Bear Crawls

Why Perform Bear Crawls

• Great for serrate anterior recruitment 
• Scapular upward rotation
• Improved anterior core function
• Great tri-planr stability

How To Perform Bear Crawls

1. Being by setting up on all fours.
2. Raise the hips up a little higher than the shoulders, moving into slight protraction of the shoulder blades. 
3. Maintain a neutral spine and begin by moving opposite leg to foot i.e- left leg-right arm, right leg-left arm. 
4. Take a big breathe before moving and exhale as you move. This forces you to slow down and with each big exhale you get the rib cage to drop down as well. 
5. As you move you want very little side to side movement. you'll get a little but you want to exhibit great rotary stability.
6. Remember deep breathe before moving and exhale are before moving. 

And for the Love of God, please knock it off with the boot camp style dynamic bear crawls. (How NOT to perform bear crawls)

Pancakes: Friend or Foe?

Good enough for The Rock, good enough for me!

The obvious answer: Pancakes in their typical form is not what one would consider to be a health food. Especially if you're consuming them on a regular basis, no matter how delicious they are!

They can be used to enhance metabolic function if used strategically, and I must add, this doesn't necessarily work for everyone. Typically for men around 15% and women hovering slight below 20%.

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Consider the following: a 28 year old, fairly healthy male. Has been lifting weights for 2 years and has a considerable amount of muscle mass and is pretty lean. Let's say he's 14% body fat, which is pretty good. That's the kind of physique where you say "oh yeah, they workout". 

And lets say they want to get to 8%, which is where you start to really lean down and look "jacked". The problem is the nutritional protocol you had in place to get you down to 13-15% isn't going to help you get down to 8%. I mean otherwise you would've already gotten there by simply staying the course, right?

So this is where pancakes fit into the picture. If this individual goes from 70% adherance to 85% of the time, they'll make a lot of progress. After a couple months, they get to 10% but they're still not at their goal. Thus a strategic calorie surplus often helps kickstart the fat loss process again. This "cheat meal" also has a lot of psychological benefits by breaking up the monotony of eating healthy foods 24/7.

Keep this in mind whether you are vegetarian, paleo, ketogenic or a "clean eater": When losing weight, there are many roads that lead to a healthier you, this is simply one way. 

My Name is Gary and I Worked at a Drug Rehab Facility

Secluded up in the Hollywood hills I had the opportunity to work with a disordered eating and drug rehab facility. Six months ago I was contacted to fill in for 6 weeks and fill in as their fitness director for the patients staying at the clinic. It was a very rewarding experience and I would like to share a few things I learned during my time there.

1. Disordered Eating Affects Over 20 Million Women & 10 Million Men Sometime in Their Lives.

The current figures show that at some point 30 million Americans will suffer from some form of disordered eating. Some of the common ones include:

• Atypical anorexia nervosa (weight is not below normal)
• Bulimia nervosa (with less frequent behaviors)
• Binge-eating disorder (with less frequent occurrences)
• Purging disorder (purging without binge eating)
• Night eating syndrome (excessive nighttime food consumption)
• Orthorexia Nervosa (unhealthy obsession with "righteous eating")

We all at some point struggle with body image and being confident in our own skin. Don't jump to passing judgement on someone simply because they're overweight or what you might consider "too skinny". You haven't walked a mile in their shoes or spent a second in their mind, so what makes anyone feel like they should have the audacity to pass judgement on them. 

That person is FAT! Well what you don't see is that they just lost their significant other, and food has become their way of coping.

That person is too skinny. What you don't see is this person has been told they were ugly their whole lives and now compensate by trying to fit into the standards that society deems fit as 'beautiful" by starving themselves eating as little as possible, often times complaining of headaches and lethargy. 

Without coming off sounding like a hippie, we all have to live on this planet together while we're here; don't make life harder for everybody by being a jerk. We need to practice compassion and empathy.

2. Talk to the individual if you  believe they may have a substance abuse or disordered eating problem. 

The prevailing theme I got from all the people I was interacted with was that they eventually had an intervention to make some type of positive change in their lives. The problem was that for some individuals it came a bit too late. Whether they had become morbidly obese or having organ failure due to rampant drug use, these people didn't just wake up with these health problems. Many of them said they wish their loved ones had spoken up sooner. 

Often people have these problems and it sits in front of us in plain sight. So if you suspect someone you love has a problem, try to get them professional help before it becomes a chronic issue that will be even harder to overcome.

3. Learning to disassociate food as good or bad. 

There's no such thing as "clean" eating. Food is food and I for one LOVE all kinds of food. When an individual begins to think of a typical food like rice as bad or dirty, that gives some insight to both their knowledge of nutrition but also their relationship with food in general. 

Many have a fascination about fitting things into a category. I eat paleo, I eat low fat, or I eat gluten free. Most of the diets people think they're following is simply marketing. Everyone was all about juicing a year ago, the narrative has changed very recently.

Education is the key to truly being the master of your health.

What's a quality protein? How about carbs? What happens if you happen to eat too LITTLE carbs and fat? These are common dietary scenarios that individuals live everyday with. Learning more about what goes on in YOUR body will do wonders.

Related: Just say "no" to that detox diet or juice cleanse by Dr. John Berardi

Ultimately being healthy should be the metric we all strive to achieve. Being happy with who you are and striving to be the best version of yourself is what matters the most.

Book to Read: So Good They Can't Ignore You

I often recommend Cal Newport's book to other fitness professionals, but this book can help anyone be the linchpin in their organization and become indispensable. This book is a MUST READ for anyone who hates their current job and wants to do something they're passionate about, but doesn't know where to start. This too, is a fantastic read for anyone who's working hard to build a long career in an industry they love. 

Newport goes to great lengths to explain just how terrible "follow your passion" is as career advice. He argues against the "passion" approach, as it can lead individuals down a road that may not be financially viable; just because you enjoy something doesn't mean that you'll be able to make a living doing it.

(GH Note: If you had the choice between making 100k but being miserable and making 70k but being happy; I would choose the latter and find areas of my life where I can scale back. Being happy needs to be at the top of your to-do list when assessing career options)

There's a few reasons one might fail such as an insufficient demand in the market for your skills, or because you may not have enough "career capital" to be successful in the early stages of your career transition. Career capital is described in the book as a set of rare and valuable skills. So as to say these are traits that greatly define amazing work. With competency comes higher job satisfaction. This key component to happiness even outweighs earning a higher salary alone. 

The author sites several key case studies that backs his career capital theory. Many professionals work long hard hours acquiring rare and valuable skills that will allow them to have more control over their careers by making them indispensable in their field. They are now able to afford to ask for more compensation and flexible schedules but also to take chances on finding a speciality to further enhance their career financially and increase satisfaction. 

Just because you love exercise, don't blow your life savings on a gym when you don't have the rare and valuable skills to succeed in the fitness industry. As it currently stands I believe there's a few reasons why people are so quick to want to jump from behind their desk job to a gym. 

The ease of entry into the field is what makes it so appealing to the workout junkie. You can become a personal trainer RIGHT NOW. You can trade in your suit for dri-fit clothing and get a pretty flexible work schedule. Could you "survive" this transition? Yeah you can but you don't want to only get by, you want to thrive in this or any industry of your choosing. 

So whether you've been contemplating a change of careers or want to get a promotion, Cal Newport's book will help you better understand how to further your career by putting in the work to go from good to GREAT. 

If you found my book recommendation compelling and feel that it might be a read a friend you know needs to get going on, please do share this post. Thanks!

The #1 Key To Healthy Knees

Photo by Andrew Tanglao on Unsplash

Every so often I receive a text or an e-mail from a friend or current client asking about knee pain. The universe is funny this way because I then proceed to receive 3-4 more messages about knee pain.

It's going to sound like I'm not answering the question but when someone has a knee issue I don't actually focus on the knee.

The only caveat is if they've suffered any trauma to the knee i.e.- they felt a "pop" when they fell or got hit directly in the knee playing pick up Basketball. THEN the knee is the site of the problem. 

For the rest of us, the fact of the matter is that knee issues are typically due to problems in other areas of the body, not the knees themselves. The two most common reasons for knee pain are...

• Lack of Ankle Mobility (In particular sagittal dorsiflexion and plantar flexion)
• Poor Hip Mobility

If you said the key to correcting and preventing most knee injuries comes down to improving hip mobility...TELL THEM WHAT THEY'VE WON ROD!

They've won an all expenses paid trip to a lifetime of healthy knees!!!!!!!!

A lack of hip mobility in all planes of motion not only leads to knee pain but can also manifest itself in back pain as well. A lack of mobility in the hips also seems to coincide with an individual's glutes not pulling their weight.

Most who have patellofemoral pain do the Google search and wind up concerned about isolating the vastus medialis obliquus (VMO). Thus they end up performing hours of terminal knee extensions (TKE) and still wind up with fragile knees. Their anterior knee pain in many cases is due to soft-tissue imbalances between the stronger lateral knee structures and the weaker medial knee structures (which includes the VMO). This muscle imbalance leads to a lateral pulling of the patella into the femoral condyle which results in anterior knee pain.

Research has found that many athletes who experience patellofemoral pain had a significant decrease of strength in their hips, as much as 30%. So we need to get the posterior fibers of the gluteus medius and the gluteus  maximus to fire more effectively.

HOMEWORK

• Begin by foam rolling of the lateral structures. I'd focus on the vastus lateralis (think the area on top of your leg towards the outside but still on the quad) and IT band.
• Improving general quad strength (via quad sets, leg extensions etc.) TKEs could definitely be part of the program; just understand they aren't a true isolation exercise.
• Improving the motor control and strength of the gluteals
• Stretching the quads and calves
• Not really something that influences it directly but proper program design helps a lot as well.

The Mini band warm up series. Perform 10 lateral steps in each direction, followed by a forward and backwards 45 degree step at 10 & 2 o'clock. I would repeat the series 2-3 times prior to exercise.

Many individuals lack external rotation of the hips. Try the FABER (flexion, abduction, external rotation) test yourself by sitting down tall on a chair and place your foot on your other leg's knee and see if you can get that thigh to parallel to the floor. Most people end up with their leg hiked up like chicken wing. You can perform the actual test if you have a friend who you trust won't tickle you when they try to hold your hip down. 

The pigeon pose which is taken from yoga is one of the best static stretches for helping to open up the hips. The biggest takeaway from this movement isn't so much to mimic the pose but to also be able to square your body, hips and shoulders, so that you're not stressing your back or your knee too much. Elevate the front knee with pads until you can get to the floor as shown. 

Integrating all this into movement prep will be the squat to stand. If you can properly pull yourself down into the squat position, lifting the arms up and then stand without compensating; you'll be well on your way to achieving your fitness goals. 

NOTE: No two knee problems are identical thus you should listen to your body before plotting course on a corrective solution. I believe you should seek professional help if you can't figure out what's going on. 

And of course the only thing I ask of you is if any of this information was useful or insightful to please share this with a friend whom this information may be able to help.