Risk-Reward in Training Athletes and Clients
This week, approximately 1,500 players will be drafted in the 2009 Major League Baseball Draft. Historically, a whopping 2-3% of these players will ever actually make it to the big leagues. In fact, only about 2/3 of all first-round draft picks - seemingly the most qualified candidates - ever make it to the major leagues.
For this reason, many have labeled competing in the professional baseball ranks a "War of Attrition." High-round picks get preferentially escorted through the minor leagues, while a lot of the late-round picks fight for their positions in the minors - especially since they know a brand new class of 40-50 draft picks and a bunch of free agent signees will line up to take their jobs each year. Along the way, loads of guys incur career-ending injuries.
Here, we come to several decisions in how to train athletes.
First, all athletes have unique movement inefficiencies, so we screen these issues and address them individually. Nothing remarkable there.
Second, some athletes have bigger contracts, so you have to be more conservative with their programming. Sure, they might get benefits out of more aggressive programming, but it also increases the likelihood that you'll mess up an athlete with multi-million dollar contracts in his immediate future.
Take, for instance, Cressey Performance athlete Shawn Haviland. Shawn was drafted out of Harvard by the Oakland A's in the 33rd Round of the 2008 Draft after being named Ivy League Pitcher of the Year. As Shawn himself has said, he "would have signed for a plane ticket to Arizona." In other words, he didn't get an $8 million signing bonus; he's a very low-risk investment. Life goes on for his organization if he doesn't work out because they can just draft another 50 guys the following year. After all, he's just another 6-0 right-hander in the system - a dime a dozen, if you will.
This is the exact conversation Shawn and I had last October when we first met up. He'd been 86-88mph on the radar gun most of last year, and that really isn't going to earn you a long stay in professional baseball. So, we decided to be more aggressive with his off-season programming than we would with someone who'd just become a first-round pick.
All off-season, he lifted, sprinted, accumulated 80-120 medicine ball throws three times a week, did some extreme long-toss, threw the weighted balls around, and consistently worked on his flexibility and tissue quality. It flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that says: a) we shouldn't long toss more than 120 feet, b) weighted balls are the devil, c) only distance running and steady-state cardio will "build leg strength" in pitchers, d) lifting will ruin flexibility, and e) medicine ball throwing will cause oblique strains (yes, I've really heard that one). However, it worked.
Now, seven months later, Shawn was just named a Midwest League All-Star. He is consistently 91-94mph and has completely changed his body. In short, he took a chance, worked his butt off, and got better.
Shawn's program wasn't "unsafe;" it was just "less conservative." It was at a different point on the continuum on which every strength and conditioning coach and personal trainer works on a daily basis. This program was obviously different than what I'd do with, say, a 40-year-old marathon runner, but it's also different than I'd do with a first-round pick with Shawn's exact build, competitive demands, and inefficiencies. And, if I had a pitcher with those exact same characteristics and an extensive injury history, we'd be even more conservative. Otherwise, the risk: reward would be completely out of whack.
Often, in our industry, we get far too caught up in numbers - whether it's the weight one lifts or his/her body fat percentage. In reality, I look at what I do as a means to an end. People train with us first and foremost to stay healthy, whether they're pitching in the professional baseball ranks or just carrying their kids around. What you do in the gym should improve quality of life first and foremost, and any activity that carries a high likelihood of injury is very rarely worth the risk.
Why pick up a stone - which demands compression and lumbar flexion - when you're not a strongman competitor and could just as easily do a more controlled trap bar deadlift?
Why behind-the-neck overhead press - which puts the shoulder at one of its most at-risk position - when you've already had four shoulder surgeries and still have hunchback posture?
When it really comes down to it, you have to fit the program to the athlete, and not the athlete to the program. For more information, a few resources I'd recommend:
1. My article, 6 Mistakes: Fitting Round Pegs into Square Holes
2. The Building the Efficient Athlete DVD Set
3. The 2008 Indianapolis Performance Enhancement DVD Set
4. For those of you interested in a bit of what we did with Shawn, check out this Athlete Profile on him.
New Article at T-Nation
For those who missed it, Part 3 of my "Lower Back Savers" series was posted at T-Nation last week. You can check it out HERE (and be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them in previous weeks).
New Blog ContentRandom Friday ThoughtsBogus Workouts and the Official Blog of...Building Vibrant Health: Part 2Friday Night Journals
Have a great week!
EC
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used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
Q&A: Hip Injuries in Baseball
Q: On Sunday, The New York Times published this article that discusses the dramatic increase in hip injuries in Major League Baseball in recent years. I know you work with a ton of baseball players and was curious about your thoughts on the article. Do you agree with their theories?
A: As always, my answer is "kind of" or "maybe." I think they make some great points in the article, but as is the case with mainstream media articles, they're written by reporters with word count limits, so a lot of the most important points get omitted. For example, with respect to the hips, it isn't as simple as "weak or strong." You can have guys with ridiculously strong adductors that are completely overused, balled up, and short - but terribly weak hip extensors and abductors. So, part of the problem is that journalists don't even qualify as casual observers to exercise physiology, so the public only gets part of the story.
(Sorry, but that digression was totally worth it.)
First, I agree that one of the reasons we are seeing more of these issues is because doctors have become better at diagnosing the problems. The "corollary" to this would be that the issues are perceived as more severe because so few physical therapists, athletic trainers, and strength and conditioning coaches are comfortable treating and preventing the problems. That's not to say that hip issues aren't serious in nature; it simply implies that there is a divide between diagnostic capabilities and treatment/prevention strategies.
Second, I agree wholeheartedly that early specialization at the youth levels can lead to injuries down the road. We're dealing with some significant rotational velocities at the hips. In previous analyses of professional hitters, the hips rotated at a velocity of 714°/second. This same velocity isn't the same with little leaguers, but with skeletally immature children, it doesn't take as much stress to impose the same kind of damage. So, I don't see it as at all remarkable that some pro ballplayers have hip problems after they may have played baseball year-round from age 9 all the way to the time they got drafted. They also have bad shoulders, elbows, knees, and lower backs that have taked years to reach threshold. It just so happens that folks are getting better at diagnosing these problems, so we now have an "epidemic," in some folks' eyes.
What I can tell you, though, is that it's borderline idiocy to think that strength training is responsible for these problems. Injuries don't occur simply because you enhance strength. In fact, muscular strength reduces the time to threshold for tendinopathies, and takes stress off passive restraints such as ligaments, menisci, labrums, and discs. Making this assumption is like saying that strength training drills to bolster scapular stability may be the reason we see more shoulder and elbow injuries nowadays. Um, no. Shoulders and elbows crap out because of faulty mechanics, poor flexibility (e.g., shoulder internal rotation ROM), bad tissue quality, and muscular weakness. Granted, the shoulder (non-weight-bearing) and hips (weight-bearing) have different demands, but nobody ever tried to pin the exorbitant amount of arm problems in pitchers on "the advent of strength training."
That said, injuries occur when you ignore things that need to be addressed: pure and simple.
To that end, I can tell you that a large percentage of the baseball players I see - including position players, pitchers, and catchers - have some signficant hip ROM and tissue quality problems. In terms of range of motion, the most common culprints are hip internal rotation deficit (HIRD) and a lack of hip extension and knee flexion (rectus femoris shortness). Pitchers are often asymmetrical in hip flexion, too, with the front leg having much more ROM. In terms of tissue quality, the hip external rotations, hip flexors, and adductors are usually very restricted.
This is has proven true of guys who lift and guys who don't lift. The latter group just so happens to be skinny and weak, too!
Done appropriately, strength training isn't causing the problem - particularly when we are talking about huge contracts that restrict how aggressive programming can be. Trust me; guys with $20 million/year contracts aren't squatting 500 pounds very often...or ever. The risk-reward is way out of whack, and no pro strength coach is going to put his job on the line with programming like that.
However, strength training may be indirectly contributing to the problem by shifting an athlete's focus away from flexibility training and foam rolling/massage. Pro athletes are like everyone else in this world in that they have a limited time to devote to training, but to take it a step further, they have a lot of competing demands for their attention: hitting, throwing, lifting, sprinting, stretching, and soft tissue work. So, they have to pick the modalities that give them the biggest return on time investment and prioritize accordingly in terms of how much time they devote to these initiatives. Some guys make bad choices in this regard, and hip flexibility and tissue quality get ignored.
Baseball is a sport that doesn't permit ignorance, unfortunately, and this is one of many reasons why it has one of the highest injury rates in all of professional sports. We are talking about an extremely long competitive season with near daily games - a schedule that makes it challenging to maintain/build strength, flexibility, and tissue quality. Throwing a baseball is also the fastest motion in all of sports. Rotational sports have the pelvis and torso rotating in opposite directions at the same time. And, as I noted in Oblique Strains and Rotational Power, most professional ballplayers have a stride length of about 380% of hip width during hitting. It is really just a matter of which joint will break down first: hip, knee, or lower back. Taking immobile hips with poor tissue quality out into a long season with these demands is like doing calf raises in the power rack when someone is around with a video camera: you are just asking for a world of hurt.
So, what to do? Well, first, get cracking on tissue quality with regular foam rolling and massage (the more an athlete can afford, the better). Here is the sequence all Cressey Performance athletes go through before training.
In many of our guys, we also add in extra adductor rolling on the stretching table.
Second, you've got to hammer on flexibility. We spend a ton of time with both static stretching and dynamic flexibility. Here are a few of the static stretching favorites (the first to gain hip internal rotation, and the second to gain hip extension and knee flexion ROM):
Third, as Dr. Eric Cobb has written, you use resistance training to "cement neural patterns." This includes all sorts of lower-body lifting variations - from single-leg movements, to glute-ham raise, to deadlifting and squatting variations - and multi-directional core stability drills. And, often overlooked is the valuable role of medicine ball training in teaching good hip (and scap) loading patterns:
For more information, check out my previous newsletter, Medicine Ball Madness, which describes our off-season medicine ball programs in considerable detail.
All taken together, my take is that the increase in hip injuries at the MLB level has everything to do with early baseball specialization and improved diagnostic capabilities. However, when you examine hip dysfunction under a broader scope, you'll see that this joint breaks down for many of the same reasons that lower backs and knees reach threshold: inattention to tissue quality and targeted flexibility training. Strength training works synergistically with these other components of an effective program just like it would at any other joint.
*A special thanks goes out to Tony "Explosive Calves" Gentilcore for being a good sport in the videos in this newsletter.
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If you liked Maximum Strength...
Then you'll love Jim Smith's Accelerated Muscular Development.
I often get asked what would be a good program to use following the Maximum Strength program, and while my first answer is always a resounding Show and Go! However, there is another excellent option out there for those who want to get outside the "Eric Cressey School of Thought." In creating Accelerated Muscular Development, Jim "Smitty" Smith did a fantastic job of introducing a thorough e-manual that includes strength training programming, flexibility training, nutrition, recovery protocols, and detailed explanations that put overly "sciency" concepts in an understandable and usable format.
Personally, I've always loved Jim's innovation and willingness to think outside the box. If you ask him about what makes this program so good, though, here's what he'll tell you are the top five components of a successful program:
1. Comprehensive - A good resistance training program teaches you what to do from the moment you walk into the gym, until the moment you leave. It does not just provide you with the primary strength exercises and a rep scheme. A progressive strategy must be incorporated so that by the time you are ready for your primary strength exercises, you are warmed up and ready to go.
2. Education - Do not just follow any resistance training program you get out of a magazine or on an internet forum blindly. You have to make specific and informed decisions based on your individual needs. A good program teaches you so that you can make these decisions.
3. Instruction of Proper Form and Full ROM - The strength exercises in a good resistance training program are demonstrated with proper form and instruction. It is not enough to teach the deadlift by saying "pick the weight off the floor."
4. Easy to Understand - The science behind building muscle and getting stronger is sometimes explained in a very complicated manner. These concepts are much easier to understand with visual diagrams and real world application.
5. Systematic Approach - A comprehensive strength program provides you with a systematic approach where each essential component is represented and input at the right times. This allows the lifter to make sure each activity is not forgotten or missed, which means he can concentrate on training.
I'd highly encourage you to check out this product if you're looking for something new - and particularly if you enjoyed Maximum Strength. For more information, visit www.AcceleratedMuscularDevelopment.com.
In the Trenches with Eric Cressey
I figured we'd go with a little change of pace this week and switch from written content to audio content, as Mike Robertson interviewed me for one of his recent newsletters. Mike and I talk about everything from shoulder assessment, to the possible future of shoulder surgeries, to strength development, to what's new at Cressey Performance, plus a whole lot more. You can listen to the entire audio interview HERE. Enjoy!
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Q: How should I warm up properly before sprinting sessions? Back in the day when I did sports my quads were always prone to injuries. Funny thing is I haven't had any problems when doing squats of any kind. Recently I decided to involve some alactic work in my workout and immediately pulled a quad doing sprints. It's obviously something wrong with my warm-up!
A: Saying "pulled quad" might be a little bit too general. In reality, most of the time, you're looking at a rectus femoris strain. While it is one of the quadriceps, the rectus femoris is also active as a hip flexor. So, as the picture below shows, it crosses two joints.
The rectus femoris is responsible for both hip flexion and knee extension. So, as you can imagine, it is placed on a huge stretch when an athlete goes into a position of hip extension and knee flexion - kind of like this:
You're asking the rectus femoris to go on a huge stretch there - and under very high velocities. With a squat, you're not putting it on full stretch, as the hip and knee are both flexed. So, with that in mind, it's not surprising at all that sprinting would bother your "quad" when squatting doesn't - especially since we know the overwhelming majority of folks out there are tight in the rectus femoris. Why?
Well, first, you don't need to be a rocket scientist to know that, as a society, we sit far too much. Second, though, is the fact that most people never really get above 90 degrees of hip flexion in anything that they do. Mike Boyle has done a great job of outlining how we can develop imbalanced hip flexion patterns; essentially, we never use our psoas, the only hip flexor active above 90 degrees of hip flexion. The picture below is kind of rudimentary (and somewhat awkward), but it shows what I'm getting at with respect to the advantageous attachment points for psoas with respect to hip flexion above 90 degrees:
How many of the folks at your gym are getting 90+ degrees of hip flexion with their treadmill, stairclimber, and elliptical work? None. So, we underuse psoas, and overuse rectus - and it shortens up over time. Take a short muscle through a maximal stretch at high-velocities, and it's going to hate you. So, what to do?
Well, first, I'd recommend running through some warm-ups from Assess and Correct, and that'll cover a lot of the fundamentals (especially if you go through the assessments to figure out what else is going on). One important thing that'll cover is activation work for psoas; Kevin Neeld demonstrates one option here:
Second, just add in some targeted static stretching for the rectus femoris a few times a day using this stretch (don't start using it until the "pulled quad" has settled down, though).
Third, and most importantly, ease your way into sprinting. Not everyone is prepared to just jump right in full-throttle. I discuss this in further detail in my contribution to the most recent Mythbusters article at T-Nation. Basically, just get out there twice a week and do some 60-yd build-ups at 80% of your best on a grass field.
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What the experts are saying about The Truth About Unstable Surface Training…
“Unstable surface training is many times misunderstood and misinterpeted in both the physical therapy and athletic performance fields. The Truth About Unstable Surface Training e-book greatly clarifies where unstable surface training strategically fits into an overall program of injury prevention, warm-up/activation, and increasing whole body strength. If you are a physical therapist, athletic trainer, or strength training professional, The Truth About Unstable Surface Training gives you a massive amount of evidence-based ammunition for your treatment stockpile.”
Shon Grosse PT, ATC, CSCS
Comprehensive Physical Therapy
Colmar, PA
Click here for more information on The Truth About Unstable Surface Training.
Subscriber-Only Q&AQ: I have a question about your 22 More Random Thoughts article from October of 2008 on T-Nation. In the stretch for the hips found above #10, I can't tell is that athlete bridging or are the hips on the ground. Also, can you please explain exactly what is stretched and how a little bit about how it corrects out-toeing of the feet?
A: Sure, no problem. Here's the lying knee-to-knee stretch, for those readers who missed the original article:
First off, it's a stretch for the hip external rotators, and the athlete is not bridging up. However, it's also useful to do the stretch in a more hips-extended position, as a small percentage of athletes will feel it more in that position. To perform this stretch, we'll do the exact same position, but have the athlete set up atop a stability ball (which keeps the femurs in a more extended position).
Poor hip internal rotation range-of-motion is something you'll see quite frequently in soccer players, hockey players, and powerlifters, as all spend a considerable amount of time in hip external rotation. Likewise, I monitor this closely with all my baseball pitchers, as front leg hip internal rotation deficit is a huge problem for pitchers. When the front hip opens up too soon because of these muscular restrictions, the arm lags behind the body (out of the scapular plane). As such, it isn't uncommon for pitchers with elbow and/or shoulder pain to present with a significant hip internal rotation deficit.
There is also a considerable amount of research to suggest that hip rotation deficits - and particularly, hip internal rotation deficits - are highly correlated with low back pain. There was a great guest blog post at Mike Reinold's blog recently that highlights all this research; you can check it out HERE. My personal experience with hundreds of people who have come my way with back pain overwhelmingly supports this "theory" (if you can even call it that). It's my firm belief that this is one of the primary reasons Mike Robertson and I have gotten so much great feedback on our Magnificent Mobility DVD from folks who have seen a reduction (or altogether elmination) in back pain. Teach folks to move at the hips (particularly in rotation) instead of the lumbar spine, and whatever's going on in their low backs calms down.
Our goal is a minimum of 40 degrees of hip internal rotation. This is measured in the seated position (hips flexed to 90 degrees).
In addition to the classes of athletes I mentioned earlier, we also need to watch out for hip internal rotation deficit (HIRD) in the general population because of what happens further down the kinetic chain. We all know that overpronation at the subtalar join is a big problem for a lot of folks. This can occur because of a collection of factors, from poor footwear (too much heel lift), to muscular weakness (more on this in a second), to mobility deficits (particularly at the ankle), to congenital factors (flat feet). To understand how pronation affects the hip external rotators, you'll need to listen to a brief synopsis of subtalar joint function...
During the gait cycle, the subtalar joint pronates, to aid in deceleration. Basically, the foot flattens out to give us a bigger base of support from which to cushion impact, and from there, we switch back over to supination to get a rigid foot from which to propel. The picture below shows what our foot looks like when we have too much pronation.
Here's where our hip gets involved. Physical therapist John Pallof once called the subtalar joint a "torque converter," and it really stuck with me. What that means is that while the subtalar joint allows motion in three planes for pronation/supination, it converts this motion into transverse plan motion where it interacts with the tibia. And, as you can imagine based on the picture above, when you pronate, you increase tibial internal rotation. This, in turn, increased femoral internal rotation. Taken all together, we realize that increasing pronation means that there is more tibial and femoral internal rotation to decelerate with each step, stride, or jump landing.
The hip external rotators are strong muscles with a big cross sectional area, so they can take on this burden. However, over time, they can get balled up from overuse. As a result, the hip will sit in a more externally rotated position all the time - and the feet simply come along for the ride. That said, as I wrote HERE, it isn't the only cause of this foot position, so be sure to assess thoroughly and individualize your recommendations.
Also, a quick side note, be careful using this stretch with individuals who have previously experienced medial knee injuries, as the valgus stress can be a bit too much for some folks.
New Blog ContentRandom Friday ThoughtsFor High School Pitchers, No Grace PeriodDoga? Seriously?CP Athlete Featured at Precision Nutrition
I encourage you to check out this Precision Nutrition Athlete Profile on Cressey Performance athlete and Oakland A's minor league pitcher Shawn Haviland. Shawn completely changed his body this off-season and had a nice velocity jump from 87-89 to 91-93mph - and he's off to a good start for the Kane County Cougars. A lot of this can be attributed to him making huge strides with improving his nutrition.
Have a great week!
EC
Avoiding Tendinopathies by Reallocating Stress
In a previous newsletter, I wrote about how people become symptomatic for some musculoskeletal problem because numerous issues have collectively brought them to the threshold where pain kicks in. If you haven't read it, definitely check it out now HERE.
Basically, the gist is that injury prevention and rehabilitation programs that only address single factors aren't sufficient. You shouldn't fix a shoulder problem with just rotator cuff strengthening exercises and rest. You can't just get a massage and take some rest to get your lower back pain to go away.
In this newsletter, I highlighted how poor exercise technique - or even just faulty movement patterns in daily life - is something that can push someone to threshold. It's one of the reasons why we go to such great lengths on our Building the Efficient Athlete DVD set to outline common technique mistakes and how to correct them with over 30 common resistance-training exercises.
One quick example of how this can push an athlete over the symptom threshold (or pull that athlete back under it) is kinesiotaping. In the past two years - and particularly at the Beijing Olympics - this modality spread rapidly in the world of athletics, treating everything from the ankles up to the shoulders.
While the creators of this tape assert that it has effects on the lymphatic and circulatory systems, it's my impression that the most marked changes occur with respect to the reallocation of stress on particular tissues. I've perused all their reading materials, and nowhere do I see any claims that it reduces inflammation.
Here, then, we get support for the new (and correct) era of thinking that tendinitis is very uncommon. The -itis ending indicates an inflammatory condition, and if that was the case, some anti-inflammatories would quickly and easily take care of the overuse pain folks so commonly feel in the athletic world. Anyone who has struggled with an achilles, patellar, or supraspinatus tendinopathy will tell you that it really isn't that simple, so what gives?
The truth is that most folks are dealing with a tendinosis. The -osis ending tells us that we're dealing with a degenerative - not inflammatory - problem. Essentially, tissue loading exceeds tissue tolerance - and that means that we need to find a way to reallocate stress to ease the burden on that tissue both acutely (kinesiotaping) and chronically (appropriate movement patterns).
The difference between tendinitis and tendinosis has been highlighted at-length in the research world. Unfortunately, the correct terminology has been slow to catch on both in the medical community and lay population. As a result, many individuals underestimate the chronic nature of these problems.
In the photo above, a tape-job might help at the shoulder acutely by posteriorly tilting the scapula or altering the degree of humeral rotation to allow for safe overhead movements (less mechanical impingement of the rotator cuff on the undersurface of the acromion process of the scapula). Long-term, though, an athlete with this type of shoulder problem would need to work on scapular stability, glenohumeral range-of-motion, rotator cuff strength, and thoracic spine range-of-motion. And, of course, he'd need to ingrain these appropriate movement patterns with a resistance training program with perfect form.
Oh, and speaking of tendinopathies, it is only somewhat coincidental that I'm publishing this newsletter today: the day of the Boston Marathon. Thousands and thousands of runners who are at the brink of threshold are going to be piling 26.2 miles of volume on top of their glaring dysfunctions. I'm headed out to watch the best reality TV show in the world: the hip replacement docs in Boston are going to be busy for the rest of the week!
Q: I recently came across an article by Nick Tumminello on tests for dynamic abdominal strength, and the primary focus was sit-ups and reverse crunches. Given your regard for training the core as an anti-rotator/resistor of lumbar hyperextension, do you have any thoughts on these testing protocols?
A: First off, Nick is a brilliant guy with some awesome ideas. For those who aren't familiar with him, check out his website, PerformanceU.net.
Moving on to your question, it is interesting that you would ask about this, as Bill Hartman and I had a good email exchange last week where we were talking about just how "functional" most tests are. And, more specifically, we were calling into question just how much particular assessments carry over to the real world of injury prevention and performance enhancement.
A study from Stanton et al. in 2004 is a great example of the divide between testing proficiency and performance. As I noted in my e-book, The Truth About Unstable Surface Training, researchers found that six weeks of stability ball training improved core stability in young athletes - as it was measured (in a manner consistent with the training itself). In other words, this is like saying that bench press training will make you better at bench pressing. Well, duh! The more important question, though, is whether or not that bench press performance will carry over to athletic performance.
And, this is where the intervention in the Stanton et al. study fell short. While their measure of "core stability" improved, it did not effect favorable changes in running economy or running posture, or modify EMG activity of the abdominal or erector spinae muscles. In other words, it didn't carry over.
A comparable result was seen in a study from Tse et al. in 2005. After eight weeks of stability ball training in collegiate rowers, while "core stability" (as they tested it) improved, the experimental (core training) group showed no performance improvements over those who did ZERO core training during this time. And, researcher tested several measures: "vertical jump, broad jump, shuttle run, 40-m sprint, overhead medicine ball throw, 2,000-m maximal rowing ergometer test."
So, with respect to your question, I think the question is: do those sit-up and reverse crunch progressions matter for an athlete who spends his/her life in the standing position? Wouldn't they have more predictive value with respect to performance in a mixed martial arts population that spends a significant amount of time in the supine position in competitive situations? Interestingly, Nick has extensive experience with mixed martial artists, and that is probably why he's seen such strong predictive value from those tests.
Additionally, these issues are worthy of consideration in an athletic population where fatigue is a big issue. Does an assessment in a rested state necessarily carry over to a situation where movements may change under fatigue? Bill wrote a great blog on this topic HERE.
Food for thought; never take anything at face value. As with almost everything you'll encounter in the world of fitness, the answer is "maybe" or "it depends." You have to know how to assess and program accordingly.
Maximum Strength Feedback
I just got the following feedback on the Maximum Strength program from a trainer who recently completed it:
"Body Weight 202--> 207
Bench 305--> 335
Broad Jump 99" --> 104"
Back Squat 315 --> 355
Deadlift 335 --> 370
Chin Ups 202+60=262 --> 207+90 = 297
I had two big 'uh-huh' moments when going through this program. (You have been preaching these forever, but it did not truly hit me until the third phase of the program)
1) Improving my ankle and hip mobility was the key to improving my squat and deadlift numbers.
2) Increasing my pulling power was the key to improving my bench press.
As a trainer, I had too much pride to ever follow anyone else's program. I am glad I finally decided to check my ego and follow your program."
Pick up your copy of Maximum StrengthHERE.
New Blog ContentIt's the Most Wonderful Time of the YearStatic Posture Assessment Mistakes: Part 2Pitchers vs. Quarterbacks vs. SwimmersRandom Friday Thoughts
All the Best,
EC
I'm in the process of reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell. It's a fantastic book - and one of the foremost messages Gladwell works to convey is that split-second decisions - those made seemingly subconsciously - are in many cases better than those that are thought-out with great time and effort.
As is always the case with a books I read that are seemingly unrelated to strength and conditioning, I got to thinking about how this applies to the industry in which I work - and I started to immediately see applications. The best coaches are the ones who instinctively know exactly what to say to clean up a movement - and this requires not only quick recognition of what's wrong, but also the ability to know exactly what to say to fix the problem. For instance, you can't see an athlete squatting who is breaking at the knees instead of the hips, and then go home and think about it for 24 hours before coming back to coach the movement correctly.
In one instance, Gladwell makes his point in the context of basketball:
Basketball is an intricate, high-speed game filled with split-second, spontaneous decisions. But that spontaneity is possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured practice - perfecting their shooting, dribbling, and passing, and running plays over and over again - and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court.
In other words, if you want to be successful in a challenge that depends on effective split-second decision-making, you need to have prepared yourself in terms of knowledge and practice. Each week, I get close to a dozen emails from up-and-comers in the industry asking for my advice on how to advance their career, and I give them three pieces of advice that - if carried out - will immediately set them apart from the rest of their peers.
Step 1 is to master anatomy. You can't be a mechanic if you don't know where the engine is, or what its constituent parts are. Memorization is boring, but you have to do it; it is the basis for everything that you do. If you are a fitness professional - or aspiring to be one - and you can't answer the following three questions, then you have room to improve:
a. What are three flexors of the hip?
b. What are the points of attachment of the latissimus dorsi?
c. What are three muscles that attach to the coracoid process of the scapula?
I am not trying to put myself on a high-horse, as I'm far from knowing every subtle intricacy of the human body. I do, however, know enough to realize that I am going to keep learning and it's always going to keep benefiting my clients.
While any anatomy book will do, I'm partial to Kinetic Anatomy for those looking to get a good start. And, if you have the opportunity to take a course in Gross Anatomy, definitely do so - or at the very least, check out the Bodies exhibit when it's at a museum near you.
Step 2 is to take that anatomy foundation and apply it in a function context. In other words, what happens when one muscle doesn't do its job? How can poor mobility in one area lead to instability elsewhere? How can certain muscles be both synergists and antagonists, depending on the plane of motion in question?
Functional anatomy is largely the reason that Mike Robertson and I made the Building the Efficient Athlete DVD set; we felt strongly that there was a need to improve on the rudimentary anatomy teaching that most fitness professionals receive in certification and academic programs.
Step 3 is to acquire an internship where you can watch others apply their knowledge and get practice applying your own in a controlled environment. With an internship, you learn about professionalism, coaching cues, and programming - and you learn how working with clients and athletes effectively blends your knowledge with your everyday demeanor. As an extension of this step, I feel strongly that it's important to get out during your career and interact with as many colleagues as possible to see what bits of wisdom you can clean from their coaching styles. And, of course, attend seminars, and read everything you can get your hands on.
Once you've gotten through step 3, it is time to get out there and practice in the "real world" by interacting with as many clients as you possibly can. These individuals will all have something to teach, and it's a chance for you to apply everything you've learned.
One thing you will notice is completely absent from my recommendations is me encouraging people to go out and get more certifications. Frankly, a certification is simply a foot in the door, and there aren't any out there - even the so-called "gold standards" - that impress me. If you are going to spend hundreds of dollars with the intention of becoming a better professional, there are much better investments than just paying for a certification that merely amounts to a piece of paper you can frame. I'd rather spend the money on books, seminars, or travel expenses to see people who actually coach.
Take care of those three steps, and in my eyes, you'll be well on your way to the "subconscious mastery" to which I alluded earlier.
A Quick Note on a Great Sale for a Great Cause
Speaking of Building the Efficient Athlete, as you may recall, I announced a sweet sale last week where a small charitable, tax-free donation can save you 20% on a boatload of our products. This offer ends on Thursday at midnight, so don't delay. You can find the details HERE.
It's that time of year in Boston. The "shufflers" are out in full effect.
For those of you who aren't familiar with a "shuffler," it's an individual who has recently taken up distance running as a means of losing weight. As the weather gets nicer and the Boston Marathon rapidly approaches, you can spot shufflers out in droves all over Boston. They shuffle for a number of reasons:
1. They believe that shuffling at 2.5mph is actually more effective than walking at 2.5mph.
2. Usually, they're about 80% of the way through the marathon training programs that were provided to them, and as a result, most are suffering from IT band problems, plantar fasciitis, Achilles and patellar tendinosis, sciatica, and a serious case of "whatthehellwasithinkingsigningupforthis-itis."
3. Because they never learned to sprint, they run with zero hip flexion (check out Newsletter 77: Sprinting for Health for details).
4. They are simply trying to finish their exercise in the most efficient way possible. In other words, complete the task with as little discomfort as possible.
And here, we have the problem. Sally takes up running because she thinks she'll lose some body fat. And, initially, she does lose weight because - to quote Alwyn Cosgrove - it's a "metabolic disturbance" compared to doing nothing. Moving burns more calories than not moving.
However, over time, that activity injures Sally and fosters bad movement patterns, meaning that she'll miss more exercise sessions down the road. And, she quickly starts searching for the most efficient means of completing her runs, so her body gets more and more efficient - meaning that it burns fewer calories to accomplish the same task. Whether it is three miles or 13 miles, it's always about just finishing. Quantity always takes precedence over quality.
With March Madness upon us, pretend you're watching a basketball game where you have two teams: Team A wants to win, and Team B wants to simply get through the 40 minutes of the game. Team A dives for loose balls, full-court presses, and hits the boards hard. Team B watches the clock. Who burns more calories? Team A, no doubt - because they get lost in their performance.
Back in college, did you learn more in the graded courses, or the ones that were simply pass-fail? And, as I asked in Maximum Strength, do you get stronger when you "train" or "work out?"
This, to me, is one more reason why interval training outperforms steady-state cardio on top of all the other reasons (e.g., excess post-exercise oxygen consumption, reduction of overuse injuries) that we already know. There is not a single effective exercise modality out there in a non-beginner population that works simply because one shows up and finishes. The outstanding success loads of folks have had with Warpspeed Fat Loss is a perfect example; Cosgrove and Mike Roussell challenged them to be just a little bit better at each successive training session - either with loading or number of sets completed.
If you are going to distance-run (and aren't a competitive endurance athlete), focus on going faster, not fine-tuning the art of pacing yourself when grandmothers are passing you with their walkers. Pacing yourself doesn't even work at all-you-can-eat buffets; everyone knows you get full too fast and never live up to your gluttony potential. And, as I always say, if it doesn't fly at all-you-can-eat buffets, it just ain't right.
If you're going to interval train, your goal is to go faster each time. More watts, more steps in a given time period, more ghastly stares from the lady reading a magazine on the leg press, whatever. Mike Boyle had some great thoughts on this front in a recent submission HERE. As long as it is quantifiable and you're busting your hump to compete against your previous best, I'm happy.
I like the idea of camaraderie and/or competition with others in interval training, too. For example, our staff did this 16-yard x 16-trip sled medley three Thursdays in a row - and each time, it was a little faster (meaning that we had fewer rest periods between sets):
Last week, my girlfriend had a big decision to make. As she finishes med school (optometry) this year, she had two offers on her plate: one for a job in a private practice, and one for a one-year residency. If she took the job, it meant we'd move out of the city. Instead, she took the residency - which means that we can stay in our current apartment for another year once our current lease is up on August 15.
Now, this might seem mundane to a lot of you, but not for me. I'm a guy who has moved eight times in the past ten years - including three separate states. I was 100% supportive of any avenue that she opted to choose, but I had made it clear that if we went anywhere, we were getting a moving company to do it. After ten years of moving, I was sick of putting my life on hold for 3-4 days at a time to relocate. It made me think of a quote I read over at T-Nation a few years back:
"Stagnancy is often confused with stability."
In the strength and conditioning world, status quo is largely understood to be unacceptable. We always have to be looking to get better. Maybe a basketball player is looking to push work capacity by perpetually increasing training volume on the court. Powerlifters rotate max effort exercises each week. And, bodybuilders may constantly changing programs in hopes of keeping muscles "confused" and growing.
However, in the world of "Eric Cressey hates moving more than he hates drunk Yankees fans in center field at Fenway Park," stagnancy is a beautiful thing. This stagnancy in living arrangements gives me stability with my schedule and productivity - so I guess the quote from above isn't always accurate. And, it makes me think about a few examples from the world of exercise where stagnancy can be a good thing:
1. Activation Drills: I often get asked how to make a scap push-up, scapular wall slide, or other mobility/activation drill harder. The truth is that you really shouldn't be trying to make them much harder; they're just low-intensity drills designed to be done with perfect technique to get certain muscles "turned on" before you get to the more complex stuff. So, if you want to make these movements harder, do a bench press or loaded push-up after the scap push-up, or a chin-up after the scapular wall slide (just a few examples).
2. Learning New Movement Patterns: It actually takes a lot more repetitions to ingrain something in your "movement memory" than you might think. In fact, research has shown that elite athletes have practiced their specific skills over 100,000 times to make them "subconsciously" learned.
Let's be clear: I'm not saying that you have to do 100,000 body weight lunges before you can start to load the movement and derive benefit from that training in other tasks. However, for untrained folks and those returning from injuries, motor (re-)education takes repetition and time. You can't expect a 16-year old girl to have an ACL reconstruction, then do a session of body weight lunges and be ready to go out and play soccer or basketball safely the next day. In fact, in this example, "stagnancy" - or consistency in training and gradual progressions - truly does enhance stability in more ways than one.
3. The Biggest Loser - When this TV show is on, it is best for you to leave your remote stagnant on the coffee table and your TV turned off. This will ensure that ratings go down for NBC and this mind-numbing crap will eventually get yanked off the air.
4. In-Season Athletes - As I wrote in Four Ways to Stay on Track, you have to be very careful with modifying things too aggressively with athletes who are in the middle of their competitive season. New exercises can bring about delayed onset muscle soreness, which may interfere with performance. And, increasing training volume and/or loads in-season can inhibit recovery between practice sessions and competition, or lead to overuse injury.
5. Deload Phases - I devoted an entire e-book, The Art of the Deload, to this topic, in fact. Make no mistake about it: the overwhelming majority of your time in the gym should be focused on getting better. However, there should always be deloading periods in your training where it's okay to intentionally be "stagnant," as these periods give rise to adaptation that make you better in the long-term.
