The Best of 2011: Product Reviews

Written on December 27, 2011 at 4:54 am, by Eric Cressey

I’ve already featured the top articles at EricCressey.com from 2011, and now it’s time to highlight the top product reviews I did at this site in the last year.

1. Metabolic Cooking – This was the most popular product review I did on the year for a very simple reason: everybody needs to eat!  And, the folks reading this site prefer to eat “clean” – and Dave Ruel did a great job of making this easier and tastier with an outstanding recipe book to which I still refer every week.  I made two posts about the product:

Metabolic Cooking: Making it Easier to Eat Clean with Healthy Food Options
A Must-Try Recipe – and My Chubby 4th Grade Pics! (this is the best chicken fingers recipe in history; try it!)

2. Muscle Imbalances Revealed – Upper Body – This was the sequel to the popular lower-body product that was released by Rick Kaselj et al. in 2010.  I went through and highlighted each presenters contributions to the product via four posts:

Muscle Imbalances Revealed Review – Upper: Part 1 (Dean Somerset)
Muscle Imbalances Revealed Review – Upper: Part 2 (Dr. Jeff Cubos)
Muscle Imbalances Revealed Review – Upper: Part 3 (Tony Gentilcore and Rick Kaselj)

3. Lean Hybrid Muscle – As the review below will demonstrate, this program offered me a nice change of pace from my “normal” training when I needed to shake things up earlier this year.  It’s a nice follow-up to Show and Go.  Here’s my review:

How I’m Breaking Out of My Training Rut: The Lean Hybrid Muscle Strength and Conditioning Program

4. Post-Rehab Essentials – Based on the fact that Dean Somerset has now gotten two shout-outs in my top product reviews of 2011, you might think that I have somewhat of a man-crush on him.  The truth is that I think Dean relates complex terms in simple terms and “teaches” about as well as anyone in the fitness industry.  Check out this post that touches on why his product has merit:

4 Reasons You Must Understand Corrective Exercise and Post-Rehab Training

There were certainly some other great products I encountered this year, but these four reviews proved to be the most popular with my readers, based on hosting statistics.

We’ll be back soon with the top features of 2011.

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The Best of 2011: Articles

Written on December 25, 2011 at 6:57 pm, by Eric Cressey

With 2011 winding down, I’ll be dedicating this week to the best content of the year, based on traffic volume at EricCressey.com.  I’ll kick it off today with my most popular articles from the past year.

1. My New Favorite Training Shoe – This post received more than 3,000 views more than #2.  Apparently, footwear is a topic about which folks were anxious to read, and I gave a detailed review of all the minimalist footwear options I’ve tried – and folks shared it a ton.  Additionally, based on feedback on my Twitter account, a lot of people purchased the New Balance Minimus based on my recommendation and have absolutely loved it.

2. Your Arm Hurts?  Thank Your Little League, Fall Ball, and AAU Coaches. – This post received well over 1,000 Facebook “shares” and loads of Tweets, and I’m hopeful that this is indicative of parents, coaches, and players learning about how to approach arm care and throwing programs intelligently.  I think it was also popular because it was a good blend of scientific evidence and simple, everyday logic.

3. Tim Collins: Why Everyone Should Be a Kansas City Royals Fan (at least for a day) – This was my favorite post of the year, as it was a chance to celebrate a good friend and long-time Cressey Performance athlete who is everything that is right about Major League Baseball. As a cool little aside, traffic to this article played a large part in having “Tim Collins” trending on Twitter during his MLB debut on Opening Day in March.

4. Weight Training Programs: You Can’t Just Keep Adding – It sounds like many of my readers were glad to hear that I was doing some writing on managing training stress.  There is a lot of common sense in this one, but sometimes, that’s what people need!

5. Strength Training Programs and Squat Technique: To Arch or Not to Arch? – Here’s a very misunderstood topic in the area of strength and conditioning technique.  You’ll be happy to know that I’ll be addressing it in great detail in the new Functional Stability Training resource that Mike Reinold and I are releasing soon.

6. Shoulder Hurts? Start Here. – In this piece, I outlined three sure-fire strategies that just about everyone can employ regardless of their shoulder issues.

7. Healthy Food Options: Why You Should Never Take Nutrition Advice from Your Government – One of the biggest surprises for me in 2011 was that my readers absolutely ate up (no pun intended) nutrition content, and summer Cressey Performance intern Tyler Simmons’ guest blog perfect example.   He shared some great (and controversial) thoughts in this guest blog.

8. Correcting Bad Posture: Are Deadlifts Enough? – People want results, and they want them fast.  This post touched on whether or not the deadlift could be an optimal “shortcut” for getting to where you want to be.

9. Why the Gym’s Out-of-Business and the Porn Store’s Thriving – This was proof that I can write about just about anything.  Don’t ever expect to see a content drought here at EricCressey.com.  The timing for this was really good, as I got the idea to write it right around the time that we released The Fitness Business Blueprint.

10. Lifting Heavy Weights vs. Corrective Exercise: Finding a Balance – I can definitely see how folks found this topic so interesting, as it’s a very challenging balance to strike.  In fact, it was even a very challenging piece around which to wrap my brain!

This wraps up our top 10 posts of 2011, but I’ll be back soon with more “Best of” highlights from 2011.  Next up, I’ll list my top product reviews of the year.

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The 6 Characteristics of a Good Dynamic Warm-up

Written on December 20, 2011 at 7:22 pm, by Eric Cressey

The dynamic warm-up is an extremely important component of a strength and conditioning program.  In addition to reducing the risk of injury while enhancing subsequent performance in a variety of contexts, it’s also a great place to implement corrective exercise drills to address underlying muscle imbalances.

With that in mind, to get the most out of your dynamic warm-up, keep in mind these six characteristics of an effective pre-training program.

1. A good dynamic warm-up should be preceded by soft tissue work.

Every one of our clients at Cressey Performance goes through the following foam rolling series (at the very least) prior to their first warm-up drills.

For a bit more on the rationale behind foam rolling, check out this post of mine from a few months ago.  Needless to say, it’s important – and will make your dynamic warm-up far more productive.

2. A good dynamic warm-up should progress from ground-based to standing.

When I write a warm-up, I want athletes to do all their ground-based activation and mobility drills first, rather than mix them in with standing exercises.  This works not only for the sake of convenience, but also in terms of facility logistics: traffic throughout the gym is more predictable.  As an example, I might use a wall hip flexor mobilization to improve hip extension range of motion before I’d get an athlete up to do lunge variations in the standing position.

I like to see things progress from ground-based, to standing in-place (e.g., scapular wall slides, bowler squats), to standing and moving.

3. A good dynamic warm-up should progress from single-joint to multi-joint movements.

We might do a rocking ankle mobilization or quadruped extension-rotation early in the warm-up to work purely on ankle mobility and thoracic spine mobility, respectively, but once the warm-up progresses and one becomes upright, all the joints need to be working together in an appropriate balance of mobility and stability.  Just count how many different pieces are in place on this drill:

4. A good dynamic warm-up addresses mobility at the ankles, hips, and thoracic spine.

Even if people just worked on these three areas (to the exclusion of everything else) and then moved on to the rest of their strength training programs, the world would be a much healthier and high-performance place.  Throw on restrictive footwear and sit hunched over a desk all day, and these are the areas that will suffer the most – so make sure you’ve got drills for each in the warm-up.  Keep in mind that while one drill each for the ankle and thoracic spine mobility will be sufficient for most, it’ll likely take several to take care of the hips, as they need to be moved in all three planes of motion.

5. A good dynamic warm-up should take into account joint laxity.

This is something I have to keep in mind all the time, as many of our baseball pitchers have considerable congenital joint laxity.  Their joint ranges of motion are already so good that we don’t need to do much (if at all) in terms of mobility work.  Rather, we do substantially more low-level activation drills during the warm-up period to teach them how to stabilize joints prior to more intense exercise.  Conversely, if you have someone who is as tight as a drum, chances are that you can be more aggressive with mobility drills, knowing the subsequent stability will come more easily to them.

6. A good dynamic warm-up should actually increase body temperature.

I see a lot of people who drag their heels going through a warm-up, thinking too much or simply wasting time along the way.  You don’t need to do 20 different drills, but rather select 8-10 drills and do them at a pace that allows you to get your body temperature and joint range of motion up sufficiently to be prepared for a more specific warm-up (e.g., light deadlifts).  If you take it too slowly, it just won’t have the same effect.  While everyone is different when it comes to perspiration, I like to see athletes sweating a little bit by the end of the warm-up.

These are just a few quick and easy guidelines I like to keep in mind when writing the dynamic warm-ups in our strength and conditioning programs.  Of course, each client has unique needs – from actual physical limitations to space/equipment limitations – that one must take into account as well.

To learn more, I’d encourage you to check out Assess and Correct: Breaking Barriers to Unlock Performance.  This two-DVD set provides 27 assessments and 78 corrective exercises that can serve as the foundation for effective dynamic warm-ups in your strength and conditioning programs.

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4 Reasons You MUST Understand Corrective Exercise and Post-Rehab Training

Written on December 4, 2011 at 11:59 pm, by Eric Cressey

Over the years, I’ve probably become best-known for my writing, consulting, and presenting in the corrective exercise field.  It’s become a great niche for me; I get to help people who may be frustrated with injuries, bad posture, or movement limitations that prevent them from doing the things they enjoy.  And, I’m able to have fun in the process and make a good living while doing so.

With that in mind, I wanted to devote today’s piece to my top four reasons that you, too, should make a dedicated effort to become knowledgeable in the world of corrective exercise.  The timing is quite fitting, as my buddy Dean Somerset just released his new product, Post Rehab Essentials, which provides outstanding insights into the corrective exercise field for up-and-coming fitness professionals.

Anyway, without further ado, here are my top 5 reasons you ought to get involved in this component of the fitness industry.

1. Health care quality and quantity are changing all over the world.

The push toward universal health care has dramatically increased the need for qualified people to fill the gap between “healthy” and “injured” populations.  When more people have health insurance, but there aren’t any more providers, not everyone can get access to what they need – and certainly not nearly as quickly.  Two stories come to mind in this regard:

a. A guy I know in Canada actually waited nine days to have a ruptured patellar tendon repaired.

b. An online consulting client in England who sought me out after a hip surgery reported that he had to wait three months for the hip surgery following the point at which they concluded that physical therapy wasn’t going to get the job done.

While the push for universal health care in the United States is still being sorted out (and it’s certainly not a topic to be covered in this blog, as I have no interest in taking this down political lines), the truth is that we’ve seen a “crack-down” on what insurance companies afford folks in terms of physical therapy visits for a given condition.  Very simply, physical therapists rarely have the time to do everything they want to do to get people truly healthy, so folks often have to just settle for “asymptomatic.”

In the U.S. and abroad, there is a huge need for qualified personal trainers and strength and conditioning coaches to step in and take the baton from physical therapists in the post-rehab setting to help improve patient outcomes.  And, there is certainly a big need for these fitness professionals to step in and help people who may move terribly, but not have symptoms…yet.

2. New expertise enable a fitness professional to tap into a new market and carve out a niche.

Roughly 80% of our clients at Cressey Performance are baseball players; it’s a population we’ve really gone out of our way to understand for years now.  Specific to the current discussion, baseball players have the most extreme collection of upper extremity injuries you’ll encounter (on top of lower back, oblique, hip, and knee issues) – so demand is never lacking for our services.

This just one sport, though.  Almost every golfer experiences lower back pain at some point.  Hockey players have load of hip issues.  Swimmers have so much laxity that their shoulders are always banged up.  The opportunities to carve out a niche in a specific sport or population are endless – but you have to know your stuff first.

3. Everybody is injured – whether they know it or not.

I’ve written quite a bit previously about how absolutely everyone you encounter has some kind of structural abnormality on diagnostic imaging.  This applies to lower backs, shoulders, knees, and every other joint you’ll encounter in your professional career.

The importance message to take from this knowledge is that even though everyone is “injured,” not everyone is symptomatic.  Rather, the ones who hurt are those who have poor mobility, stability, and tissue quality.  They’re in pain because they simply don’t move well.

Taking away someone’s pain is a tremendous way to win them over for life – and I can assure you that keeping them out of pain when they know they should be in pain isn’t far behind on the appreciation scale.

4. Structural abnormalities are becoming a part of normal physical development.

I work with a lot of 10-18 year-old athletes, and I’m constantly amazed at how we are “de-evolving.”  Kids’ movement quality is worse than every nowadays, as they’re sitting too much and playing too little.  And, their yearly athletic calendars lack variety because of early sports specialization.

The end result is that our society has created an epidemic of injuries (e.g., ulnar collateral ligament tears in pitchers, ACL ruptures in soccer/basketball players) and conditions (e.g., femoroacetabular impingement, atrocious ankle mobility) that were much less common in the past.  Getting involved with corrective exercise education is a way to not only help understand why this is happening, but also to manage it and hopefully prevent it from continuing.

I’m speaking very broadly with respect to the need for significant corrective exercise education in order to make a difference in this industry, but the truth is that it is a subject that warrants a ton of detail.  Fortunately, Dean Somerset has provided exactly that with Post Rehab Essentials.

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Creating an Effective, but Imbalanced Strength and Conditioning Program

Written on October 30, 2011 at 6:01 pm, by Eric Cressey

It might sound counterintuitive, but the best strength and conditioning programs are actually imbalanced…by design.  Check out this free webinar for details.

Click here for more information on Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and Move Better!

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Weight Training Programs: Don’t Major in the Minutia

Written on October 23, 2011 at 6:09 pm, by Eric Cressey

Last night, I was on my laptop searching for an old weight training program I’d written up a while back, and I accidentally stumbled upon some written goals of mine from back in 2003.  Based on the “Created on” date in Microsoft Excel, I had written them up in the spring of my senior year of college.

On one hand, I was proud of myself for – at age 22 – knowing enough to write down the goals that I wanted to achieve.  On the other hand, I have to laugh about just how out-of-whack my priorities were.

You see, I’d listed loads of strength, body weight, and body fat percentage goals first and foremost.  In fact, there were 41 rows worth of performance and physique goals; hard to believe that ladies weren’t lining up to date this Type A stallion, huh?  Can you say neurotic?  I was like this guy, but with better eyesight and a decent deadlift.

That’s just self-deprecating humor, though.  What was actually really sad was how distorted my perception of reality really was, as rows 42-46 consisted of the following:

42. Resolve shoulder pain.
43. Get rid of lower back tightness.
44. Get accepted to graduate school.
45. Get a graduate assistantship in research or coaching.
46. Have 3-4 articles published.

At the time, I was coming off a lower back “tweak” while deadlifting, but more problematic was my right shoulder, which hurt so much that it kept me up at night and negatively affected not only my training, but my everyday life.  It was an old tennis injury from high school that just kept getting worse and worse.

Likewise, I hadn’t gotten word on whether or not I’d been accepted to graduate school, so I was up in the air on whether I needed to start looking for jobs for after graduation, or whether I’d end up moving south to enroll at the University of Connecticut.

Finally, I’d just had my first article published, and there was some momentum in place on which I could build a successful writing career.

In other words, I was in pain, unsure about where I’d be living in two months, potentially without a job, and all but ignoring a potentially career-changing opportunity – yet I managed to list 41 performance and physique goals more important than any of these concerns.  Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was clearly buried under all the bullshit I had convinced myself was important.  They made signs like this for guys like me.

Maybe it was the acceptance phone call from my future advisor at the UCONN; the experience of moving to a new area and being out on my own; interaction with a lot of highly-motivated, career-oriented people and successful athletes; the natural maturation process; or a combination of all these factors, but I got my act together that fall and figured out my priorities.  That fall, I read everything I could get my hands on to get rid of the pain in my shoulder (canceled an impending surgery) and lower back.  I put in 70 hour weeks among classes, volunteering in the varsity weight rooms and human performance lab, and personal training and bartending on the side.  I published my first article at T-Nation and in Men’s Fitness.  In short, I grew the hell up and stopped losing sleep over whether I’d remembered to take my forearm circumference measurements on the third Tuesday of the month.

Some folks might think that this shift in my priorities interfered with my training progress, but in reality, the opposite was true.  In that first year of graduate school, I put over 100 pounds on both my squat and deadlift and 40 pounds on my bench press – and did so pain-free, which made training even more enjoyable.  I learned a ton about the importance of training environment as I lifted around athletes and other coaches in the varsity weight rooms, and even caught the powerlifting bug, competing for the first time in June of 2004.  I even won a few trophies absurdly large trophies that wildly overstated my accomplishments.

In short, when I stopped majoring in the minutia and clearly defined the priorities that were important to me – being pain-free, enjoying training, and seeing it as a means of becoming better in a profession that I loved – a world of opportunities opened up for me.  And, surprisingly, some of the “old” priority goals were easier to attain because I didn’t force them or put as much pressure on myself.

That was almost a decade years ago, and I’ve had to make similar reevaluations of my priorities since that time, from opening a business, to proposing to my wife, to buying a house, to getting a puppy, to hiring employees, to working with charities.  There are some priorities that will always remain for me, though; strength and conditioning has to be fun, and it has to improve my quality of life, not take away from it. These are values that are reflected in the weight training programs that I write, too.

To that end, how have your priorities changed over your training career?  And, how have these changes impacted your progress in the gym?

Related Posts
Weight Training Programs: You Can’t Just Keep Adding
Lifting Weights vs. Corrective Exercise in Strength Training Programs

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Strength Training Programs: Integrating the Functional Back Line for Pelvic Stability and Performance Enhancement

Written on October 14, 2011 at 7:24 am, by Eric Cressey

Today’s guest blog comes from former Cressey Performance intern Eric Oetter.  Eric was one of the best interns we’ve ever had, and writing like this is just one example of why.

In Thomas Myers’ groundbreaking work Anatomy Trains, several “lines” of fascially connected muscles are presented. Myers denoted these lines as “anatomy trains” (thus giving rise to the title of his now famous book). For those unfamiliar, fascia is a seemingly endless web of connective tissue, which envelops and unites the musculoskeletal, nervous, and circulatory systems of the body. Though manual therapists have treated the fascial system for centuries, Myers has played a pivotal role in introducing the concepts fascia and musculoskeletal tensegrity to the strength and conditioning community.

Tying the bottom of the foot to the scalp through fascial connections up the posterior surface of the body, the superficial back line remains the most referenced of Myers’ anatomy trains. While this line certainly has implications in extension (above the knee), propulsion, and full-body pronation, it’s far from being the only line yielding practical application and solutions for strength and conditioning coaches and movement therapists.

Patrick Ward wrote an excellent guest piece on Mike Robertson’s blog last year concerning the deep front line and its effect on diaphragm functionality. I’ll follow suit with some examples of how the functional back line can produce stability across the posterior lumbo-pelvic-femoral complex.

Functional Back Line Anatomy

Tying one humerus to the contralateral tibia, the two functional back lines take the following path across the dorsal surface of the body:

Shaft of humerus –> Latissimus dorsi –> Lumbodorsal fascia –> Sacral fascia –> Sacrum –> Gluteus maximus –> Shaft of femur –> Vastus lateralis –> Patella –> Subpatellar tendon –> Tuberosity of tibia

From behind, the lines look like a giant “X”, intersecting at the pelvis. The two key components in this discussion will be the latissimus dorsi and the glute max, as well as how their muscular actions can affect the sacro-illiac joint.

Sacro-Iliac Joint Stability: Form Closure vs. Force Closure

The sacro-illiac (SI) joint is comprised of the articulation between the illium and the sacrum and lies right in the middle of both functional back lines, deep to the lumbosacral fascia. Much like a crack in the sidewalk, the joint acts as a predetermined fracture to defer stress across the pelvis.

Viewed from the back, the SI joint resembles a key fitting into a lock– the grooves on either side of the posterior illium are congruous with the lateral sacrum. This “lock-and-key” structure can be described as an instance of form closure. Essentially, the innate stability of the joint is provided by bony approximation.

While form closure can create stability, it’s not truly authentic. For example, we can create stability in the lumbar spine by shearing it into extension and using bony approximation to prevent movement. I hope all reading agree that such a situation is less than ideal.

A superior option would be the force closure of a joint system. As opposed to form closure, where the morphology of the joint system creates stability, force closure entails the surrounding musculature dynamically stabilizing a joint by “pulling it tight”.

Relating to our previous example of the SI joint, imagine how much better it would be to stop relying solely on the ligaments that cross the joint andinstead employ the powerful glute max and lat, which cross superficially as part of the functional back line, as both become continuous with the lumbosacral fascia.

While using the functional back line to create force closure is useful in cases of general instability, it can be especially valuable in the instance of sacral torsion, where, as shown in the CT scan below, the sacrum rotates one way and creates strain on the contralateral tissues/ligaments as they are pulled taught.

Training this line in isolation can certainly provide benefit, but why not implement a big-bang strength exercise that integrates the entire line at once?

Here are two great examples of how to train the functional back line in a more dynamic fashion.

Split-Stance Low Cable Row

The split-stance low cable row provides an excellent presentation of shortening the functional line from both ends, thus force closing the SI joint. The latissimus dorsi aids in the horizontal pull while the contralateral glute max stabilizes the pelvis in the transverse plane to fight rotation. (Remember, any unilateral movement is inherently rotational.)

Coaching Cues:

• Place the cable stack with a D-handle attachment at its lowest height.
• Set up facing the stack with feet about hip width apart. Imagine that you’re standing on railroad tracks – when you take the step back to set up, the only movement should be in the sagittal plane.
• Pack the chin, brace the core, and then flex the hips to the point that the torso is angled at about 45°. Put most of your weight through the outside of your up-foot heel.
• Perform a row, holding at the top for a one count.

Potential Corrections:

• Look for lumbar extension in two places – the initial set-up and as a substitution for scapular retraction. Think “neutral spine” throughout.
• Scapular elevation and shoulder hyperextension are common compensation patterns during horizontal pulling. Think of rowing “back-and-down” and only to the point that the scapula gets to the thoracic spine.
• Make sure that you or your client feels the front-leg hip musculature kick on to stabilize – if not, play with the set-up a little until those external rotators are contracted.

The split-stance low cable row can be a great horizontal-pull variation for any client, but especially for those experiencing lumbosacral instability. I’d recommend placing it as an accessory exercise on upper body days – 3-4 sets of 8-10 reps.

1-arm Cable Rotational Row

Serving as a progression to the split-stance low cable row described above, the cable rotational row is a fantastic movement to dynamically integrate the functional back line into a more advanced pulling variation with much greater demand placed on the glute max. I view this movement much like the horizontal pull version of a push-press – the lower body drives the action with the upper body coming along for the ride.

Coaching Cues:

• Set up a few feet away and perpendicular to a cable stack with feet about a step outside of hip width. The D-handle should be about waste height.
• Offset the feet so that the toes of the inside foot (closest to the stack) line up with the middle of the arch on the back foot. This positioning is crucial to maximize external rotation/abduction of the front hip.
• Grab the D-handle and allow the load to pull you toward the cable stack. Maintain an erect torso and packed chin throughout. You’re allowed to let the back foot toes come up, but keep the front planted in position.
• Once you’re facing the cable stack with arm outstretched, drive hard through the front heelto extend the front hip/knee while simultaneously pulling the D-handle across your torso.
• Hold the end position – hip extended/abducted, scapula retracted, and eyes straight ahead – for a count of one before reversing the movement.

Potential Corrections:

• I find some clients tend to lead the row with cervical rotation, finishing the movement looking away from the cable stack. These biomechanics are sub-optimal, so make sure to cue a packed chin.
• Rowing from this position can prove awkward, as there is a tendency to try and row around your torso. Fight this urge by keeping the cable close to your body – it should be in contact with your shirt as you finish the row.
• Achieving full hip extension on the front leg is a must – make sure the movement is initiated by driving the lateral heel into the ground almost as if you were going to step away from the stack.

The benefits of the rotational cable row are numerous, but two stick out in my mind. First, it drives a powerful and dynamic contraction of the functional back line, which as we’ve seen can have ramifications for pelvic/SI stability. Secondly, this variation has huge carryover for some of our rotary sport athletes who rely on the connection between shoulder and contralateral hip to develop force.

As mentioned above, use this as a progression to the split-stance low cable row or with some of your athletic clientele – think in the range of 3-4 sets of 6-8 reps per side.

Conclusion

The functional back lines can be powerful players in creating stability across a region of the body that demands it. In cases of lumbo-pelvic-femoral instability, utilization of these lines can be as crucial for correction as they are for performance enhancement.

I hope the two exercises described above help give some practical application for the functional back lines in action – let me know in the comments!

About the Author

Eric is currently a senior at the University of Georgia majoring in Exercise and Sport Science, with plans to pursue a Doctorate of Physical Therapy. After concluding a Division-1 football career at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Eric has ardently pursued his passion for coaching, garnering experience with clients of all ages and ability levels through internships at both Indianapolis Fitness & Sports Training and Cressey Performance. He can be reached at ecoetter@gmail.com.

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 10/13/11

Written on October 13, 2011 at 5:25 am, by Eric Cressey

Here’s this week’s list of recommended strength and conditioning reading:

Thoracolumbar Fascia: An Area Rich with Activity – This was an outstanding guest blog from Patrick Ward on Mike Reinold’s site.  I’m a big fan of Patrick’s writing; he really does an excellent job of blending manual therapy with corrective exercise.

Why Finger Pointing at Carbs is Missing the Point – Brian St. Pierre kicks off what is sure to be a great series by focusing on yet another area in which we overreact on the nutrition side of things.

Why You Need More Strength – In my eyes, this is one of the best things Chad Waterbury has ever written – and Chad is a super-bright guy who has written a lot of excellent stuff.

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What an Elbow Alone Can Tell You About Strength and Conditioning Program Design (Part 2)

Written on October 9, 2011 at 7:48 am, by Eric Cressey

Today marks Part 2 of this mini-series covering just how much you can learn from looking at an elbow before writing up a strength and conditioning program.  In Part 1, we talked about what can be learned from our first potential scenario, elbow hyperextension.  Today, we’ll focus on the lessons to be learned from three more scenarios.

Full Elbow Extension, Muscular End-Feel – This simply means that you have all your extension and no “empty” end feel; it eases to muscular stretch (of the elbow flexors).

This is probably the most common presentation pattern in the general population, and you can generally expect these folks to respond to need equal amounts of mobility and stability training.  More thorough assessments will give you more information on where to focus your efforts.

Incomplete Elbow Extension, Bony End-Feel – These are, in many cases, guys who did not get full elbow extension back following a surgical procedure.  Or, it may just be someone with bone spurs on the underside of the joint that interferes with elbow extension.

It’s a bold assumption to make, but these individuals are almost always (in my experience) athletes who have profound limitations in other regions, as poor glenohumeral mobility, rotator cuff function, scapular stabilization, thoracic spine mobility, and terrible tissue quality can all contribute to these kind of issues presenting at the elbow.  So, when I see and feel an elbow this “gross,” I usually know that I have my work cut out for me.  Generally, these guys wind up needing a hearty dose of mobility training, soft tissue work, breathing drills, and longer duration static stretching.

That said, with respect to the elbow itself, these guys need to be cognizant of maintaining every little bit they have.  If you’ve got a 10° elbow extension deficit because of bony changes, you can probably get by.  However, if you allow that 10° to become 30° because you pile soft tissue shortness/stiffness on top of it, you could be waiting for some serious problems to come around.  To that end, I always encourage these guys to get routine soft tissue work and plenty of static stretching in to maintain whatever elbow extension they still have.

Incomplete Elbow Extension, Muscular End-Feel - These guys look very much like our previous category, but the end-feel has much more “give” to it; it’s not a “concrete-on-concrete” end-feel.  This is a very good thing, as you know you can work to get it back.  This athlete, for instance, got 15° of elbow extension back in a matter of a few minutes following a Graston treatment with our manual therapist and some follow-up stretching.

I wouldn’t expect him to maintain 100% of those improvements from treatment to treatment, but over the course of 3-4 bouts, he should get to where he needs to be.

Expect to see some of the same things with the rest of the body, as elbow extension deficits rarely occur in isolation.  In throwers, they’re usually accompanied by poor glenohumeral internal rotation on the throwing side, poor hip internal rotation on the front leg, and a host of other stiffness/shortness issues.  In the general population, you see them in people who are locked up all over – especially in people who sit at computers all day long.

That wraps up our look at four elbow presentation patterns and what they may mean for your strength and conditioning programs and corrective exercise approaches.  For more information, check out the Everything Elbow In-Service, an affordably priced 32-minute in-service where half of all proceeds go to charity.

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Corrective Exercise: Muscle Imbalances Revealed Review – Upper (Part 3)

Written on September 29, 2011 at 4:29 pm, by Eric Cressey

This marks the third and final installment of my review of Muscle Imbalances Revealed – Upper Body.  In case you missed the first two parts, be sure to check out Part 1 (Dean Somerset) and Part 2 (Jeff Cubos).  In this third installment, I’ll cover the contributions from Tony Gentilcore and Rick Kaselj.  For the record, me combining these two into one installment in no way reflects how I felt about their presentations; I am just getting ready to leave for my anniversary this weekend, and need to cover them both quickly before I head out!

Tony, as many of you know, is a long-time friend of mine and works with me at Cressey Performance – and I’ve been harassing him for years now to put out a product.  He’s a great coach whose ideas and skills deserve to be showcased to a larger audience, and I’m glad that he finally got around to putting his name on something!

That said, it was a little tougher to evaluate Tony because we literally spend so much time together that our brains are very “synced up” – meaning that it’d tough for him to throw something new at me that we haven’t already integrated at CP.  That said, some highlights of Tony’s presentation:

1. I think he did a good job of distinguishing between how we program both reactively and proactively for upper extremity issues at Cressey Performance.  How one trains someone with symptoms is, in many cases, remarkably different from that same individual would be trained in the absence of those symptoms – even if the same movement impairments are present.  This is a crucial area of understanding for trainers who may want to get more involved on the corrective exercise side of things.

2. Tony outlines some of our horizontal pulling and scapular stabilization progressions.  I think the biggest take home is understanding that different people need different progressions.  Some folks with completely imbalanced programs can thrive simply from going to loads more horizontal pulling.  Others may be doing plenty of horizontal pulling, but doing it incorrectly because they lack the appropriate recruitment patterns.  These folks need very targeted scapular stabilization drills to get the ideal “big bang” effect of rowing variations.  The low-level activation drills become the warm-ups to groove the movement patterns, and the horizontal (and vertical) pulling helps to make those patterns part of the bigger picture.

3. Above all else, I feel that the strongest value of Tony’s presentation is in the cues.  If you’re an up-and-coming coach and need to learn some excellent cues to get your clients/athletes to not just pick up movements, but pick them up optimally, then this is a great purchase for you.

4. Last, but certainly not least, Tony provides some sample programming templates to demonstrate how everything fits together in a comprehensive strength training program.  It’s one thing to hear about principles and theories, but another thing altogether to appreciate how they all fit together in a comprehensive strength and conditioning program.  He provides several examples in this regard that’ll help you get comfortable with piecing everything together.

Next up was Rick Kaselj, the man responsible for bringing all these minds together.

Here were some of my favorite points from Rick’s presentations:

1. People seem to think of clavicle as motionless.  In reality, from 0-90° abduction, you only need 5-10° of clavicular upward rotation.  From 90-180° of abduction, you need 20-25° of clavicular upward rotation.  This clavicular movement can be affected by the muscles that attach directly to it (pectoralis major) or by those that indirectly impact it (muscles attaching to the scapula and/or humerus).

Now, think about where most people with acromioclavicular joint pain wind up with symptoms during abduction: the final 30° – which is known as the painful arc.  Any surprise that the symptoms occur at the point where the most amount of clavicular upward rotation is needed?  Nope.

Keep in mind that poor clavicular positioning can also impact sternoclavicular joint function, too.  Double whammy, if you’re “stuck.”

2. Rick did a good job of showing the checks and balances that occur within the rotator cuff musculature.  Shirley Sahrmann has pointed it out in her work, but I think it gets overlooked.

The supraspinatus creates a compression force into glenoid fossa.  The subscapularis, teres minor, and infraspinatus produce an inferior directed translation force on the humeral head.  The infraspinatus and teres minor also externally rotate the humeral head in frontal plane so that the greater tubercle doesn’t clog up the subacromial space.

In other words, you get a pull in, down, and into the “right kind of rotation (external rotation increases the subacromial space, whereas internal rotation closes it down).

One point I’d add to strengthen Rick’s case even further is that the subscapularis also has a posterior pull on the humeral head.  Without adequate subscapularis function during internal rotation, the pectoralis major can take over and draw the humeral head forward, causing anterior joint capsule irritation.

3. Rick’s last presentation focused on the neck, a complex area to understand for most fitness professionals.  He started off by emphasizing to get neck issues checked out, as they can be very serious.  His presentation then emphasized training strategies to prevent neck pain and work around it if it’s present.  Accurately, Rick noted that some of the big players on this front were:

a) breathing – diaphragmatic or overuse of accessory respiratory muscles?

b) posture – forward head posture or neutral spine?

c) tissue quality

d) range of motion (particularly the thoracic spine)

e) strength (particularly the deep neck flexors)

f) scapular stability

g) rotator cuff function

Sometimes, the easiest way to address an issue (or prevent it) is to look at what happens a joint below (or above).  Of course, when you’re dealing with neck issues, always refer out to a qualified professional first.

This wraps up my three-part review of Muscle Imbalances Revealed – Upper Body.  As I’m sure you can tell by now, I’m a big fan of this resource and highly suggest you add it to your library.  Keep in mind that the $70 off discount for my readers only ends Friday at midnight, so don’t delay in picking up a copy if this is up your alley.  With the money-back guarantee Rick’s made available, you can’t go wrong.

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