Home Posts tagged "Elite Training Mentorship"

Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 9/12/16

Happy Monday! Well, at least it is for me. I'm pumped about the Patriots' season opening win on the road against the Cardinals last night! Let's keep the good vibes rolling with some recommended reading from around the 'Net over the past week:

3 Laws to Master Coaching Young Athletes - Cressey Sports Performance coach Nancy Newell does an awesome job with our CSP Foundations (7-12 year-old) class, and this blog shows why. The kids have a blast and learn a ton in large part due to her enthusiasm and fun approach to coaching. 

Performance Metrics in Professional Baseball Players Before and Surgical Treatment for Neurogenic Thoracic Outlet Syndrome - In light of the rise in TOS surgeries in professional baseball, I thought it'd be good to link to this recent publication from Dr. Robert Thompson's group in St. Louis. It's important to note that the case studies in question were performed between 2001 and 2014, and they've actually improved the surgery and rehab in the two years since then. I'd venture a guess that outcomes are even better now.

3 Tips for Transitioning Your Training Model to Semi-Private - When folks come to observe at one of the CSP facilities, invariably, they wind up asking the question, "How can I do this with my clientele?" In this blog, Pete Dupuis provides a thorough answer.

Elite Training Mentorship - Just a friendly reminder that the CSP staff uploads content to this resource every month, and the September update includes an awesome webinar, "Coaching, Cueing, and Performance," from Miguel Aragoncillo.  

Top Tweet of the Week:

 

Top Instagram Post of the Week

 

To think, this all started with a handful of HS baseball players during the summer of '07... #cspfamily #elitebaseball #CSPpitching

A photo posted by Cressey Sports Performance (@cresseysportsperformance) on

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21 Tips for Up and Coming Fitness Professionals

Over the years, my favorite posts to write have been my "Random Thoughts" pieces. Effectively, these write-ups are just brain dumps on a particular topic, as opposed to a clearly constructed arguments. It occurred to me the other day that - after years of our internship programs at Cressey Sports Performance - I've accumulated a lot of useful tips for up-and-coming fitness professionals. So, here's a brain dump on the subject!

1. Improve your writing skills.

In this industry – as much as you may think it’s unfair – a lot of people are going to assume that you are just a meathead. You’re feeding into that stereotype each time you send an email with all lower-case letters or fail to utilize correction punctuation.

True story: I once had an athlete’s mother joke with me that she was sure that I was the only strength coach on the planet that knew how to correctly use a semicolon.

2. Don’t make continuing education harder than it needs to be. Your goal should be 30 hours per month, or 360 hours per year.

-Three seminars of 1-2 days each = 24-48 hours/year
-20 minutes per day of audiobooks during your commute, or regular book reading: 122 hours/year
-Go observe another trainer/physical therapist/doctor once a month for 4 hours: 48 hours/year
-Online Programs/Videos for 20 minutes per day: 122 hours/year
-Buy/Watch three DVD sets: 24-48 hours

At the minimum, this is 340 hours. On the high end, it’s 388. Either way, it’s incredibly manageable. You just have to make it a priority.

Subscribe to Elite Training Mentorship. It's under $30/month, and literally takes 75% of the guesswork out of this continuing education "battle" for you. Just make sure you cover everything that's included in every update each month, and you'll be in a great spot.

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3. Talk 20% of the time, and listen 80% of the time – especially during initial evaluations/consults.

4. Incorporate videos into your coaching. Many clients are visual learners who do best when they see themselves performing an exercise.

5. Make it easier for potential clients to perceive your expertise. There are a million different avenues you can use to do this; think long and hard about what really “matters” to your clients. For instance, don’t expect an awesome Facebook presence to mean much to teenage athletes, as they’re all on Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat.

6. Have a clear and consistent persona. Don’t be an introvert one day and then bounce off the walls the next. Sure, there is a time and a place to shake things up to help with client engagement, but that shouldn’t change you are as a person to the point that clients don’t know what to expect when they show up. Moreover, they should never be able to tell whether you’re having a bad day or not.

8. Look the part. It actually does matter.

9. Use social media as a means of building rapport with your clients and potential clients, celebrating clients’ achievements, and also in positioning or reaffirming your expertise (think of it as a short article or blog). Don’t use it to be confrontational/negative.

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9. Never be afraid to refer out. Your #1 priority is to help clients – especially if that means to get them out of pain. I see too many trainers who are afraid to refer clients out to doctors and physical therapists because they’re afraid the client won’t come back and they’ll lose the business. If that’s the way you’re thinking, then you ought to be asking yourself, “Why didn’t I create a stronger relationship with this client?” If you do a good job, you should create a sense of loyalty in your clients – and this shouldn’t even be an issue.

10. Some clients won’t mind it if you swear. Others will REALLY mind it. Why risk it when there is nothing to be gained?

11. Don’t try to fit clients to programs. Fit programs to clients.

12. When you see another trainer with a busy calendar, don’t think, “That guy sucks. I should have way more clients than he does.” Instead, ask yourself, “What is that guy doing so well that he makes clients flocks to him?”

13. If you want to build confidence while honing your skill set in the early stages, volunteer to help out with training teenage female athletes. They have considerable joint hypermobility, which means that it’ll be easier for them to acquire the postures needed to lift effectively. And, if you’re familiar with the concept of relative stiffness, because they have less passive stability, there will be less “bad stiffness” for them to overcome as you work to establish good stiffness for lifting.

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Additionally, younger female athletes are generally more untrained, meaning they haven’t spent years lifting in the basement, establishing bad patterns the entire time. So, you don’t have egos to deal with in terms of changing lifting techniques or selecting lighter training loads. They won’t put another 2.5 pounds on the bar until you tell them to do so.

Finally, untrained athletes will make progress quickly – and that can make the training process more fun for coach and athlete alike.

Obviously, you don’t always get to pick the exact populations with whom you work, but training this “slam dunk” population is one way to get some momentum on your side.

14. Find ways to introduce clients to each other to help establish culture. Did one client vacation where another client is heading? Maybe Client A will have a good restaurant recommendation for Client B, or can comment on how good the gym access is at a particular resort.

Just this past week, an agent reached out to me to ask if I knew of any forward-thinking doctors in the Arizona area where one of his baseball clients could get blood work done. I texted one of our MLB clients who’d had it done out there last year, and he got me the contact info for one – as well as a thorough review of his experience with this particular doctor.

The more you grow your culture, the more you realize that clients don’t just come back to you time and time again for the training. If you need proof, here's a photo of the CSP Family members from the Mets, Marlins, and Cardinals during the 2014 Spring Training. We organized this get together for dinner on 24 hours notice. Not pictured are the wives and girlfriends in attendance, but suffice it to say we were a crew of 30+ that evening.

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You don't get that if you just punch the clock with your clients; you get it by treating them as family and inviting them to be part of something much bigger.

15. Never speak badly about another trainer or business. Focus on what you do well and, more importantly, how you can help the client.

16. Be very careful with how you manually cue female clients, particularly if you are a male trainer. I can lightly jab my fist into a 24-year-old MLB athlete’s core to get him to brace, but this would be highly inappropriate with a 45-year-old female client on her first day. So, if you feel the need to use your hands to cue a client directly, politely ask permission before doing so.

17. Always be on time. On the first day of their internship, I teach all our new interns about the concept of “Respect Reciprocity.” If you want clients to respect you as a coach, you need to respect them first – and that begins and ends with showing up on time and being ready to coach. Organized facilities/trainers attract (or help to create) organized clients.

If that’s not incentive enough to show up on time, just remember that doctors who have poor bedside manner are more likely to be sued by patients – and that’s independent of their actual diagnostic or treatment abilities. If a customer perceives you as disrespectful, you’re going to be paddling upstream to make things right.

18. Never, ever, ever discuss religion or politics.

19. Don’t just work to create a good network of medical professionals around you, but also a great network of specialists. Not all orthopedic surgeons, physical therapists, massage therapists, and other related professionals have identical skill sets. I'm very in tune with this because you can't send baseball elbows and shoulders to "just any" doctor or physical therapist. It's a unique population with specific adaptations, injury mechanisms, and functional demands.

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20. Be really, really, really good at something and you will do very well in this industry. However, before you can be really, really, really good at something, you should be proficient at a lot of things.

21. Remember that proficiency precedes popularity. You’ll get really busy when you’re really good at what you do.

That does it for this go-round. I'll definitely do this one again, as they really rolled off my fingertips!
 

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Coaching Cues to Make Your Strength and Conditioning Programs More Effective – Installment 12

It's time to bring back this coaching cues series to the forefront, as it's always been a popular one here at EricCressey.com. Here are three more cues I find myself using on a daily basis at Cressey Sports Performance:

1. "Chest before chin."

One of the biggest issues we see in folks with a lack of anterior core control and/or upper body strength is that they'll shoot into forward head posture as they descend to the bottom position of a push-up. Effectively, they're substituting head/neck movement for true scapular protraction and retraction. One cue that seems to clean the issue up quite well is the "chest before chin" recommendation - which means that the chest should arrive at the floor before the chin does. 

You do, however, need to make sure that the individual doesn't confuse this with simply puffing the chest out, which would put them in more extended (arched back) posture at the lumbar spine.

2. "Get your scaps to your armpits."

A huge goal of upper body corrective exercise program is to teach individuals how to differentiate between scapulothoracic movement and glenohumeral movement. In layman's terms, this means understanding that it's important to know when the shoulder blade is moving on the rib cage, as opposed to the upper arm (ball) moving on the shoulder blade (socket). Especially during overhead reaching, what we typically see in athletes is insufficient scapulothoracic movement and excessive glenohumeral movement - particularly in those athletes with noteworthy joint hyper mobility. This is one reason why we incorporate a lot of wall slide variations in our warm-ups.

Since we are really looking to teach good upward rotation (as opposed to just elevation), I always try to cue a rotational component to the scapular movement as the arms go overhead. I've found that "get your scaps to your armpits" can really get the message across, especially when this verbal cue is combined with the kinesthetic cue of me guiding the shoulder blades around the rib cage. These modifications can really help to kick up serratus anterior recruitment, as this video shows:

3. "Start in your jump rope position."

When you're working with young athletes on jumping variations - whether they're broad jumps, box jumps, or some other variations - many of them will start with an excessively wide stance. Then, they'll "dip" to create eccentric preloading (stretch) and the knees almost always cave in. As I've said before, if the feet are too wide, the knees have no place to go but in. My feeling is that many young athletes "default" to this pattern because a wider base of support generally supports a more stable position for a weaker athlete. Unfortunately, this position doesn't put them in a great posture for producing force.

The best coaching cues are the ones that build upon those movements an individual already knows, and most kids have jumped rope in the past. If you use a wide stance when you jump rope, you trip over the rope. Instead, you have to stay with the feet in around hip-width, which is right where we want our jump variations to occur.

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If you're looking for more coaching tutorials and exercise demonstrations, be sure to check out Elite Training Mentorship, which is updated each month with new content from Cressey Sports Performance staff members.

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6 Ways to Simplify Your Coaching for Better Results

As you progress through a career in the fitness industry, it’s easy to fall into the complexity trap. In other words, the more you learn, the more prone you are to making things overly complex with your interaction with clients/athletes.

To be clear, it’s absolutely essential to continue growing as a professional throughout your career. However, part of this growth is learning to be more efficient in your coaching. It’s about figuring out how to get the same or better results in less time and effort. In the overwhelming majority of cases, the simpler you can keep your approach, the better.

This “simple” phenomenon isn’t confined to the fitness industry, though. In their excellent book, Simple Rules: How to Thrive in a Complex World, Donald Sull and Kathleen Eisenhardt cite numerous examples of how simple solutions generally far outperform complex ones:

-Simple diets outperform complex ones, as people are more adherent to nutrition recommendations that they can easily understand and apply. Sull and Eisenhardt note that simply switching to a smaller plate for meals improves weight loss outcomes.

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-Individuals are less likely to actually pay their taxes when the tax code is complex.

-Employees are less likely to save for retirement when employers offer more than two 401(k) options, even when employers matched their contributions. Too many options overwhelms them – so the simple choice is to do nothing.

Author Seth Godin also wrote about our tendency to get overwhelmed in Purple Cow: “In a society with too many choices and too little time, our natural inclination is to ignore it [making a tough choice].”

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How can we apply this knowledge to coaching? Try these six strategies:

1. Shut up – or at the very least, cue less.

The more cues you give – particularly if they all come as a “barrage” in a short period of time – the more likely an athlete is to get overwhelmed and tune you out. Think of all the things you want to say, and then cut it back by 50%.

2. Establish predominant learning style.

I’ve written about this previously, so I won’t reinvent the wheel:

I'm a big believer in categorizing all athletes by their dominant learning styles: visual, kinesthetic, and auditory.

Visual learners can watch you demonstrate an exercise, and then go right to it.

Auditory learners can simply hear you say a cue, and then pick up the desired movement or position.

Kinesthetic learners seem to do best when they're actually put in a position to appreciate what it feels like, and then they can crush it.

In young athletes and inexperienced clients, you definitely want to try to determine what learning style predominates with them so that you can improve your coaching.

Conversely, in a more advanced athlete with considerable training experience, I always default to a combination of visual and auditory coaching. I'll simply get into the position I want from them, and try to say something to the point (less than ten words) to attempt to incorporate it into a schema they likely already have.

This approach effectively allows me to leverage their previous learning to make coaching easier. Chances are that they've done a comparable exercise - or at least another drill that requires similar patterns - in previous training. As such, they might be able to get it 90% correct on the first rep, so my coaching is just tinkering.

Sure, there will still be kinesthetic learners out there, but I find that they just aren't as common in advanced athletes with significant training experience. As such, I view kinesthetic awareness coaching as a means to the ultimate end of "subconsciously" training athletes to be more in tune with visual and auditory cues that are easier to deliver, especially in a group setting.

3. Speak clearly, crisply, and concisely.

I have a bad habit of mumbling and speaking too quickly, so this is something of which I’ve had to be cognizant for my entire career in strength and conditioning. It’s important to be “firm” in your auditory cues, both to ensure that the athlete actually hears and understands you, but also to reaffirm to them that you know your stuff and are confident in your cues.

4. Consider both motivation and skill.

This was a lesson I learned from Brian Grasso back in the early days of the International Youth Conditioning Association. About a decade later, the message is still tremendously useful for coaches at all levels. All athletes fall somewhere on both the motivation and skill continuum.

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In terms of motivation, they may be very fired up to train, or more disinterested. The more unmotivated they are, the more you need to engage with them to determine how to push the right buttons to get them excited to train. Conversely, the more motivated athletes are, the more you should stay out of the way. Obviously, you still need to coach them, but they're not looking to be engaged with you as much, as they already have their own intrinsic motivation to want to dominate the challenge ahead.

From a skill standpoint, some athletes will obviously be quicker learners, or have a stronger training history. These athletes usually respond best to short - but direct - cueing. The last thing you want to do is slow them down and make them feel like you are micromanaging everything about their training. On the other hand, if an athlete is less skilled, you obviously need to spend some time teaching the basics, which requires you to slow things down a bit - especially since fatigue is the enemy of motor learning.

5. Catch yourself when you’re trying to simplify programming, but actually make things more complex.

You can't out-coach a crappy program. And, when it comes to trying to simplify coaching to make it more effective, everything begins with a quality program. If you're coaching the wrong exercise for the athlete, then it doesn't matter how many key coaching principles you're employing; the movement is still going to be ugly, and the training effect is still going to be subpar.

As an example, there are still a lot of folks out there who insist machines are a good method of training because they "simplify" exercises, removing stability demands and reducing the need for coaching. However, I snapped this photo of a seated leg curl while I was lifting in a commercial gym in Japan last week. If you look closely and actually count, you'll note that there are SIX adjustments that must be made to the machine just to get the lifter in the right position.

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Now, let's compare that to a 1-leg hip thrust off bench, which requires virtually no set-up and is incredibly easy to coach, progress, and regress. It also blows a seated leg curl out of the water in terms of functional carryover to the real world.

Poor exercise prescription will always make coaching far more challenging and excessively complex.

6. Learn about previous training experience to best prepare progressions/regressions.

Imagine interacting with an athlete with whom you have never had any interaction whatsoever - and he's about to conventional deadlift. Ideally, in the back of your mind, you'll always have ideas in place about how you can progress and regress. However, with you knowing nothing about him, you have no idea whether he might need to be regressed to a sumo or trap bar deadlift, or even taken all the way back to a pull-through or kettlebell sumo deadlift.

This is why it's so important to have an up-front discussion with an athlete when he/she first starts training with you. You can quickly learn whether they're folks who need exercise regressions, or just better coaching to clean up faulty movement patterns.

Wrap-up

As coaches, we have a lot of goals for our training systems. Foremost among those goals are behavior change and fun, because if we can accomplish both those things, we improve adherence to our programs and optimize outcomes. Unfortunately, when your coaching is unnecessarily complex, you overwhelm athletes - and that works against both these goals. When in doubt, always opt for the simple solution - or find ways to make complex solutions seem very simple to the athletes with whom you're working.

If you're looking for more insights on programming, coaching, and assessments, I'd strongly encourage you to check out Mike Reinold and my Functional Stability Training series. You can learn more HERE.

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 7/6/15

I'm back in Massachusetts after a week in North Carolina with USA Baseball. It'll take me a day or two to get my feet underneath me before I can type up a new blog, but luckily, I've got some great content for you from around the web.

Elite Training Mentorship - In this month's update, we've got some awesome content from the Cressey Sports Performance crew (myself included). We cover learning styles, coaching cues, core control, and lower extremity mobility.

Physical Preparation with Patrick Ward - Patrick is a sports scientist for the Seattle Seahawks, and he shares some awesome insights on this podcast with Mike Robertson.

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Improving Communication and Developing Awareness - Cressey Sports Performance coach Miguel Aragoncillo shares some great lessons for up-and-coming coaches.

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 5/4/15

Good morning, gang; I hope you all had a great weekend. Let's kick off the week with some recommended strength and conditioning reading:

Solving Sleep Problems - Adam Bornstein presents some non-obvious strategies for improving your sleep quality and quantity.

Fitness Professionals: How to Figure Out Your Learning Style - I wrote this just over two years ago, but a recent conversation with one of our interns reminded me of it. If you're a fitness professional, it'd be a good read to help with your continuing education approaches.

How to Build Success in Your Training - Cressey Sports Performance coach Tony Gentilcore outlines some key success measures of which we need to be aware.

Also, just a friendly reminder that Elite Training Mentorship updates twice a month with inservices, webinars, exercise demonstrations, and articles from staff members at Cressey Sports Performance, Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training, and several other forward-thinking facilities from around the country. Be sure to check out this comprehensive continuing education resource.

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The Most Important Three Words in Strength and Conditioning

From 2007 to 2009, I was a big sleeper stretch guy. All our throwing athletes did this stretch at the end of their training sessions, and we meticulously coached the technique to make sure it accomplished what we *hoped* it would accomplish. I featured it in the program in my first book, Maximum Strength, and this picture of me even shows up in the first row of photos on Google Images if you search for "sleeper stretch."

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Then, in March 2010, I attended my first Postural Restoration Institute (PRI) event and "saw the light." I left the course with some great new positional breathing drills that often delivered quick results in terms of improving shoulder internal rotation - without having to actually stretch the shoulder, a joint that doesn't really like to be stretched. Looking back, we were probably trying to "stretch" out an alignment issue - and that never ends well.

We've since progressed our approach, complementing PRI exercises with thoracic spine mobility drills and manual therapy at the shoulder in those who present with true internal rotation deficits. Only after they've still come up short following these initiatives do we actually encourage stretching of the glenohumeral (ball and socket) joint. And, even when that happens, it's gentle side-lying cross-body stretching with the scapula stabilized; this has proven safer and more beneficial for improving internal rotation.

The three preceding paragraphs about my experiences with the sleeper stretch could really be summed up in three words:

                           I was wrong.

It's not the only time I've been wrong, either.

I wish I'd done more barefoot work and ankle mobility training with the basketball players with whom I worked early in my career.

I wish I'd not just assumed that all athletes needed more thoracic mobility when, in fact, there are quite a few who have hypermobile t-spines.

I wish I'd focused more on the benefits of correct breathing - especially full exhalation - with athletes sooner in my career.

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In my own powerlifting career, I wish I'd spent more time free squatting and less time box squatting. And, I wish I'd competed "raw" instead of with powerlifting equipment.

I've made some errors in the ways I evaluated, trained, and programmed for athletes. I've made dumb decisions in both my business and personal life. However, at the end of the day, I can attribute a lot of my improvements as a person and a professional to the fact that I was completely comfortable admitting, "I was wrong." Heck, I'm so comfortable recognizing my mistakes that I've written entire posts on the subject!

This is trait just about every successful strength and conditioning coach generally shares. Humility is an essential trait for personal and professional advancement, especially in a dynamic field like strength and conditioning where new research and training techniques emerge on a daily basis.

This isn't just limited to strength and conditioning, though. If you asks a lot of the best surgeons in the country, they'd admit that they were wrong in doing a lot of lateral release (knee) surgeries and thermal capsule (shoulder) shrinkage procedures earlier in their careers. And, they'd probably admit that they misdiagnosed a lot of cases of thoracic outlet syndrome as ulnar neuropathy. If they aren't willing to admit their past mistakes, you probably ought to find a different doctor.

If you're an athlete, the same can be said of seeking out a strength and conditioning coach. If the person writing your programs hasn't learned from his/her mistakes, are you really getting a "modern" or forward-thinking program that has been tested in the trenches? We've all seen those programs - both in training and rehabilitation - that have been photocopied so many times over the years that they're barely legible.

Likewise, if you're an up-and-coming strength and conditioning coach, you want to seek out mentors that'll admit their past mistakes and reflect on how they learned from them. Only then can they help you avoid making them, too. You're better off learning under someone who has 15 years of strength and conditioning experience than someone who has 15 years of the same year of experience.

Finally, if you're an established professional, the only way to grow is to get outside your comfort zone. Five years from now, if you're not looking back on your current approaches and wondering what the heck you were thinking, then you're stuck in the bubble on the left.

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You need to visit other facilities, talk with other coaches, and empower your employees/co-workers with a voice that challenges the norm. I learn a lot from my staff on a daily basis. And, looking back on that first PRI event I attended, I was the only "non-clinician" in the room. I was surrounded by PTs, PTAs, respiratory therapists, pelvic floor therapists, and ATCs. I got out of my element and it changed the course of my career dramatically.

Looking back on these experiences when I was clearly wrong, part of me wants to send individual apology notes to all the athletes I saw early in my career. By that same token, though, I feel like thank you notes might be more appropriate, as these mistakes played an essential role in my growth as a coach and person.

If you're looking for an up-to-date look on how we manage shoulders - including a look at identifying and addressing internal rotation deficits - be sure to check out my new resource, Sturdy Shoulder Solutions.

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 12/15/14

Here are some good fitness and nutrition reads from around the 'net:

Elite Training Mentorship - In the most recent update, I provide two exercise demonstration videos, and Cressey Sports Performance coach Miguel Aragoncillo kicks off a two-part webinar series on energy systems development.

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Chocolate and All Its Health Benefits - Examine.com always does a great job of evaluating nutrition and supplementation questions folks have, and this quick but informative article is no exception.

Mastery - I'm currently listening to this audiobook and really enjoying it, as it takes close looks at how some of the greatest "masters" of all time got to that level of proficiency and success in their chosen crafts.

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One of my favorite quotes thus far is, "The very desire to find shortcuts makes you eminently unsuited for any kind of mastery." The author, Robert Greene, is a huge fan of "apprenticeships," and it goes without saying that these take time. The fitness industry is no exception.

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 11/11/14

First off, Happy Veterans Day - and a big thank you to all those out there who have served our country and protected our freedom.

Second, here are some recommended reads for the holiday:

Elite Training Mentorship - In this month's update, I have a webinar entitled, "8 Things I've Learned About Core Training," along with two new exercise demonstration videos and an article.

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Mike Roncarati Interview - Mike Robertson interviewed Golden State Warriors Strength and Conditioning Coach Mike Roncarati, DPT, who happens to be a former Cressey Sports Performance intern. Roncarati brings some awesome thoughts to light on assessment, rehabilitation, monitoring, and managing a busy NBA calendar. He's is a super bright guy and this is "must-read" material if you're an aspiring strength and conditioning coach (or desire to work in professional sports in any capacity).

5 Resistance Training Myths in the Running World - This article is over seven years old now, but it warranted "reincarnation" in light of a conversation I had the other day with a friend who is an avid endurance athlete/distance runner.

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 10/6/14

It's time for this week's list of recommended strength and conditioning reading:

Elite Training Mentorship - In this month's update, I include an in-service on the top 10 mistakes I see with medicine ball training. I also have two new exercise demonstration videos, and an article on how to prevent "training boredom."

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5 Thoughts on Sprinting - This informative post from Mike Robertson draws on insights from his own experience and what he's learned from others.

Squatting Semantics - Charlie Weingroff presents a quick, but informative look at the different kinds of squats and benefits that each affords - assuming technique is correct.

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LEARN HOW TO DEADLIFT
  • Avoid the most common deadlifting mistakes
  • 9 - minute instructional video
  • 3 part follow up series