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A Great Assess and Correct ReviewWritten on January 17, 2010 at 12:18 pm, by Eric Cressey I’m not back from Florida until Tuesday, but in the meantime, I just wanted to give you a quick heads-up on a thorough review Laree Draper just did on Assess and Correct: Breaking Barriers to Unlock Performance. If you’re on the fence about picking up a copy, you won’t want to miss this, as it’ll answer a lot of your potential questions. You can check it out HERE.
Mobility Exercise of the Week: Wall Hip Flexor MobilizationWritten on November 17, 2009 at 12:21 pm, by Eric Cressey For more exercises like this, check out the Assess and Correct DVD set.
Mobility Exercise of the Week: Supine BridgeWritten on November 3, 2009 at 10:10 am, by Eric Cressey For more mobility exercises, be sure to check out Assess and Correct: Breaking Barriers to Unlock Performance.
Assess and Correct Now Available!Written on October 26, 2009 at 5:10 am, by Eric Cressey Today’s a really exciting day for Mike Robertson, Bill Hartman, and I – and hopefully for you, too!
You see, after months of planning, filming, and editing, our new product, Assess and Correct, is now available at www.AssessAndCorrect.com. And, for the first week ONLY, we’re making the product available for $30 off what will be the normal retail price.
Assess and Correct is the first resource that empowers you with not only a series of self-assessments to identify your own flexibility and stability limitations, but also exercise progressions to correct those inefficiencies. In the process, you’ll take your athletic performance to all new levels and prevent injuries from creeping up on you – whether you’re a high-level athlete or someone who sits at a desk too much. With 27 self-assessments and 78 corresponding exercises, you’ll cover virtually everything you need to feel and perform well. And, you’ll have plenty of variety to use for many years to come! And, while the DVDs alone are really comprehensive, the bonuses we’ve added to this really sweeten the deal. Included in this package are:
Again, this introductory offer will end next Sunday, November 1 at midnight EST. For now, though, I’d encourage you to head over to www.AssessAndCorrect.com to check out some of the sample videos from the DVDs – including the introduction in which we discuss our rationale for creating the product. We are close!Written on September 13, 2009 at 5:39 am, by Eric Cressey Coming VERY soon….
Maximum Strength Works for Females, Too!Written on September 9, 2009 at 5:09 am, by Eric Cressey I received this email this weekend from a very satisfied female Maximum Strength customer. It should put to rest any doubts about whether or not this program works for females: Dear Eric, Hello, I’m Kelsey Doucette. I’m a 22 year old (female) powerlifter and aspiring Olympic lifter. I just finished your Maximum Strength program. I made splendid gains. Beginning: End: Body weight: 113 Body weight: 115 You’re probably wondering about the squat and deadlift numbers (and why I’m ecstatic about them). Allow me to explain. Right before I began your program, I just started physical therapy for my hips. Among a myriad of problems (I was considered “a train wreck” by the therapists) one was that I had weak adductors, hip flexors and poor (I mean REALLY poor) glute activation. I also had horrendous hip mobility. I started your program and noticed a difference within the first two weeks just from doing the mobility warm-ups and foam rolling. Not only did your program inspire me to lift like a real strength athlete (I am a former body builder. I decided I liked lifting better than posing) but also to aggressively attack my hip issues both with knowledge and actions. It was about half way through your program when during a squat I felt my glutes activate. I was so excited I jumped up and down in jubilation once I finished my set. The same thing happened with deadlifts. So I guess you could say I squatted 205 and deadlifted 260 WITH glute activation, which I consider a major accomplishment from where I started. My conclusion is that even though my numbers didn’t change a whole lot (at least on the two lifts I really care about. I think i was just sick of benching less than a plate and that’s why my bench went up so much) I feel like a much more efficient lifter. My muscles are firing in synchrony like they’re supposed to and I’m now on my way to busting my former lifting plateaus. I also understand my body a lot more and I’m enthusiastically devouring as much knowledge about strength and conditioning as I can. Thank you! Sincerely, Kelsey Doucette Click here to pick up a copy of Maximum Strength yourself! The Biggest Magnificent Mobility/Inside-Out Blowout Sale of All TimeWritten on August 31, 2009 at 3:23 am, by Eric Cressey As many of you know, Bill Hartman, Mike Robertson, and I are very close to releasing a new product. In fact, we spent the weekend going through edits on the footage and pulling together the tag-along manuals. This new product includes a lot of our newer perspectives on assessment and corrective exercise. Many of the drills we outline actually piggyback on those we outlined with our previous DVDs, Magnificent Mobility and Inside-Out. There is even a bit of overlap where we discuss how the “older” drills fit into our up-to-date progressions. So, while the MM and I/O DVDs might be a few years old, the good news is that the human body hasn’t evolved dramatically since then – so these drills are still highly effective. However, with new products, older products sometimes get forgotten – and that’s why we figured we’d throw out this opportunity to grab up these two previous products at a big discount. Here’s the deal… 30% off on Magnificent Mobility and Inside-Out from Monday, August 31 through Wednesday, September 2. All you need to do is head over to the RobertsonTrainingSystems.com Products Page and add the item(s) to your cart. At checkout, enter the coupon code “FALL09″ (all caps, no quotation marks) and the discount will be applied. Don’t miss this last chance to get two great products at a great discount! Mobility Exercise of the Week: Lying Knee-to-Knee StretchWritten on August 26, 2009 at 6:22 am, by Eric Cressey For more mobility exercises, be sure to check out Assess and Correct: Breaking Barriers to Unlock Performance.
Random Friday Thoughts: 7/10/09Written on July 10, 2009 at 6:46 am, by Eric Cressey Here I sit at my desk on a Friday morning in an empty, 100% quiet Cressey Performance. I’m not sure that’s ever happened before – and it won’t last long, as clients start rolling in about 23 minutes from now. In other words, there goes my opportunity to create a well thought-out, organized, and relevant blog post. Let the randomness begin. 1. Here’s an interesting journal article looking at those with functional ankle instability also presented with delayed trunk reflexes. In other words, if you’ve had an ankle sprain without thorough rehabilitation, it relates to a later onset of trunk muscle activation. This closely parallels a lot of the stuff I covered in The Truth About Unstable Surface Training E-Book, as unstable surface training has been tremendously effective in correcting the proprioceptive delay we see in the peroneals following ankle sprains.
I guess you could say that this is one more “yea” vote in favor of the whole kinetic chain concept. Mess up an ankle and you very might be dealing with a knee, hip, or lower back issue sooner than later. 2. For the second year in a row, I’ll be speaking at Fantasy Day at Fenway Park. If you’re looking for a good time to benefit a great cause (The Jimmy Fund), click here for more information. The event is July 18. 3. Random fact: when preparing for the new DVD, Mike Robertson and I realized that Magnificent Mobility has sold in over 50 countries. Apparently, the Norwegians and Indonesians really dig Mike’s smooth Midwestern drawl. 4. Speaking of Mike, check out this great blog post from him: The Starving Artist That’s all for this week. Have a great weekend! Newsletter 161Written on June 30, 2009 at 7:24 am, by Eric Cressey I have the normal weekly newsletter posted below, but first a quick announcement: Mike Robertson, Bill Hartman, and I just filmed a new DVD set! Those of you who have enjoyed all of our products individually can now see what happens when the three of us collaborate. For more information, check out today’s blog post: A Sneak Peak at the New Project.
In last week’s newsletter, I talked about the first three component of the law of repetitive motion: “I” (injury/insult), “N” (number of repetitions), and “F” (the force of each repetition, expressed as a percentage of maximal strength).
This week, I’ll discuss the “A” and the “R” of this equation. To begin, amplitude, stated simply, is range of motion. If we spend our entire lives in limited ranges of motion, we run into problems. Obviously, this refers to those who sit too often and too long – particularly in poor postures. I’m a big believer that the best posture is the one that is constantly changing, so I always encourage people to try to get up and move around every 20-30 minutes whenever possible. If not, I love the idea of simply “shuffling” positions at your computer. Complement this constant fluctuation of posture with some good training to open up the hips and thoracic spine, and strengthen the upper back and glutes, and you’ll find that being stuck in a job with a small amplitude is a “manageable” problem.
Amplitude can also refer to only doing certain exercises in the gym, particularly those who exercise through a partial range of motion. It might be people who simply press too often and pull too infrequently, or those who perform a lot of bilateral exercises, but nothing unilateral. We aren’t just talking about ranges of motion at the joints; we are also talking about the muscles recruited and type of muscle action – concentric, eccentric, isometric – that takes place. Lastly, working at a specific task for extended periods of time can be a huge issue for some. Just ask musicians, factory line workers, and even baseball pitchers. These issues can all impose huge asymmetries that must be addressed both directly (soft tissue work, flexibility training) and indirectly (training the contralateral side, or just exposing the individual to a broader excursion of movement outside this specific task). So, all that in mind, improving amplitude is all about increasing range of motion in one’s daily life. Of course, this must be specific range of motion. You wouldn’t, for instance, want to increase lumbar spine range of motion in most back pain patients, but you would want to optimize hip and thoracic spine mobility. Rest, the “R” in our equation, is pretty straight-forward: if a tissue is angry, you need to give it time to settle down. However, just stopping all exercise isn’t always the best bet. Often, it’s simply a matter of keeping the stress on the tissue below its capacity for loading. As a great example, a lot of manual therapists with whom I’ve worked actually like people to go out and lightly load tissues that have just been worked in order to teach the tissue to “deform” properly. For instance, I got a little “Graston Loving” on my biceps a while back, and spent the rest of the day lightly loading the tissues and doing some prolonged stretching sets. It worked like a charm.
Taking it a step further, though, much of the time, it’s about redistributing stress. For instance, someone with anterior knee pain may not be able to do a more quad-dominant squat, but instructing that same lifter to sit back into the glutes and hamstrings more can markedly take down the stress on the anterior knee. Sure, it changes the muscular recruitment of the exercise, but the lifter derives great benefit and keeps the loading on the affected tissues below capacity. And, in this particular case, he’s strengthening the posterior chain muscles that almost always help to prevent anterior knee pain in the first place. That wraps up our look at the law of repetitive motion. It’s certainly not an exhaustive review, but my hope is that it got you thinking just enough to consider how this law applies to the issues you see on a daily basis, as well as those you want to prevent from ever reaching threshold. For more information, check out the Building the Efficient Athlete DVD Set.
New Blog Content Random Friday Thoughts
Have a great week! EC
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