Click here to check out Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and Move Better for yourself.

Why President Obama Throws Like a Girl - A lot of people took this as a political commentary, but to be honest, it was really just me talking about the concept of retroversion as it applies to a throwing shoulder - with a little humor thrown in, of course!

Overbearing Dads and Kids Who Throw Cheddar - This one was remarkably easy to write because I've received a lot of emails from overbearing Dads asking about increasing throwing velocity in their kids.

What I Learned in 2009 - I wrote this article for T-Nation back at the beginning of the year, and always enjoy these yearly pieces.  In fact, I'm working on my 2010 one for them now!

What a Stressed Out Bride Can Teach You About Training Success - I wrote this less than a month out from my wedding, so you could say that I had a good frame of reference.

Baseball Showcases: A Great Way to Waste Money and Get Injured - In case the title didn't tip you off, I'm not much of a fan of baseball showcases.

Cueing: Just One Piece of Semi-Private Training Success - Part 1 and Part 2 - These articles were featured at fitbusinessinsider.com.  I enjoy writing about not only the training side of things, but some of the things we've done well to build up our business.

Three Years of Cressey Performance: The Right Reasons and the Right Way - This might have been the top post of the year, in my eyes. My job is very cool.

How to Attack Continuing Education in the Fitness Industry - Here's another fitness business post.

Want to Be a Personal Trainer or Strength Coach?  Start Here. - And another!

The Skinny on Strasburg's Injury - I hate to make blog content out of someone else's misfortune, but it was a good opportunity to make some points that I think are very valid to the discussion of not only Stephen Strasburg's elbow injury, but a lot of the pitching injuries we see in youth baseball.

Surely, there are many more to list, but I don't want this to run too long!  Have a safe and happy new year, and keep an eye out for the first content of 2011, which is coming very soon!

That wraps it up for the best of 2010 product reviews; hopefully you can reward yourself with some late holiday shopping by picking up one or more of these items; you won't regret it.  I'll be back tomorrow with the best videos of 2010.

In the swayback posture, we see more flexion-based back pain (in addition to the classic upper body injuries/conditions), whereas the lordotic posture kicks off extension-based back pain.  Stretching the hip flexors a ton will help the lordotic folks, but usually have minimal effect for the swayback folks.  So, you really have to assess the hips individually and contemplate how they impact what goes on further up.

Likewise, you can look even further down the chain.  Overpronation at the foot and ankle kicks on excessive tibial and femoral internal rotation, which encourages more anterior pelvic tilt - which goes hand-in-hand with a lordotic posture.  Further up, we may compensate for this lordosis by getting more kyphotic to reposition our center of mass and remain "functional" and looking straight ahead.

14. Get ergonomic...conservatively.

While some ergonomic adjustments to your work station can be extremely valuable, simple modifications often yield the quickest and most profound results.  I've known folks who have gotten symptomatic relief by going to a standing or kneeling desk to get away from extended periods of time in hip flexion - and by getting the computer screen up to eye level.

Likewise, I always remind people that the best posture is the one that is constantly changing.  So, regardless of how "correct' your posture may be, it should always be a transient thing.

15. Use 1-arm pressing and pulling variations.

This recommendation will be appreciated by those of you who have checked out my new product, Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and Move Better.

If you're doing the program, chance are that you've noticed that there are quite a few unilateral upper body strength exercises - often one in each upper body training session.  The reason is pretty simple; you train thoracic rotation and scapular protraction/retraction on each and every rep.

If we are doing thoracic mobility work and lower trap/serratus anterior activation drills in our warm-ups, this is a perfect opportunity to create stability within that new ROM and solidify the neural patterns we've hoping to establish (and get an added core training benefit). You simply can't get this with bilateral exercise, particularly in a supine (bench presses) or prone (chest-supported rows) position.

16. Add range of motion - not just load - to your weight training program.

This note is one that anyone with a decent power of observation could make.  Walk in to any gym, and notice the people with the absolute worse posture as they go through their workout routines.  What do they do?

They move as little as possible on every single rep.  They squat high, don't go anywhere near the chest on bench presses, or just make up "strength exercises" that amount to violent spasms.  And that's just the ignorant folks.

Among advanced lifters, you'll see a lot of folks with terrible shoulder mobility and posture sticking with board presses and floor presses (which are certainly justified in limited volumes at specific training times), and doing rows with crazy heavy weights that force them to substitute forward head posture in place of anything even remotely close to scapular retraction.

In short, these folks keep working to add load, when they really should be maintaining or even lowering the load while adding range of motion to their weight training programs.

Wrap-up

Hopefully, this series brought to light some concepts that you can put into action right away.  Down the road, I may "reincarnate" this series as I think up some more strategies - or based on reader feedback.  Are there other areas you'd like covered?  If so, post in the comments section and there may be a Part 5 afterall!

Ideally, the chin/neck/head should remain in neutral and the scapula should retract and depress in sync with humeral movement.

Of course, these problems don't just occur with rowing motions; they may be seen with everything from deadlifts, to push-ups, to chin-ups.  So, be cognizant of how you're doing these strength exercises; you may just be making bad posture worse!

10. Get regular soft tissue work. I don't care whether it's a focal modality like Active Release, a mid-range modality like Graston Technique, or a more diffuse approach like general massage; just make sure that you get some sort of soft tissue work!  A foam roller is a good start and something that you can use between more targeted treatments with a qualified professional.  A lot of people really think that they are "breaking up scar tissue" with these modalities, and they certainly might be, but the truth is that I think more of the benefits come from altering fluid balance in the tissues, stimulating the autonomic nervous system, and "turning on" the sensory receptors in the fascia.

For more thoughts along these lines, check out my recap of a Thomas Myers presentation: The Fascial Knock on Distance Running for Pitchers.

11. Recognize that lower body postural improvements will be a lot more stubborn than upper body postural improvements. Most of this series has been dedicated to improving upper body postural distortions (forward head posture and kyphosis).  The truth is that they are always intimately linked (as the next installment will show) - however, in the upper body, bad posture "comes around" a bit sooner.  Why?

We don't walk on our hands (well, at least not the majority of the time).

Joking aside, though, the fact that we bear weight on our lower body and core means that it's going to take a ton of time to see changes in anterior pelvic tilt and overpronation, as we're talking about fundamentally changing the people have walked for decades by attempting to reposition their center of gravity.  That's not easy.

So why, then, do a lot of people get relief with "corrective exercises" aimed at bad posture?  Very simply, they're creating better stability in the range of motion they already have; an example would be strengthening the anterior core (with prone bridges, rollouts, etc.) in someone who has a big anterior pelvic tilt and lordosis.  You're only realigning the pelvis and spine temporarily, but you're giving them enough time and stability near their end range to give them some transient changes.  The same would be true of targeted mobility and soft tissue work; it acutely changes ROM and tissue density to make movement easier.

Long-term success, of course, comes when you are consistent with these initiatives and don't allow yourself to fall into bad posture habits in your daily life.  In fact, I have actually joked that we could probably improve posture the quickest if we just had people lie down between training sessions!

12. Add "fillers" to your weight training program. Mobility drills aimed at correcting bad posture are often viewed as boring, and in today's busy world, they are often the first thing removed when people need to get in and out of the gym quickly.  To keep folks from skipping these important exercises, I recommend they include them as "fillers."  Maybe you do a set each of ankle and thoracic spine mobility drills between each set of deadlifts (or any strength exercise, for that matter) - because you'd be resting for a couple of minutes and doing nothing, anyway.  These little additions go a long way in the big picture as long as you're consistent with them.

I'll be back next week with Part 4 of the Correcting Bad Posture series.

1. Train more frequently.

Obviously, in many cases, those with bad posture often simply don't exercise enough, so any motion is good motion.  However, this also applies to regular exercisers who hit the gym 3-4 times per week as well.  Why?

Well, I do a lot of my "corrective" work in my warm-up programming - and the more often you train, the more often you'll have to do your foam rolling and mobility warm-ups.  So, breaking your training program up into smaller components on more frequent days might be the best way to force yourself to do the things that you need the most to correct bad posture.

2. Use daily mobility circuits.

Along the same lines as the "increase training frequency" recommendation, it'll never hurt to repeat your mobility warm-ups during your daily life. If you are someone who is really in need of drastic changes, do your warm-ups twice a day, seven days a week (on top of any static stretching you do).

3. Strengthen the deep neck flexors.

When you get stuck in a forward head posture, the deep neck flexors (muscles on the anterior portion of your neck) really shut down as the sternocleidomastoid, suboccipitals, levator scapulae, scalenes, and upper traps get dense, fibrotic, and nasty.

You can start off by simply doing chin tucks against the wall (put the back of your head up against a wall, then make a double chin without the back of your head losing contact with the wall). Then, you can progress to quadruped chin tucks, a drill I learned from Dr. William Brady.  In this drill, you'll work against gravity as you pull your head into a more neutral cervical spine posture.  Most people will butcher this on their first try by going into hyperextension as they get to the "top" of the movement.

When you get the technique down, you'll actually notice some crazy soreness along the anterior aspect of your neck in the days that following. We usually go with sets of 5-6 reps and a 2-3 second hold at the top of each rep.

4. Go with a 2:1 pulling-to-pushing ratio.

This is a recommendation you see quite a bit, but nobody really talks about how to "smoothly" apply it to a weight training program.  Here are a few approaches I've used in the past:

a. Simply add an extra pulling exercise on the end of a day's session.

b. Pair a bilateral pulling exercise with a unilateral pressing exercise - and do "halves" on each pressing set.  In other words, if I was doing 6x6 chest-supported rows (CSR) with 3x6/side 1-arm incline DB presses (IDP), here's how I'd set it up: CSR, IDP-right, CSR, IDP-left, CSR, IDP-right, CSR, IDP-left, CSR, IDP-right, CSR, IDP-left.

c. Make the pulling exercises in your program the A1, B1, and C1 options, with the pressing as the A2, B2, C2.  And, simply have an extra set of each of the pulling exercises - meaning you just don't return to the pressing exercise for a last set.  This might work out as more of a 3:2 pulling-to-pushing ratio, but you can always tack an extra set or two on at the end to make it work.

I'll be back soon with more strategies for correcting bad posture, but in the meantime, I'd encourage you to check out Optimal Shoulder Performance at www.ShoulderPerformance.com, as this resource features loads of postural correction strategies to complement the ones featured in this series.

Okay, below is a transcript of the interview I did with Eric Cressey, beast of all beasts.  He’s seriously the man.  I’ve told you in another blog post how Eric and I met, and after 8 years and never less than 300 miles of distance between us, we’re still close and still learn a lot from each other. Eric is seriously regarded as one of the Top 5 coaches in the world by just about any authority that has any authority (if you’ll pardon the redundancy) and in my view is probably the best from a standpoint of bringing things to a practical level. His hew program, “Show and Go” has just been released, and is basically blowing the doors off of the industry. Now, I’ll warn you that Eric works with professional athletes most of the time, so we talk about that A LOT in the interview; however, as he notes, he started in fitness-based training. The program brings it all together, and the interview very clearly explains why you should pick it up. Check it out!

1.  Okay, right of of the gate, I want this interive to focus on your new program.  So, let's get to it: how is Show and Go different from the other training products out there now?

2. And modest.  Or not.  But I hate modesty anyway.  Now, like me, you’re still “in the trenches” right?  I mean, you still work clients hands on, every day in your gym?

3. Wow, that’s pretty intense.  Lets just touch on that for a sec.  You have over 40 pro baseball players from a number of different teams move into Red Sox territory to train with you.  That’s pretty telling.  Can you talk a bit more about your experiences with pro athletes?  I know this program is for “everyone” but how has working with some of the most elite athletes in the world shaped you as a coach.

4.  That’s pretty great stuff.  And as much as you love training athletes, they love training with you, too.  Every time I pick up a publication from your area, everyone from high school athletes up to Kevin Youkilis are singing your praises, and that includes other trainers.  But let’s go back to the “regular” people.

Let’s talk about my readers for a bit: they’ve done a lot of programs, but most written by trainers who don’t train pros or (in the case of myself) only a few.

So can we assume that this is a good “next step” coming from the average fitness program?  How can we take what you do with pros, what you do with absolute beginners, and apply the “middle ground” in this program?  I guess the question is: why is it that Show and Go is going be THE program for performance?

It’s absolutely a great next step. First and foremost, I should mention that while we’re probably best known for training baseball players, we’ve actually got a very diverse clientele.  Sure, there are athletes from everything from boxing to bobsled, but we also have an awesome group of adult clients who just want to just want to be leaner, more muscular, healthier, and more functional for the challenges that life throws their way.

In fact, this was actually the fitness clientele I was dealing with the most before the “baseball thing” blew up for me – so I’m certainly not shooting from the hip on this. To that end, there are a lot of things in a comprehensive strength and conditioning program that everybody – from the pro athlete to the soccer mom – needs to utilize.  I could go on all day: foam rolling, mobility warm-ups, single-leg training, more horizontal pulling, fluctuation of training stress, sufficient deloading periods, extra posterior chain work, glute activation, rotator cuff strength – the list goes on and on.  All that just speaks to staying healthy and moving more efficiently – but let’s be honest: most people want to get lean, muscular, and strong. But let me ask you this: how many of the “regulars” in the typical commercial gym are actually lean, muscular, or strong?  I haven’t lifted in a commercial gym in years, but my memory definitely serves me correct when it tells me that it couldn’t be more than 10-15% of those in attendance.  The other 85-90% are rubbing their arses raw on the recumbent bike and scratching their heads about why they aren’t getting leaner when the elliptical machine told them that they were burning 28,000 calories per hour.  After all, they made great progress in the first 8-12 weeks of their exercise program doing this – and it took them from the untrained stage to the beginner stage.  What they don’t realize is progress halts unless they change things up and kick their programs up a notch by adding strength training and interval work. Meanwhile, you have a lot of intermediate trainees who have “been there, done that” who poke fun at beginners because they haven’t discovered the same Holy Grail of strength training and interval training that enabled them to advance from beginner to intermediate.  What’s actually quite ironic (and it is irony, because it’s tragic how badly this sabotages people’s program) is that, all the while, most of these intermediate trainees are missing out on valuable training secrets that could take them to the “advanced” stage. You talked about a lot of those secrets with respect to fat loss when you wrote Final Phase Fat Loss.  I’ve had many of the same “epiphanies” when it comes to improving strength and performance.  You had trouble losing those last few pounds of body fat to get photo-shoot-ready, and I literally spent 14 months trying to figure out how to get from a 225 bench press to a 230 bench press.  Sad, but true. Well, I’m happy to report that I’ve now got a 365 raw bench press at ~190 pounds, and by this point, I’ve actually kissed a girl (even convinced her to marry me!).  I learned a lot of lessons along the way – almost too many to share, in fact – which is one reason why I created Show and Go.

5. Most people know you for the more “mundane ” aspects of performance…the boring stuff that we should be doing by most people don’t: soft tissue work, mobility work, all that.

On the other hand, you and I have known each other for about 10 years now, and I have a “different” perspective on you than the industry at large.  I’ve seen you in your aesthetic-focused period where you wanted to get bigger, I’ve seen you get into powerlifting and pull HUGE weights.

I know that having done these gives you insight into aspects of fitness many people don’t realize you have.  That said, for the time being you’re not known as one of the go-to guys if your main goal is to look better (which I personally know is bullshit).

Do you think Show and Go will help show the world that you can get people lean and muscular? I think—actually, let me put it this way.  I’ve looked closely at the program, and WOW have you just knocked it the hell out of the park.  I guess I’m asking, have you put your heart and soul into this because you want to show the world a new side of yourself?  What are your thoughts on that?

6.  Random – I’ll ask you this because I know people are interested in pro athletes: what is the one thing that makes athletes different from regular people?  Like, how do they really just differ in the way they respond to training?  What can we learn from that?

7. When you first opened your facility, you and I spoke and you were dead-set on making Cressey Performance stand out by having the most innovative people on staff and always trying new stuff.  At the same time, you didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.  In looking at Show and Go, I feel you did the same:  New science-based techniques housed comfortably alongside some of the most “common” exercises that people are familiar with; whereas a lot of programs include 80 varietals of exercises people have never heard of.  Give me your thoughts that?

8.  Your videos on the squat were posted and re-posted all over the internet.  EVERYONE got something out of them.   Show and Go could well do the same thing for programming in general—whether you’re a trainee or a coach, you’ll learn...and in a small but real way, this could perhaps chance the way people write programs. With that in mind, if you could get people to STOP doing one thing (trainees OR coaches) and START doing one other, what would it be?

Awesome.  Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Eric, thank you so much for taking the time for do this, and thank you so much for putting together an incredible program.

Oh, and hey…so sorry about the Jets dominating the Patriots last week.  That had to hurt.

Like just about all lifters, I got a lot bigger and stronger in my first 1-2 years of training in spite of the moronic stuff that I did in my weight training programs.  In hindsight, I was about as informed as a chimp with a barbell – but things worked out nonetheless.  That is, at least, until I hit a big fat plateau where things didn’t budge.

Think I’m joking?  Sadly, I’m not; otherwise, I wouldn’t have spent about 14 months trying to go from a 225-pound bench to 230.  When you’re finished laughing at my past futility (or about how similar it sounds to your own plight), we’ll continue.

Ready?  Good – because self-deprecating writing was never a strong suit of mine.  I have, however, become quite good at picking heavy stuff off the floor – to the tune of a personal-best 660-pound deadlift at a body weight of 188.

My other numbers aren't too shabby, either, but this article isn't about me; it's about why YOU can't necessarily get strong as fast as you'd like.  Let's look at a few mistakes many people make in their quest to increase strength.  Sadly, I made most of these myself along the way, so hopefully I can save you some frustration.

Reason #1: You're only doing what's fun - and not what you need.

As you could probably tell, deadlifting is a strength of mine - and I enjoy it.  Squatting, on the other hand, never came naturally to me.  I always squatted, but I'd be lying if I didn't say that it took the back seat to pulling heavy.

Eventually, though, I smartened up and took care of the issue - by always putting squatting before deadlifting in all my lower-body weight training sessions (twice a week).

In addition to me dramatically improving my squat, a funny thing happened: I actually started to love to squat.  Whoever said that you can't teach an old dog (or deadlifter) new tricks didn't have the real scoop.

Reason #2: You're not taking deload periods.

One phrase of which I've grown quite fond is "fatigue masks fitness."  As a little frame of reference, my best vertical jump is 37" - but on most days, I won't give you anything over 34.5" or so.  The reason is very simple: most of your training career is going to be spent in some degree of fatigue.  How you manage that fatigue is what's going to dictate your adaptation over the long-term.

On one hand, you want to impose enough fatigue to create supercompensation - so that you'll adapt and come back at a higher level of fitness.  On the other hand, you don't want to impose so much fatigue that you dig yourself a hole you can't get out of without a significant amount of time off.

Good weight training programs implement strategic overreaching follows by deloads - periods of lower training stress - to allow for adaptation to occur.  You can't just go in and hit personal bests in every single training session - and if you try, you're going to wind up exhausted.

Reason #3: You’re not rotating movements.

It never ceases to amaze me when a guy claims that he just can’t seem to increase strength on his bench press (or any lift, for that matter), and when you ask him what he’s done to work on it of late, and he tells you “bench press.” Specificity is important, folks, but if you aren’t rotating exercises in your strength training program, you’re missing out on a wildly valuable training stimulus: rotating strength exercises.

While there is certainly a place for extended periods of specificity (Smolov squat cycles, for instance), you can’t push this approach indefinitely.  Rotating my heaviest strength exercises was one of the most important lessons I learned along my journey.  In addition to helping to create adaptation, you’re also expanding your “motor program” and avoiding overuse injuries via pattern overload.

I’m not saying that you have to overhaul your entire strength and conditioning program each time you walk into the gym, but there should be some semi-regular fluctuation in exercise selection.  The more experienced you get, the more often you’ll want to rotate your strength exercises (I do it weekly).  We generally rotate assistance exercises every four weeks, though.

Reason #4: You’re inconsistent with your training.

I always tell our clients from all walks of life that the best strength and conditioning programs are ones that are sustainable.  I’ll take a crappy strength training program executed with consistency over a great program that’s only done sporadically.  In my daily practice, this is absolutely huge for professional athletes who need to maximize progress in the off-season; they just can’t afford to have unplanned breaks in training if they want to improve from year to year.

If a strength and conditioning program isn’t conducive to your goals and lifestyle, then it isn’t a good program.  That’s why I went out of my way to create 2x/week, 3x/week, and 4x/week strength training options – plus various supplemental conditioning options and a host of exercise modifications – when I pulled The High Performance Handbook together; I wanted it to be a very versatile resource.

Likewise, I wanted it to be safe; a program isn’t good if it injures you and prevents you from exercising.  Solid programs include targeted efforts to reduce the likelihood of injury via means like mobility warm-ups, supplemental stretching recommendations, specific progressions, fluctuations in training stress, and alternative strength exercises (“plan B”) in case you aren’t quite ready to execute “Plan A.”

For me personally, I attribute a lot of my progress to the fact that at one point, I actually went over eight years without missing a planned lift.  It’s a bit extreme, I know, but there’s a lesson to be learned.

Reason #5: You’re using the wrong rep schemes.

Beginners can make strength gains on as little as 40% of their one-rep max.  Past that initial period, the number moves to 70% – which is roughly a 12-rep max for most folks.  Later, I’d say that the number creeps up to about 85% – which would be about a 5-rep max for an intermediate lifter.  This last range is where you’ll find most people who head to the internet for strength training information.

What they don’t realize is that 85% isn’t going to get the job done for very long, either.  My experience is that in advanced lifters, the fastest way to build strength is to perform singles at or above 90% of one-rep max with regularity.  As long as exercises are rotated and deloading periods are included, this is a strategy that can be employed for an extended period of time.  In fact, it was probably the single (no pun intended) most valuable discovery I made in my quest to get strong.

I’m not saying that you should be attempting one-rep maxes each time you enter the gym, but I do think they’ll “just happen” if you employ this technique.

To take the guesswork out of all this and try some programming that considers all these crucial factors (and a whole lot more), check out my resource, The High Performance Handbook.

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The bride has hundreds of people involved in the process to keep her accountable.  Conversely, the upstart fitness consumer usually goes it alone.  I would be very curious to see what the success rate is of people who start exercising with a training partner - and I'll bet all my 2010 paychecks that it is markedly higher.

Coincidentally, I chatted on the phone on Friday with Tim Ferriss, the author of the wildly successful book, The 4-Hour Workweek.

Here is a guy who has published a #1 New York Times Bestseller as well as one of the most popular blogs on the internet.  Tim's also an entrepreneur with his hands in a lot of successful businesses, and he's learned multiple languages and taken on all sorts of physical endeavors - from martial arts to dancing.  And, most importantly, he's succeeded (thrived, actually) in all of them.  Moreover, he's mentored loads of people on how to do the same for themselves.  In short, he's an expert on getting stuff done.

So, when Tim decided that he was going to go for a 500-pound deadlift in 2010, what did he do?

Made his goals very public.  Anybody who reads his blog knows about them - and that's a lot of people.  It makes him accountable to not only himself, but all of them as well.  And, he's allied himself with resources - from training partners to meathead deadlifters across the country (yours truly) - to help him get to where he needs to be.  He is like a fired up bride who just wants to lift some heavy stuff.

And, what did I do to ensure that I'd have my new product ready in time?  I told you all that it'd be launching on September 21 - and it absolutely, positively will, even if I have to stay up every night until 3AM before that launch to finish it and all the tag-along materials. This is why my biggest recommendation to those starting a fitness program is to find a training partner and get into a solid training environment.  This isn't just for offering hand-offs and spots when you're benching, which, while nice, are the tip of the iceberg.  Rather, on those days when you're tempted to skip an exercise session, it'll make a big difference to know that there is someone waiting for you at the gym who will be disappointed if you don't show up.  They'll be there to push you when you need to be pushed, or to hold you back when you're being stupid and pushing too hard.  And, when you start to get soft and try to skip out on training, they'll be there to remind you of your goals - which you made very public.  You'll do the same for them, too. This is also one reason why I think you're seeing semi-private training and bootcamps absolutely boom in the fitness industry while one-on-one personal training dies a slow death.  In the former two options, you don't just get affordability; you also get increased camaraderie, accountability - and built-in training partners and motivation. So, regardless of your goals, find a few people you can clue in on them - and get those people involved in the process.  Doing so just might keep you from becoming another bride who tapped out on the fitness wedding. Lastly, while I'm speaking of deadlifts and the new product, I'd encourage you to enter your information below to subscribe to my FREE newsletter, and you'll be among the first to know when this new resource is released - and you'll (immediately) receive a detailed deadlift troubleshooting video.