Musings and Things to Read – 7.15.2015

Hope your summer is going along swimmingly! Here are some of my thoughts as many of our college and high school athletes are coming mid-way through their off-season training.

Movement Doesn’t Tell The Whole Picture

Biomechanical (in)efficiencies do not equate to physiological competency.

  • Just because you move well in isolation outside of your sport, does not mean you have enough fitness qualities to do well in your sport.
  • Likewise, just because you move poorly according to a standardization of movement, does not equate to the demands of your given sport.

After assessing, working with, and surrounding myself with collegiate and professional players from several different organizations and sports, I can confidently say that elite athlete =/= elite health.

Sometimes offensive linemen need to weigh a lot in order to defend the quarterback.

John Moffitt

Or you may play rugby, so you will need to have more natural weight, because you don’t have any pads while you’re in a scrum.

Or you might have contact/non-contact injuries, so from an orthopedic point of view you are “not healthy”, but you are playing at an elite level.

(See an article that was floating around during the NBA Finals this year: Lebron James and his intense recovery routineIn this, it talks about how he replenishes fluids immediately after a game, receives massages during flights, and other items that help him accomplish a lot on the court.)

Interestingly enough, based on this research article talking about low back pain and passive hip range of motion, I’d expect many of our athletes to walk in on crutches. However, passive hip range of motion can be limited for many reasons – tissue quality, inefficient joint mobility, or neurological guarding (protective tension).

Sometimes (not always) a few warm-up drills, jumping rope, and skips and marches can improve movement within the affected joints – often due to transient warming up, synovial fluid coating certain joints, and generally speaking better blood flow!

Exercise Programming: A Few Limiting Factors

Exercise selection to improve fitness qualities (speed, strength, endurance, and power) may be simpler than imagined. An exercise program should take into account two general guidelines: timeline, and limiting factors in an athlete’s development.

  • Creating a block of exercise programming for an individual who has 12 weeks of uninterrupted exercise time has the ability to be exposed to multiple stressors with which they can recover from in a positive manner.
  • On the other hand, creating a exercise block for an individual who has 6 weeks of exercise, with 1 week of vacation in the middle of those 6 weeks (so really 5), will have to readjust how they approach said training block.
  • This is not to mention training age, biomechanical movement qualities, physiological capacity for movement, sport specific skillsets necessary, and injury history, among many other items.

Personal logistics, ownership of goals, and accountability are largely underrated when it comes to success in any individual’s life.

Cressey Sports Performance’s 8th Anniversary

Monday was CSP’s 8th Birthday!

CSP

Tony wrote a great blog about some of the origins, along with various milestones that many of our clients have done, not to mention how cool it is to look back in hindsight at the amount of professionals we’ve all worked with in recent years.

Looking back at my personal story with respect to Cressey Sports Performance, it is always interesting to see how I came about working here.

If I didn’t have the internet, I wouldn’t have come across any articles from Eric Cressey from any of his mediums at the time. That, on top of working a lot after interning in the Fall of 2012, helped put my foot in the door towards getting hired at Cressey Sports Performance. It’s been a fun ride so far!

*insert cheesy smile*
*insert cheesy smile*

As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo

Hidden Benefits of Deadlifting for Dancers

Deadlifting may be one of the more important exercises for dancers out there. The reason for this is you need to develop high amounts of tension in a short amount of time in order to be successful in both dancing and deadlifts.

One move in particular throughout bboying involves performing windmills – you need to develop constant tension throughout your upper body, simply rolling from shoulder to shoulder, while slowly spreading your hips and feet apart from each other.

More specifically, there is something about having movement in the hips while maintaining a stiff upper body during deadlifts that speaks correlatively in relation to windmills, albeit it may just be coincidence.

Toyz Are Us

While you don’t need to roll your shoulders during the deadlift, you do need to quite literally spread the floor – especially during the sumo deadlift.

Hidden Benefits of Performing the Sumo Deadlift

However, performing windmills over and over may not be as conducive to joint health as performing deadlifts. I am merely representing the two movements in an analogous manner.

What is truly beneficial about the deadlift is that it can challenge the anterior core, train the legs and glutes, and develop a movement pattern to teach anti-flexion.

When we are dancing, we want to be versatile in many movement patterns, and having a little extra muscle may help prevent any injuries from occurring both from an acute and long term point of view.

Acutely, if you have more muscle around a joint, you can save your joints from being damaged – such as when you bang your shoulder against the ground when preparing to do a freeze.

From a long term perspective if your muscles (and your brain) are more resilient to stress from dancing, lifting, and all of the above, you are theoretically more able to recover from training session to session, or from competition to battles.

Lastly, the benefits of understanding rate of force production is something that is helpful to understand, as the individuals who can develop more force in a shorter amount of time may prove to be the most explosive dancers on the floor, or the most explosive athletes on the field.

4 Tips to Troubleshoot the Deadlift

There are a couple of ways to mess up the sumo deadlift. These involve:

1. Not getting close enough to the barbell.

If you don’t get close to the barbell – like having your shin LITERALLY right next to the barbell, two things will happen: the bar will drift forward and away from you as you pull, or you will tip forward and break tension in your hips.

2. Losing position with your upper back.

Many individuals say to get tight in your upper back, others say have loose shoulder blades.

I recommend getting tight throughout your lats and other upper back musculature, because if you aren’t tight through that area, the next area to “get out of alignment” is your thoracic spine (or your midback).

Lose position of your thoracic spine and you may find yourself tipping forward (again).

3. Not spreading the floor (appropriately).

Spread the floor can mean many things to many different people. Some people have no idea what spreading the floor means. It’s all about context.

Spread the floor is referring to opening your hips, while having a stable, wide platform developed from your feet.

Your knees should be stable as well – no wobbly knees, or any knees going in.

Deadlift - Article

Opening your pelvis causes your femurs to externally rotate and abduct. “Spreading the floor” from the feet up involves ever-so-slightly supinating your feet (think about supinating AWAY from pronation – similar to extending AWAY from flexion).

The focus is not on the “knees going out” anymore – it is creating tension in both the hips and the feet. The reaction that occurs at the knees are secondary to the tension that is created in the feet and the hips (along with the anterior core as well).

4. Having your hands too far apart.

If you bring your hands straight down, reach for the bar, that is where your grip should be when you sumo deadlift.

Deadlift - Arms

Notice gap between hands/arms and legs. (Top Left) This will eventually lead to a “longer arm position”, a shorter distance to pull sumo, and arms right next to your torso as you finish the lift (Bottom Right).

If your hands are too far apart, the amount of tension you need to develop increases. This can be seen with variations such as a Snatch Grip Deadlift.

For beginners just learning how to deadlift, keep these tips in mind when performing a kettlebell deadlift. I usually include kettlebell deadlifts for most beginners learning how to deadlift because it is easier to manage from an leverage point of view.

If you found the above helpful, please share the post, and THEN sign up for my newsletter in the left column for more updates on when I write other articles like this! Thank you.

As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo

USPA Powerlifting Meet Recap – 3/28/15

My last powerlifting meet was in the USAPL in 2013, and this time around I knew things would be different.

The federation would be slightly different (USPA), my strength levels have improved tremendously, and my training blocks prior to the powerlifting meet were drastically different.

USPA Powerlifting Meet 3/28/15

My training recently comprised of a lot of eccentric, isometric, and jump training to improve my ability to produce force in multiple planes. While this is usually not the norms for a pure 100% powerlifting program, my movement, strength, and capacity for physiological power greatly improved due to this type of training.

How do I know? Well, after gaining an additional 10-12lbs, I went and tested my vertical jump on a Vertec Jump System. My previous personal record was 37.5 inches for a vertical jump, and after putting on some mass, I kept a 34 inch vertical jump in my bag of tricks. So only a ~10% decrease in power, while training for a maximal strength sport.

With the interesting power maintenance notes under your belt, let’s continue to the powerlifting meet.

USPA ran a great lifting meet, and it was a lot of fun to continue to clang and bang with some “brothers in iron.” The meet didn’t have that many people – around ~30 or so individuals, but still plenty of strong individuals to admire.

The night before, one of CSP’s current interns Eric and I went to the weigh in early. This is a game changer, because if you’ve attended any PL meet before with a 2 hour weigh in before competition, it gets dicey with eating dinner, sleeping, and not eating breakfast to make sure you’re not over the weight capacity for your weight class.

All I had to do was make sure I was 2 to 3lbs under weight (just to make sure our scales at home matched the ones at the location). I weighed in at 161lbs, and then we feasted at IHOP afterwards.

IHOP
Crushed all that food in less than 19 minutes. We timed it.

 

Anyway, onto the videos of my lifts!


My previous powerlifting meet PRs (from 2013) were:

Back Squat: 346lbs
Bench Press: 231.5lbs
Deadlift: 402.5lbs

…for a total of 980lbs.

I was also competing in the 148lb weight class.

My new PRs (2015) are:

Back Squat: 407.5lbs (61lb meet PR)
Bench Press: 233.5lbs (2lb meet PR)
Deadlift: 507.5lbs (105lb meet PR)

This was in the 165lb weight class, and an overall 168lb jump in numbers.

This also allowed me to win the 165lb Open Division.

1st Place - Powerlifting Meet

Reflecting on the Past Years’ Training

What a strange jump in strength levels. Keep in mind that my previous 1RM on my deadlift prior to moving to Massachusetts was 425lbs. Fast forward to the end of March, and I’m touching 515lbs on the deadlift.

I have a feeling my lack of ability to improve on my bench press may have something to do with my (lack of) shoulder stability – I might need to re-evaluate how I approach my training on that end. My movement quality has improved greatly, and I hit a 260lb bench press (sans the butt moving half an inch), and I’ve hit 275lbs with a pause twice for a personal best in the gym.

My deadlift has improved dramatically. I hope to write more to reflect the changes I’ve undertaken in this journey of lifting, as I feel deadlifting is the most natural of all of the “big 3”.

I had braces from the 4th grade to 9th grade. I was also very uncoordinated growing up.

The squat is an interesting beast of a lift. I hope to improve greatly on this, as I’ve made the most “light bulb” moments prior to the powerlifting meet. The biggest light bulb moment I’ve had is what it means to feel a “bounce” out of the bottom/ole, or to feel the stretch shortening cycle change from the glutes to the quads out of the bottom to about midway up.

One thing that I wish someone could do is articulate on my specific body where I need to feel specific portions of the exercise. I feel the [sumo] deadlift is the easiest to feel a total body awareness, whereas all of the other movements are a bit lost on me because there is no ultimate place to feel tension.

What I mean by this is that the tension changes from position of the top to the bottom. In such a dynamic movement such as the squat, tension changes as you switch directions from descending to the hole to ascending out of it.

As you begin to flex at the hips and knees, your torso angle should primarily stay upright, otherwise you will begin to flex at the lumbar and thoracic vertebrae, which is not ideal.

Where I get lost is at the bottom of the hole, because you need to quite literally reverse the movement, and have the intent on pushing backwards while maintaining an upright torso. I feel like I lose tension quite easily from the glutes, and I immediately feel like I need to shift forward all the time (perhaps to utilize the quadriceps).

Despite this strange relationship I have with the squat, I have lifted 407.5 in a meet, and 425 in the gym multiple times.

I’m not quite sure I made the most sense with these last few statements, but I hope to look back at this post in a few months/years and speak with newfound confidence on the issue that is squats and bench press.

In any case, I’m of the belief that I couldn’t have done all of this without my gym training partners, Greg Robins (www.TheStrengthHouse.com) and Tony Bonvechio (www.BonvecStrength.com). We got weird sometimes with our #LateNightLifts last year, and I can’t wait to start the next training cycle.

If the bar ain’t bendin… 455lbs for a 30lb #PersonalRecord on my #Deadlift #MasterYourMovement @enhance2dance

A video posted by MiggsyBogues (@miggsybogues) on

As always,

Keep it funky.
MAsymbollogo