Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 10/30/17

About the Author: Eric Cressey

I hope you all had a great weekend and are enjoying these World Series games. You can’t beat playoff baseball!

Here are some recommended resources for the week:

10 Daily Habits of Healthy Lifters – I contributed a few paragraphs for this compilation at T-Nation, and the end result included several excellent recommendations.

Bored and Brilliant – I had the long car ride from Massachusetts to Florida last week, and this is one of the audiobooks I covered to pass the time. Manoush Zomorodi took an outstanding look at how technology impacts our lives in negative ways. While it wasn’t written from a strength and conditioning perspective, I could totally see how to apply its lessons to the fitness realm.

Should You Squat Tall Athletes? – Mike Robertson did a great job tackling this tall subject. Sorry, bad pun.

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Back in 2005, physical therapist John Pallof (@pallofpt) introduced me to an exercise he called the “belly press.” It was an anti-rotation drill done with a cable or band in order to challenge rotary stability. 👍 It quickly became a mainstay in the programming at @cresseysportsperformance, and somehow became known as the “Pallof Press.” We incorporated the traditional version (demonstrated here), as well as a host of other variations, including half-kneeling, tall kneeling, wide-stance, and split-stance. 👊 That same year, I signed my first book deal. And, as I wrote “Maximum Strength,” including the Pallof Press was a no-brainer, as we used it every day in our programs. 👇 This picture was taken on September 16, 2007 for the exercise demonstration chapter. Look how much hair I had. 😲 The story could end here, but sadly, it doesn’t. Not surprisingly, the Pallof Press caught on. In fact, if you Google “Pallof Press” today, you’ll get 51,200 search results. 👊 Unfortunately, if you search for “Paloff Press,” you’ll also get 14,800 hits. 🤔 And “Palloff Press?” 18,100. 😕 And “Palof Press?” 5,310. ☹️ Just look at some of the well-known media outlets included in these hit counts, and you’ll be embarrassed for them. 😠 This week, one of our college athletes sent me a copy of his program that included a “Pal Off Press.” Thinking that there is no way anybody could possibly be this clueless, I Googled it. Sure enough, 512 hits (and 607 if you hyphenate it to “Pal-Off”). I’ve had enough. 😡 I learned this great exercise from John. And, if you’re using it under that name, you learned it (directly or indirectly) from me. So – both as a favor to me and a measure of respect to him – how about you please spell his last name correctly? 🙏 (Sorry, John; thanks for your decade of patience.) #Pallof #NotPalof #NotPaloff #NotPalloff

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