The preview below contains the “Strength, Power and Speed” chapter from v2.0 of the Ultimate MMA Strength and Conditioning Program.
You’ll learn all about the strength-speed continuum and how it applies to MMA, among other things to help you get in top fight shape.
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Not much to say here, everything is in the FREE PDF DOWNLOAD below:
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Train smart and THROWDOWN,
Eric
P.S. Make sure you come back to this page to cast your vote for the chapter you want to read for FREE below. If this doesn’t make sense, it will once you read the Preview Copy above.
P.P.S. Remember the saying – if you don’t have anything good to say, at least say something funny. 🙂
Today’s BB is not about the KO that McDonald laid on Torres, despite it’s awesomeness…
I was watching the fights with my buddy Dan at a pub on the Danforth (Greek town in Toronto) and I was pretty pumped about the Torres/McDonald bout.
McDonald is a young fireball with a ton of potential and it looks like he’s about to go on a roller coaster as opposed to go into a fight – he’s always having a good time.
Anyway, study this for a moment then we’ll continue:
After looking at it what do you note?
Other than the age difference, the 6″ reach advantage that Torres has over McDonald is a big deal, especially since they’re the same height.
Now, check out this still image from their fight:
What do you notice?
OK, here’s what I see…
Miguel has an extremely exaggerated kyphotic (rounded) thoracic spine and forward head. It’s almost as if he doesn’t have a neck.
I call this the turtle posture for obvious reasons…
Compare this to McDonald, who many might say stands pretty straight up.
The turtle posture has a few benefits – such as making your body a smaller target and it helps you keep your chin tucked down.
But it also has some major drawbacks, such as moving your head and chin a bit closer towards your opponent. This totally negates Torres’ significant 6″ reach advantage in this fight. His chin is 2-3″ closer to McDonald compared to if he didn’t have forward head posture. This probably contributed to McDonald landing the big uppercut punch that lead to the KO.
I first made a note of this when watching Pacquiao vs. Margarito. Pacquiao gave up 4.5″ in height and 6″ in reach, but Margarito’s forward head posture helped Manny reach him a lot easier than if he’d stayed tall and used his range. Here’s pic showing you what I mean, look at the rounding in Margarito’s back:
When you’re in turtle posture, your abdominals (specifically rectus abdominis and external obliques) are contracted to bring your rib cage down and round you forward.
When they’re in this shortened position, they’re not as strong as when they’re in neutral position, thus, you can’t generate as much force form your core for your punches.
The other thing when you’re in turtle posture is that you’re basically in the worst possible posture for shoulder and neck health.
Excessive thoracic kyphosis and forward head are a part of something called Upper Cross syndrome, which I talk about and give you solutions for in my Ultimate MMA S&C Program. I also talked about this in the free INDESTRUCTIBLE Shoulder Injury guide.
The bottom line is that being in this posture not only makes you look like an old man, but it makes shoulder and neck problems very likely.
In fact, I just received this email from Chris, an amateur mixed martial artist who wants to have a pro fight:
I purchased your strength and conditioning program and love your blog and all the info you pass along I have found it most helpful and it definitly has raised my game over the last year. I am now faced with an injury (not sure if that is the correct term) that will not go away. I have had a MRI and the sports medicine doc says I have disc degeneration in my neck C5/C6 and should quit MMA. I am 38 years old and I have had a couple amateur fights and my goal was to get at least one pro fight before I hung up the gloves. My question to you is in your professional opinion can I reverse this to a point where I can compete at a high level or should I just give up? Really I guess is it even reversible to a point where I am not in pain? I love mma but I do not want to quit eventually I thought I would teach as well but I don’t want to be crippled later in life. I am trying to stenghten my back more and have aopted your 3 to 1 push/pull work out plan in order to get my dumbell rows to equal my dumbell press. I have also been stretching my chest, lats and neck and I have really focused on getting rid of bad forward posture but abviously as you have stated the fighting stance is not really the best posture ever…not to mention the stress on my neck from rolling. Anyway I am just curious to see what you think as I definitly respect your opinion. Thank you so much for all the time and energy you put in to providing free info for your blog subscribers. It is greatly appreciated.
Chris”
First of all, from my vantage point of not knowing the extent of the degeneration, not having assessed you fully in person and I don’t know what your pain is like, I can’t say for certain. All I can do is talk in general terms, which may help if you apply them.
To my knowledge, you can’t really reverse disc degeneration. But you don’t necessarily need to. In fact, most people above the age of 30 have discs that would be classified as ‘degenerated’, yet are symptom free.
And it’s not really a disease, but a process that occurs naturally with age and is sped up through excessive stress on the discs when they’re in bad posture, like forward head.
The key thing is minimizing the stresses on the discs that are causing pain. You’ve obviously been paying attention since you’re doing some things that will help, namely working your pull muscles more and stretching your chest, lats and neck. Thoracic spine mobilizations are also important. The chin tuck stretch I show you in the Shoulder guide is HUGE.
But you’re probably going to have to adapt your fighting style and training to minimize the stress on the neck by keeping the neck in neutral posture – that means no more turtle posture.
That means asking your training partners not to crank your neck, or rip you around the ring with a Thai clinch. Basically anything that really aggravates is out. You’ve got to remove all of these things for healing to occur, then only do them if they don’t aggravate you further.
You also might have to change your fighting stance to stand more upright. If you think this isn’t possible or is dangerous, just look at guys like Anderson Silva, GSP and Machida to realize that you can excel without the turtle posture. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, standing a little taller will help you generate more power with your hands because your abs are in a better position for generating force.
This is one of the hardest things for guys to do – change up their old, ingrained habits. But this situation might necessitate it – not everyone’s body can handle the torture that turtle posture wreaks on it.
Some more things to do include various yoga postures such as the bow pose that I show you in the video below (bow pose @ 5:59):
Yoga postures like this one are a part of my 3D Flexibility model, because they affect part the fascia component of soft tissue.
A fascinating book detailing fascia and its anatomy and functions in the body is Anatomy Trains by Tom Myers. The basic premise is that the fascia, which is the saran-wrap like cover over our muscles, runs from head to toe and there are various fascial lines, or trains.
Somehow, thousands of years ago, some Indian guy started moving his body into weird looking postures that just happen to specifically target these fascial lines.
An example is how the bow pose I show you above hits what Tom Myers calls the Superficial Front Line.
There are a ton of different postures in yoga and the best bet is to figure out what feels like it’s working well for you.
The only way to do that is to try out a bunch of different postures.
And here’s where I”m going to reveal what I’ve got planned for those who want to start working on their kick height right now.
*********** BIG ANNOUNCEMENT **********
I’ve decided to start a small group coaching program where over the next 4 weeks, I direct you to what you need to do to kick higher with more power.
It’s based on my 3D Flexibility model of addressing the 3 main factors of flexibility: soft tissue, neuromuscular and strength.
I’m also all about value and making sure you get MORE than what you paid for.
I could easily charge $97 for this, but here’s what I’m going to do (this is ridiculous and I should kick my own ass for doing this)…
There are 3 steps to joining the VIP High Kick Coaching program:
Step 1 – Pickup the yoga program here (I even negotiated a discount for you)
Step 2 – Enter your invoice # on this page to verify that you picked up the program.
Step 3 – Wait for the 1st email from me that will come Monday, April 30, 2012 to kick off the coaching program.
Grabbing the yoga program here not only gives you your ticket to my VIP coaching program, but it also gives you a wealth of yoga moves that you can go through to determine where you may be limited by your fascia.
I’ll also be directing you to perform specific stretches from the program as part of the VIP coaching program.
PLUS – when I launch the 3D Flexibility program in a couple of months, you’ll get a discount equal to the value of the Yoga program! So it’s basically like getting the Yoga program and my coaching for FREE (if you’re planning on getting the 3D Flexibility program when I launch it).
Space is limited and the deadline for signing up is Thursday at midnight, so follow the instructions above and get in now!
Can’t wait to start coaching you to higher and more powerful kicks!
– Eric
I’ve been busy at work putting all of my research and ideas on flexibility together in a way that makes it as easy to understand as possible.
Einstein said, “Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
That’s what I strive to do because most of you don’t have a degree in science and I’m betting that you probably appreciate me translating science-geek into plain English.
Consider me the bridge between the geeks and the regular peeps.
So after I scribbled everything down on paper and stepped back to take a look at the big picture, it all came together in one neat package: 3D Flexibility.
Yes, it’s a cool name that will market well.
Yes, it’s a name for the approach I’m going to use going forward when addressing flexibility issues.
And yes, it makes complete sense, once you understand the background behind it… which is what I’m going to explain to you right now.
What is 3D Flexibility?
In the first article, I gave you 7 critical flexibility concepts to understand, which lay the groundwork for the 3D Flexibility system.
Within the 7 critical components, I gave the the 3 main factors that you must address if you’re ever to achieve improved functional flexibility.
Not just the ability to hold a static stretch (which you’ll get as well), but the ability to smoothly use your full range of motion (ROM) with speed and power.
There are 3 main factors to address to improve your flexibility:
So the name 3D flexibility makes sense, no? But wait – shit gets deeper – I’ll explain in a second, but first…
These 3 main factors are not completely independent of one another, but any of them can limit your ability to achieve your flexibility potential.
In writing the previous sentence, that term sticks out for me – flexibility potential – because not everyone is capable of drinking a bottle of Coke using their feet.
Remember from last article, I mentioned that your flexibility can be limited by your ligaments, which you may not want to stretch because of potential joint instability problems, and your bones and joint architecture, which won’t change despite your best efforts.
But luckily, this isn’t the case for most functional ranges of motion that we want to achieve, such as kicking a guy in the head.
However, using myself as an example, I’ve been able to determine that the only way I can do the front splits is if I stretch my iliofemoral ligament – not something I want to do because I’d rather have a stable hip joint. I’d imagine that hip dislocations aren’t much fun.
Now beneath each of the 3 main factors, there are 3 sub-factors that you address to regain lost flexibility or achieve flexibility you’ve never had.
The 3D Flexibility Factors
Soft tissue: fascia, muscle, joint capsule
Neuromuscular: pain threshold, unconscious reflexes, conscious ability to relax
Strength: prime movers, the core muscles, joint stabilizers (muscles that provide stability at that range of motion)
When things wrap themselves in neat little packages like this you have to run with it.
So we’ve got 3 main factors and 3 sub-factors beneath each, which gives us a total of 9 (3×3=9 for those of you who skipped the multiplication component of early childhood education) factors to address.
As I mentioned, each factor may be the one limiting your flexibility.
You may be worriedly thinking, “Does that mean I have to do 9 different things to improve my flexibility?”
Not necessarily. Because there are certain techniques that hit multiple factors at once. I’ll give you an example of it in this article.
Since writing this article, I’ve released a program to help anyone who has tight hips called the Hip Flexibility Solution.
If your hips limit you from kicking, grappling, squatting ass-to-grass or deadlifting with proper form, check it out:
Before we do that – let’s talk about static stretching – the most well-known method of stretching – and what factors are affected when performing a static stretch. Let’s also discuss the limitations of static stretching based on the 3D Flexibility model.
Static Stretching vs. 3D Flexibility
When you hold a static stretch, a few of the 3D Flexibility Factors come into play to affect what exactly is being stretched.
If you’re unable to relax the muscle being stretched, say, due to one of the neuromuscular factors, you may be stretching out your tendons (SEC).
Here’s an analogy so you can see why this is so:
Imagine a spring (your muscle) that has a rubber band connected on each end (tendons).
Now imagine that the spring is glued together or so tight that it can’t stretch.
If you pull the rubber bands apart, what is being stretched?
Come on, think about it, don’t wait for me to give you the answer…
.
.
.
If you said the rubber bands, which represent your tendons, you’re correct. Gold star for you.
On the other hand, if you can achieve total relaxation of the muscle involved, you may be stretching the PEC – the muscle fibers themselves.
Now if you need to stretch the SEC – you can purposefully perform a stretch where you hold an isometric contraction at the end ROM.
If you need to stretch the PEC, your goal is to stretch while the muscle is totally relaxed.
The thing is, you don’t always have perfect conscious control of the contraction of the muscle.
Neuromuscular reflexes such as the myotatic stretch reflex, which automatically contracts the muscle if it is lengthened too quickly can prevent you from achieving total muscular relaxation.
Strength of the muscle dictates what rate of lengthening the myotatic stretch reflex occurs at.
If your muscle is very strong at that ROM, then the myotatic stretch reflex doesn’t kick in as soon as it does if you’re stretching a muscle that is weak.
This is an ingenious protective mechanism that our bodies have built-in that prevent us from tearing muscles apart. But it can also limit us from achieving peak flexibility if we don’t know how to overcome it.
Strength also controls your ability to enter and exit the ROM, so when you do increase flexibility, you’ve got to ensure that you simultaneously increase strength, to make sure you don’t make your active:passive flexibility deficit any bigger.
Can you see how deep the rabbit hole goes?
Let me give you some ideas to address most of the issues presented above…
First, it’s impossible to tell if it’s your SEC or PEC limiting your flexibility. Either way, if you need to increase your flexibility, stretching both is a good idea. Except in certain cases where you don’t want to lose stiffness, such as the calf/achilles complex, where stretching the muscle is OK but you want to leave the tendon alone for power generation.
There’s an ancient Chinese concept called “surrounding the dragon” where you do everything that you know of to fix the problem you’re dealing with. You don’t worry about isolating variables. That’s exactly how we should address our flexibility problems, if we really want to deal with them quickly.
So to stretch both the SEC and PEC, you could perform the Contract-Relax method of stretching.
To do this, you simply enter the stretch, then when you’re at the end ROM, you contract the muscle being stretched for 5 seconds at anywhere from 50-75% of max contraction. Then you relax and go deeper into the stretch, holding for another 5 seconds. Repeat this process 3 times. This hits both the SEC and PEC components of the soft tissue.
However, if the muscle being stretched is tight due to the myotatic stretch reflex, ensure that you enter the stretch slowly. Remember – the myotatic stretch reflex responds to the speed at which you lengthen the muscle. Entering the stretch slowly negates this reflex. This is a little tweak that will make the difference between an effective and ineffective stretch.
Bingo, now we’re stretching the SEC, PEC and we’ve taken care of one of the neuromuscular factors – the myotatic stretch reflex.
But what if your inability to relax the muscle isn’t due to the stretch reflex, but simply a tonic (facilitated) muscle? [NOTE: a tonic muscle is one that fires and takes over when it’s not supposed to]
We can throw in a contraction of the antagonist, to invoke the law of reciprocal inhibition.
The law of reciprocal inhibition states that when you contract a muscle, the opposing muscle group will relax.
So instead of just a contract-relax stretch, we can perform a contract-relax-antagonist-contract stretch. That term is kinda messy, so I like to call it dual contract relax (DCR) stretching.
This way, you can further address the 3D Flexibility Factors. Not to mention that you’re now strengthening both the agonists (muscle being stretched) and the antagonists!
Talk about efficiency. 🙂
Now, there are a few factors I haven’t addressed: fascia, conscious relaxation and dynamic strength. But I wanted to give you an idea of my mode of thinking and how a deep understanding of the background of a topic allows you to come up with efficient solutions to your problems.
I also mentioned last email that I was going to think about what to do in the meantime for those of you who want to increase your flexibility now, but don’t want to wait a couple of months for my 3D Flexibility program to launch.
Well, after much thought, I’ve come up with it, and it’s pretty cool.
I’ll be spilling the beans next week. [Hint: the focus of the ‘program’ will be to improve kick height, speed and power]
And as always, I’d love to hear your feedback about this article, so hit me up in the Comments section with your questions, thoughts and ponderings.
Because of the overwhelming response and feedback received to my flexibility survey (thanks if you responded), I’m going to treat this topic more seriously than I initially intended.
Why?
Because I want to hear about and SEE your results. I don’t want to spend hours putting something together only to have it disappear into the ether of the internet…
I’m definitely going to be putting a full-out premium course together including PDFs and videos like my other premium products because the confusion and mis-information needs to be eliminated and you need a simple and efficient program to follow to reach your flexibility goals. Unfortunately I won’t be able to get that together the for at least a month and a half.
But with your hunger for knowledge and desire to finally fix your flexibility problems, I want to do something for you now.
I’m not exactly sure what form this is going to take yet, but I’ve been thinking about it and you’ll be the first to know when I figure it out. I can tell you that I will have direct involvement in ‘coaching’ you through this and if you want my guidance, this will be the time to get it…
To start, I want to share 7 Critical Flexibility Concepts that you must understand before starting a flexibility program.
Knowing these concepts will help you understand the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’ that I’ll be showing you and help you achieve better and more long-term results.
Understanding the ‘why’ will also help keep you on track in the face of others trying to force feed their (mis)information on you.
These concepts are in no particular order and serve as the guiding principles behind the comprehensive flexibility training that you’ll be learning soon.
Now, I often go back to Master Bruce for quotes, because his philosophy is very powerful yet simple.
The quote I’m choosing today is this:
“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way round or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water…”
I’ve used this quote because some of the concepts that you may learn from me might fly in the face of things you’ve learned in the past…
Let go of the things you’ve learned in the past and flow with what I’m going to be teaching you. Empty your mind, be open to new ways of doing things and by doing so, you’ll increase your mental flexibility, which will ultimately manifest in increased physical flexibility.
Open?
Good.
Then here are the 7 Critical Flexibility Concepts:
The goal of flexibility training is not to achieve maximal flexibility, but to achieve OPTIMAL flexibility for your sport or lifestyle. Optimal flexibility is achieved when you have the flexibility to execute your techniques or movements freely and with speed and power, and a little bit more for a flexibility reserve. As mixed martial artists, that makes one of our goals to have just a bit more flexibility than needed to execute a fast and powerful roundhouse kick to the head. Another example is that as mixed martial artists, we have no need to be able to bend over backwards and stick our heads between our legs [I said I was going to post pics like this, but I actually find this one grotesque, but if it turns you on, go to FreakyFlexibilityFetish.com for more… you sicko :)]Phew!
That’s a lot of info to digest there. But these concepts form the basis of a flexibility program that will work for YOU.
Now I want to take the time here to address one thing that came up a few times in the responses to the survey.
In terms of low back flexibility, for the most part, it’s not something we want a great deal of and training it aggressively can lead to injury.
Training low back flexibility in either direction (flexion or extension) can cause damage to your intervertebral discs.
Instead, you want to focus on hip and thoracic spine flexibility, while minimizing the flexion and extension of your lumbar spine. Maximizing hip and T-spine flexibility will give you what you need for most techniques in MMA, strength training, other sports and daily living.
Low back flexion and extension isn’t something to avoid completely, however, since doing so will place stress on the ligaments and ligaments that experience stress respond just like muscles – they get stronger. But too much and under too great a load often results in disc injuries, so it’s not an area that I recommend you focus your stretching efforts on.
Unless of course you want to go through my Bulletproof Back program – then stretch your low back until the cow comes home. 🙂
And in MMA, the need to flex the low back to a great extent isn’t there. I can’t think of any techniques or positions where you’d need flexibility in your low back that you couldn’t get from your hips or T-spine.
That’s it for Part 1.
Let me know your thoughts and/or questions. Like I said even if I don’t always respond, I always read through them and it influences what I write about, create videos on and dream have nightmares about, like this Comment from GViera:
“Outside of my hips. I can go a gymnast split fine but getting to a full straddle seem to be impossible for me. I want to be able to put some balls on the ground.”
If I help you get this flexibility, make sure you pay attention when your balls are on the ground so nobody steps on ’em. Ouch!
– Eric
P.S. If you hit one of the magical buttons below, a unicorn will come out of your screen and give you a big hug.
Some are born with it.
Others spend their whole lives chasing it.
I belong to the second group.
How about you?
It’s such a problem, it’s why I decided to pursue boxing over kickboxing or Muay thai. Because high kicks feel like they’re going to tear my hips apart.
But about a month ago, I decided to fix my flexibility problems…
I went to the gym to work the heavy bag. This was one of the first times after I started back after hurting my hand. [Remember the bag of peas on my hand?]
There’s only 1 heavy bag in this gym and there was a guy working it before I got there. I figured with my celebrity status, once he saw me he’d drop everything and let me work the bag to my heart’s desire.
For some weird reason that didn’t work. So I decided the direct approach.
“Mind if I work in during your rest breaks to loosen up?”
“Go ahead” he said, cool-ly.
Probably didn’t want to seem too overly excited to meet me. I understand.
While he was clearly not in fight shape, with his “case of beer a week belly”, he could still kick high and hard.
A hell of a lot higher and harder than me.
That’s when it hit me that I’d better address my flexibility issues once and for all, before I get old and weary and need help putting my socks on.
So for the past month or so, I’ve been doing what I do best – diving head first into the research, into books and into whatever resources I could get my hands on. I talked to friends and colleagues in the industry and got their thoughts and insights.
After hours of poring over the data and pages of notes, I feel like I’ve come up with a big reason why many people have trouble improving their flexibility, despite their best efforts.
If you’ve ever had a flexibility issue that wouldn’t go away with simple stretching, this info will open your eyes.
But I need something first. I have one question for you to answer:
Q: What techniques, skills, exercises or situations do you wish you had more flexibility for?
This is a two-way street and for this topic, I really do need your input and feedback.
I was thinking about doing that thing where I make you leave 50 or 5,000 Comments or I don’t make my next post, but yeah, I think that’s kinda gay. Not really my style.
All I know is that the last time survey I posted on injuries, your votes showed that shoulder injuries are the most common, and I put together that little INDESTRUCTIBLE Shoulder Program for ya.
So I’ll leave it up to you or not to post your answer to the Q above.
But if I don’t get any good feedback, there’s no point in me spending the time to write up an article on the TRUTH about flexibility.
Plus, in the article, I might even embed some pics like this:
So for anyone who really wants to know the TRUTH about flexibility, leave your answer to the question, “What techniques, skills, exercises or situations do you wish you had more flexibility for?” in the Comments below.
UPDATE
If hip flexibility is an issue, you should check this article out:
When I saw Edson Barboza’s KO of Terry Etim I almost shit my pants.
Seriously!
Especially because of the fact that it was in the 3rd round.
KO’s rarely happen in the 3rd round because fighters are often too fatigued to be able to generate power.
But that’s why if you learn the techniques I outline in the video, you’ll be able to generate more power without requiring any extra energy.
How can this be?
Because you’ll be taking advantage of non-metabolic properties of your muscles/tendons and specific neuromuscular reflexes that help you utilize elastic energy for explosive knockout power.
The full details are in the 12 minute video below, so grab a pen and pad to take notes and get ready to upgrade your S&C knowledge:
A couple of additional notes for ya’ll:
The myotatic stretch reflex is when muscle spindles, which are receptors that monitor the rate at which a muscle lengthens, is what is responsible for adding some additional contractile power when you pre-stretch a muscle/tendon then rapidly contract it. So you need very good stiffness and eccentric strength to brake then reverse the action of the muscle to use this and the above properties for elastic power. The Truth About Quickness system that I talked about a week or two ago trains your lower body for exactly these things, which is why it holds my highest recommendation.OK that’s all for now.
As I mentioned in the vid, if you want me to do up the Superman punch, let me know below. Or if you have any other techniques that you’d like a BIOMECH Breakdown of, leave them too.
BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY – you can really show your appreciation for this piece (that took me over 5 hours to put together) by hitting one (or all) of the sharing buttons below to help me build my blog.
I think the best is to hit the Facebook Share button because that’s the one I use when I like content on the web. But use whatever you think is best. 🙂
Peace!
– Eric
There Are 3 Criteria You Must
Meet To Benefit From This
New ‘Quickness App’
It’s actually not an ‘App’ per se (as you can see from the pics above). I’m using the term App as a metaphor. An anaology. Don’t worry, you’ll get it by the end… Let’s begin:
The Quickness App takes time.
At least 8 weeks, but more like 12 to feel a really noticeable difference.
So if you’re here looking for a quick-fix, this is not for you.
But if you want to become more agile and more ‘springy’ than you’ve ever been before…
… then read this page to find out if you meet the 3 criteria for developing super quick feet.
Criteria #1 – You Workout At Least 3 Days/Week
This can be any combination of workouts: weights, cardio, martial arts, or any sport practice or game.
As I mentioned, this is an app, not an entire program. Think of your program as your iPhone or Android.
If you don’t already workout 3 days/week, and you do this program, it would be like trying to download this app without actually having a phone.
It just won’t work.
But if you run, you’ll feel bouncier in your step and use less energy and run faster.
If you fight, you’ll feel like you can avoid punches much easier, because you will develop quickness in all 3 dimensions, stepping forward/back, side-to-side and pivoting.
If you resistance train, your workouts will be ramped up with extra power through heightened CNS activation (more on this later).
It’ll add a boUnce to your step that makes you feel 5, even 10 years younger.
Who wouldn’t want these things?
So, only if you workout at least 3 days/week, continue reading to see if you meet Criteria #2 and 3.
.
Criteria #2 – You Have 27 Minutes To Dedicate Each Week
Do you have 9 minutes, 3 days a week?
That’s a total of 27 minutes.
Math is in my DNA, don’t feel bad. 😉
If so, all you’ve got to do is fire up this ‘9 minute app’ just after your warmup and before your main workout.
Workout more than 3 days a week?
Don’t change the program – just follow it for 3 of the workouts as outlined.
Meet the time requirement?
Good – continue reading the final criteria to benefiting from this new Quickness App:
.
Criteria #3 – You Don’t Need Someone To Hold Your Hand For The Rest Of Your Life
Unfortunately, this needs to be said, because for some reason, there are a lot of adult babies roaming the earth.
A few years back, I had this client. Let’s call him Buddy for confidentiality reasons.
In our initial consultation, I realized what the issue was.
His goal, like the majority of our population, was to lose fat.
He told me that right now, he was
the heaviest he’d ever been.
I asked him, “What programs have you tried in the past?”
“P90x. It was really good.”
“What were your results like?”
“I lost 8 lbs,” he replied.
“That’s pretty good. So what happened?”
“I’m not sure. I guess I just stopped doing it.”
Because I am a trained fitness detective, I prodded.
“Try anything else?”
“I lost 18 pounds on the Atkins diet.”
“That’s pretty good. What happened?”
“I dunno, I just kind of drifted away from it.”
I knew what I was going to be in for, but I took his money anyway, because I had a 4 year degree to pay off. 😛 Don’t hate the playa…
I worked my ass off to try and get him to stick to training on his own twice a week and eating to lose fat.
Phone calls. Emails. Meeting for coffee between sessions.
I can’t stand not delivering results, even if it’s an impossible situation.
But, because of the struggle, I now refuse to be someone’s shadow – and why should I be?
We’re all grown-ups here. I can zip my own pants thank you very much!
That’s why I love making programs available online:
Because you can purchase my programs for less than the price of one $90 session with me and I can deliver months of programming that would cost in and around a thousand dollars in person.
If you don’t use it, there’s no stress on my part – you know your role and I know mine and will deliver the results.
Even if you don’t use it, you’ve still got the info to refer to when you’re ready.
Win-Win. Yes!
So there you have the 3 criteria.
Do you meet them?
Then you’ve got 2 steps left to be quicker than a lightning- bolt…
But wait – just one more thing.
The videos included in the Truth About Quickness Insiders System (aka the Quickness App) are a bit low quality.
Sorry, let me be frank.
The quality is shit. Worse than 70’s porn. How I know that is another story for another day.
So I asked one of the creators of the program to give us a price break.
He did. A good one. It pays to have hookups. But only for a few days.
However, the most important thing is that the info contained on the videos is not impacted in anyway.
You still see the 40+ quickness, warmup and activation exercises well enough because the exercises themselves are simple enough.
You learn the science and exactly how this program delivers results in the 30 minute ‘lecture’.
The genius is in the exact selection of exercises and putting them together in a brain-dead simple program.
Basically, you’re getting 48 weeks of programming:
16 week beginner, intermediate and advanced
programs to make you as quick as a jackrabbit.
And, to give you a little something so you don’t feel even the slightest bit ripped off by the lower quality production (especially if you’re used to my stuff)…
I’m going to hook you up with my Quickness Kills program for FREE ($49.95 value).
HOW TO GET IN ON THIS DEAL
Step 1 – Visit the Page Below and Get the Quickness App
==> Truth About Quickness ‘App’
Step 2 – Visit the Page Below and Enter Your Receipt # to Claim Instant Access to Quickness Kills
==> The Quickness Kills Bonus Page
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WHATS UP.
I made this video for you a couple days ago when I was out doing an active recovery workout.
I was recovering from an MMA Ripped ‘Live Sparring’ workout, which is a bodyweight circuit that surprisingly destroyed my quads and calves.
So instead of limping around and feeling sorry for myself, I got out into the sunshine and helped speed the recovery process with the drills in this video.
One thing I wanted to make sure you realized was that these 2 drills train your feet in all 3 planes of motion: sagittal, frontal and transverse. Most guys only train their feet/quickness in the first 2, leaving out the transverse, which is a grave mistake, since so much movement and power is generated in the transverse plane.
What made this workout active recovery was the fact that I didn’t really push any of my systems to the max. I made sure my heart rate never exceeded 155 bpm and rested until it got to about 120 bpm before performing another rep.
When you do this, it stimulates your central nervous system in a way that accelerates recovery because its activity is heightened, but because you never really taxed it, it doesn’t create any effects that require regeneration.
Thus, the “extra juice” that comes from the CNS’ heightened activity from this workout is directed towards recovery of whatever you need recovering from. In my case – repairing my damaged quads and calves allowing me to comfortably take a dump again.
I performed 8 reps of each drill, which is a good amount for active recovery. Short and sweet.
If you’re training Quickness Development, you want to go full speed but still keep rest times long enough for full recovery between reps, and perform 12-15 reps of each.
For Quickness Endurance, you can shorten the rest times and/or increase the duration of each rep.
So if you’ve got an open space, get out there and work your footwork a little bit and have some fun in the sun.
So it looks like shoulder injuries are the most common injury affecting all EricWongMMA readers and subscribers, so that’s what we’re going to talk about.
I gives the peoples what the peoples wants, just like the People’s Champ:
But I’m not going to show you the same old shit of some wimpy little rotator cuff exercises with a rubber band that is somehow supposed to get your shoulder back into shape so you can knock mofoz out with a big right hand.
Oh no. We do things different ‘round here.
I’m going to give you the BIG PICTURE of the shoulder, why it gets hurt, how to fix it when it does and most important of all: how to prevent it.
What I’m going to show you is how to minimize the amount of stress on your shoulder and ensure the muscles around the shoulder are all working as they should to minimize non traumatic injuries. Ya dig?
Part 1 (what you’re reading here today) is all about the big picture so you’ve got an idea of my total approach.
Part 2 will be shoulder injury exercises and programming. There will be video. That will be coming later this week.
NOTE: If you’re not on my email list yet, get on the damn thing so you don’t have to waste time coming back to my site every few hours, hoping, just hoping that I’ve made an update. OK?
Now, let’s get started…
There are a couple of basic acute injury principles that I’ve got to remind you of, in case you’ve recently hurt yourself or if you do in the future.
Basic Acute Injury Principle #1 – If you hurt yourself, icing it as soon as possible is generally a good idea. Ice for 10-15 minutes on, 5-10 minutes off for an hour once or twice daily for a few days after you first hurt yourself. Ice again after anything that aggravates it.
Pain in your shoulder due to inflammation is a great way to screw up motor patterns and timing because your body will compensate to avoid the pain. Icing helps minimize pain and compensatory patterns, so do it.
Basic Acute Injury Principle #2 – If a movement hurts, stop. If you tweak your shoulder and it hurts to throw a punch, stop. You’re only screwing yourself up more. The 2, 4, 8 or 12 weeks of avoiding these painful activities is a drop in the bucket if you want to be fighting or training for the long-term. I know “no pain no gain” and all that but there’s a difference between being tough and being stupid. Be tough, don’t be stupid.
I just hit the heavy bag for the first time since mid-January because of my messed up hand (first MCP joint) and while it’s sucked, it would suck more hurting my hand repeatedly and having to have surgery and be out for 6 months. I have been able to work on other aspects of my game, such as conditioning, footwork, head movement, etc – so there is always something else you can do and probably need to be doing more of anyway. Spend your time on those things and stop wasting time and energy worrying about what you can’t do.
To understand shoulder injuries, rehab and prevention, you’ve got to know a bit about the shoulder. I’m not going to give you a boring anatomy lesson, I’m just going to break down the important info for you in a way that you understand. That’s how I do.
When we think of the shoulder, we usually think of the ball and socket joint. While this is the main part of the shoulder, other areas are important, including:
Everything must work together properly to keep your shoulders healthy: joints must have necessary mobility, muscles must have proper balance of length and strength and good activation patterns. These things all work to ensure the ball moves smoothly in the socket. If something’s not working, nerve impingements, grinding out the capsule or wear of the ligaments occurs. Nasty stuff.
One common misconception about the shoulder is around the area of the rotator cuff. Because of the name, people think that these muscles are designed for rotational movements. While they do perform these movements, their main job is control and stability of the ball in the socket as you go through real-world movements. So isolating these muscles all the time won’t help train them for the function they are built for, although isolation is needed when imbalances are present (as we’ll talk about in a second).
With respect to direct joint mobility, thoracic spine mobility is the most important to work on and needs to be worked on regularly by anyone who uses a computer, drives a car, watches TV or participates in a sport like MMA or boxing. That means YOU.
Here’s an example of the importance of the thoracic spine on shoulder mobility, particularly shoulder flexion (raising your arms up overhead):
Notice how hard it is to get your arms overhead when you’re hunched over and how much more range you have in good posture?
This is what happens when you’ve got chronically bad posture, specifically a hunchback, or the more scientific term “excessive thoracic kyphosis”.
When you’re hunched and your arms are overhead, the ball is getting jammed up in the socket, grinding the capsule and impinging nerves. Not good.
One exercise to address T-spine mobility isthe extension exercise over the foam roller that I show you here, in this classic era EricWongMMA video:
A better exercise for this that I’ve been using now is the Bench Extension warmup exercise, (found in the Mobility Warmup of the Olympic Lifting Mastery Course).
The other joints are controlled more by the active and passive muscle activation patterns at the shoulder vs. limitations in the joints themselves.
I mentioned earlier that “muscles must have proper balance of length and strength and good activation patterns.”
The balance of length and strength across a joint determines the resting position of the joint.
Just like with the thoracic extension example, if your shoulders are rounded forwards (protracted), the same problems at the shoulder will occur: grinding of the capsule and nerve impingements.
This problem is commonly due to something that world-famous therapist Vladimir Janda coined Upper Cross Syndrome.
Upper Cross Syndrome is when the pecs and some posterior neck muscles are strong and tight, while the opposing muscles groups, the deep neck flexors, serratus anterior, rhomboids, lower and middle traps are long and weak.
So what’s the cure?
Lengthen and loosen the strong and tight muscles while activating and strengthening the weak muscles.
Simple, but effective.
Doing so will put your shoulder girdle back into a neutral resting posture, which makes for one happy shoulder joint and one sad orthopedic surgeon.
So far, we’ve talked about the importance of thoracic mobility, addressing muscular imbalances and ensuring that the muscles are activated.
Specific exercises and strategies covering all of these topics to come in Part 2…
You also need gross strength balance across your shoulder joint. Again, the concept is simple. You’ve just got to put it into play. Simply equalize the amount of weight you can lift in a flat dumbbell bench press with the 1-arm dumbbell row. So if you can dumbbell press 80 lbs for 3 reps, you should be able to do at least the same with the 1-arm dumbbell row (if not more). If you’re pressing a lot more than you’re pulling, you’ve got an imbalance that may contribute to a shoulder problem down the road.
The other type of strength you need is absolute strength. In particular, I’ve found that people with shoulder injuries are extremely weak in the Side Lying External Rotation exercise.
First, you need super strict form. Any cheating totally negates the benefit of this exercise and shifts the emphasis on other muscles.
Here’s a video of something I see a lot with this exercise – a lack of ROM:
The big dude is doing the exercise OK, but notice his total lack of ROM. You need more than that – at least 60 degrees, like this girl here:
Important points: go slow, keep your wrist straight throughout and do your first set with a light weight, like 3-5 lbs, so you can see what kind of ROM you can get with a light weight before challenging yourself. You’ll find form quickly deteriorates if the weight used is even slightly too heavy. Any guy who fights should be getting 15-20 lbs for 8-12 reps if they want to bulletproof their shoulders. Girls should be in the 7.5-10 lbs range for 8-12 reps.
The final topic I want to talk about in this article is specificity.
Because we’re mixed martial artists here, we need to address punching and joint locks.
Let’s start with punching.
The first thing that you have to understand is why you don’t do exercises like this:
The full scoop is here: One of the WORST Exercises for MMA.
For punching, the highest risk for the shoulder is at the very end of your punch when you change directions from throwing it out to bringing it back in. At the end (of a good punch) you turn your fist (internal shoulder rotation) to add that last bit of power. Bringing your fist back is reversing all of the power you put into the punch, starting with external shoulder rotation, which means you need to brake (eccentric) then pull it back.
To train this, you can use an exercise like this:
While it doesn’t look like a punch, it trains the specific strength of the external shoulder rotator muscles needed for when you’re punching hundreds of times a day to prevent throwing your arm out of its socket or overloading the muscles and causing a strain.
Finally, with respect to joint locks, if you’re training and rolling, what I said earlier applies, “Be tough, don’t be stupid.”
One tip that can help is to roll more relaxed. When you’re fighting and grinding away with your training partner, your muscles tend to be more tense. When your muscles are tense, you lose flexibility and if you get caught in an omoplata or something and you’re all tense, you can easily strain or sprain something.
So chill out, work on technique and if you get caught, try to escape but if you’re stuck, tap early, especially with things like shoulder locks.
Phew, that was a long one.
Any feedback, thoughts, comments or questions?
Let me have it in the Comments section below, but first remember to hit ‘Like’ or any of the other fancy sharing buttons below. Thanks for reading and your feedback!
UPDATE
Part II has been published. Check it out before I regain my wits and actually charge for this:
==> INDESTRUCTIBLE: Shoulder Injuries – Rehab & Prevention
I promise that this ebook and the videos will be the most comprehensive yet practical on shoulder injuries you’ve ever seen.