1. Joint Centration is the ideal balance of prime movers and stabilizers acting on a joint.
2. Phasic muscles = prime movers ie the ones you see.
3. Tonic muscles = stabilizers ie the ones you don’t see.
4. A good screening tool will assess Neurodevelopment, Pain and Motor Control, Regional interdependence, and have a High Threshold Strategy.
5. Train Slow doesn’t = be slow.
6. Being aerobically fit will allow you to better recuperate during your rest intervals during Anaerobic training.
7. Always measure biomarkers (grip strength, vertical jump, ect.)
8. Our posture decides our function. 
9. We don’t have bodyparts or systems.  We have bodies.  That’s it.
10. Centration is neurological
11. An unpacked neck during planks is using facial constrictions to hold yourself up.  Not ideal.  Pack the neck.
12. Pain has more to do with perception of threat than it does pathology.
13. When things go bad (stroke or spinal injury) we revert to primitive patterns.
14. The first thing in correcting posture is you must feel like you are wrong.  Consius dysfunction.
15. The belly button must go down and out during breathing.
16. Get round.
17. Breathe in through your nose and out through the mouth.  This stimulates more barrow receptors.
18. Stop trying to use EMG data.  It’s useless.

There’s 18 little tid bit’s learned from this weekend.  I have much more, I just have to go through my notes again.  Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. 2011 Nationals Write Up and Videos
2. Hope For The Holidays Write Up and 12/20/2011 lifts
3. Trainers That Make The Fitness Industry Look Bad

I’m going to preface this post by mentioning that I am NOT a registered dietitian.  If you have health conditions, you should consult with your doctor before making any changes to your diet.

“What should I eat?” or “What should my kids eat?” are probably the two most frequent questions hear from my parents and athletes.  So, I figured I would go ahead and write a little something to give you some guidelines to follow.

First, let’s get a bit of background info in what Calories, Proteins, Carbohydrates, and Fats are.

Protein

Protein is basically the building blocks of muscle and other tissue in the body.  Good sources of protein are chicken breasts, fish, turkey, and lean beef.  Try to eat the least processed meat possible.  You should be able to tell where the meat come from on an animal.  For example, I know where the breast is on a chicken.  I have no idea where a hot dog or bologna came from.

Carbohydrates

Carbohydrates (carbs) are the body’s primary energy source during exercise.  The best sources of Carbs are vegetables and fruits.  Try to avoid highly processed Carbs like breads and pastas.

Fats

This is probably the most misunderstood of all the macronutrients (Protein, Carbs, and Fat).  People think “Fat makes you fat”, and they couldn’t be further from the truth.  Fat in the diet is used as an energy source while you’re at rest – like sitting in the car, sitting at work, ect.  Dietary fat is also used as construction material for other organs, like the lining of the nervous system.  Almonds, walnuts, and lean meats mentioned above are great sources of fat.

Ok, now what?

When giving nutritional information to student athletes, it’s important to realize that they have very busy schedules and typically will have a tough time with a complex nutrition program.  So, I prefer the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) approach as follows:

• Give them the above mentioned basic info
• Eat breakfast
• Eat protein
• Avoid refined carbs (this one is hard for most folks)
• What color is their urine – it should look like lemonade, not apple cider
• If they ask about supplements, tell them to take fish oil

That’s it.  Nutrition advise, like training, should be kept as simple as possible for the athlete.  I generally try to get the point across to them that if they eat like crap, they’ll perform like crap.  That usually does the trick.

Related posts:

1. Chocolate Milk as A Postworkout Supplement?
2. Energy System Development for Soccer
3. This Is Who We Are.

There is a recent blog post on the strengthcoach blog about the disconnect between the trainer and client.  Read the post here.  I really liked the post and thought that I would share it with you.

The article talks about the difference between what is important to the client and what the trainer perceives to be important to them.  While fitness may be the number one priority for the trainer, it may only be 3rd or 4th on the list for the client.  To the client, fitness is typically just something they do a couple of times per week to fulfill a need to lose weight, reduce medications, or increase self-esteem.  The quicker the trainer realizes this, the better.

Related posts:

1. Why Most Speed And Agility Camps Don’t Work
2. Here’s Where Your Trainer is Getting It Wrong Part I
3. Top Ten Of 2011

There are a couple of reasons why most of them don’t work.  The first being that training should be a constant thing.  It’s not something you pick up for four or six weeks during the offseason and then put it down till next season.  When we’re talking about things like running mechanics, the only way to get good and stay good at them is through repetition.  I’ve seen it many times.  I’ll work with a kid till their season starts; then they come back afterwards and they are back to their same bad, slow habits.  Perfect practice makes perfect.

Another component missing from most “speed and agility” camps is strength training.  To get faster, you have to improve technique and have a good strength to bodyweight ratio.  You must also be very strong in relation to your bodyweight to be fast.  There’s a reason why olympic sprinters lift weights, and it isn’t to look better on the beach.  They must apply more force to the ground.

This is why most don’t work.  If you want permanent results, you must have a permanent training plan.

Related posts:

1. Five Ways To Improve Your Speed On The Field
2. Why Renting Equipment Doesn’t Work For Most People
3. Top Ten Of 2011

1. Designating 4 specific days and times at the gym is more effective than saying I’ll go 4 days a week.

2. I have kept 90% of my training appointments in the past year.

3. I have trained a minimum of 3 sessions per week for 13 months now, the longest workout streak of my life.

4. The number on the scale is my daily FYI, fluctuating often and therefore, no longer makes or breaks me.

5. I look forward to working out.

6. I have made working out a permanent part of my schedule and make other plans around my workouts instead of the other way around.

7. Pounds are easy to lose, cellulite on my thighs however; is not.

8. Venting to your friends about your bad day does not feel near as good as whacking a tractor tire with an 8lb sledge.

9. Putting 100lbs on a sled, hooking it to your waist and running across the parking lot is more fun than it sounds.

10. The shame of having to tell my trainer I was lazy and didn’t want to workout has made me keep countless appointments.

Hearing things like this really puts things in prospective for me.  It really makes it worth it for me to wake up at 4am and head in to work.  It’s very rewarding to know that we, as fitness professionals, can have such a positive effect on people’s lives.

Related posts:

1. 4 Things I’ve Learned About Training in 8 Months
2. Top Ten Of 2011
3. Celebrating Two Years of Doing Things For The Right Reasons

1.  Does Muscle Fiber Type Effect Performance  In this post I talk about the differences in muscle fiber type and how it affects an athlete’s performance.

2.  The John Broz Method One of the more popular topics in the strength training world in 2010 was the training that John Broz does in his Las Vegas gym.  This post discusses my opinions on what he does.

3.  The Real Reasons Why People Don’t Exercise  The name says it all.  These are the reasons why people don’t workout.

4.  Is A Calorie Really A Calorie? In this post, I discuss some of the myths about nutrition.

5.  Spot Reduction Revisited  In this article, I talk about a T-Nation article on spot reduction.

6.  Trainer That Make The Fitness Industry Look Bad  I like making fun of bad trainers.  I do a lot of it in this post.

7.  5 Exercises For Washboard Abz  In this post, I give you some ab exercises that you may not be doing.

8.  Guest Blog Post By Valerie Nunn:  How Did I Wind Up Owning A Fitness Company  This post talks about Valerie’s preconceived notions of what fitness was all about.

9.  A Few Random Things  Megan Fox’s butt, Mr. Burns, and Sciatica.  Enjoy!

10.  Seven Habits of Highly Effective Exercise Programs  What do all successful exercise programs have in common?  Check out this post to find out.

So, if you’re wondering, what was the most used search engine term that brought people to my website?  It was “Globo Gym”.  Weird, I know.  Ah well, merry Christmas and happy New Year from Globo Gym!

Related posts:

1. Hope For The Holidays Write Up and 12/20/2011 lifts
2. 2011 Nationals Write Up and Videos
3. 11/27/2011 Strongman Events and 11/29/2011 Bench Press

At Nunn’s Performance Training, we are about half way through our second year being in business.  During that time, we have always kind of struggled with our identity.  Are we an adult fitness studio?  Are we sports performance?  What is our brand?  Are we corporate wellness?  For most businesses, these types of things are usually decided before it is ever incorporated.  For me, it wasn’t.  This business was started out of necessity.  Not an “entrepreneurial seizure”  as Micheal Gerber would put it.  Every gym that I had worked for had a failing business model and went under quickly.  So quickly that I had to scramble to figure out something to keep cash flowing in.  This is where Nunn’s Performance Training was born.  So when setting up my business, I looked at who my clients were.  I had a handful of adults and a handful of middle school and high school athletes.  All of which have been with me for several years and through a couple different failed gyms.  They followed me from one gym to another, my garage, and eventually into a space I could call my own.  Why did they follow me?  Because they were serious about being the best versions of themselves.

So finally, after about two years of fumbling around with it, we’ve decided who we are.  We are people who are serious about making our clients the very best they can physically be.  Whether you’re an athlete who is trying to get better or an adult who just wants to look and feel better, we are for you.  If you are just a “tire kicker” or someone who does not make their health a priority, we are not the right fit for you.

We aren’t flashy.  We don’t have any special gimmicks.  Just an educated staff who is willing to work very hard so that you can be your best.  That’s who we are.

Related posts:

1. Change Requires CHANGE
2. Energy System Development for Soccer
3. 9/17/2011 Sandhill Crane Festival Strongest Man

You can tell by my nonexistent writing on here that Soccer and Football season are over and that means my offseason programs are in full swing.  This means that plenty of athletes are gracing the Nunn’s Performance Training doorstep wanting to improve their speed and overall athletic performance.  Here’s five things we work on to make sure our athletes are among the fastest out there:

1. Technique

Technique is by far the most important thing when it comes to speed.  It doesn’t matter how explosive, strong, or whatever you are.  If your technique is flawed, you’ll never be at your full potential.  The most prominent thing we see is arms that cross the body (think right hand crossing the face and touching the left cheek).  If this is happening, your arms are producing too much rotational force to elicit good forward propulsion.  Just fixing this habit can have a dramatic effect on speed and agility.

2. Relative Body Strength

Relative body strength is simply how strong you are in relation to your body weight.  Martin Rooney once said that he saw a direct correlation between the amount of pullups a person could do and how fast they were.  Think about it.  You’ve never seen an overweight person be able to do a pullup have you?  I would also be willing to bet that you’ve never seen a fast overweight person.

3. Move Big Weights Faster

This one kind of relates to number two.  To accelerate and change directions, you must be able to apply more force to the ground.  This is why I’m not a fan of most speed and agility “camps”.  Sure, they teach sprint technique, but what are they doing to get the athletes to produce more force?  That requires resistance training.  Here’s a better way to look at it:  Say you’re in your car and press the brake and gas at the same time.  Sure, you’ll move a little bit, but not very fast.  Teaching proper mechanics is like letting off the brake.  Getting your athletes to produce more force, more rapidly is like stepping on the gas.  You need both to go fast.  To accomplish this, we’ll usually start our athletes out with some med ball tosses and gradually introduce the olympic lifts and their variations.

4. Using Too Many Cone Based Drills

When it comes to agility training, most coaches have their old standby cone drills that they like to use.  I wrote about this a bit more in-depth here.  We use them here as well.  The problem lies in the fact that we don’t play sports around cones.  We typically play them on a field or court where movement patterns are more open in nature.  This is where more “reactive” drills come into play.

5.  Get Access To The Posterior Chain

Most of the athletes I know (myself included) have a pretty prominent anterior pelvic tilt.  An anterior tilt is where the pelvis actually tilts forward to a degree.  I will usually jokingly call it a J-Lo booty with my clients.

Yep, That's an anterior tilt.

This is due to many factors that can be both environmental (sedentary job) and/or training related (too much quad dominant training).  Unfortunately, having this type of posture does not allow the person to get access to their posterior chain (back, glutes, hamstrings) like they should.  That’s a huge deal because those are the primary muscles used in sprinting and acceleration.  If those aren’t functioning correctly, the athlete will be slow.  Mike Robertson goes into more depth about correcting that situation here.

So, as you can see, getting faster on the field is all about moving better and moving big weights fast.  A successful athlete will do both of these things very well.

Related posts:

1. Indianapolis Athletic Combine
2. Energy System Development for Soccer
3. A Couple Interesting Fat Loss Tips

Lately, energy system developement (otherwise known as conditioning for you old school folk) has been a very hotly contested subject between soccer coaches and strength coaches.  It usually ends with the soccer coaches erring on the side of aerobic training (long, slow distance) and strength coaches siding with alactic and glycolytic training (short bursts –  otherwise known as anaerobic).  The question is…who’s right?

In a recent study published by the American College of Sports Medicine, Osgnatch et. al. found that about 70% of the time was spent doing low-level, aerobic activities with about 30% of the time spent on higher intensity movements.  Running full speed accounted for about 3% of the total match time or the equivalent of a 4 second sprint every 90 seconds.

Ok, so what does this mean?

When I look at energy system development, I look at it like a pendulum.  On one side of the pendulum is aerobic training – the other is anaerobic training.  For most team sports, the answer to which conditioning method is appropriate is somewhere in the middle.

Given the research presented, soccer’s conditioning would lean slightly to the aerobic side.

Sooo, we’re both right?

Sort of.  Like I said earlier, soccer coaches tend to prescribe more aerobic conditioning methods for their athletes and may be missing out on some of the benefits of the short sprint work.  Likewise, the strength coach tends to have their athletes do more anaerobic work and miss out on the benefits of the aerobic training.

I’ve found that the best method is to start the off-season with some 110 yard tempo runs with us and usually have them do some 45on/15off interval runs on their own.  As far as anaerobic goes, we’ll typically have them do short intervals in the form of agility drills.

Hope this is helpful.

Related posts:

1. Here’s Where Your Trainer Is Getting It Wrong Part III
2. 5/18 Bryan’s Back In Action Competition Prep
3. How To Properly Warm Up

Many people come to me because they want to make a change in their life.  Whether it be weight loss or becoming a better athlete, change is required.  If your goal is weight loss, you’ve got to make changes.  Big ones.  Probably the thing I see most often are people who come in and think that because they workout one time per week and don’t change their eating habits, they will get results.  Sorry, it’s not happening.  Actually, we’ve taken away the one time per week training option all together.  I now only take on serious clients who are ready to make changes.

Dr. Robert Adkins (of Adkins Diet Fame) once said, “You became overweight because you did something unbalanced.  It should stand to reason that you will have to do something unbalanced to lose the weight.”  Basically, he’s saying that you sat around and ate too much and that’s why you gained weight.  Why does it surprise you that you’ll have to do the opposite of that to lose the weight?

Change is hard for many people, but if its worth it for you, you’ll do it.  Like the video below says, if you want to be successful, you need to want it worse that you want to breath.

Are you willing to make those changes?

Related posts:

1. 9-26 Workout
2. What’s Sabotaging Your Fitness Goals?
3. Analysis of Macrocycle