This past Tuesday was my birthday, and I just turned 30.  People asked me a lot how I felt about it and if I was depressed about leaving my 20s behind.  To be honest other than the fact that I’m probably not where I imagined my life to be at 30 5-10 years ago, I really don’t care about a simple number.

Exactly how I celebrated my birthday…I guess I was a little depressed

So as usual I’ll celebrate on my blog by…….you guessed it…..A RANDOM THOUGHTS POST!!  I could put a 30 thoughts for 30 years thing, but frankly I’m getting a bit old and lazy, so I’ll make it 10!  Without further ado, here it is!

1. If you haven’t started re-training breathing patterns, you’re totally missing the boat.  This is something that the more I learn about it the more I realized its importance and how it affects everything else in the body (movement patterns, muscle elasticity, muscle tone, etc).  If you haven’t already, you should familiarize with PRI and/or DNS stuff; you’ll understand what I mean when I say breathing patterns control everything.

2. I went to the Foo Fighters concert 2 weeks ago.  Most. Awesome. Concert. Ever.

3. Learn more about the FMS.  This is the simplest, most effective tool for fitness and strength and conditioning professionals to identify movement pattern limitations and dysfunctions.  When you find the a limitation, you simply apply the corrections and you magically decrease the risk of injury of your athletes and clients.  One really doesn’t need to know everything about functional anatomy or be a rehab genius.  And it just works.  Period.

4. Periodization is not only about writing different training cycles that alternate qualities being worked on; it’s about training volume more than anything else.  Once you understand you don’t need to run your athletes to the ground during every training sessions, they start to make huge progress.  As counter-intuitive as it sounds, it’s alright (even favorable) to let your athletes leave the gym fresh sometimes.  When you understand how to manipulate training volumes to create overload and overcompensation, you understand how powerful it is.

5. I feel very fortunate to be surrounded by great people in my life.  My bosses, friends and my girlfriend all took care of me so much for my birthday, and I am very thankful to them.  A new pair of Nike Free’s and tickets for a Cowboys-Eagles game are just a few of the reasons that made my birthday so awesome.

6. Another thought on breathing; it should be trained in various positions (supine, prone, quadruped, etc) to make sure you “own the breath” in various postures.  Also, to train breathing, a balloon might become your best friend.

My new best friend

7. Right now is the best time of year for sports.  Football season is in full effect, hockey season just started and it’s playoff time in baseball.  You couldn’t ask for anything more!  ……oh, wait….maybe that your team would do better….

Not the best year to be a Red Sox fan…

8. One of the readers of my blog sent me a link to a 3D shoulder model.  When people send me stuff like that I usually assume that they’re looking for some kind of financial benefit, but this one is a totally free website and I thought I’d share it with you because it’s pretty cool.  You see the whole shoulder in 3D and spin it around, and click one button if you want to see the skin layer, only the muscles, the bones, etc.  It’s pretty cool.  Check it out HERE.

9. Next on my continuing education list for the next couple of months:

- USA Weightlifting certification
- The book Movement System Impairment Syndrome, by Shirley Sahrmann
- The Functional Training Handbook, by Craig Liebenson
- Muscle Imbalances Revealed 2.0 DVDs
- Both of Alwyn Cosgrove and Cressey, Robertson and Rigsby’s fitness business products

10. Yet another great post from my colleague and nutrition expert Brian St. Pierre on artificial sweeteners and stevia.  Definitely a must read: The Stevia Story.  I really enjoy Brian’s blog as he is as honest and objective as it gets with what he writes about on top of being incredibly smart.

That’s all for the celebratory randomness!  See you next week with some new content!

Get my 3 FREE reports on sports performance training by simply entering your information below!

Last week I wrote a post about the importance of the external obliques in pelvic control.  If you missed it, check it out HERE.  Now I wanted to give you a couple drills and exercises you can use to improve the recruitment of the external obliques in pelvic control.

The exercises that follow are not all extremely difficult to perform.  It’s more about focusing on performing them the right way.  The pelvis should be neutral throughout the entire movement and as you as you feel your back arching, it’s generally a sign that you’re losing the external obliques engagement.  These exercises are by no means the only ones that exist to attain better recruitment of your external obliques in pelvic control, but it’s definitely a good place to start if you have no clue how to achieve that.

The first one is probably the most basic one.  It’s a variation of an exercise that comes from Shirley Sahrmann’s book Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes.  The goal is maintain a very slight arch in your lower back throughout the whole movement.  To engage your external obliques as much as possible, you can keep your fingers above your illiac crest on both sides; palpation always helps to feel the right muscles doing their work.

The second one is a little similar, and also a variation of the deadbug exercises.  My colleague Matt Siniscalchi posted this one on his website last week.  I believe that Craig Liebenson or Bill Hartman might have come up with this one.  Again, the goal is to maintain a very slight arch in the lower back and make sure the arch is not increasing as your lowering your legs.  The press against the wall will also favor some inner core activity throughout the movement.

The last one is definitely much harder than the previous two.  I don’t recommend you try it until you’ve mastered the first 2.  It’s basically a leg lowering exercise, but because of the weight of the lower extremities it makes it much harder to keep the neutral pelvis and the external obliques activation.  Again the goal is to maintain a very slight arch in the lower back and make sure yo don’t lose it.

Did you get your 3 FREE reports on sports performance training yet?! If not, enter your information below!!!