Poor Driving Conditions

Image courtesy of boston.com

This past weekend I had the pleasure of being out in Denver for the Muscle Activation Techniques™ Mastery Trunk and Spine course taught by Kevin Dunn.  On Saturday evening as I was driving to the airport, the roads were pretty slick from the snowstorm that was happening.  Despite the poor driving conditions, I did my best to make my way down the interstate in my little rental car.

Making "Stupid" Smarter

Image courtesy of chess.edu.rs

One thing I try work through in my head are ways to go about taking exercises that may be completely inappropriate for a client and manipulating the variables of the exercise in order to make it appropriate for their abilities and goals.  As a professional, I think this is an important skill to develop.

Running and My Feet, Back, and Shoulder

Image courtesy of motivatedbodybuilding.com

**Disclaimer:  There are many potential explanations to why my body feels the way it does when I run.  This is just one possibility that may or may not actually be taking place, but I thought it was interesting to work through the mechanical relationships.

Last week I went for a run.  Or I should say I started to.  I lasted about five minutes before my feet were saying stop and I was starting to get a dull tightness on the left side of my lower back as well as around my left shoulder blade.  Now, what I've come to realize is I don't think this feeling is necessarily new to me when I run, but rather I think I see it in a different light after learning more about the human body.  I think my body has always felt kind of not great while running, but before I just figured it came with the territory.  But now that I think I have a better understanding of what these sensations may be indicating, I stop when I start to feel this way because I know there are ways for me to exercise without feeling that type of discomfort.

Maxing Motion

Image courtesy of zimmer.com

Something I often fall into the trap of is having my clients move through all of their active range around a particular joint during a given exercise and magnitude profile.  I'm calling it a trap because I guess that is more or less my default right now, meaning that's kind of option A that I start with and then I might strategically choose to limit the range from there.  I guess I have an issue with this in my head because it seems to be the only thing I do it for.  I don't default to max resistance for every exercise and then scale back, nor do I think that way about speed/tempo, the duration of the set, or the effort I want put forth during the exercise.  So I think this needs to change in my head.



Most everything else I tend to drift towards moderate/easy for the first set or so then increase from there, so why with motion do I almost always start towards the most that my client can actively/comfortably attain?  Furthermore, even if I justified having them move through that much range with an easy load for the sake of warming up the tissue or practicing the motion, why do I almost always continue to have them explore that entire range once a greater resistance force is applied?  The irony is that the presented challenge in terms of resistance is usually only a challenge during a small part of the range, so how much challenge to the muscular tissue is actually being accomplished by moving through the rest of it?


I can certainly see viable reasons for moving through most of the available active range of a joint during specific exercises with specific individuals, but I'm not sure that it makes sense for me to keep seeing this as option A.  Instead, I think it is time to drop this piece that has been somewhat automatic up to this point and start to see not just the motion that is being performed, but the specific part of the motion that is performed, as a variable that needs to be strategically chosen and manipulated, as well.

Do you tend to default to moving through "full range" on your curls, squats, presses, pulls, etc, etc, etc?  Do you tend to default to maxing out on weight every rep, too?

Your body.  Your training.

Want to use this arti­cle in your blog, newslet­ter, or other plat­form? You may, but be sure to include all of the bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion found in the yellow box below!

Many Lives, Many Masters

Image courtesy of brianweiss.com

Self Made® Book Store

Brian L. Weiss, M.D.'s Many Lives, Many Masters is one of the most powerful books I've read and in my opinion is a must-read for anybody who is interested in being presented a different outlook on life and death and what it means to be alive.  Honestly, I would say this is a must-read for everybody, but I'm sure there is somebody out there who that would not be accurate for, so I'm trying to be a little more conservative with my recommendation.  Similar to The Alchemist, Many Lives, Many Masters is right at the top of my all-time favorites list.

This true story is Weiss' recollection of the time he spent with one specific psychotherapy patient of his who was suffering from multiple phobias and constant cases of anxiety attacks.  After performing his traditional means of therapy with little result, Weiss decided to begin hypnotherapy with her.  Immediately in the first session he could tell he had stumbled on to a much bigger case than he originally thought as his patient began recalling events from what appeared to be past lives.

As the treatment progressed over the new months, Weiss was presented with many lessons from his patient's stories as well as from higher sources.

I need to be honest and say I really vibed with this book.  If I would have read it a year ago or six months ago, I'm not sure if I would have had the same response to it that I did.  A lot has changed with my mindset about life and death over the past four months or so, and this book spoke right to these beliefs.

Science tells us that in our absolute most basic form we are all just energy.  Science also tells us that energy cannot be created or destroyed, but rather it can only be transferred or transformed.  While our superficial physical shell that houses this energy may pass, the energy by which the physical is created and that which makes us has to have always been present and has to always be present from the beginning to the end of time.

These are the beliefs I now hold.  Whether you choose to believe the same or similar is not relevant, I only bring them up because this is the idea presented in Many Lives, Many Masters, which was my first time seeing the thoughts and beliefs I have in my head discussed in this format with this much conviction.

In addition to my recommendation above, if you are mourning a death or struggling to find solace in a difficult situation, I would highly recommend this book for you.

Your body.  Your training.

Enjoy this review?  Get a copy of Many Lives, Many Masters in the Self Made® Book Store!

Want to use this article in your blog, newsletter, or other platform?  You may, but be sure to include all of the biographical information found in the yellow box below!

Lunges vs. Leg Press: A Discussion at PHP

Image courtesy of rookiejournal.com

Last week Friday during study group at Precision Human Performance we had a really great discussion about why we would have a client or ourselves perform a lunge as opposed to a leg press.  For this discussion, we defined lunge as something that looks like this:

Ahh, college.  Okay so not the greatest video but I guess at the time I thought it was obvious what was going on with my legs and feet, even though they are completely out of the frame and arguably the most important part.  Fortunately, there are plenty of other videos of lunges on YouTube, almost all of which are much more entertaining than my own, so check those out if you need further clarification.

Then, for leg presses, we are looking at something like this:

Once again, a brilliant display of control in this video...

Okay, so the discussion started by Michelle Amore posing the question of why we would put somebody on a leg press.  Interestingly, when we broke everybody's responses down, it all came down to muscle in some regard, whether it be building it, controlling it, or biasing it (for more on this, take RTS™).

Once that was established, the discussion turned to which movement allows us to build, control, and/or bias muscle more efficiently and effectively in addition to identifying the difference between performing a leg press and a lunge.  We discussed the mechanics of each, how a leg press may have the ability to keep the challenge of performing the motion relatively high throughout a given range of motion while a lunge is often only really difficult at the bottom of the rep from a mechanical standpoint, depending on how low the individual is able to drop.

Most importantly, we discussed the differences in the amount of passive restraint typically imposed during each and how the less passively-restrained lunge dictates that less weight can be handled throughout the motion, which may ultimately mean less tension will be allowed to be generated by the muscles in order to perform that motion.  Likewise, the leg press with its higher degree of passive restraint allows for the user to almost lock themselves into the position so all of their energy, effort, and force can be directed towards performing hip and knee extension.

Think of this as similar to doing dumbbell presses on a stability ball versus on a flat bench.  If you measure the 1 rep max of each situation, you are almost always going to find that more weight can be pressed while lying supine on a bench (more passive restraint) than on a ball (less passive restraint).  This goes back to the discussion back in January about balance and how balance is a skill and, more relevant to this post, if your balanced is challenged in any way the number one goal of your brain will be to keep your center of mass over your base of support.  This means that if you create a scenario where keeping your center of mass over your base of support is no longer a challenge because of the imposed restraint, performing other tasks or motions can begin to take greater precedence.  However, without that passive restraint locking you in, ensuring that you maintain your COM over BOS will trump the execution of any motion attempted.

The takeaway message from all of this is the less passively restrained a motion is, the more the execution of that motion becomes a skill.  Bringing it back to the initial goals of the exercise, if we are performing this motion in order to build, control, and/or bias specific muscle tissue, attempting to achieve these goals by performing a skill is going to be less efficient than locking ourselves into a machine and shoving with everything we have.  However, if the goal is to improve the skill of lunging, then lunges would certainly have their place.

What are your thoughts on the Lunges vs. Leg Press discussion?  Drop a comment below!

Want to join in on the Precision Human Performance study groups?  Email info@precisionhumanperformance.com to get the GoToMeeting.com id!

Want to learn more? Take RTS™.

Your body. Your training.

Want to use this arti­cle in your blog, newslet­ter, or other plat­form? You may, but be sure to include all of the bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion found in the yellow box below!

Orthotics and Your Joints

Image courtesy of facebook.com

Last week I discussed how the use of orthotics can limit the motion of the joints of the feet, putting those joints' health at risk. Now I want to discuss what may be happening at the joints throughout the rest of your body when you use orthotics.

Once again, let me state what this post is and is not intended to do:

1) This post is not saying orthotics are bad. There may be a specific reason why you or somebody else has no other choice but to wear them.

2) This post is not telling you to immediately get rid of your orthotics. That could cause a lot of discomfort if your body is not ready for it.

3) This post is not telling you to completely disregard everything that the person who put you in orthotics has told you.

What this post is trying to do is to present some information that you may not be aware of regarding what may be happening to the rest of your body by wearing orthotics.

Okay, now on to the info.

Image courtesy of blogs.windsorstar.com

So I guess the easiest way in my head for me to see and comprehend this is if I think about a time I sprained an ankle. So if you can, imagine when you have sprained an ankle or known of somebody who has sprained an ankle. The ankle and possibly foot get all swollen up and it might hurt like heck to walk on, but what is usually a given in those scenarios is that it is now hard for the ankle to move. It is difficult to plantarflex and dorsiflex around the talocrual axis and as such part of your rehab or recovery work is traditionally exercises that are trying to reinstate this motion.

Without this normal motion of the ankle, you see people compensating and walking with a limp. A lot of times this is related to the current discomfort of putting weight on that injured foot, but even as the pain dissipates people can still be seen walking with this limp. So yes, while this blatant compensation may initially be due to avoiding discomfort, it may also be in part due to, among other things, the inability of the individual to have proper motion around their ankle, leading to them finding other ways to walk from point A to point B.

So what do you see with these individuals? Usually they are picking up motion at possibly the hip, knee, and various spinal levels in order to make up for the lack of motion available to them through their ankle. In other words, because their ankle motion is limited, they now have to move more than they normally would through their hip and/or other joints in order to compensate and walk as efficiently as they can.

Now, this compensation isn't a bad thing. In fact, it is surely better than the alternative of not being able to walk at all. But at the same time, if you are moving around one or more joints more than is required for unaltered efficient gait (walking) in order to potentially make up for a lack of motion at another joint, those joints that now have the increased motion may start to be worn down faster because they are being used in a manner that is inefficient for both their design and the completion of the desired task.

Imagine you could only raise your arm up to shoulder height, so in order to reach up onto a shelf or something you had to bend backwards until your arm was more up towards the ceiling. Eventually, your back would probably start to feel not so great. The same concept holds true for when you are trying to compensate around an injured ankle that lacks motion. You begin to pick up motion elsewhere in order to still walk, which, over time may lead to issues at these other joints.

Image courtesy of doczeke.com

And, to the subject of this post, the same concept holds true for when you use orthotics.

As I have stated in the past, there are 28 bones that make up the joints of the ankle and foot accumulating to 55 articulations between those bones*. If you consider each of those articulations as a place where possible motion can occur, you can see how implementing something such as an orthotic, which may effectively limit motion at all of those articulations, may cause the motion that is not happening around these joints during gait or other activities to be picked up elsewhere throughout the body. Furthermore, you can now see how having this increased motion at other joints as a means to make up for the restricted motion imposed by the orthotics, while useful in the short term, may over time lead to issues at the joints where greater motion is being required, IN ADDITION to the increased risk of the health of the joints whose motion is now limited (as discussed the previous two weeks).

So, what does all this mean? Well, like I said, I'm not saying orthotics are bad or you get rid of your orthotics. However, while their use may make you feel really good right here in the moment, there may be long-term consequences that aren't necessarily ideal and that should be thought through before implementing into your daily life. Furthermore, other options may want to be explored as well, such as Muscle Activation Techniques™, which can provide the opportunity to achieve the desired mobility of the joints by first and foremost increasing the stability of those or other joints.

Finally, just to clarify, this post is not a suggestion to inappropriately mobilize joints. In the example given with the injured ankle, there is a very good reason why it is not moving. That example was merely used to highlight a scenario that many of us have experienced in which we have limited motion around one axis and subsequently compensate by increasing or altering the motion around other axes.

Do you wear orthotics? How much information were you given in regards to what they may be doing to the rest of your body before you began using them?

Inter­ested in find­ing out more? Check out the “Mus­cle Acti­va­tion Tech­niques™” page.

Inter­ested in set­ting up an assess­ment time or dis­cussing this sub­ject fur­ther? E-mail Char­lie at charlie@selfmadefitness.com.

Your body. Your training.

Want to use this arti­cle in your blog, newslet­ter, or other plat­form? You may, but be sure to include all of the bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion found in the yellow box below!

*Roskopf, Greg. Advanced Foot Function. Muscle Activation Techniques™ Mastery course. p 5. February 2013.

Is Greatness Limiting?

Image courtesy of thisisnotadvertising.wordpress.com

For a number of months now I have been on a #CreateGreatness push to try to bring out the greatness in others in order to empower people to remove the limitations from the thoughts and actions that they set for themselves. But today I want to explore the idea that greatness itself may be limiting.

I believe that we all have ability to be great at something, but most of us struggle to find what that thing is. We let social norms and expectations, material possessions, and the fear of failure dictate our actions and desires. This makes it exponentially more difficult to sell out for what fundamentally stimulates and excites us--the area of our lives in which we are most likely to excel. Without this complete commitment to the cause that we care most about, the likelihood of achieving the subjective level of greatness, and subsequently our ability to positively impact others, appears to suffer.

But is greatness something that itself limits someone's ability to reach this level? Meaning, once you are considered great, does that make continuing to be considered great more difficult? Does the slope continue to get slipperier and steeper as you ascend? More importantly, and the question that is really on my mind, does setting your expectations on greatness limit your ability to achieve beyond this?

Are you, in a sense, setting yourself up for achieving a lower level of greatness than if you had your sights set on something higher, or nothing at all? Or will having such a high marker to reach only allow you to catapult yourself further once there? Are there different levels or a continuum of greatness that can be achieved, or is it a finite point that is equal for all? And are we measuring greatness by what everybody else is currently doing, what has been considered the best up to this point, or what we believe the individual has to offer?

I want to explore these types of questions on this blog throughout the month of March and possibly beyond. If all goes well, I'm not sure that I will actually answer any of them, but rather I will only find more questions to pursue further. And to me, that would be a month very well spent because while my thoughts may not be any closer to finding answers, my actions may be.

But maybe that's the point, because if greatness is to be attained, I'm not sure the answers of "how" are necessarily needed, or if it is the continual formation and exploration of questions and the pursuit of achievement that allows someone to create their greatness.

Be great.

Want to use this article in your blog, newsletter, or other platform? You may, but be sure to include all of the biographical information found in the yellow box below!