Stuff You Should Read: 10/26/10

Written on October 26, 2010 at 4:52 am, by Eric Cressey

Here are some recommended reads from the archives for today:

An Easy Way to Rotate Strength Exercises – One of the biggest frustrations of training in a commercial or home gym is that there just aren’t enough opportunities to create variety and fluctuations to the resistance training stimulus.  This post highlights one simple way to double your exercise index.

A Carrot, an Egg, and a Bag of Ground Coffee – This one is more of a “meeting life’s challenges” post as it applies to the fitness industry.

Five Resistance Training Myths in the Running World – If this doesn’t interest you, I’m sure it’ll at least interest a dozen of your friends who are running addicts!  Please spread the good word – whether it’s via Facebook, Twitter, or carrier pigeon.

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Swimming for Pitchers?

Written on July 18, 2010 at 11:28 am, by Eric Cressey

Last week, I had three separate pitchers ask me what I thought about swimming between starts.  My answer was pretty straightforward: I am not a fan at all.

There are several reasons for my contention with this as a useful modality.

Like pitchers, swimmers have some of the most dysfunctional shoulders in the entire sporting world; they have glaring scapular instability, big internal rotation deficits, and insufficient dynamic stability.

Sound familiar?  These are the exact same things we work to address too keep our pitchers healthy.

For me, cross-training is about getting athletes out of pattern overload – not finding a similar means of reinforcing imbalances.  Telling a pitcher to go swim is like encouraging a distance runner with a bum Achilles tendon to go jump rope instead.  It’s an epic fail waiting to happen.

When it really comes down to it, I’d rather have guys actually throwing if they are going to develop imbalances.  Pattern overload might as well give you improved motor control and technical precision if it’s going to increase your susceptibility to injury!

Speaking of specificity, the energy systems demands of swimming (longer distances, usually) don’t reflect what we see in pitching (short bursts of intense exertion).  So, the arguments are in many ways similar to my contention with distance running for pitchers.

And, more anecdotally, while incredible athletes in the pool, most of the swimmers I have encountered have been far less than athletic on solid ground, presumably because the majority of their training takes place in the water, where stability demands are markedly different.  I’d much rather see supplemental baseball training take place with closed-chain motion on solid ground – just like it does in pitching.

Finally, I’d like to see pitchers lift more – because they simply don’t do enough of it during the season.  With limited time between outings, it’s important to get in the most important stuff first – and I just don’t see swimming as “important” when compared to flexibility training, soft tissue work, the throwing program, and strength training.

I’m sticking to my guns here.  I’d much rather see pitchers doing what I outlined HERE between starts, as it keeps them strong, gets them moving in ways that don’t further ingrain imbalances, and avoids conflicting with the metabolic demands on pitching.

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The Fascial Knock on Distance Running for Pitchers

Written on June 9, 2010 at 2:42 pm, by Eric Cressey

This past weekend, I had the privilege to experience Thomas Myers in seminar for the first time.  For those who aren’t familiar with Myers, he is the author of Anatomy Trains and a pioneer in the world of bodywork and fascial research.

There were a wide variety of attendees present, and Myers made dozens of interesting points – so the take-away message could easily have been different for everyone in attendance as they attempted to fit his perspective into their existing schemeta.

While I enjoyed all 150 minutes of his presentations, the portion of Myers’ talk that jumped out at me the most was his list of the eight means of improving “fascial fitness:”

1.       Use whole body movements

2.       Use long chain movements

3.       Use movements including a dynamic pre-stretch with proximal initiation

4.       Incorporate vector variation

5.       Use movements that incorporate elastic rebound – this consists of cylic motions of a certain speed (for instance, cycling wouldn’t count)

6.       Create a rich proprioceptive environment

7.       Incorporate pauses/rest to optimize hydration status

8.       Be persistent, but gentle (prominent changes can take 18-24 months)

A big overriding them of Myers’ lecture was that the role of the fascia – the entire extracellular matrix of the body – is remarkably overlooked when it comes to both posture and the development of pathology.  He remarked that he doesn’t feel like we have 600+ muscles in the body; he feels like we have one muscle in 600+ fascial pockets because they are so interdependent.  And, in this fascia, we have nine times as many sensory receptors as we’ve got in muscles.

Think about what that means when someone has rotator cuff problems – and treatment only consists of ice, stim, NSAIDs, and some foo-foo rotator cuff exercises.  Or, worse yet, they just have a surgical intervention.  It overlooks a big piece of the puzzle – or, I should say, the entire puzzle.

For me, though, these eight factors got me to thinking again about just how atrocious distance running is for pitchers.  I have already ripped on it in the past with my article A New Model for Training Between Starts, but this presentation really turned on a light bulb over my head to rekindle the fire.  Let’s examine these eight factors one-by-one:

1.       Use whole body movements – Distance running may involve require contribution from the entire body, but there is not a single joint in the body that goes through an appreciable range of motion.

2.       Use long chain movements - Pitching is a long chain movement.  Jumping is a long chain movement.  The only things that are “long” about distance running are the race distances and the length of the hip replacement rehabilitation process.

3.       Use movements including a dynamic pre-stretch with proximal initiation – This simply means that the muscles of the trunk and hips predominate in initiating the movement.  While the hips are certainly important in running, the fundamental issue is that there isn’t a dynamic pre-stretch.  This would be a dynamic pre-stretch with proximal initiation:

4.       Incorporate vector variation – A vector is anything that has both force and direction.  Manual therapists vary the force they apply to tissues and the directions in which they apply them.  There are obviously vectors present in exercise as well.  Here are 30,000 or so people, and pretty much just one vector for hours: forward (to really simplify things):

Here is one guy (and a good looking one, at that) in multiple vectors in a matter of seconds:

Incorporating vector variation into programs is easy; it just takes more time and effort than just telling someone to “run poles.”  Take 8-10 exercises from our Assess and Correct DVD set and you’ve got a perfect circuit ready to roll.

5.       Use movements that incorporate elastic rebound - Sorry, folks, but even though the stretch-shortening cycle is involved with jogging, its contribution diminishes markedly as duration of exercise increases.  And, frankly, I have a hard time justifying bored pitchers running laps as “elasticity.”

6.       Create a rich proprioceptive environment - There is nothing proprioceptively rich about doing the same thing over and over again.  They call it pattern overload for a reason.  Pitchers get enough of that!

7.       Incorporate pauses/rest to optimize hydration status - Myers didn’t seem to have specific recommendations to make regarding work: rest ratios that are optimal for improving fascial fitness, but I have to think that something more “sporadic” in nature – whether we are talking sprinting, agility work, weight training, or dynamic flexibility circuits – would be more appropriate than a continuous modality like jogging.  This is true not just because of duration, but because of the increased vector variation potential I outlined earlier.

8.       Be persistent, but gentle – This one really hit home for me.  Significant fascial changes take 18-24 months to really set in. I am convinced that the overwhelming majority of injuries I see in mature pitchers are largely the result of mismanagement – whether it’s overuse, poor physical conditioning, or improper mechanics – at the youth levels.  Poor management takes time to reach the threshold needed to cause symptoms.  In other words, coaches who mismanage their players over the course of the few months or years they coach them may never actually appreciate the physical changes – positively or negatively – that are being set into action.

Distance running might seem fine in the short-term.  Overweight kids might drop some body fat, and it might make the practice plan easier to just have ‘em run.  Kids might not lose velocity, as they can compensate and throw harder with the upper extremity as their lower bodies get less and less powerful and flexible.

However, it’s my firm belief that having pitchers run distances not only impedes long-term development, but also directly increases injury risk.  Folks just don’t see it because they aren’t looking far enough ahead.

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Bum Wheels and Runner’s Diarrhea: A Special Sunday Blog

Written on April 18, 2010 at 7:03 am, by Eric Cressey

Tomorrow is marathon day here in Boston.  On one hand, it’s a great day in our city, as loads of money is raised for charity and quite a few high level, well-prepared athletes come to town to compete for a Boston Marathon crow.

Unfortunately, it’s also a day when hip replacements become reality and 140-pound dudes in shorty-short shorts instantly become Johnny Brassballs so that they can fight through pain (and runner’s diarrhea) to complete a 26.2 biomechanical nightmare that is the exercise equivalent of taking a 1983 Chevy Cavilier out for the Daytona 500.  The Boston Globe ran a feature today that noted, “Each year for the past three years, about 1,000 qualifiers received medical deferments, allowing them to postpone their eligibility to run until the next year. As of last week, about 600 of the nearly 27,000 people registered to run tomorrow had sought deferments, and the organizers expected that number could double.”

Out of the Running

The thing that I think frustrates me the most about this scenario is that all the modalities listed as “treatments” are really just band-aids on a ruptured aorta.  They talk about oral NSAIDs, cortisone shots, ice, massage, knee straps, surgery, physical therapy – all REACTIVE modalities.  People wait for issues to reach threshold and only then do they start to perceive them as problematic.  And, there will never, ever, ever, ever, ever be any modality that will overcome a dysfunctional runner with a completely warped perception of reality a few weeks out from an event so physically demanding that it actually killed the first guy ever to do it.

So, with this year’s marathon upon us, I’m going to make a plea to the (few?) marathoners out there who actually read this: start preparing on Tuesday for next year’s event if you plan to run it.  Be a regular athlete before you try to become an elite athlete.  Don’t run to get fit; get fit to run.

Four-month training programs are a load of B.S.; nobody became elite at anything in four months.  Instead, put in a legitimate year of strength training, flexibility training, (energy systems) cross-training, sprint work, threshold work, and solid nutrition BEFORE you start running any longer.  You’ll feel like a million bucks and blow this year’s time out of the water.

Confucius said that “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”  So, here’s Step 1.  Get a foam roller and start doing this series every day:

Random Friday Thoughts: 9/4/09

Written on September 4, 2009 at 4:08 am, by Eric Cressey

1. Roger “It Ain’t Over ‘Til I Turn in this Power Rangers T-Shirt and Reclaim my Man Card with a Thundercats Shirt” Lawson has his revenge!

Okay, so it was really only good for third place.  It was, however, markedly improved from the previous effort, so we’ll give him a thumbs-up (but not a high-five, Roger; that’s just not how I roll).  Thanks for all your hard work this summer!

2. Speaking of thumbs-up, here’s a diet that would make it difficult to give that stamp of approval:

The Amputation Diet

Just in case you weren’t catching the sarcasm in that post, please don’t go and cut your hand off.

3. For those of you looking for a good read, I’d encourage you to check out Born to Run by Christopher McDougall.

Now, before you go and start telling everyone that Cressey’s gone off the deep end and is now a distance running zealot, I liked this book because it talked a lot about the merits of barefoot training and how we’ve been royally screwed by modern shoe companies.  If you’re a runner who has ever had plantar fasciitis or Achilles tendon issues, you have to give this a read.

I actually listened to the book on tape during my commute to the facility.  The unabridged version is about eleven hours long, and is very entertaining.

4. The first pro ball player off-season training session is in the book for Tuesday.  A big gold star goes out to Blue Jays Double-A pitcher Tim Collins for officially kicking off the madness that is the life my life from now through the third Monday in March. Tim’s season ends on Monday, and he’s practically kicking the door down to come back and train.

With attitude like this, and 18 pro guys confirmed (and more still sorting out details), it’s shaping up to be a great off-season at CP.  I am fired up!

And on that note, make it a good weekend!

Mobility Exercise of the Week: Calf Self Massage

Written on August 18, 2009 at 6:19 am, by Eric Cressey

For more mobility exercises, be sure to check out Assess and Correct: Breaking Barriers to Unlock Performance.

Stuff You Should Read: 8/10/09

Written on August 10, 2009 at 5:30 am, by Eric Cressey

A few good reading recommendations for this week…

Sucker Punch: Alwyn Cosgrove – This is a fantastic interview at T-Muscle with one of my best friends and mentors in the industry.  Alwyn calls it like he sees it (which is sadly becoming less and less common in this industry).  He even gives some schmuck named “Cressey” a shout-out in the interview.

The Influence of Strength and Power on Muscular Endurance Test Performance – This recent study from the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research confirms what we already know – but also gives a quantifiable number for which we can shoot when training for something like the 225 bench test – or even in dealing with endurance athletes.  Here are the sentences I like the most:

“…the current research suggests that the initial goal of a training program to enhance muscular endurance should be to increase maximum strength to a point that the specific load being lifted during repeated actions is less than 40% of the individuals’ 1RM. Subsequent training should then focus on maintaining maximal strength levels and improving local muscular endurance in the specific task.”

So, if your goal is to get better on the 225 bench press test, unless you’ve got a 562.5-pound bench press, it’s still going to help you to train for maximum strength.

And, more significantly to what we see on a daily basis, you need to get fit to run, not run to get fit.  A 200+ pound woman who takes up jogging as her initial form of exercise to lose weight is just asking to get hurt because she is far too weak for the load (at least 800 pounds of ground reactive forces) that is imposed on each leg with each stride.

Someone like this would be better off focusing on programs like Afterburn or Warp Speed Fat Loss – which focus on using resistance training, interval training, and nutritional modifications to get unwanted weight off folks.

It’s impressive how I brought this entire blog post back to Alwyn in a big circle, huh?

Overuse Injuries and Knee Braces

Written on January 8, 2008 at 9:21 pm, by Eric Cressey

Yesterday morning, Tony Gentilcore and I got out to the local track to do some sprinting work.  After we had wrapped up our 45-minute session, as we walked off the track, we noticed a 20-something year-old female runner on the ground banging out crunches in what we estimated were sets of 800.

What caught my eye even more than her elite training protocol  (insert sarcastic smirk here), though, was a knee brace so large that it looked like a giant octopus had devoured her leg.  Geek that I am, I started pondering things over.

Most people would say that she’s probably got an overuse injury from all the running.  I wouldn’t disagree.

To take it a step further, though I immediately started thinking about why she had a dysfunction/ imbalance that could be predisposing her to pain with all that running.

Think about what happens with a crunch: trunk flexion.

As Mike Robertson and I described in our Building the Efficient Athlete DVD set, in the process, we actually make ourselves more kyphotic (rounded over at the upper back) via a shortening of the rectus abdominus, which pulls the rib cage down toward the pelvis.  Just check out the points of attachment in the image below and you’ll see what I mean:

In most cases, when we round over at the upper back, as a compensation to keep us upright, the lumbar spine tends to become more lordotic – meaning that the natural lumbar arch is exaggerated.  Go to a more lordotic position, and you’ll “trigger” an increased amount of anterior pelvic tilt (associated with shortening/tightness of the hip flexors, including the rectus femoris, psoas, iliacus, tensor fascia latae, among others).

We know that the hip flexors play a very important role in knee health; the rectus femoris actually attaches to the patella, too.   In addition to the pull these muscles have on the leg, they also tend to force one into anterior weight-bearing (already a problem in most females, thanks to evolution and high-heeled shoes).

Just imagine how great that knee would feel if she swapped the thousands of crunches for some foam rolling, lacrosse ball work, and glute activation and hip and ankle mobility drills.  Success in training (and corrective exercise) is all about the opportunity cost of your training time and effort; you just need to select the drills that give you the most bang for your buck while ironing out imbalances that help you to move more efficiently.

Building the Efficient Athlete

Food for thought.  Enjoy the rest of the week, everyone.

EC

Five Resistance Training Myths in the Running World

Written on January 1, 2008 at 6:37 pm, by Eric Cressey

To some, resistance training is the Rodney Dangerfield of the running community; it gets no respect. To others, it’s like Tom Cruise; runners think it might be useful, but it just doesn’t make any sense to them. And then, there are those to whom resistance training is like Abraham Lincoln; it’s freed them from being slaves to ineffective programming. As a performance enhancement specialist who has a lot of “Abe” endurance athletes under my tutelage, I’d like to take this opportunity to bring the Rodney and Tom runners in the crowd up to speed. With that in mind, let’s look at the five most prominent myths present in the running community with respect to resistance training

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Cardio Confusion

Written on January 20, 2005 at 2:04 pm, by Eric Cressey

When it comes to training purely for strength and power, it’s become vogue to vehemently oppose “cardio.” In light of the traditional connotation of “cardio” and “endurance training” — rubbing your ass raw on a bike for an hour — the individuals bashing such initiatives certainly have justification for their views.

However, “cardio” is a very general term. These individuals need to qualify their recommendations on a variety of fronts.

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