What’s up, my wicked Wednesdayers!

The time has come to perform a proper warm-up before tossing your weights around. The days of slapping your quads, hitting some arm swings and getting right under the bar are over, you’re probably too old for that anyway.

Now let’s RAMP up your warm-up for your next training session. RAMP is a systematic approach of warming up that promotes the physical, psychological and technical skill of the participant  for their immediate and long term wellness development. The acronym RAMP stands for Raise, Activate, Mobilise and Potentiate. Time to break it down.

The Raise phase focuses on raising blood flow, muscle/internal temperature, muscle elasticity and firing up neural activation(mind and movement connection). This is achieved by using low intensity general movements. Some of these general locomotion movements include, jumping rope, jumping jacks,high knees or general gym cardio machines. If you played sports growing up or now, think of the first part of your dynamic warm-up. Take about 5 minutes to get the raise phase going.

During the Activate & Mobilise phase we are working to engage our muscles and mobilise our tissues to improve our range of motion and movement skill that we are going to be using during our training or game. We are still considering the prior phase here as we move from a more general movement pattern to specific.

The Potentiate phase is essentially a rehearsal of gradually increasing “stress” on the body to prepare for your training session or competition. Let’s think build up sprints/jumps or build up sets to your squats or even light and explosive medicine ball slams, throws and exercises.

Here is a quick example of the RAMP warmup for someone who is about to get into a Squat session at the gym.

Raise- 1-3 sets x20 reps of Jumping Rope, Jumping Jacks, High Knees, Forward & Backward Skips, Side to Side Shuffle

Activate- 1-2 sets x 10 reps of Banded Monster Walks,Banded Good Morning, Bodyweight Walking Lunges, Cossack Squats

Mobilize- 1-2sets x 5-10 reps of Squat to Stretch, Inchworms, Spiderman with Rotation, Cat Camel, Glute Bridge to Reach

Potentiate- 1-2sets x 5 reps of Medicine Ball Slams, Medicine Ball Chops, Box Jumps, Lateral Skater Hops, Build-Up Barbell Squats

Try the RAMP warm-up in your next training sessions and If you have any questions about RAMP, just let your Dude know.

Stay Warm,

CeJ

Hello UF Community!

There are still a few weeks left of the summer season, but the UF team wanted to do a quick recap of the events we have held here at UF over the past few months, and a look into some events happening here in the future. Todd had the takeover Tuesday on our Instagram story this past week and highlighted some of our members who attended these events as well. We appreciate all the support from every one of you who had made it out to our events and all who plan to be in attendance in the future.

Iron City Open: Doug and his team put on a great event here at UF in June. We had several members compete in their first powerlifting meet that day and had several repeat competitors as well. We look forward to being the host site for this event every year.

Pride Night Bootcamp and Comedy Show: We had an awesome time and raised money for a great cause, too. We had a 60min (ish) bootcamp style workout followed by some food and a comedy show with a few local comedians as well as our very own MC and longtime member, Tim Bickerton. Special shoutout to Ava for making this all possible!

Ladies Night: This is held every 2^nd Saturday of the month and is open to members and/or non-members. It is a great way to meet some fellow strong ladies and to get a workout in with some equipment that you may not typically use during your gym time. Be sure to make it out to one of these Saturday’s and mention it to your friends, too!

United Not Divided Event: This year was the first annual event. UF was the host gym, Leg1on Training and Performance had come to us with the idea and Pittsburgh Fitness Project was teamed up with us as well.  It was an awesome event and turnout, and a great way to team up with fellow gyms and members in the Pittsburgh area. Stay tuned for details for another partnership and event in the future!

Yoga For Lifters: Our very own Curtis Miller and Meagan Gnibus were the OG founders of this event, and it was a huge success. The turnout was high, and the feedback received was even better. We hope to make this event or a similar event happen again in the future, so stay tuned.

ACB and Commonplace Coffee Bootcamps: These are a great way to get introduced into group style classes and have some fun while doing it. Both were a lot of fun, and even included a free beer at Allegheny City Brewing and a free coffee at Commonplace. We had around 30 total bags of clothing donated for a local shelter – the Light of Life, and monetary donations that benefited the Bridge Outreach as well.

Loop the Loops Ride+Walk Fundraiser: UF will be the site host for this event on August 13^th. This event is to celebrate BikePGH’s 20^th anniversary and the completion of the Allegheny Circle conversion project. You can ride, roll, and walk around the circle, while raising funds for BikePGH’s continued work and mission in the great city of Pittsburgh. Stay tuned for more details, and please visit this link to register! https://secure.everyaction.com/tyV9V-mss028fJLgVtk7Bg2

We have a few more exciting upcoming events that are planned to happen throughout the last months of the year. We are excited and hope to see you all at our upcoming events!

Toria

All coaches, athletes, and people in the fitness community have their own philosophies or ideas that they may use for their own training or for training another person that they have established a coach/client relationship with. In the world of powerlifting, one common programming tool that is often utilized is RPE. RPE can be an excellent tool for programming and should be utilized at different times for different reasons all throughout training. For those that do not understand what RPE is, RPE is rating of perceived exertion. Essentially, it’s what the person who is lifting the weight thinks how hard the exercise is and is generally rated out of a score of 1-10. With this being said, the higher you rate your RPE out of 10 then the harder the lift was in your own opinion. However, your rating of RPE also reflects how many more reps that you think you could have done at that specific weight. For example, if I were to do a squat single at 405 lbs and I thought the RPE was a 7, then I should have been able to do 3 more reps at that weight without failing. Another example is if I were to bench 135 lbs for 3 reps and rated it at a RPE 5, then I should have theoretically been able to do 5 more reps at that weight.

As there is with anything in life, RPE also has its pros and cons. One pro is that it can be extremely efficient in managing fatigue for people. However, everyone has their good days and everyone has their bad days. Some days you feel really weak in the gym and other days you feel really strong. For example, if you got bad sleep the night before your training session or you are very stressed out about something you may have going on in your life such as a job or school then you may not feel the best when it comes time to lift some heavy weights. This is where RPE can help. On a day where 135 lbs is feeling really heavy when on a normal day it typically feels pretty light, then you can lower the weight to match your prescribed RPE. This will prevent you from doing too much on a day where you feel physically weak and in hand will prevent you from building up too much fatigue at once. However, the same way that RPE can aid in managing fatigue it can also have a negative affect on managing fatigue. This can happen when someone overestimates themselves and thinks their lift is easier than it actually was. For example, as a coach I constantly receive videos from the clients I coach and they give me their opinion on their lift and RPE. Sometimes they will over estimate and call their prescribed single an RPE 8 but when in fact it was an RPE 10. The issue with this is that if it keeps occurring, then it can become a habit. Once the habit is created then you could be over exerting yourself when you shouldn’t be. This could lead to lack of progress from not being able to recover or could even create an injury.

Now that we have a decent understanding of RPE, how it works, and some pros and cons of it, we can dive into a discussion of RPE for accessories. Some coaches believe that RPE can be programmed for accessories and that you need to manage your fatigue from your accessories so that you can perform at your best when it comes time for your compound movements. In theory this does make sense and has been shown to work with some people. However, this theory of programming RPE 6,7, or 8 on accessories leaves the opportunity for people to slack off and sandbag on their accessories. This then leads to less muscular breakdown and less opportunity to recover, grow, and get stronger. With this being said, I think a lifter should take the approach of pushing their accessories as hard as they can and go to actual muscular failure. Yes, this may in the short term affect the lifter on their compound lifts and make them feel weaker when they attempt to squat, bench, and deadlift on their next session but it will ultimately do more good than bad. This is because the human body is an amazing thing and will eventually adjust to training accessories to failure. The body will reach a point where training to failure will not affect the next training session and you’ll be able to make progress. Along with human body being able to adjust, going to failure on accessories will provide the lifter with more muscle breakdown that they are not achieving on the squat, deadlift, and bench press, provide them with stronger joints, ligaments, and tendons, and could provide them with more confidence when they get under the bar. So, the next time you are looking to change up your programming in powerlifting and you are not training to failure on your accessories, then try training to failure to see if it works for you!

Zain

I think it’s difficult to give you a real introduction into who I am in a single blog post, but I am going to give it a shot!

My name is Dylan Heisey and I am a new staff member/coach here at Union fitness. I am originally from the Lancaster/Hershey area which is about 3 and half hours east of Pittsburgh. I moved to western Pennsylvania at the end of 2020 to earn my MBA while finishing my last year of track & field eligibility at Seton Hill University. I love all Philadelphia sports (sorry yinzers), I strongly believe that Wawa will always be better than Sheetz, and I absolutely love all things related to electronic music. When I am not in the gym, you can find me at a local flea or vintage market, reading, or finding a new hobby to learn.

So now that you have some basic information about me, let me tell you about what I think you should really know. My love of sport didn’t come naturally as it did to many. I played several different sports in High School and eventually Track and Field was the one that stuck with me. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to walk on to a college track team in a small school and the rest is history.

Even now as my chapter of a college athlete has ended and my career in Olympic weightlifting is just getting started. I don’t think I am a talented enough writer to fully encapsulate how sports have changed my life. It has given me the confidence and ambition to take on any challenge that comes my way, and I hope it can do the same thing for you. I want to be the person that pushes you to success whether it’s inside the gym or out! So if you see me around the gym please stop and say hi, I want to get to know as many of you as possible! Until we meet, I will leave you with this quote:

 “Only those who can see the invisible can do the impossible” – Frank L. Gaines

Dylan