Happy Monday to all.  I’m particularly excited this Monday morning as I just completed the registration for Eric Cressey and Mike Reinhold’s seminar,  Testing, Treating, and Training the Shoulder: From Assessment to High Performance.  The seminar will be held at Cressy Performance next month, for more info click here.  In other awesome news I will also be going to the Bahamas for the first time this Friday.  Besides these two events it’s pretty much life as usual, only slightly colder.  I didn’t write at all last week, as I was quite busy and quite bummed that I couldn’t squat or deadlift due to a mysterious adductor injury.  So, I’m giving my legs a break for the upcoming weeks and focusing more on my diet, which could always use some tuning and will hopefully distract me from the fact that I can’t workout as much.  My first goal for the diet is to include vegetables or fruit with every meal.  I’ve done this in the past with great results, better body comp and more energy, but have slipped up a little bit in the past weeks.  This week if I don’t have veggies in their classical sense, because of time or location I will use this:

or this:

As for my training I will still be showing up everyday and working on my soft tissue, flexibility, and mobility even if I can’t lift.  I will also have time to  start a series for the blog I’ve been wanting to do for awhile now.  It will be a weekly series showcasing things that people do wrong everyday in the gym.  And of course, I will show you how to do them right.   In closing here’s a similarly themed article by Nick Tuminello, How Not to Warm Up, which features a lot of nasty things that you still see performed everyday in the gym.  Until next time.

8 Grams by Jon Feinstein

Visions of Fast Food by Jon Feinstein “There’s this weird relationship that we as Americans have with fast food,” says Feinstein, who titled each image with the given item’s fat content, in grams. “I made a project where the food mostly looks disgusting, yet some of it is still strangely enticing—probably because the branding is so embedded in our psyches.”

Crossfit for Baseball? by Eric Cressey “The randomness of the “workout of the day” is simply not appropriate for a sport that has quite possibly the most specific sport-imposed asymmetries in the world of athletics.”

Clean Eating Gone Wrong by John Berardi “What if I told you that a diet of 1/2 cup oats, 4 egg
whites, 5 ounces of chicken, and 1/2 cup broccoli could be a recipe for getting fat?  Hard to believe?  Well, in this week’s update, you’ll find out how even the cleanest of diets can lead to weight gain…”

USC RB Johnson recovering from weights accident by Gregg Beacham                 If you haven’t heard USC RB Stafon Johnson crushed his Larynx the other day while bench pressing.  He is thankfully expected to make a full recovery. I don’t believe this is necessarily a “must read”, but more of a wake-up call.  This is an extremely rare accident, but it can happen.  Always make sure you use a spotter you know, like your workout buddy (if you don’t have one get one), and most importantly use your thumbs.

Happy Monday All!

This weekend I visited  Cressey Performance, an athletic training facility in Hudson, Massachusetts.  There were a couple reasons for my visit, but the most important was a shoulder evaluation.  Eric Cressey of Cressey Performance is known as “The Shoulder Guy” in the training/strength coach field.  I started my day on  Saturday with a one-hour eval with Eric.  I’ve had a symptomatic shoulder for years, but always put off going to the doctor, for reasons that are beyond the scope of this article…well okay, basically I didn’t want to end up in physical therapy that was prescribed by an out-of-shape doctor (who probably tells all his patients that squats are bad for them) following some cheesy outdated cookie cutter you’ve got a shoulder problem program that’s xeroxed for every “shoulder” person that comes in.  So, I emailed Eric for advice/guidance; maybe he knew of somebody in NYC?   He responded with “can you come to Boston” –whoa, why I didn’t think of that?  Boston is only a 4hr $15 trip/4 hours away on the Fung Wah Bus. “Yes” I responded; this would be a great opportunity to get some solid advice on my shoulder and see a kick-ass facility in action.  Then I found out that CP isn’t actually in Boston and there was no real way to get there with public transportation.  Luckily for me an awesome client of mine was willing to drive me out to Marlborough, MA where I crashed for the night on Friday.  Saturday I woke up and got a car service to CP, and as I passed through legitimate swamps on the way, I realized this place was out there!  When I arrived, the day was just getting going at CP and I was excited to take it all in.   After the eval Eric was kind enough to let me hang out and observe a Saturday afternoon at Cressey Performance, as this was the other reason for my visit.  I love to see and learn what other people are doing in the strength and conditioning field.  Eric, along with Tony Gentilcore and Brain St. Pierre , the two other trainer/coaches at the facility were happy to answer all of my questions.  So, if you are ever in the Boston vicinty, it’s worth it to  stop by and check out Cressey Performance.  Here’s a look at the space and a staff workout (FYI, I don’t know what was going on with the music the day they filmed this.  When I was there the music was quite good although I hear they do have a slight techno problem from time to time). Anyways these guys can all deadlift more than you.