Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

BSMPG is proud to announce that Jonas Sahratian, Strength and Conditioning for University of North Carolina Men's Basketball will join Brandon Ziegler, Oregon State and Brian McCormick at the BSMPG Basketball Specific Conference featuring Dr. Shirley Sahrmann as a keynote speaker next June 3rd and 4th, 2011.

Among the top strength & conditioning coordinators in the college game, Jonas Sahratian enters his sixth season with the Tar Heel men's basketball program after serving in the same capacity at the University of Kansas for five seasons.

Sahratian coordinates strength and conditioning for men's basketball and also works with the diving team. He has been a part of three Final Fours and NCAA championships in 2005 and 2009.

He worked with Carolina head coach Roy Williams in Lawrence from January 1999 to April 2003. He also coordinated strength and conditioning for the volleyball, swimming and diving teams at Kansas.

A native of Detroit, Mich., Sahratian graduated from Western Michigan University in 1997 with a bachelor of science degree in exercise science. In 2000 he received his master's in exercise physiology from Kansas.

In addition to working with Kansas athletics, Sahratian interned for two years at the Chicago Bulls/Vermeil's Sports and Fitness in Deerfield, Ill. He worked in Chicago during the Bulls' NBA championship seasons in 1996-97 and 1997-98.

He is a certified strength and conditioning specialist through the National Strength and Conditioning Association and a certified club coach through USA Weightlifting. Sahratian (pronounced suh-RAY-shun) and his wife, Grechen, reside in Durham.

Speed Drills by Sahratian featured in Stack

Conditioning Drills by Sahratian featured in Stack

BSMPG along with Children's Hosptial Boston, Division of Sports Medicine and New England Sports Partners are pround to present the 2010 Baseball Pitching Health and Performance Seminar December 5th at Children's Hosptial, Boston MA.

This conference features "the father of pitching mechanics" Dr. Tom House and New England's own, Mike Boyle along with Dan India from Qualisys North Amercia and Health Care providers from Children's Hospital Boston.  This event is an absolute must for coaches, parents, athletic trainers, physical therapists and aspiring baseball athletes looking to get the most out of their training while maintaining a healthy throwing shoulder and elbow.

Please join us on December 5th at Children's Hospital Boston for this unique event.

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

I’ve asked a number of friends why they don’t include assessments as part of their screening process.  More often than not the answer is because they are “too busy.”

What takes more time? An initial assessment of your athletes on intake followed by some simple corrective strategies or a 6-month post-surgical ACL rehab?

If you are too busy to change today, how will you have time to fix it later?

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 heard a story recently about a basketball coach that will “get lost” on his way back to campus from the airport after picking up a recruit in an effort to intentionally place the recruit in an uncomfortable situation.

Two things happen.

1. The recruit will sit quietly, put their head down and perhaps jump on their cell phone, text message friends, headphones in and wait for the coach to find his/her way back to campus.
or
2. The recruit will ask questions about general directions, look for street signs that may aid in their quest back to campus and even some will use their technology packed phone to locate their whereabouts on GPS and plug in the schools address providing the coach a clear and decisive path back to campus.

With all things being equal, which kid would you rather have on your team?

Are you worth being recruited to a better team or are you quietly sitting at your desk, minding your own business waiting for others to figure things out?

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.

Seth Godin does it again...

Do You Need A Permit?

Where, precisely, do you go in order to get permission to make a dent in the universe?

The accepted state is to be a cog. The preferred career is to follow the well-worn path, to read the instructions, to do what we're told. It's safer that way. Less responsibility. More people to blame.

When someone comes along and says, "not me, I'm going down a different path," we flinch. We're not organized to encourage and celebrate the unproven striver. It's safer to tear them down (with their best interests at heart, of course). Better, we think, to let them down easy, to encourage them to take a safer path, to be realistic, to hear it from us rather than the marketplace.
Perhaps, years ago, this was good advice. Today, it's clearly not. In fact, it's disrespectful, ill-advised and short sighted. How dare we cheer when a bold changemaker stumbles? Our obligation today isn't to spare the feelings of our peers from future disappointment. It's to establish an expectation that of course they're going to do something that matters.

If you think there's a chance you can make a dent, GO.

Now.

Hurry.

You have my permission. Not that you needed it.

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.

In the vast majority of well planned programs in both Strength and Conditioning and Sports Medicine, athletes and patients must “qualify” for a particular exercise prior to being introduced to it as a formal part of their training or rehabilitation program.  For example, it would be ill advised to simply ask an athlete to perform depth jumps without knowing they had a sufficient strength base first (1.25 x BW for females and 1.5 x BW for males seems to be standard).  Hang Cleans are rarely taught until an athlete or patient shows proficiency in a box jump, good front squat technique and a reasonable strength base.  Even in Sports Medicine, one must “qualify” to drop the crutches after injury in favor of full weigh-bearing so long as they are abel to demonstrate normal, pain-free gait.  Yet, when it comes to addressing “core” exercises many are often prescribed without thought or prior planning.  This is especially true when evaluating rotational exercises.

McGill has demonstrated time and again that people with troubled backs simply use their backs more during activities.

“But you need a strong back don’t you?”

Well yes, but there’s more to it than that.  In fact, the guys that have these troubled backs most often have much stronger backs but are less endurable than matched asymptomatic controls (McGill et al, 2003).  In addition, those that have back pain (and a stronger back mind you) tend to have more motion in their backs and less motion and load in their hips.  And we all know what poor hip mobility means don’t we – you got it, back pain.  (McGill SM et al. Previous history of LBP with work loss is related to lingering effects in biomechanical physiological, personal, psychosocial and motor control characteristics. Ergonomics 2003;46:731-46.)

"So what does all this hip, back and stability stuff have to do with rotational core and power training? I just want to throw some heavy medicine balls against the wall and wake up the neighbors!”

Not so fast, as I mentioned, mobile hips and a stable and strong mid-section are paramount and a MUST prior to any type of rotational medicine ball or rotational power training.  The Mobility-Stability/Joint by Joint Approach to Training made famous by Boyle and Cook is of course a must, yet very few actually test to see if their athletes have “stability” where stability should lie – the lumbar spine. This is especially important for post players who require a decisive and strong drop step to establish position in the post. Any leakage in energy or disconnect between their shoulders and lower body will surely afford them a less than desirable position on the low post.

To view this complete article and view associated videos click HERE.

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.

Need a doctor, hire a doctor.
Need a lawyer, hire a lawyer.
Need a real estate agent, hire a real estate agent.
Need a dentist, hire a dentist.
Need a computer analyst, hire a computer analyst.
Need a strength coach, hire an assistant football coach, or assistant basketball coach, or an athletic trainer, or a PT, or a the director of operations, or your high school buddy..

Is there something wrong here???

Ray Eady is the Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of Wisconsin and can be reached at RDE@athletics.wisc.edu