A Philosophy of Strength and Health

Last week Donie Fox had a great article for HMMRMedia -- "Using Foundational Legs Exercises as the Cornerstone of Rehabilitation." Check it out if you haven't already. Donie's article is important in my mind because it addresses a critical issue in the rehab world. There is a serious lack of appreciation for and mastery of the use of basic movements (squats, lunges, step ups) to build foundational lower extremity strength. Donie and I have decided to go into more depth on this topic in our next few podcasts. We will also hopefully touch on return to running programming criteria. Here are some barriers, in my opinion, to rehab professionals adopting a "foundational legs" approach. I'm not trying to be overly critical or a curmudgeon here. I am simply trying to share my observations after 20 years of working at all points on the rehab and performance spectrum. Ok, here goes. 1.  "Protection" mindset vs "performance" min

In support of my HMMRMedia article today , I wanted to give people a look at some of the Spectrum Squat variations I have used -- and show athletes doing them in actual training sessions. The athletes featured are Morgan Northrop (US national team, aerials skiing, 5' 6" and 128 lbs), Eli Kimche (high school senior, golf, 6' 4") and Nolan Berry (high school senior at the time, basketball, 6' 10" and 220 lbs). The video quality isn't super high, but this is the real deal, flaws and all. Morgan and Eli do a fantastic job of using their full range of motion. Eli is doing is first ever Spectrum Squats in these videos and is learning to rack the KBs. He only has KBs at home so we work with what we have during the COVID -19 times. Morgan is a pro at Spectrum Squats and has used them to their fullest throughout every training year. The video of Nolan is for all of you working with tall, somewhat inflexible athletes. I worked with Nolan

Over the next few days, Martin Bingisser will be sharing a video lesson and several articles related to programming for leg strength. James Marshall wrote a great piece -- "Training the Legs Through Movement" -- that was featured last week. Donie Fox and I will have follow up articles in the next few days that build on this idea.  In preparation for the video lesson discussion, Martin sent out some questions. I thought it would be good for me to write out my thoughts and take some time to reflect. Here are my thoughts on two of the questions. I hope my reflections spark your curiosity and direct you to the article by James and the follow up articles that will appear later today and this week. Sorry for the wacky formatting. I have been trying to get it all neat and tidy, but Blogger has not cooperated with me today. So I'm playing with it all right now. Alpine ski racer Cooper Iacobelli explores the Russian boxes. ---- One point both James and Donie have