This post was written as my contribution to a series of posts on training young athletes, published in coach James Marshall’s blog.
I will begin with tips not for the young athletes themselves but for those who train them.
I begin by commenting on a concept from the post by Frank Dick, “before you get into teaching young people techniques they must have the physical competencies to do so without building in compensatory movements.”
I don’t distinguish very much between teaching general exercises and sport-specific exercises (techniques of the sport). In both cases one has to observe athletes to see whether they are ready for the exercises, if needed correct their defects, and then, with the defects seemingly corrected, still correct those defects or others as the exercises reveal them. To do so effectively one has to pay attention to the athletes and know how to dose the exercises, their form and internal load. (External load = External resistance, number of reps, distance, etc. Internal load = Physiologic effect of the external load.)
Now I will end the fuzzy generalities and give examples.
A gymnast learns vaults. Soon after the warm-up he does well, but as the workout progresses his form gets worse. Eventually he misses jumps, more and more, and yet the coach encourages him to keep trying as if trying harder could help when inhibitions have set in. The coach is not paying attention to a technical flaw in the landing on arms, that in turn has its source in a posture defect. Every landing is causing a discomfort and raising an alarm in the athlete’s motor centers, “This hurts, this damages, stop this.”
A young female gymnast lags behind the group in hip flexibility. She is skinny but much taller then the rest of the group. Her Russian coach, a former gymnast, makes her do the same flexibility exercises as the rest of the group, even though they evidently don’t work for her. The coach has no clue that there are other flexibility exercises than those that work only with little children built for gymnastics. The coach has no understanding of anatomy that would give him a way of adjusting her position in stretches so to make them effective for her.
A high school track-and-field sprinter has a pronounced upper and lower cross posture, which forces his legs and arms to move in inefficient patterns. His coach, a high school p. e. teacher, has never given him corrective exercises. The athlete was allowed to sprint prior to undergoing a corrective exercise program.
A judo wrestler ends a practice bout, and walks off the mat with a slight limp, which he had not prior to this bout. Time for another bout, so he steps on the mat again, with a limp. His instructor acts like all is well. I stop the wrestler and order him to have his knee examined. The exam revealed a severely sprained ACL, that took several months of rehab to get back to normal.
Now tips for the young athletes themselves.
A good technique feels comfortable. If it does not, then you are taught wrong. It does not matter whether you were not prepared well for learning that technique, or you were taught a wrong technique, or you have misunderstood the instruction—you were taught wrong. It is a responsibility of the instructor to instruct according to the athletes’ capabilities.
The most effective training loads (resistance, number of reps, distance, etc.) are such that do not distort good form. If your form in exercises or techniques deteriorates, you are doing too much. You are erasing good technical habits and ingraining bad ones.
A good coach is the one who looks at the athletes when they exercise and not into notes on a clipboard or in a laptop, notepad, or whatever. If your coach or instructor doesn’t catch your errors on the first or second repetition, you need to go elsewhere for instruction.
* * *
Here are all the posts on training young athletes, published in James Marshall’s blog:
Training young athletes: Part 1 Frank Dick
Training young athletes part 2: Vern Gambetta, Roy Headey
Training young athletes part 3: Paul Gamble, Simon Worsnop
Training young athletes part 4: Gil Stevenson, Denis Betts
Training young athletes: Part 5:Kelvin Giles
Athletic training in practice: Tom Kurz
More articles on the practical application of principles of training are at Stadion Publishing site.
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Tags: Denis Betts, external load, external resistance, Frank Dick, general exercises, Gil Stevenson, gymnast, internal load, James Marshall, judo wrestler, judoka, Kelvin Giles, Paul Gamble, Roy Headey, Simon Worsnop, sport-specific exercises, sports techniques, sprained ACL, sprint, sprinter, Thomas Kurz, Tom Kurz, track-and-field, Vern Gambetta, young athletes
In my previous post I answered a question on the use of resistance bands in improving kicks. However, the video example of a class practicing kicks with those bands showed such poor instruction standards that I gave my opinion about its instructor—quite typical for m.a. So today I have another example of a typical martial arts instructor: Mr. Hu Zhengsheng, a Shaolin kung-fu exponent, in China. He is actually a master of the real Shaolin kung-fu, not of the flashy variety sold for the masses. He is described and interviewed in the March 2011 issue of National Geographic (“Battle for the Soul of Kung Fu”, pp. 94-113). Here is a passage from the article (p. 106) that gave me pause:
“A boy dressed in the school’s dove gray robes and sneakers appears at the office door to report that a student has twisted an ankle. By the time Hu arrives to check on him, the injured pupil has resumed practice, gritting his teeth as he kicks a heavy bag. Hu nods with a teacher’s satisfaction. `He is learning to eat bitterness.’”
So, no instructor, not the chief instructor, Mr. Hu, nor any competent professional was present during the workout. Children were unsupervised doing high-intensity exercise. Injuries happen with ample warnings—a good physical education or sports instructor can see them coming well ahead of time and can intervene—but one needs to be there watching! The surest way to stifle an athletic potential and make mature age miserable is to accumulate injuries at an early age. The sure way to make the injuries’ effects last a long time is to make them worse by not resting to let them heal. Persisting or even allowing intense exercise of the injured body part takes it to another level….
The Shaolin kung-fu master is a very competent exponent of the style, possibly a very proficient fighter, but a negligent instructor. He wants to make a living and to raise funds for his traditional Shaolin kung-fu school. He doesn’t care that his pupils get injured—it doesn’t occur to him that their injuries and thus long-term health are his responsibility.
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Tags: exercise, Hu Zhengsheng, injury, martial arts instructor, Shaolin kung-fu, Thomas Kurz
Someone has asked me what I think about using resistance bands in kick training, specifically Myosource Kinetic Bands. (You can see a martial arts class using these bands in the video below.)
Here is my answer:
With good technique, they could help. The TKD master in the video is an abysmally poor instructor, so for people in his class, those things may even be harmful.
For adding resistance to a technique to make sense, the form and timing of the technique have to be well learned, otherwise both will be ruined and a bad habit will be ingrained. You can see this ruining of side and roundhouse kicks by a too early application of resistance in the martial arts class shown in the video.
The type of resistance is the next consideration (but no additional resistance helps until technique is learned). Each type of resistance has its pluses and minuses. Elastic resistance slows down movements at the end of their path when their velocity should be increasing. Weights offer the most resistance at the beginning of the move, but then their inertia can overextend the move. Application of the right type and amount of resistance depends on the weak points of the athlete in a given technique. For some that will mean applying resistance only at the beginning phase of a technique, for others at the end phase. Some techniques must be broken into parts that can be safely done against resistance.
The bottom line: If a resistance distorts the correct technique, then it should not be applied or should be applied differently, or a different resistance should be applied. The way to find out is to try, observe, and adjust.
And here are reasons why this TKD master is a poor instructor:
— An instructor worthy of this title doesn’t turn his back on the class, especially a class of children. The first reason has to do with discipline and class control: You don’t turn your back on the class because people, especially children, can do the craziest things when you are not watching. This is taught to all real instructors. The second reason is not taught to people mentally fit to be instructors because it is too obvious: When you are demonstrating something, you have to face the class so students can see what you are doing, and you can see how they are doing it. Further, trained instructors demonstrate all moves as if a mirror image of students facing them. So, when a real instructor shows a move that is to be done with a right limb, the instructor does it with a left limb, so students facing the instructor don’t have to flip the image in their minds. That helps the students concentrate on the essential points of the movement and speeds up learning. With well motivated and focused students, an instructor can get away with such “backward” demonstrating as this TKD master—as witnessed in good-to-excellent results of individual instruction in Dancing with the Stars, for example—but as a rule, in large-group settings it wastes students’ time.
— The class mixes grown-ups and children. That is a sign of incompetence or desperation. In such a setting, group instruction short-changes both young and old. Readers of Children and Sports Training realize that.
— The instructor has students with poor or even no technique (a testimony to his teaching skill) practice moves they don’t know with added resistance. More need not be said….
Such sights are common in martial arts, especially those imported from the Far East. Their exotic origin and language give them an air of mystery, set a rigid hierarchy, and so help obscure incompetence of the “instructors,” grand and utmost masters, and gurus. There are individuals desperate to be in charge, to be authorities, no matter how ignorant they are of the subject. Many of those martial arts organizations give them that opportunity if they are a tad fitter and persistent than the rest of their peers. And there are plenty of gullible people among their peers to keep those masters in business.
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Tags: American Taekwondo Association, ATA, athlete, Chief Master Steve Westbrook, Children and Sports Training, comedy, elastic resistance, instructor, kick, kicking, martial arts, martial arts class, Myosource Kinetic Bands, resistance bands, Songahm Taekwondo Federations, sports training, STU, taekwondo, technique, Thomas Kurz, TKD master, World Traditional Taekwondo Union, WTTU
I just learned of existence of Bacon Salt. It is made for people who can’t eat bacon because it isn’t halal or kosher, for those who believe saturated fat is bad for them, and perhaps for those who can’t get good bacon. So it is not for me. Fat, and a lot of it saturated, is the fuel that keeps me running and keeps me healthy, like so:
Tom Kurz Does Hindu Push-ups and Hindu Squats in the Snow
I get excellent bacon from my local grocer. This is real bacon—not those prepacked, chemical soaked meat strips with little fat.
What would I put Bacon Salt on? On the good bacon I eat with practically every meal? Or on my favorite golonka (pork shanks or hocks)? Wouldn’t it be like gilding the lily? OK, I know, if I run out of bacon, then I can put Bacon Salt on the stick of butter (113 g), most of which I eat daily!
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Tags: Bacon Salt, fat, golonka, pork hocks, pork shanks, saturated fat, Thomas Kurz, Tom Kurz
In this post I will use two quotes from a recent blog post by James Steele II. Here is the first quote:
And my comment on it:
It is worse than that—muscles frequently not allowed to recover between workouts will be damaged, and this damage will turn to scar tissue, which eventually will be replaced with fat. This end result of muscle abuse is called fatty atrophy. Unlike the atrophy of disuse, the atrophy of abuse cannot be reversed.
The second quote:
Instead of a comment, a few facts and common observations. The facts and observations may at first seem disjointed, but eventually you should see a connection.
1. The glycolytic FT fibers (IIb) are the largest muscle fibers, which makes them structurally the weakest. (This is because their cell membranes and other structural elements are of the same thickness as in other, smaller fibers.)
2. It is long known that people with chronic back pain have a greater ratio of glycolytic FT fibers in their back muscles, which makes those muscles less resistant to fatigue (Biedermann et al. 1991, Mannion et al. 1997). Resistance to fatigue in back muscles—an ability to maintain steady moderate tension for a long time—is needed for those muscles’ back-stabilizing function.
3. Seriously overweight people tend to have massive leg muscles, especially calves, which usually look fat-free—so their size indicates the amount of muscle, not fluff. But when such people run or worse yet, sprint, those muscles tear—it works like clockwork—because they are made of mostly FT fibers. That’s why they are so big, and that’s why they tear so easily.
4. Muscles that are overworked are sore. Exercising them when they are still sore may damage them.
5. The weakest link in a chain determines the chain’s strength.
6. To find out when it is safe to do intense exercises (and for a sore calf, jogging and running are intense resistance exercises), press deep into the muscles to be exercised. You can poke them with your finger, you can roll on a hard roller, or you can get a deep-tissue massage. If you feel tenderness, then those muscles are not recovered sufficiently from the previous work. Change the subject of the workout. If you feel no tenderness in the muscles you plan to load, then it should be safe to do so. (Now, do you really know which muscles you are significantly loading in a given exercise? See point 8.)
7. To positively determine your readiness for intense work, use grip dynamometry or a similar holistic indicator of good neuromuscular function. How grip dynamometry is used for this purpose is described in Science of Sports Training.
8. To really know which muscles are significantly loaded and may be overworked in an exercise, check all your muscles every day for three days after the last workout with a specific exercise and note which are sore or tender. Don’t check just the “prime movers.” For example, if after heavy deadlifts the muscles around your shoulder blades are sore, then those are vulnerable to damage. If your thigh adductors or the arches of your feet are tender, then those are your weak links. If you want to get stronger, not weaker, you have to wait until these weak links are fully recovered.
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Tags: fast twitch muscle fiber, High-Intensity Training, HIT, Insufficient Recovery, slow twitch muscle fiber, Thomas Kurz, Tom Kurz
It occurred to me that a majority of people suffer various afflictions because they disregard signs given to them by their bodies. First they don’t take hints that something doesn’t agree with them, then they pretend not to notice obvious signs, then take medicines to cover up the bothersome symptoms of dysfunction. Eventually they develop a disease: overtraining, injury, indigestion, obesity, metabolic disorder, organ dysfunction up to organ failure, cancer.
I think this disregarding the body’s signs is not innate. It is instilled by surrounding idiots—assorted authorities, beginning with parents (“Eat everything on your plate.”), then on to school teachers and medics (Food Pyramid, “Have a pain—take a pill”) and experts from mass media. Perfect products of such an upbringing don’t take a hint until they have a chronic dysfunction, which they will cultivate to a full-blown disease.
Here is an example of someone who does take a hint:
Here is an example of someone who doesn’t take a hint, but eventually, after years (better late than never) reacts to signs of dysfunction:
Then follows a list of signs one should react to immediately, not after weeks or years of suffering.
He followed a dogma rather than signs—and that is a bad concept. Signs tell the truth, and the truth will set you free 
Here are two key paragraphs from the chapter Nutrition in my Science of Sports Training:
“There is no diet good or bad for everybody at all times, with set-in-stone percentages of carbohydrate, protein, and fat. There are only individually suitable diets that let an athlete perform well and stay healthy and unsuitable diets that lower performance. An athlete needs to eat different meals before exercises and after exercises.
“How to tell if an athlete’s last meal was good for him or her? It is simple—if the athlete feels well, alert and energetic, and not hungry four hours after the meal—then the meal was suitable and good. If the athlete is hungry four hours or less after the meal, then it was not suitable.”
So the key to optimal sports nutrition, just as for optimal exercise selection and dosage, is for the athlete to listen to his or her body, and for the coach to observe the signs too and make adjustments on the go.
The signs range from those noticeable immediately, during, and soon after a meal (feeling energized or sleepy, light or bloated), through those manifesting themselves several hours later or during the next couple of days (sweat, body smell, urine, stool, intestinal discomfort), to those that reveal long-term nutrition status (fat deposits, skin, hair, nails).
So much for nutrition. The principle applies to exercise too.
To sum it up: Whatever would compromise your survivability in “the wild” cannot be healthy. Speaking of survivability in “the wild,” I do not ask you to imagine being a Stone Age hunter—a modern one will do. If your body does something that would impair your effectiveness in the woods—by alerting the game to your presence, setting you up as an easy prey for predators, making you too hungry to keep still for as long as it takes, or making you too weak to dress and drag the game—then you ought to stop doing whatever you are doing to yourself.
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Tags: diet, disease, Don Matesz, exercise, J. Stanton, Paleo diet, sports nutrition, The Gnoll Credo, Thomas Kurz, Tom Kurz
Not All CrossFits Are Equal
I got the following questions from a reader of Stretching Scientifically.
> I received your book, Stretching Scientifically, and have been very excitedly
> attempting to develop side and front splits. I’ve recently begun taekwondo,
> but I come from a background of CrossFit, where I’ve been doing deep squats and
> other movements with medium and heavy weights for the past 3 years.
>
> When I try to do a horse-riding stance, either my heels leave the ground or my
> posterior leans back into a squat position. My question is this: Am I just not
> flexible in my lower back, or am I doing something wrong?
> (picture attached)
Answer: Take a look at your photo and at included photos of a deep squat (see below).
Deep back squat
Deep overhead squat
Regardless of what you say, you have not been doing deep squats in many years. Whatever you have been doing for 3 years at CrossFit, it was not deep squats. If you did a deep squat with a weight as light as half your body’s weight, you could get hurt. Follow my advice in First, Fix Faults and then, after fixing your posture, practice deep squats as shown here.
If you see that you can’t make satisfactory progress doing corrective exercises (see links from my post First, Fix Faults), find a specialist to help you (also see links from the post).
> When I try to do a horse-riding stance, either my heels leave the ground [...]
> am I doing something wrong?
Answer: It is not your technique. It is a sign of a short soleus, which may be caused by not doing deep squats for many years.
> When the feet are shoulder-width apart, what is the difference between the
> horse-riding stance and a squat?
Answer: None, practically.
Comment: I guess you were not doing your squatting at the San Francisco CrossFit (www.sanfranciscocrossfit.com). I believe that if you did, you would not have the problem you have.
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Tags: crossfit, deep squat, front splits, horse-riding stance, side splits, taekwondo, Thomas Kurz, Tom Kurz
First, Fix Faults—in Nutrition
I begin by quoting from my post First, Fix Faults (March 23, 2011):
“I think that this principle of fixing faults first applies to all aspects of health and fitness. For example, ceasing to eat bad stuff (sweets, bread and most grain products, too many carbs, too much protein, wrong fats, medicated meat, eggs from abused hens, artificial additives) helps more than eating any supplements could. It helps more than any medicine, too.”
Now, a practical example of the statement.
In response to my previous post, the one on silly questions, Brenton Deed wrote:
“I love your work—you teach people to think for themselves. Many people want a guru to tell them what to do.
“By the way, I am someone who has restarted martial arts after some years away from it. Naturally I re-bought your book Stretching Scientifically (4th edition rather than my original 1st edition) to reclaim my flexibility. I found I was remaining very sore despite increased rest. I privately thought the soreness was old age creeping up on me, but no! After much investigation and experimentation with exercise regimes and nutrition, I discovered I had insufficient magnesium in my diet. With supplements and improved diet the problem went away, and I’m again making progress! I wouldn’t have believed nutrition would make that much difference … so I’ve learned something.”
When I was young, in my twenties, I would not have believed it either. But as people age, their tolerance for nonsense diminishes. When the body is young, for a time it can overcome stuff that would quickly make an older person too weak to train and eventually ill. But even in youth, eating wrong is costly—because overcoming its effects drains the body’s resources—thus preventing one from reaching full potential. Very often wrong eating is behind an uneven form and susceptibility to infections.
Take the magnesium deficiency: It may be caused by a diet poor in magnesium. It may be caused by taking antibiotics to treat infections facilitated by poor nutrition. It may also be caused by hyperglycemia from too many carbs or by inflammation of the intestines, ranging from a mild inflammation to celiac disease, from too much grains—all weakening one’s immune system, which may lead to taking antibiotics.
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Tags: carbs, diet, exercise, Flexibility, hyperglycemia, inflammation, magnesium deficiency, martial arts, nutrition, soreness, supplements, Thomas Kurz, Tom Kurz
A couple of days ago I answered these questions from a young fighter. I get similar questions from time to time, so I decided to share my answer with my readers.
Questions:
I am preparing for amateur matches in Muay Thai and boxing. I work out twice a day. In the morning I begin with your early morning stretch, then I do aerobic runs or intervals. I would like to ask what should I do to conclude such a morning workout: relaxed stretches or isometric stretches?
In the afternoon I have a technical workout and sparring—sport-specific exercises. Two times per week I add to my afternoon workout strength exercises, including those you show in your Secrets of Stretching DVD (is doing them twice a week often enough?), ending with your isometric stretches.
Answer:
In essence, these questions are about optimal frequency of workouts—how often should you exercise.
Optimal frequency of workouts is determined by effectiveness of exercises on the one hand and by fatigue on the other.
Some exercises deliver satisfactory effects when done once or twice a week for a few sets of a few reps, while others need to be done either more often or with a greater number of reps, or both. So for considerable gains in maximal strength, you can lift weights even just once a week, but to master fighting skills, you may need to practice them more than once a day.
Now, the better shape you are in—the less you fatigue and the faster you recover—the more often and more intensely you can do all the exercises you need to make satisfactory gains in your sport. At the same time, some exercises can still be done infrequently because doing them more often won’t give you better results.
So, why have I titled this post “Silly Questions”? Because whether you should do the stretching and strengthening exercises twice a week, or more often, is revealed by your results. If your strength and flexibility improve and you feel good, then you train often enough. If you do not improve and you are fatigued, you need to train less often or less intensely. If you do not improve but feel good, then you should try to train more often.
Similarly, silly is the question of whether to end the morning workouts with relaxed stretches or with isometric stretches. Which static stretches (if any) are best for you in the morning is revealed by how you feel and move during your afternoon workout, duh!
If you want to know precisely when you are most ready for the next workout, then use the information in Science of Sports Training, chapters 17 (Control of the Training Process) and 18 (Measurements and Tests). In those chapters you will find ways of telling whether you have sufficiently recovered after the last workout and are ready for more or not.
Now, for something completely different…. Look what they did to my invention! This just in from Unfinished Man: http://www.unfinishedman.com/the-unbreakable-umbrella-a-self-defense-umbrella/.
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Tags: boxing, Control of the Training Process, Flexibility, isometric stretches, Muay Thai, optimal frequency of workouts, relaxed stretches, Science of Sports Training, Secrets of Stretching, sport-specific exercises, static stretches, strength, technical workout, Thomas Kurz, Tom Kurz, warm-up, workout
First, Fix Faults
My observations tell me that the key to a great and lasting performance improvement is not in trying harder but in removing obstacles. In other words, fixing faults pays more than overcoming them. Therefore, when asked to advise people how to improve their performance, my guiding principle is “Usun usterki,” or in English, “First, fix faults.”
Take posture: Good posture is such that all muscles (and therefore the nervous system) exert a minimal effort to maintain it—with all working in a balanced way, with none fatiguing to the point of forcing its load on other muscles. Bad posture is such that some muscles carry most of the load, until they give up and others must compensate. The muscles forced to compensate are not in the best position to do this (“it’s not their job”) and so they get too tense and too short, while those opposing them get lax and too long. The compensations cascade, affecting more and more muscles and causing tension pains, weaknesses, poor stability of joints, and eventually an injury.
Another way to put it: Good posture puts minimum stress on the muscles and joints of the body. Bad or faulty posture puts more stress on the muscles and joints than the good posture. Faults of posture can be compensated for by strong muscles, but that comes at a cost of extra energy, extra neural activity, and thus diverted attention. Here is an example from an international-level competition.
I visit a gym where international-level taekwondo players train. I stand off the mat with the chief instructor. As the players go through their drills, the coach comments to me on each player. One young player has very poor posture—a very obvious upper crossed syndrome and lower crossed syndrome—from the side his spine looks like a question mark. The coach tells me that this fellow has a spark but his performance is uneven. For example, recently this player fought a world-championship runner-up. The match was going well for the young fighter. Towards the end of the match the young fighter was one point ahead. He looked at the clock—three seconds remained to the end. He turned and walked off the fighting area, counting on the referee to overlook this breach of rules or at the most deduct a half-point from his score. The referee deducted one whole point for unsporting behavior, so the match was at a draw and an overtime round was ordered. In the overtime round, the more experienced world-championship runner-up won.
I said, “The mind that has to compensate for the poor posture, while facing a really good opponent, is tired and can’t focus completely on the fight. It has to dedicate more resources to moving than if the posture were good. It can’t wait for the fight to be over. It looks for the way out, may even look for an excuse to lose, to end the misery.” The coach concurred, and then we talked about the causes of this player’s poor posture and of his reluctance to do what it takes to fix it—but that is a whole other story.
And here is another example, not from an international-level competition. The man in this example is more unhealthy than the young taekwondo player, but he wants to get better. Here is what he wrote:
I am overweight (also diabetic and flat footed) and am trying to lose weight while taking martial arts classes. The lack of flexibility in my muscles and joints as well as my weight are great hindrances. Moreover, many of the exercises feel brutal since I am far from fit and have begun to feel joint pain in my left ankle, especially from kicks.
Committed to losing weight and being active, I nevertheless feel that I am straining my body because I don’t think I am standing correctly, finding my center of gravity, [and I am] overstretching or straining my muscles. I am in need of someone (kinesiotherapist?) who can look at my body, my posture, and walk me through an exercise and stretching regimen while knowing when not to push beyond a certain limit so I can participate in these activities without damaging myself or giving up.
Below is my reply to him.
Here are addresses of sites where you may find a specialist to treat you:
www.muscleactivation.com/therapists.html (my preferred method of treatment)
Note that excellent physical therapists and sports physicians are trained in more than one of the above methods.
You may also read the following articles on injuries and on posture posted at stadion.com.
www.stadion.com/injuries_models_of_treating.html
www.stadion.com/injuries_best_advice.html
www.stadion.com/injuries_posture_1.html
www.stadion.com/injuries_posture_3.html
By the way, I think that this principle of fixing faults first applies to all aspects of health and fitness. For example, ceasing to eat bad stuff (sweets, bread and most grain products, too many carbs, too much protein, wrong fats, medicated meat, eggs from abused hens, artificial additives) helps more than eating any supplements could. It helps more than any medicine, too.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 10 Comments
Tags: active release, injuries, lower crossed syndrome, martial arts, muscle activation, performance, posture, taekwondo, Thomas Kurz, upper crossed syndrome
Recent Entries
- Tips for Young Athletes and Those Who Train Them
- More on Poor Martial Arts Instructors
- Resistance Bands for Kick Training: Unintended Comedy
- Bacon Salt–Taste without Substance
- How to Prevent Insufficient Recovery in High-Intensity Training
- Act on the Signs or Live with the Consequences
- Not All CrossFits Are Equal
- First, Fix Faults—in Nutrition
- Silly Questions, or How Often Should I Exercise
- First, Fix Faults
- Physical Conditioning for Mental Toughness in Self-Defense
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