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Tag: exercises

The 4 Primary Goals In Strength Training When Struggling With An Injury or Pain

Craig Smith November 7, 2023

Goal setting is one of the most important, yet tricky aspects of training. Our team believes that goals are secondary to developing habits and systems that you can do day in and day out. We call this an exercise habit and it is a critical aspect of becoming an exerciser. However, goals can help to shape your training, increase motivation, and improve decision-making during the course of workouts.  When you are returning from an injury or dealing with a particularly irritating pain, we believe your goal is very specific. You need to exercise without your body feeling terrible. While this sounds obvious, one of the most common training mistakes our coaches see clients make is too much focus on performance while ignoring a recurring injury or pain.  If you have pain during your running, biking, lifting, etc., you will not achieve performance goals. We strongly believe there are 4 goals

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The 4 Unique Training Variables Used By Our Team To Improve Workout Success

Craig Smith October 12, 2023

Creating a single, hard workout is easy.   Creating a series of workouts that improve your overall fitness is not. Creating a true program that builds your skill set, builds your confidence, and adjusts for soreness or an emerging injury is extremely difficult. In the same vein, it is not hard to develop a physical therapy exercise list that targets a single problem, like glute inhibition. It is much harder to progress post-injury using strength training when we need to push the edge of the tissue capacity.  Programming a workout needs to consider numerous, modifiable variables. Remember a modifiable variable is anything you can change in the workout to optimize the training session and the overall programming scheme. At a minimum, you need to consider intensity, sets and reps, rest intervals, frequency of workouts, and supersets.   The minimum however does not optimize your workout and sometimes these are not the most

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The 6 Functional Exercises Tested During a Movement Assessment

Craig Smith May 2, 2023

A mistake in exercise programming that our team encounters is a heavy emphasis on variety in exercise, instead of movement pattern mastery. Our team does not focus on an endless array of exercises. The focus is on building depth in foundational movement patterns. These patterns make up every movement you perform when lifting. If these foundational movements are missing, advanced exercises will be wasted on poor form. You need to own the basic movements first. During the movement assessment, the 6 foundational movement patterns are assessed with 6 functional exercises from each movement pattern category. The movement assessment is where our strength coaches determine what may cause issues in your program: accountability, rehab standard, location/time, coaching need, and comfort level. The 6 functional exercises help our coaches determine your coaching need, if you have a tissue capacity issue (rehab standard), your comfort level with free weights, and what is the

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The 8 Reasons All HHP Clients Go Through a Movement Assessment

Craig Smith April 12, 2023

The Smith Performance Center team wants to be the best in the world at helping clients who want to maintain an active lifestyle. If you search the internet, this seems like a simple problem to solve. Just do this exercise or make sure to have protein after a workout. Problem solved.  This has not been our experience.  There is an entire area of research devoted to what behaviors keep people moving and what makes them stop. Keeping people active is not simple and there are numerous reasons why a person will stop. The purpose of the movement assessment is to figure out issues that will stop you from moving. There are clues in your history, how you move, how you hurt, and how you think that will help guide us. Here are the 8 reasons we do the movement assessment: Figure out what may lead to failure Determine the right

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5 Treatment Options to Reduce Knee Pain without Surgery, Injections, or Drugs

Craig Smith January 30, 2023

We treat intractable knee pain on a daily basis. Our process is called the PT Solutions Treatment Hierarchy. The treatment hierarchy allows our team to support the diagnosis, reduce pain, and create a clear home plan. Building a treatment framework is a critical component of the plan and it changes based on the key sign, the structural diagnosis, and the trigger management plan.  For example, a person with an anterior horn meniscus lesion, we would first normalize painful end range extension of the knee.  Once passive extension is pain free, we would start to load their leg with the activity that normally hurts, providing them an exercise like terminal knee extension with the band that will keep their knee extension pain free.  Finally we would dig through all of their daily activities that cause symptoms like fast walking or going downhill and stop them from doing it to allow healing.

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Linear Periodization

The Principle of Progression in Strength Training

Craig Smith October 10, 2020

Milo of Croton, a wrestling, bull-carrying, 20 pounds of meat-eating, 10 liters of wine-drinking man from Greece, is the definition of progression. Most people know the story of Milo, even if they don’t know his name. Milo carried a bull around on his shoulders. Chuze and LA Fitness were not around in ancient Greece so the Greeks created their own strength training methods. Milo intuited the importance of planned, progressive training. As a boy, he picked up a young calf and carried it around on his shoulders (because, why not?). The next day, he carried the calf again, and again the next day, and the next, and continued for FOUR years. The calf grew into a massive bull; Milo grew as well (#gainz). The daily training allowed Milo to pick up a full-grown bull, a mythical feat of strength. Our point? Progressive training regimens produce benefits that are hard to

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Strength Training Exercises and Concepts

Craig Smith September 21, 2020

How SPC Teaches the Basics of Movement At Smith Performance Center, we believe in lifelong movement. Our goal is to keep you moving and progressing through all stages of life. Whether you are looking to increase your performance in sport or improve your quality of life, learning proper movement mechanics is crucial.  We separate movements into six basic categories: Squat, Hinge, Split Legged, Upper Push, Upper Pull, and Core. Below you can see some examples of each of these exercises. By learning these basic cues, you can apply the principles to other exercises of the same category.  Feel free to reach out if you have questions or comments.  Hopefully, you find it helpful.    Squat The Basics of Squatting   Hinge How to hinge with deadlift   Upper Push Upper Body Press   Core Setting the Core   Rehab and PT Additions Physical Therapy Exercises Partner and Self Traction Bracing,

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Craig Smith