AuthorAustin Gwaltney CPT-ACE, USAW, FMS II Archives
July 2023
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INNOVATIVE Summer AB Workout8/24/2015  A different kind of pool party! Say no to any boring sit-ups and crunches! TRX Fall-outs, wheel roll-out push-ups, and cliff hanger pull-ups. After, go swim laps! Check out these two summer full body workouts: Beginner Level 1: Click on exercises to see video explanation.
Intermediate Level 2:
Enjoy! After you have completed both levels, email me and I'll send you level 3! Or if the beginner level is still difficult, no worries, I will send you another work-out Intro Level just for you! INNOVATIVE Summer AB Workout
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Perfect Practice Does not make Perfect8/20/2015   More learning occurs after more failures. Today we are going to talk about motor learning or learning movement pattern. We have all heard the same adage of “perfect practice makes perfect”, but in the realm of motor learning it is actually the exact opposite! We are going to use three skills to learn as an example of our motor movements. We will use basketball. Our three skills are a three pointer, a free throw, and a lay up. Let’s just call these movements A, B, and C. For example, we go out on the basketball court and practice each skill for an hour and we can practice skill A continually for an hour block, then skill B for an hour, and finally skill C for and hour. This is an example of blocked practice. Second technique of practice, we could go out on the court and practice skill A and B back and forth for an hour. This is an example of random blocked practice. Lastly, we could go out on the court and randomly practice A, B, and C with no order at all. This is an example of completely random practice. Now which one will help you perform better while you are practicing? It would be the first strategy of blocked practice…Problem solved, right? WRONG! Simply performing great in a practice setting does not imitate the random environment of a game performance or testing performance. The act of failing repeatedly due to the randomized practice builds more skill when the specific skills are tested. "Random practice facilitated superior learning ofthe practiced tasks as indicated by superior performance during both retention and transfer tests." (2) The group which went completely random in practice will make many failures during practice, but will perform better when the test occurs. Therefore, on the test day where all skills A, B , and C are tested, the group which practiced completely random should score significantly higher on all tests of skill A, B, and C. Citation: (1)Edwards, W. (2011). Motor learning and control: From theory to practice. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning p 410-415. (2)Curt E. Magnuson & David L. Wright (2004) Random Practice Can Facilitate the Learning of Tasks that Have Different Relative Time Structures, Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 75:2, 197-202, DOI: 10.1080/02701367.2004.10609151 Perfect Practice Does not make Perfect
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What do you use for Pre-Workout?8/17/2015
What do you use for Pre-Workout
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Stretching Myths Busted!8/13/2015 Stretching Myths Busted! Static stretching vs. Dynamic stretching Walk into any gym or go out on the track and you will see people stretching. More often than not, they are making their muscles slower and weaker! Conventional stretching, for example, is to throw your leg on the fence and stretch out your hamstrings or do some toe touches etc. This form of stretching is called static stretching. Static stretching is an inefficient form of preparing muscles for activity. With this being said, your muscles create the most force at an optimal length; thus, if you stretch them too far, they will be looser and will create less force ( there is a decrease in cross bridge connections as well). Normally, people are not interested in moving slower or being weaker so this is an immediate draw back. Instead of doing static stretching, do thermogenic movements which imitate your specific activity in order to warm up your body i.e. cyclist warm-up with some nice and easy riding. Secondly, it is optimal to do some joint mobility to mobilize areas which will be used during activity i.e. if you are squatting you need to open up the hips and activate the abductors. Lastly, do stretches while in transit, aka dynamic stretching. This will force the nervous system to fire and use proprioception, balance, and coordination during the warm-up. Once the nervous system is ready, the joints are mobile, and the body is warm, it is time for safe and injury free activity! To go into more detail as to how static stretching makes you weaker, we need to go into muscle function. The muscles require actin and myosin overlap in order to create a connection or bridge which will create a pull or contraction when the muscle contracts. If you stretch the muscles to far apart, actin and myosin cannot bind optimally, conversely if actin and myosin overlap too much (tight muscles) the contraction will be weakened as well. A proper warm-up and dynamic stretching optimizes the overlap and creates the right length for the most force production. This is brief overview of cross bridge cycling and the length tension relationship. The graph demonstrates the relationship. Below, in the graph, actin are blue and myosin are the orange brush looking lines surrounded by blue, this is illustrating overlap and tension relationships. (a) Illustrates tight muscles. (b) is optimal resting length or optimal overlap and (c) is too much stretch often caused in static stretching.  Cramer, J. T., Housh, T. J., Johnson, G. O., Miller, J. M., Coburn, J. W., & Beck, T. W. (2004). ACUTE EFFECTS OF STATIC STRETCHING ON PEAK TORQUE IN WOMEN. Journal Of Strength & Conditioning Research (Allen Press Publishing Services Inc.), 18(2), 236-241. Stretching Myths Busted!
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Your aching back?8/1/2015  Low back pain and Pelvic Tilt Today’s tip is about recovery and back pain prevention. Back pain can be caused by a myriad of reasons, but I am going to talk about a very common and easy to avoid form of low back pain. The concept is called pelvic tilt. There are two types of pelvic tilt which can cause back pain, these are Anterior pelvic tilt or forward movement of the (Anterior Superior Iliac Spine) or top of the pelvis and posterior pelvic tilt or backward movement of the (ASIS) top of the pelvis. Think of your pelvis as a bucket, completely full of water with the handle of the bucket suspended by a rope. If you push down on either side of the bucket water while it is suspended, water will spill out. Using this analogy, we can understand how the low back pain occurs through pelvic tilt. If your bucket or pelvis tilts forward, your quadriceps or the front of your thighs probably have tight muscles. This forward pulling of your pelvis causes an over exaggerated lumbar arch during standing and sitting. The tight muscles pull on the low back and eventually cause pain or in extreme cases a herniated disc through the wearing of poor posture, Posterior pelvic tilt, is the opposite, the back of the legs or hamstrings are tight and they pull the top of the pelvis backward. This will cause more of a hunched over position because the top of the hip is being pulled back. Once again, the hunching and the tight muscles will cause more low back pain. All of this pain can be alleviated by maintaining proper muscle balance by stretching both the quadriceps and the hamstrings. Your aching back |
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