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

Written on November 11, 2011 at 6:45 am, by Eric Cressey

First off, on Veterans Day, a big thank you goes out to all our readers who either have served or are serving in the military.  We appreciate all that you do and have done!

With that said, here are a few recommended reads for the week:

7 Fat Loss Essentials – This is a free webinar from Dr. Mike Roussell that I thought was extremely well done.  I’ve always enjoyed Mike’s nutrition stuff, and it’s awesome to see him kicking out great content on a regular basis now that he’s done with his PhD.

Inverted Row Ignorance – I saw an ugly inverted row video online this week, and it reminded me of this post I wrote back in 2009.  Everything I said still holds true, though!

Don’t Forget the S-C Joint – Patrick Ward posted this great blog on the impact of the sternoclavicular joint on upper extremity function.  It’s a bit more “geeky” and largely aimed toward manual therapists, but there are still some valuable lessons to learn for all of us.  I can tell you that nine out of ten times, right-handed pitchers are going to be very fibrotic in the subclavius area – just lateral to the S-C joint.  Attending to this one region can yield big payoffs in terms of upper extremity movement.

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Workout Routines: Exercising on Vacation – Part 2

Written on April 13, 2011 at 5:56 am, by Eric Cressey

In my last blog post, Workout Routines: Exercising on Vacation – Part 1, I outlined why I think it’s a good idea for most people to have at least a little structured exercise over the course of a vacation that spans a week or more.  Today, I wanted to use my own vacation workout schedule as an example of how you can stay active without filling up your schedule too much.

First, though, I think it’s important to make two points:

1. There’s a difference between “physical activity” and “exercise” – and it’s fine for a vacation to include a lot more of the former than the latter.  You’ll see below that I didn’t “exercise” every day, but I was very physically active the entire time.  We walked on the beach almost every morning, and during our trip, we did ziplined, swam, rode horses, snorkeled, and hiked.

2. What you do before you leave for vacation is likely as important as what you do during vacation.  I prefer to intentionally “overreach” right before I leave for any extended period of time, as it allows me to essentially “write off” the first few days of travel as recovery (everybody likes to sleep on airplanes and crush awful airport food, right?).

To that end, we flew out on a Saturday morning very early in the morning, so I chalked Saturday up as a travel day.  That meant that Mo-Fr in the week before were training days (MoTh – upper body, TuFr – lower body, We – energy systems work).  Since I knew I wouldn’t really have access to any heavy weights to use for lower body training, I made sure that it was the last thing I did before I left.  Here’s how the rest of the vacation looked (keep in mind that my wife joined me for all these sessions; it wasn’t like I was ditching her on our honeymoon):

Sa: Travel Day (just a walk on the beach that night)
Su: Upper body TRX work consisting of inverted rows, pushups, Ys, Fallouts, External Rotations/Ws, and some curls for the girls (hey, I was pretty much on the beach; don’t judge!)

Mo: Sprinting on the beach (eight sprints of about 80yds).  When the view is this good, you really can’t complain about being out of breath.

Tu: Lower Body TRX work consisting of pistol squats, stir the pot (video below, thanks to Dewey Nielsen), Bulgarian split squats, calf raises, and side bridges

We: Upper body TRX work consisting of (more) inverted rows, flutters, 1-arm row w/reach, and fallout extensions

Th: 2 hours of snorkeling was plenty of physical activity for me

Fr: Another light TRX session, which was just kind of a filler of inverted rows (figured I’d use this week to be proactive with my bum shoulder) and additional core work.  To be very honest, I was pretty sunburned by this point, which is why I kept it short.  Did do some prone reaches (props to Dewey below once again), which is a good exercise to try, if you haven’t seen them before:

Sa: 3 hours hiking in Manuel Antonio National Park.  Not a bad view from the top, huh?

Su: More sprinting on the beach, this time for 12 sprints of about 60yds.

Mo: Travel Day, so not much moving around besides the 2-3 mile walk on the beach that morning

We arrived home at midnight, and I was back to my normal lifting schedule on Tuesday.

As you can see, this wasn’t a ton of training time.  In fact,  I don’t think a single one of these sessions lasted more than 20 minutes, and all of them were done outside in the fresh air and sunshine.  I’m not saying that you have to include this much exercise in your vacations, but I am trying to show that if you are interested in maintaining an active lifestyle even when you travel, that it can be done quite easily and without a ton of time invested. Plus, most of these were body weight training exercises, so you don’t need a lot of equipment to get them done.

Have some vacation exercise strategies of your own?  Please share them in the comment section below.

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Stuff You Should Read: 7/20/10

Written on July 20, 2010 at 4:48 am, by Eric Cressey

Here’s this week’s list of recommended reading:

Total Football Training – I just got an advanced copy of San Francisco 49ers strength coach Duane Carlisle’s new product, and read it over this past weekend.  There’s some really good stuff in there – definitely a good fit for the football players reading this blog. It includes an eight-week off-season training program where all the drills are demonstrated on the accompanying DVDs.

Inverted Row Ignorance – Here’s one from the archived that reminds us once again just how often this exercise is absolutely butchered.

The Right Way to Stretch the Pecs – Here’s a T-Muscle article that gives you some practical suggestions on loosening up these chronically tight muscles without throwing your shoulders under the bus.

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Inverted Row Ignorance

Written on January 19, 2009 at 5:00 am, by Eric Cressey

In this week’s “The Biggest Loser made me want to stab my eye out with a hot poker” moment, I watched what appeared to be a 1,742-pound woman attempt to do an inverted row.  It was an admirable attempt, for sure, but I’m sorry to say that in all my years of coaching and writing strength and conditioning programs, I’ve can think of fewer than 20 females who have ever been able to perform a single good inverted row.

This isn’t a knock on women; it’s just that they, on average, have markedly less strength than men in the upper body.  And, more importantly, the inverted row is a more advanced strength exercise than people realize – so that strength discrepancy will be more readily apparent.

As a frame of reference, here is what a good inverted row looks like:

As you can see, the chin stays tucked to keep the cervical spine (neck) in line with the rest of the body.  Without that forward head posture, you’re getting just the kind of scapular retraction you want.  Speaking of scapular retraction, you’ll also notice that the chest is going ALL THE WAY up to the bar.

There are three compensation patterns that you’ll come across.  To protect the innocent, I won’t post videos, but rest assured that if you did a quick YouTube search for “inverted row,” you’d quickly come across example of the following:

1. The Ceiling Humper: This individual will give a little tug of elbow flexion and scapular retraction to get about halfway up, and then he/she will violently thrust the crotch to the heavens.  In some circles, this individual is known as “The Fish.”  Regardless, it isn’t pretty.

2. The Scared Cat: This individual basically does a curl – including curling the wrists in – so that there is essentially everything occurring except scapular retraction.  In the process, they get to the top – but in that top position, they are rounded up in a ball like – you guessed it – a scared cat.  There is, however, a delightful chin protrusion/forward head posture that makes that individual believe that the movement actually took place.  Unfortunately, it didn’t – and this effort, too, isn’t pretty.

3. The Half-Asser: This individual is the lazy cousin of the Ceiling Humper and Scared Cat.  He can be found around dudes who do half pull-ups, pop their collars, and live in their parents’ basements.  Very simply, he (or she, for that mattter) only goes halfway up – but usually still insists on using the feet-on-the-box set-up (the most advanced progression).

Sadly, the acronym IRA was already taken, so Inverted Rows Anonymous could never get off the ground – and these issues persist.  I suspect that we’re looking at a $47 million government stimulus package to remedy the issue.  And, as our new commander-in-chief has stated, “things are going to get worse before they get better,” be prepared to observe this inverted row ignorance for quite some time before it’s addressed.

For a host of better scapular stabilization exercises, check out Optimal Shoulder Performance.

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