The Marathon Runner With A Booty
Here's a glimpse of what an actual set looks like when I'm training a client.
There's no drill sergeant yelling in her face (other than Lamb of God in the background).
There's no fake ear to ear smile saying "Yeah You Can Do It!".
This is what REAL Personal Training looks like and...
This is Angela, she's a KILLER marathon runner, and she pays attention to detail. Her main goals are to improve her running performance and to build a booty like Kim K (obvi).
Now you COULD go the typical route and give her a regular set of squats, regular tempo, regular set and rep scheme and regular feedback which would yield regular results...
You know what I mean. The 3 sets of 10 squats. The Kipping Pull Ups. The bootcamp style circuits, etc...
But @clearcutfitness we care about giving you the most individualized experience and the MOST effective workouts so we do things a bit different.
Why Ang is a Great Athlete
Angela has mastered her body's ability to use her muscles elasticity (aka. efficient plyometrics) and she's worked up a crazy level of steady state cardio endurance to improve her running performance through the years.
However...
Plyo work, and typical squats to "feel the burn" are not going to be as effective as teaching her body how to produce large amounts of force and stiffness in the joints to transfer energy into the ground efficiently.
How We Program For Ang
We programmed Angela's squats to have a slow eccentric, 1s pause at the bottom and nice and controlled on the way up (concentric). 5 sets of 2 reps at roughly 80% of her Max.
Oh and you can forget about full squats ass to grass, since when do marathon runners squat when running?
We do half squats with Ang. This allows her to lift heavy but not go into a deep ROM that doesn't transfer well to her sport and may increases risk of injury because she's so damn tight. (Those runners muscles, I tell ya)
And what about building that Kim K booty? Squats CAN help, but Hip Thrusts and single leg exercises like lunges show higher glute activation than a full ROM back squat.
THIS is what's really going to improve her performance and help grow that 🍑.
Her body needs more mechanical tension via relatively heavy weights to get her to her goals.
Doing pull ups is another important exercise for Angela. The thought of doing a pull up scared her at first. In fact, she had never done one before! This is something we should work on for a few reasons:
1. Training the lats and the core together (with an exercise such as the pull up) strengthens your running stride and endurance. Legs aren't the only muscles working when you run. Strong lats and core let's you transfer energy better.
2. Building Strength and a balanced physique means you need proper muscle activation and if your lats ain't workin, you're gonna have a hard time getting better.
3. Plus who are kidding? Pull Ups are bad ass. We're focusing on getting Ang to engage her lats and set her shoulder blades properly for each rep. That's why we only do 2 reps per set with a band to assist her. Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. A bunch of shitty reps won't help. A few consistent proper reps will help engrain that movement pattern right into her head.
She's doing an amazing job at taking my annoying ass feedback and turning it into solid reps!
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