With 2011 winding down, I’ll be dedicating this week to the best content of the year, based on traffic volume at EricCressey.com. I’ll kick it off today with my most popular articles from the past year.
1. My New Favorite Training Shoe – This post received more than 3,000 views more than #2. Apparently, footwear is a topic about which folks were anxious to read, and I gave a detailed review of all the minimalist footwear options I’ve tried – and folks shared it a ton. Additionally, based on feedback on my Twitter account, a lot of people purchased the New Balance Minimus based on my recommendation and have absolutely loved it.
2. Your Arm Hurts? Thank Your Little League, Fall Ball, and AAU Coaches. – This post received well over 1,000 Facebook “shares” and loads of Tweets, and I’m hopeful that this is indicative of parents, coaches, and players learning about how to approach arm care and throwing programs intelligently. I think it was also popular because it was a good blend of scientific evidence and simple, everyday logic.
3.Tim Collins: Why Everyone Should Be a Kansas City Royals Fan (at least for a day) – This was my favorite post of the year, as it was a chance to celebrate a good friend and long-time Cressey Performance athlete who is everything that is right about Major League Baseball. As a cool little aside, traffic to this article played a large part in having “Tim Collins” trending on Twitter during his MLB debut on Opening Day in March.
4. Weight Training Programs: You Can’t Just Keep Adding – It sounds like many of my readers were glad to hear that I was doing some writing on managing training stress. There is a lot of common sense in this one, but sometimes, that’s what people need!
5. Strength Training Programs and Squat Technique: To Arch or Not to Arch? – Here’s a very misunderstood topic in the area of strength and conditioning technique. You’ll be happy to know that I’ll be addressing it in great detail in the new Functional Stability Training resource that Mike Reinold and I are releasing soon.
6. Shoulder Hurts? Start Here. – In this piece, I outlined three sure-fire strategies that just about everyone can employ regardless of their shoulder issues.
7. Healthy Food Options: Why You Should Never Take Nutrition Advice from Your Government – One of the biggest surprises for me in 2011 was that my readers absolutely ate up (no pun intended) nutrition content, and summer Cressey Performance intern Tyler Simmons’ guest blog perfect example. He shared some great (and controversial) thoughts in this guest blog.
8. Correcting Bad Posture: Are Deadlifts Enough? – People want results, and they want them fast. This post touched on whether or not the deadlift could be an optimal “shortcut” for getting to where you want to be.
10. Lifting Heavy Weights vs. Corrective Exercise: Finding a Balance – I can definitely see how folks found this topic so interesting, as it’s a very challenging balance to strike. In fact, it was even a very challenging piece around which to wrap my brain!
This wraps up our top 10 posts of 2011, but I’ll be back soon with more “Best of” highlights from 2011. Next up, I’ll list my top product reviews of the year.
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Last night, I was on my laptop searching for an old weight training program I’d written up a while back, and I accidentally stumbled upon some written goals of mine from back in 2003. Based on the “Created on” date in Microsoft Excel, I had written them up in the spring of my senior year of college.
On one hand, I was proud of myself for – at age 22 – knowing enough to write down the goals that I wanted to achieve. On the other hand, I have to laugh about just how out-of-whack my priorities were.
You see, I’d listed loads of strength, body weight, and body fat percentage goals first and foremost. In fact, there were 41 rows worth of performance and physique goals; hard to believe that ladies weren’t lining up to date this Type A stallion, huh? Can you say neurotic? I was like this guy, but with better eyesight and a decent deadlift.
That’s just self-deprecating humor, though. What was actually really sad was how distorted my perception of reality really was, as rows 42-46 consisted of the following:
42. Resolve shoulder pain.
43. Get rid of lower back tightness.
44. Get accepted to graduate school.
45. Get a graduate assistantship in research or coaching.
46. Have 3-4 articles published.
At the time, I was coming off a lower back “tweak” while deadlifting, but more problematic was my right shoulder, which hurt so much that it kept me up at night and negatively affected not only my training, but my everyday life. It was an old tennis injury from high school that just kept getting worse and worse.
Likewise, I hadn’t gotten word on whether or not I’d been accepted to graduate school, so I was up in the air on whether I needed to start looking for jobs for after graduation, or whether I’d end up moving south to enroll at the University of Connecticut.
Finally, I’d just had my first article published, and there was some momentum in place on which I could build a successful writing career.
In other words, I was in pain, unsure about where I’d be living in two months, potentially without a job, and all but ignoring a potentially career-changing opportunity – yet I managed to list 41 performance and physique goals more important than any of these concerns. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs was clearly buried under all the bullshit I had convinced myself was important. They made signs like this for guys like me.
Maybe it was the acceptance phone call from my future advisor at the UCONN; the experience of moving to a new area and being out on my own; interaction with a lot of highly-motivated, career-oriented people and successful athletes; the natural maturation process; or a combination of all these factors, but I got my act together that fall and figured out my priorities. That fall, I read everything I could get my hands on to get rid of the pain in my shoulder (canceled an impending surgery) and lower back. I put in 70 hour weeks among classes, volunteering in the varsity weight rooms and human performance lab, and personal training and bartending on the side. I published my first article at T-Nation and in Men’s Fitness. In short, I grew the hell up and stopped losing sleep over whether I’d remembered to take my forearm circumference measurements on the third Tuesday of the month.
Some folks might think that this shift in my priorities interfered with my training progress, but in reality, the opposite was true. In that first year of graduate school, I put over 100 pounds on both my squat and deadlift and 40 pounds on my bench press – and did so pain-free, which made training even more enjoyable. I learned a ton about the importance of training environment as I lifted around athletes and other coaches in the varsity weight rooms, and even caught the powerlifting bug, competing for the first time in June of 2004. I even won a few trophies absurdly large trophies that wildly overstated my accomplishments.
In short, when I stopped majoring in the minutia and clearly defined the priorities that were important to me – being pain-free, enjoying training, and seeing it as a means of becoming better in a profession that I loved – a world of opportunities opened up for me. And, surprisingly, some of the “old” priority goals were easier to attain because I didn’t force them or put as much pressure on myself.
That was almost a decade years ago, and I’ve had to make similar reevaluations of my priorities since that time, from opening a business, to proposing to my wife, to buying a house, to getting a puppy, to hiring employees, to working with charities. There are some priorities that will always remain for me, though; strength and conditioning has to be fun, and it has to improve my quality of life, not take away from it. These are values that are reflected in the weight training programs that I write, too.
To that end, how have your priorities changed over your training career? And, how have these changes impacted your progress in the gym?
Perhaps it’s coincidence, or perhaps the scientific community is finally catching on, but recently, there have been several studies looking at the role of short- and long-term recovery in preventing and rehabilitating injuries.
Here’s a research study that demonstrates relationships among a variety of scheduling and recovery factors and injury rates. The part I found most interesting was that researchers observed that sleeping fewer than six hours the night prior to a competition led to a significant increase in fatigue related injuries.
Additionally, researchers at Stanford recently demonstrated the profoundly positive effect that “sleep extension” has on a variety of performance variables in high-level basketball athletes.
These results, in themselves, aren’t particularly surprising: fatigue impacts performance – whether that’s on the field, or in the rehabilitation realm. Anyone who has ever trained an athlete on a Saturday morning after he’s had a late Friday night, or rehabbed a roofer after he’s completed a 10-hour-workday, will tell you that there are certainly less-than-optimal times to get the work in.
What research like this doesn’t tell us, though, is that not all fatigue is created equal – and I suspect that this is one area where strength and conditioning specialists can “return the favor” to rehabilitation specialists for all that we’ve learned from them over the years. Very simply, the very best strength and conditioning coaches I know are the ones who are masters of managing competing demands, including strength training, mobility drills, soft tissue work, movement training, metabolic conditioning, and sport-specific training. In order to effectively manage all these factors, it’s imperative to understand the different stages of fatigue. On the rehabilitation side of things, every injured athlete likely has some element of fatigue that not only impacted his/her injury mechanism, but will impact the response to a given rehabilitation program.
Over-what? Over-everything!
In their classic review, The Unknown Mechanism of the Overtraining Syndrome, Armstrong and VanHeest discussed the importance of differentiating among overload, over-reaching, overtraining, and the overtraining syndrome (OTS). They defined the terms as follows:
Overload – “a planned, systematic, progressive increase in training stimuli that is required for improvements in strength, power, and endurance”
Over-reaching – “training that involves a brief period of overload, with inadequate recovery, that exceeds the athlete’s adaptive capacity. This process involves a temporary performance decrement lasting from several days to several weeks.”
Overtraining – training that “exceeds over-reaching and results in frank physiological maladaptation(s) and chronically reduced exercise performance. It proceeds from imbalances between training and recovery, exercise and exercise capacity, stress and stress tolerance; training exceeds recovery, exercise exceeds one’s capacity, and stressors exceed one’s stress tolerance.”
Overtraining Syndrome (OTS) – “a set of persistent physical and psychological symptoms that occur subsequent to prolonged application of heavy training loads. The critical diagnostic factor is a chronic decrease in performance, not simply the existence of SAS [signs and symptoms].”
Overload is inherent to a successful training process, and over-reaching is actually quite valuable when used appropriately. For instance, in our training programs at Cressey Performance, we generally fluctuate training stress in four-week programs as high (1), medium (2), very high (3), low (4), where the deloading in week 4 allows for adaptation from the fatigue imposed during week 3.
However, over-reaching is far from overtraining – a term that is thrown around far too often among even the most qualified individuals in the world of health and human performance. Over-reaching may be attained in as little as 7-10 days, and remedied in a matter of days or weeks with adequate deloading. Conversely, the process of overtraining must take place for months for the outcome, OTS, to be apparent. Recovery from OTS requires at least several weeks – and more often several months; in other words, you really have to go out of your way to get to overtraining syndrome.
Since high level performance – and even just normal physical health – is a priority, it is imperative that coaches, parents, and athletes recognize the signs and symptoms of over-reaching and overtraining syndrome – and the differences between the two. According to Armstrong and VanHeest, the signs and symptoms of OTS may include:
Decreased physical performance
General fatigue, malaise, loss of vigor
Insomnia
Change in appetite
Irritability, restlessness, excitability, anxiety
Loss of body weight
Loss of motivation
Lack of mental concentration
Feelings of depression
What All These “Overs” Mean to You
Many of these signs and symptoms are shared between over-reaching and OTS, so how do we know the difference? How do we know when to hold back for a day or two (for overload recovery), 7-21 days (over-reaching), or even months (overtraining syndrome)?
Unfortunately, as much as I would like to be able to offer you the magic answer, I can’t do so. The scientific community has yet to agree on a single, highly sensitive diagnostic test to differentiate among the three. In fact, the only diagnostic tests that are universally accurate are those of physical performance; if performance drops off, there must be some degree of accumulated fatigue.
Other measures – such as heart rate, bloodwork, metabolic rate, substrate metabolism, and a host more – are subject to so many factors that they are hardly reliable tests of one’s training status.
As an example, research from Fry et al. had subjects perform ten sets of one repetition on machine squats at 100% of their one-rep maximum for 14 days straight. That’s an absurd volume of high-intensity resistance training, especially in a trained population. You know what, though? The only thing that dropped off was performance; hormone status (as measured by bloodwork) really didn’t change much at all.
Conversely, crush an endurance athlete with volume, and this same bloodwork will look terrible. The take-home point is that it’s a lot harder to “overtrain” on intensity than volume. And that’s where the problem exists when you’re dealing with athletes: just about every sport out there is a blend of volume and intensity. We don’t just train or rehabilitate shotputters or Ironman competitors; we get athletes from soccer, basketball, baseball, hockey, tennis, and a host of other sports.
So, what is a coach or rehabilitation specialist to do when trying to determine just how much fatigue is present, and what the best course of action is to guarantee an optimal return-to-play as quickly as possible?
In two words: ask questions.
In my opinion, the absolute most important step is to establish communication with athletes and – in this case – patients. Ask about training practices before an injury, sleep patterns, dietary factors, family life, concurrent illness/injury, changes in body weight, and appetite.
These may seem like obvious questions to ask, but we live in a one-size-fits-all world of pre-made templates and rigid systems – and people can fall through the cracks all the time. My experience has been that those most commonly “thrown under the bus” in this regard are the most dedicated athletes forced to train or rehabilitate in a “general health” world. As an example, we had an adult athlete client request a Vitamin D test from a primary care physician last year, and he was turned down because he wasn’t “a post-menopausal female.” As it turned out, he was severely clinically deficient, and normalizing his Vitamin D was a big game-changer for him.
Simply asking the right questions will always help the cause when it comes to determining just how “systemic” what you’re dealing with really is. And, in the process, it gives you an opportunity to show a client or patient how much you care before they even care how much you know.
This past weekend, my wife and I headed down to Pennsylvania for some friends’ wedding. On Saturday morning, I awoke at 7AM to her standing next to my bed absolutely covered in sweat and wearing her workout clothes. As it turns out, knowing that the weekend would be full of not-so-healthy food and limited opportunities to exercise, Anna had taken the bull by the horns and hit up the hotel gym at 6AM to kick her day off right. It’s no surprise, as she spends quite a bit of time at Cressey Performance.
That, in itself, isn’t a particularly riveting story to kick off today’s blog – until I discovered that the only thing this hotel gym had was an elliptical, recumbent bike, and treadmill. And, to take it a step further, Anna discovered that there was no power for any of them, meaning that they were essentially just places to rest her water bottle. What to do?
She could have said screw it and gone back to bed.
She could have woken me up and asked me to write her a body weight program.
She could have tried to run on the side of a busy road, or find a place to sprint in a town that wasn’t familiar to her.
Instead, though, she used the knowledge and experience she had to construct her own body weight training program. Anna’s an optometrist, not a trainer – but her skill set from asking questions, being in the right environment, and performing dozens of programs put her in a position to handle the curveballs life threw at her.
Coincidentally, a strength coach from the Cape Cod Summer League came up to observe at CP last week, and we got to talking about how you never quite have the continuity you want with training athletes because they go in-season for a big chunk of the year, and because you’re always working around competition and travel schedules. To that end, he asked me what the single biggest thing is that we focus on when we may only have someone for a short period of time. My answer?
“It’s the same thing we focus on when we have someone for a longer period of time: education. It’s our job to make athletes informed consumers who know how to listen to their body, adapt to their surroundings, eat the right foods, get the right amount of sleep, and do the correct programs regardless of what’s going on around them.”
You might think that your #1 job as a trainer is to strip 15 pounds of body fat off someone in two months. Or, maybe it’s to put four inches on a guy’s vertical jump prior to a scouting combine.
In reality, though, your #1 priority is to educate them so that they’re prepared for the days that they’re on their own.
Education needs to be different for everyone, though. A true beginner needs to be educated on everything from what to eat during/post-training to how to perform the actual exercises. If you teach a female client to have a protein and carb shake around a session in a weight training program, then chances are that she would eventually know to grab some Greek yogurt and a piece of fruit if a shake isn’t handy when she’s on the road. Or, if you teach a young baseball player how to do a dumbbell reverse lunge and a front squat, then he’ll be able to perform a barbell reverse lunge with a front squat grip someday when he needs a good single-leg exercise, but only has barbells at the exclusion of dumbbells.
A more advanced individual might want to know more about his/her unique muscle imbalances and what corrective mobility and stability drills to stay on top of to prevent problems from arising. Or, these folks might just want to make use of your network to find great gyms and manual therapists in other parts of the country so that they can stay on top of their workout routines while on the road.
Results are fantastic and obviously an absolutely essential part of a successful strength and conditioning program. However, if you aren’t educating folks along the way, then you’re not cultivating the long-term fitness success they really need, even if they don’t think to consider anything beyond short-term results.
What do you think are the most important things we absolutely have to teach our clients and athletes to ensure long-term success? And, what are the most overlooked things they need to learn to be successful over the long haul? Post your comments below!
One of the questions I’m asked the most frequently is “How did you learn how to write strength and conditioning programs?”
Unfortunately, while it’s a tremendously common question posed to me, I haven’t yet determined a quick and easy response that would work for everyone. While this may make it seem like I haven’t learned anything in this regard, the truth is that I get more and more effective and efficient with creating programs every single day. What’s my secret? Well, I actually have two of them.
1. I NEVER reinvent the wheel.
Our philosophies are constantly evolving, and I’m always working to integrate new concepts into our programming to improve outcomes for our clients. These ideas may come from things I’ve read, seminars I’ve attended, other programs I’ve observed, or – most importantly – feedback our athletes have given us. I absolutely, positively, NEVER overhaul a program, though. Why?
If you change everything, you learn nothing – because you can never appreciate what modification it was that worked (or didn’t work).
2. I build on previous successes, rather than starting from scratch with every new client.
One of the key points that the Heaths make in this book is that an idea will always be more readily accepted if it is incorporated into an individual’s existing schema. As an example, if I give you the letters TICDGFASOH and then ask you to list all the letters I included to me 20 minutes later without writing them down, most of you won’t be able to accomplish the task correctly.
However, if I reordered those letters as CATDOGFISH, you’d accomplish the task easily. You know the words DOG, CAT, and FISH – so it would fit into your existing schema. This applies to strength and conditioning programs, too.
When I attend a seminar, whenever a new technique is introduced, I try to immediately apply it in my notes and in my brain to an existing client of mine. How can that subtle modification make this individual’s program better?
And, when I evaluate a client for the first time, I ask myself how this client is similar to a previous client of mine. I’ll look back to that old client’s program to see what we used to get results – and then I’ll tinker accordingly based in the new client’s more specific individual needs. I absolutely NEVER open up a blank Microsoft Excel template and write something from scratch, as it’s always easiest to tinker with what’s worked in the past.
What does this mean for the up-and-coming strength and conditioning program author?
Get out to as many seminars as possible. Visit other coaches and observe their programs. Read books and watch DVDs to learn about how others incorporate different strategies and strength exercises in their weight training programs. Your goal is to expand your existing schema as much as possible and – in the beginning – create the strength and conditioning programs that will end up becoming the foundation for all future programs. After the first few months, you are simply “tinkering,” not overhauling. Never reinvent the wheel, and always build on previous successes.
Back in November of 2010, a good buddy of mine who is a very accomplished college strength coach came up to Boston for the Optimal Shoulder Performance seminar. The seminar was on a Sunday, but he actually flew up Friday night so that he could observe on Saturday while we trained our clients – which was a nice blend of high school, college, and professional athletes, plus our adult clientele. All told, I’d say that high school athletes are 70% of our clientele.
That Tuesday morning, I woke up to this email from him:
“I just wanted to say thanks for everything. I had a great time. Your staff was outstanding and I really enjoyed watching you guys work on Saturday. I realize you are managers, but certainly technicians as well. Perfect form, I told Tony I saw two bad reps all weekend and someone was on the athlete before he had a chance to do another rep!!! Thanks so much and come visit anytime, we would love to have you.”
This isn’t an email to toot our own horn; it’s to make a very valuable point. If this coach had walked into every single private training facility and high school weight room in the country, in what percentage of cases do you think he would have come out with a favorable impression of the technique he witnessed in these strength and conditioning programs? If I had to venture an extremely conservative guess, I’d say less than 10%.
Simply stated, both in the public and private sectors, some coaches are letting kids get away with murder with respect to technique, not warming up, poor load selection in weight training programs, and a host of other factors.
What happens, then, when the s**t hits the fan and a kid gets hurt? I’ll tell you: certain exercises get “condemned” and strength and conditioning programs become more and more foo-foo; external loading is eliminated and kids wind up doing agility ladders and “speed training” for 60-90 minutes at a time in what can only be described as glorified babysitting. Or, worse yet, weight rooms get closed altogether. The door of opportunity gets slammed in the faces of a lot of kids who desperately need to get strong to stay healthy, improve performance, and build confidence.
That’s the reactive model, but what about a proactive model to prevent these issues in the first place? Again, I’ll tell you: assess kids up-front. Find out what is in their health history and evaluate how well they move. Actually learn their names and backgrounds. Then, program individually for them. Coach intensely in their initial sessions and get things right from the start. And, if an exercise doesn’t work for them, give them an alternative.
As an example, take the squat. Some kids may not have sufficient ankle or hip mobility to squat deep in an Olympic style squat, so they’ll benefit more (and stay healthier) with box squat variations while you improve their mobility. Others may even be too immobile (or possess structural issues like femoroacetabular impingement) to even box squat safely, so you give them more single-leg work and deadlift variations. Regardless, you “coach ‘em up” well from the get-go – and they learn along the way.
In other words, the exercises aren’t the problem because exercises can be quickly and easily changed on the fly to match the athlete’s level of abilities. It’s the system in which they are placed that can be the stubborn, tough-to-change problem.
This is one reason why I’m super excited to be presenting at the International Youth Conditioning Summit in Louisville at the end of July. I want to emphasize that you can have all the book smarts and coaching ability in the world, but if you aren’t put in a good system and business model, it simply won’t matter.
In the meantime, if you’re struggling to get results with your youth strength and conditioning programs – or your business itself is struggling – be sure to look at your business model and overall systems before you start tinkering with the individual exercises. Chances are that you need to rededicate yourself to relationship building and individualization more than you need to worry about sets and reps.
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Late last week, my buddy Nick Tumminello made the follow comment that some folks, unfortunately, took out of context:
“Everyone is talking about assessments (and that’s cool). But, no one seems to talking about simply not allowing poor form in training. If you can’t keep good form in a certain exercise (movement pattern), simply don’t do that exercise until you’ve improved the movement or decided that you’re simply not built for it to begin with. Not sure why things need be any more complicated than that!”
For the record, I agree 100% with Nick and understood what he meant, but it would have been easy to assume that he was referring to “trainers train, and therapists assess.” In other words, many folks assume that as long as you aren’t symptomatic in some way, then you’re safe to start exercising because you can simply “feel” things out as you go and, if something hurts, you don’t do it.
While you obviously shouldn’t do something if it hurts, just because something doesn’t hurt doesn’t mean that it’s not harmful long-term – and to me, that’s the difference between “working someone out” and provided them with an optimal training experience. As physical therapist Mike Reinold has said, “Assess; don’t assume.”
To illustrate my point, here are a few examples.
Let’s say you have someone with a chronically cranky acromioclavicular joint or osteolysis of the distal clavicle that might only be apparent upon reviewing a health history, palpating the area, or taking someone into full horizontal adduction at the shoulder. While direct over-pressure on the area (as in a front squat) would surely elicit symptoms, my experience is that most folks won’t notice a significant amount of pain until the next day if the strength exercise selection is inappropriate (e.g., dips, full range-of-motion bench pressing). You might have avoided what “hurt” during the session (presumably because the individual was warmed up), but you find out after the fact that you just set an individual back weeks in their recovery and fitness program.
How about right scapular winging? It’s not easily observed if a client has a shirt on, and if you simply throw that individual into a bootcamp with hundreds of push-ups each week, you’re bound to run into trouble. Here’s the thing, though: even if you observed that winging and wanted to address it in your training, you really have to consider that it can come from one or more of several factors: weak scapular stabilizers, a stiff posterior cuff, insufficient right thoracic rotation, faulty breathing patterns, or poor tissue quality of pec minor, rhomboids, levator scapulae (or any of a number of other muscles/tendons). Just doing some rows and YTWL circuits will not work.
Also at the shoulder, a baseball pitcher with crazy congenital and acquired shoulder external rotation may have a ton of anterior instability in the “cocking” position of throwing (90 degrees of abduction and external rotation), but be completely asymptomatic. Back squatting this athlete would exacerbate the problem over the long haul even if he didn’t notice any symptoms acutely.
Finally, in my recent article, Corrective Exercise: Why Stiffness Can Be a Good Thing, I spoke about how someone can have crazy short hip flexors and still manage a perfect squat pattern because his stiffness at adjacent joints is outstanding. If I don’t assess him in the first place and just assume that he squats well, I’m just waiting for him to strain a rectus femoris during sprinting or any of a number of other activities. Gross movement in a strength and conditioning program wouldn’t tell me anything about this individual, but targeted assessments would.
The point is that while Nick’s statement is absolutely true – demanding perfect form is corrective in itself – you’ve still got to assess to have a clear picture of where you’re starting. Otherwise, many cases like this will slip through the cracks.
To that end, I’m happy to announce that my long-time friend and colleague, Mike Robertson, recently released his Bulletproof Knees and Back Seminar DVD Set. This comprehensive product covers anatomy, assessments, program design, and coaching. In fact, almost the entire second day is focused on coaching, and that’s an area in which most trainers really do need to improve. All in all, this isn’t a collection of bits and pieces; it’s Mike’s entire philosophy on training someone who is suffering from knee or low back pain (and how to prevent it in the first place). Effectively, Mike covers what both Nick and I are getting at in the paragraphs you just read.
Since Mike’s a great friend – and because he and his wife just had a new baby daughter that will surely shop a ton in her teenage years, go to college, and have an expensive wedding – I want to sweeten the deal and help him with sales, especially since this is tremendously valuable information that fitness professionals need to hear.
With that said, anyone who purchases the Bulletproof Knees and Back Seminar DVD Set by this Friday (5/13) at midnight will receive a free 37-minute upper extremity assessment video I recently filmed for my staff in-service and uploaded to the web. In other words, Mike covers the back and lower extremity and I cover the upper extremity, meaning you’ve got a head-to-toe resource at your fingertips. Just forward your receipt to me at ec@ericcressey.com and I’ll send it along this weekend.
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Following my recent article on T-Nation about various weight training program loading protocols (you can read it HERE), I received an email from someone asking me how I’d approach deloading for someone doing a 5×5 workout program. I’ve broken the paragraph up so that I can answer each of the inquiries individually:
Q: Let’s say on a horizontal push pull day your doing Bench press supersetted with 1-arm dumbbell rows at 5×5, do both lifts follow the same deloading strategies?
A: Yes, although I’ll often leave an extra set or two of the pulling exercise in there because people really need it from a postural/muscle imbalance standpoint. So, in other words, we might just flip-flop things to be:
A1) 1-Arm DB Rows: 4×5/side
A2) Bench Press: 3×5
This, of course, would assume that we’re deloading on volume and not intensity. It’d be a more appropriate strategy for intermediates.
Q: How do you adjust your assistance work, if at all?
A: Usually, I just drop a set, or sometimes cut the reps down by 2-4 per set. Here’s how that would work, assuming that the normal set/rep prescription is three sets of eight on both exercises:
Again, this is an intermediate approach. More advanced lifters might keep the sets/reps up and simply reduce intensity.
Q: Also, a lot of times there will be the first two push pull lifts (4 lifts total) done at 5×5 (e.g., flat bench 5×5 and incline 5×5) do you deload both lifts or do you think two chest/back exercises at 5×5 is too much and just the primary lift should have that scheme and the incline would be an assistance lift?
A: Personally, I think that doing all your lifts at 5×5 in a single workout is overkill. I would rather see other rep ranges attacked after the first pairing. However, if you are going to do it, I’d go with the deloading approach outlined in the first response I gave (above).
For even more detailed information on how to approach backoff weeks appropriately, check out my e-book, The Art of the Deload.
Yes, although I’ll often leave an extra set or two of the pulling exercise in there because people really need it from a postural/muscle imbalance standpoint.
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I received this Show and Go Review via email the other day and thought I’d share it with those of you who might be on the fence about whether or not this product is a good fit for you.
“I just read your recent blog post in which you mentioned sending Show and Go testimonials. Well…it would be a travesty if I didn’t give you a shout out.
“I’m a personal trainer myself. And after over 23 years of training myself and 16 years of training others, to say I grow “bored” with conventional weight training programs would be an understatement. I first trained to augment sport (football), then I got into powerlifting, and really became addicted to it when I started bodybuilding. I competed for eight years in the sport and did very well. But…I outgrew it. Yes…I was bored.
“I, like many others that I train, look to other sources to not only motivate me in my own training (mentally more than physically), but also to broaden my horizons as a trainer. That is what led me to purchase your Show & Go program. I have to say, Eric, it is the most comprehensive, integrated program I have ever used. From the warm-ups, to the strength exercises, to the stretching, to the cardio enhancement….my strength, flexibility, conditioning, and muscularity all improved ten-fold. And my bodyfat level went noticeably down without me tweaking my normal diet. I even had nagging shoulder and low back pain that inhibited me from doing certain movements that are now gone. I was able to deadlift weight I haven’t been able to use since my powerlifting days. Plus, a couple of the core movements you include are ones I have never seen or done and I loved them! I now use many of them with my own clients.
“One last thing to note…I very rarely get through a 16 week program. I tend to grow bored and need a different style of training. That never happened. Not only that…I am starting a second go-round this week of it with a few of my own personal tweaks to it. Great product, Eric! Thank you so much!”
Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and Move Better – This was obviously my biggest project of 2010. I actually began writing the strength and conditioning programs and filming the exercise demonstration videos in 2009, and put all the “guinea pigs” through the four-month program beginning in February. When they completed it as the start of the summer rolled around, I made some modifications based on their feedback and then got cracking on writing up all the tag along resources. Finally, in September, Show and Go was ready to roll. So, in effect, it took 10-11 months to take this product from start to finish – a lot of hard work, to say the least. My reward has been well worth it, though, as the feedback has been awesome. Thanks so much to everyone who has picked up a copy.
Optimal Shoulder Performance – This was a seminar that Mike Reinold and I filmed in November of 2009, and our goal was to create a resource that brought together concepts from both the shoulder rehabilitation and shoulder performance training fields to effectively bridge the gap for those looking to prevent and/or treat shoulder pain. In the process, I learned a lot from Mike, and I think that together, we brought rehabilitation specialists and fitness professionals closer to being on the same page.
Why President Obama Throws Like a Girl – A lot of people took this as a political commentary, but to be honest, it was really just me talking about the concept of retroversion as it applies to a throwing shoulder – with a little humor thrown in, of course!
Overbearing Dads and Kids Who Throw Cheddar – This one was remarkably easy to write because I’ve received a lot of emails from overbearing Dads asking about increasing throwing velocity in their kids.
What I Learned in 2009 – I wrote this article for T-Nation back at the beginning of the year, and always enjoy these yearly pieces. In fact, I’m working on my 2010 one for them now!
The Skinny on Strasburg’s Injury – I hate to make blog content out of someone else’s misfortune, but it was a good opportunity to make some points that I think are very valid to the discussion of not only Stephen Strasburg’s elbow injury, but a lot of the pitching injuries we see in youth baseball.
Surely, there are many more to list, but I don’t want this to run too long! Have a safe and happy new year, and keep an eye out for the first content of 2011, which is coming very soon!
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