Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

99.9 percent of French adults are organ donors, compared to only 28 percent of Americans. It’s because in France, everyone is a donor by default. In most of the United States, it’s the opposite.

The expectation in France is that you’d be willing to donate an organ to someone in need. In the United States, the expectation is that if you want to donate an organ to someone in need you’ll take the effort to check that little box on your driver’s license.

A small difference in wording with a major difference in results.

Each fall, in college sports medicine rooms across the United States, we screen for height and weight, yet the majority of each day in the majority of Sports Medicine clinics across the country no one is having a height problem.

What if the NCAA instead put assessment of Movement Patterns as a default for pre-participation physicals alongside height, weight, BP and Pulse?

Shouldn’t a procedure that addresses and screens for the majority of problems our patients encounter worth considering?

Organ donation isn’t for everyone and should ultimately be decided on an individual basis, but like organ donation, movement screening may just save some of your student-athlete’s heartache down the road.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

I was driving to work the other day when the engine heat indicator alarm went off on my dash board.  Not being a car genius, but knowing enough to know I should see an expert that deals with engine problems I promptly pulled over and into the nearest auto garage.  I explained to the mechanic that the engine heat alarm went off and he asked me to pop the hood so he could take a look.

“Wow, this engine is burning up” he explained to me as he held his hand over the engine block.  “Thank goodness you pulled in here. You got here just in time – I can help you.”

He took out his tape measure, and extended it across and over the engine then quickly disappeared into his garage.

A few moments later he returned to my car carrying a huge piece of foam which he placed over the engine block.  He then carefully pushed the edges down so the foam fit snuggly over the entire engine.

Slamming the hood down over the foam he instructed me to start the car up again and give er a try.

I started the car and walked back out to join him at the front of the car.

“See, no more heat” pointing me to place my hand next to his as he held it over the hood.

Sure enough – I didn’t feel any heat. Wow, this guy was good.

I completed my drive to work (for some reason the engine heat indicator was still going off, but I’m sure it will be fine, I mean I saw an expert who took care of the heat) where I told a co-worker of my pit stop at the garage.  He quickly told me that I was an idiot and got ripped off by the mechanic as he never took care of the problem but instead, simply just covered it up.

“What do you mean?”  I asked somewhat angered.

“Hold on one second – let me take care of this athlete and we’ll talk,” he explained pointing to an athlete on a treatment table.

He turned to the athlete and as he began discussing the athlete’s course of treatment I suddenly felt as though I was back at the mechanics…..

“Ok Johnny, so you’ve been really running up the miles and now your knee is hurting, you can tell it’s not doing well by the swelling around your knee cap and how warm it is. Let’s get some ice and e-stim on that right away, thank goodness you came in to see me, any later you could have really been in some trouble. A couple of treatments of ice and e-stim and you’ll be good to go”
____________________________________________________________________________________

I joke about this story with friends now because I was once the car mechanic. Not in a malicious cheating way – I just didn’t know how to solve the PROBLEM so I did my very best to help alleviate the symptoms – NSAIDS, ice, massage – kids felt better and I felt good about helping them. That is until they returned with the same problem again and again. 

Solving problems is tough.  It requires an investment of time and a little bit of extra effort.  The plus side however is that once you’ve solved the problem, you’ll end up actually having more time on your hands because you won’t have patients returning with engine failure time and time again.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

Thanks to everyone who came out to play and pitch in at the first Boston Promise 3-on-3 fundraiser tournament!  Congrats to the winning teams—the Bombers, the Laser Show, and the Never Wases.  Supporters like you make our program possible and we appreciate everyone’s involvement and enthusiasm.  A special thanks to the Charlestown Community Center, all our generous sponsors and the Warren Tavern. Check our Facebook page later this week for photos from the tournament.

Continue to help Boston Promise during this upcoming basketball season by clicking HERE.

BSMPG is announcing a limited time sale of our 2010 Basketball and Hockey Training DVD’s!

You can get all of the presentations delivered to your doorstep just in time for Christmas or give these DVD’s as a stocking stuffer to an aspiring coach looking to take their team training to the next level.  Watch a clip of Matt Nichol, former Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Toronto Maple Leafs present “Training Energy Systems for Hockey” by clicking HERE.

From November 23-December 1st, the 5-DVD Basketball set will be on sale for $99.00 and the 4-DVD Hockey set will be on sale for only $75.00!

Basketball - DVD includes presentations from strength coaches from University of Stanford, University of Virginia, University of Pittsburgh and many more!

Hockey - DVD includes presentations from Anaheim Ducks Strength Coach, legendary USA Gold Medal strength coach Jack Blatherwick, corrective exercise specialist Bill Hartman and many more!
Don’t miss this one time sale!

** orders placed after December 10th cannot be guaranteed to arrive prior to Christmas. 

The NBA has been in the news recently because of the impending lockout coming next summer.  With the current collective bargaining agreement set to expire, the time has come to reevaluate how the league works.  The problem (at least from the owners’ and league’s perspective) is that despite the fact that the league makes upwards of $2 billion a year, the owners as a whole are projected to lose $340 to $350 million this upcoming season.  Of course, there are still a number of profitable franchises in the NBA, but owners that play in small markets, paid above-market price for their teams in the last ten years, or both (yikes) are playing with a serious disadvantage as opposed to owners in Boston, Los Angeles and other major markets.  So what is a small market team to do?  Sell the team at a loss?  Attempt to move to a larger market?  If you are Clay Bennett, owner of the former Seattle Supersonics and current Oklahoma City Thunder, then the answer is the latter.  When times got tough, Bennett said goodbye to the city that had been the Sonics’ home since 1967 for greener pastures.  However, if you are like most small market teams with an investment in and appreciation for their city, you think outside the box.  For instance, this year a number of small market teams that only sell out a handful of games each year have begun charging increased prices for tickets to those more popular games.  Simple, but it is also as effective as it is untraditional.   It’s something that scalpers have been doing for years, so why can’t it work for the franchises themselves? 

In any environment, thinking outside the box is often the key to strategic growth.  I know what you’re thinking, “Shaun, thinking outside the box is a phrase I have heard for years.  This is nothing new.”  That’s a fair argument, but think about this for a second;  how often in your office environment do you and your coworkers choose the path of least resistance over a new way of doing things?  I am willing to bet that the phrase “that’s how we have always done things” is used a lot whenever somebody brings up a new idea.  Everybody talks about innovation, but how innovative is your office really?  True innovation is fostered on a regular basis to help small businesses play on a more level playing field, to help organizations recover from a downturn in the economy, or even to help the most successful corporations stay on top.  After all, how do you think they got there in the first place?  So take a while to evaluate what you and your business does on a daily basis to stay competitive.  Figure out what tasks are non-essential, which ones take more man hours than they should, and if there are more efficient ways of doing certain things. 

Hint: there usually are. 

BSMPG is proud to announce that Ray Eady, Basketball Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of Wisconsin will join Brandon Ziegler and Brian McCormick at the BSMPG Basketball Specific Conference featuring Dr. Shirley Sahrmann as a keynote speaker next June 3rd and 4th, 2011.

Ray Eady is currently the strength and conditioning coach for the women’s basketball program at the University of Wisconsin. He has been the strength and conditioning coach for the Wisconsin basketball program since 2008.  Previously, he was the head strength and conditioning coach for men’s and women’s basketball at the University of Akron in Akron, Ohio (2004 - 2008) and Northeastern University in Boston, MA (2003 - 2004).

Originally from Springfield, Massachusetts, Eady holds a Masters degree in Exercise Physiology from the University of Akron and is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (NSCA – CSCS), a Performance Enhancement Specialist (NASM – PES), and a Club Coach with the United States Weightlifting Association.  He is also a member of the Black Coaches Association (BCA).

See articles written by Ray Eady:

Female Basketball Athletes Need To Get Strong

Push-up Progression

BSMPG is proud to announce that Brian McCormick, Founder of Youth Basketball Coaching Association and Performance Director, Train for Hoops will join Brandon Ziegler at the BSMPG Basketball Specific Conference featuring Dr. Shirley Sahrmann as a keynote speaker next June 3rd and 4th, 2011.

McCormick is a basketball coach, trainer and author. He coached the Visby Ladies in the Swedish Damligan (women's pro league) and UCD Marian in Ireland's Men's SuperLeague. He also has coached youth, AAU, and high school teams and assisted at the junior college and college levels in California. As a coach and clinician, he has traveled to Canada, China, Greece, Macedonia, Morocco, South Africa and Trinidad & Tobago to direct camps or speak at clinics.

McCormick is a certified strength coach through National Strength & Conditioning Association (CSCS), National Academy of Sports Medicine (PES) and USA Weightlifting (SPC).

As the Performance Director for Train for Hoops, McCormick wrote a year-round periodized general strength training and off-season skill development program for youth and high school players and maintains a blog that covers all areas of player development.

After publishing Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development in 2006, he founded the Youth Basketball Coaching Association to create a certification and coach education curriculum for volunteer youth basketball coaches.

McCormick also transformed another of his nine books, Developing Basketball Intelligence, into a developmental league, Playmakers Basketball Development League, which operates in more than six states in 2010.

McCormick lives in Irvine where he works as a personal train at the U.C. Irvine Recreation Center, trains local high school basketball players and writes the free weekly Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletters. To subscribe, email hard2guardinc@yahoo.com or follow Brian on twitter @brianmccormick.

Articles:

Play Multiple Sports to Build Athleticism

Mindful Learning

Q&A

Core Stability and Basketball Training

ACL Review: Teaching The Jump Stop

There are certain things you just have to do each day – brushing your teeth is one of them.

I first heard the analogy from an old friend of mine when discussing implementing an ACL prevention program with our soccer team and the struggles to keep the coaches on it once the season started,

“You wouldn’t brush your teeth everyday for six months and then stop for six months would you?”

Dentistry has is right.

Not just the brushing every day part, (although clearly important) but their whole approach.

You probably don’t even remember your first visit to the dentist do you?  That’s my point.  Dentists get you right from the get-go. You’re evaluated, x-rayed for a baseline to compare future visits to, you get picked at, poked and prodded and then they finish your visit with a cleaning, rinse and some fresh minty breath.

If you have good insurance you get to go back twice a year – Shoot, sometimes you go in and you don’t have any tooth pain at all. But isn’t this the point?

If the dentist finds tarter build up – BAM that little hook comes in and blasts that gunk right out of there.  No use in letting that sit until it causes a cavity – your dentist wouldn’t be doing their job if they did. 

Yet, many times (I really mean all the time) in sports medicine we see athletes and patients with poor movement patterns, dysfunctional squats, steps and lunges and we do nothing.

We wait.

Their knee doesn’t hurt yet.

No need to take a look.  No baseline assessment. No poking. No prodding.

Once in a while an athlete or patient comes in on the advice from a friend – they have back pain.

“No problem. I’ll help – let’s just get some ice and e-stim on that, there, that should do the trick.  See you tomorrow.”

If you went to a dentist and you had a tooth ache and they rubbed some Novocain on your gum and told you to come back the next day to do it again you’d soon find another dentist to go to. One that addressed the problem and not just the symptom, and one then that gave you some advice on how to avoid future problems.

Dentists do it right – Baseline Evaluation, Regular On-Going Assessment, Treatment/Maintenance  and Education.

I remember when I was a child brushing my teeth three times a day and then if on the rare occasion I was allowed to have some ice cream or candy my mother would make me do it again!

33 years later not a single cavity.

I wish I could say the same for my back pain.

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

BSMPG is proud to announce that Brandon Ziegler of Oregon State will be part of the Basketball Specific Conference speaker set featuring Dr. Shirley Sahrmann as a keynote speaker next June 3rd and 4th, 2011.

Brendon Ziegler is in his fifth season at Oregon State where he serves as the strength and conditioning coach for the men’s basketball team. In his duties, Ziegler handles all strength and conditioning duties for the men’s basketball squad, including lifting and strength work, core training, speed and agility drills, flexibility drills as well as conditioning. He also coordinates all off-season conditioning programs. Prior to Oregon State, Ziegler served in similar positions with Hawai’i, Wisconsin and the Chicago Bulls of the NBA.

Ziegler is certified through NSCA-CSCS and USA Weightlifting. A native of Edgerton, Wisc., Ziegler was a four-year starter in football at Hamline University and is also a competitive weightlifter.

How important is it to relate to individual players and how can a coach improve his or her interpersonal skills?

RILEY: It depends on what level you are coaching.  When it comes to coaching on a youth level, in  a junior high school level, or a high school level, where kids are still maturing emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually, I think the communication, talking, educating type of approach transcends the actual X’s and O’s.  I think you have to develop the mind and the will as much as you develop them on the court.

As players get older, especially as professionals, they will bring the philosophies of five to fifteen coaches with them.  That means they have been talked to, they have been coached by a lot of different people, they have been motivated and inspired, and they know what it’s like to be a player who is being coached. Sometimes in professional basketball, saying less is best.  Your actions and how they work and what you put in front of them every day will be noticed. 

If I were coaching a high school team, I would be teaching, teaching, teaching, and teaching verbally every single day to every single individual.

(Interview questions and answers taken directly from the February 2007 edition of Scholastic Coach & Athletic Director)