Inspired by T-nation author Eric Cressey’s What I Learned In 2007,
I decided to put together my own list of things that I learned in 2007
(note – Eric’s 2006 article was my first ever post so be sure to read
this years version).
1) Gifted athletes do not necessarily look remarkable
but there is something weird about the way they look when they train. A
few weeks ago we did the athlete testing for SST’s 12 week football
academy. There were a variety of assessment tests but the one that stood
out to me was the penta jump. This is basically a standing long jump
with 5 jumps instead of just one, all linked together in a fluid
unstopping order. It is a skill, but talent does impact ones
performance.
Many of the athletes performed unremarkable, which is what we expect
to see at the start of the camp because many of them are untrained and
are coming off of a month or two layoff from exercising. But one of the
athletes, a 14 year old, look weird doing it. He seemed to float away
from me when he jumped – each jump took him so much further down the
turf than any of the other athletes. His distance way 6-8 feet longer
than any one else in his age group. I wasn’t very surprised to see his
sub 5 second result in the 40. He’s 14 years old and pretty small. I’m
looking forward to seeing how he’ll continue to improve as he grows
pounds of muscle and gains more complete neural control over his muscle
firing patterns.
2) Fish oil supplements eliminate most of the shoulder pain
I experience when I’m lifting heavy. I’m both shocked and happy to have
found this to be the case. There is practically no fire in my shoulders
in the days following my chest / back workouts. There used to be pain
that prevented me from sleeping and stopped me from training heavy in
the summer. This is all but gone now, thanks to 6-10 grams of fish oil
per day.
3) Great athletes embrace coaching, lifters tend to ignore it.
How someone responds to feedback plays the biggest role in the quality
of feedback that they get. The gifted 14 year old listens to all the
advice and coaching that he is given and he continues to improve, and
people continue to coach him. This isn’t surprising because people do
not like to waste their time. IF someone isn’t going to follow the
advice that is given to them, people learn very quickly to stop giving
it to them. Personally I begin to disengage from a person after the
first time they role their eyes and DON’T change their movement pattern –
they can role their eyes, call me a prick but so long as they change
their movement pattern I’ll keep coaching them.
When it comes to lifters most of them do not want to lift correctly.
They lift the weight and not the movement. I look away a lot when I’m at
the commercial gym because I don’t want to see someone hurt themselves
and feel responsible from helping them. I’ll offer advice to a young
lifter on the off-hand chance that they want to become better, but more
often than not they don’t want to hear it. This is too bad for them and
good news for Rachel because she’s going to be an athletic therapist and
will have a lot of people to work on.
4) Energetic coaching is more important than knowledgeable coaching
when it comes to working with young or inexperienced athletes. Young
people don’t not have the movement inventory or body awareness that
older people have because they have spend less time in their bodies
interacting with the earth. Most athletic movements are going to be new
to them and they are not likely to have the motor control to move their
bodies in the way that is required in order to be performed the movement
correctly. For this reason, advanced coaches are not going to be able
to use their knowledge to facilitate improvements within this
population. More importantly, given that it is frustrating to be bad at
something, particularly when a coach or another athlete does it with
ease, inexperienced athletes may find quitting an easier choice if they
do not find any enjoyment in an activity. An energetic coach can help
bridge the gap between a lack of experience and learning a new skill and
will often help the young person find joy in an otherwise unrewarding
experience.
5) Rotator cuff muscles are primarily fast twitch fibers
and should be trained in the 7-10 rep range with fast effort and slower
negative tempos. This one could have read – people should train their
rotator cuff muscles. I started doing internal and external rotation
exercises just after I started working at SST after the cause of my
horrific posture was pointed out. While I am still imbalanced in this
area, I’m catching up and standing taller than I ever have.
6) Steady state cardio promotes fat storage while
high intensity interval training creates more EPOC that will result in
greater fat loss over the long haul. I credit RPM with starting my brain
thinking about this one. The choreography is interval based with
exertion levels growing from comfortable to breathless. One of the
things I found once I stopped trying to keep my heart rate at 150 was
that I was more tired at the end of the workouts and couldn’t do so much
riding. I also noticed that there is only have a finite length of time
that I can get my heart rate above 160 and once this time is up I get
too fatigued trying to bring it up there again.
As this relates to fat loss: you need to workout very intensely to
promote fat loss, but you need to workout at various levels of intensity
to get the most fat loss because it requires the most amount of energy
to adapt to many different level of effort. Also, if you workout at just
one intensity, your body will quickly adapt to make it more and more
efficient to work at that level the next time. This means if you are
working out at a level that requires fat as fuel, the body will adapt to
store more fat to fuel the effort next time. If you keep it at a steady
state, your body will become so efficient at working at this level that
it will stop losing fat. Given that your activity level will not
change, it is unlikely that you will alter your diet to account for this
improved efficiency and will begin to eat a calorie surplus thus
promoting fat storage.
7) Spell check and proof read your resume a number
of times before you submit it. We initially passed on a trainer
candidate because of the typos on his resume. I looked over his resume a
week later and thought that maybe there was a good reason why the
mistakes were there. When we chatted it was obvious that there wasn’t a
good reason but that he was a good candidate. He did fantastic in his
interviews and we hired him. He is a gifted trainer with a wonderful
demeanor that allows him to connect with almost everyone he engages. I’m
glad I called him because he is a real asset to the team and a good
human being. But I almost didn’t take the chance because of something
that is very easy to avoid.