http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dngEImCV7ZI&feature=related
Ideally, you do this one in the midst of as much steel as possible.
That has to be horrible for his knee ligaments.
While he’s at it, he should do something like juggling chainsaws or torches since this looks like a trick/stunt rather than training. Trick or train?
Apparently, you haven’t been watching what passes for Hockey training these days.
“You need to train on unstable surfaces because you need balance on the ice.”
“You need to train on one leg because you compete on one leg.”
I had the misfortune of having to deal with this with an NHL player.
The first season I had him he went from middling to winning the fastest skater competition for his team. The next season, things got tougher because my guy was under pressure from a player he greatly admired to work with a hockey guru who believed in all this shit.
This guy turned up with the usual trained seal balancing act and insisted on training my guy with front squats. My guy had trained with med balls his whole career, developing tremendous explosive power (ask some of the many guys he knocked out!) and had never lifted in his life. He started complaining of a sore back.
I finally lost it and said:" Hey! I like weights. If he was 16 I’d have him doing them - but he’s 30, has never lifted before, he’s getting a sore back lifting 80 lbs and he got 8 weeks to get ready. What do you think you’re doing?"
The guy brushed off the remark and started to explain the benefits of plyos to me! (Does this guy read???)
The guy showed up a week later for another dog and pony show, front squats and all - and again my guy’s back got sore.
I pulled him aside and asked: “You’re two for two with this clown. Have you had enough?” He said yup.
Ironically, the player who promoted this came out to train with my guy one day close to the season when I was away and pushed my guy to do a weight session with him:
3 x (10 x 225, 10 x 205, 10 x 185 with short breaks)
My guy, who’d never benched before did the whole series without a problem while the other guy crapped out before finishing!
Dat was some funny shit!
Can’t say I’ve witnessed any of that kind of elite training before.
It seems that often something difficult to do is automatically assumed to be a superior method to others that are more easily managed. People go on and on about drills, exercises being tough so therefore they must be also effective.
Is this(the hockey player) related to the story in the first set of Vancouver tapes?
Tere are so many, it’s hard to know where to start!
Paul Chek…
My gym loves the freak. The people that run it, love him. Luckly though, not many trainers follow the crap, well with the swiss balls anyway.
It was said before, doing pushups on two balls with feet elevated on a stool, will, Paul Chek goes on and teaches just this, then progress up to feet also on a swiss ball. Thats 3 balls doing push ups.
There is also droping onto the ball onto your chest then “push up” your way back upright and repeat - but also working your way around the ball and complete a full 360 before finishing.
He teaches, kneeling and standing Wood Chops with a med ball on a swiss.
Teaches
- jumping from bosu to bosu (either flat side or round side)
- lunging onto or off from bosu
- squating on bosu or swiss (single leg mind you)
Then it gets better
- squats with bar, with say 0 kgs on one side and 20kg the other side (for stability reasons)
- Also lunges, front, side, rear also with uneven bar
- plyros jumping side ways on one leg
And the guys who Manages our Gym, loves soccer, and always seems to have an injury of some kind… Go figure
That was so funny I watched it twice in a row. Why would he upload the video of himself or his friend falling on his ass that many times?
Edit:
A former high school friend of mine is a high level but not quite elite NHL defenceman (1st North American draft pick his year, leads his team in ice time, plays for Team Canada every year), and I’ve worked out a few times while he at the gym. For the most part, he followed a fairly standard workout routine with a few gimmicky exercises thrown in. The only bosu ball type stuff he did was to invert a bosu ball on the floor, stand on it with one leg and to do one-armed stretch band pulls (similar to a seated row).
Very advanced- only one stupid bit!
I wonder why no has pointed out the obvious: if these methods are so great at developing balance/stability, why are they not used by athletes in sports that require the highest levels of balance and stability like gymnastics and ballet (which I consider a sport for all practical purposes)?
If, for whatever reason, an athlete thinks he needs to improve his balance and stability, don’t you think it would be wiser for him to take his training cues from these sports? I think the same could be said for developing agility and coordination.
Who do you think could help you more with balance and coordination, a gymnastics or dance coach who has the benefit of several generations of proven training methods, or some trainer who has hopped on (no pun intended) the latest band wagon fad with no proven track record?
Working in a commercial health club I have been exposed to some of this crap but have been able to sort the wheat from the chaff. I remember when I first saw some of paul cheks work i thought it was amazing but when I thought more about it I just couldn’t see who could possibly benefit from it other than him $$$ then I went on a seminar with a guy who spoke a bit of sense and summed up these exercises by saying it was like making you “bullet proof for a water fight”.
The only place for standing on a swiss ball is in the circus or on bloopers TV
It’s amazing how many people don’t.
because you would think that sooner or later people would get it. My athletes get pissed off every time they leave our facility to go back to season. They show me their programs(including from an NFL team) and I just laugh. I think I have tried just about everything over the past 25 yrs. The past 15 yrs have been in full time athletic prep. I tried some of the unstable surface training about 12 yrs ago. I like physio balls for ab’s and some movements in phases. I discarded much of Chek’s stuff as not useful for the goals my athletes had. I have went full circle back to basics. I look around facilities and see people do the same crap day in and day out and look no different, perform no better, and yet plug away. If it’s not working change it. If it work’s, leave it alone. I think too many strength coaches are primarily caught up in numbers and therefore use them to justify their job’s. I look at injury rate, then performance as my key indicators. Like I said, if you injure an athlete severely in the training process, you should quit. If not, the organization should can you for being an idiot. With so much information available, it’s nice to have a forum like Charlie’s to actually learn something. I guess selling results is harder than the latest gimmick or gadget.
A couple of years ago I would have been the one to try some of these exercises until I found this site. The information on this forum has potentially saved me from serious injury.
Sadly, the object with many gym trainers is to make the potential client feel as bad and helpless as possible in order to secure continued employment. Who but he can save this wretch from his alleged in-capacities?
It’s kinda sad that we have to even be dissecting all this s**t training. I had a couple kid’s from other schools who go to “the guy” who has the latest gadgets come to my facility a week ago. Right after telling me how good their “speed” trainer was, they noticed some of the kids I trains pic’s on the wall. It was “Oh my God that kid was so fast” and “so was he” etc. I just sort of laughed. I wish I had a camera, it would have made a great commercial for my speed camps. Reminds me of my Uncles marina in Bancroft, Ontario. There was a big bass fishing tourney there. All the sponsored boats and big money. A guy with a Mercury engine can’t get his boat started for the shotgun start. After about 5 minutes, he wades through waist deep water to his truck and carries a 10hp Evinrude engine out to his boat and putters off. My Uncle and I laughed our asses off. It would have been a beautiful Evinrude commercial.
It’s easy to make most of the general population feel bad and helpless in the gym, most of my training sessions last 30mins and most of my clients feel helpless because they lack what most Americans need “work capacity”.
Typical training session:
Quad Dom/Knee Ext: 2 sets per
Horz pull/Horz press: 2 sets per
Vert pull/Vert press: 2 sets per
Mb core work: 2-3 sets
1: Squat or variation/Hyper complex etc
2: Lawn mowers/1 arm db bp
3: Assist pull up/Push press
4: MB over and under
haha, so true. Many trainers at my gym as me “why do you do so many 30min workouts, what possible response can you hope to achieve in 30min?”
When i watch these trainers train, its slow reps, talking between efforts, 5-10min warm ups (who wants to pay for a warm up?), then 5-10min of “massage” (if you call it that) at the very end. All in all, they might do actually 10-20min of actual work, and i rarely see their clients sweating.
Takes my clients nearly 2-3months to be able to last a solid 30min without “dying”. They warm up before hand on their own and warm down on their own.
the difference is you are offering a service and they are running a business. Its the same with the sport I work for, we have a new Association Coach due to start soon and the quality of service he will provide will show up most of the professional coaches who charge $60 an hour.
Love that quote; “Trick or train?”