Red Light Therapy Device Now at THP Total Health Performance

Red light therapy panel

Red Light Therapy

We now have red light therapy devices at the gym.

There are many benefits to red light therapy such as reduced inflammation, improved circulation, reduced recovery time, increased cellular function/energy, improvement in skin health, improvement in hormonal health, improvement in gut health, and improvement in cognitive health.

So, you can use red light therapy to recover from sessions, speed up the healing of injuries, and optimize hormonal levels for example.

"Red light therapy, also known as photobiomodulation (PBM), is a natural and non-invasive therapy that uses specific wavelengths of red and near-infrared (NIR) light to deliver beneficial effects to the skin and cells. This therapy involves shining high-quality LED lights on the body to stimulate the mitochondria in the cells. The photons of red and NIR light interact with the mitochondria during cellular respiration, promoting the production of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), an energy-carrying molecule. This process enhances the body's ability to reduce inflammation and support healing."

20 minutes of red light therapy per day can lead to these benefits. I will go into more detail on each of the benefits in coming weeks. If you want to do a session we have the full body panels up and running and we also have smaller devices to target specific areas. Contact us to book in for a session.

 

Don't Use Phones During Training

"Don't use phones during training" - Charles Poliquin.

Many people are now starting to speak of this, but like many topics, Charles was way ahead of his time explaining the reasons as to why you shouldn't use your phone during training.

Don’t use your phone while you train. If you keep your phone in your pocket or in contact with your body while you train to listen to music then you could be lowering your androgens by as much as 31%. You do not want to be making 31% less testosterone. Most of us are already deficient so you want to optimize this as much as possible.

Close contact with your phone all day is bad for you anyway not just while you train, so you should try to limit the amount of time you spend on that device.

In Finland, where Nokia comes from, they have the most brain cancer in the world due to their use of mobile phones. There is a direct correlation between the time you spend beside your mobile phone and cancer.

Do not sleep with it next to your head. Put it on flight mode if you use it for an alarm and put it as far away from you as possible.

Another problem with phones is that the constant looking for updates, messages, likes or comments depletes your dopamine. Well, to lift big weights you need dopamine, so checking your phone constantly means you are wasting the most important neurotransmitter for neural drive.

Mobile phones are a training killer. You should stay away from them.

Related articles:

Limit radiation emitted by your phone

Pay Attention to Your Rest Periods

Rest periods between sets would be one of the most neglected aspects of training and program design. The whole training affect can be changed depending on how long you rest, so I think it is an important part of training that you should pay more attention to. The length of the rest period affects the recovery between sets and the hormonal responses to a training session.

The basic principle is, lower the reps and the higher the load, the longer the rest. Higher reps and lighter load, you need less rest.

In general, when training for maximal strength (1-5 reps at 85% or more) longer rest periods are warranted to allow time for the central nervous system to recover. Typically, larger muscle mass is being used in strength phases and the exercises tend to require more coordination such as when performing cleans or snatches. Two to four minutes is the general recommendation but there are many factors that can influence this as well. The strength of the athlete being one. For example, I have heard of world class powerlifters and strongman competitors resting a minimum of 8 minutes between sets, and some recommend even more. For most of us 2-4 minutes will be fine. This should allow enough time to prevent fatigue and allow you to perform repeated efforts at a high intensity. You should get stronger each set (up to a point) when training for maximal strength. If you aren’t experiencing this in your sessions, maybe your rest period is too short. On the other hand, if you are waiting too long, you may not see the benefits either as the post-tetanic facilitation effect might be lost, basically your nervous system may calm down too much before performing the next set.

For hypertrophy and body composition, the rest periods are shorter. You are looking to create more metabolic demands with this type of training, compared to strength training where a large emphasis is on the nervous system. Shorter rest periods, when using multi-joint movements, will also create more lactic acid, which has been said to increase growth hormone. This will lead to more fat loss over time. Kraemer and his colleagues determined that the highest growth hormone, beta-endorphin, and cortisol concentrations were observed when 10RM multiple sets (3 sets) of exercises were performed separated by a short (1-minute) rest. Testosterone was responsive to both higher intensities (5RM with 3 min rest) and also lower intensities with a shorter rest (10RM with 1 min rest).

There are many factors at play but the takeaway is to pay attention to your rest periods and match them to your goal.

When training for pure speed or power, then full recovery should be allowed between sets. This type of training is about quality, not quantity. Often, these sessions turn into speed endurance type workouts simply because there isn't enough rest given between sets.

Another problem area I see is with hypertrophy and body comp training. If you rest too long, results will be minimized. As the workout starts to get hard, people want to extend their rest periods more and more. It is important to stick to them to get the training response you are after. Resting too long in this case will change the adaptations that will take place.

Strength training isn’t impacted as much because you have more leeway and most people rest too long as it is.

Quality Over Quantity

December 2, 2019

|

Nathan Waters - Total Health Performance

This morning in the gym we got talking about the quality of training session's and ways in which to ensure you are maintaining the quality over the quantity.

I explained what Charles Poliquin had taught me many years ago about the critical drop off point. Basically, for a given training goal, you have a certain percentage of decrease that is acceptable before you call that exercise for the day and move on. 

For example, if in a workout you were to perform 6 sets of 3-5 reps on the bench press and began the workout with 100kg for 5 reps, you would stop the workout if you had to drop the weight to under 93kg or if you couldn’t perform at least 3 reps with the 100kg. 

It won’t do you any good to lower the weight more than this and proceed for extra sets. It will just tap into your recovery and make the next session a struggle as well. 

Another time to consider the quality over quantity of a workout is in a de-load week. Charles always advocated dropping the volume and not the intensity. I have used this with great success over the years.

An example of this is to cut the amount of sets you are doing and not the load. So if you were performing 5 sets of an exercise, on your de-load week, you drop it down to 3 sets. You still lift as best you can for that day but the volume is lower.

In the past I have had coaches tell us to lower our lifts to 50% of the load we used in the previous week but we would still perform all the sets and reps. I didn't find this to be as effective as it is still mentally draining to get through the entire session, especially if the reps are a bit higher, and you can still accumulate a fair amount of fatigue. Also, why train to be weak. I would much rather get in, stimulate myself, and get out then to just drag a session out for the sake of it. 

So, there are two quick ways to ensure you keep the quality of your workouts and not just increase the quantity. It will help you recover from workout to workout and decrease your risk of things like over-training, stagnation, and injuries. 

Tags:

program design

programming

quality

strength

Recovery

Injury prevention