Check out the video below for a great plyo exercise that not only works single leg power, but also lateral quickness, and proper landing technique.
Leave me a comment and let me know what you think.
D
Another installment of Monday Morning QB. Some great articles this week so I hope you enjoy. Be sure to comment and let me know what you think or if you have any questions or want to just discuss one of these articles.
Knee Pain – The final part of a great series by Mike Robertson about knee pain and how you should perform certain exercises to help with it.
Building a Death Grip – A great article by about grip strength, how it carries over to training and daily activities, and what you can do daily to get even stronger.
New Ab and Core Exercises – A brief article by Tony Gentilcore talking about a new ab/core exercise that you should put in your training program.
Training for Coordination – Coordination training for younger (age 6-18) athletes.
Workouts for People With Limited Time – Another great Diesel Crew post about fitting in a workout even when you are pinched for time.
Squat, Deadlift, and Hip Thrust Form – Bret Contreras provides an awesome breakdown and video showing you how to squat, deadlift, and hip thrust properly.
Training Top 10 Checklist – Answer these 10 questions to see if you are really training or just working out.
How to Become a Gladiatior – 7 steps from Zach Even-Esh to make sure you don’t lose your edge training and overall
The Secrets to Usain Bolt’s Success – Usain Bolt and some of his secrets to his success.
How to Eat to Build Muscle – Chad Waterbury talks about how to eat to build muscle.
Motivational Albert Einstein Quotes – Some great Albert Einstein quotes about motivation.
Random Strength Training Tips – Some quick random strength training tips that if actually put into effect would help your gains 10x.
MMA Inside NFL Training – Famed MMA Strength Coach Martin Rooney has taken his training to the New York Jets. This video shows how he implements MMA into NFL training.
5 Pieces of Advice Football Players Should Know – The man, the myth, the legend Jim Wendler talks about 5 things he wish he knew as a football player when younger. It applies to every sport and ever athlete in the junior high, high school, and collegiate level.
Barefoot Training – Eric Cressey talks about barefoot training, why and how it should be done, and who would benefit the most from it. It basically goes along exactly with how the athletes train barefoot at the facility.
D
One of the most important things in baseball is having healthy, strong, and stable shoulders. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by forcing a baseball player to move their entire body through their arms. One of the many variations that accomplish this task is the basic shoulder walk seen in the video below.
You want to keep the arms locked, reach out your hand, and pull yourself forward using your shoulders. This is not a bear crawl or other form of animal walk so your hands will not ever come up off the ground. Instead it is more of a scooting and pulling motion to move the body.
Check out the video and let me know what you think.
D
With summer winding down, I have been spending all of my time at the facility trying to get the college athletes ready to leave and get up to school stronger, and more powerful than ever before, as well as prepare all the junior high and high school athletes for this upcoming fall. It has kept me extremely and the website articles and posts have been lacking so I apologize. Next week things won’t be so hectic and I have some great content that needs to get posted to be sure to keep checking back.
Because I don’t want to leave you with nothing, I wanted to share a link to the blog of another top notch strength coach giving you 53 tips to build muscle and get stronger. Feel free to check it out and let me know what you think.
53 Ways to Build Muscle, Gain Strength, and Be Awesome (Minus the Expletives)
D
Take a look at a few of the pictures below to see some of the Cy-Falls Baseball Players utilizing a slosh pipe to strengthen not just their legs but their arms, shoulders, and entire core.
A slosh pipe is basically a 9 or 10 foot PVC pipe filled 2/3 of the way with water and only weighs 30-40 lbs, but makes any exercise harder as athletes now have to stabilize their entire body to keep the pipe balanced while still performing the exercise.
Holding a slosh pipe in a Zercher postion (as seen in the picture), or an even bigger challenge overhead, turns any exercise into a full body exercise forcing the arms, shoulders, core, upper back and lower back to resist tipping while the water shifts while trying to produce power into the ground off a single leg (especially during lunges).
They can be used instead of barbells or dumbbells for nearly any exercise and by swapping them out you will achieve a different type of strength that works in any situation.
Give a slosh pipe a try if you really want to add another dimension to your sports training and let me know how it goes.
D
The number 1 question I get asked by athletes and parents who are interested in the program is “can you make the athlete faster?” This is and always will be one of the main components that determine what makes a top athlete. Unfortunately most athletes and parents do not like my answer – “Yes and No”. They get this look on their face thinking that the program is totally crap until I sit down and explain what I mean.
Speed on the playing field for the most part is totally different than being fast or having a good 40 or 60 yard time. Yet that is how we are taught to test speed. This is why athletes flood to chain sports performance places that promote “speed” instead of athleticism. However, this type of speed does not carry over well to the playing field. Unfortunately, it’s the athlete putting in all this extra effort that suffers.
Why doesn’t this type of speed training transfer well to a game situation? Ask yourself this – when was the last time any athlete has run a straight line over 20-30 yards without any contact, change of direction, or other obstacles to avoid? While this happens all the time on a track, on any other field or court it rarely occurs. Athletes rarely have the opportunity to hit maximum velocity (or even accelerate correctly) because they must change direction, go through or around other players, or only go 5-10 yards.
So, let’s revisit my answer of “Yes and No”. Continue reading »
Next time you watch a professional baseball game have a look at the physiques of the players. Take special note of how muscular and strong nearly every single one of them appears. That’s because they are. Compare this to the physiques of players in high school and college. You’ll notice a similar trend: those in the greatest shape (strongest) are the ones that make All-Star games and get drafted. Being muscular and bigger makes you a better baseball player.
So if that is the case, then why are most high school baseball players 150lbs dripping wet with zero muscle? Likely somewhere in their lifetime they have been told that they don’t want to build too much muscle because it will affect their swings and/or their throwing. They’ve been taught by “traditional” coaches that baseball is a game of speed, grace, and especially hand-eye coordination, and performing only exercises training these traits should be used. It was assumed that traditional strength training would somehow interfere with those coveted traits.
Unfortunately this could not be further from the truth.
Not having any muscle at all and worrying only about “baseball skills” falls on the total opposite end of the spectrum. If baseball is all about how far you can hit a ball and how hard you can throw one, then wouldn’t power and strength be a big component to the baseball player? For the high school baseball athlete, this seems to be totally forgotten. This affects not only the player’s game, but their overall health as well. If you don’t have the muscle strength to continually throw a ball as hard as you possibly can, but still attempt to (like 99% of pitchers at the high school level) then something has to give. Unfortunately the thing that gives is often the athlete’s body. They end up with shoulder or elbow problems, tendonitis or worse – a muscle tear or other serious injury that requires surgery and down time (if they are ever able to bounce back from it anyways).
Baseball is a sport that requires the whole body to be fit and strong. Everything is used to throw, hit, and run. Some areas are especially important for success (both in the activity and in staying injury-free). Let’s take each spot on the athlete that needs to be powerful and healthy and break down the best way to achieve those results. Continue reading »
One of the greatest lessons I have ever learned as a strength coach is that it does not matter how strong, powerful, explosive, or fast you are. If you have glaring weaknesses that can be exploited they will be found and you will suffer because of it.
The majority of high school football lineman I work with can lift way more weight than what is needed to compete successfully at this level, but because they have concentrated on moving weight and not become better athletes their performance in general has suffered. They have tight (inflexible) hips, poor explosiveness, bad shoulders, and couldn’t move quick enough to punch out of a wet paper bag.
But what do the athletes and their coaches do? They stick with what they have been doing for years. They continue moving the weights and avoid the weaknesses (not intentionally) because that is how they have learned to train or have been training.
So how do you fix your weaknesses without sacrificing any of your strengths? Continue reading »
This Is Not Specific To Any Sport I Have Ever Seen
“Sport Specific Training” is the biggest buzz word in athlete performance today, but no one really knows exactly what it means. What is Sport Specific Training?
If you Google it or ask any strength coach who is trying to sell you something, they will show you a ton of whacky exercises consisting of big bouncy balls, cones, hurdles, vibrating plates (seriously?), and whatever else they just dropped thousands of dollars on. The problem though is this type of training has minimal (if any) carry over to the actual sport and actually hurts the athletes performance in the long run from over use and lack of absolute strength.
This is a business or trainer trying to sell you on something that looks difficult, not many people can do, seems cutting edge, but in reality provides no sort of performance enhancement to any athletes.
I See MLB And NFL Athletes In This Pose At Least Once A Game
To actually figure out what exactly “sport specific training” (SST from now on) should consist of, lets take a look at what actually makes someone a better athlete in general.
There are staples for any type of training program out there. Squat, Bench, Deadlift, Overhead Press should be the basis of any good program right? Does that mean they have to always be completed in the gym? Nope.
If you are stuck in a plateau no matter what your physique or athletic goals are, then you need to do something different. You need to fix your diet, change your routine, or just change your entire workout location.
Spend a month training in your backyard, driveway, track, or nearest park, and you will blow past that plateau like it wasn’t ever there.
I can hear it now, “But I don’t have the $$$ to spend on equipment at home” or “It’s hot and humid” or better yet “I am way too strong to just lift outside… I need big heavy weights to keep progressing”. All of these are crap and are saved for the people who really don’t care about their results and instead just want to say they “work out”.
Yes it is going to be hot, but when has a little heat ever been a bad thing? Yes you always need to progress on your weights to keep getting results, and yes purchasing home equipment is expensive… Unless you think outside the box.
You want a good summer workout that will smash every plateau, turn you into a beast, and maybe even give you a great tan? Then read on and I’ll lay out a month’s routine that won’t just get results, but also be designed around equipment that will cost under $100.
First up you need some equipment.
