Author: Tony

1. Some big news on the horizon- I’m going to be leaving the Herald in (tentatively) one week. In a nutshell, I’m going to move to my own website, which will serve as ‘homebase,’ so-to-speak, for all of my content. I’ll make a formal post when the time comes, but just wanted to give everyone a heads up. I know this is going to rock the world of all seventeen people that read this blog, but I’m hoping it’s for the best. Now I feel like this is my Jerry Maguire moment:

“Who’s coming with me, who’s coming with me.”

2. What’s the deal with people getting weirded out whenever you ask to “work in” with them on a particular piece of equipment? I was at a local BSC (Boston Sports Club) yesterday with my GF, and after a few sets of trap bar deadlifts, I figured I’d throw in a few sets of front squats to boot. You know, for shits and giggles.

Thing is, both squat racks were occupied at the time. Correction, squat rack (A) was empty. However, I happened to approach it at the same time as some dude with a two foot long mullet (red flag), and being the nice guy that I am, let him take it. I just figured that if he happened to be squatting, I’d just work in with him. Of course, he took five minutes to put on his weight belt and wrist straps so that he could…………shrug. I should have known better.

Squat rack (B) was being used by some guy doing Romanian deadlifts, respectively. However, he was taking an un-godly amount of time between sets. He’d do a set, check his watch, walk around for five minutes, add ten lbs, and do another set. In my mind I was like, “WTF-I can curl what this guy is deadlifting. Besides, he can do RDL’s ANYWHERE. Why does he need to use a rack?” After waiting patiently for 15-20 minutes (I wasn’t in any hurry per se), I asked if I could jump in with him real quick so that I could start squatting. He looked at me as if I was completely crazy, and seemed dumbfounded that I even asked.

Long story short, he had one more set, and then I proceeded to do five sets of squats in the amount of time it took him to rest during one of his sets. And people wonder why they never make any progress. It’s unreal how much time they waste.

3. Saturday night the GF and I had date night, and went to go see the show Stomp in downtown Boston.

Needless to say, it was a fantastic show and I’m pretty sure she hates life at the moment because I’m taking every opportunity possible to practice my own Stomp routine…………in her kitchen.

Me: CRASH, CRASH, tapidy tap, CRASH, CRASH, tipiddy top.

GF: Why the hell are you throwing my dishes on the floor!?!?!

Me: I’m Stompin!! CRASH, CRASH, kick, kick, arm circle, CRASH

GF: Goddammit, not my good china. Get out!

Me: JAZZ HANDS!!!!!!

4. Kate Beckinsale was recently named Sexiest Woman Alive by Esquire Magazine.

“I like the idea of it, too. I do,” she adds. “I’m feeling that I must earn this. I need to go out and become much better at pole dancing or something.”

With that, Kate Beckinsale just made my list for most awesome quote ever. Right behind:

Are those your pecs or diamonds?

-Kate Beckinsale to Tony Gentilcore, circa in my dreams

You know Tony, this back isn’t just going to oil itself

-Kate Beckinsale to Tony Gentilcore, everyday

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.

We had an exciting morning today at Cressey Performance. I managed to get through an entire session with the women’s group without being called an a-hole (no small feat by any stretch of the imagination), and Chris Frankel from TRX was gracious enough to stop by and bust out a quick two hour staff in-service for us.

As some of you may recall from earlier in the week, I blogged about the TRX Trainer, and while I went in with some hesitation, I have to say I was thoroughly impressed with a lot of the stuff he showed us. Which is to say, it was rather eye opening to see how much I sucked. Needless to say, we’re definitely going to be incorporating more of this stuff into our programming. Consider this a fair warning CP clients. *strokes evil strength coach beard*

Anyways, here’s some stuff you should check out:

1. Exercise and My First Trimester of Pregnancy– Cassandra Forsythe

As you can surmise from the title, Cassandra is preggers. As such, she’s making it her mission to prove to women everywhere that even if you’re expecting, you can still train.

2. The Cressey Performance Intern– Steph H-B (AKA-CP’s longest tenured client, and definitely not my girlfriend)

I’ve dated a girl or two (hundred*), and Steph isn’t one of them. You’ll have to click the link above to figure out what the heck I’m talking about. Anyways, Steph often writes about her experiences training with us, and this was a nice post discussing what it takes to be a CP intern.

3. Speaking of CP interns- Roger????

4. The Real Biggest Losers….the Viewers– Coach Dos

It’s no secret that I’d rather watch a rhinoceros pass a kidney stone than watch The Biggest Loser, and here’s why. Thank you Coach!

5. Four Challenges to Light Your Fire– Dan John

Dan John is one of my favorite writers, and just so happens to know a thing or two about coaching athletes. Here’s another classic.

Enjoy the weekend everyone!

* Give or take 199

Q: What is your take on these TRX trainer things that keep getting all the press lately? I notice many fitness professionals in the industry pushing them hard, and I’ve also seen them in the MMA scene, etc. I was wondering what your take was?

A: First off, is it me or does it seem like anything developed by the Navy SEALS turns into straight up cash-money? First there was The Perfect Push-Up, and now there’s the TRX Trainer. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if next year they try figure out some way to market, I don’t know, water boarding as the next big fitness craze. Hahahahaha. Just kidding. No, but seriously, what about live grenades?

Like anything “new” or unique in the fitness industry (kettlebells, anyone?), I think we have a tendency to over-blow things to the point where we oftentimes fail to realize that, you know, barbells and dumbbells do still exist. Now before I get the hate mail, please understand that I am in no way suggesting that the TRX Trainer doesn’t have it’s place in the proverbial “fitness toolbox.” On the contrary, as I type this blog, we have two pair at Cressey Performance no more than 50 feet from my desk, and we actually have a TRX representative traveling to Hudson this Friday to take us through a staff in-service.

Furthermore, I think they’re absolutely awesome for those people who travel a lot for work and otherwise have limited access to a gym. Too, outside of the athletic realm, I’ve found them to be very useful when training overweight clients, in addition to the elderly clients that I work with on a weekly basis.

That said, what really gets my goat is when people in the industry try to pass them off as the panacea of fitness- much like what happens whenever you hear someone talk about yoga or pilates. I’m not a TRX guy. I’m not a kettlebell guy. I’m not a powerlifting guy, nor am I an Olympic lifting guy. I’m a results guy- albeit I do incorporate components of all the above into my programming.

Personally, I think it’s a bit shortsighted whenever someone latches onto ONE concept and that’s all they preach to their clients.

In short, the TRX Trainer definitely has several legitimate uses. I mean, it wasn’t named Best New Fitness Gear by Men’s Health for nothing. It offers a unique twist to training that not only offers variety, but versatility as well. They’re just not the end all-be all of training that some professionals in the industry make them out to be.

1. Most know Anthony Renna as the guy behind the guy, behind the guy of the strengthcoach.com podcast. I’ve had the pleasure of crossing paths with Anthony on a few occasions, whether it be a Perform Better conference or during Mike Boyle’s latest Functional Strength Coach seminar- as was the case several weeks ago. Needless to say, Anthony is a really innovative guy, and he was kind enough to offer me a free subscription to his Strength and Conditioning Webinars site. It’s only been within the past two weeks or so that I’ve been able to play around with it, but I have to say that it’s pretty kick-ass.

The premise is simple. Get some of the top names in the industry. Have them make a PowerPoint presentation. Hook them up to the internet. And BAM- you sir, have yourself a Webinar. It’s kind of like that scene in Eyes Wide Shut when Tom Cruise shows up to that mansion in the middle of no where, opens up the doors, and finds himself smack dab in the middle of some secret mask society gettin their freak on all over the place. Except, you know, it’s nothing like that.

Nevertheless, Anthony has developed an awesome resource. and I highly encourage any fitness professional to check out Strength and Conditioning Webinars ASAP.

2. Along similar lines, I listened to Charlie Weingroff’s webinar on Knee Pain Considerations in Training and Rehab, just the other day, and was blown away by what he had to say about the hip internal rotation paradox. In a nutshell- and without giving away too much- he said:

“……the joint system can not stabilize unless it knows it HAS to. We must have full mobility at ALL joints before we have a prayer to stabilize.”

In other words, our joints are kind of like a pendulum.

The only reason a joint “knows” to stay in the middle, or stabilize (position #3), is because it recognizes what it’s like to be either to the far left (position #1) or far right (position #5). If a joint lacks sufficient mobility- as is the case when someone demonstrates HIRD (Hip Internal Rotation Deficit)- then it lacks the proper proprioception to stabilize. As a result, position #2 is now considered “normal” to the body, which will obviously wreak havoc on joint function and cause a myriad of musculo-skeletal issues in the end. Charlie discusses it more thoroughly than I do, but I felt it was a pretty cool concept nonetheless.

3. Here is a great three-part series written by John Izzo on how to fire a client. We’ve all had clients where we’d rather swallow live bees, or worse, attend a Celine Dion concert than spend another hour listening to them bitch and whine about whatever it is they’re bitching and whining about. In this series, John discusses how to go about bringing out the inner Donald Trump in all of us.

4. I’ll end with this. I’m literally speechless*

* and by speechless, what I really mean is Christmas shopping is totally done this year.

When it comes to politics, I’m about as non-political as they come. While I try to keep tabs on the important topics, and like to think of myself as having a subjective viewpoint, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m far from an expert and really only get my news from the following sources:

1. The back of a cereal box.

2. Talk radio to and from work everyday: personal favs include Michael Graham and Michele McPhee of WTKK, 96.6 here in Boston.

3. The occasional episode of The Daily Show.

4. And whatever it is that’s coming out of French newswoman, Melissa Theuriau’s mouth.

Jesus, she looks intelligent. You gotta give the French credit. If it were at all comparable to mid-90’s tv shows that kicked ass and took names, not to mention included one of the most underrated badonkadonks in U.S history (Jenna von Oy, aka, Six)- the French would be the Blossom of getting hot chicks to read news.

Moving on, I’ve generally made it a personal rule not to talk politics with people given that it usually does nothing but result in heated debates and/or knife fights. However, given the recent uproar about universal health care, and rightfully so I might add, I wanted to share a really great article written by Michael Pollan that appeared in the NY Times last week titled Big Food vs. Big Insurance.

With three quarters of health care spending going towards treatment of preventable chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity- all of which, not coincidentally, can be correlated to the typical Western diet- it’s not unreasonable to surmise that the most powerful “fix” to this whole issue could simply be what we put on our plates.

Yet another reason why Michael Pollan deserves the Pulitzer Prize for being Michael Pollan.