Random Friday Thoughts: 11/28/08
Written on November 28, 2008 at 7:00 am, by Eric Cressey
I’m writing this blog on Tuesday night, as I’m pretty sure that my mind will be a bit hazy after the insulin-induced coma that follows my Thanksgiving feast.
1. While I’ve had a week-long argument with my new website set-up, I have to say that one of the cool features I now have is a really detailed analytic panel to look at hits, referring sites, and the keywords people used in their searches to find my site. Believe it or not, 6.8% of my readers can’t spell my last name correctly in a web search. So, just to be clear, it’s “CRESSEY,” not “CRESSY.” The extra “E” stands for excellence, in case anyone was wondering. Stop laughing.
2. I work with two pro ballplayers who were drafted out of Harvard, and the other day, we got to talking about how I had finally gotten DVR on my TV (mostly for my girlfriend, to be honest). They started talking about how it’d be nice to be able to fast-forward through the commercials, and I commented on how that parallels what I do with educational DVDs. You see, I just push fast-forward and listen to things in about half the time it would take to hear the entire thing. I still comprehend everything – kind of like this guy:
 They were kind of floored that I could do that – although I’m really not sure why. I’d be willing to bet that there were a lot of students at Harvard who are a lot more cyborg-ish than I am.
3. For the record, this strategy comes in handy when listening to presenters with Midwestern and Southern accents. I employed it with great success when viewing the 2008 Indianapolis Performance Enhancement Seminar DVD Series, as that Robertson character is one……..sloooooooowwwww……talker.
Kidding aside, this was a fantastic seminar; I’d highly recommend you pick up a copy. I actually reviewed it in detail in a previous blog entitled The Best Thing I’ve Seen All Year.
4. Eric Chessen has a new blog about Autism Fitness. Definitely check it out at www.Autism-Health.com if that’s your cup of tea. Eric’s at the head of his field in this regard.
5. I’m going to be writing a new article for T-Nation this weekend. And, while I have some ideas on what I am going to write, I’m always open to suggestions. If you have one, please post it as a comment on this blog and I’ll see what I can do.
6. HERE is an interesting new study I just read that talks about performance decrements with subtle sleep deprivation. These results seem to suggest that if you’re going to miss hours of sleep, it is better to do so by going to bed later than it is to do so by rising earlier. We always teach our athletes that one hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after midnight, so these results would seemingly fly in the face of our recommendations. However, these recommendations assume no sleep deprivation. In other words, I’d rather have an athlete sleep 11pm-7am than I would have him sleep 2am-10am.
Just a quick one this week in light of the holiday. Have a great weekend!
Category Blog | Tags: Baseball Workouts, Bill Hartman, Building The Efficient Athlete, Magnificent Mobility, Mike Robertson, Rotator Cuff Exercises, Rotator Cuff Rehab, Shoulder Exercises, Shoulder Health, Shoulder Impingement, Shoulder Pain, Shoulder Rehab, Throw Baseball Faster, Unstable Surface Training, Weight Lifting Program, Weight Lifting Routine, Weight Training Baseball, Workout Program, Workout Routine
|
November 28th, 2008 at 7:54 am
Hope you had a great TG, Eric – And that you recovered fully from your insulin coma – lol –
November 28th, 2008 at 8:18 am
I would love an article on set/rep schemes. I can’t recall anything on this in recent times.
For example, in Maximum Strength you use at least four different schemes – straight sets, cluster sets, stage sets and heavy singles. What are the purposes of each – you seem to use straight sets for all “supporting” exercises for example? When/how often should I use them – I guess I shouldn’t do heavy single every workout for a year? Over what set/rep ranges – I’m guessing the doing cluster sets of 6 clusters of 12 reps with 10s rests misses the point? etc.
There is also the wave scheme, of which I have a recollection of reading something by you which said this was not a good scheme.
This information would be great for when I reach the end of Maximum Strength and go back to creating my own programmes – currently, I’m half-way through phase 3 and it’s going great – thanks for asking 🙂
Cheers,
Jon.
November 28th, 2008 at 9:03 am
As long as it’s not on ‘how to get laid’, any TN article is a good one! (nothing wrong with getting laid, of course, but being female I already know how to do that, whereas i can always benefit from good lifting and nutrition tips)
November 28th, 2008 at 10:52 am
EC,
How about a future article on the best methods for assessing/tsting for strength imbalances before designing a program and how individual levers/biomechanics and exercise selection factor in determining balanced ratios, rather than just saying very general things like “rows and presses should be about 1:1.”
November 28th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
I have always enjoyed your “5 Common Technique Mistakes” series. Every time you have written one of those, I have found a mistake that I was making.
Another idea might be to talk about medicine ball training or sprint training. I have not seen many articles on t-nation that discuss these aspects of training and I, myself, am not sure of how to successfully integrate or program them in my training.
Or, you can try to rewrite your “Rotator Cuff Conundrum” article. I think it would be interesting to see a re-write of that and compare to the original to see what you would have suggested to do then and now.
Just some suggestions,
Chris
November 28th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I’d like to hear something about the conditioning aspect of training. There are billions of articles about strength training but aloast none about conditioning.
November 28th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Bump #5 & #6
I often wonder how much a lot of the articles, products, etc you’ve done lets say since 2006 and prior would be different if you reinvented them today.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:24 pm
I definitely think t-nation needs an article on neck strengthening and stability. They’ve had a few in the past that were essentially “how to damage your cervical spine 101.” None have focused on promoting stability, much less specific work for upper cervical anterior flexors or multifidi.
T-nation has come a long way toward healthy lifting with your articles and Mike Robertson’s, especially with lumbar stability. I think this would be a good step toward promoting health in other areas of the spine as well.
Granted, if the neck isn’t sexy enough I’ll also agree with Akc above about a sprinting article. Especially if it relates to front squats and acceleration 🙂
November 28th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
An article about who to go to for common weight training/athletic problems and how to tell if a physical therapist/chiro/whatever is good or not.
November 29th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Hi Eric,
As for your next T-Nation article topic I’d like to read your thoughts on correcting knock knees. Kind of a check list of things, in order of importance if that is possible. I’m not quite sure if the T-Nation audience would be very interested in this, but I’m willing to guess there’s not a lot of people who like the valgus look and would like to do something about it.
December 1st, 2008 at 12:47 am
If you don’t mind stirring up some controversy Eric, an entire article on Round Back Lifting and McGill’s research would be awesome.
I can’t even say how many MMA guys I’ve seen online doing round back deadlifts because “they encounter it on the mat”.
December 1st, 2008 at 11:29 am
A summary covering your most infulential moments in your career would be good and how they helped mould your success now.
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:15 pm
“What I learnt in 2008.”
Or adapted from Cosgrove’s “5 Aha Moments”, something like “5 Full Circle Concepts”: ideas which started off one way when you were a novice, which you unlearned as you got “smarter”, but more experience moved you back full circle to the original direction of thought. Hopefully that is somewhat clear.
December 10th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
How about what to do instead of cardio for metabolic conditioning and just overall cv fitness?