Second part of the interview the personal trainer Guillermo Alvarado. In the first answer answer the question in the title
Personally, I consider that the training approach as a set of exercises destined to the work of specific muscles does not make sense .
From my point of view it is a simplistic approach that often comes from bodybuilding , for some a sport, but that no one will deny that Equipoise it has hardly evolved in the last 40 years. Toothbrushes have evolved more in this time.
It is true that, from my point of view, the analytical work of specific musculature such as, for example, hip rotators , can be interesting because of its role in stabilizing the entire lower body, not just the hip. It is decisive to choose movements where the transfer is optimized to the day to day or to the specific nature of a given sport . The same occurs with strategic musculature that affects the stability of other joints and that with basic movements may not receive sufficient stimulation.
Over time have your references changed as regards training?
Constantly . In fact it is important to talk about this because in Spain the figure of the referent or what I call “ influence ” is hardly taken into account . Unlike the USA, the figure of the training theorist has much more prominence here and less that of the coach who, thanks to experience, has been polishing a system that, seen from the outside, can teach us a few things.
There is an article by Mike Boyle that talks precisely about the importance of "copying" other coaches where in the first paragraph he proclaims himself "thief". In this sense, I cannot deny that I started with a great following of coaches like Poliquin but with the passage of time I have ended up leaning more towards the figures of Boyle, Cressey or Verstegen among coaches and Cook or Myers among physiotherapists.
In Spain, for example, I especially like the Tous approach although I am not a big fan of iso-commercial technology for the training of ordinary people who, after all, make up the bulk of our clients.
If you had to choose between 2 training devices, what would they be?
Clearly and without a doubt a rack with barbell and dumbbells and a cable system .
You have one of the best training blogs I've read in this country, would you like to spend more time writing things?
My blog is the current point of a long relationship with the media . I started by submitting an article about my understanding of the training that someone who submitted to a physical change program called Body-for-Life had to follow to a magazine called " SportNutrition ". Hardly a year was published and it was published as a central article and on the cover of its latest issue.
From there I published several times in Muscle & Fitness and finally in 2003 I came to Men´s Health where they offered me a monthly column called "Ask your coach". He was 23 years old. Since then that column has become a monthly page in the training magazine and blog that you also mention for Men's Health.
The blogs naturally have the problem that require new content often short and easy to understand for the audience that will read. This is contradictory with solid and rigorous content, first because of the research time required to find the related scientific literature, and second, because in the world of physical conditioning, few absolute truths can be translated into "If you want this, do this other" to make it easy to understand.
Luckily, at least for the moment, it seems that I have found a way to make the contents interesting for both the amateur and the professional and that in turn works well enough that they continue to trust me and allow me to do it this way. . However, I must admit that it is increasingly difficult for me to maintain the level and continue to meet the expectations of those who have followed it for years.
If you had to choose 5 exercises to train your whole body, what would they be?
Push ups, isolateral row, diagonal press with bar on pivot landmine style, split squats (Bulgarian lunge), deadlift . Each of them with their respective regressions and progressions.
As for the dead weight, always alternating its isolateral version with the bilateral work with hex bar . I don't like the use of straight bars for deadlifts or the Romanian deadlift version with stretched knees.
For middle zone planks with their different regressions, progressions and variations and press pallof.
Photographs | Performa, Mike Boyle, Los40 and Reto MH