Hurdle Improvisation




I don't have any regular size hurdles, so I've improvised with the bar and the rack. I'm sure there's some liability issues with using the equipment in this way (any lawyers out there?) so I'm not openly recommending it for anyone. But it gives me the ability to do this type of warm up mobility work and utilize the potential assessment method suggested by Vern Gambetta in his new book.

JE (pictured above) has good lower extremity mechanics, with just a tad bit of hammy stiffness. Front squats are easier for him than back squats. His throwing mechanics are improving--more accurate passing--according to his coach. He had 4 assists in a 9-2 club team win this past Sat. He is learning great resistance training fundamentals he can take into the high school weight room when he works out independently. He will set the bar and start a trend for his teammates during their dryland/weight room workouts. When he showed his friends his Friday workout exercises, they wanted to know where the bench press was. He just laughed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

It's About Preparing People, not Preventing Injuries

ACL injuries do not happen in a void. People sustain injuries when their infrastructure is unable to manage a specific set of physical circumstances. To describe the mechanism of the injury without the context of the person and their level/type of sport, is to miss valuable insight. In sport, we prepare the person, to the best of our understanding, to meet the physical demands of that sport. We do not just work to prevent one particular injury; we prepare athletes to navigate the total sport physical environment. By "we" I mean the coaching and support staff -- specifically the athletic development staff.  Athletic development (AD) coaches prepare athletes through the development of physical literacy and movement competencies via movement progressions. It is more than strength, power, agility; it is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors to manage themselves within the entire sporting environment. At the higher levels of sport, AD coaches coordinate wit...
Read more

Form and Function

Image
Way back in 2002, I scanned these images by Howard Schatz from Sports Illustrated (October 14, 2002). A fascinating array of elite female athlete physiques, heights and weights, eh? These are some of the women featured in his book Athlete --a very cool pictorial essay that celebrates athletic form and function.
Read more

Strength: Overcoming Tradition & Assumptions

Image
The term "strength" comes with many images and stereotypes. The most common stereotype usually includes intimidating men who look like action figures, in spaces that look like iron jungles. Strength is associated with mass gain, limb girth increases, muscle hypertrophy and maximal force production against an external load. With regard to lower body strength, we speak in terms of multiples of bodyweight (BW), with the ratio of 2x BW historically viewed as necessary and desirable. We have historically trained in terms of 1 RM. There has been a trend recently to adopt a VBT (velocity based training) approach, as we know 1 RM changes on a daily basis and technology now allows us to more finely tune things with velocity as the target within each set. These things can be helpful as we initially learn to measure and document progress. But I think it is important to step back from this narrow outlook, because this view of strength does not serve all of us well, in either the rehab or...
Read more