September 6 might seem like just another Tuesday to most folks.  Many people probably despise it because the day after Labor Day serves as an unofficial end to summer.  Kids go back to school, teachers go back to work, and many seasonal businesses lose customers and employees as the season winds down.

Not me, though.  Today, the madness begins for me – and I love it.

You see, today is the start of the professional baseball off-season, as some minor leaguers played their last games yesterday.  Between now and the start of spring training in February/March, Cressey Performance will likely see over 50 guys either in the big leagues or trying to make the big leagues.

We get a special type of ballplayer, too. Trekking to Hudson, MA in the winter isn’t for everyone – and certainly not for guys who want to be coddled.  Our guys love to work smart and hard – and that makes my job incredibly fun.

People are often surprised to learn that I never even played baseball in high school.  Being an “outsider” to the game would seemingly make it harder to enter the world of baseball strength and conditioning, but I actually used it to my advantage.  To put it bluntly, I had no preconceived notions of what people think works, so it made it easy for me to “buck” stupid baseball traditions and focus on what I know works.  In short, as some of the world’s smartest marketing advisors have recommended, I did the opposite of what others do, and the Cressey Performance Elite Baseball Development Program thrived.

Given that baseball players are among the most often-injured athletes in sports, many “experts” in the industry baby them with “do no harm, but do no good” strength training programs.  We show guys that it’s possible to get strong in an intelligent way while decreasing the risk of injury – both acutely and chronically.

Conversely, many strength and conditioning coaches alienate players by looking, acting, and programming like football coaches.  We don’t Olympic lift, back squat, or bench press with our baseball players – and we’ve gone to great lengths to bring in equipment that enables us to modify traditional strength exercises and make them safer for a baseball population.

Many coaches who have played the game before rely exclusively on their experiences playing the game to dictate how players prepare nowadays.  What they fail to appreciate is that the modern game is far different: more off-field distractions (e.g., heavier media attention, social networking), heavier travel schedules (more teams = more travel), more competing demands (e.g., strength and conditioning), and more pressure to succeed (larger organizations = more levels of minor leaguers pushing to take your job).  As a result, I do a lot more listening to my athletes than I do talking - and much less assuming than other coaches do.

Loads of coaches run their pitchers into the ground, thereby ruining guys’ mobility, sapping their power, and abusing their endocrine systems in an ignorant attempt to improve recovery.  Our guys never run more than 60 yards – and they get healthier and more athletic in the process.

Many organizations hand out the same strength and conditioning programs to all their players – regardless age, training experience, dominant hand, and position on the field.  A lot of facilities are no better; one training program on the dry erase board dictates what everyone in the gym does on a given day.  In a sport where each body (and injury) is unique – and asymmetry is overwhelmingly problematic – we give our guys a competitive advantage with a strength and conditioning program that is individualized to each player.

While some facilities were aligning themselves with companies who were trying to be “everything to everybody” by catering to loads of different sports, we allied with New Balance, a Boston-based and not only has a heavy baseball focus (225+ MLB players under contract), but a strong commitment to various charitable causes, American workers, and the education of up-and-coming players.

Walk into any professional baseball clubhouse, and you’ll see a lot of different “cliques.”  Guys of a wide-variety of ages come from different states and countries, speak different languages or have different accents, and play different positions.   On a 25-30 man roster, a player might only hang out with 2-3 teammates off the field at most during the season.  We’ve made camaraderie an insanely important piece of the CP professional baseball approach, introducing guys to each other, setting up out-of-the-gym events for our guys, and creating a culture where everyone roots for everyone else.  I’ve had guys at my house for Thanksgiving and at my wedding – and guys have held back on referring other players because they didn’t feel that their work ethics or attitudes would be a good fit for CP.  In short, we’ve created a family and an experience – and given our athletes an ownership stake in it – while others just  “worked guys out.”

Although it is a point Pat Rigsby, Mike Robertson, and I heavily emphasize in our Fitness Business Blueprint product, the concept of “doing the opposite” to succeed isn’t just applicable to business.

Go to any gym, and look at how many people are on the treadmills year-after-year, none of them getting any leaner.  Get some of them to head across the gym to a weight room and they’ll transform their bodies in a matter of a few months.  Switch someone from a high-carb, low-protein, low-fat diet to a high-protein, high-fat, low-carb diet, and they’ll often drop a lot of fat in a short amount of time.

With all that said, the answers for me will never be the right answers for you.  Look at what you’re doing – whether it’s in training, business, or life – and think about how doing the exact opposite may, in fact, be the best way to improve your outcomes.

For those of you interested in taking a peek inside what goes on with the Cressey Performance Elite Baseball Development Program on a daily basis – from training videos to footage of guys goofing off in the office – I’d encourage you to follow @CresseyPerf on Twitter.

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As most of you are probably aware, Hurricane Irene worked its way up the East coast of the U.S. this past weekend and really threw people for a loop with flooding, power outages, fallen trees, and all sorts of damages.  My wife and I got off pretty easily; we just had to go eight hours on Sunday without power - a far cry from what a lot of other folks encountered.  And, our dog, Tank, was entertained all day as he played weatherdog and stared the window to watch the rain.

Oddly enough, those eight hours proved to be wildly productive for me.  Thanks to a fully charged laptop battery, I was able to write a half dozen programs for clients, a blog, and the introduction of a new article for T-Nation.  I read over 100 pages in a book, took a nap, and even went over to Cressey Performance to get a day ahead on my strength training program...in the dark and without music (for the record, this is one more reason free weights are better than machines: no electricity needed).

In short, it was an extremely productive day for me in comparison to typical Sundays in spite of the fact that the weather outside was miserable and it would have been very easy to get antsy from "cabin fever."  What made this day so much more productive than many others for me?

There were zero distractions.

No Facebook and no twitter.  No emails or text messages.  No television or phone calls. No absurdly painful "I feel like I'm shopping at Old Navy" techno playing on Tony's iPod.  It was absolute bliss.

Now, don't get me wrong; human interaction is a huge part of my daily life as a coach, writer, consultant, and barrel-chested freedom fighter.  I don't just sit inside and think of ways to avoid human interaction so that I can be more productive.  However, some peace and quiet sure is nice - and that's why, in fact, that this blog is being written at 6:40AM.  It's an empty house with complete silence.  In a few minutes, I'll head over to the facility - an empty facility with complete silence.  A good hour or so in there before anyone else arrives gives me the leg-up on the day that I need to be productive.

It's taken me 360 words to get to my point, but the take home message is very simple:

If you want to be successful in your
strength and conditioning programs,
get rid of the distractions around you.

I talk to athletes about how everything they do takes them one step closer to their goals - or one step further away.  Each decision they make should be a calculated choice that weighs pros and cons in the context of their goal.

For instance, a training partner can be a great addition to a strength and conditioning program - but it can be an unbelievable failure if that individual is always late for training, gets too chatty between sets, or is an inattentive spotter.   That's a distraction that you have complete control over keeping or removing from your life.  A bad one can destroy you - but a great one can be a huge advantage.

However, most distractions aren't so easy to eliminate.  Family life, work, injuries, car troubles, inclement weather, busy gyms, and a host of other factors can all create stressful distractions that interfere with progress.  The most successful clients I've encountered are the ones who understand how to balance all these competing demands and keep distraction out of the task at hand - whether it's lifting or working on a big project.

Here are my top five suggestions on how to get rid of or manage some of the most common distractions and inconveniences that can sabotage your strength training program.

1. Leave your cell phone in the car - I can say without wavering that this is the single-biggest distraction I see nowadays, as mine rings off the hook on most days.  However, back in March, I went nine days without mine while I was in Costa Rica and the world didn't end.  I'm happy to report that shutting yours off for 90 minutes won't lead to any catastrophes - and you'll get strong in the process.  This sign over the gym entrance at CP says it all.

2. Always have a plan B - If you train in a busy commercial gym at peak hours, you know it can be pretty tough to get access to the exact equipment you need.  Rather than stand around and wait 15-20 minutes for it, your best bet is to go into the session knowing what would be a suitable replacement for each strength exercise.  The chest-supported row is taken? No worries; here's a blog with a few good substitutes: No Chest-Supported Row? No Problem.

Here are a few other posts along these lines that might interest you:

High Performance Training without the Equipment - Part 1 (No Access to Dumbbells)
High Performance Training without the Equipment - Part 2 (External Rotations without Cables)
High Performance Training without the Equipment - Part 3 (Pushup Variations)
High Performance Training without the Equipment - Part 4 (More Pushup Variations)

The point is that no matter how busy your gym gets, there is always a plan B.  In fact, post a comment with the most common "shortcoming" you have in terms of equipment access, and I'll devote a future blog to the topic, outlining several potential substitutes for you.  I like a good challenge.

3. When injured, there is always something you can do to get better - To be blunt, there is nothing that bothers me more in this world than people who constantly piss and moan about their circumstances.  I've read that Walt Disney was once so broke that he ate dog food.  Years back, Donald Trump went billions of dollars into combined business and personal debt - and he's certainly turned out okay.  Thomas Edison was yanked out of school at a young age because his teachers thought he was stupid - and he went on to teenage years in the workforce that consisted of being fired multiple times.  Tiger Woods missed a big chunk of time - and an absurd amount of money - when he had his ACL reconstruction.

You, on the other hand, are going to turn into Johnny Raincloud because you have tennis elbow and can't do your curls for a week?  Cry me a river...somewhere else, please.

Put on a happy face and magical things happen.  Figure out what you can do - and then do it.

Quit your complaining; whining is just your way of distracting yourself.

For more on this topic, check out Strength Training Programs: When Did "Just Rest" Become a Viable Option?

4. Have home training options - There are going to be times when life simply gets in the way of what you had planned.  Maybe it's a sick kid at home or inclement weather that prevents you from getting to the gym.  At these times, it's incredibly advantageous to have some equipment (or body weight training templates in mind) that you can use to ensure that your strength and conditioning program doesn't miss a beat.  Some kettlebells can be great, and I'm a big fan of the TRX.  In fact, I liked it so much that I brought mine to Costa Rica, and when combined with sprinting on the beach, we had great training sessions all week.

 5. Communicate with those around you - I think that one of the reason that some folks have issues with distractions with respect to exercise is that they don't clearly relate to those around them that it's important to them.  Most people find time for training instead of making time for it.  If it's important to you, block it off in your schedule and let those around you know that this is the case; they'll be more respectful of your "important time" and let you do your thing unless an emergency comes up.

These five tips are, of course, just a few of the many ways that you can eliminate distractions from your strength and conditioning programs.  What strategies have you found to be useful when it comes to keeping your focus?

Related Posts
Workout Routines: Exercising on Vacation - Part 1
Workout Routines: Exercising on Vacation - Part 2

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On a related note, congratulations to Tony on the release of his first product, Muscle Imbalances Revealed - Upper Body.  He contributed two webinars to what looks to be a great collaborative product.  Show our boy some love and check it out.

Understanding and Managing Fatigue

Perhaps it’s coincidence, or perhaps the scientific community is finally catching on, but recently, there have been several studies looking at the role of short- and long-term recovery in preventing and rehabilitating injuries.

Here’s a research study that demonstrates relationships among a variety of scheduling and recovery factors and injury rates. The part I found most interesting was that researchers observed that sleeping fewer than six hours the night prior to a competition led to a significant increase in fatigue related injuries.

Additionally, researchers at Stanford recently demonstrated the profoundly positive effect that “sleep extension” has on a variety of performance variables in high-level basketball athletes.

These results, in themselves, aren’t particularly surprising: fatigue impacts performance – whether that’s on the field, or in the rehabilitation realm. Anyone who has ever trained an athlete on a Saturday morning after he’s had a late Friday night, or rehabbed a roofer after he’s completed a 10-hour-workday, will tell you that there are certainly less-than-optimal times to get the work in.

What research like this doesn’t tell us, though, is that not all fatigue is created equal – and I suspect that this is one area where strength and conditioning specialists can “return the favor” to rehabilitation specialists for all that we’ve learned from them over the years. Very simply, the very best strength and conditioning coaches I know are the ones who are masters of managing competing demands, including strength training, mobility drills, soft tissue work, movement training, metabolic conditioning, and sport-specific training. In order to effectively manage all these factors, it’s imperative to understand the different stages of fatigue. On the rehabilitation side of things, every injured athlete likely has some element of fatigue that not only impacted his/her injury mechanism, but will impact the response to a given rehabilitation program.

Over-what? Over-everything!

In their classic review, The Unknown Mechanism of the Overtraining Syndrome, Armstrong and VanHeest discussed the importance of differentiating among overload, over-reaching, overtraining, and the overtraining syndrome (OTS). They defined the terms as follows:

• Overload – “a planned, systematic, progressive increase in training stimuli that is required for improvements in strength, power, and endurance”
• Over-reaching – “training that involves a brief period of overload, with inadequate recovery, that exceeds the athlete’s adaptive capacity. This process involves a temporary performance decrement lasting from several days to several weeks.”
• Overtraining – training that “exceeds over-reaching and results in frank physiological maladaptation(s) and chronically reduced exercise performance. It proceeds from imbalances between training and recovery, exercise and exercise capacity, stress and stress tolerance; training exceeds recovery, exercise exceeds one’s capacity, and stressors exceed one’s stress tolerance.”
• Overtraining Syndrome (OTS) – “a set of persistent physical and psychological symptoms that occur subsequent to prolonged application of heavy training loads. The critical diagnostic factor is a chronic decrease in performance, not simply the existence of SAS [signs and symptoms].”

Overload is inherent to a successful training process, and over-reaching is actually quite valuable when used appropriately. For instance, in our training programs at Cressey Performance, we generally fluctuate training stress in four-week programs as high (1), medium (2), very high (3), low (4), where the deloading in week 4 allows for adaptation from the fatigue imposed during week 3.

However, over-reaching is far from overtraining – a term that is thrown around far too often among even the most qualified individuals in the world of health and human performance. Over-reaching may be attained in as little as 7-10 days, and remedied in a matter of days or weeks with adequate deloading. Conversely, the process of overtraining must take place for months for the outcome, OTS, to be apparent. Recovery from OTS requires at least several weeks – and more often several months; in other words, you really have to go out of your way to get to overtraining syndrome.

Since high level performance – and even just normal physical health – is a priority, it is imperative that coaches, parents, and athletes recognize the signs and symptoms of over-reaching and overtraining syndrome – and the differences between the two. According to Armstrong and VanHeest, the signs and symptoms of OTS may include:

• Decreased physical performance
• General fatigue, malaise, loss of vigor
• Insomnia
• Change in appetite
• Irritability, restlessness, excitability, anxiety
• Loss of body weight
• Loss of motivation
• Lack of mental concentration
• Feelings of depression

What All These “Overs” Mean to You

Many of these signs and symptoms are shared between over-reaching and OTS, so how do we know the difference? How do we know when to hold back for a day or two (for overload recovery), 7-21 days (over-reaching), or even months (overtraining syndrome)?

Unfortunately, as much as I would like to be able to offer you the magic answer, I can’t do so. The scientific community has yet to agree on a single, highly sensitive diagnostic test to differentiate among the three. In fact, the only diagnostic tests that are universally accurate are those of physical performance; if performance drops off, there must be some degree of accumulated fatigue.

Other measures – such as heart rate, bloodwork, metabolic rate, substrate metabolism, and a host more – are subject to so many factors that they are hardly reliable tests of one’s training status.

As an example, research from Fry et al. had subjects perform ten sets of one repetition on machine squats at 100% of their one-rep maximum for 14 days straight. That’s an absurd volume of high-intensity resistance training, especially in a trained population. You know what, though? The only thing that dropped off was performance; hormone status (as measured by bloodwork) really didn’t change much at all.

Conversely, crush an endurance athlete with volume, and this same bloodwork will look terrible. The take-home point is that it’s a lot harder to “overtrain” on intensity than volume. And that’s where the problem exists when you’re dealing with athletes: just about every sport out there is a blend of volume and intensity. We don’t just train or rehabilitate shotputters or Ironman competitors; we get athletes from soccer, basketball, baseball, hockey, tennis, and a host of other sports.

So, what is a coach or rehabilitation specialist to do when trying to determine just how much fatigue is present, and what the best course of action is to guarantee an optimal return-to-play as quickly as possible?

In two words: ask questions.

In my opinion, the absolute most important step is to establish communication with athletes and – in this case – patients. Ask about training practices before an injury, sleep patterns, dietary factors, family life, concurrent illness/injury, changes in body weight, and appetite.

These may seem like obvious questions to ask, but we live in a one-size-fits-all world of pre-made templates and rigid systems – and people can fall through the cracks all the time. My experience has been that those most commonly “thrown under the bus” in this regard are the most dedicated athletes forced to train or rehabilitate in a “general health” world. As an example, we had an adult athlete client request a Vitamin D test from a primary care physician last year, and he was turned down because he wasn’t “a post-menopausal female.” As it turned out, he was severely clinically deficient, and normalizing his Vitamin D was a big game-changer for him.

Simply asking the right questions will always help the cause when it comes to determining just how “systemic” what you’re dealing with really is. And, in the process, it gives you an opportunity to show a client or patient how much you care before they even care how much you know.

Every Wednesday morning at Cressey Sports Performance, we have a staff in-service.  It's an awesome chance for our staff and interns to exchange ideas, introduce new topics, standardize coaching cues, and explain strength and conditioning program design strategies.  Yesterday, I presented on the elbow - and we decided to video it, as not all our staff members could be there.

Not to toot my own horn, but it came out really well.  The elbow is right in my "wheelhouse," so when I get going on it, things seem to just roll off my tongue.  The end result was a 32-minute in-service where I didn't use any notes, but covered everything from functional anatomy, to injuries, to injury mechanisms, to strength training program modifications.  There are valuable lessons for both those in the baseball world as well as those who don't have any interest in baseball.  With that in mind, I decided to put it up for sale today, as I feel strongly that the elbow is a topic that doesn't receive a lot of attention in spite of its importance.

Click here to purchase Everything Elbow for just $12.99 on our 100% Secure Server.

Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School won the Division 1 State Championship, and they epitomize everything that effective strength and conditioning can do to help keep a high school team healthy and performing at high levels.

We expanded our staff to include some great people who complemented our existing skill sets and program offerings nicely.

We added about 1,000 square feet more office space and polished up our look with some new paint and more framed/autographed jerseys on the walls.  I even got my own office - which is shared with our new mascot, Tank, of course:

Most importantly, though, we continued to have an absolute blast each and every day we came to "work" - and that, to me, is what it's all about.  We made new friends and further developed already-existing friendships.  The CP family grew, and we offered a service to people that helped them get to where they wanted to be.

You'll notice I didn't mention financial gain - and the reason is pretty simple; I view it as secondary.  It's the destination, and I'm a lot more concerned about the process.  Cultivate relationships, deliver a quality service, and genuinely care, and the money will take care of itself.  Before the business gurus out there start crapping on me, I'll add that our business has grown by more than 30% over the past year in spite of the fact that I usually forget that I'm supposed to receive a paycheck at month's end.  Pete just surprises me with it.

Don't get me wrong; you need effective business systems to make things work.  If you're an organizational disaster and can't make your rent, it's going to be pretty hard to put on a happy face and make someone's day with your smile.  However, the overwhelming majority of "savvy business decisions" are actually a combination of common sense, courtesy, and a genuine desire to help someone.

Most of the people that ask us business questions want to know how much we charge, how much our rent is, how we schedule, what our hours are, who painted Tony's t-shirt on him, what our start-up costs were, and why we don't use electronic funds transfer (EFT).  What they should be asking us:

1. How do you remember so many people's names?

2. How can you possibly know everyone's health history who walks through your door?

3. How do you write individual strength and conditioning programs for everyone?

4. What do you do to build relationships?

5. How do you find time to get to so many baseball games?

6. How do you do to educate and retain staff?

7. How is it that all of your clients seem to be friends with each other? (As a little aside to this point, Tim Collins was at the facility the past two days while home for the all-star break, and he greeted every person who walked through the office door.  He even answered the phone for us twice.  That's big-league customer service.)

There are some brilliant business consultants out there.  Pat Rigsby and Alwyn Cosgrove, for instance, are super bright guys and great friends who have helped loads of fitness professionals increase their incomes and improve their quality of life.  They are also the first guys to tell you that if you don't know how to cultivate relationships and treat people right, then you're studying for the wrong test by looking for the perfect business plan.

Spend more time focusing on the process, and worry less about the destination.  Four years from now, you'll probably enjoy your "job" a lot more - both psychologically and monetarily - and have a lot more friends and experiences that make you smile each time you think of them.  You'll probably even forget it's your business' anniversary!

Thank you, as always, to everyone for all your support.