Russian Stiletto Race

Written on October 16, 2008 at 4:00 pm, by Eric Cressey

For the record, my money was on Svetlana the entire time – even if this is the most moronic thing I’ve ever seen. They ought to do this daily to study ACL injury mechanisms…

For those who want more of the background on why I hate high heels, check out the sarcastic and educational previous blog posts on this topic.

Random Thursday Thoughts: 9/11/08

Written on September 11, 2008 at 9:20 pm, by Eric Cressey

1. Hopefully you all can take at least a few minutes out of your schedule to remember those who were lost in 2001 and their families. (and we’re all sending good vibes your way, Steph)

2. I’ll start off with a bang; high-heels for babies and children is the single-most moronic thing I’ve ever seen. If a grown woman wants to absolutely destroy her lower extremities by wearing heels, that’s her choice. However, putting a baby in a pair of high heels as she’s learning to walk is certifiable. Be careful watching the interview with these people, folks; you will actually get dumber.

Oh, and Britta Bacon? That’s seriously your name? Are you a water filter or a pork product?

3. I finally got around to checking out Alwyn Cosgrove and Mike Roussell’s Warpspeed Fat Loss e-book. This thing is fantastic; I’m annoyed with myself for waiting this long to open it up after they sent it my way a while ago.

I’ll actually be doing an interview with Mike on this very topic next week in my newsletter, so stay tuned – or check out Warpspeed Fat Loss yourself in the meantime.

4. Maybe if we didn’t give out drugs so easily, they wouldn’t be contaminating our drinking water. I never heard of teaching people to eat right and exercise leading to pollution…

5. Great quote from an email exchange I had with pitching specialist Ron Wolforth the other day: “I have truly been blessed in having peers who are truly cutting edge and who are more interested in getting it right than being thought of as right.”

6. Speaking of Ron, I just confirmed this past week that I’ll be presenting two one-hour lectures and a hands-on portion at his Ultimate Pitching Coaches Bootcamp in Houston on December 12-14. If you’re a baseball coach or you train baseball guys, definitely check this event out; there is going to be a lot of great information and thinking outside the box.

7. Just a quick heads-up: if you have questions about the Maximum Strength program (or any of my products, for that matter), please post them HERE instead of emailing me. I figured a comprehensive thread over at T-Nation would be a good way to get everything in one place. And, for those of you who have purchased Maximum Strength, don’t forget to check out the online FAQ page to which we allude in the book.

Have a good weekend! I’ll be dominating Pete in Fantasy Football this Sunday/Monday.

The High-Heels Addiction

Written on June 30, 2008 at 9:42 am, by Eric Cressey

In preparing my presentation for yesterday’s seminar (the focus was female training), I used Google images to dig up a picture of a high-heeled shoe for my powerpoint. In doing so, I came across a 20-step guide to learn how to walk in high heels.

Does anyone find it a bit scary that you can beat alcoholism in 12 steps, but it takes 20 to learn how to do something that will grossly warp your feet, ankles, knees, hips, and lower back?

Female Fitness

Written on January 8, 2008 at 7:47 pm, by Eric Cressey

Seminar Stories

I wanted to start this newsletter off with a thank you to everyone who came out last weekend for the John Berardi seminar here in Boston.  Dr. Berardi put on a great show, and the feedback has been fantastic.  If you ever have the chance to see JB speak, don’t hesitate to jump at the opportunity.

Naked Nutrition

A few months ago, Mike Roussell sent me the preliminary version of his new project, The Naked Nutrition Guide.  Mike went out of his way to contact several industry notables to go over this manual with a critical eye, and this feedback – combined with Mike’s outstanding knowledge of nutritional sciences – resulted in a fantastic finished product.  There are bonus training programs from Alwyn Cosgrove, Nate Green, and Jimmy Smith. Check it out for yourself:

The Naked Nutrition Guide

Female Fitness

Last week, Erik Ledin of Lean Bodies Consulting published Part I of an interview he did with me on female training.  Check it out:

EL: First off, thanks for agreeing to the interview. We’ve known each other for a number of years now. I used to always refer to you as the “Anatomy Guy.” You then became know for being “The Shoulder Guy” and have since garnered another title, “The Mobility Guy.” Who is Eric Cressey?

EC: Good question. As you implied, it’s the nature of this industry to try to pigeonhole guys into certain professional “diagnoses.” Personally, even though I specialize in athletic performance enhancement and corrective exercise, I pride myself on being pretty well-versed in a variety of areas – endocrinology, endurance training, body recomposition, nutrition, supplementation, recovery/regeneration, and a host of other facets of our industry. To some degree, I think it’s a good thing to be a bit all over the place in this “biz,” as it helps you to see the relationships among a host of different factors. Ultimately, I’d like to be considered a guy who is equal parts athlete, coach, and scholar/researcher.

All that said, for the more “traditional answer,” readers can check out my bio.

EL: What are the three most underrated and underused exercises? Does it differ across gender?

EC: Well, I’m not sure that the basics – squats, deadlifts, various presses, pull-ups, and rows – can ever be considered overrated or overappreciated in both a male and female population.

Still, I think that single-leg exercises are tremendously beneficial, but are ignored by far too many trainers and lifters. Variations of lunges, step-ups, split squats, and single-leg RDLs play key roles in injury prevention and development of a great lower body.

Specific to females, we know that we need a ton of posterior chain work and correctly performed single-leg work to counteract several biomechanical and physiological differences. Namely, we’re talking about quad dominance/posterior chain weakness and an increased Q-angle. Increasing glute and hamstrings strength and optimizing frontal plane stability is crucial for resisting knock-knee tendencies and preventing ACL tears. If more women could do glute-ham raises, the world would be a much better place!

EL: What common issues do you see with female trainees in terms of muscular or postural imbalances that may predispose them to some kind of injury if not corrected? How would you suggest they be corrected or prevented?

EC:

1. A lack of overall lower body strength, specifically in the glutes and hamstrings; these shortcomings resolve when you get in more deadlifts, glute-ham raises, box squats, single-leg movements, etc.

2. Poor soft-tissue quality all over; this can be corrected with plenty of foam rolling and lacrosse/tennis ball work.

3. Poor core stability (as much as I hate that word); the best solution is to can all the “turn your lumbar spine into a pretzel” movements and focus on pure stability at the lower back while mobilizing the hips and thoracic spine.

4. General weakness in the upper body, specifically with respect to the postural muscles of the upper back; we’d see much fewer shoulder problems in females if they would just do a LOT more rowing.

EL: You’ve mentioned to me in the past the issues with the ever popular Nike Shox training shoe as well as high heels in women. What’s are the potential problems?

EC: When you elevate the heels chronically – via certain sneakers, high-heels, or any other footwear – you lose range of motion in dorsiflexion (think toe-to-shin range of motion). When you lack mobility at a joint, your body tries to compensate by looking anywhere it can to find range of motion. In the case of restricted ankle mobility, you turn the foot outward and internally rotate your lower and upper legs to make up for the deficit. This occurs as torque is “converted” through subtalar joint pronation.

As the leg rotates inward (think of the upper leg swiveling in your hip joint socket), you lose range of motion in external rotation at your hip. This is one of several reasons why females have a tendency to let their knees fall inward when they squat, lunge, deadlift, etc. And, it can relate to anterior/lateral knee pain (think of the term patellofemoral pain … you’ve got restriction on things pulling on the patella, and on the things controlling the femur … it’s no wonder that they’re out of whack relative to one another). And, by tightening up at the ankle and the hip, you’ve taken a joint (knee) that should be stable (it’s just a hinge) and made it mobile/unstable. You can also get problems at the hip and lower back because …

Just as losing range of motion at the ankle messes with how your leg is aligned, losing range of motion at your hip – both in external rotation and hip extension – leads to extra range of motion at your lumbar spine (lower back). We want our lower back to be completely stable so that it can transfer force from our lower body to our upper body and vice versa; if you have a lot of range of motion at your lower back, you don’t transfer force effectively, and the vertebrae themselves can get irritated. This can lead to bone problems (think stress fractures in gymnasts), nerve issues (vertebrae impinge on discs/nerve roots), or muscular troubles (basic strains).

So, the take-home message is that crappy ankle mobility – as caused by high-top shoes, excessive ankle taping, poor footwear (heel lifts) – can cause any of a number of problems further up the kinetic chain. Sure, we see plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendinosis, and shin splints, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what can happen.

How do we fix the problems? First, get out of the bad footwear and pick up a shoe that puts you closer in contact with the ground. Second, go barefoot more often (we do it for all our dynamic flexibility warm-ups and about 50% of the volume of our lifting sessions). Third, incorporate specific ankle (and hip) mobility drills – as featured in our Magnificent Mobility DVD.

Oh, I should mention that elevating the heels in women is also problematic simply because it shifts the weight so far forward. If we’re dealing with a population that needs to increase recruitment of the glutes and hamstrings, why are we throwing more stress on the quads?

Stay tuned for Part II – available in our next newsletter.

Have a great week, everyone!

EC

Newsletter #47

Written on January 8, 2008 at 7:16 pm, by Eric Cressey

In light of the fact that I was delayed nine hours in the snow at Reagan Airport in Washington, D.C. on Sunday, this week’s newsletter will be a quick one.  Fortunately, all that downtime gave me an opportunity to reflect on a few things and organize my thoughts for this newsletter!

Mid-Atlantic Strength Symposium Wrap-up

I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who came out on Saturday for the seminar at George Mason; it was great to meet all of you.

For those who couldn’t make it, here’s an interesting aside.  I evaluated six people at the seminar who had various aches and pains in their lower body, and of the six, four were severely lacking in ankle mobility.  Coincidence?  I think not.  Get to training more barefoot and doing more ankle mobility work while taping your ankles less and getting rid of your high-top sneakers, high-heels, and any other shoe that dramatically elevates your heels.  You’ll feel like a million bucks in no time.

A Great Read

The bright side of my delay in D.C. was that I got a chance to read over Kelly Baggett’s Ultimate No-Bull Speed Development Manual.  I’d glanced it over when Kelly sent it to me, but only now got the chance to give it the time it deserves.  To say that I am impressed would be an understatement; Kelly really has a knack for making the complex seem simple – and telling people how it is rather than just telling them what they want to hear.

This is a fantastic product for anyone who works with athletes; I would highly recommend checking it out:

The Ultimate No-Bull Speed Development Manual

New Article

For those who missed it, I had a new article published at T-Nation last week; check it out:

The Ten Rules of Corrective Lifting

That’s all for this week.  We’ll be back next week with all new content.

All the Best,

EC