After a doctor has diagnosed the injured knee (with an MRI or manual tests for ligament structure) and determined there is no structural damage, it is time to find out why there pain in the knee.The thing about this knee pain is that the knee itself is not the problem.It’s easy for doctors to say “Oh there is no structural damage, just have your son/daughter do some exercises to strength the knee like leg extension or hamstring work.”This is just trying to mask the symptoms instead of resolving the problem.In fact, those recommendations are terrible because you may be putting more stress on the injured knee – place shear forces on your knee by doing leg extensions or partial leg extensions and isolate your hamstring muscle by doing knee flexion exercises.First off, your hamstrings primary role in functional movements is not concentric knee flexion so don’t waste your time doing hamstring curls.You are training the body to do something that it would not normally do in a baseball game or volleyball match.Instead, let us start to look above and below the knee for what is causing the problem.Most times chronic knee pain is the result of dysfunction of the ankle or hip joint.We need to make sure the ankle and hip have the proper amount of mobility and stability.The pain may also be coming from the core, back or even the shoulder.That’s right - shoulder girdle dysfunction can cause lower body injuries.Once we have determined the weakness within the kinetic chain, then it is appropriate to design a program to alleviate this knee pain.
Most athletes want to be strong and fast. You need to train to improve both variables - speed and strength. The ability to generate maximum strength and produce high speeds are different motor abilities.For younger athletes, they will likely see improvements in speed and strength when performing heavy strength training.This is the case because the majority of young athletes have no prior lifting experience and are relatively very weak – At that point anything they do safely will help.However, the same athlete will see greater performance gains if also training with high-velocity movements (training the rate of force development).It is important to incorporate Olympic lift variations, plyometrics and speed drills into a performance program.Exercises that enhance the rate of force development become even more important for athletes that already have a solid strength base.For stronger athletes, their speed will start to peak if they only continue to incorporate heavy resistance training.It is very important to incorporate high-velocity movements if an athlete is looking to improve their overall speed, quickness, and agility.
Take home message:Athletes need a balanced training program to improve their overall athletic development.They need to increase their relative strength (incorporating heavy resistance exercises) and improve their rate of force development (incorporating high-velocity movements and exercises).
Congratulations to Valencia Girls Volleyball for dominating West Ranch last night and winning league with an undefeated record.
Congratulations to Hart Girls Volleyball for dominating Saugus last night and hopefully securing a playoff spot with this victory (we’ll find out on Sunday).
The only time athletes (that require quick bursts of speed to be successful at their sport) should be doing low intensity jogging for an extended period of time is when there is systematic planning to put this type of workout in place. A couple examples of reasons to plan medium/low intensity “cardio” would include days of recovery, regeneration, or flushing (elimination of lactic acid accumulation). Essentially all three of these words are the same thing; however, different coaches have different terminology.
Too often, I see teams running laps around the track or the field for conditioning purposes. Unless your goal is to be the best jogger in the sport of baseball, soccer, basketball, etc. you should stop jogging around the track and start doing sprint intervals. Some people say that continuous paced jogging/running will increase your VO2 max (maximum ability to use oxygen - develop your aerobic system). It has been shown that intensity is the far more important variable for increasing your VO2 max. In addition, especially for sports such as basketball and soccer, you can only have a positive influence on your lactate threshold when you exercise at or above your current threshold. The lactate threshold is the point at which your lactate production begins to significantly exceed lactate consumption. (Everyone knows the feeling of lactic acid production - when your muscles become tight/stiff and it begins to affect your performance)
The bottom line is that your body responds to the type of stimulus that you provide it. Do you want to be slow or fast? Think about this and design your program with that in mind.
“I’m going to do cardio at the gym.”What the heck does that mean?For most individuals it means flopping yourself on the elliptical or treadmill for 30 minutes while you read your favorite gossip magazine or watch Oprah.It is not efficient and certainty not effective.You are not going to melt the fat off your body if do cardio at a low intensity for a long period of time – you’re just going to waste your time.Start incorporating interval training, which is efficient and effective.It is efficient because you can accomplish more work in less time.Try doing 10 hard sprints for 30 seconds with one minute of rest in between repetitions.You will only be working out for 15 minutes (5 minutes of high intensity exercise and 10 minutes of low intensity recovery.It is effective because you will burn more calories in those 15 minutes than in your 30 minutes of low/medium intensity cardio that you are currently doing.You can manipulate your interval training by changing a few different variables
The length of the interval – Run for 1 minute instead of 30 seconds
The intensity of the interval – Run at 85% of max heart rate instead of 75%
The number of intervals – Last week you did 8 intervals, this week do 9
The length of the rest period – Decrease the rest interval from 1 minute to 45 seconds
Interval training is even more important for competitive athletes that rely on quick sprints to be successful in their sport.If you are an athlete (except cross-country and long-distance track), you are wasting your time and hurting your performance if you are doing low/medium intensity cardio unless it is for a recovery workout.I will talk more about this during the next post.
I rarely endorse nutritional supplements.My nutrition philosophy is to increase the amount of produce (preferably raw), eat organic, limit produced foods, and still live in moderation.However, some nutrition supplements can compliment your diet well.I have been taking Amazing Grass Green Superfood for some time now and this seems to be a good nutritional supplement to compliment my diet.This product provides added antioxidants with 5 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables.It also has an alkalizing affect on the body, which helps to regulate pH values in your blood stream.This is important to help aid the body in detoxification, building, and general maintenance at the biochemical level.Amazing Grass also contains prebiotics, probiotics, and digestive enzymes which helps promote healthy digestion.
This is a great strength and mobility exercise. My intention with this exercise is to address the hip and shoulder in all three planes of motion. The hip and shoulder/Thoracic Spine require a fair amount of mobility in sport and daily activities. Also, these two areas of the body need to work together to produce powerful movements such as throwing a ball or spiking a volleyball. Finally, this illustrates the importance of core strength because the powerful core musculature is connecting the shoulder and hip together.
The first sequence of repetitions attacks the sagital plane (forward and backward motion). I am getting complete extension and flexion from the shoulder and the hips. The second sequence of repetitions is addressing the frontal plane (side to side motion). This plane of motion is addressed less frequently in many strength programs compared to the sagital plane. Within this movement there is abd- and adduction occuring through the hip and shoulder joints. The final sequence of repetitions targets the transverse plane of motion. This plane is also rarely considered when designing a strength training program. In this video my shoulder and hip go through full range of internal and external rotation. The key element to this sequence of exercises is that the hip and shoulder are working together to produce this movement in all three planes of motion.
I get the question from parents all the time “What age should my child begin training?”Usually they mean sports performance training with me.My answer is they have already begun sports performance (weight training, speed, and agility) training at a young age.Every youth team sport and many individual sports involve running, jumping, hitting, kicking, or throwing.If they are doing these activities, they already begun performance training.Here is the problem: parents are willing to invest money to have their kids practice with specialized coaches such as soccer goalkeeper specialists, basketball shooting coaches, pitching/hitting coaches, and many other specialized coaches.At a young age you teaching your child one skill, when they really need to train their overall athletic development.On the other hand, I teach young athletes a variety of skills that apply to virtually every sport.If the training is age appropriate and progressed systematically, there should be absolutely no reason for your child to not participate in a sports performance program.They will develop many skills such as improved coordination (footwork and foot speed) and body awareness (how to move in all three planes of motion effectively, how to change direction efficiently, improved flexibility, and relative strength).Every type of athlete, young and old needs to develop and refine these skills on a continuous basis or they will either A) never develop these skills or B) loss their ability to perform these skills correctly and efficiently.A and B will both lead to inquires in the long run.
Parents: If you invest your money into a specialized coach, you had better also invest your money into a quality sports performance coach who works on the develop of athletic ability otherwise you’ll be paying to have your child rehab from sports injuries in the future.ASAP Baseball Academy is taking the right approach and combining specialized training with athletic development training, check it out www.asapbaseballacademy.com. This is how the development of young athletes should take place.
Tight hip flexors can attribute to glute inhibition – meaning when the hips are tight the antagonist muscle group (the opposing muscle group in this case the glutes) are not at the optimal length to be able to contract properly.Tight hip flexors also can cause lower back dysfunction because if the hips are not able to move in their intended full range of motion the lower back can tend to take the extra workload causing strain on this overworked area.Shown below are a series of hip flexor stretches that can help lengthen the muscle and thus restore proper function to the hips.
