We’re all working towards the same goal; to make healthier and stronger athletes that move better. I was having a conversation the other day regarding scope of practice with a physical therapist friend of mine and we starting talking about limits of our respective practice. This got me thinking about how these limits constrain our education within this field.

Within each discipline you will find a core unit of practitioners who are highly protective of their industry. For example, ATCs may tell strength coaches to stay away from doing “XYZ” because that is out of their scope. You also might find strength coaches telling PT’s that they need to stop implementing “ABC” regarding program design because ‘it’s their territory’.I will be the first to say that I completely understand and agree with the general standards of our scope of practice. Understand that the grey areas between the scopes are becoming ever more slimmer.  There have been many times when I ‘use’ to personal train athletes that if they score poorly on the Functional Movement Screen, I referred them out. If that had positive indicators of pain doing “XYZ”, I’d refer.  This just makes sense to me. I’m not an expert at physical therapy. I’m not an expert at diagnosing injuries. I’m not an expert nor can/should be, putting my hands on athletes with manual therapy. This is where the referring and scope of practice should be.

However, I think it’s in our industries best interest to UNDERSTAND what each practice does. I’m not going to go back to school to become an ATC or Physical Therapist but you can bet your buck that I’m reading textbooks and continuing education material regarding the topic. “Why”, might you ask? I believe having the understanding of each practice helps aid the athlete in all of our respective goals. We’re all here to make healthier and stronger athletes move better and more efficiently.

If I can understand what the ATC is looking for in injuries, I will be on the ball when I suspect an nagging injury or signs of “XYZ”. This doesn’t mean I’ll step outside of my scope of practice, but it does mean I’ll be quick to refer the athlete because of my education. Regarding physical therapy (something I’ve been extensively reading on lately), if I can understand the progressions the PT is doing with an injured athlete, I can efficiently and more safely begin developing strength training progressions and protocols that will help aid in the transition from an ATC, to a PT, to a strength coach.

I encourage you to not sell yourself short. If your a coach, or a PT or any other discipline; start reading other materials outside of your field. I’m not advocating to extend your practice outside of your scope, but rather gain an understanding of how each of our fields work towards the same positive goal. I’m still supporting becoming an absolute beast of knowledge within your own field, but to begin looking at other disciplines as a source to improve your own knowledge and the progress of our athletes.

Ten years ago if you were sitting behind a desk being interviewed for a strength and conditioning job, you’d redoubtably would be asked whether your a HIT guy or an Olympic guy. This question would later lead to sworn groups of enemies that had more hatred for each other than the West Coast vs. East Coast gangster rap hatred in the 90s.

Even today, I still receive this question. Granted, most strength coaches know the answer that is probably coming, I have to admit, it’s still an issue for some.

My response to this question is unequivocally; “I’m a What Works Guy!”. That’s right, that is my answer. I am simply a whatever-works type of guy. I also believe you HAVE TO BE. Our industry is changing so rapidly, science is changing quickly, athletic populations with their differences of speeds, agility, biomechanics, physiques, the nature of the game… It’s all changing dramatically.

Are You Working w/ All the Tools?

I end up usually making this analogy. In this day and age, simply being a one-methodology guy is like showing up to build a house and only bringing a hammer. You’re going to have difficulties cutting wood with a hammer, putting in screws, measuring and cementing.

The strength & conditioning realm is changing and it’s our responsibility as coaches to change with it. I’m not by any means saying we cannot olympic lift or we cannot use machines. I love both and use both in my programing. I also don’t think we need to build such elaborate variety in the program that adaptation can not occur. There are needs for stability and exercises need to stay constant  so those adaptations can occur.

What I am recommending is that we don’t pigeon hole or paint our selves into a corner by limiting the methodologies to only one or two. I think we need to look at what the Olympic guys are doing and say “What Works”. We need to look at the HIT gang and say “How can I use this”? Look at the functional, the corrective, the physical therapists, the prehabilitation gang, the movement-based group and simply ask ourselves, “how can we use this with our athletes”.

The day I look at something and quickly propose that I’ll never do it or never program it will be the day that I have one foot in the grave. Science is improving every day and more and more research is coming out disproving some methods, proving others. The game is rapidly changing. What we know to be working and proven today will be disproved and inefficient and wrong 2 years from now. It’s our job to stay as close to science and follow it’s groove.

The Summer of 2008, I made a decision that I wouldn’t buy a single text book for Graduate School. While I was obligated to buy one during my last semester of school (only one), I graduated with high honors without purchasing a single text book. How did I do it? How did I manage to read the information needed in order to pass all my classes and courses?

I’ll tell you, Google! Google today is my number one resource and I think we need to harness it’s power for all it’s uses. I managed to learn everything I needed to get through academia by searching Google; going through Google scholar;  reading articles;  Google books; etc.   My message to you is that there is so many resources out there that are available FOR FREE that you are doing yourself a disservice if you are not using them already.

Currently, right now in my training, I’m logging about 6-7 hours of cardio a week in preparation for my wedding (I’m a dweeb). I probably also average about 2 hours in my car a week between traveling to the gym and running errands around town.

THIS IS VITAL TIME! I have about 9-10 hours a week of dead time that I utilize to the fullest. My number one secret is Audiobooks. I’ve listened to so many different audiobooks between doing cardio and driving around town. Sure maybe Black Eyed Peas would sound better on my runs, but the difference is that I’m being productive.

During my runs I’m listening to books on business, on training, on physiology, coaching, training, sports, etc. I’ve listened to more books than I’ve probably read. True Story! And my secret is, I’ve obtained these resources for free! It’s easy and it’s all accessible via Google. All you have to do is search a little bit and you can find damn near anything. That’s the secret people! I encourage you to re-read this next sentence. Everything you want to know in the world, is available from Google.

In 2004, when I was a freshman in college, I made it my mission to digest every bit of information about strength training that was on the net. In my process it delivered me to every corner of the internet. Message Boards, bulletin boards, blogs, articles, scholarly papers, white papers, live chats, etc.

I encourage everyone, young to old, start harnessing the power of Google. It’s the most powerful entity on the internet today. It’s also absolutely free to your using.

Recovery Tools

Greetings Blog Readers! I wanted to take a moment out of my day to talk about the very important issue of recovery. Recovery is often over-looked when it comes to fitness, and is one of the many reasons why people grow tired of working out and lead to burn out.

All the actions that take place on the road, treadmill or gym take a physical toll on the human body. Our muscles break down, DOMS kick in, and our body’s are riddled with trigger points that hurt to the physical touch. Alwyn Cosgrove once said that is exercise produced a painful muscle, a muscle that is sore to the touch, then there is some level of dysfunction present.

What all to commonly happens as a result of exercise is painful trigger points that hurt to the touch. A way of treating or reducing both the occurrence and severity of these painful trigger points is through a form of myofascial release. Myofascial release is a form of soft tissue therapy used to treat somatic dysfunction and accompanying pain and restriction of motion. This is accomplished by relaxing contracted muscles, increasing circulation, increasing venous and lymphatic drainage, and stimulating the stretch reflex of muscles and overlying fascia.

The single best tool a person could get is a foam roller. I picked my foam roller up at Perform Better. Eric Cressey has a video hosted on YouTube that shows many of the common trigger points and foam rolling exercises. I end up doing my foam rolling both after my workout and again before I go to bed. Personally for me, I enjoy doing it before bed because afterwards, I’m completely relaxed and it seems for me to help me sleep better.

The second tool I have pictured is the baseball. I use this for a number of spots that the foam roller cannot target. Namely, I use it for the calves, soles of the feet, and scapula. For my back, I end up leaning my back against the wall and putting the ball between my shoulder blades and working it around the scapula. If you have any trigger points in your back this will certainly get them. To increase pressure simply walk your feet further from the wall and lean into the wall by driving against the ground with your feet.

For symptoms of plantar fasciitis from running long distances or increased amounts of cardio, I often use a tennis ball or baseball to massage the bottom soles of my feet. I would recommend starting with a tennis ball and then moving to the baseball. The tennis ball has a bit more give and is a bit less painful to begin with. Essentially I shift my weight over to the foot with the ball underneath it and give “20-30 passes” back and forth over the sole of the foot. In the picture provided work on massaging only the white area. Again, I do this either after my cardio session and before bed.

Next item in my picture you see is a small mini-band. I use this predominantly to increase mobility in my ankles. I’ll loop the band around my ankles and perform 15-20 repetitions of ankle inversion/eversion movements to increase the musculature surrounding my ankles. If you’ve every rolled in an ankle, you understand how it can take you away from running. I do these exercises nightly in order to prevent any future ankle rolls by increasing the surrounding strength around my ankles. An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.

Lastly you see a heavy duty jump stretch band. I purchased this band including the mini-band and foam roller from www.performbetter.com I highly recommend this company. I use this band for damn near everything. I use it for stretching the hamstrings, quads, groin, hipflexors, etc. Here is a decent video of Vmac65 from McConnell Athletics (it was the first YouTube video that looked decent). Sidenote: I should probably be shooting my own videos so that I could endorse and promote myself rather than other people and their respective companies. I’ll try to get on that and see what kind of video I can produce.

War: By Sebastian Junger

Lastly, as my Post Article title is named, I wanted to talk about some tunes. I’m logging about 7 hours of a cardio a week now in my Shred-Down Project for my wedding. Of those 7 hours, I don’t listen to one song. What I do listen to is audiobooks. I have found the uncertainly that an audiobook brings, allows for me to get lost in the book rather than concentrating on the running. My heart rate monitor allows for me to stay within a certain heart rate range, so honestly, I can allow myself to concentrate on the book and the road in front of me.

I just finished listening to Sebastian Junger’s book titled WAR available at Amazon.com and Holy Shit was it good. I don’t want to say it was “good” because in essence our American Soldiers are going through this hell every single day, but it was written with a elegance and deeply narrative flare that made every read (or listen) suspenseful and captivating. I highly recommend this to anybody who needs a good listen for a commute, long road trip, or frequent cardio tunes.

Until next time people, Keep working hard and keep on going!

The Root Hog Sled - A Beast

I had a great workout today. Went into the gym and did a few movements that I haven’t done in quite awhile. The first being a seated leg curl using the Keiser Functional Trainer and a Valslide. That really hit the hamstrings great. I rest-paused all the reps and aimed to get 30 total across 3 attempts a leg. I fell a bit short, somewhere between 20-25 reps for each leg. This will allow me to attempt the same weight next time in aims of increasing repetitions. Remember, progression is key! If your using the same weight or getting the same amount of repetitions – that is not progression, that’s stagnation.

I then ended up doing some single leg stepup’s onto a high plyometric box. Ended up using 160lbs and scratched out around 6 reps per each leg, and then I dropped to 120lbs and aimed to get 20 each leg, but I actually only got around 9 each. I fell quite short and will drop the weight significantly next time around. I was just eye balling the weight since I haven’t done these movements since I started the “Shred Down”.

My last movement was a calf raise utilizing a leg press machine. I only aim for 12 repetitions for this movement but it’s really the TUT (Time Under Tension) that gets this workout. I perform a 1 sec concentric, a 5 second eccentric, and a 15 second stretch at the bottom of the movement with my foot in dorsiflexion. After 4 minutes (12 repetitions), your calves will be on fire.

It's a love/hate relationship

Finally, to finish the session with the cardiovascular component, I wanted to do something a bit different than my LSD (Long Slow Distance) runs lasting an hour. I set a goal to do 30 minutes of what I coined “Prowler Cardio”.

I set my watch to 30 seconds of “work time” and 15 seconds of “rest time”. I actually only loaded the horns with 45lb plates on each (totaling 90lbs) and it still is one hell of a workout. Truth me honest, I didn’t just do prowler the whole time, as I am fortunate to have a bunch of other tools at my reach.

I also ended up using the new sled, The Root Hog for a variety of pushes, pulls, and drags. I would alternate between either the prowler, or the root hog, or a kettlebell swing. None of this work was intended to “build muscle”, rather it was simply used in order for me to increase my heart rate, and keep me moving. It was one hell of a workout, let me tell you.

Cereal - The Whole Reason I Train

In the end, I reached 30 minutes of hard interval cardio and got to walk out the gym beat up from all the pushing, pulling, lifting, and swinging. If your looking to mix up your workout, start thinking about how you can use the weights around you (in a cardiovascular fashion). Don’t be so constraint to just running, or biking for your cardio. There is plenty of things a person could do to gain anaerobic/aerobic fitness. Sprinting, Hill Running, Tossing heavy objects. Who knows – Be Creative!

Lastly, a perfect post workout nutritional meal. 40 grams of whey isolate and 93 grams (75 grams of carbohydrates) of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I end up mixing my protein with water. I know a lot of people who complain about that and say water + protein is disgusting, but I’ve never drank my protein shakes with milk so I’m not missing out on anything. Until next time people!!