Should Eccentric Progressive overload replace all Static Stetching
Strength and Conditioning Peta Glaister Strength and Conditioning Peta Glaister

Should Eccentric Progressive overload replace all Static Stetching

The jury is still out on static stretching (except this author, who quit the jury room a while ago to go to the pub), but a lot of people are very attached to it so let’s have a look.

Muscles are elastic, so if you reach for your toes for 30 seconds, you’ll get a little bit closer to them. Yay #mobilitygainz! But tomorrow/next week/next year you’ll reach again and they’ll be just as far away… So what have you really gained?

Your muscles are changing constantly depending on what you do. So if you go “hey I need you to lengthen out just for this minute”, they will. Problems arise when you’re also telling them “hey we mostly just need to sit in this chair” or “if we quarter-rep this bench press I can get an extra plate on.”

If you spend 1% of your time passively trying to get into positions that you want, but that you don’t actively load, train or use for the other 99%, is it really worth your muscles’ time to change?

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Technique is King - or is it ??

Technique is King - or is it ??

If you’ve ever done any of the exercise, it’s likely that you’ve heard the phrase “technique is King” (or similar).

I’d like to play the devil’s advocate here, just to question whether our fetish with form has missed the point. Maybe it hasn’t - I’m happy to be wrong on this one.

I feel like culture around technique has drifted so far out of context that it’s more like the Emperor’s new clothes. It seems to have devolved into a lot of mansplaining dweebs stipulating narrower and narrower terms and conditions on any movement and trolling any differing perspective until everyone’s too tired of the criticism to step out and say “Oi! Maybe there’s a bit more to it than that.”

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Honest Conversations, Motorcycles and Weight Loss
Peta Glaister Peta Glaister

Honest Conversations, Motorcycles and Weight Loss

I’ve been out of the private training scene for a month or two now and I while I don’t feel like that’s enough time to properly collect my thoughts on this subject, I’ve started. And it’s a deep, fraught, emotional rabbit hole.

 

When you’re in the fitness industry there is a question that comes up more often than any other.

"How do I lose weight?"

Whenever I felt it coming I freeze.

Then I back away mumbling something about not being the person to ask because I’m only qualified in training, not nutrition.

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Cast Away with Tom Hanks & the Evolutio Team
Physiotherapy Alex Drew Physiotherapy Alex Drew

Cast Away with Tom Hanks & the Evolutio Team

Following a gruelling six-month selection camp that included events such as the left arm 1 rep max bicep curl and racing a great white shark I was given the honour to spend 4 weeks with the Average Joe’s down at Evolutio. It wasn’t all sunshine and smiles though. Two weeks before flying over from Glasgow I began to have the nervous shakes about coming to Melbourne and what happened next I will never forget. Team Captain Alex called me and said "Well, I guess if a person never quit when the going got tough, they wouldn't have anything to regret for the rest of their life. But good luck to you. I'm sure this decision won't haunt you forever." Now that may or may not be a quote from Dodgeball the movie and that may or may not have actually happened.

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Fascia, Tensegrity & The Continuous Ambush of Tension
Fitness Training Peta Glaister Fitness Training Peta Glaister

Fascia, Tensegrity & The Continuous Ambush of Tension

Now I’m not casting aspersions on any childhood songs in particular, but we have a tendency to imagine the body in movement as a rigid frame being pulled on by distinct muscles to produce specific joint actions. eg: the hamstrings pull on the shin bones to produce knee flexion. While this is not technically incorrect, are we sure this is the best way to view and address human movement?

If we were talking about robots, then I think it would be a fine. In that case, treating any pain or dysfunction would be more a case of finding the part that wasn’t working and fixing the hydraulics at that joint.

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