Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 2/3/12

Written on February 3, 2012 at 12:11 pm, by Eric Cressey

Here’s this week’s list of recommended strength and conditioning reading:

The Art of Nutrition Coaching – I thought this guest post from Dr. John Berardi at PT on the Net was outstanding.  He highlights a counseling approach called Motivational Interviewing. I’m anxious to look into it myself.

Strength Exercise: DB Bulgarian Split Squat from Deficit – Since my “Strength Exercise of the Week” column has been very popular over the past few weeks, I thought I’d highlight an old one that has slipped to the archives.

6 Questions About Tempo Training – Mike Robertson published this at T-Nation recently, and it made me realize this commonly misunderstood strength and conditioning topic has never really gotten the in-depth analysis or explanation it deserves.

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Strength and Conditioning Stuff You Should Read: 7/18/11

Written on July 18, 2011 at 5:37 am, by Eric Cressey

It’s time to kick off the week with some recommended reading:

Meet the Real John Berardi – Dr. John Berardi is a guy I really admire for the way he’s built up a successful business (Precision Nutrition) and large following the right way: with fantastic information and and awesome “way” of getting through to people.  As I read this, it makes me appreciate that I could learn a lot from the good doctor on managing my personal time effectively, too!

Men’s Health: Coffee and Alzheimer’s Disease – I stumbled onto this Men’s Health blog by accident, but was very intrigued.  My grandfather passed away last fall after a long battle with Alzheimer’s, and he absolutely loved coffee.  In the past, I’ve read stories about how the body seems to know how to self-medicate, and reading this blog about the association between coffee consumption and reduced Alzheimer’s symptoms makes me wonder if Gramp knew something we didn’t.

Two Red Sox Prospects and Former Ivy League Rivals Find Common Ground – This ESPN Boston story features Cressey Performance athlete Matt Kramer, who has made the switch from catching to pitching in the middle of his pro career.

Last, but certainly not least, don’t miss out on Everything Elbow, the staff in-service I filmed last week.

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Why Nobody Except Your Mom Reads Your Fitness Blog

Written on April 20, 2011 at 2:32 pm, by Eric Cressey

I got an email from Dean Somerset last weekend if I’d be willing to write up a post for his blog about how I built up a popular fitness blog myself.  I thought it over, and while I like Dean and enjoy reading his blog, I really didn’t think I was the right person to write such a piece.  There are folks who are much smarter when it comes to behind-the-scenes stuff that goes in to running a blog – from WordPress updates, to HTML formatting, to SEO optimization.   And, there are certainly folks out there who have monetized their blog far better than I ever will.

That said, I do feel that there was one incredibly valuable point I should make to the aspiring fitness bloggers out there:

If you don’t have good content, your blog won’t get consistent traffic.  It’s really that simple.

I started this blog in early 2006 with really no idea what I was doing on the technology side of things.  I loved my job and was passionate about teaching – and writing gave me an avenue through which to do it.  Sometimes, I wrote about what I knew well, and sometimes, I wrote about topics where I wanted to improve – and researching them and teaching them to others was the best way to get better in these areas.  Before I ever hired someone to make my site look pretty, I’d built up a solid following of people who knew me purely for my content, enthusiasm, and accessibility to readers.

A trend I see with “rookie” fitness bloggers nowadays is to design a spectacular site from the get-go and devote all their resources to SEO optimization, pop-up ads, Google Adwords, and the like.  Unfortunately, these efforts are sabotaged by these bloggers’ poor grammar/spelling and, more significantly, a complete lack of valuable information to offer to readers.

In any industry, you look for commonalities among those who succeed at what we do.  For ease of calculating “success,” let’s just use Alexa ranking.   You can learn more about it (and download a free toolbar) at www.Alexa.com, but for the sake of brevity, just understand that it is a measure of the popularity of a website.  Get more hits, receive more inbound links from popular sites, and have people spending more time on your site, and your Alexa rank will go down (a lower number is better).  Google is #1, Facebook is #2, Yahoo is #3, and so on.  It’s not a perfect measure by any means, but when you are dealing in the top one million sites or so, it’s generally accepted to be pretty good. I’m lucky to be at around 101,000 right now, and have been as high as 89,000 in the past.

If you’re in the top one million or so, you’re likely doing some very good traffic – and certainly enough to monetize your blog.  My buddy Tim Ferriss’ blog, for instance, currently has an Alexa ranking of 3,644, and he’s an absolute ninja on the entrepreneurial side of things, with two New York Times bestsellers and ownership stakes in the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, and several other companies.  He’s a success, in part, because every single one of his posts (and books) provides outstanding content that readers not only enjoy – but pass along to their friends.

Translating this message to the fitness industry, look at a guy like Charlie Weingroff.  He might be one of the few guys out there who understands technology less than I do, and there is absolutely nothing flashy about his site.  To be candid, it’s pretty basic.  You know what, though?  Charlie is an extremely bright (and strong) dude with a ton to teach, a passion for teaching it, and a knack for relating complex information in a user-friendly manner.  I don’t think his blog has even been out for a year, yet he’s ranked around 639,000.  And, he’s used his blog to make his expertise known, build a loyal following, and launch a successful product (which is outstanding, by the way).

There are several other fitness bloggers who’ve become “top one million” success stories purely with content.  John Berardi dominates with Precision Nutrition (64,000), which has been built with science, integrity, and an ultra-personal touch to great content all along.  My business partner, Tony Gentilcore (706,000) kicks out great content and entertains people like crazy.  My good friend Mike Robertson (103,000) is an awesome teacher and genuinely great guy.  Nick Tumminello (537,000) innovates like crazy to build a following, and Chad Waterbury (475,000) only recently created his own web presence and has used content to quickly ascend the ranks.  Nate Green (202,000) is an excellent writer who has carved out a great niche for himself and built a great following at a young age because of his unique content.  Mike Reinold (400,000) has built a great following in a smaller internet segment (physical therapists) with consistent content featuring up-to-date research, attention to many different clinical perspectives, and a specific focus on upper extremity dysfunction.  These guys all offer something others don’t.

You know who hasn’t built a big following?

• The random fitness dudes who send Facebook friend requests to my wife because they have mutual friends – and these guys want to build their lists.  I’ve yet to meet a single one who is in the top 2 million.

• The “fitness business guru” who emailed me four times, called my office twice, and snail-mailed me once (each of which was ignored) to try to get me to promote his product, which he guaranteed would make personal trainers “rich.”  His website ranked at higher than 6.6 million – which essentially means that he has zero traffic other than himself (and he’s probably just checking in to see if he’s gotten his first hit yet).  Instead of focusing on content (and moving out of his parents’ basement), he’s putting the cart in front of the horse and trying to sell a product on a topic (success) that he doesn’t even understand.

• The random dude who wants to exchange links with me or be added to my blogroll so that he can improve his rankings without doing a thing, much less providing some value to me (or society in general).

The only thing that’s worse than sucking at what you do is sucking at what you do and spending time and money to draw attention to it.

I started out thinking that this would be a short, to-the-point, blog, but as I now realize, that one little point was actually a very big one.  Pretty websites and behind-the-scenes tinkering are undoubtedly important components of taking an online presence to the next level, but the truth is that they don’t matter a bit unless the content that accompanies them is useful and entertaining.

If it’s not, then you’ll have a hard time even getting Mom’s attention.

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Success Tips: Find the Common Threads

Written on March 26, 2011 at 2:08 pm, by Eric Cressey

Jay Bonn is a current Cressey Performance intern, but also a Lean Eating Coach for Precision Nutrition.  He recently pulled together an excellent piece on the commonalities of success in strength training programs, sports nutrition strategies, and strength and conditioning coaching.  I thought you all might like to take a look, as it’s a great read:

Success Tips: Find the Common Threads

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Lose Fat, Gain Muscle, Get Strong, and Laugh a Little – Installment 3

Written on March 10, 2011 at 6:30 am, by Eric Cressey

Reading today’s blog post should instantly drop your body fat by about 10% and increase your bench press by 50 pounds.  I can’t however, guarantee that you’ll laugh at my attempts at humor.

1. I just came across this recently published study: The effects of resistance training on endurance capacity and muscle fiber composition in young top-level cyclists.  Researchers put a group of cyclists through 16 weeks of resistance training alongside their normal endurance training, and assessed muscle fiber composition and a variety of performance measures pre- and post-intervention.  A control group only did the endurance component.

When all was said and done, researchers found that the combined group improved maximal muscular strength and rate of force development, a change that wasn’t seen with the endurance-only group.  Both groups improved their short-term (5min) endurance capacity, but only the group that strength training improved in a 45- minute test.  So, effectively, you can say that these athletes improved in both endurance measures and strength/power measures simultaneously (probably helped by the fact that cyclists aren’t exactly what I’d call “trained” in a strength training context – so they simply filled a void).

However, it’s a good lesson to be learned for the endurance athletes out there.  The endurance-only group was completely specific in their training; they only did cycling.  One might think that this specificity would allow them to achieve greater short-term results on endurance tests, but the opposite was true; those who did more strength training improved faster on both short and long measures of endurance performance (and without a change of muscle capillarization, an aerobic adaptation important for endurance athletes).  This just goes to show you that you need to exploit your windows of adaptation – even if they aren’t things you enjoy doing.

As a brief aside, my buddies Mike Westerdal and Elliott Hulse took some heat for talking about a “Type 3″ muscle fiber in the weeks leading up to the release of their Lean Hybrid Muscle program.

My impression of what they intended was a type II fiber (presumably a IIa fiber) that could “swing” either way and hold both favorable endurance properties (e.g., capillarization, mitochondrial density) and strength qualities (e.g., maximal strength, rate of force development, and cross-sectional area).  This study tends to substantiate that assertion, as the research has shown (as with this study) that all training leads to a shift toward a slower twitch phenotype – but NOT all training leads to concurrent improvements in both endurance and strength/power measures.  Sure, we didn’t have the most highly trained resistance training athletes, but I’d argue that they are more “fit” and “adapted” than a huge majority of the general population who participates in weight training.  Food for thought.

2. It’s remarkable how similar the “Sillies” are to the new fitness gadgets that come out each week, huh?

3. That answers this question:

4. This is an old Precision Nutrition article that I just happened to come across, but it is absolutely fantastic (and very enlightening). I’m not a cereal guy, and thanks to this article, I doubt I’ll become one anytime soon: All About Breakfast Cereals.

Back tomorrow with more madness…

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Stuff You Should Read: 9/27/10

Written on September 26, 2010 at 3:57 am, by Eric Cressey

The good news is that I survived my bachelor party on Saturday night, but the bad news is that it pretty much wiped out my productivity this past weekend.  Fortunately, I was planning to throw a few gems from the archives your way, anyway.  Check out the following:

21st Century Nutrition: Talking Shop with Dr. John Berardi – JB is a good friend and a smart dude – and with Precision Nutrition rolling out a nutrition certification this week, it seemed like a great day to give this interview with him some love.

The “Don’t Squat” Recommendation – We’ve all heard it – and all wanted to vomit because of it. It’s worth a read.

Lats: Not Just for Pulldowns – The thing I remember most vividly about this article was that I wrote it faster and easier than any other contribution I’ve ever made to T-Nation.  It literally rolled off my fingers without hesitation.  I guess that means that I was 100% sure about it.

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Nutrition, Medicine Ball Training, and Overhead Pressing for Baseball Players

Written on September 7, 2010 at 4:34 am, by Eric Cressey

In honor of the end of the minor league baseball season yesterday, I thought I’d go with a baseball-only theme today for our “Stuff You Should Read.” First, though, I thought I’d give you the heads-up that I finally broke down and got a Twitter account, on the recommendation of a few people.  If you’re interested in following me, you can do so HERE.

With that out of the way, some baseball articles that may interest you:

Athlete Profile: Shawn Haviland – This is a great feature at Precision Nutrition on one of our athletes, Shawn Haviland, who was recently named a California League All-Star after striking out 169 batters in 153.2 innings, with a 3.65 ERA.  Shawn has worked really hard to get where he is, and this article shows just how tough getting in proper nutrition can be during the professional baseball season.

Medicine Ball Madness – This piece touches on our unique medicine ball training program.  At some point, I’m going to get around to writing up a detailed resource on this, but for now, this will do.  Suffice it to say that our guys will get a little bit of a break over the next few weeks, and then we’ll be destroying a lot of med balls up through the first of the year.

Should Pitchers Overhead Press? – The following video is an excerpt from Mike Reinold and my Optimal Shoulder Performance DVD set.  It’s a great resource for fitness professionals and rehabilitation specialists alike – especially if you are working with baseball players.

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Random Friday Thoughts: Chicago, Cattle, Comcast, and Customer Service

Written on June 25, 2010 at 9:09 am, by Eric Cressey

I hope everyone had a good week.  I’m writing this blog in a bit of a hurry, as I need to pack this morning before heading to Cressey Performance and then directly to the airport to fly out to Chicago.

1. Why Chicago?  Well, in case you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t heard, this weekend is the second Perform Better Summit of the year.  I’ll be giving two talks on Saturday. If you’re up in the air on which one to attend, I’d recommend my second one (lecture, not hands on).  With the room design (no concrete walls), we won’t be able to do much true medicine ball training so that the hands-on can parallel my lecture topic.  I’ll be talking about shoulder assessment and corrective exercise with a little medicine ball flavor in my hands-on instead. There are a ton of videos in the presentation, though, so you’ll be able to get the next best thing.

While I enjoy presenting at seminars, I don’t like to travel at all; sitting in airports and on planes is just not my thing.  However, when it’s Perform Better, the hassle of traveling just doesn’t seem to be present – because I know how awesome the “light at the end of the tunnel” is.   As a presenter, I don’t always get to check out as many of the other talks as I’d like because I’m tied up with speaking and answering questions, but I do get to experience a lot of interaction with audience members and other speakers between lectures, at breakfast/lunch/dinner, and on the town.  These, for me, are really as valuable as the presentations themselves.  Audience members ask some excellent questions that can drive blog content, and I’ve also added some valuable people from around the country to my network this way.  Chatting with presenters is great as well, because they always have some new project or business strategy that they’re working on that can get my mind working.  Chicago is also great because I can catch up with my buddy, Josh Bonhotal, who is a strength and conditioning coach for the Chicago Bulls.

All that said, I have to say that it is kind of nice to see my schedule as empty for the rest of the summer.  With the new house, wedding planning, and our busiest month at Cressey Performance at-hand, it’ll be nice to focus my efforts here both personally and professionally.  I try to keep the summers reasonably free so that we can take weekend trips up to Maine to visit my parents a few times a month.  Additionally, with a few of our minor league guys on the cusp of call-ups to the big leagues, I want to make sure that I can hop on a plane at a moment’s notice to be there to support them and share in the excitement wherever they wind up making those MLB debuts.

Anyway, if you’re in attendance in Chicago, please be sure to introduce yourself.

2.Those of you who can’t make it would probably like this article as the next best thing: Medicine Ball Madness.

3. Oh, I should say that it looks like my second presentation coincides with the U.S. vs. Ghana World Cup game.  Skip me, if you have to; I’d probably skip me, if I was in your shoes.

Check out this great article from Ryan Andrews at Precision Nutrition: Cattle Feedlot: Behind the Scenes.

4. Many of you might recall how much I abhor Comcast.  Well, I’m happy to report that we officially kicked them to the curb about two weeks ago by making the switch to Verizon for our internet and cable – and I have to say that it was an awesome decision.  The price, service, speed, and product offering don’t just beat Comcast; they beat it like a red-headed rented mule.  If you’re thinking about making the switch, I highly recommend it.

Incidentally, I had to chuckle when I saw that MSN Money had released its list of the 2010 Customer Service Hall of Shame, and Comcast was in third place.  Meanwhile, Sprint – which I had dropped for my cell phone service after seven years (also to go with Verizon) was listed as #4.  I guess you could say that I was getting rid of the dead wood around here last month!

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The Best of 2009: Guest Submissions

Written on January 7, 2010 at 12:38 pm, by Eric Cressey

This week, I’ve already featured our top articles, product reviews, and videos of 2009.  I was also really lucky to have some bright minds as guest contributors this year, and today I’ll feature a few of their submissions.

The Rocker Inferior Capsule Stretch – This excellent submission from physical therapist Tim DiFrancesco shows a shoulder mobility exercises we’ve used with some of our guys with excellent results.  It includes some great videos like this:

So What Does a Pitching Coach Do, Anyway? – I love this guest blog from Matt Blake, a great pitching guy with whom I get to work daily.  It just goes to show you that there is a lot more to understand than mechanics when it comes to developing elite pitchers.

21st Century Nutrition: Talking Shop with Dr. John Berardi – This was more of an interview than a guest submission, but let’s be honest: JB provided most of the content here!  He discusses the future of nutrition and the success of Precision Nutrition.

The Be-All, End-All Throwing Program from Your Favorite Snake Oil Salesman – Here’s another post from Matt Blake.  I like this one because it’s entertaining thanks to the cynical tone that kicks it off, but educational because of the justification for that cynicism.  It’s classic “info-tainment.”

Real Activation: Modifying a Classic Core Movement – Jim Smith is perhaps best known for being a true innovator when it comes to exercise selection, and this post was an excellent one for that very reason.

Interval Training: HIIT or Miss? – A great guest submission from Mike Boyle; enough said!

Building Vibrant Health Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 – Eric Talmant presented a comprehensive look at his involvement with Metabolic Typing(R).

Thanks to everyone for the time they spent on creating these pieces, and the expertise they shared!

Random Friday Thoughts: 11/27/09

Written on November 27, 2009 at 6:55 pm, by Eric Cressey

1. First off, I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.  Before I get to the video footage from yesterday morning, I wanted to give you a couple of quick heads-ups on some seminars at which I’ll be speaking in 2010 (just confirmed):

• January 30, 2010: Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning 4th Annual Winter Seminar – Winchester, MA
• March 7-8, 2010: NSCA Personal Trainers Conference – Las Vegas, NV
• March 27-28, 2010: Vancouver Seminar (click here for details)
• May 8-10, 2010: Sports Medicine 2010: Advances in MRI and Orthopaedic Management – Boston, MA

Hope to see some of you at one or more of these events!

2. A big congratulations goes out to CP athlete CJ Retherford, who hit the game-winning HR in the championship of the Arizona Fall League (Video HERE).  CJ will be out to Boston to train when January rolls around.

3. And, just when we thought the post-baseball-season celebration was over, we learned that CP athlete Tim Collins was named Toronto Blue Jays Organizational Pitcher of the Year.  Congratulations, Tim!

4. John Berardi is running a great sale on Precision Nutrition through December 1.  They’re offering them the Precision Nutrition System – including Gourmet Nutrition Version 1 and an all-access membership to their private Member Zone – plus a one-year subscription to their Results Tracker program, and free shipping to the US and Canada for just $99.00. If you haven’t checked it out – or you have a family member or friend who could use some help on the nutrition side of things – I’d strongly encourage you to check this out.  It’s the single-best nutrition resource available on the web today: Precision Nutrition

5. We’ll have the pictures and videos from the CP Thanksgiving lift posted as soon as possible.  A camera was lost and we’re in the process of finding it!

6. In the meantime, here are some recommended readings from the past here at EricCressey.com that might interest you:

Hip Injuries in Baseball: My take on the huge increase in hip issues in MLB players.

Stagnancy vs. Stability: Even in a dynamic field like strength and conditioning, the status quo is sometimes still just fine.

7. Just got this little bit of feedback on Assess and Correct from Mark Young of markyoungtrainingsystems.com:

“As a strength coach myself, I have literally read thousands of studies, textbooks, and articles relating to assessment and correction.  But when I heard that Mike, Eric, and Bill were going to be putting together a product on this very subject I wanted to be first in line to put my hard earned money on the table. I think this product is going to change how people prepare for performance and that owning it is a must for anyone who is absolutely serious about results.”

Check it out for yourself: Assess and Correct.