Category: Makes You Think

This category covers things that relate probably require some reflection and some time to allow your brain to process more completely. It will be the largest category because the aim of this site is to get people to shift their thinking in some way and to create a new “normal” state. It is safe to say that any post that is included in this category will probably present you with a new piece of information, a new way of looking at something, or a different take on what is already considered common sense or common knowledge.

Getting Lost In The Coaching – Finding Your Flow

During one of the last conversations I had with Chris Brown about SST he reminded me, above everything else, to get lost in the coaching. It’s a great comment and it should be part of the employee manual for EVERYONE who works in the strength and conditioning field.

His notion is simple and given that he is less than a year out of school rather profound. Unless you own the gym, you are there to do a job and that job ISN’T necessarily to do things correctly (or as you view them to be correct). Your job is to do what your bosses ask you to do without injuring people. If you match on both of these criteria, you are doing a good job. It’s that simple when you work for other people.

This is a tough thing for many strength coaches to keep in mind because most do not own the gyms they work at. They are skilled employees with vision and they want to move their athletes along as quickly as possible to help them become even more successful on the field/ice/pitch/floor and to become examples of optimal health. When a business owner asks them to do something that falls outside of their coaching vision or something that will hinder the athletes progress, the coach will usually dig their heals in and advocate for what they believe is correct. This may create a dissonant feeling that disengages the coach from the job which will impair their ability to be an effective coach.

What non-owner strength coaches need to do is get lost in the coaching as much as they can because this is the surest way they have to remain engaged with their athletes. They need to clear their mind of the business thoughts as much as possible and instead focus externally on making a master piece out of the clay that is the developing athlete. They need to make the coaching experience a flow experience that allows proper coaching to simple come out of them without much thought.

For me, getting lost in the coaching is a very similar experience to riding my bike or teaching a cycling class. My words and actions are spontaneous. My vision is narrowly focused and naturally drawn to what needs my attention – I’m aware of everything yet conscious of very little. The right behavior, words and actions just come out of my brain, body and mouth and every athlete gets exactly what they need at any particular moment to achieve a slightly higher level of success. I find that this state feels really good, it’s timeless and it is when I feel I am at my most productive. Hours are like minutes or seconds and at the end of the sessions I am exhausted yet have no idea why.

I think it was the same sort of thing for Chris and it’s the same sort of thing Rachel describes when she recaps a successful BodyFlow class. For each of us, there is no resistance to how things are and we simple go along with everything that happens contributing as needed and letting the irrelevant stuff float over and past us.

Being lost in the coaching is fantastic and it makes for more productive time on the floor.

More Money Than Desire

As a strength coach one of the toughest things for me to deal with are the athletes who don’t care. I find it tough because I know there are a lot of people who would love to be in the gym training with me but simply can’t afford the cost of a membership. It bothers me slightly less when we are training a team and there are a few individuals who don’t want to improve; but I know it really gets to their coach. Work ethic is something that is obvious to everyone and the lack of one is something that can spread easily through a team.

I understand that part of my job is to coach and motivate people to be more successful. It is to help them find something that they cannot find on their own. My issue is that more and more people are arriving for their sessions wanting to be trained but NOT wanting to train. Somewhere along the line they seem to have made a mistake and believe that they can get better by showing-up, watching and going through the motions. They failed to learn the lesson that TRYING to improve is the most critical part of the equation. In a number of these cases, their parents support their belief and make excuses for why their children didn’t complete a food journal, didn’t do their movement homework, didn’t get enough sleep, didn’t eat breakfast, didn’t bring a water bottle, didn’t whatever.

Initially, it’s the parents fault that their children are unmotivated and showing a propensity towards making excuses. Children learn how to interact with the world through observing their parents during the first 10 or so years of life. Their attitude is formed for the most part during the first decade and the work ethic that is established early will continue until something happens to change it.

Life is good for some people; they have high paying jobs that they worked hard to get. Unfortunately, their children may never see how hard they had to work to become lawyers, doctors, business owners so they never learn the lesson that hard work is required to nurture a skill into a high paying job. The outcome is a lot of disposable income that the children have no sense of where it came from and therefore no perspective into what is needed to be successful. They simply get whatever they want whenever they want it without connecting the dots that effort makes success possible. When they end up in front of me, they are ill prepared for the lesson I try to teach them and come to realize that I like people who try more than I like people who make excuses and they fail to realize that it is their attitude that I dislike, not them personally.

If you really want you children to be successful, make them work for the things they want. Stop handing them everything they ask for. Risk the argument with your child and teach them the value of money, hard work and a good attitude when it comes to tackling difficult tasks.

Are You A Transactional Employee?

I’ve had a lot of jobs because I leave most jobs very quickly once I stop caring about them. Once I check-out mentally, I look for something else and move on. I never learned to put my head down and keep doing something that I hated to do just for the sake of continuing to do it. This is a mixed blessing. The negative part of it is that I haven’t built a name for myself at any one company. I’ve passed through so many doors and met so many people that I haven’t really made a huge impact on any one organization.

The positive side is that I have never become a transactional employee – a drone from sector 7-G who performs a function for a company while earning an income without thought of or action to improve life. For me, work is almost always about having fun, developing some skill or ability, or being able to find a state of flow in the moment.

Signs that you are starting to become a transactional employee:

Clock watching – you are painfully aware of the time, you know exactly how long it will be before you leave. Your mind is out the door and thinking about the after work stuff well before your body leaves the building.
There is an unexplained decrease in the quality or quantity of your work. You start to make mistakes that you wouldn’t normally make, you begin to table today’s items to tomorrow, you sign-off on or submit work that you know isn’t up to your standard. Your attention is no longer on the task as hand and your willing to pass sub-par work off as acceptable quality.
Your talk with co-workers isn’t neutral or positive about work or you find yourself connecting with the office / work place gossip or complainer. Misery love miserable company and you find the other people who share your level of dissatisfaction. This only serves to foster a larger sense of resentment for your employer and your job. It also alienates those around you who remain fully engaged in their jobs.
You start sending out resumes for other job opportunities. ANYTHING looks better than what you are doing regardless of what it is. You are open to changing careers and moving into something for which you are unsuited or unqualified.
There is an increase in the amount of escape behaviours in which you engage; both while at work and while you are not. These can range from things that are simply a waste of time – Internet, excessive trips to the bathroom or unnecessary breaks – but it can include things that are harmful like drinking in excess, an increase in the number of smoke breaks, or pursuit of new sexual partners.
If you are in a salaried position, you begin to count every hour and minute you spend working. You develop a sense of persecution and begin to collect evidence that validates this belief. You continue to loss perspective and use this “evidence” to further develop your sense of disengagement.
You feel bitterness or resentment towards your bosses or coworkers. What used to be good interactions begin to be negative and hostile. Their attitude towards you begins to change to reflect your negative approach to work and them and you start to take this as further proof that work is crap and they are lousy people to work with.

There is nothing wrong with trading your time for money so being or becoming a transactional employee is fine as long as it isn’t hurting the quality of your life. It becomes a problem when you change from being highly engaged to disengaged as this is a symptom of a fundamental shift in your personality. If you find yourself showing any of the above behaviours it is probably time to examine your career or job choice.

So You Want To Train Athletes eh?

People who want to work in the strength and conditioning industry often say that they want to work with athlete. When they say this to me I always ask why. Usually they cite some belief that athletes will work harder than the general population and that it will be fun to train them. When I ask them why they think this most are left scratching their heads because it is based on the belief that ALL athletes work hard.

Then they join the industry and their preconceived notions disappear very quickly because most people who come to strength and conditioning centers do not train like athlete, at least when it comes to their time in the gym. They play higher level sport and are considered athletes because they are talented, have been given an enriched head start or they have enjoyed some sort of political advantage when it comes to joining the best teams. There are not a lot of them who have the work ethic to excel in the gym and that is why most of them are there.

Working with elite athletes can be very rewarding as they are able to learn faster, train more effectively and train using more diverse training methods than the general population BUT this is only true for elite athletes. It falls on its face when dealing with talented general population athletes because, unless they have had to work hard to get to their level, most are not prepared for the demands of intense sessions in the gym and their talent may actually work against them.

If we think about it, great hockey players are great because they are able to do things that other players can’t. One of the key difference I have noticed is that great players achieve equal or greater results with LESS effort. Their efficiency means they move less than other players. This works great on the ice, but when it comes to the gym where efficiency of movement isn’t the goal, they are at a big disadvantage because they are programmed to cut corners and get the job done in less time. This translates into incomplete reps, increased rest time, decreased loads and a difficulty understanding why they are not make progress or why the strength coach is riding them so hard. Some of the time, the laziest people in the gym are the best athletes or the most talented players.

When I ask them how they are playing, what line they are on, how many points they have it is more to find out if there is a possible mental predisposition towards slacking than for any other reason. They answer the questions with pride and I gain a sense of what their work ethic may be. With anyone under the age of 14 or 15, the best players are likely going to be a complete pain in the ass when it comes to training because they are ill prepared for the true demands of intense training and they are prone to frustration when they cannot acquire skills immediately.

With these individuals the first goal of training is to help them break down the mental barrier that talent creates – that which dictates that success should be effortless. This is a draining task and it is, in my opinion, more draining than working with the adult population because adults KNOW their is a connection between hard work and success, the young and talented tend to have no idea. The good news is that with some the break down occurs very quickly – usually within a few months – but there are some people I have been working with for the last 3 months and they are no closer to working hard now than they were when they started training with me.

Other than elite athletes the best group to work with is the moderately talented – those individuals who are not the best and have had to work hard to enjoy any level of success. These athletes do what they are told, when they are told and they follow direction to the letter. They have learned that listening and applying the lessons with as much effort as possible is the first step in achieving their potential. But they also know that reaching their potential isn’t a certainty. They are well aware that it will take sustained effort for a long time to reach it and even then it may not happen.

If you are thinking of making the jump into the strength and conditioning field you need to be aware that MOST of the people you will be training will not be elite athletes. Most of them will not be untalented hardworking athletes. Most of your clients will be talented players who have yet to learn that their talent isn’t enough to move their play to the next level and they may fight you the entire way until they actually realize that hard work AND talent make great players. Your effort as a coach is worth it when you finally break through and help them, but until that moment your time with these athletes it’s pretty thankless.

Coaching High Level Athletes

I wrote the following about 4 months ago but I didn’t hit “Publish” for some reason. My work situation has changed since then and I don’t get to work with this group of skaters any more. The lessons however have stuck.

I have fallen in love again – Rachel need not be jealous or concerned for it is not romantic love or the feelings of love that I create as a muse for writing. I’ve fallen in love with coaching high level athletes since I was tasked with looking after the strength and conditioning needs of a group of figure skaters in March.

Initially I wasn’t sure what to expect. As an athlete, I was never very good; I was the middle of the pack and was happy with any finish in the top half and ecstatic with the one or two finishes in the top quarter. I trained hard to make up for a lack of talent and as anyone who doesn’t have the correct fiber typing and didn’t do the correct type of training at key periods in their development knows, hard work is a very poor substitute for talent. I probably came within a couple of places of my potential, which might have been in the top 15 -20%. Before I began working with the figure skaters I felt that I was probably as athletic as most of them – given that I am about twice their age and likely stronger than all of them. It turns out, my belief was not rooted in reality. Figure skaters are athletes in many ways that I would never have considered.

My understanding of them changed very quickly one day in late March when we were able to go outside for the first time. The snow had melted enough to allow for them to run laps outside of the building. Being who they are (young, bright and looking for any way to make their workout easier) all but one of them decided to cut their lap short and come in the back door, walk back to the workout room and pretend to be winded. Initially I thought they had run really quickly, but there was something strange about the way they looked – their faces weren’t red, they finished together in spite of their differing running abilities and the guy who I thought would be the fastest was the last one back and he didn’t finish with the group. Once I figured out what had happened, they were assigned more weights instead of running. The guy who ran the lap was the only one I let run it again and given that I wanted to make sure he ran hard, I ran with him. I embarrassed myself trying to keep up. It was close for the first 100 meters, but he was pacing himself. I started to surge and catch up with him, but he looked back and accelerated. He finished about 20 or 30 yards in front of me and a lot less winded that I was. I said “do you feel good about yourself beating an old man?” He laughed with me as I called it a workout. This was the sign of things to come.

As the weather got nicer, we were able to spend more time outside sprinting. One of the things that struck me was just how quick most of them can run. Technically, their running isn’t that smooth – all of them would benefit from ironing out some of their arm movements and relaxing when they run, but boy can they accelerate and their top speed is something to be envied. They are on track to run as fast as any of the football players I have trained who are the same age in spite of the fact that they do not train to be quick runners. This was the most remarkable thing to me, they don’t work on starts, accelerations or top speed tempo work – they jump and spin and dance with quick feet on the ice; football players train their starts for the 40 in combines. The speed of the figure skaters is remarkable when compared to those athletes who are actually trying to get faster.I look after 3 groups which are determined based on their skill level. The elites are the top group followed by the senior A and then the senior B. The elites tend to be older and all of them have been skating for a very long time – some started when they were 2 and are now 18. The B’s tend to be younger (ranging from 8 to 14) and the A’s are a range of ages from 12-17. I’m not certain what the criteria is for moving up in groups, but it has something to do with the type of Axel they are able to do – I think a B becomes an A once they can consistently land a double.

I look after 3 groups which are determined based on their skill level. The elites are the top group followed by the senior A and then the senior B. The elites tend to be older and all of them have been skating for a very long time – some started when they were 2 and are now 18. The B’s tend to be younger (ranging from 8 to 14) and the A’s are a range of ages from 12-17. I’m not certain what the criteria is for moving up in groups, but it has something to do with the type of Axel they are able to do – I think a B becomes an A once they can consistently land a double.

I’m not sure if I am coaching any future Olympians but I wouldn’t be surprised if I was. The drive of some of these athletes is remarkable. I have little doubt that the drive comes from the fact that they started when they were young and didn’t realize that they could give less than 100%. A few of the younger elite group will cut corners and complain about the work I assign, but when they come to work, they work intensely. They work like they are trying to make up for a lack of talent and in that way, they remind me of myself.

The toughest part about working with them is that they do so much skating. They are on the ice at least 2 hours a day and it’s closer to 5 hours a day during the summer. This makes it challenging to train them not because they are tired, but because some of their eating habits are abysmal. I can related to this because when one is completely engaged in their passion, eating falls by the wayside, but their performance suffers because of it. The first version of food journals I collect from them looked like something a middle aged lawyer would have submitted – one or two meals a day of fast food, less than the minimum amount of protein, too much refined sugar and not a mention to any vegetables. When asked about it they all said basically the same things “we don’t have time to eat”. I got the evil eye from a few of them when I said “if you don’t have the time to eat, you don’t have the time to be the best”.

I feel for them because they know they should be spending more time and energy on nutrition, but they’re also told that they need to spend more time on skating, and school, and ballet, and a multitude of other things that conventional wisdom dictates will make them better performers. Regardless of their conflicting agendas, only a quarter of them are at or close to the right body composition to excel. My desire to be a better coach means I’m offering them parts of my lunch, commending them on their positive nutritional changes and praising them for making the tough decisions to skip the burger and fries and suffering through another salad of mixed greens, ground flex seed and chicken breast.

The strangest thing about working with them, and it’s only something that I noticed after reading Speed Trap again, is that I am forming unique and purposeful relationships with them. Some of the athletes really like me – they know I care about them as people and as well as athletes and skaters. I talk to them like adults regardless of their age and I try to explain my rational for choosing the exercises and program they are following. To others, I am just another coach who is trying to get them to do things that they wouldn’t spontaneously do. There is rarely a battle of wills because I’ll be very blunt with them and let them know that I do not suffer when they do not work, they suffer and in particular, their on-ice performance this season will suffer if they don’t try.

They Are Not Little Soldiers

I had a brief conversation with a skills coach this week. They are switching clubs and are interested in having me work with their next group of athletes. When I asked why they were leaving the answer I got was very unsurprising:

“I don’t care if someone likes me or not, but I’m a human being first and people need to treat me with respect”.

Okay, I wasn’t expecting them to say that, but I wasn’t shocked to hear that they haven’t been treated with respect – given that many head coaches scream and yell, demean, criticize and question the effort of the athletes the fact that they treat their junior coaches the same way is not surprising.

They continued:

“They are not little soldiers” when referring to the athletes.

Again, I’ve been getting this feeling recently when watching some skills coaches. To hear this coach say it was great because I’ve been thinking that there is a better way to training young people than to treat them like soldiers going into battle.

Then the shocker:

“You can’t write someone off at 7″.

This did floor me. While I believe we can assess some athletic potential at a young age, it is true that many national champions didn’t even start training for their sport until 10 or 11 and in the case of some sports even later. Even if someone is training at 6 and appears to be utterly hopeless, there is no reason to believe that they cannot overcome a talent gap with effort to become a much better. And you can’t really assess talent at 6 or 7 because the individual may not have the body awareness to clearly demonstrate their talent.

It is said that getting a person involved in gymnastic or martial arts very early is a fantastic way to accelerate their athletic progress in all areas, and I’ve observed this to be true. But it isn’t necessary. It may speed things along, it may help an average athlete perform at a higher level early on, but it isn’t going to create a champion. Talent is talent, regardless of what has happened in the first 5-10 years of life.

1000’s of children do gymnastics when they are little and do not make the world stage in anything and 1000’s of world class athlete have never done any gymnastics or martial arts. But some skills coaches see the advanced performance, make the jump that it is because of talent and focus their coaching energies on these athletes. When the athletes true level of talent begins to show (usually around puberty), the coaches work them harder and question their focus as opposed to looking at the athlete and realizing that they are relatively good at their sport because of their head start.

Unfortunately they may have written off a number of 7 year olds how have what it takes to be world class but just didn’t get the same athletic start.

What Phase Are You In?

Spend as much time in gyms as I do and one thing will become very clear to you, most people go to the gym without a clear purpose. There isn’t anything wrong with this – I’d sooner see people go to the gym for the sake of going than have them never go – but going to the gym without a purpose isn’t going to allow you to make the most of your time there.

The human body is an amazing thing with a fantastic ability to adapt to its environment; it takes an average person about 6-9 weeks adapt almost completely to an exercise program. For this reason, people need to approach their training or gym time in phases that have a distinct purpose and end goal. For example, many gym goers are there to drop a few pounds of fat and increase or tone muscle – basically, they want to look good naked. I think this is a fantastic goal because it is going to help someone feel better about themselves and it is going to improve the quality of their life significantly. The issue with it is that very often, trying to tackle two goals at once will prevent you from making much progress in either one.

For those individuals looking to lose body fat and increase or tone muscle I would suggest that they separate these two goals into distinct phases – one for fat loss and the other for muscle building or toning.

For example, the first 6 weeks are for fat burning and will consist of metabolic workouts aimed at increase calorie burning and cardiovascular fitness through the use of interval training. During this phase you may do 20-30 minutes of varied speed and resistance (or incline) running, cycling or elliptical machine 3-4 times per week along with some strength training – 1 or 2 full body workouts per week consisting of 1 or 2 sets of 8-10 reps per body part. Your diet will be modified and carbs will be reduced. After about 6 weeks, your body will have adapted to the workout and the reduced carb diet and you will move to the next phase with is for muscle growth.

The next 6-9 weeks will be for muscle development. During this phase you may do 3-4 full body workouts per week consisting of 3-4 sets per body part. The rep range will be different on each day and will range from 6-8, 9-12 and 12-15. The exercises will change every 3 weeks and you will lower the amount of cardio you perform. In some cases you will eliminate the cardio to allow your body to become de-conditioned to it so when you enter the 3rd phase, fat loss, you will find the movements taxing on your body again.

You will repeat this cycle of fat loss, muscle building over and over again until you achieve your fitness goals. The good thing about this approach is that you will rarely get stale or bored with what you are doing in the gym because it is changing constantly and when you start each phase, your body will be shocked into adapting to the new stimuli.

If this seems completely foreign to you or you do not know where to start, consider getting in touch with a good trainer to help you plan your workout phases.

Too Much Training Volume

Too many coaches hold the view that more is better when it comes to training volume and this belief is hurting their athletes.

Most of the conversations I have with coaches about a lack of progress focus on the athlete and not the poor program design. I hear things like “the athlete just isn’t getting it” or “they are losing focus” or “the athlete is weak and needs to work harder”. I have yet to hear a coach say “I’ve asked them to do more work than they can recover from” or “I don’t really know what I’m doing so I just get the athlete to do more” or “I train them the way I trained 20 years ago and don’t really feel like advancing my understanding by learning”.

I’m not implying that these coaches do not know how to make their athletes better at their sport because many of them do; they have an eye for the sport and can see things that more people can’t. In fact, many sport coaches are the only people who can coach the skills with their athletes. The issue is, they don’t understand the body well enough to understand that their athletes are failing to make progress because the brain cannot control the muscles to the precise degree needed to make the progress and instead blame the athletes will or focus.

Why are the athletes not progressing? There are two reasons, the muscles are not recovered enough to move as required and the nervous system is not recovered enough to coordinate the muscle fibers to move as required.

In the car racing world a driver can tell his mechanic that the car isn’t responding correctly when he press down the accelerator. The mechanic will then take a look, uncover the problem and fix it. A damaged spark plug for example will limit the amount of power that an engine is able to generate and once it is replaced, the engine goes back to full power. This is like the muscle not being fully recovered. A chef may find that he’s burning all of the items he tries to fry and when he looks at the stove realize that the gas dial goes from off to full with nothing in between. Once the dial is fixed to allow for precise heat adjustments the chef regains the ability to cook foods perfectly. This is like fixing neurological fatigue.

Cooking and car racing have one thing in common that most sports don’t have – a tool that acts as a medium between the individual and performance. This medium can be examined, shown to be malfunctioning and adjusted to function correctly. With most sports, the medium is the athletes body so it’s harder to figure-out the cause of malfunctions and since it’s harder to figure-out or see what is causing them, the first impulse is to blame the athletes will or conscious effort.

This is, when dealing with high level athletes, completely wrong. These individuals work hard, have greater focus than most people and are driven to perform better and better each workout. Their body’s however, cannot perform at a higher level each workout because of muscular and neurological fatigue and without sufficient recovery, their performance decreases. The coaches solution of making them do more reps, more cardio, more anything only serves to decrease their performance further, which will make the coach work them harder.

The good news is that body won’t allow this to continue for every long and the athlete will get sick well before they work themselves to death, which most high level athletes will do because of their work ethic. After about 6-7 weeks of over training, illness takes over and the athlete can’t perform at all. They take a few days off to recover from the illness which allows their body to recover and when they get back to their sport, they perform much better. The coach is happy and feels good knowing that they did a good job because of the improvement. They attribute the illness to a cold or flu and they start the cycle again – performance will begin to decrease after a few weeks as the athlete “loses focus” and the illness will return.

This pattern will continue until the coach smartens up, the athlete switches coaches, the athlete quits their sport or the athlete becomes aware enough to dictate the pace of training and lets the coach know that they are taking a few days off when they need to. Unfortunately, too many young and promising athletes will leave the sport and never actualize their potential because the fun leaves the sport due to this avoidable pattern.

If you are a coach and you notice in your athletes a pattern of decreased performance followed by sickness, a lack of focus following intense training periods, dramatic increases in performance following time off or if your solution for everything is more training, you need to get back to school and learn about neurological and muscular fatigue. If you allow your athletes to continue this cycle YOU are failing them and you may be chasing them out of the sport they love.

Pulled 405, Now On To 495

On Saturday I deadlifted 405 for a single. There was a little more in the tanks so the quest continues. I was surprised at just how unsatisfying it felt given that I’ve been working at it for a while. I was glad I did it, but immediately I thought “now what?” which was quickly followed by “495″. Some things really are about the journey because I was a lot more satisfied with 315, 360 and 385 when I got those for the first time.

Oh well. Maybe when I get 500 I’ll feel something about it – probably “600″.

Train Your Rotator Cuff Always And Forever

As a result of the way I trained for years, I found that my shoulders hurt a lot. In high school I trained chest too much and when I found my way back into the gym as an adult, I trained only the big muscle groups – chest, back, legs, shoulders and arms – because that’s what people do. I figured I was just unlucky and had bad shoulders.

When I started working with SST, I was introduced to rotator cuff training because they have found that too many young athletes trained the way I used to – building up the glory muscles while ignoring the ones that keep the machine moving perfectly. To say that I was imbalanced would be an understatement. When I was tested on external rotations, I was only able to lift about 5lbs for 8 reps – to be considered balanced I should have been able to lift about between 17.5 and 22.5 lbs for 8. The consequence of this weakness is an unstable shoulder and pain – given that the rotator cuff muscles are the body’s primary way of adding stability to the shoulder.

Over the last few years I have trained the rotator cuff consistently through a number of different angle and positions so it is now more than 400% stronger than before. I would now consider myself balanced since I’m able to move 22.5 lbs for 8 reps. My shoulder pain disappeared and my other lifts have gone up dramatically – even ones I didn’t train – because my body is working the way it is supposed to.

I got cocky and stopped training rotator cuff thinking that now that I’m balanced, I don’t need to work at it anymore. It didn’t take long for the pain to return and the pain was as bad as it was in high school – a sharp stabbing pain that pulls you out of a deep sleep and leaves you thinking that maybe the shoulder is dissolving. It’s a pain that you cannot turn off by changing lying or arm positions. I put up with it for a couple of weeks hoping that by doing nothing to address it, it would go away. It didn’t.

So on Monday I go to the gym and before I train my shoulders and back, I train rotator cuff – 2 movements (low cable external rotations and elbow on knee external rotations) and 1 movement for the scapula retractors. My back and shoulder workout did suffer slightly – I wasn’t able to lift as much weight as I could when I didn’t train rotator cuff, but the pain went away. I slept right through the night without even thinking about my shoulders. The pain hasn’t come back either. Who would have thought that 15 minutes of work before my glory muscle work would have made me feel like new again?

Sadly, I should have thought about that. I wouldn’t let my athletes get away with not training rotator cuff. Structural balance is not a short term thing, it’s an always and forever thing because life does not provide enough opportunities to work these muscle in a way that keeps them stronger than they need to be.