12-28-2024

Warm-up

1. We covered accels, walking A skip, A skip, walking B skip, B skip, slow forward/backward lunges, triple A skip and some hip/hamstring mobility.  
2. Upcoming drills for sprints:  Bounding and stiff-legged skips. 
3. Sprint cue reminders:
   • Ankle dorsiflexion, toe goes to front of shin.
   • Heel is raising upward with hamstring tight, not just the femur (upper leg).
   • Standing tall, but not leaning back. 
   • Knee does not collapse inward when lunging or planting. 
   • B-skip is not a "kick out", it's a "pull under".  
   • Let's always reset so we have opposite hand and opposite foot motion between every skip. 

Overhead pressing lessons:

1. TO PROTECT YOUR SPINE when overhead pressing,  ALWAYS squeeze your glutes, and keep your ribs "down" by also squeezing your abs throughout the motion.
2. Stretch your lats with preacher stretch.
3. Remember the weird stretch I showed Godswill with a broomstick for external rotation?  This helps a lot with our "front rack" position in front squats, military press or push-press. 
4. We need a flexible thoracic spine (aka T-Spine, aka the middle of your spine) for holding weights over our head, like the overhead squat I demo'd.   Use a foam roller to improve the mobility before these lifts. ‍

Deadlift lessons:

1. Bracing sequence:  Big deep breath in, brace the front of your core (abs) against this breath, and grip the bar.
2. Some of us were starting with feet pointing slightly outwards.  This caused our foot arches to collapse, knees to cave in slightly and this is called a "valgus collapse" and gives higher risk of injury.  Instead, we want feet relatively straight, knees "out" and screw our feet into the floor in the setup.  
3. Lower back must absolutely be flat when we are lifting weight off the floor as beginners.  
4. Pull the bar all the way in towards your shins, which can be accomplished using your powerful lat muscles.
5. Godswill has very tight calf muscle/ achilles tendon, which doesn't allow him to get into the bottom of the deadlift position.  For people with this issue, we should raise the bar off the floor by placing a couple plates under the bar to work around this, while he does calf stretches  we showed him at home to solve the issue over time. 
6. Brady has plenty of mobility but was beginning his deadlift with ass too low for the traditional deadlift (his style is useful when we begin the olympic lifts).  Start with hips a little higher.  In addition, we need to avoid the "stripper fault".  This fault is when we extend the knees to early, so our butt shoots up, and then we still have a lot of extending from the hip to complete the lift.  We want to smooth out this motion.
7. Robert started to begin with straight feet and screwed his feet into the floor, and his whole deadlift became much smoother and better after that change.

Overhead squat lessons:  

• Much harder than it looks.  Your T-spine (mentioned earlier) will be lit up by this exercise!   Practice it with a broom stick, PVC pipe or a wooden dowel,  slowly progress to a 45 lbs bar, and keep the weight of the bar centered over the center of your foot for the entire exercise.  Externally rotate the upper arms (attempting to make palms face each other). Do these SLOW.  If we ever want to progress to a barbell full snatch (olympic lift), these must be mastered first. 

Kettlebell grip lessons: 

• We practiced making a V with the thumb and index finger, and placing the edge of that V in the corner of the kettlebell.  See video for a grip we can use when pressing or overhead carrying kettlebells

Loaded carries:

• We covered the KB (kettlebell) overhead walks (aka Waiter walks),  the upside down kettlebell carry which we do with smaller weights in 10-25 lbs range (elbow and arm at 90 degrees, with upside down kettlebell).
• Both of above help us warm up for pressing or overhead work.  

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