Written on September 4, 2008 at 11:09 pm, by Eric Cressey
I’m actually publishing this at about 11:30PM on a Thursday night, but I guess that’s close enough to Friday. It’s going to be a busy Friday and then I’m headed to Maine with my girlfriend for a wedding (not ours).
1. Speaking of weddings, congratulations to CP staff member Brian St. Pierre, who got engaged to his girlfriend of 8,726 years over the weekend. At the pace they’re going, they should be married in the spring of 3047. Brian couldn’t out-deadlift or out-bench me – and he surely isn’t going to even come close to me in fantasy football – so he decided to beat me to eternal bliss. Congratulations, buddy.
2. And, on a related note, apparently, 93% of fantasy football participants are white. I’m happy to report that the Cressey Performance Fantasy Football league has, in fact, crossed the double-digit percentile in the quest to end fantasy sports inequality. Our league is actually 10% African-American; Clark is our Jackie Robinson. And, if you really think about it, Larrabee does a mean Terry Tate impersonation, so we’re more like 12%.
3. Speaking of Terry Tate, I’d love for him to track down whoever originally proclaimed that bagels are healthy. Everyone born in the past 40 years knows that white bread is bad for you, and a bagel is just a round piece of white bread with a hole in it. Does the hole make it healthy? No! In fact, it makes it suck more because it’s more deceptive than a regular slice of white bread.
4. I found this article about youth gymnastics really interesting – but probably not for the reason others took interest in it. The quote that caught my attention was: “He added that the coach-to-athlete ratio should be about 6 to 1 in preschool and about 8 to 1 for older athletes.”
Amen! I am a firm believer that small groups are an absolute must when dealing with at-risk sports like gymnastics and, specific to my occupation, weight-training. It makes me sick to my stomach when I see one coach supervising 15-20 young, impressionable, untrained athletes. It’s the reason why so many cookie cutter facilities just do 30-minute dynamic warm-ups, some agility ladders, and then a little running. They are insufficiently staffed – both in terms of the total number of employees and the knowledge and coaching abilities of those employees.
At Cressey Performance, we never go over six athletes per coach – even in our advanced athletes – and generally speaking, it’s more along the lines of 3-4 athletes per coach at a time.
5. While on the topic of misdirected training for kids, are these people for real? I seriously hope not, because Brookline isn’t far from me, and I’m afraid that I’ll get dumber from just being within 50 miles of these quacks. Seriously, treadmills for kids?
Why don’t you just buy a pet gerbil? You don’t have to drop $200K to send them to college, and they won’t wake you up in the middle of the night with a diaper full-o-poo. Developmentally, this is flat-out stupid; they shouldn’t be on treadmills at all. They should be out playing. If they aren’t playing, it’s because the parents haven’t set them up for success in this regard by integrating them socially. I totally hope that one of these kids meets up with one of the 9-12 year-old beasts that train at CP in our kids’ groups; our guys would take their lunch money and then overhead press their dorky treadmills.
And ellipticals for kids? Do we really need to show kids how to be too lazy to walk? You know what elite triathletes call the elliptical? The fat girl machine.
6. Last rant, and then I’m done – at least for the weekend: Skateboarder Wanted for Speeding. Instead of trying to arrest/sanction him, shouldn’t authorities be rewarding him for finding an efficient, environmentally friendly transportation alternative in a time of high gas prices and global warming?
They should be rewarding the skateboarding for being BADASS. Some guy throws a javelin all the way down a football field and he gets a medal, but let a guy crack the national speed limit on a skate, and he’s a criminal? No wonder the Germans have a reputation for being humorless.
September 6th, 2008 at 5:01 pm
“I am a firm believer that small groups are an absolute must when dealing with at-risk sports”
Small groups of people allways work better than big groups. That is not specific to sports. It’s true for any job, for school, for wahtever.
September 8th, 2008 at 1:51 am
That guy that took Brady first pick is looking awfully silly at this point. It’s a sad day for New Englanders, but who knows…
September 8th, 2008 at 9:42 am
They should be rewarding the skateboarding for being BADASS. Some guy throws a javelin all the way down a football field and he gets a medal, but let a guy crack the national speed limit on a skate, and he’s a criminal? No wonder the Germans have a reputation for being humorless.