Sports Fitness

AMRAP 10 minutes:4 minutes Row (Cal)3 minutes DB Ground to overhead, (2x 20kg(15kg) DB's)2 minutes Muscle up 1 minute Burepee  Post total reps to comments. Log results online (Beyond the Whiteboard)  

A private meeting was in the Concord and Lexington area, purposely located to symbolize the future of what is happening in Boston. I predict that more private style workshops such as the one hosted by Ricardo will be the future. Flying halfway around the world needs to be more than just visiting a professional team and doing a keynote, the bar is raised as hotel and airports are not enough to make sure speakers are happy. Speakers want to learn and network as well, as they need to be aware of what is going on or find themselves seated watching the new blood like some are doing now. With several conferences fading and some extinct (Remember when SWIS was huge?) the disruption is keeping the speakers enticed, the attendees happy, and the vendors satisfied. Of course the people behind the conference such as Art Horne need to be thanked beyond he handshake and blog nods, as he is the one driving this and his hard work is appreciated. Two presentations (Keynote) were Saturday morning and both were excellent. Keynotes are important as they are presentations everyone should watch because they are that universal and valuable. This year was more data driven and Fergus Connolly presented on High Performance. Anticipating the future and being cutting edge Art Horne reached out to Fergus, likely because of the Leaders in Performance credibility. I pleaded to share more examples of solutions by his work. For example, after practice share what the decision trees after practice for Rugby with regards to lifting and workout design and medical integration per day. Just three athletes with post game to pre game during a week would have been a game changer. Fergus made the right choice and gave principles to get people exposed to High Performance management, as skipping that step is good for 5% of the audience but the majority must be educated and exposed to new concepts. I was trying to take pictures of his dashboard and photos of moneyball for this blog, but the ken burns effect made the dashboard flash a moving target. I felt like I was getting hypnotized from the animation and needed to get some fresh air. Fergus did a fine job sharing his impressions of what was necessary, and his breakout session was more open for questions. Stu and the battle of Waterloo was awesome. I will be using unholy like a bizzaro Robin as Dr. McGill always does a nice job. Three huge points of contention were brought up. One, the issue with FMS and prediction of injury or similar. I know I have been hard on the FMS but honestly I do a similar set of screens for mobility as part of my assessment. Still, some don't want to talk about how effective it is. I like Gray Cook but now we are starting to get a little revisionist history. The great thing about conferences is when they video people's beliefs, tough to delete it unless they are burning the tapes. We have a problem with DYI Drones in the NFL spying during practice! These guys are so smart they are not buying them but building them just in case they crash! Back to Stu. He brought up points that I stated about single leg exercises and FMS screens and he is going to debate Gray Cook at Stanford. Like a rap battle, I expect a few one liners and some awesome research by Stu. I think Gray Cook needs to rethink the research beyond the Rob Butler stuff because most of the research doesn't zero in. Stu warned about hyper loading the single leg exercises with spine and pelvic strain. He also warned about thoracic mobility exercises and showed an alternative. Now another point I wanted to address to Stu was his use of GSP to validate core and the use of the pulse. If you look at the slide it's too fuzzy to see the EMG rate but anyone doing a ballistic Kettlebell swing takes just as long as an olympic lift. I love how Stu says anytime he hears a statement he goes to the lab to find out. Marco showed this on EMG (not saying it's only the cardinal sign) but I think we need like Fergus said more field

The pre-conference workshop was 5:15 on Thursday and I made sure I left about an hour ahead to beat Boston traffic into Northeastern. Art has hosted the BSMPG for years and is having pre conference workshops to stimulate learning and allow great people to network. The main interest I have is seeing the cross-fertilization of ideas from different people. If we have the same cult year after year we inbreed. We need fresh ideas, even if we don't agree with the speaker. I find the best speakers share areas that I don't have experience with and while they may have different conclusions or methods, it makes me think about what areas can be explored. Three speakers spoke last night, they were Dr. Marchese, who has his own clinic up in Woburn. Fergus Connolly, a high performance advisor out of Ireland, and Val Nasedkin from Omegawave. Each session was under a half hour or so and this was not easy to do. Dr. Marchese- The dirty secret is that when an athlete isn't getting better in the Boston area and are desperate, you may go up to Woburn. I have witness several athletes fly in after seeing some very public super therapists and come back with tales of reality. Emotionally it hurts to hear after spending good money that the quality of care is so poor. The reason I think this happens is placebo. Think about it (no pun intended), if you fly to a super therapist and believe you will get better, a shotgun of massage and light exercises and of course time, people get better. Rest does help everyone get better, so we need to appreciate that nature is helping us on the backend. Dr. Marchese was interesting because he was following the WCT model of presenting, meaning bring citations and share what you do. I like the idea of handouts as I am always going to be a paper guy. His presentation ran longer than the allotted time and that is a classic error. Remember that the time we have affects the presenters behind us. Aside from that it was very similar to a typical neurological exam based on classic neuroscience and testing. The challenge here is the huge array of possible interpretations. This is why I suggest checklists and flow charts. The brain is a big area and while it's impressive, we are human and can't juggle everything in one's head. One EPL team bought an algorithm for post concussion testing to ensure athletes are lowering their risk to ACL tears and it's a glorified checklist that calculates risk into a 10% chunks. I liked the presentation but felt that the tests should have been cut in half and shown some sort of transfer to game specific results via motion capture or similar otherwise it is patient feedback and that is very subjective. Fergus Connolly- I have known Fergus for a long time and it's great to see him climb the ladder to high performance advising. If you go to his website it's a bit of a mystery but perhaps that's part of the adoption cycle of a private consultant. His presentation was sort of a inspirational powerpoint full of Ken Burn effects and great visuals. He basically gave wisdom nuggets for 25 minutes and was clearly prepared. He was polished and prepared, but my concern is the people in the audience would copy the style. I think a Garr Reynolds presentation done too much is annoying because the visuals are just pretty stock photos. With any visual it must display a lot of information if we are doing an educational presentation. Inspiration or wisdom is a different beast so you can bust out the keynote software on your mac and be stylish when telling stories or giving tidbits of help, but sharing what people should do to get athletes better should follow the Edward Tufte model. Show the data. I felt that Fergus was appropriate for last night because he was trying to get the point of getting athletes to buy in, and I hope he shares what he does Saturday in detail and not show slides with a few quotes. If one is a top consultant one has to show why, wit

Yesterday afternoon I was in Hasely Crawford Stadium in Port of Spain Trinidad watching over three hundred track & field athletes of all ages train but I could have just as well been in London, Brisbane or back home in Sarasota. What I saw was a bunch of drills and exercises; it was obvious in most cases the drills were just imitations of what someone had seen on YouTube or learned at a workshop. Drills and exercises without purpose and context are nothing more than busy work, just stuff. If you use drills know the purpose of the drill. Know why you are using the drill or exercise at this time with these athletes. Just doing work and getting tired is not training. There must be a purpose and direction to everything you do to prepare the athlete for the demands of competition. Drills often get the athlete better at the drill and do not transfer to the actual event. I have learned over the years that less is more. Fewer drills and exercises done with a specific purpose that the athlete clearly understands are more effective that a bunch of stuff wishing and hoping they will work. Training with direction, intent and purpose will produce results.

Last weekend my track and field team brought home their 6th district plaque in 7 years. Obviously, this is a difficult task to accomplish and I couldn’t be more proud of this group. The weather has been horrible all spring with wind, rain, and lots of snow. In addition we lost a couple of our best distance runners this year/last year due to relocation out of town. Outside of track my family has been dealing with a medical crises that has tested my faith and resolve on a daily basis. A younger version of myself would have probably folded up the tents. However, we stayed the course as a program and the team has ended the season on a high note finishing second at conference and districts. I am proud of this group because they have worked hard all year by battled along side of me day in and out. The captains have been strong and my assistant coaches have been even stronger. In difficult years strong assistant coaches are a must. They can help you play good cop bad cop with the kids. In addition they can help you sell new events to your athletes making your team more diverse and giving the kids an increased chance at personal glory. As a coach it is wise not hoard all the talent in one area. You may want to make every kid a sprinter. As a sprint coach I often want to make everyone a 400 runner. However, some years you have to allow your kids to succeed in the events they are best suited for. The athletes determine their events through their performance and the coach should not force a square peg into a round hole. On the other hand as a coach you must have a realistic vision. You prepare the athlete in practice for this vision by provided them training to succeed in the event that will eventually become their specialty. This year I thought we did a great job of diversifying our line up. I believe our mission this spring was a success as we qualified all of our relays and a large number of individual events to the sectional meet. The weather at the district championship was less then ideal as the track was getting blasted by 30plus mile per hour headwinds. The kids were aware the weather could be a problem and didn’t let it affect their goal for day. The only thing that mattered to the athletes was getting top four and moving on to the sectional meet. As a coach it is your job to understand the chess match. You need to make sure the moves you make are not just for the track meet six inches in front of your face. When you set the lineup you must do your best to set up things that are the best for your kids in terms of performance, potential for state qualifying, medaling at state, and finally the team score. This year I knew 1st place was going to be out of reach at districts. Understanding the reality of second place I was not willing to stretch my kids in to multiple events if I felt it was going to hurt their chances the following week. In most cases this worked out great allowing the kids to move on to the next round and performing personally at a high level. This season has been difficult for me personally and I missed more practice time this season then I have in my eleven previous seasons combined. My amazing assistant coaches have helped and continue to battle through this with me today. They have kept the program moving forward and having a detailed plan allowed me to easily communicate (most days) what we need the kids to accomplish each practice. The overwhelming majority of the kids didn’t miss a beat by working harder than ever to honor the program, the tradition, and my family.

Mike Young did a great interview with Andreas a while ago, and I wanted to get more into detail about why I believe Andreas will be one of the new blood that will trickle down to new coaches. He is perhaps one of the most generous coaches in sharing, and he deserves all the accolades he gets now. He has paid his dues and I am one of his fans. I looked at some of the questions and can only comment on areas I see that have clear causation and wanted to expand on some of the information that I think all of us can learn from. This post is a combination of having lunch and learning, and a few follow up emails and phone calls. Much of what I have learned from coaches like Dan and Vince has resonated differently but some of it is right on. "an aggressive takeoff angle, closing down into and over the hurdle as well as continuously moving his limbs over the top of the hurdle." So what is an aggressive take off angle? I think the word choice is perfect. At first people want a number and that is fine, but the take off angle is low and into the hurdle. When in practice a floating hurdle is a survival one that is simply too fast or late. Andreas was clear that attacking the hurdle establishes a low flight and minimal air time. Continuous movement is one way to keep balanced and accelerating off the landing. If you look at the film Aries is preparing earlier, barely perceptively, than his counter parts. We are talking .001 as his arm motion has a large range that flows with his trail leg. "Since all types of hurdling is optimal acceleration/speed work, we still continue to work on maximal acceleration/speed on the flat to challenge the nervous system throughout the year." I asked this question and it has some caveats. Seven step hurdling (to the first barrier) has an enormous strain on the body and Andreas finds that much of the flat acceleration must be reduced and his program loading during the week reflects that on day one and day two. My thoughts is that this is very interesting because the amount of work by reducing one step must be enormous to make a dramatic change during some phases. After talking to a few other coaches, they agreed, and the question is how fast one is globally will dictate mesocycle timing to ensure slower hurdlers (flat speed) can grow. "We use drills with these athletes to introduce postures and movement concepts, as well as establish common language for instruction and cuing." Notice the amount of preparation before cueing. A major difference exists between Vince and Andreas versus some of the bozo performance coaches claiming magic motor change. First cuing becomes more reminder of volitional attitudinal and task demanding later, as words become minimal later. Cues exist for a reason and it's hard because some respond differently and may need different cues for the same errors during development. "Early in the year we tend to work over 4-6 hurdles with the focus being on a dynamic approach and optimal hurdling speed/rhythm, later on in the year we work in the 4-12 hurdle range with an added emphasis on rhythm endurance." The rhythm endurance workout of 12 hurdles is a staple with some coaches for good reason. Andreas times the landing off of hurdle 1 and touchdown off of hurdle 12. When he hits 11 seconds he knows Aries is ready. What I feel is that this is a balance from the Ross drill because he used overspeed with conventional heights and spacing by removing hurdles and the 12 at lower heights and tighter spaces works with cerebellum and CPG mechanisms to relax antagonists and create a feedforward loop with reflex circuits. Research shows that repetition works for the specific task for mastery. Random may help a component of a movement cycle (one hurdle) but random has limits. When I was at the USATF III school Gary Winckler was clear to address the psychological aspects of learning when failure is high, and it's far more complicated than a Wulf study or textbook. "A hurdler simply cannot

I was going to talk about Day 1 of the BSMPG conference but I frankly was not there the whole time and much better writers exist and I am burnt out of blogging I wanted to finish strong without compromise. Since every conference has VIP and pre pre conference work I simply ran out of juice before the conference began and Friday evening dinner was perhaps the most interesting. Everyone talks about how great the bar banter is or how power lunches are filled with secrets making the conference in the shadow of all of the conversation. If that was the case we would all skype and airports would be ghost towns. I will go over Saturday as I attended the entire day later. After years of wanting a serious injection of Sport Science into the BSMPG, Art Horne pulled off another blockbuster move and got Marco Cardinale. I would argue that the Genesis of my interest in Marco was the 2004 Regeneration in Sport CD that was filmed in Stockholm. That information included very progressive information at the time and if you were to survey the average coach in strength and conditioning who any of the names were you would get a glazed look. Yet still major teams and organizations are not using the best practices from the CD, and the USA is finally bringing such great speakers over thanks to Jason DeMayo and Art Horne. Nine years later we are starting to get calibrated with reality and BSMPG is leading the way. I predict a huge spike in small conferences in the future, all battling for the best line-ups and the best way to handle this is to know who can deliver. I contacted all my favorites over the last few weeks and had either NDA contracts or if they are friends a verbal yes to ensuring the best talent stays on the East Coast and in Spain. With a Malbec and unlimited steak, I sat down and discussed reality of what is going on with professional sports with a few people that are working with some starts in the NHL, MLB, NFL, and NBA. The most interesting talk I had in months included the basic fact nobody wants to talk about. Athletes are not training with their strength coach on the team. There, I said it. Anyone bring this up in conferences lately? The big boys have their own teams and network of medical professionals keeping them going. So let's talk about this. Who is working with who? That's a phone call and very off the record but a whole legion of guys are making their money working with one or more athletes and many pro athletes include their private coach in their contracts with teams. The NBA is a primary example of this. Since my main market of equipment sales is the underground private consultant wanting tools ahead of the public stuff, I wanted to share what they are doing that makes the Apollo look like Atari and how pro sports are not what people think it is. Technology and Services- One consultant has roughly a quarter million dollars of equipment and services to keep his athlete in the league. After hearing horror stories of college training, I had to validate it with some investigation. The origins of "freelance defectors" begins with college when an athlete is injured doing training that is risky without a clear purpose. Any exercise can be made dangerous if not coached properly, and after seeing a youtube montage it is clear that athletes are wising up early and understand that they are mortal. Let's be honest here, we know athletes want the latest and greatest stuff to ensure they have an edge, and equipment and tech is the easiest sell. One can get results with a rusty barbell but selling it's hard when everyone is using neurotopia and other services to get the last %. Unfortunately the first 99% is never done, but that is another story. Information- Experts are finding themselves needing to get the best and most impactful techniques and methods. The cream are supported by a network of researchers and professionals in specialties to get the most useful and effective approaches with regenerat

Numbers are not good or evil, they simply are hosts to context. A lot of hype and commercialism now with technology and training with people monitoring and looking at player tracking data. When I was young I got a magic set when I was young and being a product of the 1980s, I thought I was going to be the next David Copperfield. I am a fan of magic still, and love seeing street magic in New York, but it's not that the hand is quicker than the eye, it's usually the art of deception is the art of misdirection. Cleaning 120 kilos is good, but if it looks dangerous and your vertical is still sub 30, perhaps the context needs to be reviewed a bit. The reason I am a fan of video analysis, is that we can see the truth behind the numbers. A raw 40 yard dash running 4.4 in the middle of training is far more impressive than the 4.39 that is after weeks of test preparation. A 37 inch vertical in the middle of a football season with huge practice loads is far more impressive than the youtube stars that only do tests as their main "sport" and pull of a 40 inch vertical with no aerobic conditioning. I am middle ground with data, I think we need more of the right kinds but I am concerned with the showboating of some scores that are more hype than help. I will go into some of my thoughts more later after finishing off my velocity table and some conversions from Boo's testing matrix. I think Boo is on to something and really believe that the right balance will be practical and very logical as well.

CrossFit Kids CrossFit Kids Rochester The 2013 CrossFit Kids Elementary Curriculum is now available in the CrossFit Kids store. Warm-Up/Skill – Varsity, Junior Varsity and Novice: 3x or 5:00 10 jumping jacks => 2 cartwheels => 3 strict pull-ups => 5 squats => bear crawl => 3 broad jumps => 100-meter run Elementary and Preschool: 3x or 5:00 10 jumping jacks => 2 cartwheels => 4 monkey hangs => 5 squats => bear crawl => 3 broad jumps => 50-meter run WOD – Varsity: “Son of Kong” 10:00 AMRAP 1 deadlift, 275#/185# 2 muscle-ups 3 squat cleans, 155#/105 4 handstand push-ups Junior Varsity: “Son of Kong” 10:00 AMRAP 1 deadlift, 135#/95# 2 muscle-ups 3 squat cleans, 75#/55 4 handstand push-ups Novice: “Son of Kong” 8:00 AMRAP 1 deadlift, 75#/55# 2 muscle-ups OR 2 strict pull-ups and 2 dips 3 squat cleans, 45#/35 4 handstand push-ups OR 4 wall walk-ups Elementary: 10:00 AMRAP 1 deadlift, unloaded-10# 2 ring rows AND 2 jump-to-support with 2-second holds 3 power cleans INTO front squats, unloaded-10# 4 wall walk-ups Preschool: 5:00 AMRAP 2 deadlift, unloaded 2 ring rows 2 power cleans INTO front squats, unloaded 2 wall walk-ups Cooldown/Skill – Varsity, Junior Varsity and Novice: 2 x 6:00 EMOM Rope climbs (Varsity should attempt legless climbs) Elementary and Preschool: 5:00-10:00 Rope climbing practice

Weighted pull-ups 3-2-2-2-1-1-1-1-1 reps Post loads to comments. Enlarge image "All Smiles: Allison Truscheit" - [video] "21" with Gabe Subry - [video]...