There has been some very good answers to my Just Questions... post. What I was hoping to do was ignite some thinking, especially regarding the corrective exercise stuff that seems to be the latest way to make money in the health and exercise industry.
My biggest issue with the corrective exercise stuff, as all the bright folks who responded to the post also stated, is that any movement/exercise can be corrective. I think too many of the "experts" have been spewing too much pseudo rehabilitation stuff and now everyone is over-thinking/over-correcting symptoms and playing the role of therapist. I thought exercise in general was theraputic and pro-active. What about true expert coaching of basics and allowing these basic gross movement patterns to do the correcting?
It's important to not settle for average technique and try to patch everything up with "corrective" work. Let's allow for individuals to access their motor learning capacities. Language, quality demonstration, and effective coaching cues are important here. Using language with a little emotion goes a long way as well. Watch a group getting an energetic talk about correct lifting posture. What do you notice? The audience begins to straighten-up.
I have dumped much of the activation/prehab/rehab work from most if not all the programs I write now, and have had hardly any issues because of it. I've been demanding in the correct technique of the major barbell and dumbell lifts and bodyweight movement. I also make sure to leave the weightroom as a place to develop strength and power, and have done as much as I can to get more time of our training sessions outside the weightroom for movement/speed/agility work. What's been amazing is how "corrective" good quality movement training and basic strength and power lifts can be. Repetition and patience is important... the athlete needs practice and time, and it's amazing what happens when it is given.
The major point here is, if one gets much better at coaching the basics and has a thorough understanding of the mechanics and physiology of basic exercise, it becomes much easier to spot problems that need correcting/adjustments. Now every moment spent with an athlete or client becomes an assessment and less time needs to be spent on specific assessment sessions and filling an athletes time and energy with more exercises than needed. Every individual only has a finite capacity for attention and energy. Let's put it to use with the most effective methods.
Obviously there is a time and place for "corrective" type work, but let's not make and lead everyone to believe they are a patient.
Move.
AS
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Wisdom
"We need to teach weight trainers to work HARD. Not the pseudo stuff. Not the artificial gimaces, grunts and groans, but what my friend Mike Thompson calls 'THE REAL THING." Once lifters learn what hard work is really all about, and what it can do for a man, they will drop the all day idiot routines and the marathon training schedules like they were last week's garbage on a hot day in August. They will become dinosaurs: savage denizens of dungeon gyms who live for that extra rep, that extra pound of iron, and the feral thrill of bloody combat with an iron bar.
Do your own part to aid the revolution. Train hard. Train ferociously hard. Train as though your life depended on squeezing every last bit of effort from your body. Train so hard that a couple of hard exercises will knock you into next Tuesday. Train so hard that the mere idea of going to the gym on less than 48 or 72 hours rest is an absurdity. Train so hard that the four hour a day, six day a week crowd will barf in their water bottles when they see you in action. Strike a blow for dinosaurs. Strike a blow for men. Have the courage to train HARD. Have the courage to use an abbreviated program. Be a DINOSAUR!"
-Brooks Kubik. Dinosaur Training: Lost Secrets of Strength Development.
AS
Do your own part to aid the revolution. Train hard. Train ferociously hard. Train as though your life depended on squeezing every last bit of effort from your body. Train so hard that a couple of hard exercises will knock you into next Tuesday. Train so hard that the mere idea of going to the gym on less than 48 or 72 hours rest is an absurdity. Train so hard that the four hour a day, six day a week crowd will barf in their water bottles when they see you in action. Strike a blow for dinosaurs. Strike a blow for men. Have the courage to train HARD. Have the courage to use an abbreviated program. Be a DINOSAUR!"
-Brooks Kubik. Dinosaur Training: Lost Secrets of Strength Development.
AS
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Just Questions...
1. Does corrective exercise work? If so, does context make a difference?
2. Does corrective exercise address the cause or the symptom?
3. If all you're looking for is movement dysfunction, is all you find is movement dysfunction?
4. What happens to the psychology of an athlete when they have to follow corrective exercise protocols vs. the regular heavy training that the rest of his or her teammates are doing?
5. Should my kids get the flu shot; or does it just depend on who you talk to?
6. Is what we know about human gait wrong because we have been skewed by footwear?
7. Athletic training staffs across the country receive information from Perform Better with the latest being a email newsletter: "The Death of the Squat". With Coach Mike Boyle's latest "thought process"... being an "expert" with Perform Better... does this mean that we, as strength coaches who still have our athletes squat, now have to deal with possibly added resistance from the sports medicine staff about 'what we do', because a very well-known coach now says they are bad?
I would love to hear anyone's thoughts to any of these questions. Thanks.
Move.
AS
2. Does corrective exercise address the cause or the symptom?
3. If all you're looking for is movement dysfunction, is all you find is movement dysfunction?
4. What happens to the psychology of an athlete when they have to follow corrective exercise protocols vs. the regular heavy training that the rest of his or her teammates are doing?
5. Should my kids get the flu shot; or does it just depend on who you talk to?
6. Is what we know about human gait wrong because we have been skewed by footwear?
7. Athletic training staffs across the country receive information from Perform Better with the latest being a email newsletter: "The Death of the Squat". With Coach Mike Boyle's latest "thought process"... being an "expert" with Perform Better... does this mean that we, as strength coaches who still have our athletes squat, now have to deal with possibly added resistance from the sports medicine staff about 'what we do', because a very well-known coach now says they are bad?
I would love to hear anyone's thoughts to any of these questions. Thanks.
Move.
AS
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
No More Squats?
I think not.
I think this claim and/or marketing hype may just be the thing squats needed: A return to true strength training...
Death of the Back Squat?!
ROFTL with the RFESS
Go to the source...
The Disappearance of the Posterior Chain
Also, in the case of working with beginners, I can't think of a better, even possibly safer, way to develop and teach the intense volitional effort needed to build true strength (and, I truly believe, that high volitional effort is a rare trait these days). Teach and demand great technique...
And... one more thing... let's not make the weightroom more necessary than needed by spending all our time doing endless amounts of lifts that barely challenge the 'whole' organsim. Let's kill as many birds as possible with a few stones, and get out of the weightroom and work more on the necessary sports and movement skills.
Move.
AS
A note: I think Coach Mike Boyle is a brilliant coach, I just disagree with his No More Squats, and I think it is important for those that disagree to voice their opinion, as he did his.
I think this claim and/or marketing hype may just be the thing squats needed: A return to true strength training...
Death of the Back Squat?!
ROFTL with the RFESS
Go to the source...
The Disappearance of the Posterior Chain
Also, in the case of working with beginners, I can't think of a better, even possibly safer, way to develop and teach the intense volitional effort needed to build true strength (and, I truly believe, that high volitional effort is a rare trait these days). Teach and demand great technique...
And... one more thing... let's not make the weightroom more necessary than needed by spending all our time doing endless amounts of lifts that barely challenge the 'whole' organsim. Let's kill as many birds as possible with a few stones, and get out of the weightroom and work more on the necessary sports and movement skills.
Move.
AS
A note: I think Coach Mike Boyle is a brilliant coach, I just disagree with his No More Squats, and I think it is important for those that disagree to voice their opinion, as he did his.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Rehab Age
In thousands of years from now, fitness archaeologists are going to scour through the findings of equipment and documents of different training methods and maybe come to some of these possible conclusions:
1. The "Get strong" Age.
2. The "Get weak" Age or, more accurately, the Aerobics Age.
and currently...
3. The Rehabilitation Age.
It seems that we are fully-fledged into the rehablitation age, in which all or the majority of physical fitness training is done by rehabilitation means... or circus tricks.
Is everybody now made of glass that we should not do anything that requires a little focus, effort, and "guts"?
Yes, maybe it's a sign of the times; people are more dysfunctional from lack of moving.
But if all of our focus is on finding dysfunction, is all that we find is dysfunction?
How many passes does the team in white throw?
Hopefully our focus isn't making us lose sight of other possibilities.
Move.
AS
1. The "Get strong" Age.
2. The "Get weak" Age or, more accurately, the Aerobics Age.
and currently...
3. The Rehabilitation Age.
It seems that we are fully-fledged into the rehablitation age, in which all or the majority of physical fitness training is done by rehabilitation means... or circus tricks.
Is everybody now made of glass that we should not do anything that requires a little focus, effort, and "guts"?
Yes, maybe it's a sign of the times; people are more dysfunctional from lack of moving.
But if all of our focus is on finding dysfunction, is all that we find is dysfunction?
How many passes does the team in white throw?
Hopefully our focus isn't making us lose sight of other possibilities.
Move.
AS
Friday, October 23, 2009
Random Friday 2009
1. I don't use "sport-specific training", I use human-specific training.
2. What you believe is a close 2nd behind what you do... and in some cases equally as important in the whole scheme of things.
3. Growing up... I came from a small town and our school didn't have much of a weightroom. So I spent my summer work's earnings on purchasing my own weight equipment. It was one of those old-school benches in which the dip bars were the racks for the bench (arms went on the outside of the racks to take the bar off to bench). Now I didn't have the knowledge I have now, but I knew that I had to train my lower body and that the leg extension and curl apparatus on the bench wasn't worth shit. So basically I rigged up the bench to raise the hooks to use the dip handles to set the weight for back squats. The bar barely balanced. I had to make sure I had a family member help me load the weight so the bar wouldn't tip off and had to be sure to weight down the opposite end of the bench so the bar wouldn't get dumped to the front. Regardless... I squatted.
Also, if any of you have been to northern Minnesota you know the winters are long, cold, and f***in windy, with lots of snow. My home was about 5 miles out of town, and often the gym wasn't open when I need to run/sprint. So I would bundle-up and head out into the sometimes below 0 temp and run in the snow. We lived next to a wooded area in which the snow would pile up to 2-3 feet deep in places. I figured this would be great training for myself as a running back. Sprinting high knees through deep snow, fighting through heavy duty snow apparel, it was like trying to break leg tackles for the entirety of every sprint. Plus the terrain was hilly, so I figured, 'Eat this Walter Payton! He maybe sprinted hills, but not with this much gear and snow to battle... wuss.'
Long story short; make due with the resources and environment in which you situated, and be sure to attack it with everything you've got. Maybe I wasn't training the "right" way with the perfect plan, but I was training HARD! As the good coaches I have had, have told me: "even if you're wrong, be sure to be wrong at 100 mph." ...just be sure to learn from the mistakes after.
4. I am often guilty of getting caught-up in arguing methods regarding training, but we all know,
2. What you believe is a close 2nd behind what you do... and in some cases equally as important in the whole scheme of things.
3. Growing up... I came from a small town and our school didn't have much of a weightroom. So I spent my summer work's earnings on purchasing my own weight equipment. It was one of those old-school benches in which the dip bars were the racks for the bench (arms went on the outside of the racks to take the bar off to bench). Now I didn't have the knowledge I have now, but I knew that I had to train my lower body and that the leg extension and curl apparatus on the bench wasn't worth shit. So basically I rigged up the bench to raise the hooks to use the dip handles to set the weight for back squats. The bar barely balanced. I had to make sure I had a family member help me load the weight so the bar wouldn't tip off and had to be sure to weight down the opposite end of the bench so the bar wouldn't get dumped to the front. Regardless... I squatted.
Also, if any of you have been to northern Minnesota you know the winters are long, cold, and f***in windy, with lots of snow. My home was about 5 miles out of town, and often the gym wasn't open when I need to run/sprint. So I would bundle-up and head out into the sometimes below 0 temp and run in the snow. We lived next to a wooded area in which the snow would pile up to 2-3 feet deep in places. I figured this would be great training for myself as a running back. Sprinting high knees through deep snow, fighting through heavy duty snow apparel, it was like trying to break leg tackles for the entirety of every sprint. Plus the terrain was hilly, so I figured, 'Eat this Walter Payton! He maybe sprinted hills, but not with this much gear and snow to battle... wuss.'
Long story short; make due with the resources and environment in which you situated, and be sure to attack it with everything you've got. Maybe I wasn't training the "right" way with the perfect plan, but I was training HARD! As the good coaches I have had, have told me: "even if you're wrong, be sure to be wrong at 100 mph." ...just be sure to learn from the mistakes after.
4. I am often guilty of getting caught-up in arguing methods regarding training, but we all know,
Methods are many,
principles are few.
Methods often change,
principles never do.
Ultimately, regardless of the method, regardless of what you believe, believe in something... it's kind of like someone who once said something like, 'believe in yourself, or no one else will.' ... huh, pretty good advice...
5. The "orginal" Random Friday???
6. Want some great reading loaded with great information, insights and thoughts. Check out my good friend Josh Leeger's
blog: The L.I.F.T. Weblog
7. No More Squats. While I might not entirely agree, Coach Boyle always has good insights and thoughts.
8. Play fast. Move with everything you've got. Good things will happen. I see this at the playground I go by on my lunch break each day. We need more of this stuff. Kids always know the answer to fitness: Don't think about it, just play... we, as adults, just need to get out of their way.
9. Sleep. Quality sleep. Lots of it.
10. If you're fortunate to have some sunny weather today and this weekend, get your ass outside and load up on the Vitamin D any chance you can get... while moving.
Have a good weekend!
Move.
AS
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Modern Day ________ (you fill in the blank)
This looks to be a very interesting read. Kind of goes along with my recent rants...
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