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Dan’s Pro team is located in Normal Illinois and is called the Normal Cornbelters. They play in the independent professional Frontier League. They recently added him to the roster on the Team’s website, and on this little blurb in this press release.

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To celebrate Dans achievements, he and I have teamed up to show you 5 of the top stretches you can do to improve your sports performance. These stretches are especially valuable to the Baseball athlete. Dan has personally used these very same stretches to help become a Pro!

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Upcoming Strength Coaches, Trainers and athletes can learn from what Dan has done here at Performance U and from what he’s done for himself to become a Pro!

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As an athlete, Dan has been dedicated to his strength & conditioning program while simultaneously rehabilitating his pitching arm from Tommy John surgery. Every time there was a break in the action here at Performance U, Dan wouldn’t just sit around. He’d start performing his stretches and telling me about the tough workout he’d just put himself and some of his college teammates through. That my friends is the type of energy and dedication it takes to become a professional athlete!

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As an intern – Dan has been one of the BEST interns I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with. Every client here at Performance U loves to work with Dan because he’s genuine, social and enthusiastic! I like to say that I can make anyone a great Personal Trainer in a matter of weeks. But, all the technical stuff aside – I can’t make you a better people person. You either have it, or you don’t. Dan is just a likable guy! He always shows up when he’s supposed to, does whatever is asked of him without question and always asks great questions. Plus, he loves Strength & Conditioning and actually puts into practice what he’s learned!

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Dan regularly shares is Baseball Conditioning knowledge through his Blog – DanBlewett.com. Dan’s blog always has incredible content and is a must if you’re interested in Baseball training! It’s funny how whenever I have the honor of working with a person like Dan – I think I end up learning just as much from them as they learn from me! I read Dan’s blog every week and he’s always teaching me something new!

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The 5 BEST Stretches for Athletes!

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There are a multitude of valuable stretches available to athletes. The video below is by no means an exhaustive list of flexibility exercises Dan and I use. That said, this video will provide you with what Dan I consider our Top 5, Go-To stretches!

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Dan’s story of transforming himself from college athlete to Performance U intern, to Elite Strength coach to Pro athlete, all in just  about 1 year , is nothing short of impressive! I can assure you none of his success was due to luck! Dan’s success has come from his hard work, dedication, never give up attitude and true passion for his sport. My friends, if you want to succeed in anything – you have to be willing to work hard  and sacrifice like Dan.

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CONGRATS DAN ON ALL YOUR SUCCESS  and THANK YOU FOR TEACHING ME SOME VALUABLE LESSONS IN LIVING AND LEARNING!- YOU HAVE MADE ME PROUD!

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Please post a comment below or go to Dan’s blog and personally congratulate him on his achievements and thank him for putting together such a great video!

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We have  a great workout group consisting of myself, Alli, Mark (Simonetti) Simon and MMA guru, John Rallo. We have all been hitting it very hard lately and our bodies are in need of a rest and recovery week. So, to help us recover, we have toned things down a great deal and we are currenlty doing a Deloading workout each day.

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I’ve found that many folks, even  Strength Coaches and Trainers have trouble figuring out what to do and not to do during a Deload phase.

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So, in today’s post, I’m going to provide you a sample of a Deloading workout.

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Below is a layout of the exact Deloading workout we did today. This deload workout is lower- body dominant because today (Tuesday) is a Lower-body training day for us.

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Sample Deload Workout for the Lower-Body

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This Delaod Workout is performed Circuit training style with 3 different work stations:

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Station #1 – 4 Minute Ride on Airdyne Bike at 60-70 RPM

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Station #2 – 4 Minute Sled Pull (mix up facing forward and Backward) w/200lbs load (done on turf)

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Station #3 – 4 Minute Mobility/Activation Sequence, 1min High Hurdle Step-Over , 1min Mini-Band walks (any direction), 1min Yoga-Plex, 1min Dynamic Pigeons (hip rotator stretch)

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Rest 1 Minute between stations. Perform  3-4 rounds of the entire circuit.

A full circuit takes 15minutes total. So, 3 rounds takes exactly 45min time. Four rounds take 1hr.

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Important Deload Week Notes

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After this or any other deloading workout – You should NOT feel tired or be out of breath!

Instead, you should have a nice sweat going but still be able to talk normally and feel minimal muscle fatigue.

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REMEMBER – A deload week is for active recovery, it’s NOT a workout and shouldn’t feel like one!

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Don’t forget to post your comments below and tell us what you thought of this Deload workout and about your own personal favorite deloading techniques!

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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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Every joint in your body needs optimal mobility to function properly. However, through our common habits of poor posture and sitting too much, certain joints tend to loose mobility and become more restricted than others.

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The Thoracic spine is one of those joints. So, it requires some special attention and specific techniques to help gain and/or re-gain mobility.

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Check out this new Joint Mobility / Thoracic Spine Mobilization technique developed my good friend and colleague Morgan Johnson. Morgan is a brilliant Physical Therapist who is always teaching me incredible stuff.

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Published September 2009 in Men’s Health Magazine

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Continue Reading…

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So, I’m going to hit you with some more knowledge on smarter shoulder training.

The Sleeper Stretch has be getting allot of press these days and just about every coach is talking about stretching the posterior shoulder capsule. The Sleeper stretch is a great protocol if you actually have a tight posterior shoulder capsule.

The problem is, most do NOT have a tight posterior shoulder capsule.

I realize this is opposite to what you have been told in the past. But, even most serious lifters don’t have a posterior capsule when tested.

In the video below, I reveal a simple test that will help you check on how tight your posterior shoulder capsule really is.

If you are doing the sleeper stretch, you absolutely need to see this video!

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Comment on this post and let me know how you did on this test?

As I mentioned, I’m betting that  most of you will pass and therefore NOT have a tight posterior shoulder capsule.

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Why are you wasting time between sets? Why the hell don’t you do something, like grow, for instance?

Continue reading…

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