The Biggest Magnificent Mobility/Inside-Out Blowout Sale of All Time

Written 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 Stretch

Written 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.

The Who-What-When-Where-Why of Flexibility Training

Written on June 23, 2009 at 6:55 am, by Eric Cressey

I got this question the other day and thought I’d share my response:

Q: When significant improvements in flexibility are either desired or needed, do you have any general suggestions with regard to what method(s) and type of schedule set-up (frequency, duration of session, etc.) would help accomplish this in the most timely and efficient manner possible?

A: As always, my answer would be “it depends.”  And, more specifically, it depends on whether you are talking about short or stiff tissue.

If a tissue is legitimately short – meaning that it has lost sarcomeres due to chronic immobilization – longer duration holds are ideal.  Bill Hartman and Mike Robertson go into great detail in covering this in the Indianapolis Performance Enhancement DVD Set, as I noted HERE.

If you are dealing with someone with capsular issues (outside the scope of practice of the personal trainers and strength coaches out there, in most cases), then you might just leave them alone with 15 minutes of low-load passive stretching (e.g., theraband wrapped around a DB to hold the shoulder in external rotation after a period in a sling).  Going back to our “loss of sarcomeres” scenario, if you’re dealing with something more muscular-only issues, the least you’ll want is five 30s holds throughout the day, in my experience.  Or, if feeling bold, you can have people set up for 3x5min holds or 1x15min hold.  In both cases, total duration over the course of the day is likely more important than duration per stretch.

If it’s stiff, in order to get it to relax, you likely need to train an adjacent tissue that acts as a synergist.  A good example would be strengthening the lower traps to take the stress off chronically overused upper traps and the stiff neck that follows.  Or, we have activating the glutes to take the stress off the lumbar erectors and/or hamstrings and adductor magnus.  Here is a great blog post from Bill Hartman that closely illustrates the point that you don’t necessarily have to stretch a muscle to reduce its stiffness.

Of course, you can never go wrong with integrating a good dynamic warm-up program prior to exercise, as this option challenges both range-of-motion and stability to provide a comprehensive training effect in a matter of minutes.

So, in the end, it’s different strokes for different folks – at different times, with different issues.  Keep an eye out for an upcoming project from Bill, Mike, and I that really delves into this in great detail.  It’ll be the most comprehensive resource out there for self-assessment and corrective exercise.

Birthday Blogging: 28 Years, 28 Favorites

Written on May 20, 2009 at 6:13 am, by Eric Cressey

I turn 28 today, so in hopes of distracting myself from the painful realization that I’m starting to go bald, I thought I’d focus on the positives of my existence in contexts that would appeal to you.  Below, you’ll find 28 of my favorite things – most of which are at least loosely related to fitness, nutrition, strength and conditioning, and sports.

1. Favorite Nickname: Power Alleys.  This seemed like a good starting point, as power alleys are bald spots.  Credit for this one goes to Mets pitching prospect Tim Stronach.

2. Favorite Thing About Cressey Performance: The camaraderie among the athletes/clients. I think the hard thing to appreciate about our facility without experiencing it first-hand and being there on a regular basis is that it’s as much about the environment and attitude as it is about the expertise and programming.  I’m psyched that we’ve not only created an environment where clients can improve physically, but one in which they can thrive socially, too.

3. Favorite Book I’ve Read Related to Fitness: Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes, by Shirley Sahrmann.  This book got me thinking more about dysfunction and less about pathology.  Quality of movement is often far more important than anything a MRI or x-ray can ever tell you.

4. Favorite Book I’ve Read Unrelated to Fitness: This is a top-up between The Tipping Point and A Prayer for Owen Meany.  They might be taken over, however, by one of the gifts I just got for my birthday from CP Client Steph Holland-Brodney.

5. Favorite DVD I’ve Watched: The Indianapolis Performance Enhancement Seminar DVD Set.  Bill Hartman’s presentation on “Stiff vs. Short” alone makes this a fantastic resource, and the rest is just gravy.  I reviewed it HERE.

6. Favorite DVD I’ve Co-Created: The Building the Efficient Athlete DVD set.  I think I’m most proud of this resource because it’s something that provided something I so desperately wanted – but couldn’t get – during my college education.  Effectively, it’s a resource that blends book memorization with real-world practice with a focus on functional anatomy, assessments, and troubleshooting common exercises.

7. Favorite Seminar I’ve Attended: The Perform Better 3-Day Functional Training Summit.  Each year, they get better and better.  Check out Chicago or Long Beach this year if you missed Providence.

8. Favorite Athlete of All Time: Barry Sanders.  I can’t imagine an guy with better kinesthetic awareness, body control, or ability to turn a complete disaster of a play into a 90-yard touchdown run – while carrying two defensive linemen on his back.

9. Favorite Athlete of All-Time that you’ve probably never heard of: Jerry Sichting.  He played for the Celtics from 1985 to 1988, and I’ll always remember the night Sichting – at a heigh of 6-1 – got in a fight with 7-4 Ralph Sampson during the 1986 NBA Finals.  At the time, I was a five-year old shadow boxing in my living room yelling at the top of my lungs.

10. Favorite Place to Visit: Fenway Park

11. Second Favorite Place to Visit: Gampel Pavilion at the University of Connecticut.  It’s an incredible environment in which to watch college basketball, and it’s also where I spent just about all my time from 2003 to 2005.

12. Favorite Exercise: was this ever in question?

13. Favorite Sites I Visit Just About Every Day: T-Nation.com, MinorLeagueBaseball.com, ESPN.com, Sports.Yahoo.com, WilliamInman.com, 38Pitches.com, ShawnHaviland.Blogspot.com, MetrowestDailyNews.com, StrengthCoach.com, MikeReinold.com, RobertsonTrainingSystems.com, BillHartman.net, AlwynCosgrove.Blogspot.com, DieselCrew.com, PrecisionNutrition.com, BrianStPierreTraining.com, Tony Gentilcore’s Blog, Boston.com, BarstoolSports.com, Facebook.com, EricCressey.com.

14. Favorite Kind of Injury to See (weird category, I know): Labral Tears (SLAP lesions), or really any kind of shoulder or elbow pain in pitchers.  You’ve got so many potential causes that it’s kind of fun (for me, not the athlete) to go through a process of elimination to see what combination of factors caused it.  There are all the classic flexibility deficits in pitchers, plus scapular instability, poor thoracic spine mobility, plus faulty mechanics, plus inappropriate training volumes, plus weak lower bodies.  It’s kind of like peeling back the layers on an onion to see what shakes free.  It’s also a great scenario to illustrate what I talked about with respect to diagnostic imaging in #3 from above.  All of these guys will have labral fraying and rotator cuff partial thickness tears at the very least; it’s our job to fix them up and make them work efficiently in spite of these structural deficits in situations where surgery isn’t warranted.

15. Favorite Class I Took in School: Gross Anatomy.  Yes, I cherished the semester I spent with a bunch of cadavers.

16. Favorite Healthy Food: Apple-Cinnamon Protein Bars from John Berardi’s Gourmet Nutrition Cookbook. Admittedly, I often just eat the batter before it ever gets cooked.  Not good, I know.

17. Favorite Piece of Equipment We Have at CP: Giant Cambered Bar.  Along with the safety squat bar and front squat set-up, this bad boy has allowed me to keep squatting even though my right shoulder decided a long time ago that traditional back squats weren’t a good idea.  It’s also a great asset for working with overhead throwing athletes who should avoid the externally rotated, abducted position under load.

18. Favorite Thing About Having a Blog: I can write a lot more casually than in my newsletter, which tends to be more geeky.  And, I can post videos of this kid rocking out:

19. Favorite Mobility Drill: Walking Spiderman w/Overhead Reach.  I love this drill because you’re covering so many things at once.  You’ll get thoracic spine extension and rotation from the reach, and hip flexor and adductor length in the lower body from the lunge angle.  Keep an eye out for more new movements along these lines in the months to come as we film the sequel to the Magnificent Mobility DVD.

20. Favorite Pastime I Had to Give Up: Fantasy Baseball/Basketball.  During my sophomore year of undergrad, I finished fourth in the world in NBA.com’s Virtual GM contest.  Long story short, if you want to be really good at fantasy sports with that kind of set-up, you’ve got to put a lot of time into it – and realize that it won’t make girls like you.  You’ll also find yourself watching games in which you’d otherwise have absolutely no interest. I couldn’t do it half-ass (aside from the CP Fantasy Football League), so I gave it up.

21. Favorite Inedible Toy: Rubber Steak.

Suffice it to say that Fire & Ice wouldn’t allow us to eat a birthday cake inside their restaurant on Saturday night in celebration of my awesomeness.  So, in celebration of their suckiness, none of us (16 in all) will ever eat again – and I was reduced to gnawing on dog toys.

22. Favorite Birthday Excitement: Apparently, it’s going to be taking my car in to get work done, buying a new laptop, and then coaching ‘em upat CP.  There will also be a dominant upper body lift at CP that will undoubtedly feature Kevin Larrabee missing 300…again…and again).

23. Favorite Bench Press Celebration Spectacle: Antwan Harris, post 340 bench press.

24. Favorite Strength and Conditioning Coach Who is Having Surgery on my Birthday: Josh Bonhotal, Chicago Bulls.  I talked with Josh yesterday and he informed me that he was finally having his ACL fixed today in celebration of my birthday.  Nothing says “Happy Birthday, Buddy” like taking a chunk out of your patellar tendon and turning it into an anterior cruciate ligament.  It’s kind of like planting a tree on Earth Day.  What a nice gesture.

25. Favorite Article Series I’ve Written: A New Model for Training Between Starts (Part 1 and Part 2).  These articles were actually picked up by Collegiate Baseball Magazine as front-page features, and I received a lot of great feedback about them.  If there is one thing I do before I retire, it’s convincing the world of the evils of distance running for pitchers.  I’d put the Shoulder Savers series in a close second

26. Favorite Supplement: Fish Oil.  It’s followed closely by Vitamin D.  You need both – and probably a lot more than you think. I’m a simple guy when it comes to this stuff.

27. Favorite Random Website a Buddy Texted to Me Last Week: www.EasyCurves.com.  This thing is hilarious. A special thanks goes out to Jesse Burdick for making me just a little bit dumber with that.

28. Favorite Sign of Athlete Dedication for the Month: We have two college pitchers up here from Pennsylvania for the month to work on getting bigger, stronger, faster, and more flexible in hopes of a nice velocity jump on the mound, and the obvious injury prevention benefits of such training.  That’s all well and good – until you hear that they got an unfurnished apartment in Hudson, MA.  These guys are sleeping on mattresses on the floor, and all they brought were a few lamps, a TV, some books, and a whole lot of enthusiasm and motivation.  That’s committment to training – and just the kind of guys we like to have around Cressey Performance.

What kind of sacrifices are you making to get better and move closer to your goals?  I’m not sure that sleeping on a mattress on the floor is necessary, but it says a lot.

With that in mind, I’m not taking today off.  There is work to be done and I love to do it, birthday or not.

Pulled Quad – or is it?

Written on May 19, 2009 at 6:57 am, by Eric Cressey

Q: How should I warm up properly before sprinting sessions? Back in the day when I did sports my quads were always prone to injuries. Funny thing is I haven’t had any problems when doing squats of any kind. Recently I decided to involve some alactic work in my workout and immediately pulled a quad doing sprints. It’s obviously something wrong with my warm-up!

A: Saying “pulled quad” might be a little bit too general.  In reality, most of the time, you’re looking at a rectus femoris strain.  While it is one of the quadriceps, the rectus femoris is also active as a hip flexor.  So, as the picture below shows, it crosses two joints.

The rectus femoris is responsible for both hip flexion and knee extension.  So, as you can imagine, it is placed on a huge stretch when an athlete goes into a position of hip extension and knee flexion – kind of like this:

You’re asking the rectus femoris to go on a huge stretch there – and under very high velocities.  With a squat, you’re not putting it on full stretch, as the hip and knee are both flexed.  So, with that in mind, it’s not surprising at all that sprinting would bother your “quad” when squatting doesn’t – especially since we know the overwhelming majority of folks out there are tight in the rectus femoris.  Why?

Well, first, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that, as a society, we sit far too much.  Second, though, is the fact that most people never really get above 90 degrees of hip flexion in anything that they do.  Mike Boyle has done a great job of outlining how we can develop imbalanced hip flexion patterns; essentially, we never use our psoas, the only hip flexor active above 90 degrees of hip flexion. The picture below is kind of rudimentary (and somewhat awkward), but it shows what I’m getting at with respect to the advantageous attachment points for psoas with respect to hip flexion above 90 degrees:

How many of the folks at your gym are getting 90+ degrees of hip flexion with their treadmill, stairclimber, and elliptical work?  None.  So, we underuse psoas, and overuse rectus – and it shortens up over time.  Take a short muscle through a maximal stretch at high-velocities, and it’s going to hate you.  So, what to do?

Well, first, I’d recommend running through some warm-ups from Assess and Correct, and that’ll cover a lot of the fundamentals (especially if you go through the assessments to figure out what else is going on).  One important thing that’ll cover is activation work for psoas; Kevin Neeld demonstrates one option here:

Second, just add in some targeted static stretching for the rectus femoris a few times a day using this stretch (don’t start using it until the “pulled quad” has settled down, though).

Third, and most importantly, ease your way into sprinting.  Not everyone is prepared to just jump right in full-throttle.  I discuss this in further detail in my contribution to the most recent Mythbusters article at T-Nation.  Basically, just get out there twice a week and do some 60-yd build-ups at 80% of your best on a grass field.

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Rethinking Interval Training

Written on May 5, 2009 at 9:42 am, by Eric Cressey

A Few Quick Announcements

To kick things off, a few quick congratulations to some Cressey Performance athletes on some nice achievements from the past few weeks.

First, Danny O’Connor ran his professional record to 6-0 with a winning decision at Foxwoods last weekend.  O’Connor, a 135-pound 2008 Olympic boxer for the US, knocked his opponent down twice – including out of the ring once – en route to the win.  He’ll be fighting again in June in his hometown of Boston.

Second, Will Inman (Padres – Texas League) and Jeff Locke (Braves – Carolina League) earned pitcher of the week honors in their respective minor leagues.  Both guys spent some time at Cressey Performance this off-season and are off to fantastic starts this season.

Third, at 11-0, the Lincoln-Sudbury baseball team is currently ranked #1 in the state of Massachusetts.  Anyone who tells you that camaraderie isn’t an important characteristic of a winning team has never watched the LS guys train, practice, or play.  Here’s the last few minutes of the first annual LS Team Day on Friday:

Fourth, here’s a great article feature article in the Boston Herald about Cressey Performance athlete and Weston pitcher Sahil Bloom: Weston Ace on the Right Path

Lastly, I’ll be speaking at the Perform Better Summit in Providence, RI this weekend.  If you’re in attendance, be sure to say hello.  Also, I’ll be speaking at  two great sports medicine conferences here in Boston in the month of June.  For more information, check out my Schedule Page.

Rethinking Interval Training

I love interval training, but one of the problems we commonly run into – particularly if someone isn’t prepared physically to sprint, or doesn’t have a place to do it because of weather restrictions – is that repetitive, low-amplitude motions are our only options.  In other words, it has to just be cycling, elliptical, or stairclimber.  While slideboard work, medicine ball medleys, barbell complexes, and sled pushing definitely help to work around these problems, when it comes down to it, many of them still don’t give certain folks the variety they need in their exercise programming.

In our Building the Efficient Athlete seminar, Mike Robertson and I spoke about the law of repetitive motion: I = NF/AR

In this equation, injury equals the number of repetitions multiplied by the frequency of those repetitions, divided by the amplitude of each repetition times the rest interval.  While you can attack each of these five factors differently (and I will in a future newsletter), the take-home point with respect to today’s discussion is that simply increasing the amplitude – or range-of-motion – in one’s daily life can reduce (or eliminate) the presence or severity of overuse conditions.

For that reason, I often substitute one or both of two different training modalities for client’s interval training.

The first is dynamic flexibility circuits with little to no rest between sets.  In this scenario, we program 2-3 different mobility/activation drills for each inefficiency the athlete displays, and then combine them in a series of drills.  Ideally, as many of these drills are done in the standing position as possible.  Let’s say a client has poor thoracic spine mobility, a horrific Thomas test, bad glute function, and poor hip external rotation.  Here’s what his circuit might look like:

a) 1-leg supine bridge

b) wall hip flexor mobilizations

c) 3-point extension-rotations

d) cradle walks

e) overhead lunge walks

f) walking spiderman with overhead reach

g) yoga push-ups

h) 1-leg SLDL walks

(you can find videos of many of these exercises in the Magnificent Mobility DVD, and I’ll have more information on the rest down the road)

Is this circuit going to completely “gas” an athlete?  Absolutely not.  However, it is going to make him/her better in light of the inefficiencies I outlined above – and you don’t have to leave the gym exhausted to have improved.

The second option is to simply take a series of resistance training exercises with a corrective emphasis (sometimes integrates with the drills outlined above) and put them in a series of supersets.  For these exercises, the load utilized should only be about 30% of 1-rep max.  I outlined this option a while back in my article, Cardio Confusion. Here’s an example I used with an online consulting client recently:

A1) Overhead broomstick walking Lunges (3×10/side)

A2) Push-ups (3×12)

B1) Face pulls (3×15)

B2) Body weight only reverse lunges (3×10/side)

C1) 1-leg SLDL Walk (2×6/side)

C2) Band external rotations – arm adducted (2×15/side)

D1) Behind-the-neck band pullaparts (2×15)

D2) Bowler Squats (2×10/side)

This series is preceded by foam rolling and a dynamic flexibility warm-up, and can be followed by more “traditional” interval training.

Like I said earlier, I’m still all for both traditional and non-traditional interval training.  Initiative like I outlined above, though, can serve as a nice change of pace and work in corrective exercise while keeping the heart rate up.  Be as creative as you’d like and you’ll see great results; the sky is the limit in terms of the combinations you can use.

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The Right Way to Stretch the Pecs

Written on January 10, 2009 at 6:00 pm, by Eric Cressey

Stretches to maintain length of both the pectoralis major and pectoralis minor are really important — especially in the weight-training population, where Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are declared national bench press holidays in all 52 weeks of the year. Simply put, everyone presses too much and pulls too little.

However, what few people (including Mike and I, circa 2004) realize is that in the process of stretching out the pecs (particularly pectoralis major) in this fashion, you run the risk of irritating the anterior shoulder capsule, particularly if the shoulder blades aren’t stabilized. As the picture below shows, the attachment point of the pectoralis major is further down the humerus.

Continue Reading…

Product Review: Afterburn

Written on January 8, 2008 at 2:12 pm, by Eric Cressey

Product Review: Alwyn Cosgrove’s Afterburn

If you aren’t familiar with Alwyn Cosgrove’s stuff, you’re really missing out; here is a guy who has produced results time and time again.  If you’re looking to get lean fast, but don’t have a clue where to start, let Alwyn show you the way.  One of the best aspects of this product is that there’s something for everyone.  Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned veteran, you’ll learn some tricks of the trade to get you to where you want to be faster.  I’ve used a lot of Alwyn’s ideas personally and with my athletes and clients; I would encourage you to check them out and experience the results for yourself.

Afterburn

Eric Cressey Interview

Yes, I’m really putting an interview with me in my own newsletter.  It’s not what you think, though! Brian Grasso from www.DevelopingAthletics.com interviewed me for his newsletter last week; I hope you enjoy it!

Eric Cressey is one of the youngest and brightest stars in the conditioning world today.  He and I have forged a great relationship as of late and I wanted to bring his expertise to you… you WILL be impressed!

BG – Your newest DVD, Magnificent Mobility cites the importance of delineating the difference between “mobility” and “flexibility” in a training program. What is the difference and when do each apply?

EC – Those are great questions, Brian; very few people understand the difference – and it is a big one. Flexibility merely refers to range of motion – and, more specifically, passive range of motion as achieved by static stretching. Don’t get me wrong; static stretching has its place. I see it as tremendously valuable in situations where you want to:

a) Relax a muscle to facilitate antagonist activation (e.g. stretch the hip flexors to improve glute recruitment)

b) Break down scar tissue following an injury and/or surgery (when the new connective tissue may require “realignment”)

c) Loosen someone up when you can’t be supervising them (very simply, there is less likelihood of technique breakdown with static stretching because it isn’t a dynamic challenge)

However, the principle problem with pure flexibility is that it does not imply stability nor preparedness for dynamic tasks. As one of my mentors, Dr. David Tiberio, taught me, we need to have mobile-stability; there’s really no use in being able to attain a given range of motion if you can’t stabilize yourself in that position. Excessive passive flexibility without mobility (or dynamic flexibility, as it’s been called) will actually increase the risk of injury!

Moreover, it’s not uncommon at all to see individuals with circus-like passive flexibility fail miserably on dynamic tasks. For instance, I recently began working with an accomplished ballet dancer who can tie herself into a human pretzel, but could barely hit parallel on a body weight squat until after a few sessions of corrective training. She was great on the dynamic tasks that were fundamentally specific to her sport, but when faced with a general challenge that required mobility in a non-familiar range of motion, she was grossly unprepared to handle it. She had flexibility, but not mobility; the instability and the lack of preparation for the dynamic motion were the limiting factors. She could achieve joint ranges of motion, but her neuromuscular system wasn’t prepared to do much of anything in those ranges of motion.

We went to great lengths in Magnificent Mobility to not only outline mobility drills, but also what we call “activation” movements. Essentially, they teach often-dormant muscles to fire at the right times to normalize the muscle balance, improve performance, and reduce the risk of injury. Collectively, mobility and activation drills are best performed as part of the warm-up and on off-days as active recovery. We’ve received hundreds of emails already from athletes and ordinary weekend warriors claiming improved performance, enhanced feeling of well-being, and resolution of chronic injuries; this kind of positive feedback really makes our jobs fun!

BG – You certainly are known for you ability to get athletes stronger. What type of training do you use for adolescent athletes… let me narrow that down (i) a 16 year old with no formal strength training experience (ii) a 16 year with a solid foundation and decent knowledge with exercise form

EC – First and foremost, we have fun. It doesn’t matter how educated or passionate I am; I’m not doing my job if they aren’t having a blast coming in to train with me. With respect to the individual athletes, I’ll first roll through a health history and just run them through some basic dynamic flexibility movements to see where they stand. As we all know, there is a lot of variation in terms of physical maturity and training experience at these ages, and I can get a pretty good idea of what they need just by watching them move a bit. In your individual cases, much of my training would revolve around the following:

In the unprepared athlete, I’d go right into several body weight drills – many of them isometric in nature – to teach efficiency. We often see an inability to differentiate between lumbar spine and pelvic motion, so I spend quite a bit of time emphasizing that the lumbar spine should be stable, and range of motion should come from the hips, thoracic spine, scapulae, and arms. Loading is the least of my concerns in the first few sessions; research has demonstrated that beginners can make progress on as little as 40% of 1RM, so why rush things with heavy loading that will compromise form? The lighter weights will allow them to groove technique and improve connective tissue health prior to the introduction of heavier loading.

At the start, I’ll emphasize unilateral work; mobility; any corrective training that’s needed; classic stabilization movements (i.e. bridges); and learning the compound movements, deceleration/landing mechanics, and how to accelerate external loads (e.g. medicine balls, free weights). I’ll also make a point of mentioning that how you unrack and rerack weights is just as important as how you train; it drives me crazy to see a kid return a bar to the floor with a rounded back.

In the athlete with a solid foundation, I’ll run through those same preliminary drills to verify that they are indeed “solid” and not just good compensators for dysfunction. Believe it or not, most “trained” athletes really aren’t that “trained” if you use efficiency as a marker of preparedness – even at the Division I, professional, and Olympic ranks; you can be a great athlete in spite of what you do and not necessarily because of what or how you do it.

Assuming things are looking good, I’ll look to give them more external loading on all movements, as the fastest inroads to enhanced performance will always be through maximal strength in novice athletes. As they get more advanced, I’ll start to look more closely at whether they’re more static or spring dominant and incorporate more advanced reactive training movements. Single-leg movements are still of paramount importance, and we add in some controlled strongman-type training to keep things interesting and apply the efficiency in a less controlled environment. Likewise, as an athlete’s deceleration mechanics improve, we progress from strictly closed-loop movement training drills to a blend of open- and closed-loop (unpredictable) tasks.

In both cases, variety is key; I feel that my job is to expose them to the richest proprioceptive environment possible in a safe context. With that said, however, I’m careful to avoid introducing too many different things; it’s important for young athletes to see quantifiable progress in some capacity. If you’re always changing what you do, you’ll never really show them where they stand relative to baseline.

BG – Olympic lifts and adolescents… do you use them? Why or why not?

EC – Personally, I generally don’t for several reasons. It’s not because I’m inherently opposed to Olympic lifts from an injury risk standpoint. Sure, I’ve seen cleans ruin some wrists, and there are going to be a ton of people with AC joint and impingement problems who can’t do anything above shoulder level without pain. That’s not to say that the exercises are fundamentally contraindicated for everyone, though; as with most things in life, the answer rests somewhere in the middle. Know your clients, and select your exercises accordingly.

My primary reasons for omitting them tend to be that I don’t always have as much time with athletes as I’d like, and simply because such technical lifts require constant practice – which we all know isn’t always possible with young athletes who don’t train for a living. Equipment limitations may be a factor (bumper plates are a nice luxury). And, to be very honest, I’ve seen athletes make phenomenal progress without using Olympic lifts, so I don’t concern myself too much with the arguing that goes on. If another coach wants to use them and is a good teacher, I’m find with him doing so; it just isn’t for me, with the exception of some high pulls here and there.

BG – Basing off of the last question, do you teach Olympic lift technique to pre-adolescents?

EC – I don’t. It’s not to say that I wouldn’t be comfortable doing so with a broomstick or some PVC pipe, but when I consider the pre-adolescents with whom I’ve worked, I just can’t see them getting excited about all that technique work for one category of exercises. Olympic lifting is a sport in itself, and I think it should be viewed that way.

BG – My subscribers know that I believe as much in deceleration training as I do in any sort of speed enhancing-based work… How do you improve speed and deceleration habits?

EC – We’re definitely on the same page on this one. In a nutshell, I just slow everything down for the short-term – starting with isometric holds. Every change of direction has a deceleration, isometric action, and acceleration; I’ve found that if you teach the athlete how his/her body should be aligned in that mid-point, they’ll be golden. My progressions are as follows (keep in mind that you can span several of these progressions in one session if the athlete is proficient):

Slow-speed, Full Stop, Hold > Slow Speed, Full Stop, Acceleration > Slow Speed, Quick Transition,

Acceleration > Normal Speed, Full Stop, Hold > Normal Speed, Full Stop, Acceleration > Normal Speed, Quick Transition, Acceleration

Open-loop > Closed-loop (predictable > unpredictable)

With respect to reactive training methods (incorrectly termed plyometrics), we start with bilateral and unilateral jumps to boxes, as they don’t impose as much eccentric force (the athlete goes up, but doesn’t come down). From there, we move to altitude landings, and ultimately to bounce drop jump (depth jumps), repeated broad jumps, bounding, and other higher-impact tasks.

Finally, one lost component of deceleration training is basic maximal strength. All other factors held constant, the stronger kid will learn to decelerate more easily than his weaker counterparts. So, enhancing a generally, foundational quality like maximal strength on a variety of tasks will indirectly lead to substantial improvements in deceleration ability – especially in untrained individuals.

Another week in the books!  Thanks for checking in.

Until next time, train hard and have fun!

EC

Neanderthal No More: Part V

Written on December 22, 2004 at 3:50 pm, by Eric Cressey

It’s been a while since Part IV so those of you following this program are probably chomping at the bit for the conclusion. Chomp no more, because this is it!

The program contained in this article is designed to reintroduce more of the traditional exercises that you’ve grown to love while still maintaining the emphasis on postural corrections through appropriate prioritization and volume manipulation. Essentially, it’s one step closer to the balanced training programs you should seek to create. Remember, we shifted the balance in the opposite direction to start to take care of the problems created by lack of balance in previous programs.

This program will last three weeks (and is meant to follow the first program outlined in part IV), after which you’ll want to have a back-off week consisting of markedly lower volume. Oh, and even if you’re not following the entire “Neanderthal No More” program, you’ll still learn some new exercises you’ve probably tried before.

Here are the goods:

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Feel Better for 10 Bucks

Written on July 12, 2004 at 2:41 pm, by Eric Cressey

Ten bucks doesn’t buy much nowadays. You could pick up a day pass at some commercial gym, or pull off the co-pay on a visit to the chiropractor. If you’re lucky, you might even be able to swing a mediocre Russian mail order bride.

Or, you could just go the safe route with your $10, take our advice, and receive a lifetime of relief from the annoying tightness so many athletes and weekend warriors feel from incessantly beating on their bodies. Don’t worry, this isn’t an infomercial. We just want you to pick up a foam roller for self-myofascial release and deep tissue massage.

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