Most daily activities, as well as athletic maneuvers, have you working off primarily one leg or arm at a time, and that requires your body to supply its own stability. It also means that if one side is weaker than the other, it can’t rely on the stronger limb to cover for it. Running, jumping, throwing, punching/kicking, and changing direction all demand that your limbs be stable and strong when moving independently, and only unilateral training—working one side at a time—can accomplish this.

Below, Onnit Coach Nick Gomez (@coachnick44) takes you through his favorite unilateral movements for training athletes. They’ll help you to be stronger and more explosive with each arm and leg individually, and begin to correct any muscle imbalances you have between your strong side and weaker one. Unilateral training is also great for core strength, so, assuming your diet is in order, don’t be surprised if you see your six-pack muscles start to pop after a few weeks of these moves.

Unilateral Movements for Athletes Workout

1. 45-Degree Bound

Sets: 3  Reps: 3 (each leg)

[See 00:14 in the video above]

Step 1. Stand on your left leg and bend your hips and knees. Draw your left arm back while you reach your right arm forward. Do this all at once so you feel like you’re loading a spring—coiling up your body to explode.

Step 2. Jump as far forward as you can at a 45-degree angle to your right. Land softly on the right leg, controlling your body by bending at the hips and knee again. Pause for a moment to own the position, and repeat the jump on the other side. Each jump is one rep.

Bounding is great for developing running and jumping power. Try this one to start off your leg days (after you’ve warmed up, of course), or as part of a warmup before you do a sprint or plyometric workout.

2. Uneven Carry

Sets: 1  Reps: Walk 15 yards, or as far as you can in 30 (each side)

[See 00:40 in the video]

Step 1. Hold a light kettlebell in your right hand at chin level. Hold another, heavier, kettlebell at your side with the opposite arm. Stand tall, draw your shoulders back and down, and brace your core.

Step 2. Begin walking with control at a steady pace for 15 yards, or a total of 30 seconds. Switch the kettlebells and walk back.

A variation of the farmer’s walk, this uneven carry trains grip strength on one side while working your core. Go as heavy as you can control for the full distance/time you have to walk. Do the uneven carry at the end of your workouts.

3. Plank Body Saw

Sets: 3  Reps: 10

[See 01:07 in the video]

Step 1. Get into pushup position, and then rest your forearms on the floor. Your body should form a straight line from your head to your feet, with your pelvis perpendicular to the floor and your core braced. Rest your feet on a wheel, furniture sliders, or any other object that can glide smoothly on the floor (paper plates can work if you have a waxed floor).

Step 2. Keep your body braced and straight as you drive your arms into the floor to slide your body backward until you feel you’re about to lose control of your pelvis position. Slide yourself forward again. That’s one rep.

Though not technically a unilateral exercise, the body saw trains you to work your legs, hips, core and shoulders separately but in unison, making for an incredibly challenging exercise that leaves no room for weak links. This move is a good workout finisher.

4. Staggered-Stance Trap-Bar Deadlift

Sets: 3  Reps: 6

[See 01:36 in the video]

Step 1. Find your staggered stance by putting your feet together and turning your right foot out 90 degrees. Rotate it 90 degrees again in the other direction and your toes should line up with the heel of the left foot. Keep your right heel raised so you’re balancing that leg on the ball of your foot. Keep a long spine as you bend your hips back and reach down to grasp the trap bar’s high handles. Your chest should be visible to someone standing in front of you (i.e., don’t bend over too much). Take a deep breath into your belly and brace your core.

Step 2. Drive through your feet to extend your hips and stand up tall. Eighty-five percent of your weight should be on your front leg. Exhale as you come up. That’s one rep.

Perform 6 reps, rest, and then repeat on the opposite leg.

It’s easy to see how this exercise mimics the mechanics of running and leaping, as well as wrestling and blocking in football, and that’s exactly what it will prepare you to do with maximum power. Use the staggered-stance deadlift as your main strength exercise on a lower-body day.

5. Half-Kneeling Landmine Press

Sets: 3  Reps: 8 (each side)

[See 02:13 in the video]

Step 1. Wedge a barbell into a corner or use a landmine unit as shown. Kneel on the floor on one knee and hold the bar on the same side as the downed knee. Your pelvis should be level with the floor.

Step 2. Keeping your torso tall and straight and your core braced, press the bar overhead and lean into the movement with your torso. That’s one rep.

Most people never do pushing exercises one arm at a time, so the landmine press is perfect for evening up the strength between sides. Use it in place of your dumbbell or barbell pressing for a while. As each limb gets stronger separately, you may notice you can go heavier when you return to conventional, bilateral overhead and chest presses.

6. Rotational Medicine-Ball Throw

Sets: 3  Reps: 4 (each side)

[See 02:48 in the video]

Step 1. Hold a medicine ball and stand perpendicular to a wall (preferably one that’s padded) with your legs staggered. The front leg should support 85% of your weight.

Step 2. Twist your body away from the wall until you feel a stretch in your core and then toss the ball into the wall as hard as you can—but stop your rotation when your shoulders are perpendicular to the wall again. Catch the ball on the rebound and absorb the force. That’s one rep.

Punching, throwing, running, and so many other activities rely on your ability to produce and control powerful rotation. This simple exercise helps you develop it fast. Do these as part of your warmup before a heavy workout to prime your nervous system.

See more exercises for athletes in our article on 5 Medicine-Ball Workouts.

The post Unilateral Movements For Athletes appeared first on Onnit Academy.

The power snatch is a little more user-friendly than the classic Olympic weightlifting snatch, safer, and easier to learn, but it’s no less effective in developing power, explosiveness, strength, and total-body coordination. In just a few steps, I’ll teach you how to do the power snatch, and show you why it’s a great move to master for anyone looking to become a more powerful athlete.

Bonus: once you know how to do it and why, you’ll be able to drop the word “snatch” into more of your conversations, no doubt turning some heads, ruffling some feathers, and setting the stage for many a crude (but entertaining) joke.

What Is The Power Snatch?

The power snatch was born from the original barbell snatch, a movement performed in Olympic weightlifting to test overall strength and power. Any variant of the snatch is a great measure of these qualities because it requires triple extension—the ability to extend the hips, knees, and ankles simultaneously, which creates maximum explosiveness. As any smart coach will tell you, getting these joints to extend together with the correct timing is no easy feat, and a thing of beauty when it’s done right. This is why Olympic lifters (as well as anyone else who practices the snatch and its variants) take a lot of time to drill good technique. Olympic lifts are the most technical weight-training exercises you can do.

Olympic weightlifters use the power snatch as a supplemental exercise to improve their performance on the regular snatch, but many other athletes use the power snatch in place of the snatch to train the explosiveness they need for the field, court, or mat, so the power snatch is the more widely used between the two lifts.

The biggest difference between the snatch and the power snatch is the ranges of motion used. The classic snatch has you lift the bar from the floor to overhead while you drop into a deep squat and then stand up tall. With the power snatch, you don’t have to catch the weight in a deep squat position (you’ll end up in more of a quarter-squat), making the lift less of a test of thoracic and lower-body mobility.

Because you don’t drop into a full squat, your arms have to move a little farther to get the bar overhead in a power snatch. This is one reason Olympic lifters drill the power snatch—to get the bar traveling higher, which ultimately makes it easier to catch in the finish position of a regular snatch. That extra range means you’ll have to use lighter weight than you would doing a full snatch, but that’s a blessing in disguise. Less weight means you’ll be able to move the bar faster, and that generates even more power. It also makes make the lift safer, and easier to get the hang of.

How To Properly Power Snatch

There are six parts to the power snatch when it’s done properly. Remember, all Olympic lifts and their variants are highly technical, so you have to invest the time to learn them correctly if you want to maximize the weight you can lift safely. It’s best to start with an empty barbell, or, if you have bumper plates, very light weights. Bumper plates (the kind that bounce) will allow you to reach the bar while it’s on the floor, and let you drop the weight from overhead rather than control the bar’s path back to the floor.

I’ll walk you through the technique in this video.

Now I’ll break it all down in a lot more detail.

Step 1. Start Position

Place your feet between hip and shoulder-width apart, and turn your feet out a few degrees. Think about how you’d stand to do a vertical jump—that’s the stance you want to use for the power snatch. (You’re going to maximally accelerate the bar upward, which is not unlike trying to jump as high as you can).

Roll the bar into position so that it’s over your feet. When you look down, the bar should be directly over mid-foot.

Bend your hips back, and then bend your knees as needed, to reach down and grasp the bar with hands about twice shoulder width—arms straight. (You’ll have to play around with the grip width to see what feels most natural. The National Strength and Conditioning Association recommends starting out by measuring the distance between both elbows when your arms are held out 90 degrees from your sides and parallel to the floor—that’s the space that should be between your hands when grasping the bar.)

Draw your shoulders down so your traps are stretched, not shrugged. Think about crushing an orange in your armpits so you feel your lats tense.

Take a deep breath into your belly, and draw your ribs down so they’re closer to your pelvis—brace your core as if you were about to get punched in the stomach.

Your chest should point forward—so anyone standing in front of you could see the logo on your T-shirt—but your back shouldn’t be excessively arched. Aim to create a long, straight line from your head to your butt.

Draw your head back as if making a double chin. Your shoulders should be directly over the bar or slightly in front of it. If you have a friend nearby, ask him/her to check on this.

KEY POINT: Get into a position that makes you think of how you’d load up your hips to jump up in the air. Make sure your head, spine, and pelvis make a long, straight line, so your lower back is flat (not rounded forward). Get your body tight. Imagine it as a coiled spring ready to be released.

Step 2. First Pull

This is the portion of the lift that goes from the moment the bar leaves the floor until it’s just below your knees.

Push your feet down so that your hips and knees begin to extend and the bar breaks off the floor. You should feel your weight start on your mid-foot and shift to your heels as you lift.

Keep pulling the bar in tight to you—maintain that tension in your lats (crushed oranges). The bar should travel upward in a straight line along the front of your shins.

This part of the lift does not need to be done explosively. That comes later. Focus on creating enough tension so that your whole body is tight and moving as one unit. It’s OK if the bar comes off the floor slowly.

KEY POINT: Keep the bar pulled in tight and start standing up. Control everything.

Step 3. Transition Phase

The transition phase is when the bar passes the knees. The goal here is to position the body so you can create maximum acceleration with the bar. When the first pull is done correctly and the bar is close to you, your knees will make room for the bar to pass when you extend your legs.

Once the bar passes the knees, extend your hips explosively. Snap them! The bar will usually come up to the top of the hips, but it can also be beneficial to think about “bringing the bar to your hip pockets.”

If your timing is right, your knees will actually re-bend so they pass in front of the bar. This will happen automatically when the form is right. You should feel your weight shift back to mid-foot, but your heels stay on the floor.

KEY POINT: As soon as you feel the bar rise above the knees, drive your hips forward explosively.

Step 4. Second Pull

Here’s where that powerful triple extension comes in.

Keep extending your hips as you also extend your knees and ankles to accelerate the bar upward (just think about jumping). Shrug your shoulders powerfully, but keep your arms relaxed.

Because you’re maximally accelerating the bar, you will have full hip extension at this point, and your shoulders will move behind the bar.

Your feet may also rise off the floor.

When your shoulders are fully shrugged, bend your elbows, as if doing an upright row. Begin pulling your body under the bar.

KEY POINT: Think about it like a vertical jump. I also like to cue it as “throw the bar straight up to the ceiling.”

Step 5: Catch

Now the goal is to safely catch the bar overhead.

As the bar travels up in front of your torso, it will feel weightless. Drive your elbows out wide so the bar stays close to your body.

Bring your body underneath the bar quickly by bending your knees and “catching” the bar in a quarter- or half-squat with arms locked out.

Your feet will land a little wider than they started. Ideally, the width you’d take to perform overhead squats (if you’ve practiced them before).

KEY POINT: When the bar feels weightless, focus on getting your body underneath it. Flip your elbows around to catch the bar at its highest point.

Step 6: Recovery

Once you have control of the bar, stand up straight and tall with it overhead, and your arms locked out.

Lower the bar to your chest, and then to the floor, or let it drop in front of you with control (if you’re using bumper plates).

Reset yourself before you perform another rep. Don’t rush your set.

It’s important to understand that the goal of the power snatch is to increase power input, so there’s no point in loading it up heavy and grinding out a slow rep. (Leave the heavy snatching to experienced weightlifters.) The rate of acceleration, not the load used, should be the main marker you strive to improve.

Loading the bar with 65%–85% of your one-rep max (1RM) is ideal for most athletes. (Since you’re new to snatching, just estimate it, or start with 10–25 pounds each side.) This should be a weight you can get for three to six fast, clean reps. Repeat this for 3–5 sets.

Only increase the weight if acceleration and proper technique can be maintained for the whole set, and expect to spend several workouts with the same weight until that’s the case.

A common complaint with the power snatch is that the wide grip spacing aggravates the shoulders. If you find that to be the case, you can move your grip inward slightly, which may be more comfortable. Doing so will increase the distance the bar has to travel in order to get overhead, and that will force you to sacrifice load, but it will also help you lift even faster and develop more explosiveness. (See my video on this below.)

Many lifters find the power snatch easier to perform when they wear weightlifting shoes. These shoes have an elevated heel that can help compensate for poor ankle mobility, which is an issue for many people. See my video below for more explanation.

How To Do The Hanging Power Snatch Technique

Some people don’t have the hip and ankle mobility to start a snatch from the floor. If you feel you have trouble reaching the bar, you can’t keep your lower back flat, or your heels tend to rise off the floor at the start/bottom position of the lift, you may want to try the hanging power snatch instead, which is the same basic movement but starting somewhere between your shins and hips, thereby eliminating the bottom portion of the exercise and focusing on the range where you generate the most power.

Depending on your mobility, you can do hanging power snatches from your shin, just below the knees, just above the knees, your mid-thighs, or hip crease.

Hanging power snatches are also good for troubleshooting weak points in your snatch technique. If you want to focus on the second pull, for instance, you can start with the bar at hip level. The hanging power snatch helps you develop power in shorter ranges of motion, which is necessary in many sports—say, a jump shot in basketball.

The hanging power snatch also adds an eccentric component to the exercise. The eccentric is the negative, or lowering, phase of any lift, where the target muscles get stretched under tension. The classic snatch and power snatch don’t really have an eccentric, since you typically drop the weight to the floor to set up for the next rep, or lower it as quickly as possible. With the hanging power snatch, however, you start by standing tall and then taking the bar somewhere between your hips and shins to load up for the rep. That keeps your posterior chain muscles (the backside of your body) much more engaged than if you just began the rep from the floor. You basically end up doing a Romanian deadlift right before a power snatch.

Emphasizing the eccentric component of any lift aids muscle growth, as it causes more muscle damage that the body needs to repair. This is one reason trainers will tell you to lift a weight explosively, but take two or three seconds to control it on the way down. So, it can be argued that the hanging power snatch is a good choice for adding muscle size.

What Muscles Does The Snatch Work?

The power snatch is really a full-body exercise, making it a very efficient lift for developing muscle and strength from head to toe. The posterior chain takes on the brunt of the work—that is, the muscles that work together on the backside of the body that contribute to the powerful triple extension. But once the bar is traveling up in front of the torso, the upper back and shoulders do their part to get the bar overhead, so the upper body gets worked hard as well.

Here’s a broad list of the muscles that contribute to a good power snatch, from the ground up.

• Calves
• Hamstrings
• Quads
• Glutes
• Spinal erectors
• Core
• Deltoids
• Traps

Power Snatch Benefits

There are several good reasons to invest the time to learn the power snatch. For one thing, if you have aspirations of competing in Olympic weightlifting, the power snatch offers a good starting point for learning the snatch that you’ll have to perform in competition. It’s an easier movement to master, safer to perform, and once you’ve got it down, it isn’t much harder to learn how to transition into a deep squat (thereby completing the full snatch).

For athletes, or anyone looking to enhance their athleticism, the power snatch can be used to develop triple extension power—a skill used in virtually every sport. The power snatch will absolutely help you take off into a run faster, jump higher, and hit harder.

The power snatch offers a good middle ground between exercises like the deadlift and the sprint. In a deadlift, the focus is building absolute strength, so you lift heavy but the bar moves relatively slow. That means it’s good for developing the muscles that help you perform fast movements, but it doesn’t train you to move fast in and of itself. A sprint, on the other hand, trains you to move fast, but it doesn’t offer the resistance the deadlift does to build muscle and strength. The power snatch fits perfectly in between them, providing enough load to stimulate strength gains while focusing on explosive speed to develop the ability to apply force rapidly. A strong guy/gal who can generate a lot of force in an instant is a formidable athlete.

If you are (or were) an athlete, you’re probably familiar with the power clean, another Olympic lifting variant that’s commonly used to build power. I like the power snatch better than the power clean for this purpose for a couple of reasons. For one, the power snatch actually develops more power output than the power clean, or even the regular snatch, for that matter, because the weight used is lighter and the bar moves faster.

The power snatch is also harder to cheat. With power cleans, you’ll often see lifters pulling hard with their backs and arms to get the weight up, failing to utilize the triple extension movement the way they’re supposed to. The power clean then becomes more of a sloppy reverse curl. When you use a power snatch, however, that’s not a concern. There’s no heaving the weight up with the wrong muscles. You have to emphasize hip and leg drive, or you simply won’t be able to do it.

Power Snatch Vs. Snatch

The main thing that differentiates the power snatch from the snatch is the position the bar is caught in. Remember, in the power snatch, you catch the weight in roughly a quarter-squat position—a knee angle of 90 degrees or more, thighs above parallel to the floor. In the classic weightlifting (full) snatch, you descend into a deep squat—knees bent 60 degrees or less, thighs below parallel.

The power snatch also finds you pulling the weight higher, since you aren’t going into a deep squat position to help control the bar. The greater pulling range means you have to produce more power, and that will require using less weight than in the snatch.

Because the snatch requires a lot of mobility in the ankles, hips, and thoracic spine—and for most trainees, achieving a deep overhead squat is very challenging—it’s not as widely used as the power snatch. The power snatch is the better choice for most people who want to develop power and explosiveness, but aren’t weightlifters preparing for competition.

Power Snatch Exercise Alternatives

Before you add any exercise to your workouts, you should always ask yourself, “What’s the goal of this exercise, and what is the risk vs. reward?” The power snatch can certainly be used to build power, helping an athlete get faster, jump higher, and become more athletic, but it can also be difficult to learn and risky for those who have prior injuries or restrictions in their mobility.

If you have your heart set on power snatching, that’s cool. Just make sure you seek out a qualified coach to watch you perform it and tweak your form as needed. Remember to work on technique and speed before adding weight. Don’t be too eager to load up the bar solely for the sake of chasing big numbers. Understand that mastering any Olympic lift will take time and effort, and it may leave less time and energy for other exercises in your program.

The truth is, for the vast majority of people, I feel there are better exercise options than the power snatch to develop power, explosiveness, and athleticism. There are many movements that teach triple extension that can be taught and learned much faster, with much less risk to the lifter. Whether you choose to power snatch or not, you should be aware of the following moves, which offer many of the same benefits, and arguably many more.

For all of the following, perform 3–5 sets of 3–5 reps to start, resting as needed between sets. (Choose one per workout; don’t do more than power exercise in a session.) If you feel yourself slowing down or losing height on any rep, end the set there.

Box Jump

The box jump is a simple plyometric exercise that teaches you to explode from the hips and, just as importantly, absorb the force of a landing.

Step 1. Place a box that you estimate will be moderately challenging to jump up onto on the floor in front of you. Stand a foot or so behind it.

Step 2. Bend your hips and knees and swing your arms backward to generate momentum. Throw your arms forward as you jump up onto the box and land in its center with soft knees. Try to land as silently as possible. Step down off the box; don’t jump off.

Trap-Bar Deadlift Jump

The trap-bar provides a great alternative to the old-fashioned straight bar for a variety of lower-body exercises. It allows you to keep the load you’re lifting closer to your own center of mass, which reduces shear forces on the spine. It also lets you get into a more natural, athletic position when you deadlift, which should have more carryover to athletic activity. Doing jumps with the trap-bar loads the hips safely and builds explosiveness, and the form is easy to learn.

Step 1. Stand with feet between hip and shoulder-width and bend your hips back. Keep your head, spine, and pelvis in a long, straight line as you reach down to grasp the bar’s parallel handles. Crush oranges in your armpits to generate lat tension, and brace your core.

Step 2. Jump straight up in the air, as high as you can. Land softly, and pause a moment before your next rep to make sure you’re positioned correctly.

Medicine-Ball Scoop Toss

Many coaches like using medicine balls for power development because they’re very user-friendly and allow you to move as fast as possible. The weight can’t get too heavy, so you’re really able to explode with it, and, unlike with a barbell, you don’t have to worry about decelerating the load at the end of the range of motion—you can just release it and let the ball fly. The scoop toss simulates the triple extension used in all snatch variants very closely.

Step 1. Place a moderately-weighted medicine ball on the floor and straddle it with feet outside shoulder-width. (It should be a ball with a soft shell; one that won’t bounce.) Bend your hips and knees to reach down and grasp the ball while keeping a long spine.

Step 2. Scoop up the ball and explode upward, jumping up as you throw the ball as high as you can. Watch its path, and move as needed to avoid the ball landing on you. When the ball lands and comes to a stop, perform your next rep.

Single-Arm Dumbbell Snatch

Not all snatches have to be done with a barbell. You can use one dumbbell to perform a snatching motion, making for a safer lift that also challenges your balance and stability to a greater degree. As with all unilateral exercises, it can help you identify which side of your body is stronger.

Step 1. Place a dumbbell on the floor, and straddle the weight with feet a bit outside shoulder-width. Observe all the same form points for the snatch described above to bend down and grasp the weight.

Step 2. Use triple extension to raise the weight off the floor and straight up in front of your torso until it’s overhead. Your feet should land just as your arm locks out the elbow. You can reach your free arm out to the side to help you balance. Lower the weight to your chest under control, and then return it to the floor.

The post How To Do The Power Snatch Like A CrossFit Pro appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Remember the skateboarders on your street when you were growing up? They were probably the first kind of stuntmen you ever saw outside of a TV screen, turning your block into an obstacle course and landing death-defying tricks until the sky got dark—and even then they didn’t stop. They may have also been the first people your mom told you to stay away from, as drinking, drugs, and tattoos tend to be a part of the lifestyle. But Neen Williams, a pro skater and entrepreneur, has been changing that “skater punk” stereotype ever since an ACL injury caused him to prioritize his health and career longevity.

Williams, 34, is now a bonafide fitness influencer as well as a boarder, getting as much attention online for posts on how he’s working out and what he’s eating for dinner as he is for his heel flip catches and handrail grinds. Williams visited Onnit to discuss how he changed his habits, and how he can help other aspiring skaters do the same, improve their tricks, and make a living doing what they love.

Life before skateboarding – 0:13

Advice to sk8er bois – 1:50

Breaking the skateboarder stereotype – 3:30

The skater party scene – 4:30

The pro skater lifestyle – 8:15

Tearing his ACL – 9:30

Leaving the party – 12:10

“Fitness is my new vice” – 13:55

How he started working out – 16:30

Getting known for fitness as much as skating – 20:45

Eating to help lower injury risk – 23:20

Life after skateboarding – 25:25

Why he doesn’t wear a helmet – 26: 20

What to look for in a skateboard – 29:25

Tips for safer falls – 31:00

His toughest trick – 32:30

The secret to a great heel flip catch – 35:40

Neen’s new shoe – 37:00

If he weren’t a skateboarder… – 39:00

The origin of “Not a damn chance” – 41:30

Follow Neen on Instagram, @neenwilliams

The post “Not A Damn Chance” – Interview with Pro Skater Neen Williams appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Feel stupid and guilty yet? That seems to be the goal of The Game Changers, which is available on iTunes and features former UFC fighter James Wilks, strongman Patrik Baboumian, and even Arnold Schwarzenegger arguing for the superiority of a plant-based diet.

But, just as with What The Health, the last major vegan rally cry that came out in 2017, it’s not hard to deflate most of The Game Changers arguments, one by one.

Is A Plant-Based Diet Better for Health?

The movie references several scientific studies that seem to point to a diet rich in animal foods being dangerous. But the film never gives us the whole story.

It cites a 2010 study that showed that drinking cows’ milk can increase estrogen and lower testosterone in men. But look closer at the findings and you’ll see that the cows that produced the milk were pregnant at the time. It’s probably fair to say that, just as with pregnant humans, their hormone profiles might have been a little off of what is considered normal, but even still, the reduction in testosterone was not below levels that are considered healthy and normal. Furthermore, this testosterone dip was only measured in seven men—hardly a sample size to draw a major conclusion from.

Naturally, Game Changers has to dredge up the old idea that meat and dairy are bad for your heart, impairing circulation to the point that even your erections will suffer. It points to a 2012 study that had men consume either a hamburger patty by itself or with avocado. Hours later, the hamburger-only meal resulted in constriction of the blood vessels while the burger-avocado hybrid didn’t. The researchers blamed the beef for causing inflammation, and declared the avocado to be anti-inflammatory.

Look up the study, and you’ll see right away that it was funded by the Hass Avocado Board. Of course this doesn’t invalidate the findings, but it casts suspicion over them. And equally untrustworthy are the two experiments the movie shows—one where blood is drawn from people who just ate a vegetarian or meat-filled burrito, and another where burritos are consumed and the subjects’ dicks are assessed for erection strength and frequency. Unsurprisingly, the movie shows that both experiments found that the animal-protein meal wreaked havoc and the plant-based one was healthy. But in neither case are other factors considered. Were the subjects stressed, dehydrated, under-recovered? What else had they been eating? Or smoking? Or doing that day? Rather than elaborate, Game Changers wants you to simply accept its truth: meat is bad.

Finally, on the health front, the doc again takes aim at animal foods’ alleged cancer-causing potential, naming a bevy of chemical compounds in them (TMAO, heterocyclic amines) that might hurt you. However, the science to support it just isn’t there. “The studies showing that TMAO is bad are epidemiology studies,” says Paul Saladino, MD, a functional medicine practitioner and author of the upcoming book, The Carnivore Code (carnivoremd.com). “They show that humans who have health problems have higher levels of TMAO. It doesn’t mean that TMAO caused those problems. TMAO is produced in our bodies in response to two very important compounds—carnitine and choline. Carnitine is an antioxidant, and choline is a precursor to a neurotransmitter and is in every cell in the body.” Meanwhile, Saladino says, there’s 40 times more TMAO in fish than in meat, but no one has ever accused fish of causing cancer. “TMAO is also found in plants,” he says, “but [plant-based propaganda] will never tell you this.”

As for heterocyclic amines, potentially-carcinogenic compounds present in charred meat, these can be greatly mitigated by simply not overcooking your food. “There are no heterocyclic amines in raw meat,” says Saladino. “I’m not advocating eating meat raw, but using gentler cooking methods—sous vide, crock pot, or other slow, low-temperature cooking—will result in lower levels of heterocyclic amines. The truth is that cooking any food creates some compounds that are linked to cancer.” Acrylamide, he notes, is in the brownest parts of a piece of toast, a bagel, and roasted coffee, so plant foods carry their own risks. “The best way to prevent cancer is to give the body healthy micronutrients—which meat has plenty of—sleep enough, keep your immune system strong, and live a good life,” says Saladino. Not to toss out your hamburger.

Now let’s look at some of the research that supports the consumption of animal foods.

Animal Foods and Testosterone

So The Game Changers wants you to believe that milk-drinking will make you less of a man, huh? Well, a 2018 review of 80 studies in the European Journal of Endocrinology concluded that you don’t need to shop for a bra for those man boobs just yet. It explains that while some farming methods can result in milk drawn from cows that are well along in pregnancy, and consequently have higher estrogen levels in their milk, “it seems that there is stronger evidence suggesting that amounts of estrogens in cow’s milk are too low to cause health effects in humans.”

If you’re really concerned, buy organic milk from grass-fed cows that are treated humanely. This will greatly reduce the risk of any toxicity in the milk, and the farming practices are better for both the cows and the planet.

It may also interest The Game Changers’ producers to know that diets that are high in fat—including that from animal sources—boost testosterone levels. A study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that men who followed a high-fat, low-fiber diet for 10 weeks had 13% higher total testosterone than subjects who ate low fat and high fiber. We’re not saying to toss out your vegetables to eliminate fiber from your menu. Only that diets rich in meat are good for being manly.

Animal Foods and Heart Health

We love avocados and fully appreciate their heart-healthy fats. But to cite a study funded by the avocado business and imply that beef on its own puts your arteries in a vise just ain’t right.

First of all, the study didn’t find a statistical difference in blood vessel function between the burger alone and the burger with avocado. The results seem to have been exaggerated for dramatic effect (Game Changers is a movie, after all). Secondly, we don’t know what kind of beef was used in the study, but it’s a safe bet that it was conventional—taken from unhealthy cows raised in a feedlot and featuring a nutrition profile that’s significantly different from what pasture-raised, organic cows would yield. As with dairy, we feel that eating beef that is grass-fed and organic won’t produce the same kind of inflammatory response that a factory-farmed, grain-fed serving would. In fact, it may have the opposite effect, helping to fight inflammation and improve heart health.

A 2010 review from Nutrition Journal demonstrated that grass-fed beef has two to three times higher levels of conjugated-linoleic acid (CLA) than grain-fed beef. CLA is a fatty acid and antioxidant that’s been shown to fight heart disease and cancer.

But organic animal foods aside, it’s difficult to say that meat puts your heart in any peril at all. A 2013 review compared the effects of four different animal-rich diets—Mediterranean, low-carb, low glycemic-index, and high-protein—to other options, including vegetarian and vegan. All four of the animal-based plans were found to be effective in improving various markers of cardiovascular disease risk in people with diabetes. They were also more effective for controlling blood sugar than the plant-based controls, and the low-carb and Mediterranean approaches delivered the greatest weight loss of all. The animal diets improved heart-friendly HDL cholesterol as well.

That same year, the journal Metabolism showed that subjects who ate a high-fat, low-carb diet had lower markers of systemic inflammation after 12 weeks compared to people who followed a low-fat, high-carb diet. The researchers concluded that high-fat eating may be more beneficial to cardiovascular health.

Animal Foods and Cancer

In 2015, PLOS One showed an association between processed meat and colorectal cancer, but acknowledged that there is “little evidence that higher intake of unprocessed red meat [more than two servings a day] substantially increased risk.”

And other research suggests that grass-fed beef is in the clear. A Nutrition Journal review of studies comparing grass-fed beef to the conventional kind spanned more than 30 years, finding that grass-based meat diets raise cancer-fighting antioxidant activity (glutathione and superoxide dismutase) to a greater degree.

“Meat from grass-raised animals has anti-carcinogenic compounds,” says Saladino, “and you get more of them when you eat nose to tail.” That is, eating not just the muscle meats that most of us are used to, but organs and connective tissue. Animal livers, for instance, are rich in riboflavin, a B vitamin that may help to protect against cancer.

The Red Meat Study

Interestingly, about a week after The Game Changers was released, a massive study led by researchers from McMaster and Dalhousie universities appeared. Its findings? That red and even processed meat are not the devils they’ve been made out to be. One review of 12 trials that included 54,000 subjects did not find a statistically significant association between meat consumption and the risk of heart disease, diabetes, or cancer. The Indiana University School of Medicine stated the following: “This [study is] sure to be controversial, but is based on the most comprehensive review of the evidence to date. Because that review is inclusive, those who seek to dispute it will be hard pressed to find appropriate evidence with which to build an argument.”

The researchers also acknowledged that there were no primary external funding sources for the study. In other words, the research wasn’t paid for by the beef industry, Oscar Mayer, or any other corporate entity with a conflicting interest.

Check mate.

Is Plant-Based Better For Performance?

This is where The Game Changers really wants to make its mark, showing what no vegan movie has shown before: that plant-based athletes can be just as big, strong, fast, and durable as those who eat more traditional performance diets. They show us stars such as Patrik Baboumian, a pro strongman, and tennis great Novak Djokovic, who credit plant-based eating for better recovery and performance.

On this point, we’ll agree with them: plant-based athletes probably can perform as well as the rest of us. However, we’re far from convinced that they can perform any better than omnivores, and yet that’s what the movie implies.

Plant-Based Athletes and Protein

The main argument the film makes with respect to building muscle and strength is that, while protein intake is important, the exact source of your protein doesn’t matter. Whether you get 200 grams of protein from beans and rice or steak, chicken, and fish, it’s still 200 grams of protein, so the plant-based approach works just as well. This is more or less true, but it’s also a little misleading.

Game Changers asserts that a peanut butter sandwich packs about as much protein as a three-ounce serving of beef or three large eggs. That’s technically correct, but there are a few drawbacks to consider here. One is that peanut butter, while delicious and healthy, doesn’t offer complete protein. As legumes, peanuts don’t contain all the essential amino acids—the ones your body needs to support muscle—in adequate amounts. Now, combined with bread—assuming one made from whole grains that will offer some complementary nutrition, not some bleached white variety that’s devoid of nutrients—you probably will get all the aminos you need, but there’s still some doubt as to how many complete proteins your body can make from that combination, and how much of it your body will be able to assimilate.

“Animal protein is [generally] more than twice as bioavailable as plant protein,” says Saladino, meaning that your body can’t absorb and make use of plant protein nearly as efficiently. Vegans, however, often make the mistake of thinking that plant foods work as well as animal ones when their protein content matches gram for gram. “When people say they’re getting 60 grams of protein from a plant source,” says Saladino, “I say, ‘No, not really.’ It’s only about 30 grams of usable protein, or less,” in many cases.

When you eat beef or eggs, on the other hand, you can rest assured that you’re getting complete, highly bioavailable protein that your body can utilize. The protein is all from one source, and it’s easy to count.

The other issue with getting your protein from peanut butter sandwiches—or any plant sources, for that matter—is the other macronutrients you’re ingesting along with it. A peanut butter sandwich has a good amount of carbs and fats as well, and packs 200 more calories than three ounces of beef or three eggs. For athletes such as bodybuilders, or physique or figure competitors, who strive to hit certain macro numbers and generally try to keep carbs and/or fats in check, a sandwich just isn’t a good choice. The same applies to fighters and weightlifters who compete in sports where they have to make weight, as well as the public at large that’s just dieting to lose a few pounds. It’s a matter of efficiency. Do you want 20 grams of protein with 430 calories (the peanut butter sandwich), or 20 grams of protein with 210 calories (a serving of beef)? Which one do you think will fit more easily into a diet plan?

And this is why you don’t see ripped people eating peanut butter sandwiches all day.

The movie cites a review of vegetarian athlete studies that says plant-based eating can support training as well as omnivorous diets can. But once again, it doesn’t show the full picture. The researchers go on to say that, “as a group, vegetarians have lower mean muscle creatine concentrations than do omnivores, and this may affect supramaximal exercise performance.” So, they theorize that vegetarians may do better if they supplement with creatine. “I make sure that any vegan or vegetarian athletes I work with take creatine post-workout,” says Shannon Ehrhardt, RD, an EXOS Performance Dietician.

Supplementation does seem to be key for athletes who go totally vegan (that is, it’s even more important than it is for omnivores). That makes sense: if you’re not going to get all the nutrients you need from whole foods, you’ll have to get them from supplements. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with supplementation, but it begs the question, “If a plant-based diet is so great, why does it come up short on so many nutrients?” 

A 2017 article in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition concurs, explaining that “veganism creates challenges that need to be accounted for when designing a nutritious diet,” such as getting adequate vitamin B12, iron, zinc, calcium, iodine, and vitamin D, as well as omega-3 fats. “However,” the scientists write, “via the strategic management of food and appropriate supplementation, it is the contention of this article that a nutritive vegan diet can be designed to achieve the dietary needs of most athletes satisfactorily. Further, it was suggested here that creatine and [beta]-alanine supplementation might be of particular use to vegan athletes, owing to vegetarian diets promoting lower muscle creatine and lower muscle carnosine levels in consumers.”

A strict plant-based diet would also forbid the use of whey protein, a supplement that’s been shown to aid both performance and wellness. A 2017 meta-analysis of nine studies showed that whey helped overweight/obese people lose fat and reduce their risk of cardiovascular disease. And if you’re wondering, no, soy protein supplements don’t work as well. A 2014 study found that when subjects drank a whey shake before eating their biggest meal of the day, it promoted better changes in appetite, body composition, body mass, and waist circumference than drinking soy protein did.

Plant-Based Athletes Vs Omnivores

According to an article by the American Council on Exercise, plant-based dieters might have an easier time losing weight than meat-eaters, but a harder time gaining muscle—mainly because a plant diet is generally less calorie-dense (peanut butter sandwiches aside). Vegans may also find they do better at endurance sports than when they try strength sports, since the plant-based diet is rich in carbs and carb stores are thought to be one of the limiting factors for endurance performance. But there’s little research comparing plant-based athletic performance against that of omnivores, so these ideas are only speculative.

It’s worth mentioning that many athletes who try switching over to veganism wind up coming back. One famous example is NFL tight end Tony Gonzalez, who read the book The China Study (which preaches the so-called dangers of animal foods) and cut out animal products in the hope of improving his health and lengthening his career. However, Gonzalez lost weight and strength. Then with the Kansas City Chiefs, Gonzalez consulted the team nutritionist, who recommended he add a few servings of meat and fish to his menu. Ultimately, Gonzalez’s performance improved, and he went on to break the league records for most receptions by a tight end and career receiving yards by a tight end.

Is Plant-Based Better For the Environment?

In addition to all its claims about plant-based eating being superior for health and fitness, The Game Changers naturally plays the environmental card, saying that raising animal foods contributes to pollution while eating plants is sustainable. It’s generally true that factory farming is damaging to the planet, but going vegan won’t immediately absolve you either.

As one article points out, demand for trendy plant foods such as avocado and quinoa has led to shortages in countries that produce them, like Mexico, and rising prices now make them unaffordable to people whose cultures have depended on them for generations. Avocado exports are so lucrative that forest lands have to be clear cut to make way for more avocado trees.

Scientists in the UK have warned that intensive farming practices have depleted the topsoil to the extent that the country may only have 100 harvests left in it. The solution? The Food and Agriculture Organization recommends letting animals graze it, as their poop provides a natural fertilizer that restores the soil.

Vegans love to cite the methane emissions of livestock that contribute to climate change, but in biodiverse pasture areas—used in organic farming—wild plants provide fumaric acid, a compound that has been shown to reduce methane emissions by 70% when added to the diet of lambs. Meanwhile, as The Guardian reported last year, plowing the earth to raise crops releases a tremendous amount of carbon into the atmosphere—70% of that which top soil once contained has gone up into our air since the dawn of the industrial revolution.

Saladino argues the potential for meat production to actually help the environment by pointing to farms that practice regenerative agriculture, such as White Oak Pastures in Bluffton, GA, which not only treats its animals humanely but manages to capture more carbon than it produces. Its cows graze the grass while sheep and goats eat the weeds and chickens eat insects. The result is an eco system unto itself that doesn’t rely on the use of hormones, antibiotics, and pesticides, and produces zero waste annually. In 2017, White Oak’s beef production sequestered 919 tons of carbon in the soil—more than its cows emit in their lifetime. The farm’s total emissions are less than what is released by farming soy beans.

“White Oak has revived destroyed grasslands by grazing animals on them,” says Saladino. “That farm is greenhouse gas-negative. Regenerative agriculture may be the only way we can decrease greenhouse gas in our eco system. We can decrease our emissions, but what else can actually take carbon out of the environment? It’s like, a Tesla car doesn’t emit greenhouse gas, but producing those cars still does. A farm that sequesters more carbon than it produces is actually reversing the damage.”

Finally, there’s the ethical argument. There’s no denying that raising animal foods kills millions of animals each year, and most of them die cruelly (again, organic methods are much more humane). Still, this doesn’t mean that vegans don’t have blood on their hands.

Harvesting crops inadvertently kills rodents, reptiles, and insects that get caught in machines, and the pesticides used to protect plants from predators poison millions of mice. Research on Australian farming practices indicates that “at least 55 sentient animals die to produce 100kg of useable plant protein: 25 times more than for the same amount of rangelands beef… When cattle, kangaroos and other meat animals are harvested they are killed instantly. Mice die a slow and very painful death from poisons.”

But surely a plant-based diet must be more efficient at feeding people worldwide, right? Vegans are always arguing that if everyone “went veggie,” we’d wipe out world hunger. A 2016 study published in Elementa looked into this.

Researchers compared numerous eating styles—vegan, two kinds of vegetarian diets, four omnivorous diets, one low in fat and sugar, and one similar to the modern American diet. They found that the amount of people the vegan diet could sustain based on the resources of the ecosystem was less than that of the two vegetarian diets and two out of the four omnivorous ones. An article on the study on PBS’s website noted that the vegan diet wasted land that could otherwise feed more people. The diets that contained the most meat, by contrast, used all available crop and grazing land. The author wrote: “If modern agriculture in the U.S. were adjusted to the vegan diet, according to the study in Elementa , we’d be able to feed 735 million people—and that’s from a purely land-use perspective. Compare that to the dairy-friendly vegetarian diet, which could feed 807 million people. Even partially omnivorous diets rank above veganism in terms of sustainability; incorporating about 20 to 40% meat in your diet is actually better for the long-term course of humanity than being completely meat-free.”

Conclusion

We don’t mean to bash plant-based diets. If you follow one for your own personal or ethical reasons, kudos to you. Virtually everyone can benefit from adding more plant foods to their diet, and it seems that vegan athletes can perform as well as omnivorous ones if they plan their eating carefully and supplement appropriately.

Just stop feeding us the line that eating meat makes us sick, irresponsible, or unethical. We won’t bite.

The post The Game Changers: Are Plant-Based Diets Better For Health and Fitness? appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Summary

– The tuck jump builds lower-body power and coordination

– It works all the major lower-body muscles and the core.

– Tuck jumps should not be used for conditioning, due to safety concerns. (Don’t do them for high reps as part of a circuit workout.)

– To prepare your body for tuck jumps, work on landing safely.

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There’s a famous photo of Bruce Lee jumping in the air with dumbbells in each hand and his knees tucked to his chest. His body is so neatly folded it almost looks like he’s crouching on the ground. The photo perfectly illustrates The Dragon’s mystique: a man who made incredible displays of power and athleticism seem simple and effortless.

In case you haven’t deduced as much already, Lee was doing a tuck jump in that pic, and the move was one of many he used in a workout regimen that was ahead of its time. If you hope to capture some of his explosiveness, this guide to tuck jumps will help you master an exercise that put spring in the step of one of the greatest martial artists of all time.

What Is The Tuck Jump?

The tuck jump is a vertical jump in which you raise your knees to your chest as you rise into the air. Interestingly, unlike other vertical jumps, the tuck jump is not purely a triple-extension movement. That is, vertical jumps, along with Olympic weightlifting exercises such as the clean, have the hips, knees, and ankles all extending simultaneously to generate explosive movement. While the tuck jump begins like a vertical jump, the knee tuck causes hip-, knee-, and ankle-flexion, which contributes greatly to its effectiveness. Tuck jumps are primarily done by athletes to develop power and coordination.

Like all jumps, tuck jumps are a full-body exercise that work a lot of big muscles, so you often see them used in exercise classes and circuit workouts for the sake of raising the heart rate, but we don’t suggest that you perform them for that purpose. The tuck jump is a high-impact exercise—even more so than most other jumps, due to the height and the tucking of the knees—and performing it with anything less than perfect form is dangerous. So is jumping into tuck jumps too soon (no pun intended), failing to build up to them gradually.

For those reasons, we recommend starting with lower-intensity jump exercises for a while to condition your joints for the impact of tuck jumps, and ultimately using the tuck jump for its original intention—to develop explosive power. (See “Alternatives To The Tuck Jump” below.)

“The majority of people who do tuck jumps aren’t ready for them yet,” says Sam Pogue, CPPS, FRCms, VP of Brand at TrueCoach, and a performance coach to athletes, including World Series champion pitcher Jake Arrieta. But we’ll show you how to prep your body the best way possible to fast-track your hops.

What Muscles Does The Tuck Jump Use?

The tuck jump works all the muscles of the lower body and the core. Here’s a breakdown of how they contribute to the movement.

Glutes and hamstrings. Both muscle groups have an eccentric contraction (that is, they tense while lengthening) as you lower your hips toward the floor during the jump’s countermovement—think: coiling the spring. Then, when you explode upward, the glutes and hamstrings shorten rapidly to drive the hips forward, creating the power that propels the jump.

Quads. Like the glutes and hamstrings, they contract eccentrically on the way down and then concentrically to extend the knees as you jump. When you’re in the air, the rectus femoris quad muscle works again, along with the hip flexor muscles, to pull your knees up toward your chest.

Calves. The calves extend the ankles, assisting the glutes, hamstrings, and quads in getting your feet up off the floor.

Core. The abs and lower back must brace the spine as you lower into the jumping position, as well as when you tuck the knees and land back on the floor.

All of the above muscles also work as shock absorbers, reducing the force that acts on the joints upon landing.

While tuck jumps work many muscles, don’t make the mistake of thinking that they’re a great way to “tone” your legs. Jumps work primarily fast-twitch muscle fibers to provide explosive movement, but the volume you’ll train them for isn’t enough to build serious leg muscle, and no muscle group stays under tension long enough to induce the metabolic stress that’s associated with muscle gains. Jumps are done to translate the strength you build with more traditional lower-body exercises (squats, deadlifts, lunges, etc.) into powerful movements you can make on an athletic field, such as running, jumping, and cutting.

Benefits of the Tuck Jump

Tuck jumps are mainly used to increase bilateral power output. That is, to train your ability to move explosively on two feet. “Jumps are also really good for developing coordination,” says Pogue, “increasing your understanding of where your body is in space.” Because the tuck jump has the added hip and knee flexion at the end, its coordination demands are higher than a typical vertical jump. “It’s akin to the long jump,” says Pogue, the track and field event where you kick your legs out in front of you to get as much distance as possible. If you can tuck jump proficiently, it’s pretty much a given that you’ll be able to run fast, jump high, and turn on a dime when needed during sports play.

Nevertheless, you’ll notice that athletes get tested on their vertical jump height, not their tuck jump performance. “The tuck jump isn’t as applicable to sports as a vertical jump,” says Pogue, “but it’s a good jump to practice if you want to maximize athleticism.”

Pogue, himself a former baseball player, liked to use tuck jumps during games, because of their effect on the central nervous system. Explosive, reactive movements make the mind more alert and focused, so you can use tuck jumps to “wake you up” before you need to do something that’s explosive, fast, or requires maximum attention. “Baseball can be slow sometimes,” says Pogue, “so I used to use tuck jumps to recharge if I’d been standing around for a while.” Doing one or two reps before you step up to bat could make the difference between a strike and a base hit.

As tuck jumps place so much stress on the hips, knees, and ankles, they’re sometimes used in clinical settings to help identify an athlete’s risk of injury, particularly to the knee. A study published in Athletic Therapy Today concluded that tuck jumps may be a useful assessment tool in gauging neuromuscular control, and risk of ACL injury among female athletes.

How To Stretch Before Doing A Tuck Jump

Use the following warmup drills from Onnit Durability Coach Cristian Plascencia (@cristian_thedurableathlete on Instagram) before performing tuck jumps in a workout.

How To Do A Tuck Jump

Step 1. Stand with your feet between hip and shoulder-width apart and soften your knees.

Step 2. Bend your hips and knees to lower your body into a quarter-squat. You’ll end up in the universal athletic stance (picture a lineman in football)—hips and knees bent, chest lined up with your toes, looking forward, and ready to explode. Your torso should be about 45 degrees to the floor with your lower back in its natural arch. Swing your arms back as you bend your hips back so that they run parallel to your spine.

All of the above must happen quickly and in one movement. Think of it as coiling a spring as you dip your hips down and back before you reverse the movement to explode upward.

Step 3. Immediately rise up, extending your hips, knees, and ankles (come up onto your toes) and swinging your arms forward and up to jump as high as you can into the air. As you rise, pull your knees upward with you, tucking them under your chest. Your thighs should end up parallel to the floor. Try to stay tall as you tuck—don’t actively crunch yourself into a ball.

Step 4. Extend your knees on the descent and use your toes to buffer your feet as you land. “Land like a ninja,” says Pogue, bending your hips and knees as needed to absorb the force of the ground, although you should end in the same athletic position that you started the jump.

Take a moment to reset your feet before you begin the next jump, and begin it from a tall standing position again. You can also begin each successive jump immediately, rebounding out of your landing, but we don’t recommend this unless you’re an experienced jumper, and we definitely don’t like it as a means to get cardio. “Doing multiple reps like that can get really sloppy,” says Pogue. As you fatigue, your form will break down, and that’s when people get hurt. “If you want to get your heart rate up,” says Pogue, “there are other ways to do it without risking a blowout of your ACL.” When you can do 2–3 sets of 1–3 reps with good landings, you can attempt doing the tuck jump with continuous reps (no reset).

Don’t think you have to jump to the moon to demonstrate your explosiveness. If you can jump to where your feet are at the level your hips would be while standing, Pogue says you’re getting some pretty good air. As for loading the jump with dumbbells, a la Bruce Lee, it isn’t necessary, and it increases your risk of a bad landing.

When Should I Do The Tuck Jump?

For maximum power development, do tuck jumps when you’re fresh, at the beginning of a workout (but after you’ve warmed up thoroughly). They’re a great way to kick off lower-body sessions, so try them before squats or deadlifts, or any running/sprinting you do. As stated above, you can also do them during downtime from sports activities, for the sake of keeping your energy up.

Alternatives To The Tuck Jump

As you might have guessed, if you don’t land the tuck jump properly, you’re going to land hard, and that can wreak havoc on your ankles, knees, and hips. Pogue recommends building up to tuck jumps by first mastering the depth jump and box jump, in which you practice proper landings and absorbing the impact.

Depth Jump Prerequisite

Start with the most basic version of the depth jump, which has you rising onto your toes and then dropping your heels. It may not look like much, but it will go a long way toward conditioning your joints for a hard landing, especially if you haven’t jumped since you were a kid.

Step 1. Stand with feet hip to shoulder-width apart and raise your arms overhead.

Step 2. Raise your heels up, balancing on the balls of your feet.

Step 3. Now, in one motion, drop your heels and drive your arms down behind you, landing in a quarter-squat/athletic position. Stick the landing so that your ankles and knees have a moment to fully absorb the force.

Perform 3 sets of 3 reps, 1–2 times per week. Pay attention to how you land (it may help to have a friend watch you, or set your phone up to film your sets). You should be able to land without your knees caving inward, feet rotating out, or losing your spine position. Do not move on to any other jumping exercises until these problems are corrected.

Depth Jump

When you feel you’re doing the prerequisite exercise smoothly, and you’re sure it’s not aggravating your knees or ankles, move on to the classic depth jump and box jump below. (Note that it may take a few weeks to feel comfortable with the depth jump prerequisite; don’t rush it.)

Step 1. Place a box or step that’s about 12 inches high on the floor. Stand on the box with feet between hip and shoulder width.

Step 2. Step off the box with one foot and let yourself drop to the floor, landing with both feet in the quarter-squat/athletic position with arms driving behind you and parallel to the spine. Stick the landing, and step back up on the box to repeat for reps.

Perform 3 sets of 3 reps, 1–2 times per week. Again, be aware of any changes in your shin position (they must be vertical upon landing) and be sure that you’re landing with feet forward and flat on the ground. When you feel comfortable doing the depth jump from a 12-inch box, increase the box height to 24 inches. When you can perform depth jumps safely from a 24-inch box, you should be ready to do tuck jumps.

Box Jump

While you work on the depth jump, practice the box jump too (in the same session or in another workout that week). The box jump develops power similar to the tuck jump, but is safer and less demanding.

Step 1. From a standing position, bend one knee and raise it in front of you until your thigh is parallel to the floor. Notice where your foot is—the height of the box you use should be below that level. Place an appropriate-sized box on the floor and stand a foot or so behind it.

Step 2. Bend your hips and knees as described in all the jump variations above, lowering into the athletic position, and then jump up onto the box, controlling your landing.

Perform 3 sets of 3–5 reps. Gradually increase the height of the box over time.

In addition to lower-level jumping movements like those above, lower-body strength lifts such as squats and Romanian deadlifts will help enormously to prepare your body for tuck jumps. Pogue recommends doing the single-leg version of these exercises too, as most landings won’t happen on perfectly even feet.

The post Tuck Jumps: How To Do Them & Why Your Workout Needs Them appeared first on Onnit Academy.

But if you think your standard gym rat training sessions are going to lift you to new heights, you’re mistaken. To jump like an elite athlete, you need to train like one, starting with the five exercises we’ll outline here.

How To Jump Higher: 5 Exercises To Improve Your Vertical

This list of movements was compiled by a pair of trainers who know a thing or two about making athletes more explosive: Jason Benguche, former assistant strength and conditioning coach for the Carolina Panthers and Director of Performance for Jet Movement Labs (@movement_mogul on Instagram), has worked one-on-one with NFL quarterback Cam Newton. And Firdose Khan (@dose_9), head trainer at Nine Innovations athlete training facility in Houston, has worked with such athletes as former NBA MVP Derrick Rose and NFLers Arian Foster, Braxton Miller, and Brian Cushing.

Follow their advice, as demonstrated in the video above by the talented Hannah Eden (@hannaheden_fitness), a distinguished coach in her own right, and you’ll be jumping out of the gym in no time.

Muscles Used for Jumping

A jump is the result of triple extension: the simultaneous and explosive extension of the hips, knees, and ankles. Whether you’re watching an Olympic weightlifter perform a clean, a sprinter take off down the track, or a basketball player go up for a dunk, triple extension is the driver. Below are the muscles that make it possible.

–Glutes (gluteus maximus, gluteus medius), for hip extension

–Quadriceps (vastus lateralis, intermedius, and medialis; rectus femoris), for knee extension

–Hamstrings (biceps femoris, semimembranosis, semitendonosis), for hip extension, knee flexion, and absorbing landings

–Calves (gastrocnemius, soleus), for ankle extension (plantarflexion)

–Abdominals and core (transverse abdominis, rectus abdominis, internal and external obliques, multifidi, erector spinae), for trunk stability

How To Test Your Vertical

Before we explain how to build your jump, let’s make sure you know how to jump properly in the first place and can get a baseline measurement for it. See 00:25 in the video above for Eden’s demonstration and a walk-through of all the steps.

How To Jump

Step 1. Stand with your feet directly under your hips. If they’re wider than that, you won’t be able to translate as much power from your legs directly into the ground. Drive your knees outward without moving your feet, so you feel tension in your hips. This will turn the hips on for better jumping power.

Step 2. Quickly dip your hips and knees, throwing your arms behind you to gather momentum. Picture a half-squat position or slightly shallower—your hips must be behind your knees. The hip action in a jump is the same as the hinge pattern you perform with your hips during a deadlift or clean—bend them back while keeping a long spine.

Step 3. Jump as high as you can while flinging your arms forward and overhead. When you leave your feet, only reach up with one arm; you’ll be able to reach a higher point this way versus reaching with both arms. Land softly with a slight knee bend, being careful not to let your knees cave inward. Drive them outward as you did when preparing to jump in the first place.

How To Measure Your Jump

At the competitive level (i.e., the NFL and NBA combines), vertical leap is measured using a “jump tester”—a tripod with a series of thin plastic sticks one inch apart. If you have access to this equipment, it’s your best bet for getting an accurate measurement. A cheaper, more feasible option is to do your jump next to a wall and mark the highest point you touch with a piece of chalk.

Whichever equipment you use, the first thing you’ll need to do is measure your reach standing flat-footed on the floor with one arm fully extended straight overhead. (You can measure your reach up against a wall for the chalk option.) Then, when you mark the highest point you touched, you’ll subtract your reach from that number. For example, if your reach is 90 inches and you touched 115 inches up on the wall with your chalk, your vertical leap is 25 inches.

After warming up, make anywhere from 3 to 5 jump attempts.

Most official vertical jump tests do NOT permit any steps to be taken leading into the jump. No running start or even a power step allowed. Stand on both feet in one spot and jump from that spot.

How To Stretch Before A Jump Workout

Before we get into the exercises that will build your jump height, warm up with these moves from Onnit’s Director of Fitness Education, Shane Heins (@shaneheins). They will help to improve mobility in your hips as well as durability in your knees and ankles, improving performance and reducing the risk of injury.

Jump Higher with These 5 Exercises

1) Depth Jump

(See 01:26 in the 5 Exercises To Improve Your Vertical video)

The defining characteristic of the depth jump is that the jump is preceded with the strong eccentric (negative) muscle action caused by dropping down from a raised surface, as opposed to a standard box jump where you start on the floor. This makes the depth jump a true plyometric movement, where the muscles are stretched suddenly (by the impact of the landing), producing a powerful shortening of the muscle fibers.

“The depth jump utilizes the stretch-shortening cycle to improve CNS activation and rate of firing,” says Benguche. “The shock of rapidly absorbing, and then producing, force trains the body to respond with greater levels of reactive force to improve the elastic components of the lower body.”

Step 1. Stand on a plyo box that is 10–30 inches high (start with a lower one if you’re brand new to depth jumps). Your body should be fully upright and your feet hip-width apart, hands at your sides.

Step 2. Step off the box, leading with one foot and then following with the other, to drop yourself down to the floor. You’re not hopping or jumping off the box; your body should simply fall to the floor.

Step 3. Land squarely on the floor on both feet (again, around hip-width apart) and immediately jump as high as you can, straight up in the air. It’s important that you spend as little time as possible with your feet on the floor before the jump—it should be a split-second reaction. Don’t lower down into a squat before leaving your feet. Just let your hips and knees dip naturally, then extend them explosively to launch upward. Drive your arms straight up as you do so.

Step 4. Land back down on the floor with soft knees, settle yourself, then step back onto the box and repeat the sequence for reps. Don’t be in a rush between reps; the objective of this exercise is explosive power, not conditioning.

Technique Tip: Be mindful of your body position as you land on the floor and go into the explosive jump. Your hips should be over your heels, and your weight over the center of your feet. You want to jump straight up (vertical), not out in front of you.

How to Use the Depth Jump

Timing: Do depth jumps early in your workout, after you’ve warmed up thoroughly and before lower-body strength exercises like squats.

Sets/Reps: Benguche recommends keeping the total volume of reps very low on depth jumps: 2–4 sets of 2–5 reps.

“No additional load is necessary,” he says. “However, the height of the box for the depth jump can be progressed over time to increase the challenge and stimulus.”

Regression

In the absence of a plyo box, depth jumps can be performed using a standard weight bench. Since benches are lower to the ground than many boxes, they’re a good option for those new to the exercise.

Progression

Athletes often do depth jumps with two plyo boxes: one to step off of and another to jump onto. Essentially, it’s a depth jump into a box jump. When doing this variation, make sure to leave enough room between the boxes to allow you to land and jump safely (3–5 feet between boxes should work). To advance within this progression, increase the height of the second box gradually as you develop more strength and power.

2) Medicine-Ball Broad Jump

(See 02:31 in the video.)

Adding resistance to jumping exercises (versus using bodyweight only) can help increase strength and power. And it doesn’t take much weight to get the job done—a 10-pound med ball will suffice.

With this exercise, you’re going for maximum distance instead of height, but the benefits will carry over to your ability to jump vertically. “The med-ball broad jump is great for developing hip explosion, due to the power aspect that comes from loading the hips with the hinge-type motion,” says Khan.

Step 1. Stand a few feet back from a wall holding a medicine ball (about 10 pounds) in both hands. You should have plenty of floor space in front of you to jump. Start with the ball overhead, arms extended, and your feet hip-to-shoulder-width apart.

Step 2. Lower your arms toward the floor and bend at the hips and knees to create elastic energy for the jump. (This is technically the eccentric, or negative, phase of the exercise.)

Step 3. Without hesitating, explode out of the “hole,” pressing through the balls of your feet and throwing your arms out ahead of you. Toss the ball into the wall and jump as far out in front of you as possible.

Step 4. Land with bent knees, through your heels, and absorb the eccentric force by going into a squat if necessary. (This finishing squat is not a crucial part of the exercise—just a safe way to land.) Catch the ball as it rebounds if you can, or, if the wall is further away, let the ball fall. Then pick it up and repeat for reps.

Technique Tip: When doing a broad (long) jump for maximum distance, you want to get some height, but not too much. Aim for your trajectory to be under 45 degrees.

How to Use the Medicine-Ball Broad Jump

Timing: Do medicine-ball broad jumps early in your workout, before heavy lower-body strength movements. Khan prescribes glute activation work with his athletes before jumping exercises, such as hip bridges or lateral band walks, to help the glutes “wake up” and fire harder.

Sets/Reps: Khan recommends 3 sets of 5 reps, using a 10-pound medicine ball.

Regression

Those new to explosive jump training should start with no added resistance. In this case, simply do the standing broad jump without the med ball.

Progression

Khan often adds an extra layer of resistance to the med-ball broad jump with his athletes: a heavy-duty elastic band attached to the back of the waist with a belt and anchored to a solid structure behind the athlete at floor level. As the athlete jumps and travels through the air, the resistance from the band increases as it stretches.

3) Back Squat

(See 03:29 in the video.)

Strength begets power, which leads to a better vertical, and there’s no better exercise for increasing lower-body strength than the classic barbell back squat. 

“The squatting pattern is one of the best ways to train the body for improved strength and power,” says Benguche. “Quads, hamstrings, and glutes will be the primary drivers of the squat, and all have high importance for helping improve the vertical jump.”

Step 1. Set up in a squat rack and grasp the bar with your hands as far apart as is comfortable. Step under the rack and squeeze your shoulder blades together and down, wedging yourself under the bar so that it rests on your traps or the back of your shoulders.

Step 2. Nudge the bar out of the rack and step back, setting your feet at shoulder width, with your toes turned slightly outward. Without letting your feet actually move, try to screw both legs into the floor, as if you were standing on grass and wanted to twist it up—you’ll feel your glutes tighten and the arches in your feet rise. Take a deep breath into your belly and brace your core, pulling your ribs down so your torso forms a solid column.

Step 3. Keep your weight over your mid foot and your eyes facing forward. Bend your hips back and spread your knees apart as you lower your body down. Go as low as you can, while keeping your head, spine, and pelvis aligned.

Step 4: Push through your feet to come back up, extending your hips and knees.

Technique Tip: Keep your heels on the floor while squatting. The bar should remain over your mid foot (not the balls of your feet) throughout both the positive and negative portions of the lift. If your heels come off the floor, it means the weight has shifted too far forward.

How to Use the Back Squat

Timing: For maximum strength gains, do back squats as either the first or second strength exercise in your workout.

Sets/Reps: For general strength and lower-body development, Benguche recommends 3–6 sets of 3–8 reps with moderate loading—70%–85% of your one-rep max (1RM). For developing more speed and power, he recommends lighter loads (55%–70% of 1RM) for 3–6 sets of 2–5 reps. Squats performed with light weights but done so explosively that your feet leave the floor when you come up are called jump squats (see “Progressions” below).

Regression

Scaling the back squat for beginner-level athletes generally entails sticking to lighter loads (even bodyweight only to start) while learning proper technique. Goblet squats with a kettlebell or dumbbell can be used to practice form, but keep in mind that goblets are an anterior (front-loaded) variation and won’t directly mimic the mechanics of the back squat.

Progression

As you gain experience, multiple barbell squat variations should be rotated into your program. Jump squats in particular will help you develop more explosive strength that translates directly to a vertical jump.

In the jump squat, you lower your body only until your thighs are parallel to the floor (you don’t go for maximum depth, as in the conventional back squat). As you come back up, do so explosively so that your feet leave the floor at the top—three to six inches is high enough. Land softly with a slight knee bend, reset, and repeat for reps.

4) Rear-Foot Elevated Split Squat (Bulgarian Split Squat)

(See 04:48 in the video.)

This isn’t just some light-duty assistance exercise. The rear-foot elevated split squat (aka, Bulgarian split squat) is a legitimate movement for increasing pure glute and quad strength, which will in turn enhance power and vertical jumping performance. Even if you’re a two-foot jumper, focusing on one leg at a time like you do here will ensure that your dominant side isn’t compensating for your weaker leg during the movement.

The exercise is also a great option for those with lower-back issues, as the rear-foot elevated position requires a more upright torso than a standard squat. This prevents shearing forces on the lumbar spine, which are a common cause of injury in the classic back squat.

Step 1. Hold a dumbbell in each hand and stand lunge-length in front of a bench that’s 18–24 inches high. Reach back with one leg and rest the top of that foot on the bench.

Step 2. Take a deep breath, brace your core, and lower your body as far as you can, or until your rear knee is just above the floor (you should feel a stretch in the hip of the trailing leg). Keep your front heel grounded—don’t allow it to rise off the floor. Complete your reps on one side and then repeat on the other immediately.

Technique Tip: Determining how far out in front of you to place your front foot may require some trial and error. At the bottom of the motion, your front knee should be somewhere above your heel to mid foot. If your knee is behind your heel, your foot is too far forward; if it’s out over your toes, step out further. One trick to find the right distance is to start in the bottom position and adjust your stance from there. 

How to Use the Rear-Foot Elevated Split Squat

Timing: Perform split squats as one of the first two exercises in the strength portion of your workout. If done for low volume with no added resistance, it can also be done as part of a warmup prior to explosive jumps (see below for the isometric hold variation).

Sets/Reps: 3–4 sets of 5–8 reps, using a moderate weight. Because balance will be an issue with the staggered stance and rear foot elevated, you’ll have to go lighter than you would doing a standard split squat or lunge.

One training method Khan utilizes is a 30-second isometric hold in the bottom position of the split squat, followed by 5 reps; this is typically done with no added resistance, pumping the arms in a running motion on each rep. “The time hold creates endurance and strength in the quads and glutes,” says Khan.

Regression

The rear-foot elevated split squat can be a difficult exercise from a balance standpoint. The first time you try it, use no added resistance (bodyweight only) to practice the technique. If you’re unable to keep your balance, perform a standard split squat with your back foot on the floor (not elevated).

Progression

Holding the resistance in a higher position can increase the difficultly of the exercise and call on more core engagement. Examples of this include holding a kettlebell or dumbbell with both hands in the “goblet” position below your chin, or doing the movement with a barbell across your shoulders (the most advanced version). 

5) Kettlebell Hike Swing

(See 05:32 in the video.)

A variation on the basic kettlebell swing, the hike swing gets you used to exploding from a dead-stop position, so you learn to generate force quickly out of nowhere.

Step 1. Place a kettlebell on the floor and stand behind it with feet shoulder-width apart. Soften your knees.

Step 2. Hinge your hips back until you feel a stretch in your hamstrings. Your head, spine, and pelvis should form a long, straight line.

Step 3. Grasp the kettlebell and try to snap the handle in half. This should cause your shoulder blades to drive downward and your lats to tighten.

Step 4. Hike the kettlebell back between your legs until you feel your forearms contact your inner thighs.

Step 5. As soon as you feel your forearms touch your thighs, extend your hips explosively, as if you were standing up quickly and tall. Squeeze your glutes as you come up. Allow the power to raise the kettlebell up in front of you to shoulder level.

Step 6. Control the kettlebell on the way down and park it back on the floor. That’s one rep.

Technique Tip: This is an explosive lift, where the objective is to get the kettlebell moving upward as fast as possible. That said, keep the exercise safe, particularly for the lower back, by staying tight in the core and having your hips low coming off the floor—do lift the kettlebell with a rounded lower back, and avoid hyperextending your back at the top of each rep (i.e. don’t lean back).

How To Use the Kettlebell Hike Swing

Timing: Do hike swings early in your workout, before lower-body strength exercises.

Sets/Reps: 4 sets of 3–5 reps.

Regression

If starting and stopping each rep feels awkward, just work on the regular kettlebell swing instead, going for fluid reps (and higher reps, like 10 or more). If you’re not familiar with this move, we’ve got the ultimate guide to the kettlebell swing.

Progression

When you’ve got your explosive hip hinge mechanics down, a squat clean exercise can be a good next step. See our guide to the squat clean.

How to Dunk a Basketball

Once you’ve boosted your lower-body strength and power via the aforementioned five movements, it’s time to carry that newfound explosiveness over to the court—because if your goal is to jump higher, chances are dunking a basketball is high on your list of things you’d like to do with that skill.

These expert tips will help you with the finer points of dunking. Combine them with a respectable vertical leap, and you’ll be throwing one down soon enough.

7 Tips for Parlaying Better Hops into Monster Jams 

1) Wear the Right Shoes

Remember the Spike Lee (as Mars Blackmon) 1989 Nike commercial? (Yeah, we’re old too.) In reference to Michael Jordan’s epic hops, Lee exclaims, “It’s gotta be the shoes.” The line was a tad hyperbole, but it is worth putting some thought into your footwear.

A pair of relatively new basketball shoes (i.e. not Chuck Taylors) is a good choice for dunking, especially if you have unstable ankles; basketball shoes offer good lateral support, as opposed to running shoes, which can easily lead to a turned ankle.

“It doesn’t matter too much as long as they’re not sandals or boots, but I would say the lighter the shoe the better,” says Bobby Jones, a former NBA player and all-Pac-10 standout in college at the University of Washington, who currently plays professionally in Italy. (Visit Jones at BobbyRayJonesJr.com.)

Tyler Harris, a professional basketball player for the Sendai 89ers in Japan and brother of NBAer Tobias Harris, has one pair of shoes in particular he prefers to dunk in: “Kobe [Bryant] low-top Nikes are one of the best shoes to wear for dunking,” he says.

2) Warm Up Properly

Dunking (or attempting to dunk) is a high-impact, highly intense activity that deserves a sufficient warm-up prior to a throw-down session. Just as you would for a lifting workout, start your warmup with a few minutes of low-intensity cardio, then progress to more dynamic movements—dynamic stretching/mobility drills as well as jumping. Before attempting your first dunk, take a couple dry runs with no ball where you’re touching or grabbing the rim at the top.

“Warming up is very important for preventing injuries,” says Harris. “I would recommend warming up and stretching for at least 30 minutes before any basketball game or just practicing dunking the basketball.”

Harris recommends warmup and stretching drills (both dynamic and static) such as: jumping and touching the rim; high knees; ladder drills; lateral defensive slides, seated and standing hamstring stretches; seated straddle stretch; and Achilles stretches. Hold each stretch 15 seconds.

3) Decide If You’re a One-Foot or Two-Foot Jumper

Should you go off of one foot or two feet when dunking? That depends on what you’re more comfortable with as well as your athletic ability and coordination.

Jumping off one foot means you’ll be taking a running start and launching a few feet in front of the rim (since your momentum will carry you forward as well as up). When going off two feet, you won’t take a running start—more like a few hard steps and a power dribble. You’ll take off right in front of the rim and go straight vertical.

“When most people first start trying to dunk, it’s usually off one leg,” says Jones. “You’re banking on your speed, so this means you want to have a running start to gain momentum. If you want to dunk off two, that requires more athletic ability, more coordination, and using the power dribble to gain momentum. If you have a nice set of calves and a big butt, this might be the way to go.”

4) Dunk One-Handed, if Possible

It takes a higher vertical leap to get both hands up to the rim versus just one (and don’t forget, you’ll be holding a basketball as well), so if you’re cutting it close, try for a one-handed jam. Being able to palm the ball will obviously help, but it’s not totally necessary; just make sure you keep the ball in both hands until you leave the floor so you don’t lose it.

“Dunking with one hand is definitely easier than two,” says Jones. “It’s one less thing to worry about, so you can focus better on the task at hand.” When the time comes that you’re dunking easily, then you can start dunking with two hands for more authority.

5) Approach the Rim from the Baseline

When your goal is simply to throw one down, you want to be as focused as possible on your target: the rim. Because of this, Jones recommends coming in from the side (along the baseline) instead of straight on.

“Starting from the mid baseline or corner to dunk, I think, gives your mind an easier target and is less distracting,” he says. “That way, you can just focus on getting as high as you can, sort of like doing the long jump. When you’re trying to dunk straight on, you visually see the entire basket and might get distracted, scared, and lose focus.”

6) Take Plenty of Rest Between Dunks

Giving yourself the best chance to throw one down requires you to be as fresh and explosive as possible. You want full rest between dunking attempts—just as you would when maxing out on a big lift like a squat, deadlift, or bench press. After each dunk attempt, take at least a minute or two to rest and recover.

7) When Performance Diminishes, Call it a Day

In any power and strength activity, there comes a point of diminishing results. This is why powerlifters typically don’t do more than three heavy sets or one-rep max (1RM) attempts for any lift in a given session.

Dunking isn’t much different. You’ll likely find yourself getting slightly higher with each attempt at first, but before long, fatigue will set in and your vertical leap will decrease. At this point, it’s a good idea to end the session, rather than try to push through and force yourself to jump higher. It’s an indication that your nervous system has mustered all the energy it has to help you jump, and you need to let it rest. Give your legs a couple days’ off, then come back again and try.

The post How To Jump Higher: 5 Exercises To Improve Your Vertical appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Nutritionists used to focus on how to reduce the size of your gut. Now they’re taking a closer look at what’s inside of it. Recent science points to the gut microbiome—that is, the balance of bacteria living in your digestive system—as a potential source of (or means to affect) a wide array of health concerns.

“Your gut is more than just a place for food to be digested,” says Shannon Ehrhardt, R.D., a performance dietitian with EXOS (Onnit’s partner in performance nutrition). “It’s home to more than half of the body’s immune system. An imbalanced gut microbiome can lead to a variety of different gut-related issues and make it very difficult to keep a healthy body weight.”

Glutamine: The Missing Ingredient For Gut Health

According to an article by the Harvard Medical School, the organisms in your gut help you metabolize the nutrients from your food, protect you from intestinal infections, and produce vitamin K, which aids in making proteins that allow your blood to clot. In May of this year, the preliminary findings of the largest microbiome study ever (the ongoing American Gut Project) found that people with mental disorders ranging from depression to schizophrenia shared similar bacteria makeups in their guts. “Virtually every aspect of health is tied into what’s going on in your gastrointestinal tract,” says Ehrhardt.

You may already know that you should be consuming probiotics and prebiotics to keep a healthy gut. Probiotics are the good bacteria and yeasts that help you break down food and fight off the bad bacteria in your body that can make you sick. Meanwhile, prebiotics are the fiber the probiotic organisms feed on. Foods like organic yogurt, kombucha, and kimchi, as well as supplements with good bacteria strains such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium, go a long way toward helping your gut stay in balance, but there’s also a sports supplement that can bolster the effort. A supplement that, up until recently, most people only took for muscle recovery and performance.

Glutamine might be the missing ingredient that helps you digest your food better and stay healthy, while also offering ergogenic properties that kick your performance into high gear.

What Is Glutamine?

L-glutamine is the most abundant amino acid in the body, accounting for 60% of your cells’ total aminos. Your body makes some glutamine for itself, but also gets it from high-protein foods such as meat, seafood, and eggs. Still, despite glutamine’s prevalence, any number of stresses can drain your glutamine stores, causing you to become suddenly deficient. This is why glutamine is considered a “conditionally essential” amino acid.

“Your need for glutamine goes up at various times,” says Ehrhardt, “such as when you’re sick, stressed out, injured, or performing high-intensity activities. Most people probably don’t get enough glutamine in their diets.”

Therefore, glutamine supplementation is worthwhile, and it’s been shown to offer the following benefits.

Benefits of Glutamine

Supports Gut Health

“Glutamine is the gut’s preferred source of fuel to help the body repair intestinal damage and support the immune system,” says Ehrhardt. According to an article in the Journal of Epithelial Biology and Pharmacology, one way in which glutamine works is by helping to preserve the “tight junctions” in the gut lining that prevent inflamed states like leaky gut, where microbes and food you eat permeate the intestines and enter the bloodstream. In other words, glutamine can act as a sort of spackle that fills the cracks.

And good news for athletes and active people: A 2015 study in Cell Stress & Chaperones found that subjects who took glutamine shortly before working out didn’t have an exercise-induced rise in intestinal permeability and markers of inflammation.

Aids Recovery

In a 2015 study, subjects performed eccentric leg extensions to induce muscle soreness. That is, the researchers made them lower the weight slowly to create as much muscle damage in their thighs as possible. Not only did the people who supplemented with glutamine report feeling less sore afterward, they experienced a smaller loss of strength when their legs were tested again three days later (less than enough time for adequate recovery).

In summation, the researchers wrote: “A basic hypothesis is that glutamine supplementation may improve muscle function by attenuating the inflammatory response to eccentric exercise.” Additionally, “after mitigating the inflammatory response, the increased availability of glutamine promotes protein synthesis [i.e. muscle growth] and the recovery process.”

Recovery includes wound healing and the ability to bounce back from illness as well. According to an article in Eplasty, glutamine is the primary fuel source for dividing epithelial cells—the ones that line the surfaces of your body—and therefore plays a major role in aiding the body to close the skin up around a cut. Meanwhile, an Oxford study found that endurance athletes supplementing with glutamine were at a lower risk for infections. This is significant because, while we think of athletes as healthy, the stress of their training suppresses the immune system.

Promotes Aerobic Performance

As part of the body’s stress response, glutamine is released from cells and converted by the liver into glucose, making it serve as an energy source just like carbohydrates and fat. This may help to keep you training hard long past the point where you’d usually punk out—especially if the rest of your nutrition isn’t quite on point. A trial in the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition had endurance athletes get slightly dehydrated and then work at 75% of their VO2 max on a cycle ergometer. Subjects on glutamine had longer times to exhaustion despite the “mild hydration stress.”

Helps Reaction Time

There’s a growing interest in non-stimulating nutrients that can help keep you alert (hence the popularity of Alpha BRAIN®). Glutamine may qualify as one of these. A 2015 study on basketball players demonstrated that glutamine supplementers had better reaction times, out-shooting a control group on the court by 12.6%.

How Much Glutamine Should I Take?

Due to Americans’ poor diets, Ehrhardt says that gut issues are becoming increasingly common. “Five grams of L-glutamine a day is a great way to support the healing process and get your gut back on track.” Available in powder form, you can take glutamine before or after training, and in combination with other supplements (say, blend it into a protein smoothie). “Glutamine isn’t time-dependent, like some supplements are,” says Ehrhardt, so you can take it any time (such as stirred into a glass of water first thing in the morning, if you like). “You could mix it into your morning oatmeal too.”

The post Glutamine: The Missing Ingredient For Gut Health appeared first on Onnit Academy.

YouTube will never do it justice. You have to experience the electricity of the event in the flesh – the cheering, the smell of chalk and sweat slowly filling the gymnasium throughout the day, and the opportunity to share the platform with world champions.

While I hope my international experience will only strengthen in the upcoming years, this meet will always be special, as it was my first of this magnitude. In hopes that it will inspire others to pursue similar experiences in Kettlebell Sport, or any other sport for that matter, I want to share three important takeaways from my weekend in Hamburg.

Kettlebell Sport Lesson #1:  Relaxation is the Most Important Aspect of Kettlebell Sport to Master

Those new to Kettlebell Sport often approach their lifting with the same tension and intensity as they would apply in powerlifting. This manifests itself in a number of different ways, such as applying a death grip to the kettlebell handle, panicked breathing, and contorted facial expressions.

I find that these mistakes are the effects of improper framing or more simply put, they’re not thinking about the sport correctly. As a weightlifting sport, they only see the need for strength, power, and explosiveness. And while these attributes are important, they neglect the fact that Kettlebell Sport is actually an endurance sport, which requires an element of relaxation.

Relax! Smoother! Breathe! More relaxed! These were the most common cues coaches and teammates were giving their athletes on the platform. The “let’s go!’s” and “you can do it!’s” were saved for the final minute – the sprint finish – the time to go for broke.

The true world-class athletes will be able to relax in ways you didn’t think were possible – in the drop from the overhead position or in the microsecond that the kettlebell is weightless in the pull of the Kettlebell Clean or Kettlebell Snatch. But for beginners, the first steps are simply learning to hold the kettlebells comfortably in the rack and overhead positions.

Kettlebell Sport Lesson #2: Your Team Should Do More Than Cheer You On

On the international level, like at the IUKL World Championships, your team is your compatriots. For other meets, it could be your local club team, the group of students under a single coach, or even just a group of friends. Regardless, you should have a team and they should do more than just cheer for you.

In addition to reminding you to relax, teammates can help with keeping pace during the set. Once you start breaking into high anaerobic heart rate zones, math and counting is quite a challenge. This is where it becomes very helpful to have someone remind you of your target numbers each minute.

The supportive role extends off the platform as well. Teammates can help each other stay on schedule with warming up before flights by providing equipment, water or snacks, chalking kettlebells, and massaging tight forearms.

And lastly, and maybe most importantly, teammates can help each other stay in good spirits before and after sets. From giving an inspirational pep talk to just keeping things light by joking around – it’s essential to have a good crew who knows how to help you manage the mental side of competition.

Kettlebell Sport Lesson #3: Never miss an Opportunity to Learn Something New

Whether it’s local, regional, national, or international, meets will bring together athletes and coaches who don’t regularly interact with each other. Thus, the event becomes not only an opportunity to compete against one another, but to learn from one another.

Watch how different athletes warm up and recover during sets, especially the strongest lifters. Study their technique and determine what makes them successful. Then there are all the little things: what are they eating and drinking, how they wear their belt or other special equipment, etc. And of course talk with each other – but just be sensitive to the fact that some lifters will be more willing to discuss their training than others.

And most importantly, stay in touch and build your lifting network. Kettlebell Sport is still in its infancy in many countries like the US, and so most of the strongest lifters are very spread out geographically. As a result, there are a lot of big fish in little ponds. But by staying connected online throughout the year, your virtual training partners will inspire you to push harder in training, even if your gym is in your garage or living room.

The post 3 Lessons from the Kettlebell Sport World Championships appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Now instead of focusing solely on the batter, teams have to worry about you stealing a base which adds pressure to the defense. Speed can also enable a player to score from second, or go first to third on a hit that slower players wouldn’t even think of trying. Lastly having good speed makes your defensive skills that much better.

For instance, an outfielder with great speed will be able to run down balls in the gap and prevent extra base hits. Players who have great speed are that much more dangerous on the baseball field.

How Did You Enhance Your Speed Through Physical Training?

Every offseason I make it a priority to arrive at spring training in the best shape of my life, specifically focusing on my speed and agility. For power and explosiveness, I get after heavy lower body workouts. These workouts range from squats, deadlifts and lunges to more explosive plyometric work such as box jumps and split squat jumps.

Starting in November, I mix in speed work. Beginning during these part of the year, gives me three months of good solid speed and agility workouts to reach my peak just in time for spring training in February. These workouts usually consist of any of the following movements: agility ladder, cone drills, resisted sprints, hill sprints, and treadmill sprints.

This kind of work gets me to a place, that allows me to compete at a high level both on the base paths and in the field on defense.

How Do You Train to Increase Hitting Power? 

To increase hitting power I incorporate functional movements into all of my workouts. I want to get my core and forearms ASAP (as strong as possible). Since hitting is a rotational movement, I do exercises to increase my rotational strength and power. One of my favorites is performing tire strikes with an Onnit Steel Mace.

Not only is it a very similar movement to hitting a baseball, but it’s a great total body workout. Onnit Steelbells are also great tools. They help a lot with rotational power, as I use them for movements such as wood chops and slams.

They also crush the forearms, allowing you to use a variety of grips while doing the exercises. Seated Onnit Steel Club Curls and rotations are another forearm crusher I love. Using both the light, and heavy weight Steel Clubs I can build up the small and large muscles needed for hitting and throwing a baseball.

Combining the functional movements I listed above with old school lifts, such as pull-ups, squats and deadlifts, I finish the offseason in February stronger than ever and rearing to go for the upcoming season.

How Do You Use Supplementation to Enhance Your Training?

I do my best to get all I need from eating quality earth grown food. Because of that, the supplements I do use, are of the highest quality. To get the clean energy I need to get through a tough workout my go-to is Shroom TECH sport. Never before have I had any pre-workout supplement last so long and have no crash later.

During my workouts having a Hemp Force Bar is also a must as it gives me key nutrients and the necessary fuel to finish. For recovery after a workout, I make sure to have a shake made from Hemp Force, Onnit EGN powder, coconut oil, Himalayan salt, and some fresh fruit.

This has everything I need to ensure my body is getting what it needs to recover and refuel for the next day. I also cannot forget Krill oil, for Omegas. It reduces inflammation and allows my joints and ligaments to feel the best they ever have.

The post How a Major League Baseball Player Uses Unconventional Training appeared first on Onnit Academy.

Growing up, I was a pretty reckless athlete. I grasped most sports with ease. I played with fire, via ski racing, almost daily. I’d somersault over fences into forests and only have a bloody nose to show for it. I’d go from 80mph to 0 in 3 seconds and just have ‘a bit of a sore neck’.

Unconventional Training & Recovery

I had strength and athletic talent so I was able to get out of most situations. But a couple of months prior to the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, I crashed and didn’t walk away. I tore my ACL, MCL, patellar tendon and both medial and lateral menisci.. in one knee. Having an Olympic Games in my home country was going to be epic. Most legends in their sport don’t have that opportunity during their careers.

With that said, I have no regrets. I have no regrets because that crash single-handedly made me a professional. To this day, I have had 4 left-knee surgeries and met a magnitude of people due to my injury that I may never have crossed paths with otherwise.

Both of my parents are chiropractors. I grew up in a very natural environment. When I got injured, I had the confidence from my upbringing to steer away from any conventional approach that I had seen or heard about up until that point. I followed my gut and it landed me in New Hampshire doing the Burdenko method of rehabilitation, conditioning and training.

Hydrotherapy for Recovery

This land and water approach focuses on “restoring maximum functional capacity”. I was keen on being better. Tom Barbeau, Burdenko Master certified instructor, kept me for weeks in this environment. In the pool and on land, slowly introducing each quality (balance, flexibility, speed, strength, endurance, coordination). My left leg began contributing and my body started working as one. Often, the emphasis in rehab is on the ‘injured leg’ and not on the body as a whole.

The Burdenko Method is an incredible tool for showing the body what it IS capable of. I was doing sprints in the pool well before I was able to walk without a limp. That, alone, gave me the confidence that I would be extremely athletic again very soon. The last thing anyone wants, is to be between an athlete and their sport.

However, the whole package was important. I took all the right homeopathics, I kept my spine and pelvis happy, I kept my muscles length in perfect alignment, so that I could progress at any time and stay sane. The sanity was just as hard to maintain. I am highly passionate and driven by hard work. When this was taken away from me, I suffered.

The Psychology of Recovery

I had a sport psychologist that continued to prescribe me explanations for my state versus medication for my symptoms. As a ‘why’ kinda girl, I appreciated this and tried to respect the progression. With that said, I battled with keeping the optimism that I so often heard other recovering athletes speak about… “I never doubted” “I always knew I would make a full recovery.”

For my personally, I needed to validate my feelings, understand the place for mourning and then decide how to best inspire myself. Often, it was most encouraging to think of something within reach so as to make myself feel like I was constantly succeeding. Thinking about an end result of hauling ass on the world stage while I was unable to even leave my leg vertical. Being a logical person, it just didn’t add up.

Currently, I continue to ‘manage’ my knee and optimize my health by ingesting the right fuel, training very unilaterally and understanding the signs my body gives me. Many will look for the ultimate cure, the ultimate training regime, the ultimate vegetable. What I’ve found to be ultimate, across the board, is taking responsibility. Between research and trial-and-error, I believe that everyone is capable of finding the path to optimizing our lives.

Aubrey talks about being “fair, honest and transparent with his customers”. I try to practice the same method with my body and mind. I am forceful but I try not to squeeze myself. There IS a difference. And I am always happy to learn of a weakness because it means I have more potential to exhaust.

For more information on any of the more unconventional recovery approaches I used, click here:

The Burdenko Method
Igor Burdenko himself
Trigenics

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