Random Thoughts

Obviously it's been a while since I've put together a post like this, but that seems to be the norm for when I can nail down enough time to get it all into type.  I think I've been getting quick thoughts onto Twitter more than previously this year.  I think we actually go back to April when I started this particular list.During my time in the NBA, I was quite guilty of setting some arbitrary number of minutes played in where a player would have to do extra cardio work.  Of course that magic number was 20 minutes that a lot of folks still use.  If we think this through, why 20 minutes?  What is the difference between 16:44 of minutes of significant profile of intensity vs. 23:34 of much less intensity.The question I think we should be asking are does anybody need to do something based on what they did or didn't do in the game in the first place.  Maybe everybody should do something?  Does everybody do the same thing?  All the time?  How quickly can we have data like sRPE or SportVu to help inform decisions? How does travel impact active recovery time available after a game?Ultimately, I struggle with the blanket suggestions across performance and rehab that lend to something is better than nothing.  It's not.Most people I've met recently that have gone through some extended version of Smolov have been really banged up.I wonder if running the reps and intensities as directed but changing the bars day-to-day would make a difference in the end result but also daily measures of how perhaps anticipation of a different activity can be exploited.Injury mechanisms are undeniable.  Avoiding these positions through competency, motor strategy and strength are good ideas.They do not seem to always work in as much as these ideas are logically and fairly rudimentary to implement, yet we still have injuries.Can we also intelligently dose resilient tissue changes in the directions of these known injury mechanisms?  Yes.How about we do both?I wonder how many folks realize that the original Bill Starr 5x5 was intended to be performed in a circuit fashion.When I ask if you can pinch grip your programming, can you take the main goal(s) of the session and look very myopically at it, and then if asked, you can expand the binocular view of adding complementary approaches that potentiate the lift, add to the individual training session, or the mesocycle or block of training.I think we should be able to change the zoom view, if you will, of any kind of programming.The 4x4 Matrix gives context to Lateralizations and Regressions.What is the final movement we want proficiency, and where can we use other drill to yield mobility, motor skill, or fitness?In order to train and condition proprioceptors, there probably has to be movement and honor to the rules of motor skill acquisition.Movement Health = SFMAMovement Competency = FMSMovement Symmetry = Y-BalanceMovement Control = Motor control via Y-BalancePostural Control = Integrity via Loaded CarryExplosive Control = Power via JumpingImpact Control = Efficiency via Repetitive Airborne EffortsI've found myself saying sometimes that I've failed enough by now to have a good idea on how to do <something.>I need to stop staying that, but I would like the chance to prove if I'm correct.When we look to anthropometry to guide training efficiency, I think there is more to it than long or tall legs should DL and shorter legs should squat.The proportion of femur to tibia lengths are much more important.  One can be very short or tall overall but have very different femur lengths.Further to anatomy and anthropometry, they don't impact total performance.They impact how making training and rehab choices and how unique or focal are the needs to recover.I wonder if there is enough strongman equipment in terms of able to vary loads to truly train athletic development.  I can see men using female loads to train for carryover to other sports with form that has better mechanics and integrity.Good strongman training and competition doesn't always have an efficient cost to training mechanically, but I don't discount it.  Stuff's just too heavy to be efficient.I've never come across someone with a huge bench press that was an overall weak person.Neither have you.In motor skill acquisition, external stimulus drives the car, but if there is not context of internal coding/recognition, I'm not sure it much matters.Efficient clockwork of nerve conduction, fascial qualities, central and peripheral interplay can be just as important as the cues and external inputs we may use in training and rehab.Environment drives motor strategy, but is it internal environment or external environment?Learning is driven by experience, integration, and choices of a mistake.Models speaking out against negative feedback are very hypocritical.Motivated or truly athletic individuals will follow what they perceive the instructions are. Where these instructions come from or how they are perceived is all up for debate. How that debate is won or lost is how we adapt.Not every adaptation is desirable.And not every desirable adaptation comes without a cost.Sleep is when motor skill acquisition goes from adjustment to adaptation.If you can't control sleep, I don't know that motor skill acquisition is a great idea that day. Instead getting after a fitness or pain quality passively is better suited to that day.Are there ECG commonalities with certain types of sleep? Maybe this is one of the mysteries of Omegawave. Maybe it is answered by sleep monitoring that tell us HRV before waking as well as measuring Omegawave as close to waking as possible.There is a role for training aids for sport skills.  I think they can be useful AFTER a skill has met a certain level of satisfaction in terms of quality.  And regardless of the sense the training aid makes, it can't change the motion to the point where it worsens.  This goes for any fitness, motor, or mobility drills regardless of how much "sense" it makes.Just because something is supposed to do something or makes sense doesn't mean it happens.  This is the bane of training aids.As we create variation without change with the goal of furthering resistance to unique variables during a movement skill, be wary of fitness.  Motor skill acquisition neurology is not the same as we approach threshold.If you are so inefficient at the variation, it may not be very wise for motor skill, but it would be very wise for fitness..........as long as it doesn't make your skill worse.Welcome to the dance of coaching.I used to think availability for sport was far more important than performance.I think I was wrong.  The above statement can not be made without cost analysis of everything else involved including social whims.If we make educated and intelligent decision knowing the risk-rewards, it's hard to say something is "wrong."When you have the right questions, you are better set up to get good information and thusly good decisions.You have to ask the right questions, which becomes easier when you ask the wrong ones and admit mistakes.When you can't bring up your weaknesses, what do you do?I suggest keep getting better at what you do well and let the chips fall.Faking getting better at weaknesses just doesn't turn out well.  Best thing that happens is you think mediocre is really good.If clients or patients don't give you a chance to do what you think is best, then go to 4th and 12 and just punt.  They're not even giving you a chance to help them.When I have said this before, some have responded to ask if that is giving up on someone.  You could say it is, but if they are setting you up to fail, how will it look at the end when they go around as a walking billboard for your "best" work.Physical training is not the opportunity to show your mettle..I'd prefer what you can do to better show your mettle another day when it matters.You can only go as hard as possible in a technique when you totally know what you're doing.Maybe that extends to not thinking about what you're doing or of there is any thought of passing or failing.Non-physical competitions still yields physiological and allostatic stress.There are expectations of benefits like building camaraderie, teamwork, practiced leadership........and also unused catecholamines.Training with fear as a stimulus can work, but it appears it greatly diminishes cognitive awareness and decision-making.  Perhaps it is better to be part of physical time trials that are more closed loop.It's an interesting sports ethics discussion as to where individual player wellness stands among an approach that says do what's best for the team in-season and what's best of the player off-season.I think in developing the athlete, the latter approach is more in context.Maybe the training aids that I mentioned before work for some people by having them focus on something other than the skill. This would be quite the essence of the external focus favor.Skill is markedly decreased as there is more focus to the skill, especially when the skill is often executed effortlessly, both physically and mentally.I believe this fact of motor skill adds a different context to reflexive stability as well as mental mobility, which I would describe as a large bandwidth for not having to think and rethink to integrate non-physical stressors.Given the glute medius' pennation, it can't be powerful or a great mover of the hip.It is designed for absorbing force, hence its large proportion of Type I fibers.Yet, you still insist on training in as a phasic muscle with silly exercises that barely burn calories.Machines vs. Free Weights is actually something I think about a lot recently.Marty Gallagher's brilliance in Purposeful Primitive suggests that training with machines is at best 33% effective.  This is because a machine picks up stability in 2 out of the 3 planes, so it can only be 1/3 as effective.However, the brilliance of Eric Oetter suggests that while motor function in using muscles developed using machines is in question, the organelles have to get into the muscles somehow.  It's an interesting thought and one that I have not forgotten for some time.The organelles have to get in there somehow............yes, yes, they do.The 5 senses are the stimulus for movement.What makes no sense for athletic development usually works pretty well for weight loss.This is commentary on Concurrent HIIT programming.  It has a role in athletic development for some athletes at some point, but it's hands down the best way to lost weight.It is interesting watching midfoot creasing in the guys' sneakers when literally just walking through plays on the court.OW and FMS are so polarizing because people are reading linear statements. They advise to the cost of doing business. You don't always get what you expect.Many years ago, Travis Mash talked about training Olympic Lifts with bands.I wonder how useful this is for a non-Olympic Lifter.When you pull in your belly button, really, honestly, why do you do it?While providing not exactly all linear statements, the research on hyperthermia and tendon health probably suggests we should be "heat people up" before true mobility training.Things I'd like to get better at using and using more in general.....Vertimax, Lateral Squats particularly all around oxidatively, CoreX, DNS exercises, Bosch exercisesCould exercise be more dichotomous than DNS vs. Bosch?  And they'll both say the other is useless.One of the more interesting monitoring data we consistently found the last 2 years was sRPE in a game vs. practice.12 minutes on the court could yield an RPE sometimes double than that of a 2 hour practice.Subjectively, this would support psychological intervention, but how do you quantify this to narrow interventions?In 2009, I talked about understanding the Core had to do with the gyroscopes of the cranium on the Axis and the pelvis/sacrum on L5.I still believe this, and if I had to explain it, I'd do it with the same motions I did in my first DVD.Sweating and wakefulness during sleep = sympathetic dominance.Treat that profile with a late night meal with ideally a long-lasting protein = parasympathetic.Makes sense, no?Accupuncture first to get him to sleep.  Protein to keep him asleep.This is what it's like to surround yourself with people smarter than you in a real performance team.Exercise Efficiency Index = Force Production / Joint LoadIt's just a ratio and a new name we don't need to describe intelligent training.But I made it up.I think joint mobility is more important than core strength, particularly when the intended motion is not supported by the excursion available at the joint.It's always mobility before stability.How about a training block using only these exercises?Hula hoopSingle Leg Stance Ball Toss, flat surface-Airex-flat of Bosu for 100+ reps3D Locomotion, MatrixTricep ExtensionsPull-upsPlanks, PushupsMonkey BarsToe drillsCrawlingSomersaultsCartwheelsGHRReverse HyperDouble KB SnatchHanging AbsAside from there being no legitimate way to measure, define, or quantify words like feel and rhythm, I think they are overall BS terms in skill development.Since the beginning of time, FG %age and FT %age have not gone up.  I can eye ball the data real quick and say its gone down, but I haven't done the calculations.And it's not because of 3pt FG %age because that appears to have gone up.So tell me more about shooting for hours to get your feel and rhythm?  How does that work now?Justifying "getting shots up" or any sport skill practice with feel and rhythm really means, "Yeah, I'd just rather play my sport than train other qualities that I don't enjoy as much."If you have a mobility problem, you're going to have a stability problem if the movements of your training or sport are not Lateralized or Regressed.In other words, the biggest stability problem is bad coaching.RPE is probably a better measure of load when lifting for HIIT than HR.Some, probably fair, portion of HR increase during lifting is not from any desirably adaptable process.I need to spend more time with Boo Schexnayder to learn how to effectively put together a Realization phase or have fun with a Park Bench approach with advanced general pop folks.In-Place Jumps - easy for conditioning; harder/advanced to establish initial volumes (many options, less overuse) watch for breakdownShort Bounds - technical demands [horizontal and vertical] 5 contactsExtended Bounds - sustaining force production (power endurance)Depth Jumps - High end elastic strength developmentIt's not Westside, but changing out the Maximal Effort Method for the Stato-Dynamic Method 2-0-2-0 is something I'm looking forward to see results.A great big lift has as few joints moving as possible.Changing shape of tissue stimulating some kind of electrical response, mechanotransduction, simply makes a lot of things happen.