The little things really do make all the difference. You see examples of this repeatedly throughout history. Think about this in terms of sports performance. The 'greats' weren't usually the most gifted. They weren't freaks in the weight room. For example, none of the following are household names: Justin Ernest, Stephen Paea, Mike Kudla, Mitch Petrus, Leif Larsen, Brodrick Bunkley, Jeff Owens, Dontari Poe, Scott Young, Kyle Harrington... Do any of these names ring a bell? Don't worry if they don't but they are the NFL Combine bench press record holders. Contrast this with Peyton Manning. His level of preparation for games was meticulous. Before a Super Bowl he would watch all 16 regular season games the opponent had played. And he had the back-up watch the 4 pre-season games and give him a report on what they were doing. He kept notes himself of what worked and what could be better. And then he made the appropriate adjustments and corrections based on this study and preparation. What about regular Joes like you and I? Does preparation matter? Absolutely it does! All I need to do is go back about 5 years to a powerlifting competition where I missed a deadlift attempt at 385 lbs. My previous effort in that competition was 365 lbs so that is where I finished for that lift. That was disheartening. At that point I felt like maybe strength was going to be a thing of the past for me. Maybe I would have to adjust my training? Maybe I would  get into the sports and activities that guys in their 40s and 50s do? Maybe my best was now in the rear-view mirror? [caption id="attachment_5459" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Was this going to be my new sport? This was a bitter pill to swallow. But I was...

In the last post I introduced a discussion about body awareness. And what I meant by this was understanding which muscles were firing, when they are firing and how they are firing. The reason this is so important is that many of us having compensations or deficiencies of some type. Think about it. The aches and pains that we get from time to time are partly due to the strain we put our body under when it is out of alignment. And when we live with these aches and pains for long enough we can sometimes become a little bit desensitized to the feedback our body is trying to give us. For example if you've had a chronic low back problem you may not think about it all the time. But if someone asks you how it is and you stop and think about it for a second you'll realize it simply hasn't corrected itself but instead you learned to block it out somewhat in order to get through the day. And you aren't consciously thinking about it until someone asks you about it or it gets worse. So let's jump ahead and assume that someone was able to point out where it is that you're out of alignment and how to correct this alignment issue. Perhaps it's a lack of frontal plane (think side to side) glute activity and by firing this muscle helps to restore your alignment and take stress off your joints that were 'picking up the slack'. As well, you were also made aware of how you will alter your body position to cheat when your glutes get tired and you don't want them to work anymore.This would all be very useful info to you. So how do you make sure to ingrain this process and ensure...