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Articles, Brandon Senn, Methodology

July 26, 2018

Brandon Senn competes in Powerlifting and is the Head Coach at Kabuki Strength Virtual Coaching. His mission is to support athletes through global management systems that directly influence their performance within the competitive realm.Over the past decade the idea that you can fluidly manage training loads based on defined scales has gone from a distant idea, to now being adopted as a critical tool that many lifters use every day in their training. Some coaches even base entire training philosophies on this concept. That’s not to say the formalization of autoregulation was the beginning of its application. Since man began training for sport or towards desired physical outcomes we have been managing how heavy, or how hard we push at any given time mostly based by feel. Not since the creation of specified scales have we began to put a name to it. But as with formally attaching a name to this idea, everything must evolve. This article is going to expand on the idea of autoregulating training load from its first use in medicine, into current trends in fitness, and to velocity and objective regulators. This article isn’t intended to overload you with information, but rather provide detailed instructions on how to implement each specific method into your training immediately. AMRAPs the Beginning of Autoregulation as a Method Ever wonder where the ever popular 3 sets of 10 came from? The Progressive Resistance Method was designed as a method for increasing maximal strength, where the weight lifted gradually increases as proprioceptive feedback (the body’s awareness to a stimulus) increases. The DeLorme Method (as used in the rehabilitation of soldiers after WWII) requires the individual to lift 50%, 75%, and 100% of 10RM loads (respectively) over the course of 3 sets for 10 repetitions. So what’s this have to do with autoregulation?...

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Articles, Methodology, Other

February 20, 2017

This piece was written by Mark Langley on his blog. TL;DR -The purpose of this article is to address the validty and reliability of velocity based training (VBT) measurement devices.-Three devices were compared to video analysis: Beast, PUSH, and OpenBarbell V2. Of the three, OpenBarbell seems the most appropriate for powerlifting.- “This will be covered largely from a powerlifting standpoint. Also, did I mention this is geared towards powerlifters? I mostly wrote this for people interested in improving their squat, bench press, and deadlift. Athletes that focus on these movements in particular are powerlifters. I wrote this for powerlifters. Powerlifting.”-The most important considerations for a VBT device for powerlifters are affordability, reliability at low-end velocity, and support for powerlifting specific movements (primary and secondary lifts)-There is nothing that makes a tethered or accelerometer VBT device better than other options without testing across different movements you intend to perform under VBT conditions-The limitation of an analysis like this is accuracy or reliability can be improved in some models with no additional hardware changes (adding something to the internals). An update to their respective apps could change how velocity is calculated, rendering this analysis null and void. This was conduct in late January of 2017 INTRODUCTION Velocity Based Training (VBT) is one method of auto-regulating training. It can auto-regulate load on the bar, number of reps within a set, total number of sets, any combination of those three, or any other relevant factor in training. It is beyond the scope of this article to make the case for VBT. It’s hard to make a case for VBT when you haven’t first established that the methods used to gauge velocity are valid and/or accurate. VBT has been a training methodology put forth in power athletes and team sports. It has gotten significantly less attention for strength athletes...

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Articles, Chris Duffin, Methodology

June 28, 2016

As the founder of a popular movement website called www.Kabuki.MS I feel it’s my duty to tell you that I want you to limit the amount of exercise prep that you perform. Yes, I said limit your exercise prep, not do more. In recent years I’ve seen a trend for mobility, movement priming, and other means of exercise preparation. While this trend is very positive over the just ‘grind through the pain’ mentality of the past, by many it has been taken too far. Just like anything else people seem to jump right to the “if a little bit is great, then more must be better” approach.If you are doing 45min of prep work and 30min of training, then you're doing something wrong! In fact your preparation work should not exceed 10min. Keep it to 9min or less of preparation work prior to training! We call this the #SMEP approach or Single Minute Exercise Prep. So why isn’t more better? Simply put, it just isn't adding value and is actually taking away from the time you could be spending training. Training provides a stress response and thus adaptation. In the lifting world we call this GAINS. Yes, DEM GAINS are what we are looking for, and the cumulative effect over time yields improvement in performance. Improved performance is the reason we are in the gym or on the athletic field to begin with. And if you are training well, the movements done in training will not have the negative effect on the body, or even be the actual “prep work” in your warm-up.   This leads us to our first key point.KEY POINT: Evaluate your training and movement- If you need to do tons of prep or recovery work in excess of 9min just to be able to train…. You might want to look at your training or your quality of movement.Once you...

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Articles, Chris Duffin, Dr. Stuart McGill, Methodology, Movement

March 14, 2016

In this two part series, Chris Duffin sits down with Dr. Stuart McGill. Dr. McGill is the leading researcher on Biomechanics in the world. He is a professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo (Waterloo, ON, Canada). His advice is often sought by governments, corporations, legal experts and elite athletes and teams from around the world. Difficult back cases are regularly referred to him for consultation.In this rare interview, McGill and Chris share their passion for engineering and design outside of the human body and movement. They reach into discussions about vehicle suspension and chassis design and relate the same processes to ‘tuning’ of the human body for performance....

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Articles, Chris Duffin, Equipment, Methodology, Movement

October 14, 2015

By: Don Berry, DC CK FMS SFMA  My Background, I am a Chiropractor and have been in practice for over 26 years I specialize in movement restoration and rehabilitation based on the Neurodevelopmental Model using a variety of Movement Assessment tools that look for Dysfunction. I have been a Martial Artist for 31 years, lots of different styles but primarily Wing Chun Kung Fu. Only in the past few years have I gotten interested in Powerlifting thanks to an introduction to Marty Gallagher from some friends in Kettlebell world.The importance of the background is to bring to light, that I had a lot of tools at my disposal and a lot of great coaches. But, for some reason there was a disconnect between my 4 worlds: Clinical Practice, Martial Arts, Kettlebells and PowerLifting. Chris at the DMS was able to tie all of that up for me and help me end two years of pain and frustration. Part 1: My Shoulder Dislocation and Two Years of Frustration to Recovery I had just set a national record in my age weight class for a raw squat for 420 lbs. My shoulder was a little tight so I planned to keep the bench light and murder the Dead Lift. Unfortunately, my shoulder gave out on the bench at 275 lbs., a weight I could rep for sets of 5 in training. That was it for me that day and for a long time to come. At the time of the injury I was in a bit of pain but mostly in shock as to why this had happened. I really didn’t get the answer to that until just a few weeks ago at the Duffin Movement System certification (More on that later).   The only input I did get was from Kirk Karwoski who said, “Your...

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Articles, Chris Duffin, Methodology, Movement

May 31, 2015

As a performance guy, I absolutely hate the ‘traction control’ button that they put in a number of vehicles today. If you aren't aware of what this button does, it operates by detuning the engine and, in some cases, the transmission. By retarding the engine timing to reduce its output and slowing the shift patterns, it effectively improves the traction but really no more than if you purposely stepped on the gas pedal a little softer and with better control. With less power, the detuned powertrain has less chance of losing control on an unstable surface and causing you to crash and injure yourself.Your body has the exact same mechanisms in place. When you lack stability, your body detunes its reaction to prevent you from injuring yourself. This is the primary reason why training with a Bosu ball or squatting in squishy tennis shoes is counterproductive. With a detuned body, you simply can’t work as hard as you want to or fire and engage your muscles properly. It's also the reason why my coaching cues help people realize immediate improvements in their lifts when implemented properly.If you don’t have a properly stabilized core with proper intra-abdominal pressurization (IAP), this down-regulation is in place. Your traction control button is on. Another button is proper joint centration. If your positioning or tight muscles are pulling the joint to one side of the socket, it will down-regulate your central nervous system firing as well. In practice, this looks like a movement pattern-based, warm-up drill. I have several examples on my YouTube channel and further examples will be covered in depth in the  Duffin Movement Series (DMS).If you're training squats, you would do some movements that require transferring power through the hip joint with a stabilized core. You would do these with proper IAP as a warm...

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