Okay, gang, it's about time for me to start a new one of these, as:

a) there are about seven other thread of questions for me, and I want to consolidate all of them (even though the EricCressey.com one has been closed since March, people don't seem to be catching on)

and

b) I'm going to make an effort to be around here more. I was forum guy myself back in the day and I really think they're a great means of information exchange. It's cool to be able to give back.

With that said, please understand that I own a business (train athletes about 40 hours a week), manage a blog and newsletter, have online consulting clients, and have to attend to about 150 emails per day. And, believe it or not, I actually have a life away from strength and conditioning (including a girlfriend who I've gotten really strong, and she won't hesitate to kick my a** if I spend too much time online). So, it might take time - even weeks - for you to get your response, but I will do my best to get to it.

Important note: the one thing I WON'T do is critique programs that are pasted into posts. There are way too many variables that go in to programming to make this worthwhile, and frankly, it's usually better to start over completely.

Other than that, anything's fair game: product inquiries, article questions, article topic suggestions, programming strategies, you name it.

Also, if you've posted your question elsewhere, feel free to post it here now; I'm only going to be answering questions on this thread.

Have at it.

www.EricCressey.com
www.CresseyPerformance.com

Hey Eric.

This is a question regarding your internship Program. I am thinking of takeing the third year of my Degree at a university in Boston in September 2009.

I would love to come work at Cressey Performance so, I was wondering could you elaborate a bit on what the internship program actually is and more about it than is displayed on your website?

Thanks
Scott

EC,

A trainer at my gym was telling me that the best way for a bodybuilding competitor to perform lateral raises was to execute them in or slightly behind the frontal plane and in the "empty-can" hand position(he said this is good for long-term shoulder health since he claimed it would strengthen the supraspinatus) while leaning slightly forward.

While I like to work on creating an aesthetic physique and maximizing the contributions of each exercise, I also want to be mindful of the bigger picture.

Do you think this recommendation is conducive to longterm shoulder health, or would it lead to excessive wear and tear and potentially create impingement problems? Or is it a case of this being perfectly acceptable for some populations and a nightmare for others? If it is the latter, who can perform them this way and who should avoid them?

Eric,

You've previously said you're not keen on reverse-grip bench presses, but would they be a solid exercise if done with an angled-handle bar such as "the Football Bar"?

And would a bar with parallel handles ever be useful for general pressing?

EC,

Both when seeking to restore proper vastus medialis function and also when working on maintaining it, is terminal knee extension(such as with TKE's with a band) or deep squatting more crucial both for muscle activation and strengthening? Or are they of equal importance?

Coach Cressey,

I have two general questions for you.

If working with a bodybuilder who has good daily posture, normal thoracic spine kyphosis, solid thoracic spine extension and rotation ROM, and proper hip mobility; would you feel comfortable using a larger volume of dynamic , multi-planar ab exercises throughout the week as opposed to the exclusive use of pure spinal stability training?

On a separate note, how would you go about determining if limited mobility has more to due with a strength deficit versus actual soft-tissue or joint restrictions?

Eric, your arctiles are some of my favorite on the Nation...i always come away smarter after reading a Cressey article

anyways what id LOVE to see is a Low Back Savers series...just like the shoulder saver series you did...which was great! Ive hurt my spinal erector/QL many times. So any more info on how to perserve these delicate muscles would be great for me. And if you look at the bodybuilding forum there is a new Low back pain thread every month, usually from deadlifting or squatting.

Connor

Eric,

I have a few exercise performance related questions for you.

1) When and why would you use seated goodmornings? And do these mostly stress the spinal erectors? Would hamstring involvement be limited due to the legs being bent and glute involvement be lessened due to terminal hip extension never being achieved?

2) Do Scott curls mostly stress the first 2/3 of the strength curve? And if performing these, Should the ROM be stopped about 1/3 of the way from the top/where tension is taken off of the biceps?

Thanks coach!

EC,

When it comes to reverse crunches and hanging leg raises, is psoas involvement actually important rather than something to try to limit? I've heard coaches say to watch out for too much hip flexor involvement during ab exercises like these, but are they referring more so to the TFL and rectus femoris?

Should hanging leg raises involve actively trying to flex the spine like a reverse crunch or merely involve the maximum amount of hip flexion while maintaining spinal stability?

And if most hip flexor activity is indeed undesirable during ab exercises, do you have any tips for limiting their involvement during reverse crunches and hanging leg raises?

Lastly, what are some potential implications of an underactive psoas on one side?

Mr. Cressey,

How would the various energy systems come into play during something like a home-run derby competition? I'm assuming each swing would rely heavily on the ATP-CP system and that the aerobic system would start to factor in to recovery between swings, and that anaerobic glycolysis might come into play as you get deeper into your at bats.

I just wanted to get your take, since you have a much better knowledge of this than I do.

Hey Eric, I was just wondering what your thoughts were on knee sleeves? Im just getting over a soft tissue strain in my knee and would like to avoid knee injuries in the future. Im incorporating single leg work 3 times a week as well as increasing my hamstring and glute work. I also use one of the warmups from Maximum Strength before every workout. Would knee sleeves be a good investment?

Thanks for your thoughts.

Troy.

Coach,

Do you have any tips for setting up for the bench press and un-racking the weight when training in a power rack at home by yourself as opposed to having a hand-off from a partner?

EC

no question here, just a note of thanks and encouragement.

i love your writing and have got max strength. i just want to say thanks for giving up your time on here and elsewhere.

you should pass on our thanks to your girlfriend too!!!!

mike.

Eric,

In the above stretch(from a past blog post of yours), is the goal to drop the knees as close to the floor as possible without allowing the soles of the feet to come off of the floor? Also, can this stretch be used safely for extended holds(even minutes at a time) with those who have HIRD?

And speaking of HIRD, can a person who chronically has the heels elevated(for example, due to poor footwear choices)develop an internal rotation deficit as a result of tight external hip rotators secondary to an initial loss of external hip ROM/ the external rotators working overtime in a decelerative capacity due to the elevated heels? I suppose a clearer way of asking this is if you can actually end up with a loss of both internal and external hip ROM simultaneously.

G'day Coach C,

Quick questions regarding your Neanderthal No More Series.

I'm an accountant, stuck at my desk all day (45 hours a week usually), and also a fairly competitive basketball player. Interesting combination. Makes it hard to train an explosive athlete who sits on his butt all day.

I'm about to get started on the 7 weeks of training to correct some issues, and was just wondering what safe additional cardio (being additional to my basketball games) I can do that won't interfere with what the 7 weeks is trying to correct.

I'm guessing that maybe once or twice (at tops) a week I should do a strides/sprints session, making sure I maintain an upright position of my torso constantly, so not to undo any good work from the workouts. Sound okay? What do you suggest?

And in regards to the workouts, from my untrained eye, most bases of strength for basketball seem to be covered over the 7 weeks. Anything I should add to the workouts to further benefit my sport, or do you think the workouts are fine as is for me?

Thanks in advance EC.

Matt

Hey Eric, I have a L5-s2 central disc herniation. I know this because of an M.R.I. resulting from high school wrestling, and in turn change my life as I i lost the opportunity to get a collegiate wrestling scholarship I'm 27 now but Throughout the years would agravated it out of no where just from coughing or moving wrong, and would be in terrible pain for days.

Nothing worked heating pads massage ,chiropractor,Etc.Because of that I fear heavy squating,deadlift etc. Instintively developed a stretching technique that has honestly heal my disc to about 95% and im squating,deadlifting and doing a variaty of olympic lifts without a problem. I've research it and have not found anything on it . It would be great for you to evaluate this techique. after looking into inversion tables and and the new traction machines that pull your your lumbar region apart. But are extremely expensive and most insurances do not cover it. I thought how can I do that to my self.

So first i tried just hanging from a pull up bar but that does not work because it is very hard to get your lower back muscles to relax therefore your lumbar region does not decompress, Than from parallel bars by letting your scapula come up and as if your doing a shrug and letting your legs hang, that works better but I realize that not everyone has acess to parallel bars or might be too out of shape to even hold this posture for a long time.

So this is what I came up with
I do the following every night and it takes about 5-10 minutes you can do it before going to sleep and in the morning if your in bad pain or post workout and at night before bed

....First prepare by doing the following

Lay down on the ground on a hard,slippery even surface, tile or wood floor.
first star by putting your feet together reaching overhead breathing in using diaphram stomach breathign and reachin up and is being pulled apart, as you breathe relax the lumbar region until your lumbar back is completly against the floor.

...Now here comes the stretch.
while still laying down and having your lumbar back against the floor bring the bottom of the feet together as if doing a butterfly stretch and bringing your heels as close as posible to the groind area. Your upper legs should be parallel with your hip.

Now place your hands, with your hand position as if you were going to give a handshake (thumb extended,four fingers together), place them with your four finger right outside your hips,cradiling your hip, with your thumb and your four fingers right outside your hips (the placing should be right at the skin fold of your leg and hip) again breathe in deep inhalattion in your diapharam expanding your stomach and as you exhale press down with your hands toars your feet as hard as possible, keeping your shoulders relaxed but against the floor and only using your triceps to press down. Otherwise your if your press down with your shoulders and your arms you will defeat the purpose as your whole body will have the tendency to tense and you will not achieve decompression of the lumbar .

Repeat this breathing and pushing down about 10 times minimum, holding for aobut 10 seconds each time.

After that you can also try this way. you can get on a sit-up position on the floor with feet on the floor and knees bent. and press down with your palms right at the upper thight and hip where the flexors attached to the hip and follow the same as above (breathing technique and pressing down only with tris.

or also with your knees bent at 90 degrees on top of something like your bed or computer chair if your bed is to high.

following that you should do some lower back exercises like what you have shown in your dynamic warm up video and, specially pelvic tilts, hyperextensions. and lot of hip flexor stretching. Im no doctor or but I also belive that people with the most lumbar problems are people with poor posture and an ecxecive lumbar curve. Which a lot of times is due to hip flexor tightness,weak abdominals.

I would do the stretching that I described above before and after the drills

On a closing note anyone having lumbar problem or disc herniations should be doing everything they can to provide lumbar mobility, hip flexor stretching,streghting your abs and lumbar

I know the pain and how bad it is but laying down in bed because your in pain or taking pain killers and avoiding exercises that put any lumbar emphisis is just going to make it worst and worst. As your making your hips tighter, lumbar region weaker and playing on the fear that your going to have another week or two of bad pain.

I also thing the worst you can do is wear a belt all the time. I personally dont like wearing a belt at all i think it makes your lumbar region weaker and dependent on that support. Other than someone doing a max lifts or at a powerlifting meet.

Think about it how many times do you see people at the gym walking around with a belt throughout their whole session and most of the times they complain about back pain and avoid everything that makes your lumbar stronger.

All I can say as far as for me these simple stetches have change my life and heal my hernia.

Im not doctor so consult your Dr. before performing any of my suggestions

Eric,

Wanted to ask where, when, how, and why do you use EQI's (I think the abbreviation is correct.) Basically I am asking about the use of an isometric hold in the stretched position. I am wondering if your thoughts on these have changed at all since your "Building the Efficient Athlete DVD set" Also can you give me a short list on what exercises these are best used on and a simple progression.

Thanks and great to have you in one spot on T-mag.
Ray McCarthy