School House Rock was right – Knowledge IS Power! Cressey Performance, BSMPG, and Perform Better Providence

I think there’s a point in most young persons careers when they feel as if they have all the answers. But, as they learn more and more, they begin to realize they know less and less.

Written by a person with all of the right answers, classic.

Now I’m not entirely sure who this KnowLage character is, but the message still is pretty clear. I had the opportunity to attend both the Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group’s Hockey/Basketball/Sports Medicine Symposiumin and Perform Better Providence Seminar where I learned from some of the best minds in Physical Therapy, Athletic Training, Strength and Conditioning, and Manual Therapy. Luckily for me, I learned early that I do not and will never have all of the answers; hence, the life-long pursuit of learning. If attending conferences and being absolutely enamored by everyones cutting edge information is cool, consider me Miles Davis!

Sure the conferences were awesome, but the fun started way before we listened to our first lecture.

Friday started by picking up my good buddy Johnny Mac in New York. Thanks to my incredible boss and mentor Shon Grosse, Jmac and I were able to stop by one of the best strength and conditioning facilities in the country, Cressey Performance, on our way up to the Symposium. After talking shop for the whole trip, we finally arrived and met Shon outside. When we walked in, we instantly met a few of the keynote speakers that were going to be at the Symposium including Clare Frank and Charlie Weingroff, along with a great guy and great strength coach, Sam Leahy. Of course standing next to them was Eric Cressey, who couldn’t have been nicer. Aside from getting to hang out and observe in the facility, Shon called me over to their conversation and I was lucky/unlucky enough to be chosen as their guinea pig in looking at mobilizing the Thoracic Spine and its role in gaining more internal rotation at the shoulder. So, they layed me over some props, let me cook for 5 minutes, and then came back and found me. I had some of the most skilled therapists working on my shoulder for the next 10 minutes, and then some more after Clare Frank decided to take it upon herself to get more internal rotation to gain more motion in my terribly limited right shoulder (thank you year round baseball!). After that, Dr. Frank was nice enough to talk to Jmac and I – who knew aside from being a genius physical therapist that she was on the National Badmitton team! In 3 years after my DPT, I hope to learn the methods for treating movement dysfunctions from the Prague School, which is what Dr. Frank lectures for. We also got to talk a bit with Cressey Performance staff members Tony Gentilcore and Chris Howard, who gave us the rundown of how what it’s like to train at the facility. A HUGE thanks to Shon and EC for letting us stop by and hang out – it couldn’t have been better.

After picking up my other buddy Dustin from where he took the bus from the airport to Harvard’s campus (where they wouldn’t let him into any building because he wasn’t a Harvard student), we were primed and fueled with Qdoba to get our nerd on.

I could keep writing and writing; but, I’ll leave a few thoughts here from Shirley Sahrmann and Eric Cressey at both the BSMPG and the Perform Better Summit in Providence, RI that really hit home for me:

 1. A reoccuring theme that is here to stay: Femoracetabular Impingement, or FAI, HAS TO BE considered when looking at Squat depth. Very simply, if someone has a CAM (head of femur too large or neck of femur too short or thick) or Pincer (head of femur too small for acetabulum) Impingement, than you HAVE TO limit the depth of the Squat, otherwise compensatory patterns will ensue and, A: Injuries will result to the lumbar, or B: You’ll beat up your labrum and will eventually need surgery. Both Shirley Sahrmann and Eric Cressey spoke about this hip pathology that plagues more individuals (notably hockey and soccer players) than we know.

2. Assess assess assess. Acetabular Anteversion, where the posterior acetubular rim protrudes more than the anterior rim, and Acetabular Retroversion, where the anterior acetabular rim protrudes more than the posterior rim, also plays into FAI and movement restrictions. Again, if you/your athletes has this, don’t beat up your hips/lumbar by trying to squat below parallel! If you want to learn how to assess for these, check out David Lasnier’s post on the topic: http://davidlasnier.com/2011/assessing-for-femoroacetabluar-impingement

3. I’m obsessed with watching people move. Can that be read in a creepy way? Probably – well, yes it can; but, try to keep your mind here. When we were walking down the streets of Boston, I couldn’t help but notice what Shirley Sahrmann described as Lumbosacral Rotation Syndrome in a vast majority of people. Movement occurs at the path of least resistance. In Lumbosacral Rotation Syndrome, there is rotation at the lumbar spine during gait (walking/jogging/sprinting – and yes, if you have it in one, you most likely have it in the other) due to the lumbar spine being less stiff relative to the TFL – resulting in lack of hip extension, which creates rotation at the lumbar spine (excessive/repeated rotation/flexion at lumbar = the devil; some rotation/flexion is ok). Add sarcomeres in series to the TFL by prolonged low load static stretching and stiffen the lumbar spine to remedy this movement dysfunction.

4. Stiff muscles are better than flexible muscles (Sahrmann). Stiff means that you can still be flexible in certain patterns; it just means it requires more force to get into those patterns.

5. Poor Movement causes Pathology, not vice versa (Sahrmann).

More to come! I hope to make time for this conference again next year.

Thanks to everyone that made this such a memorable weekend! And one last time… “He’s an angry elf.”

Eric Keene

Advertisement