Cressey Performance - Day 2

Even though I woke up sore from my first day with EC, I was more prepared for what he had in store for me. At this point I know I can do everything that's thrown at me, and it's even nice to have a little shot of adrenaline that comes with being in a strange place and trying to impress strangers.

I knew there were 3 things in store for me today: EC was going to take a look at my sprinting "technique" (I put this in quotes because I'm not sure what I do can be called technique), we were going to have an upper body workout, and I was probably not going to be mistaken for a baseball player now that we answered those questions the first day.

First up we needed to work through the foam roller routine and take care of my mobility work. Pretty much the same set up as the day before, except I didn't really need someone to hold my hand through it. My intern of the day today was Connor, and he seemed extremely knowledgeable about the body as well. He's about to graduate with his bachelor's and will be starting PT school soon. From our conversation, he seems really passionate about it, and seems to have found a good home at CP.

Here's that foam rolling routine:


After the warm-up, I ran a series of 6, 40 yard sprints with critique in between. I started with excessive heel-striking (which could lead to the pain in my heel) and didn't utilize the full arm motion in my stride. The arm motion is linked to the opposite glute muscle through the lats. My arm motion apparently didn't engage the glutes enough and I was potentially losing speed that way. After a few runs I was looking better according to EC, but was told that I would see noticeable difference in my sprinting once I could deadlift 315... I took that a little mixed... I've deadlifted 375 before, but not with good form, so I can see where he could say I haven't lifted 315... but come on, don't I look like I could pull 315?!?

Anyway, I'll take that to mean that I need to lift 315 with some more authority. Speed up the lift and get a little more explosive, and then maybe I'll be a little faster. The only thing I'm concerned with here is the difference between my running technique sprinting on a 40-yard track and the technique I use on the Ultimate field. Hopefully I can make the two match.

After the sprints, we moved into the upper body routine. It wasn't anything out of the ordinary, but it was good to hear that I had good power on my chins and I was able to do a set of 4 close-grip bench press at 225. I haven't done that before, so that was kinda cool. We moved to some single-arm bench press, seated rows, external rotations, and split-stance cable lifts. It was a pretty good workout and the timing was great so that I could ask plenty of technique questions. One of the only bad things I took out of the session is that I was using 75's for the single-arm bench press when I max out at 60 lbs. at home. That just means I get to spend more money...

A good nugget I took from my questions was about mobility and stability. Your body needs alternating mobility and stability to perform properly. Mobility in the ankles, stability in the knees, mobility in the hips, stability in the lower back, mobility in the thoracic spine, stability in the scaps, and mobility in the shoulders/arms. It's a good way of looking at it, and the reasons behind finding that mobility are to limit the amount of compensation the stable areas have to make. Basically, if you lack mobility in one of the areas that should have mobility, then the closest stable area will have to take one some mobility to perform the function. This is where injury happens.

So now I've got my plan and I'm a week into it before I got this post up. It's painful so far, but I think some of that is due to a little extra Ultimate lately. One more big Ultimate weekend and I'll be free to concentrate on my iron.