I recently came across the video of Peak Performance Project who is the group that took over the Mariners strength and conditioning. This isn’t the Mariners facility but the company’s private facility in California. I have to admit that it has all the bells and whistles you can imagine. I can’t fathom what this facility cost to create. It may be the most scientifically designed training facility I’ve ever seen. Whether they use it to its max would be my concern, and especially when their training lots of younger athletes. Their training philosophy sounds pretty good and they have the ability to calculate all sorts of data. Anyway it’s a good watch.
I got caught flipping through channels the other nite and on came The Biggest Loser. It reminded me of one of the first things I wrote about at the time. As I the show began I see things still hadn’t changed. My back, and knees hurt just sitting on the couch watching.
A question was recently posed to me about the differences in training young athletes for football and baseball, and what the difference should be. The athlete in question was a junior high football player. The uniformed parent wanted to know the difference in the training of a junior high football player vs. a baseball player. They were under the belief that the training should be completely different for these two athletes and that these two athletes shouldn’t train together.
First off, in young athletes I believe the most important thing to emphasize is development and perfection of movement patterns. Every young athlete needs to be taught how to move first and foremost. It doesn’t matter if the athlete is a baseball player, gymnast, badminton player, or football player. Young athletes need to be taught how to move and move correctly before they incorporate stronger and more specialized training means. They should build a foundation of movement before other motor skills are taught.
The foundation of movement that should be taught refers to sprinting, cutting, decelerating, jumping, basic athletic positions, as well as implementing proper movement patterns such as pushups, squats, RDL’s, lunge patterns, etc. Just because two kids play different sports doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have similar training. Everything that happens in a weight room should be about teaching general movement patterns. The specific activities should occur on the field. Movement patterns are the foundation of athletic development and future training.
Parents should remember that there is no reason to specialize in sports at a young age. The total pool of motor skills developed becomes extremely limited and in essence puts a ceiling on the overall development of the athlete in the future. Not only does this limit athletic potential but causes severe overuse injuries, creates huge imbalances and movement deficiencies at a young age that aren’t easily corrected, and causes burn-out.
With it being Friday I thought we might have some fun before a big weekend. The Frogs play rival SMU tonite across town in Dallas.
In other news I just got back from watching my first Tommy John surgery. Pretty impressive stuff if you’ve never seen it. Everything went real smooth. I was impressed at how quick the surgery is.
To set the theme for the weekend we have the top two knockouts in support of the upcoming UFC 119 which our staff plans on watching. Enjoy. GO FROGS!!!
No we’re not talking about Weimaraners here, we’re on the topic of a commonly used exercise that gets run through the mud when it comes to technique.
A damn good birddog!!!
This is one of Stuart McGill’s Big 3 for low back rehabilitation and performance, and one that about every athlete performs at one time or another. Our athletes utilize this during their warm up as well as during their low back / glute activation circuit. It never fails that we see a lot of errors in the correct performance of this exercise.
Not what we want
In the birddog the legs are arms are being mobilized while the spine is stabilizing. This is the reason the exercise is so important in back rehabilitation as well as performance. The purpose is to lock in and stabilize the spine while the arm and leg are moving around it. This is the general concept of all athletic activity for the most part. The spine acts to stabilize and transfer power to the appendages
Athletes generally try to bring the leg and arm up too high equalling compensation by the lumbar spine to achieve this motion. The arm and leg don’t have to be any higher than parallel to the ground. What we want when we perform the birddog is to push the leg straight back instead of picking it up. This helps to keep athletes from arching the back to achieve this position as well as helps teach and train the glutes to fire.
Spine should always stay neutral
When we teach the leg movement we also train it with dorsiflexion. This helps create the image of driving the leg straight back through the heel and aids in creating glute activation.
Good birddog
Another problem that commonly arises is athletes keeping their head up during the exercise. This inevitably causes the back to arch. Always teach and train the head to stay in a neutral position with spine.
Athletes need to be taught the real reason for doing the birddog. Many believe the exercise is about moving the arms and legs above parallel. I don’t care how high we move the appendages as long as we learn the proper pattern of stabilizing the torso and spine.
Last week we visited external impingement in the shoulder, how it arises, and what to do. This week we’ll take a look at internal impingement. Internal impingement is a pathologic condition that can lead to a whole host of problems in the shoulder. The problem is most commonly seen in overhead throwing athletes, tennis players, volleyball players, swimmers, as well as athletes involved in overhead weight lifting.
Internal impingement is the repetitive contact of the articular surface of the rotator cuff against the posterior superior surface of the glenoid and glenoid labrum. Essentially, the supraspinatus and infraspinatus become trapped between the humeral head and the rim of the glenoid in the back of the shoulder. This happens when the arm is abducted and externally rotated or the “high 5” position as I like to refer to it. When we look at sporting activities this encompasses it’s the exact position for throwing, or serving in tennis.
Contact between these structures happens naturally but not everyone presents symptomatic with pain. When internal impingement is ignored rotator cuff and labral fraying can occur which can lead to full on cuff tears SLAP tears, and labral lesions; not a good thing for the shoulder.
The precise cause of these impingement lesions remains unclear. However, it is believed that varying degrees of glenohumeral instability, posterior capsular contracture, and scapular dyskinesis may play a role in the development of symptomatic internal impingement.
Overhead athletes are pre-disposed to internal impingement purely because of the physiologic adaptations that they develop which include humeral retroversion, anterior laxity, increased external rotation, etc. The same characteristics that allow an individual to throw hard also cause dysfunction in the shoulder.
When pitchers lay back into maximal external rotation the head of the humerus is allowed to slide anteriorly in the gleniod. With the inability to stabilize the humerus dynamically at high speeds the posterior cuff gets pinched between the gleniod and the humerus. Athletes usually complain of pain on the posterio-superior region of the shoulder when the arm is externally rotated into the throwing position.
Exact causes of internal impingement aren’t exactly clear but there are several theories on what causes internal impingement but most start with anterior laxity, the inability of the rotator cuff to stabilize dynamically, scapular dysfunction, as well as posterior tightness.
The first place to start in the rehabilitation of internal impingement symptoms is to restore total motion to the glenohumeral joint, namely the posterior musculature. This can be done by stretching with the sleeper stretch as well as cross body adduction.
From there we also want to emphasize strengthening the rotator cuff statically, then dynamically. Anything to strengthen the cuff and major players in the role of proper scapular function is warranted, especially upward rotation.
The one thing we don’t want to emphasize is any external rotation stretching. The anterior capsule is already loose enough due to the nature of their skill. When we stretch we are concerned with increasing movement through internal rotation.
The main take home points for internal impingement are to restore motion, especially internal rotation, strengthen the cuff and scapular stabilizers, and look to restore proper motion in the scaps.
Every weekend during the fall baseball practices we have herds of recruits and their families to entertain. Part of the recruiting process involves me laying out the strength and conditioning program that is in place for baseball. I usually spend about 45 minutes to an hour presenting to a group of 20-30 people. One of the questions I get asked most often is why I left professional baseball to come back to the collegiate ranks. For those of you who don’t know I spent two years as a strength coach in the professional baseball ranks. At the time I had opportunities to advance within the system as well as several chances to get back into professional baseball since I’ve been here. Each time I have declined.
The biggest problem I have with professional baseball is the lack of athletic development with their athletes. Professional baseball has a “let the cream rise to the top” philosophy in many of the organizations. I’ve never understood that and it was a serious factor when it came making a decision as to which level I wanted to build my career in.
Young players are brought into the organization and never given the tools to really succeed. They aren’t fully developed into the athletes that they could be. One set of 12-15 reps on 15 different machines is not what I would call a “good program” for athletic prowess. In many places this in the norm. Players are never taught the basics of movement in any form. Players break down continually because of major imbalances and negligence in general movement patterns.
When your an 18-year-old kid who has gotten this far on pure athletic ability never having to further develop your ability to dominate the competition, why would they go workout after a long day when you can go back to your hotel, take a nap and play X-box the rest of the day. Players aren’t held accountable for doing their training. If a player doesn’t want to get his training session in he doesn’t necessarily have to. Many players show up and do nothing, some slip through the cracks and never show up, others will do their program with random weights never progressing in any way. Sometimes players may get fined for skipping workouts but often times no repercussions occur.
More often than not players are trained around convenience using what I call “idiot periodization” which is random exercises placed in random order to produce a random training effect.
Rarely are athletes actually trained to perform at a higher level year in and year out. They are put on the same training program for the six months they are in season with an organization and then start the same training program all over when they return whether they have utilized the off-season to work out or not.
Training programs should be built around developing athletes into the best all-around baseball players and athletes. Doing this would not only keep medical bills down due to less surgeries, rehabs, etc. but would develop the diamonds in the rough that get passed up right now. Organizations are loaded with hidden talent so to speak. If they got the chance to develop these kids they might produce more phenomenal players but this chance is never given. Every year a new crop of 16-20 year old youngsters come into the program, get chewed up and spit out never knowing what really could’ve been. They don’t know that what will determine their future is their ability to stay injury free and fully DEVELOP as a baseball player and athlete.
I got an email yesterday from Allen Huffstutter, President of the OmegaWave. In it he had attached an article that I found interesting. It comes from Dave Tenney, the Seattle Sounders soccer club’s Athletic Development Coach. Coach Tenney utilizes the OmegaWave with his athletes and uses one of my old friends in the area, Joel Jamieson, as a consultant. The article has a lot of great information and goes right along with what I posted a few months back during the World Cup on the training of soccer athletes.
Here is one of Coach Tenney’s excerps from the aritcle.
We’ll need to come to the agreement that soccer is an alactic-aerobic dominant sport. We could then assume that most intense actions are short enough that the energy required can be fulfilled by the alactic system, and the resting intervals should be enough time that the oxidative system aids the replenishment of ATP for the alactic system. It appears that an over-reliance on lactic energy can be very taxing on the body, and is not efficient.
This goes right along with my opinions in my previous post that soccer players don’t need to train in a lactic environment. This delays restoration, and recovery and causes more stress on the body. When you truly look at how soccer is played it is with short bursts of activity with active rest type recoveries.
The other piece in the article that is terrific is Coach Tenney’s view on training specifically. He talks at length of training the energy system by playing the sport, not by circuits or randomized weight room training. They train for their sport by playing their sport. Everything in the weight room is general in nature. Training on the field with a ball, and competitors is the most specific way to train not only skill but proper energy systems as well.
Everyone that reads the blog regularly probably knows just how important soft tissue work is by now. I harp on it quite a bit but only because I believe in it so much.
A few weeks ago we added a new piece to our foam roll collection. It’s the rumble roller. You can find more info on it here, and no I don’t have stock in the product. I just think it’s a good product.
Positives:
The first time I used the rumble roller I was a little disappointed. I’m used to using a 4″ round PVC pipe for my soft tissue work and the rumble roller just felt too soft. It seemed like I was taking a step back to a softer material. But after a few weeks of work with the roller I quickly realized this wasn’t the case at all. When I went back to the PVC I didn’t get the same out of it. The big benefit is the bumps in the roller. These have the ability to get deep. After using the rumble roller a few weeks I’ve grown to really like it.
The best area I have found to use the roller is on the upper back. The bumps are able to get into the rhomboids, traps, etc. much more effectively than a normal foam roller. It is by far the best foam roller for that area. We actually use some other devices in that area that are even more effective but as foam rollers go, this has been the best.
Negatives:
The biggest drawback is the price and it’s actually come down about $15 since we ordered ours. It’s hard to spend $60 or $70 on a foam roller for some schools because they probably need 10 to 20 to be effective with their teams. The other drawback is I would like to see them have different grades of density, just like a regular line of foam rollers. Once this one gets to easy there is nothing to step up to.
Continuing on with Part III of our shoulder series we come to impingement and its different forms. There is internal, and external impingement. Each comes with its own set of problems as well as treatments. If you haven’t caught the other two previous parts you can find them below.
Today we will focus on sub-acromial, or external impingement. There are actually different forms of external impingement. However, we are going to focus on the secondary form of external impingement as that is generally the more common form that we find working with athletes.
Like I said last week with new crop of baseball players at my disposal I get to see a new crop of shoulder problems and like everything in the shoulder series that we are going to go over I have a player who tested positive for external impingement.
So what is sub-acromial, or external impingement and how do we fix it?
External impingement is when the tendons of the rotator cuff, and/or biceps tendon becomes irritated/inflamed. All these tendons pass through the small, bony space between the humerus and the acromion. When this space becomes too tight these tendons rub on the underneath side of the acromion causing inflammation, and pain.
This can lead to the thickening of these tendons causing more, and more problems. Over time bone spurs can accumulate on the acromion and in severe cases the rotator cuff can actually be severed. This mainly happens with overhead activities and is fairly common with throwing athletes, tennis players, and especially swimmers.
From other posts of mine you may remember the main function of the rotator cuff is to stabilize and depress the head of the humerus. When the rotator cuff becomes weakened either due to pain, injury, improper training methods, etc. the head of the humerus is allowed to migrate superiorly. When this occurs the sub-acromial space doesn’t exist and the tendons are being trapped any time there is overhead activity.
Everybody has external impingement. As we move the humerus overhead the sub-acromial space closes. It happens to everyone with the only difference being in who presents with pain.
With external impingement we want to open the sub-acromial space up as much as possible. More often than not the space has decreased due to a poor posture and compensations. When we allow the scapula to anteriorly tilt, downwardly rotate and/or protract the sub-acromial space decreases greatly.
If you slouch in a chair and try to raise your arm overhead it isn’t easy. The humerus doesn’t move as far into flexion, or as easy, and you might even get a pinch in the front of the shoulder. But open up the chest, sit up tall with the shoulder blades down and back and the movement is much easier and gives the head of the humerus room to breathe.
If you haven’t figured it out this also has to do with the scapulo-humeral rythym as well. If the scapula has a hard time upwardly rotating, then (drum roll please) the sub-acromial space is closed down and we get external impingement.
Just like in other posts recently, upward rotation of the scap is hugely important in an overhead athlete for this very reason.
So when we are weak on the backside in the lower and middle traps, and serratus anterior, and tight on the front side in the pec major and especially pec minor as well as the downward rotators we get a scap that’s out of whack.
This problem is a common theme and I’ve touched on it several times previously.
When it comes to external impingement the first thing we want to do is eliminate the area that causes pain, namely anything overhead.
Everything that we do as far as training must be done without pain. We want to help correct the poor scapula patterns and even thoracic spine patterns associated with the impingement. Strengthening the scapular stabilizers is highly important, especially the upward rotators when it comes to movement as well as strengthening the rotator cuff all while using exercises that are pain free and don’t create inflammation. Don’t let the athlete work through pain or pinches in the sub-acromial region.
A common theme to strengthening the backside and scaps is that we need to do soft tissue work on the front side. Lenthening the pec minor especially will go a long way in correcting poor scap patterns. Just like our upper crossed syndrome states we want to lengthen the downward rotators of the scapula. This means soft tissue work on the levator scapula, and rhomboids as well. Eliminating downward rotation of the scapua means increasing the sub-acromial space.
So are steps will be strengthening the upward rotators of the scap, correcting poor scapular patterns, increasing the strength in the rotator cuff, and lengthening the pecs, and downward rotators all while doing so in a safe unimpinged zone.
Well college football season is finally here. We have a big game coming up this Saturday against the 22nd ranked Oregon State Beavers. It’ll be at the house that Jerry Jones built. I’m excited for the game not only because it’s gonna be a big one but that’ll mean I won’t have to spend all day on Friday’s at the Cowboys Stadium watching practice, or actually taking the tours for the umpteenth time. Frogs will be on ESPN at 6:45 pm Saturday evening on ESPN.
Well I couldn’t leave everyone all weekend without learning something, so here’s another article of mine that was recently posted on EliteFTS.com. Hope you enjoy it.
And to leave everyone with a smile on their face I figured we’d end it with decent mascot video. I know I missed my calling in life because I’d love to be the one inside those inflatable mascots. Oh well, I’ll stick to strength and conditioning for the time being. Have a great weekend. GO FROGS!!!
Sports Training for Coaches, Athletes, and Parents
Zach Dechant Sports Performance Enhancement 