Interviews

Q&A with John MacLaren: Fitness guru and former SEAL - Part II

This is the second installment of my interview with John MacLaren. You can read Part I here.

Question: What led you to transition from SEAL to personal trainer?

MacLaren: What led me to a career as a personal trainer was actually a combination of experiences over the years. For starters I took notice in the SEAL Teams and other Special Forces units who got injured, and who didn’t, and what their training programs were. I look for patterns in everything I see, hear, and think, and there were such obvious differences as to what type of training program appeared to make a difference in performance in that environment.

After getting out of the Navy, I started to work in the gym that I belonged to more out of boredom than anything else. Initially I ended up working with your average amateur bodybuilders on contest stuff and I really hated that at the time because as much as I admire the consistency and effort of bodybuilders, it just wasn’t my interest personally. Personal training was really just getting going in those years and I was also really ignorant in so many areas of mechanics and performance so I just didn’t have the fun in the business that I do now. We did the best we could, but back then compared with the knowledge I have available today, I can take an athlete in a year to the place that it took me four or five years to get to back then. If you have the knowledge, training today is safer and faster than it ever has been before. Unfortunately the knowledge seldom makes it to the amateur or college athlete level. The old habits of exercise and physiology programs are slow to change so often times the training information that athletes come to me with is older than they are.

The area of study that most influenced my understanding of training was actually biological psychology. Bio-psych is the study of the chemistry of our psychology but even more than that it is the chemistry of everything that happens in our bodies. Neurons and other stuff may bore some people, but those areas of research always thrill me to learn more about. When I really began to study the chemistry of psychology, I adjusted much of my thought on how to train people for performance and to minimize injuries. The results were almost immediate and I began coaching and training clients and athletes to entirely new levels in just weeks. It was at this point that training began to get really fun for me and I have truly been in love with the field of performance and rehabilitation ever since. I never get tired of testing and evaluation biomechanics, V02, muscle balancing, and endurance levels. I could literally do it all day every day but I find most often that if people don’t hurt enough yet, they are often slow to change their programs and awareness.

Question: What has been your experience working with triathletes?

MacLaren: Yes I have worked with triathletes. Since Los Angeles is such a center for sports and athletics, they are always crossing my path. I have a little saying though when I work with triathletes: People in the gym are often ignorant of proper training methods but triathletes are obstinate!

A triathlete will have great information right in front of him and still continue to do the very same thing that he and his friends have always done. I will take ignorance in a client over obstinance anyday! I laugh every time I say it but it still rings true every time I’m sitting around a bunch of triathletes listening to them talk about being stuck on some plateau and hearing about their programs, so I am always happy to get out whatever tips and training methods that will help their speed and minimize injuries.

Question: With the triathletes and their obstinacies, what are they typically hung up on changing?

MacLaren: I actually shouldn’t talk about an entire group of people as being obstinate because it’s more of a joke than anything, but the point I was making is that often times when athletes get very, very involved in their sport and it requires a large time and effort commitment, it is easy to lose sight of the basics that create progress. I find this when working with fighters as well. So much time is spent in one environment that the foundation of mechanics and endurable strength can fall by the wayside and lead to a much greater increase in injury potential.

Question: What is it with endurance athletes and their aversion to strength training? How do you work to overcome their belief that all they need to do is more running, biking and swimming?

MacLaren: I think much of the aversion to strength training comes from a s simple lack of understanding of what is occurring during strength training. I definitely grew up in world where the gym and working with weights was sold as the way to get bigger. Stronger sure, but the magazines all sold strength training as the way to bodybuilding and conversely running in general was still thought to be a sport that involved mostly the lower body. It wasn’t until I started lifting weights at 18 years old that I realized how much faster I became as a runner when I started to incorporate weight training. If we consider that isolated resistance training is really about increasing efficient neurological function then strength training suddenly begins to make very good sense. Running coaches around the country now realize this even if they do not fully understand biomechanics and the left/right imbalance that is caused by the way our brain hemispheres function.

There is an inherent problem in using your sport itself as your training method. Running for example does very little to balance out your strength and it do even less for those areas of the body that support our running stride but are not directly utilized in our running itself. I often use the expression that running is not training its practice for your sport. The same would be true with cycling, it is practice for your sport and although we all accept the term training I like to differentiate between practicing my sport and actually breaking down the motions of my sport and training each individual muscle and nerve area with the objective of creating maximum efficiency when I go out for those runs or long rides.

I have a good friend who trains for triathlons pretty consistently and he is pretty good overall. This friend of mine and I go riding on occasion and although I ride about once every two months, lately I easily breeze by him in almost any environment. I should tell you that I am not a great cyclist by any means but the reason that he cannot compete with me is that he is simply not strong enough to use the mechanics of his bike to his advantage. Now project this concept forward to the run and imagine what his additional level of fatigue is doing to his performance on his run.

I have long since stopped offering advice or opinion to athletes unless specifically asked and even then only if I really feel that they can and will use the information I would offer them. I work with triathletes every year who have been out there killing themselves in their training programs and wondering why they are not getting faster. As soon as I get them in the gym it becomes so obvious that they are simply not strong enough and not bio-mechanically aware enough to perform anywhere near their potential. Whether they can understand this or not is simply up to them and I often suggest that they simply try it a new way for three weeks. If they don’t find that they are faster and better recovered then they are welcome to go back to their old way. Notice that I am not talking about months to improvement but weeks! That is the beauty of a scientific and highly efficient program, the response comes week to week.

I often joke (half seriously) that if you cannot look in the mirror and do an alternating dumbbell biceps curl and have both arms doing the exact same thing and taking the exact same path throughout the range then there is no point in even thinking about having great mechanics on the road. Next time you go to the gym take a look at people doing biceps curls and watch how many people have one arm coming straight up and one arm turning out to the right or left as they come up. That will tell you all you need to know about their mechanics because that imbalance is systemic and you will find it in their shoulders, hips, knees, and feet.

Our brains are not built for balance, they simply will not do it! We must always be breaking down motions to their most basic elements to even attempt to achieve some sense of balance in our strength, form and endurance but it will never happen completely and we will always have to be working in that direction. For every ounce of your body that is off balance there is that much energy being used to try to get it to go in the direction you want it to go in. Form is simply how much of your whole body is supporting you in doing exactly what you intended it to do and endurance is how long you can hold the most efficient positions throughout the range and over the distance.

Question: Looking around at many triathlons, there are quite a few body types and much to most people’s surprise, a fair share of overfat triathletes. Many entered the sport to lose body fat and even after a few seasons of hardcore endurance training, are still carrying around too much flab. Is it diet, type of exercise, or just plain ol’ genetics that keeps these individuals from losing the fat that would not only improve their performance, but make them look better in their Speedos?

MacLaren: I say this a lot. We can always out-eat our training program. The average human body can digest and utilize about 50 grams of carb per sitting, 30 grams of protein and about 30 percent of their meal in fat. If you have ever wondered why you hear that you should eat several smaller meals per day? This is it in a nutshell.

The body digest and utilizes food but it has limits as to how much and how often it will do it with a high degree of efficiency. So what happens when we eat 250 grams of carbs in one meal, or a big steak with 75 grams of protein in it? The bulk of the remaining carbs and protein is broken down, re-assembled and stored as fat. Bummer I know, but that is the way it is.

For the average person who eats the bulk of their calories every night after 6 p.m., they are killing the benefits of fat burning that they worked so hard for all day. This type of eating also tends to adversely affect performance so eating large meals kills your race times as well. Utilizing the science of eating is simply the difference between just showing up and setting a PR in your events.

All things being equal it’s the science of your training program and your nutrition program that will leave you injury free and performing at elite levels. Your genetics play a factor of course but they are what they are so some of you will find that at 10 percent bodyfat you look ripped, while others still have a bit of a belly at 10 percent and will need to bring it much lower, at least for a time, to have the ripped look you want. By the way, being ripped is not for everyone and at 6-12% bodyfat, most athletes will find their highest level of performance. That being said, there is no single magical fat percentage number. It will vary from athlete to athlete and VO2 Max, muscle mass, body structure, height, gender, injury history, and age. All of these factors play a part in how we perform at the end of the day.

This is a great question because it touches on several areas that are often debated at length in the fitness community. In the end, body fat is a math issue. Calories in and calories out over time equals body fat percentage. While there are heart rates and training time lines that have higher fat per calories burned than others, the overall concept is still calories in and calories out. There are several theories on body types and fat burning and how much fat a particular body type should have to perform at peak levels but there seems to be no doubt that carrying “excess” fat is in conflict with performing to an athlete’s potential. This would be particularly true in the running phase of a triathlon since we are actually lifting our weight off of the ground and that is the limiting factor in speed and endurance. The mechanics of the bike seem to neutralize some of the excess weight factor and this appears to be true in swimming as well that there is a buoyancy and energy processing factor in swimming and fat percentage of swimmers that does not appear to have the same negative effect that carrying excess fat on a run has. Notice here that I use the words, “appear” and “seems” because no matter how many tests are done in these areas, the findings are still theoretical and are not reproduced in every test group. In the end training is ALWAYS theoretical and I never assume that anything is actually known.

Fat on humans can show up in different ways. One athlete might carry more visible fat around the middle while another might carry more visible fat around the hips and thighs while at the same time having clearly defined abs. For each of these cases it can be a real challenge to eliminate those “problem areas”.

Over the years of testing VO2, AT, AET and RMR in all types of bodies and activity levels, I have found that there is somewhat of a pattern in fat deposits and VO2 max, but only in the most general sense. Most of the athletes I have tested with a VO2 Max over 60 Ml/Kg have had a pretty even fat distribution overall and this pattern does leave me thinking that plain old genetics play a very large factor in how we lose and gain fat. In the end we could always lose more fat if we simply did the math and ate and trained accordingly, but the end does not always justify the means.

For instance, I work with a female athlete who is just barely five feet tall. At 104 pounds she still has a hip and glute area fat percentage that is noticably higher than the rest of her body. I never like to see an endurance athlete down around this weight because in my view there is nothing but pain and injury coming for an athlete who is this close to 100 pounds. However, this client very much wanted to lose as much fat as possible in her “problem areas” so we did a bit of a test.

Bodyfat does not seem to come back in exactly the way it comes off and I have a feeling that this has something to do with the amount of time it took to develop the fat percentage to begin with but for the people who have a very hard time with certain areas, while being very lean in others, you will most likely have to go well past what is attractive to you overall to remove the fat in those hard to reach areas and then come slowly back up in fat percentage until you are satisfied with your overall look. What this means is several months of your friends saying things like, “Hey are you ok? Do you have an eating disorder?”

For most people this method is uncomfortable and can be detrimental to your race performance so I often suggest doing the best you can and paying great attention to your calories in/out and pro/carb/fat intake levels per meal and per day and practicing some acceptance of your body type. Not easy I know, but we all can’t be built like the Soloflex guy or gal.

Question: You coached Tom Jane, the actor from the movie “The Punisher,” through a remarkable physique transformation. Can you briefly describe where Tom started in terms of weight and body fat and where he ended up? What would an endurance athlete be able to learn from that case study?

MacLaren: Thomas was an interesting client in that I begain working with him with only nine weeks to go before the beginning of his film shoot. He had been training for some months but just not in the way I would have recommended for his body type and the role he was about to play.

The first week was a bit of a challenge since we did not know each other and I am not sure how thrilled Thomas was at being assigned a trainer since he had one already and with only nine weeks to go to lose five inches on the waistline and add inches to arms, chest and back. I enjoy this type of work and I often joke that I am the “emergency trainer” when your race or film is coming up rapidly and you are just not getting what you want in your current situation, but it is extremely difficult on the client or athlete because a major body transformation in nine weeks is very difficult on a body. Thomas and I did a few workouts together and as always, we faced the “well my other trainer says” conversations which is normal and my answer is always very simple: “I am not here to tell you that your other trainer is incorrect, I am simply going to tell you what I suggest and why and you will do what makes the best sense to you.”

When a safe, but average, program turns into a scientific and highly effective program the results are week-to-week so you will know immediately that you have changed your program for the better. Thomas walked into the gym on week two with an entirely new idea now of what potential was in him that was just not being released on his other program. That next Monday, Thomas turned on like a light switch and became the most intense workout machine that I have ever seen. This is where it really got fun for me in that I now had a client who I could work out the most minute details of his training and diet and he would be follow them to the letter. I joked often at the time that not even NASA had the science in their programs that Thomas Jane had in his and week to week the results showed.

Two weeks later the guys from Marvel comics called and said, “My God John, what are you guys doing to make such a change in two weeks?”

The real problem was that we were going for maximum fat loss while trying to avoid losing major amounts of muscle mass and there are limits to how much fat a body can lose per week without seriously increasing muscle loss and those limits are set by 100,000-plus years of evolution so we are stuck with them. They can be manipulated somewhat but not changed. Because of this Thomas lifted in a very isolated, heavy, almost bodybuilder, type program on a four-day week. You will hear many bodybuilders tout the 6-day per week heavy lifting program, but if you are dieting and lifting in a non-anabolic enhanced program, I wouldn’t suggest 3-on-1-off for your lifting program.

So what’s the moral of the story that athletes might take from all of this? One, your success will not be found alone. I find this to be true in all of life. At least find a partner in your training program but research and develop all areas of your training program.

Two, never accept or expect that your training program is good enough. All programs are worth constant examination and because it worked for your buddy does not have any bearing on how it will work for you.

Three, you always have 10-30 percent more in you than you currently realize. I can take almost any athlete on the planet and find a 10-30 percent improvement in performance if they have the will power and can follow a program. There is ALWAYS a way to get more out of a body. I was at dinner not too long ago with the CEO of very large health product company and he is very much into triathlons. I listened to him talk about his training program and he is obviously a hard working and talented athlete. When he finished I told him to consider just spending two weeks with me because I would be interested to watch his increase in performance. I actually offered it at no charge because the value in increasing his awareness, given his position and influence, would have potentially benefited countless athletes and that is worth far more to me than money.

I watched his eyes glaze over and the story of how he really wanted to stick with what he was doing because of this or that reason and I was again reminded that you can’t give information away to certain people and that everyone has their own timeline for gathering that information.

To contact John MacLaren to find out more about his programs, you can reach him at john@maclarenmethod.com or at www.getfitla.com.

Share on Facebook

Popularity: 100% [?]

© 2008 The Outdoor Journey.