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The Assessment Experiments: Installment 2

In The Assessment Experiments: Installment 1, I laid out the basic principles with which I view assessments on a regular basis.

One item I want to expand on is the idea of regional interdependence.

Originally, regional interdependence talks about how one area of the body may be affecting another’s dysfunction or maybe even pain. This can be described further by the Joint by Joint Approach. If there is a lack of mobility in one area of the body (the ankle for example), then another adjacent area of the body will theoretically be more mobile to compensate.

JointByJointApproach

From the last article, I had demonstrated how facilitation of the auditory system changed how you move. With regional interdependence being utilized to demonstrate the plasticity of the brain, I can now ask two questions:

  1. What will influence [the brain] in a positive manner?
  2. What other ways can I improve movement patterns?
Systems
Systemic Interdependence aka Homeostasis

Well when working with athletes on all levels, I have three goals:

  1. Improve ability to produce force.
  2. Improve ability to absorb force.
  3. Improve joint position either through coaching, soft tissue work (massage and self-massage), or through habitual changes (better sleep, etc).

These three goals will resonate throughout the rest of these installments.

Lack of Oxygen Affecting Movement Patterns

At Cressey Sports Performance, we are lucky that people will drive, fly, and commute from all over the world in order to improve their movement quality with our staff and lift heavy stuff.

One caveat that goes unnoticed is what occurs when an individual flys for long hours at a time – pressure changes within the body occur, hydration status fluctuates, and on the most mechanical level, sitting in one position may be uncomfortable for a number of reasons (muscle tightness, joint issues, psychological nerves).

In fact, one such study correlates oxygen saturation with air travel. (1) If the body is lacking oxygen, what occurs at the lung level? If the inter pleural cavity does not receive enough pressure to fully exhale, because of constant inhalation, what is the resulting effect?

Hydration Status

Another idea that may not come across involves the specific hydration status of any given individual. At the very basic level, water is a fluid that allows many processes to occur within the body – the digestive system needs water to mix with other chemicals to break down food, water (H2O) gradients allow cells to shift waste products in and out, among many other complex processes beyond the scope of this article.

On a movement capacity point of view, what happens to the muscles, fascia, and the nervous system when there is not enough water in the system?


Fascia

Funny enough, I competed in a powerlifting meet at the end of March this year (2015), and one item I performed to make sure I made weight was to not drink water for one whole day (Friday for weigh-ins).

Prior to weigh ins, I did a movement assessment because I did not feel great, and wanted to see just how bad my movement quality truly was.

So if hydration status affects neuromuscular status, what about cardiovascular status? I just remember riding in to weigh in, and checking my heart rate while sitting down – steady to mid 90s. Sitting down, it wasn’t the most fun for me to have a heart rate of 93, not drink water, and be fatigued as well from a full day of working.

After weigh-ins, we went to a local pancake house and immediately had 4 glasses of water. I checked my movements after drinking water, and my shoulder and hip mobility improved drastically, not to mention I could think a lot more clearly as well.

I bring up traveling along with hydration status because those two items are interrelated – if you travel, more often than not you won’t be thinking about how hydrated you are, especially so if you are on a road trip for a few hours because it may hinder how fast you get to your destination.

If you’re traveling, often times you may be enticed to get an alcoholic beverage or two to get the vacation or trip started, or to even settle your nerves. Perhaps getting a few extra bottles of water in your system may be the trick you need, instead.

Interesting how water will affect a movement assessment.

Or perhaps pancakes and waffles helped more than I can imagine as well.

Practical Application of Info for Assessments

Well, what does this tell us?

  • Hydration status may be indirectly linked to movement quality.
  • This could explain how closely linked the nervous system is in relation to the musculoskeletal system.

This is a direct explanation of structures dictating the function of fascia, muscles, and the nervous system. If fascia surrounds muscle fibers, and within the fascia there are interspersed neural connections, the proximity of these structures could elaborate how water can influence movement quality.

Muscle-structure
Photo Credit: SequenceWiz.org

Sports Performance Application

Now the more interesting application of this information.

Imagine the original scenario around my dehydration video. I’m dehydrated, and the next day I need to perform at a supra-maximal intensity in order to express the qualities of maximal strength.

  • If I’m dehydrated, and it negatively carries over into my movement qualities, how fast can I bounce back to regain composure of my movements?
  • Will cutting weight have negative application towards sports performance?
  • What does this mean for sports that necessitate a weight cut in order to compete (wrestling, boxing, powerlifting, weightlifting, and mixed martial arts)?

Even more importantly, in the context of a team sport, many athletes travel via flights, and by bus.

  • If an athlete has to travel from time zone to time zone, and loses quality of a movement pattern, but does nothing to reintegrate an appropriate recovery pattern, what is the actual effect acutely (on game day)?
  • What is the effect from a chronic point of view (over the course of a season, or even long term aka the lifetime of an athlete that travels professionally)?

Simply, I’m utilizing these assessments in a way to ask better questions, as I currently don’t have answers to these unique experiments of mine. Hopefully I can look back in the future and find that someone has answered these items appropriately!

As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo

References

1 – Humphreys, S., et al. “The effect of high altitude commercial air travel on oxygen saturation.” Anaesthesia 60.5 (2005): 458-460.

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My Favorite Exercise Combinations: Installment 6

As many of our athletes have returned from their high school and collegiate seasons (and go on to play summer baseball as well), there have been many individuals who, for several reasons, have only just returned to lifting on a more regular schedule.

When it comes down to it, there are only so many general preparatory exercises that need maintenance on a day to day basis.

  1. Hip Hinge
  2. Squat
  3. Lunge
  4. Push
  5. Pull
  6. Anti-Extension, -Rotation, -Flexion

The loads, implements, and other items will change from day to day, but the movements will largely remain the same.

As a rule of thumb with many of our youth athletes, the rotational demands that they have experienced for all of the season during their school year will need to be restored, maintained, and improved upon in order to prepare their body for the upcoming fall semester of play.

If an athlete is returning and they have only give or take 2 months (8 weeks) of hard training, not including any weeks off for vacations (so only 6.5 to 7 weeks in reality).

The drills indicated by the baseball edition of the combination days hopefully serve as an index for restoring movement that may have been as a cause of degradation during the season.

During the off-season, the athlete can now restore mobility, improve power and strength qualities that may have been lost for absolute speed qualities that were improved upon during games.

With all of this in mind, two drills (with a bonus third) I find myself using after the dynamic warm-up involve utilizing a rotational medicine ball drill, and a very simple half kneeling mobility drill.

A1. Hot Feet Recoiled Shotput – 4×4/side

A2. Half Kneeling Windmill – 3×8/side

The “hot feet” version of the recoiled shot-put involves understanding what it means to shift weight appropriately from foot to foot, and from hip to hip. As you move back and forth with intention, the movement will require adequate mobility through the hips, thoracic spine, and scapulae as you throw the ball.

Often times the movement may incorporate simply too much movement from the upper body, and not enough in the hips or even the feet.

What is hopefully accomplished with the pairing involves understanding how the Half Kneeling Windmill works – there is movement that aims to free up the scapula, requires co-contraction of specific lower body musculature, along with maintaining abdominal integrity as you rotate.

This coordination of the lower portion of the body with the upper body is necessary towards developing low levels of motor control – a quality that is also necessary for doing Moonwalks.

Perhaps this third exercise can be introduced to solidify the dissociation and association necessary for more body awareness for our athletes!

As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo

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Improving Communication and Developing Awareness – From Student to Coach

My history in the fitness and strength and conditioning industry is rife with education and internships:

  • Undergraduate degree in Kinesiology
  • Over 1500+ hours of internship time with 4 various private facilities
  • Several continuing education courses from various organizations
  • Multiple speaking engagements; both in-person and online

With this time, I have personally seen over 30-40 interns come and go with respect to the internship process while working full time as a strength coach for a handful of private facilities.

While the question has evolved over time, my professional philosophy has largely remained the same:

What does it take to get to the next level of [sports] performance?

This question has taken me quite literally all over the nation, and it has been fun and interesting to meet with a large group of individuals who seem to be swept up under a similar personal question.

Further, by identifying the components of this question, I have begun to understand how several different models may be utilized in order to attain that “next level” of performance. I have currently found myself to be employed by Cressey Sports Performance, where I’m happily creating several outlets for this high performance model.

Every fresh crop of interns I encounter, either here at CSP or from previous positions, involves two questions:

  1. What do you want to do after the [Cressey Sports Performance] internship?
  2. What is your intention on being here during your internship?

The above questions aren’t meant to be antagonistic, as they can come across as such if asked out of context. My purpose is not to engage in a zero-sum competition; it is to engage in a genuine conversation to see where the individuals state of mind is with respect to professional work, educational goals, and/or personal obstacles that may be impeding them from achieving these goals.

The context that the answers to these questions provide involves knowing what motivates individuals who come through our internship process. The faster I can get caught up to speed with what your (the incumbent intern class) intentions are, the more value I will be able to provide based on your answer. If you want to know where the best beers are in Boston, we can talk about that. If you want to know what the assessment process involves, then we can go down that route, for sure.

Not many places better than this.
Not many places better than this.

Further, my intentions for identifying the answers to these questions involve understanding how I can utilize key individuals for improving the high performance training process that we deliver here at CSP.

If I can provide some guidance towards your answers as quickly as possible, I hope to achieve these items:

  1. I genuinely enjoy helping others.
  2. Scratch your back by providing value, so you in turn will scratch our backs by working.

If people can recognize my altruistic nature, I hope to impart the fact that I am merely here for our athletes and clients.

If others live with item number 2’s motto, then I hope to provide value in understanding that they will also provide value for our staff down the line (by working within our model).

Improving the Learning Process

There are several ways that we as a staff can provide value for any given internship class:

  1. Weekly educational in-services
  2. Observational opportunities for various models with respect to fitness, strength and conditioning, and rehabilitation modalities.
  3. Constant and consistent interaction with staff who deal with various types of populations
  4. Access to library of various types of information with respect to the above items.
  5. A training environment that is often imitated, but rarely duplicated.

Why is Miguel spotting Tony doing a bowler squat? I honestly have no idea. #gregphotobomb #CSPfamily

A photo posted by Cressey Sports Performance (@cresseysportsperformance) on

I make my best attempts at asking each intern quite literally on their first day during their internship, “What do you want to learn?”

Now not everyone is super aggressive with the learning process, but when this question is thrown at certain individuals, I can quickly identify if these individuals are up for a specific type of logically oriented learning. If these individuals don’t respond in earnest, there is no harm. Not everyone is up for a rapid learning process right out of the gates.

If the intern responds with (xyz) topics, I know how to better direct them in terms of ideologies, philosophies, and how to best communicate thought processes.

Analogously, if I went to CSP as a high school or collegiate athlete to learn how to get stronger to help me on the field, but all that was communicated to me was the best practice for stretching, I would feel underserved.

Essentially, there is a lot of value that can be extracted from a high performance oriented internship such as this one.

Subjectively, there are a few ways that I can categorize the types of individuals that come through our internship process, along with other private facilities that I have worked at before as well.

If someone comes into an internship process to “hang out”, the staff is relatively quick to realize this. After seeing close to 100+ interns total, and interacting with them all, I’m of the belief that reading people quickly is something of a sixth sense that all of our staff has (but no one will admit it).

Don’t get me wrong – there is nothing inherently incorrect with hanging out.

In fact, Pete has written about how creating an environment for hanging out has created a “third place” for our athletes to flourish and improve the clubhouse feel.

However, when there is only between 3 to 4 or 5 months of a learning and training environment that you won’t get anywhere else, I’d rather take that time to commit 1000% to absorbing everything around me. There is no time to hang out when taking things at that pace!

Fixed vs Growth Mindset

The next aspect can be described from this info graphic.

Fixed vs Growth Mindset

With a fixed mindset, there are limitations towards what can be achieved, learned, and applied. This mindset can create issues for individuals who see obstacles with every scenario presented to them.

With a growth mindset, there are endless opportunities for learning, and if you have this mindset, you are often excited by the thought of being presented with obstacles (because it will keep you on your toes to create new solutions).

Creating Self-Awareness

At the end of the day, I find many interns come through the internship process with the intentions of becoming more self aware of who they are within the craziness that is known as the fitness (or S&C) industry. I wouldn’t mind personally taking a hand in that process for every individual, but if I can direct them to another more authoritative individual who can handle their modus operandi, I’d be more than happy to do so.

My Personal Expectations

My intentions for coming to Cressey Sports Performance has always been to improve and enhance the already high performance training model. If I can surround myself with coaches and other like-minded with a growth mindset, I’m of the belief that we as a collective can improve all of our athletes performance and fitness oriented goals to the next level.

The obstacles that I may encounter will come along with knowing that some individuals are merely there to “hang out”. I often joke to Pete Dupuis, the vice-president and business director at Cressey Sports Performance, that all of the coaches here right now (and many of the past interns as well) are a part of the #CSPMafia, akin to the PayPal mafia that housed Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other investors who have gone on to create some wonderful contributions to the world.

The beginnings of the "CSP Mafia"
The beginnings of the “CSP Mafia”

If someone is there to “hang out” instead of quite literally bringing the heat from a coaching and high performance training perspective, I’m not convinced these individuals will be able to handle the logical thought processes that are necessary for improving on a daily level.

A Sampling of Day to Day Activity/Responsibilities

While the first face that is in contact with our athletes and clients is our front desk manager, our second point of contact are our coaches (and thus, our interns), which also takes up a majority of the somewhat more personal conversation for day to day activities.

Within the category of regulatory feedback, I (along with our other coaches) often find myself asking our athletes similar questions day to day to gauge feedback on their activities outside the gym.

If an individual has a week full of games from the summer league they are playing in, the person that they will communicate this with involves our coaches/interns, and this information should be handled delicately.

This is where the time for asking subjective feedback of exertion levels, quantitative information such as sleep levels, and other similar minded items take place.

While the inherent knowledge of our interns can vary from education level, to intentions for working, etc., there are two not-so-obvious items that should be explicitly expressed:

  1. Know how to coach the exercises that are under the philosophy of Cressey Sports Performance.
  2. Know how to ask relatively important questions with respect to the 23/1 rule (1 hour of in-person contact is often overruled by the other 23 hours in the day).

Often times a simple, “Switch the legs that you are using for that exercise,” and “How was your weekend?” in rapid fire succession will be enough to elicit both of these items in a quick enough fashion.

If our interns can communicate item number 1 to our athletes and clients regularly, and item number 2 to our full time staff, it makes everyone’s jobs that much easier.

Now, not only do you need to work hard, be relatively engaging on a daily basis, but you also need to understand what it means to work as a team, which is even more imperative if you intend on completing an internship at CSP.

If, as a coach, you are having issues with having awareness for why you are working in a high performance model such as the one found at CSP, let’s begin at that foundational level before evolving to the next questions of what to learn next, and what to do next in your professional career.

The bar has been metaphorically raised.

—

As always,

Keep it funky.

MAsymbollogo