Hey Gang,

No transitional material this week; I’m a little scatterbrained.

1. Jeremy Frisch and company are running a great event for charity in Acton, MA on June 21. For more information, head HERE. Even if you can’t make it, these charities could really use a donation.

2. Maximum Strength isn’t just for men!

“Maximum Strength is the book where brain meets brawn in an all-inclusive guide to getting strong and in shape. Eric manages to take the sissy out of salad and add the steak. It’s a must have for busy lifters who need to make the most of their time while still getting optimum results.”

-Juliet Deane CSCS, RKC, USAW

Check it out for yourself HERE.

3. Assess, don’t assume. Still, if you’re in the strength and conditioning field and dealing with teams, it’s important to understand trends in the sports with which you work so that you can program to avoid the most common injuries.

4. On a related note, yesterday, in the time it took me to write an email, we had a kid come in with a cast up to his upper arm for a wrist injury from diving, and another guy tell me that he’s having hip surgery in July for a chronic problem. This just goes to show you that if you work with athletes – no matter how young – you need to understand injuries.

5. I’m heading to my first optometrist appointment in WAY too long this morning – and I’m kind of hoping that they find something wrong with me to justify me wearing an eye patch. At the very least, it’ll scare some of our athletes into lifting heavy stuff. I’m working on my pirate accent right now.

6. Stretching the anterior capsule in baseball players is just a bad idea.

7. There are a lot of blog readers who might not realize that I also have a newsletter that goes into far more depth on various topics each week. If you aren’t already subscribed, don’t miss out! You can sign up with the subscription set-up to the right of this screen.

8. Cadaver grafts for ACL reconstructions seem to work well if you’re older and have no aspirations of really doing anything too athletic – especially change-of-direction and jumping. If you’re younger, though, the chance of re-rupture is a lot higher, in my experience. The patellar tendon graft is pretty nice simply because the limitations of the graft site work hand-in-hand with the limitations of the ACL from a rehabilitations standpoint.

9. Great win for the Celtics last night. Waaahooooo.

10. If you want to look at the hip and knee in a non-traditional, outside-the-box way, I highly recommend Gray Cook and Brett Jones’ Secrets of the Hip and Knee DVD. It’s fantastic.

Have a great weekend!