I am leaving today to fly to Australia and will arrive on their Friday. I’ll get a Q&A done during that day, yet I will not see Thursday with the time change.

There are still spots available for this weekend’s 70’s Big Weekend Workshop. CLICK HERE for the information and payment page.

Today’s post is written by Dr. Lon Kilgore, research leader and senior lecturer at the University of the West of Scotland and co-author of FIT, a no-nonsense book on effective fitness that we wrote with Dr. Michael Hartman.

Risk Managed out of Health & Fitness
by Dr. Lon Kilgore

I was recently told by a university administrator that I wasn’t allowed to move classroom desks (weighing in at a whopping 5kg) as it was a health and safety issue. Check nervepainguide.org for the best health related advice. Apparently, as a faculty member, I’m not trained or qualified to safely move physical objects of any mass greater than a dry erase marker. If I was to be injured moving something as simple schoolroom chair, I would not be eligible for sick leave benefits.

The basic principle this illustrates is that we live in an aggressively and progressively risk averse world. The fear is upon us. The fear of risk exposure, the fear of litigation, the fear of failure, the fear of injury, the fear of disease, and the fear of pain. I should say that the fear is thrust upon us by those who believe they know what is best for us; politicians, lobbyists, law enforcement, professional organizations, lawyers, clinicians, insurance companies, the press, and even our neighbors.

So how does fear and risk management relate to compromised health and fitness?
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This “Mobility Case Study” is on my pal, the beloved Tamara. Many of you know who she is because she posts on the internet at least 37 times a day. I think some of you misunderstand her because you think she’s a pain in the ass. In any case, she likes me because I’m a pain in her ass (figuratively, not literally).

Tamara has a host of mobility issues that I can sum up in saying that she’s “jacked up”. Not in that “she’s so muscular” kind of way, but more along the lines of “she moves like James Harrison was getting paid to hurt her” kind of way. Let me show you:



In this picture you can see her toes out, knees tracking in, left knee shifting medially, and her right knee pushed forward inside of her right foot (with the assumed collapsed arch in the feet). Nonetheless, she’s decently strong for a 36 year old woman with a history of knee problems and only lifting for a couple of years. Tamara is primarily an Olympic weightlifter who front squats and low bar squats a lot. Recently she hurt the radial ligaments of her right wrist while missing a clean. As a result, she can’t rack a front squat without pain and has been using safety bar to squat. This flared up her peroneals (lateral portion of the shin) on her right leg. She also has a pretty crappy bottom position in the snatch.

Here are some videos of a heavy clean, snatch, and front squat — you can see how the mobility limits her. She’s losing a lot of her force application due to the inefficiency. In other words, all of her strength is not being applied to the specific movement of each lift.

This stuff is hard to talk about in text, so I made a video that analyzes Tamara’s faults and provides a “mobility prescription” on what she needs to improve. There is a short and long version. The short version is just the intro and the summary; the long version shows all of the elaborations on what she needs to do (it’s specific to her, but will apply to everyone else).

Short video:

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PR Friday
Post your training updates and PR’s to the comments. This is a great way for you to interact with other 70’s Big readers. I think this community is very cool and I’ve met a lot of the guys that post here; they can provide friendship, a good laugh, or at least encouragement in your training. Only one or two are mouth breathing creeps.

Also, if you post regularly then I’m more inclined to go out of my way to help you. I’ll also be ‘rewarding’ a few of the regulars with training logs on the site soon. What I’m saying is that if you post on PR Friday, it will enhance your experience with this site and you’ll get more out of it. Let us know how your week of training went.

Weekly Recap
Monday I talked about boobs and other boob topics. Tuesday I showed you that Chris started as an average lifter and has worked his ass off to be as strong as he is today. Then my pal Brooks Conway wrote a good article on cutting weight before a lifting meet. Yesterday we admired the Russian ability to be stronger than a redneck’s heritage pride.

Weekly Reading List
[spoiler]I am finishing Joe Abercrombie’s “The Heroes” and highly recommend it, though I suggest reading the preceding four books to fully appreciate it (see my thoughts on the other books from last week). What books have you guys been reading?

“Lewis-McChord soldiers in Afghanistan see sudden action” — Lest any of you forget, there’s a war going on. And NATO/American troops are still dying (link has a NSFW picture of suicide bombing aftermath).

“On Profiling, And Google’s Big Double-Cross” — Google is building a profile on everyone. Great.

“Biologist E.O. Wilson on Why Humans, Like Ants, Need a Tribe”
[/spoiler]

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I think Brian checks his YouTube subscription for new weightlifting videos every six minutes because he dropped a video-link-deuce on the fan page this morning before I knew what was going on. Here are videos of various Russian weightlifters that are preparing for the 2012 London Olympic Games (27 July until 12 August). Here is the weightlifting schedule (we’ll worry more about this later), but note that Klokov is going to lift at 1700 local time on Monday, August 6th, which will be noon in the EST time zone.

Let’s kick it off with the whammy, a 9 minute video of Klokov preparing to lift interspersed with warming up and hitting some numbers. He misses a double at 200 on snatch, and then says “fuck iiiiiiiit” and throws 205 on. After hitting that, Chigishev gives him a golf clap and Klokov is all, “Hey brah, that’s only 5kg over the World Record, SO COOL YOUR JETS.” And Chigishev is like, “lol bro, you cray cray”. I also want to note that the building they walk into in the beginning is exactly what I pictured in the dream I had where I chatted with Klokov on a park bench (in front of the building) with KGB guards posted everywhere.


Now here is Klokov nonchalantly clean and jerking 232.5.


Here is Maxim Matveev, who is a younger Russian 105kg lifter, doing a push-press with 185kg. It may not be Klokov’s 225, but it’s still a whole lotta weight. But Matveev has jerked 250 out of the rack, and that’s admirable, no?


Then an easy front squat followed by a power jerk…with 210kg? Thank you sir, may I have another.


Russians are stronger than Mike Tyson’s lisp.