Tired of dealing with aches and pains at the gym?
If so, don’t miss this seminar!
Who:
Eric Cressey, performance enhancement specialist, and one of the fitness industry’s leading authorities on corrective exercise strategies and injury prevention
What:
Joint-Specific Mobility and Stability: A one-time opportunity to learn from one of the industry’s best how to prevent and correct the most common musculoskeletal problems once and for all! Topics to be covered include:
-Functional Anatomy of Various Joints
-Static and Dynamic Assessments
-Corrective and Preventative Exercise Programming
-The Art of Hardcore Corrective Exercise: How to Maintain a Training Effect While Correcting Imbalances
-Troubleshooting Resistance Training Technique
When:
January 5, 2008: 9AM-4PM
Where:
Bahia Mar Beach Resort and Yachting Center
801 Seabreeze Boulevard, Ft Lauderdale FL, 33316
(888) 802-2442
Cost:
*$99/person prior to December 20th, $129 thereafter; *$20 off for those with a valid student ID
Contact:
jonboyle at mac.com for more details
The Smith machine is the equipment parallel to High Intensity Training. On one hand, it's been called more dirty names than Madonna on a trip to the Vatican. On the other hand, there are those who vehemently adhere to it in spite of the fact that it's an inferior way to train.
I'm about as anti-machine a guy as you'll ever meet, but I'm also open-minded enough to realize that as is the case with most things in life, the answer rests somewhere in the middle.
I'll be the first to admit that if I was to outfit a training center tomorrow, I wouldn't put a Smith machine in it. Beyond the obvious injury risks associated with a fixed line of motion on the exercises people normally perform on this machine, it just makes no sense financially.
Why spend $1,200 on a coat rack when I could buy one at Wal-Mart for $19.99 and use the leftover cash to pick up a glute-ham raise, some Jump-Stretch bands, and surprise TC with that Russian mail order bride he's coveted for so long?
Unfortunately, it's a moot point, as many gym-owners have already made their purchase and devoted precious floor space to it. That's not to say, however, that we can't work with the situation and make lemonade out of rotten lemons. With that said, here are ten ways to make the Smith machine eyesore more attractive
So Read More...
Q: Dear Eric,I am a huge fan of yours, and a 21 year old Australian student studying exercise science. I am big fan of your Magnificient Mobility DVD, discovering it after I had written a paper on the effects of a six-week PNF stretching program. I wish I had owned your DVD earlier and used dynamic stretching as the main topic.
I fully ruptured my ACL in April and have not had an operation yet, but since then I have regained all mobility. I have not, however, done any lower body weight training apart from some calisthenics. I have been cycling to maintain some strength and whenever I ask someone they tell me to strengthen the VMO and Hamstrings, which I have also been doing. However, now I am keen to start resistance training on my legs; I did a moderate volume session last week and it was fine. I am wondering if I do strengthening exercises for my lower body such as squats, deadlifts, leg extensions, lunges, etc. and I don’t feel any pain if I am doing it any damage? Any recommendations?
A: Believe it or not, there are a lot of people – impressive athletes included – walking around with ACL tears that they don’t even know are there! Some eventually become symptomatic – possibly because of other inefficiencies – and others don’t. To that end, the best thing you can do is teach your body to move efficiently in light of the structural defect you have.
You can do posterior chain stuff like deadlifts, back extensions, pull-throughs, and glute-ham raises until you're blue in the face; the hamstrings work synergistically to the ACL, so strengthening the hammies will help you long-term. When you optimize glute function to correct position the femur (i.e., eccentrically controlling excessive internal rotation and adduction during ordinary movements), you’re helping your cause even more.
To that end, single-leg movements are very important. Along these lines, I would start with isometric exercises (split squat isometric holds) and gradually work toward incorporating more dynamic variations, starting with reverse lunge variations and eventually progressing to walking lunges and potentially forward lunging. Luckily for you, our Magnificent Mobility DVD just so happens to be on sale through December 12 (enter coupon code HOLIDAY2007), and it would be a big help, too. There are tons of useful glute activation and frontal-plane stability drills in there.
As I have written in a previous article, leg extensions are crap for everyone:
Chow (1999) examined patellar ligament, quadriceps tendon, and patellofemoral and tibiofemoral forces at different speeds of leg extensions execution. Tibiofemoral shear forces showed that the ACL was loaded throughout the ROM — not exactly what you want (passive restraints doing the work for active restraints).
Squats variations may or may not give you trouble. I would recommend progressing from box squatting (sitting back, more hip dominant) to more quad-dominant variations.
For more information along these lines, I’d highly recommend you check out Bulletproof Knees by Mike Robertson (same holiday discount applies).
Best of luck!
Tags: ACL, Knee Injury, Magnificent Mobility
Q: A PT recommended me to do foam rolling on the IT band for the clicking sound on my knee. I've been rolling for quite some time but the clicking hasn't gone yet. I read your article on the subject at T-Nation and figured you’d be a good person to ask.
Anyway, I have a question. A trainer on an online forum advised against rolling on painful areas. Instead, we should just put pressure on that area for 30 secs. Rolling would just make the tissues tighter. Is this true?
A: As always, the answer is: it depends. Pain tolerance is an individual thing. If you just have some minor discomfort – not a shooting pain or something that would lead you to believe that there are other issues at hand, it’s fine to work through it. If, however, the pain is so intense that you find yourself guarding, then you’re likely working against yourself.
The problem is that foam rolling alone won't fix the issues entirely; it just works on tissue quality (treating the symptoms). You likely need to look at ankle and hip mobility, glute activation, and soft tissue quality at several other joints. Footwear can be an issue, and the same can be said of activities of daily living and the rest of your training program.
Mike Robertson’s Bulletproof Knees Manual would be an excellent resource for you to pick up for more information.
I'm a deadlift-aholic. I don't just want to pull; I want to pull every minute of every day for the rest of my life. I dream about grinding out heavy pulls where the bar seemingly bends in half, and I jump at the opportunity to do speed pulls so quickly that I nearly castrate myself with the bar. This passion has led me to a ranking in the Powerlifting USA Top 100 for my weight class, and the brink of a 1RM of 3.5 times my body weight.
Do I expect you to share my enthusiasm? No, although it would be nice if you'd at least get a little excited to humor me! I do, however, hope that you'll derive some benefit from my passion and the perspective it's enabled me to attain. Whether you're a powerlifter, bodybuilder or athlete, the deadlift and its variations should take a central role in your training.
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Eric Cressey
The other day, I was speaking with one of the top collegiate strength and conditioning coaches in the US, and he said that even after 30+ years of coaching, he still thinks that the top two things he can teach his athletes are attitude and environment. I may be a guy who writes articles and books and pretty much lives and breaths training, but I still agree with him completely.
You see, at a point, knowledge works against you. The internet has helped us a lot with advice and sharing of information, but it’s also led to a generation of people who think and talk about training way too much relative to the amount of time they spend actually training!
To that end, if you’re a beginning or intermediate lifter, feel free to read everything in sight. However, leave the bookworm in you at home when you go to the gym. In place of the geek lifting weights, I want you to focus on two things:
1. Teach your body to move efficiently.
2. Apply that efficiency to improve performance. Simply try to be a little bit better in each training session. There is always something you can do to get better - even if you're injured or tired.
Don't get stuck in the curse of knowledge; it’s been said that a bad program executed with lots of attitude and effort will outperform a good program with a foo-foo training style anyday. Use the gym to let loose and take out some aggression. This is supposed to be fun, you know.
Eric Cressey
Sure, the Red Sox are World Series champs. And the Patriots are now 11-0. And the Celtics – at 12-1 – might very well be the best team in the NBA.
To be honest, though, for the first time in a while, they weren’t the highlight of my sports world. Rather, one of my childhood idols, Pete Sampras, helped solidify his already stellar place in tennis history by playing World #1 Roger Federer close for two exhibition matches – and then beating him 7-6, 6-4 in the finale of the three match series.
Did I mention that Sampras has been retired for five years? And, that Federer was 65-9 this year with eight titles, including three Grand Slams? This guy has been nothing short of completely dominate the ATP tour this year, and Sampras gave him more than a run for his money, as this video shows.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVCqqNBQeQc
Believe it or not, in my youth, I was a lot more into tennis than I was lifting heavy stuff. I spent a lot of hours watching Sampras in Wimbledon and the U.S. Open while I was stringing rackets at the tennis club at which I worked. Were it not for a rotator cuff tear (which, fortunately, led me to this field of specialization), I might still be playing.
Nice job, Pete. Way to win one for us retired guys!
Tags: Sampras, Federer, Cressey, tennis, Red Sox, New England Patriots, Boston Celtics
Q: What advice do you have for sore knees? It might be from over use, squats, dead lifts, cardio, but I'm sure joggers run into this all the time. Do you cover it in you Mobility DVD?
A: "Knee issues" is a very broad topic. You can have dysfunction at the ankle, hip, or knee itself - and that's just the tip of the iceberg. We most commonly see issues at the ankle, hip, or both, though. It could be mobility deficits, soft tissue restrictions, capsular issues, or even congenital issues (femoral-acetabular impingement, for instance). Issues like you describe can simply be a result of imbalanced training programs, too. Most people tend to be very quad dominant and do a lot more squatting work than hip-dominant exercises.
With Magnificent Mobility, we've definitely had some excellent results in people with nagging knee issues. However, given that you have more of a "amorphous" issue, you'd be better off picking up a copy of Mike Robertson's Bulletproof Knees Manual. Mike goes into great depth on knee issues, their causes, and solutions - all while educating the reader in an easy-to-understand manner.
Eric Cressey
