Third round of this series of interview already.  Patrick Ward, strength and conditioning specialist and massage therapist, was kind enough to give me a couple minutes of his time to answer my questions.  Here we go:

What does your current training look like?

My current training is pretty darn boring. I lift 3 days per week and perform total body workouts. I do the same four exercises each day 3 sets x 5 reps and currently work below 80% intensity for all sets. I do some form of cardiovascular exercise at least 3-5x/week usually consisting of either consistent work in the 120-150bpm range or some form of extensive tempo work. I’ll do this for about 3-5 weeks and then begin to focus more on some specific lifts, increase the intensity, etc…

What’s your favorite song to lift heavy things to?

I can’t say that I have a favorite song to lift to but I do enjoy putting country music on the radio. Sometimes I even listen to sports talk radio when I lift. I try not to blast realy intense music and hype myself up for lifts in the gym unless I am testing something and I am trying to get really gassed up. Otherwise, I try and keep my cool.

What would be your best advice to an up-and-coming strength and conditioning coach who wants to make it in this business?

Read as much as you can, ask a lot of questions of others and of yourself, and never take anything anyone says as gospel – be open to many possibilities.

What’s your passion, or second passion in life after health and fitness?

I like jazz music a lot and actually my undergraduate degree was in jazz guitar from Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA.

Who are your 3 most influential mentors?

Charlie Weingroff, Willem Kramer, and Judith DeLany are up there as far as people that have influenced me professionally that I have been able to have some form of personal communication/relationship with. Also in that list I would have to include Don Miller, Jeff Cubos, and Dave Tenney.

What’s the biggest mistake you see athletes who want to make it to the next level make?

Doing too much. Most athletes crush themselves with insane amounts of either volume or intensity (or both) setting themselves back from further progres and decreasing their level of readiness, causing them to have inconsistent results when they compete.

What’s your favorite supplement?

I am not a huge supplement guy. I like fish oil and protein powder (muscle milk chocolate is my favorite). After that if you want some creatine or a multi-vitamin go for it. In general though I am a whole foods guy and feel that people should dial in their diet before they try and SUPPLEMENT it with anything.

What’s the most overrated exercise?

Every exercise has its place in a program and it is not my job to tell people what they should or should not use as every situation is different and every individual is different. I try not to get enamored with too many exercises or exercise variations. I see a lot of people creating new exercises for the sake of doing something “new”. I still like to stick with the basics and just focus on that.

What’s the most underrated exercise?

Don’t know if there is an underrated exercise. I try and focus on very basic compound exercises and they aren’t exercises that most people aren’t already doing – bench press, chin ups, rows, push ups, deadlifts, squats, lunges. Perhaps an exercise that I do like to use that I don’t think too many people use is the step up. I think it is a great exercise for the lower extremity and find that most people seem to shy away from it for one reason or another.

What book are you currently reading?

Arguably one of the main goals of strength training is to improve the way the body moves and reinforce good movement patterns with weights.  It will make your body stronger in those positions and those movement patterns that are considered optimal in the way we move.  It will also ensure that when challenged by outside forces and velocities, our body will be able to maintain good alignment and react properly.  The squat and the deadlift, for example, are primitive movement patterns that your body needs to own.  We own them as babies, but because of modern life that makes us extremely sedentary and because we sit all the time, we lose these movement skills as we age.

How many adults do you know can squat this low with a spine as neutral as this?

So in a way, we need to re-learn these movement patterns, and ultimately become stronger in them.  But because how restricted our bodies are, there is a process to go through to be able to own these movements and get stronger.  It might mean working on soft-tissue restrictions, doing general and specific mobility work, doing static stretching, improving motor control, etc.  Once the restrictions are out of the way, you’ll want to become proficient in the basic movement patterns before getting stronger.  Most strength gains you’ll make in in the beginning are going to be mostly neural adaptations and improved motor control, anyway.

In order to get strong and efficient in the basic lifts, you need PRACTICE!  I just finished reading Never Let Go, by Dan John, and one thing he stresses is the repetitions.  If you want to get good at something, if you want to get strong, you need to put the reps in.

When designing programs, we probably don’t need as much variety as we think we do.  Sure we need to keep things interesting so we don’t get bored in the long run.  But the basics stay the same; squat, deadlift, 1-leg squat, bench press, chin ups and rows.  That’s it.  You don’t need to have a new main lift every month; if that’s what you do, how do you know if you’re getting stronger, or better?  You don’t have any basis of comparison.  If you want to become proficient in these movements to improve the way your body moves and get stronger, that’s what you need.  And you need to do them a lot.  If you do chin ups for 4 weeks, and then take them out of your training and don’t do them for another 3-4 months, how do you expect improvement?  Repetition really is the key to mastering a movement and getting stronger.  The more repetitions you do, the more efficient your nervous system will be at this specific movement, and the easier it’ll be to get stronger.

Not only do you want reps, but you want perfect reps.  Doing near-max effort reps every single time you deadlift is not going to be the answer because your body won’t be able to perfect the movement pattern; every single time you perform the movement, you’re just trying to lift the heaviest weight possible (aka, your body switches to compensation mode).  Don’t get me wrong, you do need to load the bar to get stronger, but you need to be smart about it.  You need to make sure that form is your first priority and you never sacrifice it for weight.

Practice.  Practice with perfect form.  Practice some more.  Make every rep count.  Do a lot of them.  Do your main movements more than once a week.

“If it’s important, do it every day.  If it’s not important, don’t do it at all.” – Dan Gable

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Last week during one of our meeting at Endeavor, one of our coaches came up with an interesting study that supported the use of caffeine to increase maximum strength.  The study measured upper body strength in trained subjects(1).  The study used a 1RM bench press test as well as a  bench press test (with load = 60% of 1RM) to failure.  The amount used was 5mg/kg of body weight and was compared to a placebo group.  In both tests, with caffeine consumption pre-test, subjects showed an increase in both maximum strength (for 1RM test) and an increase in number of reps (for test to failure).

As I was going over PubMed to find the study, I also came across another similar study done only with women(2).  The study measured the effects of caffeine on upper body strength in trained women(2).  The tests used were the same one as in the previous one and also showed an increase in maximum strength in women who consumed caffeine prior to an upper body strength test.  The amount of caffeine used was 6mg/kg of bodyweight and was compared to a placebo group.

The use of caffeine has previously been supported by research to improve endurance in longer duration exercises, but it’s the first time I actually come across studies that support the use of caffeine to improve maximum strength (1RM tests).  These are only 2 studies that have been done within the last year, so I think it’s going to be interesting to see more research on the subject.

References

1. Duncan MJ, Oxford SW.  The effect of caffeine ingestion on mood state and bench press performance to failure.  J Strength Cond Res. 2011 Jan;25(1):178-85.

2. Goldstein E, Jacobs PL, Whitehurst M, Penhollow T, Antonio J.  Caffeine enhances upper body strength in resistance-trained women.  J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2010 May 14;7:18.