Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Review of Z-Health S-Phase DVD: The Complete Athlete Volume 1
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As a follow up to an overview of R-Phase and I-Phase, the following is a review of Z-Health's excellent new double DVD set, S-Phase: the Complete Athlete Vol. 1 (CAV1 hereafter). It is hard to think of or lay hands on another video that presents training for athletic performance in such a thorough, repeatable and effective way.
CAV1 presents a suite of skills skills that support key components of athletic performance training:
The vid takes each of these topics and presents them in terms of specific drills and drill progressions. In other words, it takes the Z-Health philosophy that athletic movement is a skill, and thus is teachable, and so presents the drills to achieve that skill. Indeed, a unique and commanding features of this package is exactly the way it has disected these athletic movements into skill sets in the first place, and then breaks them down further into trainable, drillable chunks, with these drills. Critically, the drills take the skills learned in R & I phases and put them in applied motion - motion that takes into account the stops, starts and tumbles of real world movement.
If you accept the Z-Health position that everyone who moves is an athlete, then CAV1 is the essential complement to the R-Phase and i-Phase progressions. Highly recommended.
The following review presents an overview of the S-Phase approach to atheltic movement informing CAV1, and then goes over the topics covered in the DVDs.
CAV1 Overview:
Athletic Movement as Physical and Visual Skills
Running fast, catching or throwing a ball, leaping high (to say nothing of remembering plays) - these are all moves that are usually associated with athletic endeavor. Any one of these moves may have been used by us to self-select out of sports: perceived to be too slow for track, or simply hating ball sports. For those of us of the Kettlebell persuasion, lifting heavy stuff may be about as sophisticated as our athletic experience takes us: no running; no balls.
It turns out that catching a ball - the visual accuity required to do this - is a teachable skill in more cases than not. And in more cases than not, an aversion to ball catching has been visually related. S-phase is packed with visual drills to help build the skills to improve visual accuity.
Likewise speed, co-ordination of upper and lower body in motion (running one way while looking another to catch a ball for instance), recovery from a fall to get up and going again are all teachable skills.
Speed as Skill is personally a Big Deal to me. I have never thought of myself as a fast person - i ran x-country in grad school. Go for distance. I learned a lot about VO2max, stamina, fartlek and tempo runs, but nothing about either going fast or blending that speed with visual work to achieve the S-Phase goal of "quickness." Is the best player, you'll hear Z-Health founder Eric Cobb, DC, ask at any Z-Health certification, either the fastest on the track or the strongest in the gym? More often than not, it's the person who can read the changes on the field, respond and be at the right place at the right time. Great visual skills with speed skills.
After learning the skills on this DVD and practicing with them more, i'm pretty confident that a wee gal like myself would be able to start taking bets at the local pub on being able to beat anyone else off the line and in the first 10 meters. Not kidding.
Likewise, using drills from the DVD i've had the pleasure to work with another Z-Health trainer who has been traditionally freaked out by an incoming ball. Within the course of a session with the S-Phase Letter ball concept, she was catching with ease, confidence, reduced threat, and ambidexterously. It was awesome to see this skill build and fear of the ball disappear and simply enjoyment in the fun of catching and letter calling increase.
These results may seem pretty tame if one is not a sports player - after all, when does one need speed in the realm of the desk jockey? Well, we're not always at a desk; we move in the real world. And sometimes, being able to respond and move quickly can mean the difference between being in an accident or able to respond to one. That may seem extreme, but life is motion. Better quality of motion control on all levels translates into better quality of life.
DVD Topics Covered: Starting with Efficiency.
Many gaps in teachable althletic techniques are addressed by Z-Health S-Phase. Now while not all of us are on sports teams where making the fastes 90 degree change in position to follow an opponent is necessary, having skills for quickness and efficiency in movement are all Good Things for coping with the world in which we do move and act. Learning Efficient movement is therefore optimal for stronger, less taxing, more beneficial action. To that end the DVD begins with Bone Rhythm.
o Bone Rythm & Athletic Ready Stance
The concept of bone ryhthm is introduced in the R-phase certification on its last day. Now, fabulously, it's detailed in the S-Phase video. Awesome. This set of drills alone is worth the purchase of the DVD is will benefit your workouts that much. I've referenced the technique elsewhere and am delighted there's such a clear reference now available. Guaranteed, adding this refinement to pulls or presses, for instance, will improve the speed and power of the lift (and hence likely enable increased load, too).
Bone rhythm effectively means that one gets the top and bottom of a prime mover bone move at the same speed in an action. In a push up, we see this when the shoulder and the elbow finish the move together - both in the press up and in the descent. This move tune alone is worth the price of admission. In the DVD both upper and lower body drills are taught, as well as how to cue another person to get the ryhthm.
The technique is refined by pulling in some basic work from I-Phase called Compass Lunge Position drills which practice lunge /take off angles and feet positions.
These drills will recur in speed work plyo drills, too.
The application of bone rhythm is also presented as part of learning and refining what is often called the Universal Athletic Position or here, the static or dynamic Athletic Ready Stance.
Learning how to get into Athletic Ready using good bone rhythm awareness means the difference between achieving a super solid position that's also ready to move, and a position that is unbalanced, easily able to topple and suboptimal for going from ready to move to gone.
Because of the importance of the Athletic Ready position for just about any field movement, CAV1 presents both static and dynamic versions of athletic ready position, along with a suite of variations.
o Different Plyometrics 1: Jump Landing
With athletic ready stance firmly drilled, CAV1 takes bone rhythm vertical. In many sports jumping up (and coming back down) are key attributes of required movement. Blocking a volleyball coming over the net; leaping into a passing shot; jumping over another player about to be tagged out, or simply jumping very high to clear an obstacle.
Without going into the explanation of how these movements represent "plyometric training" (see "elastic" at top of post on plastic and elastic for more) suffice it to say that this S-Phase approach to plyo is as distinct as its approach to joint mobility. Imagine simply rising up on your toes from athletic ready, and coming down into athletic ready. Doesn't sound like a depth jump, does it? doesn't sound very violent to one's joints. And yet such a simple drill has huge benefit towards movement speed. And as with R-Phase, the reason is the neural pathways triggered by optimizing joints involved in generating the action.
o Visual Acuity
We are visual creatures. We determine where we are in space, primarily by vision, then by balance (vestibular), then by proprioception. Our ability to use our peripheral vision effectively to cue awareness of activity, for instance, and then rapidly shift focus where necessary is again, a necessary and trainable skill. Much perceived speed actually comes from visual quickness: the ability to catch, interpret and respond to visual cues.
Because S-Phase teaches both visual and speed drills, it also covers a range of acuites in Vision that are often overlooked in sports training. As Cobb notes at the I-Phase Certification, apparently over 50% of the American Olympic team in Beijing had not had even a vision test, never mind assessments for "sports vision." We may think vision is just near and far sigthedness, but it's not. It, too, is skills based and can have movement dysfunction just like other muscle based motion. The drills provided in the DVD help strengthen and improve that visual acuity for sports, for life, reducing perceived threat, improving performance.
CAV1 has significantly more visual drills than either Neural Warm Up I. or Neural Warm Up II. These drills are designed to work each of the 6 core muscles operating on the eyes. One of my favorites is Letter Ball Catching - 1 of many visual drills.
This drill alone is another "worth the price of the DVD" for practicing responsive vision - while training and strengthening the eye's muscles as well as prepping to respond to visual cues. Great package. Visual response work will mean faster responsiveness overall. Indeed, the drill is demonstrated as a great way to combine both movement and visual drill work.
o Prepping for Speed.
A key concept throughout Z-Health is that any of the R and I phase drills have best effect when practiced over time at a variety of speeds. Z-Health has 4 described speeds, the last and fastest of which is Sports Speed. CAV1 takes the time to go over key I-Phase drills to demonstrate best practice for taking these movements to the two extremes in speed: sports speed and super slow speed.
In case you're wondering why I-Phase rather than R-Phase drills here, I-Phase are advanced "under load" or "alternate position" versions of R-Phase drills. I-Phase enables the athlete who has personally owned the R-Phase movements to explore more athletic positions. These shifts are described more fully in this review of I-Phase.
The challenge of the sport-speed I-Phase drills is largely control and work against fatigue. Quality of movement *must* remain high or efficiency drops; injury is associated often with poor form. Since there is a lot of speed work to come in this DVD set, practicing sport-speed I-Phase is a safe and effective way to prepare the body to move efficiently in motion rather than in static loaded positions.
Likewise, though, super slow speed means exploring each aspect of a movement drill with specific attention and control. That control of movement to a fine level is a key part of athletic movement control - including getting up to full speed.
o Upper body for Speed - and Deceleration.
From S-Phase, one of the key takeaways is that speed is a tremendous demonstration of upper and lower body coordination. Combine speed with sports field work, and vision also comes into play, as well as some unusualy physical positions - running while twisted back looking up to catch a ball being thrown towards one; dashing from one side of the court to the other to hit a low ball with a back hand while decelerating. And so on. CAV1 accordingly breaks speed training initially into upper body work and lower body work, which means performance improving drills.
In the upper body section, both arm drills for speed and plyo work for deceleration (yup that's Different Plyo 2, and it means landing from a deliberate dive to grab or block a ball to a less deliberate fall and being able to use ones arms effectively for getting down with the best movement efficiency possible, taking the joint concepts from jump landing training and bone rhythm and putting them together in a solid application for safety and speed).
Not something most of us think about outside learning say a judo roll in a martial arts context, but once you see the motion, you start to see it everywhere. And it becomes equally pervasive why training for the move is going to have way better luck than not practicing for it.
Thus endeth DVD 1.
o Getting Going and Staying Gone
CAV1's DVD 2 is about speed: starting, changing directions, getting the arms involved and moving optimally to continue speed once you get going. It's especially combining these fast dead starts with the skills for getting up to speed and then maintaining speed that lead to those immenent, lucrative anticipated bar bets. Speed, really, is hugely a skill. After practicing and watching DVD2, i want to go check out that olympic 100m race with Usain Bolt last year and see where he matches the template and where his competetors might benefit from a little S-Phase lovin.
o Getting Up and Getting Going
"Help help. I've fallen and i can't get up" That was the tag line for an alarm system featuring an elderly woman who had fallen from no apparently height and for no apparent reason, but was now on the ground and effectively incapacitated. She could press the alarm system carried at all times around her neck and someone would come rescue her. Implicitly the business model for this alarm system was that this situation was frequent and broad enough such that one could found a business to help old ladies recover from falls.
Z-Health predictably takes a slightly more personally proactive approach: more of the Dr. Seuss, i can read this all by myself. In this case: i can move myself all by myself. If our elder in the commercial was up on her S-Phase practice she would have been able not only to get up, but to have gotten on her way quickly. I'm not joking. Research with the elderly shows that strength, speed and mobility work have huge effects on reducing falls and fractures from falls in the elderly. S-Phase adds in skills to deal with it, should it happen.
In other contexts, being able to recover expeditiously from however we got on the ground, such that we're going again quickly can make a huge difference in any situation that requires quick response and necessitates rapid reposition. In sports we see this necessity frequently. A runner falls on the track; a player is knocked down during a play. Life situations are not less infrequent: lying in the grass at the park, and one's peripheral vision picks up the child wandering towards the nice very large wolfhound that has slipped its lead. Seconds count.
CAV1 teaches a variety of drills for getting up from one's back or stomach into a posture that will let anyone bolt. Remarkably all that joint jump and deceleration work along with bone rhythm comes strongly into play.
Beyond the Content: what makes CAV1 great.
The content is plainly sterling. Eric Cobb says that he has been watching the best of the best in athletics. He has looked at what they do to be the best, and has broken down those techniques into skills, and those skills into sub-component drills to develop the skills specifically for preparing to move and then moving.
What makes CAV1 all singing, all dancing, however, is not just the content alone, but the presentation of that content.
o Views of drills: Do and Not Do
In each segment for a drill, once the How To Do It has been presented, the DVD presents common errors. These common errors are great both for checking oneself, but especially for working with others when teaching these drills.
A note here that's another plus is that the athlete in the video provide a range of builds to see the drills carried out. It's kinda inspiring.
o voice over
While Eric Cobb is in the video, as in previous videos, this time he is just another athlete demonstrating the techniques with the rest of the team. Instead of doing a live description, Cobb provides a voice over for each part of the video as the moves are demonstrated. This approach makes it easy to focus on the multiple views of the drills.
o variations
Live movement is rarely always perfect or always linear. As with I-Phase any of the S-Phase drills can be practiced in multiple positions. The DVD spends time demonstrating many useful and usable variations for most of the drills presented.
o Sports Context
The visual introduction for each drill features pictures of athletes demonstrating live versions of the drills about to be presented. This kind of reality check provides a solid context/rationale for the ubiquity and relevance of the work about to be presented.
o Split Screen
The video uses split screen to provide mutliple angles for a move as well as demonstrating why using the correct technique vs not the shown technique (but perhaps a typical approach) is sub-optimal.
A request:
If i had one request for this S-Phase video it would have been to provide a subtitles track for the video. I work with several athletes who have audio impairments; being able to read the script for the video would help; likewise i'm just frequently in contexts where watching something with the audio turned down is a necessity. Having those on-demand subs tracks are golden for these occasions.
o Skills Overview
Each drill is capped with a review of an itemized review of each of the components of the drill to ensure success. These review charts are, again, one more reason to get the DVD's: they are clear, clean and useful distillations of what has just been taught.
o Closing Credits
One of the most enjoyable parts of the DVD is the closing credits. Not just because they tell you who was involved in some great production (including Shannon Mauck, producer/director), but because they feature the Z-Health trainers/real people who made this video, most of whom also happen to be RKC's. What is this kettlebell/z-health connection?
In the context of this video, that connection is particularly cool. We are seeing people whose significant athletic gig is swinging heavy metal balls, not running around a field with a team (there is one exception in a 400m runner/rkc), and yet hear they are, being super quick, cutting fast, loose and efficiently. That's powerful stuff. And again, why i, the self-imagined slow girl, could see getting the jump on those younger patrons at the Local watering hole.
What about R&I phase? Are they Pre-Requisites?
After all this excellent news about what's covered in S-Phase one may want to know do i have to know R & I phase before i can do S-Phase CAV1?
To quote from the Z-Health site:
Summary
Speed is Fun. Moving fast and with ease, efficiency, is fun. Being able to get going from any position is fun. Addressing visual issues that have increased threat and decreased ability is awesome fun. We are physical beings, designed to move. To my knowledge, this is the only video of its kind to put together technique drills to teach the skills behind these demonstrations of movement control.
Learning these skills let those of us who have felt slow feel fast perhaps for the first time. From discussions with sports athletes, these techniques directly enhance their performance. From a Z-Health perspective of letting us "improve the neural map" of our bodies to be able to respond to the world we move in better, S-Phase is rather the sine qua non of Z-Health movement, in motion as opposed to static positions.
If you've been doing R- and I- Phase, S-Phase goes to a whole other place, translating that work into movement - fun movement, and oh ya, superlatively excellent training for any athletic endeavor - like life.
Highly Recommended.
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CAV1 presents a suite of skills skills that support key components of athletic performance training:
- rhythm
- visual acuity,
- optimum readiness for motion,
- speed,
- upper and lower body coordination,
- plyo work (in a way you mayn't have previously considered),
- and, one of my faves, how to get up and going FAST if one finds oneself on the ground.
If you accept the Z-Health position that everyone who moves is an athlete, then CAV1 is the essential complement to the R-Phase and i-Phase progressions. Highly recommended.
The following review presents an overview of the S-Phase approach to atheltic movement informing CAV1, and then goes over the topics covered in the DVDs.
CAV1 Overview:
Athletic Movement as Physical and Visual Skills
Running fast, catching or throwing a ball, leaping high (to say nothing of remembering plays) - these are all moves that are usually associated with athletic endeavor. Any one of these moves may have been used by us to self-select out of sports: perceived to be too slow for track, or simply hating ball sports. For those of us of the Kettlebell persuasion, lifting heavy stuff may be about as sophisticated as our athletic experience takes us: no running; no balls.
It turns out that catching a ball - the visual accuity required to do this - is a teachable skill in more cases than not. And in more cases than not, an aversion to ball catching has been visually related. S-phase is packed with visual drills to help build the skills to improve visual accuity.
Likewise speed, co-ordination of upper and lower body in motion (running one way while looking another to catch a ball for instance), recovery from a fall to get up and going again are all teachable skills.
Speed as Skill is personally a Big Deal to me. I have never thought of myself as a fast person - i ran x-country in grad school. Go for distance. I learned a lot about VO2max, stamina, fartlek and tempo runs, but nothing about either going fast or blending that speed with visual work to achieve the S-Phase goal of "quickness." Is the best player, you'll hear Z-Health founder Eric Cobb, DC, ask at any Z-Health certification, either the fastest on the track or the strongest in the gym? More often than not, it's the person who can read the changes on the field, respond and be at the right place at the right time. Great visual skills with speed skills.
After learning the skills on this DVD and practicing with them more, i'm pretty confident that a wee gal like myself would be able to start taking bets at the local pub on being able to beat anyone else off the line and in the first 10 meters. Not kidding.
Likewise, using drills from the DVD i've had the pleasure to work with another Z-Health trainer who has been traditionally freaked out by an incoming ball. Within the course of a session with the S-Phase Letter ball concept, she was catching with ease, confidence, reduced threat, and ambidexterously. It was awesome to see this skill build and fear of the ball disappear and simply enjoyment in the fun of catching and letter calling increase.
These results may seem pretty tame if one is not a sports player - after all, when does one need speed in the realm of the desk jockey? Well, we're not always at a desk; we move in the real world. And sometimes, being able to respond and move quickly can mean the difference between being in an accident or able to respond to one. That may seem extreme, but life is motion. Better quality of motion control on all levels translates into better quality of life.
DVD Topics Covered: Starting with Efficiency.
Many gaps in teachable althletic techniques are addressed by Z-Health S-Phase. Now while not all of us are on sports teams where making the fastes 90 degree change in position to follow an opponent is necessary, having skills for quickness and efficiency in movement are all Good Things for coping with the world in which we do move and act. Learning Efficient movement is therefore optimal for stronger, less taxing, more beneficial action. To that end the DVD begins with Bone Rhythm.
o Bone Rythm & Athletic Ready Stance
The concept of bone ryhthm is introduced in the R-phase certification on its last day. Now, fabulously, it's detailed in the S-Phase video. Awesome. This set of drills alone is worth the purchase of the DVD is will benefit your workouts that much. I've referenced the technique elsewhere and am delighted there's such a clear reference now available. Guaranteed, adding this refinement to pulls or presses, for instance, will improve the speed and power of the lift (and hence likely enable increased load, too).
Bone rhythm effectively means that one gets the top and bottom of a prime mover bone move at the same speed in an action. In a push up, we see this when the shoulder and the elbow finish the move together - both in the press up and in the descent. This move tune alone is worth the price of admission. In the DVD both upper and lower body drills are taught, as well as how to cue another person to get the ryhthm.
The technique is refined by pulling in some basic work from I-Phase called Compass Lunge Position drills which practice lunge /take off angles and feet positions.
The application of bone rhythm is also presented as part of learning and refining what is often called the Universal Athletic Position or here, the static or dynamic Athletic Ready Stance.
Learning how to get into Athletic Ready using good bone rhythm awareness means the difference between achieving a super solid position that's also ready to move, and a position that is unbalanced, easily able to topple and suboptimal for going from ready to move to gone.
Because of the importance of the Athletic Ready position for just about any field movement, CAV1 presents both static and dynamic versions of athletic ready position, along with a suite of variations.
o Different Plyometrics 1: Jump Landing
With athletic ready stance firmly drilled, CAV1 takes bone rhythm vertical. In many sports jumping up (and coming back down) are key attributes of required movement. Blocking a volleyball coming over the net; leaping into a passing shot; jumping over another player about to be tagged out, or simply jumping very high to clear an obstacle.
Without going into the explanation of how these movements represent "plyometric training" (see "elastic" at top of post on plastic and elastic for more) suffice it to say that this S-Phase approach to plyo is as distinct as its approach to joint mobility. Imagine simply rising up on your toes from athletic ready, and coming down into athletic ready. Doesn't sound like a depth jump, does it? doesn't sound very violent to one's joints. And yet such a simple drill has huge benefit towards movement speed. And as with R-Phase, the reason is the neural pathways triggered by optimizing joints involved in generating the action.o Visual Acuity
We are visual creatures. We determine where we are in space, primarily by vision, then by balance (vestibular), then by proprioception. Our ability to use our peripheral vision effectively to cue awareness of activity, for instance, and then rapidly shift focus where necessary is again, a necessary and trainable skill. Much perceived speed actually comes from visual quickness: the ability to catch, interpret and respond to visual cues.
Because S-Phase teaches both visual and speed drills, it also covers a range of acuites in Vision that are often overlooked in sports training. As Cobb notes at the I-Phase Certification, apparently over 50% of the American Olympic team in Beijing had not had even a vision test, never mind assessments for "sports vision." We may think vision is just near and far sigthedness, but it's not. It, too, is skills based and can have movement dysfunction just like other muscle based motion. The drills provided in the DVD help strengthen and improve that visual acuity for sports, for life, reducing perceived threat, improving performance.
CAV1 has significantly more visual drills than either Neural Warm Up I. or Neural Warm Up II. These drills are designed to work each of the 6 core muscles operating on the eyes. One of my favorites is Letter Ball Catching - 1 of many visual drills.
This drill alone is another "worth the price of the DVD" for practicing responsive vision - while training and strengthening the eye's muscles as well as prepping to respond to visual cues. Great package. Visual response work will mean faster responsiveness overall. Indeed, the drill is demonstrated as a great way to combine both movement and visual drill work.o Prepping for Speed.
A key concept throughout Z-Health is that any of the R and I phase drills have best effect when practiced over time at a variety of speeds. Z-Health has 4 described speeds, the last and fastest of which is Sports Speed. CAV1 takes the time to go over key I-Phase drills to demonstrate best practice for taking these movements to the two extremes in speed: sports speed and super slow speed.
In case you're wondering why I-Phase rather than R-Phase drills here, I-Phase are advanced "under load" or "alternate position" versions of R-Phase drills. I-Phase enables the athlete who has personally owned the R-Phase movements to explore more athletic positions. These shifts are described more fully in this review of I-Phase.
The challenge of the sport-speed I-Phase drills is largely control and work against fatigue. Quality of movement *must* remain high or efficiency drops; injury is associated often with poor form. Since there is a lot of speed work to come in this DVD set, practicing sport-speed I-Phase is a safe and effective way to prepare the body to move efficiently in motion rather than in static loaded positions.
Likewise, though, super slow speed means exploring each aspect of a movement drill with specific attention and control. That control of movement to a fine level is a key part of athletic movement control - including getting up to full speed.
o Upper body for Speed - and Deceleration.
From S-Phase, one of the key takeaways is that speed is a tremendous demonstration of upper and lower body coordination. Combine speed with sports field work, and vision also comes into play, as well as some unusualy physical positions - running while twisted back looking up to catch a ball being thrown towards one; dashing from one side of the court to the other to hit a low ball with a back hand while decelerating. And so on. CAV1 accordingly breaks speed training initially into upper body work and lower body work, which means performance improving drills.
In the upper body section, both arm drills for speed and plyo work for deceleration (yup that's Different Plyo 2, and it means landing from a deliberate dive to grab or block a ball to a less deliberate fall and being able to use ones arms effectively for getting down with the best movement efficiency possible, taking the joint concepts from jump landing training and bone rhythm and putting them together in a solid application for safety and speed).
Not something most of us think about outside learning say a judo roll in a martial arts context, but once you see the motion, you start to see it everywhere. And it becomes equally pervasive why training for the move is going to have way better luck than not practicing for it.
Thus endeth DVD 1.
o Getting Going and Staying Gone
CAV1's DVD 2 is about speed: starting, changing directions, getting the arms involved and moving optimally to continue speed once you get going. It's especially combining these fast dead starts with the skills for getting up to speed and then maintaining speed that lead to those immenent, lucrative anticipated bar bets. Speed, really, is hugely a skill. After practicing and watching DVD2, i want to go check out that olympic 100m race with Usain Bolt last year and see where he matches the template and where his competetors might benefit from a little S-Phase lovin.
o Getting Up and Getting Going
"Help help. I've fallen and i can't get up" That was the tag line for an alarm system featuring an elderly woman who had fallen from no apparently height and for no apparent reason, but was now on the ground and effectively incapacitated. She could press the alarm system carried at all times around her neck and someone would come rescue her. Implicitly the business model for this alarm system was that this situation was frequent and broad enough such that one could found a business to help old ladies recover from falls.
Z-Health predictably takes a slightly more personally proactive approach: more of the Dr. Seuss, i can read this all by myself. In this case: i can move myself all by myself. If our elder in the commercial was up on her S-Phase practice she would have been able not only to get up, but to have gotten on her way quickly. I'm not joking. Research with the elderly shows that strength, speed and mobility work have huge effects on reducing falls and fractures from falls in the elderly. S-Phase adds in skills to deal with it, should it happen.
In other contexts, being able to recover expeditiously from however we got on the ground, such that we're going again quickly can make a huge difference in any situation that requires quick response and necessitates rapid reposition. In sports we see this necessity frequently. A runner falls on the track; a player is knocked down during a play. Life situations are not less infrequent: lying in the grass at the park, and one's peripheral vision picks up the child wandering towards the nice very large wolfhound that has slipped its lead. Seconds count.CAV1 teaches a variety of drills for getting up from one's back or stomach into a posture that will let anyone bolt. Remarkably all that joint jump and deceleration work along with bone rhythm comes strongly into play.
Beyond the Content: what makes CAV1 great.
The content is plainly sterling. Eric Cobb says that he has been watching the best of the best in athletics. He has looked at what they do to be the best, and has broken down those techniques into skills, and those skills into sub-component drills to develop the skills specifically for preparing to move and then moving.
What makes CAV1 all singing, all dancing, however, is not just the content alone, but the presentation of that content.o Views of drills: Do and Not Do
In each segment for a drill, once the How To Do It has been presented, the DVD presents common errors. These common errors are great both for checking oneself, but especially for working with others when teaching these drills.
A note here that's another plus is that the athlete in the video provide a range of builds to see the drills carried out. It's kinda inspiring.
o voice over
While Eric Cobb is in the video, as in previous videos, this time he is just another athlete demonstrating the techniques with the rest of the team. Instead of doing a live description, Cobb provides a voice over for each part of the video as the moves are demonstrated. This approach makes it easy to focus on the multiple views of the drills.
o variations
Live movement is rarely always perfect or always linear. As with I-Phase any of the S-Phase drills can be practiced in multiple positions. The DVD spends time demonstrating many useful and usable variations for most of the drills presented.
o Sports Context
The visual introduction for each drill features pictures of athletes demonstrating live versions of the drills about to be presented. This kind of reality check provides a solid context/rationale for the ubiquity and relevance of the work about to be presented.
o Split Screen
The video uses split screen to provide mutliple angles for a move as well as demonstrating why using the correct technique vs not the shown technique (but perhaps a typical approach) is sub-optimal.
A request:
If i had one request for this S-Phase video it would have been to provide a subtitles track for the video. I work with several athletes who have audio impairments; being able to read the script for the video would help; likewise i'm just frequently in contexts where watching something with the audio turned down is a necessity. Having those on-demand subs tracks are golden for these occasions.
o Skills Overview
Each drill is capped with a review of an itemized review of each of the components of the drill to ensure success. These review charts are, again, one more reason to get the DVD's: they are clear, clean and useful distillations of what has just been taught.
o Closing CreditsOne of the most enjoyable parts of the DVD is the closing credits. Not just because they tell you who was involved in some great production (including Shannon Mauck, producer/director), but because they feature the Z-Health trainers/real people who made this video, most of whom also happen to be RKC's. What is this kettlebell/z-health connection?
In the context of this video, that connection is particularly cool. We are seeing people whose significant athletic gig is swinging heavy metal balls, not running around a field with a team (there is one exception in a 400m runner/rkc), and yet hear they are, being super quick, cutting fast, loose and efficiently. That's powerful stuff. And again, why i, the self-imagined slow girl, could see getting the jump on those younger patrons at the Local watering hole.
What about R&I phase? Are they Pre-Requisites?
After all this excellent news about what's covered in S-Phase one may want to know do i have to know R & I phase before i can do S-Phase CAV1?
To quote from the Z-Health site:
PLEASE NOTE: Z-Health programs are progressive in nature and our PRIMARY concern is your safety. Please DO NOT purchase S-Phase unless you have a thorough grounding in both our R-Phase and I-Phase programs or have worked with a Z-Health coach.If someone absolutely insists on diving into S without R and I, there is a program included on a DVD insert to help get a participant up to speed. But yes, a thorough knowledge of I-Phase drills (and therefore the R-Phase foundation that precedes R-Phase training) as the warning note says, just makes dropping into the S-Phase work fast, easy and injury free.
Summary
Speed is Fun. Moving fast and with ease, efficiency, is fun. Being able to get going from any position is fun. Addressing visual issues that have increased threat and decreased ability is awesome fun. We are physical beings, designed to move. To my knowledge, this is the only video of its kind to put together technique drills to teach the skills behind these demonstrations of movement control.
Learning these skills let those of us who have felt slow feel fast perhaps for the first time. From discussions with sports athletes, these techniques directly enhance their performance. From a Z-Health perspective of letting us "improve the neural map" of our bodies to be able to respond to the world we move in better, S-Phase is rather the sine qua non of Z-Health movement, in motion as opposed to static positions.
If you've been doing R- and I- Phase, S-Phase goes to a whole other place, translating that work into movement - fun movement, and oh ya, superlatively excellent training for any athletic endeavor - like life.
Highly Recommended.
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Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Plastic vs Elastic when talking about Human Perfomance
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The body is often variously described as plastic and/or elastic. Sometimes it seems the terms are used interchangeably. But what do they mean - at least in terms of the body? The are complementary. Elastic: to stretch away from a shape but be able to return to the original form. Plastic: to stretch out (or not) to a new form, and be able to maintain that new form, way, approach. How these concepts apply to the body have inspired some compelling models in human performance training.
Elastic is the more common term. Elastic bands: they stretch out; the snap back. That ability to expand and have the object return to its original state is the biggie part of elastic.
Elastic also has this interesting property with energy. For example, pulling back a bow string loads the bow with the energy to drive the arrow. When the bow string is released, the bow springs back to its "relaxed" position. Entropy is achieved once more.
Muscles are often described as "elastic:" they stretch out; they snap back.
Muscles also takes advantage of elastic energy, in particular stored elastic energy. Elastic energy is a big part of plyometrics. For instance "depth jumps." A person wants to leap up in the air. So before they do this, they stand on a box about a foot off the ground, jump down and then quickly leap straight up. That jump will be higher than if they just leapt up from a standing position. Why?
Well the theory goes (and it's been tested a lot), that pre-stretching a muscle (eccentric contraction) stores up energy in the muscles and tendons that if translated very quickly from storage to use (the brief transition between storing to using, called amortization), that energy can be used by the muscles as a kind of power assist.
The difference between muscles and a bow string is that the bow string can maintain that stored energy longer than our muscles. Stored elastic energy in muscles translates very quickly into heat if it's not used immediately by the muscles for work.
This is also in part why plyometrics is about very quick movements: translate the stored energy into work before it dissipates into heat.
an aside - what don't stretch
Plastic - constant adaptation
Elastic is about being pulled from an original state and returning to its original state. Plastic is the complement of this about being able to be pulled from an original state into a new state and then staying in that new state.
Despite its relatively recent use to describe a material, plastic as a concept is rather old. According to an online etymology, it's been used in English (1632) to refer to something "capable of being molded" and 1839 - surgically - talking about "fixing a deficiency of structure," and finally 1905 as a "solid substance that can be molded."
When folks talk about the body as plastic, they're also talking about this ability to be reshaped. Scientists have studied this reshaping for some time. There's Wolff's law, which considers how bone is constantly remodeling based on use - or lack of use. Then there's Davis's law which talks about soft tissue remodeling, similar to Wolff's on bone remodeling. And these both can be seen to act along the lines of the SAID principle: specific adaptation to imposed demand
(aside: just try to find the history of this term - everyone talks about it, but the source? i'm sorry i haven't found who first started talking about it, but with Wolff and Davis, it's easy to support it; that said the principle of specificity (seemingly used interchangeably with SAID) is similar but perhaps different in intent, suggesting that training should be similar to the action to be performed. Anyway).
Only more recently though has research begin to show that our brains and nervous system remain plastic. It used to be thought that after infancy, our brains effectively set. Work since the last part of the 20th century, discussed in the Brain the Changes Itself, shows that this is not the case. Our nerves and brains, too, re-pattern based on demand.
This patterning is refered to as neuroplasticity. If a limb is injured, a nerve cut, it rewires to utilize other nerves available. Likewise if the brain has an issue, it's been found that with work, it will rewire itself to use another part of it to make up the difference.
This knowledge of neuroplasticity, of brain and nerves rewiring, has made it possible to develop new practices to address challenges from stroke recovery to reducing the effects of dyslexia to autism. Some of this work has been put into research-tested products like those by Posit Science to help older folks especially recover brain function. I've been watching some of my elders benefit hugely from "playing" with these brain practices to help retune the brain to a sharper form that can attend, focus, hear better.
Plastic and Elastic: Always On, All the Time
Organic life is pretty amazing. We as such are also pretty amazing: bio-mechanical, electro-chemical, neurological beings. We stretch out and snap back; we also adapt. All the time. Not just in shape but in practice, learning.
A profound challenge in research seems to be how we can best design training to enhance best adaptations for best performance.
One of the attractions of Z-Health, at least to me, is that it takes advantage of the elastic and the plastic, using the plastic to enhance the elastic (as per this discussion of form and efficiency in the front squat). It works with the SAID principle, neuromechanically.
Z-Health extends the SAID principle to suggest that we are always adapting, always and exactly to what we do, and rather immediately. Therefore what we practice is what we become (we are what we eat?). Practice the most efficient neural patterns for plastic adaptation; enhance elastic performance. The intriguing thing is just how immediately these adaptations do take place.
This all started as a discussion of plastic and elastic. While elastic is so well known and used in muscular training, it's perhaps the research in plasticity that will be the new plyometrics in sports and well-being training. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Elastic is the more common term. Elastic bands: they stretch out; the snap back. That ability to expand and have the object return to its original state is the biggie part of elastic.
Elastic also has this interesting property with energy. For example, pulling back a bow string loads the bow with the energy to drive the arrow. When the bow string is released, the bow springs back to its "relaxed" position. Entropy is achieved once more.Muscles are often described as "elastic:" they stretch out; they snap back.
 |
| Depth Jump - stretch shortening |
Well the theory goes (and it's been tested a lot), that pre-stretching a muscle (eccentric contraction) stores up energy in the muscles and tendons that if translated very quickly from storage to use (the brief transition between storing to using, called amortization), that energy can be used by the muscles as a kind of power assist.
The difference between muscles and a bow string is that the bow string can maintain that stored energy longer than our muscles. Stored elastic energy in muscles translates very quickly into heat if it's not used immediately by the muscles for work.
This is also in part why plyometrics is about very quick movements: translate the stored energy into work before it dissipates into heat.
an aside - what don't stretch
Since elasticity is related to stretching, a note about what does stretch and what doesn't. Generally speaking, muscle and skin stretch. Tendons, the bits that join most muscle to bone, don't stretch. But for a few types, ligaments, the bits that connect up joints, don't stretch either. Fascinating, eh? And here's another bit: tendons carry electricity to the muscle; ligaments are without charge.
Plastic - constant adaptation
Elastic is about being pulled from an original state and returning to its original state. Plastic is the complement of this about being able to be pulled from an original state into a new state and then staying in that new state.
Despite its relatively recent use to describe a material, plastic as a concept is rather old. According to an online etymology, it's been used in English (1632) to refer to something "capable of being molded" and 1839 - surgically - talking about "fixing a deficiency of structure," and finally 1905 as a "solid substance that can be molded."
When folks talk about the body as plastic, they're also talking about this ability to be reshaped. Scientists have studied this reshaping for some time. There's Wolff's law, which considers how bone is constantly remodeling based on use - or lack of use. Then there's Davis's law which talks about soft tissue remodeling, similar to Wolff's on bone remodeling. And these both can be seen to act along the lines of the SAID principle: specific adaptation to imposed demand
(aside: just try to find the history of this term - everyone talks about it, but the source? i'm sorry i haven't found who first started talking about it, but with Wolff and Davis, it's easy to support it; that said the principle of specificity (seemingly used interchangeably with SAID) is similar but perhaps different in intent, suggesting that training should be similar to the action to be performed. Anyway).
Only more recently though has research begin to show that our brains and nervous system remain plastic. It used to be thought that after infancy, our brains effectively set. Work since the last part of the 20th century, discussed in the Brain the Changes Itself, shows that this is not the case. Our nerves and brains, too, re-pattern based on demand.
This patterning is refered to as neuroplasticity. If a limb is injured, a nerve cut, it rewires to utilize other nerves available. Likewise if the brain has an issue, it's been found that with work, it will rewire itself to use another part of it to make up the difference.
This knowledge of neuroplasticity, of brain and nerves rewiring, has made it possible to develop new practices to address challenges from stroke recovery to reducing the effects of dyslexia to autism. Some of this work has been put into research-tested products like those by Posit Science to help older folks especially recover brain function. I've been watching some of my elders benefit hugely from "playing" with these brain practices to help retune the brain to a sharper form that can attend, focus, hear better.
Plastic and Elastic: Always On, All the Time
Organic life is pretty amazing. We as such are also pretty amazing: bio-mechanical, electro-chemical, neurological beings. We stretch out and snap back; we also adapt. All the time. Not just in shape but in practice, learning.
A profound challenge in research seems to be how we can best design training to enhance best adaptations for best performance.
One of the attractions of Z-Health, at least to me, is that it takes advantage of the elastic and the plastic, using the plastic to enhance the elastic (as per this discussion of form and efficiency in the front squat). It works with the SAID principle, neuromechanically.
Z-Health extends the SAID principle to suggest that we are always adapting, always and exactly to what we do, and rather immediately. Therefore what we practice is what we become (we are what we eat?). Practice the most efficient neural patterns for plastic adaptation; enhance elastic performance. The intriguing thing is just how immediately these adaptations do take place.
This all started as a discussion of plastic and elastic. While elastic is so well known and used in muscular training, it's perhaps the research in plasticity that will be the new plyometrics in sports and well-being training. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Vibram Five Fingers Meets Z-Health - at birthdayshoes.com
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Justin Owings runs the very groovy birthdayshoes.com, a site dedicated to all things & people digging Vibram FiveFingers. The site presents great interviews with surprising folks who wear VFF's. Like Christopher MacDonald, author of Born to Run. Perhaps that one might be expected. But what about Justine Lam, Ros Perrot's eCampaign director. Not so obvious.
Then there's just the great resources about VFF's from pose running gurus to super reviews of various VFF's in use (and ok, one ref to an article about how to fit these suckers). And it looks great, too.
So, after some conversations about VFF's being great for proprioception, and how Z-Health optimizes those benefits, Justin asked if i might do an article describing how/why Z-Health might just take VFF wearers to an even better neur0-physiological performance place.
And it looks so nice! So, here is the article that pulls together stick figures, da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, cell phone towers, Henry VIII, 18thC class warfare and of course Vibram FiveFingers.
Here's a quick fact form the article:
the vff'd feet of justin owings...
ok i like this one, too (despite the pc hardware):
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Then there's just the great resources about VFF's from pose running gurus to super reviews of various VFF's in use (and ok, one ref to an article about how to fit these suckers). And it looks great, too.
So, after some conversations about VFF's being great for proprioception, and how Z-Health optimizes those benefits, Justin asked if i might do an article describing how/why Z-Health might just take VFF wearers to an even better neur0-physiological performance place.
And it looks so nice! So, here is the article that pulls together stick figures, da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, cell phone towers, Henry VIII, 18thC class warfare and of course Vibram FiveFingers.
Here's a quick fact form the article:
Given this context that (a) the more freely our joints move, the better the information, and (b) the more joints that are sending back these signals, the richer the picture of how we're moving, let's consider the foot. All those joints!. Twenty-five percent of the body's joints are in the feet: per foot, there are 26 bones, 33 joints, 107 ligaments, 19 muscles and tendons. We are designed to send 25% of our physical orientation from our feet!
And yet in a conventional shoe — especially a "supportive" trainer, the arch is blocked from flexing, the ankle is restricted, we heel strike with abandon, and the squishiness of the soles deadens any true sense of the state of the surface to which we might otherwise be adapting by our highly flexibily designed foot. Modern shoes are like sensory deprivation tanks for the feet...
Enter Z-Health: it helps reeducate the foot (and other parts of our body) to move like we were designed to move.
Thanks for the invitation, Justin, and happy trekking to all.
the vff'd feet of justin owings...ok i like this one, too (despite the pc hardware):
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
begin2dig is a year old: thank you for your readership
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Goodness, just noticed that b2d is a year old - yesterday - the ides of June 08 was the first post.
Time flies, eh? In the past year there have been 89 articles (this being the 90th) and about 63k visits to the site. Looking back over the past year, there seem to (have) be(en) a few themes.
There are the various discussions on the turkish get up, and about the role of cardio and strength and kettlebells (kb and vo2max | cardio and strength).
Likewise, nutrition oriented discussions, from carbs being treated as the new fat (ie evil), and various debates about multiple fuelings (a la precision nutrition. pdf overview) vs IF's various incarnations.
Feet have played a remarkable role, as in Freeing your Feet (with Vibram FiveFingers, mainly,
and how to fit them to do so). Feet freeing and the whyfore's of that relate to the "perfect rep quest adventure" about blending repetitions (how many) with load (balancing volume for strength) for the perfect rep (what's perfect mean anyway?). The perfect rep discussion has in turn been informed by Z-Health and movement efficiency; that has lead into the relationship between reducing/eliminating pain by improving movement.
While there's only been one post so far, learning more about how to get rid of
crap around goals has been pretty powerful stuff for calming down, working out, moving up. Higher up and further in, as it were. Hope to write more about the ongoing experience of "letting go" soon.
In this past blogging year, through b2d, i've met amazing folks who have posted comments or emailed, and you'll see many of their blogs listed on the side bar of b2d. Comments are always appreciated and thanks for reaching out. My work's been enriched by these comments, and a big shout out, please to
Mark Reifkind whose blog inspired me to start this one. Rannoch Donald of Simple Strength, Mike T. Nelson of MTN's Ramblings, Georgie Fear, the redoutable RD of Nutrition Solutions, Adam Glass with hands of steal potentially, Suleiman Al-Sabah and Roland Fisher (who needs a web site), who it's been my pleasure to get to interact with a little more this year through the blogosphere and related.
Please also let me thank all
Belated Happy Site Day, Welcome, Thank you for visiting.
As always, if there's a topic in the b2d sphere that is of interest to you, let me know, and i'll see if i can dig something (or someone) up.
All the best to you as we head rapidly towards the summer solstice and perhaps finally summer weather?
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Time flies, eh? In the past year there have been 89 articles (this being the 90th) and about 63k visits to the site. Looking back over the past year, there seem to (have) be(en) a few themes.
There are the various discussions on the turkish get up, and about the role of cardio and strength and kettlebells (kb and vo2max | cardio and strength).
Likewise, nutrition oriented discussions, from carbs being treated as the new fat (ie evil), and various debates about multiple fuelings (a la precision nutrition. pdf overview) vs IF's various incarnations.
Feet have played a remarkable role, as in Freeing your Feet (with Vibram FiveFingers, mainly,
and how to fit them to do so). Feet freeing and the whyfore's of that relate to the "perfect rep quest adventure" about blending repetitions (how many) with load (balancing volume for strength) for the perfect rep (what's perfect mean anyway?). The perfect rep discussion has in turn been informed by Z-Health and movement efficiency; that has lead into the relationship between reducing/eliminating pain by improving movement.While there's only been one post so far, learning more about how to get rid of
crap around goals has been pretty powerful stuff for calming down, working out, moving up. Higher up and further in, as it were. Hope to write more about the ongoing experience of "letting go" soon.In this past blogging year, through b2d, i've met amazing folks who have posted comments or emailed, and you'll see many of their blogs listed on the side bar of b2d. Comments are always appreciated and thanks for reaching out. My work's been enriched by these comments, and a big shout out, please to
Mark Reifkind whose blog inspired me to start this one. Rannoch Donald of Simple Strength, Mike T. Nelson of MTN's Ramblings, Georgie Fear, the redoutable RD of Nutrition Solutions, Adam Glass with hands of steal potentially, Suleiman Al-Sabah and Roland Fisher (who needs a web site), who it's been my pleasure to get to interact with a little more this year through the blogosphere and related.
Please also let me thank all
- the folks who have said you grok b2d and hit the blogger "follow " button - that's really kind and very much appreciated.
- the folks who follow on rss feeds - thanks for making b2d part of your bit stream.
- the folks who have pointed to articles here to share with others - so glad you've found them useful and usable
- again the folks who take time to drop a line or a comment, and
- of course the folks who drop by from time to time either from searching for something or following someone's suggested link (either of which always amazes me).
Belated Happy Site Day, Welcome, Thank you for visiting.As always, if there's a topic in the b2d sphere that is of interest to you, let me know, and i'll see if i can dig something (or someone) up.
All the best to you as we head rapidly towards the summer solstice and perhaps finally summer weather?
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Why I? Loading for the Real - an Overview/Review Z-Health I-Phase
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In life we have physical things that we do that we'd like to do better. It may be as complicated as getting a technique down for a wicked lick on a guitar or as simple as getting off the steep stairs of a bus with a little more grace. Our goals may be a little more serious: we'd like to move more smoothly, and perhaps take fewer falls when going for a run or even walking about the house. Z-health's i-phase approach provides a suite of strategies to help with these real life movement goals. Before we get into i-phase a bit of z-health context
In an overview i did of Z-Health, focusing on R-phase, i wrote about how Z-Health (Zed for short in this article) focuses on communicating with the nervous system, and why that's important for improved well being, whether that's getting out of pain, or moving better for daily life or an athletic pursuit. For a quick review, R-phase focuses on moving each joint in the body through its range of motion. It does this not just because moving joints about is good for the health of the joint, but because joints have a TON of two particular kinds of receptors in them: noci- (detecting noxious stimulus - not just pain) receptors and mechano- receptors (excellent article overviewing joint mechanoreceptor types).
The mechano's in the joints are in large part communicating about where that joint is in space, as well as how fast it's moving. The brain processes all the inputs coming in from these joints to create a microsecond by microsecond map of where we are in the environment. Help all the joints move through their whole range of motion, and at least two key things happen:
(ok you too may have wondered why he didn't just step aside, but heh, that means there were a few options rather than just one).
The pay off here is that the more ways we can move the more choices we have to avoid a crisis. The more we practice moving, the more we work our balance and visual system to connect to those movements, the better our coordinated responses, or reflexes have in a given situation. This range of options and heightened reflexes that comes from such agility/balance work has been shown to be an important component as a strategy for people at risk of hip fractures, for instance. Enhance the signals as to where one is in space, practice using them, we give the body more options to adapt and remain vertical, lessen the chance of a fall.
It's a Map - a Map of the World. Eric Cobb talks about what our bodies do in space as Navigation. "And navigation is an action." The better information coming in from the body about position in space, the better off we are. When joints can move, they're sending off more points of information.
Think about the "light bulbs" that people wear on motion capture rigs for computer graphics. Only a few points are needed around the major limbs to be applied to a model of a human form in order for the computer to integrate those points and model to render a pretty convincing motion (movie, 275kb). But look closely at the foot. How "mobile" does it seem in the model?
Thus, entire strips of sensors have to be used to map finer joint movements accurately, like those of the fingers (movie 2.6mg). Way more sensors to give finer detail of movement - but check out how well or not even here, the fingers unscrewing the cap are mirrored in the computer model of same.
In other words, a few points certainly give a general sense of movement, but more points of information are necessary to get a truer picture of the movement. And that's just for a computer trying to render a passable realistic sketch of a anthropomorphic character. My fave work in this space is Mike Chat's from Discovery's Extreme Martial Arts, and mapping the skeleton onto the form (check about a minute into the clip).
Very convincing approximation from gross motor movements.But notice that the light suit to get that degree of movement detail has many more points (the white dots on the skin suits in the image below)
It's these multiple points of information of course that feed into why Zed heads talk about freeing your feet, getting out of non-bendable, twistable, overly squishy shoes: their "support" stops your joints from moving as they're designed, and hence lessens the signal back to the body about the foot's location in space.
It's no wonder that so many runners get sprained ankles: the shoe wear designed to "support" their foot deadens its natural ability to communicate, hobbling the body's ability to respond and get it out of trouble. R-phase therefore is about openning up all the communication channels of the joints to enable a better map, better signal to noise ratio for letting the body respond to the envirnoment. I-phase is training the body to put that new information to work.
Building on the Information Flow: Putting the Map to Work
Eric Cobb talks about R-Phase as learning the vocabulary of movement; IPhase is getting into the grammar - building sentences. What does that mean, practically?
In R-Phase, by learning the drills that move each joint of the body through its range of motion (with the exception of the sutures in the skull - that's T-Phase), we learn about those ranges of motion. Speaking for myself, i started unable to move my thoracic spine in any meaningful, mobile way. Thought it was impossible for me. Turns out not. Lots of practice, et voila: thoracic circles like no one's business. Standing still.
So R-Phase we learn how to move these joints to send off that information with very little load on the joints themselves. Great for learning, and teaching the body to create new patterns of movement. The benefits of this practice alone are legion. I could write idyls of joy to how much R-Phase (with a little T mixed in) has helped my back. Likewise, in working with clients, R-phase drills have wrought out and out remarkable benefits for many clients, helping them either into better performance or out of pain or both.
Once that practice/knowledge is in place to perform perfectly in "neutral" posture and load, I-phase adds load. With lunges. And foot positions. A simple pelvic circle in neutral stance suddenly has a plethora of combinations from 6 lunge positions and 3 foot positions for each of 2 feet. Nice.
Train for the Sprain; the Kobioshi Maru of Movement
So why add all these positions to a given neutral stance posture? Cobb argues that this puts the body in positions that are closer to real life. Get used to working in these postures (80% load on the front leg, feet neutral; shift to 80% load on the back leg, feet turned out), the body is more ready to respond to unusual circumstances, ie, life. This is the magic of practice, or the learning effect of making reaction reflexive rather than cognitive.
We see this practice effect all the time. One of the greatest examples of it was in the early Space program, where astronauts rehearsed and rehearsed multiple variations of space maneuvers in the earliest simulators in order to have that vocabulary of options at their finger tips, but in order to be able to call on them in a variety of less than optimal conditions. Like going for a run on a muddy chip trail (in vibram fivefingers of course. no stupid squishy trail shoes that kill the proprioception here) and starting to slide, but being able to recover.
There is no Spoon: I-Phase as a Template
Another aspect of I-phase work is that "it's a
template." Unlike R-Phase, while the I-Phase and Neural WarmUp II DVDs take one through a variety of combinations of the I-Phase movements, and while they introduce some moves not in R-Phase at all (like the powerful peg board drill), the DVDs are by no means exhaustive. Right elbow circles in a left lateral lunge with neutral foot position are demonstrated. But all the other lunge positions and foot positions are available, too.
To add even more dimensions, head and eye positions can also be part of the mix. How about practicing the elbow circles with a left anterior lunge, head titled left, eyes looking right (up). Sounds like a slightly wacky combination until perhaps looking at the picture on the right.
By following the guidance in the I-phase manual on how to learn and practice these loaded positions, one is not only working mobility, but adding strength/muscle work. The advantages are the same as in R-phase: signal is increased.
Adaptation for the Unexpected or the Fairly Usual.
If you've ever tried to hold a position that's new, you may feel your muscles shaking. That's a neurological adaptation happening: you may be entirely strong enough to hold the move but the muscles/nervous system are figuring out optimal firing patterns to adapt the muscles to that move. There can be quite a bit of initial shake in I-phase. But as the positions become practiced, neural paths are developed to get used to these positions.
What happens at the same time is again, more signaling information is brought to the body's central processor; better mapping happens. The muscles, like the joints have tons of mechanoreceptors too telling the body about limb position and the stretch position of the muscles. The more patterns practiced, the more the brain gets used to those new positions, the better it can navigate by putting just the right resources there (no more shaking) and having more available for elsewhere. Go from clutz in learning a move to grace in practice of a move; from conscious effort to unconscious response.
Faster Learning?
Another benefit to the I-Phase template approach is enhancing the rapidity of being able to learn new moves/adapt to new situations. Cobb talks about this kind of learning as that of the "natural athlete" - someone who has such unconscious body awareness that they can readily move their bodies into the forms demanded of that work. With I-phase practice in its varied positions, the body habits of natural athleticism can be learned.
One might protest, but i am a desk jockey, not an athlete.
Phooey!
If one has to walk stairs, open a car door in a rainy oil slicked parking lot, shovel snow or sweep a floor, reach for something rolled under the couch, stay vertical on a moving British bus, then one needs these I-phase teachable athletic skills for simple survival (especially in the case of the British bus. sheesh!).
I've personally noticed that my reflexes have improved without consciously working on them - when i can catch a bottle that's coming off the counter towards the floor, grab my hat 2 feet in front of me as the wind's whipped it off my head, or beat my cousin at a video driving game without ever having played the game, something's funny here. Especially when my previous image of myself was always of the person who was lucky if the lid to the jam landed sticky side up.
So when do I do I?
Some folks ask "when should i do I-phase?" I've also heard some people say, after a year or more of focusing on R, "i'm not ready for I; i still haven't mastered R."
My view? based on my experience and working with folks? Really being grounded in R is a very good idea. Doing the 12 week program that's in R-Phase to learn R-Phase is a very good idea. I worked on R-phase for about 6 months before really getting into I. I also did the R phase certification 3 months into that cycle, so i got a lot of attention on how to do R properly (get a coach; it's worth it). This is not to say all that time was necessary; it's just what i did. Your mileage may vary, as a colleague says. What i would say is if and as you've been practicing R-phase, do connect with a Z-health coach to check your form. As with anything, getting the form right makes huge difference in performance/experience. Those simple toe pulls go from "oh ya, ok" to "ahhh. wow" when you really get 'em. And that's what you want every time.
That said, R-phase is not a martial art; it's not yoga. It's learning how to hit particular targets cleanly and effectively to recover function and "clear the map." While one can do R forever fruitfully, getting into I, as i hope has been shown above, is doing your body a favour to take that knowledge and get into some Astronaut Training Time. That is, I-Phase's addition of load and position challenge is prepping the body for Life; it's the simulator to train for the sprain. My opinion? based on my experience and working with folks? If you've been doing R for awhile, have gone through the 12 week programs, have met with a coach to optimize your target hitting, you owe it to your body to get into I-phase.
We can Work it Out
And if you'd like to work with me on some of that Zed mojo, either in person or online (yes that too is possible), please feel free to contact me. My email's in my profile, and there's some feedback here, mainly from other trainers with whom i've had the pleasure to work. Otherwise, hope you'll check out the I-phase Neural /WarmUpII package. As with R-Phase, the I-Phase DVD goes through the suite of I-phase Drills in some of the lunge/foot combinations. The Neural Warm Up II is a power boost subset version of I drills and is more of a work out. It also has several new (and intense) super chargers, body openers and eye drills.
Later, let's talk about S, too?
:)
(update 1: review of S-Phase DVD, the Complete Athlete, vol.1, posted) Tweet Follow @begin2dig
In an overview i did of Z-Health, focusing on R-phase, i wrote about how Z-Health (Zed for short in this article) focuses on communicating with the nervous system, and why that's important for improved well being, whether that's getting out of pain, or moving better for daily life or an athletic pursuit. For a quick review, R-phase focuses on moving each joint in the body through its range of motion. It does this not just because moving joints about is good for the health of the joint, but because joints have a TON of two particular kinds of receptors in them: noci- (detecting noxious stimulus - not just pain) receptors and mechano- receptors (excellent article overviewing joint mechanoreceptor types).
The mechano's in the joints are in large part communicating about where that joint is in space, as well as how fast it's moving. The brain processes all the inputs coming in from these joints to create a microsecond by microsecond map of where we are in the environment. Help all the joints move through their whole range of motion, and at least two key things happen:
- more options to respond to the environment because there's more mobility;
- the brain gets a better picture or "map," as Z-Health founder Eric Cobb puts it,of where we are because more signals are firing;
(ok you too may have wondered why he didn't just step aside, but heh, that means there were a few options rather than just one).
The pay off here is that the more ways we can move the more choices we have to avoid a crisis. The more we practice moving, the more we work our balance and visual system to connect to those movements, the better our coordinated responses, or reflexes have in a given situation. This range of options and heightened reflexes that comes from such agility/balance work has been shown to be an important component as a strategy for people at risk of hip fractures, for instance. Enhance the signals as to where one is in space, practice using them, we give the body more options to adapt and remain vertical, lessen the chance of a fall.
It's a Map - a Map of the World. Eric Cobb talks about what our bodies do in space as Navigation. "And navigation is an action." The better information coming in from the body about position in space, the better off we are. When joints can move, they're sending off more points of information.
Think about the "light bulbs" that people wear on motion capture rigs for computer graphics. Only a few points are needed around the major limbs to be applied to a model of a human form in order for the computer to integrate those points and model to render a pretty convincing motion (movie, 275kb). But look closely at the foot. How "mobile" does it seem in the model?Thus, entire strips of sensors have to be used to map finer joint movements accurately, like those of the fingers (movie 2.6mg). Way more sensors to give finer detail of movement - but check out how well or not even here, the fingers unscrewing the cap are mirrored in the computer model of same.In other words, a few points certainly give a general sense of movement, but more points of information are necessary to get a truer picture of the movement. And that's just for a computer trying to render a passable realistic sketch of a anthropomorphic character. My fave work in this space is Mike Chat's from Discovery's Extreme Martial Arts, and mapping the skeleton onto the form (check about a minute into the clip).
Very convincing approximation from gross motor movements.But notice that the light suit to get that degree of movement detail has many more points (the white dots on the skin suits in the image below)
It's these multiple points of information of course that feed into why Zed heads talk about freeing your feet, getting out of non-bendable, twistable, overly squishy shoes: their "support" stops your joints from moving as they're designed, and hence lessens the signal back to the body about the foot's location in space.
It's no wonder that so many runners get sprained ankles: the shoe wear designed to "support" their foot deadens its natural ability to communicate, hobbling the body's ability to respond and get it out of trouble. R-phase therefore is about openning up all the communication channels of the joints to enable a better map, better signal to noise ratio for letting the body respond to the envirnoment. I-phase is training the body to put that new information to work.
Building on the Information Flow: Putting the Map to Work
Eric Cobb talks about R-Phase as learning the vocabulary of movement; IPhase is getting into the grammar - building sentences. What does that mean, practically?
In R-Phase, by learning the drills that move each joint of the body through its range of motion (with the exception of the sutures in the skull - that's T-Phase), we learn about those ranges of motion. Speaking for myself, i started unable to move my thoracic spine in any meaningful, mobile way. Thought it was impossible for me. Turns out not. Lots of practice, et voila: thoracic circles like no one's business. Standing still.
So R-Phase we learn how to move these joints to send off that information with very little load on the joints themselves. Great for learning, and teaching the body to create new patterns of movement. The benefits of this practice alone are legion. I could write idyls of joy to how much R-Phase (with a little T mixed in) has helped my back. Likewise, in working with clients, R-phase drills have wrought out and out remarkable benefits for many clients, helping them either into better performance or out of pain or both.
Once that practice/knowledge is in place to perform perfectly in "neutral" posture and load, I-phase adds load. With lunges. And foot positions. A simple pelvic circle in neutral stance suddenly has a plethora of combinations from 6 lunge positions and 3 foot positions for each of 2 feet. Nice.
Train for the Sprain; the Kobioshi Maru of Movement
So why add all these positions to a given neutral stance posture? Cobb argues that this puts the body in positions that are closer to real life. Get used to working in these postures (80% load on the front leg, feet neutral; shift to 80% load on the back leg, feet turned out), the body is more ready to respond to unusual circumstances, ie, life. This is the magic of practice, or the learning effect of making reaction reflexive rather than cognitive.
We see this practice effect all the time. One of the greatest examples of it was in the early Space program, where astronauts rehearsed and rehearsed multiple variations of space maneuvers in the earliest simulators in order to have that vocabulary of options at their finger tips, but in order to be able to call on them in a variety of less than optimal conditions. Like going for a run on a muddy chip trail (in vibram fivefingers of course. no stupid squishy trail shoes that kill the proprioception here) and starting to slide, but being able to recover.
There is no Spoon: I-Phase as a Template
Another aspect of I-phase work is that "it's a
template." Unlike R-Phase, while the I-Phase and Neural WarmUp II DVDs take one through a variety of combinations of the I-Phase movements, and while they introduce some moves not in R-Phase at all (like the powerful peg board drill), the DVDs are by no means exhaustive. Right elbow circles in a left lateral lunge with neutral foot position are demonstrated. But all the other lunge positions and foot positions are available, too.To add even more dimensions, head and eye positions can also be part of the mix. How about practicing the elbow circles with a left anterior lunge, head titled left, eyes looking right (up). Sounds like a slightly wacky combination until perhaps looking at the picture on the right.
By following the guidance in the I-phase manual on how to learn and practice these loaded positions, one is not only working mobility, but adding strength/muscle work. The advantages are the same as in R-phase: signal is increased.
Adaptation for the Unexpected or the Fairly Usual.
If you've ever tried to hold a position that's new, you may feel your muscles shaking. That's a neurological adaptation happening: you may be entirely strong enough to hold the move but the muscles/nervous system are figuring out optimal firing patterns to adapt the muscles to that move. There can be quite a bit of initial shake in I-phase. But as the positions become practiced, neural paths are developed to get used to these positions.
What happens at the same time is again, more signaling information is brought to the body's central processor; better mapping happens. The muscles, like the joints have tons of mechanoreceptors too telling the body about limb position and the stretch position of the muscles. The more patterns practiced, the more the brain gets used to those new positions, the better it can navigate by putting just the right resources there (no more shaking) and having more available for elsewhere. Go from clutz in learning a move to grace in practice of a move; from conscious effort to unconscious response.
Faster Learning?
Another benefit to the I-Phase template approach is enhancing the rapidity of being able to learn new moves/adapt to new situations. Cobb talks about this kind of learning as that of the "natural athlete" - someone who has such unconscious body awareness that they can readily move their bodies into the forms demanded of that work. With I-phase practice in its varied positions, the body habits of natural athleticism can be learned.
One might protest, but i am a desk jockey, not an athlete.Phooey!
If one has to walk stairs, open a car door in a rainy oil slicked parking lot, shovel snow or sweep a floor, reach for something rolled under the couch, stay vertical on a moving British bus, then one needs these I-phase teachable athletic skills for simple survival (especially in the case of the British bus. sheesh!).
I've personally noticed that my reflexes have improved without consciously working on them - when i can catch a bottle that's coming off the counter towards the floor, grab my hat 2 feet in front of me as the wind's whipped it off my head, or beat my cousin at a video driving game without ever having played the game, something's funny here. Especially when my previous image of myself was always of the person who was lucky if the lid to the jam landed sticky side up.
So when do I do I?
Some folks ask "when should i do I-phase?" I've also heard some people say, after a year or more of focusing on R, "i'm not ready for I; i still haven't mastered R."
My view? based on my experience and working with folks? Really being grounded in R is a very good idea. Doing the 12 week program that's in R-Phase to learn R-Phase is a very good idea. I worked on R-phase for about 6 months before really getting into I. I also did the R phase certification 3 months into that cycle, so i got a lot of attention on how to do R properly (get a coach; it's worth it). This is not to say all that time was necessary; it's just what i did. Your mileage may vary, as a colleague says. What i would say is if and as you've been practicing R-phase, do connect with a Z-health coach to check your form. As with anything, getting the form right makes huge difference in performance/experience. Those simple toe pulls go from "oh ya, ok" to "ahhh. wow" when you really get 'em. And that's what you want every time.
That said, R-phase is not a martial art; it's not yoga. It's learning how to hit particular targets cleanly and effectively to recover function and "clear the map." While one can do R forever fruitfully, getting into I, as i hope has been shown above, is doing your body a favour to take that knowledge and get into some Astronaut Training Time. That is, I-Phase's addition of load and position challenge is prepping the body for Life; it's the simulator to train for the sprain. My opinion? based on my experience and working with folks? If you've been doing R for awhile, have gone through the 12 week programs, have met with a coach to optimize your target hitting, you owe it to your body to get into I-phase.
We can Work it Out
And if you'd like to work with me on some of that Zed mojo, either in person or online (yes that too is possible), please feel free to contact me. My email's in my profile, and there's some feedback here, mainly from other trainers with whom i've had the pleasure to work. Otherwise, hope you'll check out the I-phase Neural /WarmUpII package. As with R-Phase, the I-Phase DVD goes through the suite of I-phase Drills in some of the lunge/foot combinations. The Neural Warm Up II is a power boost subset version of I drills and is more of a work out. It also has several new (and intense) super chargers, body openers and eye drills.
Later, let's talk about S, too?
:)
(update 1: review of S-Phase DVD, the Complete Athlete, vol.1, posted) Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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COACHING with dr. m.c. 
