You probably noticed that the newsletter is a day late this week. I have been absolutely swamped with the goings-on at Cressey Performance on top of heading to a big baseball seminar in Houston this weekend (fly out Thursday night). Fortunately, though, this full schedule provided me with the idea for this newsletter.

With the chaos of the past week, I didn't have time to do my normal cooking and food prep for the week on Sunday night. So, Tuesday morning (had already had a normal breakfast), with about twenty minutes left before I needed to head out to work, I looked in the fridge in hopes of pulling together a few meals from a stir fry or casserole. Nothing was there.

As a result, I just wound up grabbing a half-empty tub of cottage cheese and added a tablespoon of psyllium husk powder for fiber. Later in the day, I'd add some Superfood and a scoop of low-carb Metabolic Drive, and had that concoction with a handful of almonds from the stash in the top drawer of the desk in my office. Another meal was a Metabolic Drive bar, and a third was simply a shake with Superfood and some Flameout (fish oil) and almonds. Obviously, it wasn't an ideal daytime meal plan - and it certainly wasn't an aesthetically-pleasing culinary masterpiece like you'd see in John Berardi's Gourmet Nutrition Cookbook, but it got me through the 8-10 hours.

I had a shake with my evening training session, and then came home to cook up a legitimate, whole food meal.

This certainly wasn't optimal, but it was a nutritional "out" for me: it got calories in, kept my energy levels up, and did so without blowing my diet with unhealthy convenience foods. Having good food easily accessible to me is huge when things get busy; I'll roll with mixed nuts, protein powders, protein bars (homemade and Biotest ones), Superfood, and beef jerky. We're also lucky to have a cafeteria in our building, and a good take-out place with awesome salads just about three miles down the road. So, in my eyes, there is never a reason for me to eat garbage - even if I haven't had time to cook up good stuff for myself.

Obviously, this can be applied to diet, but it also has applications in other facets of your healthy lifestyle.

From a training logistics standpoint, what happens if you walk in to your gym to squat, and find that the only squat rack is occupied and there is a long line waiting to use it. Do you stand in line, or do you go to trap bar deadlifts (option A) or walking dumbbell lunges (option B)?

Also along the training lines, but with more of injury perspective, what do you do if your shoulder starts acting up when you go to barbell bench press? Do you try to push through it, skip it altogether, or move to neutral grip dumbbell bench presses (option A) or a push-up variation (option B)? (As an aside, I just wrote an article covering these situations; check it out HERE)

How about professionally? If you're a trainer or a strength coach, if something stumped you, who do you contact? Have you built a good network of health care professionals with both general expertise and specializations? Case in point, one of my current clients started up with me in December of 2006, and he came to me with a C5-C6 disc hernation that had left him with numbness in the tip of his middle finger for the previous ten years - and none of the neurologists and physical therapists he'd seen could do anything about it. I introduced him to John Pallof, PT, COMT, and John had complete feeling back in his finger within two sessions from a combination of manual therapy and neural flossing.

Nowadays, John sees every neck issue that comes to Cressey Performance. Likewise, Dr. Bill Morgan sees all our significant wrist and elbow issues - and the list goes on and on. So, it's not just about having a network; it's about having a network of great people, some of whom specialize in certain areas. I had dinner with Dave Tate a while back, and I recall him saying that he was less concerned with knowing everything and more concerned with knowing who to call to find out everything. Dave was right on the money.

What about easily accessible resources? What books, DVDs, journals, and newsletters do you consult on a regular basis to stay on top of things and research new issues that cross your path? Improving your own abilities is just as important as expanding your network. If you haven't seen it already, a while back, I compiled a Recommended Resources page outlining my recommendations for both free websites and products you can use to stay ahead of the game.

At risk of sounding overconfident, I think that the Building the Efficient Athlete DVD set is something that every trainer and strength coach should watch, as it covers everything from functional anatomy, to static and dynamic assessments, to troubleshooting common resistance training technique mistakes.

Food for thought - and hopefully a little something for everyone.

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Random Friday Thoughts
Training the Baseball Catcher
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Have a great week!

EC