Random Friday Thoughts

I am blatantly stealing the idea for Random Friday Thoughts from Eric Cressey, a very intelligent and effective strength coach who deals with a lot of baseball players and who I’ve learned a lot from (and continue to learn a lot from).

1. “If you perform static stretching before working out, you’re going to get injured.”

If this were true then there would have been a lot more exercise injuries in the 80′s and 90′s as that’s what the dogma of the day was – to warm up, you do static stretching.

You'd better not workout after this static stretch - you might injure your anus.

But no, people weren’t exploding their muscles because they did a few stretches before working out.

Static stretching before workouts can be very useful if they’re used to inhibit a tonic muscle – in layman’s terms – if you have a muscle that works when it’s not supposed to, static stretching can shut it off, allowing the proper muscle(s) to be worked.

A bad time to use static stretching is if you are going to perform explosive exercises right after your stretches, such as stretching the hammies then doing 100 m sprints.

So like most things with training, there is a time and place for everything, even good old fashioned aerobic training for MMA.

2. Ciabatta bread makes delicious sandwiches. Especially after a hard workout.

ciabatta-sandwich

3. If you normally train alone, get a buddy, or better yet, a few buddies. You’ll work harder, miss fewer workouts, get better results, and maybe most importantly – you’ll have more fun and enjoy training more.

4. “Summer’s almost over.”

My dad says this starting in June, every year. At first we’d always be like, “No, we’ve still got 2 months left!” But now I see his wise-ness (real word?) – the time that you have, take advantage of it. You never know when it’s going to be over.

With that being said, I’m going to go enjoy the day by going to the driving range with my girlfriend while listening to Michael Jackson (RIP).

michael-jackson