|
|
Anthony Lucia is a guy who came to Cressey Performance just over eight weeks ago with some chronic, painful shoulder issues – and he had just pre-tested for the Maximum Strength program. I gave him some takeaway mobility and soft tissue drills, plus a few subtle modifications to the Maximum Strength program. This morning, I got this email from him:
"Hey Eric,
"I just thought I'd give you some feedback. I have been doing MS for 8 weeks now, in fact I just started phase 3 today. On packing day my shoulder hurt so much I tried to bench 245 and just about couldn't rerack it. After seeing you personally, and 8 weeks of stretching and stretching and stretching, I benched 285 for 1 the other day, with no discomfort!
"You set straight an average gym guy with 25 years of lifting experience, who thought he knew it all. In fact, after I told my dad (age 70) what you did for me, he went out and bought your book.
"I can honestly say, I never believed in stretching, I thought my warm-ups were good enough. Boy, was I wrong. Stretching has made me more flexible, and most importantly more aware of my form and balance.
"You have helped me with my recovery so much, thank you. I can't wait for the sequel to Maximum Strength!"
Anthony Lucia
South Hadley, MA
Order Maximum Strength!
|
| Read more |
|
We are publishing this on Thursday night again, as I am going to be up early tomorrow to train, do an evaluation on a pro baseball pitcher who is in town from South Carolina, and then hit the road to get to Stamford, CT in time to speak on a roundtable at Ryan Lee’s Bootcamp. I’m looking forward to a great weekend and catching up with plenty of friends in the industry – including Mike Roussell and Alwyn Cosgrove, which leads me to…
1. For those who missed it, it isn’t too late to get the EricCressey.com subscriber-only discount on Warp Speed Fat Loss. Check out this week's newsletter for more details – or just head over to pick up a discounted copy through the following link (coupon code is embedded already):
Warp Speed Fat Loss
2. Still overpriced and lame.
3. Alan Aragon had a great article published at T-Nation yesterday. Definitely check it out:
A Musclehead’s Guide to Alcohol
4. Anyone who can find me a good study that shows that you can isolate the vastus medialis effectively gets a gold star. If you want to save yourself a few days of frustrating Pubmed searching, you’ll give up now, because you aren’t going to find it.
5. Someone asked what I thought the best substitute for front squats would be in the Maximum Strength program if one didn’t have access to a power rack. I’d probably go with walking dumbbell lunges – mostly because it’d be funny to see someone do clusters with lunges!
For the record, that was a joke, folks; lunge clusters would be stupid.
 6. Some researchers say that we all would die of heart disease eventually if we “outlasted” everything else. I, on the other hand, would likely die from the monotony and pure frustration of trying to explain to baseball players and coaches why distance running is stupid. To tack a few years onto my life, please do me a favor; if you are a baseball player or coach, you need to read these two articles – and then forward them on to everyone you know who also plays or coaches.
Part 1
Part 2
7. Someone asked me the other day if I thought all problems were related to anterior pelvic tilt. While it’s a big problem in athletes, I would not attribute any of the following problems to anterior pelvic tilt: gonorrhea, shingles, global warming, diarrhea, traffic jams, or that annoying cashier at Trader Joe’s who always insists on commenting on how I’m buying a lot of eggs. I do hope that bastard’s hip flexors are tight, though; he rubs me the wrong way. Michelle would probably kill him for a stupid comment like that.
8. I’ll be introducing a new product next week. While many of you might be disappointed that it won’t be the 2009 Mike Robertson Pin-up Calendar (March is the Funky Knee Surgery Scar Month; it drives the ladies wild), I’m sure you’ll be delighted with the content. This is absolutely, positively, a must-read for all personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches. And, I suspect that a lot of you everyday gym-goers will like the content as well. If you aren’t already signed up for my free newsletter, sign up using the opt-in feature to the top-right of your screen (Name and Email Address) and you’ll be among the first to know.
Have a great weekend, folks! |
| Read more |
|
We see a lot of baseball players, so a lot of these guys come to use with elbow problems. In most cases, the doctors they’ve seen have said, flat-out, “NO LIFTING WEIGHTS.” This drives me nuts for a variety of reasons:
1. They’ve still got two good legs, one good arm, and a bunch of core musculature that needs to be strong and functional.
2. This recommendation implicitly means “Stay away from personal trainers and strength coaches.” It’s probably due to the fact that there are a lot of bonehead personal trainers out there who could do more harm than good, but the truth is that these services comprise more than just lifting weights. We do a lot of mobility and activation work and self-myofascial release on the foam roller.
Collectively, #1 and #2 demonstrate that this blanket recommendation includes an insanely ignorant omission, as the majority of elbow problems can be attributed to mobility and strength deficits at the shoulder. You can train a shoulder a thousand different ways without even involving elbow motion – let alone challenging it sufficiently to cause a problem. In fact, I'd estimate that you could prevent 90% of elbow problems in baseball guys if we simply taught all of them how to sleeper stretch in their early teenage years:
I'd strongly encourage you to check out this article I wrote, where I go over the common mistakes folks make when performing the sleeper stretch.
3. This recommendation flat-out ignores the specific nature of the overwhelming majority of elbow problems in throwing athletes. Let me elaborate..
In my estimation, 95% of baseball players with elbow pain couldn’t elicit their pain in a weight room if they wanted to; seriously! The reason is that this elbow pain is typically mechanical in nature; that is, it’s only aggravated by specific activities (in their case, throwing).
Believe it or not, I have had guys do everything from pull-ups, to dumbbell bench presses, to rows, to push-ups, to grip work just days out from elbow surgery. It isn’t true in every case, but it’s definitely the majority. And, they can all get diesel in the lower body during this time period.
Some great related reading for you:
Inefficiency vs. Pathology
Lay Back to Throw Gas
Sign-up Today for our FREE Baseball Newsletter and Receive a Copy of the Exact Stretches
used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
|
| Read more |
|
I lost 112-80 in fantasy football this week to this guy.
No, I'm not joking. Doesn't it boggle the mind that he can even turn on and operate a computer to manage a fantasy football team?
The truth is, I let Pete win because Monday was his birthday (he turned 12). Actually, it was Derek Anderson and Jamal Lewis - also known as the captains of the Cleveland Browns JV team - who let him win on Sunday night when they combined for a whopping nine points for me.
That's ten points less than my backup kicker (Ryan Longwell) scored with a five field goal performance as he was resting on my bench - but still an impressive nine points more than my tight end (Anthony Fasano) managed with his goose egg. I was hoping that the statisticians would at least throw Fasano a sympathy points for a good block or signing a few autographs on the way out of the stadium. No such luck, though.
So, happy birthday and congratulations, Pete. Bring on the Magic Man for week 3; Kurt Warner's going to lead me to the promised land.
EDIT: The only thing that got beaten worse this week than my fantasy football team was my retirement account. Ouch. |
| Read more |
|
Each day, on my drive to work, I pass a series of traffic lights right where Rt. 16 in Somerville/Cambridge enters into Rt. 2, a pretty major pseudo-expressway here in Greater Boston. Without fail, at each traffic light, homeless folks will pace alongside stopped traffic with a cup in hand, asking for change (I'd say it's competitive among all of them, but the truth is that they seem to have a system mapped out, as there is always someone new on each corner daily). The locals have grown accustomed to it, and judging by the fact that these folks are there year-round, they make enough to get by.
The other day, a gentlemen strolled past my car while I was stopped at a red light. He had the normal sign ("Homeless, Sober, God Bless") and the customary Dunkin' Donuts cup for change collection. However, he was also wearing a Yankees hat in the heart of Red Sox country - and in an area of knowledgeable/perceptive people (Harvard and Tufts are within a few miles of this spot, as a frame of reference). That hat couldn't be helping his cause...
Here was a guy doing almost everything right (well, at least in the context of being homeless and asking for change), but he was missing out on a single crucial piece of the puzzle. It isn't all that different from most folks' fitness programs.
You'll see people all the time have all sorts of stuff right: plenty of motivation, a good diet, a great training environment, top-of-the-line equipment, you name it. Then, they're missing out on something seemingly small, but hugely important. Maybe their back hurts because they're wearing cross-trainers when they deadlift (shifts the weight forward too much). Or, maybe they haven't implemented strategic deloading effectively, and are all banged-up or have hit a plateau.
It might be poor exercise selection, too much or too little volume, or poor exercise technique.
It's analogous to spending hours trying to figure out how to do your own taxes, and then overlooking a huge deduction you could have written off. You not only have to consider that you have physically lost money (the extra cash you paid to Uncle Sam would be your injuries and/or lack of progress); you also have to recognize the opportunity cost of your time doing taxes (efforts in the gym that didn't pay off). It would have been cheaper and more fruitful to just hire an accountant in the first place - just like you'd see a lawyer if you needed a contract, or a doctor if you needed surgery.
For some reason, though, people have been conditioned to think that they can figure out exercise on their own. Just getting active is similar to understanding how to balance your checkbook. However, exercising safely, effectively, and efficiently is more along the lines of filing a tax return when you're self-employed with three ex-wives, 14 kids, and two company cars you want to write off (that's not me, for the record; I don't even have a goldfish, let alone 14 kids).
What I'm saying in a not-so-concise format is that it's okay to outsource here and there. For a long time, I refused to put out articles and books/manuals that featured comprehensive programming, as I was all about how things need to be perfect for each individual.
Eventually, though, after a lot of requests from readers, I broke down and found a happy medium when I wrote my Ultimate Off-Season Training Manual; it is a choose-your-own-adventure type of book where you tested yourself on some athletic qualities and then followed one of two programs depending on the time of year.
The feedback was fantastic, and I realized that a lot of people were better off with an educated generic template than they were coming up with their own programs. That's why I was open to the idea of writing Maximum Strength when my co-author Matt Fitzgerald approached me with the idea. Effectively, we integrate comprehensive strength training, mobility/activation warm-ups, energy systems work, deloading, nutrition, supplementation, and quantifiable pre- and post-testing measures. For the majority of folks, these programs - with some minor modifications - do the trick.
For others, more advanced strategies are necessary. Some folks see personal trainers, physical therapists, or orthopedists. I do a lot of online consulting work in the corrective exercise realm, helping folks who have chronic aches and pains that don't necessarily qualify them for physical therapy because they don't interfere with activities of daily living, but do act up with weight-training or sprinting, for example. I also work with a lot of folks who have just been discharged from physical therapy and need to figure out how to effectively transition back to "normal" training.
So, with all this said, don't ever hesitate to outsource. Chances are there are people who outsource to YOU because you're an expert in some capacity where they need help. |
| Read more |
|
| 1. Hopefully you all can take at least a few minutes out of your schedule to remember those who were lost in 2001 and their families. (and we’re all sending good vibes your way, Steph)
2. I'll start off with a bang; high-heels for babies and children is the single-most moronic thing I've ever seen. If a grown woman wants to absolutely destroy her lower extremities by wearing heels, that's her choice. However, putting a baby in a pair of high heels as she's learning to walk is certifiable. Be careful watching the interview with these people, folks; you will actually get dumber.
Oh, and Britta Bacon? That’s seriously your name? Are you a water filter or a pork product?
3. I finally got around to checking out Alwyn Cosgrove and Mike Roussell’s Warpspeed Fat Loss e-book. This thing is fantastic; I’m annoyed with myself for waiting this long to open it up after they sent it my way a while ago.
I’ll actually be doing an interview with Mike on this very topic next week in my newsletter, so stay tuned – or check out Warpspeed Fat Loss yourself in the meantime.
4. Maybe if we didn’t give out drugs so easily, they wouldn’t be contaminating our drinking water. I never heard of teaching people to eat right and exercise leading to pollution...
5. Great quote from an email exchange I had with pitching specialist Ron Wolforth the other day: “I have truly been blessed in having peers who are truly cutting edge and who are more interested in getting it right than being thought of as right.”
6. Speaking of Ron, I just confirmed this past week that I’ll be presenting two one-hour lectures and a hands-on portion at his Ultimate Pitching Coaches Bootcamp in Houston on December 12-14. If you’re a baseball coach or you train baseball guys, definitely check this event out; there is going to be a lot of great information and thinking outside the box.
7. Just a quick heads-up: if you have questions about the Maximum Strength program (or any of my products, for that matter), please post them HERE instead of emailing me. I figured a comprehensive thread over at T-Nation would be a good way to get everything in one place. And, for those of you who have purchased Maximum Strength, don't forget to check out the online FAQ page to which we allude in the book.
Have a good weekend! I'll be dominating Pete in Fantasy Football this Sunday/Monday. |
| Read more |
|
| Q: A trainer at my gym was telling me that the best way for a bodybuilding competitor to perform lateral raises was to execute them in or slightly behind the frontal plane and in the "empty-can" hand position (he said this is good for long-term shoulder health since he claimed it would strengthen the supraspinatus) while leaning slightly forward.
Do you think this recommendation is conducive to long-term shoulder health, or would it lead to excessive wear and tear and potentially create impingement problems? Or is it a case of this being perfectly acceptable for some populations and a nightmare for others? If it is the latter, who can perform them this way and who should avoid them?
A: I disagree wholeheartedly. The empty can is a provocative test; it's what we do when we want to see just how angry an injured supraspinatus is.
If you want to keep the supraspinatus healthy, you don't need to make a dedicated effort to strengthen it. You need to strengthen the muscles that position the scapula so that there is more clearance through which that tendon can pass under the acromion process. These would include lower trapezius and serratus anterior. Strengthening the muscles of the rotator cuff will help to depress the humeral head as well.
There is also a definite role for thoracic spine mobility (as I wrote about in a previous newsletter) in this situation, as it helps dictate the positioning of the scapulae.
Sign-up Today for our FREE Baseball Newsletter and Receive a Copy of the Exact Stretches
used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
|
| Read more |
|
| Over a year ago, I wrote an article called Are You Doing Stupid Stuff in the Gym? In that article, I made a somewhat bold statement that seemed to ruffle some feathers:
"I've said it before and I'll say it again: any healthy male under the age of 50 can deadlift 400 within two years of proper training — and most can do it even faster than that."
Several people took issue with it, but as they say, opinions are like a**holes; everyone has got one. We proved that two years was a conservative estimate for a lot of folks when my business partner Pete pulled 400 after just 364 days of lifting.
Anyway, it's been a while since this statement of mine received any attention, but I just got this email the other day:
A while back you wrote an article on T-nation, and in it you wrote your belief that anyone could achieve a 400-pound deadlift in two years of training. Anyway, here's another point of data to support that.
I started working out July 06. I attempted my first DL that October and didn't start deadlifting regularly until February 07. I used a measly 215 lbs then. I made tremendous progress initially, hitting 385 in August 07. Then I stalled for a long time. In February 08 I made a slight gain to 390 then went cold again. I took a long break from DLing then started on the Coan DL program 7 weeks ago. Finally, 3 weeks ago I pulled 400 for a double, and this week I got 405 for a single.
That's been a goal of mine and I'm pumped to have finally achieved it.
Truth be told, I have absolutely no idea what kind of program this guy used to get to where he is, but it only took him 18 months from when he first started deadlifting regularly. Again, I'm not saying that your deadlift is the absolute measure of your progress or efforts, but I'd say that it's a reasonable consideration for those who are healthy and training regularly.
Get your deadlift up with Maximum Strength.
|
| Read more |
|
Today marks the first installment of my Tuesday Fantasy Football recap. I know this is a strength and conditioning/fitness/nutrition blog, so I’ll do my best to keep it at least loosely related to fitness. No promises in this regard, though.
Kevin Larrabee’s learned a lot in his few weeks as a Cressey Performance intern. He understands the importance of glenohumeral internal rotation for baseball players, can teach a good box squat, and has even managed to put a few inches onto his vertical jump. We’re even hoping that Kevin will soon realize that if you get stapled on bench press attempts at 300, 285, and 280 (in that order), that it’s probably better to cut your losses and move on to your assistance work rather than having another Spike and attempting 280 again. But, I digress...
This weekend, Kevin learned that you should never, ever, ever, ever, ever mess with EC in the realm of fantasy football. Here was the basic theme of Kevin’s weekend of football:
Yes, folks; he got bent over.
(and for the record, you shouldn’t rerack weights like this)
I mean, Tony Dungy didn’t even think Joseph Addai needed to play the 4th quarter to get me the win. In fact, my defense (Tennessee) outscored Kevin’s two running backs and quarterback combined. It was bittersweet, though, as New England fans (myself included) lost our quarterback (Tom Brady) for the season as Kevin lost his pride and #1 overall draft pick. Unfortunately for Kevin, unlike Brady, he doesn’t have a supermodel at home to console him. I guess those Star Trek reruns and Dungeons and Dragons sets will have to do.
Congrats to Jason SChuman for posting the high score of the week. And, yes, that “C” was intentionally capitalized.
1-0. You’re next, Pete. |
| Read more |
|
Q: I'm about to start Phase 2 of Maximum Strength and I'm wondering if there's a recommended substitute for the bar rollout. The plates at my gym aren't completely round. Should I suck it up and buy an ab wheel or is there something simple I can do instead? I appreciate your time!
A: You've got a few options. The first, as you noted, is to buy an ab wheel. They're awesome and we use them a ton at Cressey Performance - and they're very affordable at Perform Better.
Another option is to simply set up exactly the same as you would with a bar rollout, but instead, just do an isometric hold at end-range for 10-30s, depending on your fitness level.
If you can't quite do it at end-range, just bring the hands in toward the knees a bit and gradually work your way out as your stability improves.
Get Maximum Strength! |
| Read more |
|
LEARN
HOW TO
DEADLIFT
- Avoid the most common deadlifting mistakes
- 9 - minute instructional video
- 3 part follow up series
|
