I turn 28 today, so in hopes of distracting myself from the painful realization that I’m starting to go bald, I thought I’d focus on the positives of my existence in contexts that would appeal to you.  Below, you’ll find 28 of my favorite things – most of which are at least loosely related to fitness, nutrition, strength and conditioning, and sports.

1. Favorite Nickname: Power Alleys.  This seemed like a good starting point, as power alleys are bald spots.  Credit for this one goes to Mets pitching prospect Tim Stronach.

2. Favorite Thing About Cressey Performance: The camaraderie among the athletes/clients. I think the hard thing to appreciate about our facility without experiencing it first-hand and being there on a regular basis is that it’s as much about the environment and attitude as it is about the expertise and programming.  I’m psyched that we’ve not only created an environment where clients can improve physically, but one in which they can thrive socially, too.

3. Favorite Book I’ve Read Related to Fitness: Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes, by Shirley Sahrmann.  This book got me thinking more about dysfunction and less about pathology.  Quality of movement is often far more important than anything a MRI or x-ray can ever tell you.

4. Favorite Book I’ve Read Unrelated to Fitness: This is a top-up between The Tipping Point and A Prayer for Owen Meany.  They might be taken over, however, by one of the gifts I just got for my birthday from CP Client Steph Holland-Brodney.

5. Favorite DVD I’ve Watched: The Indianapolis Performance Enhancement Seminar DVD Set.  Bill Hartman’s presentation on “Stiff vs. Short” alone makes this a fantastic resource, and the rest is just gravy.  I reviewed it HERE.

6. Favorite DVD I’ve Co-Created: The Building the Efficient Athlete DVD set.  I think I’m most proud of this resource because it’s something that provided something I so desperately wanted – but couldn’t get – during my college education.  Effectively, it’s a resource that blends book memorization with real-world practice with a focus on functional anatomy, assessments, and troubleshooting common exercises.

7. Favorite Seminar I’ve Attended: The Perform Better 3-Day Functional Training Summit.  Each year, they get better and better.  Check out Chicago or Long Beach this year if you missed Providence.

8. Favorite Athlete of All Time: Barry Sanders.  I can’t imagine an guy with better kinesthetic awareness, body control, or ability to turn a complete disaster of a play into a 90-yard touchdown run – while carrying two defensive linemen on his back.

9. Favorite Athlete of All-Time that you’ve probably never heard of: Jerry Sichting.  He played for the Celtics from 1985 to 1988, and I’ll always remember the night Sichting – at a heigh of 6-1 – got in a fight with 7-4 Ralph Sampson during the 1986 NBA Finals.  At the time, I was a five-year old shadow boxing in my living room yelling at the top of my lungs.

10. Favorite Place to Visit: Fenway Park

11. Second Favorite Place to Visit: Gampel Pavilion at the University of Connecticut.  It’s an incredible environment in which to watch college basketball, and it’s also where I spent just about all my time from 2003 to 2005.

12. Favorite Exercise: was this ever in question?

13. Favorite Sites I Visit Just About Every Day: T-Nation.com, MinorLeagueBaseball.com, ESPN.com, Sports.Yahoo.com, WilliamInman.com, 38Pitches.com, ShawnHaviland.Blogspot.com, MetrowestDailyNews.com, StrengthCoach.com, MikeReinold.com, RobertsonTrainingSystems.com, BillHartman.net, AlwynCosgrove.Blogspot.com, DieselCrew.com, PrecisionNutrition.com, BrianStPierreTraining.com, Tony Gentilcore’s Blog, Boston.com, BarstoolSports.com, Facebook.com, EricCressey.com.

14. Favorite Kind of Injury to See (weird category, I know): Labral Tears (SLAP lesions), or really any kind of shoulder or elbow pain in pitchers.  You’ve got so many potential causes that it’s kind of fun (for me, not the athlete) to go through a process of elimination to see what combination of factors caused it.  There are all the classic flexibility deficits in pitchers, plus scapular instability, poor thoracic spine mobility, plus faulty mechanics, plus inappropriate training volumes, plus weak lower bodies.  It’s kind of like peeling back the layers on an onion to see what shakes free.  It’s also a great scenario to illustrate what I talked about with respect to diagnostic imaging in #3 from above.  All of these guys will have labral fraying and rotator cuff partial thickness tears at the very least; it’s our job to fix them up and make them work efficiently in spite of these structural deficits in situations where surgery isn’t warranted.

15. Favorite Class I Took in School: Gross Anatomy.  Yes, I cherished the semester I spent with a bunch of cadavers.

16. Favorite Healthy Food: Apple-Cinnamon Protein Bars from John Berardi’s Gourmet Nutrition Cookbook. Admittedly, I often just eat the batter before it ever gets cooked.  Not good, I know.

17. Favorite Piece of Equipment We Have at CP: Giant Cambered Bar.  Along with the safety squat bar and front squat set-up, this bad boy has allowed me to keep squatting even though my right shoulder decided a long time ago that traditional back squats weren’t a good idea.  It’s also a great asset for working with overhead throwing athletes who should avoid the externally rotated, abducted position under load.

18. Favorite Thing About Having a Blog: I can write a lot more casually than in my newsletter, which tends to be more geeky.  And, I can post videos of this kid rocking out:

19. Favorite Mobility Drill: Walking Spiderman w/Overhead Reach.  I love this drill because you’re covering so many things at once.  You’ll get thoracic spine extension and rotation from the reach, and hip flexor and adductor length in the lower body from the lunge angle.  Keep an eye out for more new movements along these lines in the months to come as we film the sequel to the Magnificent Mobility DVD.

20. Favorite Pastime I Had to Give Up: Fantasy Baseball/Basketball.  During my sophomore year of undergrad, I finished fourth in the world in NBA.com’s Virtual GM contest.  Long story short, if you want to be really good at fantasy sports with that kind of set-up, you’ve got to put a lot of time into it – and realize that it won’t make girls like you.  You’ll also find yourself watching games in which you’d otherwise have absolutely no interest. I couldn’t do it half-ass (aside from the CP Fantasy Football League), so I gave it up.

21. Favorite Inedible Toy: Rubber Steak.

Suffice it to say that Fire & Ice wouldn’t allow us to eat a birthday cake inside their restaurant on Saturday night in celebration of my awesomeness.  So, in celebration of their suckiness, none of us (16 in all) will ever eat again – and I was reduced to gnawing on dog toys.

22. Favorite Birthday Excitement: Apparently, it’s going to be taking my car in to get work done, buying a new laptop, and then coaching ’em upat CP.  There will also be a dominant upper body lift at CP that will undoubtedly feature Kevin Larrabee missing 300…again…and again).

23. Favorite Bench Press Celebration Spectacle: Antwan Harris, post 340 bench press.

24. Favorite Strength and Conditioning Coach Who is Having Surgery on my Birthday: Josh Bonhotal, Chicago Bulls.  I talked with Josh yesterday and he informed me that he was finally having his ACL fixed today in celebration of my birthday.  Nothing says “Happy Birthday, Buddy” like taking a chunk out of your patellar tendon and turning it into an anterior cruciate ligament.  It’s kind of like planting a tree on Earth Day.  What a nice gesture.

25. Favorite Article Series I’ve Written: A New Model for Training Between Starts (Part 1 and Part 2).  These articles were actually picked up by Collegiate Baseball Magazine as front-page features, and I received a lot of great feedback about them.  If there is one thing I do before I retire, it’s convincing the world of the evils of distance running for pitchers.  I’d put the Shoulder Savers series in a close second

26. Favorite Supplement: Fish Oil.  It’s followed closely by Vitamin D.  You need both – and probably a lot more than you think. I’m a simple guy when it comes to this stuff.

27. Favorite Random Website a Buddy Texted to Me Last Week: www.EasyCurves.com.  This thing is hilarious. A special thanks goes out to Jesse Burdick for making me just a little bit dumber with that.

28. Favorite Sign of Athlete Dedication for the Month: We have two college pitchers up here from Pennsylvania for the month to work on getting bigger, stronger, faster, and more flexible in hopes of a nice velocity jump on the mound, and the obvious injury prevention benefits of such training.  That’s all well and good – until you hear that they got an unfurnished apartment in Hudson, MA.  These guys are sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and all they brought were a few lamps, a TV, some books, and a whole lot of enthusiasm and motivation.  That’s committment to training – and just the kind of guys we like to have around Cressey Performance.

What kind of sacrifices are you making to get better and move closer to your goals?  I’m not sure that sleeping on a mattress on the floor is necessary, but it says a lot.

With that in mind, I’m not taking today off.  There is work to be done and I love to do it, birthday or not.