NEWS & EVENTS
  In the U.S., our youth athlete development structure is completely backwards. We overemphasize competition and under-emphasize preparation. We essentially force kids into early specialization with year-round single-sport opportunities in the form of long season, camps, select tournaments, etc. It's extremely difficult for parents that understand PROVEN athletic development systems to make the right choices for their kids in today's model. Last week's post highlights a couple training-specific examples of what youth athletes can/should do for optimal development. If you missed it, you can check it out at the link below: Push-Ups Gone Wrong? Push-ups are one of the most popular exercises out there, especially in youth sports. When performed correctly, push-ups are a terrific exercise to promote core/shoulder stability, upper body strength, and a proper upper body pressing movement pattern. I was recently featured in Men's Fitness for a segment on how to train to perform 100 push-ups consecutively.
As you can imagine, the first step in being able to perform 100 push-ups is being able to perform one, correctly. In reality, the push-up form I see most frequently is pretty far from optimal. This is the result of never being taught how to perform the movement correctly or having been taught incorrectly. In either case, the result is a continued development of an improper movement pattern, which will inevitably lead to a breakdown SOMEWHERE (front/top of the shoulder, back of the next, and lower back are the most likely culprits). Shortly after the Men's Fitness article went live, I received an email from a reader that had to perform a push-up test for his work (police officer) and noted that his performance was limited by shoulder pain. My response to his email was: If I understand your case correctly, it's not uncommon. The reality is that most people have never been taught to do a push-up correctly, and MANY have been taught how to do them incorrectly. Assuming your shoulder pain is a result of a suboptimal movement pattern and not the result of another underlying issue (you should get that checked out by a doctor), you can improve your push-up ability immensely by following the guidelines I wrote about here: Shoulder Pain with Pressing Exercises
Rather than reinvent the wheel here with a new post on how to address shoulder pain with pressing exercises like push-ups, I'll just direct you to a post I wrote a while back that covers the issue in-depth. Check it out here:
Kevin Neeld, MS, CSCS
P.S. Please forward this to your friends, family, and teammates that you think will benefit from the information. If they're interested, they can sign up for our weekly newsletter here: Endeavor Sports Performance Newsletter
Bookmark:
The last week has been an exciting time. Before I get into why, I want to quickly recap on last week's post. One of the most persistent misconceptions in athletic development is that muscles are these stupid pieces of meat and as long as you make them bigger, they will perform the way you want. In reality, this view is extraordinarily limited and causes most well-intentioned athletes to waste the majority of their gym time. Last week's post discussed why the "bodybuilding" approach is not suitable for aspirational athletes and a few of the most common problems we see in athletes that come to us after a few years of lifting on their own (other than the sleeveless shirt epidemic). If you missed it, check it out on our website via the link below, and as always, please feel free to forward it along to people you think may benefit from the information!
Congratulations!
This is interesting because the eyes have direct neural connections to muscles in the suboccipital area. I have a suspicion that retraining a "neglected eye" and restoring proper structural alignment and soft-tissue pliability in the suboccipital area may just be two approaches to the same problem.
In an ideal posture, the ears would be situated directly over the acromion (bony prominence at the top of your shoulder), which would be centered over your hips, which would be centered over your feet. Forward head posture is extremely common in modern day society because we're constantly repositioning our head to read text messages, stare at computer screens and, well, generally hold ourselves in about as apathetic of a body position as possible.
Take Home Message
To your success,
Kevin Neeld, MS, CSCS
Bookmark:
Everything I've ever written on sports training or sports nutrition is predicated on the assumption that the athletes applying the strategies are also abiding by three fundamental principles. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case. Every accomplishment is built upon a series of progressions. Athletic development is no different. In some cases, athletes need to return back to the basics to ensure they're still building elite level performance on a stable foundation. Last week's post discussed three simple development concepts that every athlete needs to buy into moving on to more advanced strategies. If you left for Memorial Day vacation early and missed it, you can check it out via our website at the link below:
>> Back to Basics <<
An Old Paradigm When I was growing up, it seemed like every muscle strain (pull, tear, tweak...whatever you choose to call them) was blamed on a muscle being too tight, stiff, short, etc. Not only did this cause people that had mild strains to stretch as a primary recuperation strategy, but it also overemphasized stretching as an injury prevention tactic. There is sufficient research to question whether static stretching before activity decreases subsequent injury risk. In fact, some research has shown that it actually increases injury risk, but that's a topic for a different day. Unfortunately, the more fundamental issue of muscle strains resulting from the muscle being overly tight is questionable. Shirley Sahrmann, a highly respected and incredibly bright physical therapist from the Washington University in St. Louis, suggests that injuries result from the exact opposite problem: Where a muscle is too lax/weak, excessive motion will occur and injury will result. In order to understand how this works, you need to understand a few basic principles (a continued theme from last week?) that Sahrmann points out in her two outstanding books: Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes and Movement System Impairment Syndromes of the Extremities, Cervical and Thoracic Spines Movement Principles The first is that movement will occur in the path of least resistance. This is actually a fundamental principle from physics, but to better understand it's application to movement (and why I'm discussing it today), we need to also consider the implications of stiffness. Stiffness can be described as a muscle's resistance to movement. Stiffness can be both active (involving participation from the nervous system) or passive (strictly the mechanical resistance of the involved structures). An easy way to think of stiffness is by using a rubber band analogy. When you first begin to stretch a rubber band, it lengthens fairly easily. However, as you continue to stretch it, it becomes increasingly resistant to further stretching. In this scenario, the stiffness of the band is increasing as you stretch it. Muscles operate in a similar capacity. Now consider what would happen if you tied two rubber bands together. Both bands were the same diamater, but one was twice as thick as the other. You can imagine that, in isolation, the thicker band would be harder to stretch (stiffer, at all ranges of motion). With the bands tied together, if you take one band in each hand and pull them apart, you'll find that the thicker band doesn't lengthen nearly as much as the less thick band. In fact, the thicker band won't stretch at all until the thinner band is stretched to a point where it's instantaneous stiffness surpasses that of the thick band. Rubber Band Analogies within the Body I can appreciate the utility of rubber bands as much as the next guy... 
...maybe not as much as him...
...but the analogy serves no purpose if it doesn't have an application to human movement. While anatomy is often taught in an isolative fashion (muscle X originates at point A and inserts on point B), in reality the muscular system is vastly integrated. Simply, an individual muscle's function can not be discussed without, at a minimum, a discussion of the adjacent and opposing muscle's. Most relevant to today's topic, you can think of the body as a series of rubber band analogies.  Not exactly what I had in mind As a few core examples:
 A great athletic example of the pec/abdominal stiffness battle across the ribs
The list of examples is endless, but the ones above are very common both in the general and athletic populations. You can see that it's not as simple as "everyone has this, so do this." It's a balance game. In the above examples, the pecs can't be stiffer than the abdominals, which can't be stiffer than the thoracic extensors, but need to be at least as stiff as the hip flexors.
Band Tearing Injury Prevention Coming back to the idea of muscle tears, one application of the band idea is that the less stiff muscle will move more frequently and through excessive length as a result of losing the stiffness tug of war and eventually breakdown. As I alluded to earlier, some stiffness imbalances are predictable because they are based on societal norms, which is basically just "fancy talk" for saying that, as a nation, we all sit on our assess way too much and our body adjusts accordingly. Other imbalances are more sport specific. For example, we've built a solid reputation at Endeavor for preventing adductor (what most people call the "groin") strains in high risk athletic populations (e.g. hockey and soccer players), and in quickly returning athletes that come to us with one of these injuries to pain-free play. Simply, these injuries often result from a stiffness imbalance across the hips that requires self-myofascial release work and static stretching to DECREASE the stiffness in the glutes, and active strengthening of the adductors in a shortened position to increase stiffness. Using this approach, we've COMPLETELY eliminated adductor strains in our athletes, including in those with a history of "chronic strain". In fact, it works so well that I've given this approach to colleagues through email (without always ellaborting on the detailed specifics of how we implement it), and it's worked for them. Take Home Stiffness isn't bad. It's an inherent property of every structure within the body. In fact, as an injury prevention strategy, it's often implicated to INCREASE the stiffness of one region instead of decreasing the stiffness of an adjacent/opposing one. This isn't to suggest that stretching has no utility as part of an athletic development program, only to highlight the importance of strengthening exercises AND to emphasize that training programs need to be purposeful. Generic "canned" programs that you can find on the internet (and that some exceptionally lazy sports training companies use with their athletes) that don't take into account fundamental movement principles such as stiffness imbalances will inevitably lead to a breakdown somewhere in the athlete. Because nothing sucks more than being sidelined by a nagging muscle strain (except maybe major surgery that results from constantly pushing through nagging muscle strains), it's imperative that we're PROACTIVE in our approach to injury prevention. To your success,
Kevin Neeld, MS, CSCS
Bookmark:
Last week's post outlined many of the key findings of an outstanding review of the research on the benefits and concerns of resistance training for kids. The review was the National Strength and Conditioning Association's 2009 position statement on youth resistance training. Unfortunately, this area is flooded with commonly accepted misconceptions, which ultimately cheats today's youth athletes out of the most beneficial athletic development systems. If you missed it, you can check it out via our website at the link below (lots of great quotes from the article in this post): Why Almost Every Mom is a Performance Expert For decades, moms have been telling their kids to "sit up straight" and "not slouch." Not only do these melting candle postures make kids appear unconfident and generally lazy, but it can also have pretty significant psychological and physical repercussions.
Check out this news article on a study showing the link between posture and confidence: Body posture affects confidence in your own thoughts. The findings of that study have huge implications. From a physical standpoint, slouched posture generally results to short/stiff hip flexors and anterior chest/shoulder muscles, which is accompanied by inhibited glutes and mid-back muscualture. This is an oversimplified description of what Dr. Vladimir Janda refers to as Lower- and Upper-Crossed Syndromes, which can explain a number of common injuries and performance limitations.
These anatomical imbalances and associated movement imbalances result in a forward tilted left hip, hiked right hip, and relatively externally rotated left femur and internally rotated right femur. While this affects the overwhelming majority of people, few have any awareness of it and some may never have problems because of it. That said, as imbalances and trauma accumulate, this pattern can lead to a number of recognizable injuries, including:
The interesting thing about this, is that typical assessment findings deemed "normal" may really indicate a pathology in the presence of these alignment issues. For example, the forward tilt of the left hip joint and relative positioning of external rotation of the femur should result in a loss of both hip extension (using a standard Thomas Test, where the pelvis is repositioned into neutral orientation relative to a table) and hip internal rotation. In this case, full hip extension, which would typically be considered a good thing, is indicative of anterior hip capsule laxity. In other words, the ligaments holding the front of the head of the femur in the hip joint are excessively loose, which will result in a failure to appropriate control motion and transfer force through the joint. As I've said in the past, excessive uncontrolled motion across a joint is almost a sure recipe for osteoarthritis (and impaired performance for those that don't care about the long-term implications of movement impairments). Similarly, full internal rotation ROM on this side is likely indicative of ischiofemoral ligament laxity (ligament in back of hip). In these cases, restricted ROM is a good sign, as it indicates that the movement pattern hasn't driven more severe adaptations.
Take Home Message It's hard to say to what degree this pattern effects athletes, but highlights a couple important things. First, continuous learning is essential in my line of work. Without knowing this information, it's possible that we could be recommending stretches to correct ROM limitations that would actually make the athlete more pathological. Second, this pattern may help explain some of the phenomenon that are somewhat elusive to health care professionals (e.g. people that have one "flat foot" and one "high arch foot", why there are more hip impingement cases on the right, etc.). Third, and most foundationally, posture and even minor movement impairments can have PROFOUND implications on performance and injury risk. It is not always easy to understand, but it is important to try! Athletic injury rates are at an unacceptable high; it's imperative we find ways to continue developing elite athletes, but also keep them healthy. The result is longer, more successful careers, and happier, more accomplished athletes. To your success,
Kevin Neeld, MS, CSCS
Bookmark:
Integrity may be one of the most important qualities of both an individual athlete and of an entire team. Last week's post raised the idea that integrity isn't just an interpersonal quality, but also a physical one. Joint integrity, or the "other integrity", is rarely talked about unless someone gets hurt. As you can imagine, a loss of joint integrity can be the cause of or result from a host of serious injuries. If you missed it (or want a refresher!), you can check it out via our website at the link below: Devastating Injury
I've written a lot about ACL injuries in the past because they affect so many athletes and have such serious consequences. In fact, I remember perusing through some of the research regarding ACL injuries and coming across these facts:
The Numbers Game
This latter estimate with regards to treatment costs really got my attention. Let's assume the low end of this and run a few numbers. If every year there are 80,000 ACL repairs in the U.S. (lower end of the estimate) and each of these has an associated cost of $17,000, that means that, on average, each year we spend:
80,000 x 17,000 = $1,360,000,000!
That's ONE BILLION 360 million dollars, on ACL injuries alone, EVERY YEAR! I understand that treatment costs may spill over into subsequent years, but it's liktely that previous years' ACL injuries spill over into any given year so it's a wash. The fact is that we spend an absolutely ALARMING amount of money every year paying for injuries that are, to a large extent, pretty easily prevented. Neuromuscular Prevention Strategies Researchers have a unique way of putting fancy names to "protocols" that they use to test whether specific injuries can be prevented. In this case, they use "neuromuscular" which just describes how the nervous system (neuro) controls the muscular system. In reality, ALL human movement is governed by the nervous system so it's somewhat of an unnecessary description, but the idea is that these prevention protocols aren't just focusing on increasing muscular size or endurance, but also on improving the QUALITY of movement. If you've been reading our newsletters for a while, the importance of QUALITY movement shouldn't be a new concept. Check out this passage from a 2010 study by LaBella and Carl:
"The correlation between specific neuromuscular patterns and ACL injury risk has led to the development of neuromuscular training programs designed to improve athletes' knee awareness and neuromuscular control during landing and cutting maneuvers. Neuromuscular training programs combine progressive core and lower extremity strengthening and plyometric jumping exercises with proprioception and balance training, safe landing, deceleration techniques, and education on how to recognize and avoid unsafe knee positions. With plyometric activities, an athlete starts with a muscle group in a stretched position, then rapidly contracts the muscle group; jumping and landing on two feet with good control is an example of a simple plyometric exercise. These programs have been shown to reduce knee injuries in adolescent females by up to 88%."
I encourage you not to get absorbed with any scientific vocabulary that you may not be familiar with. All this paragraph is saying is that COMPREHENSIVE training programs can reduce knee injuries in the most pre-disposed population by nearly 90%! I can't emphasize enough that this isn't the result of a magical program or secretive exercises; this is the EXACT process we use with all of our athletes at Endeavor every week. It's not just a jumping program, or a sprint program, or an injury prevention program, or a strengthening program, it's ALL of them together. It's what a QUALITY training program should be composed of. Return to Math Let's get back to our math from earlier. If we again attempt to underestimate the application of this research, we could suppose that the "neuromuscular training program" intervention ONLY reduces injury risk in females (it doesn't; this works in males too), and that females make up only 65,000 of the 80,000 ACL repairs every year (they don't, as this would only be a 4x great incidence than males, not the 9x reported in research), and finally that the program only reduces knee injuries by 50% (a drastic underestimation!). This leaves us with: Females: 65,000 x 0.5 x 17,000 = 552,500,000 Males: 15,000 x 17,000 = 255,000,000 Total: $807,500,000/year This number is still outrageously high, but it's a $552,500,000 reduction in PER YEAR costs. In reality, given that we substantially undershot all of the true estimates, this reduction could be 2-3x as high. Take Home In my years with Endeavor I've seen some parents and coaches struggle to see the TRUE value behind sports training programs. Most will opt for whatever the cheapest option is because they don't really understand what the difference is between that and a more comprehensive approach. The fear is that paying a few extra bucks for a higher quality training program may not be worth the money. Hopefully this sheds some light on the impact quality training can have. Quality training will SUBSTANTIALLY reduce your athletes' risk of ALL injuries. I've highlighted ACL tears here, but a comprehensive approach will decrease risk to all sport-related injuries (ankle sprains, hip flexor and "groin" strains, shoulder dislocations/separations, etc.) AND improve your athletes' performance. On an individual basis, this will save your athletes the physical and mental stress of having to go through an injury, and improve their performance and confidence. On a widespread basis, it could save our country hundreds of millions of dollars in health care costs every year. Training 2x/week with us in a small group setting year-round would cost about $2,700 (even less if you take advantage of group discounts!). In contrast to the associated costs of injuries, and the fact that these injury costs are only the hopeful removal of negatives, not the addition of any positive benefits, it seems like a no brainer! To your success,
Kevin Neeld, MS, CSCS
Bookmark:
|
|
Search Posts
CategoriesEndeavor in the Media Athletic Development Nutrition Advice Weight Loss Golf Training Endeavor Training Maximum Strength Endeavor Athlete Success Back Pain Supplements Injury Prevention Hockey Training Quote of the Week Training Intangibles Power Development Core Training Sport-Specific Conditioning Endeavor Nutrition Coaching Monthly Archives  |
Translate:          |