Home 2011 March (Page 2)

Stuff You Should Read: 3/17/11

Here are some links I'd encourage you to check out this week: Understanding Elbow Pain - Part 3: Pitching Injuries - With recent (medial) elbow injuries to Adam Wainwright and Andrew Bailey - and the fact that the high school baseball season starts next week here in Massachusetts - this article is a timely read because it talks about the causes of elbow injuries in throwing, and how those injuries may be different for a young pitcher than an adult pitcher.  The follow-up article (Part 4), Protecting Pitchers, is an important subsequent read, too. Case Study: Anterior Knee Pain in a High School Runner - My buddy Shon Grosse, a physical therapist in Colmar, PA, just got his blog off the ground and will be doing some case study presentations.  What I love about Shon is that he's not just a skilled physical therapist, but also an informed consumer when it comes to everything from strength and conditioning, to track and field, to martial arts.  You'll see this reflected in his treatment strategies.  This will make for a great regular read for up-and-coming physical therapists. An Interview with Bret Contreras - Dean Somerset interviewed Bret on his blog, and as it typically the case, Bret really overdelivered on content.  That man can write! Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a deadlift technique tutorial!
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Dean Somerset Interviews Me – Part 2

This is the second half of an interview I did for Dean Somerset's website.  In case you missed part 1, you can check it out HERE. DS: What are the best supplements for the money, in your opinion? EC: For most folks, fish oil, vitamin D, a decent low-carb protein powder, creatine, and a greens supplement (I prefer Athletic Greens) will get the job done.  I’d add in probiotics for many people as well.  The longer I’m in this field, the more of a minimalist I become. DS: There are a lot of misconceptions and misinterpretations on core strength and core training out there. Some say you have to lay perfectly still and think happy thoughts while flexing your belly button, while other say you need to use stability balls to get anything, and other say heavy stuff on your shoulders does the trick. Also, the definition of where the core is and what it does seems to be either incomplete, or somewhat lacking in common sense, as most of the anatomical diagrams will show the core as a hollow vessel, and eliminate the internal organs from the picture. What do you consider to be important in the anatomy of the core, and what would be your go-to core training exercises? EC: I tend to fall in the camp that it encompasses just about the entire body.  We can all agree that the hamstrings probably deserve a place in the role of the core, since they attach to the pelvis via the ischial tuberosity and sacrotuberous ligament, right?

Well, those same hamstrings attach below the knee on both the tibia and fibula.  They share a function (knee flexion) with the gastrocnemius, clearly are in close “fascial proximity,” and have neural innervations from the same origin at the lumbar spine (sciatic nerve).  The gastrocnemious attaches on the calcaneus – so we’ve established “hip to foot” relationships of the “core.” Add latissimus dorsi to the picture.  It attaches to the iliac crest, thoracolumbar fascia, thoracic spine, ribs, scapula, and humerus.  That would be a “hip to arm” connection, right?

Add in the trapezius, which runs from as far down as T12 to the base of the skull, and you can argue that you’ve got a “hip to head” relationship, too.

We’ll just train it with crunches, though, right??? I don’t think it’s as simple as just memorizing the anatomy of the muscles surrounding the lumbar spine; it’s about understanding the complex, functional relationship among all the muscles and their tendons, the ligaments, the fascia, the nerves, and the bony structures to which they attach.  Things are more complex than we try to make them – which is probably why a lot of people have chronic back pain that goes misdiagnosed and mistreated. While much of the industry has gone to the “don’t move the lumbar spine” end of the continuum, it’s really not that black and white.  It – like any other body segment – should have some movement.  The problem just becomes when we add load to that movement.  And, more specifically, things get dangerous when we add load to the end range of that movement.  Going into full lumbar flexion with an 800-pound deadlift isn’t going to make your intervertebral discs very happy, and not controlling violent extension and rotation during an athletic movement like swinging or throwing could very well leave you with a stress fracture, oblique strain, or spondylolisthesis at some point. That said, there should be movement during daily activities; otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to tie our shoes, and my puppy wouldn’t be able to lick his unmentionables for twenty minutes every night before he falls asleep.  When we start adding resistance, crazy velocity, and high volumes to the equation, though, we change the game.

To that end, I’ll continue to train anti-rotation and anti-extension exercises in the gym because the favorable outcomes we’ve seen with this approach have been tremendous.  If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. DS: Chewing tobacco: help or hindrance?? EC: I’m probably not the best one to ask.  I dipped once when I was about 18 and booted a few minutes later – and then felt miserably for about four hours afterward.  It wasn’t one of my finer moments. DS: I had a client who I was training for hockey a few years ago, and he forgot to go to the washroom for what I like to call a "pre-game." During the middle of his heavy squats, while I was spotting him, he, well for a lack of better term, he "released," and had to go change his shorts. Any training blooper highlight moments from CP? EC: Honestly, there are too many to list!  Most of them take place when our pro baseball guys are just shooting the breeze in the office.  Throw in a British golfer, pro boxer, or Ironman competitor, and you get enough people from different walks of life to make any conversation memorable and absolutely hilarious.  To that end, we actually have a quote book in the office; it’s got dozens of pages of stupid things that have been said over the past three years or so. DS: Who is the bigger prankster, you or Tony? EC: I’m not sure that I’d say that either of us are huge pranksters, but Tony is definitely the brunt of a lot more jokes at CP.  We always joke that every 2-3 months, we have a “Tony Moment” where he learns about something and is absolutely blown away to find out that we had already known about it for months. That said, the CP jester is definitely our pitching coordinator, Matt Blake, as some of these videos show:

DS: You have a lot of people looking up to you and aspiring to hit the level of professional success that you've been able to attain in a relatively short period of time. Who do you look up to so that you're continuously motivated to push and achieve more? EC:  That is a tough question to answer because my goal has never been to “be” someone else.  If I was to blindly follow someone else’s steps, it wouldn’t be the career I had in mind.  So, I feel like if you are going to be successful in what you do, there has to be some degree of innate motivation in you. That said, I look to a lot of people for inspiration. My father owns his own business and that had a more profound impact on me than you could possibly imagine as I opened my own facility.  Without even knowing it, he taught me that your business problems are your own and that you never make them anyone else’s problems.  And, give your employees autonomy, and as long as you’ve picked the right people, they won’t let you down. My mother is a high school teacher and administrator – and is pretty much the Mother Teresa of my hometown.  Over the years, I’ve watched on numerous occasions as she has fed some of her students who couldn’t afford to eat.  I’ve gone to the grocery store with her countless times – and it always takes an extra hour or so because she runs into so many grateful parents and students she’s dealt with over the years.  She established the first International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum in the state of Maine at her school.  She didn’t have to do any of this; it wasn’t mandated by her salary, and it certainly isn’t something a lot of other teachers do.  She taught me that your job has to fulfill you in some way far more significant than money, and that good will never runs out. My grandparents were married for over 60 years before my grandfather passed away this fall.  They taught me that family comes first – and my wife and I have had many talks about how they educated us on how a marriage should work. In the industry, there are quite a few people I look to for advice.  Alwyn Cosgrove has taught me a ton about how to run a business.  Mike Robertson has been a guy with whom I’ve collaborated a lot – and we’ve both gotten better in the process.  I look to guys like Bill Hartman and Charlie Weingroff as very bright individuals who simply enjoy learning for the sake of learning – and that’s something I enjoy. Pat Rigsby is a guy who has shown me more about how to balance all of life’s demands – from family time to various business endeavors. I could go on and on, but the point is that I draw inspiration from a lot of sources – both intrinsic and extrinsic. DS: You've stated that for baseball player, olympic lifting and vertical jumping aren't really necessary as the sport doesn't require it. Most trainers gave you hell, but you stood your ground and proved them all wrong. What other concepts have you brought to the table that have helped re-form many common misconceptions about training and sports development? EC:  It’s funny; right after I published that piece at T-nation about how power is “plane-specific,” I got an email from a researcher who was studying the exact same thing – and finding preliminary data that completely verified what I’d said.  Sometimes, research is out there to validate what we’re already doing. Whether I’ve made people changed their thought processes or not, a few things I’ve tried to bring to the forefront are: 1. The Difference Between Inefficiency and Pathology – We’ve always been taught that if an x-ray or MRI tells us that we’re structurally out of whack, then we’re screwed.  The truth is that all of us – even when we’re asymptomatic – have structural issues on diagnostic imaging.  The people who are in pain are the ones who don’t move efficiently on top of these structural flaws.  I see this every day with the pitching shoulders that come through my door; I assume that they’re all “broken” and that we are just managing them to avoid them hitting a painful threshold.

2. The Concept of Long-Term Athletic Development Beginning with Strength – This is an area where I’ve tried to lead by example with our training model at Cressey Performance.  I’m not interested in running a group of 20 14-year-olds through a bunch of agility ladders.  If we want the best long term results and safety, our #1 job in a youth population is to improve strength.  Sure, they run faster, jump higher, and throw harder – but they also decelerate better and change directions more efficiently.  You can run all the "quickness drills" that you want with a young population, but the truth is that you’ll never improve speed or agility unless you teach them to put more force in to the ground.  It’s like polishing the hub cabs on a car with no horsepower; you’re studying for the wrong test. Unfortunately, there are a lot of facilities out there that are just about finding a training model that allows one to run a ton of kids through the same program without much concern for the actual benefits to be gained (or lack thereof).  I’m not interested in babysitting. 3. The Differences Between Flexibility and Mobility – This was a key portion of my contribution to the recently released IYCA High School Strength Coach Certification. Mobility refers to the ability to reach certain positions, whereas flexibility refers to just one factor (joint range of motion) that affects that ability.  Mobility is also dependent on stability, the foundation for which is neuromuscular recruitment.  When we test flexibility, we’re talking about isolated testing of relaxed muscles/tendons.  To be blunt, we’re ignoring the nervous system.

Mobility encompasses multiple joints and therefore likely involves fascial contributions to movement, whereas flexibility may only involve 1-2 joints and may therefore minimize the impact of fascia on an assessment. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we can easily assess mobility in a general sense – but determining the cause of limitations is more challenging.  Flexibility, too, is a quick assessment – but correcting the limitation discovered doesn’t guarantee that movement quality will improve. 4. The belief that there is always something you can do to get better, regardless of injury – I’ve never been a fan of doctors and physical therapists telling injured patients to “just rest.”  First off, rest alone is rarely the answer.  Just as importantly, though, this recommendation ignores the fact that there are endocrine, immune, functional, psychological, and social benefits that are still to be derived from exercising.  When I’m working with clients who are injured, I feel that it’s my job to show them what they can do and not just what they can’t do.  And, there is always something you can do to maintain a training effect. 5. Weighted baseballs might actually be safer than traditional 5oz baseballs – and at the very least, they can be a beneficial training addition. This article sums it up quite well, so I won’t reinvent the wheel.  A lot of people can’t believe it when I saw that we used weighted balls, but the results have been nothing short of fantastic. These are just the few things that came to mind right off the top of my head.  I’d like to think that there are more! Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a deadlift technique tutorial!
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Dean Somerset Interviews Me – Part 1

I recently was interviewed by Dean Somerset, and thought that interview might be of interest to all of you.  He asked some great questions that deviated from the hackneyed "tell us about yourself" and "what's your philosophy?"  Check it out below. DS: You have a very busy facility that trains pretty much every baseball player in the eastern seaboard, you write a daily blog, and write for T-Nation, Men's Health, etc, etc, etc. On top of that, you train like a demon and have a wife and puppy that need the occasional quality time. Have you found some rip in the space-time continuum or managed to clone yourself in order to get all this done?? What's your secret for time management and productivity? EC: I inherited my late grandfather’s love of coffee and managed to find a wife who is quite understanding (although she thinks I am a crazy workaholic as well). Kidding aside, while I have picked up on some good time management strategies over the years, the truth is that I am still very much a work in progress.  The main problem is that when things are going well, it’s tough to cut back – so instead, you keep pushing the bar higher.

When I’m tired and overworked, I usually just remind myself that this is how it’s supposed to be when you start a business.  While I’ve been writing articles since I was 20, the truth is that Cressey Performance is just 3.5 years old.  Read any entrepreneurship textbook and it’ll tell you that the first five years are the most challenging and include the longest hours.  Things have definitely gotten better since 2006-2007, which was undoubtedly the most hours I’ve ever worked, but I’m not ready to rest on my laurels and pat myself on the back. As for strategies on how to get things done, loving what you do is the most important thing.  If you don’t enjoy it, the hours go by very slowly. I actually outlined a few strategies in this blog post as well: How Do You Find Time for Everything? Lastly, I’m very lucky to have an excellent staff that does an awesome job.  When you have good people working all around you, time management is a lot easier – as you don’t have to waste time second-guessing everything they do. DS: I bumped into you waiting for a sandwich at the NSCA conference in Las Vegas last year and joked about how you were easy to pick out as you and your whole crew were wearing Cressey Performance T-shirts and other paraphernalia. For trainers looking to create an image or brand and increase their exposure, what should they do besides printing off kick-ass T-shirts and setting up Facebook pages to increase their drawing power? EC: Treat people right, overdeliver on all your promises, and focus on results.  I’ve had quite a few people tell me that I’m a good marketer over the years – but they are remarkably surprised when I tell them that we haven’t spent a penny on advertising since we opened Cressey Performance.  The truth is that we have grown 100% by word of mouth; our clients are our marketers.

If we make a t-shirt, it’s to give our athletes a sense of ownership in Cressey Performance and help them feel at home.  If we create a Facebook page, it’s to build camaraderie among our clients, disseminate information to make their lives easier, educate them, and help connect them.  If we write blogs about our athletes, it’s because we’re proud of them and want to recognize their achievements.  If we write blogs about our area of focus, it’s because we feel like we have valuable information to share that can really help people. In other words, the client experience – both in terms of enjoyment and results – is at the center of everything we do.  You don’t get exposure and build a brand unless you get results and make people happy. DS: The sacroiliac (SI) joint is a tricky bugger, it's not the low back and it's not technically the mobile part of the hip. What do you do with any suspected sacroiliac dysfunction issues to get them moving and reduce pain? EC: Well, I think that the first step is determining whether whatever is going on is clinically within my scope of practice, and if not, who the right referral is for them.  Two minds are always going to be better than one in solving a problem, and there are specific interventions (e.g., manual therapy) that I can’t offer that would expedite their recovery.  So, the first step is appreciating that I’d likely be working hand-in-hand with someone else to make sure that we’re covering all the important things.  It’s not feasible from a time or skill-set standpoint for me to handle everything, nor would it guarantee the best outcomes (even if that individual did wind up symptom free). That said, I think that one problem we run into nowadays with respect to this particular issue is that everyone just wants to call one-sided back pain “sacroiliac dysfunction.”  It’s almost become a “shin splint” or “impingement” garbage diagnosis that really doesn’t tell us a whole lot about how someone moves.  Many of the folks we’ve seen come through our doors over the years with “sacroiliac dysfunction” have actually been those with previous soft tissue injuries in the area, or even folks with femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) that has just led to chronic spasming in the area because they couldn’t flex or internally rotate the hip sufficiently (particularly in closed chain).  They don’t necessarily have sacroiliac dysfunction; they just have pain on one side that happens to be somewhat near the SI joint.

The truth is that in 85% of cases, lower back pain has no definitive diagnosis.  Even still, over 80% of people have disc bulges or herniations that they don’t even know are there; they’re completely asymptomatic. So, even if we could diagnosis what was structurally wrong in all the cases, we’d never know that it’s exactly what’s causing the pain.  So, we have to look to movement – and here’s what I’ve most commonly seen: 1. Left AIC/Right BC patterning – If you look at the Postural Restoration Institute philosophy, they talk extensively about how many people (especially right handed individuals) are “stuck” in right stance: right hip adduction, internal rotation, and posterior rotation.  Not surprisingly, you see more hip surgeries (labral repairs, sport hernia surgeries, and FAI cases) on the right side – but you also see a lot more sacral injections on that side.  Get people out of right stance – even if you just yell at them every time you see them sinking back into the right hip in standing – can make a big difference.  The PRI folks also have a myriad of corrective drills – from breathing patterning to muscle re-education – to bring people back to center (even if true symmetry isn’t a reality). 2. Poor Motor Control and Strength of the Glutes – We spend a lot of time on our butts – so much, in fact, that they shut down.  The gluteus maximus is active in the sagittal, frontal, and transverse planes, so it’s a big player in hip stability and femoral control. If you don’t use your glutes in the sagittal plane, you’ll hyperextend at the lumbar spine as a compensation (and increase your risk of excessive anterior glide of the femoral head secondary to hamstrings dominance in hip extension).  If you don’t control the femur in the transverse and frontal planes, you’ll end up in excessive adduction and internal rotation – which is “no bueno,” as I described in the previous example. 3. Poor Hip Rotation (and mobility in general) – This works hand-in-hand with the previous two factors, but warrants mention on its own. Vad et al. found that lead hip internal rotation correlated with a history of back pain in golfers, but the problem extends further than just rotational sport athletes.  You need a fair amount of hip internal rotation to squat, so if you’re lacking it – yet including squatting or athletic activity that requires it – it’s not unreasonable to assume that the lumbar spine (or sacroiliac joint) will get a big angry at you eventually.  Likewise, if you have a structural hip issue (like the aforementioned FAI), the lower back is often the first place where people become symptomatic. 4. Poor Thoracic Spine MobilityCharlie Weingroff made a great point that the thoracic spine is an even bigger player in the joint-by-joint approach than just about any other segment, as it interacts directly with the scapulae, rib cage (respiratory system), lumbar spine, and cervical spine.  Just about everyone is stiff in the T-spine, aside from some of the pitchers I see with freaky mobility.  Asymmetrical t-spine mobility is a centerpiece of the PRI philosophy in light of their heavy focus on respiratory function.  The area I see this being a big player the most is in rotational sport athletes, as the thoracic spine allows for continued creation of elastic energy when hip range-of-motion is maxed out – and it’s also essential for creating a longer deceleration arc – whether we’re talking about throwing or swinging/shooting.

5. Poor Core Stability – Here’s my turn to use a garbage term, but let’s be honest: most of the 25% of Americans in low back pain at any given point are the ones who don’t do anything that even closely resembles exercise.  Then they go out to shovel snow, play catch with their kids, or just put on their socks – and their backs go.  They don’t need to be absolute physical specimens to get through life pain free; they just need enough stability to buttress against shear stress and create enough multi-directional stability to handle compression. 6. Soft Tissue Quality – This one is a bit of an X factor and not the answer for everyone, but I won’t lie: I have seen people with years of back pain who get immediate and lasting relief from symptoms following more aggressive soft tissue treatments like Graston and Active Release.  If you use (or overuse) muscles, they can get fibrotic over time.  This tends to work more commonly in a trained population than an untrained population because they’ve accumulated more wear and tear over the years.  The point is simply that you can’t overlook tissue health, especially if there is a previous history of strain. Check back soon for the second half of this interview. Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a deadlift technique tutorial!
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Off-Season Baseball Training at Cressey Performance

It's been a few months in the making, but we just finished up a promo video about how we attack off-season baseball training at Cressey Performance for our professional, collegiate, and high school baseball players.

We'd love to hear what you think - and hopefully you'll like it enough to help spread the word on Facebook and Twitter. Thanks! A big shoutout goes out to Jamie and Matt at Lasting Memories Videotaping; these guys do an awesome job, and we can't recommend them highly enough! Sign-up Today for our FREE Baseball Newsletter and Receive a Copy of the Exact Stretches used by Cressey Performance Pitchers after they Throw!
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Lose Fat, Gain Muscle, Get Strong, and Laugh a Little – Installment 3

Reading today's blog post should instantly drop your body fat by about 10% and increase your bench press by 50 pounds.  I can't however, guarantee that you'll laugh at my attempts at humor. 1. I just came across this recently published study: The effects of resistance training on endurance capacity and muscle fiber composition in young top-level cyclists.  Researchers put a group of cyclists through 16 weeks of resistance training alongside their normal endurance training, and assessed muscle fiber composition and a variety of performance measures pre- and post-intervention.  A control group only did the endurance component. When all was said and done, researchers found that the combined group improved maximal muscular strength and rate of force development, a change that wasn't seen with the endurance-only group.  Both groups improved their short-term (5min) endurance capacity, but only the group that strength training improved in a 45- minute test.  So, effectively, you can say that these athletes improved in both endurance measures and strength/power measures simultaneously (probably helped by the fact that cyclists aren't exactly what I'd call "trained" in a strength training context - so they simply filled a void). However, it's a good lesson to be learned for the endurance athletes out there.  The endurance-only group was completely specific in their training; they only did cycling.  One might think that this specificity would allow them to achieve greater short-term results on endurance tests, but the opposite was true; those who did more strength training improved faster on both short and long measures of endurance performance (and without a change of muscle capillarization, an aerobic adaptation important for endurance athletes).  This just goes to show you that you need to exploit your windows of adaptation - even if they aren't things you enjoy doing. As a brief aside, my buddies Mike Westerdal and Elliott Hulse took some heat for talking about a "Type 3" muscle fiber in the weeks leading up to the release of their Lean Hybrid Muscle program.

My impression of what they intended was a type II fiber (presumably a IIa fiber) that could "swing" either way and hold both favorable endurance properties (e.g., capillarization, mitochondrial density) and strength qualities (e.g., maximal strength, rate of force development, and cross-sectional area).  This study tends to substantiate that assertion, as the research has shown (as with this study) that all training leads to a shift toward a slower twitch phenotype - but NOT all training leads to concurrent improvements in both endurance and strength/power measures.  Sure, we didn't have the most highly trained resistance training athletes, but I'd argue that they are more "fit" and "adapted" than a huge majority of the general population who participates in weight training.  Food for thought. 2. It's remarkable how similar the "Sillies" are to the new fitness gadgets that come out each week, huh?

3. That answers this question:

4. This is an old Precision Nutrition article that I just happened to come across, but it is absolutely fantastic (and very enlightening). I'm not a cereal guy, and thanks to this article, I doubt I'll become one anytime soon: All About Breakfast Cereals. Back tomorrow with more madness... Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a deadlift technique tutorial!
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Show and Go Review: Get Strong and Destroy Clothes

I just received this review from a happy customer of Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and Move Better (and grow out of every single piece of clothing you own): Eric, Thought I'd add to your pile of stories about my experience with Show and Go. As a 30 year-old non-athlete who has never truly followed a complete training program, Show and Go really challenged me, brought some great results, and has turned me into a huge snob in the gym (my rest periods are generally spent grimacing at peoples' form and judging them for their partial range movements/exercise choices). The biggest challenge for me was adapting to the longer workouts/more volume/new exercises. As I reached the end of the program I certainly noticed I had adapted well.

I did not test my 1RM before starting, but I had good estimates and without a doubt I am much stronger and much more confident in my body to handle heavier loads. My results: 1RM Deadlift  - 380 (approx. +60lbs) 1RM Front Squat - 245 (approx +55lbs) 1RM Bench Press - 260 (approx +30lbs) Other stats of note: - Gained about 9lbs even though I know I don't eat enough - Literally ripped the back of 5 pairs of pants bending over or sitting down (and grew out of most of the rest of them) - Grew out of almost all my suits (pants and jackets) I'll be coming back to Cressey Performance in the next few weeks to get a new program in person and can't wait. Hopefully my legs/butt will settle down and stop growing out of pants. It's getting to be an expensive hobby for someone who has to dress up for work everyday. Thanks for this program. It was what I needed and it worked. Your blog and Tony's blog helped with continued motivation and instruction throughout. You guys have a good thing going. Looking forward to what's next. Zach Stanley Whether you're a beginner or a veteran lifter, I'd encourage you to check out the program that had Zach splitting pants and moving big weights: Show and Go. Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a deadlift technique video!
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How to Develop Your Fitness Niche

Five months ago, I wrote an article called How to Find Your Fitness Niche – and it was one of the more popular posts in my site’s history.  I realized after writing it, though, that I never bothered to talk about how I developed the niche I was in once I discovered it. If you didn’t read the original installment, definitely check it out now.  However, as a brief background, about 80-85% of our clients at Cressey Performance are baseball players.  This past off-season, we had 44 professional players travel from all over the country to train in snowy Hudson, MA.  So, you could say that my dream “niche” came true. Here are some of the strategies we employed along the way. 1. Don’t go for the big fish right away. People are always blown away when I tell them that I started out with training high school baseball players, not big leaguers.  That’s the truth, though; a few younger guys got great results, won a state championship, earned D1 scholarships, and – in the case of one – received state player of the year honors.  My phone started ringing off the hook when some of those results were featured in the Boston Globe. Eventually, the high school clientele grew to include more college guys and, in turn, pro guys.  Once you have a few pro guys and you get results with them, they tell their buddies – and their agents and teams also have more guys to send your way.  Then, all the younger athletes see professional athletes training at our facility and it reaffirms in their mind that Cressey Performance is the place to be.  If a professional baseball player travels all the way across the country to train here, why wouldn’t they be willing to travel ten minutes?  You wind up with a big circle that continuously grows. What doesn’t work is just shooting for the “red carpet” clients right off the bat.  Don’t expect to just be able to call your local professional sports team or some big time agent and “wow” them with a 15-second elevator pitch to get their best players to train with you.  The truth is that you probably won’t even get a call back.  It’s not my niche, but it works the same with celebrities, TV personalities, politicians, or anyone else who lives their lives knowing that everyone wants a piece of them.  Be patient and fish in the river for a bit before you head out to catch the big fish in open waters. 2. Start locally. Before you can be a national expert, you have to be a local expert.  Training my local guys got me motivated to research and write more in the baseball realm.  That gave rise to more guys traveling from out of state to train with us. 3. Remember that expertise is perceived differently. Some perceive expertise as telling them what to do so that all the guesswork is taken out of the equation.  They might think you are annoying or clueless if you try to tell them the “why” behind everything you do. Others perceive expertise as your ability to justify everything that you do.  They might think you’re incompetent if you tell them to “just trust you” because you “know” the program will work, or if you’re simply at a loss for words when they ask you to explain the “why” behind your training approach. Some want to see you coach athletes to be confident in your abilities, and others just want to sit down with you and ask questions to verify your competence.  Others might want to see you present at a seminar.  Some want to read your writing, and others want to ask current clients about their experiences with you. The point is that you have to be versatile and multi-faceted in the way that you present your expertise.  I can rattle off research and tell guys why we’re doing stuff, or I can skip the science mumbo-jumbo and replace it with loud music and attitude.  People are welcome to watch me coach, ask me questions, read my writing (online and the stuff that is framed in the office), view seminars I’ve given, check out flyers in the office, and speak to our clients.  We make “perceiving expertise” easier for them. 4. Good will doesn’t run out – and costs nothing to give.  Cultivate relationships. At the end of the day, success in your niche isn’t about making up flyers or some other advertising tactic; it’s about overdelivering relative to clients’ expectations and creating genuinely positive relationships with people.  We haven’t spent a penny on advertising since we opened in 2007 – but we’ve made a lot of friends along the way. 5. Remember that impressionable young minds ultimately become opinion leaders. This is a cool year for us because it’s the first class of guys that we’ve seen all the way through high school.  In other words, some kids I started training when they were in eighth grade are now seniors in high school with college baseball scholarships.  They might not have been big referral sources when they were 14 years old, but as more accomplished 17-18 year-olds to whom underclassmen look up, they are huge opinion leaders who refer us a lot of business.  Likewise, we’ve gotten to know their families well over the years, so the referrals don’t just come from the kids; they also come from the parents. Tim Collins was the second professional baseball player I ever trained.  He was a free agent signing out of high school in 2007 – and at the time, he was 18 years old, 5-5, 130 pounds soaking wet, and topping out at 82-83mph.  Tim just wrapped up his fourth off-season with us and stands an outstanding chance of making the opening day roster for the Kansas City Royals after putting up some of the best numbers in minor league baseball over the past few years.  He’s now 170 pounds, throws in the mid-90s, and has a ~39-inch vertical jump.

In the fall of 2007, Tim was as much of a longshot in professional baseball as you could have possibly imagined: undersized, underpaid, and undrafted.  Now, he’s on the big league radar screen – and along that journey, he’s generated an enormous amount of publicity for Cressey Performance and referred several of his teammates our way. 6. Research like crazy. If you are going to be the expert, it’s your job to know everything you possibly can about your niche.  Being smart is never a bad thing; you need to be on the cutting-edge. 7. Adapt. Whether you are training fat loss clients, pregnant women, senior citizens, or MMA fighters, we are in a dynamic field where things change daily.  New research comes out and better ways of doing things are constantly being discovered.  If you’re going to be the “go-to” expert, it’s not just good enough to learn new things; you have to be able to effectively integrate them in your existing philosophy.  It’s no good learning something if you aren’t going to use it – and let’s face it: change is hard.   Find a way to make it easy. 8. Don’t try to replicate yourself; complement yourself. The single-worst thing I could have done in developing my baseball niche was hiring someone to be like me.  Conversely, the best thing I can do is surround myself with people who have skill sets that complement mine so that we can together offer a more comprehensive product to our niche. With that in mind, at CP, we have a pitching coordinator, nutrition director, massage therapist, and chiropractor on hand.  My business partner handles all the billing, scheduling, and other office tasks.  We have a cafeteria in the building to help out with nutrition needs.  All these people do their thing so that I can leverage my abilities, which allows us to best serve our niche. 9. Don’t force it. This one will be brief: you have to enjoy what you’re doing in order to be good at it. I don’t care what sounds profitable or what your spouse or buddies tell you you’d be good at; it has to appeal to you on a level far more important than financial gain. 10. Success is about what you’re doing right, not what others are doing wrong. Because we’re so focused on our niche, I have never really paid any attention to what surrounding training facilities are doing simply because I don’t view them as competition.  However, that doesn’t mean that I’m not asked about them all the time – almost as if people are trying to bait me into talking poorly about industry colleagues.  My policy is strict and straightforward: stay positive and never speak poorly of your competition. I will gladly talk about what I feel we do well and how this distinguishes us from the industry “norm,” but it’s not my place to comment on what others are doing.  Speaking poorly about others only makes you look jealous and petty.  And, frankly, this time and effort is much better spent looking in the mirror to determine how you can make your own offerings better. Closing Thoughts Surely, these are just a few of the many factors involved in turning a fitness niche from a dream into a reality.  And, I’m sure we can all learn from one another.  In the comments section, I’d love to hear what your fitness niche is and what strategies you’ve employed to get to where you are. Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a deadlift technique tutorial!
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Stuff You Should Read: 3/7/11

For this week's list of recommended reading: Final Phase Fat Loss: An Interview with John Romaniello - I did this interview with John Romaniello just over one year ago, but the information is still very applicable.  And, given that John is just "re-launching" his product with new additions and a big price discount (starting next Monday at midnight), the timing is very good.  For more information, check out Final Phase Fat Loss. Band Work After Pitching? - With the baseball season about to get going, I thought this would be a good time to reincarnate this post I wrote a while back. Act Small to Grow Big - When I read this article by Pat Rigsby, I immediately sent it to my business partners, Pete and Tony.  While I think we are doing a lot of things correctly in this regard, it seemed like a good reminder.  If you're a fitness professional reading this blog, I'd call it a must-read for you. Sign-up Today for our FREE Newsletter and receive a deadlift technique tutorial!
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Strength Training Programs: Lifting Heavy Weights vs. Corrective Exercise – Finding a Balance

Q: How does one find a balance between "technique/form/corrective/sissy work" and lifting heavy weights to make gains in a strength training program? I see both extremes, but am curious about what affects the balance between the two.

A: This is actually a great question, and I am actually surprised that I’ve never answered it before in over five years of writing on this site.

For me, it all comes down to five factors in each athlete/client: strength training experience, injury history, goals, time to commit, and training session structure.

In someone with limited strength and conditioning, more of the session is going to be devoted to technique work on entry level strength exercises.  You don’t have to worry as much about lifting really heavy weights simply because beginners can make appreciable strength gains with as little as 40% of 1-rep max on exercises.  The more advanced an athlete becomes, the less time you spend on technique work, and the more work you do with strength development and corrective exercise.  Eventually, when an athlete has a lot of strength, you have to consider whether all the time and effort that would go in to adding 20 pounds to his squat would actually be better spent elsewhere – whether it’s with corrective work, power training at a lower percentage of 1-rep max, or in introducing new exercises.  Effectively, it always comes down to finding someone’s biggest window of adaptation and exploiting it.  That's one reason why I tried to make the Show and Go program so versatile by including 2x/week, 3x/week, and 4x/week training options alongside five supplemental metabolic training protocols.

If we are talking about someone with a lengthy injury history, though, the rules get thrown out the window.  You are not only spending more time with corrective exercise, but also refining your strength exercise selection to work with this individual – so it might mean that you have to do more technique work to add in new strength exercises, regardless of that individual’s training experience.

One’s training goals impact the corrective/heavy lifting balance as well.  If I’m training someone who simply wants to improve quality of life or stay healthy in athletics, I can be a bit more cautious on the heavy lifting side of things and hold back.  However, if we are talking about someone who was put on this planet to get strong and wants to be the most badass guy in the gym, we have to lift some heavy weights to make that happen.  So, while the second scenario in many cases requires more corrective exercise, we’re talking about a population that is willing to take more risks in training to get to a goal that might not be at all interesting to a more “low key” population.  This does not, however, mean it’s okay to let strength-oriented people lift with atrocious technique.  Doing so makes you an unethical clown who is more likely to get sued – not a professional.

Time to commit is another important consideration that many folks overlook.  Very simply, if someone can only get in two exercise sessions a week, I’m not going to be spending a ton of time on corrective exercise with them.  You’re much more likely to die from being fat and having diabetes than you are from having a cranky rotator cuff.  I’ll gladly give these folks additional corrective exercise that they can do during their busy schedules (which are never as busy as they claim), but I won’t coddle them when they need to move.

The last factor, which is more about the training model than the athlete/client in question, is how one structures a training session.  At Cressey Performance, athletes start their sessions with foam rolling and then proceed to an 8-10 exercise dynamic warm-up.  For many folks – particularly young athletes – that is enough “corrective” work, and the remainder of the session can be devoted to technical instruction and increasing strength on exercises that are safe for them.  Those with more accumulated wear-and-tear on their bodies will need more corrective exercise beyond what they’ll get from strength training alone – so we add in fillers (e.g., extra mobility work) between sets, and some additional corrective work at the end of the session.  Since you have a limited amount of time with people, you may have to cut back on strength training or metabolic conditioning initially just so that you can get in this early corrective work to get them over the initial “hump.”  Trust me: it will set the stage for long-term success rather than “short-term gain, long-term pain.”

There are two final points I’d like to make.  First, in my experience, many experienced lifters/athletes have responded well to separating the heavy lifting from the corrective stuff.  When they show up to train, they may be really fired up and ready to go – so the last thing they’ll want is to do some wall slides or spend five minutes getting some length in their rectus femoris.

These folks would be wise to do just enough warm-up work to prepare for their heavy training, and then add in some separate sessions to address movement inefficiencies – whether we’re talking additional foam rolling, massage, mobility drills, rotator cuff work, or something else.  They can also add it in on the end of the session after the hardest work is done.

Second, for many folks, maximal strength can be tremendously corrective.  Increasing strength in one area can reduce excessive stress in another area of the body.  An example of this would be using the box squat or deadlift to learn proper hip hinging techniques, which would increase posterior chain contribution and take some of the burden off the quads in someone with anterior knee pain.  Likewise, all other factors held constant, a stronger muscle is less likely to become degenerative.  You can read more along these lines in two older newsletter of mine on the Law of Repetitive Motion: Parts 1 and Part 2.

Obviously, there are many things to consider, but this should at least get you headed in the right direction in finding the right balance in your strength training program.

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Learn How to Deadlift with the Most Detailed Deadlift Technique Video Available…FREE

A lot of folks who read this blog might not realize that those who subscribe to my free newsletter also receive free access to a 9-minute video that teaches you everything you need to know about how to deadlift.  This thorough deadlift technique tutorial covers the conventional, sumo, and trap bar deadlifts - as well as the common mistakes we see on all of them.

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Also, if you have a friend (or 50 friends) who you think would benefit from this video, please click "Tweet" or "Recommend" at the left side of this page. Thanks for your help in spreading the word!

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LEARN HOW TO DEADLIFT
  • Avoid the most common deadlifting mistakes
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