I got an email from Pete Monchek today.
Pete’s a distance client as is his daughter Maia.
He wanted to tell me that Maia was just named to the First Team All-State Softball Team in California.
Just to let you know how good she really is…on the season, Maia lead the team offesively in almost every statistical category with a .550 batting average, 55 hits, including 13 doubles, 5 triples, and 3 homers. She drove in 45 runs and scored 42 herself.
She’s going to be attending my alma mater, Purdue University, on a softball scholarship proving that she’s also a smart one (she has a 3.9 GPA as well).
Pete sent me the email at 11 PM California time. He sent it because Maia was busy. She was finishing her workout.
What are you willing to do to succeed?
It’s interesting how some athletes are put down for relying on their obvious talent. Those who are critical of others successes never see the hours of work that many athletes put in just to make it look easy.
Maybe the criticism gives people an excuse. The excuse not to do the hard work necessary to succeed.
You too can be successful. Just quit making excuses. Stop comparing yourself to others. Take responsibility for where you are now and do the work to get you to where you want to be.
Bill
Yesterday’s training:
60 min of The Dark Knight at 131 bpm average
Hip mobility
If you’re having anterolateral ankle pressure or pain with dorsiflexion, give this mobilization a try. We’ve used this a lot in the last week at IFAST and have seen some outstanding results.
It was a good day at the gym today. Everyone that came in was feeling good and putting out a great effort. I even got a session in at IFAST.
I’ve been working on some foundational things like developing my cardiac system and my ability to produce energy locally in the muscles as well as addressing some mobility issues in my hips. This is the kind of work that really isn’t much fun, but it will set me up for the more intensive training to come later. It screws with your head a bit because, as you’ll see some of this programming is easy from an effort standpoint, but it can challenge your mental toughness.
Sled drags warm-up
followed with lower body mobility
Subjective readiness: 7/10
forgot my heart rate monitor
Safety squat bar (SSB) step-ups to just >=90 degrees
95 x 6, 135 x 3 x 6
SSB Squat to box just below parallel
225 x 6, 275 x 6, 305 x 6
SSB Tempo squats
135 x 30 sec x 3 on 60 sec rest
SSB deep quad dominant split squat
135 x 2 x 5
Sub jective level of effort 7/10
3 hours later 30 min of LISS aerobic work at 120 bpm. This is to ultimately improve recovery and I’ll be doing it more frequently. Intensity is so low that it won’t impact any other aspect of programming, but I’m expecting to see some improvement in sleep as I adapt. It is horribly boring, so I watched a bit of Ironman to occupy my brain.
All in all, not a bad session. Still felt challenged from an energy standpoint which brought my level of effort down to a 7/10. Nothing was to failure and I did’t really have any hip pain during training. It did stiffen up a bit after cooling off a bit.
Subjective readiness
Subjective readiness is a measure of how ready I feel for training after warming-up. It will vary depending on sleep patterns, stress (mental and physical), nutrition, state of recovery, etc. It’s a good measure to allow you to make programming changes on the fly. For instance, if you normally get 7 hours of sleep and wake at 6am, but last night you got 5 hours and woke at 5am, you may not feel as good and not as ready as you should be for an intensive training session. If you still rate your readiness at a lower than normal level (it varies depending on the person), you can effectively adjust your training for that day to prevent excessive loading that may slow or even halt progress.
I do recommend that you warm-up first as a little activity may actually improve your rating and level of readiness. I’d also track this measure before every training session to allow you to establish your own typical trends as to how your react to certain intensities and loads. I tend to use <5/10 as a cut-off for continuing with a regular session or just doing some light recovery work.
Ankle mobilization
A lot of coaches will use an active mobilization to improve ankle dorsiflexion as part of their preparation for training. I’ve had a bit of issue myself in my left ankle, but using Mulligan’s mobilization with movement techniques help quite a bit. Problem is that it’s damn awkward to try to mobilize your own ankle when a skilled practitioner is not around.
I was messing with a technique that I’ve recently started using on myself with a couple clients this morning. They had some rather significant improvements and were pretty pleased with the result. It was also quite easy for them to pick up the technique. I have no idea if anyone else has used this method before, so I’m going to create a video and pass it around to some people and have them test drive it themselves. If it goes well, I’ll try to post it for all to use themselves.
Have a great Independence Day!
Bill
If you’ve read through some of the blog posts here, you’re probably aware that I believe the impact of fatigue to be a large component of sports-related injuries.
Fatigue has been shown to alter proprioception, muscle activation patterns, stability, etc. This only reinforces the importance of effective training programs for athletes based on their specific needs.
I came across this article at mmajunkie.com today that discusses the same subject and thought you’d like to take a peek at it.
Rant warning…
Back in the days before big screen TV’s and internet when I played football in high school, we were allowed to have supervised summer conditioning programs but no organized practice until two weeks before the season started.
Now the programs have absorbed the entire summer of our fall sport athletes by having organized practices and conditioning sessions. Sure, the programs may be offered as voluntary, but you and I both know that “voluntary” means “manditory if you want to play this year.” Now you have to make the 7-on-7 team just to get noticed by the coach.
Two things are really bugging me…
One, from this day forward football players, your summers will never be as fun and relaxing as they should be. Now don’t get me wrong. I loved playing football. I love preparing to play football. But I also loved having down time from school and formal schedules. (note to parents who think your kids need to be in school year round…you’re all idiots. It won’t make your kid any more intelligent. The guys that sent other guys to the Moon and back got their summers off when they were in high school.)
Two, having seen some of the conditioning programs from the local high schools, it’s clear that most sports team coaches know very little about preparing their athletes to perform when they need to perform. Nothing like getting beaten up and exhausted before the season even starts.
I predict a record injury rate this season.
I hope I’m wrong.
Bill
What at weekend!
I’m still a little tired. I was almost in a constant state of activity.
First, we had the big launch of the new Faster Fat Loss Zone. It’s now part of the Naked Nutrition Network. To celebrate we’re giving away a ton of free stuff including presentation, workouts, interviews and more. You can check it out Here.
Saturday morning was a full house at Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training. By mid afternoon I was deep into shooting video for a brand new project from Eric Cressey, Mike Robertson, and myself. This is going to be huge. I can’t give much away at this point, but if you thought Inside-Out was an essential element in your program, this next project will blow you away.
Saturday ended with a visti to Fogo de Chao. It’s truly a meat eater’s dream. Apparently they do have a salad bar, but I don’t think I even looked at it. If you ever get a chance to try this place, I recommend you wear pants with an elastic waist.
Personal note…
My own training has sucked for the last couple months due to speaking engagements (Thanks again to Sean Armstead/NSCA and Perform Better) and preparing for this past weekends video shoot. I will be making a monster comeback starting this week and will be working on reestablishing my foundational fitness.
I’m thinking I may post my workouts to gain some accountability. Thoughts?
Have a great week.
Bill
