Hit the brakes speedy

Couple things First off so people don't think I'm too serious or, not that most would think that after only 2 posts, first if you happen to read this and think I'm wrong in what I'm saying, by all means send me a friendly e-mail and I will be happy to talk with you, I'm still eager to learn and having another opinion will only make me better. Second thing is that if you happen to walk into the facility here in Hudson, and look at the big pile of flesh walking around and wondering 'who is the trainer that got kung fooed while sitting in an oven?' The answer there is probably me, played rugby in Newport, RI this weekend and it tends to beat ya up on a weekly basis. Case and point throughout the season my clients have come to expect me to come back with some new mark on my face or body, last week was no exception when I got some jerkhole to scratch my face at the bottom of a ruck. Didn't get a face or number, but I'm sure he knows if I knew it was him, he'd have one worse, end of random spiel.

Today's flavor is the speed you move through an exercise and why some people need to pump the brakes just a wee bit. I've been guilty of this on a number of occasions  throughout my life, but have gotten better at it. Easy way to tell if you need to slow down, if your back rounds, you hyper-extend it or you rotate through your lumbar spine with massive amounts of weight, you may want to consider slowing it down, lowering the weight and taking your time with your technique, unless you want to feel like you are 82 when you are 32, I vote for feeling younger than I am, rather than the other way around, that's what we are shooting for here right? Doing your best resistance training version of Speedy Gonzalez (one of my favorite looney tunes growing up) isn't going to help you get results faster if your technique is poor and hindering.

Slowing down your movements has actually been shown to get you stronger, numerous studies support slowing down eccentric movements in resistance exercises will build muscle faster. There are certain exercises that are meant for fast explosive movements, but that's only IF, and for some people that's a bigger if than that so let's try again, IF you have mastered the movement should you speed it up to an explosive movement. There's always a progression of exercises you can master before we start to speed up the goal exercise. For example: I am a huge fan of cleans, any kind of cleans, for this purpose we will go with hang clean. Cleans combine numerous motions into one to make for an exhausting workout when done correctly. The videos that follow have progressions for a hang clean; Modified RDL, Front Squat, Triple Extension Shrug, Triple Extension High Pull and well I figured what the hell a hang clean. Some might have a different view on these progressions, technique and so forth, bear with me and just go with it. You'll notice in the first few I'm taking my time, as the pieces come together the speed picks up and until finally the big kahuna comes in. Yeah I only did 95 cause I didn't want to mess it up and I'm still pretty beat from this weekend so hold your tongue.

Thanks to Paul for being the camera operator, also note the dreadful music we have to deal with in the facility that's on a constant loop. It's a wonder why everyone around here uses their own headphones and tunes out the rest of the world along with some of this garbage. Another side note, apparently blogger spits out 2 videos, one to watch in the browser and one to watch on your computer.

That's all I got for today kids, hopefully I made someone out there better. Any questions, concerns or the like about the videos or the written content please contact me, I can always learn. Until next time folks, ta ta for now.

What in the #*&^$ happened to your foot???

Been awhile since our last post and I've had this one in mind for awhile, just been a matter of clearing up time for myself to do it. Here in Hudson I've seen plenty of technique and "exercises" that make me cringe and my joints and muscles ache just watching them. About a month ago something that had pretty much nothing to do with those gave me one of my biggest shut the front door moments. Like I said still havin a hard time finding time for everything, getting better though.

One of the tools myself and a few others here use for assessments is an overhead squat. Shoes are off, hands overhead, feet about hip width to shoulder width apart, sit back and squat down and I'll look for what needs to be fixed. Well I did one of these on a client of ours named Evan. The second Evan took his shoes off and I saw what looked something like the picture here I knew almost immediately what was going to happen, toes turned out knees went knock.

Evan is in fact an athlete of sorts, and I bet the first guess most of you have is that he is a basketball player that has just rolled his ankle a kajillion times (yeah don't care it's not a word I used it) sorry nice guess, but wrong. Evan is a member of a crew rowing team. After doing a quick look up on exactly what the technique for this is I came to a conclusion that this explained it all. In crew you are tucked into a tiny seat, while in this tiny seat you are pushing with your legs with all your might to pull an oar, along with using your shoulders of course. The reason I mentioned the tiny seat is because Evan is almost forced to keep his knees together when he pushes with his legs as he row, because he is a fairly big kid squeezed into this child's sized seat. 

Between keeping his knees together and pushing through the inside of his foot, I'd say that would pretty much sum up why the medial part of his ankle is nearly on the floor when he walks and looked like he belonged in Happy Feet, which seems like kind of an ironic title here. We loosened the lateral part of his calf along with his adductors with some SMR (aka Foam Rolling, I know a term not everyone understands, amazing!) and stretching, and reactivated his medial calf and abductors with some corrective exercises. About a month later his ankle looks so much better, it's almost normal and I don't cringe and feel like my ankle wants to buckle when I look at it for longer than 2 seconds. Now a thing to remember here is because Evan was so grooved into his unusual functional pattern that his ankles and feet may never look completely normal, but that's no reason to leave it as is, he's under the age of 22 so he may yet be able to be completely repaired. That's all I got for today kiddos, until next time, ta ta for now.