Never neglect your balance

Working with a younger baseball/ football athlete today got me thinking a little about an old topic that I've dealt with quite a bit and wanted to discuss some.

Balance. Stability. Control.

It you look at many workouts (mostly generic ones) you will see that these aspects are, for the most part, completely forgotten and avoided. Its a bit of a tragedy, really. Fixing some simple aspects that allow the body to become more efficient can lead to some great results. You're eliminating weaknesses AND building on strengths.

First, before I start, let me throw some counter arguments Ive heard in the past. That doing stability work is a waste of time. Performing standard exercises under heavy loads will still build stability and control. Also, it will not help develop strength and power.

Both arguments are partially true. Going back to what I mentioned earlier performing stability exercises can help to increase EFFICIENCY. Like putting a better transmission in a sports car. Sure you did nothing to increase horsepower but if more available horsepower gets to the tires isn't that, in a sense, the same thing? Sure I can just put a bigger engine in under the hood but typically it takes a lot longer to add pounds on the squat bar then to develop a bit of fine tuning to the suspension.

So first off let me go at the "Heavy loads argument". I've seen this argument a bit more and usually its accepted because, in all honesty, it makes the most sense. If you can squat 500lbs you likely have some strong stability and core strength to hold that sort of weight to begin with and the power and coordination to squat it. Same to assume that if someone benches 350 then they should have strong shoulder stability and upper body power. Once again, usually.

What's interesting is how many of these strong athletes can do a 1-legged squat? Speaking from experience only, however consult some of Mike Boyle's works and you will see the same, I have yet to see many of these heavyweights able to handle just their body weight on 1 leg. So this leads to a problem- How often are we playing a sport and are on 1-leg? Yes, we teach that we are stronger on 2 legs and thats where we should be in a perfect world but how often is that? Watch a football game, soccer, basketball, ANY game and you will see that time spent on 1 leg is quite often. Sprinting, lateral movement, lunging, jumping, etc. all are dominated by 1 leg at a time movements.

Now thats not to say the heavy back squat is useless- Im all for it. However, there needs to be at least a minute or two to evaluate single leg control and function. This is where the argument "Its a waste of time" can be valid or not. I see it a bit where workouts during season or at odd times have an entire team performing planks, single leg stands, bosu squats (which I think are dumb as hell), etc. when realistically only a few athletes actually need to work on those aspects of their physical game. If you have a 6' athlete that can stand on one foot and touch his nose chances are he doesn't need to spend much time balancing on one foot. Now that 6'10" lanky bastard that can't walk straight much less stand on one foot is a different story. There is progression you can throw in there. Instead of just standing on one foot have the more experienced athlete add some movement- cone touches, med ball squats or rdl's, or even multi-direction jumps (think start at 0-degress, jump to 90, back to 0, etc.)

Point with that last statement is if you're absolutely bent on putting stability work into a team workout make sure that adjustments can be made for more advanced or less advanced athletes. Otherwise the more developed individuals are wasting time while the underdeveloped are struggling to keep up. I've done this for upper work as well with my baseball athletes through pushup progressions and shoulder stability work. Looked something like this:
Group A (beginner)          Group B (intermediate)      Group C (adapted)       Group D (advanced)
Assisted bar pushup          Standard pushup                 Hand on ball pushup    Divebomber
Chest to ball pushup         Band resisted pushup         T-Position Pushup       3-position pushup or plyo

With those mentioned each athlete is given the option to challenge themselves. All athletes are getting similar work done but can progress at their own rate or, if I deem fit, at my rate. Sometimes they just need a boot in the hind quarters to give them that extra push.

So whats the take away here? Each athlete is different and workouts should be treated as such. That last example is my favorite way of still training similar muscle groups but at a steady rate of progression for the individual. That way you're not only working stability, function, and core strength but also developing strength and power through continued resistance. Also, note that this type of training is done on our hypertrophy or dynamic days. NOT on max effort workouts.

Chain lifting - Accomodating resistence at its finest part 1

So I finally decided this past Monday that it was a good time to get some chains. Heard of a nearby place that sells all kinds of different hardware and at a reasonable price. To put it in perspective chains from a exercise equipment supplier have some crazy prices. Usually around 110-140 bucks for a pair of 20 pounds chains. Total weight at roughly 40-45lbs. So about $3 a pound. Kind of ridiculous. So I found McMaster Carr right down the highway in Aurora that has chains for dirt cheap compared to others. At about 9 bucks a foot I think I saved roughly 30 or more per pair with attachment chains and links included. So not a bad deal despite the complete utter cluster#$&@ that happened when I tried to order the damn things...

So heres the story-

I head out to Aurora around noon thinking I call them up and make the order, swing by play-it-again sports, and then come back to grab the chains. Seemed simple enough, right? Well it started that way. I make the call when Im about 15 minutes out and they inform me it will be about an hour to complete the order after I made it a point I AM ON MY WAY to come pick it up. So no worries. I'll get some shopping done and it'll be ready when I get around to them...WRONG. So a little over an hour passes by and I walk up, give them my info, and suddenly a puzzled look comes across the guys face.

"Hmmmm..."

Hm?

"Well it looks like your order was shipped." (Mind you it cost me about 10 bucks in gas to get there plus the tolls while shipping was somewhere around 90 dollars total so Im a little annoyed now).

"Hey it was supposed to be will call, man."

"Yea, Im not sure what happened. Well let me get you another order in and it should be ready in about 15 minutes"

So here I am thinking "great Im going to have 12 friggin chains when this is said and done and be about 600 in the hole. NOT what I was planning on.

"Ok. Yea they have the order so it should be out soon"

Alright. Whatever. I still have some time before practice. I can wait 15 minutes. So I shot some texts out to my athletes and let them know I was going to run a few minutes late but no big deal. Well except the man must've been on some seriously good medication as it took well over an hour and a half to get my new order ready. So not only do I still not have chains yet but practice AND the anticipated testing day is a complete wash. Its already 330 and Im still stuck in some massive warehouse the size of the IX center.

"Ok sorry about the wait you can head around back and pick them up."

Are you shitting me?? After all this they were around back?? For all I know they could have been ready for awhile but I was sitting up front waiting around with dumbass who doesn't understand how time works.

Alright, whatever, the day is already lost so lets make the most of it. I head around back. Grab the bucket of chain (which seemed kind of light for the listed 127lbs but I figured 'well I have been getting stronger') and was on my way.

Finally Im back in Brunswick. After a quick stop to Home Depot for the rest of the pieces I needed Im back in the high school weight room. Home sweet home.

Lets crack these babies open....

I pull two out and link em up to the bar. Bench a few times. All is well. Pull out two more, chain em up, bench a few more times. Feels good. So I reach in to grab the other two...remember when I said it felt light? There was only one chain left. I ordered 6 and was given 5. Alright now really? I was starting to feel a little better until this happened now I got 6 chains in the mail and 5 in front of me. Where do they hire these guys?

It gets better...

So I send them an email 'kindly' voicing my frustrations with the day thus far. Was responded later with "please use this shipping account to send them back and you be issued a full refund for the bad order". Ok well thats good to hear except I got to lug around a heavy ass bucket to UPS to send a bogus order back.

Then I noticed something-

The chains on the left side of the bar were grazing the ground like they are supposed to. The right side- hanging freely. I checked the links and they were even in height so wtf? Why is one higher than the other? I begin to take each chain off and lay them down next to each other....

AW SUNUVA $#%$^@#*$@#*%^#*($@($!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok so lets recap. Not only did they completely misunderstand "I am coming to pick them up DO NOT ship them", they have no idea how long it takes to cut chains and prepare an order, they can't count, and now apparently dont know how a tape measure functions. Its complicated stuff I am sure.

Heres the worst...maybe they just had their B-side working service that morning. Maybe it was just because it was Monday and McMaster pulled their complimentary employee coffee. Maybe the company Cinco De Mayo party just royally screwed up their staff so bad that they were still recovering until Tuesday and therefore normal human functioning on any sort of intelligent level just ceased to be. Tequilas ridiculous.

I don't know.

What I do know is they still have a better location and way better prices than anyone else. So what does this mean? Well like Jim Carey said in Liar Liar - "Guess Ill just piss and moan like an incompetent prick!"

No, seriously, thats about the whole point of this post. Have a good weekend!