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These days, just about everyone from strength coaches to exercise enthusiasts are familiar with the concept of a dynamic warm-up. That said, simply because you are aware of a concept doesn’t mean that you actually understand how to properly apply it.

Speaking around the country as a strength coach and educator, I’ve observed that most folks (even fitness professionals) still lack the ability to design and utilize a comprehensive dynamic warm-up that is effective in improving strength, functional range of motion, and overall performance.

This article will change that and will provide you with the necessary tools to maximize performance in both training and competition by using the Performance U approach to dynamic warm up.

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In Part 2 of his warm-up series, Nick Tumminello shows you exactly what you need to do to better prepare for your lower body workout days. These Lower Body Warm-up techniques are guaranteed to maximize strength, improve motor unit (muscle) recruitment, and help prevent injury.

This warm-up takes no more than ten minutes. If you are serious about improving your performance and breaking new PR’s, you’ll do well to listen to Nick Tumminello as he gives a lower body warm-up 101.

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Serratus Anterior

A strong Serratus Anterior muscle is crucial for optimal shoulder health and functional movement. Put simply, the Serratus Anteriror keeps the Scapula (Shoulder Blade) pressed against the rib cage while your arm moves or deals with load.

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Many folks blame a weak Serratus Anterior muscle for causing a winged Scapula. Although this can be true. There are some cases in which Scapula winging is cause by a long Thoracic nerve problem. This an an issue that is way beyond the scope of most coaches and therefore beyond the scope of this Blog.

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Now, what IS within the scope of this Blog is to provide you with yet another  new, smarter and more effective way to use the Push Up Plus exercise for the purpose of shoulder strengthening and injury prevention.

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In the video below, I demonstrate  how to perform the Push Up Plus exercise to MAXIMALLY recruit and strengthen the Serratus Anterior muscles.

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These recommendations featured in the video below are based on the current Bio-mechanical research and teachings of world renowned Physical Therapists like Mark Comerford and Kevin Wilk.

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Check out this video and discover how to Perform the Push Up Plus a Better way!

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As always, I love to hear your thoughts and feedback. So, don’t forget to comment below…

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MIke is very smart and one heck of a nice guy. He has some insightful things to tell you about the brain and Joint Mobility. Check out his article “Ichabod Training” and cool videos below. When you’re done, check out his Blog here.

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Ichabod Training

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I see it gyms all around the country and it is spreading worse than the swine flue (sorry, H1N1 since we don’t want to blame the pigs).  I call it “Ichabod Training.”   In case you live in a cave with Osama or are pulling a very long Salman Rushdie, Ichabod Crane was a fictional character in Washington Irving’s short story “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”

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During his fabelled journey home one night, Ichabod encounters another traveler, known as the legendary Headless Horseman; the ghost of a Hessian soldier who was decapitated by a cannonball during the American Revolutionary War.  Ichabod is chased and then disappears. Rumor has it that he himself was the Horseman, of whose legend he took advantage to dispose of his rival.

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That is the classical background for all you literary critics in the crowd.  For a more modern version I like it when George Costanza (of Seinfeld fame), remarks in one episode “Why don’t we smooth the head down to nothing, stick a pumpkin under his arm, and change the name to Ichabod Crane?”

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I know you are asking, how the hell does this relate to training?  Good question and I am glad you are still reading.   There are some people training in the gym like they don’t have a head or it was replaced with a pumpkin on a good day.  I am not referring to you, the reader’s of Nick’s blog here, you guys are way too bright.  I am talking about your average commercial gym goer that you see.  Everything they do is focused on “this or that muscle” how to recruit “this or that muscle”, how to make “this or that muscle” bigger, ad nauseum.   Of course those things are important, but we need to look more upstream and find what causes those muscles to contract, get bigger and perform better.

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The Brain: The Final Frontier

Pretend you are a salmon going upstream in the land of physiology to find out how to get stronger and perform better.  Once you finally reach the stream (and just before you die,  poor salmon) you find the brain and nervous system.  This is the control center for human performance.  Your brain controls all of your movement and strength, so to optimize it we need to look at how the brain gets its information.   This primarily comes from:

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1) Eyes (visual and eye muscle movements)

2) Vestibular (inner ear “balance”)

3) Proprioceptive (info from the joints)

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In order to optimize the body for performance (and pain reduction but that is a whole different topic), we need to optimize each one of these systems.

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Just the other day on this very site, Nick said, “Between folks like myself, Mike Boyle, Eric Cressey, Mike Robertson and many others (editor’s note, cough cough Mike T Nelson, too, hehehe),the importance of Joint Mobility for optimal health and human performance has been made crystal clear.  Every joint in your body needs optimal mobility to function properly.”

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I could not agree more!

Better movement = better performance

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Better, higher quality and more efficient movement is the goal.  At its simplest level, this is just coordination.  If we look at my favorite exercise of all time, the concentration curl (ok, so it is not my favorite, but it works well for this example)  I can increase my curling power by two main ways.

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1)    Fire up more muscle fibers.

If I can find a way to get my nervous system to get more muscle tissue to contract, I can lift more.  While highly debatable how much muscle tissue you can contract at any one point, the range is about 20-60% with the higher end being a highly trained athlete.  The take away is that is it 100% or even close to it!  Pavel Tsatsouline says (paraphrasing here) “your muscles can already lift a car; they just don’t know it yet.”

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2)    DECREASE firing of the antagonist

The antagonist is the opposite muscle that works to brake the action.  In our power concentration curl, the antagonist is the tricep.   If you take our foot off the brake, we can increase performance.   Less tricep contraction = more bicep strength.

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Moooo P.O.W.E.R!

So just how do we do this?  Joint mobility the rescue.

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“Jammed joints create muscular weakness.”—Dr. Cobb, Creator of Z-Health Athletic Performance System

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If I injure my elbow, neurologically my body will start to shut down the muscles that cross my elbow (triceps, biceps, etc) in an effort to protect my body and reduce the risk of further damage to the joint. My body is trying really hard to protect itself which is pretty smart!  If that joint (or ANY joint) is not brought back up to 100% health, it will still has some “neurologically braking” going on, thus performance is not optimal. At some level, my body thinks that there still is an issue in my elbow and will be shutting down the muscles to some degree.  The technical term for this is arthrokinetic reflex.

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The direct opposite is also true.  More mobility (a measure of health) will result in more strength, instantly!

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Further Down the Rabbit Hole

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If that make sense, lets go even further, so hold on to that pumpkin. The nervous system connects ALL the joints, so ANY joint that is not back to 100% mobility is going to dampen performance! Yes, that is a leap, but it makes logical sense (and I’ve seen it happen many times).

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So far, every chronic shoulder issue that I’ve helped someone with, I have yet to do anything with their shoulder!

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“He who treats the site of pain is lost”  –Karel Lewit

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Where there is smoke, there is fire and the pain is usually just the smoke.  We need to find the fire!  In my experience with chronic shoulder issues, I find that by doing mobility work on the opposite foot/ankle, opposite hip, thoracic, or same side wrist will normally do the trick.  The body moves as a whole (hopefully or else you have some problems), so ALL the joints must be working optimally.  The key to performance is optimal mobility at EVERY joint (including the jaw).

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Actually, my fellow Strength Coach and Friend Kevin Neeld is going to show you the exercise. He is the one that shot the video and originally posted it on his site after visiting me here at Performance U.

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Kevin is a very smart guy who is willing to actually listen to what other coaches (like me) have to say. He has taught me some great as well, through our personal interactions and through his Hockey Training Blog which I check regularly.

Anyway, here’s what Kevin had to say about this new Hip Mobility exercise and his video demonstrating it.

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The Below is Taken from KevinNeeld.com

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A couple weeks ago I visited my friend and colleague Nick Tumminello at his facility in Baltimore.

Nick is a brilliant coach so I love stopping by his place to steal some good stuff from him.

While there, I saw him do a hip mobility exercise I had never done before. I started playing around with it this week and really love it. It’s a great way to mobilize the hip into adduction and abduction in a hip flexed position. This is one of those “must-includes” for hockey players and soccer players that tend to have a lot of hip problems.

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There are many sites that discuss the sleeper stretch. But, in my opinion, Dan Blewett has by far the best and most thorough description of how to safely and effectively stretch the posterior shoulder capsule using the sleeper stretch.

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Go here to check out Dan’s coaching tips on performing the sleeper stretch.

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In addition to Dan Blewett’s post on the best way to perform the sleeper stretch, check out the video below and discover a simple method I use to test if an athlete actually has a tight posterior capsule.

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There is one key point to understand about the sleeper stretch as it relates to the above test.

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Even if you don’t test “tight”, but still experience restricted limited ROM while performing the sleeper stretch. It still may be important for you to use the sleeper stretch protocol as described in Dan’s blog.

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Your restriction may simply not be related to the posterior shoulder capsule. But, rather be related to other shoulder structures be it passive or active. Regardless the sleeper stretch can still benefit you and  improve the functional ability and overall health of your shoulders.

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However, in some cases, we simply don’t have the time to perform an extensive dynamic warm-up.

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We may just be in a rush, maybe arrived to the gym late or simply want to get in and get out.

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For these specific instances, I have a few “express” warm up exercises. These are CNS Activation, Muscle Activation and Dynamic Mobility exercises that accomplish a large amount in a little time.

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One of my favorite, “go to”, express Dynamic mobility exercises is the Yoga-Plex.

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The price for this DVD is $49.

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For a limited time, I’m offering two exclusive bonuses-

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BONUS 1 - templates for my three, favorite, “go to” warm ups. These are the very same, battle tested warm ups I use everyday with my NFL players, MMA fighters, Physique Competitors and exercise enthusiasts.
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BONUS 2 – A PDF of my entire, New Concepts and Techniques in Dynamic Warm Up Power point presentation. This is the very same workshop I give at major fitness conventions all over the country. Normally, The only way to get this presentation, aside from this limited offer, is to pay top dollar to attend one of my live workshops or a major fitness convention.

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These 2 awesome bonuses go away this Monday, September 14th at Midnight. So, don’t hesitate, buy this DVD now and get your hands on the Bonuses!

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Here are few of the key concepts you will discover in this CNS Activation DVD;

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- How to consistently improve and refine coordination each time you warm up

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- How to turn a simple jumping jack into one of the best CNS activating and skill building exercises

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- Why you should be warm up in reverse!

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- How to turn a simple body weight squat into an incredibly effective CNS builder guaranteed to improve your vertical jump and explosive power

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- CNS dominant Core Training, why every athlete needs it and how to do it…

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- Over thirty exercises with many new, never before seen variations

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- Exercise progressions and regressions to accommodate all fitness levels and abilities

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- How to ensure all athletes optimize speed, power and agility before training or competition

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- How to do all the above with no special equipment and very little space

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Plus, much more!!!!

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Don’t forget that the Bonus offer ends on Monday, Sept 14th!

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According to Nick Tumminello, a lot of the stretches we do in the gym–a lot of the mainstays–are actually liable to hurt us more than help us. He calls these physiological bad boys “Warmup Don’ts.”

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