Taking on the Yoga Question

Written on June 16, 2009 at 7:37 pm, by Eric Cressey

What do you think of…

I got the question again this week:

What do you think of yoga?

Don’t get me wrong; this newsletter isn’t going to be about yoga.  To be honest, I already wrote an article about my thoughts on yoga a while back.  Admittedly, I probably should have taken a more impartial standpoint, but I wrote it more for shock value to outline some of the fundamental problems with some practices that I felt were becoming universally accepted without question.

That said, with respect to this newsletter, the word “yoga” in the question above could easily be replaced with “lifting weights,” “static stretching,” “weighted balls,” “Chinese food,” “owning your own business,” or “curling in the squat rack.”

Lifting weights is generally great.  Deadlifting with a rounded back isn’t.  Doing 150 sets of pull-ups as fast as possible probably isn’t going to make your shoulders and elbows happy.  Overhead pressing two weeks after you had a rotator cuff repair isn’t a good idea.

Static stretching can be of huge benefit if you’ve got muscles that are legitimately short.  If you’re an individual with crazy congenital laxity on top of ten-years of gymnastics, then static stretching will probably chew up your joints really quickly.

Weighted balls have worked wonders for some of my athletes, particularly those who have already built a great foundation of velocity with long tossing and optimization of on-the-mound mechanics.  For others, they’re premature and inappropriate.

I like water chestnuts, but not mushrooms.  I guess the jury is out on whether Chinese food is good or not in my book, huh?  I never met General Tso, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Owning my own business is fantastic.  I get a lot of autonomy, set my own schedule, and have my name on a t-shirt.   I also get a lot of hours and the last paycheck of the month – for whatever is left over.

Curling in the squat rack is the most annoying thing in the world if you are the guy waiting to squat.  If you’re the guy curling, though, it’s a great way to impress your frat buddies.  If looking like a complete tool is your goal, there is no better way to do it.

Where am I going with all this? Yoga isn’t good or bad.  Some lifts aren’t appropriate for some people.  Static stretching can help or hurt.  There is good and bad Chinese food, depending on the person and restaurant.  Owning a business has its perks and drawbacks; it isn’t for everyone.  There are no absolutes.  Okay, maybe there is just one: curling in the squat rack is always dumb, but I digress…

One of my primary goals in writing over the past eight years has been to empower folks with knowledge.  in fact, it was the entire premise behind Mike Robertson and my Building the Efficient Athlete DVD set; rather than simply handing people fish and telling them it’s good for them, we tried to teach people how to fish.

“Dumbing things down” can certainly be valuable when dealing with clients (particularly those with no injuries).  However, as fitness and strength and conditioning professionals, it’s important to not do the same with our own education.  You can’t dumb something down until you’ve fully understood it.

That, I feel, is where the industry has gone a bit astray.  Resistance training research really didn’t even start up until the 1980s; there is still a ton we have to learn.  And, to be honest, there is much better information coming out of experimentation in the trenches than there is in any research lab out there. There are new methods to be discovered, and old methods that can better be leveraged in (or removed from) certain scenarios.

In short, this is a very dynamic field.  If things just keep getting dumbed down to “good and bad” and “just do this,” though, then we’re really selling ourselves short.

Or maybe I don’t know anything.  I guess it depends on who you ask.

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Random Friday Thoughts: 7/18/08

Written on July 18, 2008 at 8:01 am, by Eric Cressey

1. Here’s a great article on the potential drawbacks of yoga. I’ve written about this before, but it’s nice to see someone else providing a “user’s perspective.”

2. My girlfriend deadlifted 250 and benched 135 this week. She’s awesome and I’m the luckiest guy in the world.

3. I’ve written about it before, and I’m going to reiterate it again: Vitamin D supplementation is going to be the next big thing. The typical 400IU dosage doesn’t appear to be enough; there’s a solid benefit for most to up that to 1,000IU/day or slightly more. In some serious clinical deficiencies, they’ll go on some insane dosages.

4. The All-Star Break has just finished up, but I’m already as excited as a little kid on Christmas when I think about our crew of pro baseball guys for the upcoming off-season. We’re going to be kicking out studs for years to come. If you’re a ballplayer (or other athlete, for that matter) with interest, drop us an email at cresseyperformance@gmail.com.

5. Brian St. Pierre attempted to become the first person to ever get me to puke with training program with an insane pseudo-Strongman medley at the facility on Tuesday. It was to no avail, though; I only dry-heaved, so the perfect record is intact. Thanks for playing, Brian.

6. I really can’t stand the phrase “It is what it is.” What the heck does that mean? “I’m too lazy to finish this sentence or come up with another useful thought.”

7. Mike Robertson and Bill Hartman are offering a SWEET discount on their Inside-Out Product Line. As you probably know, as a “shoulder guy,” I’m a huge fan of the drills in this DVD. Through 7/21, if you go HERE, add it to your cart, and enter the code IFAST in the discount code box at the right, you’ll get 40% off the DVD and/or manual.

Yoga This and Pilates That

Written on January 1, 2008 at 6:57 pm, by Eric Cressey

Ever since Mike Robertson and I introduced our Magnificent Mobility DVD, we’ve been inundated with email inquiries about how what we’re recommending is different from yoga and Pilates. And, those that actually appreciate the difference keep asking what we think about it.

Let me preface this entire article by saying that I’m all for anything that makes people enthusiastic about exercise, or gives individuals an outlet to relieve stress. If you’re not moving, you need to move – regardless of what it takes to make you do so. With that said, I gave these two modalities three strikes before I called them “out.” Here are my main issues with Yoga and Pilates:

Continue Reading…

QA with Eric: Yoga and Flexibility

Written on October 24, 2007 at 8:33 am, by Eric Cressey

Q: Dancers and yoga practitioners are notoriously known for their extreme flexibility, which can be a problem if not balanced with strength. How so?

A: Hypermobility can definitely be a problem. All movements require a delicate balance between mobility and stability. Some joints demand more mobility at the expense of stability (e.g. shoulders), whereas others require more stability at the expense of mobility (hips). It’s one of the reasons that we’re always emphasizing stabilization work at the glenohumeral joint, scapula, and lumbar spine and mobility work at the hips, ankles, adn thoracic spine. When you push the balance between mobility and stability out of whack too far in one direction (e.g. hypermobility), ligaments aren’t as effective as joint stabilizers and muscle length-tension relationships can be negatively affected.

It’s something that a lot of us have been doing from an “isolationist” perspective for quite some time (I remember trying to make sense of it back in graduate school in one of my classes with Dr. David Tiberio), but it wasn’t until guys like Mike Boyle and Gray Cook put it out there that we realized this “alternating joints” approach explained a lot of dysfunction we see – and how to prevent it.

Now, we’re at the next frontier: optimizing training protocols to correct the problems. I’m always experimenting with new ways to mobilize the thoracic spine and ankles while trying to figure out the optimal combination of mobility, activation, joint mobilizations, and soft tissue work to get the job done. It’s not much different than fat loss; we know now that aerobic exercise is an inferior fat loss modality and that strength training and high-intensity interval training are superior, but we’re just looking to find the optimal blend to make things work perfectly. Compare Alwyn Cosgrove’s Real World Fat Loss and Craig Ballantyne’s Turbulence Training and you’ll see a ton of similarities, but the subtle intricacies of the programs are different.