If your trainer still believes the only way to a healthier heart or better endurance is through long slow distance cardio work, perhaps ask them to look into the comparisons between traditional long slow distance work and different forms of interval training. If they use the term “Core” in reference to balance work or TVA as opposed to core exercises like squats, lifts, pulls and pushes then you may well be suspect.

Sure, some sports require long duration events but most do not and the vast majority of us that workout do so for health and looks and exercise protocols such as Crossfit and H.I.T. have at least shown us that short workouts of the correct intensity will produce both health and fitness beyond the levels of traditional cardio routines that consume more of our time than most can now days afford to sacrifice.

If you are told that you must eat breakfast to lose fat as it “stokes” the metabolism it may be time to look else where for a trainer. Naturally there is variation in the methods you can and will abide over the long haul but there certainly other “easier” options available to you.

Your health, weight, body fat levels and strength really needn’t take up hours of dedication each week and provided your Personal Trainer is on top of their reading they can help you achieve 99% of fat loss and general fitness goals within a very short period of actual training time.

I have been helping people lose body fat, gain strength and be better with thirty minutes per session with between 1 and 3 sessions per week for years now and if you live or work near to Epsom then I suggest that you give me a call. You deserve to know just how to go about looking better naked and being healthier without spending more than 90 minutes per week in the gym.

Richard “Peg Leg” Ham Williams

Epsom Personal Trainer

07742 952 208

The body learns skills in a specific manner. The order in which muscles and fibres are recruited, the speed at which they contract and much more.

I see many sports coaches trying to mimic a sports specific movement in the weight room with barbells, dumbbells, bands, balls and a host of other equipment which are more likely to hurt the performance of any athlete than they are to help due to the nature of motor learning.

Example;

A sprinter running with weighted shoes or bands around his waist or a parachute are skills that are very similar to sprinting but not quite the same, yes the muscles will experience a minute level of overload but at the cost of a second motor skill very close to that of the sports specific skill of sprinting being learned. The nervous system now has two motor skills to decipher in competition and that “noise” will only serve to slow the runner down.

The single best use of any strength coaches time is and should be to all, obvious. To coach strength and the ability to express it. Secondly should come the consideration of muscle building which ultimately dictates the power and strength displays of an athlete and allows a certain amount of injury prevention from impacts.

The use of stability exercises is another field of bamboozle that has been gaining momentum over the past decade to the point it is hard to find a gym without balls, boards and a host of other injuries waiting to happen. Not only that but they are touted as working the core harder. The core is some mythical set of muscles that can only be worked with new and fancy equipment or so we are led to believe. The core muscles are those that are at the core of our bodies, the centre and we can work them with a bag of shopping. Amazing.

Our abs, backs, sides and several other muscles deeper inside, beneath the ones we see on a daily basis are our “core”.

Now just ask yourself; do those very same muscles not get worked when you sprint/jump/lift/push/pull/climb/squat etc?

And do they not get worked as hard and in most cases a damn sight harder than they would whilst you struggle to stop yourself falling off something squishy?

To get stronger we must expose our muscles to high levels of tension through either an external load (barbells/dumbbells etc) or our own body weight and progressively increase that load as we get stronger to continue challenging the tensile and metabolic properties of the muscle structure.

Next time you are on a balance board or ball have a feel of your abs or lower back and see how much they are working…now go and pick up something heavy in one hand and walk with it….yes the same muscles are working but this time they are working harder.

Job done, no fancy equipment or pseudo science sales pitch, just plain old common sense hard work.

Activating your core is almost an entire industry on its own and it’s a con and a big one at that. Yes you can activate your core on a wobbly surface but to a far lesser degree than you would on a stable surface that you are less likely to fall off.

Beware the Personal Trainer or coach that tries to sell an exercise gimmick as anything other than fun.

Here in Epsom we know the difference between strength training and exercise for fun, I believe you should too.

The first person to successfully do this will then get FREE Personal Training with me in Epsom for the rest of January.

Now that’s a Christmas present!

Anyone wishing to join in must be weighed by me on my scales for accuracy…..

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9 day six pack eh!

So just how long should we wait until we see our dream bodies manifest in the mirror before us? As always, it depends. I know, I say that a lot but it is worth heeding.

Excellence in any endeavour appears to take 10 years according to Malcolm Gladwell (author of “The Tipping Point”);

“Everyone, from all three groups, started playing at roughly the same time – around the age of five. In those first few years, everyone practised roughly the same amount – about two or three hours a week. But around the age of eight real differences started to emerge. The students who would end up as the best in their class began to practise more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight by age 12, 16 a week by age 14, and up and up, until by the age of 20 they were practising well over 30 hours a week. By the age of 20, the elite performers had all totalled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives. The merely good students had totalled, by contrast, 8,000 hours, and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours.”

And although this is a reference to musicians it certainly spills over to any arena that requires skill practice, which is to say pretty much everything we do from running to computer programming.

The book “The Talent Code” insists that 10,000 hours of practice, no matter what the field are needed to achieve the levels of excellence we see displayed in sport as a daily occurrence on our televisions! That’s one hell of a lot of gym time.

Excellence after years of dedication

But what does this have to do with reaching the body we want, the fat loss, and the tone we so diligently chase? Everything and nothing.

I think it is fair to say that most people that workout are not there to master a skill and perform at world level but they still want to look like many of the athletes that put in those 10,000 hours.

Now that's an athletic physique

How quickly you can reach a sexy low body fat percentage and attain the firm bum and thighs of a competitive athlete is a combination of how fat and out of shape you have let your self become over the years and how hard you are willing to work.

A nice rule of thumb is for every centimetre of excess fat you can pinch near your belly button, aim for nothing less than a month to get rid of it. Most people need about 4-6 months of consistent dieting to achieve something resembling their end goals and sometimes a lot more. Obviously the less disciplined a diet the longer it will take (the further you move away from meat, fish, vegetables, dairy and fruit as a base diet, the harder it is to reach low body fat levels).

As far as the shapely and sexy muscle tone of an athlete, well that can happen over a similar period of time depending again on your activity levels over the past 6-12 months.  If the most strenuous exercise you have done of late is walking to work and up and down a few stairs, or God forbid jogging then we have to assume a base level of strength as nil. Your starting point is that of a recovering car crash victim. I don’t say this lightly but in most cases the body will have discontinued the maintenance of strength in ranges motion you don’t use so you must first relearn how to squat down to ground level, stand up and work in positions you have neglected for years. Then and only then, when full flexibility and base strength has been recovered can we begin to work on your future, advanced self.

When mobility returns to base, you can progress

If you have been an active individual and used your body through its full range of motion on a regular basis through a sport, yoga, pilates or something similar then you probably have mobility sorted and a focus on strength can be made which will see you transform your shape within 2-3 months give or take. Make no mistake, strength training and its sporting equivalents are what make a muscle “toned”. Sprinting, jumping, throwing, punching, kicking and any explosive bodily movement have the same, albeit, smaller effect as resistance training; a request of the muscles to produce high levels of force. This is the secret to a firm and capable body. Ladies have no fear, you will not get bulky from high force training, promise.

So if you are looking for world class excellence then you should have started as a child and spent a minimum of 10 years or 10,000 hours practising BUT if you just happen to want to look as good a world class athlete then relax, you can make damn good headway in somewhere between 3 and 12 months depending on your starting point. Phew!

Three to twelve months to undo perhaps decades of bad lifestyle choices, thats an amazing return on investment in anybodies books.

This shows it can be achieved (I am not sure of the time scale of this change but WOW) Jennifer Nicole Lee

I run a small Personal Training business from a private training facility in Epsom and am looking for a handful more clients as the New Year settles in. Give me a call if you want to make that change. 07742 952 208

Your Personal Trainer,

Richard ‘Peg Leg’ Ham Williams

Travesty!Not when you break down the numbers.

Weight loss is a nice indicator for statisticians and population studies but really means very little to the health of an individual. Here in Epsom we have a huge variety of people walk through the doors and two people of the same age, height and weight can have very different level of function, health and body fat.

Body fat and lean mass are the more important indicators of healthful progress toward a vital and capable physique. The above picture gives you an idea of how two bodies can be of the same weight but very different compositions.

If for example you start your new lifestyle at 80kg with a body fat of 30% (24kg of fat and 56kg of lean tissue) and after 6 months of intelligent and consistent power and resistance exercise and dietary changes you find your self now weighing 75kg you may, if you are weight obsessed, be upset at the paltry 5kg loss, many are. BUT if you delve a little deeper and look into the real numbers of the amount of body fat and lean tissue then you will see something totally different;

You realise that you know have a body fat of 15% (11.25 kg of fat and 63.75kg of lean tissue) which means you actually lost 12.75kg/28lbs of fat and increased healthy lean tissue such as muscle, bone, sinew and organ by 7.75kg!

That kind of change in body composition is a startling difference in the way you look with very little actual weight lost. Body composition is of far more significance in the way you look than weight itself.

Thanks leighpeele.com

Now lets look at the traditional methods which rely solely on weight loss on the scale;

The same person comes in weighing in at 80kg with a body fat of 30% and spends the next six months on a calorie restricted diet and aims to lose 1kg per week of weight irrespective of where that weight comes off so goes the traditional cardio route with a few token resistance training moves thrown in.

Some weeks the scale goes down and other weeks it even goes up! Overall the loss sits at around 15kg which, to the casual observer of the scale, seems like a much better result! You and I know different now.

Due to the nature of traditional dieting and exercise’s obsession with the scale, when we break down the numbers it becomes clear there is a drastic loss of metabolic lean tissue and a very different capability and shape. We find that the 15 kg lost comprises of mostly fat (9kg) but also rather unfortunately 6kg of lean tissue which may be in the form of muscle,bone density or organ tissue! This is a tragic situation for anyone over the age of 25 to be in due to Sarcopenia (the age related wasting of muscle, a leading cause in falls and injury).

So with 9kg of fat lost and 6kg of unspecified lean tissue wasted away you are left with 23% body fat compared to our smart trainees 15%. We know which will look stronger, sexier and healthier on the beach and I can guarantee you that the one who focused on body composition rather than weight will feel better!

You choose (thanks leighpeele.com)

Now you understand that weight is of less importance than composition you should search for ways to maximise or maintain as much lean tissue as possible whilst removing excessive body fat and to do this you need to either a)read this blog b)find a source of information that you can depend upon to get you to your goals c)Come to Epsom and have me as your Personal Trainer.

Body re-composition is as much art as it is science in finding how to apply sound principles into your daily routine on a long term basis. Good luck and smart training.

Richard ‘Peg Leg’ Ham Williams

Epsom Personal Trainer

We have a handful of Personal Trainers here in Epsom and we all follow varying protocols to reach our goals. The following is a brief look at who is in the competition and their thoughts on diet and training;

Balboa

Roberto “Balboa” Barcellona

http://www.rbpersonaltraining.com/

Age – 30

Height – 5`11

Weight – 74kg

Balboa is all about the aggressive training mindset, psyching himself and willing to put his heart and soul on the line to get a lift. A warrior.

Rob believes the diet should be natural, whole and supplement free. With the right balance of healthy foods he feels he can attain the level of strength and conditioning he needs through lifting hard and heavy as specifically to your goals as you can.

As the lightest competitor he is out to win the power to weight ration title and is proud of how lean he stays year round. A contender for the deadlift title too!

Triceps Daly

James “Triceps” Daly

http://jdpersonaltraining.co.uk/

Age – 27

Height – 5`10

Weight – 78kg

James is a seasoned Celebrity Personal Trainer and has a reputation of having grossly strong triceps which he hopes will see him walk away with the bench press win.

He follows a Paleo’esque diet with some foods that traditionally fall outside of the Paleo lifestlye (think sweet potato). Feeling that performance and results can be influenced by carbohydrate manipulation through nutrient timing and I have to agree.

Not a stranger to supplements he has a regime that includes whey protein and glutamine to help recovery and keep his protein intake high whilst a busy work day keeps him unable to take in enough from whole foods.

Training is planned and intense with around three days per week dedicated to lifts of the competition and includes assistance lifts like pullups and pushdowns.

“Mother Nature with a hint of Sports Science”

Big Dave Saunders

http://www.salusfitness.co.uk/

Age – 28?

Height – 6`4

Weight – 117kg

Dave, an ex Rugby player,  is the largest of the competitors this time round but is coming back from major shoulder surgery to repair a torn labrum so his focus has recently been on bringing body fat levels down and focusing on squatting power, which he has! Dave will likely walk the squat with an easy win.

Paleo is the diet he prefers with a carbohydrate re-feed once every five days and so far, it has worked well for him. Supplements do play a role in his methods but only to the extent where they iron out individual nutrient deficiencies; he see’s no place for stimulants that “stress the adrenals”.

His training is intense as is the volume of work he packs into his sessions. “Weak shoulders don’t allow for a big bench”, he works on the weak links to strengthen the unit. His caters to genetic differences with his clients.

Peg Leg waxed for a photo shoot, mwaha!

Richard “Peg Leg” Ham Williams

http://www.peglegpt.com/

Age – 31

Height – 6`1

Weight – 94kg

I believe that we all have a different response to exercise and that must be accounted for in training. Our genetics determine just how we should train for optimal gains;  low reps may work wonders for some and awfully for another which is where Science comes into the training arena.

My diet is mostly based around nutrient timing and using that to manipulate results and on the day performance. I don’t believe carbohydrates are the enemy but they are the easiest to manipulate in the diet for drug like effects.

I have no need for supplements most of the time but see the need when life gets too busy for whole foods to be prepared. They have a place but are overly relied upon. There is no substitute for a good diet.

My training is very brief and bespoke to individual genetic make up with sessions that rarely last past thirty minutes, my aim is to stimulate whilst keeping recovery abilities high.

I aim to win the Deadlift!

We have other competitors on the day competing in individual lifts and not the total three lifts;

Chris B – Bench

Chris F – Bench

Garteh – May well jump in on all three lifts

For information on any of the above trainers feel free to check out their respective sites or call them for a chat.

The talk and banter has already begun on Twitter under the hash tag of #TeamAwesome which you are more than welcome to follow or join in with.

For those that are unfamiliar with the events of Powerlifiting here is a brief overview;

The SQUAT

The BENCH Press

The King of lifts; The DEADLIFT

They are the three lifts we will be performing on the day; Squat, Bench press and the Deadlift;All three have a great history and world records that are mind boggling.

RULES;

Apologies to the purists out there but our rules are somewhat more slack than those of an official meet;

Squat – the crease in the hips must be in line with or below the height of the to top of lifters knee. Each lifter will have the rack safety bars set to height and the bar must touch them for a clean lift.

Bench – the bar must touch the chest but no pause is required, touch and go is fine. Buttocks to stay on bench and bar to be fully locked out before re racking.

Deadlift – is there a way to cheat on the deadlift…bar simply leaves floor and must be pulled to a standing position without the use of wraps. Belts are fine (we don’t want anyone crying about a bad back). You can lift rounded, drag it up your thighs whatever works for you.

You can have as many attempts at the lifts as you wish.

Chalk allowed. Assisted lifts do not count.

Chalk, obviously

There will be overall winners for each lift and and overall winner for biggest combined lift totals along with a best power to weight ratio lifter.

Each of the competitors that have a twitter account will be updating training and diet info through the previously mentioned #teamawesome and at the individual twitter pages. So far we have myself; @RHamWilliams  @TeamJDPT @RBPTSpecialists @SalusFitness  so follow each of us and see what you can pick up from the tips and information you read  (If you are part of the team already and I haven’t mentioned your twitter tag please let me know).

Videos of the event will also be posted along with some training tips we may have used.

We have not got any female trainers wanting to join in as of yet but they are welcome and encouraged for women can benefit far more from lifting weights than men in this day and age, ladies…strong is sexy!

EDIT;

After discussion it has been decided that no assistance whatsoever should be allowed to keep it as raw as possible, this I like.

So no belts,straps or chalk. Street Strength is perhaps an apt name for it. Just you and your clothes versus gravity and slag.

Now we have covered, in brief, fibre types we can move onto training of those fibres.

Each fibre type plays a different role in our lives. Type 1 are the weakest so it will be of less benefit to any other than endurance athletes to fatigue these, which their events will do nicely in themselves without additional training exercises. Type 2 are very strong and have the greatest force output as previously mentioned and the practice of many sports, past a certain point, will not stress these enough to fully stimulate a positive performance enhancement. Anyone involved in sports will be best suited training type 2 fibres.

Every person has a different distribution of fibre types throughout their muscular structures. The majority of people have an distribution pattern that is in favour of intermediate twitch fibres (type 2a and 2ab) which have a moderate force output capability and moderate anaerobic capability making up about 60% of their muscles, the other 40% being made up of slow twitch type 1 fibres (20%) and type 2b fibres (18%) with a small amount of the strongest type 2x fibres (c2%). Those percentages were as an example only.

Others will have a distribution more favoured to one fibre type than another. Examples would include endurance athletes; they display a higher percentage of type 1 fibres than average. Strongman, power lifters, sprinters etc. display a higher than average percentage of type 2b fibres (type 2x dominance abnormalities will express themselves in only the most gifted of athletes – think Usain Bolt).

They do not display those fibre distribution patterns because of their sport; rather, they gravitated toward those sports because of their fibre type distribution.

A brief but important note;

Fibres are defined by the nerve that they are controlled by – fast twitch fibres are controlled in larger numbers (for example, one motor unit may control one hundred fibres) by a powerful motor unit with a strong electrical discharge and have a fast shortening speed. Slow twitch fibres are controlled in smaller numbers (for example, one motor unit may control only ten fibres) by smaller and less powerful motor units with slower shortening speeds and less powerful electrical discharge.

The greater your share of type 2b and 2x fibres, the bigger and stronger you can be. They have the greatest size of all the fibres and if you have more of them then you will get bigger than normal muscles.

The greater your share of type 1 fibres, the wirier and more enduring you will be. They are the smallest of the fibre types and even if you have lots of them, you will not ever be really large.

The more even distribution of fibres you have, the better all round athlete you can be. You can attain a great athletic physique.

If you have a domination of type 2b or 2x fibres then trying to become anything other than a strength athlete is futile – you will never excel at endurance events. The same holds true if you have a dominance of type 1 fibres, you will likely not succeed in strength based sports. Play to your strengths as the saying goes.

Now it gets a little tricky to break down training parameters into a simple text, I will however, try.

A muscle grows due to the depth and duration of fatigue (this may cause uproars, read on). If it were mechanical load/work as many follow then isometrics simply would not produce the same degree of hypertrophy as dynamic exercise, and they do.

Fatigue is best viewed as a depletion of strength away from your maximal capacity.

Example;

If your maximum strength is one hundred kilos and you lift eighty kilos until you can longer do so, then you have lost twenty kilos of strength. A momentary loss in strength of twenty percent.

Your dominant fibre type distribution will determine just how many repetitions you will achieve with these eighty kilos;

Type 2b and 2x dominant will perform far less repetitions, perhaps as little as three to six depending on the severity of the dominance.

An even mix of fibres (as most of the population have) will achieve between eight and twelve repetitions.

A tendency to be type 1 dominant will see higher repetition ranges from thirteen up to thirty and in some cases, more, depending on the severity of the dominance.

This will affect your training in two major ways. Firstly it will guide you to understanding which repetition ranges to utilize and secondly, perhaps of more importance, it will give you a sense of how frequently you should push hard in your training.

If you are type 1 dominant then you will mainly be working fibres that recover quickly and wont fatigue until higher repetition ranges have been used – frequent hard training can be handled and required for the fastest results to manifest.

Type 2a and 2ab dominant trainees will be training fibres that mostly recover moderately quickly and fatigue fairly slowly which will allow for higher repetitions ranges than someone of type 2b fibre dominance and slightly lower than a type one dominant trainee. The frequency of hard training will need to be less than someone who has a dominance of slow twitch fibres.

The type 2b/2x dominant trainee will fatigue to high levels within a limited number of repetitions, far less than a type 1 dominant trainee but they will likely display far greater levels of maximal strength. They will take a far longer period of time to recover due to this abnormal number of large type 2 fibres and would be best served only pushing their training hard very infrequently.

What use is this to you? It should at least signify the use of training by a guided percentage of your maximum ability opposed to just picking a traditional repetition range that may well be hindering your progress.

It has been said that you will gain the most size if you lift a weight that you can handle for eight to twelve repetitions, the most strength if you lift for three to six repetitions. Great, if you are an average mix of fibre types, if you’re not then that will likely produce limited results, if any at all. At this stage, many walk away from strength training. Sad but true, and understandable.

An example of how this may produce less than optimal or satisfactory progress is if you are anything other than type 2b/x dominant. A type one dominant trainee may be able to perform eight to twelve repetitions with 85 – 90% of their maximum effort, which leads to a fatigue of 10-15%, hardly enough to create anything approaching optimal stimulation.

A trainee with a standard mix of fibres lifting may need to use 75-80% of their maximum force for 8-12 repetitions, signifying a deeper state of fatigue at 20 – 25% – a better stimulus indeed.

The trainee that will get the most size (and ultimately strength) from the old recommendation of 8-12 repetitions for size is the one who has a domination of fast twitch type 2b and 2x fibres. An eight to twelve set may mean they need to use 60% of their maximum force and thus fatigue their muscles by 40%, a rather significant degree of stimulation.

Andy Bolton, the strongest dead lifter to walk the planet entered a friendly competition with friends to see how many times he could lift 200kg (his record at this time stands at 457.5kg), this represents a little over 40% of his maximum force output. He achieved 24 repetitions. Twenty four repetitions with 40% of your maximum shows a fatigue rate of about 2.5% per repetition. This shows that he has a fairly even distribution of fibre types. And what does this tell me? That there is more to strength than mere fibre types. Joint structure, tendon insertion points, limb lengths, muscle belly length and size and neurological factors such as rate of force development and motivation are HUGELY important subjects to consider. If you don’t have a great number of type 2b fibres, all is not lost if superhuman strength is your goal.

If your maximum strength is 100 kilos and you use 10 kilos of force then only the type 1 fibres are used. If you now use 80 kilos of force, the type 1 and all type 2 fibres are in use. If you continue to produce eighty kilos of force until you can’t and you are of a normal fibre distribution then you will have fatigued the small number of type 2b and x fibres you have to zero force capability, you will have fatigued the weaker type 2ab and 2a fibres to a lesser degree and the type 1 fibres to barely any mentionable level. This signifies that you have only stimulated enough fatigue to cause a great response in the type 2b/x fibre types but seeing as how this trainee has so few of them; it will make little difference to the size of his muscles. He would be better served training the fibres he has in large quantities, in this case, type 2a and 2ab.

From that example it should be clear that if another trainee is predominantly type 2b/x fibres then this will represent a much larger number of fibres that have been fatigued. If the trainee is a usual mix of fibre types then the depth of fatigue the majority of fibres have received is low and not enough to stimulate large scale results. What little number of type 2b/x fibres they have will still have been deeply fatigued, they are just not vast enough in number to manifest as any large scale results.

If you have 100 fibres in your muscles and 20 of them are type 2b/x, 60 of them are type 2b/ab and 20 if them are type 1 then which do you think he would be better focused on for hypertrophy training – the ones he has many of or few of? Just a thought…

Earlier I mentioned that fatigue was the stimulus for strength and hypertrophy. The question then becomes – how much fatigue is enough to elicit a response? The work of Medx over the past twenty or so years has suggested that fifteen to twenty percent fatigue will work to allow performance increases in strength of the lower back. Increases certainly, but not maximum increases.

A few have tried and applied this fifteen to twenty percent fatigue protocol for strength successfully, many have found this lacking.

This could be to do with the fibre type distribution previously mentioned and applying the incorrect number of repetitions suitable to their individual fibre type dominance, not resting long enough or training hard too often (causing overuse atrophy). However, it could be that reaching a suitable level of fatigue (peak fatigue) and then resting may not be enough of a stimulus to the body. Remember that high tension (above 60% effort) creates an anaerobic environment in which the cells approach death the longer they are anaerobic. A simple level of fatigue, achieved once, for a brief period of time (one set), may just be enough to stimulate gains for differing periods of time for each person. A more advanced trainee may need the fatigue stimulus to be endured for longer to manifest more dramatic gains, as you would experience with rest pause or drop sets due to prolonged occlusion.

Another point worth mentioning here is that to display maximum strength, the skill at which you want to display that strength should be practiced as often as possible, in the most specific way possible to specifically work the motor patterns and appropriate cross bridges* associated with that skill. This applies to all sports, perfect practice makes perfect.

* Each skill/movement pattern will use a different selection/degree of cross bridges to be formed due to muscles performing mechanical work by shortening. A joint nearer the position of flexion will display a greater number of cross bridges than one nearer extension. This goes a long way to explaining why new and unfamiliar movements will cause an unusual degree of soreness – new cross bridge connections are being strained in a way they usually are not.

A barbell athlete should train to be as muscular as his weight class allows and practice lifting heavy weights as often as possible to refine the exact and most efficient and economic way to lift.

A track and field athlete, a footballer, rugby player and all other sports should first and foremost practice the skills of their sport. They can then enhance their power production through strength training. They have no need to learn how to apply their maximum strength to a barbell as power lifters and Olympic weightlifters do. They should merely use barbells to grow the appropriate muscles and learn how to use them with the skill set specific to their sport.

If this seems gibberish to those of you involved in strength training you need look no further than the world strongest man competitors – they are clearly monstrously strong but their best barbell lifts are not world records, they know to use the barbells to build muscle and then learn how to specifically use it in their sport. If they were to focus on barbell only lifts and practice them as judiciously as they do their strongman lifts then I guarantee their barbell specific skills would display greater barbell lift numbers. Such is the specificity the body works to. Simple SAID principle.

Bottom line, lift weights progressively in a manner that is both appropriate to the fibre type you want to develop** and your specific goals.

**If you are of an average mix of fibre types and want to display as much strength as possible without putting on size then you would need to avoid fatiguing your dominant fibre type and focus on the less dominant and bigger type 2b/x fibres. Your maximum strength will be inhibited due to not achieving maximum size but you will get stronger (and a small, possibly unnoticeable amount bigger) and your power to weight ratio will improve. The same principles can be applied to any mix of fibre types if the avoidance of size is desired.

Watch out for part 4