Tip of the week Train the serratus

The serratus anterior is a cool-looking muscle on the side of the upper abdominal muscles. It's not technically an abdominal muscle, but it completes the look of a muscular, defined torso.

The problem is that it's quite difficult to train this muscle directly. In fact, many strength coaches will tell you to forget about training the serratus and instead just achieve a low body fat percentage and do a lot of overhead presses and pull-ups, which bring the serratus into play. That's not bad advice in principle, but you can also target this muscle directly with the following exercise.

Serratus cable crunches

1. Stand at the side of a cable pulley with the cable over the top pulley and a D-shaped handle. With your left side facing the cable pulley, grab the handle with your left hand.
2. Place your right hand on the left serratus, this will help you to target and contract the serratus.
3. Bend sideways in the opposite direction to achieve a full stretch and then crunch the serratus down and slightly forward. Hold the side-bent position for a few seconds for the full effect.
4. After 6 to 12 repetitions, switch sides and train the other serratus.

This will take some practice. Adjust your position until you feel the serratus contract. Once you have established this mind-muscle connection, it will become easier.

Tip: Do crunches, but follow this rule

Many experts consider crunches to be an unsafe exercise, but this exercise can still be a good ab exercise if you follow a simple rule

By Joseph Brigley

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-do-crunches-but-follow-this-rule

The rule

If your posture is good, double the amount of work you do on each variation of crunches for your back extensors. Why? Read on to find out.

How crunches got bad

Not so long ago, crunches were a basic exercise. Everyone did them. Today, the "in the know" shy away from them. What happened here?

In the seventies and eighties, physiotherapist Vladimir Janda discovered that posture is the result of our everyday habits. How we sit, how we stand and how long we sit and stand directly influences our skeletal structure. He said that it is our daily habits that cause our hip flexors to become hyperactive, causing our gluteus muscle groups to become underactive or inhibited through a process called reciprocal inhibition.

When the hip flexors become very stiff, they pull our pelvis down at the front, causing excessive curvature of the lumbar spine. In other words, the hips cause a tight lower back, which doesn't help anyone.

Janda also formulated a hypothesis regarding the upper body. He said that when we develop a posture where our shoulders hang forward, we put damaging stress on our spine in the middle of the back and around the neck. This is also known as kyphosis.

The problem with these variations of poor posture is the position of the spine. Excessive concave curvature of the lumbar spine with the pelvis tilted forward and excessive convex curvature of the cervical and thoracic spine puts your discs, spinal cord and nerve function in a compromised position. Ultimately, it was this realization that pushed crunches off the main stage.

Since both of these postures stress the spine, any forward bending movement will either increase hip flexor hyperactivity (in the form of tilting the pelvis forward) or damage the spinal cord in the upper back and neck. The problem with this reasoning is that crunches are a necessary function of your abdominal muscles - a flexion of the spine.

Spinal flexion - what you do when you perform crunches - is a necessary component of the abdominal wall because it supports the movement of moving the upper torso forward by shortening the anterior abdominal muscles. This helps MMA fighters land harder punches, gives gymnasts the ability to tighten the legs and roll safely, and makes the average man stride proudly on the beach.

Should everyone do crunches?

This entirely depends. Whether or not you should perform any spinal flexion exercise like crunches depends on the following factors:

1. If your hip is tight enough to cause lower back pain, then no. In this case, you need to start with hip mobility and isometric core exercises.
2. If you have a posture with your head bent forward, you should work on correcting this before you start doing crunches. Move your head away from your phone, stop twerking and talk to the next woman you meet. Do this with a strong, confident posture by pulling your shoulder blades back and down.
3. If you have a forward tilt of the pelvis - a kyphosis - or any other postural issues, then you are already compromising your spine. The likelihood is that you simply need a better exercise program.

If none of the above applies, then you can use the training rules above to your advantage.

Double the training for the lower back

Balance any training of crunches with direct training for the antagonistic muscle groups - your back extensors and lower back muscles - which are the muscles that keep you standing upright. For every spinal flexion exercise like crunches, you need to perform double the number of movements for the back extensors. So if you do one set of crunches on the floor, cable or medicine ball slams, you need to do two sets of the following exercises:

• Rack Pulls
• Isometric Supermans
• Good Mornings
• Reverse Planks
• Gluteus bridge variations
• Hip-Thrust Variations
• Pallof Presses

Anything that isolates the back extensors and combats the effects of spinal flexion will work here.

Get to work

Remember that no matter how many times you bend at the waist to work your abs, you need to do double the amount of work with the opposite movement.

This is not about condemning crunches or the advice of physiotherapists. Rather, it's about understanding the right exercise choice and having a rationale for that choice. If you have a tight hip, lower back or neck pain or walk around with a hunched posture, then you should first work on fixing these issues before attempting crunches.

Tip: Make sure you get enough iodine to keep your thyroid healthy

A mild iodine deficiency can make it harder for you to stay lean. Here are tips for getting enough iodine and information on how much you need.

By Bill Roberts

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/tip-get-enough-iodine-for-thyroid-health

The thyroid gland needs iodine

The thyroid gland needs iodine - either in the form of iodized salt, in the form of certain foods or in the form of supplements. The body uses this iodine to produce the thyroid hormones T3 and T4.

Iodide is the ionic state of iodine that occurs when iodine combines with another element such as potassium or sodium. Iodide is the form of iodine that is safe for consumption.

About 12% of Americans suffer from a serious iodine deficiency, as urine analyses have shown, and this proportion is likely to be similar in Europe. Many more have moderate iodine deficiency or suboptimal iodine intake. Even if the diet alone can provide sufficient amounts of iodide, this is often not the case in practice. It therefore definitely makes sense to take a closer look at your food choices and your consumption of iodized salt.

If you prepare most of your food yourself and salt it with iodized salt, then you should already have a good iodine intake. If not, then you should increase your use of iodized salt. How much iodized salt is needed if this is your primary source of iodine? If you use iodized salt at full potency, then it takes about 2 grams or half a teaspoon of iodized salt (which is about 936 mg of sodium) to meet your minimum iodine requirement.

Unfortunately, about half of all iodized salt products do not contain the amount of iodide indicated on the label, so a little more iodized salt may be needed to meet the minimum requirement.

In general, fast food, processed food and restaurant food do not contain iodized salt. If the label lists only salt and not iodized salt as an ingredient, then the product does not contain iodized salt. Even sea salt only contains small amounts of iodide. If you don't consume much iodized salt at home, then you will probably benefit from increasing this amount. I recommend 300 mcg of iodide per day, although a little more is fine.

How much iodized salt is too much?

Overdosing on iodine from iodized salt is relatively unlikely unless you are consuming an extreme amount of salt. The American NIH (National Institute of Health) recommends 1,100 mcg (1.1 mg) of iodide as the maximum daily intake and scientific studies support this maximum amount as the upper limit. There is absolutely no reason to consume more than this amount on a daily basis and there are good reasons not to.

Intake higher than this can result in hypothyroidism - and it may not even require that much iodine. A large study from China found that an intake as low as 800 mcg per day can be associated with hypothyroidism.

If you use full-potency iodized salt as your only source of salt, then 800 mcg of iodine per day is equivalent to about 5 grams of sodium per day. This is equivalent to about a whole tablespoon. In general, I like to see athletes consume about 4,000 mg of sodium per day, so this amount is about right.

However, I would recommend that you limit your consumption of iodized salt to no more than half a tablespoon per day, as I see no reason to take your iodine intake to extremes. In practice, some of the iodized salt available does not reach full potency, so some variation should be expected. The range mentioned above leaves room for normal variation. However, it assumes that the salt is added to food after cooking and not before.

For pregnant women, I would recommend avoiding excessive iodine intake, which can come from consuming seaweed or iodine supplements.

Which foods are rich in iodide?

If you are looking for iodine-rich foods, you can meet an iodine requirement of 150 mcg by consuming each of the following foods in the amounts indicated:

• 2.5 cups of milk, yogurt or cottage cheese
• 2.5 baked potatoes with skin
• 12 eggs
• 400 grams of shrimp or sea fish
• 400 grams of turkey

Beef, chicken, pork, rice, most wheat products, fruits and vegetables contain too little iodine to be good sources of iodine. Seaweed or kelp are extremely rich in iodine, but are not particularly widespread in our latitudes. Whey protein concentrate and micellar casein are also quite rich in iodine. It only takes about 80 grams of these proteins to get 150 mcg of iodine.

So if your diet includes several of the above things - or even just a lot of one of them - then you probably won't need iodized salt or iodine supplements. However, if your diet consists primarily of things like beef, chicken, vegetables, pasta and fruit, but is low in the above foods, then iodized salt or a supplement will probably be beneficial.

You'll find different claims on wheat products. Some tables show one or two wheat products as good sources. But if wheat products are rich in iodine, then it is the additives that provide the iodine and these vary greatly from product to product.

Tip: Set personal bests with higher repetitions

Setting personal bests with the 1RM weight is great, but setting personal bests with the 8 or 10 RM will also help you reach your goals.

By Charles Staley

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-set-higher-rep-prs

The sand pile analogy

Let's say you're on a beach and you need to build a pile of sand that reaches a height of 60 centimeters. You'll probably just throw sand on top of a big pile.

Of course, the diameter of the pile would increase much faster than its height. If you are not patient, then you will probably give up because you think you are not making any progress. However, if you are persistent, you will eventually pile up a 60 centimeter high pile of sand, even if it will reach a much larger diameter.

As a beginner, it is sufficient to simply increase the weight on the bar to build up this pile within a short period of time. The "sand" tends to pile up vertically instead of spreading horizontally. However, the more experienced and advanced you become, the more sand you will need to use to make the pile grow. The sand in our case is the training volume.

Set personal bests with higher repetitions

Don't just focus on increasing your max weight for one or three reps, but also consistently strive to set new records at higher reps on your core exercises. For example, if you go from 150 x 10 to 180 x 10 on squats, how do you think your previous max weight of 200 kilos for one repetition will feel?

Even if your ultimate goal is to build maximum strength, you should document and break a number of personal bests. A new best at the 3 RM weight will still mean more relative to your goal than a new best at the 8 RM weight, but all of these increases will lead to progress in the long run.

Source: https://www.t-nation.com/training/tip-train-the-serratus