Marilia Coutinho is a multi-disciplinary educator (researcher, professor, writer, speaker, coach, whatever) who writes evidence-based pieces about both technical and social/philosophical aspects of strength and strength training for elitefts. She has both a MS and a Ph.D. and her background/degrees include biology, biochemistry, ecology and sociology of science and health. Marilia has been a powerlifting world champion, broke several federation world records and one all-time record. She has also been a competitive fencer. She was a faculty member in three universities, has a few published books, many peer-reviewed articles and thousands of other published pieces, from fun to serious.
I’m not going to lie—getting old is the opposite of wonderful. But you won’t find doom and gloom in this text—there’s a lot to feel good about as we all go through this aging process.
It’s time for a talk to the young and the old about the inevitable (devastating yet fascinating) aging process under a loaded bar. Buckle up, it’s a bumpy ride!
The key here seems to be how to figure out what is the optimal and the minimal chronic exercise level, type and frequency to maintain thyroid function.
In several sports, neglecting hamstring and glute strength leads to imbalance-associated injuries. It's a great idea to include the NHE in any program.
Denialism is not only unhealthy but dangerous. Adults should be comfortable with the idea that humans don't get to choose their facts. Facts are facts, like it or not.
I prefer to focus on the athlete's autotelic enjoyment (enjoy the sport for the sake of it) and intrinsic motivation. It's wise to avoid motivational lies about success. If one in a million will make it, these competitive lies will hurt a million minus one.
As we age, get injured, heal (repeat the cycle several times), get over-specialized in unilateral movements, we deviate from that ideal type and become prone to more injury, more instability and the ensuing snowball effect includes pain, loss of performance, poor recovery and miserable life.
The triple extension of the lower limb joints to execute a deadlift should be orchestrated so that the highest number of synergistic chains participate.
Bottom line is that if you just want to know what to wear for squatting and deadlifting, take a look at some of the best athletes. Most wore just chucks. If you are a weightlifter, eventually you will find that perfect beloved shoe to grow old with.
If we use a stable surface and unstable axial load, then we're talking: this type of motor task transfers to the target movement and improves maximal strength and the sticking point crossing time.
Maximal strength, power output, rate of force development, coordination, rate coding, proprioception, and kinesthetic awareness are all functional properties that have either non-linear or no relation to muscle mass.
Moral of the story: each person is going to find their "comfort grip and speed" (as well as their foot placement, chest touching point, arch, etc. What we need to make sure is that scapular adduction, glute/hamstring isometric contraction, overall core stability and wrist elbow alignment are fine.
It's possible to follow even an elite level training protocol completely alone, with the owls for company. Not at the novice level, though. The number of things that can go wrong is significant.
It is my belief that those gyms that succeed in implementing effective measures will enjoy a double reward: in the short term, the community’s safety against SARS-CoV-2 contagion. On the long run, the prevention of several infections caused by viruses and bacteria.
Acredito que quem for bem sucedido em implementar estas medidas agora terá um duplo retorno: no curto prazo, a segurança de todos os membros da comunidade que convive na academia quanto ao contágio do SARS-CoV-2. No longo prazo, a prevenção de outras viroses e infecções bacterianas.
Most small gyms with good lifting equipment are small businesses / sole proprietor businesses. This is the economic category that took the hardest blow during the pandemic.
For the weird, varied, and unpredictable post-acute phase, everything and anything is inconclusive. Our patients' group is populated with researchers, front line health practitioners, and investigative journalists, all of which had/have COVID. We are listing symptoms and what appears to improve or aggravate them.
I'm a health researcher and a specialist in medical information. It's my job to monitor the literature. For this reason I'm pretty sure about our level of ignorance in most biological fields. It also makes me more aware that any tentative diagnostic and treatment that I design for myself is on me and on me alone.
This week we added both squatting and benching starting with the empty barbell and adding 10 lbs each 3-rep set up to when I have no more squats/benches to give. It's an interesting approach that keeps a high volume at a controlled level.
Walking and jogging have always been an important component of my training. Not only it provides the constant low-intensity cardio-respiratory training but they are also an important "default brain network" moment. A resting moment.
I was one of the lucky ones: it's been a month and a half, maybe two months when I began to manifest symptoms. Since I have adult-onset asthma and recently had two episodes of pneumonia, I wasn't sure of anything.
We're all on the off-season. We're on off-season on everything. We might as well revisit some issues that frequently come up and have no right answer: what's the best number of days for the smallest unit in a periodized program?
This is the first time that I see a big change in the individualized online programming and coaching scene. The first and obvious reason is that our traditional clients used to have access to a gym – now they don’t. The other reason is that there is nothing to program for.
If I was that young woman in the picture with my present old mind, I would do it all differently. Unfortunately, I can’t rewind that tape but if you’re reading this and you are or know of a young couple expecting a baby or handling their first one, this read may change your child-raising perspective.
Here are some books on biomechanics. No matter what you choose to read on training, you bump into biomechanics. Now that you are homebound you might as well have a look at it.
There is a third, rarely mentioned training component that is even more severely compromised in the home office life: “low-intensity-steady state” cardio-respiratory training.
There is no universal healthy diet or macronutrient composition. You must identify what is healthy for you. Read on to understand why we are so diverse to discover your best diet options.
As a coach and an athlete, what else is safe and cautious? I’m sure you are going to hate it, but the first thing is to cancel your competitions until more is known about the disease in the US, or it is contained.
With the threat of coronavirus contagion and development of COVID-19, a particularly severe form of respiratory illness, this issue should be a top concern for both coaches and athletes.
Respiratory illnesses are an important concern for any coach and athlete. If you are an adult athlete, especially at the elite level, your chances of developing respiratory infections after a competitive season are not small
Believe it or not, you don’t need the assistance of a research team to make your training, health, and life decisions. Here’s how to navigate through your uniqueness from identification to decision making.
Anything involving athlete and barbell, forming the athlete-barbell-system (ABS), is a constant and dynamic “negotiation” with gravity, of balance and stability along something we call the line of gravity.
Today I will defend the argument that the only strong point an online coach has is being extremely proficient and knowledgeable in training programming
After many years, my experience is that unless you are working with elite athletes highly motivated to achieve some important landmark, their feedback will be minimal.
If you read the previous article on this series on online coaching, you probably suspect that I am not very enthusiastic about it. However, there are not enough proficient coaches near everyone and sometimes the online coach is as good as it gets for someone living in a technical desert.
Is it possible to accurately analyze an athlete’s movement through video? Not even close to what an on-ground coach can by directly looking at the movement as it is executed.
I’m aging, my parents are aging, and yes, you’re aging too. Aging equals disease. Or does it? In this article, I will introduce explanations about the role of strength and conditioning in healthy living and suggest how we can promote that before disuse and decay unleash their vicious cycle.
The problem with fields that are not highly well structured is not their lack of structure. It is the obscene dishonesty of self-proclaimed rank-builders.
I get inquiries that are far from the regular strength coach routine. Mostly, they are inquiries about complex technical issues that involve trust. One of them is muscle wasting in cancer.
This is a completely different type of article you’ll find within my column. It’s personal and it makes a case for increased injury burden as an athlete progresses in their career, gets older, trains more, competes more, the list goes on…
My anecdotal observation is that the “quick lifts” (either full snatch and clean & jerk or their many variations and assistant exercises) have a strong carry-over effect to almost anything but there are considerations to be made.