Stand Up Jump Down

As Fred Lowe says, "Ya gotta move greasy fast." Gravity waits for no one.


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The Waiter's Bow

The sit and reach test stinks. Why? Well, it does not allow one to discriminate between hip and lumbar spine flexion. It tells you NOTHING. The initial testing position puts the hip/torso in 90 degrees of flexion to start; that is an end-range hip flexion position for many. For most, this is only a tortuous test of lumbar flexion. Ever had the pleasure of making a wrestling room full of 9th grade boys try to sit up against the wall while keeping their knees extended?

I prefer to use the Waiter's Bow as a assessment tool, and as a warm up or cool down exercise. My goal is to create hip extensor mobility in the context of the neutral spine. The Waiter's Bow is a weight-bearing, AROM test of flexibility that allows you to discriminate hip flexion from lumbar spine flexion. The Waiter's Bow is, in my book, a basic movement comprehension skill everyone should learn. It lays a foundation for advanced training skills and the neutral-spine body awareness that is critic…
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Rethinking Load & Intensity: Valuing Bodyweight Work and Effort

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Obstacles bring opportunity.

For many athletes and athletic development coaches, this is the first time they have not had access to a facility and traditional weight training equipment. Can we really do effective work with non-traditional/submaximal implements and bodyweight movements?

ABSOLUTELY.

This is our opportunity to see the power of simplicity. The power of consistency, intention and effort. Done well. Applied over time.


This is a great opportunity to reflect upon our ideas about intensity and load -- and the traditional definitions (%1 RM) we use to drive programming and periodization. The development of equipment to easily measure barbell velocity has prompted many coaches to seriously think about how they use a barbell. Many now see value in lighter absolute loads on the bar.

Can we get more coaches to value movements that don't use a bar? Maybe now we can. Because they are being forced to use bare-minimum loads. Maybe more coaches will actually try and do the bodyweig…
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A Primer for Building Foundational Squats

Many people ask me about teaching athletes to squat. So I thought I'd put together a post showing some of my "go-to" teaching movement sequences and share a few helpful points. This post will not go into any depth about working with people who have significant mobility restrictions -- we'll save that for a future post. But this should give you some practical tools and cues to help you build your process and progression.
And that's my first point: We all need a process. This is the process I've developed over the last 15 years or so. It's not perfect, but I've found it helpful -- for me. EVERYONE I work with uses this process. So everything I do within my system of programming builds from the elements in this process. New movements will have familiar elements of movements already learned. 
Second point: You will probably need to use a few explicit instructions at the start. Stance width. Toe out. Help people find this right away. And then let them kno…
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