The NEW DVD by Stew Smith - Workout with Stew Using the Pre-Habit Fitness Concept!!!
Often, I get requests from my readers to make a workout DVD. Though I appreciate the requests, I have never felt comfortable making a workout of large reps of pushups or pull-ups and abs, because for me, high repetition workout videos get pretty boring. So, I have been waiting to find something that would be a good plan to build muscle tone, as well as functional fitness, and create stability in an unstable world, but still have a flare of Special Ops training that I love to write about. Well, I have found the program and helped create a routine with the help of Dr Jeff Spencer, former US Olympic Team Cyclist and trainer to USPS Cycling Team during eight Tour De France victories.
The new program is called Pre-Habit Fitness – meaning “before habit” and will help you learn or re-learn proper full body movements for athletics as well as life in general. It can be for beginners, athletes, current or future Spec Ops soldiers, and will also assist with correcting years of improper technique training. The Pre-Habit Fitness program is a supplemental routine that adds to your present workout and will not compete with any program on the market and actually takes as little as 15-20 minutes to do.
The DVD thoroughly discusses the methodology but in a nutshell it teaches us that the fastest way to better fitness, more energy, and top performance is by learning to move correctly. “The best athletes aren’t the biggest, strongest or fastest. They are the ones that have superior control of body movement.” says Dr. Spencer as he critiques my own form.
Dr. Spencer continues, “The Pre-Habit Fitness concept builds fitness and performance by doing weighted or non-weighted exercises within the context of the body’s genetic movement patterns, many of which cannot be done properly by many people.”
Ultimate levels of fitness and performance as well as daily living injury prevention can only occur when the body is:
a. Well postured and symmetrical, and
b. Moves precisely in accordance with its pre-programmed genetic movement patterns
What does all this mean? Well, when you workout with poor movement patterning or technique and posture, you only reinforce the brain’s poor movement patterning circuitry. This reinforces body distortion, places stress on injury prone areas, produces less power per movement, and consumes excess energy unnecessarily. All of which produce sub-par fitness gains, poor performance, overtraining, and injury susceptibility.
“The brain thinks in terms of whole movements not individual muscles.” writes Dr Irvin Korr, renowned neurophysiologist. Movement creates mind-body reorganization to better build top fitness and performance while minimizing injury risk.
The Basis of Foundational Fitness: The Pre-Habit Fitness workout is really a “general” foundational workout that precedes and sets the stage to maximize all other “specific” activities such as sports, circuit training on isolation machines, body builders, tri-athletes, power-lifters, boxers, and everyday living and movements. This workout is NOT in competition with ANY workout routine. Pre-Habit Fitness was developed to SUPPLEMENT your workout – no matter what your workout is. Pre-Habit Fitness not only focuses on core strength, but the movements and kinetic links that must relay through your body to produce the maximum power out of every motion.
For instance, a boxer’s punch does not generate knockout power simply by extending the arm. The true power comes from these kinetic links and power relays that multiply through the body until impact. This movement starts from the feet, travels up the legs, across the hips and torso to the arm and fist. All of these movements have to happen in perfect sequence in order to be effective. The same holds true for a baseball pitcher and batter, the basketball player, and especially the person lifting something and placing it in the trunk of a car.
In Pre-Habit vocabulary, we call the kinetic link a “power relay” because what we are emphasizing is rewiring the body to efficiently and effectively deliver power. Remember, fitness, like life, is a game of inputs and outputs. What matters is not how hard you are trying on your inputs but what your output, or real world effect is. Pre-Habit’s mission is to teach how to make your output more powerful through discovering your power relay system.
The best thing about setting the body’s movement circuitry is that it can create in beginners / non-athletes a better foundation in athletic movements. Programming perfect movements equals increased athletic ability, decreased injury chances, increased power, and energy conservation. The most common injuries that shut any person down are found in the four vulnerable areas of body that transmit the greatest power relays: the ankle, knee, lower back, and shoulder. These injuries occur because of the following:
1. body tightness
2. muscle strength imbalances
3. poor control of movement
4. slow muscle contraction
The Pre-Habit Fitness program focuses on the above elements in a supplemental fashion so to not compete with what people love to do for their exercise. It is recommended however, that the workout be done first without weights enough times so the brain learns to control the body correctly, sufficient tissue pliability is developed, and the pacing of the workout established.
IN THE DVD coming in March 2008 – Stew Smith and Dr. Jeff Spencer will discuss the development of the Pre-Habit Program and demonstrate its basic form. Then Stew Smith will show how to add more advanced exercises that correspond to the five phase system and demonstrate the Spec Ops version of Pre-Hab Fitness. The second workout is a tough routine and will challenge any advanced trained person. However, in the DVD you will be reminded that this is ONLY the beginning. You still need to do your “other” workout - be it for sports, running, swimming, boxing etc. This routine does not replace your program, it just makes it better. It makes YOU better and that is the “output” that really counts!
You can now pre-order the Pre-Habit Fitness Workout at StewSmith.com Fitness Store. The Pre-Habit Workout DVD
