Designing a strength program for athletes is more like finding the pieces of a puzzle and then putting the puzzle together.  When there are injuries, bad posture or poorly designed workouts, bad stuff happens.  That is why it is so important to try and find all of the pieces of the puzzle and get them to fit together the right way.

When I visited Martin Rooney several years ago, and we got into the dynamic / CNS intensive warm-up, he noticed that I moved like a slug stuck in maple syrup…in January.  Yes, we squatted, deadlifted, lunged, cossack squatted, prowler’d, but dynamic movements – ones that really ‘turned on’ the CNS and recruited more higher threshold motor units (HTMU) – were limited to loaded power movements in our programming.  The revelation was that power movements like Olympic lifts, medicine ball drills and dynamic effort barbell work, is much different than power skips, sprinting, and agility drills.

Yes, they are all important and you must find a balance.  Neglecting a required movement skill will create an imbalance.  We get so caught up in resistance training that we forget to how to move powerfully.

Learning how to actually use your body and move it fast, is a skill that you lose over time.  And we had lost it.  I remember a story that my friend Joe Dowdell – owner of Peak Performance in NYC – tells of the fitness industry’s over-exaggeration of removing all core-specific exercises from many programs.  He stated that after sticking to isometric exercises for his core work, he had trouble sitting up after bench pressing.

Just like we can have a weakness in a particular muscle group, we can have a weakness or limitation in our movement.  The SAID principle and Law of Specificity is real son!  Or more simply, if you don’t use it, you lose it.

In this video, Martin goes into detail of what happens when you lose the ability to move and you DON’T create a comprehensive strength profile.

Watch this video!