Dec

31

Improving Your Hamstring Flexibility

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Yesterday Karl (our first intern at Endeavor Fitness) and I went through the Functional Movement Screen together.

I’m proud to say, as the mentor, that I came out victorious with a score of 18 (over his measly 17!).

He “lost” because his hamstring extensibility (or flexibility) was terrible. While most of our athletes have decent hamstring extensibility we do have a few that are pretty locked up.

With Karl, and some of our athletes, I’ll have them do this quick stretching activity to improve hamstring extensibility.  When someone is available, we’ll usually do this with a partner, which allows “on the fly” adjustments to leg positioning, but often times I want our athletes to do this at home, using a wall as their partner.

Please ignore the music in the background!

The protocol is:

1) Set up with one leg raised in a “hamstring stretch” position with your knees of both legs fully extended and the toes of both legs pulled toward your shins. In this position, your lower back should be flat (or with a slight curve), and you should feel a good stretch in your hamstrings on the raised leg. Hold this position for 10 seconds.

2) If you feel like you can, shift your body a little closer to the wall to increase the stretch on your hamstrings.

3) Actively raise your heel off the wall and hold for a few seconds. Return to the wall and rest a few seconds. Repeat 2-3 times.

4) If you feel like you can, shift your body a little closer to the wall to increase the stretch on your hamstrings.

5) Actively press your heel into the wall as hard as you can without it lifting your hips or moving your body at all (or breaking your heel through the wall!). Keep pressing for 3-5 seconds, then rest a few seconds and repeat 2-3 times.

6) If you feel like you can, shift your body a little closer to the wall to increase the stretch on your hamstrings and hold this final position for 10 seconds.

Most people notice a substantial improvement in their hamstring extensibility after performing this circuit. If you’re really locked up, try doing this twice a day for a couple weeks and see how much you improve.

Dec

25

Core Stability for Instant Strength Increases!

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A few weeks ago I started working with a Division 1 bound high school baseball player.

During his first session, he was able to do a set of Dumbbell Reverse Lunges with 40s for 6 reps/side.

2 weeks later he did a set of 4 reps/side with 75s, and he did 70s for 6/side the following week.

There are multiple possibilities to explain this drastic strength increase:

1) Becoming more comfortable with the movement pattern

2) Increased neural drive to the involve musculature

3) Better night of sleep before the training sessions later in the program

While I won’t rule any of these things out, I’ll say that these strength increases aren’t abnormal here.

With all of our athletes, there seems to be one common theme:

When our athletes learn to brace/stabilize their core during the lifts, their weights go through the roof!

Simply coaching athletes to “get up tall” and/or (depending on the lift) “keep their core tight” while they lift has an incredible impact on their ability to transfer force through their core, and therefore the weight they can lift.

Many athletes pick this up from simple coaching cues. For the athletes that need a little more help, I teach them how to brace their core with these instructions:

1) Put their hands on their stomach

2) Tighten up their core, which contracts the stomach musculature

3) Take a deep breath “in through their belly”, without releasing the core tightness

4) Practice taking mini-breaths in and out without losing their core tightness

After teaching them this skill in a static environment, most are able to transfer that to their lifts.

Dec

23

Does Flexibility INCREASE your risk of injury?

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A couple weeks ago I did an audio interview with Joe Heiler for SportsRehabExpert.com, one of the most underrated membership sites on the web. I’m really humbled that he asked me to contribute.

If you’ve never been there, check it out. Joe’s a really bright guy and has compiled a lot of great information from other smart, successful coaches and therapists.

One of the things that came up during the interview was what we can do to prevent “groin” (adductor) strains. We’ve been fortunate in that we haven’t had too many adductor injuries in our athletes. This is probably, at least in part, due to the hip mobility and hip muscle activation exercises we use.

We did have a couple athletes complain of adductor pain though, and they all had ONE thing in common:

OUTSTANDING ADDUCTOR FLEXIBILITY!

This trend flies in the face of the “you got hurt because you didn’t stretch or aren’t flexible enough” way of thinking.

In these athletes, we were able to resolve their pain relatively quickly, by having them STOP STRETCHING their adductors, start stretching their glutes a few times a day, and by doing isometric adductor strengthening exercises by crushing a medicine ball between their knees for time.

The rationale was simply that their adductors were weak relative to their abductors (to be overly simplistic: weak groin, strong glutes).

By stretching their glutes and strengthening their adductors, we were able to shift the strength and stiffness relationship between those muscles into more balance and get rid of their pain within a week or two.

Dec

21

Present Ideas for Athletes, Coaches, and Strength Coaches

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Last Christmas my face lit up like a 6-year old ripping through wrapping paper to discover a toy fire truck (or iPhone in today’s kids) when I opened my presents. I got 5 AWESOME Physical Therapy textbooks.

It was probably the most excited I’ve been about Christmas presents in over a decade. My family thinks I’m strange, and they’re right, but that was all I wanted!

So for the fellow Athletic Development Enthusiasts out there that can never have enough great training information (or the significant others/family members of such enthusiasts), here is a list of some of the incredible books, DVDs, and websites I recommend to everyone:

1) Assess and Correct by Bill Hartman, Mike Robertson, and Eric Cressey: I just wrote a review on this. If you don’t have it already, get it now!

2) Precision Nutrition by Dr. John Berardi. This is still BY FAR the best nutrition resource for EVERYONE, competitive athletes to stay at home parents.

3) StrengthCoach.com with Michael Boyle. Coach Boyle’s membership site has the most current information from the Strength and Conditioning Industry’s most successful coaches.

4) SportsRehabExpert.com with Joe Heiler. This is a great resource for physical therapists and athletic trainers to stay current on the practices of some of the greatest minds in the world.

5) StrengthandConditioningWebinars.com with Anthony Renna. This is one of the most brilliant advancements in the history of strength and conditioning continuing education. Without taking credit away from any of the other great sites out there, this is my favorite site on the internet. Learning great education from incredible presenters without leaving my home..what’s not to love?

There are a ton of great products out there. Among others, I can attest that anything from Nick Tumminello, Kim McCullough, Brijesh Patel, Eric Cressey, Michael Boyle, Mike Robertson, and Bill Hartman will be packed with incredible information.

If you have specific questions about other products, please don’t hesitate to email me.

Happy Holidays!

Dec

18

Should You Stretch After You Pull A Muscle?

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Think about the times in your life that you’ve “tweaked” a muscle or slightly strained/pulled it.

What was the FIRST thing you did on your own or were told to do?

If you’re like most people, you immediately stretched the muscle.

The very first thing I tell my athletes if they tweak a muscle is NOT to stretch it!

A muscle strain can range from a slight over-stretch to a complete tear. Assuming the muscle isn’t COMPLETELY torn, it’s likely that there is some micro-damage to the muscle and that the muscle feels tight because it’s guarding against further injury.

This means that most people are attempting to stretch an over-stretched muscle AGAINST the muscles’ contraction.

Not only is this not an effective way to speed up your healing, but it’s probably making your injury worse!

Think about your muscle as a rubber band. Now imagine cutting a small slit in the rubber band with a razorblade.

If you stretch that rubber band now, what’s going to happen?

The small slit is going to expand, getting longer and wider.

Does making a slight tear in your muscle longer and wider seem like a smart recovery strategy?

If you tweak a muscle, DO NOT stretch it. You can ice it if you want (although I’m not convinced that ice does anything either). If you’re going to stretch anything, stretch the muscles that OPPOSE the injured muscle.

Many muscles are overworked or strained because of a relative stiffness imbalance with their antagonists, so stretching the opposing muscle can help bring you back into balance.

Keep training smart!

Dec

17

Should Kids Lift Weights?

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A couple months ago I wrote a quick article for the Endeavor Fitness website on the issue of whether kids should lift weights or not.

It’s a question I get a lot, or more accurately, it’s a misconception I have to explain a lot.

Today I read Eric Cressey’s newsletter on the same issue.

Whether you’re an athlete, parent, coach, or “trainer”, you should check out both articles. If you’re like most people, you’ve likely been given poor information on the subject.

Check out the articles:

Kevin’s Article on Endeavor Fitness’ Website

Eric’s Newsletter Article

Dec

10

Assess and Correct Review

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Last week I received my copy of Assess and Correct in the mail, the new DVD set from three of the brightest and most well-respected guys in our industry: Mike Robertson, Bill Hartman and Mike Robertson.

I’ve been fortunate to learn a ton from all of these guys; I own all of their products and rewatch/reread them on a regular basis, so I was psyched that all three of them teamed up for this project.

Assess and Correct really exceeded my expectations.

The first DVD walks you through a series of simple assessments to identify your personal weaknesses and imbalances that may be inhibiting your performance.

The major benefit of this assessment DVD is that they are all self-assessments, which means you don’t need anyone else to run you through them.

Being able to run yourself through a series of assessments to identify performance limitations is an invaluable tool.

Best part?

The entire series of assessments takes less than 10 minutes!

The second DVD is PACKED with corrective exercises to improve your limitations and really help you unleash a whole new level of performance.

This is truly an invaluable resource.

If I told you that I could teach you how to identify your MAJOR performance limitations in less than 10 minutes, would you be interested?

Of course, you aren’t stupid.

If I told you I could then teach you all the exercises to fix your limitations and drastically improve your performance, would you be interested?

Any serious athlete would be. Any serious coach (sport or strength and conditioning) would be interested in learning this for their athletes.

Whether to pick up Assess and Correct is really a no brainer.

The only people I would say definitely should NOT get it are the people that have no interest in learning from the most intelligent, most successful Therapists and Strength and Conditioning Coaches in the business.

Click here to take the first step toward lifelong performance improvement!

Dec

4

How Lifting Movement Speed Can Drastically Improve Your Strength

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As a reminder, check out my new hockey training website to pick up my Off-Ice Performance Training Course for only $47!

I should have an update for you soon on my OTHER new hockey training site too, so check back for that.

While I was in grad school at UMass Amherst, a lot of my research/reading focused on exercise neuroscience. While some of that can be really technical (and boring), I was able to pick up a lot of usable information about how to manipulate our nervous system to improve performance.

One simple way to manipulate the nervous system in every workout is by changing the speed at which you perform your lifts.

In general, the eccentric or negative phase of the lift should always be under control, meaning it shouldn’t be a dangerous free-fall.  I’ll actually write in time lengths for this part of the lift in many of my programs. For example, I may write in 5s negatives for a dumbbell chest press. In this case, the lifter would lower the dumbbells down toward his/her chest in 5 seconds before lifting them back to the top.

Without exception, the concentric or “up”phase of EVERY lift should be performed as rapidly as possible…Always!  Even if the weight is near your max, you want to think about moving it as quickly as possible.

One of the things I learned while sifting through all that research is that the intention to move fast has similar effects on muscle recruitment as actually moving fast.

So by simply thinking about lifting the weight as quickly as possible, you can reduce the recruitment threshold of your motor units (which drives muscle contraction), which basically increases muscular tension and “driving power”.

Down under control. Up fast.

-Kevin Neeld

Dec

3

How Much Protein Should You Take In?

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Protein has long been hailed as the “super nutrient” amongst athletes and lifters.

Dr. John Berardi recently sent out an email presenting a few new studies have sparked up a lot of conversation about whether athletes do have a higher protein requirement than non-athletes and if the additional protein actually contributes to improved performance or training results.

I’m a huge fan of high protein diets (in most cases), so when I caught wind of these studies I had to check out what Dr. Berardi had to say about them.

Click here to read why you should limit your protein to 20g per meal.

-Kevin Neeld