Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 10/2/17

About the Author: Eric Cressey

Happy Monday! The MLB regular season ended yesterday, so you could say that this is yet another reminder that the Cressey family “inseason” has begun. Our craziness starts when all the players’ lives slow down a bit. Here’s a little recommended reading for you:

Dr. Andy Galpin on How to Unplug from Tech and Social Media – This was a fascinating podcast with Dr. Galpin from Mike Robertson, where they critically review the role of technology and data collection in the training process. The points on the need to unplug from technology and social media really hit home for me, too, and I’ll be checking out his book soon!

My Body Let Me Down…Again – This was a great article from Gray Cook on all the potential causative factors for why we may hurt. Many people default to the explanation that their bodies simply fail them, when in reality there were likely a lot of things “missed” on the path to that declaration. Aside from trauma, injuries are rarely just “happenstance.”

Breaking Down the Quadruped Thoracic Rotation – Dean Somerset outlines the most common mistakes seen with this common upper back mobility drill.

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*Put the elbows in your pockets.* 👇 When doing chin-ups and pull-ups, you want to be careful about extending the humerus past neutral at the top position. If the elbow moves behind the body, the humeral (upper arm) head can glide forward, irritating the structures at the front of the shoulder. Additionally, the thoracic spine (upper back) becomes excessively kyphotic (rounded), and the scapula may anteriorly (forward) tilt, closing down the subacromial space and exacerbating impingement on the rotator cuff tendons. 👎 On the left, you’ll see what this bad position looks like. On the right, you’ll see the corrected version. 👍 I’ve found that encouraging athlete to put the elbows in the pockets also makes athletes get the chest to the bar instead of just reaching with the chin and creating a forward head posture. Conversely, if you encourage many young athletes to “just get your chin to the bar,” you get some garbage kipping concoction that looks like Quasimodo on the monkey bars with his pants on fire. So don’t do that. #cspfamily #sportsperformance #chinup #pullup #hudsonma #SportsMedicine #shoulderpain

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