First things first: I received a shipment of freshly minted TG “Because Heavy Things Won’t Lift Themselves” t-shirts this week.
My cat looooves them.
Don’t worry, I’ll knock $5 off any shirts with cat hair on them….;o)
The first round resulted in some high-praise, and I’m pretty sure will be featured in NYC Fashion Week later this year. Or, I don’t know, maybe not,
Either way, they’re badass and you should totally get one.
How to Order
**Note: t-shirts are Next Level brand made with tri-blend material.[footnote]For optimal pec and bicep showiness.[/footnote] Women’s sizes are available (M, L)
Here you get more options of the material you’d prefer (cotton, tri-blend, t-shirts made from the belly-button lint of Ryan Gosling), sizes, as well as varying apparel options (sweatpants, sweatshirts, tank tops, etc).
And international orders are TOTALLY acceptable here.
I applaud any fitness professional who goes out of his or her’s way to broaden their expertise repertoire. However, there’s a dangerous precedent that many teeter on where now we have personal trainers providing “shitty physical therapy” (<– to quote Nick Tumminello) and not staying in their lane.
This article by London-based trainer, Luke Worthington, hits the nail on the head.
I can’t tell you how many times I receive messages from trainers and fitness enthusiasts alike whenever they come across pictures like the one above, and inevitably write me a message along the lines of “WTF I can’t believe a trainer would have a professional athlete do something like this!”
Lets hold off on the pitch-forks and understand that CONTEXT is everything. Nice post by Michael on this one.
Sure, they have a time and place…but truthfully I’ve always hated the kneeling push-up (or “girl” push-up).
I feel they set a poor precedent out of the gate and their connotation speaks to”oh, you’re a girl, you’re fragile, we’re going to do “girl” push-ups.”
Screw that.
PS:
I’ll be in Philadelphia this weekend (Sunday, April 24th) at War Horse Barbell presenting The Shoulder: From Assessmentto Badass workshop.
If you have nothing better to do – or are sick of eating cheesesteaks – spots are still available, and you can go HERE to sign-up.
Also, Dean Somerset just put his stellar resource – Post Rehab Essentials 2.0 – on sale ($50 OFF regular price) from now through this Sunday. Easily one of the best resources on assessment and “corrective” exercise programming out there today. Check it out HERE.
Well, if you’re reading this post you know I landed safely in the UK!!
I purposely didn’t program this post to go up automatically because 1) I’m superstitious and 2) due to my proclivity for superstition, I somehow convinced myself that if I pre-programmed this post to go up – due to travel – something bad would happen, because, you know, I’m logical like that.
In any case I made it (!!!), and I’m so stoked to be here and this is pretty much what I looked like when I stepped off the plane and went through customs at Heathrow:
By now, after this post goes live, I’m either aimlessly walking the streets of London doing my best impersonation of Austin Powers or asking around for directions to where they’re filming Star Wars.
Or on a quest for some Cadbury chocolate (per the request of Lisa).
Before Dean and I melt people’s brains with strength and conditioning knowledge this weekend, I have a day and a half to be a tourist here in London, so if anyone has any recommendations (that aren’t too “touristy”) I’d love to hear them and take any suggestions in the comments section below!
Looking to add a little variety to your training repertoire? Or, maybe you’re looking to bring up a lagging or weak body part? Try adding in some mechanical advantage drop sets!
I don’t care if we’re talking about getting out of a chair, lifting weights, sex, or back friendly twerking moves, if Dr. McGill chimes in I’m going to listen.
You know you’re going to click. Do it! Do it. Do it! Pun totally intended.
It’s hard to believe that two weeks from today I’ll be in London walking the streets taking in the sights and sounds and (hopefully) not coming across as an annoying American tourist.
I’ll be getting in early Thursday morning after an overnight flight and I’m sure I’ll be knackered to the gills, but hoping to not get in a barney with a bloke on the tube over seeing a man about a dog.
That would be all to cock.
^^^^ LOLs.
See what I just did there? I’m familiarizing myself with some British slang. I have no idea what I just said, but it sounds harmless enough. I’m pretty sure I just asked someone “where’s the bathroom,” but by all accounts I could just have just easily said something along the lines of “your breath smells like fart and onions.”
I’m still learning.
Anyways, I’ll be in London for mine and Dean Somerset’s Excellent Workshop High-Five, and as a gentle reminder there are still a handful of spots open for out little shindig near Washington, DC the weekend of October 18th.
For a full itinerary and details on accommodations and price click the link below.
Nowadays it seems like you can’t walk more than ten feet before a trainer or coach starts blabbing off about asymmetries, apical expansion, rib position, and zones of apposition.
In short, breathing (and how much we suck at it) is all the rage and more and more fitness professionals are jumping on the PRI (Postural Restoration Institute) train.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a good thing. We’re big fans of PRI at the facility. Several our of staff members have attended some of the PRI modules and we’ve also had a handful of PRI practitioners and instructors come in to speak on the topic (including the author of the article linked to above).
We use it and know it works.
That said, it’s amazing how many people sing its praises, incorporate into their programs, and yet have no idea what it actually is, or does, or how to explain it to their athletes and clients.
Even worse are those trainers who buy into it so much that they start playing faux practitioner and forego their main responsibility: having people train and lift weights. It’s a sentiment I touched on HERE.
Nonetheless, I felt this was a fantastic article summarizing PRI’s general philosophy and approach to attaining “balance.”
Having an athletic looking body and actually being, you know, athletic is a tough feat to accomplish. In this article Eric breaks down the “Laws” that will help you get there.
This isn’t a fitness related article, but I loved it nonetheless.
Curiously, I just Google imaged the term “best friends” – just because – and low and behold 99.99% of the images were of women or had a “feminine” connotation. Dudes can have best friends, too.
And there’s nothing to be ashamed of for that.
Bonus
And if that last article was too “girly” for you, here’s T-Nation’s list of their 22 best article on everything and anything on the DEADLIFT.
Not for nothing, between myself and Eric (Cressey) we wrote seven of the 22 articles listed. Holla!!!
Last week I wrote a quick synopsis of a staff in-service we participated in that consisted of Michael Mullin stopping by for a few hours and proceeding to melt our faces off with the number of knowledge bombs he dropped regarding some of the “inner workings” behind the PRI (Postural Restoration Institute) philosophy.
For those who missed it, you can check it out HERE(< — click me, don’t be shy).
In a nutshell (if that’s even possible to do): we breath like poop.
I’m more of an analogy guy, so using one that most people reading can appreciate: if our breathing patterns are like the worst karaoke singer we’ve ever heard, we’d sound like a whale passing a kidney stone.
Yeah, not pretty.
As a corollary to the above post I linked to, current Cressey Performance intern/coach (and resident break-dancing/ Gangham style guru), Miguel Aragoncillo, wrote a quick follow-up that I felt many of you would enjoy.
Why Are We Breathing Inefficiently?
Everyone is breathing incorrectly. We are all stuck, we are all patterned. The real question is… Do you want to get out of the pattern?
Take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed, and believe what you want to (and still breath like an asthmatic Darth Vader).
Take the red pull, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you just how deep the rabbit hole goes.
The stance that the Postural Restoration Institute takes (pun intended) is that yes, we have two arms, two legs, two eyes, two ears, etc. To elaborate on the PRI aspects of Tony’s blogpost, we have one heart on the left/central part of our body, liver on the right, along with different diaphragmatic discrepancies such as more crural attachments on the lumbar spine, right versus left lung control, and lung structure.
With this anatomy refresher, you have to wonder: how does this affect our ability to use our diaphragm effectively?
To break down how the body compensates, here are a few factors that are involved in the PRI philosophy:
1. Posture
What is your posture like? If you are constantly standing or moving around (or coaching), you are subjecting ourselves to being in a more extended position. Comparing by contrast, if you’re a desk jockey – a phone pressed to your ear, a keyboard to crouch over and work on, and more often than not, a not so comfortable chair that you plop yourself into everyday – you’re most likely a walking (or more appropriately, a sitting) ball of flexion.
Whether you are extended or flexed for the majority of your day, it is safe to say that the posture you assume for most of your day will definitely affect you in the long term.
2. Patterns
After attending a 2-day PRI seminar at Endeavor Fitness, my brain was mush on the ride home. So to spare your face from getting melted like Tony from our most recent in-service, understand that there are different patterns that we can be classified into, along with the breakdown of what exercise we should use to not only inhibit these patterns, but also “encourage” us into a better working posture.
Further, if you’re an athlete that has extreme unilateral demands (ie: baseball), it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’re an ideal candidate for PRI’s corrective exercises.
Personally, as a breakdancer, I’m full of dysfunction and asymmetry – rotating in one direction along with favored limbs for other dance movements falls neatly within the PRI philosophy.
During the PRI Seminar, I had many “A-ha!” moments as to why I move the way I do, along with why I favor one side versus the other during years of dancing.
Now take a look at any sport – baseball exhibits handedness (right-handed vs. left-handed pitcher), soccer shows favor for a dominant leg, and swimmers favor one side over the other to rotate towards their flip turns.
The constant demands of a chosen sport, coupled with your structural posture (thanks to the above reasons) will more often than not “feed into your dysfunction,” which in turn can often exacerbate common injuries seen in specific sports.
These dysfunctions alter how we breathe and how we respond to certain exercises or stretches.
3. Positioning
When we got into the practical portion of our in-service at CP, we were asked to get into some rather crazy positions, even blowing up a balloon. However, by getting into an ideal position, we are more readily able to get ourselves out of this pattern. So do not fear – most of us are able to get out of this pattern, much like Neo did in The Matrix.
WARNING – I’m going to geek out a bit…
“The activation/setting of the abdominals pulls the lower ribs down and in (caudad and posterior) and helps to inhibit/relax the paraspinals muscles (trunk extensors) which may help to decrease the patient/athlete’s lumbar lordosis and pain in the paraspinal region through reciprocal inhibition.”-1
(Side note: After performing these exercises, a few mentioned that they felt immediate results – loss of tension in their back, or even getting rid of back pain upon movement after being “repositioned”. Some pretty magical stuff.
On another aside: I asked Michael Mullin to walk me through some of the advanced tests, as I had only experienced the lower half of the assessments. After breathing into a few positions, I had seen immediate results with my shoulder issues. Craziness – I know.)
Putting It All Together
So putting the pieces of this puzzle together shows that a large majority of us may fall into a few of these categories from the get-go. What can we do now? Luckily for us, PRI gave us a few corrective exercises that they use often enough for the unlucky few that are still caught up in “The Pattern.”
Sounds like a Stephen King novel, I know, but bear with me.
One question that’s often been asked: where can we fit more exercises into an already jam packed session of foam rolling, mobilizations, and strength exercises?
The few things I’ve been experimenting with on my own along with coaching at CP are using these correctives after foam rolling, and before a dynamic warm-up, and also between sets of heavy compound lifts.
Note from TG:For those who feel it a bit strange to use a balloon, you can also use a standard straw for this exercise. Just be sure that when you inhale, you do so through the nose (which means you’ll have to block/pinch the tip of the straw in with your tongue against the roof of your mouth).
And for those who feel it’s a bit weird or “funky” to do this exercise in your gym, it’s no stranger than the moron who’s performing one-legged squats on an inverted BOSU ball while curling pink dumbbells.
Further, we have even gone on to emphasize with our athletes the importance of fixing our posture when we are standing during games, during our travels, and even at rest – sleeping and sitting. If your commute to work is long, making a conscious effort at shifting your posture can go a long way towards reducing overall symptoms.
What can we expect after appreciating these factors?
Whether you call it diaphragmatic breathing or the zone of apposition, we need to be mindful of how we position ourselves not only during exercise, but during our “resting” posture, and most importantly during our respiration.
With these things under our belt (or diaphragm!), I recommend watching the diaphragmatic video one more time to “see” how the above factors can affect our ultimate goal of performance and getting out of The Pattern.
Author’s Bio
Miguel Aragoncillo, CSCS, graduated from Temple University with a B.S. in Kinesiology. His focus as a trainer is getting people to move better and lift heavy things. Miguel is currently interning at Cressey Performance, and openly enjoys Techno Tuesdays, breakdancing, and powerlifting. Check out his writing at www.miguelaragoncillo.wordpress.com and follow him on Twitter @MAragoncillo1.
I mentioned yesterday that I had to head into the facility a littler earlier than usual because we were taking part in a pretty baller staff in-service revolving around some of the key principles and ideologies behind the Postural Restoration Institute.
While trying to squeeze their philosophy into one sentence or paragraph would be doing it a huge disservice, if I had to give a quick ten second “elevator pitch” on what their schtick is and what they’re all about, I’d say: it’s about breathing! Or, to be more precise, it’s about how most of us suck at it.
Like, really bad.
It’s about understanding that symmetry – as much as we try to attain it, and think that it exists – probably ain’t gonna happen. Taking even a step further, it’s recognizing that we’re inherently designed in such a way where assymmetry is inevitable, and that how we breath plays a major role in that.
PRI tries to teach people how to breath more efficiently, which in turn, in conjunction with their corrective modalities, will help attempt to bring them back to neutral.
Like I said, trying to summarize everything into some pseudo Cliff Notes blog post isn’t even going to scratch the surface. In fact, after listening and watching Michael Mullin drop knowledge bombs for two hours I pretty much felt like that evil Nazi from Raiders of the Lost Arc:
Having thoroughly had my face melted, it’s safe to say I had a lot of information and dialogue to digest.
Thankfully (and to his credit) Michael was a phenomenal speaker and presenter and was able to take all the complicated goobely gook and water it down so that we could follow along and appreciate the general picture.
In a way, he took what was equivalent to rocket science and made it seem more like long division. And, you know, he provided handouts, which sorta helped.
Out of all the nuggets that Michael provided however, there was one phrase which really struck a chord with me, and it was something that he blurted out nonchalantly and without any fanfare at the very start of his talk.
Michael noted that he has been practicing for over 20 years, and has been studying (and practicing) PRI for twelve. When he first stumbled upon it, he tried everything in his power to DISCREDIT it. To him, he couldn’t quite understand how something so profound didn’t hit his radar screen sooner. How could something that made this much sense not be discussed or talked about more in the therapy world?
Anyways, Michael went on to say that he’s always apprehensive whenever someone uses the words Everybody, Never, and Always.
He wasn’t there to “sell” PRI to us, and he immediately noted that it’s not the only modality he utilizes with his clients. He was very much of the mindset that it’s in everyone’s best interest to “cherry pick” a little from this or a little from that, and decide what’s a good fit FOR YOU and YOUR clients.
Speaking on the assessment side of things for example, I try not to back myself into one corner or follow one train of thought. I’ll take a little from the FMS, a little from the NASM train of thought, and even a little from Assess and Correct.
The point is: there should be no one set way in anything.
To that end, he noted that whenever he hears someone start spewing out the words Everybody, Never, and Always, his bullshit meter starts flashing (my words, not his).
Not coincidentally this is the exact mentality that pervades much of the fitness and nutrition community. A few candid examples:
Everybody should lift heavy.
Everybody should perform yoga.
You should never eat a carb past seven o’clock.
One should never allow your knees go past your toes when squatting.
Always avoid spinal flexion.
We should always eat breakfast.
Everyone should always make certain that they never listen to anything Tracy Anderson says (or stick their finger in an electrical socket).*
It’s human nature – we like to abide by absolutes, and there really aren’t any that exist in the fitness world, or in the “real” world for that matter. Except, you know, that last example, of course.
But lets take the above list and test it out:
Everybody should lift heavy.
I realize that heavy is subjective here, but bear with me. What if they’re not concerned with lifting as much weight as humanly possible? What happens if they’re a complete newbie? Should they still lift heavy?
Everybody should perform yoga.
Not if they’ve got a chronic history of congenital laxity or disc injuries – that’s the last thing they probably need.
You should never eat a carb past seven o’clock.
Okay Oprah, settle down. The human body doesn’t just miraculously shut down its metabolism once Jeopardy comes on. What happens if someone generally trains later at night? Should they not eat afterwards?
One should never allow your knees go past your toes when squatting.
I guess every Olympic lifter in history had it wrong.
Always avoid spinal flexion.
Flexion IS a normal human movement pattern. Loaded spinal flexion is one thing, but to tell someone to always flexion in general is a bit overkill. What happens if you’re working with someone who lives in extension? Wouldn’t it be prudent to encourage a little more flexion to get them back to a more neutral position?
We should always eat breakfast.
Or what? We’ll die off? My god, what did our ancestors do back in the day? They couldn’t have possibly gone more than seven hours without eating!!!!!!
Listen, I’m not saying that I don’t do it – I do! I certainly have my biases. For example, I feel everyone should deadlift at least once a week.
Now which type of deadlift is a different notion altogether, but you get the idea.
I also feel that if you have a history of shoulder issues – especially dislocations – you should never perform a dip. Like ever.
And I also think it’s kind of important for people to always stay hydrated.
Simultaneously, those three ubiquitous examples aside, I do feel I do a pretty bang up job of not leaning too far to the left or right on any given topic. With few exceptions, I feel there’s a time and place for everything – yes, even leg presses (as much as it pains me to admit it). And I’d encourage everyone reading to foster the same approach.
Especially as it relates to fitness and nutrition.
Summarizing: Don’t be an a-hole and think you know it all or that your way is the only way. Unless your name is Gandalf, get over yourself…..;o)
What is your posture like? If you are constantly standing or moving around (or coaching), you are subjecting ourselves to being in a more extended position. Comparing by contrast, if you’re a desk jockey – a phone pressed to your ear, a keyboard to crouch over and work on, and more often than not, a not so comfortable chair that you plop yourself into everyday – you’re most likely a walking (or more appropriately, a sitting) ball of flexion.
Miguel Aragoncillo, CSCS, graduated from Temple University with a B.S. in Kinesiology. His focus as a trainer is getting people to move better and lift heavy things. Miguel is currently interning at Cressey Performance, and openly enjoys Techno Tuesdays, breakdancing, and powerlifting. Check out his writing at 
