Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Sleep: (should be) the new fitness craze
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Sleep - the final frontier
If we have our workout program dialed in, and our eating dialed in, what's left? Sleep? We log our workouts; we watch our eating. Do we think much about our sleep?
For athletes we know how important sleep is for recovery. Body builders know how critical it is for muscle building. But most of us barely have sleep in our field of view, other than to say we're too busy to get enough. And way way too many world leaders and health professionals work sleep deprived
How did you sleep, a partner might ask? Ya, ok. Or not. And that's it. If the question comes up.
Sleep Work Outs? So, just like we might say we need to get in shape and develop a program to achieve that goal, or likewise get a plan to eat better, how many of us get a strategy to sleep better?
Later this week i'll be chatting with Stephan Fabregas of myZeo about sleep and what sleep is, and some wild thoughts around how sleeping is an evolutionary strategy.
In the meantime, what's your experience with sleep? Do you sleep well? If not have you thought about formally getting a better sleeping strategy?
Keep it Dark: Here's one thing i've been finding- my room is not dark all night: there's light leak through the windows. As an experiment i've been using an eye mask that folks use to sleep in the daylight. And guess what? sleeping more through the night.
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If we have our workout program dialed in, and our eating dialed in, what's left? Sleep? We log our workouts; we watch our eating. Do we think much about our sleep?
For athletes we know how important sleep is for recovery. Body builders know how critical it is for muscle building. But most of us barely have sleep in our field of view, other than to say we're too busy to get enough. And way way too many world leaders and health professionals work sleep deprived
How did you sleep, a partner might ask? Ya, ok. Or not. And that's it. If the question comes up.
Sleep Work Outs? So, just like we might say we need to get in shape and develop a program to achieve that goal, or likewise get a plan to eat better, how many of us get a strategy to sleep better?
Later this week i'll be chatting with Stephan Fabregas of myZeo about sleep and what sleep is, and some wild thoughts around how sleeping is an evolutionary strategy.
In the meantime, what's your experience with sleep? Do you sleep well? If not have you thought about formally getting a better sleeping strategy?
Keep it Dark: Here's one thing i've been finding- my room is not dark all night: there's light leak through the windows. As an experiment i've been using an eye mask that folks use to sleep in the daylight. And guess what? sleeping more through the night.
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Monday, March 22, 2010
Spring Wellbeing Haikus at b2d on fb - please share yours
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Spring Wellbeing Haiku Quest: Is spring putting a bit more zing in your step? Are new thoughts and plans and actions budding forth?
If so, please drop by the begin2dig Spring Revitalization Discussion page on facebook and share a Haiku of yours.
The form of a Haiku is 3 lines, 5/7/5 syllables a line. A few examples are already there.
Why a haiku? well in some psych literature, we see that apparently self-reflection is a great thing, and i'm thinking too that having some kind of structure to reflect around with a topic might just be spring like and unearth new thoughts.
Why not give it a go.
See ya over there?
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
If so, please drop by the begin2dig Spring Revitalization Discussion page on facebook and share a Haiku of yours.
The form of a Haiku is 3 lines, 5/7/5 syllables a line. A few examples are already there.
Why a haiku? well in some psych literature, we see that apparently self-reflection is a great thing, and i'm thinking too that having some kind of structure to reflect around with a topic might just be spring like and unearth new thoughts.
Why not give it a go.
See ya over there?
mc Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Sleep and the Carrot Cake Correlation: have you experienced this?
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Can carrot cake help sleep? Or is it just the icing? A couple weeks ago, i was coming to the end of a several month low cal low starchy carb lifestyle as part of the 
final training push for an event. One night, about a week after said event, but still having been quite diet-rigerous (by then it was habit) a group of us were out for dinner, and the waiter brought out the desert tray. On this cart was the largest slice of carrot cake i had ever seen. "It's usually bigger on the plate when they serve it"
I asked if anyone wanted to share a piece. Of those interested in the carrot cake, two other studly guys were quite happy to have their own. Ok then. I was still hungry. I was ready to go for it. Not only that i was quite sure i'd be done first. Not rushing; just i was still hungry.
The deserts arrive. The coffee arrives. The deserts are indeed huge. They are also lavished with some kind of white icing and perhaps some cream cheese kind of middle. The cake part was very good. The icing's sugar hit was intense. Wow what a rush. And yes, i did finish the cake first, but only the lads were able to polish off all the icing and middle substance.
Interestingly there were predictions of an immanent and horrible sugar crash, but perhaps i got to sleep soon enough after this (within about 90mins), but no such crash occurred. What did happen is that for the first time since i could remember, i slept through the night. I woke up feeling terrific. I have not had quite such a deep sleep since.
Is there a carrot cake correlation?
A while ago, i wrote about work that showed that mega hi GI carbs taken four hours before planned sleep resulted in getting to sleep and staying there. In looking at the GI of carrot cake (in the 50's) and the Jasmin rice used in the study (100+) that doesn't seem quite to fit. Maybe the icing put it over the top - even though i think, seem to recall, leaving quite a bit?
Dunno. I just dunno.
But if you've had any kind of similar carrot cake experience related to high quatlity sleep and high wellb
eing the next day, please let me know.
Keen to learn.
Oh, and coming up on B2D: discussions with Stephan Fabregas, Sleep reearcher at myzeo.com.
We'll get at this thing that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care yet. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
final training push for an event. One night, about a week after said event, but still having been quite diet-rigerous (by then it was habit) a group of us were out for dinner, and the waiter brought out the desert tray. On this cart was the largest slice of carrot cake i had ever seen. "It's usually bigger on the plate when they serve it"I asked if anyone wanted to share a piece. Of those interested in the carrot cake, two other studly guys were quite happy to have their own. Ok then. I was still hungry. I was ready to go for it. Not only that i was quite sure i'd be done first. Not rushing; just i was still hungry.
The deserts arrive. The coffee arrives. The deserts are indeed huge. They are also lavished with some kind of white icing and perhaps some cream cheese kind of middle. The cake part was very good. The icing's sugar hit was intense. Wow what a rush. And yes, i did finish the cake first, but only the lads were able to polish off all the icing and middle substance.
Interestingly there were predictions of an immanent and horrible sugar crash, but perhaps i got to sleep soon enough after this (within about 90mins), but no such crash occurred. What did happen is that for the first time since i could remember, i slept through the night. I woke up feeling terrific. I have not had quite such a deep sleep since.
Is there a carrot cake correlation?
A while ago, i wrote about work that showed that mega hi GI carbs taken four hours before planned sleep resulted in getting to sleep and staying there. In looking at the GI of carrot cake (in the 50's) and the Jasmin rice used in the study (100+) that doesn't seem quite to fit. Maybe the icing put it over the top - even though i think, seem to recall, leaving quite a bit?
Dunno. I just dunno.
But if you've had any kind of similar carrot cake experience related to high quatlity sleep and high wellb
eing the next day, please let me know.Keen to learn.
Oh, and coming up on B2D: discussions with Stephan Fabregas, Sleep reearcher at myzeo.com.
We'll get at this thing that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care yet. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
Friday, March 19, 2010
Michael Castrogiovanni Interview: The Innovative Fine Art & Sport of Kettlebell Partner Tossing
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For many folks, playing catch is a fun activity - get a little exercise, exercise a little skill to catch a ball while moving or to adapt to a crappy pitch or to pitch well for a great catch. Usually the implements of such game play are at most a few ounces (a few hundred grams). Now imagine taking this game up a notch and playing catch tossing 12kg (26lb) to 32kg (70lbs) or more via an iron ball that has a handle on it.
This particular form of catch is an evolution in Micahel Castrogiovanni's kettlebell practice, developed with his colleages RKC TL Jeremy Layport and RKC Blair Ferguson. It's called Kettlebell Partner Tossing, previewed half a dozen posts ago here at begin2dig. The video above is from Michael's forthcoming DVD on progressions to develop the skills for these out-of-the-sagital-plane movements few of us working out with kb's have ever tried.
I got to see this tossing live (way more incredible and very "beautiful strength"y than even the video conveys) and found it so compelling, i asked Michael if he'd do an interview about his own background in athletics, how he came to kettlebells, how the heck KB Partner Tossing came about and fits into his practice. Michael kindly agreed, and beyond those points, we also discuss some thoughts on who else might consider adding Tossing kb's to their athletic regimen.
Background: In what's known as the hard style kettlebell community Michael is a quiet but potent presence. For context, he is the co-author with Brett Jones of the well regarded Kettlebbell Basics for Strength Coaches and Personal Trainers. We'll come back to this one.
Michael also has a Bachelors degree in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Fitness Nutrition and Health, his certifications include NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist; he is an RKC team leader. Michael's training has seen him working with business executives, the Orange County fire authority, high school football teams, and Hermits at a monastery to name just a few. More bio details are available at Michael's Facebook page.
Interview Proper
Have you always been an athletic guy? If yes, what's the path been? if not, what's the path been?
the guy with the beard is you! you taught me how to push press a kettlebell, dude! that's a great video. Would you care to discuss a bit more about how that dvd came about since it's become such a reference set?
to participate with you?
Wow that will be great for your sales.
So a few questions here: what kind of prep would you say is crucial - how does someone know they're and advanced kettlebeller - you mention time - what else?
What would you say if it hasn't been covered is important for folks to be sure to incorporate into their own strength practice that you think may be missing or underplayed?
Will post an update as soon as Michael's video is out. In the meantime if you'd like to hook up with Michael for training, he can be reached via sportfitproformance.com
In the meantime, let's see that again...
Related Posts
This particular form of catch is an evolution in Micahel Castrogiovanni's kettlebell practice, developed with his colleages RKC TL Jeremy Layport and RKC Blair Ferguson. It's called Kettlebell Partner Tossing, previewed half a dozen posts ago here at begin2dig. The video above is from Michael's forthcoming DVD on progressions to develop the skills for these out-of-the-sagital-plane movements few of us working out with kb's have ever tried.
I got to see this tossing live (way more incredible and very "beautiful strength"y than even the video conveys) and found it so compelling, i asked Michael if he'd do an interview about his own background in athletics, how he came to kettlebells, how the heck KB Partner Tossing came about and fits into his practice. Michael kindly agreed, and beyond those points, we also discuss some thoughts on who else might consider adding Tossing kb's to their athletic regimen.
Historical Note - it may well be that strongmen (and maybe stronggals) of yore partner kb tossed. You know, it's bound to happen: have a kettlebell; a couple strongpeople. Eventually, it has to come up "heh let's throw that at each other " (thanks ltd for that '30's link).
The ever vigilant Randy Hauer sent me a link to a demo of Ukraniane KB partner tossing hence me calling Michael an Innovator, rather than an Inventor. What i saw with Michael and Jeremy was not as formalized as the ukranine precision tossing, used heavy kb's, and seems to have the potential to evolve into a sport (my assessment; Michael makes no such claims). It seems to me that by doing a How To DVD on this practice, Michael is making an effort to enable others to gain access to this practice. All good. Here's to you experiencing delight and joy in this practice, too.
Background: In what's known as the hard style kettlebell community Michael is a quiet but potent presence. For context, he is the co-author with Brett Jones of the well regarded Kettlebbell Basics for Strength Coaches and Personal Trainers. We'll come back to this one.
Michael also has a Bachelors degree in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Fitness Nutrition and Health, his certifications include NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist; he is an RKC team leader. Michael's training has seen him working with business executives, the Orange County fire authority, high school football teams, and Hermits at a monastery to name just a few. More bio details are available at Michael's Facebook page.
Interview Proper
Have you always been an athletic guy? If yes, what's the path been? if not, what's the path been?
I have always been involved in athletics and it has taken me many years of practice and dedicated training to develop my athletic abilities. I view athleticism as a lifelong pursuit and it is something I am continually working towards improving. I played soccer, basketball and football as a youngster. When I turned 14 I asked Mark Reifkind (the owner of the World Gym at the time and current Master RKC) if I could work out at his facilities. Unfortunately the age requirement was 16. After begging and pleading he told me I needed a note from my mom and dad with their permission to work out. My parents felt it was a good idea so I started at the World Gym shortly thereafter. In high school I played football, tennis and wrestled. I continued wrestling on club teams in college and I furthered my pursuit of athleticism in the weight room and in the class room. After college I spent as much time as possible with leaders in the industry honing my skills, learning as much as I could from as many people as possible.it sounds like you may have moved progressively away from sports to more strength based training. Is that the case or is something else happening here?
I have been doing strength based training with weights since I was 14 to supplement my sports performance. As I am getting older I am participating less in competitive sports and have moved more towards the strength training, yes. I also do quite a bit of work for my hand eye coordination, overall coordination and agility as well in order to keep things well rounded and balanced. My intention is to increase athleticism and my ability to move optimally and restriction free in all ways, anything that will improve these abilities gets incorporated into my training.Your early DVD on KB coaching with Brett Jones- it took me ages to connect
the guy with the beard is you! you taught me how to push press a kettlebell, dude! that's a great video. Would you care to discuss a bit more about how that dvd came about since it's become such a reference set?
Sure. The KB basics DVD came from my 2004 pat the point of doing this video, what was your main training? how did it come about?resentation on kettlebells at the NSCA national conference. I had made contact with the NSCA and they invited me to do a presentation on kettlebells in Minnesota of all places. I contacted John Du Cane of Dragondoor publications and told him of the business opportunity and he got on board.
Shortly after I spoke with John, Brett Jones senior RKC and a fellow CSCS sent me an e-mail asking to be a part of the presentation, and that he would help in any capacity that he could. So I decided that it would be a good idea for him to demonstrate the Kettlebell movements. The presentation was a huge success and we received positive feedback for our performance and our chemistry. Pavel, who was also at the conference, remarked at how well we worked together and told us that we should do a DVD. We agreed and worked for the next several months building the outline. We shot the DVD in early 2005 had it edited and on the market by late June of 2005 and the rest is history.
At the point of filming I had just left the monastery where I had been living for the previous six months. While I was there my training consisted of all things kettlebells, squats, deadlifts, pull-ups and yoga. When I wasn’t working out I was splitting wood, climbing trees, lifting rocks, mountain biking and hiking.SO before we get to that one, how did you come to KB's?
The way that it came about is actually quite cool. I brought my bells up to the monastery and they had some very basic weights in their gym. I worked ninety percent with kettlebells and ten percent or sometimes less with more conventional types of training. My style of training was dictated by what I had available to me and how creative I could be. It is one of the fondest memories I have of training even thought the equipment was minimal.
Interestingly enough the same man who opened his gym doors to me when I was 14 would introduce Kettlebells to me 9 years later. Mark Reifkind had been telling me about this strength and conditioning tool called a "kettlebell" for several months. Finally one afternoon in his garage he showed me the swing, clean and snatch. After the initial lesson, he ran me through a quick circuit with the kettlebells that left me mindboggled and out of breath! From that moment I knew my training would be changing for the better.That's cool. What was your practice at this time? still sports focused? strength focused? or did you just trying to get a sense of what you mean your training would get better?
There was still sport focus but it was beginning to taper quite a bit. I had sustained a wrestling injury so my competitive days had come to a standstill. I was predominately focused on rehabilitating myself and getting as strong and healthy as I could. When the kettlebell was introduced to me I realized that my training was going to get better in the sense of more interesting, more creative and in a way a totally different paradigm of training. I moved away from many of the lifts I was doing with the intention of immersing myself in the kettlebell.How did strength become important to you?
Sounds like you've had at least one experience - perhaps that was not in the strength space - that led you to this discovery about the vulnerability/strength tao. if you care to share a bit more about that, that could be cool.
The first response that comes to mind is that I wanted to be as strong as possible so that when I wrestled I could man handle my opponents. If I look deeper, a more honest answer is that strength became important to me because of my desire to not feel weakness or vulnerability and the insecurity that accompanies the two. I guess you could say fear of being week or vulnerable was where it all started-compensation based if you will. I used my apparent strength to feel better about the areas where I was not strong. Later in my strength training career I learned that the very thing I was aiming to avoid, vulnerability, was the key to finding real strength. To be willing to be vulnerable and face weakness is where authentic strength is spawned. The willingness to make mistakes, to fail and to not be perfect is true strength training. This is my ongoing practice and by no means I am a master yet. However, now I know that vulnerability is not something to fear. Rather, it is an ally to be embraced, accepted and learned from.
It will sound trivial to say that is a compelling and powerful story, Michael. It's the sort of thing one wants to ponder. How then now do you measure your satisfaction with your own pursuit of strength?
The experience that comes to mind is a wrestling injury. I was in tip top shape wrestling five to six days a week going to school full time, teaching grade school P.E. part time and studying some martial arts. My plate was full, my speed was full throttle, and my definition of who I was came from all the physical demands that I placed on myself. I felt invincible, powerful, fully alive and completely identified with my body. At wrestling practice the week before league finals I made a poor choice to wrestle with a novice. I took a sloppy shot, he dove at me, my face met the crown of his head and he knocked me out. I awoke on my back with blood in my throat and no feeling in my legs. I freaked out and began to pray.
Fortunately nothing was broken. Since I was feeling numbness and tingling in my left arm the doctor sent me to a neurologist who ordered an MRI. We discovered a herniated disc and was ordered to stop physical activity. Everything that I identified with had been taken away from me in a moment and I was left questioning who I was. I didn’t realize how much self worth I put in my identities, as a wrestler, as a coach, as a teacher, as a strong man, etc until I was unable to be those things. I felt that there was more to me than my physicality and I also saw that many of the superficial aspects of my life were what I believed myself to be. The journey back to physical, mental and emotional health was where my true strength journey began. Vulnerability and weakness became the norm and my lessons became more about acceptance and letting go than making personal records and building my body. I began to experience a different type of strength from a whole, new perspective .
Slowly I felt sensation come back to my body. Dazed, I sat up; stabilizing my neck with my hands I went to the bathroom and packed my nose with toilet paper. I had a friend drive me to the gas station to buy a big bag of ice for my neck. She wanted me to go to the emergency room and I insisted I would be fine. I had a test the next morning and couldn’t afford to wait in the ER. She took me back to my house and I passed out for the night. The next morning I knew that I was in bad shape, I bombed my test and headed over to Student health services with a swollen neck and pounding headache. The doctor immediately put me in a neck brace, diagnosed me with a concussion and sent me off for a CT scan.
I feel most satisfied in my strength pursuit when what I am doing to build strength carries over into other aspects of my life. The measurement for that is quite intrinsic but I know when there is carry over and that is what is most important to me.Moving then from this intrinsic aspect to the extrinsic and the particulars of your new practice, at the RKC II 2010 cert in San Jose you spoke of a kind of dissatisfaction with kb's always in the same movement plane - effectively, going between one's legs and over one's head. What inspired you to move outside that plane/box?
Ideas came to me and I wanted to try and see if they could actually work. By allowing myself permission to explore the possibilities, the conceptual moves soon became reality that in turn lead to more possibilities. The kettlebell is a creative outlet for me.Was that a surprise to you?
I see myself as a very creative person so it was not a surprise to me.Good for you. That's cool. Dare i ask what are the properties of the kettlebell that appeal to you such that it made sense for this kind of exploration?
This is a deep conversation that I think we ought to have over a cup of tea after we have tossed some bells together. I can show you better than I can tell you.Delighted. How long have you been developing/playing with less static movement in kb's.
The more dynamic movements started in 2004 when I was living in Big Sur at a monastery. Yes, at a monastery.Well i can think of few better places for one than on the Big Sur road. Pray continue.
I felt confined in the traditional ranges and I wanted to incorporate more movement to promote greater growth in general and in athleticism. So I started to explore as many possibilities as I could imagine.Can we do something very basic here and ask about movement? Folks used to pressing weights in the gym might already see kettlebell swinging as dynamic and a wee bit dangerous. So to say you wanted more movement may be intriguing for folks watching regular kb vids, or those who are already practicing with them.
Even though the kettlebell moves are much more dynamic than most people are used to, the movements are all done with stationary feet. As an athlete and strength and conditioning coach, I recognize the importance of footwork and agile feet. So when I talk about wanting more dynamic movements, I am referring to moving the body through time and space as well as the kettlebells.What motivated the partner kb tossing? how did you encourage others
to participate with you?
The motivation for partner passing came from my desire to progress further outside the box. Once I tried passing I immediately knew that it was something that I wanted to pursue. Unfortunately it is not that easy to convince other people to let you throw cannonballs at them. Luckily, I met Blair Ferguson of Sportfitproformance.com and he was totally into the idea!The difference between the video clip and the demonstration/performance with you and Jeremy in San Jose seemed to be the closeness of the space. There was something even more compelling i found both in the tighter space of the performance and also, sitting on the ground to watch it low. Have you seen video from that seated position of you guys passing the kb? if not, i hope you'll take a look.
The other person that I was able to convince to throw bells at me, AND who has been instrumental in the development process is Jeremy Layport. Thanks to Blair and Jeremy I have been able to develop KB passing beyond what I ever imagined.
I have not and I will take a look at that as it presents itself thank you for the insight.Also, do you see your movement in partner passing as demonstration or performance or something else?
It is demonstration, performance and training all in one. All aspects are going on when an audience is present. The degree of perceived danger is increased with an audience in front of you-especially the first time demonstrating.From an athletic wellbeing perspective, what do you see as the benefits from kb tossing?
i wonder how we could set up a functional mri of kb tossing - just to see how the brain lights up as the risk/attention and coordination go up. fascinating.The benefits are many. I find that the most important thing that it has facilitated in me is greater trust: trust in my body's ability to handle whatever is "Thrown at me", trust in my partner to do his or her best and trust in the process as it unfolds. Another benefit that comes from partner passing, is learning to read situations and make split second adjustments accordingly without compromising structural or personal integrity.Some additional training effects of KB passing are increased awareness and sharpened focus. As the perceived degree of difficulty and/or danger of a given activity increases, we tend to invest more of our focused attention on the activity at hand. Some side benefits that I have seen are increased eye hand coordination, grip strength and endurance, the ability to manage load and force from many different angles and improvement in one's ability to improvise to name just a few.
That is a great idea and I would love to be a part of that and see what the results would be.Two quick questions: i'm betting that y'all would call kb partner tossing safe because you train with weights against which you know you can get position when they're thrown. Is that fair?
That is fair and there is still danger involved.That said, what are your usual partner tossing weights? do you train with these or heavier/lighter weights?
I use as many different weights as possible. The amount of weight is one important variable of this type of training that allows for so many possibilities. As the weight changes, even though the patterns stay the same, the exercises become radically different. I do most of my experimentation with the 12kg, 16kg, or 20kg, with the goal of being able to eventually do the patterns with the 24kg, 32kg, and up. There was a session a few months back where Jeremy and I were tossing a pair of 48kgs for reps back and forth. I also toss the 8kg’s with some of my female clients, it really depends on who I am tossing with and what my intention is for our session.How much time would you say you and your colleagues put into training tossing daily/weekly to get to the proficiency you have - and let's just get it out there now that you are all veteran kettlebell trainers and practitioners in the standard arts of swing, snatch,get up.
You also say you trust your partner to give "his or her best" - have you worked with women in the tossing? if so, are any parts of the experience different from working with men/women in this practice?For the year prior to filming the video I was practicing with Blair Ferguson three times a week for one to two hours depending on what we were working on. I only had a few weekends to work with Jeremy several months before we filmed. Fortunately, Jeremy is such a stud and incredible athlete he was able to pick it up quickly and he also had [RKC Team Leader -mc] Chris Holder to practice with and that made a big difference.Tossing is also a single person endeavor. On the days I was not practicing with Blair or Jeremy I would practice my single man juggling routine to get better at handling the bell and understanding its nature to prepare for partner passing.
Yes I have worked with a few women and there is very little difference other than the amount of weight used. Women tend to pick it up fast and enjoy the challenge just as much as the men I have worked with. I want to work with more women because one of the major benefits is the balancing, grounding and rooting aspects this type of training has to offer. I feel tossing has quite a lot of potential for women of all ages.In your experience how is tossing different than kb juggling?
There is far less control in tossing vs. jugglingNice. good point.
You never know what kind of a rep is going to be thrown at you and adaptation is paramount. There is also a component of communication that exists with the passing that is not there when you are juggling. Tossing kettlebells is an interaction between two humans and a way of relating with each other through the kettlebell, whereas juggling you are relating to the kettlbell. Kettlebell passing is in its essence a complete model for communication and I still have much to learn about communication from this type of training.You sound pretty passionate about the importance of communication. could you speak a bit more about why this is critical for you?
The reason I am so passionate about Communication is because it is the platform for all interaction. To be effective and successful at life is to be an excellent communicator. Communication is both listening and speaking and to be a master of communication allows one the ability to exist in any environment with ease and grace. Listening is one of the most powerful aspects of kettlebell passing, it becomes more than an act of the ears, rather, an act of one’s entire body. Listening takes on a whole new meaning as all the senses are employed to read a given situation as it is unfolding in the present moment.
What would you advice folks to do who are new to kettlebells, see your video and say "wow that looks so cool; i want to do that?"
Don't.
This type of training was developed for advanced athletes and kettlebellers. Spend a few years learning the basics before you get any crazy ideas. Strength health and longevity are the goals of training and making poor choices will only keep you from the goals.You know as soon as you put out your dvd though, that folks who haven't worked much with KB's are going to get excited about this as "extreme kettlebelling"
So a few questions here: what kind of prep would you say is crucial - how does someone know they're and advanced kettlebeller - you mention time - what else?
You might be an intermediate kettlebeller if you have been practicing for a year or more and teaching for about as long, and you have an RKC, AKC, or IKFF cert under your belt.Also, i mention "extreme kettlebelling" - it doesn't sound however like it has that "extreme" mantra to you - that you're not driven by how far you can toss or how heavy. What is the key focus for you?
You might be an advanced kettlebeller if you have three to five years under your belt and you are a Team Leader, a Senior RKC, a Master RKC, or if you are a competitive kettlebell lifter with several meets under your belt and you are a higher level instructor for one of the other reputable kettlebell certifying bodies out there..
Seven or more years of continuous practice and you are more than likely to be in the advanced category provided you have had a credible instructor teach you the techniques of the trade. Learning from magazines books and DVD’s does not count!
If you can easily complete the single man [sic] kettlebell juggling routine from my KB partner passing DVD with good form and in a safe manner, it is most likely o.k. to proceed. Provided you have had instruction from credible instructors.
I do enjoy tossing bells as far as possible and passing heavy bells back and forth and you are right the drive is not the extreme aspect of the training. The key of the kettlebell partner passing for me is the highly focused state of Zen like meditation that is achieved from practicing. It is a movement meditation and a form of self cultivation like no other that I have experienced. It is a cross between Tai Chi, wrestling, and weightlifting.Have to say that my recollection of watching the tossing at the RKC the youtub clip just doesn't do it justice. WHen you kept saying to the group to move back and give you a bit more room, i don't think most of us had any idea what was coming - for what would you need that much room with a kettlebell?
I think it is far more impressive to see KB passing in person then in video format. It was an amazing experience to have the space I did and the audience to demo for. I was so into what we were doing that time and spaces were of little concern.Kettlebell tossing is an act to be seen by others as well as practiced for dynamic strength, is it not? Where does performance in front of others come into your practice? What's its role?
I hope others see this style of training and realize that it takes good sound judgment to determine if it is appropriate for their personal practice. To see is one thing and to do is a whole different ball of wax. I recommend extreme caution when others consider this kind of training. It is Dangerous! The element of danger adds to the benefit of the training and the reward must be weighed against the risk.Does it feel much different when there's folks watching?
The performance aspect creates more pressure, when I start tossing the only thing I have on my mind is what's being tossed at me and what I am tossing back.When you're not tossing kettlebells with the willing, what do you do, Michael?
One of my favorite things to do is train at sportfitproformance.com in Ventura, California with Blair Ferguson. Our collaboration is one of the main reasons that the KB passing has advanced and evolved to this level. I love being active, hiking, biking, yoga, surfing, grappling, kayaking and just about anything else that involves nature. I also enjoy learning, communicating, reading and I am learning to enjoy writing more. Spending time with friends and family is very important to me and I always enjoy developing and growing my relationships.Yoga? any particular form? and how long has that been in the Michael mix?
I began yoga in 2000 just before I was introduced to kettlebells. The tyle of yoga was predominately vinyasa flow, I have also practiced restorative yoga, tantra, and power yoga. Four years ago, I transitioned to a more aggressive and challenging form of power yoga called Blanchard yoga and have been practicing it since.Is that activity what sets your hair on fire or is there something else that also moves you?
I tell ya, watching you do pull-ups at the RKC 2 moved me!! The natural world and the mysteries' of life along with the depth and beauty of the human body sets my hair on fire.Goodness.
What would you say if it hasn't been covered is important for folks to be sure to incorporate into their own strength practice that you think may be missing or underplayed?
Squats, Deadlifts, overhead press and pull-ups.OK, let's go: why each one, and with which implements?
All implements are good to use and should be used in moderation.As we've been discussing, you do have a video on kb parner tossing coming out. What will it be called, when can we expect it, and where will we be able to order it?
They are all full body exercises and require significant amounts of tension to perform and they all systemically fortify the body.
Pull-ups because it is important to be able to pull your weight.
Squats because they teach you to stand up
Overhead press because this is one of our weakest positions and it is always good to have the strength to put your own luggage in the overhead bin.
Deadlifts because it is important to be able to pick up heavy stuff you never know when you will need this.
"Michael Castrogiovanni's Kettlebell Partner Passing" (as of right now) is in the final stages of production and is expected to be released this quarter. It will be available through multiple outlets including my website transformativefitness.com.Fabulous; looking forward to it. I'm sure the three of you could get onto tv shows demonstrating this - that strength can be fluid and beautiful in different ways.
Yes I want to juggle for OprahThat would be fantastic. How do we make that happen? In the meantime, is there anything else you'd care to share that i haven't touched on here related to wellbeing, fitness, what's important to you in this space?
Thank you for taking the time, Michael, to talk about your practice and your new sport. Much obliged.Yes. I feel that there is one key ingredient to wellness and fitness that is overlooked and often thrown by the wayside in favor of increasing numbers, winning and achieving new personal records.
That crucial ingredient is fun.
We have been conditioned at such an early age to win that the idea of fun gets glossed over. The win at any cost attitude is a fast track to burning out. If a lifelong pursuit of health, fitness and wellness are the goals, I highly recommend doing more of things that you enjoy, that make you laugh and smile, with people you love.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my experience with you and your readers. Peace and blessings to all.Michael is one more incredible athlete whom i've spoken with from the RKC II who's independently said the premium should be on fun, being in the moment, rather than numbers. There's a theme from the best practitioners developing here.
Will post an update as soon as Michael's video is out. In the meantime if you'd like to hook up with Michael for training, he can be reached via sportfitproformance.com
In the meantime, let's see that again...
Related Posts
- Asha Wagner: taming the beast with Greasing the Groove (interview)
- What if we were no longer how we define ourselves - like strong?
- RKC Cert Experience
- Prepping for the RKC Cert
- GS first impressions
- Enter the Kettlebell Review
- Deadlift Resources: Deadlift Digest
- Sensory-Motor Contribution to Strength/Performance
- Green Tea, why it rocks for health || how to prepare it
- Sedona Method Review: getting rid of crap around goals
- KB Basics for Strength Coaches and Personal Trainers double DVD set
- ETK (Enter the Kettlebell)
- Kalos Sthenos (beautiful strength)
- Power to the People Pavel Tsatsouline (deadlift guide)
- Starting strength Mark Rippetoe (squat/deadlift guide)
Monday, March 15, 2010
Sports Training on the other side of the weight room with Sensory-Motor Perception
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Does Make me Stronger Make Me a Better Athlete? When athletes talk about getting stronger for their sport, what's the goal behind that quest? Is that because we think that strength is the missing ingredient that will actually make us *better* athletes in a game situation? If so, why? We want to hit the ball harder, throw faster, kick further and we think strength's it? Is that the key part of our game that's weak? And if that's it, is raw strength the real issue?
If we're swinging a bat, and our hips and pelvis move as a unit rather than serially into the swing (bacause they can't move separately), that's a power leak that where more strength mayn't make much of a performance difference without correcting that hip/pelvis issue. If we're going to grab the bar for a deadlift but our wrist mobility is shonky, are we going to be able to control our grip with the strength it takes to make the pull? More leg strength isn't the issue. If we want to kick a football really far but our balance is off so our coordination is a bit askew, more power may continue to be directed away from optimal contact.
likewise, there's a lot of decision processing going on whether on the court or on the field, right? Our brains are making tons of decisions so quickly from where to put a ball on the opponent's side of the tennis court, to where the best path is to run a ball down the field, to who's open for a shot. If we're not really seeing the field, we can't make optimal decsisions about it.
So maybe we need to consider the sensory-motor connections of visural, vestibular and proprioceptive perception and associated skills to enhance our sports performance training. Each of these systems can be trained deliberately to behave more reflexively to these very normal sports situations.
In the following sections, we'll look at these areas of the sensory-motor processing within our sensory systems AND there'll be some quick self-checks you can run to check parts of these perceptual systems' performance. We'll also consider the time a person would have to put into this program to see real performance change, and i've peppered in links for resources either to doing each bit at a time, or training to put each part together at once.
The goal is that with this overview you can begin to ask the questions - and have some answers - about how to assess yourself in terms of performance, not just strength. You may find that your strength simply improves as a consequence of better work here, too.
Tuning Sensory-Motor Performance.
By way of a quick overview the proprioceptive system, as i've written about at b2d rather a bit, is the monitoring system in our bods that lets us know what's happening to us from a range of awarenesses: pressure, temperature, chemical shifts, elecro-magnetical sensing, and particular for athletic movement, positional and noxious (aka pain in many cases) awareness.
For positional awareness, we're wired up with propriocpetive mechanorecptors ( a special class of mechnoreceptors), with a good many of them being around the joints, the bendy bits of the body (makes sense - good to know where the mobile parts of a limb can be) and in the musles that detect stretch, motion, pressure. This being the case - that these receptors convey alot about the state of our limbs moving in space - the corollary of this is the better a joint can move, or the better the range of motion and the control of that range of motion around a joint, the better the information that joint is putting out.
Eric Cobb talks about this enriched sensory action as "map clarity" - the more data points the more detailed the map; the more mechanoreceptors available to give positional information the more options the body has about where and how it can go somewhere. If there's restrictions in the ankle or knees so that range of motion is not available there's in effect a sensory deprivation and a performance decrement: the body doesn't tend to go down blind alleys; it makes the best decisions it can based on the available map. Which can mean - you body don't have the resources to step quickly over that stump, you're going down suddenly. Ugh! shock! sprain!
Similarly if an athlete's restricted in their hips for instance (the hip and pelvis behave like a fused unit rather than separate joints) how the heck are they going to perform optimally? What will pay for this lack of mobility? the Low back maybe?
Preliminary Assessment
So one key part of athletic training can be a good movement assessment before any training takes place. An assessment helps discover where an athlete may need to do some work to reduce restrictions in mobility in order to open up better movement options - and thus the athlete has a better set of options for responding to situations without getting hurt when in play: yes the body has a very clear sense of where it is and (b) with lots of range of motion available, has more options for moving the ankle rather than going over on it.
At an even more basic level, mobility work is simply the practice of the joint movements to make sure an athlete can they move the joints well on demand and effortlessly.
Aside: such assessments can also check visual and vestibular performance too.
Movement Quick Check: Here's a simple check you can do with yourself or your athletes to explore joint freedom for greater movement options. Stick a leg out in front of you, and then put the leg out and straight so that it crosses the body where the foot of the outstretched leg goes past the foot of the stance leg. Check in a mirror: is the pelvis torquing around to let the leg reach this far? Now make little circles there with the knee locked out and the leg crossed over: is the pelvis torqued over? still? going up and down? If the pelvis is still and not torqued forward as if moving towards the other leg, in that position at that speed, super. Try going slower and faster. Still good? super duper. If not, that may be a sign that the pelvis and hip don't know how to work independent of each other - and so the mechanoreceptive information is less clear/accurate, and the functional options for movement less optimal. Mobility work can often address this and recover that more discrete hip/pelvis function.
Time to train: every joint in the body takes 10 mins a day, once a day. Can work different speeds/drills on different days.
Roles: So mobility work has two main functions: (1) ensuring optimal signal for optimal options of movement in live situations (Example programs for self-development).; (2) practicing movements in a variety of positions with the joints so that getting into weird (eg accident) type positions are not shocking, but relatively adaptable (program for self-dev)
Vestibular Acuity.
The middle of the neural hierarchy is the inner ear: it is predominantly the balance system of the body. BUT it also relates to motion detection, proprioception and even muscle tone. Everything is interconnected. That's really critical to understand that these systems in the neural hierarchy are not independent of each other: an issue in one has consequences in the other, and multiple systems contribute to different degrees in different contexts to the same thing. Here, for short hand, we're focusing on the balance role of the vestibular system.
The balance system is mainly located in the inner ears. We have two inner ears - one for each
ear. That sounds obvious, but just like each eye may be slightly different in strenghts/weaknesses, likewise the inner ears may have different dominances. How well are they behaving in general to support sports movement? And how well are they behaving in concert?
Assessments of the vestibular system may show a discrepency on either side specifically, or generally that there may be some weaknesses. The cool thing is, the balance system can be trained. Intriguingly this doesn't mean stepping onto unstable surfaces. IT may mean skills development on very stable surfaces (see middle of this post) .
Quick Test: Here's an example. Stand on one foot for more than fifteen seconds. Now stand on the other. Is one side more wobbly than the other? Why is that? How common is it for someone on a sports field to have one leg off the ground at a time? So might it be valuable to ensure that one can be as stable as possible in that circumstance?
Time to train: 3x's a week, 10 mins/session, 8 weeks. Then maintenance.
Visual Accuity
At the top of the neural hierarchy is visual acuity - not eye sight, but they get sports vision evaluations to see how they're doing, and they practice visual acuity (here's one example) so that they can respond quickly to what's happening on the field - so their ability to perceive the situation under pressure improves.
When we work on visual accuity, we not only look at the function of the two eyes and how well they're working together, but we also work on improving the time, complexity and distractions that can be processed concurrently for quicker visually lead responses to action in the environment.
Quick Test - check out the near/far drill modelled in the link above.
Time to train: basic drills, 2 mins a day, can be combined with mobility work.
Practice sessions for cognitive load, 15 mins a day, 3times a week, 8 weeks, then maintenance.
Great program for self-development: great visual drills and speed work, too.
Putting This Sensory-Motor Work into Practice: Speed/Quickness:
As said in vision, we work with athletes to improve visual acuity of eye performance like speed of changing focus, but also work on processing dynamically changing visual information more quickly. When we have discrete loaded mobility, balance and visual acuity firing, we can also consider putting these together at "sports speed."
But speed is also a skill, too. Strength and conditioning has for awhile now been looking at sprining mechanics and technique and training - like plyometrics - to improve quickness. All sorts of things like towing a partner or being towed can get into faster turn over.
There are other techniques, too, though, that have to do with putting all the mobility and visual and vestibular accuity to work to move quickly and more efficiently at quickness. So sometimes speed is speed, but sometimes it's being faster in response to something than the opponent.
Speed in Context.
This one seems so obvious - to move fast is a good thing. And that's where our example athlete came in at the beginning: someone who wanted to move faster (i think that's what the fast twitch is about) but the skills described here would be not about making the person faster once they're up and running (how far do they have to go on a field?) but
I've bet guys much younger than i am that i can beat them getting turned around or i can get a faster start off the line from a standing start than they. What's the difference? Technique and practice of technique for moments of change where the technique is efficient and it respect the brilliance that is the athletic ready position.
Strength: what kind of strength. Finally, after all the above neural stuff happens, we might want to come back to the question: so do you really need to be stronger in your current deadlift to be a better socer player?
I generally find that most guys who have been playing for awhile are plenty strong on the teams but their endurance in the last part of the game can flag. So if anything gets added to the program, kettlebells can be great and very efficient for brute strength and stamina: two simple moves - swings and turkish get ups.
Quick Test If ya don't believe me, try this for ten minutes:
- (assuming you know how to swing a kb safely) you swing a heavy kb while your partner TGU's left and right with a medium bell, then swap and keep going non-stop for ten minutes. These two moves have the advantage of also developing hip and lat strength, pretty key for that athletic ready position.
Time to train - 20-40 mins every other day except in season. In season, coach's discretion.
Ask any coach if the strongest athlete in the dressing room is their best athlete on the field.
Taking the Pieces Further: getting more drills and skills and program plans. If the above kinda program sounds interesting to you, beyond the links to various bits above, there's a three day workshop that gives a great intro to self-assessment and practice on this performance pyramid of vision, vestibular, proprioception calledessentials of elite performance (overview).
Some of us also coach this stuff (look for S-phase (review) in the training certifications). If you can't find someone in your neighborhood, i also coach via email/skype. Contact me with the email link at the bottom of this post if you're interested in neural hierarchy for sports training.
Take Away: Better is not necessarily Stronger.
Assuming the goal is to be a better field player, not just stronger, there may be more and other ways to look at performance than just raw strength. And that OTHER which we may often think of as rather fixed - vision, balance, movement - is highly plastic and trainable. When we start with the nervous system, too, the biomechanics seem to come online, stronger, faster, better.
Update: related new resource (may 2010)
DVD Mini Course - 6.5 hours of the essentials of elite performance workshop on three divds. If you can't make the workshop, or just want to get going on this stuff NOW, this new dvd mini course is a great way to get going. I'll have a full review soon, but in the meantime, there's way more self-tests and practices than covered above. Please check the link for the full nine yards on the details.
Get it, love it, sign up for the essentials workshop or R-phase cert (overview) within 30 days of purchase and get $100 off tuition of either course.
Great way to get a richer sensory-motor training tool box and tune up. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
If we're swinging a bat, and our hips and pelvis move as a unit rather than serially into the swing (bacause they can't move separately), that's a power leak that where more strength mayn't make much of a performance difference without correcting that hip/pelvis issue. If we're going to grab the bar for a deadlift but our wrist mobility is shonky, are we going to be able to control our grip with the strength it takes to make the pull? More leg strength isn't the issue. If we want to kick a football really far but our balance is off so our coordination is a bit askew, more power may continue to be directed away from optimal contact.
likewise, there's a lot of decision processing going on whether on the court or on the field, right? Our brains are making tons of decisions so quickly from where to put a ball on the opponent's side of the tennis court, to where the best path is to run a ball down the field, to who's open for a shot. If we're not really seeing the field, we can't make optimal decsisions about it.
So maybe we need to consider the sensory-motor connections of visural, vestibular and proprioceptive perception and associated skills to enhance our sports performance training. Each of these systems can be trained deliberately to behave more reflexively to these very normal sports situations.
In the following sections, we'll look at these areas of the sensory-motor processing within our sensory systems AND there'll be some quick self-checks you can run to check parts of these perceptual systems' performance. We'll also consider the time a person would have to put into this program to see real performance change, and i've peppered in links for resources either to doing each bit at a time, or training to put each part together at once.
The goal is that with this overview you can begin to ask the questions - and have some answers - about how to assess yourself in terms of performance, not just strength. You may find that your strength simply improves as a consequence of better work here, too.
Tuning Sensory-Motor Performance.
By way of a quick overview the proprioceptive system, as i've written about at b2d rather a bit, is the monitoring system in our bods that lets us know what's happening to us from a range of awarenesses: pressure, temperature, chemical shifts, elecro-magnetical sensing, and particular for athletic movement, positional and noxious (aka pain in many cases) awareness.
For positional awareness, we're wired up with propriocpetive mechanorecptors ( a special class of mechnoreceptors), with a good many of them being around the joints, the bendy bits of the body (makes sense - good to know where the mobile parts of a limb can be) and in the musles that detect stretch, motion, pressure. This being the case - that these receptors convey alot about the state of our limbs moving in space - the corollary of this is the better a joint can move, or the better the range of motion and the control of that range of motion around a joint, the better the information that joint is putting out.
Eric Cobb talks about this enriched sensory action as "map clarity" - the more data points the more detailed the map; the more mechanoreceptors available to give positional information the more options the body has about where and how it can go somewhere. If there's restrictions in the ankle or knees so that range of motion is not available there's in effect a sensory deprivation and a performance decrement: the body doesn't tend to go down blind alleys; it makes the best decisions it can based on the available map. Which can mean - you body don't have the resources to step quickly over that stump, you're going down suddenly. Ugh! shock! sprain!Similarly if an athlete's restricted in their hips for instance (the hip and pelvis behave like a fused unit rather than separate joints) how the heck are they going to perform optimally? What will pay for this lack of mobility? the Low back maybe?
Preliminary Assessment
So one key part of athletic training can be a good movement assessment before any training takes place. An assessment helps discover where an athlete may need to do some work to reduce restrictions in mobility in order to open up better movement options - and thus the athlete has a better set of options for responding to situations without getting hurt when in play: yes the body has a very clear sense of where it is and (b) with lots of range of motion available, has more options for moving the ankle rather than going over on it.
At an even more basic level, mobility work is simply the practice of the joint movements to make sure an athlete can they move the joints well on demand and effortlessly.
Aside: such assessments can also check visual and vestibular performance too.
Movement Quick Check: Here's a simple check you can do with yourself or your athletes to explore joint freedom for greater movement options. Stick a leg out in front of you, and then put the leg out and straight so that it crosses the body where the foot of the outstretched leg goes past the foot of the stance leg. Check in a mirror: is the pelvis torquing around to let the leg reach this far? Now make little circles there with the knee locked out and the leg crossed over: is the pelvis torqued over? still? going up and down? If the pelvis is still and not torqued forward as if moving towards the other leg, in that position at that speed, super. Try going slower and faster. Still good? super duper. If not, that may be a sign that the pelvis and hip don't know how to work independent of each other - and so the mechanoreceptive information is less clear/accurate, and the functional options for movement less optimal. Mobility work can often address this and recover that more discrete hip/pelvis function.
Time to train: every joint in the body takes 10 mins a day, once a day. Can work different speeds/drills on different days.
Roles: So mobility work has two main functions: (1) ensuring optimal signal for optimal options of movement in live situations (Example programs for self-development).; (2) practicing movements in a variety of positions with the joints so that getting into weird (eg accident) type positions are not shocking, but relatively adaptable (program for self-dev)
Vestibular Acuity.
The middle of the neural hierarchy is the inner ear: it is predominantly the balance system of the body. BUT it also relates to motion detection, proprioception and even muscle tone. Everything is interconnected. That's really critical to understand that these systems in the neural hierarchy are not independent of each other: an issue in one has consequences in the other, and multiple systems contribute to different degrees in different contexts to the same thing. Here, for short hand, we're focusing on the balance role of the vestibular system.
The balance system is mainly located in the inner ears. We have two inner ears - one for each
ear. That sounds obvious, but just like each eye may be slightly different in strenghts/weaknesses, likewise the inner ears may have different dominances. How well are they behaving in general to support sports movement? And how well are they behaving in concert?Assessments of the vestibular system may show a discrepency on either side specifically, or generally that there may be some weaknesses. The cool thing is, the balance system can be trained. Intriguingly this doesn't mean stepping onto unstable surfaces. IT may mean skills development on very stable surfaces (see middle of this post) .
Quick Test: Here's an example. Stand on one foot for more than fifteen seconds. Now stand on the other. Is one side more wobbly than the other? Why is that? How common is it for someone on a sports field to have one leg off the ground at a time? So might it be valuable to ensure that one can be as stable as possible in that circumstance?
Time to train: 3x's a week, 10 mins/session, 8 weeks. Then maintenance.
Visual Accuity
At the top of the neural hierarchy is visual acuity - not eye sight, but they get sports vision evaluations to see how they're doing, and they practice visual acuity (here's one example) so that they can respond quickly to what's happening on the field - so their ability to perceive the situation under pressure improves.
When we work on visual accuity, we not only look at the function of the two eyes and how well they're working together, but we also work on improving the time, complexity and distractions that can be processed concurrently for quicker visually lead responses to action in the environment.
Quick Test - check out the near/far drill modelled in the link above.
Time to train: basic drills, 2 mins a day, can be combined with mobility work.
Practice sessions for cognitive load, 15 mins a day, 3times a week, 8 weeks, then maintenance.
Great program for self-development: great visual drills and speed work, too.
Putting This Sensory-Motor Work into Practice: Speed/Quickness:
As said in vision, we work with athletes to improve visual acuity of eye performance like speed of changing focus, but also work on processing dynamically changing visual information more quickly. When we have discrete loaded mobility, balance and visual acuity firing, we can also consider putting these together at "sports speed."
But speed is also a skill, too. Strength and conditioning has for awhile now been looking at sprining mechanics and technique and training - like plyometrics - to improve quickness. All sorts of things like towing a partner or being towed can get into faster turn over.
There are other techniques, too, though, that have to do with putting all the mobility and visual and vestibular accuity to work to move quickly and more efficiently at quickness. So sometimes speed is speed, but sometimes it's being faster in response to something than the opponent.
Speed in Context.
This one seems so obvious - to move fast is a good thing. And that's where our example athlete came in at the beginning: someone who wanted to move faster (i think that's what the fast twitch is about) but the skills described here would be not about making the person faster once they're up and running (how far do they have to go on a field?) but
- how to get off the ground from a fall or tackle quickly,
- foot work on how to follow,
- turn and
- cut,
- techniques for how to accelerate for a critical 10 yards to get past their opponent.
I've bet guys much younger than i am that i can beat them getting turned around or i can get a faster start off the line from a standing start than they. What's the difference? Technique and practice of technique for moments of change where the technique is efficient and it respect the brilliance that is the athletic ready position.
Strength: what kind of strength. Finally, after all the above neural stuff happens, we might want to come back to the question: so do you really need to be stronger in your current deadlift to be a better socer player?
I generally find that most guys who have been playing for awhile are plenty strong on the teams but their endurance in the last part of the game can flag. So if anything gets added to the program, kettlebells can be great and very efficient for brute strength and stamina: two simple moves - swings and turkish get ups.
Quick Test If ya don't believe me, try this for ten minutes:
- (assuming you know how to swing a kb safely) you swing a heavy kb while your partner TGU's left and right with a medium bell, then swap and keep going non-stop for ten minutes. These two moves have the advantage of also developing hip and lat strength, pretty key for that athletic ready position.
Time to train - 20-40 mins every other day except in season. In season, coach's discretion.
Ask any coach if the strongest athlete in the dressing room is their best athlete on the field.
Taking the Pieces Further: getting more drills and skills and program plans. If the above kinda program sounds interesting to you, beyond the links to various bits above, there's a three day workshop that gives a great intro to self-assessment and practice on this performance pyramid of vision, vestibular, proprioception calledessentials of elite performance (overview).
Some of us also coach this stuff (look for S-phase (review) in the training certifications). If you can't find someone in your neighborhood, i also coach via email/skype. Contact me with the email link at the bottom of this post if you're interested in neural hierarchy for sports training.
Take Away: Better is not necessarily Stronger.
Assuming the goal is to be a better field player, not just stronger, there may be more and other ways to look at performance than just raw strength. And that OTHER which we may often think of as rather fixed - vision, balance, movement - is highly plastic and trainable. When we start with the nervous system, too, the biomechanics seem to come online, stronger, faster, better.Update: related new resource (may 2010)
DVD Mini Course - 6.5 hours of the essentials of elite performance workshop on three divds. If you can't make the workshop, or just want to get going on this stuff NOW, this new dvd mini course is a great way to get going. I'll have a full review soon, but in the meantime, there's way more self-tests and practices than covered above. Please check the link for the full nine yards on the details.
Get it, love it, sign up for the essentials workshop or R-phase cert (overview) within 30 days of purchase and get $100 off tuition of either course.
Great way to get a richer sensory-motor training tool box and tune up. Tweet Follow @begin2dig
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