A few months ago I wrote about my experience participating in the Functional Movement Screen. I spent an entire weekend (something like 20 contact hours) completing both module I and II.
I didn’t get a t-shirt[footnote]If I knew how to add a sad-face emoticon here I totally would[/footnote], but it was an awesome learning experience nonetheless.
One of the chief messages that stood out to me was the notion of “feeding dysfunction.” It’s a concept I’ve used intermittently throughout the years to help clean up movement, but hearing it described and used in the confines of four walls amongst so many other smart people…it really resonated more with me.
I’m sure it’s a concept that many of you reading have used as well.
One of the more common iterations is when someone’s knees cave in during a squat.
Unfortunately, there are some trainers and coaches out there who would deem this an acceptable squat pattern, and do nothing to correct it. They should be drop kicked in the neck.
The less lazy trainer may fix it by screaming, “knees out, knees out, PUSH YOUR KNEES OUT!”
It’s a step in the right direction, but sometimes it takes more than a verbal cue. For some trainees their nervous system needs a little more “feedback.”
So the more savvy trainer will wrap a band around one’s knees.
The idea is that the band will push the knees in, giving the trainee some proprioceptive feedback to prevent or resist this action. More often that not it works like a charm.
Squat pattern is fixed, all is right in the world, parades are held in your honor.
What About a Weight Shift?
Ever watch someone squat and he or she tends to sway/weight shift to one side or the other?
There can be any number of reasons this happens.
1. Bony Block. Those with Femoral Acetabular Impingement on any given side will block/impinge quicker on that side, often resulting in a weight shift to that very side.
I don’t want to get into a heavy FAI discussion now, but suffice it to say it’s often in this person’s best interest to 1) stop squatting altogether (in lieu of exercises that require less hip flexion, like deadlift variations) or 2) tweak squat height so they don’t enter the “danger zone” (90 degrees or below).
2. If we were to jump down the PRI (Postural Restoration Institute) rabbit hole we could explain things by stating how much of the population tends to weight shift into their right hip.
CSP coach, Greg Robins, PRI Blue Steel pose
In this scenario – which is very common – people are more internally rotated and adducted on the right side (externally rotate, abducted on the left), which then parlays into their squatting pattern. I.e., you’ll see a weight shift to the right.
As I’ve noted in the past: I like PRI, I use PRI, I think there’s a lot of validity to PRI. And, in this scenario I do feel some dedicated positional breathing drills hold weight with helping to “correct” the issue at hand.
If we can encourage more neutral (we’ll never, ever, like, ever be 100% neutral) and help to shift the hips and own our rib position (reduce Zone of Apposition) the likelihood we can fix the faulty pattern is fairly high.
All that said, the PRI rabbit hole is a deeeeeeeeeeeep one, and I do find many fitness professionals tend to overstep their scope of practice and forget that, you know, barbells still work and that our jobs are to still give people a training effect.
I’m sorry but people aren’t going to get fired up spending 30 minutes of their training session practicing their diaphragmatic breathing. In fact I think a recent research study found that incidences of people wanting to stab themselves in the eye with a pen increase by 130% when this is the case.
Don’t get me wrong: PRI drills could very well be a part of the equation and I have used them to fix this very dysfunction, but I try not to get too carried away with it.
3. Lack of kinesthetic awareness. Much like the notion above with placing bands around someone’s knees to prevent them from caving in, we can use the same concept here.
Band Reactive Neuromuscular Training (RNT)
If you find someone exhibits a weight shift during their squat you can use a band to pull them into the weight shift (“feed the dysfunction”), and attempt to fix the faulty pattern. Essentially you use the RNT factor to help turn other stuff on that otherwise would be under-active or not firing efficiently and contributing to wonky movement.
This is what I looked like last Sunday after spending three days and 20 course hours taking the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) I & II modules.
That’s my face melting.
It sounds (and looks) like a bad thing, but I assure you it’s the exact opposite.
Sitting through 20 hours of anything can be daunting.[footnote]Unless we’re talking a Lord of the Rings marathon or a workshop on chokeholds.[/footnote]
Sitting through 20 hours of non-stop talk on anatomy, assessment, corrective exercise, and how much I suck at the Active Straight Leg Raise can be downright overwhelming. And to be honest there were times I was overwhelmed.
But this was easily one of the best 20 hours I’ve spent doing anything not involving a book, baseball, Star Wars, or chocolate covered strawberries. BOM CHICKA BOM BOM.
Trying to overview the entire experience in one simple blog post isn’t doing it any justice. But I figured I’d try to highlight some “big rock” concepts and tidbits of information I learned while everything was still fresh in my head.
Lets Do This
I’d be remiss not to first give a shout out to both Functional Movement Systems and Perform Better for putting on and running a class-act event. The two together are like peanut butter and jelly or Jordan and Pippen or Batman and Robin (<— without the weird sexual tension).
I’d also be remiss not to lend a huge kudos to the bandleader, Brett Jones, who was the epitome of class and professionalism the entire weekend. He’s like Justin Timberlake, only with kettlebells. And a 500+ lb deadlift.
He along with Mike Perry and Diane Vives did an amazing job coaching all the attendees up and offering their expertise. A slow clap goes out to all of them.
NOTE: From here on out I’m using bullet point format because what follows is going to be a massive brain dump that may or may not make any sense. Good luck.
– The “S” is the most important letter in “FMS.” It’s a (S)creen. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s NOT an end-all-be-all assessment. I’ve always used components of the FMS when assessing my athletes and clients, but always viewed it as the outer layer of an onion. If I need to peel back more layers and dig deeper with other protocols I will.
What does the FMS accomplish? In a nutshell: it ascertains whether or not someone can “access” a pattern.
– Simplifying things even more: the FMS helps to figure out if “you move well enough to do stuff.”
– The FMS can also be seen as a litmus test to see if someone is at risk for injury. Of course a previous injury is going to be the greatest risk factor, but the FMS looks at other things such as asymmetries, mobility, stability, and neuromuscular control.
A great analogy that Brett used to describe the process was to ask the audience whether or not smoking increases the risk of cancer? Yes. Does not smoking protect you from cancer? [Interesting question, right?]
Just because you do or do not do something doesn’t mean anything. The primary goal(s) of the FMS is to set a movement baseline, identify the pain or dysfunction, and set up proper progressions and conditioning to address it.
– Fitness professionals are the worst at testing. We overthink things. There’s no such thing as a “soft” or “hard” 2. There’s no such thing as a 1+ or 1-. The screen is the screen, and it’s important (nay, crucial) to hold yourself to the standards and criteria set forth by the manual.
I’m paraphrasing here, but either shit looks good – and meets the criteria for testing – or it doesn’t.
You can’t overthink things or start doing stuff like, “well, his heel only came up a teeny tiny bit, and only rotated 8.3 degrees. I guess that’s a 3.”
– We can’t feel bad for giving people the score they present with and deserve. It’s doing them a disservice in the long run. It’s just like Brett said and made us pledge as a group before we started testing one another: “I’m still a good person and am not a failure if I score a 1.”
It’s not the end of the world and you won’t be considered the spawn of Satan if scored a “1” on your Deep Squat screen.
Life…will…go…on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ois60CobLZM
– If pain is present…ALWAYS REFER OUT. If pain is present and persists, don’t just blame the hip flexors. Again, as Brett noted, there’s 32 muscles that act as hip flexors, why is the psoas always the culprit for back pain? If you do the screen, apply the correctives, and pain persists, it’s (probably) something deeper and outside your scope of practice.
Seriously, refer out.
But that doesn’t mean we still can’t train the athlete or client. As coaches we can usually train around any injury; we don’t need to keep everyone in a safe bubble where we just tell them to “rest.” To me that’s unacceptable and not an option.
– Take a gander at the Functional Performance Pyramid. Don’t worry I’ll wait.
If you decrease one’s movement capacity and increase their performance (make the movement block less wide compared to the performance block), that’s bad.
If you increase one’s movement capacity (think: yoga) and decrease their performance, that’s also bad.
We’re really good as coaches and personal trainers at building better engines (improving performance), but neglect to address the brakes and suspension (movement). Hence, people often break down sooner.
This is also another fantastic reason why the FMS is valuable. It’s helps you figure out where people need the most work/attention.
– Raise your hand if you feel the Active Straight Leg Raise is a great screen to test for hamstring length.
It’s not.
If anything it’s more of a screen for the “core,” and how well you’re able to control your pelvis. I.e., can you maintain extension on the down leg as you bring the other into hip flexion (and vice versa).
– The Deep Squat Screen (<—- bolded on purpose) takes place with the toes pointing straight a head. It’s not how we coach the squat in the long run.
1. Toes forward provides some semblance of standardization. It doesn’t make sense to allow people to externally rotate their feet (even a little bit) because that defeats the purpose. You allow someone to rotate 5 degrees, and the next person rotates 15. Like, WTF?
2. Toes forward also makes it easier to see faults and compensations in the pattern.
I literally had a “tense” exchange with a female attendee who gave me push back on making her perform the screen with her toes pointing forward.
Her: “Well I can’t squat if they’re forward!”
Me: “Then you won’t get a 3.”
Her: “Last time I went to this (she attended module I at a previous time), I was told we could point our toes out.[footnote]Funnily enough, I also overheard her the following day explain to a few people about a WOD workout she has some of her clients do to “flush out” lactic acid the next day. Um, 1995 called and wants its fitness myth debunked.[/footnote]
[Relax, deep breaths]
Me: “Sorry but we were told otherwise yesterday. Toes forward.”
Based off her reaction you would have thought I insulted her yoga pants. With a little bit of a huffy attitude she reluctantly conceded and ended up with a 2.
I guess I’m an asshole.
– Corrective exercise is like boxing. It’s generally accepted that there are four different kinds of punches in boxing: the jab, cross, hook, and uppercut. The Five-Point-Palm-Exploding-Heart-Technique from Kill Bill didn’t make the cut.
You don’t need 500 different correctives to “fix” something. You only need a few and to OWN each one. Don’t overwhelm your clients with 17 different variations of glute bridges to perform before they go to bed. They’re not going to do them. Ever.
I’ve seen magical things happen when you help someone address a faulty breathing pattern. But pigging back off the previous comment about corrective exercise, you don’t need to get all fancy pants on people.
Showing your athletes and clients how to properly perform “crocodile breathing,” where they learn to get 360 degree expansion (and to not rely on their accessory muscles like the upper traps, scalenes, etc) can go a long ways in helping to set the tone on fixing stuff….even a straight leg raise or shoulder mobility.
Dumbledore can’t even do that.
How’s that for a super scientific explanation.
– You need to be RELAXED when you foam roll. We’re not deadifting max effort weight here. Chill out.
– Don’t underestimate the power of grip work (squeezing the handle of a dumbbell or kettlebell) to help improve rotator cuff function as well as shoulder mobility.
– You need a minimum of 30 degrees of ankle dorsiflexion to run well. Just sayin…..
– Here’s one of the best analogies I’ve ever heard with regards to overhead pressing courtesy of Brett Jones. When explaining the path of the DB or KB during an overhead press tell your client to pretend as if there’s a booster rocket underneath the elbow and that it takes the weight to space.
The path should be straight up, not to the side or in a zig-zag fashion. Straight up.
I Could Easily Keep Going
But I think that’s enough.
Needless to say I HIGHLY encourage any and all fitness professionals to attend one (or both!) of these courses if you have the opportunity to do so. I learned a ton and there’s no reason to suspect you wouldn’t either.
Welcome to the first Miscellaneous Miscellany Post of 2015! Fresh off an impressive Pats win last night no less!
So, what’s everyone’s prediction for the Super Bowl? I honestly have a hard time convincing myself to pick one team over the other. I tend to ride on the same fence as my favorite sports talk guy, Colin Cowherd, in that both teams have a star quarterback (Pats = Tom Brady, Seahawks = Russell Wilson), both have a solid offensive line (particularly left tackle), and both have an A+ head coach (Bellichick and Carroll, respectively).
It’s just really, really hard to pick one.
Okay you’re right. It’s not that hard: Pats 54-3.
1. So yesterday Lisa and I were walking around town doing a little of this and a little bit of that[footnote]Read: she was shopping and I was following her around carrying bags.[/footnote] when something unexpected happened.
Most of you will recall my trip to London last September, when I travelled across the pond for one of mine and Dean Somerset’s workshops. While the main reason for going was to spend two days at The Third Space in Soho speaking to 25-30 trainers and coaches, I also had ample time to play tourist and had the opportunity to walk around the city and take in the sights and sounds.
It was spectacular. I fell in love with London – everything from the people, the Underground[footnote]which, compared to the T here in Boston is like comparing a rocket ship to a tricycle[/footnote], the food, the culture, and just how chill everyone is over there was enchanting.
One of the subtler highlights of my trip over there was experiencing Caffe Nero.
A popular, family owned, European (Italian) coffee shop, Caffe Nero has something like 600+ locations throughout Europe; and they’re everywhere in London.
There was one directly across the street from the venue where Dean and I were presenting (as well as near where our hotel was located in Euston Square), and after having one of their chai tea lattes I was hooked.
The quality just seemed better compared to similar establishments[footnote]Hint: rhymes with cartrucks.[/footnote], and this doesn’t speak to the overall vibe and ambiance inside…..hard to describe, but “boner inducing” is about the best I can do.
Anyways, Lisa and I were walking around Downtown Crossing in Boston yesterday when low and behold we passed a freakin Caffe Nero!!!
Picture inside of Downtown Crossing location.
Little did I know that this location was the FIRST location in the entire US!! And the manager/owner mentioned to us that a handful more are slated to open around the city in 2015.
I had been bragging to Lisa about this place since my London trip, so I was excited to see what she thought.
She ordered her standard espresso and LOVED it. “This is coffee!” were her exact words.
I have to assume with several locations coming to Boston, that Caffe Nero has plans to open in other large cities in the near future. So keep your eyes peeled. You won’t be disappointed.
For the past year or so I’ve been running a group called the Tony Gentilcore Premium Workout Group.
It’s an online training program hosted by WeightTraining.com where I write monthly “canned” (non-individualized) programming for anyone to follow for a bargain price. Yes, I’m a guy who feels that IN-PERSON coaching is the way to go. But given not everyone has access to quality coaching in the first place, this group is a nice alternative.
In 2014 I focused on providing a variety of training blocks: strength block, fat-loss block, and a hybrid hypertrophy block (which are all still available if you choose to do them), but with 2015 kicking into high-gear I decided to revamp my approach.
Not everyone wants to focus on strength or fat-loss or muscle growth, and I certainly can’t cater to everyone and make everyone happy.
Still I know how to write effective, efficient, quality programming that will help (most) people get stronger, move better, address nagging injuries, and make people of the opposite sex (or same sex!) want to hang out with you. Rather than write specific blocks of training, in 2015 I’m just keeping things simple.
Don’t confuse simple with not effective
Simple is what most people need BTW.
The first month of programming for 2015 went live yesterday, aptly titled Tony Gentilcore Premium Workout Group – January 2015.
If you find yourself in a training rut or in limbo as far as succumbing to analysis by paralysis when writing your own programs, this group may be a perfect fit.
3. For those people who are looking for something more dialed in, specifically to the tune of improving your squat, bench press, and deadlift, my good friend Jordan Syatt released his Raw Strength for Powerlifting manual today.
If you’re a competitive powerlifter or someone who’s toying with the idea of entering a meet down the road, this manual will undoubtedly help.
Jordan, on top of being one of the most genuine fitness professionals I have ever met, is one strong mofo….to the tune of a (close to) 4x bodyweight deadlift! So, in a word, he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to getting people strong.
Full Disclosure: I am not receiving any affiliate kick-backs by recommending this manual. I just think it’s a solid resource that can (and will) help a lot of people.
4. In addition to the Caffe Nero experience, Lisa and I also went to the movies yesterday to check out American Sniper.
In lieu of “douchehole of the moment” Michael Moore’s commentary on the movie yesterday, where he basically referred to Chris Kyle as a “coward” (I don’t mind that he didn’t like the movie – to each his own – I just felt it was a bad take done in poor taste on Moore’s part to use the term coward), I couldn’t have disagreed more.
I’m not calling a Kyle a saint by any stretch (I know he had a few libel suits in the past held against him, and I also know some elements of his book have been called to question), but I find it hard to call any person who risks his 0r her’s own life to defend our country a coward. Furthermore, I’d have to assume it’s the last adjective the hundreds (if not thousands) of soldiers Kyle helped protect and save would use to describe his actions (regardless of how Hollywoodized the movie made them seem).
I loved this movie. I wouldn’t rank it right on par with The Hurt Locker or Zero Dark Thirty as far as best (recent) war movies made, but it’s not too far off.
American Sniper isn’t just a war movie. If anything it’s more about the psychological and after effects that war has on soldiers. To his credit – and my fiance would know more about this than myself since she’s a psychologist – Bradley Cooper (who portrays Kyle in the movie) did an amazing job showing how one almost has to “shut down” and remain closed off in order to perform their job – to the detriment of their relationships with loved ones.
Pacing, acting, cinematography, dialogue, directing, everything was superb. I give it a solid B.
5. I made it a personal goal of mine to step up my continuing education game in 2015. I was able to attend a few workshops and seminars last year, but not as many as I would have liked.
I’ve already got a sick line-up slated for the early part of this year:
To start, Greg Robins is putting on his Optimizing the “Big 3” Seminar again this March at Cressey Sports Performance.
I attended last year (and helped out with coaching), and I plan on attending again this year. Greg is a FANTASTIC coach who has a lot of knowledge with regards to coaching and getting results. If you’re looking to spend an afternoon going into more depth on squats, bench pressing, and deadlifts….this will be well worth it.
Second (and obviously not in chronological order) I’ll be heading to Burlington, MA the weekend of February 20th for both the FMS I and II certifications.
Brett Jones will be coaching/teaching that weekend and I can’t wait to watch him in action!
You can go HERE to check out other FMS venues/clinics.
And last, also in February, Chad Wesley Smith of Juggernaut Training, will be in Boston on Sunday the 8th to head his Powerlifting Clinic.
It’s a one-day seminar where he’ll discuss anything and everything related to technique on the big 3, programming, warm-ups, and even some insight on nutrition. Plus, he’s stronger than everyone else there so he’ll make all of us feel bad about ourselves….;o)
Like I said, I’ll be attending all three. Who’s coming with me!?!?!
And Not to Be Understated or Forgotten
We shouldn’t forget the great Martin Luther King Jr and everything he stood for. Probably even more so given the current commentary and state of affairs throughout the country.
Lets hope his leadership and message from back in the day permeates to today (and then some).
few workshops and seminars last year, but not as many as I would have liked.
