1. I started this week off with a bang with a few good (and goofy) YouTube clips in my newsletter, so there's no reason to shy away from a continuation of the awesomeness in this blog.
2. Tony Gentilcore got the day off from work today. He claimed it was to go see the filming of the next Functional Strength Coach seminar, but we all know it was just a front for his regular ol' "weird ninja dude in the woods" routine. Glad you enjoyed your alone time, big guy.
2. Congratulations to CP athlete and New York Mets minor leaguer Tim Stronach (St. Lucie Mets: High A), who just missed both a perfect game and no-hitter on Wednesday. "Stro" took a perfect game into the 8th inning, and then lost the no-no with one out in the 9th. The wildest part is that Tim didn't even know until the day before that he'd be making the start.
Stronach packed 21 pounds on his 6-5 frame this off-season with loads of hard work at Cressey Performance, and deserves all the success that comes his way. Great job, Tim!
3. I received an email with the following question yesterday: "I play basketball. I watch how guys lose lots of weight and bodyfat preparing for the combine. How do they do that?"
Answer: The overwhelming majority of college basketball players I've encountered live on sugary sports drinks, chicken wings, pizza, and booze. Simply cleaning up their diets for a month or two will work wonders even if training is held constant. Did you expect something more revolutionary?
4. Here's another study showing that swinging a heavy bat prior to regular hitting is an inferior warm-up protocol as compared to swinging the normal bat or an underweighted bat. Researchers "suggested that when preparing to hit, 5 warm-up swings with either a light or normal bat will allow a player to achieve the greatest velocity of their normal bat." This is in complete contrast to the use of weighted baseballs to increase throwing velocity; I love 'em when used with the right population.
5. Huh? What? Come again?
6. I went back through Jim Smith's Accelerated Muscular Development today to check up on how he approaches formatting for e-books (as we prepare some for the upcoming project's release). While I was looking it over, I got to thinking about how it never ceases to amaze me how thorough Smitty is with his products; he just seems to cover everything. I've said it before: this is a great resource; I'd highly recommend you check it out.
I've written previously about the many flexibility deficits we see in baseball players (particularly pitchers). One of the biggest issues we face is a loss of elbow extension range-of-motion. This adaptive change most likely occurs because of the insane amounts of eccentric muscle action required to decelerate the 2,500 degrees/second of elbow extension that occurs during pitching. You'll find some serious shortness/tissue restrictions in biceps brachii, brachioradialis, brachialis, and all the rest of the muscles acting at the elbow and wrist.
Unfortunately, it's not an area you can really work on with the foam roller or baseball, as it's in a tough spot. For that reason, we prefer using The Stick - and hold it in place with the j-hooks in a power rack. Here is how it works when rolling out the anterior forearm musculature (this same technique can be utilized on the elbow flexors):
Follow that up with some longer duration holds of this stretch, and you'll get that elbow extension back in no time.
For the entire Cressey Performance foam roller series, click HERE.
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used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
Risk-Reward in Training Athletes and Clients
This week, approximately 1,500 players will be drafted in the 2009 Major League Baseball Draft. Historically, a whopping 2-3% of these players will ever actually make it to the big leagues. In fact, only about 2/3 of all first-round draft picks - seemingly the most qualified candidates - ever make it to the major leagues.
For this reason, many have labeled competing in the professional baseball ranks a "War of Attrition." High-round picks get preferentially escorted through the minor leagues, while a lot of the late-round picks fight for their positions in the minors - especially since they know a brand new class of 40-50 draft picks and a bunch of free agent signees will line up to take their jobs each year. Along the way, loads of guys incur career-ending injuries.
Here, we come to several decisions in how to train athletes.
First, all athletes have unique movement inefficiencies, so we screen these issues and address them individually. Nothing remarkable there.
Second, some athletes have bigger contracts, so you have to be more conservative with their programming. Sure, they might get benefits out of more aggressive programming, but it also increases the likelihood that you'll mess up an athlete with multi-million dollar contracts in his immediate future.
Take, for instance, Cressey Performance athlete Shawn Haviland. Shawn was drafted out of Harvard by the Oakland A's in the 33rd Round of the 2008 Draft after being named Ivy League Pitcher of the Year. As Shawn himself has said, he "would have signed for a plane ticket to Arizona." In other words, he didn't get an $8 million signing bonus; he's a very low-risk investment. Life goes on for his organization if he doesn't work out because they can just draft another 50 guys the following year. After all, he's just another 6-0 right-hander in the system - a dime a dozen, if you will.
This is the exact conversation Shawn and I had last October when we first met up. He'd been 86-88mph on the radar gun most of last year, and that really isn't going to earn you a long stay in professional baseball. So, we decided to be more aggressive with his off-season programming than we would with someone who'd just become a first-round pick.
All off-season, he lifted, sprinted, accumulated 80-120 medicine ball throws three times a week, did some extreme long-toss, threw the weighted balls around, and consistently worked on his flexibility and tissue quality. It flies in the face of the conventional wisdom that says: a) we shouldn't long toss more than 120 feet, b) weighted balls are the devil, c) only distance running and steady-state cardio will "build leg strength" in pitchers, d) lifting will ruin flexibility, and e) medicine ball throwing will cause oblique strains (yes, I've really heard that one). However, it worked.
Now, seven months later, Shawn was just named a Midwest League All-Star. He is consistently 91-94mph and has completely changed his body. In short, he took a chance, worked his butt off, and got better.
Shawn's program wasn't "unsafe;" it was just "less conservative." It was at a different point on the continuum on which every strength and conditioning coach and personal trainer works on a daily basis. This program was obviously different than what I'd do with, say, a 40-year-old marathon runner, but it's also different than I'd do with a first-round pick with Shawn's exact build, competitive demands, and inefficiencies. And, if I had a pitcher with those exact same characteristics and an extensive injury history, we'd be even more conservative. Otherwise, the risk: reward would be completely out of whack.
Often, in our industry, we get far too caught up in numbers - whether it's the weight one lifts or his/her body fat percentage. In reality, I look at what I do as a means to an end. People train with us first and foremost to stay healthy, whether they're pitching in the professional baseball ranks or just carrying their kids around. What you do in the gym should improve quality of life first and foremost, and any activity that carries a high likelihood of injury is very rarely worth the risk.
Why pick up a stone - which demands compression and lumbar flexion - when you're not a strongman competitor and could just as easily do a more controlled trap bar deadlift?
Why behind-the-neck overhead press - which puts the shoulder at one of its most at-risk position - when you've already had four shoulder surgeries and still have hunchback posture?
When it really comes down to it, you have to fit the program to the athlete, and not the athlete to the program. For more information, a few resources I'd recommend:
1. My article, 6 Mistakes: Fitting Round Pegs into Square Holes
2. The Building the Efficient Athlete DVD Set
3. The 2008 Indianapolis Performance Enhancement DVD Set
4. For those of you interested in a bit of what we did with Shawn, check out this Athlete Profile on him.
New Article at T-Nation
For those who missed it, Part 3 of my "Lower Back Savers" series was posted at T-Nation last week. You can check it out HERE (and be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them in previous weeks).
New Blog ContentRandom Friday ThoughtsBogus Workouts and the Official Blog of...Building Vibrant Health: Part 2Friday Night Journals
Have a great week!
EC
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used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
I turn 28 today, so in hopes of distracting myself from the painful realization that I'm starting to go bald, I thought I'd focus on the positives of my existence in contexts that would appeal to you. Below, you'll find 28 of my favorite things - most of which are at least loosely related to fitness, nutrition, strength and conditioning, and sports.
1. Favorite Nickname: Power Alleys. This seemed like a good starting point, as power alleys are bald spots. Credit for this one goes to Mets pitching prospect Tim Stronach.
2. Favorite Thing About Cressey Performance: The camaraderie among the athletes/clients. I think the hard thing to appreciate about our facility without experiencing it first-hand and being there on a regular basis is that it's as much about the environment and attitude as it is about the expertise and programming. I'm psyched that we've not only created an environment where clients can improve physically, but one in which they can thrive socially, too.
3. Favorite Book I've Read Related to Fitness:Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes, by Shirley Sahrmann. This book got me thinking more about dysfunction and less about pathology. Quality of movement is often far more important than anything a MRI or x-ray can ever tell you.
4. Favorite Book I've Read Unrelated to Fitness: This is a top-up between The Tipping Point and A Prayer for Owen Meany. They might be taken over, however, by one of the gifts I just got for my birthday from CP Client Steph Holland-Brodney.
5. Favorite DVD I've Watched:The Indianapolis Performance Enhancement Seminar DVD Set. Bill Hartman's presentation on "Stiff vs. Short" alone makes this a fantastic resource, and the rest is just gravy. I reviewed it HERE.
6. Favorite DVD I've Co-Created: The Building the Efficient Athlete DVD set. I think I'm most proud of this resource because it's something that provided something I so desperately wanted - but couldn't get - during my college education. Effectively, it's a resource that blends book memorization with real-world practice with a focus on functional anatomy, assessments, and troubleshooting common exercises.
7. Favorite Seminar I've Attended:The Perform Better 3-Day Functional Training Summit. Each year, they get better and better. Check out Chicago or Long Beach this year if you missed Providence.
8. Favorite Athlete of All Time: Barry Sanders. I can't imagine an guy with better kinesthetic awareness, body control, or ability to turn a complete disaster of a play into a 90-yard touchdown run - while carrying two defensive linemen on his back.
9. Favorite Athlete of All-Time that you've probably never heard of: Jerry Sichting. He played for the Celtics from 1985 to 1988, and I'll always remember the night Sichting - at a heigh of 6-1 - got in a fight with 7-4 Ralph Sampson during the 1986 NBA Finals. At the time, I was a five-year old shadow boxing in my living room yelling at the top of my lungs.
10. Favorite Place to Visit: Fenway Park
11. Second Favorite Place to Visit: Gampel Pavilion at the University of Connecticut. It's an incredible environment in which to watch college basketball, and it's also where I spent just about all my time from 2003 to 2005.
12. Favorite Exercise: was this ever in question?
13. Favorite Sites I Visit Just About Every Day: T-Nation.com, MinorLeagueBaseball.com, ESPN.com, Sports.Yahoo.com, WilliamInman.com, 38Pitches.com, ShawnHaviland.Blogspot.com, MetrowestDailyNews.com, StrengthCoach.com, MikeReinold.com, RobertsonTrainingSystems.com, BillHartman.net, AlwynCosgrove.Blogspot.com, DieselCrew.com, PrecisionNutrition.com, BrianStPierreTraining.com, Tony Gentilcore's Blog, Boston.com, BarstoolSports.com, Facebook.com, EricCressey.com.
14. Favorite Kind of Injury to See (weird category, I know): Labral Tears (SLAP lesions), or really any kind of shoulder or elbow pain in pitchers. You've got so many potential causes that it's kind of fun (for me, not the athlete) to go through a process of elimination to see what combination of factors caused it. There are all the classic flexibility deficits in pitchers, plus scapular instability, poor thoracic spine mobility, plus faulty mechanics, plus inappropriate training volumes, plus weak lower bodies. It's kind of like peeling back the layers on an onion to see what shakes free. It's also a great scenario to illustrate what I talked about with respect to diagnostic imaging in #3 from above. All of these guys will have labral fraying and rotator cuff partial thickness tears at the very least; it's our job to fix them up and make them work efficiently in spite of these structural deficits in situations where surgery isn't warranted.
15. Favorite Class I Took in School: Gross Anatomy. Yes, I cherished the semester I spent with a bunch of cadavers.
16. Favorite Healthy Food: Apple-Cinnamon Protein Bars from John Berardi's Gourmet Nutrition Cookbook. Admittedly, I often just eat the batter before it ever gets cooked. Not good, I know.
17. Favorite Piece of Equipment We Have at CP: Giant Cambered Bar. Along with the safety squat bar and front squat set-up, this bad boy has allowed me to keep squatting even though my right shoulder decided a long time ago that traditional back squats weren't a good idea. It's also a great asset for working with overhead throwing athletes who should avoid the externally rotated, abducted position under load.
18. Favorite Thing About Having a Blog: I can write a lot more casually than in my newsletter, which tends to be more geeky. And, I can post videos of this kid rocking out:
19. Favorite Mobility Drill: Walking Spiderman w/Overhead Reach. I love this drill because you're covering so many things at once. You'll get thoracic spine extension and rotation from the reach, and hip flexor and adductor length in the lower body from the lunge angle. Keep an eye out for more new movements along these lines in the months to come as we film the sequel to the Magnificent Mobility DVD.
20. Favorite Pastime I Had to Give Up: Fantasy Baseball/Basketball. During my sophomore year of undergrad, I finished fourth in the world in NBA.com's Virtual GM contest. Long story short, if you want to be really good at fantasy sports with that kind of set-up, you've got to put a lot of time into it - and realize that it won't make girls like you. You'll also find yourself watching games in which you'd otherwise have absolutely no interest. I couldn't do it half-ass (aside from the CP Fantasy Football League), so I gave it up.
21. Favorite Inedible Toy: Rubber Steak.
Suffice it to say that Fire & Ice wouldn't allow us to eat a birthday cake inside their restaurant on Saturday night in celebration of my awesomeness. So, in celebration of their suckiness, none of us (16 in all) will ever eat again - and I was reduced to gnawing on dog toys.
22. Favorite Birthday Excitement: Apparently, it's going to be taking my car in to get work done, buying a new laptop, and then coaching 'em upat CP. There will also be a dominant upper body lift at CP that will undoubtedly feature Kevin Larrabee missing 300...again...and again).
24. Favorite Strength and Conditioning Coach Who is Having Surgery on my Birthday: Josh Bonhotal, Chicago Bulls. I talked with Josh yesterday and he informed me that he was finally having his ACL fixed today in celebration of my birthday. Nothing says "Happy Birthday, Buddy" like taking a chunk out of your patellar tendon and turning it into an anterior cruciate ligament. It's kind of like planting a tree on Earth Day. What a nice gesture.
25. Favorite Article Series I've Written:A New Model for Training Between Starts (Part 1and Part 2). These articles were actually picked up by Collegiate Baseball Magazine as front-page features, and I received a lot of great feedback about them. If there is one thing I do before I retire, it's convincing the world of the evils of distance running for pitchers. I'd put the Shoulder Savers series in a close second
26. Favorite Supplement: Fish Oil. It's followed closely by Vitamin D. You need both - and probably a lot more than you think. I'm a simple guy when it comes to this stuff.
27. Favorite Random Website a Buddy Texted to Me Last Week: www.EasyCurves.com. This thing is hilarious. A special thanks goes out to Jesse Burdick for making me just a little bit dumber with that.
28. Favorite Sign of Athlete Dedication for the Month: We have two college pitchers up here fromPennsylvania for the month to work on getting bigger, stronger, faster, and more flexible in hopes of a nice velocity jump on the mound, and the obvious injury prevention benefits of such training. That's all well and good - until you hear that they got an unfurnished apartment in Hudson, MA. These guys are sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and all they brought were a few lamps, a TV, some books, and a whole lot of enthusiasm and motivation. That's committment to training - and just the kind of guys we like to have around Cressey Performance.
What kind of sacrifices are you making to get better and move closer to your goals? I'm not sure that sleeping on a mattress on the floor is necessary, but it says a lot.
With that in mind, I'm not taking today off. There is work to be done and I love to do it, birthday or not.
1. It's a fun time of year around Cressey Performance, as all the college guys are starting to roll back in, and the high school baseball playoffs are nearly at hand. Brian St. Pierre was so excited about it that he tried to high five on of our power racks with his forehead. He (and his three stitches) will be featured in the next episode of "When Power Racks Attack."
2. After I mentioned last week that Mike Robertson, Bill Hartman, and I had something in the works, I got several emails (and a stand-up question at the end of my talk at Perform Better last weekend) from people wanting to know what we were scheming up. Suffice it to say that it's a sequel to Magnificent Mobility and Inside-Out, but on a whole new level. If those DVDs were little league, this is going to be big league stuff,
We'll have detailed assessments, progressions, and sport-specific protocols. I guess you could say that it's somewhat of a "choose your own adventure" book where you can take multiple paths; and, in the case of trainers/strength coaches, you can help your clients/athletes out individually. And, there will be a nice tag-along manual. We are hoping to get this kid to sing on the soundtrack, but his agent won't call me back.
Anyway, we've got over three years of accumulated "add-ons" from the initial MM DVD, and it's also the first time the three of us have put all our heads together on a project. Should be very cool - and we are hoping for a mid-summer release date. If you aren't already subscribed to my newsletter, definitely do so (with the feature over to the right of this page) and we'll make sure you're notified right away. You can view a sample of this newsletter by checking out the one from earlier this week: Newsletter 154.
3. Mike Reinold has an awesome blog post series going about Anterior Knee Pain. Whether you're a strength coach, personal trainer, physical therapist, garbageman, orthodontist, or lazy wanker who just lives in his parents' basement, I'd highly recommend you check it out at MikeReinold.com.
4. One of the things I love the most about training pitchers is when they go out in the spring - after a winter of training to improve throwing velocity and prevent injury - and start hitting bombs at the plate. Obviously, it's awesome for their confidence, but just as importantly, it's proof in the pudding that simply enhancing overall athleticism will carry over to just about anything.
If a kid only goes from 78 to 88mph on the mound, he tries to attribute it solely to a change in mechanics or lots of rubber tubing drills for his rotator cuff. However, if he starts hitting 400-foot shots alongside that velocity increase, you know he'll start to appreciate that the extra 20 pounds of meat on his butt, hamstrings, and upper back - and the big strength increases - are all playing a part in that improvement.
That's all. Have a great weekend!
A topic of interest that seems to get thrown around quite a bit nowadays is whether front squats are a "safer" exercise than back squats. We don't do much back squatting at Cressey Performance, so a lot of people automatically assume that I'm against the idea of back squatting. This couldn't be further from the truth, as my answer to the question "which is safer?" is a resounding "IT DEPENDS!"
At last check, 74% of the Cressey Performance clientele is baseball players. The majority of these athletes have acquired actual structural changes to their shoulders that make the back squat set-up more of an at-risk position than in non-overhead-throwing athletes. To make a long story short, in this externally rotated, abducted position of the shoulder girdle, the biceps tendon pulls awkwardly on the superior labrum. This peel-back mechanism is exacerbated in the presence of a glenohumeral internal rotation deficit (GIRD) and scapular instability - two features extremely common in baseball players. So, for these folks, the front squat is a much safer alternative. We also use giant cambered bar and safety squat bar squat and lunge variations.
Conversely, take an athlete with either traumatic or chronic acromioclavicular joint problems, and the front squat will really irritate his shoulder because of the bar's position atop the shoulder girdle. Move this bar to the upper back, and the pain is avoided altogether. So, for AC joint pain suffers, the back squat is a safer bet.
Let's be honest, though; the entire front vs. back squat argument is about lumbar spine health. So, we'll attack it from that perspective. To kick things off, I've got a little announcement that may surprise you: I haven't back squatted in almost two years, and my back squat form isn't very good.
I know what you're thinking: "You're a strength coach, Cressey; you must really suck at what you do if you can't even back squat."
Well, I guess that would depend who you ask. I regularly squat well over 400 pounds with the giant cambered bar. Front squatting isn't a problem, and I can use the safety squat bar, too.
The issue for me with back squats is a bum shoulder from back in my high school tennis days - similar to what I outlined earlier. Because my shoulder doesn't like the externally rotated, abducted position, the only way I can get under a bar pain-free is to use an ultra-wide grip - which means my scapulae are winged out and my upper back is rounded over. My shoulder range-of-motion is just fine, but the structural flaws I have (partial thickness tear, bone spurring, and likely labral fraying) means that if I want to back squat pain-free, I have to do so like someone who lacks external rotation.
Who lacks external rotation? Well, just about everyone who sits at a computer all day, and every athlete who has spent too much time bench-pressing. Combine this with poor scapular stability and a lack of thoracic spine extension, and you realize that a large chunk of the weight-training population simply can't effectively put a bar on the upper back, let alone actually stabilize it.
Let's be honest: if you have poor hip and/or ankle mobility, both your front and back squats are going to look pretty ugly. You'll go into lumbar flexion or come up on your toes to get your range of motion, in most cases. You'd think that one potentially protective factor would be that in the back squat, the lifter can better utilize the latissimus dorsi (in a more shortened position) to help stabilize the spine.
The main problem with the back squat, in my eyes, is that not everyone has sufficient upper body mobility to position and stabilize the bar properly. As a result, it can "roll forward" on people - and that's where more of the forward lean problems come about. More forward lean equates to more shear stress, and an increased risk of going into lumbar flexion under compressive load. The front squat - even under heavier loads - keeps a lifter more upright, or else he'll simply dump the bar.
So, with all that in mind, while it may be a bit of a bold statement, I'd say that for individuals with excellent whole-body mobility and no upper extremity pain, a back squat is no more dangerous than a front squat. While the extra stabilization contribution from lats may reduce some of this risk, the simple fact that one can move more weight with a back squat probably "cancels out" this advantage in this comparison.
All that said, regardless of whether you front or back squat, I'd encourage you to regularly get video of yourself lifting - or find an experienced coach - to give you feedback on your technique.
Q: My son pitches for a Division II baseball program - well, at least, until recently. Since he began his strength training regimen one year ago, his pitches have gained velocity, but he no longer has control over the ball. Is it possible that his training has changed the mechanics in his arm so much that he has no idea where the ball is going after it leaves his hand? He's frustrated - we are talking about one of the best and strongest in collegiate baseball and now they won't even put him on the mound. I asked some baseball veteran friends about it and they suggested he has to retrain his arm since he has become so much stronger. What are your thoughts?
A: I've definitely seen guys who have gained muscle mass and lost velocity because they didn't train the right way, and it can absolutely go in the opposite direction as well and affect control.
I agree with your pitching coaches that he probably needs to retrain his mechanics with the added weight, but to be honest, it's something that should have been happening with a gradual weight gain anyway. I would be more inclined to look to address any range of motion (ROM) deficits he may have acquired through the process of gaining weight.
For instance, if he lost some hip rotation ROM, it could markedly affect control. A guy without enough hip internal rotation will fly open early on his front leg and, as a result, the arm lags behind (and out of the scapular plane, which can also lead to arm problems). A guy who loses external rotation tends to stay closed, which means he either throws more across his body (increased arm stress) or miss high and inside frequently (in the case of a RHP vs. right-handed batter, or LHP vs. left-handed batter).
Likewise, a pitcher who bench presses until he's blue in the face can lose both external rotation and horizontal abduction ROM. These ROM factors are two (of many) predictors of velocity, and while a decrease in one or both normally equates to a drop in velocity, it could also cause a pitcher to change his arm slot. I actually wrote more about this in an old newsletter: Lay Back to Throw Gas.
These are just some thoughts. I'd need to do some ROM tests and see some videos of him throwing to know for sure if any of my impressions are on the money.
For more information, I'd definitely recommend you check out the 2008 Ultimate Pitching Coaches Bootcamp DVD Set.
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used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
I got back late from Easter and pulled a blog together at the last minute on Monday morning - hoping to just kick the can down the road to a big Tuesday night blog (was out of town all day Tuesday). I think the Doga piece satisfied the comedic interests of you, the readers, but I'm afraid it was a little light on the content.
So, my goal for Wednesday was to come through with some crazy geeky content, but I just didn't get much quality time on the laptop - and the project was kicked back to this morning. I started writing some sweet content, but it just kept stretching on and on and on - to the point that it was too long to be a blog. So, that'll be my newsletter early next week. Subscribe to the right of the screen if you want to read it.
That said, I just devoted about 45 minutes to writing, and I still have no blog for Thursday. So, I'm going to cut my losses, brainstorm for Friday, and give you the best filler content I can think up in the meantime for today.
First, I'm going to encourage you to check out this Precision Nutrition Athlete Profile on Cressey Performance Athlete and Oakland A's minor league pitcher Shawn Haviland. Shawn completely changed his body this off-season and had a nice velocity jump from 87-89 to 91-93mph - and he's off to a good start for the Kane County Cougars. He's got a nice blog rolling, too: Ivy League to MLB.
Second, I've got a little challenge for you. One of CP's newest high-level athlete additions is Danny O'Connor, a boxer who was a member of the 2008 US Olympic Team. Danny has turned pro since the Olympics, compiling a record of 5-0 with 3 knockouts, and we're currently in the process of preparing him for his fight on April 25 at Foxwoods (shown on Showtime, for those interested). This kid enters the gym and instantly, everyone gets fired up to train.
Here's the thing, though: Danny might be the only professional boxer in history without a nickname. Nobody's come up with something good enough yet, he says. I suggested "135 Pounds of Irish Fury," but he didn't seem to go for it. So, let's see if my readers can do better than I did. What do you suggest for a nickname? Post your suggestions as comments on this blog.
Q: At what point do you think that muscle size affects one's range of motion? Just interested in your thoughts. I'm a golfer and my flexibility is important; there isn't much point for me to be really strong but not able to move properly.
A: Well, it would be joint- and population-specific. On the joint side of things, as an example, the elbow flexors (biceps, to the lay population) and knee flexors (hamstrings) can restrict elbow and knee flexion, respectively, if they get too big. Or, the pecs may inhibit horizontal adduction ROM. This list goes on and on.
I don't feel that simply making a muscle bigger means that you lose range-of-motion in that specific muscle, as the improvements are to cross-sectional area. If this was the case, the elbow flexors would be restricting us in extension, and the pecs would be restricting us in horizontal abduction, but as the examples above show, that's just not happening.
Provided that flexibility training is good, and structural balance is prioritized in programming, there is no reason to believe that you can't be big and flexible.
Now, it's important to consider the sporting population in question. A powerlifter isn't going to need as much mobility as, say, a baseball pitcher. One guy needs to be efficient in a short range of motion, while the other needs to be efficient through a larger range of motion.
In pitchers, external rotation ROM is a good predictive factor for velocity. On top of that, horizontal abduction at stride foot contact is huge, according to the research.
So, in order to have good pitching specific ROM, you need to have adequate length of the muscles that internally rotate and horizontally adduct the shoulders. And, the big muscle that does this is the pectoralis major. Bench until the cows come home, shorten it up, and then you'll lose that ROM.
Now, ask anyone who has ever trained baseball pitchers, and they'll tell you that pitcher gain external rotation over the course of a season simply from throwing. Guys who don't weight-train properly can certainly impede this velocity-aiding adaptation.
This, of course, is an example specific to baseball pitching, and demands would be different for golfers.
This week's recommended reading:
LiftStrong- this compilation of writings from dozens of coaches and trainers is fantastic, and I was honored to contribute. Alwyn Cosgrove - a two-time cancer survivor - pulled this great resource together, and all proceeds benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. For a small price, you get over 800 pages of content on a CD, and help out a great cause.
