Most of the literature on sleep is regarding restriction and its impact on health and performance. However, there is a growing body of research on sleep extension and the potential implications it may have on athletic performance in particular. It’s fairly well understood that sleep is a primary contributor to recovery and performance. In spite of this, it’s estimated over ⅓ of the american population is underslept (1). The American Academy Of Sleep Medicine recommends individuals aged 18-60 sleep a minimum of seven hours a day (1). Failing to meet this requirement has been associated with various chronic conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, high blood pressure, along with various other deleterious health and performance outcomes.
It is not uncommon for athletes to develop restrictive patterns inhibiting hip extension due to postural deficiencies or imbalances. The output of this may be pain, or just simply a reduction in performance. In this article we will teach you how to quickly identify if you have these problems as well as how to resolve them in a safe, efficient, and methodical manner. To accomplish this we will use several videos from our private video movement library. There are hundreds more videos and drills all indexed along with guided tutorials on this website as well. This piece will also highlight what we can accomplish with our multidisciplinary approach. Our goal is not to be dogmatic to any one particular method, but to get you back training with the best movement possible to increase performance and reduce your injury risk.
Dr. Craig Liebenson was kind enough to lend us an hour of his time to discuss movement, strength, and the concept of becoming Anti-Fragile for an episode of Strength Chat. We dove into all areas of human performance but his priority list for becoming anti-fragile is what stood out the most to me. We often hear about mental toughness or cringe worthy statements such as “pain is weakness leaving the body”. But, it’s not so often we get to pick the brain of a professional as respected as Dr. Liebenson. Aside from his work as the Director of L.A Sport and Spine (a pain management, rehabilitation, and performance enhancement center) Dr. Liebenson is an active consultant for professional sports organizations such as the MLB and NFL.
In my previous article, I outlined a couple of mistakes I see throwers making with their training. You can check that article out by clicking here. I really appreciate the feedback I got from the Kabuki Strength community, and one of the most common questions was how those considerations actually entered into program design. I thought the most productive way to answer that question was to just open up my old training log and show a sample training week from my final season as a pro. This is my actual in season workout schedule assuming a meet on Saturday.
I’m sure people have noticed my shoeless attire in all my lifting video’s this last year. There is a reason for this and it ties directly to how we both coach and asses the lifts. No I’m not going to sell you on going shoeless yourself. Well, at least not all the time, as you may try it for some information gathering or assessment after this.
As the founder of a popular movement website I feel it’s my duty to tell you that I want you to limit the amount of exercise prep that you perform. Yes, I said limit your exercise prep, not do more. In recent years I’ve seen a trend for mobility, movement priming, and other means of exercise preparation. While this trend is very positive over the just ‘grind through the pain’ mentality of the past, there is such a thing as ‘too much’. Just like anything else, people seem to jump right to the “if a little bit is great, then more must be better” approach.
In this piece Kelly Starrett and Chris Duffin are clearly fired up and addressing topics in a rapid-fire fashion. Starrett and Duffin quickly hit on and address numerous topics on movement mechanicsMuch of the focus of the discussion surrounds the future of role of the responsibility of the strength coach. Duffin and Starrett challenge the status quo of the current role and when clinical intervention is brought in. Both articulate that these roles need to change, but this also involves people on both ends of this spectrum needing to “up their game”. Clearly defining what those roles are and then educating to those expectations will reduce injury rates and improve performance of athletes.
I recently had the opportunity to spend some time with Shawn Sherman and Jonathan Loos of The Reset System. They visited our facility over the course of a couple days and used their method on a number of our athletes. We were able to see some immediate results in a number of them as well as observe them diagnose known issues (unknown to them) with several of them in a very quick fashion.
If you quickly peruse popular strength training magazines, blogs and other sources, it is common to see a majority of the content reference core and hip training. These areas are important to human function, but I would like to draw some attention to the body part we cover up, hide and neglect, despite it providing the evolutionary ability for upright locomotion, the foot.
An athlete recently asked me how to achieve peak conditioning and peak strength levels simultaneously. To his disappointment, I noted this realistically could not be achieved. But the two are not mutually exclusive. In fact the correct interplay of both conditioning and strength can maximize your performance in both.
