Clarity and Distractions

Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.

-Cal Newport, Deep Work

Clarity

What is clarity, and why is the pursuit of clarity important?

In a world full of distraction, noise, bright lights and shiny things, when can you have clarity for your thoughts or your actions?

The second definition of clarity, reading the “quality of being easy to see or hear: sharpness of image or sound” brings about a great visual imagery of what is expected when you have a clear and focused mindset.

Magnifying Glass

I have had the pleasure of traveling by myself for quite some time the past few weeks and months for several hours at a time. This provides several advantages that I would not have had I traveled with someone else:

  1. I can refine my thoughts about my professional life, personal life, and any other thoughts as a cause of this as well.
  2. I can pick and choose who to have small talk with on my travels.

Other than the times I am jamming out and singing along to a song when driving, there are times where my mind will focus on what is important, and what is not important.

The first point brings about the greatest point on “clarity.” By traveling, I get several hours to myself to fine tune my thoughts, or fine tune a conversation, or fine tune an approach on a difficult problem that occurred previously in the week or day before. The constant revision of my thoughts along with the innovation of many methods that follows these principles is what yields my results over and over again.

With these travels, I have the ability to refine my thoughts before executing. This goes against the current grain in a field that favors ADD like attention grabbing hashtags, images, and quotes that make people feel good in the moment, but do not add value at the end of the day.

The thoughts in my specific field are execute before you can even fact check or make sure it lines up with your principles – if you have any. Any attention is good attention. No news is bad news.

Well I’d rather create a sharp, laser like focus where my thoughts can survive the fray, as opposed to leaning on a world where everyone is quick to share an often half-baked idea.

I bring this idea of clarity up because where else will you find another individual who has had nearly every weekend in the past year to travel for multiple, multiple hours at a time, thinking about the intricacies of anatomy and physiology, along with the application of all of this knowledge in a very deliberate sense? And I’ve been doing this for several years at this point – being alone with my thoughts in order to refine my philosophy.

The second point on clarity brings about the idea that every little thing that can distract you, will distract you. I’m fortunate at the moment to not have major major responsibilities such as having to take care of any family, or any other responsibilities other than me being alive and paying bills. This helps, but I know this will change in the near future.

So when looking to create something so good that no one can ignore you, do you think it is accomplished by paying attention to the hundreds of distractions that are out there?

Hardly.

You need focus, clarity, and stubbornness to accomplish this. If you are constantly distracted through small talk, phone notifications, and other items of the sort, you won’t be able to survive to create anything, let alone refine your thoughts to create something that excels past the noise.

Action Plan

1. Track the amount of times you unconsciously check your favorite social media outlet in a 10 minute block.

If it distracts you from a current project, ask yourself – is it helping or hurting?

2. Track the amount of time you have alone to yourself – without talking to anyone else.

If you don’t get more than 30 minutes to yourself, either on purpose, or because of other responsibilities, block off time where you quite literally tell people that you have an appointment – with yourself… just to get things done, or at least think.

3. Make yourself unavailable during certain times of your day or week.

  • Henry David Thoreau traveled into the woods alone, and later created Walden.
  • Many musicians go for days and maybe weeks at a time in the studio with no contact with the outside world.
  • Many of my mentors wake up earlier than the rest of the world in order to get things done – all before these distractions enter their lives after sunrise.

I choose to travel for hours on end, along with staying up late into the nights to get things done.

What about you?

As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo

Foundational Coaching: Installment 2 – Medicine Ball Drills

In this series, I’m going to go over some of the basics with respect to how I progress medicine ball drills and how our youth athletes can best represent the idea of improving movement qualities of power and speed.

Many times our youth athletes will come in one of three ways: very coordinated, somewhat coordinated, and very uncoordinated.

This plays a role in not only our screening process at CSP, but also in what exercises are selected to help them display and express the physiological qualities of strength, speed, power, and endurance.

For example, If someone gets fatigued doing a specific type of drill, it can be expected that their ability to move around and perform that exercise for long durations of time will reduce in terms of efficiency over time. Long story short, their form will degrade as the exercise continues.

The energy requirements that require strength, speed, and power to be expressed in various movements are very different than the ones that are needed during endurance activities. So this brings to light a specific timeline or even window with which these youth athletes can perform exercises before fatiguing on a global level.

If they cannot maintain form for a movement pattern past the 60 to 90 minute mark, who is to say we need to keep on performing that exercise? What do you do instead?

Miguel_Aragoncillo-203

What Do You Do When Someone Has No Coordination & is Quick to Fatigue?

Set them up for success – by any means necessary. Period.

Now let’s answer the question of how we go about doing this. 

If someone can’t display strength, speed, or power from the get-go, what can we do differently to help them show off their power that is harnessed within their body?

One thing to understand is that if someone comes into our gym with a “very uncoordinated” body, then perhaps the position that they are normally in will not elicit the best expression of the desired qualities of strength, speed, power, and even endurance.

How can we bridge this gap between an uncoordinated individual with the tremendous source of energy that they might be able to display in their program?

I’ve always hung my hat on knowing when clients or athletes may not feel coordinated. Over time, you too will be able to sense a moment of hesitation before an explosive motion occurs in jumping, throwing, hopping. This subconscious self-doubt or self-talk displays itself in several micro-ticks within an individual’s behavior. Some call it the coach’s eye, and others will point to reduced force production on force plates or technology, Just Jump Mats, or less weight pulled on the barbell (than you know they are capable of).

Whatever the output is, it is best to identify which movements will elicit the highest outputs of force without detracting from the end goal.

Practical Application

One thing I can use to my advantage is to reduce the movement to its simplest movement patterns in order to progress or layer into the next drill – the end goal for the day. On a neurological level, sometimes standing and being explosive is too much work. Let’s make it easier – go to one knee or two knees, and ask them to be explosive in this manner.

Sometimes sprinting drills aren’t effective because the individual doesn’t understand the requisite movement patterns that are necessary to understand. Sometimes an individual doesn’t understand what it means to throw their whole body into a jump, or medicine ball drill, and there is force production left behind on the table.

Using drills such as a medicine ball medley or medicine ball warm-up will help bridge this gap between uncoordinated movement qualities and powerful slams and throws.


I not only find these drills to be effective for our youth athletes, but also as a great reinforcement of separation for our intermediate and advanced athletes. By locking down the lower half of the body, you can elicit a static base and foundation with which you can display great levels of rotary and sagittal explosive force, depending on the drill.

Coaching Cues

1. Make sure to stay tall through your torso – head up to the ceiling.

2. Brace with the ball in your hands, and give a slight exhale as you slam the ball.

3. Break the ball through the wall, and REACH with whatever position you are in (to encourage upper body separation from lower body).

4. Lastly, keep hips square to whichever position you originally started in.

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As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo

My Favorite Exercise Combinations: Installment 17 – Hands, Wrists, Forearms – Oh My!

I’m continuously fascinated by how much one part of the body that seems so far away from another can affect another body part. In this case, I’m super interested in how a lack of flexibility can affect your hands and wrists!

Interestingly, the most I can point to is the concept of relative stiffness from Sahrmann, and regional interdependence in which a proximal area (shoulders) will affect a distal structure (hands and wrists).

Biceps - Forearms Check - AROM Collage
On the Left: Muscular Hypertrophy is also another reason why distal structures may be tight. On the right: Hypermobile individual without as much hypertrophy displays much more mobility.

Question: In the above picture, would the left or right individual have an easier or harder time setting up a traditional front squat position from the shoulder position on up?

Essentially if you are stiff up top, your range of motion will obviously be affected up top. Thusly, you may “ask” of your body to move where there is a path of least resistance – and thus the smaller structures involving the elbows, forearms, wrists, and even hands may display different movement patterns. This is opposed to if you aren’t as tight or stiff up top!

Long story short, if you have short or stiff lats, this may affect what is going on at the biceps, which can affects what goes on at the forearms, which can affect what’s going on at your wrists and hands!

This is of course, assuming you have had a pre-disposition towards these range of motion deficits. I’ve seen many athletes that walk in our door display a lack of shoulder range of motion, but make up for it further down the chain (and have a shift to the right in wrist and forearm pronation).

But what happens if you apply a stressor such as a sport (such as baseball) or even lifting heavy weights in the context of hand or wrist issues?

Miguel_Aragoncillo-283
What happens if you constantly dance on your hands and abuse your wrists?

Well, sometimes blood flow to an area can create a residual or superficial warming up of the affected area, and movement improves.

This is a good thing.

Other times, however, you can aggravate your issues further by ignoring the specific issue, and overgeneralizing your warm-up, and the condition is glossed over.

This is a bad thing.

For example, take into account one athlete that came into our doors earlier this year:

As you can see, there is a lack of closed chain wrist extension (or the ability to place her hands on the ground flat, and move her wrist into extension past 90°. There was even a discrepancy from hand to hand, which was concerning to me. Perhaps there was a soft tissue problem that can be alleviated, but if not there may be something else going on!

Turns out she competes in pole vaulting. (Watch some high level pole vaulting here.) This motion is exacerbated when she bench presses, and rightfully so as the barbell compresses her carpal bones in a not-so-fun manner.

So what are some easy fixes that can be done if you have issues with compression?

Well, from a joint appraisal point of view, assessing rib mobility will allow you greater input towards what occurs at the glenohumeral joint, which can affect shoulder flexion, extension, and internal & external rotation. This seems to be first. Afterwards, identifying range of motion at the hand, wrist, and forearm will be next.

Shoulder Motion
Photo Credit: https://www.senderoneclimbing.com

Next, we assessed what was happening with her bench press technique.

If you don’t keep in mind the specificity of what happens when someone does an activity, you may be caught in a “corrective exercise rabbit hole” that you won’t be able to dig yourself out of.

Turns out her wrist position was not ideal, and we also assessed her ability to deliver high tension techniques in her bench press, which was improved after a few minutes of coaching.

Read: Wrapping the Barbell in the Bench Press

Developing a Simple Plan of Action with Exercise Combinations

To give a few really easy drills of what we did from an exercise combination point of view:

1. Golf Ball on Forearm/Hand for Neurological Inhibition (or loosening up the structures on superficial level)

Wrist and Hand SMR - 22. 1-Arm Lat Stretch with Hand Distraction

1-Arm Band with Hand Distraction

3. Fixed her bench press technique.

These few items helped alleviate or at the very least, staved off any problematic issues from preventing her from competing in either powerlifting or pole vaulting.

These sports are not the only sports that are affected or plagued by hand issues. There are tons of them out there – gymnastics, bboying, any contact sport involving pushing, CrossFit even – not to mention even typing on a computer or laptop for 8 hours a day for hours on end will create carpal tunnel like syndromes that can be alleviated with some simple exercises.

In Conclusion…

With these tips in mind, I have a slew of other exercises that were utilized to help improve hand, wrist, and forearm range of motion for those who are lacking the ability to get into certain positions with their upper limbs. If you’re interested, I have a whole webinar dedicated to this topic, and it can be found at Elite Training Mentorship here.

—> Join Elite Training Mentorship TODAY <—

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As a part of the Cressey Sports Performance webinar library, I also have uploaded several exercise demonstrations along with monthly webinars that go over functional anatomy and exercises that you can begin using today in the gym – without all the fancy philosophy and rhetoric.

You can join today for less than a weekend out in the city, and get a ton of different content (including all of the past content) to help you coach and train your clients today. Make sure to check it out at EliteTrainingMentorship.com.

As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo