CategoriesStuff to Read While You're Pretending to Work

Stuff to Read While You’re Pretending to Work: Haters Gonna Hate

Ever notice that when it’s cold outside – for the record:  yesterday and today are the first two days of legitimate snow here in Boston – people bitch and whine about how cold it is?

By that same token, when it’s too hot – people bitch and whine about how hot it is!

I don’t get it.

Then again – these are the same people who will find any excuse to complain about something. It’s too windy; the Dew Point is f’ed up; ObamaCare is the next Death Star; the barista at StarBucks put too much cream in my latte; I can’t believe “so and so” is on the new season of Dancing With the Stars; the checkout person didn’t ask me if I wanted my receipt, bitch; that rainbow is too “raibowey;” for the love of god, people, HAN SHOT FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyways I have no other reason behind this keen observation other than it’s something I noticed today while standing in line at Panera while someone complained that the line was moving too slow.

People complain way too much.

Now if you excuse me, someone just looked at me wrong and I have to go scissor kick them in the pancreas.

If You Are Not Sore, You Are Not Working Hard Enough…Or Are You – Kyle Arsenault

It’s a common fallacy people make.  If they’re not drowning in a pool of their own sweat or don’t feel like they’re on the verge of an epileptic seizure after a training session, it obviously was a waste of their time.

This is a battle I have fight all the time and my retort is usually saying something along the lines of “any tool with a certification can make you tired and sore.  But it takes a COACH and someone who actually know what they’re talking about to be able to tweak programming to garner a desired effect – whatever it may be.

Making someone tired for the sake of feeling tired is a pointless endeavor and rarely yields positive results in the long run. Likewise soreness doesn’t mean much either

On one hand, especially with newbies, it’s a matter of teaching them the difference between sore and hurt.

On the other, especially with those who are more advanced, it’s a matter of teaching them that fatigue will always mask one’s true level of fitness.

Yes, soreness is okay and it’s perfectly fine to want to kick yourself in the ass sometimes so that you ARE sore the next day.

But it’s certainly not the “x-factor” when it comes to long-standing results, and it’s certainly not something that should be strived for on a consistent basis.

Supple Leopard vs. The World – Dr. Quinn Henoch

It’s the fitness industry’s latest version of the classic West Side Story rivalry between the Jets and the Sharks.

On one side you have those who lean towards the CrossFit mentality – in particular, Dr. Kelly Starrett – and advocate pushing the knees out when squatting or deadlifting in an effort to create more torque and not to allow any torsion stress on the body.

On the flip side, you have those who have a little bit of an issue with this mindset.

I thought this was a fantastic (and fair) discussion which lends the opportunity for the reader to make up his or her own mind on the topic.

My thoughts?  I think much of the controversy is lost in translation.  I’ve heard Kelly talk about this and from what I can gather – and I could be wrong on this – he never really states that he wants people to excessively push their knees out.  Rather, it’s more of a cue so that people don’t go into knee valgus (which I agree with, 100%).

I know I’d never go out of my way to allow someone to squat with excessive knee valgus. And I think by that logic it makes sense that letting the pendulum glide too far to the other side – where people are going into excessive knee varus – doesn’t do them any favors either.

What are people arguing about again?

Take the Lunge – Lee Boyce

Lee’s been on a writing tear lately, and with this gem he touches on the intricacies of the one of the more overlooked movement patterns – the lunge.

CategoriesProgram Design

Are We Doing Lunges Wrong? Hint: Maybe

As some of you know I had the luxury of spending the past few days attending Phase II of the Elite Baseball Mentorship hosted at my stomping grounds, Cressey Performance, listening to Eric Cressey, Eric Schoenberg, and Matt Blake discuss, well, training baseball players.

And while training baseball players is our Soup de Jour at Cressey Performance, what many fail to realize is that we train a wide variety of athletes (softball, basketball, football, hockey, boxing, and at one point we even trained a fencer!) as well as general population clients at the facility.

While the crux of the information covered over the weekend pertained to baseball players and the intricacies involved with managing their care and programming, a fair percentage of it spilled over into the meathead/general population crowd as well.

As is the case every time I attend a seminar or workshop there’s always a nugget or two of information that blows me away and makes me wonder “why am I such a moron?”

One such instance involved a comment that Eric Schoenberg made regarding lunges and how we (as an industry) coach them.  In a nutshell he questioned the audience (us) as to why we don’t include more of a hip hinge pattern when we introduce it and coach the lunge?

Ask any strength coach how he or she generally “patterns” the squat, deadlift, kettblebell swing, or any number of other foundational movements, and almost always they’ll say everything revolves around the hip hinge.

Why, then, when we coach the lunge, as Eric noted, do we gravitate towards more of an upright torso (which in turn results in more of a “gross” extension based pattern)?

“Huh,” I thought. “That’s interesting.”

But to be more specific, for visual reference, the video below best depicts my reaction the second Eric made this point.

To give more of a play-by-play description:  I’m Triple H, and Eric’s comment is John Cena straight-up power slapping me in the grill.

It……was……awesome.  And helped to turn on a light bulb in my head.

And, the whole shebang makes perfect sense when you think about it.

Coaching the lunge with an upright torso isn’t inherently wrong; it just might not be the most ideal way to go about things for some people.

Especially with regards to baseball players and more of the meathead/athletic crowd (who live more of their lives in “gross” extension anyways).

Think about it:  those in extension tend to have excessive anterior pelvic tilt, which in turn leads to more femoral internal rotation, which in turn leads to more tibial internal rotation, which then, as we all know, is the real cause of global warming.

But in all seriousness, someone may exhibit faulty hip mechanics, we then coach them to perform a lunge pattern in a way that feeds into said faulty hip mechanics, and then we bark at said athlete or client when his or her’s knee caves in when they lunge.

What’s more, coaching the lunge with a more upright posture only feeds into the extension pattern which doesn’t do their lumbar spine (and more specifically their facet joints) any favors.

And, to add insult to injury, if someone is purposely programmed to think that staying upright is ideal (which isn’t always the case for some), the DBs are going to serve as a counterbalance to keep them in extension.

Instead, what’s wrong with cueing more of a hip hinge and slight forward lean to save their back and to help offset a poor pattern?

One simple cue would be: don’t think of shoulders over the hips, but rather shoulders over the knees.

Thoughts?

This is something that completely flew over my head up until this past weekend, and is something I plan to fix sooner rather than later.

Sadly, I can’t fix the epic fail of having Taylor Swift playing in the background in the above videos.