When I was in fourth grade, I loved two things: sports and chicken fingers.
When I was about 8, I went on a 4-5 day trip to Gettysburg with my grandparents, and to this day, my grandmother jokes about how I ordered chicken fingers for every single lunch and dinner for the entire trip. Likewise, Tuesdays at the Sea Road School cafeteria was affectionately known as “nug-nug” days for the chicken nuggets my friends and I couldn’t wait to dominate each week.
Little did we know (at the time, at least) that we were really just eating a load of “mechanically separated chicken parts,” sugar, bread crumbs, corn starch, vegetable oil, and “leavening” and “anti-foaming” additives. In spite of my crazy activity level, it’s these stellar ingredients (and surely some of the other garbage I was eating) that were responsible for my remarkable transformation between my third and fourth grade school pictures.
Whoever said that you can’t gain “baby fat” in 4th grade never watched me crush nug-nugs.
Kidding aside (kind of), it should come as no surprise that I love to eat; at heart, I’m still a chubby kid who wants his chicken fingers. However, I fight my inner demons and stick to the healthy stuff. I’m proud to say that I was “chicken finger sober” for 16 years, but that streak ended on Monday night. Fortunately, I was working off a great recipe I picked up from Dave Ruel’s Metabolic Cooking e-book, one of my favorite resources of all time.
These fingers were “to die for,” so I thought I’d reach out to Dave to see if he’d be okay with me reprinting his Metabolic "Fried" Chicken Fingers recipe for my loyal readers. Knowing the joy that chicken fingers has brought to mankind for centuries, he kindly obliged – and here it is:
"INGREDIENTS (RECIPE MAKES 4 SERVINGS/16 FINGERS)
• 4 cooked chicken breasts (4oz each)
• 2 egg whites
• 1 teaspoon coconut oil
• ½ cup bran buds
• ½ cup oatmeal
• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• Salt and pepper
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 375°F. Prepare baking sheet by coating the coconut oil. Cut chicken breasts into four equal strips (you should have 16 strips total). Set aside. Grind oatmeal and bran buds in a food processor (or blender). Next, combine all dry ingredients in a large container with a tightly fitting lid. Shake well. This is your coating mixture.
2. Add egg whites in a medium bowl. Dip each strip in the egg whites. Then dip each strip (finger) in the coating mixture. Make sure each piece is well coated.
3. Place on the baking sheet. When all of your chicken has been coated and your baking sheet is full, place in the oven and bake for 10 mins or until golden. Then turn the fingers and bake for an additional 5-6 minutes."
Here's how ours turned out (and I can assure you that they tasted even better than they looked; I was more concerned with wolfing them down than I was with tastefully presenting them for the camera):
For more awesome recipes like this, be sure to check out Metabolic Cooking, a great resource to which you'll be referring for years to come. It (as well as its sister resource, Anabolic Cooking) is on sale for just $10 through the end of the day today
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For those of you who don't know, as part of the fifth generation of UCONN graduates in my family, I was a really proud Husky on Monday night when they won the NCAA Men's Basketball Championship. While Coach Calhoun and Kemba Walker will be getting a lot of media attention (and rightfully so) over the next few days, the man for whom I was the most thrilled wasn't someone who appeared in the box scores or post-game interviews. It was Chris West, the the Associate Head of Strength and Conditioning at UCONN, who got his first national championship ring.
From 2003 through 2005 (and even a bit in 2006) - as I was getting started in this field - I was a "sidekick" to Chris. During that time period, I helped Chris out with basketball and soccer. At the time, as I recall, they were all top 5 in the country: not a bad collection of athletes to be training!
Chris was an incredible mentor to me and afforded me tremendous opportunities to not only work with high level athletes, but also see all the important work that goes on behind the scenes. These experiences and conversations with Chris not only made me a better coach, but also showed me just the kind of work ethic it takes to be successful in the strength and conditioning field. Chris' passion for helping athletes made me realize that you can (and should) have a blast when you're coaching. Likewise, his insatiable desire to constantly be improving as a professional pushed me to be a little better each day - and a lot better over the course of a career.
And, I wasn't the only one; you can find many of Chris' other "understudies" doing great things in professional sports . One of them, Mike Irr, is the head strength and conditioning coach for the Charlotte Bobcats, and Mike and I texted back and forth Monday night not only as excited UCONN supporters, but also because we were both so excited for Chris to get the ring he deserved. It's countless hours of hard work rewarded.
As an interesting aside to this, I got down to a game at Gampel Pavilion last year and remarked to my uncle after that contest that the only way UCONN would win was if they had a dominant big man who could rebound and block shots. It was the case with the 1999 championship team when the combination of Jake Voskuhl and Kevin Freeman gave the Huskies a strong inside presence, and also in 2004 when Emeka Okafor was National Player of the Year and UCONN won its second national title.
Last year's Huskies just had tall guys, but no dominant big men. However, Alex Oriakhi's improvement from last year to this year was remarkable and clearly played a huge role in UCONN's success this year - and a huge part of that improvement absolutely, positively came in the weight room with Chris. You could see it in the way he used his strength to box out and set himself up in the low post (where he was dominant on Monday night) and the reactive ability he displayed with successive jumps in rebounding and blocking (4 blocked shots on Monday). Even more interestingly, the only time that UCONN struggled in the game - the last portion of the first half - was when Oriakhi was out with foul trouble. He was an essential part of not only the win in the finals, but the entire season.
You don't just find dominant big men; you develop them. While Oriakhi was already a pretty big dude when he got to college, I just didn't see the body control or athleticism last year that he showed this year. While some of that surely was a matter of instincts and on-the-court coaching, a lot of the credit goes to Coach West for a fantastic job with preparing him.
Congratulations, Chris!
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A lot of people know me as a guy with incredible willpower when it comes to eating; I’m not a guy who eats pizza, desserts, or really anything kind of junk. However, a lot of people take that to mean that I don’t enjoy food – but that couldn’t be further from the truth. I love to eat – but I prefer it to be healthy food options; give me a good steak and some fresh vegetables and I’ll be much happier than if I’d just spent some quality time with Ben and Jerry.
That’s why I’m always psyched when I get healthy recipes thrown my way. As much as I like healthy food, it’s easy to get stuck in ruts with the same things over and over again. Taking it a step further, now that I’m living with a wife, I have to keep in mind that she doesn’t tolerate a bland diet as easily as I could – and since she likes to cook, new recipes are pretty clutch for my marriage!
As such, I was really fired up when I read through Dave Ruel’s Metabolic Cooking, a resource consisting of over 250 awesome recipes for eating healthy. If you like John Berardi’s stuff in this regard, you’ll also love Dave’s.
Metabolic Cooking is a really expansive product, as it provides recipes for breakfasts, chicken/poultry, fish/seafood, red meat, pork, sides, smoothies, snacks, and vegetarian options. There were several things that really stood out for me about this fantastic resource.
The first thing I really took away from this resource was how to use different spices in cooking. You’ll get a kick out of this, but the ONLY thing I added to our wedding registry last year was a spice rack, as I wanted to use more herbs and spices in our cooking. I received it – but it’s been sitting idle in our kitchen since October simply because I didn’t know when to use things like thyme, sage, and rosemary. Sure enough, Dave includes a lot of these in his recipes – and they’ve been delicious additions to meat and vegetables. Check out the herbed green beans I made the other night.
He does some equally creative stuff with healthy salad dressings, too.
Second, Dave “convinced” me to start eating some pork again. I never really resisted including pork in my diet like a lot of people do nowadays (because they think it’s unhealthy), but I didn’t really have any good recipes that made me want to go out and buy some. That changed last week when I made some slow cooker chili pork the other night.
Third, Dave gave me something to do with the coconuts and fresh pineapples in our front yard during our honeymoon in Costa Rica. Check out this pina colada smoothie (yes, I even hacked up the coconut and pineapple myself). Before and afters:
Fourth, my wife and I eat a fair amount of ground turkey, which almost always comes in one-pound packages. The problem is that 16 oz of meat cooks up to 12oz of meat – and I’ll eat 7-8oz and my wife will eat 4-5oz. In other words, there are zero leftovers after we have dinner – and I get "hangry" (a combination of hungry and angry) when there’s nothing kicking around the next day for me to take to work. Dave’s got a great recipe called “Mexi Turkey-Eggs Skillet” that adds eggs (and some vegetables) to the ground turkey, which thickens it up and ensures that you’ll have some leftovers.
When all was said and done, my wife and I both had our dinners – and then had enough for lunch for both of us to take to work the next day. And I wasn’t hangry at all.
Fifth, on the logistical side of things, Dave has a cool feature in his e-book that allows you to easily navigate back and forth from the individual recipes to the table of contents (and vice versa). I hadn’t seen this before in an e-book and I absolutely love it (so much, in fact, that I plan to incorporate something similar where appropriate in my future products).
For those looking to lean out (or gain muscle, for that matter), Dave provides nutritional facts for each recipe and advice on whether to include it as a protein and fat, protein and carb, or “mixed” meal. So, it’s not just recipes; it’s very useful advice as well.
In case you couldn’t tell by now, I give this product about 47 thumbs up, as evidenced by the fact that all I’ve been doing is eating healthy food (and a lot of it) ever since it arrived. I mean, can you argue with this Lemon Herb Mustard Chicken? Not bad for a meathead strength coach, huh?
Trust me: this is a resource you will use for years to come. Pick up a copy and you won’t be disappointed: Metabolic Cooking. As an added bonus, it's on sale for 67% off this week - along with its "sister resource," Anabolic Cooking, which is also awesome. You can get them both for just $20 right now...pretty sweet deal.
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After I published my feature on Tim Collins' rise to the big leagues the other day, I had quite a few requests from readers to update them on how Tim did - so I thought I'd post a quick blog about it today.
Tim actually made his MLB debut on opening day, entering the game for the ninth inning with the Royals down 4-2. He pitched one inning, and gave up one hit and one walk, but no runs. He had one strikeout...of Torii Hunter (who'd hit a mammoth 461-foot HR earlier in the game).
It was a pretty special day for all of us. Sorry for the grainy photo (taken from my Blackberry), but here's Tim with my business partner, Pete, and me prior to the game.
As an interesting little aside to all of this, the phrase "Tim Collins" was actually trending on Twitter at the time that he entered the game on Thursday. My original piece was retweeted 75 times and recommended 270 times on Facebook, making it the busiest traffic day in EricCressey.com history - so that had to get the ball rolling in some regard. More importantly, I think a lot of people had really just been waiting for the debut, as it's an awesome story.
On a funny aside, we were joking that although he was trending on Twitter, no Kansas City fans would recognize him out of his jersey when we went out to dinner after the opener. That was true; we had a quiet dinner with Tim and his parents. The only recognition came when an arm reached back to grab Tim as we left the restaurant at 10:15PM.
It was Torii Hunter, the 13-year MLB veteran who is making $18 million this year and surely meets hundreds of new people every day. However, he recognized Tim - and took the time to congratulate him on his debut, tell him he was impressed with his stuff, and wish him well this season and beyond. Class act. Maybe we ought to all be Angels fans for a day in his honor?
Thanks to everyone for your kind words and support.
UPDATE: Tim wound up picking up his first MLB win on Sunday afternoon, pitching the 11th, 12th, and 13th innings for the Royals in their win over the Angels. His final line was 3IP, 2H, 0BB, 0ER, 5K. Check out the video highlight of his appearance.
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We received the following testimonial from a very satisfied Assess and Correct customer via email last week, and I thought I'd share.
"After spending five years heading in the wrong direction regarding my training, I was left with many injuries in my upper as well as my lower body. I had multiple muscle/strength imbalances and horrible posture which caused overuse injuries, chronic pain, pinched nerves and other problems. I physically couldn’t do a single thing without causing some sort of pain. Even though I was only 22 years old at the time, I just assumed that I had headed so far down the wrong path that I would never recover and never be able to comfortably work out again. I accidentally came across one of Eric’s articles about one of my many problems. I read the article and instantly looked for others.
"After some deliberation I decided that Assess and Correct might be something that could help me. I gave it a try, consistently performing the exercises, in combination with other exercises recommended by Cressey, Robertson, and Hartman aimed at restoring correct posture. The best way to describe this product was that it completely changed my life.
"I have loads of mobility and stability in all the right places. I went through every exercise or mobility drill in every progression even if I didn't need to. All the exercises are described thoroughly and simple to complete. Injuries or no injuries, I would recommend this product to every single person who lives and active lifestyle. I am a believer and will be a lifetime follower of Eric Cressey, Mike Robertson, and Bill Hartman. Thanks, guys!"
Click here to pick up a copy of Assess and Correct for yourself!
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Professional baseball really is an enigma.
On one hand, some professional players are bad-bodied one-trick ponies who aren’t athletic enough to train their way out of a wet paper bag. And, many of them are okay with it.
On the other hand, you’ve got players getting arrested for crimes so stupid that you wonder if they even appreciate the fact that they get to play a game for millions of dollars each year. They’re just so anxious to take it for granted that they let waste it away.
It would be a really depressing picture if it wasn’t for optimism and enthusiasm of the millions of up-and-coming baseball players around the globe who dream of one day playing in the big leagues. And, we DO have some diamonds in the rough in professional baseball who stand out as fantastic role models for these aspiring players with their efforts both on and off the field.
I’m thrilled to say that the major leagues gained another Ambassador of Awesomeness today when the Kansas City Royals announced that Cressey Performance Athlete Tim Collins would be on their opening day roster - and that's why I'm probably on a plane to Kansas City as you read this. While hundreds of young athletes (and our staff and adult clients) in the Cressey Performance circle alone already appreciate Tim as a tremendously positive influence in our community, with this promotion, a lot more people are going to appreciate just how special Tim’s story is.
If you’ve read this blog at all in the past, you’ve probably come across Tim’s story as the ultimate longshot. In case you missed it, check out this article.
The long story short is that Tim was overlooked by every single Division 1 school in the country in spite of being the ace of a high school team that compiled a record of 91-5 over Tim’s four years of school. His high school numbers were absolutely video-game-like, but he was overlooked because he was only 5-5, 130 pounds. Former Toronto Blue Jays general manager JP Ricciardi came across Tim by accident in the summer of 2007 when scouting an American Legion game – where Tim struck out all 12 batters he faced with a low 80s fastball, but an absolute “Kaboom” curveball. Two days later, JP and the Blue Jays took a leap of faith, and in the single greatest baseball scouting story I’ve come across, signed Tim – who, at age 17, had never left the Northeast – and sent him to rookie ball…the next day!
This is where Cressey Performance entered the equation. Tim had been committed to play at the Community College of Rhode Island on a baseball scholarship – and he was going to be roommates with another one of my athletes. The two had played against one another in high school extensively and stayed in touch – and when Tim got back from his first few months in minor league baseball, this “roommate that never was” encouraged me to reach out to Tim because he thought I could really help Tim. I made the call, and the next day, here’s what walked in to CP on October 12, 2007:
That, folks, is what 5-5, 131 pounds looks like. And, that’s a body that was lucky to touch 82-83 on the radar gun. That’s only the tip of the iceberg, though.
That first week, my business partner, Tony, and I took Tim to the track with us to do some movement training. I figured, “Hey, this is a professional athlete; he’ll be able to move pretty well.” I couldn’t have been more wrong. Tony and I whipped him all over the track. He got beaten by a good 8-10 yards on every single sprint, and spent more time wheezing than he did training. He had the fuzzy dice (curveball), but no horse power in the engine. His vertical jump was 25.0 inches (a peak power of 4497 watts, considering the body weight of 131).
It would have been very easy for Tim to tap out that morning at the track. He could have just resigned himself to being a slug in the off-season like so many professional baseball players. Pitchers aren’t athletes, right? Well, this one committed himself to becoming one.
Over the next three off-seasons, the entire Cressey Performance community watched Tim transform. Each year, his weight and athleticism shot up – and he’s now about 172 pounds with a vertical jump of 38.7 inches (7453 watts - or a 66% improvement in 3.5 years).
More importantly, this athleticism directly carried over to increased throwing velocity and pitching performance. In 2008, he jumped up to 87-89mph. In 2009, it was 90-92, and 2010, he was 92-94 – while reportedly touching a 97 on the stadium gun. Oh, and entering the 2011 season, Tim had a career ERA of 2.26 in 223 professional innings, - with 329 strikeouts (13.3 per 9 innings). And, he just turned 21 in September.
That’s the tip of the iceberg, though. We’ve had lots of guys get more athletic and perform better in their chosen sports. There are a few things that make Tim’s story even more special.
First, of course, is the simple fact that he defied the odds and has made it to the big leagues as a long-shot – when only 3% of players ever drafted ever make it this far in their career. And, he did it as an undrafted free agent signing. Nobody ever crunches the numbers on these guys because, frankly, it almost never happens; they are scouting “afterthoughts.”
So, it’s an awesome story because it meant that every time Tim went out and “shoved” against opposing hitters on his way through the minor leaguers, he also “shoved” against baseball traditionalism. He showed that pitchers need to be athletes, that strength and conditioning really can change a career significantly, and that there are some situations where scouts really don’t know a stud from a dud. And, he has shown – and will continue to show – loads of impressionable young athletes that working hard really does pay off, even while other professional athletes are being lazy and destroying their bodies and careers, or being unethical and taking the easy way out.
Second, and more interestingly to me, I’ve watched Tim mature exponentially as a person – far moreso than anyone else his age who went to college. He was thrown into the real world quickly, and he matured and thrived, coming out of his shell and becoming a wildly popular part of Cressey Performance. The kid who used to barely talk when he came in to train now spends about eight hours a day at CP – between training and just hanging out in the office chatting with other clients and our staff. In perhaps my favorite story, last spring, we watched Tim sell over 90 boxes of Girl Scout cookies for one of our adult client’s daughter. He literally set up a makeshift desk in our office and met everyone at the door. And, even against the objections of CP nutrition expert, Brian St. Pierre, just about everyone obliged because, well, it was Tim – and he makes people smile.
Simply, changing his body and surrounding himself with the right people in the right environment played a big part in shaping Tim as a person. While quantifiable results are certainly very important, these more subjective changes are ones that every fitness professional and strength and conditioning coach hopes for with their clients and athletes. As I see Tim signing autographs, doing charity work, and taking younger players under his wing, I’m thrilled that he’s “paying it forward.”
The Kansas City Royals might not be a favorite to win the American League Central, but there’s still something to be excited about in Kansas City right now: a great guy getting to live a dream to which he has dedicated himself relentlessly to achieve.
Congratulations, Tim. I know I can speak for all the Cressey Performance staff and clients when I say that we couldn’t be more proud of you and happy for you. Thanks for having us all along for the ride!
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Just over three years ago, during a period where oblique strains were on the rise in professional baseball and the USA Today profiled this "new" injury, I wrote an article on what I perceived to be the causes of the issue. Check it out: Oblique Strains and Rotational Power.
This year, the topic has come back to the forefront, as players like Joba Chamberlain, Sergio Mitre, Curtis Granderson, and Brian Wilson have experienced the injury this spring training alone.
While my thoughts from the initial article are still very much applicable, I do have some additional thoughts on the matter for 2011:
1.Is anyone surprised that the rise in oblique injuries in baseball is paralleled by the exponential rise in hip injuries and lower back pain? I don't care whether you work in a factory or play a professional sport; violent, repetitive, and persistently unilateral-dominant rotation (especially if it is uncontrolled) will eventually chew up a hip, low back, or oblique; it's just a matter of where people break down.
In other words, pro athletes are generating a tremendous amount of power from the hips - moreso, in fact, than they ever have before thanks to the advances in strength training, nutrition, supplementation, and, unfortunately, in some cases, illegal "pharmaceutical interventions." Assuming mechanics are relative good (as they should be in a professional athlete), rotate a hip faster and you'll improve bat speed and throwing velocity; it's that simple. This force production alone is enough to chew up a labrum, irritate a hip capsule, and deliver enough localized eccentric stress to cause a loss in range of motion. The Cliff's Notes version is that we've increased hip strength and power (more on this in a bit), but most folks have overlooked tissue quality (foam rolling, massage, and more focal approaches like Active Release and Graston) and mobility training.
If the hips stiffen up, the lumbar spine will move excessively in all planes of motion - and, in turn, affect the positioning of the thoracic spine. Throw off the thoracic spine, and you'll negatively impact scapular (and shoulder), respiratory (via the rib cage), and cervical spine. Hips that are strong - but have short or stiff musculature can throw off the whole shebang.
2. "Strong" isn't a detailed enough description. I think that it goes beyond that, as you have to consider that a big part of this is a discrepancy between concentric and eccentric strength. Concentrically, you have the trailing leg hip generating tremendous rotational power, and eccentrically, you have the lead leg musculature decelerating that rotation.
Moreover, because the front hip can't be expected to dissipate all that rotational velocity - and because the thoracic spine is rotating from the drive of the upper extremities - you put the muscles acting at the lumbar spine in a situation where they must provide incredible stiffness to resist rotation. It is essentially the opposite of being between a rock and a hard place; they are the rock between two moving parts. Structurally, though, they're well equipped to handle this responsibility; just look at how the line of pull of each of these muscles (as well as the tendinous inscriptions of the rectus abdominus) runs horizontally to resist rotation. That's eccentric control.
How do we train it? Definitely not with sit-ups, crunches, or sidebends. The former are too sagittal plane oriented and not particularly functional at all. The latter really doesn't reflect the stability-oriented nature of our "core." The bulk of our oblique strain prevention core training program should be movements that resist rotation:
While on the topic, it's also important to resist lumbar hypextension, as poor anterior core strength can allow the rib cage to flare up (increases the stretch on the most commonly injured area of the obliques: at the attachment to the 11th rib on the non-throwing side) and even interfere with ideal respiratory function (the diaphragm can't take on its optimal dome shape, so we overuse accessory breathing muscles like pec minor, sternocleidomastoid, scalenes, etc).
So, to recap: I don't think oblique strains are a new injury epidemic or the result of team doctors just getting better with diagnostics. Rather, I think that we're talking about a movement dysfunction that has been prevalent for quite some time - but we just happen to have had several of them in a short amount of time that has made the media more alert to the issue. The truth is that if we worried more about "inefficiency" and not pathology," journalists could have "broken" this story a long time ago.
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Packing in the Neck - This is an old one, but a good one from Charlie Weingroff. Charlie talks about proper neck positioning while lifting - a topic that I think gets really overlooked in discussions of appropriate lifting technique. In case you can't tell from this deadlift technique, I'm in full agreement with Charlie.
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Jay Bonn is a current Cressey Performance intern, but also a Lean Eating Coach for Precision Nutrition. He recently pulled together an excellent piece on the commonalities of success in strength training programs, sports nutrition strategies, and strength and conditioning coaching. I thought you all might like to take a look, as it's a great read:
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