Episode 7 – Tony Gentilcore Pt. 2 – Go the F*#& to Sleep: Why Recovery is Easier Than You Think

In this Episode:

• Introduction
• Yellow Flags in Strength Training
• Earn the Right to Increase Weight
• Go Through a Session Without Increasing Weight
• (De)hydration, Blood Volume, and Performance
• Slow Down!
• Deadlifts
• Conclusion

Show Notes:

0:41 –

Introduction

• Just go to sleep!
• Recovery: why it’s so important and much easier than you think it is
• Deadlifting for endurance athletes
• Why strength training is very different, and why most endurance athletes struggle with it

2:28 –

Yellow Flags in Strength Training

• Lack of motivation to train
  • You’re not being overtrained
    • You’re tired – just go the fuck to sleep
    • No Netflix!
• Dr. Quinn Henoch and Dan Pope
  • Both talk about training volume and how that needs to be better monitored as far as injuries, motivation to train, etc.
  • If you’re doing too much volume of what you can handle of certain movements or load, then you’ll get hurt
  • If you have a client or athlete getting hurt a lot, audit your program – your training might be too aggressive

5:07 –

Earn the Right to Increase Weight

• “I do think people need to kinda stay put for more than a week – to kinda earn the right to increase the quota on the bar” – Tony
  • People don’t get this
• Each week we either add reps, time under tension, or we’ll go up a weight
• “Training is not linear” – Menachem
• Cyclists that are commonly injured are working too hard in the weight room or too hard on the bike
  • Working on breathing patterns is essential
• “It’s not just going up in load every week, but it’s also the recovery in between” – Menachem

8:06 –

Go Through a Session Without Increasing Weight

• Add time under tension or add reps
• People need to be more cognizant of how they feel
• “Recovery – the time in between workouts – is just as important as the actual workout”  – Tony
• “I’m very minimalist when it comes to supplements” – Tony
  • He likes protein powder, fish oil, vitamin D, creatine, and that’s about it
    • You don’t need any of this – just go to sleep!
      • It might be unsexy, but it is that simple!
• “Sleep is important. Eating adequate calories is important. Drinking adequate water.” – Tony
  • All of this will affect how your workouts are
  • “If you’re dehydrated x amount, your performance in the weight room is going to be compromised” – Tony
• As far as training related stuff, it’s a matter of writing things down and tracking it
  • What gets tracked gets managed, and it gives you accountability
• With injury, you have to tinker with that pain threshold a little bit
  • People tend to power/plow through pain threshold
  • We have to produce a training effect, so let’s do what doesn’t hurt
  • Dan Pope says the magic number is a 3 in a pain scale
    • 0 = nothing
    • 10 = excruciating pain
    • During the workout, immediately after, and the day after, you don’t want to be above a 3 as far as dealing with injury
    • Mechanotransduction – you have to elicit a little bit of discomfort, but don’t surpass that 3
      • Ideally you should move the pain threshold line up, so then you can progress pain-free

17:08 –

(De)hydration, Blood Volume, and Performance

• Decrease in performance with drop in blood volume (in relation to hydration)

• Dr. Stacy Sims said a 2% drop in blood plasma volume will lead to a 8-12% decrease in power for cyclists
• Gatorade and Powerade have very complex carbohydrates
  • You want glucose and sucrose in a 3-4% carbohydrate concentrate solution
  • You need to water down those drinks because if not it can upset your stomach
• Different types of sodium:
  • Sodium chloride (table salt)
  • Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda)
  • Sodium citrate
    • Sodium bicarbonate and citrate will be better absorbed
    • Add a teaspoon of baking soda to your sports drink, and it’ll act as a cotransporter to help you bring the water into your system
      • Same thing with when you take creatine, you have to drink water, and it’s best absorbed with carbohydrates
• Pain and breathing patterns
  • Poor breathing patterns increase ischemia and thus increase pain
    • Ischemia = lack of blood flow
  • We don’t want to be hard men and women when it comes to the weight room, we want to be smart
    • Minimal effective dose
    • “Hybrid Athlete” – Alex Viada
    • You have to be pretty lazy in the weight room
      • You don’t want the intensity of your training to match the intensity of all times that you’re in the weight room
        • You have to separate the two
      • It’s easy to maintain strength once you get to a certain level
        • Balance the body: hinging, rows, obliques, shoulder
        • Brad Schoenfeld – muscle hypertrophy study

22:15 –

Slow Down!

• Get endurance athletes to appreciate the rest periods
• Repetition
• Common thread: strength training helps and it’ll improve your running economy
• Understand that the intensities don’t always have to match
  • You don’t always have to go full throttle the whole time
  • “That’s why I’m a big fan of fillers” – Tony
    • Filler exercises would be some time of corrective exercises to do during the rest break that won’t affect the subsequent sets
      • Low threshold, low effort
      • Helps them slow down
• 4 major pillars for athletic progression:

1. Hormonal
2. Neuromuscular
3. Cardio-respiratory
4. Metabolic

• Rest periods focus on all of these pillars, which is where strength training can have a great impact
• It’s just repetition – I just hope they follow the program

31:06 –

Deadlifts

• Do you have everyone who comes into your studio deadlift off the floor? Why, or why not?
  • Nope!
  • “Because they’re not all competitive powerlifters” – Tony
  • I think it’s a narrow-minded view of the deadlift
  • Tony’s job is to figure out what the best way for you is to perform a deadlift
    • You must be able to maintain a neutral spine
  • Some people do it off box, trap bar or straight bar, sumo stance or conventional stance, kettlebell or landline 
  • “They have to earn it” – Tony
  • “I wanna train the hip hinge, not necessarily the deadlift” – Tony
    • Reduce lumbar extension with minimal knee flexion – essentially what a deadlift is
      • It’s not a squat
      • There is a squatty hinge
  • “My initial progression or introduction to the deadlift is typically the trap bar” – Tony
    • A more back-friendly way to introduce a loaded hinge
  • Stark beginners will sometimes start off with a kettlebell
  • Elevating the bar makes it easier as well so that they don’t injure the back and they’re still focusing on the posterior chain
• Cycling back injuries
  • A number of these injuries happen in the weight room and are perpetuated from the riding position
  • Cyclists have very low bone density if they don’t consistently strength train
    • Tissue needs to adapt, which takes so much time
    • You need to earn the right to move the weight

38:14 –

Conclusion

• 2 or 3 big things for listeners to remember:

• • Train the position that you’re not in
    • As far as the bike, training should be in extension not flexion
  • Intensity of exercise
    • You don’t need to kill yourself in the gym
    • It’s more of the 80% effect
      • With consistency
• We still need to talk about overhead motion for triathletes
• 2 or 3 movements for cyclists to be focused on in the gym:

• • Deadlifts
  • Improve T-spine extension
    • Gets them access to more shoulder flexion
• Where can people find you?

• • The Complete Shoulder and Hip Blueprint
  • The Complete Trainers’ Toolbox
    • Geared more toward coaches and trainers
    • 9 fitness professionals
    • Video and webinar format
    • 17 hours of content
    • CEU credits
  • Instagram and Facebook: tonygentilcore
  • Twitter: tonygentilcore1

• Tonygentilcore.com – website
  • Social media, articles, blogs, etc.

• • • “Stuff to read while you’re pretending to be working” – really good