The Top 5 Ways to Make Any Exercise Harder (Or Easier) By BJ Gaddour, CSCS, YFS2 www.WorkoutMuse.com One of the most frequently asked questions I receive from people all over the world is how to make an exercise harder (or easier) to best accommodate a wide variety of fitness levels. In my fitness career I have prided myself in developing a truly automatic system of exercise progressions and regressions within my own fitness bootcamp program design that has allowed people from all walks of life to safely and effectively be pushed to the limit while performing the exact same workout at the exact same time. Today I’m going to breakdown the top 5 ways to make an exercise harder or easier as needed for your own campers and clients or for your own personal workouts. Let’s get to it! Progression#1- Stability: Changing the Size or Position of Your Body’s Base of Support The overall stability of an exercise basically is determined by the relationship between your center of gravity (COG) and base of support (BOS). In other words, the less contact your body has with the floor (or stable surface) the harder it is for your body to stabilize itself during the exercise and visa versa. See below for a quick overview of how this applies: - Most Stable: when using a large base of support with your center of gravity positioned as close to middle of that large base of support as possible - Most Unstable: when using a small base of support with your center of gravity positioned as far away from the middle of that small base of support as possible The best way to demonstrate this stability progression is to use the front pillar variation as a case study. Level I- Most Stable- 4-Point Front Pillar- Progress from Wide Feet to Close Feet © 2010 Workout Muse, LLC - www.workoutmuse.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author. Level II- 3-Point Front Pillar- Progress from 1-Leg to 1-Arm Level III- Most Unstable: 2-Point Front Pillar- Opposite Arm and Leg © 2010 Workout Muse, LLC - www.workoutmuse.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author. - - -Furthermore, there are variations that would apply as Level IV and beyond such as performing the front pillar with the points of contact (in this case, your forearms and feet) on unstable surfaces like stability balls, stability discs, or the TRX suspension trainer. In general, stability progressions involve moving from a static/stationary exercise to a dynamic/moving exercise. Clearly any exercise variation performed in a static or stationary environment is easier to perform than it’s dynamic or moving counterpart. Let’s take a look at two quick examples of this: © 2010 Workout Muse, LLC - www.workoutmuse.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author. Example#1- Static vs. Dynamic Exercise Variation: Split Squat vs. Lunge A split squat is performed with your feet statically positioned on the floor in a split stance throughout the duration of the exercise. A lunge involves stepping into a split squat position thus requiring greater stability since your base of support and center of gravity are changing throughout the movement. Dynamic exercises simply require greater motor control than their static alternatives. Split Squat © 2010 Workout Muse, LLC - www.workoutmuse.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author. Forward Lunge Example#2- Stationary vs. Moving Exercise Variation: Lunge vs. Walking Lunge A lunge involves stepping out into a split squat position and then explosively returning back to the starting position and repeating for time. A walking lunge involves continuous lunges where you move your body to a new position rep after rep, only returning to the original starting position at the end of the exercise (if ever). Moving exercises force your nervous system to work harder because of constant inherent variance in ground contact forces due to a host of factors such as changing terrain as opposed to staying in the exact same spot with no true displacement. Walking Lunge © 2010 Workout Muse, LLC - www.workoutmuse.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author. The applications of the stability principle truly are endless. Here are a few more examples: - You can perform exercises like push-ups, lunges, rows, squats, and deadlifts on one leg instead of two - You can do push-ups on your fists or fingertips instead of your hands - You can perform pulling exercises while gripping towels encasing the weights instead of the weights themselves I personally love stability progressions because they allow you to seamlessly intensify any exercise without the need for equipment, added loading, or elaborate set-up and transition times. This has the two-pronged benefit of mitigating the cost of your training while minimize the inherent risk associated with intensive exercise that involves external resistance. Remember, when in doubt use bodyweight exercise variations over external resistance to best keep safe and in order to take your workouts anywhere you may be: at home, in the gym, or on the road. Stability progressions force your body’s internal stabilization system to kick into overdrive. As always, the more muscles we involve in every exercise the better. More specifically, the more we involve our pillar stabilizers of the shoulder, hips, and core, the more unbreakable we make our body. Progression#2- Tempo: Changing Your Speed of Movement Tempo describes the speed at which you perform a certain exercise. The tempo of an exercise includes 4 distinct components: #1- Eccentric Period (E): the time it takes to perform the negative or “lowering” portion of an exercise #2- Eccentric-Concentric Transition Period (EC): the time it takes to transition between the eccentric and concentric phase of an exercise #3- Concentric Period (C): the time it takes to perform the positive or “lifting” portion of an exercise #4- Transition Period Between Repetitions (T): the time you take between each repetition of an exercise © 2010 Workout Muse, LLC - www.workoutmuse.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author. When combining all of these components, we have the following tempo formula that can be prescribed to any exercise: E – EC – C – T For example, let’s examine a push-up performed at a 3-1-X-1 tempo. This means that you will: - Take 3 seconds to lower your chest to the floor - Then pause for 1 second as you reach the bottom of the push-up without resting - Then explode back up to the starting position - Then pause for 1 second before you perform the next repetition First and foremost is a requirement that you must first be able to perform a certain movement with perfect form and technique through a full range of motion at a controlled tempo before considering any of the outlined tempo progressions to come. For our purposes, the typical repetition takes about 2-3 seconds to perform at a controlled 2-0-X-1 tempo. Basically, you control the lowering portion of the exercise and then try to perform the lifting portion of the exercise as explosively as you can. Always start here to best ensure safe and effective training. That being said, below is a basic outline of tempo progressions that allow you to intensity any bodyweight exercise without the need for external resistance or equipment: a.) Add speed of movement to increase training density Using the same push-up example as above, if the task was to perform max reps of push-ups in 30 seconds, it’s obvious that performing 20 reps is a better result than 10. This increase in reps can only be accomplished by performing the push-up at a faster speed than the aforementioned controlled 2-0-X-1 tempo. © 2010 Workout Muse, LLC - www.workoutmuse.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author. Performing more work in the same amount of time increases training density (work performed per unit of time) and will help your burn more fat and build more lean muscle. However, increasing speed of movement is only a true progression when performed without sacrificing perfect form and technique or range of motion. b.) Eliminate the Stretch Reflex to increase muscle work Your muscles and tendons are just liked coiled springs.