Rapid Fire – Round 2: Eric Cressey
Thursday, April 26th, 2012You must have been living under a rock for the last 8 years if you’re involved in any way in the fitness industry and have never heard of Eric Cressey. Eric is one of the smartest minds in the business, he has been a huge mentor for me for the last 6+ years, and he is just a great person that will go out of his way to help people. I must say that I owe him a lot and if it wasn’t for him I wouldn’t be where I am today- literally; he got me an internship in 2007, and put me in touch with Kevin Neeld, who ended up hiring me for the job I have today!
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?
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!
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Perturbation Progressions for Motor Learning
Tuesday, April 24th, 2012Adding 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.
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