Who works on the weekend? Not me, I read!

My morning perusal of the interwebs left me with a bounty of good articles…so good you should read them too.

Some Thoughts on Louie and Westside– Charlie Weingroff 

Mr. Weingroff is super smart and his thoughts on neck packing really influenced my training the last year. I know, it’s like ummm “packing your neck” made a difference?

Yeah, yeah it did..

This article is awesome, covers several misconceptions and arguments against the Westside Philosophy. Plus the videos range from informative to down right cool..Best part is in the first video when Louie says he has physicists and engineers come out to evaluate training. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “Physics rules the weight room.” You might be strong, fast, quick etc. and have the latest training gadget gizmo or thing-a-ma-jig but ultimately, physics determines the performance and outcomes of exercises.

Everybody used to hang on Lou’s nuts, now it’s popular to bash him. While I don’t think you should be a nut hanger for anybody…If I wanted to get really strong I would go to Lou and do EVERYTHING he says….maybe not forever but for right now, definitely. Know why? Because every one of his lifters are waaaaaaaaay stronger than me and that’s gotta be worth something.

7 Ways to Ease Pain and Avoid Injury– Sue Falsone

Awesome, short to the point article about how…..ease pain and avoid injuries…..If people just did number 2 (no, not that number two)

not this one either…

but, spent 5 minutes a day with prehab it would go a looooooooong way.

20 Best Fitness Tips of All Time– Susy Sedano

Truth

Brace your core, shoulders down and back, hip hinge, lift heavy weights, grip the weights HARD

Do Squats Damage Young Spines– Charles Poliquin

The study this article is talking about is not out in print yet, will be soon, everyone will read it and nothing will come of it except negative no-nothing media driven BS….(think steroids, that’s whats gonna happen here).

I’m going out on a limb here (read: not really): Squatting, we’re assuming proper squatting, is perfectly acceptable and safe. Like Poliquin points out Mel Siff went over this long ago,

It is extremely misleading to focus on the alleged risks of weight training on children when biomechanical research shows that simple daily activities such as running, jumping striking or catching can impose far greater forces on the musculoskeletal system than very heavy weight training“- Mel Siff, Facts and Fallacies of Fitness

Crossfit Endurance, Tabata sprints and why people just don’t get it– Steve Magness

This is a really good article on the pitfalls of CrossFit Endurance. The take home message is this,

#8 Periodization matters:

It seems simple enough that people would know that how you plan and periodize training matters.  Training isn’t a random collection of hard exercises or workouts.  There has to be some sort of logical sequence and progression.  If there’s not, then you can expect to get exactly what you trained for, random results.

The bottom line is that so called high intensity interval training (HIIT) which is the new fad word with strength coaches is good.  But for endurance performance it’s even better when it is supported!  You have to support it with something.  Endurance work of various kinds and even pure speed work (with lots of recovery) serves as support for the intense stuff.

Sounds an awful lot like Charlie Francis, Dan Pfaff, Mel Siff, Yuri Verhkoshansky, Mark McLaughlin, James Smith, Buddy Morris ie coaches who know their shit and don’t just make stuff up because it sounds cool or to sell their “certification”……

As far as I’m concerned Steve hits the nail on the head when it comes to CrossFit,

Crossfit exploits a couple different natural reactions people have to get people on their bandwagon.  First, they create a straw man “us vs. them” mentality.  We’ll go over this straw man tactic a bit later, but they try and cultivate this idea that just because it’s different and new means its got to be better.  They throw in some pseudoscience or misinterpretation of science and they’ve bolstered their selling point.  Further exploiting peoples natural habits, they promise better results with less time commitment, which in today’s “busy” world is probably the number one selling point for many products or ideas. If you’ve ever watched late night infomercials, you might start to see some similarities…

Lastly, once you’re in they do something pretty creative.  They first created their own new performance metric on which you’re judged.  Because being good at all the other methods of establishing performance isn’t good enough, so now you’re judged based on some criteria that crossfit develops.  Being a specialist at something is apparently bad?  Additionally, they really go after this hard work/pain = improvement and results idea.  This is also known as the Rocky effect.  But if you’ve been in the coaching business long enough you know that hard stupid work doesn’t get you anywhere.  You can’t just do work that is painful just because it hurts and expect to get better.