FLO FITNESS

What are we doing to our children?                 I had a conversation with a fellow athletic trainer the other day about the long term effects of specializing our youth athletes so early. I would like to highlight the important take-a-ways from our hour long conversation. -           Sports are still new. Many people may thing I am crazy for saying this but I would like you to really think about how old popular sports are. Just think, there was racial segregation in some sports. The popularity of High School sports is fairly new. 20 years ago, no one really cared if you were a star quarterback on your football team. It was cool, but it didn’t guarantee a free education. Now the stakes are blown out of proportion.   Sports, to some, are the only way they will get to school and for others it will open doors for them that they could not reach academically.   This is a whole new beast and something many have not realized.   -             Personally my parents knew nothing

Anyone who deals with clients in pain has heard the following story : “I don’t remember doing anything. I was just walking around the mall and when I got home I couldn’t get off the couch. I was in so much pain.”                 So what is the problem? How does someone go from strolling the mall and feeling great, to not being able to move? Here is an idea! Did anyone ever teach you how to walk?   That’s right; your pain may be coming from the way you walk. Many trainers are missing this part of their assessment.   You can tell a lot about a person by the way they walk. Pain, dysfunction, bad mechanics, mood, aura, etc ,   can all be seen in someone’s gait. So how many trainers out there are doing gait analysis?   I can assure you the answer is, not many.   The next question should be, WHY?                 Here is my answer to the WHY question. Not many trainers want to put in the time and effort into understanding how the foot can effect the entire body. A good friend

The Rotational Athlete  In today’s blog we will be discussing a pattern in the overhead/rotational athlete, called the “Serape Effect”. Gene A. Logan and Wayne C. McKinney introduced the Serape Effect to us in their book, “Kinesiology” a couple centuries ago.  The Serape Effect gets its name from a Mexican garment that is draped loosely over the shoulders and is crossed in front of the body.  The muscles involved in the serape effects are the rhomboids, serratus anterior, external obliques and internal obliques. “The Serape Effect incorporates several major concepts which are vital to the understanding of movement. In ballistic actions such as throwing and kicking, the serape muscles add to the summation of internal forces. They also transfer internal force from a large body segment, the trunk, to relatively smaller body parts, the limbs. For example, the serape effect functions in throwing by summating, adding to, and transferring the internal forces generated in the lower l

In business, looking at your numbers is a great way to measure success.  Actually, in anything you do tracking your numbers is a way to measure progress. I understand this concept completely. However, I have found that in fitness and performance coaching, people are getting lost in the numbers. They are forgetting what their main job is because they are to busy watching the numbers.  I will give you an example of what I mean.  Example 1: (My biggest pet peeve)  Many "performance coaches" brag about the numbers that they have their athletes lift. There is nothing wrong with this because it is a great measure in how your athlete is increasing in "strength" (I put strength in quotes because it depends on how you define strength).  With that being said, I ask you the following questions.:  What was Micheal Jordan's max squat?  How many burpees could Wayne Gretzky do before he puked?  What is Usain Bolt's 3 rep max on bench?  I can probably gues

So your season is finally over....... Now What?  Wait! Your next season starts in 3 weeks, YIKES!!! NO worries, here is a program you can use to get the recovery you need while also retraining your body how to move again. No need to rush back into lifting heavy weights and doing sprints to prepare for your next season. This program was created to regain mobility and stability in your joints. This will help to hopefully prevent many over training issues that many multi sport athletes suffer from. We normally have our athletes do this for the week following their season.  Post Season R & R Recovery and Regeneration Program   *You will need a baseball, Thera Band or elastic tubing, Foam Roller and Rope or stretching strap.     Roll/ Activate/ Stretch Plantar Fascia 1 min http://youtu.be/7n2kDO6-4NU Big Toe Stretch 1min http://youtu.be/vt0IFSc63cY         Calf Rol

Are you enjoying the downtime?     I remember when I was the assist Athletic Trainer at the high school I'm at now. I was wired all the time and on the days I worked, I would run around like a chicken with its head cut off. I always felt the need to be doing something. There were times when the training room was quite and my boss at the time would sit back and tell me, "Enjoy the downtime because you don't get much of it." . At the time I was 24 and couldn't imagine just sitting and doing nothing, but now I fully understand what she was saying.      In this super fast world it is easy to be 100% busy from the second you wake up until you go to bed. Between social media, work, kids, relationships, etc... our lives are jammed back at all times. We all just want a breather every now and then. The irony of this is that when we have the free moment for a breather we automatically pack it with something else to do or we feel guilty for doing nothing with the

A Few Tips on Public Speaking    Recently I took a course on public speaking by a group called "own the room".  I felt it was a very helpful course and I wanted to share some of my major takeaways with you all.     As many people may guess, public speaking is one of the greatest fears of most people. It is also the best way to get your message across to large groups of people at the same time. In the fitness business, it is necessary to constantly get your face exposed in the community you work in.  This will help you gain exposure and more exposure equals more business. The following tips may help you get more comfortable with public speaking.  Start off with a BANG! Don't stand there and talk bout yourself for 20minutes. If people are coming to see you talk they already assume you are qualified to speak. Start off with a story, quote, poem, riddle,joke,  etc. Something that will grab their attention. The audience  decides if they are going to listen to the

What Supplements Should I Give My Child Athlete? It seems like every day a new product comes out that is suppose to enhance your athlete's performance. All these outrageous claims are made by all these companies promising things that are just completely false. In this very short blog I will give you every piece of "performance enhancing supplement" advice you will need to make sure your child athlete is performing their best.  Rule #1 is NO SUPPLEMENT CAN INCREASE SKILL! I hope this is not a surprise to anyone. Taking creatine, or some magic protein shake will not make you better at any sport. The secret to getting better at a sport is Hard Work and Dedication. Its as simple as that. Supplements will not make you jump higher, they will not increase your free throw percentage, they will not give you a better touch on a soccer ball, and they will not teach you how to hit a fast ball. Skill development does not come in a bottle or pill.  There is not substitute for

                                                         SLOBATA Experience At the end of every session at FLO Fitness we have a finisher. Normally we have a high intensity metabolic circuit that we call a FLOBATA.  It's normally 2 to 4 high intensity exercises that we do at a 20/10 work to rest ratio. It is by no means a true TABATA type of training, and that is why we switched the name up for our own personal fun.  However I recently read a book called "The Little Book of Talent" that my schools soccer coach gave to me.  The book gives quick tips on how many successful coaches have created talent in their athletes.  Two key points jumped out to me and we now use them at FLO to end our sessions and we call these finishers our SLOBATA.  The first point that jumped out to me was having athletes perform a move with their eyes closed. There has been research done on the benefits of this style of teaching a person new movement but hardly anyone knows how to implemen

This is a must read article for ALL ATC's and anyone involved in the sports world. Concussions are serious and we need to increase awareness of players coming back to soon due to pressure from coaches. Lives are at risk here folks and winning is NOT everything. I ask that you please read and share this article. http://m.chronicle.com/article/article-content/141333/

I was walking down the halls today of the High School I work at and saw all of the soon to be freshman walking around the halls. They were holding their papers and looking up at all the room numbers trying to find where their classrooms will be. As I looked at them I smiled because they looked so lost and helpless. I thought to myself, I wonder what that feels like. Then I remembered when I first entered the fitness/athletic training industry and thought to myself, “Wow,   that really sucks for them. “. Haha!                 Whenever we enter a new unfamiliar industry we all have that same blank and scared look on our faces. Remember when you trained your first client, or when you had to eval your first injury on the field? This is something that not many veterans tend to remember.   After working in your field for a few years you begin to develop a pattern and comfort level with what you do. We forget that we were once that lost puppy wandering around the industry trying to fin