Random Thoughts

More just a build up of random thoughts that I jot down during my days................In a course recently, I had an excellent fellow who was very skilled at some of the majestic bodyweight training movements.  He was a brilliant student at discussing the differences in this type of bodyweight strength and how and if it applies to actually becoming physiologically stronger.What kind of adaptations do bodyweight strength training and externally loaded strength deliver?Are they different?  Are they the same?I clearly think they are different versions of strength because we see some amazing things done bodyweight, and those folks can not do similar total loads with a barbell.  I tend to think let's have exceeding levels of strength in all forms rather than argue which one is better.  Or we should decide which type of strength is best for the person's goals.  What carries over?But the more leveled discussion was that no matter what type of movement acquisition you wish to acquire, whether it be bodyweight strength, some other version of physiological strength demonstrated with -bells, or learning a particular technique or skill, the common ground is that for these acquisitions to be made, there is a range of technique that is required.  And that technique requires a range of joint positions to be achieved.  If that range and/or buffer zone beyond that range at the joint, some level of failure or inefficiency should be expected.I'd like to thank that student for being clear and understanding that registering this joint position, can the joint get into the right position to absorb and adapt to stress is what the FMS is used for.So it is a dilemma that the broad jump correlated with the 1st 10 of the 40 and acceleration is also a daunting movement to train repetitively.I read I think on StrengthCoach.com a simple solution to just space out the hurdles more in your 5-7 jump lines.  Nice idea.It's not bad luck when your players get hurt.You're not snake-bitten, not getting dealt a bad hand.Suggestively, there are implicit untrainables to open-loop contact sports, but even then, there are those that believe their markers can measure out the likelihoods of sport mastery and these "unpreventable" traumas.The fact of the matter, as I see it, is that it works like this.....1) Maybe the right people aren't listening, but maybe it's because you're not saying it correctly,2) maybe you don't know the right answers,3) maybe you're not asking the right questions, or4) maybe you're just so happy working in a bigtime sport making money where you can't make 30% in the real world, or5) maybe you just think it's okay to play your games on Thursdays.Discussing Canada Basketball to someone recently..............The biggest thing I think is that we don't really do anything so special because of us.  Ultimately, we are allowed to do it by the healthy business structure that the organization is built upon.There are people who take the fall if something goes south, and there are people who deliver so that doesn't happen.We all embody leadership.Youth Programs/Academy are built on 1) Talent Identification, 2) Cultivation of Assets, 3) Precise and Keen LTAD, and 4) Identification of the Special Abilities and Skills for your sport.There's something interestingly unique when a coach goes to different teams, runs different systems, different talent pools.There's something similar when you look at the likes of Pat Riley, Bill Parcells, Coach Cal, Coach Brown.  They all just win.  I'm sure there are many more.Good conversation with David Peters from Leaders in Performance a few weeks ago.When I first went to Leaders, I was like, okay, it is special to get invited and be a part of what you hear about, but I didn't really see how it impacted me.Well, was I wrong.  Running my own business, delegating resources in several other situations, and advocating for myself in front of decision makers, many pieces from the last 2 years really clicked for me.Investing in ourselves as mini-businesses in some way is something that has been invaluable to me.Looking back as well on the Indian Club course I took in the winter of 2010-11, it was one of the best courses I've taken in terms of how when I pick up a Club, I feel like I'm learning and understanding something about my shoulder(s) every time out.Speed, Agility, Quickness training is really just cardio.And when it's cardio, it's very hard to become deliberate practice.How a Head Coach wants to play in terms of style of play will affect how a High Performance Program is run.There is a physiological profile to different styles and tactics in all sports.Strength training is one of many options to buffer stress.  Force production is a secondary byproduct.If overtraining strength can make you ill, why can't intelligent strength training keep you from getting ill?Load, Strain, and Monotony are important words to standardize when communicating sport science.They should mean the same to everybody.How do Mulligan Mobilizations really work?I remember Clare Frank, who I owe so much to, showed how DNS can explain why Mulligan works.Neurodevelopment through the lifespan is a series of semi-reliable or widely-ranged inputs leading to a predictable and narrowly ranged series of responses.These and other manual therapies are inputs and yielding acute adaptations that allow for another series of other inputs and hopefully chronic adaptations.  Other than that, I'm not sure anything can be proven.Sleep and hydration are secondary measures.If they matter, it will come out in other primary measures.  To assume that everyone needs a certain amount of sleep or hydration is really false.I also recently became aware that over-hydrating as a safe-all measure also has drawbacks.Sleep and hydration are possible solutions and should be measured, but to base a program on these 2 factors does not hold favor in my mind.So you have training load and solid statements regarding monotony and strain.But how does this data get affected by joint stiffness, daily Readiness, age, nutrition, orthotics or other external aids, history of injury?  Basically I am suggesting inclusion criteria to validate the training load data.  It can and maybe even should be an endless process.What can you control?  And what can't you control will drive training just as much.Some notes from Fascial Manipulation Parts 1A and 1B......................It's interesting how there is a different view of fascia in America vs. Europe.In America, it is discussed a 1 whole thing under the skin.  However, in Europe it is discussed as a line in the middle of the fat layer.Or is this just one sides elitist view on the topic?Skin rolling or pinching the skin does not assess the deep fascia.They key to fascia is that it is a multi-layered substance with the ability to mesh or glide on its intra-layers.  Gliding is the desired quality.Is a retinacula any different from fascia?  Or is it just more of "it?"In some of the training options that are questionable or negligible, you never really see that coach or therapist suck at performing those methods.Just because something works for you doesn't mean it works for others.The substance that allows for fascial gliding is the ground substance/extracellular matrix.  Hyaluranic Acid plays a major role, as do glycosaminoglycans.When this does not happen, and the fascial layers reach instead of glide, mechanoreceptors are overstimulated, and threat is potentiated.YouTube videos showing fascia or something as "fuzz" only happens in embalmed bodies.It does not appear to be a useful visual or concept.The trunk and upper extremities regularly have more elastin than the lower extremities given less need to control load.  Collagen creates the stiffness.Maybe this is desirable if it does not lead to loss of joint mobility and specific and special technique.Fascia can 1) stabilize motion, 2) generate motion, and 3) transmit load.The saphenous vein travels through the superficial fascia of the medial gastroc.This is an amazing money area to treat for any kind of chronic lower extremity issue.  The few minutes max that it may take is well worth the potential to yield neurological and vascular effects, even if acute.Collagenous layers' ability to glide is affected by overuse, trauma, surgeries, sometimes of very old etiology.Everything matters until proven otherwise, even if it appears unrelated to the current complaints.Densification, which is perhaps the best way to report this obtuse measure of "feel" through palpation, can be proven in terms of thickness by MRI, movement by real-time ultrasound, and stiffness by elastostenography.All of these objective measure impact the neuromuscular system and can be reported qualitatively.A myofascial unit is a movement's motor units, joints, neurovascular bundle, and fascia required for execution.Treating them all is incumbent, and knowing what is efficient is perhaps even more important.Inventing new words to make things easier to understand is a brilliant expression of teaching and innovation.Making up new definitions to already used words to support a commercial model even after you have been told that assumed definitions were not accurate is not productive in bringing people together.It's such a shame because some of these methods are absolutely brilliant, yet less than premiere individuals get torn apart and confused by the terminology and are forced to "pick a side."A plank is obviously an expression of stability.In my mind, it is an intervention for motor skill acquisition of vertical locomotion and tension. Back to Fascial Manipulation........Decreased fascial gliding increases biomechanical cost and decreases efficiency.You can have a tissue inefficiency that has not been chronic enough to affect joint position.  This is when you see Neuro-Locked in the SFMA and a breathing drill like DNS works for what is tabbed a JMD. In looking at still vascularized tissue, muscle is red where there is a thin of fascia and then the muscle.It is white where there are 2 layers of fascia, then the epimysium, then the muscle.The thoracolumbar fascia is like a long flat tendon.  Treating it as such supports much of what learn from Andreo Spina and his Functional Range messages.In larger quantities of hyaluronic acid, the viscoelasticity of fascia decreases.  This is an overuse syndrome.Decrease in sliding sends nociceptive messages to the nervous systems.An increase in pH decreases fascia sliding/viscosity.  It is not the lactic acid itself that causes the stiffness adaptations, but rather a chronic response to pH being in the lower 7's.Overuse in a distant area can become a major shift in neurological adaptations of motor control.Fascia appears to be reactive to a sliding/gliding technique such as cross-friction or the FAT Tool.  Heat can break the chains in stiff fascia.To suggest that this is all that is needed I fear is incomplete.  We have just removed the barrier to creating further adaptations of tissue alignment, motor control, and fitness.In terms of heat, this breaks down hyaluronic acid.  This may be where the anti-ice nonsense comes from.However, icing to decrease peripheral fluid accumulation does not mean the inflammatory process ceases and heat is completely dissipated.The Fascial Manipulation points (CCs, CPs, CFs) all came before the current evaluation process.This suggests to me that down the road, the evaluation process can be even better.  I recall clearly in maybe 2010, Luigi Stecco using a much different evaluation process than we were taught recently by Antonio.It shows the ideals of never making an evaluation or even an entire system out of a brilliant technique or method.An evaluation should lead to a principle-based or need-based solution, of which there can be many successful methods.Fascial Manipuation also appears to greatly value the DN as treating the chief complain of pain is recommended against.It also values Regional Interdependence as the FP or FP portion of your SFMA will also include relevant old injuries or painful sites even if they are appear to reveal no current connection.Fascial Manipulation excites me so much because it is implicit that everything is connected. When you pick an exercise, you can do things: 1) learn a new skill, or 2) become faster, stronger, more fit.Ordering or suggesting imaging is not the first salvo in the "I'm getting surgery" process.It is to learn more information to make great informed decisions and to solidify expectations and deliverables and for/by whom.I'm not getting surgery anyway, so I don't care is not acceptable when I have to be able to say whether I think we're wasting time or not getting after the issue in a rehab format.I can tell you I think.I can't tell you everything I know because it's all context specific.But everything I know shapes how I think.  I believe I know what is behind Door #3 when we get there.The thing is though I am going to keep knowing more things, and that will always change the way I think.In training the big lifts, getting up to 85-90+%, getting pinned, and then building back up to the same or bigger lift seems to happen, and it's an inspiring training session.Maybe you just don't warm up enough.Maybe you just need to be introduced to your opponent and not take him so lightly next time around.Even the empty bar feels heavy-ish with 5 or 6 chains on.Describing the SFMA to PTs that think they don't like it, or what they do is better, is just an arduous sucky process.The SFMA, done correctly, can only make you better and asks you to change nothing of your previous evaluation or treatment.Asking a patient that complains of pain running but has no pain when you evaluate them to go out for a run so then they do have pain is absolute lunacy.Very simply, how do you know if it is fitness and subtle change in motor strategy or they just run wrong?I forgot about the effects of slapping, scratching, and velcro before a big lift.Does Seluyanov suggest to never go lactic in training so you don't destroy mitochondria, or is it just be aware of what competitions do with this in mind?Seluyanov does suggest that there is only peripheral influence to motor function.  He does not account for spinal or central mechanisms, be them facilatory or governing.If I understand this correctly, that's sour.The FMS can be a standardization of movement if you so choose.However, THE standard of movement is how you want it to be in what you believe is efficient and effective.  And for efficient and effective, you need joint positions.  The FMS, done correctly, will tell you if those joint positions exist and with what buffer zone of range.In just using well coached GPP exercises, symmetrical 2's will speak to all of the joint positions required.But of course this requires using the FMS correctly and doing the Deeper Screens and not making ridiculous claims.If explaining to a patient that a movement-based approach is geared towards a desirable terminal skill, how is that catastrophisizing? From Fascial Manipulation 1B..................Sports will lead to density from overuse at certain FM points.Maybe medial humerus will not be used often.Runner = horizontal planeCyclist = Sagittal planeMost links to treating fascia to change pain lie in the same cardinal plane.Choosing a second plane occurs after a quick result, and all the symptoms come back.The same could be said in decision-making of comparable DNs in the SFMA.Unpublished literature correlates the YoYo to the Omegawave 60s Jump Test.We will use the 60s Jump Test as I think we will get better compliance and compare to 10s Jump Test in terms of who can benefit from Type 1 hypertrophy or Type 2 oxidative work.I haven't seen anybody talk about the Keiser chop and lift power tests in a while.Good therapists can't or refuse to see the umbrella of the SFMA in terms of bucketing pain, mobility, motor skill acquisition, and fitness.Not so good therapist just use it totally wrong.When you have pain or some deep rehab situation, maybe the first step in running your system is to understand how or why they got there in the first place.Suggesting you can improve the FMS by practicing the tests is true.  But you missed point.Because if you actually do practice and improve the score, you probably had the joint positions anyway.The movements represent joint motions you may require for training.  To that end, the movements are just arbitrary, and you just went and practiced them.Ultimately, the 7 Screens are not arbitrary as they are representations of the neurodevelopmental process and exhibitions of key degrees of freedom that you will need to aggressive fitness and strength training.Instead of practicing the Screens, you could have been training because you had the joint motions. Coaching strategy: Demonstrate the full skill just to show it and set a baseline even if it's awful.Then you may have a good place to start in coaching. Back to Fascial Manipulation 1B.................Principles of verifying densification1. Contraction2. Stretch3. CompressionIn my opinion, the Center of Perception may be the most important piece to the Fascial Manipulation model.Antonio said they are a waste of time.I find this amazing, but this statement has to be based off the success he sees in using the treatment model.  I've found the treatment model to be amazing thus far as well, but I want the principles down first.  And if this model was based on these Centers of Perceptions as referral points, I want to build a model off those points where other techniques can challenge those referrals and perceptions.You need to make errors in practice, so you can reorganize and learn.There needs to be a level of randomness to practice to allow this to happen.This thought process is probably most effective in more terminal skills and less in painful situations.Practice makes perfect has actually been proven to be false since the early 70s.But perfect practice doesn't make perfect either because no 2 movement exhibitions are the same.  It is a very fine line dancing on venturing away from biomechanics but not teasing injury mechanisms.These solutions begin with load and plane of motion.Many speak of great success with the Javorek Complex for a number of reasons.One reason not often mentioned is the randomness of learning of very similar movements.Random practice yields less cognitive decision-making in reproducing those motions in other sports.Can you coach without coaching?I work hard at keeping my mouth shut.Fascial Manipulation is clearly a Choose Your Own Adventure in its commercial evaluation process.  There is no systematic approach to choosing areas for Movement Verification or Palpation.  When there is no systematic approach, you are prone to miss things.Performing the SFMA before the FM model can give you some kind of guidance of distal contribution rather than just not choosing one.By definition overuse is doing something a lot.Of course joint competency and directional tissue resiliency are factors, but if they were primary factors, it would be trauma, not overuse.Local aerobic adaptations are the answers.Except you probably can't develop these adaptations without joint competency.I would not consider tension-based directional tissue resiliency for physiological adaptations, particularly oxidative.  Triplanar loaded movement is more viable.I find it hard to warmup for DB Bench Press.It seems like knee issues always track back to the pelvis. Why do you think the pain won't come back when returning to same skills, intensities, loads, volumes, durations?If you insist on training external and internal rotation for whatever reason, why are they better choices than Diagonal 1 and Diagonal 2 patterns?Interesting % standards from Leo Totten...Power Clean should be 80% of Full CleanFull Snatch is 80% of Full CleanClean and Jerk 80% of Front SquatIf these are way off, it seems like a fair guide on where to work.T=R is not injury prevention.It's principles of a system where skill sets are applied by the right practitioner working in unison to restore and improve ability to perform.Training by myself with a long time on the clock, which is absurdly rare for me, reminds me that training with a crew gets you rest.