Packing in the Neck - This is an old one, but a good one from Charlie Weingroff. Charlie talks about proper neck positioning while lifting - a topic that I think gets really overlooked in discussions of appropriate lifting technique. In case you can't tell from this deadlift technique, I'm in full agreement with Charlie.
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Jay Bonn is a current Cressey Performance intern, but also a Lean Eating Coach for Precision Nutrition. He recently pulled together an excellent piece on the commonalities of success in strength training programs, sports nutrition strategies, and strength and conditioning coaching. I thought you all might like to take a look, as it's a great read:
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Here are some links I'd encourage you to check out this week:
Understanding Elbow Pain - Part 3: Pitching Injuries - With recent (medial) elbow injuries to Adam Wainwright and Andrew Bailey - and the fact that the high school baseball season starts next week here in Massachusetts - this article is a timely read because it talks about the causes of elbow injuries in throwing, and how those injuries may be different for a young pitcher than an adult pitcher. The follow-up article (Part 4), Protecting Pitchers, is an important subsequent read, too.
Case Study: Anterior Knee Pain in a High School Runner - My buddy Shon Grosse, a physical therapist in Colmar, PA, just got his blog off the ground and will be doing some case study presentations. What I love about Shon is that he's not just a skilled physical therapist, but also an informed consumer when it comes to everything from strength and conditioning, to track and field, to martial arts. You'll see this reflected in his treatment strategies. This will make for a great regular read for up-and-coming physical therapists.
An Interview with Bret Contreras - Dean Somerset interviewed Bret on his blog, and as it typically the case, Bret really overdelivered on content. That man can write!
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This is the second half of an interview I did for Dean Somerset's website. In case you missed part 1, you can check it out HERE.
DS: What are the best supplements for the money, in your opinion?
EC: For most folks, fish oil, vitamin D, a decent low-carb protein powder, creatine, and a greens supplement (I prefer Athletic Greens) will get the job done. I’d add in probiotics for many people as well. The longer I’m in this field, the more of a minimalist I become.
DS: There are a lot of misconceptions and misinterpretations on core strength and core training out there. Some say you have to lay perfectly still and think happy thoughts while flexing your belly button, while other say you need to use stability balls to get anything, and other say heavy stuff on your shoulders does the trick. Also, the definition of where the core is and what it does seems to be either incomplete, or somewhat lacking in common sense, as most of the anatomical diagrams will show the core as a hollow vessel, and eliminate the internal organs from the picture. What do you consider to be important in the anatomy of the core, and what would be your go-to core training exercises?
EC: I tend to fall in the camp that it encompasses just about the entire body. We can all agree that the hamstrings probably deserve a place in the role of the core, since they attach to the pelvis via the ischial tuberosity and sacrotuberous ligament, right?
Well, those same hamstrings attach below the knee on both the tibia and fibula. They share a function (knee flexion) with the gastrocnemius, clearly are in close “fascial proximity,” and have neural innervations from the same origin at the lumbar spine (sciatic nerve). The gastrocnemious attaches on the calcaneus – so we’ve established “hip to foot” relationships of the “core.”
Add latissimus dorsi to the picture. It attaches to the iliac crest, thoracolumbar fascia, thoracic spine, ribs, scapula, and humerus. That would be a “hip to arm” connection, right?
Add in the trapezius, which runs from as far down as T12 to the base of the skull, and you can argue that you’ve got a “hip to head” relationship, too.
We’ll just train it with crunches, though, right???
I don’t think it’s as simple as just memorizing the anatomy of the muscles surrounding the lumbar spine; it’s about understanding the complex, functional relationship among all the muscles and their tendons, the ligaments, the fascia, the nerves, and the bony structures to which they attach. Things are more complex than we try to make them – which is probably why a lot of people have chronic back pain that goes misdiagnosed and mistreated.
While much of the industry has gone to the “don’t move the lumbar spine” end of the continuum, it’s really not that black and white. It – like any other body segment – should have some movement. The problem just becomes when we add load to that movement. And, more specifically, things get dangerous when we add load to the end range of that movement. Going into full lumbar flexion with an 800-pound deadlift isn’t going to make your intervertebral discs very happy, and not controlling violent extension and rotation during an athletic movement like swinging or throwing could very well leave you with a stress fracture, oblique strain, or spondylolisthesis at some point.
That said, there should be movement during daily activities; otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to tie our shoes, and my puppy wouldn’t be able to lick his unmentionables for twenty minutes every night before he falls asleep. When we start adding resistance, crazy velocity, and high volumes to the equation, though, we change the game.
To that end, I’ll continue to train anti-rotation and anti-extension exercises in the gym because the favorable outcomes we’ve seen with this approach have been tremendous. If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it.
DS: Chewing tobacco: help or hindrance??
EC: I’m probably not the best one to ask. I dipped once when I was about 18 and booted a few minutes later – and then felt miserably for about four hours afterward. It wasn’t one of my finer moments.
DS: I had a client who I was training for hockey a few years ago, and he forgot to go to the washroom for what I like to call a "pre-game." During the middle of his heavy squats, while I was spotting him, he, well for a lack of better term, he "released," and had to go change his shorts. Any training blooper highlight moments from CP?
EC: Honestly, there are too many to list! Most of them take place when our pro baseball guys are just shooting the breeze in the office. Throw in a British golfer, pro boxer, or Ironman competitor, and you get enough people from different walks of life to make any conversation memorable and absolutely hilarious. To that end, we actually have a quote book in the office; it’s got dozens of pages of stupid things that have been said over the past three years or so.
DS: Who is the bigger prankster, you or Tony?
EC: I’m not sure that I’d say that either of us are huge pranksters, but Tony is definitely the brunt of a lot more jokes at CP. We always joke that every 2-3 months, we have a “Tony Moment” where he learns about something and is absolutely blown away to find out that we had already known about it for months.
That said, the CP jester is definitely our pitching coordinator, Matt Blake, as some of these videos show:
DS: You have a lot of people looking up to you and aspiring to hit the level of professional success that you've been able to attain in a relatively short period of time. Who do you look up to so that you're continuously motivated to push and achieve more?
EC: That is a tough question to answer because my goal has never been to “be” someone else. If I was to blindly follow someone else’s steps, it wouldn’t be the career I had in mind. So, I feel like if you are going to be successful in what you do, there has to be some degree of innate motivation in you.
That said, I look to a lot of people for inspiration.
My father owns his own business and that had a more profound impact on me than you could possibly imagine as I opened my own facility. Without even knowing it, he taught me that your business problems are your own and that you never make them anyone else’s problems. And, give your employees autonomy, and as long as you’ve picked the right people, they won’t let you down.
My mother is a high school teacher and administrator – and is pretty much the Mother Teresa of my hometown. Over the years, I’ve watched on numerous occasions as she has fed some of her students who couldn’t afford to eat. I’ve gone to the grocery store with her countless times – and it always takes an extra hour or so because she runs into so many grateful parents and students she’s dealt with over the years. She established the first International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum in the state of Maine at her school. She didn’t have to do any of this; it wasn’t mandated by her salary, and it certainly isn’t something a lot of other teachers do. She taught me that your job has to fulfill you in some way far more significant than money, and that good will never runs out.
My grandparents were married for over 60 years before my grandfather passed away this fall. They taught me that family comes first – and my wife and I have had many talks about how they educated us on how a marriage should work.
In the industry, there are quite a few people I look to for advice. Alwyn Cosgrove has taught me a ton about how to run a business. Mike Robertson has been a guy with whom I’ve collaborated a lot – and we’ve both gotten better in the process. I look to guys like Bill Hartman and Charlie Weingroff as very bright individuals who simply enjoy learning for the sake of learning – and that’s something I enjoy. Pat Rigsby is a guy who has shown me more about how to balance all of life’s demands – from family time to various business endeavors.
I could go on and on, but the point is that I draw inspiration from a lot of sources – both intrinsic and extrinsic.
DS: You've stated that for baseball player, olympic lifting and vertical jumping aren't really necessary as the sport doesn't require it. Most trainers gave you hell, but you stood your ground and proved them all wrong. What other concepts have you brought to the table that have helped re-form many common misconceptions about training and sports development?
EC: It’s funny; right after I published that piece at T-nation about how power is “plane-specific,” I got an email from a researcher who was studying the exact same thing – and finding preliminary data that completely verified what I’d said. Sometimes, research is out there to validate what we’re already doing.
Whether I’ve made people changed their thought processes or not, a few things I’ve tried to bring to the forefront are:
1. The Difference Between Inefficiency and Pathology – We’ve always been taught that if an x-ray or MRI tells us that we’re structurally out of whack, then we’re screwed. The truth is that all of us – even when we’re asymptomatic – have structural issues on diagnostic imaging. The people who are in pain are the ones who don’t move efficiently on top of these structural flaws. I see this every day with the pitching shoulders that come through my door; I assume that they’re all “broken” and that we are just managing them to avoid them hitting a painful threshold.
2. The Concept of Long-Term Athletic Development Beginning with Strength – This is an area where I’ve tried to lead by example with our training model at Cressey Performance. I’m not interested in running a group of 20 14-year-olds through a bunch of agility ladders. If we want the best long term results and safety, our #1 job in a youth population is to improve strength. Sure, they run faster, jump higher, and throw harder – but they also decelerate better and change directions more efficiently. You can run all the "quickness drills" that you want with a young population, but the truth is that you’ll never improve speed or agility unless you teach them to put more force in to the ground. It’s like polishing the hub cabs on a car with no horsepower; you’re studying for the wrong test.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of facilities out there that are just about finding a training model that allows one to run a ton of kids through the same program without much concern for the actual benefits to be gained (or lack thereof). I’m not interested in babysitting.
3. The Differences Between Flexibility and Mobility – This was a key portion of my contribution to the recently releasedIYCA High School Strength Coach Certification. Mobility refers to the ability to reach certain positions, whereas flexibility refers to just one factor (joint range of motion) that affects that ability. Mobility is also dependent on stability, the foundation for which is neuromuscular recruitment. When we test flexibility, we’re talking about isolated testing of relaxed muscles/tendons. To be blunt, we’re ignoring the nervous system.
Mobility encompasses multiple joints and therefore likely involves fascial contributions to movement, whereas flexibility may only involve 1-2 joints and may therefore minimize the impact of fascia on an assessment.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we can easily assess mobility in a general sense – but determining the cause of limitations is more challenging. Flexibility, too, is a quick assessment – but correcting the limitation discovered doesn’t guarantee that movement quality will improve.
4. The belief that there is always something you can do to get better, regardless of injury – I’ve never been a fan of doctors and physical therapists telling injured patients to “just rest.” First off, rest alone is rarely the answer. Just as importantly, though, this recommendation ignores the fact that there are endocrine, immune, functional, psychological, and social benefits that are still to be derived from exercising. When I’m working with clients who are injured, I feel that it’s my job to show them what they can do and not just what they can’t do. And, there is always something you can do to maintain a training effect.
5. Weighted baseballs might actually be safer than traditional 5oz baseballs – and at the very least, they can be a beneficial training addition.This articlesums it up quite well, so I won’t reinvent the wheel. A lot of people can’t believe it when I saw that we used weighted balls, but the results have been nothing short of fantastic.
These are just the few things that came to mind right off the top of my head. I’d like to think that there are more!
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I just received this review from a happy customer of Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and Move Better(and grow out of every single piece of clothing you own):
Eric,Thought I'd add to your pile of stories about my experience with Show and Go. As a 30 year-old non-athlete who has never truly followed a complete training program, Show and Go really challenged me, brought some great results, and has turned me into a huge snob in the gym (my rest periods are generally spent grimacing at peoples' form and judging them for their partial range movements/exercise choices). The biggest challenge for me was adapting to the longer workouts/more volume/new exercises. As I reached the end of the program I certainly noticed I had adapted well.
I did not test my 1RM before starting, but I had good estimates and without a doubt I am much stronger and much more confident in my body to handle heavier loads. My results:1RM Deadlift - 380 (approx. +60lbs)
1RM Front Squat - 245 (approx +55lbs)
1RM Bench Press - 260 (approx +30lbs)Other stats of note:- Gained about 9lbs even though I know I don't eat enough
- Literally ripped the back of 5 pairs of pants bending over or sitting down (and grew out of most of the rest of them)
- Grew out of almost all my suits (pants and jackets)I'll be coming back to Cressey Performance in the next few weeks to get a new program in person and can't wait. Hopefully my legs/butt will settle down and stop growing out of pants. It's getting to be an expensive hobby for someone who has to dress up for work everyday.Thanks for this program. It was what I needed and it worked. Your blog and Tony's blog helped with continued motivation and instruction throughout.You guys have a good thing going. Looking forward to what's next.Zach Stanley
Whether you're a beginner or a veteran lifter, I'd encourage you to check out the program that had Zach splitting pants and moving big weights: Show and Go.
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Five months ago, I wrote an article called How to Find Your Fitness Niche – and it was one of the more popular posts in my site’s history. I realized after writing it, though, that I never bothered to talk about how I developed the niche I was in once I discovered it.
If you didn’t read the original installment, definitely check it out now. However, as a brief background, about 80-85% of our clients at Cressey Performance are baseball players. This past off-season, we had 44 professional players travel from all over the country to train in snowy Hudson, MA. So, you could say that my dream “niche” came true. Here are some of the strategies we employed along the way.
1. Don’t go for the big fish right away.
People are always blown away when I tell them that I started out with training high school baseball players, not big leaguers. That’s the truth, though; a few younger guys got great results, won a state championship, earned D1 scholarships, and – in the case of one – received state player of the year honors. My phone started ringing off the hook when some of those results were featured in the Boston Globe.
Eventually, the high school clientele grew to include more college guys and, in turn, pro guys. Once you have a few pro guys and you get results with them, they tell their buddies – and their agents and teams also have more guys to send your way. Then, all the younger athletes see professional athletes training at our facility and it reaffirms in their mind that Cressey Performance is the place to be. If a professional baseball player travels all the way across the country to train here, why wouldn’t they be willing to travel ten minutes? You wind up with a big circle that continuously grows.
What doesn’t work is just shooting for the “red carpet” clients right off the bat. Don’t expect to just be able to call your local professional sports team or some big time agent and “wow” them with a 15-second elevator pitch to get their best players to train with you. The truth is that you probably won’t even get a call back. It’s not my niche, but it works the same with celebrities, TV personalities, politicians, or anyone else who lives their lives knowing that everyone wants a piece of them. Be patient and fish in the river for a bit before you head out to catch the big fish in open waters.
2. Start locally.
Before you can be a national expert, you have to be a local expert. Training my local guys got me motivated to research and write more in the baseball realm. That gave rise to more guys traveling from out of state to train with us.
3. Remember that expertise is perceived differently.
Some perceive expertise as telling them what to do so that all the guesswork is taken out of the equation. They might think you are annoying or clueless if you try to tell them the “why” behind everything you do.
Others perceive expertise as your ability to justify everything that you do. They might think you’re incompetent if you tell them to “just trust you” because you “know” the program will work, or if you’re simply at a loss for words when they ask you to explain the “why” behind your training approach.
Some want to see you coach athletes to be confident in your abilities, and others just want to sit down with you and ask questions to verify your competence. Others might want to see you present at a seminar. Some want to read your writing, and others want to ask current clients about their experiences with you.
The point is that you have to be versatile and multi-faceted in the way that you present your expertise. I can rattle off research and tell guys why we’re doing stuff, or I can skip the science mumbo-jumbo and replace it with loud music and attitude. People are welcome to watch me coach, ask me questions, read my writing (online and the stuff that is framed in the office), view seminars I’ve given, check out flyers in the office, and speak to our clients. We make “perceiving expertise” easier for them.
4. Good will doesn’t run out – and costs nothing to give. Cultivate relationships.
At the end of the day, success in your niche isn’t about making up flyers or some other advertising tactic; it’s about overdelivering relative to clients’ expectations and creating genuinely positive relationships with people. We haven’t spent a penny on advertising since we opened in 2007 – but we’ve made a lot of friends along the way.
5. Remember that impressionable young minds ultimately become opinion leaders.
This is a cool year for us because it’s the first class of guys that we’ve seen all the way through high school. In other words, some kids I started training when they were in eighth grade are now seniors in high school with college baseball scholarships. They might not have been big referral sources when they were 14 years old, but as more accomplished 17-18 year-olds to whom underclassmen look up, they are huge opinion leaders who refer us a lot of business. Likewise, we’ve gotten to know their families well over the years, so the referrals don’t just come from the kids; they also come from the parents.
Tim Collins was the second professional baseball player I ever trained. He was a free agent signing out of high school in 2007 – and at the time, he was 18 years old, 5-5, 130 pounds soaking wet, and topping out at 82-83mph. Tim just wrapped up his fourth off-season with us and stands an outstanding chance of making the opening day roster for the Kansas City Royals after putting up some of the best numbers in minor league baseball over the past few years. He’s now 170 pounds, throws in the mid-90s, and has a ~39-inch vertical jump.
In the fall of 2007, Tim was as much of a longshot in professional baseball as you could have possibly imagined: undersized, underpaid, and undrafted. Now, he’s on the big league radar screen – and along that journey, he’s generated an enormous amount of publicity for Cressey Performance and referred several of his teammates our way.
6. Research like crazy.
If you are going to be the expert, it’s your job to know everything you possibly can about your niche. Being smart is never a bad thing; you need to be on the cutting-edge.
7. Adapt.
Whether you are training fat loss clients, pregnant women, senior citizens, or MMA fighters, we are in a dynamic field where things change daily. New research comes out and better ways of doing things are constantly being discovered. If you’re going to be the “go-to” expert, it’s not just good enough to learn new things; you have to be able to effectively integrate them in your existing philosophy. It’s no good learning something if you aren’t going to use it – and let’s face it: change is hard. Find a way to make it easy.
8. Don’t try to replicate yourself; complement yourself.
The single-worst thing I could have done in developing my baseball niche was hiring someone to be like me. Conversely, the best thing I can do is surround myself with people who have skill sets that complement mine so that we can together offer a more comprehensive product to our niche.
With that in mind, at CP, we have a pitching coordinator, nutrition director, massage therapist, and chiropractor on hand. My business partner handles all the billing, scheduling, and other office tasks. We have a cafeteria in the building to help out with nutrition needs. All these people do their thing so that I can leverage my abilities, which allows us to best serve our niche.
9. Don’t force it.
This one will be brief: you have to enjoy what you’re doing in order to be good at it.
I don’t care what sounds profitable or what your spouse or buddies tell you you’d be good at; it has to appeal to you on a level far more important than financial gain.
10. Success is about what you’re doing right, not what others are doing wrong.
Because we’re so focused on our niche, I have never really paid any attention to what surrounding training facilities are doing simply because I don’t view them as competition. However, that doesn’t mean that I’m not asked about them all the time – almost as if people are trying to bait me into talking poorly about industry colleagues. My policy is strict and straightforward: stay positive and never speak poorly of your competition.
I will gladly talk about what I feel we do well and how this distinguishes us from the industry “norm,” but it’s not my place to comment on what others are doing. Speaking poorly about others only makes you look jealous and petty. And, frankly, this time and effort is much better spent looking in the mirror to determine how you can make your own offerings better.
Closing Thoughts
Surely, these are just a few of the many factors involved in turning a fitness niche from a dream into a reality. And, I’m sure we can all learn from one another. In the comments section, I’d love to hear what your fitness niche is and what strategies you’ve employed to get to where you are.
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Time to learn and laugh - and hopefully lose fat and gain muscle in the process.
1. Here's a great study that shows that scapular dyskinesis in swimmers is magnified as training duration increases. I think that we all assume that you either have a scapular dyskinesis or you don't - but the truth is that you may not have it at rest, but it can kick in with activity as you fatigue. This is often why pitchers' mechanics change (e.g., elbow drops) as they get tired later in an outing.
It's a perfect example of how managing a pitcher - building up throwing volumes, charting pitch counts, and preparing the body - is much more important in terms of long term health than simply teaching pitching mechanics. A pitcher might have great mechanics in a 15-30 pitch bullpen, but that can change dramatically if he is asked to extend his pitch count.
2. I woke up this morning to an email from two CP pro guys, Matt Kramer (Red Sox) and Chad Rodgers (Braves), and it included this video thank you/tribute from the off-season. Not a bad supplemental skill set for a couple of guys who throw 95mph!
3. My wife and I have been doing more and more cooking from Dave Ruel's Anabolic Cooking. He's got a ton of great (and healthy) recipes in this cookbook that have been a nice change of pace for us, as we seemed to have gotten in a rut when things got busy and we just kept preparing what was quick, easy, and familiar. I'll write up a thorough review of the product sometime soon, but for now, you can find out more information HERE.
4. On Monday, my wife and I returned from four days in Iceland. It was an awesome trip; people there are so hospitable and we were treated fantastically. I could go on and on about our experiences there, but a travel guide could tell you much more than I ever could - so I'll just make an interesting observation...
On average, Icelandic folks live two years longer than those in the U.S. This is in a country that a) gets far less vitamin D due to minimal sunlight and b) has very few resources when it comes to growing fruits and vegetables because almost the entire country is lava fields. What do they have that we don't? Portion control at meal time.
Speaking of meal time, I ate whale blubber, rotten shark, and ram's testicle. Not surprisingly, none of them were very good.
5. I saw this advertisement with Mick Jagger on it in a clothing store at a Reykjavik mall and just had to snap a picture. Apparently, Jagger has 20-inch biceps in Iceland.
This was definitely one of the better Photoshop jobs that I've seen. They really made it believable. The only thing missing from the picture is the purple unicorn that Mick rode to the show.
6. My buddy John Romaniello was on Good Morning America the other day. I was hoping he'd talk about the time that we ate moose meat sloppy joes together, but instead he talked about fat loss. I think the sloppy joe story would have come out better, but his appearance still went pretty well. Check him out.
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Yesterday, New England Sports Network (NESN) ran a feature on my work with Kevin Youkilis of the Boston Red Sox. In the background of the video, you'll notice several other professional athletes (including a pro soccer player and pro triathlete) doing their thing, too. What's perhaps more interesting, though, is that you'll even see some general fitness clients getting after it at the same time.
It reminded me of an interview Chad Waterbury did with me for his website a while back; the focus was what ordinary folks can learn from professional athletes, and how they're alike/different in the gym. I think that there are some valuable takeaway points:
CW: You work with a lot of high-performance athletes. What are three principles that apply equally to athletes and non-athletes?
EC: I think people would be surprised to realize just how similar the Average Joe or Jane is to a professional athlete – both socially and physically.
The lay population often sits in front of a computer for 8-10 hours a day, but many pro athletes have 4-8 hour flights or 10+ hour bus rides where they’re sitting – and because they’re taller, sitting is even more uncomfortable and problematic. Like everyone else, they spend time surfing the internet, Skyping, playing video games, and goofing around on Facebook/Twitter. The advances in technology have hurt everyone from a physical fitness standpoint – but brought the “Pros and the Joes” closer together, believe it or not.
They’re also very similar in that they want the most bang for their buck. Most pro athletes are no different than anyone else in that they want to get in their training, and then go to visit their families, relax, play golf, or whatever else. They really don’t have interest in putting in six hours per day in training outside of the times when they have to do so (namely, in-season).
All that said, if I had to pick three principles crucial to the success of both populations, they’d be the following:
1. Realize that consistency is everything. I always tell our clients from all walks of life that the best strength and conditioning programs are ones that are sustainable. It’s not about working hard for three months and making great progress – only to fall off the bandwagon for a month. This is absolutely huge for professional athletes who need to maximize progress in the off-season; they just can’t afford to have unplanned breaks in training if they want to improve from year to year.
If a program isn’t conducive to your goals and lifestyle, then it isn’t a good program. That’s why I went out of my way to create 2x/week, 3x/week, and 4x/week strength training options – plus five supplemental conditioning options and a host of exercise modifications – when I pulled Show and Go together; I wanted it to be a very versatile resource.
Likewise, I wanted it to be safe; a program isn’t good if it injures you and prevents you from exercising. Solid programs include targeted efforts to reduce the likelihood of injury via means like mobility drills, supplemental stretching recommendations, specific progressions, fluctuations in training stress, and alternative strength exercises (“plan B”) in case you aren’t quite ready to execute “Plan A.”
2. You must balance competing demands, and prioritize the ones that are the most pressing at a given time. Using our professional baseball pitchers as an example, their training consists of strength training, mobility drills, medicine ball throws, movement training, and the throwing program (which is near daily in nature). In the Cressey Performance system, when the throwing program ramps up, the medicine ball work must come down substantially, and the strength training tapers off just a bit. You simply can’t keep adding sets and reps without subtracting something else and making a tradeoff, as athletes only have a certain amount of recovery capacity, and it’s hard to fine-tune an exact movement like throwing a baseball if you’re fatigued from everything else.
Managing competing demands is arguably more challenging in the general population, as their jobs outside the gym are usually more stressful than those that face many professional athletes – meaning that the Joes and the Janes have less recovery capacity with which to work. It seems logical that when you add something to a program, you have to subtract something else – but I’m constantly amazed at how many people decide to just keep adding more volume when they can’t lose fat or gain muscle mass fast enough. Sometimes, you just need to change the composition of the program, not add more and more, thereby creating three-hour marathon training sessions. This leads to my next point…
3. The success comes from the overall program, not just the individual parts. In other words, synergy is everything.
The aforementioned pitchers can’t just go out and start a throwing program after doing nothing for three months. Rather, they need to work to enhance their mobility and get stronger, more reactive, and more powerful first. If they skip these important steps, they increase their likelihood of injury, make it harder to re-acquire a skilled movement, and reduce the likelihood of improvement.
In the general population, a good strength and conditioning program consists of tremendous interdependencies. Your deadlift technique and strength depends on the training you’ve done in the previous month, week, and day – and how thorough and targeted your mobility warm-up (or lack thereof, in many unfortunate cases) was prior to that day’s training session. Those trainees who have the best results are the ones that line everything up – from nutrition, to strength training, to mobility exercises, to movement training, to metabolic conditioning, to recovery protocols.
CW: It’s common for people to think they’re advanced when they’re really not. Can you mention a few things a pro athlete typically does that a weekend warrior shouldn’t do?
EC: I would strongly discourage non-professional athletes from holding shirtless press conferences in their driveways while exercising during contract holdouts.
Then again, I wouldn’t really recommend that to Terrell Owens or any professional athlete, for that matter, but I digress…
To be honest, in the context of resistance training, a lot of professional athletes aren’t really as advanced as you might think, especially after a long season that’s taken its toll on them. Many of them have a ton of similarities with our general fitness clients – but just have different exercise contraindications and energy systems needs.
I think the better comparison would be between novice lifters (less than one year of resistance training) and those with years and years under their belt. They have to do things quite a bit differently.
As a first example, the novice lifter can handle a lot more volume because he (or she, of course) is relatively neurally inefficient. If this lifter did the volume of an advanced athlete, he might actually undertrain on volume (and possibly overdo it on intensity to the point that it’d interfere with picking up appropriate technique).
Second, a really advanced lifter will often need to deload on intensity – meaning that when it’s time for a “backoff week” – he’ll often keep the sets and reps up, but take a lot of weight on the bar. It’s just about getting reps in. A novice lifter, on the other hand, is better off keeping the intensity up and dropping the number of reps.
Third, a novice lifter can often be more aggressive in terms of caloric intake because there is such a large window of adaptation ahead in terms of muscle weight gain. I gained 50 pounds in my first year of lifting, but nowadays – even though I’m five times as strong as I was then – if I can go up 3-4 quality pounds a year, I’m thrilled. Surely, lifters are the opposite ends of the experience continuum can’t have similar caloric needs – even if the more experienced ones are heavier. Skinny novice guys can sometimes get away with eating like absolute crap as long as there are enough total calories – and still end up getting bigger. I certainly don’t advise it, but it’s one more way to show that novice and experienced lifters are horses of different colors, and that you have to be honest with yourself on where you fall on this continuum so that you train and eat optimally.
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