Author: detric

Softball Sports Performance- Injury Prevention

Softball has a long season that demands precision and excellence at every turn. You’ve got to time split second reactions, whip a throw to first, smack a ball out of the park or leap to keep it from sailing over the fence. How you train and play at a young age sets the foundation for performance in college, into the pros, or just pick up ball in the park. The longer you can outlast injury, the more you can work at honing your craft. While you want to get the reps, you also need to make sure you can play through the season unscathed. Sure, you’ll get some bumps, bruises, and maybe a few battle scars from a home plate collision. But if you do these four things, you can outlast any serious injury and stay in fighting shape.

Prevent Injury – Stay Mobile

With better range of motion, the further your muscles and tendons can stretch across a joint before injury. If things are all tied up in there, one wrong throw can lead to injury. If your muscles and tendons aren’t mobile, they won’t respond to sudden external loads as well. Therefore, all the pressure gets put in the joint – such as your AC joint or ulnar collateral ligament (in your elbow). Tendonitis and thrower’s shoulder are often attributed to a lack of internal rotation at the shoulder and general tightness down the kinetic chain. This altered range of motion, over time, contributes to more repeated stress on the elbow, shoulder and wrist during high velocity throwing.

Thoracic spine rotation, banded distraction stretches at the lats and pec, and regular soft tissue with a softball can do wonders. Spend a few minutes every day with your softball pinned between your chest and the wall to open up your overhead mobility.

Train for more than just looks

As teens are developing athletically, it’s also a time when training for looks can be tempting. While in some cases having more muscle can help protect you from injury, training solely for size can make you unbalanced. Excessive use and tightness can mean strains or chronic, overuse injuries. Rather than fighting your own body to produce force, create a balanced system that performs like a well-oiled machine.

Upper traps, lats and pecs will make your shoulders well-defined. However, athletes that are overly dominant in these areas risk too much tension in the wrong places. Doing just traditional strength exercises like pull ups, bench press, and shrugs can make things worse. Due to the high volume of throws, pitchers are at an even greater risk. Manage your pitch count and continue with flexibility and strengthening

Train your mid and lower trap to stabilize your scapular movement and allow for shoulder elevation. Start with bodyweight and bands first – light resistance but perfect form. Wall slides, band pull aparts, scap push ups and Y’s, T’s and W’s will improve your throwing mechanics. Add 2-3 sets of 10-15 reps of these exercises to your warm up. Set a strength foundation here, and then progress to reverse flys and face pulls.

Get Proper Nutrition to Perform

If I had to pick one area in which most young athletes are lacking, it would be nutrition. Sodas and sugary foods spike your insulin levels unnecessarily. Even “sports drinks” can cause problems if used outside of the training window. Over time, your body loses sensitivity to insulin and it starts to forget to respond to it. And that’s bad news for athletes, as insulin is what tells us to uptake the carbs we need for energy. Add to that the saturated and trans fats from fast and fried foods, and you’ve got a recipe for a slow metabolism. Since metabolism is what provides us with energy, ignoring good nutritional habits makes us feel worse, slows recovery, and lowers performance.

To stay at the top of your game, feed your body a good balance of whole grains, fruit and vegetables, lean protein and omega 3 fats. And make sure you’re getting enough food overall to fuel performance. A good softball game can last forever and demands your full attention while at bat or covering the bases – so keep those energy levels from spiking and dropping by feeding yourself well. Avoid fried or sugary foods and drink plenty of water. After the game, enjoy some chocolate milk to recover.. Attention to these details can make the difference between making it to the next level or not.

Avoid doing too much too soon

I know you want to be the next Jennie Finch or Cat Osterman, but give yourself the time to get there. Doing too much too soon can put you at high risk for a serious injury. The pressures from parents, coaches, teammates, colleges and more drives lots of young athletes to push beyond their limits. It’s okay to train hard, but be sure to listen to your body. If you feel like you’re breaking down, or something feels not right, train accordingly.

Too often I see young athletes burn out or get a career threatening injury before they turn 18. Get set up with a good strength and conditioning program, have someone monitor your throws and batting practices per week, and keep a balanced life outside of the softball diamond.

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Volleyball Sports Performance- Injury Prevention

Volleyball matches can be hard-hitting on the joints. Between diving on the floor and continuous jumping to block, serve, or spike, the game itself is a recipe for bumps and bruises. You’ve got to time split second reactions, sacrifice your body on the floor, and land athletically just to leap back up again to stop a point, all while avoiding colliding with your teammates.

How you train and play at a young age sets the foundation for performance in college, internationally, or just pick up ball in the park. The longer you can outlast injury, the more you can work at honing your craft. While you want to get the reps, you also need to make sure you can play through the season unscathed. Sure, you’ll get some battle scars along the way. But if you do these four things, you can outlast any serious injury and stay in fighting shape.

Prevent Injury – Stay Mobile

With better range of motion, the further your muscles and tendons can stretch across a joint before injury. If things are all tied up in there, one wrong landing can mean a sprained ankle. If your muscles and tendons aren’t mobile, they won’t respond to sudden external loads as well. Therefore, all the pressure gets put in the joint , and you risk injuries of the CFL or ATFL, which are fancy acronyms for ligaments in ankle or high ankle sprains. However, most knee or ankle injuries originate from the hip and general tightness down the kinetic chain. Lack of mobility in the hips or ankles creates bad landing mechanics, which, over time, contributes to more repeated stress on the lower leg.

Pigeon, frog and hurdler’s stretches can be implemented in the warm up. Banded distraction with a hip extension bias in the lunge can also create more room in that hip joint and open up our hip flexors. Finally, the calves, peroneals and tibialis anterior get surprisingly tight with all of that jumping. Spend a few minutes every day with a foam roller or peanut pinned between your calves, shins and the floor to roll out some of those adhesions.

Train for more than just looks

As teens are developing athletically, it’s also a time when training for looks can be tempting. While in some cases having more muscle can help protect you from injury, training solely for size can make you unbalanced. Excessive use and tightness can mean strains or chronic, overuse injuries. Rather than fighting your own body to produce force, create a balanced system that performs like a well-oiled machine.

While your legs may look great in those shorts, don’t forget to balance out the big players with the smaller, less noticeable muscles. Weak and tight calves are strong contributors to repetitive use injuries such as shin splints, and improper hamstring and glute med strength leaves many athletes landing with their knees buckled. While much of this can be attributed to improper mechanics, the more we balance things out, the less likely we are to injure ourselves while focusing on setting up the winning spike.

Train your balance and posterior chain at the same time with body weight single leg RDL’s. Banded crab walks activate the glutes in the perfect landing position. Multi-directional lunges also help stabilize the ankle, as do prehab exercises such as calf raises and single leg balancing. Make it a game and practice hitting the ball back and forth while balancing on one leg. The more stable you can get in an athletic position – knees slightly bent and tracking with the ankle, weight on the balls of your feet, glutes engaged – the better you’ll be at jumping anyways.

Start with bodyweight and bands first – light resistance but perfect form. Add 2-3 sets of 10-15 reps of these exercises to your warm up. Set a strength foundation here, and then progress to broad jumps or goblet squats.

Get Proper Nutrition to Perform

If I had to pick one area in which most young athletes are lacking, it would be nutrition. Sodas and sugary foods spike your insulin levels unnecessarily. Even “sports drinks” can cause problems if used outside of the training window. Over time, your body loses sensitivity to insulin and it starts to forget to respond to it. And that’s bad news for athletes, as insulin is what tells us to uptake the carbs we need for energy. Add to that the saturated and trans fats from fast and fried foods, and you’ve got a recipe for a slow metabolism. Since metabolism is what provides us with energy, ignoring good nutritional habits makes us feel worse, slows recovery, and lowers performance.

To stay at the top of your game, feed your body a good balance of whole grains, fruit and vegetables, lean protein and omega 3 fats. And make sure you’re getting enough food overall to fuel performance. A good volleyball match demands your full attention – so keep those energy levels from spiking and dropping by feeding yourself well. Avoid fried or sugary foods and drink plenty of water. After the match, enjoy some chocolate milk to recover.. Attention to these details can make the difference between making it to the next level or not.

Avoid doing too much too soon

I know you want to be the next Kerri Walsh-Jennings or Misty May-Traenor, but give yourself the time to get there. Doing too much too soon can put you at high risk for a serious injury. The pressures from parents, coaches, teammates, colleges and more drives lots of young athletes to push beyond their limits. It’s okay to train hard, but be sure to listen to your body. If you feel like you’re breaking down, or something feels not right, train accordingly.

Too often I see young athletes burn out or get a career threatening injury before they turn 18. Get set up with a good strength and conditioning program, have someone monitor your jumps and training hours per week, and have a balanced life off the court.

SIGN UP BELOW TO RECEIVE MORE INFORMATION ABOUT OUR PROGRAMS

I can’t tell the story of Results Performance Training without some background on me and my experience. Below is a quick overview of things I have done……

• VCU graduate – Kinesiology
• Assisted with Strength and Conditioning at VCU as a Volunteer
• Worked at a sports performance center
• Worked at quite a few commercial gyms as a trainer
• Worked at quite a few personal training studios
• Taught PE in elementary and middle school
• Coached at the high school level (strength and conditioning, track, football)
• Spent a few years competing in powerlifting, but not really a powerlifter ..this is a “sport” for people that are not crazy gifted athletically. It taught me a lot which I will discuss in future articles

So I basically started off working with college and pro athletes and worked my way to 5 year olds, before starting up Results Performance Training. It’s been about 17 years total with 11 of those coming before Results Performance Training opened.

That first decade of my career formed the foundation for what we do at RPT. A blend of coach, trainer, and teacher is what you will get when you step in our doors. I started off with the label coach, and when I hear it today it still makes my day. It’s the difference maker and everyone needs one in their life! You see coaches get RESULTS(or they get fired!). Coaches don’t leave when the session ends. Coaches are there 24/7 and do whatever it takes to win!

Those years at the commercial gym taught me what I did not want our business to become. I had to get out of an atmosphere where it’s more about taking someone’s money than actually helping them reach their goals. Their trainers are listed on a board with how much money they made and you get more sales training than advice on actually changing lives.

I loved the personal training studios I worked at! I just was not a fan of a bunch of useless machines taking up space. They all did great when it came to building the relationship though.

The last job I thought I would have in this lifetime, as a teacher, taught me the most. I think everyone should have to experience of leading a room of 25 five year olds,or middle school children. You see they don’t care one bit about all that other stuff. They only care, after you show them that you care! It also gave me experience breaking down those complex task into something simple that anyone can understand. It’s all simple, not easy, but it is simple.

Results Performance Training is nothing more than a blend of the above. We are not in this to turn in to another me-too business. We are in this to change lives. We will coach you up when you need it. We will always be there for you. We are teachers, and teach technique better than any other location. We believe in education instead of having you follow all these fads that are worthless. We are not copying these “hardcore” workout centers that do a better job of injuring people than getting results. We are not in this to be another group class. We turned the “group class” into group personal training. WE ARE HERE TO CHANGE LIVES.

Over the next few posts I am going to dive in to the specifics of how we differ from all those other places. I am going to tell you about our system for getting Results. If you are a current member you know about these things, but I am going to push you a bit harder. If you are just staring up, then you will know what we stand for before you come in for session one. If you are sitting on the fence then realize you don’t have a lot of time, and this is the main reason to take action today. If you are a former member I am still here for you, and I am obsessed with making RPT just a little better every single day. If I am not for you that is cool also. There is an unsubscribe button at the bottom.

So do me a favor and click that reply button and share your story. We are here to help. Feel free to send your name and a text over to 757-589-7028 to set up your free success session today!

Detric Smith, CSCS, ACSM Exercise Physiologist

We are about a week away from diet season! You know, nothing beats waiting until 2017 to start making progress towards your goals! I have a love-hate relationship with January. I love to see so many people taking actions towards their fitness and health goals, but I hate to see so many of them fail because they have no guidance. They end up choosing instant gratification over principles that work long term.

99% of diet books are worthless that make you believe there is some magic formula between you and the body you want. They lead people into buying useless and over priced supplements. Diet books dance around solid principles and cause more confusion after the diet is done. A plan is only as good as your ability to execute the plan, long term.

A few commons sense principles can help you lose the pounds and keep them off. A quick warning though – this is very simple and quick. I go into more detail in our 28 Day Program, and when our members turn in those food logs – to hold them accountable.

I am a bullet point type of guy so:

• Long term success on a diet means you have to be in a slight caloric deficit over   time and enjoy the foods you eat.
• Staying on the plan is an important part of the plan that most people forget or don’t plan for.
• Calories do count! I have to say this because some diet books don’t even address  the one law you cant break and lose fat!!
• The food has to taste good! Learn to prepare healthy food so it does not taste like card board. Don’t follow a one size fits all grocery list that does not fit you.
• With solid habits around planning, grocery shopping, flexible meal plans, and food prep any diet will work.
• Eat high quality natural foods that take care of your needs for fiber and nutrients. Quality foods is a term that can be debated for the next 200 years but we go over  this in more detail in the 28 Day Transformation. For the most part we all agree on 90% of what is good and bad. If your body does not get the required nutrients it will be hungry. So if you eat 2000 calories of cotton candy and still feel hungry or hungrier, there is a reason for that. It’s called survival!
• A higher ratio of protein helps a ton with staying on your plan because it keeps you full. No, I did not say go buy a protein shake, eat no carbs, and have no fat in your diet.
• Drink plenty of water.
• Hunger, energy, and cravings will tell you a lot about if your diet is working and if  you can do it long term. If these are off then it will not work.
• The foods  you eat that are not healthy can still be eaten…. In smaller portions and less frequency. This will actually lead to better results because you will  stay on your plan. You will avoid the diet mentality of ” I messed up so screw it for the rest of the week”.

Diet books also miss the most important part of success, accountability. The main reason our 28 Day Transformation works so well is because of the coaching that comes along with it. The way we put more emphasis on day 0 and day 29, as in the mindset going in and how you will transition and build habits.

Tired of jumping from plan to plan with no results?

Tired of losing a few pounds just to put them back on?

To learn more about our 28 Day Jumpstart and Training Programs, Click Here!
If you have any questions, comments, or would like to schedule a FREE Success Session, Email us at [email protected]

thanks,
Detric Smith, CSCS, ACSM-HFS

The 28 Day Transformation is a course that is delivered to your inbox. You will have access to the information forever. You will also be able to set up a call to address potential problems before starting. After the 28 days we can talk and set up a transition plan.

All of this for $20 if you take action before December 1st!

30 Days No Questions Asked GUARANTEE!

Consider these facts:

1. You have probably wasted 3 times this amount on just one useless supplement.
2. You have probably wasted time and energy trying to figure it out yourself.
3. You have followed a million diets that leave out the most important aspect… The coaching, so it fits your specific needs and lifestyle.

Get The 28 Day Transformation
NOW for just $20!!!
(normally $30)

Click Here For Immediate Access:

Special Bonus: Sign up before December 1st and we will include our manual that tells you what to eat when you go out to your favorite restaurant or Holiday party. This alone is worth the value of the program and will prevent you from putting on the holidays pounds!

Thanks,
Detric Smith, CSCS, ACSM-HFS

Can you handle the truth? If not, then don’t continue reading!

I have a love -hate relationship with the fitness industry. I love it because it has changed my life and has allowed me to do the same for others over the past 15 years. That said, I hate the fact that the money involved in the fitness industry has ruined the information people receive. Every year it seems it’s a new fad, a different myth, “fact”, or a ground-breaking study that takes us further away from what really matters.

Let me give you a brief history and then discuss a few trends I hope go away.

The equipment industry plays a huge role in ALL of this. The original gyms started off as dingy, dirty smelly places with some barbells and dumbbells. They attracted men while ignoring women for the most part. Even today, the ‘womens’ area of the gym is typically a tiny area that is cluttered with small pink dumbbells. These gyms attracted people that knew what they were doing and who were already in good shape. This was a very small market.

Enter Arthur Jones, the man who invented Nautilus equipment. Following him, there were others, like Dr. Darden, who promoted these machines and even had a 5 minute workout using the concept of ‘one set to failure’.

If you put Dr. before your name, people take it more seriously and tend to listen. Darden, Oz, and Dre. Machines changed the fitness industry forever, in both good and bad ways. We started to see more women and beginners showing up to gyms and people felt safe doing the machines because they felt like they “knew what they were doing”. The machines allowed for places to be open and built everywhere and all the while, they could hire lower quality staff as the gyms pretty much ran themselves. Right before our very eyes, the commercial gym industry exploded!

If you want to see more detail about machines, please check the article below where I went into far more detail.

https://resultsperformancetraining.com/realizing-the-benefits-of-free-weights-over-machines/

Let’s just say it will work for a few weeks and then your body will adapt. In the long-term, they are not that effective at all.

So you do one set to failure, completing a machine circuit, and then hop on the treadmill for 30 minutes.  Their goal is to get people in and out fast without injuring them. They don’t care about results at all and these places don’t get them for their members. If the people actually showed it would like look the first three weeks in January all year. Let’s not even mention the fact that after they take your money for that membership, you will never hear from them again.

Joe Weider is another business genius who shaped the fitness industry. He hired bodybuilders and fitness models to promote books, supplements, equipment, and his magazines sold all of this and more. Sex sells and that will never change. Unfortunately, it sells terrible information that has ruined our industry. Here is a quick overview of how this works….

1. The magazine makes money off supplement companies who pay them for ad space.
2. The bodybuilders are getting paid by supplement companies to say “I look this way because I take ‘X’ supplement.”
3. The supplement company takes your money.
4. The magazine then gets some popular athlete or guy taking steroids (not the supplement) to write an article (if they even write it). 9 times out of 10 the information is terrible but yet, it lives on

3 Reasons Why the Term “Functional Training” Doesn’t Mean Anything

If there’s one fitness term that has exploded into the mainstream, it’s the word “functional”. You see this word used everywhere now. Whether a celebrity is trying to sell you a “functional” training system or an exercise guru wants you to transform your body using “functional” movement patterns. “Functional” has become an overused, over-marketed term that is used to draw consumers in but does it really mean anything?

Let’s take a look at 3 reasons why you need to ignore the word “functional” when planning workouts or purchasing training.

3. Used as a Marketing Ploy : So many new fitness trends are guilty of using the word “functional” to sell their product. It makes sense. It’s a hot button fitness term. People see “functional” and they buy but few know what it really means. As I’ll explain below, every company or product will have its own unique definition for “functional”.

Don’t buy a product just because of the keywords on the label. You should be buying based on REAL research and scientific studies. More importantly, you should be investing in fitness products that are ideal for your personal training and not the masses.

2. Strength vs. Balance : If you visit any form of a fitness website, you’ve probably seen the pictures of men and women doing single leg barbell squats on a BOSU ball. Or maybe you’ve seen the people doing single arm handstands with a weight on their feet. Seems excessive, right? That’s because it is.

Many of these forms of “functional” training take difficult and complex strength exercises and throw in the added variable of challenged balance. You think that would be better for you but the reality is that many of these “functional” exercises only end up working against you.

Take the barbell squat. This is a full body exercise that on its own is extremely difficult to master. You have guys and girls who have been working out for years and still can’t perform a squat correctly. Take this same person who does a butt wink or has an arched back while squatting and put them on a BOSU ball. How is THAT functional?

“Functional” exercises usually are far from that. Most of the time, they do nothing but make you look like a show-off.

1. Variety of Definitions : The greatest sin of all: no one can seem to agree on what functional actually is. Take five different “functional” products and you’ll get five different “functional” definitions. Isn’t this a red flag?  The fact that these expert fitness companies can’t agree on what “functional” is should be a clue as to the reliability of the exercise or product.

The truth is that there is a reliable definition of “functional” training and it’s far simpler than everyone is making it out to be.

Conclusion: What IS “Functional” Training?

“Functional” exercises for me may not be “functional” exercises for you. See my point?

“Functionality” in fitness has NOTHING to do with a universal definition. Instead, functional training has everything to do with the individual. This is why the best fitness experts roll their eyes when they hear the term “functional training”.

Does it exist?

Of course.

Will you and I have the same “functional” training program.

Highly doubtful.

Functionality in fitness is dependent upon what acute variables the individual needs to obtain an ideal physique. Not ideal in terms of how it looks but how it performs. To make things a lot easier, let’s call “functional” training by what it really is: optimal individualistic exercise.

During the month of October, First-Time Visitors and Returning Members are invited to join in on one of our current boot camps with a reduced walk-in fee of ONLY $10 with proceeds going to Beyond Boobs! Form your own group with friends or have a friend join one of our current boot camp times.

To register for Burpees For Boobs, please send email to [email protected]

October 15th is the annual “Run for the Hills 5K/10K” with proceeds benefitting Beyond Boobs! Join our team at this event. We’ve even been provided a special discount code exclusively for Results Performance Training members. Let’s show up in our pink RPT shirts and support this amazing cause.

Discount Code: $10OFF2016
https://www.beyondboobs.org/events/bb-annual-events/fallfest/

Wear Pink Days: Wear your pink shirts in October! On October 19 & 20 we are taking Bootcamp Team Pictures!

Fitness Boot Camps: for more information about the Fitness Boot Camps click on the tab above and take advantage of our free trial session

Personal Training: Train one on one with a certified and degreed personal trainer that will get you closer to your fitness goals every session.

Group Personal Training: Train in a small group setting with your friends or ask to be placed in a group with similar abilities and goals.

Program Design Services: This is a great fit for those that know there way around a gym but need to change up their routine to continue making progress. I also include phone consultation to go along with documents that lay out exactly what you will need to do to reach your goals.

Sports Performance and Team Training