That
is a decided “key” to training with the Xvest; the product can be used
throughout your day in any setting with tremendous benefits. When employing
the Xvest, the first step in our work is to wear it in our daily activities
that you normally encounter. Starting slowly with roughly 5% of bodyweight
for a few hours a day. While it may seem like a small amount, it will impact
upon you and you need to gradually build up tolerance but also be careful
not to disrupt correct biomechanics – remember at all time’s
picture-perfect posture (re “concepts”)
must be maintained (see "posture"
below). Quickly the weight will build and the vest will be worn throughout
the entire waking day, including training. This has been shown to have
dramatic impact on force development within weeks of starting this training.
Extensive research, notably performed by C. Bosco in the mid 1980’s laid
the groundwork of what he termed as a “hypergravity” training period and
its impact is nothing short of startling. With common adaptation (considered
at the neurogenic level) we gradually, over a period of months, build up to
wearing up to 10-20% of bodyweight and the training effect has continued to
improve.
Posture
By
John Davies
I
am often asked of my own grueling training demands and how my athletes and
have developed extreme physical abilities. The answer comes easily in the
guarded wording of “balance”. In a peculiar twist of words,
“balance” is in-fact not a section of training but more accurately the
manifestation of correct training protocols. “Balance” is not-only the
all-encompassing ability to control bodily movement but also, and it cannot
be stressed enough, it is also the totality of balance and self-fulfillment
in life. As the-years-of experience with tell us, patience is the key to
possess this magical ability and can be done through adherence to the
renegade concepts of training and movement generation.
Physiologically-speaking
balance training is often grossly misunderstood as “functional training”
zealots promote the what has become the flavor-of-the week in health and
fitness. While many hide behind the myriad of gadgets and slick marketing
terms, improving balance is a path laid first with the recognition of
training (i) movement not musculature, (ii) the core first and not the
extremities and (iii) the ability to stabilize movement in the most
destabilized environments through proper postural alignment.
Balance
training while in vogue now as the hungry fitness industry recognizes the
opportunity to pimp gadgets, has for the most part been ignored for the last
fifty years. In a move to make exercise easier, less “dangerous”, more
compacted and isolated, the simple recognition of concepts and that the body
was meant to move in a single harmonious fashion and over-take challenges
has been all-but forgotten. And so with the advent of fitness revolution the
nation’s level of health has deteriorated to pathetic levels and initiated
from early-childhood development but with an equally-so destruction of
“balance” abilities. The rich diversity of exercise and activity-based
games and chores that a child / teen would experience years ago has now been
replaced with the ever-present video game. Not limited to children, adult
life-style is significantly less physically challenging and for those who do
engage in exercise, the selection of activities is extremely limited and
quite often machine-based resistance training which very directly weakens
the body over-time by eliminating core-activation. Stimulation needs to be
varied to not only avoid adaptation to movement but to assist in the wide
spectrum of developing different attributes and adhering to the
afore-mentioned renegade concepts.
Within
the actual application of Renegade concepts and program design, any student
of my work will tell you that there is actually no “balance” section. It
is all actuality layered throughout the entire body of work, whether it be
something as simple as varying work surface (from simpler choices of lifting
platforms or soft sandy surfaces to more extreme of the Indo Board),
aggressive protocols with imperfection training, blindfolded lifts or quite
likely the easiest adjustment to training, the wearing of the Xvest. With
every level of our work “balance” or more accurately, postural adherence
training is integrated – whether it be in earliest stages as the
wheelbarrow walks, Overhead Squats, hybrid movements to the aggressive
progressions that include Indo Board training or hyper-core loading with the
Xvest.
And
while I have noted the rush toward gadgetry in the fitness industry I would
be remiss at not noting two items that are indispensable to any training
room much like a barbell or skipping rope - the Indo Board and the Xvest.
The Indo is one of the most important and powerful training mediums at an
athlete’s disposal but equally so – the most misunderstood by those who
ignorantly mistake it as a sedentary “wooble board” where your feet
remain affixed during training. For every user to Indo, care must be taken
to ensure picture-perfect posture is maintained and never strayed from. If
performed properly it will assist with virtually every “spoke” in the
“wheel of conditioning” in athletic performance enhancement, re-hab
work, improving aesthetics and has had dramatic impact in areas few consider
such as torso angle in squatting and thus in-turn improving maximum effort
lift totals. Doubly so, in
conjunction with the Xvest and its enormously diverse use – balance,
postural training is perfected and performance improves exponentially (see
the Xvest here: http://www.renegadetraining.com/xvest.html).
