Nutrition: Fridge vs Cupboards

It's easy to list what's in your fridge. If you have the basics of a healthy diet then your fridge probably has a variety of plant based products, multiple lean protein sources and a few natural/organic condiments.

These could include, but not limited to:

Pickles (I prefer clausen's)

Sauerkraut (same)

Greek Yogurt (Fage, Chiobani, Oikos are good. I wouldn't eat the Greek Gods brand)

Kale

Spinach

Asparagus

Brocoli

Tomatoes

Cucumber

Strawberries

Grass fed Beef

Free Range Poultry

Free Range Eggs

Almond Milk (unsweetened)

Coconut Milk (unsweetened)

Pomegranate Juice

Horseradish

(for me this comes from a patch at my parents house, and I'm a very lucky guy for this)

Minced Garlic

(You're supposed to cut it as you use it, but if you're like me then you prefer doing it all at once)

Tobasco/Cholula

For me cholula almost always wins.

Natural organic ketchup

Personally I really like Annie's but making your own can be interesting on occasion as well.

Stone Ground Mustard

I prefer Boetje's Mustard. Theirs is simply the best.

This is actually what happens to be in my fridge right now but I also just went to the store yesterday. There's also some beer, different cheeses and I'm sure rotting food that I don't yet know about.....

The freezer is pretty boring, there's some random frozen meats and vegetables, but I usually keep some Ezekiel bread around too. Oh, and I'm a sucker for corn bread and ice cream (not at the same time). Everyone has their vice, and that's mine, so I have a couple mixes and a half gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream, that I try to make last a very long time.

Where I feel people really go wrong is the crap in their cupboards.

Cupboards are usually where you stack the junk that wont ever go bad which usually means candies, pastries, chips, pastas, etc. These are things that wont help our waistlines, our performance goals, or quality of life.

I'd rather have this....

Than this....

You don't think it would've been cool to have a miniature little native american friend when you were that age? I do

The following is a short list of some of the foods that'd be good to keep in your cupboards.

It's actually what I keep stocked in my cupboards on a regular basis.

-Steel Cut Oats (always buy in bulk)

-Quinoa (same)

-Brown rice

I use brown rice sparingly. Mainly just pre/post workout on occasion but that's about it, should probably throw it away, it's getting old

-Almonds
-Walnuts

-Chia Seed(that I grind w/ a coffee grinder)

-Flax Seed (grind those too)

-Protein Powder (whey+casein)

-Barlean's Greens
-Vitamin D

I really prefer Carlson's they make a great product for an overly reasonable price.

-Fish Oil
-Magnesium

-Zinc (used as necessary)

-CoQ10
-Multivitamin

-Melatonin (rare and random usage for whenever I want to go comatose for about 12 hours)

My spice rack gets used a ton but I run out of Turmeric and Watkin's Cinnamon all the time.

-Garlic

-Onion (yep, they're not even supposed to be refrigerated until you cut them)

-Sweet potato (same)

-Real Butter from grass feed cows (no need to refrigerate it either, in fact it'd get so hard you could barely use it)

-Extra Virgin Olive Oil

-Tarragon Vinegar

-Balsamic Vinegar

Interestingly, this is one item where paying more does make a difference, up to you.

-Dark chocolate

For my taste the darker the better but less than 70% cocoa and you're just eating candy.

-Peanut or almond butter:

I've tried alot of these and tend to enjoy Full Circle's the most, and it just so happens to be on the lesser expensive side.

Then I usually keep an assortment of tea's around. Right now it's

-Ginger Peach

-Honey Ginseng

-Earl Greyer

There's no rhyme of reason to this, I just think they taste good, except the Earl Greyer, Idk where it came from.

This usually surprises people but I do keep a good stock of canned goods in my cupboards. My mom has been canning food from her garden for longer than I've been around, and you don't go to her house w/o taking something home. It's usually tomatoes, green beans and applesauce. All of which are from soil that hasn't been depleted and the food was harvest when it was ripe, unlike the food you'd get in the store, so it's very good for you and comes in handy during the winter.

On my counter and dinning room table there are bowls of fruit that always have apples and w/e else I feel like having around at the time.

There are also things I don't keep in my kitchen on purpose.

A) I'll be more likely to eat them if they're around

B) They are so rarely used in my cooking that there's no point

C) Nutritionally they aren't the greatest choices in the world, so why give support by purchasing the stuff.

These would include:

-Wheat flour

-Sucralose (or any type of artificial sweetner for that matter)

If I want some sugar I'll have real sugar, we've been doing it for thousands of years. I think once in awhile is okay if you're living an active lifestyle and consuming 95% of your carbohydrates from better, plant based sources.

-Candy:

chocolate bars, twix, snickers, jolley ranchers (of which I don't even like hard candy), m&m's, chex mix. etc.

-Falsely marketed "healthy", "high in protein/fiber" stuff either.

You wont find a Fiber One Bar, Cliff Bar, Zone Bar, or anything else like that in my house. They're just candy too.

-Cold cereal's:

Cheerios, frosted flakes, Lucky Charms, Kix, sorry to burst your bubble these suck too. They're simply candy, and hold little to no nutritional value.

-This goes for the ones marketed to be "heatlhy" as well.

There's absolutely not one Kashi product in my house, nor Total, or anything else like that. They all suck, eat some real food.

And that's that. Really, in the end the basics get you by, most everyone just tries to make it complicated. Eat 5 big cups of vegetables every day and that'll go along way by itself.

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Olympic Lift Variations Worth Doing: Part 2

What variations of olympic lifts would I use?

1) Unilateral Dumbell Snatches.

It's much like the kettlebell swing. Quick learning curve. Athletes learn how to load their hips. It's unilateral so your strengthening and reinforcing good movement patterns. The gripping hand and the opposing hip are having to work synergistically to move the weight in an explosive manner. It's plain and simple a great exercise.

2) Unilateral Dumbell Jerk

I wouldn't use this as a max effort movement, I'd think of this exercise as more of a core exercise. Being on one side displaces the lift so you load your hips differently providing a change in stimuli.

3) If I were to do Snatches w/ a barbell

I have a client I've worked w/ for a long time, and he loves doing cleans and snatches. So like I said in Part 1, if your main goal is a PR in cleans and snatches then great, do them.

But I'd make one little change. Bring your hands in. The only reason a wide grip is to decrease the distance the bar has to travel and so the catch is easier when sitting deep underneath. That's it.

See what I mean? Grip width doesn't really matter until you start maxing out.

So make your hands the same width as your shoulders, just like a clean grip. You'll go down in weight a bit but this will really save you and your shoulders a ton of headache.. Then once a month whether it's just to practice or actually max out take your normal wide grip again.

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We Don't Do Olympic Lifts: Part 1

I've said it before and I'll say it again. We do NOT do olympic lifting. This is not to 'try' and be different or to create some kind of separation from other coaches. I simply feel that the affect produced by the movement is not worth the process/learning curve and that there are other movements and lifts that do a better job and have a faster learning curve.

Simply put the juice is not worth the squeeze.

And neither was she in that movie....just sayin.

Just to be clear and for those that are not familiar w/ the olympic lifting game. I'm referring to barbell:

-Cleans

-Snatches

-Jerks

Just as a side note:

I realize just how ludicrous it seems to hear and how quickly this post will be dismissed by many but after years of arguing w/ myself this is the conclusion that I have come to. I'm willing to bet that a lot of people will be surprised in a couple years when enough studies have been done that come to the same conclusions as I have, mark the date it's Wednesday, May 11, 2011. I'm sure they'll be able to convey a much more scientifically based message as well.

If you are unwilling to give up your clean that's fine, it's your program but I at least hope that:

A) you can keep an open mind throughout this post and

B) I hope your not a coach/trainer/person that emphasizes the 'shrug' while teaching/doing cleans, that is not what the lift is about.

Cleans

Sure the clean is great. And the process for teaching it can be great as well. Everyone knows it:

1. Teach kids how to hang pull quick w/ stiff arms

2. Teach a high pull from hang clean position

3. Teach hang clean

4. Teach power clean

This is a hang clean, much like a power clean you just don't take it all the way to the floor and it's extremely technical. Your main pull is only about 5"-8" and momentum should carry it the top. I also don't like messing w/ the wrist in/flexibility.

But this process takes an entire month. My athletes don't have an entire month, and neither do I. I consider myself a very patient person, but I hate waiting on things (and I realize how much that might not make sense at first). But an entire month to get a lift?

Mainly I don't feel the "product" of a clean and snatch are all that great.

Yeah they're post chain dominant, triple extension, explosive movements but the affect we get from them is not enough to program them above other exercises. I'd rather get my athletes going on swings and trap bar deadlifts and do it the first day. I feel like they get a better training affect, can control and feel through the motion better, and athletes pick both up extremely fast, I'll go into more detail about this later.

A closer look at Snatches (not a joke)

Now the reason I or my athletes don't do barbell snatches is a different deal. To me it seems that if you'd like a shoulder impingement then snatches would be a good decision.

This idea started back in the summer of 2005. Before attending Wartburg I'd not done many snatches. After one season of Wartburg football workouts I'd done hundreds. We always dropped the weight from the top, which was a first for me, but when I lifted back at my high school over break I couldn't drop the weight and had to catch it. I don't know if I remember feeling my shoulders wrench like that in my life. I wrestled, pitched, have had one dislocation and two third degree AC seperations, and both shoulders were doing it w/ each catch.

Fast fwd one summer during my internship w/ Coach Matt McGettigan (of which I'm extremely thankful for this guy he's an incredible coach and I would suggest working under him even if just for a short time). I asked Coach McGettigan why he didn't have his athletes doing snatches, I mean we did them at Wartburg all the time. He said, "If you like shoulder impingements." And it makes sense, on the way down you're catching the weight w/ your shoulder in it's most vulnerable position and you have X lbs on the bar. Looks bad to me. Same reason I speak against upright rows.

Can you imagine catching this on it's way down?

Getting into the Jerk

We also did tons of jerks at Wartburg. I don't really feel like I should need to explain this to anyone, b/c it seems so obvious. But basically this movement really doesn't have much carry over to the field, mat, court or track. If you're a powerlifter or olympic lifter then great, you gotta do them. It's like a basketball player shooting hoops, of course it doesn't aid his/her athleticism but it definitely makes them better at their sport.

This is a clean and jerk. Obviously this guy is an olympic lifter and that's his thing so of course he should do it. But my athletes aren't going for a one rep max jerk. So we do things differently.

Outside of actual olympic lifting competition I'd say the jerk is not much more than a core exercise. But it'd be a very good core exercise. Holding that much weight above your head, you'd be bracing and stabilizing like crazy. But the jerk doesn't really take us through any range of motion.

So there's my reasoning for why my athletes don't do olympic lifting. Mainly b/c they're high school athletes playing multiple sports like football, wrestling, baseball, volleyball, etc. This requires them to move in multiple planes, and they're programming needs to reflect those needs, of which olympic lifts don't fit w/ as well as other lifts and movements.

I do use some variations of olympic lifts which I'll go over in Part 2.

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Stuff you should read: Nutrition

It's pretty well accepted at this point that w/o a solid nutritional foundation we're going to be sick, stupid, and fugly. I'd say that the majority of people know that eating at McDonalds 3x/week is not a good nutritional strategy. But I'm also surrounded by people that are either on their way to becoming more healthy or they already are extremely into nutrition.

This is a collection that comes from some of my best nutritional resources.

And it's great b/c........they're all FREE!

John Berardi

Precision Nutrition Nutrition Strategies for Success

Gourmet Nutrition Recipe Book

PN Nutrition course

Brian St. Pierre

Case against Conventional Dairy

Soda: Diabetes in a can

Supplements 101

Organic or Conventional: Is there a difference?

Jonny Bowden

The Truth About Supplements

Stuff to watch

Food Inc. was a great movie and well worth the watch. Safe to say that you'll never look at chicken the same way again.

Stuff to watch for:

Forks Over Knives hasn't been released yet but I'm excited to see it.

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4 Stretches for tight hip flexors

The average athlete walking into see me looks approximately like this.

This is almost exclusively caused by tightness in the anterior portion of the hips.

Typically a combination of all 4 hip flexors: TFL, Psoas, illiacus and Rectus Femoris. Some people don't consider the Rectus Femoris as hip flexor b/c it is actually a quad muscle, but I assure you it flexes the hip and you use it every time you pick up your knee.

Mobilization and stretching is absolutely pivotal in this situation.

Here are a few of the main stretches we use.

This is a simple hip flexor stretch however I often see people not doing the it justice.

Tightening the abdominals and glutes will increase the precision of the stretch.

This stretch will also behoove those w/ TFL and Psoas issues much more than people those w/ rectus tightness.

And it's convenient when working at a desk for continous amounts of time. Throw a pad down and switch knees every 15 minutes or so.

You can also use a box to create a deficit

Creating a deficit like this forces the hips closer to a neutral position causing the opposing muscle groups to stretch each other.

Here we're going to be stretching much more than just the hip flexors. We'll get some hamstring and adductor as well but will greatly increase the stretch and learning curve for the stretch from the above example.

The Rear Foot Elevated Hip flexor stretch can be done multiple ways. At GRIT we almost always use the wall.

If you have rectus tightness you'll know right away w/ this one. We use it w/ every athlete and every workout.

Or

The Rear Foot Elevated Hip Flexor Stretch targets the rectus femoris (not exclusively). As you can see by its attachment points. Just by elevating the back foot we greatly increase the stretch through this muscle due to its nature as an extender of the knee.

We can also group these stretches.

I feel like you get more out of the stretches this way but some people are just plain not flexible enough to get into position in order to perform it.

I call this the Rear Foot Elevated Hip Flexor Stretch from Deficit. Longest name of any stretch I've come across yet....just sayin.

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Getting Recruited

We all know that the time is now, and every second we wait is one we're not getting back. Yatta, yeata, yata..... (figured I'd go w/ three different possible spellings.)

Everyone wants a Division I scholarship and it feels cool when you get pulled from class to the principles office and instead of being in trouble it's actually a football coach that's there to recruit you. Then you get to go back to all your buddies, they're asking what's up,why was *so and so* w/ all the *enter school of your choice*'s gear on talking w/ you, and all that jazz. I'm not gonna lie, I remember feeling like a total BAMF.

But that's probably about as cool as it ever got. Really no one tells you how full of crap some of them are. Or that probably 25% of the time it's actually a guy trying to sell you some kind of service that'll supposedly help you get recruited.

Always sucks when you walk in and see this guy.

Guess it's better than being in trouble though.

Now I've heard a few feelings towards the recruiting process.

-If you're good enough you'll be found

-You gotta put on a campaign for yourself and send highlight videos everywhere.

-Go to as many camps and combines as you can, showcase your talents, and network w/ all the coaches and recruiters

-You have to hire a recruiting agency to create highlight videos of you and send them across the country.

-Blah, blah, blah... No, No, NOOO

Okay, here's what you have

Your kids have 4 years of high shool sports period there is no more, and they only have 2 that they'll be able to be recruited during (freshman year no one looks, sophmore's have to be something really special to get on the radar, junior year is the big year to get noticed, senior year scouts have already decided who they're going after).

I grew up in small town Iowa. It's pretty rare that a recruiter is going to come to a small town game b/c s/he's only going to be able to see 1 or 2 potential recruits. So unless your team is very good and you have multiple specimens on one team, then your chances of being found are not as high.

Not every position is going to get the spotlight. If you're a baseball pitcher, you'll probably be found, same w/ a running back and other glory positions, but linemen don't get noticed.

It was a lot less like this

And a lot more like this

But add a few players (I played 11 man) then replace the 'ranch' w/ some trees, corn fields and cows. Not joking.

Here's what you need to do.

1) Take care of yourself. Your performance is everything.

First and foremost you gotta be in top physical shape. By the time your junior year rolls around you gotta be very very focused and have to have put in the work.

-Take your offseasons, but don't sit on your ass

-If you wanna do all 4 sports go ahead, but that doesn't mean you can slack in other areas. If you wrestle that doesn't mean we can be cutting enormous amounts of weight, and not lifting. Just like everything else we have to do it the right way. Power output doesn't mean we have to have huge muscles.

-Sleep, Eat, and Recover correctly

-Train like a madman. You want this then its on your shoulders.

-Eat right: breakfast, stay hydrated, protein throughout the day, lots of fruits and vegetables, time your carbs but get enough of them.

2) Show the world

-Perform. You've prepared, you're ready, now get it done.

-Sending videos doesn't hurt. But remember recruiters get videos all the time. Include your stats in a readable manner:

Name:

Height:

Weight:

40yrd:

Pro Agility:

Vertical:

Broad Jump:

L Drill:

Squat: if it's good

Bench: if it's good

Feats of strength don't hurt: For example, if you can do 10 good pullups w/ an additional 100lbs, I'd probably throw it in there.

-No one cares about your track times or your wrestling record. If you placed at state mention it. If you have a wow factor use it otherwise it's just a number.

-Be honest but leave out anything bad. Don't mention any previous or current injuries, ever! Never ever admit to a weak point. I used to be kinda proud of all my injuries, felt like it showed my toughness. Another friend of mine had his scholarship pulled soon as he got a herniation in his back.

-Social media is making things interesting. This is where networking pays off b/c you can expose yourself to friends of friends of friends very quickly. Don't be afraid to post a video on facebook of your squat, deadlift, bench, or performance highlight, even if it's practice.

3) Going to camps is a must. But not at the cost of your season. Training preparation comes before any camp.

I hate to admit that camps are pivotal but it but it's true. The problem I'm seeing is that kids are going to 4-6 camps a summer. This is way too many, and not going to allow enough training time nor rest time. So kids end up going into the season under prepared and not having the season they needed. Remember reason one.

Number one thing an athlete must do to be recruited is to perform. Plain and simple.

-while your at camps, perform. You gotta be the best version of you all the time, no matter what.

-Show character: this means working your ass off (and making that work look easy, don't show weakness), doing things crisp and correct, showing up early, showing leadership (which means be a leader while you're there), etc..

-parents/coaches should spend at least a couple of days observing and networking w/ the staff, coaches and other parents. It goes w/o saying that you should write down peoples names after you meet them so you remember who to look up later.

-Kids should bring a video w/ them if they have it.

-Be forward w/ the team's coaches. You want to be recruited. Say that, "I want to play here." Coaches like that, they'll remember you, and it shows them your commitment and character.

-Always meet the strength coach, and make sure he remembers you.

-Keep it to less than 3 camps/summer. Anymore and we're losing too much time. The season is the first priority to getting recruited and it should be anyway.

4) Follow up immediately

Don't wait one week. Get on email, facebook, w/e and email all the coaches you meet or want to play under as soon as you can. Keep it short and sweet. Under 6 sentences.

5) Do NOT hire a recruiting agency. They're a rip and full of dip shit life failures that probably got fired from selling used cars, women's cosmetics, or vacuums.

That's how you get recruited. You gotta prepare and perform, the other stuff just helps a little.

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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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Anterior Pelvic Tilt

You gotta figure out your pelvic tilt. Until then your performance will suffer, no matter what sport your participating in.

Pelvic tilt goes something like this:

And it's caused by tight hip flexor muscles. You have 4 hip flexor muscles: the Psoas, TFL, Iliacus, and Rectus femoris but non the less your hips tilt fwd and you put yourself in a poor mechanical position that can lead to nagging injuries and you just plain and simple wont be able to perform as well, plus you'll look like you have a belly (see above).

Your glutes wont be able to fire correctly or as efficiently as they could b/c they are inhibited by the tight/shortened hip flexors.

This will put the hamstring in a pre stretched position b/c the posterior portion of the hips are higher than they should be. This is bad. You know any athletes w/ nagging hamstring issues.....it's probably b/c their pelic tilt sits to far anteriorly.......Not good.

Anterior pelvic tilt will also lead to an increased lordosis. In other words your lumbar spine (lower back) is going to have too much of a curve.

Sounds like no big deal right? I mean, it already curves right? Well, increasing the curves of your low back means you aren't as tall, your belly will stick out further making you look like you have more bodyfat than you really do, it's really bad for your back, will probably lead to pain, and its potentially not healthy for the nerves that innervate that area.

What to do

Working on stretching your hip flexors will go a long way.

Most people will need more than that though, and that's where activation and strength comes in.

Next post will be on stretching and lengthening the hip flexors, activation, and strength work.

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Pile Driven for your rotator cuff practices

I notice things that people do fairly often, and I like to think that I'm a patient person. For instance when I absolutely want to form tackle someone into next week, I almost always refrain and walk away. B/c I realize not everyone is the same, we all have our own worthless opinions and the only reasons they're worthless is b/c we can't do a thing to change the other person's. But when I see a professional doing stupid stuff w/ their athletes or clients in the gym it really bothers me. So, after pile driving this individual, I came up w/ the top 3 things people do in regards to incorrectly training the rotator cuff.

#3 Doing multiple short sets for the rotator cuff.

The rotator cuff is a small muscle that’s main job is to keep the shoulder in place and absorb force/decelerate the arm. It does not need to be over loaded repeatedly w/ rest times. It needs to function, function long enough (endurance) and be strong enough to absorb force, keep the shoulder in position, and decelerate the arm.

I participated in a program once (it was college, we had no choice and didn’t know any better) where one day/wk we had 3 different rotator cuff exercises for 3 sets of 20 reps each. That means the entire football team sat there and did rotator cuff work for 10-15 minutes one day/wk. This is extremely excessive, and had an incredibly low ROI (return on investment).

Programming rotator cuff work is completely dependent on the athlete, time of year, sport, ect. But it’s a safe bet that 1 set of 20 reps one or two days/wk at the end of a workout, w/ a side lying external rotation exercise like this would be safe and beneficial for almost any athlete and the general population.

I also think it's much better to have something between the arm and torso, especially if using bands/pulleys in a standing position. I couldn't find the study but placing something simple like a towel between the arm and torso for external rotator cuff work increased EMG activity by close to 30%. Which makes sense, you use better technique that way w/ your arm closed off and pivoting at the shoulder like you should.

#2 You don’t need to progressively overload your rotator cuff like you do your squat, bench, or deadlift. It doesn’t work that way.

I’ve seen guys using over 20lbs for external rotation exercises. Your rotator cuff is a very strong muscle but that doesn’t mean that it is going to be able to move massive amounts of weight. It is not a fast twitch muscle like your glutes or hamstrings. It is a very small muscle and not meant for that. For most exercises anything over 5lbs or a very light band and you are wasting your time.

#1 thing that annoys me in regards to people training the rotator cuff

People using the empty can test as an actual exercise. The point of the test is to gauge problems of the rotator cuff. You are literally exacerbating the impingement to get a better look at how the shoulder is functioning.

The empty can test is not a go to exercise for the rotator cuff. Most people’s shoulders are just gonna get pissy doing an empty can test too many times, let alone adding resistance.

We've known this for a long time. The empty can is also not going to let us significantly pinpoint the area we want to work. According to Boettcher, Ginn, Cathers the empty can is going to recruit much more of the deltoid, which leaves the rotator cuff w/ a subpar role in moving the arm. We want to significantly recruit the external rotators of the rotator cuff. Although rear delt recruitment is not a bad thing, in this case we want to get in deep w/ the cuff. And we don't want to piss it off, and inflame the impingement.