Before I go any further with my recommendations, I will say this: it is very important to clear out any other possible underlying issues in the first place.  Groin pain may be caused, for example, by Femoral Acetabular Impingement (FAI), which would warrant the subject of a whole book in itself.  In short FAI is an abnormality (usually a bony lesion) on either the femoral head or the acetabulum itself that creates impingement and may translate into groin pain.  But I digress.  What I’m saying is to get checked out first to make sure the issue is not coming from somewhere else.

• The first step to take with groin pain problem is to stay away from anything that hurts for a little while.  If you’re a hockey player and have some groin pain while skating, the first step to take is to stop skating, and I mean completely.  I know it sucks being forced to stay away playing, but this is a necessary process to follow, and it will all be worth it in the long run.  If you think the injury is not that bad and you’re just going to suck it up and keep playing until it goes away, it’s a BIG mistake.  First of all, groin pain, groin pulls and adductor injuries don’t magically disappear, especially if you keep doing the same thing that’s been causing the pain (skating, in this case), and first thing you know is the pain is going to get worse and worse and you’ll have to suffer for months.  So as much as it sucks, you need to take that time off.

• Foam roll your adductors and your hip flexors.  Most of the time, athletes will have scar tissue built up in their adductors and some kind of soft tissue limitation in their hip flexors.

• Stretch your hip flexors, glutes and hip external rotators.  Because of the nature of a sport like hockey (repeated hip extension, abduction and external rotation), athletes will have a loss in adduction and internal rotation, as well as hip extension range of motion.

Rectus Femoris Stretch (Hip Flexor)

Prone 90/90 Glute Stretch

• Strengthen the adductors and the psoas, which is usually the weakest of the 3 hip flexors.  These 2 muscles usually are very weak because they are underutilized in different sporting motions, especially the skating stride.

Lying Med Ball Crush

Seated Psoas Lift (make sure the thigh is above 90°)

Using this approach, you want to make sure to use these strategies at least twice a day, everyday (foam rolling, stretching and activation drills).  We’ve had hockey players (and many of them) with pretty bad groin pain getting back on the ice totally pain-free in as little as 2 weeks after they start applying those exact recommendations.  The key is really just to stay away from anything that hurts and be consistent with the exercises, and chances are you’ll be back on the ice (or the field) in no time.

To learn more athletic development secrets, check out my 3 FREE sports training reports that you receive by signing up to my newsletter!

Squats, deadlifts, lunges and rows are all exercises that should be coached mostly from the side.  This lets you see if the spine is neutral, if the hip hinge is good, if the knees come forward too much, if the chin stays packed, etc.

I definitely agree that it’s the most efficient angle to coach from.  But it doesn’t mean that you should coach exclusively from the side.  There is valuable information that you can collect from the back or from the front that is pretty much impossible to identify from another angle.

The knee valgus collapse for example is something that’s pretty hard to spot if you’re only coaching from the side.  Moving around a little bit will give you that additional information that is hard to identify from observing from the side.

I posted a video a couple weeks ago on box jumps shot from the back.  You can see the knees collapsing in during the loading phase of the jump with that angle.  I am not sure that it would be as easily identifiable from the side.

Same thing for a deadlift or a squat; a knee valgus, unless extremely bad, is hard to identify from the side.  In this video you’ll see that the form looks good from the side, but as soon as the camera gets behind the athlete, you immediately notice the feet being a little too wide, and the knees collapsing in.

Another thing that can be spotted from the back is the feet position.  Without going into too much details, as this could be the subject of an entire article, a foot that looks flat in a standing posture, or when lifting weights doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s structurally flat; it can be the result of a collapsed arch (similar to the knee valgus collapse, it’s something that can be coached and/or corrected).

Standing from the back, you’ll notice immediately when the feet lose their arch during a deadlift or a squat.  (Whether the problem is structural or the result of stability problem in the weight bearing position is something you should assess early on.)

The take home point is that you shouldn’t just be standing still watching things from one angle when coaching athletes or clients, whether you do group training or one-on-one training.  Seeing things from different angles will give you more information on the exercise or the movement you’re coaching, and it’ll help you see everything that’s going on in the execution of said movement.

Don’t forget to sign up for my FREE newsletter! You’ll also receive my 3 reports on sports performance training!

What does your current training look like?

My current training is pretty darn boring. I lift 3 days per week and perform total body workouts. I do the same four exercises each day 3 sets x 5 reps and currently work below 80% intensity for all sets. I do some form of cardiovascular exercise at least 3-5x/week usually consisting of either consistent work in the 120-150bpm range or some form of extensive tempo work. I’ll do this for about 3-5 weeks and then begin to focus more on some specific lifts, increase the intensity, etc…

What’s your favorite song to lift heavy things to?

I can’t say that I have a favorite song to lift to but I do enjoy putting country music on the radio. Sometimes I even listen to sports talk radio when I lift. I try not to blast realy intense music and hype myself up for lifts in the gym unless I am testing something and I am trying to get really gassed up. Otherwise, I try and keep my cool.

What would be your best advice to an up-and-coming strength and conditioning coach who wants to make it in this business?

Read as much as you can, ask a lot of questions of others and of yourself, and never take anything anyone says as gospel – be open to many possibilities.

What’s your passion, or second passion in life after health and fitness?

I like jazz music a lot and actually my undergraduate degree was in jazz guitar from Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA.

Who are your 3 most influential mentors?

Charlie Weingroff, Willem Kramer, and Judith DeLany are up there as far as people that have influenced me professionally that I have been able to have some form of personal communication/relationship with. Also in that list I would have to include Don Miller, Jeff Cubos, and Dave Tenney.

What’s the biggest mistake you see athletes who want to make it to the next level make?

Doing too much. Most athletes crush themselves with insane amounts of either volume or intensity (or both) setting themselves back from further progres and decreasing their level of readiness, causing them to have inconsistent results when they compete.

What’s your favorite supplement?

I am not a huge supplement guy. I like fish oil and protein powder (muscle milk chocolate is my favorite). After that if you want some creatine or a multi-vitamin go for it. In general though I am a whole foods guy and feel that people should dial in their diet before they try and SUPPLEMENT it with anything.

What’s the most overrated exercise?

Every exercise has its place in a program and it is not my job to tell people what they should or should not use as every situation is different and every individual is different. I try not to get enamored with too many exercises or exercise variations. I see a lot of people creating new exercises for the sake of doing something “new”. I still like to stick with the basics and just focus on that.

What’s the most underrated exercise?

Don’t know if there is an underrated exercise. I try and focus on very basic compound exercises and they aren’t exercises that most people aren’t already doing – bench press, chin ups, rows, push ups, deadlifts, squats, lunges. Perhaps an exercise that I do like to use that I don’t think too many people use is the step up. I think it is a great exercise for the lower extremity and find that most people seem to shy away from it for one reason or another.

What book are you currently reading?

The first thing to do is assess the client or athlete and identify where the problem lies.  You should also decide if referring out to a another health professional is appropriate.  Either way, you’ll want to use appropriate corrective strategies, if appropriate, to make the person correct the source of the problem.

What you won’t want though is to turn the training session into a rehab session.  You still want your clients or athletes to feel like they can get a training effect.  They definitely shouldn’t feel like a patient; that’s not your job.  You want to make them feel like athletes and you should focus on what they can do, rather than what they can’t do.

The big problem with most low back pain is that it limits your lower body exercise options quite a bit.  Most of the time any variation of bilateral squat or deadlift will be out.  So where does that leave us?

Although every person is different, there are options that are generally going to be safer than others.  The first thing I would tell you to do is stick to the “do no harm” rule: if it hurts don’t do it.  As simple as that.

That being said here are some options to consider with your low back pain clients and athletes:

Reverse Lunges

Depending on the type of back pain and how severe it is, your athlete might be able to get away with lunge variations using a front squat grip or a back squat grip, but usually DBs are going to be a safer alternative.

Rear Foot Elevated (RFE) Split Squat

In the video above, coach Dan Gabelman demonstrates a bodyweight RFE split squat. If your athletes are pain-free and strong enough, you can load them with 2 DBs or with one DB in the goblet position.

1-Leg Squat

This one might not be an option in some low back clients, but is usually OK with most if you keep a neutral spine throughout the range of motion, even if it means limiting that range of motion.  Someone who’s flexion intolerant and has limited hip mobility might round at the back in the bottom position, which could exacerbate the problem. Usually just bodyweight is plenty hard for most people, so you don’t even have to use any external load to make the exercise challenging.

Sled Drag

What I really like about sled drags for athletes or clients with low back problem is we can use so many variations of them, and also still load them pretty significantly without any negative effect on the low back.

Again, the “do no harm” rule is king.  Make sure you don’t do anything that hurts your athletes.  You should also be smart about what you prescribe them, make sure it’s not making their problem worse, and when in doubt refer out!

Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter….it’s FREE!! And I’ll also send you my 3 reports on speed training, soft-tissue work and shoulder injury prevention!!

Having confidence in ourselves make us achieve things we would have never been able to achieve if we would have never believed in ourselves in the first place.  Perhaps it might have helped you become a great athlete, a great student or a great professional in whatever field you are working in.

Confidence is essential to build new relationships, make new contacts and get people to buy into whatever you’re saying.  It is a big part of human interaction.

As a strength and conditioning professional, personal trainer, or just as someone who trains yourself, confidence plays an important part of the training programs your write or follow.  Believing in your training programs, believing in your system is important to get results and achieve success.

But is it possible to be too confident?

When you think that what you’re doing, the methods you’re using are the end all be all, you probably never question yourself.

Do your system really work that great?  Are your athletes and clients achieving optimal results?  If you always follow your own system and the same methods, how do you know your athletes couldn’t achieve better results faster?  Do you ever try new things?  Do you question your methods?  Do you reach out to other people and ask them questions?

I can easily see how over-confidence can become your own worst enemy.  I guess you could also call that having an “ego”.

Either way, having insecurities and questioning yourself from time to time is not a bad thing.  Putting things in perspective, being open to try new methods and accepting that other coaches somewhere in the world might achieve better results than you, will only open the door for potential improvements.

And all due respect to all the coaches who’ve become famous on the internet, there is probably a lot more coaches out there who are just as smart or even smarter who just aren’t interested in promoting themselves on the web.  If you can find these people, more power to you.  Chat with these guys, listen and compare how their system and methods differ from yours.

I have met my fair share of over-confident coaches in my life.  One thing I have noticed about most of them is that this over-confidence also comes with a distorted vision of reality; they have a tendency to perceive things in a way that ultimately makes them feel better about themselves.  Why did your athletes not improve as much as expected?  “They didn’t work had enough…They don’t get it…etc…etc”.  Sometimes those reasons are legitimate, but sometimes it might be good to question yourself.

Earning a college degree builds confidence.  Gaining experience builds confidence.  And most importantly, getting results builds confidence.

But never be too confident to the point of never questioning your methods.  There is always a better way to do things, a way to improve.

Be open minded.  Question your methods.  Always re-evaluate your system.  And even doubt yourself from time to time, it’ll only help you become better at what you do.

Want to get my 3 FREE reports on speed training, soft-tissue work and injury prevention for the shoulders?? Just enter your info below, and I’ll send them to you!

The major lifts are all occasions to reinforce good movement.  This is really what the premise of strength training is about; improve the way you move, and get strong in those “good movement patterns”.  All the mobility work, corrective exercises and foam rolling are tools to help you achieve that very goal.  But it doesn’t need to get more complicated that that.

Whether it’s because of the physical stress that life puts on us, the overuse trauma that certain activities exert on our bodies or the sedentarity of our lifestyle in 2012, our bodies build up dysfunctions.  Playing sports definitely increase the overuse stress on our body, and is really good at making dysfunctions worse.  Displaying maximal effort and energy at high velocities as it is commonly seen in sports, will make your body use the path of least resistance; your body doesn’t “think” about good movement.  It just does whatever it is asked to do.  That’s why it’s something that needs to be reinforced.

Achieving good movement and understanding it is the first step, then you perform repetitions, and lastly you start loading to solidify those movement patterns.  With practice and added strength, your brain will start to make the connections, and the automated response of quality movements under high velocities will happen.

That’s what strength training is all about.  It’s not about who’s going to be able to jump on the highest box.  It’s not about who can perform 50 snatches from the floor the fastest.  And it’s definitely not about pushing yourself when your form becomes shitty.

I’m not pointing any fingers here.

Or maybe I am….

Did you get my 3 FREE reports on sports performance training yet? No? Just enter your info below and I’ll immediately send them to you!

Eric was kind enough to take some time out of his busy schedule to participate to my rapid fire series which, you’ll see, turned out to be more than one-line answers for most questions!

Here we go:

What does your current training look like?

I generally lift four times per week, with two sessions being lower-body and two sessions being upper-body.  I’ll usually do some sprint work or some kind of conditioning (been rowing more lately) on two other days per week, and have one complete day of rest.

What’s your favorite song to lift heavy things to?

I’ve always been a big Linkin Park guy, so any of their stuff is good.  Honestly, though, I have heard so much music in my time in gyms that I’m just about desensitized to it by now!

Was it Linkin Park playing in the background?

What would be your best advice to an up-and-coming strength coach who wants to make it in this business?

Find mentors.  You need people to not only educate you on how to assess, program, and coach, but also how to approach your professional goals and development.  I’ve been very fortunate to have a few people take me under their wings over the years, and wouldn’t be where I am without them.

What’s your passion, or second passion in life after health and fitness?

Well, I’d say that health/fitness obviously comes after family.  So, that aside, I’d say that I am very fortunate that my profession and my passions are closely related, as I am a huge baseball fan and train a ton of baseball players.

Who are your 3 most influential mentors?

Alwyn Cosgrove was a tremendous mentor for me on the business side of things.  I think Alwyn recognized that I was an effective technique with entrepreneurial thoughts, but realized that I didn’t know how to be a manager or manage effective systems yet.  He was extremely influential in guiding me as we opened Cressey Performance.

What’s the biggest mistake you see athletes who want to make it to the next level make?

They assume it is going to be easy, and talk more than they work.  I actually wrote a blog post about it HERE. Sadly, we have a generation of athletes who really don’t know how hard it is to actually make it to that next level.

What’s you favorite supplement?

I’m a fan of Athletic Greens.  I think it’s a great “catch-all” supplement for those who have gaps in their diets.  Of course, fish oil and vitamin D are essentials, too.

What’s the most overrated exercise?

I can think of loads of often injurious exercises – upright rows and flyes, for instance – but I don’t know that we can really say that something is “overrated” for EVERYONE.  It’s really just a matter of individual needs.

What’s the most underrated exercise?

I might actually say sled work.  You can push/drag it, pull it, side step with it, and row with it. You can use it to get strong or to get conditioned. And, there is very little eccentric stress, so it doesn’t make people sore – which makes it a good in-season training option.

What book are you currently reading?

I usually have a few books going at any given time – usually one training and one business.  My training one is actually more of a sports psychology book, called “The Mental ABCs of Pitching.” It’s a very popular book in the pitching community and one that I should have read quite some time ago, as it’ll help me learn more about what our athletes go through on the mound and how they need to respond to it. In the car, the Steve Jobs biography is in the CD player.

Eric, thank you so much for your time!

If you want more info on Eric, check out his website HERE.  And if you’re interested in his latest product Functional Stability Training for the Core, check it out HERE; it’s a pretty cool product to learn more about REAL effective core training!

…..Aaaaand lastly don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter.  Just enter your info below, it’s FREE, and you’ll receive my 3 reports on speed training, soft-tissue work and injury prevention for the shoulders!

]]> http://davidlasnier.com/2012/rapid-fire-round-2-eric-cressey/feed 0 http://davidlasnier.com/2012/rapid-fire-round-2-eric-cressey http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DavidLasnier/~3/-OQgnVdH8_g/perturbation-progressions-for-motor-learning http://davidlasnier.com/2012/perturbation-progressions-for-motor-learning#comments Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:00:26 +0000 davidlasnier http://davidlasnier.com/?p=3471 Adding perturbations to an exercise basically means to manually disturb the stability of a given exercise.  The goal is to make the environment more unpredictable and increase the stability challenge of the exercise, movement pattern or muscle groups used.  I’ve been introduced to this concept a couple years ago at the Optimal Shoulder Performance seminar.  This is a concept that Mike Reinold was (and still is to this day) using for rotator cuff exercises with his baseball pitchers.

A typical exercise would put the athlete in a given position and the coach or trainer would give manual perturbations to the arm to challenge the stability of the humeral head in the shoulder joint, and improve the stabilization ability of the rotator cuff muscles for injury prevention purposes.

I immediately embraced the concept as I thought it was a genius idea, and I’ve been using rhythmic stabilization exercises for the rotator cuff ever since.

The concept can also be applied with other types of exercises…

Any exercise with the purpose of improving stability could be a candidate for a progression using perturbations.

When you’re trying to improve stability, your body and your brain need to be challenged.  This is why so many people use the stability ball; it increases the challenge of stability and makes you work harder.  The thing with stability balls is that they’re not always used smartly, and not always by smart people.  But I digress.

Hint: NOT the smart kind.

A lot of core exercises designed to improve stability can be progressed to manual perturbation.  As I’ve mentioned above, the perturbation will help improve control and stability.  When training stability, the important thing to remember is that motor control (which is the brain-to-muscle connection that works to improve stability) can not be improved unless it fails to succeed doing certain tasks.  Your brain needs to be challenged beyond its own stability limitations.  If you always work within your strengths, or your current level of stability, you’re not going to improve.  This is a great point that Mike Reinold highlighted in Functional Stability for the Core.

How do you actually apply this?

It could be something as simple as adding manual perturbations to a front plank.  A mastery of the front plank is in order before attempting any type of manual perturbation to your clients or athletes.  The same concept can also be applied to other core exercises like dead bugs, belly press, glute bridges, bird dogs, etc.

Again the important thing is to follow the progression; make sure your client or athlete is efficient at the basic exercises and doesn’t compensate in any way.  The logical progression for any exercise would be:

1. Stable
2. Stable with perturbation
3. Unstable
4. Unstable with perturbation

Using this progression with a front plank, the progression might look something like this:

1. Front plank
2. Front plank with perturbation
3. Stability ball front plank
4. Stability ball front plank with perturbation

The idea with the manual perturbations is to make it challenging and push it just beyond the point where the athlete or client maintains perfect form, but it shouldn’t be unbearable- if that makes any sense.

If you want more ideas on how to incorporate perturbations/rhythmic stabilization you should definitely check out Eric Cressey and Mike Reinold’s Functional Stability for the Core.

Make sure you enter your info below if you want to receive my 3 FREE reports on sports performance training and injury prevention!!

]]> http://davidlasnier.com/2012/perturbation-progressions-for-motor-learning/feed 0 http://davidlasnier.com/2012/perturbation-progressions-for-motor-learning http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DavidLasnier/~3/BfYE3KSe2o4/the-basics-of-neutral-spine-training http://davidlasnier.com/2012/the-basics-of-neutral-spine-training#comments Thu, 19 Apr 2012 11:00:18 +0000 davidlasnier http://davidlasnier.com/?p=3455 The neutral spine concept has been widely accepted as one of the norms for good movement by now.  It is understood that it is one of the basics of functional movements, and it is extremely important when moving external loads.

With athletes lifting weights this would translate into making sure they always squat, deadlift, do core exercises, and any hip extension based movement with a neutral spine.  Most high level athletes don’t have a hard time at all grasping that concept, especially when they’ve learned to lift the right way.  But with younger athletes who are just learning to lift, or with deconditioned clients, what’s the first step in being able to perform lifting exercises with a neutral spine?  Well, you need to teach them neutral spine first!

This looks like a pretty solid neutral spine to me

Including exercises such as planks, birddogs, and bridges that help reinforce neutral spine seem like a good place to start, but if your athlete or client doesn’t understand what neutral spine is, odds are he won’t be able to get it.  And they won’t have the ability to keep a neutral spine under challenging situations like lifting heavy weights, or moving at high velocities.

Teaching neutral spine in different positions is the first step.  Make your athletes or clients feel what neutral spine feels like in different positions, coach them as much as possible, make sure they really get it.  Mike Reinolds delves into that stuff quite a bit in Eric Cressey’s and his Functional Stability Training DVD set.  This is a seminar they held at Cressey Performance a couple of months ago that they put on DVD and just released to the public.  Mike emphasizes the 3 step process before allowing anything to move:

1. Find neutral

2. Brace

3. Breathe

Whether you’re teaching neutral spine using a plank, birddog, bridge or dead bug you should follow the same pattern.  Make the client flex and extend his spine a couple of times, and make him find neutral somewhere in between.  Coach the client as much as possible, and make sure that in the end they can find it by themselves.  From there, brace just hard enough that you’ll maintain neutral (brace shouldn’t be a max effort unless you’re lifting max effort weights), and breathe.  As a rule of thumb, if you can’t breathe through your brace, you’re bracing too hard.

You don’t need to brace THAT hard

One tool that we like to use to teach neutral spine that I like a lot with our athletes at Endeavor is the hip hinge with a dowel.  It is very basic, it gives physical cues (with the points of contact of the dowel on your back) and it’s easy to know when you’re not doing it right.  Again the same concept applies: find neutral, brace, breathe.

If you want to learn more about that and how to train according to the neutral spine concept when training your core, your lower body and with any lifting exercise really, I suggest you pick up a copy of Eric Cressey and Mike Reinolds’ Functional Stability Training.  They just released it and you can get at the introductory price until Sunday at midnight; after that the price will go up.  You can check it out HERE.

Don’t forget the best thing of them all….signing up for my FREE newsletter! Just enter your info below and I’ll send you 3 reports on sports performance training and injury prevention.

]]> http://davidlasnier.com/2012/the-basics-of-neutral-spine-training/feed 0 http://davidlasnier.com/2012/the-basics-of-neutral-spine-training http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DavidLasnier/~3/-8lgqRzL7xw/4-of-my-favorite-exercises-to-develop-explosive-power http://davidlasnier.com/2012/4-of-my-favorite-exercises-to-develop-explosive-power#comments Tue, 17 Apr 2012 11:00:49 +0000 davidlasnier http://davidlasnier.com/?p=3457 Just a quick post today to share with you some of my favorite exercises to develop power for athletes.  Obviously there are plenty more exercises that I like to use throughout a training year, but these are just a couple of my favorite ones if you need some variation and something different from the traditional plyo exercises and the common Olympic lifts.

Unloaded squat jumps are a great exercise that I learned from Cal Dietz, strength coach at the University of Minnesota.  It allows you to jump higher by pulling down on the bands as you jump (although it doesn’t necessarily translate into more power development), but because of the height of the jump, you have more force to absorb (or decelerate) when you come back on the floor.  That really is what’s beneficial about the exercise; an increased ability to absorb forces and react to high velocities.

The second one is more of a method than an exercise itself.  It’s called the complex method, and the concept is simply to perform a heavy lifting exercise (with about 90% of your 1RM) for 2-3 reps, rest for anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes and then perform a bodyweight plyometrics exercise.  The idea is that the heavy lifting exercise will activate more fast-twitch muscle fibers that you’ll in turn be able to use when doing the plyo exercise.  In the video I perform them within 15 seconds, but ideally you’d want a longer rest.

The third one is a medicine ball throw variation that I got from Eric Cressey. It incorporates more velocity in the movement by running a couple steps and jumping before smashing the med ball into the wall. I’ll use this variation a lot with baseball players.

The last one is a variation of an Olympic lift. The reason I like it so much is because it usually is so much easier to teach and to learn than the traditional Olympic lifts. The 1-arm DB snatch is very effective to develop power and will take minimal time to master. If you haven’t already, try it!

As I mentioned in the beginning, this really is just the tip of the iceberg, as there are so many exercises to help develop power. I just wanted to share some of my favorite ones with you if you always end up using the same ones and need variety!

Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter and you’ll also receive my 3 sports training reports for FREE!

]]> http://davidlasnier.com/2012/4-of-my-favorite-exercises-to-develop-explosive-power/feed 2 http://davidlasnier.com/2012/4-of-my-favorite-exercises-to-develop-explosive-power