April 2010 Blog Posts (29)

Wolff’s Law dictates that a healthy bone will adapt to the loads under which it is placed. If a bone is repeatedly stressed, over time, it will become stronger to resist forces in that direction as

repetitive elastic deformation results in changes in density and volume

of the trebeculae and secondary changes to the cortex. For example,

tennis players often have much stronger bones in their dominant arms,

baseball players often exhibit bony retroversion on their throwing…

Looks can be deceiving! With the majority of medicine ball progressions consisting of rotational throws and slams, it can appear that these exercises are custom-made for rotational or throwing athletes. Surely, medicine ball exercises are an easy sell to baseball, tennis, hockey athletes, etc; however, if we change our perspective slightly, it is clear that every athlete can benefit from med ball work.

Medicine balls are just an implement, as universal as a dumbbell or cable…

The beauty of these…

People in the fitness world often talk about “Ah-ha” moments, I know I have, but nobody really talks about the “maybe” moments that occasionally turn into “ah-ha” moments or are forever lost. Today I'll give you my hypotheses and hope you'll refute or confirm them for me.

1. Maybe I have been reading research a bit less then ideally over the course of my education. In my early days, I’d read the introduction, skim the methods, and then read results…

A few posts back, I explained the theoretical consequences of coaching an athlete to "get on their toes". For this week’s post, I decided to provide some close up, visual evidence of my stance (no pun intended).

Here is a video of an adolescent female tennis player and male baseball/basketball player. Both athletes compete or practice with their team or private instructor six, if not seven days a week (not including a training session at Empower). Both athletes’ tendency is to shift…

While I have spent a great deal of time assessing the arguments and the literature concerning the true function of the foot and differences between shod and unshod postures, gait, and movement I haven’t really

addressed the injury realm extensively nor have I shared with you

Boddicker Performance’s assessment set that we use to check

preparedness for barefoot running.

It is commonly asserted that barefoot running isn’t a good idea based on the evolutionary thought…

Decided to try a Mike Bradley (Florida State) metabolic workout tonight, just for the fun of it. Yeah, great idea Dave. By the end of the workout my face was numb, the back of my neck was throbbing,

and walking down the stairs to leave the gym was like trying to play

pool with a rope. Ha ha, very funny Mike.



To learn how to improve your conditioning without jumping, balancing, or throwing

anything-and about 50 other things that will help your…

Yesterday it was made apparent that the feet are rife with afferent neurons that detect and report magnitudes and rates of loading, joint kinematics, and pressure distribution on the plantar surface of the

foot. Also, I said that they are in such a high concentration for a

reason. That reason will be expounded upon today.

Recall that these afferent cells are important for the maintenance of posture, detect aberrant movement during the stride, and also help us…

To a young or novice athlete, the warm up can be, well, everything. It can take on both corrective, strength, and even conditioning purposes for untrained athletes. However, once an athlete becomes acclimated to their warm-up routine, it is time to move on. A simple way to progress a warm up is to combine exercises. Physiologically, this isn’t rocket science; however, combining exercises will make a warm-up more efficient, saving time for power, strength, and conditioning as the program…