In This Issue:

– Robertson Training Systems Updates
– Training Tip
– Nutrition Tip
– Product Review: Mike Boyle’s “Functional Strength Coach”
– Performance Coach Spotlight: Zach Even-Esh
– Calendar and Coming Events
– New Articles

Updates:

Site Updates

As you take a look around, you’ll see that I’m in the process of making a lot of updates to the site. Most notably, I’m going to keep updating the Products page with the best new items availabe today. As I get a chance to review more items, I’ll continuously post them here.

Program Design Annoucement and Gradauting Clients!

I wanted to take a quick second and announce that two of my high school clients are graduating this week! While I’ve worked with both of them about 8 or 9 months, these two gentlemen have been a pleasure to work with and have exceeded my greatest expectations. And, while I’d love to continue training them the whole summer, they both have some pretty amazing plans in store, so I wanted to wish them both the best of luck in their summer adventures and the ensuing school year. Keep in touch guys!

With that being said, this has opened up a few roster spots for online training clients. If you are SERIOUS about taking your performance and physique to the next level, drop me a line at [email protected] and I’ll explain what you need to do to get set-up. I’m only looking to take 3-5 highly motivated individuals, so don’t wait if you’re interested!

G-Flux Seminar Recap

Mike Bystol and his crew at the PPC Chicago did an excellent job of bringing this seminar to together – it’s pretty rare to have two huge coaches such as John Berardi and Charles Poliquin in the same room for an entire weekend.

The seminar covered a ton of topics, but the primary focus was on the G-Flux principles: Increasing your training volume and caloric intake to raise basal metabolic rate and induce favorable changes in body composition. John and Charles did an excellent job of showing EXACTLY what you need to do if you want to achieve your ideal physique. As well, even though I’ve seen JB talk a number of times now and have reviewed virtually all of his products and articles, I always take something new away from his work. Whether it’s better information or simply ways to become more proficient at applying it, it’s no wonder JB is at the forefront of his field.

Building the Efficient Athlete – July 22nd and 23rd

Eric Cressey and I will be giving an intense and informative 2-day seminar at the Peak Performance facility New York coming this July. Whether you’re a personal trainer, a performance coach, or someone who simply wants to improve their performance in the gym, this seminar will be of great benefit to you. Not only will we be covering functional anatomy (something you NEVER know enough of), but we’ll also be covering how to assess yourself and your clients for postural flaws, as well as developing impeccable technique on the lifts you perform each and every day in the gym.

Needless to say, you don’t want to miss out on this! We’ve already filled half the seats, so if you are interested download and fill out the registration form below. Don’t miss out!

Seminar Registration

Training Tip:

Increase your eccentric speed to move more weight

Want to increase your squat, bench or any other lift that starts out with an eccentric movement? Try lowering the bar with increased speed; the increased speed with which you lower the bar will potentiate the stretch reflex and give you more “pop” out of the hole. However, don’t try this unless you are confident in your technique and be sure that you maintain your tension throughout the repetition.

Nutrition Tip:

The Sunday Ritual
by Dr. John Berardi

To ensure that good foods will be available when you need them, use the Sunday Ritual. This is performed by setting aside three hours every Sunday to write out your menu for the week, shop for the week, and prepare your meals for the week. Cook all the meat, chop all the vegetables, measure out all the yogurt and/or cottage cheese, and distribute all the powders. Have them ready and set aside so that you can grab them in the morning and bring them with you regardless of what your day holds in store for you.

If you like this tip and want to learn more about JB and his products, check out his Precision Nutrition website.

Product Review: Boyle’s Functional Strength Coach DVD

Every now and then, there’s a book or product that makes you take a step back and ponder how you’ve been doing certain aspects of your training. I didn’t know what I was getting into when I asked Mike to let me review his DVD series for my newsletter, but I certainly didn’t expect what I got.

Simply put, this DVD series has changed the way I look at and perform a lot of my training; most importantly, I should mention here that Mike’s views on core training have influenced a virtual renaissance with how I prescribe core training to myself and my clients.

Performance Coach Spotlight: Zach Even-Esh

MR: All right Zach – let’s start off with the basics here. Why don’t you tell everyone a little bit about yourself and how you got into the iron game?

ZEE: My background is a funny one, but possibly a typical one for many. I am 30 years old now, I began training in the summer before high school when I was 13 ½ years old. I had Arnold’s Encyclopedia plus FLEX and Muscle & Fitness magazines at the house. My older brother would read them so I grabbed them whenever he left them laying around the house. In fact, I read these magazines for over a year before I ever lifted a weight.

Sure, the training information was off the wall and pure insanity, but one thing I did learn was proper training technique with a lot of movements before I lifted a weight. Other than that, my training was hilarious at best. I would superset and triset everything!

I would do back squats with 60 lbs. because it’s all I could press overhead! Then I would immediately follow these up with dumbbell lunges. My arm workout would be barbell curls, followed by dumbbell curls followed by hammer curls. This would be 30 – 45 reps non stop! Those days crack me up!

The main thing was I loved working out! LOVED IT! I couldn’t get enough of it and I would watch that show on ESPN, ‘American Muscle’ all the time. If that meant waking up at 3 am in the middle of the night to watch the show I did it! I would cut school to watch the show or get to the gym in the morning and then in the evening when my parents would drop me off.

This process and style of training kept evolving through trial and error, listening to others and typical bodybuilding books and magazines. My most progress came when I trained at Diamond Gym, a hardcore bodybuilding gym which I would equate to the Westside of bodybuilding. This place was all about heavy weights, plenty of volume, and plenty of intensity.

MR: Sounds like you’ve been doing this for a little while, but it hasn’t all been easy. You’ve dealt with several serious injuries as well too, right?

ZEE: That’s right, Mike. Throughout this time of bodybuilding, until the age of 26, I was still involved with wrestling. The problem was, once I hit age 21, I would get at least one serious injury each year that sidelined me pretty well.

First it was my nagging shoulders, I couldn’t do incline barbell benching from age 15 until age 23 or so. The culmination of compromising positions through wrestling coupled with NO prehab / rehab work and lots of forced reps with all movements played a heavy toll on my body.

I had a torn meniscus, nothing serious, but had surgery, and had MAJOR problems rehabbing my leg back to normal. I traveled all over the tri state area to Doctors for help w/my knee and NO luck! Finally, I STOPPED listening to these Doctors (who had no heavy experience with athletes) and just did what I felt worked and what felt good for me. If it hurt, I stopped the movement set asap, no two ways about it. Back then, if I had contact with guys like yourself, Eric, Buddy Morris, etc. things would have been different.

The two big injuries that drew the final straw were:
1. A slight tear to my rotator cuff while wrestling (this took 6 months until I felt full force again) – this injury affected EVERYTHING I did. I couldn’t even do barbell curls with the empty bar it was so painful! Back then I knew NOTHING of guys like yourself and man it would have made such a huge difference!

2. My ACL tear, which occurred while in BJJ from a stand up position. After y ACL surgery / injury I was so friggin’ pissed with all my years of training I demanded of myself to find better ways to train.

Once I began the research I found a whole new world – I started reading Elitefts.com constantly, Joe DeFrancos’s site and plenty of stuff from JC Santana. I was shocked with how different these guys were doing and I was freaked out that I spent half my life using bodybuilding methods to train for wrestling and BJJ! But guess what, the majority of people still are doing what I did! The information is so f**ed up still, that even in big name magazines they show the use of leg extensions, preacher curls and tricep extensions to prepare grapplers and fighters!

MR: It sounds like you’ve been to hell and back. What’s your current training like now?

ZEE: My own training is always evolving, because I’m always trying to learn more. My hands on clients are high school athletes and a few seniors prepping to enter college. We don’t do anything fancy, we focus on safety first, results second. As we all know, stupid programs lead to plenty of injuries (I am the prime example of this). So I incorporate a solid warm up – some movement for hips and lower body, this is all things I stole from your Mobility DVD and the Parisi warm up. We use bodyweight calisthenics, bands and movement to prep.

The workout itself is always full body, and we do not train 2 days in a row here. If they train a 2nd consecutive day, it’s because their at their high school gym. So I work hard to educate them in addition to the training. We discuss optimal methods for these days on their own, movements like sled work, prehab / rehab, calisthenics, tempo runs, grip and ab work, and extra training with lower intensity for weak areas; posterior chain (upper back down to hamstrings).

I use a complex I learned from James Smith, The Bondarchuk complex. We’ve had great results using this program. In addition, James has always been an awesome help and resource as I visit his site often and read all his posts at Elite.

MR: All right Zach – enough fluff talk! Tell us a little bit about the “Underground” and its training methodology.

ZEE: A lot of people who know me know that I love training ‘Underground’. This is where we take odd objects and training tools and make use of them for kick butt workouts. These kids have great fun training like this. Couple this with the results they get and we have a great combination.

We use plenty of bodyweight movements, barbells and dumbbells during our workouts, no doubt, these three tools are the bread and butter of our workouts. But, with this great weather, we’ve been getting lots of sled training in (* see my endless sled training variations article at elitefts.com), kettlebell training outdoors, sledge hammer work, rope climbing, log carries, log training for legs (squats, lunges, zercher rdl’s) and sandbag work.

This is basic training at it’s best! We even use picnic tables for things like front squats, presses down with 2 arms and 1 arm! We tear it up at the playgrounds doing pull ups on the bars, using towels and ropes, hanging leg raises and jumps onto park benches and picnic tables.

There are so many tools to use, but, we always go to basic training for results. In addition, isolation work for weak areas with prehab / rehab done on a regular basis is key for getting athletes stronger and keeping them healthy! Before most of our guys are strong enough to start doing deads with a trap bar, we do tons of band face pulls, band pull aparts, 45 degree back extensions, GH raises, shrugs, KB swings, sled dragging in all directions and bodyweight training. Notice the isolation movements in there! Those weak muscles need isolation and volume on a regular basis to prime them and strengthen them.

I learned this early on from Joe DeFranco – he told me that when you start coaching you think right away you’re gonna start squats, deads and benching. You see the form is horrendous and you start to think the kid can’t listen or you’re a bad Coach. Step 1 is getting them strong where they are weak.

This is also where I start using simple movements that work their body economically. Sandbag zercher carries, farmer walks with kettlebells, hand over hand rope pulls attached to kettlebells and sleds, walking lunges, log carries. These movements get a lot of muscles working which never got work before. Slowly we progress and begin implementing the more traditional movements.

MR: I really like the idea of basics; but then again, if you didn’t, I wouldn’t be interviewing you! It sounds like you’re constantly learning, so who’s on your “Go-To” list when it comes to good resources?

ZEE: My go to guys are many, but here’s a solid list: The entire team at Elite – this crew of guys and the entire site is jam packed with info it’s a MUST for all involved in coaching and training of athletes! Yourself and Eric Cressey – you guys have sent me huge e mails in response to my questions and have helped me tremendously. I personally don’t think enough people know how friggin’ good you and Eric are! I believe that will change very shortly ?

Josh Henkin – a great coach with a killer combination of hands on experience and scientific experience.

Alwyn Cosgrove – a true mentor and great friend, one who knows his shit like no other! Guys like Mike Boyle, Bill Hartmann, Martin Rooney – these guys really inspire me and educate me constantly to keep on improving. I’m just a baby in learning all this info and all these people plus many more I forgot to mention really motivate me and offer me words of wisdom in such a selfless manner I am very grateful.

It’s great seeing guys like this out here who support and help others because this is truly the way it should be. They all learned from others and now they are “paying it forward” – the assholes out there in the industry who have bad remarks to make on other Coaches just let their lack or professionalism and insecurity shine through. It’s GREAT to have friends like yourself and the others Mike.

MR: Thanks a lot Zach, that’s really nice of you. Now how can my readers find out more about yourself and your products?

ZEE: Thanks for giving me a chance to be part of your newsletter and of course, thanks for always helping me with my weak areas to make me a better Coach!

If anyone wants to contact me they can shoot me an e mail through either of my sites, www.CombatGrappler.com & www.UndergroundStrengthCoach.com.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to read the interview!