Home 2008 May (Page 2)

Vitamin Water: My New Nemesis

Vitamin Water: It drives me crazy. High-school kids drink it non-stop and think the added nutrients to it outweigh the problems associated with downing those nutrients with a bunch of simple sugar. Actually, most kids don't even know that it's loaded with "crystalline fructose;" they just think it's regular water and someone just dissolved a Flintstones chewable into it and made it taste good. You know what? Even though most young athletes eat terribly, they still get plenty of vitamins, for the most part. They also get plenty of fructose - so there's certainly no need to supplement that. As Dr. John Berardi has said in his Seven Habits of Highly Effective Nutrition Programs, "Drink only non-calorie containing beverages, the best choices being water and green tea."
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Maximum Strength: Can You Adjust Your Schedule?

Q: I purchased your new book Maximum Strength, and am really enjoying it – and looking forward to the programs. One question, though: are there any general recommendations you would make if someone, due to schedule restrictions, needed to modify the lifting portion program (i.e. not the recommended energy system work) to fit into a 3x/week rather than 4x/week schedule? While I can change up the days of the week, including weekends, I find that my job and family responsibilities limit me to 3x/week at the gym. I realize that going to 3x/week means I'm no longer really on the program, but I would like to keep to its other parameters as much as possible. A: As a general rule of thumb, I'd simply drop some assistance work from each day and then blend them as well as possible. For 3x/week, I prefer: Monday: Heavy lower body movement (including a dynamic single-leg movement), assistance upper body Wednesday: Heavy upper body movements, static unsupported single-leg movement (generally a one-leg squat to bench or one-leg Romanian deadlift). Friday: Lower body speed or volume emphasis (such as speed deadlifts or front squats for 4x6), assistance upper body. You should be able to pick and choose from each phase to get to where you want to be. Eric Cressey Get Your Strongest Body in 16 Weeks with the Ultimate Weight-Training Program
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Maximum Strength: Band Assisted Chin-ups

Q: I recently purchased your new book, Maximum Strength, and I've enjoyed reading it. My question is about pullups/chinups. If somebody is not capable of performing one, what do you recommend? Assisted pullups, negatives, pulldowns, or something like that? For that matter, if the reader can't do a chinup, are they ready for the program and might they be better off with a beginner's program until they're capable of doing chinups/pullups? A: They could still be a good position to do the program; they just might be a bit heavy. If a guy is 250 and can squat 400, bench 300, and deadlift 400 - but not do a chin-up, it's tough to call him weak! If this is the case, I would substitute either eccentric-only chin-ups or band-assisted chin-ups. For the former, you'd want to lower to a count of 4 or 5 on each rep. The latter of the two is pictured below. If you can't do it with a 1-inch band or thinner, definitely start with the eccentric-only version.
All that said, above all else, if you have a training partner, him helping you is the best option - as it most closely accommodates your strength level.
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A Quick Cressey Performance Update

As you can tell, I haven't updated the blog for three days - but I can tell you that it's with good reason. In the past three days, we've logged 39 hours of insanely cumbersome manual labor to move our entire gym three miles east to a bigger and better location. There were two "days" that last until 3AM. The entire Cressey Performance staff is going to try to catch up on sleep on Sunday and hopefully start to heal up, as there were some really torn-up hands and blistered feet. We'll have pictures of the new place soon, though...
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Back Squats and Overhead Throwers

Q: You don't like back squats for overhead throwers, is this because of anterior instability or some other reason? A: In a word, yes; anterior stability is so crucial for a pitcher that I’m not tempted to push it. Then again, that’s the short version – and it also assumes that the lifter is using a closer-grip, which mandates more external rotation. So, to the casual observer, the solution to this would be to simply bring the hands out and squat with a wider grip, which requires less external rotation. Unfortunately, this logic is flawed, too, as you have to abduct (elevate) your humerus another 15-20 degrees to get to that position. In the process, you bring it further into the “classic” impingement zone. This not only compromises the rotator cuff, but perhaps more significantly, the long head of the biceps, which is an extremely common nuisance in both powerlifters and overhead throwing athletes. All that said, while I’d never do it with a pitcher, you can probably get away with it with position players because they have better upward rotation. I wouldn’t go near it if thoracic spine range of motion is subpar – or the athlete had a history of shoulder or elbow issues. Sign-up Today for our FREE Baseball Newsletter and Receive a Copy of the Exact Stretches used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
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Why I Don’t Like the 5×5 Strength Training Programs…

Actually, this post should have been entitled, “Why 5x5 Workouts Works for Some People, but Not for Others.” That title would have been long and not “black and white” enough to get your attention, though. The 5x5 workout (or 4x6, for that matter) approach works relatively well for taking people from beginner to intermediate. When all you’ve been doing is 3x10-12 (because the bodybuilding magazines said that was the way to do things), lifting heavier weights for continued progress makes perfect sense. I feel strongly that not working below five reps on the main strength movements in your program is a huge mistake for lifters who are intermediates (or more advanced) – whether the goal is size or strength. You see, in an untrained individual, you get strength gains on as little as 40% of 1-rep max (1RM). As someone gets more trained, that number goes up to 70%. However, you need at least 85-90% of 1RM in intermediate and advanced lifters to elicit strength gains. For the average intermediate, 85% of 1RM corresponds to about a 5-rep max. In other words, only your heaviest set of five would be sufficient to stimulate a strength improvement. Now, what happens if you do a 5x5 workout? You’ve done 25 reps – and maybe five of them (the first set) were actually performed at a high-enough intensity to elicit strength gains. As I show in my new book, Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and Move Better, if you want to get stronger faster, you need to spend time below five reps – and above 85% of 1RM (and preferably 90%). This isn’t just physiological; it’s also psychological. You’ll get more comfortable handling heavier weights.

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Cressey Performance in the Boston Globe

Training for On-Field Rewards: Local Ballplayers Flock to Hudson Gym EDIT: It was actually a double-dip on publicity on Sunday, as it turns out: On Campus: Ostrander, Scanlan get northern exposure
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Athletes aren’t as smart as we think….

It never ceases to amaze me when we have an athlete do a 30-second isometric hold (such as a side bridge), and then they'll finish the set at 12 or 13 seconds and think that they're good to go. Apparently, I'm not the only one that noticed this phenomenon - and athletes will unintentionally go overboard as often as they'll underachieve. According to Wilk, Meister, and Andrews, when professional pitchers were asked to throw at 50% effort, the radar guns showed that they were actually throwing at 83% of peak velocity. And, at a requested 75%, they were popping 90% fastballs. Perhaps we should stop worrying about ascending oscillatory conjugated inverted periodization, and instead teach athletes how to count and follow the perceived exertion chart.
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EC on Rest Periods

Q: How long do you typically allow your athletes between sets? A: Rest periods are subject to so many factors that - believe it or not - I never make recommendations. Big guys need longer than little guys, and metabolic conditioning factors play into it as well. In a broad sense, I recommend the following: on strength work (<6 reps), rest as long as you feel you need, and then add 30 seconds (trust me on that one; your CNS takes longer than the muscles to recovery). On higher rep stuff, rest as long as you feel you need or just knock 15 seconds off that figure. Truthfully, a lot of what we "believe" about optimal (and strict) rest periods is based on the acute growth hormone response to exercise. In the grand scheme of things, though, a few extra seconds between sets isn't going to impact the acute growth hormone response so much that it markedly changes the efficacy of a program. In fact, in many cases, the extra bit of rest will allow for more loading, which in turns provides for a better chronic adaptation in terms of strength and hypertrophy. So, if you're worrying about whether 63 seconds between sets is inferior to 60 seconds, you're probably studying for the wrong test.
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