More Notes on Achieving the Early Vertical Forearm

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NOTE: Portions of this post were drawn from my posts in the Total Immersion forums.
A while back, I wrote a post about my path to achieving the Early Vertical Forearm or EVF. Over a year now of coaching TI, I thought I’d capture all my EVF thoughts into one place.
Pre-requisites for EVF:
1. First, the high elbow catch requires some mobility. You must have sufficient mobility in the shoulder, arm, and elbow for you to perform this movement at all. So if you have restrictions or are stiff, you need work in this area before any progress can be made. I would search out a good physical therapist/sports medicine person to help with this. If you want to try it yourself, probably the best text I’ve found is Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett. You can also find some free resources at his website MobilityWod.com. Someone trained in the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) will also be a big help (this is why I certified in FMS; to learn how to address mobility and inbalances in the whole body, and as a coach not as a clinician).
2. You must be able to spear higher, about horizontal. The higher your elbow is at the start of the EVF, the easier it will be to let your forearm drop underneath it. But you shouldn’t be spearing horizontal to try for EVF if you haven’t perfected body balance to a point where spearing horizontal means your hips start to drop!
TI teaches a deeper spear in the beginning to help our students learn proper balance in the water. At some point, you should start seeing if you can derive proper balance through the body alone and not rely on your arm’s depth for balance. Once you have great balance no matter how deep you spear, you can then start moving towards imprinting the EVF.
Next comes neuromuscular patterning of the movement. I would break that down into 2 parts, what happens in the extended arm and what happens in the overall stroke/switch in the entire body and arms.
Extended arm:
After you address mobility, then you need to be able to get your elbow on top of your arm, or at least somewhat on top if not a bit to the side. If you cannot, you will not be able to drop your forearm/hand under your elbow – it will fold inward towards your head.
On dryland, try this drill. Extend one of your arms with your palm facing down, as if you just speared. Now, without a ton of movement in the shoulder AND keeping your hand still, rotate just your elbow from its down/side position to the top of the arm. Nice parlor trick right?
Here is a video of me explaining this movement:

That was the advanced and most desirable movement. For some, shoulder and neuromuscular issues may make this movement difficult. An easier path is to just rotate your hand inward, with the thumb starting to point down, about 5-10 degrees. This also gets your elbow nearly on top. You do not want to rotate your hand all the way inward to get your elbow all the way on top; this is bad because now your palm is not facing backward and is not in the optimal position to catch water.
In the water, you must imprint this movement as you spear. So as the spear extends outward, you must either turn your thumb inward/down slightly, or better rotate your elbow on top (without excessive rotation of the shoulder and no movement of hand). Either way puts your elbow in a more optimal position to just let your forearm drop underneath it, or nearly under it – it may bend slightly inward.
But also remember, your entire body is in motion at this point. So even if your elbow is not all the way on top, the moment you bend is when you spear the other hand so that it will end up with the hand pointing down once your body rotates with the other side spearing.
This is a good segway into the patterning of the entire movement:
I highly recommend practicing Coach Dave Cameron’s dryland drill. It is one of the best ways to drill the spearing and EVF movement:

In the water, the EVF has many elements.
First, you must be able to do this movement WITHOUT moving your upper arm during the time to stroke back. Most swimmers have imprinted just moving the entire arm back during the stroke back; this habit must be changed. So at the time when you would normally move the entire arm back, you just drop the forearm under the elbow. This is the essence of Coach Dave’s video.
Second, you must adjust the timing of your stroke back. Here is a textual description of this movement while swimming:
1. You are at the end of recovery. For the sake of clarity, let’s say the right arm is in proper spear-ready position, the left arm is extended in front of you. As we discussed before, you already have your elbow on top or near-top of the arm. Your fingers are relaxed and drooped slightly, such that your palm is facing somewhat back.
2. As the right arm begins its spear, it drops into the water. Your left arm is still extended – remember the patient lead arm!
3. As the right arm spear starts extending forward (and your body is beginning to rotate, probably getting flat at this point), your left arm bends at the elbow WHILE keeping the upper arm still extended forward. Thus the left forearm is dropping below the elbow to catch water with the entire forearm, not just hand.
4. The right arm spear is now extending forward and the left arm has a full vertical forearm now. Your body has rotated almost its finished position on the other side.
5. As the right arm spear is shooting forward, only now do you stroke back with the left hand, keeping its path straight backward which results in the elbow moving “high” in the water back with the hand. The stroke back along with the 2BK and hip drive through the torso and shoulders is what launches the spear forward, and you along with it.
Most of the time, the main issue is that you want to get your whole arm stroking back as soon as possible. You need to change that and delay it until you drop the forearm under the elbow first before stroking back.
You must leave your patient lead arm left extended forward a little longer until the recovering arm has entered the water and begun its path forward. At this point, most swimmers have imprinted a timing which is to pull the lead arm back as the recovering arm has dropped into the water. Now you must delay that by a tiny bit more to let the forearm drop down first and then stroke back.
Note that Coach Shinji has described two phases of tension. The first is when you drop your forearm down and you place pressure on the water you’ve caught with your entire arm, at the beginning of you stroking back. Then as you pass your shoulder, the tension lessens until you get a bit further down your torso and then again you use tension to push water back strongly, as you finish the stroke back to your hip. This is apparently very present for sprinting; for longer distance, they have found that there is more tension at the back of the stroke near the hip, versus in front.
All this takes a ton of practice and work, some out of the pool, but it is definitely achievable by everyone.

Tips on Turning a Masters Workout into a Total Immersion Practice

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For those of you swimming in Masters workouts and want to continue to incorporate TI learnings and principles, here are some tips:
General Tips:
1. Practice maintaining mental focus on each lap, to do whatever it is you are practicing for those lengths or laps.
2. Train your brain to keep active for the entire workout. Resist drifting off.
3. Practice counting strokes for each length, and remembering them by the end of the workout.
4. If stroke counting and other data you want to remember is hard, buy a waterproof notebook and waterproof pen from amazon and write things down. I would not recommend regular pen and paper. Paper will disintegrate upon contact with water, and regular pens won’t write on soaked paper.
5. Focus on continual improvement. Know when you are slipping or getting tired. Change your routine if it is getting monotonous.
6. Know when to get out of the pool. Our energy and skill ebb and flow day by day. Sometimes it’s better to just get out of the pool and – most importantly – do not keep imprinting bad swim habits for the sake of lasting through a workout.
7. Swimming has a energy system training component, but until your swimming skill has reached a decent level, it is more important to train the nervous system FIRST so that your body can make the correct swimming movements before you worry about extending perfect swim habits over time. Swimming poorly at higher stroke rates in an attempt to increase speed will result in exponential energy usage but with very little speed increase, or perhaps even decrease. It will also raise the probability of injury.
8. Training for short distance sprints versus for longer distance (ie. triathlon swim leg) versus for marathon swims (ie. swim around Manhattan) all have common elements and different elements. Don’t mistake the training that many coaches might do for pool swimming for optimal swim training for long distance.
9. Get to know your stroke counts at given tempos and lengths (ie. 25y, 50m). Take some time to setup a tempo/SPL matrix.
10. Having a Tempo Trainer (TT) means you can have consistency between workouts and know if your skill has increased or decreased day by day. Without the TT, it can be very hard to know if you’re really swimming better or not. Or if you’re having an off day.
11. Get used to swimming with the TT. It can be annoying/distracting/unfamiliar to be swimming to a task master like the TT whose beep forces you to swim to its tune, not to your own. I swim with the TT all the time now and can’t imagine swimming without it for workouts.
12. Get to know the Masters coach. Does he/she care if you break from doing his workouts exactly or does he come over to yell at you if you don’t swim his instructions? Does he let you not swim with tools if you want? Can you swim a set in freestyle even if he calls out back/breast/fly?
Are you able to ignore his instructions or yelling if he comes over and sees you not following your instructions exactly?
Does he comment on your little TT gadget and then make disparaging remarks about it? Or does he even comment on you “swimming TI” and how TI sucks?
It may be time to switch Masters workouts – your goal is to swim better, not to be berated for attempting to improve your swimming. IMHO a great coach should be open to new ideas and not be dismissive. In any case, unless you are specifically on a swim team driven by this coach, you should have more freedom on how you swim his workouts.
If you don’t have a TT, use these tips:
1. Before you start the workout, have a set of things you want to workout during the Masters workout. Generally, these boil down to focal points which will help you practice great swim form and habits.
2. For each interval, pick a focal point or set of focal points. Maintain the focal point for the entire length or lengths.
3. As you pause at the wall, select the next focal point, or keep you current focal point. You may want to practice the same focal point for many laps/lengths/intervals.
4. As your ability to swim with focal points increases, you can start trying to employ more than one focal point within a given swim set.
a. The first method would be to rotate between focal points, changing after each length. Ex. for a 150m lap, you would do focal point 1 for the 1st 50, focal point 2 for the 2nd 50, then back to focal point 1 for the 3rd 50.
b. A more advanced method would be to try to swim any given length while focusing on 2 more focal points at once.
5. Count strokes for each length. For TI, we like to count when the lead arm spears forward as one stroke.
a. Generally the first length seems to always be one stroke less. It is most likely the result of strong initial pushoff plus the length you are swimming with the most energy.
b. If you have a TT, we usually push off on a beep, let one beep go by while gliding, then pull one arm back on the 2nd beep, and our first official counted stroke is on the 3rd beep. This works for tempos of 1.2s or higher (or slower tempo). For faster tempo, we sometimes let another beep go by.
In general, you want to start stroking at about the same point in a pool length, which is usually around where the flags are. If you start stroking at different points in the lane, you’ll find your stroke count could vary by 1-2 on this fact alone.
If you have a TT, use these tips:
Use the tips for without the TT and combine with the below:
Warm Up Set:
1. Use the warm up set to determine your easy and cruise tempo for the day. It may be your usual easy and cruise tempos, or it may have changed due to other factors like fatigue.
2. Determine how many lengths or laps you can swim for your warmup. Start with your easy tempo. Aim to increase your tempo each length or lap until you hit your cruise tempo. So do some quick math and know the increment you want to increase tempo with, and adjust the TT after every length or lap.
Do not be afraid to not increase the TT if you are not feeling comfortable just yet. Swim another lap and see if adaptation occurs on this or the next length/lap.
If for some reason you’re just not able to increase it, you may have reached your current neural threshold. This is a data point for use later during the set.
3. You can use the warm up set to employ some focal points to fine tune your technique for the main set. This can also be a good time to see which focal points you need more work with, or less.
Main Set:
1. Get to know your tempos for the various effort levels a Masters coach might designate for a set. These might be easy, cruise, tempo, fast, strong, sprint, etc. These will also vary by length. Ex. you might be able to sprint at .7s tempo for 50m but you have a hard time sustaining that for 100m so you set at .8s.
Note this changes day to day based on fitness/fatigue level, and also as your skill grows.
2. Upon hearing the set, think quickly on the tempo(s) you will use, adjust the TT before you swim.
3. Depending on the set, you may or may not need to adjust the TT.
Sometimes you may go out too fast a tempo for a given set or fitness/fatigue level. You may need to pause at the wall to readjust tempo.
4. The easiest sets to swim with the TT are the ones that have a pause at the wall, which is time for you to be able to adjust the TT. So 3×50 descend 1-2-3 on 1:50 interval would have pauses between 50s to speed up tempo to aid in the descend.
The more difficult, if not impossible sets, are the ones that vary speed without you pausing at the wall. For example, a set which is 150s descending 50s would be tough to stop in between the lengths to adjust the TT. In situations like this, I would recommend one of two options:
a. Don’t adjust the TT. Just swim the entire 150 at one tempo. Note that this may cause yelling at you by the coach.
b. Set the TT at the starting tempo which is slower. Then attempt to “beat the beep” on the subsequent lengths. You could set it at the ending tempo but I find that it is more comfortable to start with the slower beep and then beat it on the subsequent lengths.
5. TI discourages the use of tools like fins and paddles. Depending on the situation, they have their uses. However, they do tend to interfere with developing the finer points of swimming that we teach. You should consider not swimming with them even during sets which require them.
6. If you are primarily a freestyle swimmer, consider free for sets that are back/breast/fly. You should essentially practice free as much as possible to get better at it. This may also result in a yelling session from your coach.
7. Over the time of a Masters workout, I like to end up at a faster tempo than when I started. This is because:
a. As my nervous system adapts, I can generally sustain higher tempos.
b. Pushing higher tempos challenges my neural threshold. My goal is to maintain form at higher tempos which in theory means I should be swimming faster.
c. Over the course of a race, you always want to end up either at the same effort level or higher by the end. Most of your competitors won’t have trained that way and will fizzle while you will be experiencing rising energy and, hopefully, speed.
So start with Easy->Cruise during Warm Up. Then start the first sets at cruise tempo and eventually end up faster than that, probably ending up at tempo which may end up being the new cruise tempo by the end of the workout, maybe even sprint tempo if the coach designates some sprints at the end.
8. Don’t increase tempo or back off to previous tempo if your nervous system isn’t adapting to the new tempo. Evidence is speed drop off, form breaks down, extra effort or discomfort experienced, etc. However, be patient. Try again in a set or two. Sometimes a little more time needs to happen before adaptation.
Having said that, if you just increased tempo and finding it tough to adapt AND you feel good still, try swimming a length or 2 or 3 at the new faster tempo. You may adapt after a few more lengths.
8. Be mindful of stroke counts and times to swim a length or lap. Practice using your brain to keep track of both as much as possible to know when your form is slipping. For example, a stroke count increase of 2 or more between lengths probably means your form faltered on that length, if the tempo remained constant. Another example: if you stroked at a faster tempo but your time to swim the length remained the same as with a slower tempo, was that a good set or bad?
Cool Down:
1. Simple method is to set it very slow and swim but with the same mindfulness. The aim is to swim technique-wise the same whether slow tempo or fast. But swimming slowly will cool you down.
2. Turn off the TT and swim slowly.
3. Practice minimizing stroke count with and without the TT.
4. Use focal points but with slower tempo for cool down.

ARPWave and EVOUltrafit: Rehab and Training via Electrostim

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In my journey to find the ultimate and most efficient training methods, I came across the next stop in my quest at Dave Asprey’s Bulletproof Conference back in January. There I met Dr. Justin Marchegiani of Just In Health and Jay Schroeder and Charles Maka of EVOultrafit.
Both of them specialize in using electrostim devices made by ARPWave to enhance treatment of muscle and movement issues and results in training. Yes, think Rocky IV where they had shots of Dolph Lundgren training with electrostim pads stuck to his chest! This is, of course, the real thing. Apparently, the Russians had pioneered the use of electrostim in training many years back. Now here with ARPWave, they have brought this to the public here in the US and it works great. Rather than attempting the long explanation of how it works, see the ARPWave How It Works description.
Dr. Justin is a chiropractor and nutritionist and he trained under Dr. Jay Pietila in his In-Balance system which uses the ARP devices to first determine where muscle imbalances are, and, then, to treat them. The In-Balance Technique can evaluate “neurological signaling from the brain to the body” and determine if they are balanced via strategic placement of the electrodes and moving them around the body. Injuries and rehabilitation can both also be done with similar methods.
I went to Dr. Justin for several treatments and it was fascinating to see him probe my body with the electrodes, sometimes seeing myself jump in reaction. These were areas of concern and showed dysfunction and imbalances. He then stuck electrodes on those areas, turned up the power, and then had me do movements. With the power cranked, compensation patterns appear and I was forced to do the movements correctly, without compensation patterns and fighting through the intensity of the electrostimulation (see more info on ARP Therapy). The sessions were so intense that I had delayed onset muscle soreness for days after! Not sleeping enough, nor eating enough didn’t help my recovery. But after about the 3rd visit, I started seeing some great results.
For example, I had a nagging problem with my TFL (Tensor Fasciae Latae) muscle, a small muscle on my hip. It always seemed to be firing and was taut all day long, which is pretty annoying. I tried everything to get it to calm down but nothing really worked. With Dr. Justin’s probing, we figured out that it was not the TFL but my Sartorius muscle, which attaches in the same place as the TFL. He hooked that muscle up, stimmed the hell out of it while forcing me to walk in place and do squats. Soon after (well, after the soreness went away!) I didn’t feel my TFL/Sartorius any more!
Around the same time, I began a training program with Jay and Charles at EVOUltrafit. And of course I had to own one of these electrostim bad boys myself – so I plunked down some cash to get one and wanted to see if training the EVO way would help rid myself of some nagging problems I’ve had, like cramping out in the last half of marathons. But also, according to Jay and Charles, the use of the electrostim machine not only prepares me physically for athletic pursuits, it also stimulates my CNS (central nervous system) and all sorts of other things start to work better, like my glands, hormones, digestion, cognition, and thinking. I didn’t care about the cost – this sounded like the answer to all my problems all at once! I bought one of their POVsport devices, which is the consumer version of the electrostim devices.


Jay Schroeder
A table full of POVs!

Charles Maka hooking me up
Compensatory action!

I submitted a thorough evaluation. I ran set distances, and did some physical tests. I also submitted videos of me doing some typical workouts. It wasn’t pretty. They wanted to see me hop on one leg, on two legs, sprint some distances – pretty bad since I hadn’t done anything for months!
They came back with a program that uses what they call “isoextremes” which are isometric hold type exercises. The four I started with are:
1. Standing Push Up
2. Wall Squat
3. Scapular Pull Up
4. Lunge


Me doing a wall squat hooked up with electrodes

The way these exercises are done aren’t probably the way most people think they are done. For example, the lunge is not an exercise which works the quads; instead, you are supposed to pull the lead leg into a leg curl via the hamstrings, and the rear leg is supposed to have tension pulling it back and upwards. Many of these isoextremes seek to teach the body how to lengthen muscles which may normally think we’d want to tense up in order to do the isometric exercises. It also seems that these isoextremes also train the nervous system to react in the proper way to movements and absorbing force – somehow they have found that holding static positions can train the nervous system to act while moving. Pretty cool stuff!
They gave me specific electrode placements based on issues they saw in the videos. Being experienced coaches/trainers/therapists, they didn’t need to see me live; they could pick out all my problems just by looking at my doing some movements. While the isoextremes can train me by doing them alone, they are more effective when combined with a POVsport unit and proper electrostimulation of the right muscles.
I then proceeded to train on their protocols. Before each workout, I would “loosen” using the POVsport. Depending on the settings, the POVsport can cause muscles to be conditioned or loosened – the waveform it generates is patented and is not like other electrostim units. I was skeptical at first but loosening works pretty well. The stim magnifies your normal loosening movements and helps warm up the body while causing muscles to release their tightness.
Each movement is about 8 minutes in duration, doing 1 minute of work with a minute of rest. At first, they were pretty unfamiliar and difficult. Adding the electrostim coursing through various muscles didn’t help as my muscles were thrumming at many many times per second. In the power output of the POVsport, level 100 is the level at which the body, it it can tolerate it, will experience no compensatory patterns at all. So a goal is to get to power level 100 at some point.
I also joined up with their monthly webinar series. The first one was interesting – it’s an hour of discussion and teaching through personal experiences with the POV via protocols that Jay/Charles give us, and then we observe the results after about a month. Fascinating stuff and I think necessary to really learn how to get the most out of my POV. Hooking electrodes up yourself without direction is a pretty dangerous thing – there are stories of people overloading their CNS accidentally and throwing them into a state of “restoration” which means they are mimicking a state of severe sickness and weakness! Bad news. Think I’ll walk slowly and with lots of direction….
What results after about a month of EVO training?
Some tightness – my body has a “fear” reaction to this foreign stimulus of electrostim and seems to cause some tightness in their overnight protocols while sleeping. But I switched to another one they gave us during the webinar and the tightness went away!
Some of the results were masked by me getting conjunctivitis and a spring time allergy attack. Also lack of sleep from new young kids in the house doesn’t help. But on days when I do get a good sleep, I can see a marked increase in ability – I think my resources get too tied up with managing the lack of sleep mostly and also the occasional malady that has hit over the last few weeks.
Interestingly enough, my deadlift movement has a new feeling. Before EVO workouts, I would deadlift my kids off the ground for practice, or my kettlebells or barbells and have to clench my glutes or “close off my sphincter” to make sure I am getting proper posterior chain activation. But after I started EVO training, all of a sudden I was feeling both glutes AND hamstring activation, which is better and exactly what I want! This is an awesome result.
Some of the lengthening aspects of the isoextremes have also worked well. On the standing push up, I can nearly relax my pecs so much and get them to lengthen upon contraction of my lats so much that I can nearly pull myself through a doorway. The wall squat seems to have gotten easier but it’s still a willpower challenge. Hanging from the scapular pull up, I can lengthen my lats quite a bit, but my grip suffers a ton. Charles tells me this is natural although I wish my grip were better. The lunge seems to be working on one side better. I can really flex my glutes/hams on my left side (left leg back, right leg forward) to lengthen my hip flexor and quads, but not so well with my right leg back.
The whole thing is fascinating as an experiment in using an external device to help with my training and improving aspects of my physical condition. I am looking forward to further training with the POV unit to accelerate training and fitness, and to run a marathon without cramping!

Functional Movement Screen Level 2 with Dr. Mark Cheng

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Last year, I took the FMS online certification class and it left me wanting more information. Screening someone for imbalances is fine, but what do you do with them afterwards?
Getting some corrective exercises prescribed to me was great, but I didn’t have a great idea on how to prescribe correctives to someone else via their results of the screen. I spent a ton of cash on DVDs and materials from Gray Cook but still I felt there was something missing.
This is why I leaped on the chance to take the FMS Level 1 and 2 certification when it finally came to SF. And also, it was being taught by Dr. Mark Cheng, renowned martial artist, Sr. SFG instructor, and proponent of the FMS. I have been a big fan of Doc Cheng’s for a while now, after I started on my path to the SFG Level 1 certification. Now I would get the chance to meet him live and hear him teach the FMS.
I took both the FMS Level 1 and 2 even though I already was certified in Level 1 via the online system. I didn’t want to miss Doc Cheng’s lecture on the first part – hearing it live versus in online materials is much better and it constantly evolves, so I would get the latest information that weekend. FMS Level 1 teaches the screen only, and FMS Level 2 teaches the corrective exercises. So to me, knowing the screen is great but less than half the battle; most of the work happens after the screen in making the client a better athlete.
It was more than I hoped for! Now I had the templates and methodology to apply corrective exercises in a systematic way to correct an athlete’s imbalances which were sorely missing from just taking the FMS Level 1 course! The general path to treating a client goes like this:
1. Identify the imbalances via the screen
2. Mobility
3. Static motor control
4. Dynamic motor control
5. Strength and conditioning
You screen someone and determine their most critical imbalances; then you go through each step in order, making sure that the client has achieved a basic level of each step before moving onto the next. In our course, we are given a ton of corrective exercises, most of which are found at Functional Movement website. Without taking the course, these exercises were all a big jumble. Which ones should I apply and when? Which one should I do first? How do I know when something is working? All these were outlined in the course.
Learning the screen in Level 1 is great, but without Level 2 it is almost pointless. I highly recommend taking both together and not just online but live in front of a lecturer. Doc Cheng was awesome and I hope to hear him again, as well as someday Gray Cook and Lee Burton the creators of the FMS soon.

The Functional Movement Screen, Corrective Exercises, Movement Patterns, and Fixing Me!

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A while back, my sports med doc put me through the Functional Movement Screen or FMS. The FMS is a set of 7 physical tests, designed to capture movement imbalances between your left and right sides. Research has shown that movement imbalances are a great predictor of potential for injury. With the FMS, trainers and clinicians now have a tool to measure athletes’ imbalances. But there is more: the FMS system includes a set of corrective exercises which are designed to be used from the results of the FMS. The whole system is very templatized; you don’t need to think about which corrective exercise to use but simply employ the progressions depending on the results of the test. Another big advance that the FMS makes is that it attempts to treat imbalances via movement patterns, not individual muscles. Traditionally, clinicians would attempt to exercise individual muscles when addressing problems.
These few sentences above do not do the FMS justice; the founder Gray Cook has better discussion on his site FunctionalMovement.com.
When I took the test, I didn’t really do any of the corrective exercises and didn’t fully understand the purpose of the FMS. Recently I started digging deeper into the FMS and what its full purpose is. I bought a ton of the FMS DVDs from Perform Better and went through them all. I realized that here could be the answer to nagging athletic problems that I’ve had through the years! For example, I have a tendency to cramp in my inner right quad by the knee on marathons – I have tried everything to cure cramps: electrolyte/salt tablets, strength training, more training, different types of training – nothing seemed to cure it. Each year I would race a marathon and inevitably no matter how hard I trained, or how many salt/electrolyte pills I would take, I would still cramp in the latter half of the race.
However, now the FMS has given me more clues at to why I might be cramping and why all those other reasons could never completely cure it. It has to do with muscle imbalances which cause me to compensate for poor movement patterns, and these muscles used in compensating eventually wipe out before the end of the marathon, causing me to cramp up.
Or at least that seems to be the theory. Certainly there is nothing left to try!
I got tested via the FMS again from my sports med doc. Then I got a series of corrective exercises to employ from the results of the FMS. For the last 2 months, I’ve been doing them multiple times a week. Although I have not retested my running again, I’ve noticed some interesting results:
1. My core control is not optimal in the push up. Working on this allowed me to correctly tense up my entire body so that when I push up, my body comes up as a single unit, with no body part lagging.
2. My left/right balance is very uneven. I have a tendency to always lean to the right, even when balancing on my left leg. I worked with some Gray Cook Bands on my one leg stance:

The other thing that helped my left leg balance was the use of a technique called Reactive Neuromuscular Training (RNT). I used a Gray Cook Band on my left knee, pulling it inward into a “mistake” which is called Valgus Collapse. When the band pulls my knee inward, my body relearns how to stop my knee from collapsing inward, firing the right muscles. So I did rear lunges and high steps onto a 12″ surface both with the band pulling my left knee inward. After a few weeks of this, this really helped my balance a ton. Before this, I would step up 12″ and I would wobble like crazy and then tip to the right. After doing this for a few weeks, I could step up now with decent balance.
Both have improved my ability to balance on my left leg.
3. A surprising result was when I was trying to improve the stability of my core in a quadriped position. There is a drill which is called Rolling Pattern.

You have to roll back and forth with one elbow touching the opposite knee.
When I did this, my right side, or right arm extended above my head, was fine. However, I had major problems with my left side, or left arm extended above my head. I worked on this for a while and finally got the hang of doing it with left arm extended.
This had an expected result in improving my swimming. I had been having a lot of trouble with my left arm spearing forward/right leg kicking in two beat kick. I could not generate the same amount of my propulsion when spearing with my right arm forward. The coordination had eluded me for months until I did this drill and got better at it. All of a sudden, I was experiencing much better propulsion on my left spear! This Rolling Pattern had somehow awakened the right core activation to initiate the right movements in the left spear action.
4. I also discovered some pelvic control issues in the active straight leg raise while lying down. To help with this, I used a Gray Cook Band to improve my core engagement while raising one leg at a time while lying down:

At the moment, I am working through some corrective exercises with the kettlebell. Gray Cook created a special FMS system that is designed with kettlebells called the CK-FMS. There are a number of great corrective concepts coming out of the kettlebell community and I am going through those one by one. One of my favorites is Kettlebells from the Ground Up 2, whose drills showed that I still had poor pelvic control in a straight leg raised position. For me, I am going through those to activate the right stabilizing muscles while swinging a cannonball with a handle on it – definitely taking some time for my body to figure out how to do that right and without messing myself up!
As a result of all this, I got certified with the FMS Level 1 a few months back. This allowed me to administer the test but I was still missing the critical FMS Level 2 which was the set of corrective exercises to give as a result of the test. I am looking forward to that this coming March in SF with the infamous Dr. Mark Cheng, one of the most knowledgeable folks in the field.
As I learn to become a personal trainer, I find that the FMS is a critical part of the equation. Gray Cook is fond of saying that he refuses to train people unless they get a minimum score on the FMS and that left and right sides of an athlete are equally balanced, or equally inbalanced. I think this is one of the most important concepts missing with personal training today, which is both an issue with trainers and with clients. Clients are mostly at fault because they just think they can go out there and train and race, regardless of their physical condition, and have no patience for doing something else. Trainers need to build a business, and clients who want to leap into training immediately often will leave trainers who don’t start immediately and recommend something else.
As a guy who has experienced first hand what can happen to an unbalanced body, I wish that someone could have put me through the FMS system before I started training for triathlon. Those corrections would have balanced my body and then could have made my racing career much less injury prone, perhaps even removing cramps during my marathons.
I look forward to continuing corrective exercises on myself, and also the FMS Level 2 course coming in March to the SF Bay!
Some other interesting observations as a result of this process and things I’m looking into:
1. I learned about mechanoreceptors on my feet and how important they are to activating the right muscles during walking and running. If they do not get the proper stimulus, then my movement pattern for walking/running can get totally messed up. I also learned that this can extend up to the ankle as well, so loosening up the ankle through dorsiflexion exercises as well as releasing tension in the feet can make a huge difference in how you perform during a workout.
2. Evaluating the difference between the left and right sides for the active straight leg raise whlie lying down can show problems in running. If one side is more restricted than the other, then the length of my stride will be different on each side, which can cause compensations and other problems when my body tries to use other muscles and body parts to equalize my stride.
3. I’m building up my spinal stabilizers, which still aren’t firing correctly. This is critical not only for the Deep Squat, but also for improving my Deadlift and maintaining proper back position during heavy kettlebell swings. Many FMS corrective exercises involve helping my spinal stabilizers to fire properly again. This has helped greatly in my deadlifting and achieve my goal of 2x body weight.
4. Maintaining proper back alignment has many more critical effects than I could have imagined.
5. Been reading up on the Janda method for correcting muscle imbalances (see Assessment and Treatment of Muscle Imbalance:The Janda Approach). Fascinating stuff!
6. Equally fascinating are the methods pioneered by Alois Brügger in Switzerland for postural correction. Very related to FMS corrections.
7. The master of backs is Dr. Stuart McGill. More stuff to dig into.
8. It also has made rethink gluteal amnesia and what it means to treat it. While glutes being weak and not firing is a big problem, they can’t only be trained in isolation as a muscle group. Merely getting them stronger and firing again doesn’t mean they will fire properly in the right sequence during movement. Again this is where FMS corrective exercises come into play, and retraining the body for proper movement, potentially starting from infant based movements on the ground to standing up.
9. Along with 8., I find the concept of not strengthening stabilizers to be eye opening. This is what therapists did before. If you injured a stabilizing muscle, they made you do weights or reps with that muscles, thinking that’s what would make it work properly again. But this is only half the equation; rehab-ing it may require manual manipulation and some training to get it functional and pain free, but it doesn’t mean the nervous system is going to fire it properly during movement.
10. This is my big learning after 9. Pain and injury can cause your nervous system to compensate and remove proper movement patterns, replacing them with patterns that will allow you to complete the movement but with the muscles and structures that weren’t designed to do it for long periods of time. Some of these movement patterns need to be re-patterned back after injury and pain.
11. Central nervous system training has come to the forefront of my mind in my own training.

The Gentler Side of Muscle Scraping

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Graston Technique and Gua Sha generally bring up images of someone taking a blunt metal tool and painfully bruising the heck out of your muscles, but with amazingly positive results. But recently, I have been experimenting with scraping with a lot less force with also positive results.
Watching Gray Cook on his Secrets of the Hip and Knee DVD talk about his use of The Stick, he advises rolling the stick on restricted muscles gently on the affected area 20-40 times in order to achieve some release. He also says to put the muscle in a relaxed and not flexed position or else it could achieve less or negative effects.
Recently, I was having some tightness in my flexor hallucis on my left leg. I tried to calm it down using some vigorous manipulation via a TPMassage Roller, and then a Rumble Roller. I put my calf/flexor hallucis on it and rolled deeply and strongly. I even put a 35lb Kettlebell on my lap to put more weight on the calf. But it reacted negatively; my nerves fired up and then it tightened up reflexively for the rest of the next day!
Generally, Graston scraping involves only 3-6 passes at most over an affected area. A skilled practictioner can often tell how many passes to make and how much pressure to apply. By reducing the number of passes, vigorous and deep scraping can be done but without a negative reaction; instead, a positive reaction results and the muscle calms down as well as releases.
Obviously I had overdone it on my calf and flexor hallucis. But then I remembered what Gray Cook said and decided to try my metal tools in a more gentler fashion.
First I put my foot on a ledge and then pushed up on my ankle BUT I did not flex my calf muscle; I just locked out my ankle to keep my lower leg up on the ball of my foot, and I kept my muscle relaxed. Then I took my Myo-Bar Fascia Bar and gently applied pressure, stroking the muscle about 20 times. It was more like a targeted massage then anything else but nowhere near as vigorous as I did with the rollers nor what a Graston practictioner might do.
This had immediate more positive results. My muscle was much more relaxed and did not have a negative reaction to this treatment. My flexor hallucis unclenched as I worked through the knots and adhesions, smoothing out the muscle and making it functional again.
I then repeated this same thing to my forearms, which were sore from doing chin-ups, grip training, and carrying my newborn daughter around so much. I gently pressed in and moved a Myo-bar Healing Edge I along the muscle lines of my inner forearm near the elbow about 20 times. By next morning, my forearm felt much better – one area which I missed was still sore, which shows that something good had happened from this less forceful manipulation with the tool.
Interesting to see that both deep, forceful scraping can be used as well as more gentle scraping and both have their applications in restoring muscle function.
Here is a current list of muscle scraping tools available now:
Myo-bar – Myofascial tools for IASTM, Gua Sha, FAKTR, and other soft tissue therapies.
Synergy Soft Tissue – Home of the Synergy Tool.
Gua Sha Tools.com – Modern Gua Sha Tools for the Rehabilitation Professional.
The FAST Technique – FAST Tools are the soft tissue mobilization tools that can take myo-fascial manipulation and mobilization to the next level in your practice.
STARR Tool – The Swiss Army Knife of IASTM tools that comes with instructions and demonstration videos.
And for those who are old school:
Gua Sha Shop.com – The number one gua sha tool store.

The Deadlift Update: Focus and Nervous System Activation

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It’s been a while since I’ve been on this deadlifting kick. My goal is still to reach 2x my bodyweight and I am currently at 255 lbs. at a weight of 145. Only a measly 35 lbs to go!
My strength workouts look something like this. I am also beginning my RKC training so adding the overhead carry and suitcase carry to help me get through the test, which will probably take around 3-4 years to prepare for:
Bench
2x 135 lbs
4x clap push-up
RI 5:00 (RI= Rest Interval)
@ 2:00 into the RI, hold 245 off the rack for 10 count
2x 155 lbs
4x clap push-up
RI 5:00 (RI= Rest Interval)
@ 2:00 into the RI, hold 245 off the rack for 10 count
1-2x 180 lbs
4x clap push-up
Deadlift
2x 135 lbs
4x hop up 22″
RI 5:00
@ 2:00 into the RI, standing hold 315 off the rack for 10 count
2x 175 lbs
4x hop up 22″
RI 5:00
@ 2:00 into the RI, standing hold 315 off the rack for 10 count
2×225 lbs
4x hop up 22″
RI 5:00
@ 2:00 into the RI, standing hold 315 off the rack for 10 count
2×255 lbs
4x hop up 22″
Overhead carry 40 lbs dumbbell for 1:00, each arm
Suitcase carry 55 lbs dumbbell for 1:00, each arm
2x 10 reps of Assisted Glute Ham Raises
3x 4x 5 sec of Torture Twist
Along the way, I discovered a few things:
1. In my infinite inability to add up the weight of plates on the bar, I DL-ed 270 lbs by accident. This was a dumb move and glad I didn’t hurt anything. On the other hand, I am heartened that I could DL 270 lbs.
2. I mistakenly trusted the ability of my nervous system to imprint the proper activation on a lift. About 3 weeks ago, I put up 255 lbs only to realize I did something bad to my back. As my muscles recovered, the discomfort and a twinge of pain that remained in my back led me to believe that something happened to my spine itself. I used Rocktape to either side of my spine which eased some of the muscle tension, and also support the muscles as I recovered. I then iced my lower back which brought the swelling of discs under control. It took a full 2 weeks to get back into the gym, and I restarted my lifting at 245 and just got back up to 255 lbs.
3. As I built to 255 lbs, my body weight has not changed at all. It is floating around 144 give or take a pound. To me, this is real evidence that strength is not about muscle size; it is much more about nervous system activation of muscle fibers and the ability to generate tension with as many fibers as possible. Thus, as I increase weight (about 5 lbs on the bar, every 5th workout), I am causing adaptation to happen in my nervous system to adapt to generating tension/nerves firing into muscle fibers enough to DL that weight. Right now, I need about 4 workouts to adapt to a new weight. After that, I can advance, but only 5 lbs at a time, 2.5 lbs on each side.
4. I cannot lose focus. DL-ing is truly about training the brain to hold the focus on activating the nervous system, firing nerves into the muscles to hold that tension against heavy weights.
5. Crushing the bar really helps activation of muscles. I feel tension from my hands up my arms into my entire body. It hurts to try to squeeze and crush the bar and my palms are getting pretty messed up. Oh well.
6. Holding heavy weights in between the lifts helps shut off my nervous system’s natural response to loads that feel too heavy but are actually not. This is called the Golgi tendon reflex. All I need is about 10 seconds to hold, at about 2 minutes into the rest interval.
Marching onwards to 290 lbs…!

We Are Weak

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Yesterday I was going through the first of Gray Cook’s DVD series on the Certified Kettlebell-Functional Movement Screen or CK-FMS. The FMS was developed by Gray Cook as a way to consistently and accurately assess an athlete via only 7 tests. It could tell you where your muscle inbalances were and your weaknesses that need to be corrected. In fact, if Gray trains you, he will put you through the FMS and you must correct your inbalances before he gets into the meat of your training! This totally makes sense – too many coaches just throw you into intense training for competition without figuring out whether or not your body is ready for the training.
In the first DVD, he goes through the origin of FMS. I am amazed at some of the videos he showed during the development process of FMS. There was this one video of a girl who played basketball. As a test, she jumped down from a plyo bench, and then leaped up to grab a basketball suspended pretty high up there. She made it fairly easily – great for a basketball player! HOWEVER, when she leaped down and landed, her knees bent inward to absorb the shock of landing and provide spring for the leap upward! Definitely not an ideal movement pattern.
In fact, during the FMS development process, Gray found that they could predict accurately where an athlete would eventually develop problems or get injured, based on the inbalances and weaknesses they found with the screen! That’s frickin’ amazing!
But then I got depressed. I thought back to when I first began triathlon. We had no FMS back then and I got injured a lot. There were points where people told me I was genetically disinclined for this activity and almost believed them – thankfully, part of me told me that this could not be, and I spent the next several years figuring out what really was right and fumbled my way to a mostly pain free athletic career.
Still I rewound further in my head. I thought about my life. In grade school I never played sports. I was always the small guy and other kids were always faster and stronger. It didn’t help that I was born in November so I was actually physically younger than everyone else in my grade. So I got discouraged from doing physical fitness and my parents weren’t into fitness so they would rather see their kid study than run around outside.
After I got into college, it was only then I began some martial arts and some weight lifting. But that was 18 years of pretty much little or no activity and then leaping into martial arts and pumping iron! And I got injured here and there. My muscles and nervous system were not keyed for movement at all. Still I made it through Tae Kwon Do, a bit of Aikido and Shotokan Karate, and trying to get huge via the Arnold method of lifting to failure.
After college, I became the typical worker man. I sat in front of a computer for the bulk of a day. And in doing so, sitting destroyed a whole bunch of movement patterns mostly by giving me gluteal amnesia. I did weight lift here and there, but it was to get huge and not to train for strength or movement.
No wonder when I got to 2002, I started triathlon and got injured a lot! So many years of basically making my body weaker and weaker, never training movement patterns and strengthening them. Just sitting around on my ass typing on a computer. And working out but not in a way that strengthened my system, muscular and neural.
But in the middle of it all is the fact that I got weak. I got really weak. I didn’t have even the basic strength profile of a triathlete and I started training. Looking back, no wonder I got hurt.
Fast forward to today – after watching Gray Cook talk about his ability to PREDICT injury in athletes by their inbalances and weaknesses, I now thought back to how wrong we are in general about training and injury. If I had taken the FMS back in 2002, I bet it would have told me exactly where and when I would have gotten injured. But also I needed a change in philosophy and an update in my training knowledge. There is so much crap out there about training now and it sickens me every time I read yet another expert’s training advice.
Still the way our society is, our lazy, sedentary culture – who hauls wood and bricks any more, or does manual labor? – has become weak. We need to change this. This is why I’m building my REAL strength now and learning how to teach others how to reclaim their strength – and I’m not talking about the bulked up size of bodybuilders – I’m talking basic strength, strength that comes not from size, but proper and maximal activation of the body’s resources towards a common physical goal.

Hardstyle Kettlebell Certification in NYC 6-30-12

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On Saturday June 30, I was in NYC the week prior on business and decided to stay an extra day to attend Hardstyle Kettlebell Certification (HKC) workshop and get certified.
I had first discovered kettlebells shortly after reading Four Hour Body by Tim Ferriss and began using them regularly, although I had no formal training and only went by what I read in books and saw in DVDs. But now I was in a place where I really should get some formal training on how to use them, because as evidenced by my first attempts at deadlifting, I was totally doing it wrong until someone set me straight.
In addition to my Total Immersion swim coach certification, I thought that I had better start broadening my credibility in personal training, which is basically to go out and get as many certifications as you can. Interesting industry, this personal training stuff. I don’t have an Olympic medal or professional sports career to fall back on; I gotta go get all these “degrees” in many areas of personal training to be credible and expert in the eyes of potential clients.
Also, given that I’ve stopped doing Ironmans for the time being, and pretty much all long distance racing also, I felt the need for another challenge. And there was one related to kettlebells, which is the Russian Kettlebell Challenge (RKC) which is part strength/endurance challenge and part certification for becoming a kettlebell instructor of the first degree. What makes this ridiculous in some ways is the strength test at the end: I have to snatch, single armed, a 24kg (53lb) kettlebell 100 times in 5 minutes! At the moment, I can barely snatch a 16kg (35lb) kettlebell 3 times before taking a break, and then only my right arm and not my left! So having done the Ironman thing, it’s now time to set my sights on yet another physical challenge!
One note: while the 100 snatches in 5 minutes is daunting, the whole RKC workshop is a challenge in itself. It covers 3 full days of workshops, tossing around heavy kettlebells each day, and then you have the strength test at the end. This is something I definitely experienced in the single day of the HKC workshop!
The HKC workshop was held at the Five Points Academy, a MMA training studio on the top floor of a building I must have walked past dozens of times, at the corner of Broadway and Canal. The day was a typical extra hot NYC day; it probably rose to 95+ outside with steamy humid air, and the air conditioning in the MMA studio was only half working. Not good!
As you walk in you see a showcase of MMA belts won by winners who work out there:

I got there early and sat down near the racks of kettlebells along the wall:

It’s nice to see a gym that isn’t scared of putting kettlebells out for general use. I’ve been to other gyms where they are always either very light or locked up in some special room. Yes kettlebells are pretty dangerous; you swing them around and if you let go, you better hope that nobody is around you – and woe to the floor when it hits!
The HKC workshop started with a strength test: 5 chin-ups, full lock out of arms at the bottom, chin must clear the top of the bar at the top of the chin. You can also do pull-ups as well; either one is OK. Women can choose to do the chin/pull-up test or do the 15 seconds hold at the top of the bar, either pull or chin-up style. We got this over with thankfully at the beginning of the day as I was worried about doing this after being wiped out all day from workshop activities. But little did I know what was in store endurance-wise later.
We then went through a lot of great stuff. These were:
1. Proper deadlift form with kettlebell. This formed the basis for starting many kettlebell moves. Engaging the spring potential of the glutes and hamstrings. Use of a Functional Movement System technique with pole to teach proper back alignment.
2. Belly breathing, and the use of breathing to generate energy.
3. The Goblet Squat. How to load the weight, breathing while performing this squat. Back positioning and tips and tricks to get the back aligned correctly. Prying the knees apart by using the tips of the elbows against the inner thighs. Proper alignment of the knees and feet.
4. The Turkish Get-Up – We went through each of the parts of the Turkish Get-Up one by one. Very complex, a great move and great to get instruction on it live. Proper positioning of the limbs, and also where to look during each part of the Get-Up.
5. The Two Arm and One Arm Swing – Proper foot positioning on start, using the deadlift to load the weight, alignment and bracing of the body for swinging. Use of glutes and hamstrings to launch the kettlebell, timing of the arms and when to bend over. Proper height of the swing.
In each one, we were asked to take the information we got and teach it to our partners. This helped us practice coaching the concepts and what to look for, and how to correct it. Tips and tricks abound, and the coaching experience of the RKC instructors showed.
All day we grabbed kettlebells of varying sizes, given the exercise we were practicing. We would do them over and over and over again and coaches helped correct bad movements. By the end of the day, we were all wiped! And the half working A/C didn’t help either.
The real kicker came at the end. Not only did we have to do the strength test in the beginning, we then had to do a mini-strength test of the Goblet Squat, the Turkish Get-Up, AND the one armed Swing! Good thing I brought two bottles of energy drink and tons of fruit and trail mix. But at the end of the day, all of that was nearly gone.
We got up one by one to test. I did OK with the Goblet Squat and one armed Swing, but totally messed up the Turkish Get-Up. I thought I was sunk! But then, one of the RKC coaches called me back up to demonstrate the Turkish Get-Up and he passed me thankfully, attributing the first fail to nerves. Whew! Those that do not pass need to submit a video to the coaches within a month or so for retest. Thankfully I got all of it done that day.
They gave us our coveted HKC manuals and I bought a Five Points Academy T-shirt for a souvenir:

Afterwards, I stunk and felt like I had raced an Ironman! For days after, my hamstrings and glutes were tight. At least this was as it should be; if my arms were tight, then I wasn’t executing kettlebell moves correctly! But certainly I was not trained enough for that kind of day…
After completing the HKC, I’ve now got my sights on the RKC. This is now three similar grueling days of instruction on coaching methods (and the participants are practicing the moves with the kettlebells all day, each day) and then, the nice big strength test at the end consisting of snatching a 24kg/53 lb a minimum of 100 times in 5 minutes. More on this later as I begin the journey to see if I can even hoist that much weight over my head without doing some serious damage to myself.

A Run with Zozi Guru Dean Karnazes and Awesome Lessons Learned

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Two Saturdays ago, I had the awesome opportunity to do a run with Dean Karnazes who is part of the Zozi Guru program.

The day was beautiful and the run was out in Big Sur. We ran through groves of poison oak which was not fun, but the day was sunny and not cold and more than made up for stressing about whether or not I was going to get a ton of itchy blisters.
I’ve been following his exploits ever since he wrote Ultramarathon Man which is a great read. Since then, he’s been an inspiration to me as an Ironman triathlete and marathoner. Endurance events take a certain mindset; some people can’t enjoy the long hours on the road but you gotta be able to last to the end. Somehow, I’ve come to enjoy the long hours out on my bike, or running on the road. After I fixed most of my running issues, I too have come to just love running for the sake of running.
Thus, it was a real treat to run with him and hear some of his philosophies on running and on life. Here were some of the stand outs:
Technology is Great for Kids Especially in Keeping in Touch
Dean recounted a conversation with his wife on whether or not to give their kids mobile phones at such an early age. His wife was skeptical, but he prevailed. Later, he travelled away to race and after the long race, he texted a picture of himself at the finish line and his kids responded within seconds! Since then, his wife became a believer. Since Dean spends a lot of time away from home, technology has helped keep in touch with his family no matter where he is.
Overspend on Bringing Family to Races, Make it Something to Look Forward To, Not Dread
Dean likes to make each race he attends a major event for his family. Since he does so many of them and sometimes they are in very remote places, he overspends on them to make them extra special. In this way, he makes his races something his family looks forward to, rather than avoiding because they aren’t fun to go to.
Training Distance is Very Individual
I asked Dean about typical training programs for ultramarathoning. I noted that some of them I found on the internet ran never over marathon distance. Was that enough to complete a 100 mile race? He told me that in his travels, he has met some great runners who only train up to marathon distance, and some that train nearly up to the distance of the race itself. He is of the opinion that some can race well by training only marathon distance, but some need to train longer distances. It is very individual and the only way to find out is to try it yourself.
Runs with High Leg Turnover
This is consistent with current run form teachings – higher turnover prevents overstriding and is less stressful on the legs.
For Downhill He Uses Wider Stance
This is something I discovered myself. When I go downhill, I take a wider stance and run down hills almost crab-like. This was in reaction to the fact that I sprained both ankles, one after another about 2-3 months apart when I trained for the Honolulu Marathon (and didn’t run because of it). I attributed to the fact that my feet were too close together and as a result, when I caught the edge of my running shoe, it caused a sprain. With my feet further apart, this was much less likely to happen. It is also more stable when you are moving fast downhill.
I am glad he tells me he does this too.
Balance in Life is Overrated
I found this to be the best comment of all.
He mentioned that he would go run a marathon nearly every day out of joy and for training. But then he pointed out he had kids, a wife, and a full time job – not to mention travelling and doing speaking gigs. We then wondered – how the heck does he find time to run a marathon every day?
That’s when he gave us the secret. Yep. Balance in life is overrated, especially when you love what you’re doing. Just suck it up and do it all.
Love it.