Now that efforts are placed into coaching and training breathing and even defecation, are we really doing a better job? What concerned me after Tom Myers was showing the german pelvic floor I was then asking the same question every time I go to a seminar of what to do to enhance my training program in the future. Some smart people are blogging about 3 degrees of axial rotation here, this facial connection there, and this cool book is what they are reading before spewing out their personal spin. All Lies, as visiting will see no real functional difference. The truth is what is constant? So far Gravity, Time, Rules, and the laws of nature. When one person reviewed my own workouts didn’t see exercises and sets and reps with breathing exercises I responded that I had the assessment done by a very good therapist and addressed this with an eval and found no problems.I also have time limits and can’t do toe mobility and neck training for this athlete one on one because of time restraints, energy, and of course expertise as I am not a rehabilitation professional. My view was that we have too many robot coaches that what to break down the body and build it up artificially, and after watching one athlete look like C3P0 warming up before the combines I realize that training is working with people, not functional anatomy books. If I am an athlete, and every time I see my coach and he is pointing out dysfunction and placing efforts too much on correcting things, I am going to loose my natural rhythm and tighten up. No wonder people pull up in the combine with hamstring pulls. One athlete who is doing some summer meets was training on his own, and in time has improved by simply getting away from helicopter coaches. Breathing is not separate but integrated within the program. See what you can do without artificial means and see if you can encourage good breathing by circuits designed to hit a work capacity threshold.
One personal trainer after performbetter stopped by and said hello after the Aaron Brooks presentation. After a quick talk another personal trainer asked for what I would do in the future and I responded we have an obesity crisis, not lack of balance causing car accidents (airex pad DVDs anyone?) or entire waves of people pulling hamstrings and blowing up their spines while walking at malls. Corrective exercise doesn’t fix diabetes. Sure better body alignment helps to train the body so it can be harder but what I learned working with some people that needed weight loss that creativity is key to challenge the body without hurting them. The same can be said with one coach who observed Z-Health being done 50% of the 1 hour session. A year later the athlete is still slow, weak, fat and now frustration. Z-health is complimentary and I have seen some great things from low velocity precise mobility, but nobody following Z-health to a T is going to create freaks. I think the take home here is about integrating, not artificially isolating the tiny things that are likely to be caused by tinkering too much.