February 11th, 2009

Robertson Training Systems Newsletter 5.04

In This Issue:

– Robertson Training Systems Updates
– Bulletproof Your Knees: NBA Edition
– Latest Articles

Robertson Training Systems Updates

MR Out from February 12th – March 1st

I just wanted to let all my readers know that I’m going to be out of commission for the next couple of weeks.  I leave tomorrow for Boston, and then Sunday I leave Boston for my Australia Seminar Series.  I will be back in town late on March 1st.

Unfortunately, that means it’s going to be a little harder to keep up on blog posts, Twitter/Facebook updates and the like.  Just because I’m traveling doens’t mean I’m falling off the face of the Earth, though!

Stay tuned as I’ll still be posting throughout the course of my trip; it just won’t be as regular as usual!

Warp Speed Fat Loss update

I’ve gotten many e-mails over the past couple of months asking me about the Warp Speed Fat Loss program/diet that I followed a while back.  Needless to say, I really liked it – and I’ve maintained that weight loss ever since!

However, Mike and Alwyn recently let me know that they’re currently offering a very sweet deal, just in case you’re still on the fence.  If you purchase the product today, tomorrow or Friday and aren’t 100% satisfied, they’re going to give you MORE than your money back!

That’s right – if you don’t get great results you’ll get 120% of your money returned.  I don’t know about you, but that’s an amazing offer.

You have to hurry, though, as this offer is limited to the first 100 people who purchase the product.  If you’re interested in trying out the Warp Speed Program, just follow the link below.

Warp Speed Fat Loss Main Site

Bulletproof Your Knees: NBA Edition

In the past here weeks, three major NBA stars suffered from big time knee injuries.  Michael Redd blew both his ACL and MCL, and is now out for the season.  Andrew Bynum tore his MCL, and his prognosis is a little better at 8-12 weeks of recovery.  It only got worse this past week when budding superstar Al Jefferson blew his knee out.

While I’ve never met any of these players, it always saddens me a little bit to hear about injuries such as these.

ACL injuries in basketball players isn’t odd.  What is odd, in this case, is that most of the injuries were contact based in nature.

Look at the Bynum injury first, as it’s the most blatantly contact based.

The Jefferson injury could’ve been due to him losing his balance in mid-air.

The Redd injury, however, seems to be totally non-contact.

As I allude to in my Bulletproof Knees manual (and seminar), you could give me the most orthopedically healthy knee known to man, put it in a bad position and/or hit it with enough force, and that knee would blow.  It could be an ACL, MCL, PCL, meniscus, or a host of other injuries.  Unfortunately, that’s the nature of the beast with the knee.  It’s a condyloid joint with limited mobility outside of the sagittal plane, which puts it at an increased risk of injury when compared to the ankle or hip.

After hearing Brian Grasso speak at the Perform Better Summit in Chicago last year, however, he stated that as many as 85% of the injuries in youth sports are non-contact in nature!  That number is absolutely astounding.  When I hear the words “non-contact,” I immediately think of one word in my head – preventable!

While I could drone on and on about Title IX and more females playing sports, the fact of the matter is that ALL kids are less prepared to play high level sports now than they were 10 years ago.  And to be quite honest, that’s a disgrace considering all that we’ve learned about performance enhancement and injury prevention in that time frame!  A little piece of me cringes every time I hear about kids running on over speed treadmills to get ready for sports.

If your goal is to keep your athletes (or yourself!) healthy, here are a few simple tips that you absolutely can’t ignore.  You may have seen them before, but they are absolutely critical to both performance enhancement AND injury prevention, so they bear mentioning again.

1 – Get the posterior chain brutally strong

The glutes, contrary to popular belief, are a tri-planar muscle group.  Both the glute max and posterior glute medius are responsible for promoting hip extension, abduction, and external rotation.   That’s what the textbook tells you, anyway.  What may be more important in sporting populations is their role as decelerators.

Eccentrically, they work together to control hip flexion, adduction and internal rotation.  Too much adduction/internal rotation at high speeds and your begging for an ACL or MCL injury.  Strong, active glutes not only keep you healthy, but they store and transfer that energy to make you more explosive coming out of a cut.  I don’t know any athlete who plays basketball, football, or soccer who wouldn’t want that!

Along those same lines, the hamstrings help control  tibial translation.  Moul (1998) found that women have very poor eccentric control in their hamstrings when compared to their quads.  Women in particular tend to be very quad/adductor dominant, while their glutes and hamstrings need some serious work.

Getting the glutes and hamstrings strong is one of the simplest, yet most effective things you can do to keep your knees healthy.

2 – Teach them to absorb force properly

Before you get your kids doing 60” box jumps, take the time to evaluate their decelerative mechanics first.  How well do they absorb force when they land?  When they plant and cut?

The bottom line?  If they can’t decelerate well, you have no business working on acceleration techniques or plyometrics!

Focus on absorbing/distributing force through all the major joints – hips, knees, and ankles.  Land softly.  And perhaps most importantly, try and focus on moving more so around the hip versus the knee.  When landing from jumps focus on increasing hip flexion (think butt back/athletic position).  When cutting, again, think about trying to load the hip.

This will eventually lead to decelerative/accelerative techniques where you load the hip with the eccentric movement, then explode out on the concentric.

3 – Allow them to participate in a variety of sports

Especially with regards to kids, allowing them to play multiple sports when growing up gives them a broad spectrum of athletic abilities.  Baseball teaches you hand-eye coordination.  Soccer teaches you to move as well with your feet as you do with your hands.  Gymanstics teaches kids basic body awareness and balance.

Playing the same sport month-in-and-month-out allows kids to develop weaknesses, imbalances, and asymmetries that we generally don’t see until an athlete gets to a high level of sport!  Allowing them to play different sports not only makes them better athletes, but it keeps them healthier as well.

The days of youth “specialization” are over.  If your goal is to get your kid injured, burned out, or simply hating their favorite sport, let them specialize when they’re 10.

If your goal is to allow them to be the best possible athlete they can be, let them play sports by season until they’re at least 15 or 16 years old.  Then, let them specialize on what they’re really good at.

To learn more about the Bulletproof Knees program, just follow the link.  I not only cover the points above more in-depth, but discuss other vital factors you absolutely must integrate if your goal is long-term knee health and function.

Latest Articles

Squattin’ 101

The Cardio Conundrum

Guide to Metabolic Training


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