The Cable-Pull Through - the Best Exercise You are Not Doing!

 

Cable Pull-Throughs may be the best exercise you aren’t doing!   They share a lot in common with the Kettlebell Swing, but they are much easier to learn and can really help to groove the hip hinge pattern.   The pull-through is fantastic for building posterior chain strength and directly carries over to the field of play by teaching you how to use your glutes and hamstrings to produce hip extension for running and jumping.   Specifically, it teaches you to separate your low back from your hips during the hip hinge pattern.    

Many people use their low back to produce movement which sets them up for injury!   The pull-through also provides full-range loading with no dead spots in the movement which teaches you to maintain full-body tension throughout the entire range of motion for hip extension and flexion.

The pull-through is also an excellent choice for people with low back issues because it places much less load on the spine yet provides the benefits of a deadlift or other hip hinge movements like the kettlebell swing.  Last but not least the pull-through can help as a corrective exercise for people who consistently fall into the pattern of being hamstring dominant in classic glute exercise like supine bridges. 

When doing bridges aka hip lifts many people will have hamstring cramps because they are not effectively activating their glutes so consequently compensate by overusing their hamstrings.    For these folks cable pull throughs can often completely fix the problem by teaching them to use their glutes more and hamstrings less for hip extension!

How to do a Cable Pull-Through

 Set an adjustable cable in a low position – not necessarily the lowest position because you want the line of pull to be more horizontal than vertical which is one of the big advantages of using a cable over a free weight! Keep in mind standing hip extension is more of a horizontal movement than a vertical one.

1. Attached a tricep rope to the end of the cable so you can grasp both ends of the rope.
2. For this movement you will face away from the cable with a slightly wide stance and think about pushing the knees out from the center. You are going to reach down and back through your legs and grasp both ends of the rope.
3. This is NOT a squat movement – so sit back like you are trying to touch a wall behind you with your butt. Keep pushing back until your hands are past your knees.
4. Keep your spine straight the whole time! This means maintaining the natural arch of the low back and not allowing your upper back to round – you will really feel the stretch in the hamstrings if you are doing it correctly!
5. Your head should follow the hip hinge with chin-tucked slightly throughout – you do NOT want to hyper-extend the neck!
6. At the top of the movement concentrate on squeezing the glutes at the top without locking the knees.
7. A good starting point is 3 – 4 sets of 8 – 15 reps and this is NOT about moving as much weight as you can or trying to rack the stack! Be mindful during the movement and make sure the back stays flat, neck does not hyper-extend, and you feel those glutes firing!

For a great visual watch this video teaching the movement by Tony Gentilcore:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZFRe50WzpM 

New Vitamin D/Covid Study

 

IMPORTANT NEW VITAMIN D FOR COVID STUDY. There have been several studies showing a relationship between Vitamin D intake and Covid - long story short - having your levels correct makes an ENORMOUS difference in risk and outcome should you contract Covid-19. This body of evidence has been strengthened even more but a full randomized controlled clinical trial - the gold standard in research and WOW.

The first randomized controlled trial (RCT) of vitamin D in COVID-19 has just been published (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076020302764?via%3Dihub) The results are astounding: vitamin D nearly abolished the odds of requiring treatment in ICU. Although the number of deaths was too small to say for sure, vitamin D may actually abolish the risk of death from COVID-19..

You should ALWAYS take Vitamin D with vitamin K2 which is the fat-soluble version of K. K works synergistically with D to make sure calcium goes where it is supposed to - into your bones - not your tissues or arteries.

Ideally get your levels checked and then supplement - you can get a blood test or a finger stick test and neither require a prescription. You want your blood levels between 40 - 80 ideally. The only way to KNOW this is testing. For most Caucasians who do not get much sunlight you will need to take 5,000iu per day of Vitamin D3 to get into this range, but it can vary considerably based on genetics. I require 10,000iu per day in winter months to stay there. People of color require even more. Sunlight can and does create D in most people very well, but you have to be careful of getting burned.

Now is the time to be getting your levels optimized as we head into fall and winter - do not let those levels drop! There are many other benefits to optimizing D levels including cardiovascular health, bone health, muscle mass in aging adults, etc. This list is long and impressive - single most important supplement to get right! 

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27Sarah Troutman, Amanda Maurer and 25 others

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How to Avoid the Nine Biggest Beginner Gym Mistakes

 

Watch this short video to learn how to avoid the 9 most common beginner mistakes at the gym.     This will give you a simple guide to achieving the results you want in the shortest time possible at a gym: https://youtu.be/-NL1_upNzQU  

Psychological Stress and Exercise Recovery

 

We all know that stress impacts our lives, but what may surprise you is that stress directly impacts how you recover from workouts.     Chronic psychological stress literally increases muscle soreness after a workout and slows down recovery.     This study above proves it:    https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24343323

At the same time workouts can help reduce psychological stress so not working out is NOT the answer.      Balance intense workouts with low intensity activity and activities which bring your focus into the moment such as meditation, yoga, playing games, etc. to get the benefits of exercise while enhancing recovery!

How Much Time Should You Rest Between Resistance Training Sets?

 

One of the most common questions about weight training aka resistance training is how long should you rest between each exercise set?     If you take a look at the relevant research concerning this topic there are some good answers.

For a long time, researchers believed that shorter rest periods were better for increasing muscle size which was thought to occur because of increased levels of metabolic stress by not allowing complete recovery.    However, research done in 2015 shows that using longer rest periods actually results in better results for both increased muscle size and increased muscle strength.     It is thought that this occurs because longer rest periods allow a higher training volume (more repetitions of each exercise).

Another aspect to consider is whether most of your workout uses compound exercises (compound exercises use multi-joint exercises using more muscle mass such as a chest press vs a pec dec or pull-up vs an Lat Pullover).      In a 2012 study researchers found that with shorter rest periods workout volume decreased for both single-joint and multi-joint compound exercises.       However, the decrease in volume in workouts with short rest periods tended to be significantly greater with multi-joint compound exercises vs single-joint exercise (29% reduction in volume with multi-joint as compared to 15% with single- joint exercise). So for strength routines focused on compound, multi-joint movements increased rest time is probably a good idea.

Another study which looked at the effects of rest interval length on training volume discovered another important item:    reduction in training volume occurs mainly between 1 and 2-minute rest periods.    The percentage difference between 2 and 3-minute rest periods is much smaller, except when doing 5 or more sets of an exercise.     So, for people doing 3 – 4 sets per exercise, 2 minutes is a good rest interval, but if doing 5 or more sets you should probably extend the rest interval to 3 minutes.

Another important piece of information is that recreational lifters who self-determine rest periods tend to rest just under 2 minutes between sets meaning that for most lifters doing 3 to 4 sets of several exercises whose goal is increased muscle size and strength you probably do not need to time your rest intervals and can go just go by feel.

Timing rest intervals becomes more important for advanced resistance training such as Power Lifting and Bodybuilding, but for most of us we can just go by how we feel!

How Sugar can Sabotage Your Weight Loss Program

 

Many people notice that eating breakfast makes them hungrier throughout the day, and this is probably NOT their imagination!   In this case the culprit is likely what they eat.  Specifically, refined carbohydrates, including sugar, can drive hunger particularly if they are consumed with little fat or protein.

A recent study tested this hypothesis with 16 healthy young women between the ages of 18 and 30 who had a stable body weight for the last 3 months.  Anyone with diabetes or on medications that affect appetite was excluded along with people who were allergic to any part of the meals given as part of the study.

Participants fasted for a minimum of 8 hours prior to the study.  In the morning participants came to the laboratory and were given a standardized test meal consisting of passion fruit juice, one cup of coffee, French bread and 5 grams of margarine.   The two drinks had no sugar added and the participants were instructed to sweeten to their preferred taste.

The sugar container given to the participants was weighed both before and after its use by each person to know the amount of sugar each person added to their drinks.   After completing the entire meal participants did not eat or drink anything (except water) until lunchtime.

Lunch was served 3 hours after breakfast and consisted of pasta with tomato sauce, and participants were instructed to eat until they felt satisfied. 

Study Results

The participants were divided into two groups based on the amount of sugar they elected to add to their breakfast.   The high sugar group added about 25 grams of sugar to breakfast while the low sugar group only added 14 grams of sugar. 

  

Both groups were evaluated for their perception of hunger and satiety.     The high sugar group had significantly higher levels of hunger during the three hours after breakfast AND consumed significantly more pasta at lunch!

Take Home Message

Avoid high sugar breakfasts such as standard breakfast cereal, fruit juices (eat fruit don’t drink it!) and consume 15 – 20 grams of protein and a small amount of fat.   Also try to add higher fiber carb choices like berries instead of banana, adding spinach to an omelet, etc.      Examples include an omelet with spinach with berries or a shake with protein, greens, and small amount of MCT oil for fat.

How Many Repetitions and Sets are Required to Get Results from Weight Training?

Many hours are spent in heated debate on this topic, but the truth is that the number of reps per set and number of sets per workout are secondary measures.       A close review of the scientific research shows that the weight of evidence does NOT support the idea that different numbers of repetitions have differential effects on muscular strength and endurance.       Furthermore, a review on this subject concluded that “all these studies strongly suggest that within a reasonable range of repetitions, approximately 3 to 20, there does not appear to be a specific number of repetitions that will elicit more favorable gains in muscular strength, power or hypertrophy.”

What does matter then?   It is ALL about reaching momentary muscular failure (meaning that you cannot complete another repetition of an exercise in good form.     If you do not reach muscular failure or come very close the reps and sets will not produce results.     Perfect form is part of this equation because perfect form means keeping tension in the targeted muscle/s throughout the entire repetition and not using momentum.     For example, allowing the weights being lifted to settle on the top of the weight stack means you are unloading the muscle – NOT what we want to do!     Throwing weight using momentum is another way you can deload the muscle.   The key is performing smooth, steady repetitions throughout the range of motion for an exercise with no deloading until you reach momentary muscular failure.   

For beginners one set to failure between 8 – 15 repetitions is plenty for each muscle group.   Over the longer haul repetitive sets may become necessary to make progress – but never sacrifice reaching muscular failure and perfect form to do extra sets!