Home 2013 (Page 15)

Quick and Easy Ways to Feel and Move Better: Installment 39

Here are this week's nutrition and strength and conditioning tips from Greg Robins.  Hopefully, they make your week a little more awesome!

1. Try these tips for a better late night smoothie.

If you’re after increased strength, performance, and muscle mass, you need to conquer two variables. One is eating nutrient dense foods (and plenty of them), and the other is getting quality sleep. Many people turn to a smoothie later in the evening as an easy way to add additional calories to their day. If you’re in this boat, consider using some ingredients that will help you tackle both of the previously mentioned variables. Check out this smoothie, and give it a try!

12-16oz Almond Milk (almonds are high in magnesium, which can help you relax!)
½ -1 Cup Plain Greek Yogurt (yogurt is rich in calcium – which can reduce stress – and contains tryptophan – which can aid in sleeping!)
½-1 Banana (These guys are also high in magnesium, as well as potassium, which will aid in relaxation and stress reduction!)
1 Cup Dark Cherries (cherries are rich in melatonin!)
¼- ½ Cup Raw Oats (oats are also rich in magnesium, potassium, and calcium!)

For additional protein needs, you can throw in a scoop of whey as well!

2. Consider this video for your sumo deadlift technique.

3. Prioritize adherence for nutritional success.

Nutrition is an area that frustrates me. It goes beyond the fact that deep down, I wish ice cream, cereal, and anything engulfed by bread was the pinnacle of healthy eating. My frustration has to do with how we approach nutrition. What I am about to tell you is not revolutionary, nor does it apply solely to nutrition.

If you want to be successful, prioritize adherence.

If I asked a handful of people what the priorities would be in helping someone improve nutrition, they would likely spit out a few things. Eat real food, drop the carbs, and so on. All these ideas are worth considering, but all leaps and bounds away from the top of the priority list.

Nutrition is often limited by the person, not by the information. The information is there; it’s everywhere, although some information is better than others. The reason changes aren’t being made has more to do with the person (or with YOU).

If I were to choose one thing to prioritize in a nutrition plan, it would be adherence. Adherence is your ability to stay the course, or stick to the plan. When you ask yourself “What do I need to know about this person?,” and “What can I do to make sure this person can be successful adhering?,” you will see what needs to be prioritized. The same goes for you. Make changes slowly, and choose things to which you know you can adhere.

4. Try this front squat technique cue.

5. If it’s important, just do it.

Recently, I had a conversation about whether implementing a certain training strategy had value in my programs. Interestingly, the debate wasn’t about whether or not using a certain exercise was worth it; instead, it was about “how” worth it. The exercises in question were ones that have a lot of reward. The problem was whether or not people would take them seriously enough not only to do them correctly, but also to learn from them and keep their lessons in mind throughout the rest of the training day – not to mention the rest of the day in general.

As an example, let’s use breathing drills. We know that breathing drills are important. Challenging someone to change their breathing, and to be aware of it more often, can have incredible transfer in improving a number of different qualities. However, the average person tends to miss the value of their application. While we can debate the quality of coaching, and explanation they are receiving, in relation to its continued practice; the truth is no amount of information is enough to make someone do something they are not willing to practice. If the majority of people aren’t going to do it, is it worthwhile to include it at all?

YES, I think so. With our example, let’s say that adding breathing drills takes two minutes of additional time. Now let’s imagine only 20% of the people who do them actually take the concept to heart. 120 people will come through our facility on a given day. That means 24 people will have picked up a concept that has incredible value. In fact, those 24 people have completely revamped their thought process, and are benefiting from it ten-fold. That may seem like a futile effort, but in the end, the others didn’t receive anything negatively from their inclusion, and the 24 who bought in have received a mighty return.

The take home message is that if something is worth doing, then you need to include it. If people choose not to do it enough, or not do it properly, it’s their loss. If you don’t include something based purely on whether or nor not you think it’s going to hit home with your athletes, it’s like counting them out from the start. Give them a chance to succeed using the best of what you know. Furthermore, as the ones who benefit begin to show improvement, the likelihood that others will follow suit is very high.

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Understanding Stride Foot Alignment: Subtle Changes Yield Big Results for Tim Collins

In today's guest video blog, Cressey Performance Pitching Coordinator Matt Blake talks about stride foot alignment and its effect on the pitching delivery.  Matt is an important contributor on the Elite Baseball Mentorships team, and in this post, he breaks down how Kansas City Royals pitcher Tim Collins' stride foot alignment changed over the course of the past few years as he dramatically improved his K:BB ratio in the big leagues.

Click here to learn more about Elite Baseball Mentorships; we'd love to have you at one of our future events.

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New Fitocracy Article: Finding Your Accountability

I recently had an article published in the Fitocracy Knowledge section.  Check it out:

--> Finding Your Accountability <--

I draw one of my most interesting parallels of all time in this article, so I think you'll find it amusing!

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 4/4/13

Here's this week's list of recommended strength and conditioning reading:

Mobility Exercise of the Week: Palmar Fascia Soft Tissue Work - This is a reincarnation from the archives of EricCressey.com. CP coach and massage therapist Chris Howard talks about a commonly overlooked area for self myofascial release and manual therapy: the hand.

Passion, Hard Work, and a Little Luck Will Help You Find Your Niche - For those interested in the business side of things, here's a Podcast interview with me from last week on the topic of finding your niche in the business world.  There are some good lessons in here, regardless of whether you're in the fitness industry or not.

Baseball 2013: Here Come the Flamethrowers - The Wall Street Journal did a pretty good job with this article, which details how advances in science - from training techniques to video analysis - have helped to push pitching velocity higher and higher in MLB with each passing year.

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Strength Exercise of the Week: 1-arm Bottoms-up Kettlebell Turkish Get-Up

I'm a big fan of the Turkish Get-up.  It's one of those exercises that affords so many benefits - core stability, hip mobility, scapular control, rotator cuff control - that you could make a list a mile long and still forget a few of the positives.  It is, however, one of those exercises where every rep takes quite a bit of time to execute, and there are a lot of cues to remember.  In fact, in referring to Turkish Get-ups the other day, a 17-year-old Cressey Performance athlete remarked:

"It's like solving a damn puzzle every step of the way and that's just to do one rep...stupidest thing I've ever seen in my program."

I like to think of it as "exposure to a rich proprioceptive environment," but I guess we'll have to agree to disagree!  With that said, regardless of what you call it, it's important to not let people rush through the get-up, as it should be more "segmented" to ensure that they don't miss out of the benefits.  Young athletes, in particular, will want to speed through it and try to make it one fluid movement.  One of my favorite ways to prevent rushing is to simply switch to a bottoms-up kettlebell get-up.

Going bottoms-up increases the stability demands at the upper extremity, and in a more unstable environment, you have to move a bit slower. Additionally, this serves as a great challenges to the scapular stabilizers, rotator cuff, and grip musculature.

The next time you find yourself rushing through the get-up - or dealing with a client or athlete who is going through it too quickly - try going bottoms-up; it should clean up some of the issues you're seeing.

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Preventing Pitching Injuries: You Get What You Train

Today's guest post comes from my friend and college, physical therapist Eric Schoenberg.  Eric is an integral part of our Elite Baseball Mentorships, and will be contributing more and more regularly here to outline some of the topics we'll cover in these mentorships.

As this great article from Tom Verducci at Sports Illustrated pointed out a few years ago, injuries cost MLB clubs $500 million dollars (an average of $16+ million/team) in 2011. In addition, over 50% of starting pitchers in MLB will go on the disabled list each year. Although there are many factors that contribute to these staggering numbers, an overwhelming majority of these injuries are due to five simple words:

"You Get What You Train."

This saying was made popular by the great physical therapist Shirley Sahrmann in her work at Washington University in St. Louis. This premise (in baseball terms) covers almost every issue that we encounter in the areas of injury prevention and performance enhancement. Here are some examples to illustrate the point:

  • If a pitcher is allowed to throw with bad mechanics (misuse), the result is a kid who is really good at throwing wrong and an increased risk of injury.
  • If high pitch counts (overuse) are allowed at a young age, the result is a pitcher throwing with fatigue, mechanical breakdown, and ultimately decreased performance and injury.
  • If a pitcher “throws with pain” (poor communication) due to pressure from coaches, parents, and teammates (culture of baseball), the result is compensated movement, decreased performance, and ultimately injury.
  • If a “one-size fits all approach” is rolled out in a strength and conditioning program or a pitching academy, then the result will be a program that doesn’t adequately “fit” anyone.
  • If performing “arm care programs” and long toss programs incorrectly before a game or practice is the norm, then the result will be athletes that are improperly “tuned” neurologically and fatigued before they even step on the mound for their first pitch.
  • If a hypermobile athlete performs a stretching program to “get loose”, then the result will be an athlete that has more instability than he can handle ultimately will get injured.
  • If we teach an athlete to get his shoulder blades “down and back” when his throwing shoulder is already depressed and downwardly rotated, then what we get is more strength in a dysfunctional position.
  • If we don’t teach proper movement, then we will get exactly what we train. The correct exercise performed incorrectly is a bad exercise.

This point is illustrated in the videos below. In the first video, the only instruction given to the athlete was to hold the top of a pushup on the elevated surface. As you can see, there is clear dyskinesia in the scapulae which if repeated without correction would result in reinforcement of the faulty movement pattern. Without actually seeing the shoulder blades (shirt off) or at the least putting your hands on the athlete, this faulty pattern is missed and the athlete will get worse.

In the next video, the athlete is instructed to get into the same position, however the athlete is cued to “engage the shoulder blade muscles and don’t let the shoulder blades come off your ribcage”. This simple cue can be coupled with some manual correction to activate the proper muscles to achieve a proper movement pattern.

In summary, both of these videos can be called a “pushup hold” or “elevated plank,” but only one achieves the desired movement and activation pattern.

This concept of “you get what you train” becomes a bigger problem when you realize that baseball players rarely play for the same coach or in the same “system” for more than a year or two (different leagues/levels, coaching changes, etc.). In addition, it takes a while before faulty movements and overuse reach the threshold where an athlete becomes symptomatic. As a result, there is no direct cause and effect and no “blame” to assign. A coach that overuses a kid in his 13 year-old season is never identified to be the actual cause of that same kid’s UCL tear in his 16 year-old season. This lack of accountability is a huge factor in the injury epidemic across all levels of baseball.

The goal of the Elite Baseball Mentorships is to bring together leaders in the baseball and medical communities in an effort to be proactive and share ideas to help improve the overall health of the game of baseball and its players.  We'd love it if you'd join us for one of these events; please visit www.EliteBaseballMentorships.com for more information.

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Quick and Easy Ways to Feel and Move Better: Installment 38 (April Fool’s Day)

Today, Greg Robins has a little fun with our quick and easy tips.  You see, this is the April Fool's Day edition.  Try not to take yourselves too seriously, people!

1. Consider supplementing with Mediocrity +/-.

It seems a lot of people have the same goals in mind: they want to be strong, but not too strong. They want to be lean, but not too lean. If this sounds like you, you may be selling yourself short if you aren’t supplementing with Mediocrity +/-. This product blends together some of the most powerful ingredients to help you get to your goal. Let’s have a look at a few!

  • Inconsistent effort: Inconsistent effort is the precursor to inconsistency in general and has been shown to have a positive correlation with average, to below average, results.
  • Excuses: Let’s face it; nobody actually wants to confront the things that are holding back their progress. Excuses are a top ingredient for those looking to get around the truth. Research shows they can have a short-term effect on boosting self-validation. This is a perfect complement to your efforts in avoiding what it takes to be extraordinary.
  • Conflicting Goals: The guys in the lab threw in a bunch of conflicting goals, which is great news. With all these competing demands in the mix, you are sure to never really achieve anything notable in one category. Instead, you will be able to maintain slight decency in multiple areas.
  • Comfortable Situations: This is really cutting-edge. Using the most recent advances in science, they were able to include high doses of comfortable situations, guaranteeing that you will be able to avoid any kind of physical or mentally challenges. Research showed that a test group (subjects were given an effective dose of comfortable situations) was able to maintain or lower their current fitness levels 100% better than a control group that was given varying amounts of uncomfortable situations. In fact, each person in the control group all showed an amount of progress. As you can see, getting outside of comfortable could totally thwart your efforts, so every little bit helps!

Sounds pretty incredible, but not too incredible, right? Make sure to check this out and head to your local retailer as soon as it’s convenient!

2. Ask more people questions so you can share your opinions and or talk about yourself.

If there’s one sure-fire way to get by in this world, it’s by going out of your way to make sure people know what you think, and what you’ve done. Furthermore, it’s ten times more effective when you voice your opinion after asking someone for his or her expertise. While I am sure this is a sure fire way to build an excellent reputation in any field, it really goes a long way in the fitness industry.

Want to make a lasting impact on someone? Try it out:

The first step is to completely close your mind to any options outside of what you have deemed correct. While not imperative, it is helpful to make sure you have as little hands-on experience as possible using your decided approach. In fact, if you can keep the sample size to you alone, it would be ideal.

Next, seek out someone who has established themselves in the field, or that you respect for the results they have produced with clients or themselves.

Once you have taken the initiative to seek them out for guidance, hop on the first opportunity to get the conversation moving in a direction that allows you to bring up your thoughts. The easiest way to do this is to ask them for their opinion on the subject. When they give you an answer, comment quickly with something like “That makes sense, but how about…” From there, you can give a detailed synopsis of your findings. Carry a tone that makes it clear you aren’t considering your findings in relation to theirs, but rather that yours are superior.

Lastly, don’t make the mistake of applying your strategies, learning through trial and error, and continually evaluating and adopting new concepts to better your approach through time. If you do, in time you might actually garner the attention you seek in a more positive light.

3. Continually seek perfection.

Not enough people are seeking perfection in their lives. When you seek perfection, the world becomes infinitely better. Why? The answer is simple: because you will never achieve it. After all, what could be more fulfilling than seeking out something that doesn’t exist? It gives us a wonderful sense of security that there is reason for not doing the things that ARE possible, albeit somewhat short of our currently decided ideals.

If we continually focus on ideal scenarios, we will never have to learn about resolving problems with solutions, we certainly won’t have to evaluate and learn from misfortune, and we will never have to face a scenario where we managed to make the absolute most of what we had.

I’m telling you, guys, if you’re patient the perfect program may just appear. You’ll surely discover the perfect diet for you, the perfect time, the perfect body, and the perfect partner.

Are you so ignorant that you don’t think perfect form exists? What about perfect movement qualities, and perfect symmetry? Keep restraining yourself from anything shy of absolutely perfect. This way, you can be sure to never realize your potential or help others in a similar situation work productively with what they have now.

4. Set a new personal record EVERY training session.

I was hesitant to share this, because it’s pretty amazing stuff. I have actually figured out how to set a new personal best for myself every time I train. Sounds pretty awesome, right? Want to know the best part? It’s easy!

In fact, if you just do new exercises every time you train, you will always set new personal records. It’s great!

Gone are the days where you bust your tail month after month to make little improvements in the basic foundational exercises. With this approach, you can spare yourself the countless hours of honing in technique as well as the many lessons learned about patience and discipline. Furthermore, you will no longer need to concern yourself with understanding how to manage variables, transfer of training means, or how to read your body to make progress. Every training session is a guaranteed success, and a new PR waits just 24–48 hours away.

If you’ve been slowly compiling an “impressive” training history, where you can look back and celebrate small amounts of progress over the course of months, years, and even decades…STOP! The key to personal ego inflation and false measures of progress await you. So get started!

5. Cut back, because you’re probably overtraining.

Lately there’s been a lot of banter about the “myth” of overtraining. Don’t believe the hype. In fact, you probably are working way too hard.

Let’s be honest, these days it’s common practice for people to work relentlessly for what they want. In fact, laziness is a small act of Congress away from being banished from our vocabulary altogether.

I know, you’ve probably heard something like “overtraining is an easy cop out to give people a reason to do less.” That’s just not the case. Really, if you want more, when has it ever been true that working harder made it happen? We all know that the better approach would be to scale back our efforts and push ourselves less often.

Examine what you’re doing. All that sweat, and exertion is not the key to pushing forward. All that effort to prepare good food, get to bed on time, and resist activities that negatively impact recovery? That’s hard to do. In fact, it’s too hard. So starting today, remember that the answer is almost never to look at what else you could put forth; it’s about what you could scale back.

Happy April Fool's Day!

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EliteBaseballMentorships.com: Taking Baseball Preparation to the Next Level

As many of you know, my colleagues Matt Blake, Eric Schoenberg, and I introduced our Elite Baseball Mentorships program back in the fall, and the first phase 1 event in early January was a big success.  Attendees included strength and conditioning coaches, baseball coaches, physical therapists, athletic trainers, massage therapists, and chiropractors - and the feedback was fantastic.

With that in mind, today, I'm excited to announce the debut of our mentorships website, www.EliteBaseballMentorships.com

On this page, you'll be able to find information on the agendas and dates for upcoming courses, see testimonials from previous attendees, and register to take part in the fun.  Our next two events will be June 23-25 (Phase 1) and August 18-20 (Phase 2). 

As a participant, you'll attend lectures, review case studies, observe training, and interact with hundreds of high school, college, and professional baseball players. We feel strongly that these events provide the premier baseball education experience in the industry, and we'd love an opportunity to show you why.

Over the next few weeks, we'll be featuring some guest blogs from CP pitching coordinator Matt Blake and physical therapist Eric Schoenberg to complement my own writing so that you can get a feel for how this provides a unique, multi-disciplinary educational opportunity.  In the meantime, be sure to check out www.EliteBaseballMentorships.com to learn more and sign up, as we expect these to sell out quickly.

All the Best,

Eric Cressey

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So You Want to Start Sprinting?

While sprinting has been around since the dawn of man, only in the past few years has it really taken off as true fitness trend. In other words, it was either what we did to kill our dinner in prehistoric times, or it was a modern athletic competition. Only recently have we realized that doing sprint work for our interval training is a tremendously effective way to get/stay lean, enhance mobility, improve athleticism, and prepare ourselves for the demands that life throws our way.

Heading out to sprint full-tilt when you haven’t been doing any running work in recent months is, however, analogous to signing up for calculus when you haven’t brushed up on basic math of late. The main difference is that you can’t rip your hamstrings off your pelvis doing calculus!

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Sprint work requires tremendous mobility, good tissue quality, and adequate strength to tolerate significant ground reaction forces and a wide variety of joint angles. You don’t prepare for this with your “typical” gym workouts, so before I have some specific modifications in place that you’ll want to follow. To that end, below, I’ve provided you with seven tips you can apply to ease into sprint work so that you can get the benefits of it with less of the risk.

1. Do these foam rolling drills and four mobility exercises every day for a month.

These drills are like summer reading before a tough English class. You have to do them so that you can hit the ground running (pun intended).

2. Sprint uphill first.

People often get hurt when they overstride; they’ll pull the hamstrings on the front leg. Sprinting uphill doesn’t really allow you to overstride, though, and it’s also good because you go up with each step, but don’t come down quite as much. Ground reaction forces are much lower, so this is a great option for easing into top-speed sprinting. (great studies here and here, for those interested).

While it’s more ideal to do uphill sprinting outside, it is okay to do this on a treadmill. After all, you’re just trying to lose your spare tire or be a little better in beer league softball, not go to the Olympics.

I like to see a month of 2x/week uphill sprint work before folks start testing the waters on flat terrain.

3. Don’t sprint at 100% intensity right away.

Contrary to what you may have heard, you don’t have to run at 100% intensity to derive benefits from sprint work. In fact, a lot of the most elite sprinters in the world spend a considerable amount of time running at submaximal intensities, and they are still lean and fast.

The bulk of your sprint work should be in the 70-90% of top speed range. You might work up to some stuff in the 90-100% zone as you’re fully warmed up, but living in this top 10% all the time is a recipe for injury, especially if you’re over the age of 35-40 and degenerative changes are starting to kick in.

When you first start out, sprinting is new and exciting, and it's very easy to get overzealous and push the volume and frequency side of the equation just as you would the intensity side.  Don't do it.  For most folks, twice a week is a sufficient complement to a comprehensive strength training program, and the session shouldn't last for more than 30-45 minutes - most of which will be you resting between bouts of sprinting.  If you find that they're 90-120 minute sessions, you're either doing too much volume or not working hard enough.  The speed and quality of your work will fall off pretty quickly as you fatigue, so be careful about forcing things too quickly.  Beyond just injury prevention benefits, taking it slower on the progressions side of things allows you to test out your footwear of a few weeks to make sure that they're the right shoes for you.

5. Don't sprint on pavement.

I can't think of a more unforgiving surface than pavement, especially since it means that you're more likely to get hit by a car. Unfortunately, it's also the more easy accessible surface for most people. In an ideal world, I like to see folks sprint on grass, artificial turf, or a track surface. Broken glass and hot coals would also be preferable to pavement (for the record, that was a joke, people; don't be that schmuck who goes out to try it).

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6. Don't sprint through fatigue early on.

This is a "go by feel" kind of recommendation. On one hand, you have to sprint through some fatigue to get in the volume it takes to derive the training effects you want: namely, fat loss. However, we also have to appreciate that states of fatigue drive injury rates sky-high in the athletic world. With that trend in mind, I encourage people to run conservatively in the first few months of their sprint training programs; in other words, don't allow a lot of fatigue to accumulate. Instead, take a little extra time between sprints. Then, as your sprinting mechanics and fitness improves (and you've gotten rid of the initial soreness), you can push through some fatigue.

7. Generally speaking, sprint before your lower body strength training work, not after.

People often ask me when the best point in one's training split is to sprint.  As a general rule of thumb, I prefer to have people sprint before they do their lower body strength training sessions.  We might have athletes that will combine the two into one session (sprinting first, of course), but most fitness oriented sprinters would sprint the day or two prior to a lower body session.  A training schedule I like to use for many athletes and non-athletes alike is:

Mo: Lower Body Strength Training (with athletes, we may do some sprint work before this as well)
Tu: Upper Body Strength Training
We: Sprint Work
Th: Lower Body Strength Training
Fr: Upper Body Strength Training
Sa: Sprint Work
Su: Off

In this case, the intensive lower body work is consolidated into three 24-36-hour blocks (Mo, We-Th, Sa).

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Conversely, I've also met lifters who like to sprint at 70-80% effort the day after a lower body strength training session, as they feel like it helps with promoting recovery.

Closing Thoughts

As you can tell, while there are definitely some tried and true strategies for avoiding injury when you undertake a sprinting program, there are also some areas that are open to a bit of interpretation.  The value of incorporating sprinting into one's program is undeniable, though, so I'd encourage you to test the waters to see how it fits in with your strength and conditioning programs.  At the very least, it'll give you some variety and help get you outdoors for some fresh air.

If you're looking for ideas on how to incorporate sprinting in a comprehensive strength and conditioning program, I'd encourage you to check out my latest resource, The High Performance Handbook

HPH-main

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Fitness Feeds: A Collaborative Upcycling Effort for Charity

Recently, I had a conversation with my good friend John Romaniello about charity work. John brought up how he is most passionate about feeding those who can’t afford to eat in America, and something he said hit a nerve with me:

"I find it to be the very definition of irony that we spend much of our time in the fitness world telling people to eat less to lose weight or eat more to gain weight. Meanwhile, in America, there are people who still can’t afford to eat – period."

I thought back to when I was a kid and discovered that my mother (a high school teacher) kept food in a drawer of her desk to feed students who came to school hungry. It was astounding to me that in my hometown – a reasonably affluent community in Southern Maine – there were still families who couldn’t afford to eat.

John and my conversation ultimately brought in another fitness friend, Ben Bruno, and we discussed how we might be able to use our industry presence to increase awareness and, more importantly, make it easy for our readers and colleagues to help to feed folks. We stumbled upon an organization called Causes International that will allow us to do just that, and – as it turns out – much more.

You see, Causes International focuses on upcycling, the process of donating your used electronics so they can be sent back UP the chain, and either disposed of in an environmentally clean and sustainable way—or given to those in need. This is a big deal, as electronics that aren’t disposed of properly often wind up releasing extremely toxic heavy metals—such as lead, cadmium, mercury, chromium and deadly toxins like polyvinyl chlorides—directly into the environment. We may not notice it yet in the US, as over 80% of our "electronic trash" is sent overseas, but there are parts of China and other industrialized countries where people can’t breath the air or drink the water, and children are dying or being born with defects because of these toxins.

These electronics – even if they’re outdated or broken – actually have residual value to those who refurbish them and introduce them into other markets, or simply reuse the parts. With over 12 million laptops thrown away in 2007 alone in America, and more than 100 million smartphones tossed in the garbage annually around the world, there are a lot of financial resources going to waste, literally and figuratively.

That’s where Causes International comes in; they have developed not only education—but practical, real-world solutions for fixing the e-waste epidemic for good. In this case, in line with the theme of our drive (Fitness Feeds), the “good” will also refer to feeding the hungry.

Here’s how it works:

Step 1…

Do your normal spring cleaning and notice how many outdated pieces of technology you find (the average American has 4-5 items). Figure out which items you want to donate, and enter them for donation directly on the special donation page Causes set up for us at www.FitnessFeeds.org. Over 60,000 items, in 13 different categories - iPhones, iPods, iPads, and MacBooks (even with shattered screens), plus various other items, like other smartphones, video games, graphing calculators, or digital cameras - are eligible.

Step 2…

Once you do that, you’ll receive a free, pre-paid shipping label you can print off —so that you don’t have to spend a penny or leave your house in order to send in your used electronics. You just hand it to a UPS driver or put it in one of their 40,000+ boxes around the country.

Step 3…

This is the best part: the items you donate can be used to generate revenue to help Feeding America put food on the table for hungry Americans. Every $1 raised can provide 8 meals for those in need. That’s not a typo: $1 yields 8 meals.

And, your donation is 100% tax deductible.  There's no cash outflow, either, so Causes has done a great job of combating the "donor fatigue" seen by charities in a down economy.

Our goal with this drive is to provide 100,000 meals to those in need by the end of April, and we can do it with your help. We’d love it if you’d put that broken or outdated iPhone to great use, and encourage your friends to do the same by passing along the www.FitnessFeeds.org link.

This is an absolute win/win for everyone. You’re cleaning out the clutter in your house, while feeding those in need, while saving the Earth, while getting a tax deduction – and without spending a penny. However, Ben, John, and I wanted to sweeten the deal by offering a free PDF special report, “30 Ways to Shake Up Your Training Programs Today,” to anyone who donates. Just forward your receipt on to receipts@fitnessfeeds.org and we'll send it along. We'd normally sell it, but in this case, it's just our way of saying thanks for supporting a great cause.

Thanks for your time, consideration, and support. I’d encourage you to click the link below to start upcycling today:

www.FitnessFeeds.org

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LEARN HOW TO DEADLIFT
  • Avoid the most common deadlifting mistakes
  • 9 - minute instructional video
  • 3 part follow up series