Home Posts tagged "Warm-Ups"

CSP Elite Baseball Development Podcast: Warm-up Wisdom

For this week's podcast, I'm tackling an important - but underappreciated - topic in the worlds of health and human performance: warm-ups. I shine some light on the goals of warm-ups, as well as the research on both injury reduction and performance benefits. Most importantly, I make some practical recommendations for how to structure an efficient, effective warm-up for not only baseball athletes, but a variety of other populations as well.

A special thanks to this show's sponsor, AG1. Head to https://www.DrinkAG1.com/cressey and you'll receive a free 10-pack of Athletic Greens travel packets with your first order.

Sponsor Reminder

This episode is brought to you by AG1. AG1 is your daily foundational nutrition; it has 75 whole-food sourced ingredients designed to support your body’s foundational nutrition needs across five critical areas of health: 1) energy, 2) immunity, 3) gut health, 4) hormonal support, and 5) healthy aging. It is the new and future way of getting a multivitamin, and a whole lot more. Head to www.DrinkAG1.com/cressey and claim my special offer today – 10 FREE travel packs – with your first purchase. I use AG1 daily myself and highly recommend it to our athletes as well. I’d encourage you to give it a shot, too – especially with this great offer.

Podcast Feedback

If you like what you hear, we'd be thrilled if you'd consider subscribing to the podcast and leaving us an iTunes review. You can do so HERE.

And, we welcome your suggestions for future guests and questions. Just email elitebaseballpodcast@gmail.com.

Thank you for your continued support!

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CSP Elite Baseball Development Podcast – January 2023 Q&A: Assessment Principles, Thoracic Outlet Syndrome, Warm-ups, and 91mph 13-year-olds

It's time for another listener Q&A, so I cover four questions from our audience in this week's podcast on the following topics:

  1. "Big Rock" Assessment Principles
  2. Why Thoracic Outlet Syndrome is a Diagnosis of Exclusion
  3. The Key Components of a Good Warm-up
  4. Injury Concerns in Young Pitchers with Elite Velocity

A special thanks to this show's sponsor, Proteus Motion. They're changing the way we assess and train athletes with their 3D Resistance. Head to www.ProteusMotion.com/elite to learn more about this cutting-edge technology. 

Sponsor Reminder

Proteus Motion has a patented technology that allows us to measure power for the overwhelming majority of human movements. Proteus software guides users through 4-minute physical assessments to arm trainers with unprecedented performance data and insights, creating an entirely new standard for personalized fitness and physical rehabilitation. All of this is enabled by a total reinvention of resistance training called 3D Resistance. Training power and acceleration with Proteus’ patented 3D Resistance can be safer, more efficient, and more effective than traditional resistance training tools in many cases. I’ve been a big fan of Proteus for the past few years. We have a unit in both Cressey Sports Performance facilities, and actually helped to develop the Cressey Power test for rotational athletes. The information we’ve gathered from this testing has been an absolute game-changer in helping us to more optimally program for our athletes. Additionally, as a training initiative, work on the Proteus has allowed us to train different points on the force-velocity curve in rotational patterns in ways that medicine ball work never could.

You can learn more about them by listening to Episode 106 of the Elite Baseball Development Podcast, or by heading to www.ProteusMotion.com/elite.

Podcast Feedback

If you like what you hear, we'd be thrilled if you'd consider subscribing to the podcast and leaving us an iTunes review. You can do so HERE.

And, we welcome your suggestions for future guests and questions. Just email elitebaseballpodcast@gmail.com.

Thank you for your continued support!

Sign-up Today for our FREE Baseball Newsletter and Receive Instant Access to a 47-minute Presentation from Eric Cressey on Individualizing the Management of Overhead Athletes!

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The Best of 2020: Strength and Conditioning Articles

With 2020 winding down, I'm using this last week of the year to direct you to some of the most popular content of the past 12 months at EricCressey.com, as this "series" has been quite popular over the past few years. Today, we start with the most popular articles of the year; these are the pieces that received the most traffic, according to my hosting statistics.

1. What Do You Think of XYZ Method? - Often, I’ll get inquiries where folks ask what I think of a specific method. It might be yoga, Crossfit, Pilates, or a number of different disciplines. These are always challenging questions to answer because there are actually a number of variables you have to consider - and that's what I cover in this article.

2. Accidental Strength and Conditioning Success - I often joke that some of the biggest training successes of my career came about when I was trying to develop one athletic quality, but actually wound up accidentally developing something else that yielded a great return on investment. Medicine ball training might be the absolute best example of this.

3. Random Thoughts on Sports Performance Training - Installment 36 - This series is among my most popular, and I was long overdue for an update.

4. Efficient Programming, Better Warm-ups, and Combination Exercises - This feature outlined some programming principles you can employ when designing strength and conditioning plans.

5. Variation Without Change - For long-term training success, there are certain exercise categories that have to be mainstays. However, underneath those broad categorization schemes, there are a lot of opportunities (and a great need) for variation.

I'll be back soon with another "Best of 2020" feature. Up next, the top videos of the year!

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Programming Principles: Installment 4

With my recent sale on The High Performance Handbook, it seemed like a good time to update this series on program design strategies. Many fitness professionals and strength and conditioning enthusiasts have looked to this resource as a model upon which to base some of their program design efforts, so I thought I'd dig in a bit deeper on a few useful principles you'll find in it that should be consistent across all programs.

1. The warm-up should always build context for the strength and power training exercises that follow.

A good warm-up shouldn't just get your body temperature up; it should also be a chance to drive quality movement so that you're patterned for the loading that follows.

Planning to sprint and want to improve the likelihood that you'll get clean hip extension? Try a glute wall march iso hold.

Looking forward to a big overhead pressing day? Get in a set of the back-to-wall shoulder flexion drill.

[bctt tweet="Specificity doesn't just matter with respect to how your high-load and high-velocity movements carry over to performance; it also relates to how your warm-ups prepare you for those movements in the first place."]

2. In any program, the most important work should occur early in the training session.

In my opinion, one of the absolute ways to teach a young coach how to efficiently and effectively program is to ask him/her to take a 4x/week strength training program and pare it back to a 3x/week and eventually a 2x/week program. In doing so, it forces the coach to really consider what the most important programming inclusions are.

95% of the time, you'll find that it simply means cutting off the last exercise pairing from each day, trimming the volume on certain exercises, and then simply rearranging the exercises so that there aren't competing supersets (which can often happen when switching from an upper/lower split to a full-body approach). If you go through this exercise and find that any of your A1/A2 and B1/B2 programming is "expendable," then you probably need to reconsider your programming approaches.

3. Make use of combination exercises when you need to be efficient - or just more athletic.

Let's face it: you don't always have unlimited time to get in an optimal training effect. In this situations, it's really helpful to have exercises you can plug in to combine some of your favorites. Here are just a few examples:

Landmine Squat to 1-arm Press - I love this as a first exercise on the middle day of a 3x/week strength training program. You can train a squat pattern, get a bit of lower body stimulus, and still drive some free scapula pressing under considerable load.

Rear-Foot Elevated 1-arm Low Cable Row - This is a great horizontal pulling exercise you can plug in when you also want to get a little single-leg emphasis, but don't want to bury an athlete with fatigue or soreness. I might use it on a full-body day when we've already had a deadlift variation and lateral lunge variation, but I want some kind of single-leg work in the sagittal plane without making the session last much longer.

The possibilities are really endless on this front, but the point is that you always need to have options for delivering multiple training effects without driving excessive volume or really long sessions.

I'll be back soon with another Programming Principles installment, but in the meantime, be sure to check out my flagship resource, The High Performance Handbook, as an example of how I attack my programming.

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Random Thoughts on Sports Performance Training – Installment 31

With summer training in full swing at both Cressey Sports Performance facilities, I've had all sorts of thoughts rattling around my head on a daily basis, so it set the stage for a new installment of this series on sports performance training.

1. Where an athlete feels an exercise is important, but not on all exercises.

I recently put up two Instagram posts that would appear to contradict one another, to the naked eye.


On one hand, you should always ask athletes where they feel an exercise. And, on the other hand, you sometimes don't want to feel it in one specific place. The answer (as is almost always the case) is "it depends."

When motion is actually taking place, muscles are working concentrically to create that motion. When a muscle shortens, you'll usually develop that "feel" in a certain spot.

Conversely, on an isometric exercise like a carry, there isn't a chance in tissue length, so you won't usually get that same sensation.

Also, keep in mind that the position you're in plays into this as well. If you're squatting, don't expect to "feel" your glutes, hamstrings, or quads specifically in the bottom position or mid-range - but you definitely could feel them a lot at the top as you approach the end of knee and hip extension, as the muscles shorten fully.

In short, "feel" matters - but not all the time.

2. Consider an athlete's age when you're trying to determine why they have a mobility restriction.

One-size-fits-all mobility approaches rarely work because of the way the body changes over the course of the lifespan.

Early on in life, kids are very hypermobile, so you don't really see mobility restrictions. If something seems out of whack, it's probably because they lack adequate motor control at an adjacent joint.

As they hit growth spurts, bones lengthen faster than muscles and tendons can keep up, so restrictions often become more musculotendinous in nature.

As the athletic lifespan continues, those muscular restrictions - in combination with the stress of sports participation or faulty postural habits - can lead to bony blocks and cemented joints. In the years that follow, capsular stiffness can emerge as a problem.

Over time, ligamentous laxity falls off and arthritis becomes more common, limiting range-of-motion even further.

Beyond a lifelong focus on preserving mobility, this knowledge of ROM "regressions" can remind to look to different places at different times. That 14-year-old athletic probably doesn't have capsular stiffness, nor is arthritis a concern. And, that 64-year-old client with the cranky hip probably isn't *only* dealing with muscular problems.

3. Strong guys need longer to train.

Imagine two lifters. Lifter A has one year of training experience and has a personal record deadlift of 315 pounds. Lifter B has 15 years of lifting under his belt and deadlifts 700 pounds. Let's assume both lifters are working up to ~90% of their 1RM in a training session.

Lifter A Warm-up

135x8
185x5
225x3
255x1
275x1
Work sets at 280-285

Lifter B Warm-up

135x8
225x5
315x3
405x3
455x1
495x1
545x1
585x1
605x1
Work sets at 630

Lifter A can get to his working weight in five warm-up sets while lifter B needs nine sets to do so. And, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Lifter B will take more time to unload his plates after finishing his work sets - and he'll probably need an additional warm-up set or two on subsequent assistance exercises. Additionally, chances are that given his time "under the bar" over the years, he'll be a bit older and more banged up (especially at those strength levels), so he'll need to devote more time to the general warm-up before he even gets to deadlifts. Lifter B will also be far more neurally efficient and therefore need more rest between heavy sets than Lifter A even if they've got similar aerobic capacity to facilitate recovery. You're really comparing apples and oranges.

The list goes on and on, and we arrive at the realization that every lifter will have a different optimal training time. This is why I always disagree when I hear things like, "You're working against yourself if you train for longer than 60 minutes." Meanwhile, just about every accomplished strength sport athlete on the planet trains for longer than 60 minutes in just about every training session. And, many of them are extremely lean and muscular.

Don't waste time in the gym, but don't try to race the clock in every session, either. Do what you need to get to get your work in to deliver a quality training effect.

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12 Elite Athletic Development Coaching and Programming Lessons

With this week's release of Mike Robertson and Joe Kenn's Elite Athletic Development 3.0 DVD set, Cressey Sports Performance coach Nancy Newell and I put our heads together to highlight 12 of the key takeaways from this great new resource. 

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1. Coaching jump and landing technique is a must.

The “athletic position” occurs in every sport. If you want athletes to apply force, they also need to understand how to absorb force. With ACL injuries on the rise, it’s no surprise that 60-70% of these injuries result from non-contact incidences. This means that kids are getting hurt because they haven’t learned or practiced this technique.
Try these approaches:

a. Deceleration on two legs (Vertical Jump with Stick)

b. Deceleration on one leg (Heiden with Stick)

c. Upper body deceleration (Medicine Ball Work)

2. Don’t count the reps; make the reps count.

It can be challenging for a youth athlete to perform a set of ten bodyweight squats with perfect technique.

[bctt tweet= "Remember: the single-most transferable trait of an excellent program is confidence."]

If you start to see their form going down the drain, break the reps up into smaller pieces of success. Instead of performing one set of ten reps, you might perform five sets of two reps. The athlete will gain confidence, learn and retain HOW to perform the movement.

3. Teach athletes to “push,” not “pull.”

A common mistake athletes make is having the mentality to “pull” weight off the floor. When we pull weight off the floor, a large portion of that force produced comes from our lower back. If you can teach an athlete to apply force into the ground by “pushing,” a large majority of that force comes from our posterior chain and creates a strong, stable base for our bodies to produce force.

4. Use single leg strength to achieve stability and control, not maximal strength.

While incredibly important, single-leg work is not the best way to get “globally” strong. In a bilateral exercise such as the squat and deadlift, you have a larger base of support to move more weight using mostly prime movers (hamstrings, quads, glutes). A single leg exercise with a smaller base of support places more emphasis on owning and controlling our bodies through multiple planes of motion. Use single-leg exercises to fill in the gaps between maximal strength and stability.

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5. Attitude controls your efforts.

One of the most impactful quotes Joe Kenn had during Elite Athletic Development 3.0 was, “You’re not giving good effort with a bad attitude.” Young athletes feed off coaches’ energy, so if you're upset about something personal that happened and you bring that to the weight room, your athletes will likely adopt that same poor attitude about today.

[bctt tweet="Your attitude is the number one dictator of the success of your program."]

You need to have the utmost confidence in yourself to achieve what you set out to complete for each day.

6. Get young athletes proficient in fundamental movements.

This may seem like a no brainer; however, many coaches are willing to place an external load on an athlete before they can confidently control their own bodyweight. Fundamentals are the building blocks for getting stronger, performing better and – most above all – staying injury-free. Youth training should not be about a “quick fix.” It should be about developing efficient motor patterns, skills, and confidence to form a robust foundation for long-term athletic development.

7. “Once relative strength is compromised, continuing to focus on maximal strength becomes an issue.” -Loren Landow

Robertson and Kenn highly urged everyone to over-emphasize general basic strength qualities because strength is a skill. Once you start to “own” this skill, you can start to add layers to challenge your mental and physical strength. Use layering to prepare your athletes for the next phase of training. As an example:

Phase 1: Bodyweight w/3second quasi ISO hold
Phase 2: KB Goblet Squat w/3second lowering/ Explosive concentric
Phase 3: 2KB Squat

8. “There is no elevator to success; you have to take the stairs.”

In your personal life, career, athletics you can’t be afraid to work hard. The most valuable teaching tool is experience, and experience comes from jumping on opportunities to learn from smarter, more experienced people than you. Set your goals high, but don’t jump stairs.

kenn

9. Building a more robust athlete comes from the bottom of the pyramid.

If you want to maximize your training results, you have to maximize recovery. One way to kick start recovery is to be consistent with the little things at the bottom of the pyramid (sleep, nutrition, and soft-tissue work). These variables can have a dramatic impact on one's ability to feel good and stay healthy for the long haul. For example, take an athlete who works out 3x/week for one hour. That’s three hours out of 168 hours in a week. Your training makes up less than 3% of your week, but those "tiny" elements at the base of the pyramid that make up a big chunk of the remaining 97%.

10. An efficient warm up has three broad components:

a. Physiology - We want our athletes to warm-up to increase tissue temperature, improve joint lubrication (especially for the older athletes), and fire up the nervous system.

b. Biomechanics - We aim to optimize alignment; isolate then integrate; and sync up the nervous and musculoskeletal systems.

c. Specific - We want to reflect the actual nature of the activities that follow, whether we're incorporate lifting weights or training speed/power. 

11. High-intensity/anaerobic exercise is built from a low-intensity/aerobic base.

Focusing year-round on just high-intensity work with your athlete will result in a less than impressive work capacity and performance. Instead, use various forms of cardiac output work to expand your pyramid base and help your reach higher anaerobic peaks.

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12. Everybody is an athlete.

Regardless of age and training experience, everyone can benefit from training power. Power is vital for overall athleticism, but it is unfortunately one of the first physical qualities we lose as we age. By respecting all the elements on the force-velocity curve you can help anyone get stronger, faster, and more explosive.

Here's an extended warm-up example that would constitute power training in these individuals:

-Low amplitude/high velocity (jump rope)
-Upper body throw (overhead med ball stomp)
-High amplitude/low(er) velocity (Heidens)

As I noted earlier, Mike Robertson and Joe Kenn's new Elite Athletic Development 3.0 seminar DVD set is on sale for $100 off through this Friday (7/22) at midnight. I would consider it an outstanding investment for any strength and conditioning professional. For more information, head HERE.

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About the Co-Author

Nancy Newell (@NancyNewell2) is a strength and conditioning coach at Cressey Sports Performance in Hudson, MA. Nancy earned her Bachelors Degree in Fitness Development from the State University of New York at Cortland. You can read more from her at www.NancyNewell.com.

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 10/20/14

It's a big week for us at Cressey Sports Performance, as we're in the home stretch and about to get into our new training facility in Jupiter, FL. If you want to follow along, I'll be posting some progress pics on my Instagram account. While I won't have much time to pull together new content this week, I can definitely tell you the following articles will be well worth your time!

Widening the Aerobic Window - Mike Robertson has published some excellent stuff on energy systems development in the past, and this article does a great job of building on them.

The Six Characteristics of a Good Dynamic Warm-up - I reincarnated this old post on Twitter yesterday, and it was a big hit. So, I thought I'd remind the EricCressey.com readers, too.

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How You Make Decisions Says a Lot About How Happy You Are - I always love reading research on social phenomenons and how people behave. This Wall Street Journal article highlights some entertaining stuff in this realm.

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Avoid These 3 Baseball Warm-up Mistakes

At Cressey Sports Performance, we manage a ton of baseball players throughout the year.  In doing so, we often notice trends - both good and bad - that emerge in the things they start applying on their own.  Here are three warm-up mistakes I commonly see players making before they pick up a ball to throw:

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Quick and Easy Ways to Feel and Move Better: Installment 14

Here's this week's list of quick tips you can put into action to improve your strength and conditioning and nutrition programs, courtesy of CP coach Greg Robins.  This week, Greg focuses on improving your warm-ups.

1. Integrate new movements into your warm-up first.

A solid warm-up should do a few things for you; in a nutshell, it needs to prepare the body for the task at hand. At Cressey Performance, we do this via soft tissue work, mobility drills, and various low level activation exercises. Essentially, we are working on our weak points (from a movement standpoint), so that we can solidify these new ranges with our strength training. Therefore, the warm up itself is a great spot to work on any new movements we want to externally load down the road. As a believer in training efficiency, I would rather see more time spent loading what can be safely loaded, and not spending as much time in the "meat" of the training session working new movements. If you have movement patterns that need practice, do a few sets in the warm up. As an example, CP coach Chris Howard is currently working the steps of the Turkish get-up as part of his warm-up routine before he loads it up. Other options include: frontal plane exercises such as lateral lunge variations, squat variations, and lunge or split squat variations.

2. Put a time limit on you warm-up.

A thorough warm-up includes a lot, and each piece is important. That being said, it doesn't (nor should it need to) take more than 15 minutes. As I said before, the warm-up needs to prepare you for the task at hand, and that task includes crushing your training session. In order to make that happen, you want to leave the warm up area sweating, fired up, and ready to train. Too often, I see people allow the warm-up process to morph into a 30-minute affair. Not surprisingly, these are the same people who comment on the tediousness of the process, and the fact that their training sessions seem like two-hour affairs. Focus on what needs to get done, and get it done. Scrap the small talk, and get to work! I can properly do all my self massage and 10-12 warm up exercises in 15 minutes, and so can you. When I finish my shirt is damp, my adrenaline is pumping, and I am ready to do work. You need to do the same. Next time you get into the gym, set a timer and condense your 30-minute marathon of a warm-up into 15 minutes. The difference in training quality will be immediately noticeable, and your distaste for warming up will be a thing of the past.

3. "Floss" your joints during self-massage.

I picked this tip up awhile back from strength coach and physical therapist Kelly Starrett. It has made a huge difference in how my elbows, knees, and shoulders feel after warming up. When rolling out you will often find "knots" or areas that are noticeably more tender than others. Stop on these regions, keep constant pressure on the area, and take the nearest joint through some active ranges of motion while the implement used for massage is still applying pressure. I have found this to be especially helpful with a lacrosse ball placed just above the knee, just above the elbow, and under the shoulder. Other options include simply flexing and extending the knees, elbows, and shoulders while rolling across the IT bands / quadriceps (knee), upper and mid back (shoulders), and upper arms (elbows). Here are a few examples:

4. Mimic the day's big exercise with a lower load variation first.

As a powerlifter, my training sessions always begin with one of the tested lifts: squat, bench, or deadlift. While this may not be the case for the general population or athletes, more times than not they are still beginning with a big compound movement. Instead of diving right in to the lift at hand, consider doing a few light sets of a similar movement that will help ingrain proper technique and give you additional time to orient the body to the day’s main movement pattern. I have found the goblet squat to be a great way to set up for successful squatting. Band resisted good mornings or KB swings are good for the deadlift. Finally, something as easy as a few sets of pushups can help with the bench press.

Each of these options will help raise your core temperature, fire up the CNS, and give you some sensory feed back on how the lift should feel (or will feel) on the given day.

5. Consider using MCTs for pre workout nutrition.

I'll finish this warm-up edition with a suggestion on how to warm up your body from the inside out. Many people tend to fuel their body pre-workout with various supplements (mostly full of garbage), or with carbohydrate-rich concotions. Instead, consider using a healthy source of fat: Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCTs). The benefits are numerous, and especially advantageous for those looking to increase fat oxidation during the workout. This study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed that consumption of MCTs as part of a weight loss plan improved overall weight loss. After ingestion of MCTs, the free fatty acid levels are raised, and more available to be used as energy. Supplementing with MCTs pre workout is therefore a terrific option for those on low carbohydrate diets looking for pre-workout energy and increased fat loss. You can get your MCTs in via coconut oil, MCT oil supplements, or even quality coconut milk products. Add in a small amount of BCAAs or whey protein, and caffeine for a boost that will keep you fueled up while aiding you in staying lean.

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Quick and Easy Ways to Feel and Move Better: Installment 8

In collaboration with Cressey Performance coach Greg Robins, here are some tips to get just a little more awesome this weekend.

1. Hard start, easy finish.

This phrase applies to almost everything in training and in life. In short, putting in the work up front is going to benefit you ten-fold throughout the rest of your...

Exercise Set: Put the time in to set up a lift correctly (bar placement, spotters, foot position, etc) and you will make the entire set go off smoothly.

Training Session: Don't skimp on your warm-ups. Make sure you spend the 15 minutes to hit self massage, mobility, and activation work.


Training Block: Make the time to make a plan. If you do not have the time (really?!), or the knowledge (fair enough), then seek out someone to make a plan for you.

Training Career: If you're new to the game, take the proper amount of time to learn correct movement patterns, build general work capacity, and understand technique. If you're not, and these sound like foreign concepts, have you considered pressing rewind?

2. Meet the bar.

3. Address lagging body parts with frequency.

If you have a body part that isn't making the grade, the answer could very well be to adjust the frequency in which you train it. Training variables such as volume and intensity are household names, even if their application is often butchered. Frequency is a less-considered variable in your training program. The frequency at which you train a muscle group can have a profound effect on its growth. Additionally, high frequency protocols can produce major surges in strength when programmed correctly. Using high frequencies to make gains in strength is definitely more complex. The more demanding the exercise selections (think deadlifts, squats, cleans, etc), the more tinkering you'll need to do in the overall management of volume and intensities. Luckily for you, using higher frequencies to illicit gains in "size" isn't as involved.

Here is a good place to start: choose an area (i.e. arms) and add a specialization day to your strength training program. Make this days short, but challenging. This is a good time to utilize drop sets, forced reps, pre-exhaustion etc. Stick with the same area for three weeks, back off a week, and either choose a new area for three weeks or continue with the previous selection. Maybe you'll do calves like Tony does?

4. Appreciate that various characteristics relate to throwing velocity.

A study conducted in 2009 by The Open Sports Medicine Journal looked at the relationship between six anthropometric (body height, body mass, body mass index (BMI), arm span, hand spread and length) and four physical fitness (aerobic capacity, explosive power of the lower limbs, flexibility and running speed) characteristics and their relationship to throwing velocity in female handball players. The study found that "throwing performance is significantly correlated with all variables calculated in this study except of the body mass index. This suggests that high performance requires advanced motor abilities and anthropometric features."

This isn't revolutionary, and the study does not go into details (that have been found important to velocity) such as joint mobility, stiffness and laxity. However, it is interesting to note that the researchers ranked each characteristic in order of importance in terms of the effect on velocity:

1. Hand Spread
2. Playing Experience
3. Arm Span
4. Body Height
5. Standing Long Jump
6. 30m Sprint
7. Sit and Reach
8. Body Mass.
9. VO2max
10. Body Mass Index

As you’ll see, the recipe for success will always be a combination of genetic pre determents, mechanical skill (sport practice), and physical performance traits (explosiveness, strength, etc). Two out of three of those you have control over, and if you are willing to put the work in, you can make up for quite a bit that Mommy and Daddy didn't pass on to you.

EC’s notes: three interesting asides to this…

First, it’s interesting that body mass index wasn’t more highly ranked, as body weight has been shown to have a significantly positive association with throwing velocity in baseball pitchers. The primary difference between these two populations, of course, is that the handball players aren’t throwing downhill on a mound, so perhaps having a greater body mass benefits pitchers because they’re more “gravity-aided?”

Second, this is friendly reminder that your silly long distance running won’t do anything for throwing velocity.

Third, the researchers only tested straight-ahead (sagittal) plane measures of power development. If they’d tested power development in the frontal and transverse planes, I’d expect to see a greater value for these measures.

5. Don't limit yourself.

Have you heard this before?

If I do everything you say, and work as hard as possible, do I have a shot at: making it, losing 10lbs, benching 315?

The answer is always YES; why would it be NO? We are all capable of impressing - and even surprising - ourselves with what we are capable of doing. Not everyone (even with an insane work ethic) is going to look like Captain American or play on ESPN. It doesn't matter.

What matters is that you never shot for something less than that. You gave everything you had, and you ran that course until it was over. Wherever that point may be, you arrived there knowing that you didn't leave anything in the tank. This is the absolute most you could do, given the tools you had, and you can be happy and fulfilled knowing that. If you attack everything with that mentality, you will be successful and happy with the result, even if that result isn't exactly what you thought it was when you got started.

This is an important lesson to remind young athletes and adult clients alike. Teach them to respect the process, and find value in the journey. Remind them that many variables are not within their control, but their effort is.

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LEARN HOW TO DEADLIFT
  • Avoid the most common deadlifting mistakes
  • 9 - minute instructional video
  • 3 part follow up series