Home Posts tagged "Magnificent Mobility"

I’m Having a Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale (Just Like Everyone Else on the Planet)

I guess I'm joining in the discount madness this holiday season, even if I didn't have to do any planning!  Here are some options for your holiday shopping at EricCressey.com:

1. Whip: What it is and How You Get it - This was a presentation I did a while back at Ron Wolforth's Pitching Coaches Bootcamp, and it's now available for sale individually. In the presentation, I talk about factors the influence whether you increase throwing velocity and how strength and conditioning programs can have a dramatic impact - either positive or negative - on whether one develops the whip needed to throw harder.  You can either watch this online or get it as a DVD.

2. 20% off all Physical Products at MikeReinold.com - This sale includes Functional Stability Training and Optimal Shoulder Performance, along with many of Mike Reinold's other products.  Just enter the coupon code BLACKFRIDAY2012 at checkout to get the discount.

3. 15% of all Products at RobertsonTrainingSystems.com - This sale includes Assess and Correct, Building the Efficient Athlete, and Magnificent Mobility, along with many other products from Mike Robertson. The discount will automatically be applied at checkout.

We don't put products on sale very often, so be sure to take advantage of these offers before they expire at the end of the day on Monday!

Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a four-part video series on how to deadlift!

Name
Email
Read more

Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale

I don't know about you, but I can't think of anything I would rather do less than get up at 4am and go stand in line at some store with thousands of other people to take advantage of some sale.  And, it's with that in mind that Mike Robertson, Bill Hartman, Mike Reinold, and I are proud to announce a sale through Monday (11/28) at midnight on the following products: Assess and Correct DVD Set Inside-Out DVD Set Magnificent Mobility DVD The Bulletproof Knees and Back Seminar DVD Set Building the Efficient DVD Set 2008 Indianapolis Performance Enhancement Seminar DVD Set The Single-leg Solution DVD Set and Manual Bulletproof Knees Manual and DVD Optimal Shoulder Performance DVD Set I've linked to each one of these products individually so that you can learn more about each of them, but you can purchase them individually or together easily at the Robertson Training Systems Product Page. The only exception would be Optimal Shoulder Performance, which can be purchased exclusively through www.ShoulderPerformance.com with the coupon code bfcm2011. If you're someone who is "new" to our products, I'd encourage you to check out this video on Assess and Correct to learn a bit more about how we roll with one of these products.  Assess and Correct is a great place to start, if you haven't purchased any of our stuff yet:

Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a four-part video series on how to deadlift!
Name
Email
Read more

Three Years of Cressey Performance: The Right Reasons and the Right Way

Though a somewhat "normal" day at the gym, yesterday marked Cressey Performance's three-year anniversary. While my business partner's blog post yesterday did an excellent job of doling out "thank yous" to a lot of the important people who have been so involved in our success - from clients to parents, coaches, interns, and significant others - I wanted to add my own two cents on the matter today.  More than anything, I really wanted to highlight a sentence that illustrates what makes me the most proud about where CP has been, where it is, and where it's going.

We've done this for the right reasons, and we've done it the right way.

newcp21 I read a business development blog post by Chris McCombs the other day where he wrote something that really hit home for me.  When he was talking about how he decides to accept or reject a new project/opportunity, here is one of his guidelines: "Only Take on Projects That Are In Line With My Current Values and Fulfill Me Beyond Just The Money - A project must fulfill me in some way BESIDE just money...too many people spend their life JUST chasing a buck; to me, that's no way to live.  For me, the money must be there, but it should fulfill me personally, be fun, help a lot of people, and build and be in line with my current brand and brand equity." Back in 2007, I had a tough decision to make.  My online consulting business had really taken off, and the Maximum Strength book deal was in the works.  My other products - Magnificent Mobility, The Ultimate Off-Season Training Manual, and Building the Efficient Athlete - were selling well and getting great reviews, and I'd just had a study published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research.  This website was growing exponentially in popularity, and I had just wrapped up my first year on the Perform Better tour - so lots of doors were opening for me on the seminar front to present all over the world - and I could have stayed home and just written all day, every day. I was getting really crunched for time, as I was already training clients 8-13 hours per day, seven days per week, as my in-person clientele had rapidly grown. My phone rang off the hook for about three weeks after Lincoln-Sudbury won a baseball state championship after I'd trained several of their guys, and one of my athletes was named state player of the year.  And, after being featured on the front page of the Boston Globe with a nipple so hard I could cut diamonds, I was in demand as a t-shirt model (okay, not really - but it made for an awesome blog post, The School of Hard Nipples).

picture-1

I was exhausted and stressed - but absolutely, positively, "living the dream" that I'd always wanted. To make matters a bit more interesting, I had just started dating a great girl (now my fiancee) who I really had a good feeling was "the one" after about three months.  The work days, however, were insanely long and I was worried that I'd screw up a good thing by not spending enough time with her. Every business development coach out there would have seen a "simple" answer to all my problems: stop training people in person.  Just write, consult, make DVDs, and give seminars.  It would have cut my hours by 80% and still allowed me to earn a pretty good living - and enjoy plenty of free time.  There was a huge problem with that, though; as Chris wrote, it wouldn't "fulfill me personally, be fun, help a lot of people, and build and be in line with my current brand and brand equity."  I like doing evaluations, writing programs, coaching, sweating, training with my guys, cranking up the music, helping people get to where they want to be, collaborating with and learning from other professionals, and watching my athletes compete - whether it's at some high school field or at Fenway Park.  Giving that up wasn't an option; I guess I'd have just been a crappy business coaching client, as I would have been stubborn as an ass on giving that up.

stubborn

Fortunately for me, Pete Dupuis, my roommate from my freshman year of college, had just finished his MBA and was in the midst of a job search.  And, during that MBA, he'd started to train with me and packed on a ton of strength and muscle mass - making him realize and truly appreciate the value in what I was doing (especially since he was and is a goalie in a very competitive soccer league).  Pete had also met and become friends with a ton of my clients - and taken a genuine interest in my baseball focus, as a lifelong Red Sox fan.  Almost daily, Pete would encourage me to do my own thing and let him handle all the business stuff for me. Simultaneously, Tony Gentilcore was ready for a change of scenery on the work front.  Having been Tony's roommate and training partner for almost two years at that point, I knew he was a genuinely great guy, that he'd read everything on my bookshelf, and that he could coach his butt off and "walk the walk."  He, too, had met a lot of my clients - so there was continuity from the get-go. So, on July 13, 2007, Cressey Performance was born.  Here is what we started with.

first-picture

Boatloads of renovations and equipment additions later, it wound up looking like this.

cressey-performance-1

Of course, we outgrew and demolished this space after about nine months and moved three miles east to a facility twice the size.  And, we've continued to grow right up to this day; June was our busiest month ever, and July should be busier.  We've got regular weekly clients who come from four states (MA, NH, CT, RI), and in the baseball off-season, I have college and pro guys who come from the likes of OH, AZ, CA, SC, NC, GA, FL, and VA.  And, we had 33 applicants for this summer's internships.

To be very candid, though, I don't consider myself a very good "businessman."  No offense to Pete or Tony, either, but I don't think they even come close to the textbook definition of the word, either.  We just try to be good dudes. "We've done this for the right reasons, and we've done it the right way."

We don't allocate a certain percentage of our monthly revenues to advertising.  In fact, we haven't spent a single penny on advertising - unless you count charitable donations to causes that are of significance to us.

We don't search high and low for new revenue streams to push on our clients.  In fact, if I get one more MonaVie sales pitch, I'm going to suplex whoever delivered it right off our loading dock.  Rather, we bust our butts to set clients up for success in any way possible - and trust that those efforts will lead to referrals and "allegiance" to Cressey Performance.  We ask what they want from us and modify our plans accordingly.  It's what led to us bringing in manual therapy, a pitching cage, and, of course, pitching coach/court jester Matt Blake's timeless antics.

Along those same lines, we don't measure our success based on revenue numbers; we measure it based on client results.  In three years of seeing LOADS of baseball players non-stop, we've only had three arm surgeries: one shoulder and two elbow.  All three were athletes who came to us with existing injuries, and in each case, we kept them afloat as long as we could and trained them through their entire rehabilitation.  I don't want to toot our own horn, but this is a remarkable statistic in a population where over 57% of pitchers suffer some form of shoulder injury during each competitive season - and that doesn't even include  elbows!  And, our statistics don't even count literally dozens of players who have come to us after a doctor has told them they needed surgery, but we've helped them avoid these procedures.  The college scholarships, draft picks, state titles, individual honors, and personal bests in the gym are all fantastic, but I'm most proud of saying that we've dedicated ourselves to keeping athletes healthy so that they can enjoy the sports they love.

The same goes for our non-competitive athlete clients.  The fat loss and strength gains they experience are awesome and quantifiable, but beyond that (and more qualitatively), I love knowing that they're training pain-free and are going to be able to enjoy exercise and reap the benefits of training for a long time.

We don't penny-pinch during our slowest times of the month (late March through mid-May - the high school baseball season).  We see it as an opportunity to do more staff continuing education, renovate the facilities, and get out to watch a lot of baseball and support our athletes.  And, we adjust our hours to open up on Sundays and stay later on weeknights during the baseball season to make it easier for athletes to get in-season training in whenever they can.  If a pitcher wants to come in and get his arm stretched out before or after an outing, he stops by and we do it for him - but don't charge him a penny for it.  It's about setting people up for success.

We don't try to just "factory line" as many clients through our facility as possible with everyone on the same program.  You might walk into CP and see 20 different clients on 20 different programs - because a 16-year old pitcher with crazy congenital laxity is going to have a markedly different set of needs than a 16-year-old linebacker with shoulder mobility so bad that he needs help putting a jacket on.  One program on one dry erase board for hundreds of athletes isn't training; it's babysitting.

Taking this a step further, we don't boot clients out after a certain amount of time.  Clients take as long as needed to complete the day's program. And, when they're done (or before they even begin), loads of our clients spend time hanging out in the office just shooting the breeze and enjoying the environment.  As an example, Toronto Blue Jays Organizational Pitcher of the Year Tim Collins spends a minimum of five hours a day at CP all off-season.

collins_stride

Tim has sold girl scout cookies for the daughter of one of our clients, and he's been our back-up front desk guy when Pete is out of town.  Yesterday, he was back to visit on his all-star break - and he said hello to every client he saw - and remembered them by name.  If you're a 15-year-old up-and-coming baseball pitcher, how cool is it to get that kind of greeting when you walk into the office?  Well, at CP, kids get that greeting from 10-15 pro guys all the time.  And, if they're lucky, they might even get to throw on a bobsled helmet and join these pro guys in a rave to Miley Cyrus, apparently.

At least once a week, I get an email from an up-and-coming coach asking for advice about starting a facility.  When I get these emails, I now think about how Rachel Cosgrove recently mentioned that more than 80% of fitness coaches leave the industry within the first year. In most cases, this happens because these people never should have entered the fitness industry in the first place - because their intentions (money) were all wrong.  They usually leave under the assumption that they could never make a living training people, but in reality, these folks are going to have a hard time making a living in any occupation that requires genuinely caring about what you do and the people with whom you work, and being willing to hang your hat on the results you produce.

ec-bk

As such, the first advice, in a general sense, is obvious: do it for the right reasons, and do it the right way.  Sure, making a living is essential, but only open a facility because it would fulfill you "personally, be fun, help a lot of people, and build and be in line" with who you are and what your values are - which together constitute your "brand." Making the move to start up this business was one of the most daunting decisions I have ever had to make, and all the efforts toward actually getting the business started were equally challenging.  However, in the end, it has been more rewarding both personally and professionally than I could have ever possibly imagined.

Thank you very much to all of you - clients/customers, parents, EricCressey.com readers, seminar attendees, and professional colleagues - for all your support over the past three years.  We couldn't have done it without you - and look forward to many more years of doing things for the right reasons and in the right way.

Please enter your email below to sign up for our FREE newsletter.
Name
Email
Read more

Memorial Day Sale!

To celebrate Memorial Day and the long weekend that many call the "unofficial start to summer," Mike Robertson and I decided to put two of our most popular products to-date on sale through this Monday night - and update their websites. So, from now until midnight on Monday 5/31, you can get both Building the Efficient Athlete and Magnificent Mobility for 20% off.  The discount will be applied automatically at checkout; you just need to pick them up at the following websites:

www.BuildingTheEfficientAthlete.com

btea_set

www.MagnificentMobility.com

mm1 If you'd like to order them along with other products, just check out the RobertsonTrainingSystems.com Products page. Don't miss out on this great opportunity to pick up two of our "best sellers" at an excellent discount!

Read more

The Biggest Magnificent Mobility/Inside-Out Blowout Sale of All Time

As many of you know, Bill Hartman, Mike Robertson, and I are very close to releasing a new product.  In fact, we spent the weekend going through edits on the footage and pulling together the tag-along manuals. This new product includes a lot of our newer perspectives on assessment and corrective exercise.  Many of the drills we outline actually piggyback on those we outlined with our previous DVDs, Magnificent Mobility and Inside-Out.  There is even a bit of overlap where we discuss how the "older" drills fit into our up-to-date progressions. So, while the MM and I/O DVDs might be a few years old, the good news is that the human body hasn't evolved dramatically since then - so these drills are still highly effective.  However, with new products, older products sometimes get forgotten - and that's why we figured we'd throw out this opportunity to grab up these two previous products at a big discount. Here's the deal... 30% off on Magnificent Mobility and Inside-Out from Monday, August 31 through Wednesday, September 2.  All you need to do is head over to the RobertsonTrainingSystems.com Products Page and add the item(s) to your cart.  At checkout, enter the coupon code "FALL09" (all caps, no quotation marks) and the discount will be applied. Don't miss this last chance to get two great products at a great discount!
Read more

Random Friday Thoughts: 7/10/09

Here I sit at my desk on a Friday morning in an empty, 100% quiet Cressey Performance.  I'm not sure that's ever happened before - and it won't last long, as clients start rolling in about 23 minutes from now.  In other words, there goes my opportunity to create a well thought-out, organized, and relevant blog post.  Let the randomness begin. 1. Here's an interesting journal article looking at those with functional ankle instability also presented with delayed trunk reflexes.  In other words, if you've had an ankle sprain without thorough rehabilitation, it relates to a later onset of trunk muscle activation.  This closely parallels a lot of the stuff I covered in The Truth About Unstable Surface Training E-Book, as unstable surface training has been tremendously effective in correcting the proprioceptive delay we see in the peroneals following ankle sprains.

cressey-blog

I guess you could say that this is one more "yea" vote in favor of the whole kinetic chain concept.  Mess up an ankle and you very might be dealing with a knee, hip, or lower back issue sooner than later.

2. For the second year in a row, I'll be speaking at Fantasy Day at Fenway Park.  If you're looking for a good time to benefit a great cause (The Jimmy Fund), click here for more information.  The event is July 18. 3. Random fact: when preparing for the new DVD, Mike Robertson and I realized that Magnificent Mobility has sold in over 50 countries.  Apparently, the Norwegians and Indonesians really dig Mike's smooth Midwestern drawl. 4.  Speaking of Mike, check out this great blog post from him: The Starving Artist That's all for this week.  Have a great weekend!
Read more

Taking on the Yoga Question

What do you think of... I got the question again this week: What do you think of yoga? Don't get me wrong; this newsletter isn't going to be about yoga.  To be honest, I already wrote an article about my thoughts on yoga a while back.  Admittedly, I probably should have taken a more impartial standpoint, but I wrote it more for shock value to outline some of the fundamental problems with some practices that I felt were becoming universally accepted without question. That said, with respect to this newsletter, the word "yoga" in the question above could easily be replaced with "lifting weights," "static stretching," "weighted balls," "Chinese food," "owning your own business," or "curling in the squat rack." Lifting weights is generally great.  Deadlifting with a rounded back isn't.  Doing 150 sets of pull-ups as fast as possible probably isn't going to make your shoulders and elbows happy.  Overhead pressing two weeks after you had a rotator cuff repair isn't a good idea. Static stretching can be of huge benefit if you've got muscles that are legitimately short.  If you're an individual with crazy congenital laxity on top of ten-years of gymnastics, then static stretching will probably chew up your joints really quickly.

double-jointed-2

Weighted balls have worked wonders for some of my athletes, particularly those who have already built a great foundation of velocity with long tossing and optimization of on-the-mound mechanics.  For others, they're premature and inappropriate. I like water chestnuts, but not mushrooms.  I guess the jury is out on whether Chinese food is good or not in my book, huh?  I never met General Tso, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Owning my own business is fantastic.  I get a lot of autonomy, set my own schedule, and have my name on a t-shirt.   I also get a lot of hours and the last paycheck of the month - for whatever is left over. Curling in the squat rack is the most annoying thing in the world if you are the guy waiting to squat.  If you're the guy curling, though, it's a great way to impress your frat buddies.  If looking like a complete tool is your goal, there is no better way to do it. Where am I going with all this? Yoga isn't good or bad.  Some lifts aren't appropriate for some people.  Static stretching can help or hurt.  There is good and bad Chinese food, depending on the person and restaurant.  Owning a business has its perks and drawbacks; it isn't for everyone.  There are no absolutes.  Okay, maybe there is just one: curling in the squat rack is always dumb, but I digress... One of my primary goals in writing over the past eight years has been to empower folks with knowledge.  in fact, it was the entire premise behind Mike Robertson and my Building the Efficient Athlete DVD set; rather than simply handing people fish and telling them it's good for them, we tried to teach people how to fish.

btea_set

"Dumbing things down" can certainly be valuable when dealing with clients (particularly those with no injuries).  However, as fitness and strength and conditioning professionals, it's important to not do the same with our own education.  You can't dumb something down until you've fully understood it.

That, I feel, is where the industry has gone a bit astray.  Resistance training research really didn't even start up until the 1980s; there is still a ton we have to learn.  And, to be honest, there is much better information coming out of experimentation in the trenches than there is in any research lab out there. There are new methods to be discovered, and old methods that can better be leveraged in (or removed from) certain scenarios.

In short, this is a very dynamic field.  If things just keep getting dumbed down to "good and bad" and "just do this," though, then we're really selling ourselves short.

Or maybe I don't know anything.  I guess it depends on who you ask.

Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a detailed deadlift technique tutorial!
Name
Email
Read more

Stuff You Should Read: 6/15/09

This week's collector of stuff you should read: Front vs. Back Squats (Newsletter 154) - this recent newsletter from me takes a different perspective on a common debate in the world of strength and conditioning. Stronger Abs, Bigger Lifts - this article from Matthieu Hertilus was really good - and that's a big compliment coming from a guy who needs to read another "core training" article like he needs a hole in the head. Comparison of different rowing exercises: trunk muscle activation and lumbar spine motion, load, and stiffness - this presents some recent research on how various horizontal pulling exercises affect EMG of several trunk and hip muscles.
Read more

Intern Hazing: Installment 2

Today, we've got the first ever Cressey Performance Intern Hazing Poll.  Here's how it works.... Posted below are three videos of our interns getting dominated by a delightful assortment of torturous exercises.  We really didn't expect them to look good doing this, but hey, that's the whole point, right?  Anyway, you, the readers of EricCressey.com get to rank the interns from 1 to 3 (1=first place, 2=second place, 3=third place) based on the following criteria: 1. Artistic Mastery 2. Fashion (nice shoes, Roger) 3. Proximity to Vomiting 4. Time to Completion 5. Number of breaks in action 6. Inferiority to Mike Roncarati, the most diesel CP intern of all time, who could eat these kiddies for breakfast (way to be, Mike!) 7. Inspiration (someone out there was having a bad day until they watched these videos and realized that things could have been a lot worse). Voting will be closed Monday night, June 15th at midnight.  The winner really won't receive anything, but futility is really the name of the game anyway.  Oh, feel free to suggest some torture for next Thursday for these guys. Without further ado, the candidates: Candidate #1: Phil "The Thrill" Gauthier

EC Commentary: He plays the grunting card nicely.  Good speed...compared with a 12-year-old girl's performance on this medley.  Push-up technique was probably the best of the bunch, although I don't think it's going to get him any Cirque Du Soleil tryouts. Candidate #2: Alex Nash "and Burn"

EC Commentary: Admittedly, I was stretching out one of our pitchers while he was doing this, so I'm shooting from the hip on his on-camera presence rather than relying on my experience on Thursday.  Eyewitnesses reported that he demonstrated the worst push-ups in CP history.  I would have liked to see a jog back to the sled after finishing the overhead keg lunges, too.  I will give him some credit for not losing his breakfast, as the omelet and oatmeal was flying after pushing the sled last week.

Candidate #3: Roger "Double Your Pleasure, Double Your Fun" Lawson

(Note: Roger took so long that the first camera's battery died, and we had to rush to grab a second digital camera in the office.  There was a good two minutes of grunting, sweating, and weird spasm-like movement during this brief hiatus)

EC Commentary: Roger certainly took the grunting to a whole new level; in fact, was he crying at one point?  I think I actually heard him blurt out, "My mother didn't love me, and I never learned to read!"  I can't be sure, though.  I'll give him some style points for managing to get caught in the batting cage net like a tuna; that was graceful.  He also earned some drama points for the repeated collapses on the keg lunges, not to mention an artistic mastery bonus with the swift sniper roll during the sled-to-keg transition.

So what do you think, world?  Cast your votes as replies to this blog, ranking these guys from 1 to 3 (1 being the best).  And, don't forget to suggest some torture for Installment 3.

Read more

A Quick Thursday Promise to You

If you asked my fiancee (or anyone who knows me well, for that matter), she would tell you that I work all the time.  If I'm not training athletes, I'm training myself, reading research, or writing programs or articles about training. My life pretty much revolves around it - and I'd be lying if I didn't say that it is challenging to get to everything. To be very honest with you, I'd probably make more money if I just stayed home and wrote articles and books all day.  It's a direction quite a few folks in this industry have taken, in fact.  You'd be surprised at how many well-known internet personalities in the exercise world don't see athletes anymore; they just stay home and write about what life would be like if they actually did train people.  Or, they talk about what they used to do when they worked with folks, or what they've seen in the research of late. Now, I'm all for research.  And, given my articles, books, and DVDs, I'm all for sharing knowledge that I've gained.  However, I'm a huge believer that you can't add to the body of knowledge unless you are out in the trenches working with people.  You'd be surprised at how many researchers and writers could never get results in the real world.  Why?  Because people - attitudes, emotions, individual differences, etc. - get in the way. This is why I have so much respect for those who are "in the trenches" and derive a significant portion of their income from in-person training.    I enjoy articles, blogs, seminars, and products from guys like Alwyn Cosgrove, Mike Boyle, Mike Robertson, Bill Hartman, Mike Reinold, Jim Smith, Brijesh Patel, Nick Tumminello, and dozens others because these are all guys who are in the real world working to help people.  Unlike those who just write, they are constantly getting feedback from clients/athletes on what works and what doesn't; theories don't go untested.  If I was a consumer, I'd actually go out of my way to make sure the person writing a book or article was actually seeing clients/athletes before purchasing it. A few years ago, I never would have even thought to make this promise, but the internet certainly changes things.  And, that's why I'm promising today that I'll be training athletes for a long time, and the day I stop training athletes is the day that I stop writing and speaking about training, too.
Read more
Page 1 2 3 77
LEARN HOW TO DEADLIFT
  • Avoid the most common deadlifting mistakes
  • 9 - minute instructional video
  • 3 part follow up series