{"id":26632,"date":"2015-11-26T16:30:56","date_gmt":"2015-11-26T21:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/?p=26632"},"modified":"2015-11-26T16:30:56","modified_gmt":"2015-11-26T21:30:56","slug":"the-barbell-prescription-the-what-why-and-how-of-weight-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/2015\/11\/26\/the-barbell-prescription-the-what-why-and-how-of-weight-training\/","title":{"rendered":"The Barbell Prescription: The What, Why and How of Weight Training"},"content":{"rendered":"So much cool stuff happens on campus all day every day. It breaks my heart that I literally don\u2019t have the time to go do and see and hear everything.\r\n\r\nOn Tuesday, I went to a free seminar that was held at Hart House called, \u201cThe Barbell Prescription\u201d.\r\n\r\nYou know it\u2019s going to be a good one when you\u2019re already taking notes and salivating over the guest\u2019s credentials.\r\n\r\nDr. J Sullivan joined us from Michigan. A former US marine, 3rd<\/sup> degree black belt in Karate, 3rd<\/sup> level Krav Maga practitioner, doctor, researcher\u2026 The guy received a $2 million research grant from the NIH\u2026 that\u2019s the National Institutes of Health. It\u2019s a big deal. On top of all that, he owns, manages and trains clients at a gym called Grey Steel, for aging adults.\r\n\r\n
\"Dr.<\/a>
Dr. Jonathon Sullivan Source: greysteel.org<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nWe started off talking about what we considered an \u201cathlete\u201d, how we\u2019d define the word. I learned a little bit about Greek athletes (the word athlete comes from the Greek \u201cathlos\u201d which means contest or feat). Apparently there was an athletic event in the Greek games, \u201cHoplitodromos\u201d, which was a race in full battle armour. Competitors in the games had to swear an oath to Zeus that they trained for a minimum of 10 months. Awfully specific for so many years ago!\r\n\r\n
\"Hoplitodromos<\/a>
Hoplitodromos depicted on a piece at the Louvre.
Source: wikipedia.org<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nWhile the word itself suggests an athlete is someone who competes, we agreed that a broader definition could be applied. We were asked to consider whether martial artists, marines, firefighters were also athletes. What do you<\/em> think? We decided they were indeed athletes.\r\n\r\nWe then discussed the fundamental fitness attributes: strength, power, endurance, mobility, balance and body composition. These fundamental attributes apply to all athletes. Ballerinas need them, firefighters need them, and soccer players also need them.\r\n\r\nDr. Sullivan explained that strength is the key fitness attribute. It is most fundamental because it underlies all the others. It\u2019s more general and comprehensive and it requires more investment (because to get stronger we need to build<\/em> tissue) but is more persistent (that same tissue <\/em>doesn\u2019t just disappear too quickly once we stop maintaining it).\r\n\r\nWhat resonated most with me was his explanation of the Stress-Recovery-Adaptation cycle. Basically, Dr. Sullivan explained how strength training works, how we get stronger:\r\n\r\nWe come into the gym, work hard and leave fatigued. Under this fatigue, we are weaker than we were when we first walked into the gym. Our body immediately starts to recover. Our body however, thinks to itself \u201cHuh, that sucked\u2026 maybe that\u2019ll happen again\u201d and overcompensates in its recovery, bringing our strength not just back to where it was before we stressed our muscles by training, but above that level. In this way, our body makes us stronger. Pretty cool, huh?\r\n\r\n
\"The<\/a>
The concept, illustrated. Source: breakingmuscle.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nThis doesn\u2019t work forever though (obviously, since we aren\u2019t all Arnold Schwarzenegger). What happens is we get strong enough \u2013eventually- to do a workout we won\u2019t recover from in time. This happens after many months of training and is the reason for more complex training plans used by intermediate and advanced athletes.\r\nSo where does \u201cThe Barbell Prescription\u201d come in? Dr. Sullivan explained that barbell weight training is an extremely good way to build strength and develop all fitness attributes. It\u2019s safe, it\u2019s scalable (meaning we can increase and decrease the weight easily to progress), it\u2019s comprehensive because it uses the entire body, it\u2019s effective and specific, simple and efficient.\r\nIf you\u2019re stuck on the \u201csafe\u201d part, Dr. Sullivan explained that it\u2019s done on a stable surface and it consists of repeated movement in a normal range of motion. It\u2019s also scalable and doesn\u2019t involve unpredictable forces. However, proper execution is very important!\r\nWe went into a lot more detail and despite there being some science involved (which I liked being able to relate to my coursework), Dr. Sullivan did a fantastic job of making the lecture accessible to anyone \u2013science background or not.\r\nThis talk was just one of many free events happening on campus all the time. Be sure to check out the Hart House events calendar and our Facebook page so you don\u2019t miss out!","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"So much cool stuff happens on campus all day every day. It breaks my heart that I literally don\u2019t have the time to go do and see and hear everything.\r\n\r\nOn Tuesday, I went to a free seminar that was held at Hart House called, \u201cThe Barbell Prescription\u201d.\r\n\r\nYou know it\u2019s going to be a good one when you\u2019re already taking notes and salivating over the guest\u2019s credentials.\r\n\r\nDr. J Sullivan joined us from Michigan. A former US marine, 3rd<\/sup> degree black belt in Karate, 3rd<\/sup> level Krav Maga practitioner, doctor, researcher\u2026 The guy received a $2 million research grant from the NIH\u2026 that\u2019s the National Institutes of Health. It\u2019s a big deal. On top of all that, he owns, manages and trains clients at a gym called Grey Steel, for aging adults.\r\n\r\n
\"Dr.<\/a>
Dr. Jonathon Sullivan Source: greysteel.org<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\nWe started off talking about what we considered an \u201cathlete\u201d, how we\u2019d define the word. I learned a little bit about Greek athletes (the word athlete comes from the Greek \u201cathlos\u201d which means contest or feat). Apparently there was an athletic event in the Greek games, \u201cHoplitodromos\u201d, which was a race in full battle armour. Competitors in the games had to swear an oath to Zeus that they trained for a minimum of 10 months. Awfully specific for so many years ago!
Continue reading “The Barbell Prescription: The What, Why and How of Weight Training”<\/span>…<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1758,65,61,66],"tags":[25512,15745,1385,15738,570,25504,1733,111,15741,216,15746,176,15739,15743,173,495,15742,706,15744,15740,15627,1837,766,887,12589],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26636,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26632\/revisions\/26636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.studentlife.utoronto.ca\/lifeatuoft\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}