IOL Strength and Conditioning

We’ve all got our own quirky tastes and texture preferences, even for simple protein shakes. Here are a few tips you may find useful in preparing your favorite protein shakes.

If your shake:

• is too thin: Try adding a few ice cubes, frozen fruit, or a tablespoon of sugar-free instant pudding mix to thicken it.

• is too thick: Some protein mixes have guar gum or other artificial thickeners in them. To use up less-favorable protein powders, you can make shakes using only a half-serving, mixing in a regular whey protein to cover the protein gap.

• is not creamy enough: Try using a tablespoon of sugar-free pudding mix if you make your shakes with water or milk. If you use milk, you can try using milk with higher fat content (1 or 2% instead of skim). Low-carb dieters or those not concerned with low calorie counts can add some half and half—magic!

• is not foamy or frothy enough: Extend the whip time in the blender to fluff the shake.

• won’t dissolve: Solubility is usually related to the the particular brand of protein. Your best option is to first blend your liquid and ice and slowly add the protein to the blender. Look for an “instantized” protein that blends easily to avoid the problem all together.

• is not sweet enough: Add a packet or two of Splenda or a small piece of banana. Fructose (fruit sugar) is 70% sweeter than sucrose (table sugar); a small piece of banana or other fruit goes a long way in providing sweetness.

• has weak vanilla flavor: A half-teaspoon of imitation vanilla flavor or quarter-teaspoon vanilla extract will enhance the vanilla flavor without adding calories. Alternatively, you could add a tablespoon of sugar-free instant vanilla pudding.

• has weak chocolate flavor: A teaspoon of real cocoa powder will give you a nice chocolate flavor without adding the sugar that comes with using chocolate syrup. This is a great idea for those who only purchase one flavor of protein at a time because you can add cocoa to vanilla protein to make rich chocolate shakes.

• sticks to the blender glass: Always add the liquid to your blender or shaker first. When blending thicker shakes, try pouring the protein into the blender as it whirls or lightly pushing the powder down with a spoon to ensure it mixes.

• is “to go:” To cut down on dishes and make a handy “to go” shake, you may be able to use a pint or quart Mason jar in place of your blender pitcher. Simply remove the blending attachment from the pitcher; if it twists onto the jar (like a jar cap), it will work. Put your drink ingredients into the jar, twist on the blending assembly, turn the jar top-down onto the blender and hit the switch. Voila!

This is an excerpt, page 122, of Stella’s Kitchen, by Stella Juarez Post—healthy, tasty… easy! recipes with per serving nutritional information. Click here to review the recipe list, get a sampler pdf or order Stella’s Kitchen, $19.95.

New and improved YTWLs
A guest blog post by Nick Tumminello, the guy who produced those self-myofascial release and self-mobilization dvds I liked so much. Thanks, Nick, this is great new thinking for us to ponder. Laree

Tumminello Proclamation: The YTWL is no longer Y-T-W-L. It’s now the L-Y-T-P.

The Ls are put first for the simple reason that they are the hardest, weakest movement. It only makes sense—if you place the weakest movement last, as in the traditional method, you’re more likely to have a harder time doing it correctly due to fatigue.

I’ve never understood why anyone would put the weakest movement first. I guess we all just went in the order of the name YTWL. The L came last in the name so it came last in training.

Well, no more!

It’s Ls first from now on!

Better positioning = Better results
Another issue that needed to be resolved is the traditional body positioning before performing the YTWL. Most folks are doing these from one of two positions

• Standing, bent over in a similar fashion to an RDL or how a Baseball short stop would stand.
• Lying prone on the floor or on a bench.

Along with my good friend and colleague, Mike Robertson, I really like the standing version! As Mike says, “It’s a great way to integrate the torso.” How right he is!

Standing with the torso at a 45-degree angle is also a great way to change the force angle of the LYTP series. That said, I do have a problem with the prone version. While doing the prone version from the floor or bench, there is nothing preventing you from extending your lumbar spine and reinforcing a compensatory, dysfunctional pattern.

By using a stability ball and a bent-knee position, you eliminate all possibility of the lumbar extension.

Plus, as Mike adds, “Lying prone on a physioball, we are forced to extend the t-spine actively versus passively.”

Mike is one of the best in our field. I highly recommend reading his blog and checking out his products.

Watch this video for more on how to use a swiss ball to improve your LYTP shoulder exercises:

A Quick Disclaimer

Before I move on to cover the rest of the letters (YTW), I want to make something very clear: My recommendations for each of these applications is very general and based on what I feel to be best for most healthy, uninjured people.

With these and any other exercise applications, there is never just one way to do things. I’m most certainly not claiming these techniques are the best or only right way to do your shoulder pre-hab training.

As a strength coach, it’s my job to find methods that maximize success and minimizes error. I will tell you with confidence that each of these techniques has been well considered and battle-tested successful in my setting with 100s of clients and athletes of all levels.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk some more shop!

A New Angle on Ys 

The first thing I want to address here is hand position. When your hand goes overhead as they do when performing Ys, the safest position for your shoulder to be in is the neutral position. This is with your thumbs pointing toward the sky if you’re lying prone.

This is not a new concept and is fairly well understood among coaches and trainers. However, I have seem some coaches performing Ys while holding a dowel rod. This is problem because holding the dowel takes you out of neutral and places your shoulders into some internal rotation. In doing so, there is NO added muscular benefit, only an increased risk or shoulder irritation and impingement issues.

This is why I choose not to use a dowel rod or to keep the palms flat while doing Ys. When doing Ys, keep those thumbs pointed up, toward the sky!

Why Don’t Your Ys Look Like Ys?

The next mistake folks make is the angle at which they are performing the Ys. In many cases, people place their arms next to their ears (parallel to one another) as in a superman position.

First off, this arm position doesn’t even make a Y; it makes an I.

Secondly, and more importantly, this is not the best strategy to maximize recruitment of the lower traps, which is the intended goal of the exercise.

Here’s a quick anatomy lesson.

As you can clearly see in the picture, the lower trap muscle fibers run at a 45-degree angle. The best way to stimulate a muscle is to line up the force vector with the line of muscle (fibers) pull.

In other words, in order to perform s effectively, the arms should be placed at 45 degree angle (in the same line as the low trap fibers).

Some folks Ys with their arms at more of an angle. But, in most cases the angle is not as wide as it should be relative to the angle of the fibers in the low traps. Watch the video below to see the angle I recommend.

No More Is 

You may be actually doing Is (arms parallel) along with the rest of the letters. I recommend against this because there is no added muscular benefit, only more room for error and compensation.

How to get Maximal Lower Trap Recruitment

I could make this part a long and complicated discussion, but that’s not my style, s I’m going to hit the ground running. If your arms are at the correct 45-degree angle, as described above, there is no need to consciously pull your shoulder blades back and down as most coaches recommend. In fact, doing so will more than likely cause you to compensate and use your lats as the primary muscle. This is also described in the video below.

A great way to prevent compensation and maximally stimulate the lower traps is to use a technique I learn from world-renowned physical therapist Mark Comerford:

Once your ams are fully lifted into the Y position, attempt to reach outward, away from your body. In other words, try to make your arms longer. If your arms are at the correct angle, you will NOT shrug your shoulders and compensate by using levator scap.

Due to the fact that lower trap is primarily a low-load, local stabilizer muscle, this reaching out of the arms action will cause lower trap to activate to create scapular stability.

It’s also important to note due to fact that lower trap is primarily a low-load stabilizer, it should be trained in a different load and rep-range than the rhomboids: You will use a different rep range doing Ys than you would doing Ts.

When doing Ys, I recommend performing 5-10, 3-5 second isometric reps. Keep the weight low.

See this video for more on Ys:

A Small Twist for Big Results on Ts

The goal of Ts is to hit primarily the rhomboids and mid traps. In order to do this, two adjustments from the traditional method need to be made.

First, when doing Ts, it’s not necessary to externally rotate your shoulders (keep your thumbs up). This has been recommended to add the additional stimulation of the external rotator muscles. The problem with this is most people don’t have weak external rotators as we once thought. Instead, we tend to have overused shoulder external rotators. See the Truth about Ws video below for more on that.

Hard training already overworked and irritated tissue is never a good idea. So, again, no need for that added external rotation.

If in the case you do actually have weak external rotators, which should be determined by a qualified physical therapist—not a trainer or coach who just attended a weekend assessment course, this weakness can cause you to struggle while doing Ts and interfere with the quality of the movement.

It can also distract from the primary goal of this exercsie, which is to strengthen rhomboids and mid traps. As they say, if you chase two rabbits, you’ll never catch either.

In short, Ls are designed to strengthen the external rotators and therefore are better suited for that purpose.

How to Maximally Recruit Your Rhomboids

While doing Ts, keep your shoulders and hands neutral (palms down while prone). As you raise your arms to the side, pull your arms toward the mid-line of your body. Don’t think of retracting your shoulder blades back and down.

Your rhomboids are responsible for scapular retraction and elevation. So, if your pull your shoulder blades down, you decrease rhomboid activation.

Plus, if you just think of pulling your shoulder blades downward, you end up using the lats instead of rhomboids.

To reduce any chance of mistakes/compensation and maximize rhomboid recruitment, attempt to shorten your arms as if someone was trying to pull them out of the sockets.

Yes, I know: This is the complete opposite of what I recommended earlier for performing Ys.

It’s different for good reason! Your rhomboids are primarily mobility muscles, whereas your low traps are primarily stability muscles.

Put simply, muscles with different functional roles require different training protocols.

Unlike the low traps, the rhomboids are high-load-dominant mobilizer muscles. Therefore, we take a more traditional approach to training them by using heavier loads, with normal tempos for 8-12 reps.

See this video for more on Ts:

Out with Ws, in with Ps

I’ve already given you enough new and smarter strategies for shoulder training to make your head explode. To keep you from a brain overload, I’m going to keep this one short and to the point.

The W is the most useless of all the letters in the YTWL shoulder circuit. I explain exactly why in the video below. I have replaced the Ws with Ps. The P stands for Pivot Prones, which are demonstrated in the video as well. If you are wondering where the idea for the pivot prone comes from, the name originates from a neural developmental position we all learn before we start to crawl while lying prone as infants.

“At approx 5 months of age the child develops an interesting skill that contributes to their pelvic and scapular mobility.”

“During the Pivot Prone posture or pattern, the upper extremities assume the high guard position with the scapulas adducted by the rhomboid muscles. The upper limbs are horizontally abducted at the shoulders and flexed at the elbows. This retraction of the shoulder girdle and posturing of the upper extremities enhances trunk extension. To assume the pivot prone posture, the anterior muscles must elongate.”

Pediatric Physical Therapy, By Jan Stephen Tecklin, pg.34, Publisher: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins; Fourth Edition edition (October 1, 2007)

Now that you understand the origin of this movement pattern, you can better appreciate the important role that pivot prones can play in regaining and maintaining a fundamental movement pattern we all should possess.

There you have it: the knowledge and the tools to improve your shoulder strength, stability and overall health.

Enter the L,Y,T,P Shoulder Exercise Circuit!

Most of the corrective exercise writers discussing pelvic tilt suggest anterior tilt is by far the most common, meaning the pelvis tilts forward, toward the front. I’m starting to wonder if that’s not quite right.

Now, remember I’m not a personal trainer and don’t work with people in the gym, so perhaps I have this all wrong. But what I’m wondering is if these writers are mostly guys, working mostly with guys or maybe younger, athletic women, and maybe, just maybe, women might have a higher incidence of posterior tilt, the pelvis tilting toward the back.

Here’s what I’m thinking: Many women spent their teen years sucking in the lower abdominals in search of a flat stomach – certainly women my age (and let’s not even discuss the lack of side-to-side motion as we learned early on to lock down our walks!). That habit (both, really… sucking in the stomach as well as limiting the model’s hip sway) was a huge, huge problem for me to break, probably the hardest of all the corrective work I’ve done.

Guess what happens when you hold in your lower abdominal region. Just try it: Sitting there at your desk, close your eyes and focus your attention on your low back. Suck your lower abdominals in, then let them relax – pooch out, and down. Go back and forth between drawn in and pooched out. Do you feel your low back move toward the back of the chair and away? This is your pelvis shifting between anterior positioning when you let your stomach muscles go, and posterior positioning as you draw your stomach in.

Too much anterior tilt is bad and posterior tilt is bad; a bit of anterior positioning is just right.

What’s this mean?

You’ve got to let your stomach go.

If you’re holding your stomach in, you’re pushing your pelvis back, into posterior tilt.

So what do you want to bet a lot of women have habitual posterior tilt? Anyone want to take that bet?

We’ve got to jump to the other side of this, too, because once you get your head around how important it is to let the stomach relax (this may be in addition to one or two other issues), your pelvis moves back into healthy alignment; your back pain disappears like magic and your squat form automatically fixes itself, there’s one more issue.

The downside of a relaxed stomach is… oh, you’ll never guess this one: greater stomach size.

Right! This is just great! We work the heck out of our corrective exercises and mobility and get what? Pelvic mobility means more movement, right? So here’s this woman who’s been exercising over the years, holding her stomach in and now she’s got a bunch of movement around the hips and a bigger feeling stomach, and well, we’ve got trouble right here in River City.

Gals, we locked down our hips and abs, and that’s likely what started our whole lack of mobility problem in the first place. But it’s a headtrip to learn to reverse that, and it may take some mental jumps to get yourself comfortable with the successful outcome.
I heard a guy in a movement class tell the story of a trip to Latin America. He said for a man, Latin women’s hip movement was intoxicating. There’s always that side of the equation.

It’s either learn to enjoy it, lose 20 more pounds so the relaxed stomach and hips take up less space, or live with low back pain. Hmmm, flip a coin?

Joint mobility work is practically mainstream these days—everybody’s doing it. Even you, right?

What’s the next step? Let’s fine-tune this a little bit. As you move your joints through a range of motion quickly, the larger muscles initiate the movement and propel the joints through the circles and stretches.

Is that really how you want to do this?

I don’t think so. More reps done faster is not the answer to poor joint mobility or sloppy movement in general. What you want to do instead is give your body the opportunity to learn good joint coordination, and for that you need to slow down… a lot.

If you think you’re going slow, cut the speed in half again. Really give your brain a change to re-learn all the nooks and crannies of your joint motion.

There are two main roadblocks to good mobility of a healthy joint:

• Coordination via brain-to-joint connection (the neurological factor)

• Tight muscles

Using quiet, slow, gentle movements with your eyes closed allows you to discover what’s holding you back. If you make a circle at a joint and the action is jerky, shaky or you feel like part of the circle is missing, that’s lack of coordination at that section – the brain has forgotten how to access area via the nerves. Slowing down and calmly repeating the motion—waiting out any shakiness—will smooth out that circle, and joint coordination will be regained, often in a matter of minutes.

Tightness is addressed with slow small movements, too; in this case you’ll use the gentleness to find the tightness. When thinking of tight muscles, we generally think of whatever major muscle group is near the joint, but it’s often something much more subtle, and you won’t find it with fast movements or prime mover stretches.

There will often be a tiny muscle causing a glitch, and in that case it’s not a matter of stretching the heck out of it, but merely using your head to find it and invite it into the action. It’s not stiff or short; instead, it’s more like… dormant.

Another great tip for working joint mobility: Think bones and skeleton, not muscles.

Ponder that for a minute: Think skeletal movement.

Lift both your arms and flop them around a bit. Stop a sec, and think of the bones moving, not which muscles you have to pull and push. Now flop them around again. The movement got a little freer, easier, didn’t it?

Joint mobility is working the joints of the skeleton, using the brain first, muscles second. Instead of working to make the muscles do what you want, try to make your joint movements as smooth and effortless as possible.

That’s where good joint coordination will come from, and from there your optimal joint mobility will appear.

Listen up!

Dan John, the author of our new book, Never Let Go, is a lot of fun to listen to — he’s an educator and a storyteller with a lot to share. He’s done a number of audio interviews the past couple of weeks, with a few more on tap through mid-July. You can listen through your browser by clicking on the links, or download them to your computer to listen via your desktop player or iPod by right-clicking, and selecting Save Link As to choose a place on your computer to save the files.

• Troy Anderson did a long interview with Dan after the recent Utah seminar and offers it up for us to share. Here are the direct links to the two-parter:

• Interview at Power-Quest. The first minutes are in German, then the interview starts. Second link down, episode 191.

• IronRadio interview with Dan, Charles Staley, Phil Stevens, Rob Fortney and Lonnie Lowrey

• The Fitcast — Dan John: Do Your Behaviors Match Your Goals?

• Dan’s Strength Coach podcast interview with Anthony Renna is up. It’s episode #39, at the top of the page — scroll down a bit to right-click and download the mp3 file for transfer to your iPod, or click at the top to listen online. Dan’s part will be the main section, after a bit with Mike Boyle and a couple other short spots.

And for the discus throwers — or those who’d like to learn — here’s a two-hour discus instruction video. Once you click on the link and see the page, press play, then wait a minute or two for it to download before it will begin. It’s a really large file.

I’ll add the new links as the future interviews become available.