EHS baseball '09 pics

"Proper" Firing Patterns?

Muscular activation patterns during active prone hip extension exercises- Journal of Electromyography & Kinesiology Jan. 09.

A popular sports medicine certifying agency uses the prone leg extension test as a method of screening for "gluteus maximus latency". They claim a normal firing pattern goes something like hamstrings, glutes, contralateral erector spinae, ipsilateral. I've yet to see this pattern substantiated in a major scientific journal.

Yeah, I believe there is a plethora of weak butts out there; and all of the dysfunction it causes from ankle sprains to sore backs. I'm just wondering if this test needs to be thrown out. Your 2 cents please.

EHS baseball '09

Make sure you read Vern's post for today, Jan. 26, 2009, "punishment is not coaching". It is amazing how much fun the baseball players are having doing their off season workouts- pulling on rings, tossing sandbags, hopping/jumping. Sweating their asses off & smiling the whole time. I will get some stills.

Joe P. speaking engagement

For those of you in the NJ area, I'm speaking at the Yogi Berra Center in Upper Montclair this Wed. Jan 28. Go to www.yogiberramuseum.org for more info. I'll be applying the kinetic chain concept to rehab & conditioning. Steve Donohue, assistant AT with the NY Yankees is speaking, as well as Paul Reddick, co-author of Tom House's pitching books.

Rehab Session Management

...this is something that is probably not important to the collegiate or clinical ATC. It is not taught in any A.T. college curriculum, that I know of (please tell me if I am wrong). You are all by yourself and you have one classroom period to rehab 5 different athletes with 5 different injuries in various stages of healing. Here's an example of how I get it done. I think if you click on the image you can enlarge it.

GAIN '09 Lineup announced

Apprentorship = Apprenticeship + Mentorship.

What a lineup!! In addition to last year's faculty James Radcliffe & Kelvin Giles have been added.

James is the S&C coach at the University of Oregon, and author of "Functional Training for all Sports".

Kelvin is president of "Movement Dynamics" and is really doing some interesting work on creating an athletic profile as a starting block for athletic development & identifying movement problems.

There will be more info posted on www.gambetta.com in the coming days. If you really want to dive into this stuff join us this June in Florida USA. We're on the go from 6am-ish to 10pm-ish with both formal & informal hands on instruction. In addition, we have our own web forum where I have the opportunity to go deeper into the ideas in this blog, upload video etc.

Smorgys

...learned this workout paradigm from Vern about 10 years ago. It's a great way to design an introductory module to your particular athlete's athletic development program.
-simple to execute & administrate
-reduces the possibility of injury by the nature of it's design
-highly adaptable to ANY sport
-keeps the athlete focused

It involves an UE exercise, a core exercise, a LE exercise, followed by an anerobic exercise. My baseball guys are doing one now. It looks like this:

dumbbell upper cuts-exercise band partner see-saws-rotational R stagger squat-SP jops
dumbbell V press- exercise band partner skiier- rotational L stagger squat-FP jops
dumbbell curl/overhead press-ex.band partner rotations-rotational lunge- TP jops

They do 45 seconds of work, 15 seconds of rest. There are 30 exercises total. Counting the warmup & some static stretching at the end, it takes about 1 1/2 hours to complete. You can increase the difficulty by doing 3 in the right column first, followed by the jops, then the middle column and so on. To minimize the amount of equipment, the team is split up into 3 different groups that start at different points in the workout. In this way, some are using dumbbells, some bands, some bodyweight etc.