Out-thinking the body?

Hello,

I hope the fall is treating you well wherever you may roam. Here in the Northeast, US, the fall is turning into bright colors and chilly mornings. A sweater in the morning and a t-shirt by the afternoon hours...
I heard they are predicting a cold winter...I personally hope they are right and that I can attach those slippery boards in my feet and go down the mountain slope more than once this winter.

Are we trying to out-think the body?

I have made a few interesting findings during my "career" as a trainer, some of them at least partially through the method of trial-and-error. Well, learning by both successful and unsuccessful events of life is said to be the key to constant improvement.

So, what are some of these trial-and-error expericences?

Mostly they are birthed by the concept of out-thinking the body.

I my own work I have utilized exercise techniques that have worked well for myself and also for my athletes. Based on those positive experiences I have elevated those specific exercise techniques to a very high position in the hierarchy of movements.

Can you guess where the problem emerges?

The problem appears when I end up over-using one technique or movement over another.

Examples of this include:

1. Glute training: Don't get me wrong, activating and strenghtening the gluteal family is super-important, but I ended up going overboard in the other end of the spectrum and causing unnecessary gluteal over-training. This caused piriformis issues among other things. I reached this state by doing exercises that emphasized hip action in single leg stance and split stance...excessively. Too much of a good thing, right?

2. Spinal extension: Yes, too many of us have a bad posture, mostly in the form of spinal flexion etc. So, I focused too much on the form on spinal extension forgetting that the body doesn't move like that in real life. Muscles around the spine need to lenghten to load to be able to unload and produce force. Constant extension in the spine doesn't allow loading to occur and now other problems can be expected.

The training industry elevates certain exercises and objectives to a "final solution"-position and some of us simplify the concept and forget moderation and individuality in all exercise prescriptions.

The next areas that could become a problem if overempasized too much are in my opinion:

3. Scapular retraction: Maybe the focus at the moment is slightly too much on concentric retraction of the shoulder blades instead of first creating a proper loading (eccentric) response prior to retraction motion.

4. Abdominal wall activation in static from: Tranversus abdominis and other core stabilizer muscles are dynamic in function. Overuse of only static stabilizing is not enough to prepare abdominal wall for true movement needs.

These are just my own experiences. I try not to out-think the body any more but to understand it better and respect its proprioceptive ("thinking") capabilities.

Have a great day!

Tommi

"What I dream of is an art of balance."
Henri Matisse.

Pre-season conditioning for high-school athletes

'Tis the season alright!

Connect with the idea that matches the worst!

Deconditioned 15-year old female soccer player

WITH

Basic Movement skill training 3 times a week

or

Injury prevention exercise program within the soccer practice

or

Cross-training (soccer, basketball, tumbling) x 4/week

or

Progressively increasing soccer practices from 2 to 5 times/week

or

Double-sessions of soccer practice 5 days a week with 30 min conditioning (?) in the end
_________

You got it!

Tommi

PS: Please, recommend International Youth Conditioning Association www.IYCA.org to anyone working with children and youth and sports. I believe they are doing a great job!

What is physical education?

How are you?

I hope your summer was great!

I wish you strength for the new season! It is going to be an excellent one.

First of all, my apologies for such a long period of blog silence. I feel accountable to those brave minds that go through the effort of trying to understand my ideas of human movement in a written format.

Some of the readers of this blog also have had to learn a new language called Finglish, a fine blend of English and Finnish language that I use often without being aware of it.

By the way, for the Finnish readers interested in human movement development and functional training, I have established a Finnish blog http://www.toiminnallinenharjoittelu.com/

This will actually enable me to focus on one language at a time.

(suomenkielinen blogi osoitteessa www.toiminnallinenharjoittelu.com)

SO, what is physical education?

Can you define it? What does it consist of?

My degree is in physical education. I should know what it is.

Well, at least I know what I have been told it is.

It is at least some of these things defined by a few main goals:

- to inspire and motivate to stay physically active for life
- to learn motor abilities
- to offer physical movement to compliment otherwise more passive life styles
- to introduce different forms of games, plays and activities
- to support social, psychological and emotional development
- to teach different kind of skills of life through physical movement and activities

I am sure there are more of them that I can’t think of right now. However, I would like to add one goal that I feel is not paid attention as far as I know.

I think it is very important and I think we should spend a few minutes of THIS during every single session of physical education no matter what the level or age.

Can you guess what it is?

To establish basic integrated movement patterns!

What?

That’s right. I will give a satisfaction guarantee (sounds good right? :-)) to a physical education program that will spend 5 minutes every single session teaching integrated movement patterns such as deep squat, lunge, hand stance, single leg squat and hanging.

Imagine if from the kindergarten level to the last grade in high school, or even better… in a home for elderly, every person would do these movements COACHED and supervised.

What if the 1.5 year olds who can sit in deep squat would never stop doing that pattern but would keep doing it for the rest of their lives?

Would it keep them healthier and more functional for the rest of their walk on the earth?

And if so, could this be a part of a successful physical education program?

Just thinking...

I missed writing the blog. It teaches me to structure my thoughts.

Thank you for your support!

Tommi

PS: “Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” Malcolm Forbes.

Weak and Frail?

What kind of a picture emerges in your mind from the word combination "training for elderly"?

Think about the exercises and the environment that you would use?

What are the possibilities? What are the risks? How is the potential for improvement?

Training program for 65-77 years old....?

Keep that mental image available in your head and watch this video.

http://moniviestin.jyu.fi/ohjelmat/sport/eki/en/gymnastics/6

Enjoy!

Tommi

PS: The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.
(Lucille Ball)

Liikkuvuuden liikekehittelyita, OSA 3

MUISTATHAN, että demoliikkeet ovat aina vain esimerkkejä eivätkä välttämättä sovellu sellaisenaan toimivaksi työkaluksi.

Tavoitteena videodemossa on esitellä yksi lajiliikkuvuusharjoitteluun käytetyistä menetelmistä. Yksilöllisen lajiliikkuvuusharjoitteen laadinta perustuu urheilijan henkilökohtaisiin tarpeisiin ja tavoitteisiin.

Toiminnallisen perusliikkuvuuden hankinta on myös olennaista ennenkuin lajispesifeihin harjoitteisiin voidaan turvallisesti edetä.

Lähde: Gary Gray: Functional Flexibility, Functional Video Digest Series. (DVD)

Sport skill - a measurement of training effectiveness?

My goal as a movement and conditioning coach is to have the athlete perform better in his/her sport.

I think it is easy to solely focus on so called "strength and conditioning" that has it's own agenda with its own measurements and practices.

Ultimately everything I do with an athlete should reflect the actual sports performance. In other words, the movement conditioning should compliment the sport, filling in the gaps, strengthening certain aspects, reversing negative effects and so on....

Is it realistic to expect that effectiveness of the movement conditioning could be measured by improvements in the actual technique of the sport specific movement?

I think so. I believe that the results of movement conditioning should be seen as a better ability to absorb techniques and sport specific skills.

This does not mean that I should necessarily imitate the movements of the sport performance. It simply means that I should facilitate an adaptational absorption layer where new motor stimulations can "stick" and cause a learning response to occur.

When you build a new addition to a house, you must be sure that the original foundation at the ground level is solid but you must also prepare a new "foundation" layer in order to put something on top of the original structure..... I hope I am right about this...I know nothing about building houses....

However, you do know about the guy who built his house on the sand right?

Have an excellent week!

Tommi

PS: Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. Martin Luther King Jr.

What does "Athletic Development" look like?

It is interesting to discuss what 'athletic development' means to each person and what do they think a workout program with such an objective would look like?


By 'athletic development' we generally speaking talk about performance enhancement by means of different exercises.


A lot of people would say that an 'athletic development' program has a lot of power elements, speed and agility, strength exercises, plyometrics, sprints, metabolic conditioning and so forth...


What do YOU see when you picture the main exercises for 'athletic development' in your head?

-------------

It is pretty interesting that day after day in the trenches of training all sorts of people with all sorts of objectives, one component of human movement rises up from among the others...


So when do I see the most acute responses and positive adaptations in terms of athletic development?


And what kind of drills or exercises elicit the best visible response?


Sometimes the answer comes to me as a surprise....the exercise that elicits the best response might not look or smell much like power, plyometrics or lactic acid...but it looks and smells something else and that is PROPRIOCEPTION.


Proprioceptive activation and recruitment of the desired chain in the body within an active warm-up or movement preparation has probably been the most valuable training tool I have learned about.


Movements that wake up the glute complex can be immediately seen in the vertical jump or in single leg balance.

Movements that actively engage the SSC of the ankle complex can be seen right away as improved foot contacts in the sprint or in the ladder.

Movements that reflexively acticate the stabilizers of the trunk result in better coordination and agility and power.


So, back to the beginning.


Most of the movements that do all these things do NOT look like 'athletic development' at all but could potentially change the outcome of all the other exercises performed during the session...


It is all about creating an optimal adaptation...and I can't do that without appreciating PROPRIOCEPTION.


It is a fascianating thing....can't really see it...can't really point out where it is...can't really tell exactly what it is.....can't even say how it truly works....but it is there and it is important.


Have a victorious day!


Tommi


PS: The positive thinker sees the invisible, feels the intangible, and achieves the impossible. Anonymous.