Recently I was reading through the daily entries of blogs I follow and was reminded of a recommendation that's always bugged me..."don't add strength to dysfunction." This is a statement often used by corrective exercise specialists and therapists to justify having athletes fix asymmetries and movement dysfunctions before doing significant strength work. The thought process behind it is logica [...]

Over the past couple years I've run in to a handful of advocates of corrective exercises. This is a little bit of a generalization, but most seemed pre-occupied by correcting something rather than training the qualities really necessary to perform. The irony, is that if they just trained appropriately they could kill two birds with one stone (train & correct). There are a couple of problems with [...]

Inigo Mujika posted about the Power Band Bracelets a few months ago and I left it alone, but now this is getting out of hand. Most will laugh off the gimmicks and say what is the big deal. The real issue is not that the power band bracelets are bogus or that the Phiten Necklaces didn't' help the Red Sox in September, it's that we have problems even in our profession We all have been fooled by r [...]

You can't do this or you must do that. Don't listen to absolutes. I was appalled when I read one prominent consultant share his opinion that swimmers should not do olympic lifts like it was gospel. His evidence was "it was documented the power clean caused the back problem". Well my documentation shares a boatload of olympic gold medalists and world records by those who have used bars and bump [...]

We are not training our torso we are doing anti-extension stability work for our core! It's not a lunge or squat exercise it's anti-collapsing training (can't take credit for that joke). I do think it's import to classify things in detail to better see relationships, but rebranding things to the point it's as exciting as the release of a Harry Potter book is a little over the top. When I was [...]

I was told to read Fooled by Randomness, a great book by the way, from a member of EliteTrack. It was a quick read and very enlightening how we confuse cause and effect and casual connections, often just noise or random coincidence. Often we believe that a piece of equipment, workout method, training system, and even a coach is responsible for the results we are seeing. Don't be fooled. The key [...]

The underlying theme with many training practices in the "fitness industry" is very similar to McDonald's. Unskilled labor mass producing inferior burgers but billions and billions "served". It doesn't matter if it's a morning bootcamp with pink kettlebells, a speed camp with cool underarmour shirts similar to the free toy in a happy meal, or the elite athlete endorsing the magical bracelet [...]

I know many of you are seeking the edge in training. For many years I was doing the same. I was searching for secrets, the latest and the greatest, something special, that one or two percent that would make the difference. The more I searched the more elusive it became. Finally I realized I had the answer right in front of me, I could not see the forest for the trees. I had seen it time and again [...]

With efforts to be like Edward Tufte when sharing data, I am reading a few books on data visualization. No matter how much reading one does or talking to coaches, experience is rate limited to the system you use, repeated over time. The spider graph of improvement comes from some exchanges with a smart "kid" named Carson Boddicker. At a tender age of 20 I am interested to see what he does over t [...]

Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that every time I hear a speaker talk about a tool in the toolbox, I don't see good work from their hands and eyes when I visit. I am not saying the TRX (suspension training) is not a good tool but when I see price tags of $189.99 I am worried about the HS teams and PE departments that don't have such a budget. When I look at old manuals and see minimalist i [...]