Ten Years of Silence

Lately, my personal library has made a pretty dramatic shift in composition. A year ago my shelves were completely stocked with books only covering training, physiology, chemistry, and even a few left-over biology texts from my undergrad days (don't ever pick a major out of high school and then just go through the motions for 3 1/2 years before deciding what you want to do). Now, it's almost an even split between training and personal development/success type books. I strongly suggest you add this type of literature to your collection if you haven't already.

I've read several of these books lately and one of my favorites was Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. I've referenced this book before, and one of the points I took from Gladwell was the efficacy of the 10,000-hour rule. In a nutshell, research has shown that no "elite" level performer/businessman/entrepreneur/professional has ever reached their status without investing at least 10,000 hours of "practice" to their craft.

This led me to search out a book titled Talent is Overrated by Goeff Colvin. 90% of this book really bored me to death, but I did take a few quotes and principles that piggy-back Gladwells' findings in Outliers that I want to share.




Colvin mirrors many points by Gladwell and points out a principle he called (or quoted) the Ten Years of Silence. In the research he examined all high-quality performers had put in at least 10 years of deliberate practice before perfecting their craft. This included such "child prodigies" as Tiger Woods and Mozart.

My favorite example/anecdote Colvin uses is of Jerry Rice. Colvin says, "Of all the work Rice did to make himself a great player, practically none of it was playing football games." When it came down to numbers, less than 1% of Rice's entire career was spent on the field, in games, yet he is regarded as the best wide receiver, and possibly best football player overall, in history.

But how is this so? In our culture we have decided that exposing kids to as many off-season leagues and games as we can possibly fit in is the only way to get to the "next-level," whatever that level may be.

As defined by Colvin, deliberate practice is a very stringent routine where kids practice by having a coach "choose a comparison that stretches you just beyond your current limits." I love this definition, as this is the key to training kids in a strength and conditioning sense as well. Make a drill/exercise too difficult and the athlete either gets hurt or frustrated, and too easy and they get bored and don't improve.

But now, we are intentionally taking away this type of productive practice time for our kids to expose them to countless games and competitions to get them in front of college coaches at younger and younger ages. While playing AAU, summer baseball, off-season elite level club soccer, and the likes can be fun at times, they eventually become so competitive that they are added stressors to the athletes and at the same time they prevent them from actually practicing.

I hope there is a shift in the trend sometime soon, although it doesn't seem likely, where parents will start to follow examples like Rice, to help set their kids up for success down the road.

Follow up...

First things first...they say you learn something new everyday. Well, today I learned 2 things. 1) How to change a headlight in a Honda and 2) It's probably worth it to pay someone to change your headlight in a Honda.

Moving on...

Yesterday I wrote about not taking everything you hear as a strict law that can be applied to any situation, and gave an example of the exercise science student who was told to "never" let her knee move beyond her toes. Well I got this response from a friend of mine from grad school, Sharon, who is now teaches Kinesiology at Ithaca. It's a very well thought-out response, and will seem even more-so if you try to read it in a Briti...oops I mean Aussie accent...

"Hi Jon

I thought it was about time I read your blog, and I'm glad I did. I'd like to address your 'knees over toes' point. I am one of the several who teaches the knees behind toes general rule when performing squats / lunges, etc. I do this simply as it's a good rule of thumb when teaching technique to the general population. I'm not certain of the precise mechanism in play, but I teach this way as keeping end knee flexion ROM <90deg> both a) maintains the mechanical advantage of the patella and b) keeps the knee flexors/extensors at an ideal length for force generation (the latter of these also contributes to knee stability, crucial when overcoming heavy loads). I teach my students to supervise their clients in this way as it minimizes potential for joint injury in those who don't understand the principles behind the rules. Once you begin to deal with a 'non-general' population, the rules obviously change to suit different goals.

I appreciate that you were asking your client to adopt the knees over toes posture only as a one-off, but I wanted to clarify why I teach the posture I teach :)"

I only included the last part, the Mike Boyle bit, to show how oblivious I am with jokes. But a couple more thoughts on the subject...

She makes valid points about maintaining a mechanical advantage and an ideal length-tension relationship with knee extensors/knee flexors (knee extensors working while flexors stabilizing). This is important and can seem crucial if only looking at the knee joint. But as I alluded to (sort of) in the squatting example, we sometimes have to choose between the lesser of 2 (or 3) evils; pushing the knee out over the toes vs. increasing shear stress to the lumbar spine. The fact is, if the athlete doesn't have the ability to stabilize their knee in multiple planes, they really have no business doing any lifting under heavy load. This is one of the reasons we need sufficient dorsiflexion in the ankles, so the knee can be more stable and not try to make up for the lack of range elsewhere. Gray Cook points out that you always work, in order, mobility, then stability, and finally strength.

And not all situations are created equal...In lifting, there are times when you don't want your knee to move over your toes. This doesn't mean it should never happen. Think about an athletic position; If I put my athletes in an ideal position for multi-directional movement, their knees better be over their toes.

This hips can't move back without the knees and shoulders moving forward to keep the center of mass in a good position to move

Why??

Well, what's the first thing we tell athletes to do to get in an athletic stance? "Get low and push your hips back." Well this triggers a chain reaction that requires the knees to move forward and shoulders to move over the feet as well (We'd never squat in the position-but it does look somewhat like an RDL). This position loads the ankles to allow for more explosive plantarflexion on take off in any direction (so long as our backs stay neutral-rounded back=unloaded peroneals and weaker starting speed). As always, I credit Lee Taft with providing me with this info.

So I'm done rambling now, but I appreciate the response from Sharon, and encourage anyone else to jump in, even if it's to suggest I write about something else since this is so boring.

Jon

Thoughts from the weekend

Hey I'm back after a week long hiatus...

Coupl'a things

1) Big win for my Giants yesterday...typical W; didn't look pretty but the job got done.

2) RPI's new athletic facility might just be the nicest at the DIII level, and could stack up against a lot of DI schools' strength and conditioning centers.


3) I wrote a post a little while back about using common sense to make decisions with training and how you can't always use peer-reviewed research to guide your programming. Well Alwyn Cosgrove does a much better job of this than I ever could, so check out this link and scroll down to "Training to Maximize Fat Loss" for a great read on the subject.

4) Along those same lines, I think it's important to actively question and challenge the "norms" that we hear about every day. Recently, I wanted to check on a new clients ankle mobility as she was having trouble performing body weight squats without turning her toes out. As I put her on one knee, and asked her to push her knee as far over her toes as she could, she smiled and said "you're never supposed to over-extend your knee over your toes." She was an exercise science grad who had been told by several teachers in her program how awful this was for your knees. And as most students do, she simply accepted the information that her professors had given her. Well I convinced her that she wouldn't explode if she did this and sure enough she lacked significant mobility in her left ankle.

There are so many examples of this where professors are just doing their job. They read research (which is generally 5+ years behind practice) and they hear different things second-hand (because they don't actually work in the trenches to see what works and what doesn't) and they pass along information that students accept as gold. So next time you hear something, instead of just repeating it (Mike Boyle says there are way too many "parrots" in the industry), try to think it through and decide for yourself!

Have a great start to the week,
Jon

Principles vs. Practice

I've said before how lucky I was to learn from one of the best in the business, Lee Taft, to help put me on the right path in this industry, and I'm going to do it again here. One of the many nuggets that have stuck with me is his insistence on teaching principles as opposed to giving a big list of drills and just saying "Go". Learning why and when to work on certain skills has made me a much better coach. I can watch someone perform a drill, and decide if I like it by thinking back to the principles that need to go along with it.

Along these lines, we used to learn to program skills, and not drills. We would decide what skill we wanted to work on that day (so an example may be lateral hip strength) and then we would pick a drill in that category that would fit the athletes. We might have 3 or 4 skills planned, and then we would go to strength. It's a very effective system that I still use and will until the end of my career. I can do this because I learned the Principles first, which transcend time. No matter what changes happen in the future of training, the principles I learned will always be true.

This isn't only true with my field though, it's true in life. One of the most influential books that I have read is 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. He talks about Principles vs. Practice. Essentially, you can't tell someone exactly what to do, have them do it, and consider it "right". Decisions have to made based on sound principles to guarantee success and happiness.

Read it!

If we are taught principles correctly, that sticks with us forever. If we are taught practices we only know what to do in very specific situations. This reminds me of a pretty boring job I had where I was in front of a computer for 7 hours a day with not a lot to do besdies read. I actually taught myself how to solve a rubik's cube (yes, it was that boring) by memorizing algorithms that I found on a website. I drilled these algorithms until I had them memorized, and I could solve a cube in maybe 5 minutes consistently. Only problem was I never really learned the principles that go along with it, so now I would have no chance to finish one.

Back to training...Do you teach your athletes principles (or for that matter train yourself based on them)? I try to make my athletes think through the why's and how's of the drills and exercises we do, so I can be comfortable with them when they are on their own.

What principles do you live and train by? If you can't answer this it's time to sit down and think about it!

Jon

P.S. Anybody going to watch history on Saturday? Rachel Alexandra at the Spa!

A New Era

Yesterday, while working with a freshmen soccer player, Rebecca, trying to get back into playing shape for her fall season, I had to chuckle while watching her do a part of her strength chart.

She was performing single arm push presses with a relatively heavy kettle bell for a 14 year old female; 30 lbs I believe. She was giving great effort and using great form. The part that I laughed at was when I noticed she had freshly-painted, pink fingernails.

Rebecca has had a rough stretch since having ACL surgery in February, but has made great progress with her overall strength. She takes pride in her workouts by being competitive with herself with how much weight she uses or how many reps she can complete (with assisted pull-ups, push-ups and the like).

I realized that she epitomized the point I try to make to all the girls I work with (adults as well as athletes), that they won't get all jacked-up and manly if they accidentally touch a weight that is more than 10 lbs. This myth has been around for a long time, and hopefully that is starting to change, however slowly. The truth is, girls need to lift weights almost more than the guys. Injury rates are much higher with girls due to increased exposure to competitive sports (which is awesome) combined with a lack of proper training, nutrition, and education about how to prepare for athletics.

I promise that you WON'T look like this

Women, in general, Do not have the necessary levels of hormones to gain the bulk you see with the competitive bodybuilders. With a good strength training program, strength and muscle cross-sectional area will increase, but only in combination with a leaner frame. And the best part is, increased muscle mass does not result in "looking all jacked up." That pumped-up frame that bodybuilders work so hard to get is actually a result of higher muscle glycogen levels (which actually leads to higher water content in the cells). This gives them the puffed-up look of huge muscles, while some people who may look smaller actually have more contractile proteins in the muscle and are stronger than many bodybuilders.

To simplify, getting stronger is not a death sentence for your womanly frame. Unless you eat about 5,000 calories a day, take a few "supplements" you might find in almost any baseball clubhouse, and workout for 3-4 hours a day, you don't have anything to worry about!

Go move some weights!
Jon

Law of Common Sense

Back in high school math I remember learning about Geometry and Logic Proofs. Essentially you had to use a step by step process, by applying certain laws of logic (generally named after the people who founded them in the case of logic proofs, or names that were descriptive of the step itself) to prove a given statement to be true. Proving the statements to be true weren't generally difficult, but it could be tough to remember the actual names of the laws. One time on a test, a friend of mine finished the proof correctly for the most part, except for the supporting law on one of the steps, he used "The Law of Common Sense."

I'm not sure the teacher saw the humor in it, although I found it hilarious.

I think my friend may have been on to something though. I feel like, in today's world, we are so caught up in numbers, data, statistics and research that we forget that we can use a little common sense every now and then to come to viable conclusions.

Just last night I caught a thin-slice of a story about a Doctor who believes vaccinations may be contributing to the large number of autism cases. Most of the medical community was quick to toss him in the loony bin because "the data simply doesn't show this." I don't know if he's right or not, but given the potential implications I think common sense says to listen. Is it so crazy to think that something foreign intentionally introduced to our bodies could cause the rate of something like autism to increase 17 fold in about 15 years? It might be, but I'd want to know for sure before I dismissed it.

This same logic can be applied to the field of strength and conditioning, in a couple different ways. Sometimes the research isn't there to support something that you know is helping, so you do it anyway. For example, a few years back when I first learned of foam rolling as an intern, and was having my athletes do it before class, I was able to get a feel for how they were going to perform that day. Were they sore? Did they feel good? Did they have a tough day at school? The roller answered some of these questions, and I asked the rest while they were doing it. There are really no drawbacks in my eyes.

"Whoah! Be careful there Chris-Lets wait for the data to come out before you get yourself hurt!"

Well I had a college professor tell me he wasn't sure about foam rolling and would like to see more peer-reviewed research to show the benefits of it before making athletes do this. Really? So something that takes 4-5 minutes to do, makes my athletes feel better, gives me a chance to assess the upcoming workout, and mentally prepares the athletes for that workout is a waste of time? I don't need research to tell me to keep doing it.

On the other side of that coin though, is the possibility that research shows something to be beneficial when really we should be more cautious of applying techniques from controlled studies to the general population of athletes.

A good example of this is with plyometric training. Research has proven that exercises such as depth jumps, performed at fairly high heights, can improve vertical jump scores and lower body explosiveness. Does this mean I should have all my athletes perform depth jumps since improving vertical jump performance is desired?

Absolutely not. Especially at the heights used in some of these studies. Now, if I have an elite athlete who is trying to get a scholarship and needs an improved vertical, I may program them. And I also have kids to depth jumps from much lower heights. But why risk a serious injury (especially with some kids who may be slightly overweight) by stressing the achilles tendon to it's max potential?

Most research lacks an element or risk-reward assessment that is absolutely necessary in our field, and all fields for that matter. If there is low risk involved and the research isn't there-do your own experiments. Anecdotes aren't always wrong. And if the research is there, but you question the risks involved, make a decision for yourself on whether or not it will be beneficial for your athletes. Don't be handcuffed by numbers and statistics.

Have a great week,


Jon

ACL Shortsightedness

First off, I'm going to start with a disclaimer...I am not a Doctor, Therapist, Athletic Trainer, and I don't even have the best background in anatomy and physiology that I should to be doing what I'm doing.

That being said, I've run into a very narrow-minded point of view from PT's and ATC's when it comes to strengthening an athlete recovering from ACL surgery. I've heard, almost verbatim, from three independent sources when the topic of ACL rehabilitation was brought up:

"Oh, ACL's are easy. I just tell them 'hamstrings, hamstrings, hamstrings'."

I almost cringe when I think about how shortsighted this outlook is, and then wonder how many of these athletes end up limping off the field, after a couple days of practice after being cleared, with a quad or hamstring pull.

Now, do hamstrings need to be strengthened? Absolutely. But this is just the beginning of the story. If we only concentrate on the hamstrings, we are completely ignoring the mechanism of an ACL injury. Let's consider some basic anatomy:

The hamstring group (Semimembranosis, Semitendonosis, and the long and short head of Biceps Femoris) originates at the ischial tuberosity, with the exception of the short head which originates at the linea aspera, at the distal end of the femur. Semimembranosis and Semitendonosis attach distally on the medial side of the tibia, and both heads of the Biceps Femoris attach on the lateral head of the fibula.

This is a very simplified picture of the attachments of the Biceps Femoris

So what does this mean? Let's go back to the mechanism of injury. Most research, and I think most top trainers, PT's and Docs would agree, that the absolute last line of defense is the hamstring. The injury starts up the chain. Most notably from the gluteals. The "funny" part is, it doesn't seem to be a lack of strength that's the problem...simply a lack of activation. The proper muscles are not turned on in the correct order, leading to medial rotation of the femur and the knee going valgus, stressing the ACL, MCL and everything else that goes along with it.

Back to the hamstrings; the only part of the hamstrings that is anywhere near the femur is the short head of the biceps. Clearly strengthening the hamstrings can't be the answer for preventing future injuries. We need to strengthen, and relearn how to activate, the external rotatores of the hip; Glute max., posterior glute medius, in addition to the lateral aspect of the hamstrings.

Now, I have a second problem with how some PT's operate. I am working with a 14 year old girl, barely 6 months post-ACL surgery, who was recently cleared by the Doctor because her knee looked really strong. Well they were right, her knee is very strong...but what about the rest of her? They didn't bother asking. Long story short, after a couple days of practice, she came to me with a strained quadriceps. Hopefully mild enough to recover in a week or so but who knows. But now I'm the bad guy who has to tell her to sit out of her first soccer scrimmage of the year, even though the Doc told her she was fine.

Sometimes we need to take away the magnifying glass and look at an athlete as a whole person, not just a joint or a couple muscle attachments.

Have a great weekend!
Jon