Mr. Cressey,
I have followed your site for about a year and find the information that you publish is fantastic. I used some of the exercises and philosophies with the high school baseball team I coach and we made tremendous strides not only in our strength and conditioning, but also transferring that strength onto the baseball field. By using just the pointers and articles on your website, it helped my son to be drafted out of high school in the 2011 MLB Draft by the Seattle Mariners.
We really are interested in attending an off season program at your facility, but we live in San Diego and your facility is in Boston(?), Is there a S&C coach or facility here in San Diego that you would recommend for a basebll pitcher? Or do you have a program for pitchers similar to what you teach at your facility?

Thanks,
Glenn

1. Focusing on too many thing’s at once rather than having one main objective
2. Poor soft tissue work, started well then I slackend off and paid the price.
3. Simply not eating enough

Great video! well, mistake number one ….eating, for…i do not know, 4 years, i wasted time NOT eating properly… i was on strength and conditioning forum ,and i avoided nutrition one …i was reading exercise programs, but not “food programs”… another thing is, recently i developed my OWN philosophy for diet and exercise, and years before i was just jumping around supporting different ways of eating/exercise and bein a “fan” of i.e paleo/ low carb crew…now i know better. 🙂 there are many ways to skin the cat…

Hi Chad, great information for all, training for specific needs and sports performance.
As I have got older, there is no question I have gottrn more efficient with my sessions. Identified and honed specific goals. For mine, essentially to increase lean body mass the key ingedients are intensity of effort, movements functional with max range and a session that is shorter than longer (@ 30-45mins. The session should achieve a major purpose (a saddle can only ride one horse) but it can elevate other fitness components proportianately, much like the demand on the energy systems in rugby. But a variety of training stimuli (mixing it up) promotes motivation as much as it does a training effect, depending of course on what the session outcome primarily is.

If the increase of lean body is the goal. then the scope for session variety can’t be discounted.
With clients no doubt we need to get to strength early and be aware & use the benefit of progressively overload
Enjoyed yr video
regards Brigga

Just getting started and trying to absorb all the imfo.

I enjoyed the presentation and made a lot of sense. I want to say that your strength progressions are very impressive for a man of your physique. I too have learned from my mistakes in the past. One of them that really sticks out is trying to be a hybrid of many faces. Basically, I believe training for too many events have led to many injuries and I focused on looks than total body strength. Tearing my pectoral muscle was devastating! This took me out for 6 months! Also, through years of sports and workouts, I had to have minor back surgery in my lumbar region. I have brought myself back to about 90 – 95%. My philosophy of training has changed over the years do to my injuries. My long – term goal is to be in shape/strength for competative racquetball. My skill level now is A and want to be in Open division soon. What would you recommend? Thanks, Josh.

Thanks for taking the time to put this together, mistakes 4 & 5 are very interesting,many S&C coaches,make this mistake at the request of a sport coach.

My current problem is that I am not making the kinds of gains I made in the past. I now know that the poundages I thought I was lifting at my former gym were imaginary; nevertheless, inflated as they were, I was making progress, regardless of what the real weights were.In explanation, I’ll just say that I thought that I was reaching for a 300 pound shoulder press, but I now believe that I probably never even reached 200 pounds in that lift, regardless of what the machine said. Machines lie! Anyway, I didn’t go to the gym for over a year, and the machines at my current gym SAY that I’m doing the following: 125 shoulder press, 165 bench press, 230 pulldown. These are the most I have done on these lifts in this gym. I do 14 other exercises, but these are the lifts that are most important to me. As to my legs, I’ve always managed to max out the leg press machines, so I’m satisfied there. My dissatisfaction can be measured by the fact that on 8/28/11 I did the following in these lifts: Shoulder Press- 90, 110, 120 (single lifts); Bench Press: 130, 140, 150 (single lifts): Pulldown: 210, 215 (single lifts). The method of exercise I use is-usually- one repetition of the maximum I can lift once a week, and I always have failures in determining the maximum. I am 73. Finally, I have never been athletic, and I can’t remember ever even once chinning myself or doing more than one pushup. Final, final: I-almost- never injure myself; however, I am now trying to be more prudent, and I’m doing exercises to avoid rotator cuff injuries since I have read that such injuries are very, very common. I’m going to the gym today. the last time was about 10 days ago.

I am only going to list one because it was so unbelievably wrong that no other mistake that I have made as a trainer could even come close to topping it. When I first go into training athletes I was “certified” under a specific pitching guru and his company. He insisted that stretching (static) would increase joint laxity. He would say that muscles aren’t built to stretch so when you feel that “pull” from a static stretch you are actually lengthening connective tissue (tendons and ligaments), which would cause a variety of laxity issues in a joint. Being a 20 something, robot I used that without question. Sorry to all of those athletes that are so bound up that they can’t walk or throw anymore.

nice job, have made many of the same mistakes myself, sometimes experience is the best teacher

Well… here I’ll go with the HUGE mistakes i’ve made since I first went in a gym.

1. Getting information from the “Big Muscle Guys” at the gym (You know… The big though guy who seems to know what he’s doing… but actually doesn’t…)
2. Doing “body-part split” programs instead of the big lifts
3. Focusing on eating a lot… of crap…
4. Training like a demon for 2 to 3 hours a day.
5. Training the muscles I only saw in the mirror.

I began to get results only when I began :

1. Getting lots of information from LOTS of sources. Coaches blogs, books, internet sites, nutritionists blogs, etc.
2. Doing big lifts and strenght
3. Eating the good amount of REAL food. (by that I mean everything my Old gran’pa, proud farmer, known as food that did’nt come in a box…)
4. …no comments there…. training for that long was just stoopid…
5. Putting mirrors everywhere in my appartment… (Hehe, I started to train my body as a whole. Every muscles are important and they should work together.)

There’s a lot more I would say but I think those are the worst. In fact, I think that if beginners start with the no.1 (Not the mistake… the other no 1), they would eventually correct all the other problems they’re facing. But hey, I’m not a professional, so there’s probably some mistakes I still do but at least I’m still learning.

P.S : French-Canadian here, so the choice of words or sentences may be of poor quality. Just sayin’…

First off, I have several of your products Eric and they kick ass! I use bits a pieces of ALL of them with my clients everyday. You and a few other people I have met (friends and mentors of yours) have this shit nailed!!
So, mistakes. Not doing enough assessment before starting with a client. Asking a client to do something that might be good for them if their current condition didnt dictate otherwise (tough for 300+ lb double knee replacement clients to get up off the floor!!). Working through the pain. Not paying enough attention to nutrition. Not realizing how ignorant the general public (and good athletes !!) really are about exercise and nutrition and how MUCH you can truly help with just a little effort, knowledge and careful application. Not doing something I truly love and believe in, earlier in my life.
Keep up the great work .

“You rust out before you wear out.”

Jim

Your experience shows. Never seen such a complete list of “don’t dos”..

Lots of mistakes in 20 years of training, a few are;
1. Doing what everyone else was doing
2. Not taking time to recover or warmup
3. Always searching for the next great supplement or “magic bullet”
4. WAAAY too much bodybuilding work
5. Becoming too devoted to one person’s methods and being close minded to everyone else, until the next person came along!

My biggest mistake with my training has always been training for the wrong reasons. I went from being a hockey player that team mates termed almost invincible on the ice to spending a year and a half recovering from a major concussion. It was a result of me losing all of my athleticism in search of a bodybuilding style physique. I am a perfect example for my clients as to why you should not make the mistakes that so many of us do.
Thanks for the awesome webinars Eric.

Wow, great stuff Eric! Your transformation was truly incredible! Tons of great advice!

I had to learn mistake #6 the hard way, riding too many horses with 1 saddle. I had my max deadlift up to 450 lbs last winter and felt great, eating a lot of healthy, high calorie meals. Then when i began to cut calories to lose a little bodyfat, I thought i could do intense cardio and heavy deadlift at the same time. WRONG!!!! I totally jacked my lower back up. I learned the hard way that i cant have single digit bodyfat and do max pulls. Pick what is the most important thing to you at the time and focus your energy there.

Oh, and way to bust Tony’s chops! haha You guys have a pretty powerful staff, when Tony, who is a 560 deader and 300 bencher is not as strong as the others! Tony would easily be the strongest guy at my gym. LOL

Thanks for all the great advice and God bless!

Joe

GREAT webinar! Is there any way I can download this video?

Wheres the link to purchase the show and go program?

once again, awesome! as far as my mistakes, 2 major ones: as you say, riding multiple horses with one saddle and the other is just letting the stress and emotional difficulty of life derail my plans

Thank you for sharing this information. I found it informative and useful as I am trying to refocus my training. I look forward to the next video.

Hey Eric You are the Best! can you do a video on posture please ?? i am struggling with anterior pelvis tilt and forward shoulders and the rest you probably got it. Please go a video on it. Thanks a lot man!

Hey Eric,

Thanks for the time and energy and focus you put into this.. I am a NASM trainer out here in Los angeles although I am from Shrewsbury ma and learned alot from my strength coach at UNH ( New Hampshire).. I am curious to why you rarely discuss the actual physical result that comes from proper training.. I know you are focused on folks being strong and functional but there is also an aspect of training you never touch on. The actual physical breakdown that takes place when you train properly…. meaning loss of body fat… getting ripped .. etc.. you mentioned your buddy who overtrains who could be a mens fitness model at any time but you basically alluded that being ripped was wrong. I know many of my clients as well as teams I work with .. there is a physical aspect of training that you rarely discuss.. Wonder if you could share your views a bit on the efficient athlete and body fat percentage.. I think you get what I ‘m asking.. Thanks again

Scott McCray

Eric, great information. I have been following you for some time and really like what you have to say. I am making some of these mistakes, maybe all of them, and hopefully I can learn from this. Thanks.

Great information!!

My biggest mistake is not giving myself the time to properly workout. As a trainer, father, and husband, its easy to let other things become more important than my own training program.