Miscellaneous Miscellany Monday
1. For those who have followed me for any length of time, whether it’s through reading my articles, my blog, or listening to me on The Fitcast, one of the things I am always stressing to other fitness professionals is the importance of continuing education. More specifically, making it a priority to attend seminars and conferences as often as you can. As such, I’d say that I try to make a cameo appearance to at least four events in any given year. In the past year alone, I’ve been to a handful of Perform Better’s seminars, Mike Boyle’s Winter Seminar, as well as Northeastern University’s Sports Medicine Lecture Series. Note to Self: Comic Con is next on the list.
Be that as it may, it goes without saying I always walk away with a ton of useful information that I’m able to apply immediately with the athletes and clients that I work with on a daily basis. While it’s always cool to learn things about retroversion and how it affects an athlete’s shoulder, or I don’t know, reciprocal inhibition (because it makes me sound smart), whenever I reflect on the day’s topics, there always tends to be one simple (albeit important) theme that reverberates in my mind over and over again. Which is———————-I need to stretch more.
While I do spend my fair share of time in front of the computer everyday- I also spend anywhere from seven to ten hours training clients. Which is to say that unlike you, I’m on my feet loading/un-loading plates, demonstrating how to squat properly, taking clients through their dynamic warm-ups, so on and so forth. Needless to say, if I feel I need to stretch more, then it’s a safe bet that you really need to stretch more.
Interestingly enough, within the past few months, I’ve FINALLY been making a conscious effort to stretch. Furthermore, to steal a term from Mike Robertson, I’ve been taking a “grenade approach,” and really making a point to be more thorough with my foam rolling- sometimes doing it twice per day. As a result, my knees haven’t felt this good in years, and I’ve been implementing squats back into my routine for the past few weeks with no resounding ramifications. Fingers crossed.
2. Knowing full well that we were going to be taping The Fitcast at 10:30 AM yesterday, and that I had plans later on in the afternoon*, my girlfriend and I headed down to the local BSC at like eight in the morning to get a quick lift in. We hop in the car for the short drive to Davis Square and this is the conversation that took place:
GF: “OMG, I can smell your knee sleeves from here.” Note: my Rehbands were in my gymbag in the backseat of the car.
Me: “Well, you know what? It’s pretty much an established fact that when you lift heavy stuff, things are going to smell bad sometimes.”
GF: “My armpits smell, you haven’t lifted me.”
Me: “That’s just gross. I’m totally going to make out with you.”
She’s a keeper.
3. *= we headed to Westford, MA to spend the day at Kimball Farm, which is pretty much the most awesome place on earth outside of Marisa Miller’s cleavage of course.
We spent the day playing miniature golf (in the rain) and followed that with some arcade action. Here’s me playing some pitching game that I totally dominated- highest MPH score of the day, thank you very much. I’m going to suggest that we get one of these for the facility in our next staff meeting. We need a new glute ham raise? Pffffft, whatever. What we really need is this thingamajig. Our pro baseball guys would never leave if we had this. Then again, it would get them out of Pete’s office. Hmmmmmmm………
4. Speaking of The Fitcast, check out this week’s episode. Kevin, Leigh and myself spent a good two hours talking about, you know, stuff.
5. I don’t know if this dog was dreaming about catching a t-bone flavored frisbee or running away from Bruce Willis’ latest movie. Either way, it’s freakin hilarious.
