Conditioning | DEAN COULSON

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Balance, Conditioning

All about the Balance

Balance, what is it and why do we need it?

Think about it, when was the last time you worked on your balance? For most people I am willing to bet that since they learned to walk as a toddler, they have never thought about balance again.

I have performed some kind of balance drill for years, primarily with my martial arts background. Nowadays I even end up wrapping my hand wraps standing on one leg at the end of a boxing session, performing swings with my non standing leg! I also do them in the dark before I go to bed. If I am out I am always jumping on walls or fences see how far I can reach before I fall or not!

Injury

Balance training is great for restoring stability in joints particularly the knee after injury. I have spent time after my recent knee injury performing such drills. Knee stability is paramount in rehabilitating the knee along with strength training and stretching.

Difficult to Measure

I frequently hear people going on about how fit or fast they want to be or how strong or powerful. Then they toddle off to the gym and get on the weights or on the track to try and make it happen. These are all valuable elements of an all round athlete, however there is one vitally important ingredient that can be easily missed….Balance Training!

I guess it might be because it is difficult to quantify, you can’t really say how fast can you balance or flex your “big guns” and say “look at the balance on that”. It is hard to measure and is therefore so often neglected. However, look at professional sportsmen/women, when their poise and agility just becomes one fluid movement as if they were born to do it, that is balance.

Balance is something that we can all work on, there are many drills that can be performed to improve its function. It is closely related to coordination and agility as both are dependent on how good your overall balance is. Problems that you thought were related to poor coordination or speed could actually be coming from poor balance. If the balance isn’t there you are going to really struggle to improve technique.

Maximise Performance

In say a combat sport for example, the power of a punch or kick is paramount. However all the explosive/power training in the world won’t help if balance is not mastered. Why? because without proper balance these techniques will not be effective, power will not be maximal and thus be ineffective.

Conditioning is the same, repetitive squats and lunges for example will be affected if balance is not present, it will directly affect the execution of the technique and therefore what you get out of it.

You must be able to control all body parts in a certain movement and be able to react quickly in the event of an attempted change in movement. The faster the reaction, the faster the recovery.

Improve Your Balance

To maximise performance/results, you must include balance training in your daily routine. At the end of the day balance is a mastery of your centre of gravity at all times. Although standing on one leg is a good basic drill, in reality balance training has to be dynamic as movements are dynamic. I have never seen “standing on one leg” as an Olympic sport!

Playing football for example creates a constant change in external forces surrounding you, whether it be the weather or other players, improving your dynamic reactions will allow you to maintain your centre of gravity.

Develop and train Balance in motion

There must be a variety of drills performed from basic one foot standing to dynamic balance training. There are many facets of training balance, start off slowly and work on improving.

Balance Training Drills

Include balance training in your daily routine. By incorporating a 5-10 minute balance routine in your daily warm up you should see improvements.

Try these drills no matter what you may think, I guarantee you that even if you think you can balance on one leg, your outlook might change if you then close your eyes and try it again.

One Leg

1. Balance on one leg with arms by your sides, switch legs every 30 seconds.

2. Same drill with your eyes closed

One Leg with head rotation

1. Stand on one leg with your arms by your sides, slowly turn your head from side to side and up and down. Alternate legs every 30 seconds. Once mastered you can roll your head.

2. Repeat this drill with your eyes closed as before.

One Leg with leg swings

1. Stand on one leg with your arms by your sides, swing your non standing leg forward back and to the side.

2. Repeat this drill with your eyes closed as before.

Once you have mastered these then you can move onto more difficult dynamic balance drills:

Best thing you can use for this is a 2×4 inch wooden board, anywhere from 8 to 12 feet long.

Lunge

Perform the lunge technique whilst balancing on the board, do not touch the floor.

Heel to toe walking

Walk heel to toe from one end to the other.

Spinning walking

Walk along the board in a 360 degree spinning motion, every step you perform part of a turn. Once you complete one length go back spinning in the opposite direction.

If you are serious about training and want to improve, add this into your daily routine, I guarantee you you will see a difference.

yours in training

Dean Coulson

Conditioning, Mental Strength

Spice up your Training Tabata Style!

There may be some of you thinking, so what is this tabata thing all about? well I ain’t gonna bore you with the science behind it other than it’s named after someone and it is a great conditioning protocol. Thats all you need to know!

Tabata Style!

So how do you train tabata style? the answer is any which way as long as it involves 20 seconds of fast paced exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest, with each exercise having 8 rounds. It can make for a tough 4 minutes if you are flat out. It can be bodyweight, with weight, a mixture, anything that you can go at a fast pace.

Short on Time?

These drills are perfect when you are short on time. They are anaerobic and crank your metabolism right up, with it sitting raised for up to 24 hours after the event. Thats right, higher metabolism = more calories burned even resting afterwards!

Of course that means exactly squat if you then go and eat crappy foods. It may sound boring but the nutrition part goes hand in hand if you want to shave some lard off!

Anyway, it just so happens that today I was short on time so after a warm up on my heavy bag, I tagged 4 exercises together to really crank up a tabata style workout!

doesn’t have to 4, hell it could be 3 or 5, point is though is that you have to be able to maintain this fast pace to its end

Example Workout

I cranked out this workout earlier, using a combination of bodyweight exercises and a medicine ball for good measure!

Here goes:

Flex strap rows – inverted bodyweight rowing with straps.
Med ball Slams.
squats and alternating with lunges with the med ball.
Pushups (variations).

I added a core finisher at the end of ab wheel rollout’s and hanging leg raises, it is up to you whether you want to tag anything on the end!

it may sound easy, but keeping a fast pace and doing these exercises for 8 rounds each can result in 16 minutes of hell. If it is easy, make it harder, the challenge it to yourself, not to me.

What are your favourite exercises you could plug into tabata training?, fire the comments in and lets find out!

stay fit and train hard

Dean Coulson

Conditioning, Mental Strength, Power, Speed

Circuit Training Variations

I have been playing around with different circuits to keep things interesting and thought I’d share this cool conditioning circuit.

Using the “integrated circuit training” principle, I created a 10 station circuit using a combination of body weight and weighted exercises. The premise is simple, each station lasts 30 seconds before immediately going onto the next exercise, this continues until the 10 stations are complete.

Make no mistake this is tough, it is meant to be, pushing your body through fatigue increases your general physical preparedness (GPP) and allows your body to adapt to train further during fatigue as well as decreasing your recovery time.

I aim to to 5 circuits with 1 minute rest in between each one. However if you feel you need more rest then take it, however I’d advise to keep it as minimal as possible.

Here’s the circuit:

Body weight squats (with or without 5kg dumbbells)
Body weight Lunges (with or without 5kg dumbbells).
Heavy Bag Punching.
Elevated Push ups.
Burpees.
Squat Jumps.
Dumbbell Alternating shoulder press (high tempo).
Bench Dips.
Skipping.
Heavy Bag punching.

In this circuit I emphasise “doubling up” on upper and lower body exercises until station 9 and 10. I wanted to create more fatigue on the same muscle groups with a combination of exercises. You can just as easily make it upper/lower. The exercises are not set in stone either, there are plenty substitutes if you don’t have a heavy bag, Shadow boxing with a pair of light dumbbells would suffice.

The key here is that the circuit is continuous. It is possible to play around with the amount of stations, the time at each station and of course the exercises.

Don’t forget an interval timer such as a gym boss is an excellent training tool here, it takes care of the time so you can concentrate on the training.

Stay sharp and train Hard!

– Dean Coulson

Conditioning, Power, Speed

Partner Drills

I am the kind of person that works well training alone. I am pretty dynamic in how I train and find it is difficult to find a partner who can be the same. Quite often timing or even goals conflict and it just doesn’t work. It is rare that I do train with anyone because of those reasons and in the main I can achieve everything I want going it alone.

However there are times when having a partner can be a huge benefit. Times when a bit of competition can push you further than you have before and makes us give everything in the session, hell sometimes it is good to have company!

Even though the following drills can be performed alone, it gives you a change in emphasis when you perform them with a training partner.

Heavy Bag Drills

I am a big fan of the heavy bag, however when you use it with a partner it adds another dimension to it.

The premise is simple, 6 x 1 minute rounds each, your partner holds the bag or moves it to add to the difficulty and you hit it all out for a minute. You will have to dig deep for this one as fatigue will definitely set in as the end of the minute draws near. I usually pick a combination of punches, or one type of punch for speed or for power. You can even split the minute and do 30 seconds speed then 30 seconds power. When the minute is over, swap over with your partner. Encouragement is key here, as you begin to tire you partner drives you on to the end. A gymboss interval timer is an excellent addition here so you can concentrate on the training and let it worry about timing you.

Wind Sprints

These are a great exercise and can be performed inside or outside. Here are a few examples:

Outside, put markers at 10 metres, 20 metres and 30 metres. The idea being that you go against your partner and sprint to the 10 metre marker and do 10 push ups and sprint back. Immediately sprint to the 20 metre marker and do 10 squats, return to the start and finally sprint to the 30 metre marker and do 10 burpees and sprint back. This offers a massive competitive goal and really tests your mental resolve, especially when you rest and repeat 2 more times!
Another drill works well indoors. I use my local gym, which has a 20 metre long room, but it would work in a smaller room. The idea is to sprint from one end of the room and back and on your return, punch a heavy bag 10 times. Now at this point you can switch to your partners set or, do this for 30 seconds, then your partner goes. This is draining if you put the effort in and a partner serves as a good motivator.

Hill Carry’s

This definitely adds difficulty to a normal hill sprint. Your partner is on your back and you set off up a reasonably steep slope over a measured distance. Due to intensity of this drill it is recommended that you make the distance relatively short (around 30 metres). At the the top, both come down and repeat this drill as soon as you reach the bottom. After two repetitions, swap over. Do this for four sets and I guarantee you you will have had enough.

Remember in this exercise the intensity is governed by how steep the hill is, how far you go and how fast you travel.

Sprint chases

This is a great drill and will create a real adrenaline rush with everyone trying to get to the finish line first. Because every one has different abilities and fitness, it is better to have the fastest sprinter at the back and stagger the race so that no one has an unfair advantage. The reason for this is simple, to make it a competitive sprint, staggering the start will allow for a more even race and will push all involved.

These are only a very small selection of examples of training with a partner, of course there are lots of ways to utilise a partner when one is available. When there is one or more around, make use of them.

– Dean Coulson

Conditioning, Mental Strength

Out of the Weight Room

There s nothing like hard labour to mix up your training and give a completely different slant on things.

Last weekend I helped my father in law at his new house. When I say new, I mean it is a newish purchase but is in need of some work. Built in the 1800’s it is in need of some serious renovation, to the point that he not only removed the stone floors but kept digging until there were 5 foot deep holes in each room! God knows why, I am sure there was absolutely no need to create so much work, but he did and is now filling them back in with hardcore aggregate.

I would say around at least 80 tonnes of it to be exact! he had another 21 tonne drop last weekend and I went to help him out, bearing in mind we were using 2 shovels and 2 wheel barrows between us to cart this stuff into the house and dumping it inside.

Here’s when the training comes in, good old fashioned manual labour, it ticks so many boxes, strength, stamina, endurance etc it really is a great all round strength and conditioning exercise.

Breaking it down you have so many similar movements in the gym that are simulated in doing this.

Shovelling, hits all the upper body and incorporates rotational strength for your core. I kept swapping hands so that I could hit each side.

Lifting barrow is like a rack pull. More than enough to hit the quads, back, traps and arms.

wheeling it for distance is like a farmers walk. I know the barrow has wheels but it is still weight over distance and awkward terrain repetitively and seriously eats into your grip strength.

Dumping the load in the barrow goes in as an all over body explosive lift to tip the barrow up, well in my case to flip it, just to add to the fun!

Put all that together at a good pace over the course of the day makes for a damn hard but rewarding session!

It is definitely a man thing, just good old hard honest graft. Even my son was there getting into the thick of it and he is only 5!

Next time someone needs you to pick up a shovel, I would recommend it, beats a gym any day of the week!

– Dean Coulson

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