Hello High School, today the Alternative Thought Society will be introducing and discussing the theory of multiple genders beginning with a short video and presentation from Dr. Bryan. If you are interested in joining the discussion make sure to stop by room 3114 on April 26th, today, during lunch.
A.Q.Interviews: Dr. Razik talks with Sunny about his journey to ISB and his legacy
Culture Shock: Shawn sits down with Young Metro to talk about his passion for electronic music production
Full Court Press (Poetry in Motion): Eighth graders tackle the recent Super APAC soccer tournament through poetic voices http://ift.tt/2pAyyy6
ISB Service: Ethan and Shawn visit the Smile Week babies with the STUCO representatives
Desktop Concerts: A live performance and a look back some of the orchestra musicians from Once Upon a Hutong http://ift.tt/2pAVm0y
Many more great stories are published at our site. Dig in and celebrate our community with us!
Wacky Wednesday went great! We´re so close, in total we have - 6th Grade raised ¥3790, Grade 7 ¥5905, Grade 8 ¥5410 and Faculty ¥3930! All home room representatives must come to Mr Fidler's room at 8:15am today to collect your smiles.
Remember function tickets are on sale today and tomorrow. We have had a great response to the new arrangements for the function tomorrow night so let's see as many people there as possible. See Kenny in the cafeteria for your ticket.
Remember also to see Mr Fidler at the main door to the cafeteria at Lunch today to fill in your free lucky draw slip for the two wonderful photographs on display. The winning name will be drawn tomorrow at 3:30pm.
Smile Week has been great so far!
Keep Smiling!
What: Drama Performance for Grade 5
When: Friday, April 28
Time: 1:30 PM
Meet at Black Box
*Wear ISTA shirt and joggers.
IMPORTANT: Submit passport to Mrs. McManus on Tuesday morning (May 2). Read her email to the team.
Finally, make sure you complete your pre-absence form this week and inform your teachers of your coming absence. You will be responsible to catch-up with the school work that you will miss from May 3-7/8.
It's time for the April installment of Random Thoughts on Sports Performance Training. In light of this week's $30 off sale on The High Performance Handbook, I wanted to write a bit about the importance of versatility in any strength and conditioning program. I firmly believe that The High Performance Handbook is the most versatile program on the market; in other words, it's been used with great success by folks from all walks of life. This is because of the self-assessment component, various programming options, and exercise modifications it includes. You can learn more HERE.
With that in mind, here are some thoughts on versatility in programming.
1. Psychosocial stress impacts joint loading.
Back in February, I went to a great seminar with Dr. Stuart McGill, and he alluded to some excellent research from Dr. Bill Marrus at The Ohio State University. It's almost 20 years old, but still fascinating. You can read about it HERE, but he's an interesting excerpt:
"An experiment was performed that imposed psychosocial stress on people performing standard lifting tasks and compared this with situations where no psychosocial stress was present. Under the stress conditions, significant increases in spine compression and lateral shear were observed, but not for all subjects. Gender played a role in that females moved differently in response to stress, thereby causing an alteration in muscle coactivation patterns. More surprisingly, when the personalities of the subjects was considered, it was found that certain personality traits, such as introversion and intuition, dramatically increased spine loading compared with those with the opposite personality trait (e.g. extroversion and sensing). These differences in personality were closely associated with differing trunk muscle coactivation patterns and explained well the dierence in spine loading (and expected risk of LBD) between subjects. These increases in trunk muscle coactivation are believed to in ̄uence spine loading more at low levels of work intensity than at high levels where the biomechanical demands of the job probably overpower any additional loading that may be due to responses of the musculoskeletal system to psychosocial stress."
In other words, the more Type A your personality type, the higher your spine stress, and the different your muscular recruitment patterns. This shouldn't surprise anyone who has looked at injury rates in athletes during stressful academic periods, but it is interesting to see that there doesn't seem to be a "desensitization" occurring with those who are always more stressed. With that in mind, chance are that the training stress needs to be managed more conservatively in those who have very stressful personality types, not just lifestyles.
2. There are many different ways to fluctuate training stress.
Speaking of reducing training stress, there are many different ways to do so. We all know that you can reduce intensity (load), training frequency, and/or volume (sets x reps x load) to give people appropriate deloading periods.
Sometimes, though, simply changing exercise type can reduce the training stress. As an example, changing to more concentric-dominant exercises (as I wrote HERE) is one way to reduce training stress. Most people won't feel really banged up from a session of deadlifts, step-ups, and sled pushes even if there is a fair amount of volume and intensity.
3. Versatility implies the ability to quickly and easily progress and regress.
When I think of versatile programs, I immediately think of the ability to quickly change something on the fly - and that usually refers to exercise selection, usually because something is too advanced or basic for someone.
Regression is as important to learn as progression. Sometimes, you need to back off, relearn a pattern, and move WELL before you move a LOT.
— Eric Cressey (@EricCressey) January 15, 2013
If you lack the hip extension needed to do a Bulgarian split squat, you're better off regressing to a regular split squat or a step-up.
It's also important to understand how to move laterally. An example would be if a program called for a piece of equipment an individual doesn't have. For example, if you don't have a cable column, maybe you could use dumbbells, bands, or a TRX suspension training for your rowing variation.
4. There is a point of diminishing returns on variability.
Check out this image I created for a presentation I gave on long-term athletic development.
If young athletes have low variability in their lives, they make very little progress. Obviously, the risk of overuse injuries is higher, but just as importantly, without adequate movement variability, athletes don't have opportunities to build "predictive models" to which they can resort amidst the unpredictable challenges sporting environments throw at them. In other words, some exposure to controlled chaos prepares you for a lot of unpredictable chaos down the road.
To the far right of the column, though, we realize that too much variability can be problematic as well. There simply aren't enough high quality reps to build an firmly ingrained pattern. If an athlete throws a football in week 1, baseball in week 2, tennis ball in week 3, and shotput in week 4, he won't really have built one pattern any more than another. This is why athletes ultimately do benefit from an element of specialization; it brings them back to the center for more "focused progress."
These same ideas can be applied to the everyday gym-going lifter. Early on in a training career, we need to expose these individuals to just enough variability to prevent overuse injuries. In many cases, we can get this just by having comprehensive mobility warm-ups and assistance exercises - single-leg work, horizontal pulling, push-up challenges, carrying variations, etc. - that complement the big bang exercises like squats, deadlifts, and presses. If we just do a few big multi-joint exercises, though, injuries can often creep up, and we may encounter plateaus. However, there are also scenarios where specialization programs (less variability) may be needed to bring up specific lifts by pulling us back from the far right of the curve.
The take-home point is that the relationship between training progress and exercise variability is always in flux, and it's a good place to look if you're struggling to make progress, chronically injured, or just want to better understand why you're getting the results you're experiencing.
Looking to see how I create both versatility and variability in the programs I write? Check out The High Performance Handbook, which is on sale for $30 off this week.
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