Below is an email Aaron sent me after he completed the first 3 days of the Z Health R Phase Certification. Aaron did some couch surfing at my place for the whole 3 days and it was awesome to bounce ideas off him. Very bright guy and be sure to check out his blog HERE. I got this email only a few days after the cert!
Mike,
We gotta talk.
I have been doing the Z-health R movements and I am doing some movements that I have not done this smoothly and with this much power in a long time. O-lifts, sprinting (my speed in both sprinting and weightlifting is seeming "scary" fast...for me) and 100 kettlebell (the 24kg KB) swings in just 4 minutes without even feeling I did anything (maybe a little glute fatigue but mostly all I felt was a tremendous "pop" in the hips each rep, and the only thing that really stopped me was fatigue in my hands) ...what the hell?
Is this stuff (Z-health) that legit or have I fallen deep into the placebo medicine? In just a few days?
Aaron Schwenzfeier
Strength and conditioning coach at the University of North Dakota
Super stiffness?Here is an idea I've bouncing around for awhile. I am sure I am not the first person to state this either and I am half expecting an email from the original owner any day now (seriously, if it is you let me know and I will give you credit, no problem).
"So maybe our end result is more muscle “stiffness” but we need to TRAIN MOBILITY to get there?" click HERE for the whole article
I guess I feel that stability is just "coordination"? (I know that is an over simplification.)
So I ran this past John Gray who is a PhD candidate in Dr. Stuart McGill's lab at the University of Waterloo. Dr. McGill is a top researcher on spine biomechanics. I see the word "super stiffness" being used in all sorts of crazy context now, so I thought I would go close to the source for any insight.
John did a great presentation at the NSCA regional conference recently, so be sure to check out his presentation on core stability if he is presenting in your neck of the woods.
Thanks Mike, what you wrote sums it up perfectly. It is all about coordination. But of course, an appropriate explanation of that is a lot more involved!
When people think of stiffness, they think they have to keep their trunk like a block of iron all the time. Not the case, you need to be able to turn it on and off in fractions of a second, so it is the ability to have a stiff torso but also the ability to change stiffness depending on the demands that are placed on it.
John Gray
