Anterior Pelvic Tilt part 2: What we do at GRIT GYM

2nd installment of Anterior Pelvic Tilt: What we do at GRIT GYM

First off the hips are the center of our bodies, they are also the center of movement, the difference between fast and slow athletes is many times directly correlated w/ the function of their hips, good or bad.

This is interesting b/c what if we can make every athlete's hips better and the whole team takes 1/2 a second off their 40yrd and pro agility times.

Remember these?

They guaranteed to take .2sec off your 40yrd time and we thought that was a huge amount of time.

At GRIT Gym we've been working on extension based exercises, w/ nervous system reaction forces as well as almost zero conventional "core" work and getting incredible results.

Focusing mainly on the function and efficiency of the body seems to have a larger impact than simply seeing how much a kid can lift. Especially in the long run.

Simply by working on getting athletes hips mobile and using specific strength exercises I've seen a consistent .3-.6 sec drop in my athletes times. This is mainly for the 40yrd and pro agility.

What are some of the things we do. Well,

we warm up properly

-SMR

-Mobility work: mainly thoracic spine, anterior portion of hips, and ankles

-Activation

-Dynamic flex

we don't do a ton of sprinting

we do quite a bit of movement training

-Med balls

-plyos

-bands

-shuffles

we keep the plyometric volume fairly low

we don't really do olympic lifts

-my feeling is that the difference between a clean, kettlebell swing, and deadlift is mostly the amount of time it takes to learn each. The kettlebell swing and deadlift give more bang for their buck and the learning curve is quick. Cleans take forever to learn, and I feel like the other two better aid in my athletes progress.

We don't do any long distance, steady state cardiac work. Non, Never, Zip, Ziltch, Ever, Ever, Ever!!!

-We do interval work and complexes but we almost never do anything over 30 seconds.

-there's too much fun stuff for this. Prowlers, ropes, dual action bikes (yeah that one isn't fun), but kettlebells are, short sprints, shuffles, competitions. etc....

-and the majority of my athletes are 16 and under so not only is long distance work not going to help them in anyway its actually very dangerous.

-Its been proven repeatedly that volume is directly correlated w/ injury. Simply put, you run too much and you'll get injured

-It also will suppress immune systems

-Decrease endocrine system activity (during a very developmental period of an athletes life)

-Can potentially stunt growth. If an athletes joint capsules aren't fused, which really doesn't happen until about 21-26 years of age.

-Probably the worst is that long distance stuff makes kids SLOW. You can't get faster by moving slow all the time. You'll just be getting better at moving slow and that's about it.

We do quite a bit of barefoot training, but we're not doing anything stupid like sprinting, and cutting w/o shoes.

The atmosphere is fairly light until it's time to get to work then we go hard.

Kids learn to make better life choices. Like what goes in their bodies (they know what a good breakfast is, and don't drink a ton of pop), how to stand up for themselves, lifting and training naturally raises your self esteem and confidence, working smart and working hard exacerbates this.

I've said for a long time that the first step in self improvement is elimination.

I stand by this. You want to make your life better, remove the crap. You want to be a better athlete remove the crap and stick w/ what works. We don't fill programs to make the athlete "feel" like they're getting better (and I use the quotes for a reason, I'm being extremely cynical). Sure they might be getting stronger on another program doing it that way. You're body will react to imposed demands, but that doesn't mean that you are becoming a better athlete. Talk to me when you can move faster while using less energy, that's what we're going for, b/c that's the program that's gonna take an athlete to another level. When s/he can be tons faster at the beginning of the game and strong enough to last to the end.

Simply put, get a kids hips to open up after 7 hours of sitting in a desk (w/ mobilization drills), take a minute to activate the areas that are going to be lacking (particularly the glutes and probably psoas) and we'll have given our athletes a drastically different chance of being successful and healthy.

I'm off to the gym to take some videos of what I'm talking about. Let me know your thoughts below.

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