Donut wrote:It's taken me 18 years to get where I am, I took very small steps and I've gone up and down. Along the way, I've seen enough people trying to get too strong too fast and fighting injury the whole way. I'd rather be healthy and weak than injured and strong.
I always told people that my secret in powerlifting was that I never tried very hard. Now, this is facetious, of course, but the truth behind the sarcasm is that I never overshot my ability. As you say, you have a very long time and a lot of workouts in your future, if you just progress a tiny bit each time and stay within your ability, you'll be surprised where you end up. Said another way: people overestimate what they can do in a day, and underestimate what they can do in a year.
3rdGenRigger wrote:Any thoughts on Creatine? I've heard lots of mixed thoughts and opinions regarding it. I know it's a substance that is in a lot of protein drinks etc. and I have a friend who was part of a high jump team when he was in University and his trainer basically told him that all Creatine did was to trap water in your muscles, making them look bigger, but making them slower and not any stronger, therefore less useful. I'm wondering if there are any benefits to taking protein supplements that contain Creatine.
Of course! This is a little bit like asking me my opinion on hammers, because you know a drywaller that says hammers are useless for screwing in drywall screws. I'm not saying the question is a bad one, its just unfortunate that there's so much misinformation out there that it confuses what is simply a question of utility of a particular tool for a job. Like any misinformation, there is a kernel of truth to what this coach was saying, but his statements are misleading and his conclusions erroneous. Some basics:
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Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is the molecule your cells use for energy. In the case of your muscles, this translates to contractile force.
-Releasing the energy stored in ATP involves dropping one of the phosphates, resulting in adensine diphoshphate (ADP).
-Your body recycles ADP back into ATP so more work can be done (wikipedia says you recycle the equivalent of your bodyweight in ADP per day!).
-Creatine is stored in skeletal muscle as Creatine phosphate, and as you may be deducing, this is useful because it can then give its phosphate to turn ADP back into ATP.
-You get creatine from your diet if you're eating meat (creatine gets is name from the Greek word for meat), although you likely can't eat enough meat to maximize your potential to store creatine in your muscles, which makes supplementation effective.
So for any effort where muscular endurance will be required, creatine supplementation will be helpful. Yes, creatine binds to water, but this water is within your muscle cells and is doing a job. If you eat a ton of salt, you'll retain water to maintain sodium balance, and in that case the water weight is useless (beyond keeping you alive). Yes, this additional intracellular volume will result in (slightly) larger looking muscles that will, of course, not be as strong as if they were that size without creatine. However the point is not to have stronger muscles
today, the point is to have stronger muscles two months from now because your weight training regimen, which invariably involved multiple sets of multiple reps, was more effective. So, if this coach believed in periodization of a program to include weight training, he should have recognized that creatine supplementation, while useless and maybe even detrimental on gameday, would actually be helpful during the initial volume phase of his weight training plan.
So, for anyone who understands what creatine does, and understands their goal and how to get there, there are no mixed feelings on creatine. It does a job, like a hammer, and the nature of the job at hand determines its utility. Even when I was powerlifting, I would cycle off creatine close to a meet, because it wouldn't help my 1RM attempts, and it was making me weigh slightly more. However, it was quite helpful whilst training.
In general, I don't recommend buying a protein drink with creatine premixed in it for three reasons. First, that confines the usefulness of the protein to a time where you want to supplement with creatine. Second, they're probably overcharging you for it, as creatine is very cheap in bulk. And third, I like to be able to add my own amount of creatine, as some people are more or less sensitive to digesting it and might need to scale up the amount slowly (it can give you otherwise harmless diarrhea if you take too much).
3rdGenRigger wrote:High jumping is dependent on low body weight to percentage of strength (Which can only benefit myself on the job given that I climb for a living), but I'm not training for any professional or even amateur events....just curious as to the merits or downsides to the claims of his trainers.
Ha if this were the case I'd be coaching a world class high jumping team! Jumping and sprinting are speed based activities, and there is a large genetic component to the fast activation and proper sequencing of compound activities. That is to say, some people are talented jumpers and sprinters. It is very simple to double someone's squatting strength, but if I could double someone's vertical jump I'd be charging $2,000 per hour. But your muscles are involved in either case, right? So how are speed and strength related? Here is the hierarchy (with some examples):
Absolute strength (1RM Back squat) -> Speed Strength (1RM Power clean) -> Strength Speed (Max distance shot put) -> Absolute speed (Max vertical jump)
Now the level to which these depend on one another are not entirely straightforward. Again, making someones legs twice as strong does not make them able to jump twice as high. If I were a jumping or sprinting coach, I would pretty much train up through the hierarchy, with strength and speed strength being in the off season, and strength speed and absolute speed being in the season. Creatine supplementation would be useful during the off season, but not in season.
3rdGenRigger wrote:Also, I don't have any trouble climbing given that I've been doing it for more than a decade and never had any problems, but climbing works different muscles than other occupations and I'm wondering if you have any suggestions regarding workout practices. It mainly involves pushing with my legs and pulling with my arms (Making benchpresses for example not all that useful). I'm in pretty good shape, but I am curious as to the potential to improve on my own fitness capabilities.
Ah, not so fast, my friend. Most muscles cross at least two joints. As such, they have two or more functions. Well if a muscle can only shorten itself, how does it decide which function it does? Often it doesn't, the other muscles around those joints either keep them from moving or allow them to move accordingly. For instance, your biceps can close your elbow, supinate (turn up) your palm, or lift your forearm. Much of what your biceps does depends on what the other muscles attached to that joint are doing. So, although your work is certainly biased towards certain motions, it still makes sense to train in a balanced fashion. Plus, doing a complementary movement like a shoulder press, has been shown to enhance your ability to do the other movement such as a pull-up.
I'd certainly be doing bodyweight push/pull movements, such has push-ups, pull-ups,
wall walks, dips, and the many variations available around those movements. I'd also do weighted push/pull movements with dumbbells. There are myriad static holds to choose from as well, since your core (or trunk) is involved in pretty much every natural movement you do. A good rule of thumb is you need more variety in upper body movements, and more intensity (weight) in lower body ones.
just now that I'm in college i'm around the bodybuilding type all the time, and it honestly gets old, I wondered if I was the only one. I know one guy who went from 140lbs, to 160lbs in a couple months, put nearly 2 inches on his arms from 14 to 15.75. Half of it was while dieting, I've trained with people who have used steroids and lets just say thats not typical even if you use them, so what does he do? He starts trying to sell thermogenics and such to get sponsored and puts down people he outgrew. 
But hey, I just lift to see what I can do and to close the manix 2
