New Year, New Goals

When Big Ben sounded and London's skyline lit up with fireworks it sparked the beginning of 2017. A new year means new resolutions and for the keen gym geeks out there it often means new goals in the gym. It's key to set these goals so they'll challenge you but also be achievable and realistic for you to complete.

I've spoken about this in previous posts but goals should always be SMART, meaning they're Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and with a Time frame. These are the fundamentals when it comes to setting goals that will keep you motivated and push you to become a better you.

Another important factor is to understand why you should set up goals. Now for me they set up the direction of my training by focusing my attention towards goal-relevant activities and away from goal-irrelevant activities. For example, if a marathon runner sets out to improve cardiovascular fitness, running economy and muscular strength then he should focus on improving these areas, something towards their goal. They should not focus on other tasks such as their clean and jerk. Yes aspects of this may somewhat help in running but is it still relevant to running itself? This approach will allow you to focus on the most important aspects of training and in essence, ensure your training is as efficient and effective as possible.

As I mentioned earlier on the post motivation is huge in any type of training and the way you set your goals can help with this. Goals allow for an easy assessment of performance and enable you to learn more about your training abilities which can subsequently help to replace boredom with challenge. As you start achieving your goals you will build your own self-directed motivation and replace fear and tension with focus and confidence. These factors combined often lead to more rewarding training.

My last point is set both short and long term goals in order to see success. No goal is too big in my eyes but you must set short term goals in order to achieve this. So, set one long term goal encompassing all that you want to achieve but within this set short term goals. These could be daily, weekly or monthly but something which when put together with others will help in achieving that long term goal.

For me goal setting is an extremely powerful technique for enhancing performance that can be applied by absolutely anyone ranging from elite athlete to recreational gym-goer. Goals help you to establish your ultimate destination, they offer a prudent method of identifying the roads you can take to get there, and indeed, they let you know when you have arrived. It is important to consider the different type of goals and how these can be implemented into your training regime so that you remain focused on your gym goals.

Happy New Year one and all.

Jack

Barbells, Dumbbells or Cables?

With the ever growing dilemma of achieving the best workout the exercises you're using are important but more so now the equipment in which you're using to perform these exercises. Now I would always advise people to try and stay away from machines, do they have a place? Yes, but, they're so constrictive on movement, range of motion and more often than not giving you the plasibo effect that you can lift a lot greater weight than one can actually lift. I'd recommend sticking to the Barbell, Dumbbells and cables, here are a few pointers on how to choose which.

The barbell is the most recognisable piece of equipment in any gym when it comes to lifting weight. Usually being 7ft in length and weighing 20kg, with smaller versions in certain gyms if you're lucky enough to target a certain muscle group or perform an exercise. They're easy to set up, just loading plates onto each side, often in 2.5kg intervals with a huge exercise base to use them for. The barbell is often associate with the big compound exercises such as the squat, bench and deadlift where by you're recruiting many muscle groups in one exercise, this is why they're a must in anyone's routine. They allow you to go heavier than most other exercises and due to the fact your lifting all of the weight through one force is often easier to control than say a dumbbell.

There are however some disadvantages to using the barbell that being they can often create strength imbalances amongst the same muscle groups, where by muscles don't get to work independently. Let's take the simple back squat, you load 100kg on the barbell and be performing a squat with perfect form but more so than not you have a dominate side creating a imbalance, sometimes as drastic as 70/30. This in the long run can causes size difference and cause you to plateau. Furthermore it's late on a Friday night, in the gym by yourself and you benching your one rep max and you go for a second rep but just can't lock it out, that weight is coming back down onto you. Barbells can therefore cause serious injuries, there is no way of being able to remove the weight unless you've got a spotter, to many cases seen on the Internet of people not and ending up in serious trouble.

Dumbbells are what more and more people are tending to use when working out due to these sense of ease to change weight and the versatility in which they offer. The one thing I love about DB's is they offer fitness to a wider range of people purely due to the fact they can be used anywhere. From your home, to office it doesn't take up any room to store a few DB's with a heap of exercises which they can be used for, avoiding the hefty gym costs along with no excuses of not being able to fit a workout in.

There are no constraints when training with DB's either, allowing muscles to work independently, targeting and isolating certain muscle groups whilst further recruiting major muscle groups if required. This over time will aid balance and coordination through the independent training. Unlike a barbell the range of motion with a dumbbell can be slightly altered, this can be seen as a positive or a negative but in my eyes a certain positive. Not everyone's built the same, in short not everyone's therefore going to lift the weight from A to B the same, much like a barbell promotes. The DB however allows this, furthermore recruiting more to form a stabilising platform than a barbell. When lifting a dumbbell greater attention is paid to ligaments, tendons and overall agatonist muscles. People neglect these a lot, especially in the shoulder department however lifting with DB's you're somewhat achieving this. The only downfall is it demands a greater deal of control thus meaning you can't go as heavy and will often require a spotter.

Finally cables, people often neglect using when it comes to training anything but arms. The fundamental factor is they can be used for any movement pattern, which is great for sport related exercise or rehabilitation. It allows you to focus on a certain movement, let's take golf. The tee off shot you would never be able to rubricate unless using cables, building the strength, explosiveness and overall power through the increase of weight in order to develop the swing. With all cable machines you can gather many different attachments opening a wider spectrum of exercises and again allowing to rubricate certain functional movement from sport and everyday life.

From your committed gym goers the cables allow for ease when wanting to perform supersets with just a switch between the two cable or things such as drop sets and strip sets by just removing the pin as oppose to stripping the barbell or grabbing more DB's. The most important thing for me with cables is they cause greater muscle stress due to constant tension on the muscle. Unlike the barbell where for example with a barbell row the contraction, pulling the weight towards is a great deal harder than lowering it due to gravity with cables this never changes. It gives you a far superior of motion but further contraction allowing for you to really squeeze the muscle when contracting and stretching at the bottom of the movement. Some may say cables are superior therefore when it comes to isolating the muscle.

Cables do have their drawn backs through the way that the range of motion is so forgiving and any exercise can be performed often leading to horrendous form. They take up a lot of room so out of the question for your garage as well as very few will ever be in your gym.

So you may think which one is best and my answer to that is neither. There is no one I would solely recommend on using to create an all round great workout. They all have positives and negatives but I would create a happy medium using all in your workouts. Barbell for the big lifts, Dumbbells for your more so isolation along with cables for those high rep finishers.

If you're still lost and confused then I am still writing personalised programmes so drop me an email me on jcdpersonaltraining@gmail.com

Happy Training

Jack