With many of us spending long hours at work, finding the time for a total body workout in the gym can be difficult. But what if you could combine a handful of exercises and train your entire body in just three workouts a week?

Why Total Body Workouts?

Total body workouts are a fantastic way to workout because, as the name suggests, your ‘total’ body gets a workout. What many people think of when they think of total body workouts is a long gym session with multiple exercises that work each individual area of the body. While this style of training will certainly give you a total body workout, there is a quicker way to get the same results.

Benefits Of A Total Body Workout

In addition to building strength and definition, the new wave of total body workouts are also a fantastic way to burn fat, increase muscle and fitness and eliminate any weaknesses and/or imbalances you may have. This new wave of workouts combine regular resistance exercises to ‘form’a new exercise which then works several muscle groups at once.  This helps you burn more calories, thereby increasing your fat burning ability.

Exercises For A Total Body Workout

Give these exercises a try to increase your fitness, build muscle and burn fat:

Front Barbell Squat to Shoulder Press – Place the barbell so it rests on the front of your shoulders.  Squat down so your quads are parallel with the floor. As you push up out of the squat, extend the barbell above your head as you would for a shoulder press. Return to the start.

Barbell Straight Leg Deadlift to Deadrow – Hold the barbell with an overhand grip. Bend from your hips and lower into the deadlift position. Remain here as you perform a deadrow, then straighten before repeating.

Dumbbell Hammer Curl with Lunge to Shoulder Press -Start with your hands by your sides, perform a hammer curl as you lunge forward on your right leg. As you step back, push your arms straight up into a shoulder press. Return to the start before repeating on your left leg.

Barbell Jump and Shrug – Hold the barbell with an overhand grip. From a half squat position, jump up, fully extending your legs while shrugging your shoulders at the same time.

As you can see, a few repetitions of these exercises and you will be burning fat and building muscle in no time and enjoying the benefits of a total body workout.

It’s been almost a full year since we ran our last Transformation Contest (called the Fitter Than Ever Contest) and I’m happy to announce that our newest one is just around the corner.

Our famous 12-week transformation contest will be starting next Tuesday February 1, 2011 and wrapping on Tuesday May 3, 2011.

The last day to register for the Fitter Than Ever Contest will be Tuesday February 1, 2011 at midnight.

The reason we’re running this contest now is that the beginning of February is usually the time of year when most people fall off the fitness/health wagon and abandon their new year’s goals.

And quite simply, I don’t want that to happen to you!

That’s why I want YOU to take part in our newest transformation contest.

If you’ve been waiting for something to light that fire under your butt and give you a “purpose” to workout and get fitter and healthier than ever, then this is it!

You can register here:

http://www.FitterUFitness.com/contest3.html

And before I forget…

I should mention that you can WIN some awesome prizes again, including $500 cash and 1-year FREE Fitter U Fitness membership.

All the information for the contest is here <—————– Learn more

The last day to register for the transformation contest is Tuesday February 1, 2011 so if you’re serious about some truly transforming your body and your fitness level then I wouldn’t wait – this is what you need!

This is your chance to get my best fat loss workouts, monthly coaching calls, and access to our “locker room” forum to reach your ultimate goals.

And, I’ve just put together an amazing new BONUS for anyone who joins our transformation ontest…

It’s called “The Body Transformation Nutrition Guide” and it’s complete with 60 plant-based recipes and a 12-week meal plan that are specifically designed to work with your Fitter U Fitness workouts to maximize your ability to burn fat, get stronger, recover faster, and create the body of your dreams.

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Hope you can join us.

Your friend and coach,

Yuri

P.S. The last to join the Fitter Than Ever Contest is Tuesday February 1, 2011. I look forward to seeing your transformation!

The best transformation contest is here <—————– Details here

If you’re someone who is quite serious about the sport of soccer, it’s going to be important that you’re taking the time to put together some athletic workouts that will quickly help strengthen all the areas of fitness that you use to perform your best.

Soccer is a very physical demanding sport so without the right personal trainerapproach behind you to see success, chances are you won’t reach your full potential.

But, when you have a good off-field conditioning system in place, you will notice dramatic improvements in your playing ability and how much you enjoy the sport in general.

Let’s have a look at the main things that you should consider doing as you go about your athletic workouts in order to see top level results.

Perform Plenty Of Running Drills

The very first thing that you should be doing with your soccer fitness training is making sure that you’re performing sufficient running drills. Ideally when doing these you want to be changing directions as quickly as possible since this is often the type of running that will be performed as you go about playing the game.

Incorporating in some pylons will work well for this where you have to weave in and out of them moving both forwards and backwards while keeping up a relatively quick pace.

Work On Leg Strength And Quickness

Second, the next thing that you must make sure you’re doing is working on your leg quickness. Since speed is a second big component of how well you do while you’re out on the field, you want to be sure that you’re addressing this with your workouts.

To develop more speed and quickness as you go about the workouts, on any weight lifting movements you perform be sure that you perform the first half of the exercise at an accelerated rate, and then slow down and execute the second half in a more controlled fashion.

This will not force you to compromise the strength gains you develop but by moving through that first half much faster like that you’re going to notice that you can generate force much more quickly.

Perform Weighted Core Work

Third, another key aspect of having a high level of soccer fitness is having strong abs. To enhance your core development, be sure to think about performing plenty of core work. This is going to enable you to remain in balance whenever you do have to make a rapid change in direction and will also help to reduce the chances of fatigue as you go about the game.

Weighted core work is best since it adds that outside resistance force, as which may also be the case while you’re playing and momentum is really acting upon you.

So there you have three key areas to focus on with your athletic workouts. If you can be sure to touch upon these with each workout you do, it’s not going to be long before you’re playing better than ever.

If you’re on the hunt for athletic workouts it’s important that you keep in mind a few of the main concepts of what most athletes comprise their sessions with. Pursuing athletic workouts is a great way to boost your fitness level and get into the best shape of your life.

While many athletes will dedicate hours each day to their training efforts, if you can even dedicate just one hour four to five times per week to your workout program, you should have no problem seeing results because of it.

Let’s take a look at some of the key characteristics that you should keep in mind regarding athletic workouts.

Keep The Intensity Level High

The very first thing you should do if working out like an athlete is on your goal set is to make sure that you’re keeping the intensity level as high as possible. Since athletes are concerning themselves with their max out power and speed, most will utilize some form of interval training, as well as heavy lifting that focuses on the concentric portion of the movement pattern.

By placing your focus there you’re going to be that much better able to develop the areas of your fitness that parallel that of athletes.

Focus On Core Stability

Second, the next thing that you should be doing with your athletic workouts is making sure that you’re including plenty of exercises that utilize the core.

Core stability is an important element of fitness for any athlete because with all the various forces that will be acting upon them, either from them quickly changing directions as they go about playing the sport or from opponents placing these forces on them, they’re going to need a strong core to combat it.

Core stability exercises will allow you to accomplish just that.

Ensure Adequate Rest and Nutrition

Finally, the last component that should be in place is proper rest and recovery. Athletes more than anyone else must ensure that they are recovering between training sessions since performance is of highest priority.

Unlike those who are just searching for fat loss, going through the workout just to burn calories is not enough. Instead, they must be trying to reach personal bests. This means making sure they are incorporating enough time off throughout the week and looking after their nutritional strategy so tat they are eating as they should be to refuel and repair their broken down muscle tissues.

So there you have the main things that you must focus on during your athletic workouts. If you do, you can feel assured that you’re on your way to results.

Here’s the finale to our 3-part “train like a pro” interview with tennis pro, Jeff Salzenstein.

Enjoy and be sure to check out Jeff’s site at www.JeffSalzenstein.com .

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Yuri: That’s great. Just a couple more questions here. Looking at the competitive season for tennis—obviously, there’s four major slams and a bunch of, you know, smaller tournaments throughout—what does, what do most players do? I mean, if they’re competing, I guess, in the smaller tournaments, they’re playing, you know, in most cases, every day sometimes and in the slams every day, every other day.

How do they work in their training schedule around that? Are they still training in the gym, doing stuff before their games, on the off days? How does all that work? And maybe comparing that to the off season as well.

Jeff: Yeah, that is the art, that’s the science; it’s all wrapped into one. I mean, there’s no easy answer to that. I mean, tennis players are playing twelve months out of the year. I think it’s pretty funny that, you know, the season ends maybe mid-November, November 1, they take a few weeks off, and they have this off season, it’s like six weeks, to get ready for Australia.

There’s really not much of a break, like in other sports, to really build up your reserves and get a lot stronger. So, I’ve kind of adopted the approach or believe it’s more of a kind of a grease-to-groove theory.

There is a strength coach out there named Pavel, who talks a lot about that; you do a little bit every day instead of really organizing a periodization schedule.

Now, Roger Federer, he’s number one in the world—number two now, actually—Rafa Nadal, number one. These guys can afford to take segmented breaks where their trainers can really organize their schedule, but if you’re a hundred in the world or two hundred in the world and you’re trying to survive out there, you really have to keep training throughout the year, and you have to be smart about it.

So, on days that you play matches, you know, you might do a few corrective exercises. And then as soon as you lose in that tournament, if you know you have seven days off, that’s when you might need to hit the gym hard for a couple days. Maybe you need to get to the track, depending on how you feel.

But there’s a huge challenge of overtraining because you’re always having to work on your skills and playing matches. So, I’ve felt that you really need to focus on injury prevention, keeping the body balanced, keeping the tissue soft—you know, the massages and the foam roller and all the things that can open up the body—stretching, when I talked about static stretching.

I believe, again, you should only hold a stretch for two seconds and then you release and then you move into the stretch again, so you’re always keeping the body moving. But I think just a consistent daily dose—it could be two minutes, it could be ten minutes, it could be a half hour some days—of just opening up the body, doing your corrective exercises, and focusing on recovery and nutrition.

And then if you can get some maximal strength work in when you’re not playing matches, when you’re recovering a little bit, then you wanna hit that. If you can get some intervals and get to the track or do some burpees or do something in a confined space where you can get your heart rate elevated to burn fat and to get stronger, by all means, you need to do that. But just changing the approach to more of injury prevention, diet, nutrition, recovery, I think that needs to be the foundation first.

So the concept of really focusing on injury prevention, rest and recovery, and nutrition instead of, you know, running yourself into the ground if you’re a pro tennis player because you’re just, you’re playing and you’re practicing so much that it’s really hard to top that off, like going to the track and killing yourself out there, so you’ve gotta be really smart about your training and when you do it.

Pick your off times to get your interval training in and get your strength work in. But with maximal strength, for example, I mean, I like to keep the reps really low. I saw one top woman tennis player at the U.S. Open one year. She had her trainer with her and she was on a physio ball and she was doing kind of dumbbell press exercises, like eight pounds on each side and I’m thinking to myself, Okay, this is a pro athlete, and she’s lifting sixteen total pounds off a physio ball.

I’m trying to think what’s the carryover for her to help build her forehand or serve. There isn’t any. I mean, she should be busting out maybe push-ups with a weight vest on, you know, something like that, to be able to build up to that level.

I think there is a shift moving in that direction, but there’s still more, too many, I think too many athletes still doing, you know, your machines and your dumbbells and your sets of, you know, three sets of fifteen because somebody told you to do three sets of fifteen.

I think it should be more of an intuitive approach about what you feel. And, certainly, if you’re interested in finding a trainer for your own improvement and your skill development, you wanna look for someone that has that approach, rather than that, again, that machine approach, the long, slow cardio approach, the three sets of fifteen approach.

Everybody is different, everybody has a different way of doing things, but the more organic, holistic approach is the way that sport is moving.

Yuri: Yeah, totally, couldn’t agree more. And along those lines, what lessons can you impart with people from the world of pro tennis to training for fat loss, just getting fit, building a bit of strength? What kinda lessons can anyone take from what you went through with some of the pro athletes or are doing?

Jeff: I think it’s a great concept that, you know, again, a lot of people are trying to make all of this really complicated, and what we can learn from these pro athletes, number one is consistency. I mean, they have a goal, they’re focused on achieving a certain ranking or winning a certain tournament or whatever it is; they have a specific tangible goal.

And so, if you have a goal to lose fat or to build muscle or strength, you gotta start there; you gotta have that goal, you gotta have that mind-set. And these guys just show up and these girls show up every day. There’s a consistency to it, so every day you wanna do something that moves you closer to your goal instead of away from your goal.

And just having a clear plan on, ‘Okay, what exercises am I gonna do? What am I gonna eat?’ And just increasing overall awareness.

I think just, you know, are you gonna grab that cupcake or are you gonna grab the oatmeal raisin cookie when, you know, maybe you don’t need that or are you gonna eat more vegetables? I mean, just simple, basic guidelines of, you know, high-quality protein, good fats, increase your vegetable intake.

As far as the training goes, two to three times a week of, you know, interval training, tobadas, where you go twenty seconds on and then ten seconds off. If you can’t do that yet, start with twenty seconds on and then maybe thirty or forty seconds off, and you do a series of six or eight reps of that and then you do that two or three days later, but just a consistent program where you’re working on your strength levels and your endurance with the intervals a couple times a week, and then you’re just aware of what fuel you’re putting in your body.

And that’s what these pro athletes are doing; it’s just consistency day in and day out. And they also have a team supporting them usually around; you know, coaches, if it’s a girlfriend or wife, somebody is there supporting them maybe when they have their down moments.

So, if you’re wanting to achieve a certain goal by losing fat or building strength or muscle, it’s important to surround yourself with likeminded people that are going after the same goals.

Yuri: Awesome. That was some great pieces of advice. Well, it’s been a very insightful and informative interview so far. Just before we end, what’s the best place for people to get a hold of you, Jeff, and follow some of the stuff that you’re doing?

Jeff: Yeah, I started a blog, and we’re actually in the process of creating an instructional tennis DVD because we find that there’s just a lot of misinformation out there, so we have a lot of cool project in the work. You can go to JeffSalzenstein.com.

It’s a tennis Web site, but there’s a huge spin on health and nutrition and really with optimal performance. So, even if you’re not a tennis player, we’re gonna be providing great information there, you know, lots of content that can help you improve your tennis and your life. Certainly, if you’re tennis fan, we would like you to check it out, but that’s the best place to find us.

Yuri: Awesome, buddy. Well, that’s great. We’ll definitely make sure people get there and follow your stuff ’cause you’re definitely doing some great stuff. Yeah, anything else you wanna finish with before we end our interview today?

Jeff: No, Yuri, I actually just wanna thank you for having me on this call. It was awesome to be able to talk to you, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for what you’re doing and how you’re helping people and I learn a ton from you too, so thanks again for having me.

Yuri: Definitely, definitely, anytime. All right, well, on that note, again, thanks, Jeff, and thanks everyone who’s listening to this or reading this interview, and remember, guys, check out Jeff Salzenstein’s blog and, in the meantime, we’ll speak to you later. Thanks again, talk to you soon.

Hope you enjoyed PART 1 of my interview with tennis pro, Jeff Salzenstein.

Here’s the continuation of the interview…

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Yuri: So, that’d be for the warm-up. Now, for a typical workout that you might put a player through nowadays, what would that look like?

Jeff: Yeah, certainly, I like to look at, you know, can an athlete do a basic single-leg squat. There’re certain form requirements but, literally, I’ll have a tennis player sit on a bench and perform a single-leg squat.

And most of the kids that I work with can do that, but if they can and they have good form, then we can increase the loads either using resistance bands or some type of a weight. We put them in deep-lunge position—we call it an iso-extreme lunge—and see how long they can hold that position.

So, I’m a big believer, again, in the body weight being able to hold plank-type positions, using resistance bands to challenge your core, and most of the time people ask me—you know, I had one of the bigger serves on the tour when I played, and, certainly, technique plays a huge role, but I can serve faster than a junior tennis player because I’m a lot stronger in my legs, in my core, and so we also focus a lot on corrective exercises.

We wanna make sure that the glute muscles are activated, we wanna make sure the feet are really strong, so we do different exercises for the feet. I mean, there’s a whole host of things we can do that might be considered somewhat out-of-the-box, but that’s the way that sport and athletic performance is moving.

You’ve gotta have strong feet, you’ve gotta have a strong core, your hips have to be aligned; so, there’s a whole series of exercises that you can do that seem very basic, but instead of going out and, you know, putting two hundred pounds on your back and doing a squat or doing a leg-extension machine, if you master these core-type corrective exercises, not only are you gonna prevent injuries, but your body’s gonna be more aligned, and you’re gonna feel more efficient on the tennis court.

Yuri: Totally. And what about some tips for recovery or regeneration?

Jeff: Well, certainly, a lot of the American athletes, actually—Andy Roddick is somewhat known for this—when they have these tough matches, they actually jump in the ice bath, so for those of you who are brave out there, try an ice bath after a tough match.

I mean, you get the soreness out of your body, and you can recover the next day a lot faster when you just shock your system with that cold temperature, the ice bath. A hot-cold contrast shower or you go thirty seconds on, thirty seconds off with a really hot shower and then as cold as you can handle it, again, you’re getting, you know, the old blood, stagnant blood out of the body, and you’re getting new blood in there.

Certainly, diet is huge. I mean, in the first thirty minutes after you finish competing or you finish practicing, you wanna get great nutrition into your body, and that would be a high-quality protein source, that would be fruit and vegetables. You wanna look for healthy food bars.

As far as the protein goes, sometimes you can’t eat—if you are a meat eater—you can’t eat chicken or beef right after you play, but if you get a protein shake—it could be a rice protein or a whey protein, that sorta stuff. It’s just that first thirty-minute window is just so crucial for incredible recovery, and a lot of times, I’ll see athletes, you know, they’re either drinking the soda pop or they’ll have Doritos.

Literally, I’ll see them bringing it for after practice, and I look at ’em and I’ll just say, ‘Okay, well, there’s not a lot of preparation going on there,’ and they really need to take a hard look. They might be able to get away with it when they’re young, but when you’re older you’re not gonna get away with that. And I think with tennis, a lot of the pro tennis players out there, I think that they are stepping up their nutrition plan.

I think there’s still a long ways they could go, and I know, Yuri, you’re an expert with this, so, certainly, your tips could help a lot of the pro tennis players out there. But just that preparation of knowing that in thirty minutes, you need to have something handy so that you don’t go an hour or two hours after a tough practice or a match.

Yuri: Yeah, and I think that’s probably one of the bigger things that we see a lot of, especially with younger athletes. And, actually, with the, even the ice baths, we just started preseason, as I mentioned yesterday, and it’s boiling hot up here.

It’s about forty degrees in the humidity—Celsius—and so we’ve implemented ice baths, like, right after training, and the guys have been just loving it and they’re recovering so much faster. So, that’s a really good tip. The hot-cold contrast showers are awesome too.

Jeff: Yeah, for sure.

Yuri: Well, nutrition, I mean, nutrition, I find, as you mentioned, I think it’s a big crutch for a lot of athletes, and it’s something I’ve always been interested in, especially among tennis stars, ’cause it’s always interesting to see if there’s a lot of difference between players.

Do you have an idea, like, maybe what was a typical day like for you in terms of, you know, your daily diet when you were playing? Do you have any idea of what some of the other players are eating throughout the day? Just to give people a sense of, you know, what the things that they’re doing are.

Jeff: Yes, well, again, nutrition and health and training has been my passion probably intensely for about the last eight years because when I was twenty-four—I actually had a lot of injuries; I had two surgeries by the time I was twenty-four, and I actually was playing better tennis at thirty than I was when I was twenty-four.

I broke the top hundred for the first time then, and I was kind of becoming known on the tour as the organic, holistic-type pro tennis player, and I certainly wasn’t extreme in that I was, you know, vegetarian or eating raw. I didn’t go that route, but people on the tour, players on the tour kinda looked at me. I was drinking my green-powder drinks and I was going to Whole Foods.

Now I think, again, about five years later, a lot more athletes are doing those sort of things. You know, they’ve got the right supplements, they’ve got the green drinks, they’re eating more vegetables, but I’ve definitely seen, again, even some of the top players really not eating as clean as they can, and what I wonder about is, certainly, nutrition is not gonna help a top player hit a better forehand, so they can get away with competing at a high level without having a great diet, especially when they’re younger.

But I do see it catch up to athletes, whether they know it or not, maybe in their late twenties, certainly into their thirties. So, you see Mardy Fish actually dropped thirty pounds this year and really made a commitment. I think he hired a chef and cleaned up his—he got the pizzas and the sugars out of his diet. He’s playing the best tennis of his life at twenty-eight just because he dropped the weight and he looks great.

Andy Roddick did the same thing last year; he dropped fifteen pounds. There was this notion for a while that you need to get big and bulky just to be strong, but, really, what you wanna do is get as strong as humanly possible, carrying as little weight as possible, you know?

It’s more the relative maximal strength, the relative strength rather than getting big and bulky. So, definitely a movement in that direction. I really think the next frontier with athletes is—especially the guys like Federer, who can afford it—actually traveling with a chef.

I mean, they travel with a coach, they travel with a physio, but if they had a chef that was preparing all their meals, I mean, these guys could play until they were forty or forty-five. I just think the body starts to break down at twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty if you’re not putting clean fuel in your body.

Yuri: Yeah, that’s some great advice, and I couldn’t agree more. One of the, again, one of the biggest issues that I’ve seen personally is a lot athletes thinking that, ‘Hey, it’s okay, I’m gonna burn the calories.’ So, they think that because they’re exercising a lot—whether it’s tennis or any other sport—they can afford to eat whatever they want.

I mean, look at Michael Phelps, right? A guy who’s eating so many calories of garbage, that’s bound to catch up with you. And I think that one of the biggest benefits to eating organic and a lot more of a vegetarian-based diet, you know, like you had mentioned, is that it definitely helps the recovery, and I think that’s a really important, you know, component that you touched upon earlier, is that recovery is so huge, especially at that top level, where you’re playing so often and training so much.

Even if it’s for the, you know, the person who’s working out at the gym five, six, seven days a week; being able to recover is so important to your ability to continue, you know, at the top of your game, whatever that game might be.

Jeff: Yeah. Actually, you know, up in your neck of the woods, in Canada, I played the Canadian Open several years ago, and one American player, who has retired several years ago, he either finaled or won it, but he was telling me that the entire week of the Canadian Open, he actually at McDonald’s every single day, and he won that tournament.

And that just kinda proves the point that hey, you know, for one week you could probably get away with it, but this guy was outta the game by the time he was twenty-eight. I mean, he would wake up in the morning, and he would say, ‘Jeff, do you ever get sore?’ I’m like, ‘No, I never get sore.’

This guy was sore every single day; he had shin splints and he was a mess by the time he was twenty-eight. So, he had that success at twenty-three and he ate the McDonald’s every day, but it caught up to him. His livelihood was affected because he didn’t put good fuel in his body.

You know, that’s one of the reasons that I wanted to become a nutritional therapy practitioner as well as a high-performance tennis coach, is I wanted to be able to share this information with people that they could go out and actually live their best life possible and perform at optimal levels on the tennis court or on the field.

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Stay tuned for PART 3 coming tomorrow.

In the meantime, you can start training like a pro here.

I’ve got a special treat for you guys over the next few days.

You’re about to learn how to train like a pro and discover the training, diet, and recovery strategies of the world’s top tennis players. Even if you’re not a tennis player, this is golden information that can your workouts and overall diet.

So, this is PART 1 of an interview I did with my good buddy Jeff Salzenstein – who is a former Top 100 pro tennis player. He shares some really great stuff. Enjoy…

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Yuri: Hey, guys, Yuri Elkaim here, and on today’s call I’m really excited because I’ve got a good buddy of mine, who I just recently met a couple months ago.

His name is Jeff Salzenstein and I’m really excited because Jeff is a former professional tennis player and he’s gonna bring us some really, really cool insight into the world of pro tennis, but, you know, obviously, not a lot of us are in that world, but what we’re trying to get out of this call, really, in this interview is that he’s gonna show us how some of the top athletes, how some of the top players are training to keep in such great shape, and then we’re gonna kinda look at how we can and how you can apply a lot of those into your training regime as well. So, Jeff, thanks for joining us, buddy.

Jeff: Hey, awesome to be here. Thanks so much, Yuri, for having me.

Yuri: No problem. And just before we start, you said you were ranked in the top one hundred, right? Is that correct?

Jeff: Yeah, I’ll give you a quick background on my tennis history. I started at a very young age, was a National Junior champion by age twelve. I actually dropped off a bit in the middle of my junior career, but by the time I was eighteen, I was top four in the country in the juniors and went on to Stanford University and played there and was a two-time All-American and won two national team titles there and was able to play with Paul Goldstein, who is another top tennis pro, top fifty in the world, top sixty, top fifty in the world, and just got exposed to a lot of great players at Stanford and decided to try my luck on the pro tour.

It actually wasn’t part of the plan. I just improved a lot in college. I developed a really big serve, and my coaches said, ‘Hey, you should give this pro tour thing a shot.’ I thought I was gonna be a lawyer or doctor someday. It turned out I ended up playing eleven years on the tour. I have a great passion for tennis, a great passion for health and nutrition, and I took those passions on the tour and learned a ton while I was out there.

So, while I was playing and competing with the best in the world and having an opportunity to practice with different generations of players, you know, Sampras and Federer and the likes of those top players—I really studied what it takes to be a pro athlete, what can help you get to the next level, because I had a lot of injuries and I had a lot of challenges breaking through certain barriers, so it was just an awesome experience to play as long as I did, and now I’ve shifted that focus as a player.

I’m now coaching in Denver, Colorado, working with a lot of junior tennis players, but, really, I just wanna help all athletes and all tennis players that wanna get better, that wanna improve, and I believe you can improve every day with the right information if you apply it.

Yuri: That’s awesome, that’s really cool. And I guess we’ll kinda dig deeper into some of that during this interview. I guess getting started, in your eyes, how has tennis changed—I guess, specifically, fitness in tennis changed over the last twenty years?

If you look at guys like, you know, Jimmy Connors and McEnroe way back when, they’re very different physically from, like, a guy like Nadal or González, who are, you know, just monsters on the court.

Jeff: Yeah, I mean, it’s been an incredible transformation, and I think you probably see that in all sports but tennis for sure. I mean, thirty, forty years ago, the Aussies and some of the Americans were ruling tennis and they would finish their matches and they’d go grab a beer afterwards and chill out and party a little bit.

Now it’s a twenty-four-seven gig, and that really started with Ivan Lendl, for those tennis fans out there that are familiar with tennis history. Ivan Lendl was probably one of the first guys that took physical fitness and physical training to the next level with tennis.

And then your next guy was Jim Courier; there were commercials of him, you know, dragging sleds and tires in the Florida heat, you know, maybe fifteen years ago. And then you had Agassi, who had this resurgence at age twenty-eight, twenty-nine, you know, running up Magic Mountain in Las Vegas.

So, you just seen this incredible shift to, going from being just kind of a tennis player to being a complete athlete, and Rafa Nadal has taken that to the absolute extreme level. I mean, this guy can just bust out one-arm push-ups like they’re goin’ outta style, and he can go all day. It’s just a physical sport, and they’re animals out there.

I mean, when I came off the tour three years ago or kinda near the end of my career, I thought I was physically a pretty strong guy compared to the rest of the herd, but nowadays if you go out there, everybody’s just an absolute beast.

Yuri: Yeah, and it definitely shows in terms of the power and the way the game has changed as well. You mentioned Andre Agassi, and I think he’s, he’s actually, I believe he’s won the most titles after the age of twenty-nine I think, and a lot of that they kind of attribute to his training and a lot of the stuff that he did.

He had a trainer, Gil Reyes, that he worked with for a number of years. Do you have any insight into some of the stuff that he did as he got older? You mentioned running up Magic Mountain in Vegas. Do you have any insight into maybe some of the training that he did to help him get in such great shape as he got older?

Jeff: Yeah, well, Andre is a mentor and example to most of us pro tennis players to see how he was able to turn his career around. It really started with his mind-set. He decided with his coaches and with his team and his trainers that he was gonna just go for it, and I think when he made that decision, instead of just relying on his talent, he made that conscious decision to go the next level with his training.

That’s when everything changed for him and got better for him. As far as training goes, basically, Gil Reyes was the mastermind behind that. I had an opportunity to actually observe one of his workouts with Marcos Baghdatis last year in the gym, and they just get after it.

There’s a huge mental component, you know, really pushing through the sets and the reps and really just understanding that you’ve gotta put the work in and the yard work and the road work in and the gym work in to be able to last three out of five sets day after day after day.

As far as running up Magic Mountain, I mean, obviously, interval training and running up hills is an incredible way to get in shape, to burn fat, to increase muscular endurance, but I do think there are some more efficient ways to train. You know, again, running up those hills, there’s some questions on whether that ultimately hurt Agassi’s career with his back problems, you know?

So, I think there are some different ways to train, but the ultimate lesson that we need to be learning from this is that they had a systematic approach, they followed it, and they just got stronger every day, every week, every month, and he was fitter at thirty-three than he was at twenty-five, by a long stretch.

Yuri: Yeah, totally. And you mentioned you observed a workout with Reyes and Baghdatis. Baghdatis won the Australian Open in, what was it, ’07 or ’08? Somewhere around there?

Jeff: Yeah, finals in the Australian Open a few years back and, you know, another guy that’s just an immense talent. He’s had some challenges with injuries the last few years, and that’s something we can maybe touch on a little bit later, but they really focus a lot on the legs and the core and, you know, Gil focuses more on machine-type exercises.

He’s got, actually, some special machines that he’s designed, but I’m a big body-weight guy. If you look at some of the strongest athletes in the world—I mean, you’re gonna look at gymnasts, you’re gonna look at wrestlers—and they’re doing a lot of stuff with body weight.

I see a lot of athletes, a lot of weekend warriors that they can’t even do a basic push-up. I really think that you’ve gotta master simple body-weight exercises, and then you start loading up resistance on top of that; being able to do push-ups, pull-ups, single-leg stuff, holding deep-lunge positions. All those things you take for granted.

You wanna be on the machines, you wanna do all these intricate things, but you gotta be able to handle your body weight and be able to get as strong as you can so that when you can use your body weight in certain ways on the court or on the field, everything just becomes that much easier in your chosen sport, especially with tennis.

And Nadal shows he’s the strongest guy on the tour, and he’s very intimidating because he’s the strongest guy. He can hit the ball harder, he can create more spin, he can reach out and hit shots from all angles, and people marvel at it, but a lot of it is due to just pure physical strength.

Yuri: That’s true and I guess the unfortunate part for most people is that most people are exposed to, I guess, commercial gyms where machines are the latest and greatest, and I think if we have less of those and people are kind of subjected to just using their body weight, they’d be a little bit better off.

Now, in terms of playing at the professional level, what are the, you know, the different elements that are required to, like, physically to play tennis at the top?

Jeff: Yeah, well, as I mentioned earlier, being an athlete, being a pro tennis player, it’s a twenty-four-seven job. These guys and girls are waking up in the morning, they’re having to eat right, they’re having to train correctly on the court, they’re doing lots of great drills on the court but off the court, the preparation that goes into it, the dynamic warm-ups, they usually have a therapist or trainer with them if they’re top fifty, top thirty in the world.

If you don’t have a trainer, which most of us don’t have, you’re gonna have to learn some of the tools to be able to take care of yourself, and, again, that just goes into, you know, getting massages, maybe using a foam roller to help you break up the adhesions that you feel in your body, dynamic warm-up, sprinting, as I alluded to, body-weight exercises, resistance stance.

All of this is incorporated into a program, and you’ll see all these tennis players doing that throughout the day before and after practice, and then there’s a huge emphasis on rest and recovery. I mean, that part is often overlooked, or people don’t really think about it. They’re always thinking about, Well, what do I need to do to train?

Well, Roger Federer, he’s on the massage table two to three hours a day, and there’s a reason why he’s so limber and he looks effortless on the court. It’s because his tissue is just so soft. So, there’s a lot that goes into being a pro athlete and it’s very comprehensive.

And even though most weekend warriors are people that aspire to be pro athletes, they might not have the time to train six hours a day, but they certainly can implement some of the things that they’re doing and create amazing results.

Yuri: Totally. So, along those lines, in terms of the everyday person, what kind of tips would you give from, like, warming up to the actual workout, to cooldown, and maybe some recover strategies to help them out?

Jeff: Yeah, well, all the rage right now is doing some type of dynamic mobility warm-up. I feel that static stretching is a thing of the past; it’s about as outdated as the Aussies drinking beers after their matches. I mean, some type of movement exercise where you’re warming the body up, you’re increasing overall core temperature with the body, and you’re moving into different ranges of motions that are gonna somewhat resemble your chosen sport.

So, a dynamic warm-up is great. I also think that whatever sport you’re playing—and in this case it’s tennis—we often have our athletes do a lot of shadow stroking and practice the specific footwork patterns that they’re gonna be using on a tennis court.

You know, I see a lot of people warm up, and they just jog around the tennis court or, you know, they jog around a soccer field, but I really think that as soon as you’ve kinda done that dynamic warm-up, you should start getting into some drills that incorporate the specific movement pattern that you’re gonna be using, and I think, again, I see too many athletes that get on the treadmill and they just run and run and run, but that’s not really teaching their body to move exactly how it needs to move on a tennis court or a football field or a basketball court. So, those are just a few of the things that I believe strongly in.

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Stay tuned for PART 2 coming tomorrow!

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Week 2 Month 2 on Fitter U Fitness, and Oh My!!  We up the intensity in month 2 and I  was ready for it, sort of…

Some of the changes are subtle,45 sec instead of 30 sec in the core exercise, but HOW they make a difference. This core workout is by far the best I’ve ever done, and I am sticking to it. Some of the exercises are familiar with new ones thrown in for good measure, i.e. half turkish get ups. My advise is WATCH the videos. I did watch them, but AFTER I had tried them.

This month Im training alone. Not only did I really miss having a partner, there was no one to watch my form, ask advice or feedback.

The  videos I reckon are the most important tool here, watch and make notes, so you ensure correct technique. Often, if it doesn’t feel right, it isn’t right, so make sure that you check to be sure. The second important tool, for me, would be the weekly trackers. Make note of weights/ reps, what feels good and what needs tweaking. Be honest with yourself here, its your program and will be your results.

Excited about Month 2 and ready for the variation, I soon had my new favorite: Total Body Conditioning 2. I love the cycling DB chest press(don’t wear baggy shorts)! I have a love/hate thing going on with the Leg lift planks, willing the clock to move faster and complete that 1 min! The stuff that hurts the most, are usually the ones you need most!

Im also loving fat blaster 1, this time I watched the video FIRST. The stability ball push-ups with knee roll in are my challenge, and embarrassingly I had to talk to myself through the lunge walks with press, as I lose coordination! With Bodyweight Circuit 2 in these weeks I realized that things were getting serious Im loving it and I feeling it. Its awesome to raise your heart rate, sweat and puff in a 30-40 min workout KNOWING that you really have worked.

This month, Im noticing my poorly tendons in my hand are struggling with the body weight stuff, and I will need to work around this.  I can see some positive changes, and my bi’s are definitely bigger!!   I have to watch my form and check back with the Fitter U Fitness ids and pics and not take for granted I “know it”. Lastly I have noticed that it is much more difficult to motivate yourself when you work out alone, but once you have done it, you feel a million dollars!

Hope its been a great couple of weeks for you?

Keep on Keeping on…..

Tam

There is quite a bit of controversy about which exercise you should be adding to your athletic workouts – free weight squats or smith machine squats?

Some people firmly stand by the fact that free weight squats are the better way to go and that smith machine squats will only set you up for injuries. Others however, hold a much different viewpoint.

Recently researchers from the College of Kinesiology in Saskatoon, SK assessed the comparison of the two exercises using electromyography to determine if any differences were seen.

This is how the study played out.

Design

The study was designed so that six healthy participants would be chosen to perform one set of eight reps on either the smith squat machine or by doing a free weight squat. They were to lift a heavy enough weight that they would be fully fatigued by the time they hit the 8th rep, so using their 8 rep max.

Each workout had a minimum of 3 days between sessions and the researchers would take an electromyographic reading of the activity in the tibialis anterior, calves, vastus medialis, vastus lateralis, hamstrings, erector spinae, and the abdominal muscles.

Results

After the results came back it was found that those who were performing the free weight squats noticed significantly higher activation in the calves, hamstrings, and vastus medialis. There were no other significant differences between the exercises for the other muscle groups however.

Take Home Message

So from this study we can conclude that if you are looking to generate a maximum amount of strength from your squats, you really would be best off performing free weight squats. While smith machine squats may seem easier to performthey are not nearly as beneficial.

Furthermore, free weight squats are also more functional to real life movements. Think about it – when in life will you be doing squats with the assistance of a machine like the smith machine?

Binsted, G. et al. (2009). A Comparison of Free Weight Squat to Smith Machine Squat Using Electromyography. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Dec; Vol 23(9):2588-2591.