IOL Strength and Conditioning

I spent last Sunday with Charlie Weingroff, a doctor of physical therapy who’s exceptionally generous with his time, constantly sharing information to bridge the gap between those of us in the fitness world and his peers on the medical side. Last weekend he was presenting a three-day workshop covering Gray Cook’s Functional Movement Screen and some of his assessment ideas to a group of personal trainers at Equinox, a high-end fitness club in Palo Alto. On Sunday I was his client model, and he spent the day hauling me up off the floor, and shoving me back down again.

The movements he looked at were the toe touch, backward bend, standing rotation in both directions, single-leg stance on both sides, neck flexion, shoulder mobility, overhead squat, inline lunge and upper and lower rolling patterns.

The entire review was fascinating, me showing dysfunctional movement in nearly all cases when I was expecting little or none, and ending with improvements across the board in a short amount of time. Of course, Charlie was lecturing, giving examples and demonstrating a variety of techniques, so the process took much of the day, but amazingly, the success could have been accomplished in less than an hour. By the time he was finished, which included some hands-on physical therapy movements, the asymmetries he found in standing rotation and single-leg stance were gone, and I had solid twos across the board.

All except the overhead squat—that one even Charlie gave up on for the time being, so I’m sure as heck not going to worry about it.

I had the most trouble with the rolling patterns, particularly the upper body rolling. That took a long time to coax out of me, with Charlie using a variety of props designed to sneak an instinctive response. I did literally dozens of these, which without weight may sound like nothing, but when you’re working too hard to try to provoke movement, it’s exhausting. And man, was I sore the next day—all the little musculature between the ribs and around the serratus were brutalized by all that excessive effort.

Check out this video of Mark Snow demonstrating the rolling pattern; note the legs aren’t being used at all in the upper body rolling. It’s a lot tougher than it looks. Get on the floor and try it; leave your legs quiet as you try to roll with the upper body… you’ll see. Yet today, after Sunday’s learning, those movements are a step from effortless; I could do triple the reps from Sunday without soreness. Once you get it, you’ve got it, and that’s the real beauty of this stuff.

He left me with my corrective assignment:

• Chop and lifts, half-kneeling, back foot with the toes turned under
• Rolling pattern practice from all four quadrants
• Deadlifts
• Kettlebell Swings
• RDL stretching with belly breathing
• Supine band kneeups
• Reach/Roll/Lift Arm in semi-quadraped
• TGU stretch for T-spine rotation

And as long as I’m on the floor, I’ll comply with Gray’s recommendation to make the getup a cornerstone of training.

Here’s a look at Gray discussing the chop and lift:

Now go over to Functional Movement and grab the 4-part Chop and Lift article pdfs, here.

Already I can feel a difference, and in fact, a movement specialist friend of mine, Feldenkrais teacher Suzie Lundgren, noticed a difference in my movement last week. And that was before I’d told her about spending the day with Charlie. This stuff is remarkable—I thank Charlie for working with me, and I thank Gray for developing the movement pattern program as a foundation for guys like Charlie and his peers to work from.

Incidentally, Charlie’s presenting the same material to Equinox in Manhattan this weekend, which he’s having filmed for DVD. I’ll let you know when the dvd set is available, or you can subscribe to his website updates via the sidebar subscription box on charlieweingroff.com. That’s a new site; he’s planning to update it regularly with Q&As for strength and conditioning coaches and corrective exercise specialists, and will also be recording his training log online. I expect we’ve got a lot to learn from our pal Charlie.