For those of you that don’t know Eric Cressey, he is an experienced athlete and powerlifter and has quickly established himself as one of the most brilliant strength coaches in the country.  After spending a week at his facility, I realized that he and I share strong opinions on a few issues that may be of interest to you.

1.  The most effective way to warm-up is to do some foam roll work, mobility work, and a few dynamic movements.  If you aren’t familiar with foam rolling techniques, learn.  Essentially you spend 5 minutes before your training session working through all the knots in your body and basically improving the pliability and health of your muscles and the fascia that encloses them.  You can and should mobilize your ankles (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/wallanklemobility.html ), hips (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/wallhipmobility.html), thoracic spine (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/FRThoracicExtension.html )and glenohumeral (shoulder) joints (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/HockeyStickDislocation.html ) prior to training.  You should do activation and stabilization work for the muscles around your knees (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/SplitSquat.html ), core/lumbar spine area (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/BirdDog.html and http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/FrontPlankMarch.html ), and scapula (http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/ScapPushUpElbows.html).  Ten minutes of work to improve the quality of your muscles, improve range-of-motion around the joints that need it, and activate the right muscles.  It seems like a no-brainer to me.

2.  If you want to get strong, you need to lift heavy weights!  90% of the people that I consult with that have plateaued in their training have never purposely done work in the 2-4 rep range.  Just to clear up any misconceptions, lifting very heavy weights 2-4 times is NOT dangerous and will NOT necessarily make you bigger (females, I’m talking to you here).  Cressey is a big proponent of low-rep lifting, as am I.  Both of us have gotten a lot stronger, quickly, working in this rep range, without putting on significant amounts of weight.

3.  We do not know the long-term effects of ketchup use.  Completely irrelevant?  One of the younger clients at Cressey’s facility wanted to discuss the safety and efficacy of creatine use because his doctor said it was unsafe for the liver and kidneys and that we did not know the long-term effects of creatine use.  For the record, research has shown, almost excessively at this point, that creatine supplementation is both safe and effective in improving lean muscle mass and muscular strength.  In fact, it is SO safe and effective, that current research is now being performed on various elderly and diseased populations in an effort to try to counteract some of the muscle wasting associated with these states.  I’m an optimist.  I’ll just assume that the doctor is blind and that the 10+ years of creatine research haven’t yet been transcribed in braille.  After Eric went on a 15-minute angry rant about the medical system’s expertise in the area of exercise and nutrition, he advised the young lifter to ask his doctor about the long-term effects of ketchup use, or salt use.  Ridiculous, yes.  But his point is obvious.  Just because we don’t know the long-term effects of creatine use, doesn’t mean it’s bad for you.  He’s been taking 5g/day for over 5 years.  I’ve been taking creatine off and on for about the same time.  We’re both alive!  Creatine is safe.  Creatine works.

4.  Building off of the last point, everyone should be much more proactive with their doctors.  Do the research yourself before you go to a doctor.  Eric cancelled a shoulder surgery years ago after rehabbing himself for a few months.  I was told by my hernia surgery doctor and a sports med doctor (following a brutal shoulder mangling) that I would never lift heavy again.  They were both wrong.  How many people are being told to take anti-inflammatory drugs when fish oil supplementation would be a healthier, more beneficial alternative?  Please do not just assume that your doctor always knows what is best for you.  It is your right as a consumer to question their advice.  To paraphrase a quote from Jerry Seinfeld, “somebody’s doctor is finishing last in their class at medical school!”

5.  Loud music makes you stronger.  Listening to Justin Timberlake has shown to decrease strength and testosterone levels by 10%.  Listening to Metallica improves these same measures by 20%.  You make the call.

6.  Pre- and post-training nutrition is essential.  I don’t care if you’re a man, woman, teenager, baby, whatever.  You’ll almost definitely get better results from your training if you consume a simple carbohydrate and whey protein supplement before/during your training and a whey/casein mix protein supplement IMMEDIATELY after your training.  Immediately doesn’t mean after you drive home, shower, change, etc.  It means as soon as you finish your last set you pull your pre-made shake from your bag and slug it down.

If you’re in the New England area, consider training at Cressey Performance.  In one week I saw some of the most unique, effective, and fun training programs I’ve ever encountered.  I saw a 165-pound kid that didn’t look like he lifted at all squat over 2x his body weight and bang out a set of 3 chin-ups with an 85 lb. dumbbell hanging from his waist.  I saw a 65 year old man do 8 chin-ups.  It’s a great place to get strong.  It’s a great place to get healthy.

Yesterday I sat in the office of Philadelphia Flyer’s strength and conditioning coach for over two hours and talked about their program.  Talk about an eye opening experience.

I know many strength coaches and personal trainers that will swear on their lives that squats should ALWAYS be performed to a full depth (below parallel).

Do they know that patellofemoral (think knee cap on knee joint) joint reaction forces exceed 7x the person’s body weight when you pass a 90° knee angle?

Maybe that’s not something you want to do with someone that’s experiencing or predisposed to knee injuries.

The Flyer’s won’t run or squat their guys that have a femoral neck angle of inclination over 145° because it increases the compressive forces on the anterosuperior hip joint/labrum.

I realize that it’s not always practical to make these types of decisions.  I don’t know anyone outside of the professional strength and conditioning realm that will be able to monitor their athletes femoral neck angle of inclination.  The thing that is most important to remember is that no form of training is ideal for everyone.  Some people aren’t built to squat.  Some people that are okay to squat, might not be okay to squat because of a current injury.  It’s frustrating to see strength coaches and trainers make sweeping umbrella statements about certain exercises or ways to train athletes.  It’s even more frustrating when these people judge other coach’s programs without talking to the coach about them directly.

One of the things I thought was most interesting was the weight room they worked out of.  It was filled with machines.  Anyone walking in would be lead to the conclusion that most of their training is machine based.  There were no Olympic lifting platforms.  No Olympic lifting?  Not really.  In fact, the Flyer’s use almost all the Olympic lifts and their dumbbell and barbell variations.  They RARELY use the machines at all, except for rehabilitation purposes.

The take home: More than likely you don’t know as much as you think you do.  Continue to educate yourself.  Speak with other strength coaches about what they do and WHY they do it.  The best strength coaches I’ve been fortunate to meet are always looking for better ways to train their athletes and are learning constantly.  These aren’t 25 year old newbies.  Jim McCrossin has been in professional hockey for over 20 years.  Mike Boyle has been in the industry for 25 years.  Jeff Oliver and Brijesh Patel at Holy Cross and Chris Boyko at UMass have all been doing this for 10+ years, yet they all continue to seek out more knowledge and better ways to train.

It’s likely that whatever training program you’ve followed to get yourself or your athletes to here, won’t get them anywhere else.  Quite simply, if you do what you always did, you’ll get where you always got.

Continue to be a student of the industry.  Continue to get great results.

Recently I’ve read a few articles and forum discussions that have left me with that “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed” feeling.  Despite writing about this a few times already, it seems that people still do not understand the difference between muscle recruitment and muscle activation.

Recruitment refers to the beginning of force production from additional motor units.  A motor unit is a motor neuron and all the muscle fibers it innervates.  For the sake of simplicity, just think of motor units as muscle fibers and recruitment as more muscle fibers producing force.  In most cases, in small muscles, recruitment is MAXIMAL by 65%; in large muscles, recruitment is MAXIMAL by 80%.  This means that you DO NOT recruit additional motor units (or muscle fibers) above these percentages.  If you read somewhere that doing this or that will improve motor unit recruitment or the recruitment of fast twitch fibers, they are probably lying to you.  The exception, of course, is that below these percentages a rapid concentric contraction can lower the recruitment threshold of these motor units, meaning they are recruited below 80% (in big muscles, for example).

When most people refer to recruitment, they actually mean activation.  Activation is an all-encompassing term that includes both motor unit recruitment AND rate coding.  Rate coding simply refers to the firing rate of a motor unit.  For any given motor unit, a faster firing rate results in higher levels of force production.  Therefore, despite maximal motor unit recruitment at 80% in large muscles, maximal force production can increase due to changes in firing rate.  The total change in motor unit recruitment AND in firing rate properties is referred to as activation.  Increases in activation occur as a result of strength training.  Increases in recruitment do not.  There is essentially no evidence that untrained people cannot recruit all their motor units.  There is ample evidence that they cannot fully activate their motor units.  It’s not just semantics; it’s actually important.  Next time someone tells you to perform some form of exercise because it will increase your recruitment, ask them for a reference!

Power, defined as force production over time, is arguably the most important variable of training for athletics.  I never used to think there was such a thing as too much power.  Today I changed my mind.  Today I was doing a series of medicine ball throws against a brick wall as part of a conditioning workout (Side Note: I hate traditional conditioning.  All my conditioning sessions involve slideboards, medicine ball throws, barbell complexes, farmers walks, and sled pulls).  Today it looked like:

3 Times Through:

A) 1 x 10 Overhand MB Floor Throws

B) 1 x 30s Heavy DB Holds w/ Added Perturbation

C) 1 x 10 (Each Side) Side-Standing MB Wall Shot-Puts

D) 1 x 10 Underhand MB Wall Toss

On my first rep of the underhand MB wall toss, I threw my hips back, and rapidly thrust them forward as I threw the ball against…well, over the brick wall, into the ceiling pipeline, and straight down into a water pump.  The take home: Maybe too much power CAN be a bad thing.  Either that or I should stick to hockey and leave ball-throwing for someone with better aim.

Last week I had another article published on T-nation.  If you haven’t already, check it out here: Fight the Injury Blues: Keep Lifting.  Remember, if you’ve suffered an injury or are dealing with nagging pain (and the article doesn’t clear things up for you), feel free to email me and I’ll get a response back to you ASAP.  No one on my newsletter list stays hurt!

I leave for Denver tomorrow evening to relax for a few days in the mountains.  It’ll be nice to take a break from everything.  I hope you all get to relax a bit this weekend as well.  Enjoy the holiday.

I hope you all had a great 4th of July.  I had a lot of fun out in Denver, but am glad to be back on the east coast.

One of the primary issues I get questioned about is supplement use.

Should I take supplements?

What supplement should I take: protein, creatine, etc?

What brand should I take?

When should I take them?

My position on supplements is pretty straight forward.  I think everyone should have a protein supplement, creatine supplement, and some sort of multi-vitamin or greens supplement.  As for brands, all the products from Biotest (https://www.t-nation.com/onlineStore.jsp) are of the highest quality.  I’ve tried some others, but always come back to Biotest, with the following exceptions: the green supplement Greens+ (Get the berry flavor; the regular tastes like dog food…no, not the stuff that tastes like chicken or beef); Carlson Lab’s fish oil.

There is a large crowd that largely discounts the need for supplements, claiming that people can gain all the macro- and micro-nutrients they need from food alone.  In general, I agree with them.  However, there is research coming out now stating that even people that eat a wide variety of foods in adequate amounts still have some form of nutrient deficiency.  The quality of food simply isn’t as it used to be.

Probably more importantly, I think I can count the number of people I know that eat a balanced, versatile diet on two hands.  Regardless of whether people can get adequate nutrients from a proper diet, they aren’t.  Supplements can fill a void in the diets of both athletes and non-athletes alike.

However, over the years I’ve noticed an interesting trend amongst people trying to put on weight.  The primary problem in most of these individuals is that they simply don’t consume enough food, let alone the right types of foods.  After listening to what they eat on a daily basis, and reminding them that they need to eat much, much more, I invariably hear “I know. I know.”  But they never do it.  For whatever reason, eating isn’t a desirable behavior for this strange population, but taking a supplement is always seen as the solution.

Is a supplement the only solution?  Absolutely not.

In fact, research has shown that consuming chocolate milk after training brings about the same desired results as a protein shake, probably because milk has a whey/casein mix (just like a good protein supplement) and the chocolate usually means the drink will have simple sugars in it (just like a good post-training shake).

But people don’t want to drink chocolate milk either.  Supplements just flat out work for these people, not because it’s the only solution, but because it’s a solution they’re willing to work with and that THEY think will work.

The addition of a protein supplement during/after training will increase the total amount of protein and the total number of calories that the individual consumes.  Also, I’ve read that the placebo effect can account for up to 40% of realized results (in general, not specific to protein supplements).  This is huge!  If one person takes one supplement that they don’t think will work and one that they do think will work, they are likely to have better results with the one they do think will work.

Science has invariably supported the benefits of consuming a protein supplement during and after training.  If you aren’t taking one yourself, and/or aren’t recommending that your clients take one, ask yourself “why?”.  Whether people “need” it or not is irrelevant if it is an effective solution to their “weight gain problem.”  More times than not, people simply will not eat more food, but they will take a supplement.  If you have some moral dilemma with supplement use, I’ll caution that your illogic is fighting an uphill battle against years of research and in-the trenches efficacy.

Keep training hard.  Starting drinking your protein shake during and after your training.  Start achieving your goals.