly I got a laugh out of it so it served it’s purpose. becasue honestly that’s what bodybuilding is. No meaning to diss bodybuilding or anything because I’d love to look pretty when oiled up, I’m just too skinny. lol.
But yeah… trainer was talking out of his ass on everything but curling.
’
[quote]mathboxers wrote:
I found out that I had a few free personal training sessions from when I joined my gym, [/quote]
No offense, but from now on…this is your new indicator that the trainer is not worth your time. If he has time to give away free sessions…well the answer should be obvious.
He must have read these ‘nuggets’ while sitting on the john of his local J.C. Penny. And speaking of sitting on the john…
Before Thomas Crapper made the modern toilet prevalent in modern society the ONLY way to squat (to take a deucer that is) was ASS TO GRASS…literally!
As for his advice on stance, I’m sure that every single time that he squats, a shoulder stance would be appropriate, since he probably only squats in the gym. In the real world, the shoulder stance works only when the task dictates its necessity. But that’s what they teach at 24 Hour University…so it must be true.
Do the math…on the bench that’s 80 to 96+ seconds per set and this is saying that you take zero time on the isometric portion (stick point). Anything over 60 seconds has been shown over and over to have more of an endurance training effect than strength. This is program design 101.
This one is hilarious because he’s actually prescribing the exact opposite of what ‘corrective specialists’ would advise. Now, I’m assuming that by buckling, he means a medial deviation of the knee during the descending portion of the squat. If this is the case, it COULD mean that the external rotators/stabilizers aren’t doing their job.
These ‘corrective specialists’ would then prescribe a belt or heavy band around the knees and the client to push out against it. However, none of these ideas have much scientific backing to them…for what that’s worth. And…Poliquin says NO! to this type of movement pattern training, so…
However, if he means that your knees flail outward, the point still stands that training someone to push in or out or back or whatever during the squat is NOT good movement pattern reprogramming.
Of course not, then he’d be doing something wrong, since while I’m on an assuming rampage…I’m assuming he’s training you the same way he trains himself.
I can make up exercise names too…how about the neck extension-lunge? Actually the snatch-clean is when you’re about to go down on your ole’ lady and this is the mental thought while you’re doing the “kiss down to the navy pea-coat sleeve”…you all know what I’m talking about, don’t gasp.
[quote]
Those are the ones that stand out the most. [/quote]
There was MORE to this steaming pile of donkey shit misinformation session? Jesus Christ!
In all seriousness, I’m very sorry that there are those in our profession that fit the stereotype to the tee (it’s like white dudes that where Starter caps with a flat bill and ALL white clothing…topped off with fake platinum chains) and you were unfortunate enough to have had to endure this bullshit.
Thankfully, you’re a member of a site that is as high quality as this one (Are you listening Biotest Gods? I want 20lbs of lean muscle for Christmas…wait, that’s Santa!).
Make sure that all who you know that also happen to train at that gym know about this personal douchebag.
I hope you reach your goals and find a quality trainer in your area…these people are generally not found at corporate gyms, have little free time and charge an arm and a leg (but it’s worth every penny).
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
Wow! I’m with OneDay in that it’s trainers like this one who give those of us who actually have a clue what we’re talking about a bad name.[/quote]
-If you have bad arches you should look into a new shoe for running. But your lifting. Chucks it is! Cross Trainers have a heel that will reduce your flexibility if you wear them around.
-Wide Stances are bad for Olympic Lifters, Bodybuilders, and people with pelvic issues that don’t allow for Wide-Stance Squats. In Olympic lifting it’s harder to catch a bar with a Wide-Stance Squat. The ideal distance you see them using is the ideal distance for their feet to be at: slightly wider than when they first pulled. In Bodybuilding you risk losing your V-Taper with Wide Stance squats: The stress on your pelvis will make it grow. It’s happened to me. Squatting Olympic Style is best if you want to look like a V. Wide Stance Squats are best if you want to look like a giant block of muscle and if you want to get a big squat number.
-Your bench press speed should be about the same for the negative and the actual press.
-15 reps for squats, deadlifts, and cleans are best for packing on size. Strength for bigger numbers will come from low reps.
-Maybe he meant the split snatch, not the clean snatch.
-You should be able to support the barbell in a front squat between the top of your delt and your clavicle. If you have the wrist flexibility and you aren’t leaning forward, then keeping the bar in place shouldn’t require any effort from your shoulders and some from your wrists.
Geez, I wonder how much this trainer gives this information out to other people. I as well am a trainer, but a badly certified one, I did the easiest course but didn’t learn a thing in it it was just something I had to sit through to get certified and actually train people. I learn almost all my stuff from articles on here, and a little bit on other sites.
Curious, what exactly does he think a snatch-clean is.
I had an ass of a personal trainer for my introduction to the gym. I was an ultra noob at the gym when I started, now of course I’m just a noob, as I have learnt a lot from the Internet (T-Nation, www.exxrxx, or something like that, very good), and by watching other people, the blessed few.
One of the exercises he showed me was the barbell bent over row. A back exercise right? Well this was a hefty trap exercise for an ultra noob, as I had my knees slightly bent and my back straight, rowing like you would if you were rowing a boat, with the bar coming back towards the stomach, across the legs.
I didn’t know that this was the wrong way, so I just thought I was getting used to gym life. I didn’t even question the pain I was getting in the traps the day after, which persisted until I stopped doing the exercise and changed the routine.
What I really think it is, is that anyone can become a trainer. Theres a trainer at my gym (my previous gym anyway) who was quite top heavy. Who would want to be taught by someone who was out of proportion?
I’m only 18 but I am noticing that most people are not getting the best advice (me especially), when it comes to weight training, the reason being that most gyms have to be business orientated. Looking after the skinny’s who do an hour on the treadmill (yep, I see them a lot), or the guys who have no real workout plan and have a roulette wheel in their pocket to determine what weights they’re going to do.
I’d say I’m lucky to have use my head soon enough, and to have searched the Internet.
2lb monkey I agree with that all of that except the skinnie’s on the treadmill, you say it like there’s no reason to. There are justifiable reasons for skinny people to be on the treadmill going for a run…hopefully that’s not all they do though.
What I was saying is that there were people who would just go on the treadmill for the time I worked out. Ok if they want to do that, but I just see it as spending too much time doing something when they could use the gym more constructively.
To those that run, doing it outdoors would save them £40 a month, and they’d get a much better view (well, without the sight of women working out, lol). I love running outdoors. But to each their own.
[quote]2lb Monkey wrote:
What I was saying is that there were people who would just go on the treadmill for the time I worked out. Ok if they want to do that, but I just see it as spending too much time doing something when they could use the gym more constructively.
To those that run, doing it outdoors would save them £40 a month, and they’d get a much better view (well, without the sight of women working out, lol). I love running outdoors. But to each their own.[/quote]
I’d have to agree with you 2lb Monkey, that most gyms (and trainers) spend the majority of their money and time catering to the cardio only crowd or the completely clueless lifter/nautilus machine user crowd. In fact, I’ve actually heard other trainers specifically say that.
The reason for this is simple in my opinion. It’s that sadly, as W@LRUS pointed out, the majority of trainers out there don’t have a clue what they’re doing, nor are they themselves even remotely athletic or advanced from a training perspective. So, they lack the knowledge and/or experience to be able to help the more advanced lifters in the gym.
Now, there are certainly trainers who can and do work with more advanced trainees, but the majority of them don’t. You also need to realize that the vast majority of the industry has fallen to almost the same level as the exercise gimmick informercials that you see on t.v.
No longer are trainers teaching and prescribing time tested proven methods of exercise that have for decades, and still do, produced results in countless trainees/athletes. Instead, they’re all caught up in what’s the newest, fanciest methods of training.
Don’t get me wrong, there is some use for some of those methods, and there are individuals who can certainly benefit from them. But, they’re still just the icing on the cake. A good diet and a solid training program are still going to take someone the vast majority of the way towards their goals (if not all the way).
Really the only people who I can see truly benefiting from things like VO2max testing or blood lactate level testing are professional athletes who have already built great foundations of strength and muscle mass. For those guys such high tech methods actually might be able to help them make that 0.1% change which would take them above other highly trained athletes. But for the average person/newbie it’s a complete waste of time and completely overcomplicating the issue if you ask me.
What they don’t seem to realize is that results will always speak much louder than any scientific research conducted in a lab setting. If you can get people to make progress and see results, then you’re doing something right. If you can’t, then either they’re not putting in the effort that they need to be (which is also partly your fault if you’re training them), or your methods aren’t working.
As has been said on this forum countless times before, any even decent diet and exercise program will get results out of a newbie. That’s why most trainers like working with them, because they don’t really need to know what they’re doing to get them to make progress. More advanced trainees will require more advanced training techniques and a deeper understanding of training principles.
Plus, as I said earlier, not many big strong advanced guys are going to take advice from a smaller less developed trainer. Now, in some cases this is too bad because the trainer might actually have some tidbits of information that might help the more advanced guys. But, in most cases I can understand why this would occur. It’s like catholic preists giving marriage advice, when the priests have never been married themselves. Their intentions may be good, but they lack the experience to know if their advice really works.
hah this reminds me the guys at my gym offered me free personal trainer session-I was much bigger then him also- I actually laughed at him and just said no. I have had one good personal trainer when I was young though, who helped me with plyometrics.
I’m looking to become a personal trainer myself, but the only academy that teaches it strongly believes deadlifts and squats are the devil and machines are heaven…
I also had free training sessions (two) when I joined the new commercial gym that opened near where I live. But I had a better experience than what mathboxers had. I was lucky enough to get assigned a trainer who knows his work and practices what he preach. After the two free sessions I took his services and have been training under his supervision for a year and a half now. I started out with zero “lifting years” so the initial program he gave was for general conditioning and to teach me the main three excercises of his programs, the deadlift, the bench press, and the squat. Here are some of the ideas I learned from him
He suggested that I use Chuckies since my Nike trainer was too unstable during the squat, I bought one, tried it and I use chuckies up to this day
importance of post workout shake
importance of enough rest
he explains what the goals for the day before we start the session he also explains the purpose of each exercise. The idea is to give me enough info so that I can design my own program in the future. I guess in this manner he is more of a coach than a trainer.
suggested that i checkout T-Nation
his a fan of Louie Simmons, Dr. Hatfield so most of our conversations revolved around training methods by them
core exercise (first two of each session) are always (the bench, deads, or squats), the second would be a variation of the first to address perceived weaknesses in the first movement. Ex. depending were I failed in the PR attempt of the bench press we would follow it up with 2-3 board press (using 5kg plates since we don’t have board presses, so just imagine how difficult a 3 board press would be) or close grip for the triceps, if the problem was the lockout portion of the lift.
introduced me to a lot of movements and how to do them properly that I could use later when I am on my own. (RDL, Good mornings, floor presses, etc.)
how to avoid imbalances, each session’s pressing movement have a matching pulling movement (during ME and Speed bench days we have variation of rows too)
-importance of variation, we do three week mini-cycles (sometimes 4) in a twelve week mega cycle (is the term for that meso cycle?)
-he sometimes trains with me and once I watched him deadlift 150kgs in one all out set for 10 reps. I was thinking…“Shit, I wanna do that too” so he actually practice what he teaches
-he got me started in logging (actually a blog) my workouts to keep track of my progress or lack of it
All in all I guess I am satisfied with his services. A year and a half ago I’m 211 lbs. at 34% bf, now I’m at 203 and 20%bf (still a long way to go though). My lifting stats are paltry compared to what you guys can do but I started out with zero background in lifting. BP @ 90kgs (atleast now I have I have lifted my bodyweight). Squat at aroundd 130kgs and deadlift at 170kgs (my favorite lift).
The gist is if you are lucky enough to meet a good trainer, get his services immediately and learn as much as you can.
[quote]Sentoguy wrote:
the vast majority of the industry has fallen to almost the same level as the exercise gimmick informercials that you see on t.v.
Sentoguy[/quote]
Yeah, the British shopping channels at about 11pm have the oddest contraptions. The bowflex? another that uses your body weight, omg. Has anyone heard of dumbbells and a bench. I seriously think these are aimed at lonely people who sit watching tv and eating lard, who think, oh I could be like that guy. Perhaps if you trained for 5 years using proper methods not some crappy contraption of death.
Oh and evil, that is amazing that you can do 90kg. I don’t do bp, but when i joined the gym (also having no gym experience) I could do 40kg, and a max of 60kg for 2 reps, I benched for about 2 months. But now I’ve learnt and suffered, I will conquer, and complete my dream of benching my own weight ( I’m 203lb, 14.5% bf, at 6ft 4).
By the way, is it harder for taller people to do bench press than smaller people due to longer arm reach, or is that just a myth?