Product Review: The Vertical Jump Development Bible by Kelly Baggett

It’s not often that I come across a product that really blows me away to the point of me not only saying “wow,” but also calling the author and complimenting him personally.  There aren’t many Kelly Baggetts in the world, though.

Kelly and I have both worked with a ton of high-level athletes, and I literally found myself nodding in approval with every paragraph I encountered in this book.  Simply put, Kelly is one of the few people in this industry who really “gets it;” he put into words so many things that go through my mind all the time.  This book won’t just teach you about improving an athlete’s vertical jump; it’ll teach you about improving an athlete period.  I’ve used the principles outlined in the book with athletes myself, and they’re tremendously effective and, just as importantly, related in a context that’s understandable for experienced coaches and novice lifters alike.  This book is more than just the “what;” it’s the why, how, when, and who as well.  If you work with athletes or are an athlete yourself, you need to pick up The Vertical Jump Development Bible.

If you need any further proof that Kelly has my highest endorsement, consider that he and I are actually co-authoring an e-book right now as well.  I’m about as picky as they come when it comes to joint ventures; I wouldn’t be pursuing this book if Kelly wasn’t the real deal.  Definitely check his stuff out.

Newsletter Subscriber-only Exclusive Q&A The Q&A I did in last week’s newsletter was very well received, so I’ll be doing this more frequently.  Last week, I received a great question from an accomplished golfer from whom I am an online consultant, and it sparked a good ol’ fashioned Cressey tangent with plenty of rambling.  Hopefully, there will be something for everyone. Q: Having been lucky enough to spend time around some of the world’s best golfers (both pros and amateurs) over the years, the one question that comes up about conditioning for golf is “What gives you the biggest carryover to improving your performance?”  Over the years, I have talked to and asked many strength and performance specialist coaches and have gotten very different answers to what gives maximum results.  One well-known “guru” who has written a book on golf conditioning insists that because golf is a rotational movement, the best way to improve is to bang out lots of rotational movements.  I followed this with a trainer I had until he went and spent time with another world-renowned coach who told him that through his research with hundreds of athletes from multiple sports that rotational movements don’t carry over to rotational events.  I emailed this coach to ask about this and also what part Olympic lifts had for golf and he told me the carryover was not too good and that strong lats and a well integrated shoulder unit is what is required.  But then, to put another slant on this, a prominent Olympic lifting coach told me to snatch and clean, which made me curious to keep finding answers. Now that I’m training with your programming, you have opened my eyes to a very complete way of training making sure to cure imbalances and develop all strength qualities as well as all factors of dynamic flexibility.  I am now convinced that this is the way to get max results when training for any sport and specializing is not the answer.  I hope you don’t mind me asking you about this, but what your opinions on so-called “sport-specific training?” A: Without going any further, the big answer will always be "biomechanically correct efficiency."  You can't have health and performance without it.  Teach the body to move efficiently, and you'll keep it healthy and performing at a high-level indefinitely.  My number one responsibility as a performance enhancement coach is to keep you healthy; you can’t perform if you’re injured.  If you’re inefficient, you’re asking for injury, so that needs to be addressed first and foremost. However, that’s not to say that corrective training has to follow the lines of the foo-foo garbage so many personal trainers are promoting nowadays.  In fact, I’m speaking on “hardcore corrective training” at the Syracuse Strength Spectacular, and Mike Robertson and I will touch on the subject in great detail at our Building the Efficient Athlete seminar on July 22-23 in New York City.  Just because someone is a little out of kilter doesn’t mean that you have to treat him like he’s a geriatric hip replacement patient.  Here’s a quick example: Let’s say that a right-handed golfer comes to me with an extension-rotation syndrome (very common) that’s giving him some left lower back pain.  I check him out and find that he’s got a super-tight right iliotibial band – tensor fascia latae complex, and his right rectus femoris is equally knotted up.  My knowledge of functional anatomy tells me that two of his hip flexors on that side are working crazy overtime, so there is a good chance that the psoas major (the only hip flexor active above 90-degrees of hip flexion – a range of motion that most people don’t encounter enough) might not be doing its job.  I test it, and there’s a deficit.  I know that the psoas major doesn’t just flex the femur; it also has the ability to rotate the lumbar spine.  If the right psoas is not firing, it’s not acting in rotation to counteract the rotational pull of the left psoas major.  Essentially, its stiffness relative to the opposite side is insufficient.  So, there’s my rotation. I also know that the psoas major can pull the lumbar vertebrae anteriorly, so that can contribute to my extension problem.  Likewise, when I factor in the tightness and adhesions in the rectus femoris and TFL, it’s pretty clear that the pelvis is going to be anteriorly tilted (and rotated, most likely) and the gluteus maximus isn’t going to be firing due to reciprocal inhibition.  As such, the individual isn’t going to be able to get full hip extension – so he’ll have to hyperextend his lumbar spine to compensate for a lack of hip extension range of motion.  Likewise, with the overactive TFL, I can guarantee that his gluteus medius on that side isn’t going to be doing its job, so the hip will likely slip into adduction (think of the hip fallout you see in a newbie squatting). This is really just a small piece of the puzzle in terms of what’s going on, as you’re going to have compensations up and down the entire the kinetic chain.  A knee could have gone first, or the individual might actually develop shoulder pain secondary to this lumbo-pelvis misalignment.  How do we treat it?  Well, definitely not with leg extensions, a little stationary cycling, and some unstable surface balancing!  Here’s what I’m going to do: 1. Really get after the TFL, rectus femoris, quadriceps, and adductors with a foam roller, “The Stick” and, if possible, Active Release®. 2. Static stretch the TFL and rectus femoris. 3. Do some activation work for the psoas major, gluteus medius, and gluteus maximus. 4. Progress to tightly supervised bodyweight-only mobility drills that don’t allow faulty compensation patterns. 5. Use a combination of bilateral and unilateral movements done CORRECTLY to teach proper initiation of the posterior chain.  In other words, I might do a rack pull or pull-through where I teach the individual to fire the glutes and pop the hips through at lockout instead of simply leaning back.  Controlled eccentrics and isometrics holds can be fantastic here. 6. We’re going to start with pure stabilization work for the lumbar spine, and over time, we’ll start to progress to rotational movements once I see that he can get the rotation in the right places. 7. I’ll discuss with the individual what can be done to avoid reinforcing this movement pattern in his daily life.  Maybe he’s always reaching to one side to answer the phone.  Or, more likely, he’s getting too much rotation at his spine with his golf swing because his hip rotators are too tight. All this said, without a doubt, the single-most important thing I’m going to do with this golfer is continue to treat him like an athlete.  I’ll give him challenges and test him just as I would a healthy athlete – just in a more controlled environment and with slightly modified exercises.  None of that sissy crap needed; it’s just going to make him so soft that training him once he’s healthy (if he ever does get healthy with that garbage) will be like pulling teeth. Anyway, the take-home message is that you have to understand functional anatomy first and foremost.  Otherwise, you have no place telling people that you’re using “functional training” – especially if you don’t even know the true origins of the term.  I’ll step off my soapbox and get to your questions now… I think the rotational idea has merit, but the fundamental problem with this is that most people get rotation in all the wrong places.  If you're getting lumbar rotation, you're on the fast track to lower back pain.  Get it at your hips, thoracic spine, and scapulae, though, and you'll be in a good position.  In this regard, one needs to learn to stabilize the lumbar spine (think “Super Stiffness,” as per Stuart McGill) and mobilize the hips, thoracic spine, and shoulder girdle.  That's what you've been doing, and it's paying dividends.  If I just send Average Joe out to train rotation all day, he'd be booking an appointment with his orthopedic back specialist in a matter of weeks (it's the same reason that so many golfers have back pain...remember extension-rotation syndrome secondary to tight hip lateral rotators and hip flexors?) Let’s just say that I would love to see the peer-reviewed journal in which that “extensive research” was published; lats are important, no doubt, but still somewhat of a stretch as “most” important.  My experience tells me that they're most valuable in sports where you're actually hitting the ground with your swing (e.g. hockey), but not as important as rotational power in the golfing motion.  The effective shoulder model is definitely important, though, so he’s on track in that regard.  You need a perfect balance of stability and mobility for optimal health and performance. As far as the snatch and clean recommendations are concerned, go to an Olympic lifter, and he's going to tell you to Olympic lift, you know?  Olympic lifting has merits, but two lifts aren't a magic bullet.  The reason this coach’s ideas are valuable is because he made you realize that the value of simplicity is highly overlooked.  However, if you've got imbalances like most golfers do, doing two compound lifts is just going to reinforce those imbalances. I'm a firm believer in what Vladimir Zatsiorsky termed delayed transmutation (of nonspecific motor potential into sport performance results); it's defined as "the time period needed to transform acquired motor potential into athletic performance."  Basically, this holds that you build an athletic up in a general sense, and then he takes those general qualities and adapts them to his specific sport.  You can think of the training as "generally specific.” With your program, I'm not tinkering with your golf swing directly, but I'm tinkering with your neuromuscular system, which governs that golf swing.  If it moves efficiently (via constant ingraining of those activation and mobility patterns), you're going to integrate that efficiency into your golf swing without even knowing it.  It's the same reason I can make someone run faster without actually making him run.  Would you believe that in biomechanics lab analysis, the best golfers swing 50% as hard as their poorly performing counterparts?  As long as they've got efficiency and ROM, they can get the job done without overswinging - which also throws things off because transfer of energy through the core is out of whack. We train mobility where we need that, and stability where we need that. We train power at all points along the speed-strength continuum for obvious reasons. We train maximal strength because it can have a ceiling effect on power, especially in naturally reactive individuals. We do rep work to iron out imbalances and attend to your "aside" goal of being more solid.  As long as you don't put on so much muscle mass that you lose ROM, we're golden. We do low-intensity recovery work to allow you to bounce back and training again sooner and at a higher level of strength and speed.  Plus, it helps to repeat mobility and activation work on a daily basis. What we will NEVER do is have you mimic the golf swing under loaded conditions or while standing on an unstable surface.  Crap like this is what makes so many modern "sport-specific" and "functional" training programs so useless.  From my thesis defense presentation: “Willardson (2004) observed that two problems arise when one attempts to mimic sports skills while on an unstable surface. 1) The individual may actually be mastering two separate motor patterns, as “the underlying neuromuscular recruitment patterns and proprioceptive feedback may be completely different” for the two exercises. 2) The incorporation of unfamiliar entities to a pre-existing neuromuscular recruitment pattern for a given activity may negatively impact performance of that skill.” So, basically, trying too hard to mimic the golf swing will screw up your golf swing, but enhance your performance in this new environment.  If you want to add ten pounds to your clubs or play in the middle of an earthquake, you’ll be more than prepared.  Otherwise, I’d stick to “general specificity.” Hopefully, all this makes sense.  I tend to ramble sometimes… That’s all for this week; stay tuned for some great announcements and new material very shortly.  Have a great week! EC

In this update, we’ve got a review of Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes by Shirley Sahrmann, and an interview with Mike Robertson.

With seminar appearances, helping our guys get ready for the NBA combine and individual team workouts, and my ordinary three-times-weekly trek to South Side, there isn’t a whole lot of new stuff to report in the “online world” of Eric Cressey. I did, however, have an interview with Stuart McGill published at T-Nation yesterday; check out some great information from the world’s premier lower back pain researcher in Back to McGill.

In spite of the low-key online scene, it’s shaping up to be an exciting spring and summer; I’ve got several individual and joint-venture projects on my plate for the months ahead, so definitely keep an eye out for exciting announcements at EricCressey.com in the months to come. Without further ado, let’s get to the good stuff!

Product Review: Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes

It seems only fitting that one of my first product reviews be devoted to what I believe to be one of the greatest resources available for coaches, trainers, physical therapists, physicians, and everyday weekend warriors with a desire to understand human function and dysfunction. In Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes, Shirley Sahrmann provides a breath of fresh air to those who are tired of following the medical model of care by simply treating symptoms. Instead, Sahrmann proposes countless functional tests and corrective exercise interventions aimed at treating the causes of the problems rather than the compensations that emerge after dysfunction has emerged.

This book has profoundly impacted the way that some of the industry’s greatest minds train their clients and athletes and themselves. To be blunt, Shirley Sahrmann has likely forgotten more than most physical therapists will ever know. If you’re serious about your own education, and have the best interests of your clients and athletes in mind, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of this classic.

An Interview with Mike Robertson

In light of all the projects on which we’ve collaborated, a lot of people seem to have come to the conclusion that Mike Robertson and I are the same person. I guess that’s what we get for co-authoring ten articles together and co-producing the Magnificent Mobility DVD. I figured that the best way to clear up any confusion about our unique identities would be to interview him. If it helps, read the text below aloud, and use a Midwestern drawl for Mike’s voice, and a pseudo-Boston accent for me. If you’re a visual learner, you might want to alternate an Indianapolis Colts hat with a New England Patriots one at the same time.

EC: Hey Mike, thanks for agreeing to do this. I know you like the back of my hand, but our readers don’t. Fill them in a bit on your background; I’m sure you get questions all the time about how you got to where you are. Who inspired you?

MR: Wow Eric, there’s been so many people along the way, to name just one or two wouldn’t really be prudent. However, if I had to name a few people that have significantly impacted the way I view and approach training and nutrition, I’d have to say yourself, Alwyn Cosgrove, Dave Tate, John Berardi, Mike Boyle, Joe DeFranco, Jim Wendler, Ian King, Stuart McGill, Bill Hartman, and Shirley Sahrmann.

As you can tell, I’ve got everything from physical therapists to elite-level strength coaches, but all have taught me something or significantly influenced my thinking in one way or another. In fact, I think you need to learn from as many disciplines as possible to truly understand how the body works.

EC: What frustrates you the most about this industry?

MR: Two things about this industry really annoy me. They are:

1. People who have no business training people for athletics. These people know who they are; whether they are PTs that “wanna’ be” strength coaches, to strength coaches who just don’t know what the hell they are talking about, these people piss me off. They typically get by with either “smoke and mirrors” training, or by yelling incessantly at their athletes to “work harder.” While this may sound contradictory to my next point, running your athletes into the ground doesn’t make you a good strength coach; it makes you a schmuck.

2. Lazy people. This can include people who are too lazy to train themselves, people who are too lazy to keep learning, or people that feel like others should help them “catch a break.” I have no sympathy for people like this: I firmly believe you create your own destiny by doing the right things and busting your ass.

I always say that I could write a killer training book about training hard (the REAL key to success) and no one would buy it. Why? People who are already training hard know it’s the key to their success and my book isn’t going to make a difference. People that aren’t training hard are going to think I’m full of s**t and that it’s their training or diet habits that are holding them back. In other words, they always find some other factor that’s the cause for their failure.

Simply put, hard work is the difference between people of similar abilities.

EC: What’s a typical training week look like for you?

MR: Since I had my knee scoped last June, my training has been all over the place. I was approaching (or exceeding) all my previous PRs this past December, but my body had taken on numerous compensations from the surgery. Even though I don’t feel like I rushed back into things whatsoever, between the surgery and the actual injury that caused it four months earlier, my body was getting very good at doing some very bad things.

Over the past few months, I’ve been making a concerted effort to clean up my posture and recruitment patterns so I can get back on the platform stronger and healthier than ever before. My current programming looks like this:

Tuesday: Lower Body (typically ME work)

Thursday: ME Upper Body

Friday or Saturday: Accessory Lower Body

Sunday: Accessory Upper Body

I’m currently performing a specific mobility circuit that Bill Hartman gave me on a daily basis to re-groove my squat motor pattern and get it back to where it needs to be.

EC: Now, your wife is a dietician; how has that impacted the way you eat and approach nutrition with clients and athletes?

MR: Well it’s definitely impacted my wallet and my waistline; when I met her I was a svelt 170 pounds!

Seriously, though, I’ve always been interested in nutrition, but she has the amazing ability to meld the science and the practice. She’s an amazing cook to begin with, so she has the ability to take the right foods and actually make them taste great. I think too many people think that “healthy” food has to taste like garbage, and that’s just not right. Maybe someday I’ll actually convince her to put all her recipes into an e-book for publication.

Also, I think if you’re serious about training and don’t take the steps to cover your nutritional bases, you’re pretty much setting yourself up for failure. Whether you’re a bodybuilder, powerlifter, Olympic lifter, strongman, or just someone who wants to improve your physique, you have to respect the power of nutrition and supplementation. If you don’t, please don’t expect to see exceptional results in the gym.

EC: Name five people you feel everyone should see speak.

MR:

1) Alwyn Cosgrove

2) Dave Tate

3) Mike Boyle

4) John Berardi

5) Anyone who knows more about your profession than you do (even if they don’t have the same outlook as you)

EC: How about books and DVDs? What are your top ten library “must-have” choices?

MR:

1) Supertraining – Mel Siff

2) Science and Practice of Strength Training -Vladimir Zatsiorsky

3) Functional Strength Coach – Mike Boyle

4) Professional Fitness Coach Program Design Manual – Alwyn Cosgrove

5) Magnificent Mobility – Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson (These guys are geniuses…or so I’ve heard!)

6) Ultimate Back Fitness and Performance - McGill

7) Precision Nutrition - Berardi

8 ) Gourmet Nutrition - Berardi

9) Parisi Deceleration Method - Parisi Speed School

10) Charlie Francis FAST Seminar Series

EC: If you had to pick five things our readers could do right now to become better lifters/athletes/coaches/trainers, what would they be?

MR:

1. Start getting some soft tissue work done!

2. Don’t neglect mobility work!

3. Understand functional anatomy

4. Train to get stronger

5. Keep learning!

EC: What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in your training and professional careers? Looking back, what would you do differently?

MR: It may sound cheesy, but I don’t look at mistakes as mistakes; I look at them as learning opportunities. First and foremost, I wouldn’t have tried to learn to snow ski at the age of 27! This little stunt has set me back almost a year of training and left me with 20% less shock absorption in my left knee. Not the best idea, if you ask me.

But, instead of looking at it solely as a negative, it’s caused me to really re-examine my own training and thought process. As well, I really dug in so I now have a much better understanding of the knee, as well as how to rehabilitate knee injuries (and what causes them). So while I could piss and moan ‘til the cows come home, the fact of the matter is I’m really not much worse off and I have a much better understanding of myself and the human body.

EC: Where do you see yourself in a few years, and how would you like to be remembered way down the road?

MR: Ideally, at some point I’d love to have a training facility geared toward athletes. Whether it’s my own or partnered up with the right people doesn’t really matter. This would not only allow me to do what I’m passionate about, but give me a solid place to train myself. Every day I train at the commercial gym here in Indy a little part of me dies.

However, I must admit I really enjoy all the “extra-curricular” stuff I do as well: writing articles, producing info products, and giving seminars. I feel like the personal training/performance coaching allows me to keep in touch with what works and allows me to affect people on a small, intimate scale. On the other hand, the extracurricular stuff opens the doors to a huge number of people, all of whom can directly benefit from the things I’ve learned. In my eyes, it’s the best of both worlds.

As for being remembered, I just hope a person or two out there does remember me! The best thing anyone can say about me is that I influenced their life or athletic career for the better. I genuinely love what I do and the people with whom I work, and I think people can feel that whether it’s me coaching them, writing for them, or speaking to them at a seminar.

EC: Feel free to use the space below to shamelessly plug all of your products and services.

MR: Well I’m sure we’ve talked about it ad nauseum, but if you haven’t picked up a copy of our Magnificent Mobility DVD, you need to get it done NOW. You’ll never look at warming-up the same! You and I also have a huge seminar coming up in June at the Peak Performance facility in NYC, and I’m sure it’s going to turn some heads as to how people evaluate and train their clients. Finally, I’m not even going to get into our “little book” until we make some headway!

Next, Bill Hartman and myself are working on a 2-DVD series and manual that’s going to cover a lot of upper body concepts that I don’t think many people have examined. Bill is an amazing PT, so I really feel this is going to do for the upper body what Magnificent Mobility does for the hips.

Finally, feel free to come check out my website and sign-up for my FREE NEWSLETTER, which is sent out monthly. You can check out my website at www.robertsontrainingsystems.com, and you can sign up for the newsletter by sending me an e-mail at mike@robertsontrainingsystems.com with “Subscribe” in the subject line.

EC: Lots of stuff on the agenda, and I’m sure that it’ll all be top-notch. Thanks for taking the time, Mike.

MR: Thanks a ton for having me, EC!

That’ll do it for Newsletter #2.

All the Best,

EC