Nearly every champion athlete lifts weights in some way, shape, or form. It is embraced by the athletic masses to the point that every team in a professional sport has a designated weight coach. All players, young and old, should develop a foundation of strength. What exactly does strength training do for you though? What actually happens to an athlete's body when they start pumping iron? Read on for some fundamental answers to these questions.

Happy New Year, Bridge coaches and athletes! After a break over the holidays, I know you are ready to get back into the swing of things. The next block in the video series is dedicated to preparing you for a successful competition phase: Speed and Recovery. To perform at an optimal speed, you need to make sure you're fully rested from your training phases. In this video series that I have chosen for the New Year, I will include a combination of plyometric and stretching exercises.The plyometric exercises are aimed at developing speed and the stretching exercises complement the plyometric exercises to best aid in recovery. Never forget, sleep is the best tool we have for recovery.

Welcome back, Bridge fans. I would like to use this episode to share some ideas and concepts to help you make your pre-competition warm up the best possible. The most important aspect of this warm up is to implement it during the off-season or pre-season, allowing your body time to adjust to the concept prior to competition. Keep the warm up as dynamic as possible. The idea is to warm up the body's core temperature and muscles without fatiguing them. Following are some recommendations to add to your toolbox to help get yourself or your team ready to compete. As always, remember to have your water bottle at your side to stay hydrated before competing.

Bridge fans, it is great to have you back to the third episode of our four-part travel training series. Today, I will take you through a sequence of post-travel stretches that has helped my athletes overcome their trips and prepare for competition. The post-travel stretch routine is often overlooked because of fatigue or having to rush to get to the competition venue. No matter your reason, it's time to build a post-travel stretch progression into your arrival routine. Take five minutes as a team to go through this sequence, and see the benefits is has on your body, especially the day after travel.

Incorporating stretching weekly into your life can improve your mental health in a simple and direct manner. Everyone experiences mental stress, but often that stress can manifest itself in physical stress as your muscles contract in response to stress. As muscles can tense up when you are stressed out, you may not even notice until you stretch to release the tension. Stretching is an easy way to relax tense muscles. Stretching is also a form of light exercise, so you can still enjoy the endorphins that come along with it and see an improvement in your mood as well! Another way stretching improves your mood is by alleviating chronic pain that creates anxiety. 

You’ve seen the gadgets: you go to the gym and someone is wearing a cool digital watch, until you realize it’s much more than that. You walk into any athletic retail store and alongside the running shoes and sportswear they now showcase a bit of technology that can track your training, sleep, and much more all by wearing a band around your wrist. In this week’s discussion I will outline three of the major brands of training trackers so you can make the choice right for you.

This video is the first in the 4-part Bridge Travel-Training Series. Included are 5 stretches that I like to include in a pre-travel routine to prep the body for the journey ahead. Remember, these are just a few examples from the overall routine that I have found to help combat the travel blues.

The Power Clean Pull is the first pull exercise in the power series. Following the Dumbbell Jump Shrug, this exercise is the next step in the strength training progression from a strength phase to a power phase. The Power Clean Pull is a compound exercise that helps the athlete develop power and speed through the hips.

The shoulder is a complex joint that keeps your arm from its natural desire to fall out of its socket while enabling a wide range of motion in all 3 planes. The joint capsule, rotator cuff muscles, and the tissue connected to your bone, called the labrum, all work to stabilize the joint. Swimmers and water polo players increase their range of motion by creating tiny tears in their labral tissue, trading in shoulder stability for greater mobility. However, high mobility combined with overtraining can compromise the labrum by creating a larger, painful tear. This can be caused by an acute event or gradual repetition.Shoulder injuries are ubiquitous in sports, but swimmers, water polo players, and any athletes that execute repetitive overhead motions are exceptionally at risk. You are 1/3 more likely to dislocate your shoulder with a torn labrum. The labral tissue has little blood supply so these injuries do not heal easily. The frayed ends of a tear contain nerves that cause pain with motion. Depending on the size of the tear, surgery may be necessary to reattach the tissue to the bone, while more minor tears can avoid surgery partially by strengthening the surround musculature to compensate for weakened tissue. Despite the advantage associated with greater mobility in athlete’s joints, larger tears in the labrum can be painful, severely compromise shoulder stability, and lead to worse injury.

Know the Difference between a Separated Shoulder and a Dislocated Shoulder: Mechanism of AC tears and Shoulder Dislocations

The terms “separated shoulder” and “dislocated shoulder” are thrown around in sports so often that it is easy to misinterpret their origin. A separated shoulder injury occurs at the most important joint between the thorax and arm, known as the acromioclavicular (or AC) joint. Located between the end of your clavicle and your scapula, the AC joint and surrounding ligaments are subject to high load transferring from the chest to the upper arm. Ligament tears from falling on your shoulder, especially with your hand outstretched, or striking something hard (like a body check in hockey), allow the clavicle to separate from the scapula, thus the term shoulder separation. In a shoulder dislocation, the upper arm bone, known as the humerus, pops out of the socket known as the glenoid. This injury can also occur from falling, as your body weight pushes the humeral head out of place. The labrum, joint capsule, and muscles are supposed to stabilize the joint and prevent dislocation, but if any of the three are injured, dislocation occurs more readily. A dislocated shoulder can be pushed back into place, and pain may diminish very quickly. Resting your shoulder will prevent re-dislocation, and therapy can improve your range of motion gradually. Separated shoulders are treated by first immobilizing the AC joint with a sling. In a minor separation, healing may take a few weeks, whereas a larger separation may take weeks to months and involve surgical reattachment of torn ligaments1.