Home Posts tagged "Warm-Ups" (Page 2)

Random Friday Thoughts: 8/27/10

I didn't do a "random thoughts" feature last week, so I'll have to be extra random this week to make up for it. 1.  Bam!

guyswalksintoabar

You weren't expecting me to come out with such amazing humor, were you?  Let that be a lesson to you; nobody is more random than EC (and nobody pulls off referring to himself in the third person better, either). 2. We all know that warm-ups are importance for enhancing power output, grooving appropriate neural patterns, and avoiding injury.  Here is some cool research that demonstrates how much more effective an active warm-up is than a passive warm-up when it comes to metabolic responses to exercise.  Namely, those who undergo an active warm-up demonstrate increased oxygen uptake and lower heart rate at a given workload than those participating in a passive warm-up (or no warm-up at all). Anecdotally, I can tell you that there have been some days where I have felt like there was lead in my shoes and that there was no way I could get any interval training in on a day I'd planned to do so.  However, after a good dynamic flexibility warm-up, things "miraculously" got a lot easier. 3. A big congratulations go out to CP baseball athletes Jordan Cote, who committed to Coastal Carolina, and Joe Napolitano, who committed to Wake Forest. Both made their decisions last week and were featured at ESPN Boston.  We're proud of our boys! 4. Likewise, I've got to give a congratulations to CP athlete and Lincoln-Sudbury All-American soccer player Cole DeNormandie, who became the second CP athlete featured on the cover of ESPN Rise Magazine in just the past few months (he joins Vanderbilt-bound pitcher Tyler Beede):

cole-espn-rise

5. Mike Robertson published a three part series on Knee Pain Basics this past week; it is absolutely fantastic and I'd strongly encourage you to check it out.  Here are the links: Part 1 - Philosophy Part 2 - Programming Part 3 - Coaching Along these same lines, if you haven't checked out Mike's Bulletproof Knees Manual yet, I'd strongly encourage you to do so; it's an excellent resource.

bpk

6. Greg Robins recently came down to spend some time observing the madness at Cressey Performance, and wrote up a detailed review of his experience; check it out: Science and Attitude: My Trip to Cressey Performance. 7. Here is a link to a great blog from Bret Contreras; it's definitely worth a read: Sprint Research, Biomechanics, and Practical Implications - An Interview with Matt Brughelli. 8. I need some advice from the dog lovers out there.  Both my fiancee and I grew up with dogs and are thinking about getting a puppy after our wedding (less than six weeks away right now).  We both agree that we want something small - but at the same time, I'd like something that doesn't make me want to instantly turn in my man card, like the silky poo for which she is currently pushing:

silkypoo-450x300

I actually really like bulldogs, but that's going to be a tough sell for her unless it's a "hybrid" where you can't see a whole lot of bulldog.  Plus, I know a lot of people have said that they have a higher propensity for health issues.  I like puggles, mini pincers, and a few others, but what do those of you in-the-know suggest?  Thanks for any help you can offer!

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

Coordination Training: A Continuum of Development for Young Athletes

Today's guest blog comes from Brian Grasso, the director of the International Youth Conditioning Association. The myths and falsehoods associated with coordination training are plenty.  I'll outline the "Top 3" here: 1.       Coordination is a singular element that is defined by a universal ability or lack of ability 2.       Coordination cannot be trained nor taught 3.       Coordination-based stimulus should be restricted to preadolescent children This article will provide a broad-based look at each of those myths and shed some light on the realities behind coordination training as a continuum for the complete development of young athletes aged 6 - 18.

young-athletes

1. Coordination & Young Athletes Largely considered a singular facet of athletic ability, it is not uncommon to hear coaches, parents or trainers suggest that a given young athlete possess "good" or "bad" coordination. This generalization does not reflect the true nature of the beast, or specific features that combine to create coordination from a macro-perspective.  Coordination is, in reality, comprised of several different characteristics:
  • Balance - a state of bodily equilibrium in either static or dynamic planes
  • Rhythm - the expression of timing
  • Movement Adequacy - display of efficiency or fluidity during locomotion
  • Synchronization of Movement - harmonization and organization of movement
  • Kinesthetic Differentiation - the degree of force required to produce a desired result
  • Spatial Awareness - ability to know where you are in space and in relation to objects
While many of these traits have great overlap and synergy, they are unmistakably separate and can, in fact, be improved in relatively isolated ways.  That's not to suggest that your training programs should necessarily look to carve up the elements of coordination and work through them in a solitary manner.  Just a notation intended to show that coordination as it relates to young athletes can be improved at the micro level.

youth-soccer

2. Coordination - Can You Teach Young Athletes? The answer, in short, is yes. Coordination ability is not unlike any other biomotor; proficiencies in strength, speed, agility and even cardiovascular capacity (through mechanical intervention) can be taught, and at any age. The interesting caveat with coordination-based work, however, is that its elements are tied directly to CNS development and therefore have a natural sensitive period along a chronological spectrum.  The actuality of sensitive periods tends to be a contentious topic amongst researchers and many coaches.  Some of these individuals are not satisfied with current research and are therefore not eager to believe in their existence and others who accept sensitive periods of development to be perfectly valid.  It's worth pointing out that I am in no way a scientist or researcher, but have read numerous books and research reviews on the subject and feel satisfied that they do exist and can be maximized (optimized for a lifetime) through proper stimulus. This "optimization" issue is the true crux of the matter.  Especially during the very early years of life (0 - 12 years) the CNS contains a great deal of plasticity, or ability to adapt.  This plastic nature carries through the mid-adolescence, but then significantly decreases from there.  Many mistake this point as an implication that the human organism cannot learn new skills in any capacity once their CNS has passed the point of being optimally plastic, but this is not true.  Skill of any athletic merit can be learned at virtually any age throughout life.  What the plasticity argument holds is that these skills could never be optimized if they were not introduced at a young age. Why Michael Couldn't Hit: And Other Tales of The Neurology of Sports is a fascinating book by Dr. Harold Klawans.  Klawans presents a review of his prediction that Michael Jordan, one of the greatest athletes of all time, would not become an extraordinary baseball player during his attempts to do so with the Chicago White Sox.

whymichaelcouldnthit

Dr. Klawans contented that because Jordan did not learn or practice the specific motor and hand-eye aspects of hitting baseballs when he was young, no matter how great an athlete he was, he would never be able to do so at an advanced level. Inevitably, Dr. Klawans was correct. The case for neural plasticity suggests that during the formative years of growth, it is imperative that young athletes be introduced to all types of stimulus that fuel improvement to the elements of coordination listed earlier.  This is one of the very critical reasons that all young athletes should play a variety of sports seasonally and avoid any sort of "sport specific" training.  Unilateral approaches to enhancing sport proficiency will meet with disastrous results from a performance standpoint if general athletic ability, overall coordination and non-specific load training is not reinforced from a young age. This bring us to the final myth... 3. Teenage Athletes Are 'Too Old' Now, while there is truth to the matter that many of the sensitive periods for coordination development exist during the preadolescent phase of life, it would be shortsighted to suggest that teenage athletes should not be exposed to this type of training. Firstly, much of the training of coordination takes the form of injury prevention.  Any sort of "balance" exercise, for example, requires proprioceptive conditioning and increases in stabilizer recruitment.  With "synchronization of movement," large ROM and mobility work is necessary.  "Kinesthetic differentiation," by definition, involves sub-maximal efforts or "fine-touch" capacity that is a drastically different stimulus than most young athletes are used to in training settings. Beyond that, there is the matter of motor skill linking.  According to Jozef Drabik, as much as 60% of the training done by Olympic athletes should take the form of non-direct load (i.e. non-sport-specific).  To truly stimulate these rather advanced athletes however, one option (which is a standard during the warm-up phase of a training session) is to link advanced motor skills (coordination exercises) together creating a complex movement pattern.

Layout 1

For example: Run Forward ---> Decelerate ---> 360 Jump ---> Forward Roll ---> Tuck Jump Or Scramble to Balance ---> 1-Leg Squat ---> A Skips ---> Army Crawl ---> Grab Ball/Stand/Throw to Target In each of these patterns, we have represented:
  • Spatial Awareness
  • Synchronization of Movement
  • Balance (dynamic and static)
  • Movement Adequacy
  • Kinesthetic Differentiation
  • Rhythm
I have used warm-up sequences just like these with high school, collegiate and professional athletes from a variety of sports. Brian Grasso has trained more than 15,000 young athletes worldwide over the past decade.  He is the Founder and CEO of the International Youth Conditioning Association - the only youth-based certification organization in the entire industry.  For more information, visit www.IYCA.org. Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter:
Name
Email
Read more

The Best of 2009: Articles

In place of "Stuff You Should Read" this week, I thought it might be cool to direct you to our most popular pages and videos for 2009, according to our website statistics.  Presumably, these are the ones that people forwarded to friends the most, and/or the ones that caught the most people's eyes.  This excludes pages like the homepage, baseball content, products, etc.  Here we go: Medicine Ball Madness - This piece outlined some of the medicine ball work I do with both my baseball guys and the rest of our clients.  It was so popular that it actually led to me deciding to cover this topic at my Perform Better talks for 2010. Hip Internal Rotation Deficit: Causes and Fixes - This Q&A on what the lying knee-to-knee stretch does actually led to a discussion of the who, what, when, where, why, and how. Front vs. Back Squats - This is a different kind of discussion on a debate that's been going on for years. Crossfit for Baseball - Controversial?  Yup.  I got a little hate mail for this one, but on the whole, I think I was pretty fair with how I approached it. "Quad Pulls" and Sprinting Warm-ups - This article discusses how the term "quad pull" might not be the most accurate one out there - and, more importantly, how to avoid them. A Common Cause of Hip Pain in Athletes - This piece discusses femoral anterior glide syndrome, a term coined by Shirley Sahrmann. Next, we'll feature the most popular product reviews of 2009.
Read more

Get Your Butt in Gear II

In Part I we covered some pre-training measures you can use to get your glutes fired up and ready to go. Now it's time to get to work on strengthening them. Before we discuss the exercises, let's go over four regulations. If you violate these four groundrules, we'll kick your ass (no pun intended). 1) You'll use a full range of motion (ROM) on all exercises, even if you're the most inflexible person alive. 2) You'll drive/lead with the heel and not prance around like a sissy on your tiptoes. 3) You'll keep the torso erect (chest high and scapulae retracted) to ensure a full ROM. 4) You'll check your ego at the door and decrease the weight if necessary to perform the exercises correctly! Every rule doesn’t apply to every exercise, but more often than not, these little cues will help you to increase your gluteal function and strength. Now, let's move on to the exercises! Continue Reading...
Read more

Get Your Butt in Gear

We need an appropriate balance between strength and mobility in our hips. This is true if we want to squat or deadlift more weight, jump higher or sprint faster. A world-renowned philosopher by the name of Coolio may have said it best: "You can't have da' hop if ya don't have da' hip!" It’s no surprise that athletes in sports like Olympic lifting, powerlifting and sprinting have amazing overall development in both flexibility and strength of the hip musculature. We see tons of injuries to the hamstrings and lower back, but rarely encounter any sort of injury to the glutes. The fact of the matter is that most athletes are tight in the hamstrings, lower back and hip flexors. This collection of problems is related to a lack of strength and motor control in the gluteal muscles. When the hip flexors (antagonists to the gluteus maximus) are overactive, the gluteus maximus becomes weak via a mechanism known as reciprocal inhibition. Furthermore, when our "butt" muscles aren’t up to the task, the hamstrings and erector spinae muscles are forced to work overtime to compensate. This is known as synergistic dominance. This unfortunate cycle often results in injury, or at the very least, sub-optimal levels of performance. Continue Reading...
Read more

Feel Better for 10 Bucks

Ten bucks doesn't buy much nowadays. You could pick up a day pass at some commercial gym, or pull off the co-pay on a visit to the chiropractor. If you're lucky, you might even be able to swing a mediocre Russian mail order bride. Or, you could just go the safe route with your $10, take our advice, and receive a lifetime of relief from the annoying tightness so many athletes and weekend warriors feel from incessantly beating on their bodies. Don't worry, this isn't an infomercial. We just want you to pick up a foam roller for self-myofascial release and deep tissue massage. Continue Reading...
Read more
Page 1 2
LEARN HOW TO DEADLIFT
  • Avoid the most common deadlifting mistakes
  • 9 - minute instructional video
  • 3 part follow up series