Last week, I had the pleasure of visiting a good friend of mine, Tim DiFrancesco, at his facility in Swampscott, MA. I’m sure many of you haven’t heard of Tim, but he is definitely an up and coming performance enhancement professional. Tim is licensed physical therapist, a certified athletic trainer and a certifield strength and conditioning specialist. Needless to say, he’s had plenty of schooling and has the knowledge and skills to get people better.
Tim’s facility is called TD Athlete’s Edge and is located on Boston’s North Shore. He runs a semi-private training environment that is geared towards not only getting his athletes to perform at a higher level but also to move much more efficiently and feel healthier.
Whenever I go to visit a fellow colleague, I really love to just watch and observe how the athletes move, how they train, what kind of purpose they perform their exercises with while taking notes or taking pictures. What I noticed is how self sufficient the athletes were, how purposeful they were with their work and how organized their training sessions were.
This is the mark of not only a good coach, but also a good system. Every successful coach, no matter the sport or level, has a system. The system dictates how a practice/workout is run, what is expected and has specific goals. Tim and his staff have developed a successful system that works for their situation and their clientele. Going to visit another coach allows you to see what other coaches do which might allow you to pick up some new exercises, tips and cues that you might be able to implement into your program. What I realized this time is that the new things that you see and pick up have to fit within your system.
If you don’t have a system of training you HAVE to develop one. Your system is your road map and will help you take you where you want to go. If you don’t have one, look to another coach to see how they do it, and then look to another and then look to another to really get an idea of how you want to develop your system. Make sure it fits your philosophy and it is adaptable to any situation that may occur.
Stay tuned for guest post by Tim in the next couple days that discusses this more in depth.
To find out more info on Tim check out:
and his blog:
One of the reasons that I love the field of collegiate athletics is the competitive nature of the business. As a whole, our athletic department is competing to be superior to the other eight in the Big Sky Conference. This competitiveness permeates all the way from administration and staff, to the coaches, and finally to teams and individual athletes. Although I don’t know many of the other strength coaches in the Big Sky personally, I feel like every day I train my athletes, I am competing against them to do a better job getting my athletes prepared to win conference championships. This extreme level of competitiveness drives me to find out what steps I need to take to make me a better coach for my athletes.
Just like countless other coaches in this industry, I have sacrificed in order to improve at my craft. I have moved across the country twice, interned for little to no money, and am working on completing my Master’s degree. I did not make all of these sacrifices in hopes of being a mediocre coach. One resounding piece of advice I have received from strength & conditioning coaches across the country is that attending seminars and conferences is a sacrifice you MUST make to get better in this industry. And often times, the money you spend to attend these conferences comes back to you in the long run, because of the ideas and knowledge you gain from the experience and the people you meet. Since I started actually earning a paycheck for strength & conditioning, I have managed to attend my share of seminars and have met many outstanding coaches. However, I still must operate within the financial confines of a married man who just purchased a home, works with hundreds of athletes, and all while still being a student. And there are times when I get to the end of the month and realize I barely have enough money to support my wife and me, let alone spend money on continuing education.
With all that being said, I absolutely love my job and in no way will I let my financial situation dictate what kind of coach I am going to become. At this point in my career I know I cannot attend every conference and seminar that I would want to, but at the same time, I want to be getting better every single day at what I do. The good news is there are plenty of other ways to continue to grow as a coach in lieu of only going to conferences (coming from the guy who just attended two in less than a month). Here are some suggestions on how to get better on a budget:
1. Subscribe to free newsletters
Mike Boyle, Brijesh Patel (SB Coaches College), Mike Robertson, Eric Cressey, Adam Feit (YSCCa), Rob Taylor (SMARTER Team Training). These are only a few of the names in our industry who provide a FREE newsletter just for registering through their respective websites. These newsletters are often packed full of useful information that could help even the best strength coaches get better at what they do. Often times the newsletters contain video content, articles, and interviews. There are no excuses not to be signed up for these. As an aside, I actually won a copy of Functional Strength Coach 3.0 by being on Mike Boyle’s mailing list. All I had to do was make a video to explain why I was deserving of the product. It turned out to be a savings of almost $200 and it took me 10 minutes to make the video! Being proactive will pay off!
2. Email / phone correspondence
Although these are more informal ways to connect with coaches and other professionals, sometimes it allows you the opportunity to contact someone who is extremely far away from you that you may not meet otherwise. But be patient; these coaches are just as busy as you are, and are not necessarily going to call you back soon, if at all. Don’t take it personally. Remember that there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of people trying to contact these coaches as well. However, if you are patient and send a couple of emails or leave a confident detailed messages about why you want to talk to them, sometimes you’ll get lucky and get to communicate with some really great coaches. The knowledge I have gained about being a better coach from these interactions is probably more than I got out of my entire undergrad experience. Many of the people I talk to in the strength and conditioning profession are solely through email or phone contact, and I have never met them in person. Use peers as a resource and don’t be afraid of ego!
3. Visit free informational websites / blogs / podcasts
Similar to newsletters, fitness websites are great places to access tremendous content for no cost. There are too many good ones to list, but my personal favorites would be sbcoachescollege.com, t-muscle.com, ericcressey.com, robertsontrainingsystems.com, and elitefts.com. One thing I really like from these sites, aside from their great content, is that often times they have a recommended resources page, which is really helpful when selecting books and products for purchase.
Along these same lines, try to visit as many collegiate strength & conditioning websites as possible. The NSCA’s website has a pretty comprehensive list of universities who have strength & conditioning pages. Many of their websites include staff philosophies, nutritional information, and exercise demonstrations. Again, invaluable information that can make you better at what you do.
As for blogs, again there are too many good ones to list, but I really like all the guys of Cressey Performance (Tony Gentilcore, Brian St. Pierre, & Eric Cressey), Mike Robertson, Dan John, Diesel Crew, Nate Green, Alwyn Cosgrove, and Luka Hocevar to name several. Blogs are great because the content is updated frequently and is usually entertaining to read.
The mother of all free content comes from free podcasts. The two that I listen to are from Robertson Training Systems and the FitCast. Again, outstanding content and you get to listen to the opinions of some of the best professionals in our business.
Finally there are some relatively inexpensive pay websites (strengthcoach.com, sportsrehabexpert.com, bighousepower.com, myfittube.com) that have extremely excellent reputations and are run by very qualified coaches (personally I have only used strengthcoach.com). Some of these sites also include open forums where you can get advice and talk shop with some of the greatest coaches in the world, which is worth the price of membership itself!
4. Taking advantage of social networking sites
I’m about as against wasting my time with social networking sites as the next coach, but some of these sites are great in terms of accessing helpful information. One that I just joined, Strength Performance Network, is like facebook for coaches, and has a ton of great video content, as well as a chat area to talk with other professionals. Then there is always facebook, but often times I have found it better to join fan pages promoting a coach’s facility or company rather than being their personal facebook friend, because the site is still intended for uniting “friends” rather than strangers with agendas. Just be forewarned that facebook seems to be more about promotion rather than learning, but it is still a pretty decent way to get in contact with coaches.
5. Earning continuing education from classes
If you are like me and certified through the NSCA, you are expected to earn 6.0 CEUs by December 31, 2011. 5.5 of those CEUs can come from course work. According to the NSCA, you can earn .3 CEUs per hour for a quarter class, and .5 CEUs per hour for a semester class, with a maximum of 2.0 CEUs per class. If you work at a college, you should be able to take classes at a highly discounted rate. At Eastern Washington University, I pay five dollars for up to 10 credits! Not only are you earning continuing education units by taking classes, you are hopefully gaining a ton of knowledge from the experience. I prefer taking advanced anatomy, biomechanics, or computer classes. All of these will definitely make you better at what you do and give you some sympathy for what your student athletes endure on a weekly basis!
And I can hear a collective moaning from the post-graduate group about taking classes again. But the bottom line is that it doesn’t hurt to be challenged every once in a while, and we typically have pretty open schedules during the middle of the day when these classes are being offered. Homework definitely is not fun, but how many hours a night do you waste watching American Idol and Dancing with the Stars? Suck it up.
6. Checking out books from the library
I typically purchase one or two books a month from Amazon that relate to strength and conditioning, and another one for personal enrichment. However, the other day when I was in our library looking for some research for my thesis, I found they had a copy of one of the books I was going to buy later that month (Mechanical Low Back Pain). From now on, I always check in our school and local library for books that I want to purchase before buying online in hopes of saving a few bucks. Why buy when you can read them for free.
7. Attend clinics & seminars regionally
Try to find out what is regionally when planning to attend seminars. If it is local, you can save money on traveling funds and meals. And typically if you contact the people hosting the event, they can sometimes provide you with contact information from other people attending the clinic. That way, you might be able to find someone to split the cost of a room, as well be able to get to spend some extra time with a fitness professional you would otherwise only see at the conference.
8. Convince administration to help with conference costs
As stated previously, nothing beats attending a large conference or seminar in terms of meeting new people and learning a ton of great stuff. It has been my experience that in the university setting, the beginning of the school year is typically when the administration is willing to be more flexible with spending. Budgets have been replenished and there is a renewed sense of resources and commitment to the advancement of the department (at least for the first couple weeks). In my opinion, this is the best time to approach an AD about money to budget towards attending conferences. Let them know exactly why it is important that you attend the seminar, how it will make your athletes better, provide a detailed list of costs and how you plan to incur some of the expenses through department fundraisers or out of your own pocket, and then cross your fingers that they agree to help. If you strike out here, at least you know then what you’re dealing with in terms of how much money you need to save in order to get to the conference. And don’t be discouraged to attend. Often times if you let the administrators know that you will be attending anyway, they will understand how important it is to your staff and may help you the next time you plan to attend a seminar or conference. You can also use other coaches as a resource for additional funds. A little money from each athletic team could help to get you to a conference.
This is by no means an exhaustive list on how to get better in the field of strength and conditioning on a budget, but hopefully there are a few things you can take away from this article to not only save you some money, but to also motivate you to get better at what you do. Coming from the background of a competitive athlete, I always want to be the best at what I do, and am motivated to do what it takes to get better. But if I can save some money in the process, it can’t hurt. Hopefully this helps some people who are in the same boat as me.
If you work with basketball athletes or taller athletes, you may have noticed that these athletes may struggle with not only double leg squatting but also single leg squatting. This is because their femurs tend to be longer than the average folk.
This comes back to simple physics as a longer lever is more difficult to control. And if an athlete has trouble controlling movements, injuries are sure to occur. Every joint within our body needs a certain amount of mobility (movement) and stability (control). If mobility is established then we need to add stability/control to it. In our case of long femurs and squatting, the first step is to make sure there is adequate mobility within the hip joint. If that is good we need to move onward to see why an athlete still has trouble performing the movement. The movements that tend to be the hardest to control are the eccentric actions of the squatting movement which are internal rotation and adduction. Now what muscles help control these femoral movements?
Namely the muscles that help to externally rotate and abduct the hip which are the gluteal muscles.
The Glute max, medius and minimus play a huge role in developing femoral control. And we have to train these muscles in ways that help to work on these actions.
If we don’t include exercises that help to work on femoral control than it could lead to knee issues in our athletes. Double leg squatting is a good starting point but having 2 fixed points of contact doesn’t challenge the hip musculature to the same degree as single leg work….and single leg unsupported to be specific.
Mike Boyle was the first strength coach that broke down single leg training into single leg supported and single leg unsupported. Single leg supported exercises is where you have 2 points of contact where one leg is performing the majority of the work. Examples are lunges, split squats, lateral squats, etc. Single leg unsupported work is where the body is supported on a single leg and the other leg is free (in the air). Examples of these exercises are single leg squats, single leg reaches, and pistol squats.
With basketball athletes and athletes with longer femurs it is imperative that single leg unsupported work be included to help develop the glutes to control the femur. Single leg squats to a box with a band above or below the knees is a great way to start and get the athlete to understand femoral control and the importance of it. You may need to start your taller athletes with a higher box and progressively move them down to a lower box as their strength and control improve.
We should all know the importance of single leg strength now, but if you are working with taller athletes make sure single leg unsupported work is included within your program.
What are other variations that you would include?
It’s about that time when most collegiate strength coaches who don’t work with football are starting to plan programs for the upcoming school year. When starting out to write a training program there are a number of factors that must be considered and questions that you must ask yourself.
Below is a list from the late Dr. Yuri Verkhoshansky
- where are we in the training calendar,
- what is the technical-tactical nature of the position,
- what are we philosophically committed to,
- what geometric position does his body initiate movement from at the snap,
- what directions might he initiate movement in and in what way might he change his direction,
- what muscles are involved,
- what is the speed of contraction,
- what amplitudes of movement are involved in the work,
- where in the amplitude are the greatest forces generated,
- what percentage of his technical-tactical responsibility necessitates that he overcomes or resists external resistance,
- what is the magnitude of resistance he must overcome or resist against,
- what are the geometric positions of his body when he overcomes or resists against external load,
- over what distances does he cover on average,
- what role do speed, reactive/elastic ability, power, strength, and joint mobility play in the execution of his competition maneuvers,
- how many snaps does he average per game,
- how long is the average play,
- how much time transpires between most plays,
- how might I construct drills to be performed under alactic and aerobic conditions,
- how will I sequence the change and introduction of training stimuli into the training load,
- how will I utilize the time available during the off-season,
- what will the contents of the training blocks consist of,
- how will regulate the sequence and nature of the bioenergetic training,
- how will I regulate the sequence and nature of the biomotor training,
- how will I structure individual training sessions and consecutive days and weeks of training,
- and the list goes on…
Some of those questions may apply to your sport, while some may not, but you should get the idea. Writing a training program is so much more than putting a grouping of exercises together with some sets and reps. How are you organizing them to gain a training effect? How must rest are you giving between sets? How is the week planned out? etc.
The next time you sit down to plan a strength and conditioning program what kind of questions are you asking yourself?
I see myself as a movement practitioner; one that is looking to aid in the process of moving more efficiently. This will hopefully reduce the rate of injury as well the quality of performance. So when I am making a program I am looking to see where everything fits into helping this process best. With all of that being said, I place all movements in a work out with the intention of making better athletes.
To put it in a term that I think that everyone can relate to, I am what they call a functional trainer. What that means for example in terms exercise selection is that I would opt for a ground based position over a seated one. I know I can lift more weight in the more stable seated position (for some movements), but it means nothing to me if an athlete can not optimally press or pull something with out maintaining a neutral alignment.
There are ways I can position my athletes in which I can lift greater loads or in a position with an increased stability demands. Manipulating foot position is simple but effective method that increases the body’s ability to stabilize and thus lift greater loads. This is critical in circumstances with athletes that are looking to increase their strength as well as novice athletes that still have difficulty maintaining a neutral posture during movement. Thus the creation of: Myofascial Line Training.
I don’t typically like to promote pre-constructed programs as a means for athletic development because they don’t tend to be the most well designed or well thought out.
I was fortunate enough to get an advanced copy of a new football training program that will be released early next week that is OUTSTANDING!
Total Football Training
Developed by Duane Carlisle, Head Strength & Conditioning Coach of the San Francisco 49ers, it is, without question, the most comprehensive, easy to implement football training program I’ve ever seen.
Duane Carlisle Speaks to High Schoolers
I won’t try to explain all the details in this blog post because it would take too much space (just click on the above link for more info). But if you’re looking for a program to develop your football players’ speed, strength and conditioning, then you need to check out Total Football Training.
If you want a program that does most of the heavy lifting for you, so you can focus on coaching and not wasting time trying to decide which workout to do and when, then Total Football Training is just what you, your program and your athletes need to make a run at a Championship this year…and next.
Programs and players who implement Coach Carlisle’s system and technique will get faster, stronger and will put themselves in better position to win games. Those who don’t, won’t.
I’m not just saying this because I’m a 49ers fan either and think they are in for a big season. I’ve trained football athletes before and seen many programs out there. This is a well conceived, thought out program that covers all aspects that a football player needs to enhance their performance. The manual with DVD’s also help to educate athletes and coaches about the entire process rather than just giving you a plan.
That being said, I highly recommend you invest in a copy of the best football training program available anywhere.
Even if you don’t train football athletes, I think the information in this product can be beneficial to all performance enhancement coaches.
Regards,
Brijesh
This is a common question that gets posed to my athletes. I ask them what are you doing to make yourself better.
Are you working as hard as you can to make yourself better?
Are you encouraging and pushing your teammates to make them better?
Are you eating breakfast every day and getting more fruits and veggies in your diet?
Are you getting to sleep on time and focusing on your recovery efforts?
I ask my athletes these questions to put ownership on them and realize that they are the ones who control what type of results they are going to get out of the training program. The better results they get from their efforts, the greater their confidence and ultimately the better their performance. If you believe in yourself more and believe you won’t fail, you will perform at a higher level and won’t let distractions and disappointments in your way.
But we as coaches also have to look at ourselves and ask ourselves “What are we doing to make ourselves better?”
If we are asking our athletes to sacrifice their time and energy to becoming better, we must ask ourselves to do the same.
Are we reading more to increase our knowledge base to better help our athletes?
Are we attending conferences to pick up more tools that we can use in our toolbox?
Are we training and seeing how effective our programs are?
Are we calling, visiting and or emailing other coaches to find out what others are doing?
Are we learning how to be better coaches, communicators and educators?
Are we investing in ourselves to better help our athletes?
Getting better is a two way street. You have to raise the bar on yourself if you expect your athletes to do the same.
The more we can help ourselves, the better we will be able to serve our athletes.
What are you doing to make yourself better?
Collegiate strength and conditioning coaches don’t typically get a lot of attention. The profession is a behind the scene’s type job. You work long hours, and have a variety of different roles. You are a coach, motivator, therapist, confidant, disciplinarian, counselor and sometimes a friend. The impact that you have on 18-22 year olds is immeasurable.
We do it because we love to do it.
The field of Strength and Conditioning is growing and is finally coming into the mainstream. More and more people are recognizing the impact that we have on the athletes and the athletic department.
ESPN recently did some articles on Strength coaches (namely Football, since football is king).
Check them out and enjoy the reads and congrats to all the coaches that were named.
STRENGTH COACHES DOING HEAVY LIFTING
SEC STRENGTH COACHES
PAC-10 STRENGTH COACHES
BIG TEN STRENGTH COACHES
BIG 12 STRENGTH COACHES
BIG EAST STRENGTH COACHES
ACC STRENGTH COACHES
Recently you may have all gotten blasted with email notifications from us at S B Coaches College. This caused much angst to many of you all and we sincerely apologize for the inconveniences we may have caused you.
Our address book was hacked into and spam messages that seemed to be from us were being sent out to all of our list members. The problem occurred when replies were being sent back to everybody on the list and continued to be replied to. We have solved the issue and are looking at another way to notify all of our loyal readers and followers about updates. The best way to do that is to subscribe to the newsletter on the left hand side of the page. As a thank you for subscribing we are offering our Core Exercises for Health and Performance Video with PDF as a download. So be sure to sign up to get this great video – you will definitely find some great core exercises that you can add to your programs.
We pride ourselves in the quality of content and educational information we put out there. We also pride ourselves in the way we conduct ourselves and feel extremely embarrassed at the recent situation and how angry it may have made all of you.
We hope we can regain your trust and following.
Brijesh, Shawn and Robb
In 1990, two men coined a term that would later become a standard term for business students and companies attempting to enter the marketplace. What is this term? Core competency. In the business world, a core competency is a specific factor that a business sees as being central to the way it, or its employees, works. Additionally, for it to be a legitimate core competency in business, it must provide a benefit to the customer, be inimitable, and provide broad sweeping application to numerous products or markets.
In the world of strength and conditioning, core competency is a specific factor that is central to the way athletes function and are trained. Simply put, these core competencies are to be developed first and foremost in athletes of any discipline before even beginning to look to other movements and training interventions. To be termed core competencies, they must also provide benefit to the athlete that few other methods are capable of replicating and also provide benefits for a number of movement dysfunctions. As I see it, there are two core competencies to be addressed with every athlete or client regardless of discipline. Unquestionably, these two core competencies are breathing and rolling patterns. That’s right, breathing and rolling.
Breathing as a Core Competency
Breathing is a critical piece of the movement equation and is one that has been almost ignored until recently. Many people simply breathe, and call it “good” if they do not suffocate, unfortunately this is far too simplistic as there is a “right” and a “wrong” way to breathe.
Unfortunately, we know that the majority of people fall toward the “wrong” way and incorrect breathing patterns lead to a gamut of movement dysfunctions. Improper breathing can lead to dysfunction as high as the TMJ (though some osteopathic physicians see proper breathing as having a mobilizing effect on the skull) and as low as the hips. In between, breathing plays a powerful role in cervical posture, carpal function, shoulder health from a joint centration perspective, thoracic spine mobility, and lumbo-pelvic-hip stability via intra-abdominal pressure mechanisms. Better control at the pelvis, leads to more favorable mechanics of the joints above and below, making breathing a powerful ally in preventing lower extremity injury. Restoration of proper breathing patterns can reduce tone in the majority of cervical muscles, aid in the reduction of forward head posture, and reduce tone of the hip flexors.
The biochemical effects of hyperventilation have powerful effects on fascial constriction and there are primary and/or accessory muscles in each and every fascial line presented by Thomas Myers. As we understand from the concept of tensegrity, it then stands to reason that breathing limitations alter all fascial lines, and ultimately lead to movement dysfunction. One could go as far as to say that due to the relationship between the obliques and intercostals of the lateral line, improper breathing can result in reduced function of the “anterior X” that controls and produces torque, and subsequently running and walking mechanics can be altered.
Proper breathing certainly provides great benefit to the athlete, is inimitable, and is of huge benefit to a vast array of movement dysfunction. Thus, there is little question that breathing must be a core competency. As the great therapist Karel Lewit said, “If breathing is not normalized, no other movement pattern can be.”
Rolling as a Core Competency
Rolling is a concept that is beginning to gain respect in the strength and conditioning world thanks to the great work of Pavel Kolar, Gray Cook, and Craig Liebenson. It is not a new concept and rolling as a therapeutic technique has been utilized by Moshé Feldenkrais, members of The Prague School of Rehabilitation, Margaret Knott, and Dorothy Voss among others for decades.
The basis of rolling goes back to the developmental sequence during which a baby follows a predictable set of developmental movement parameters as a result of “pre-programmed” neural patterns. After lifting the head, the first step in the sequence is rolling. By allowing appropriate developmental sequencing, the baby goes through postural ontogenesis and develops reflex responses that are useful at later stages of development. Unfortunately, Vojta suggests that up to 30% of children never reach full CNS maturation yet go on to develop more complex quadruped or bipedal movement patterns. This altered sequence can contribute to movement dysfunction in many ways. Additionally, Janda and Lewit theorized that it is the body’s response to revert back to an earlier stage of posture or movement patterning in response to trauma or excessive strain. It is here that rolling fits into training all populations.
Rolling allows us to train patterns that already exist in our neural circuitry that may be out of touch, and in turn allow us to restore appropriate and reflexive motor control. Though muscles are not a focus in retraining patterning, rolling requires good function of the deep neck flexors, diaphragm, mutifidi, pelvic floor, and abdominal wall according to Kolar. Additionally, some suggest that the psoas and transverse abdominis plays a role in providing stability via the inner unit of the core.
Appropriate development of the rolling sequence depends on neurological, energetic, biomechanical, and cognitive functions. In the initial stages, a feedback mechanism is in place as a response to excessive rotational stressors on the spine. This mechanical stress leads to boatloads of afferent information, which leads to long loop reflex activity that stimulates the musculature involved in stabilizing the movement. With repeated exposure, our brain is able to develop an effective feedforward mechanism by body schema monitoring. It is at this time that the CNS is able to identify the body’s relationship relative to its base of support, predict where alterations in the center of mass occur, and ultimately leads to anticipatory muscle response and a better controlled neutral zone. When this portion of development is complete, the body is capable of using eye and tongue movement to create reflexive activation that applies to far more movements than rolling.
With proper development, an athlete stands to gain superior control of segmental translation via feedback mechanisms and the ability to control coupled spinal shear and rotational moments, which are critical for clean gait patterns. Additionally, the establishment of strong ocular and respiratory synkinesis will allow for higher levels of function and development in all body positions. Perhaps most beneficial, however, is the development of the feedforward mechanism, which can assist in the prevention of injury as a result of unexpected shifts of the center of mass characteristic of athletic contests.
Due to it’s ability to stimulate reflexive core activation unlike any other exercise and because it provides benefits to nearly every movement pattern via feedback and feedforward reflex mediation, rolling is undoubtedly a core competency.
Wrap up
It is also important to note that simply because you have decided that you have core competencies that they are all you are allowed to focus on until they are perfect. This could not be further from the truth, as there are many exercises that can be programmed that will make your athletes better breathers and rollers.
Whether you agree or disagree with breathing and rolling as the two core competencies in training matters little. Instead, what matters is that whatever you choose you have a strong supporting argument. Remember, it must provide benefit, be difficult to emulate with other exercises, and provide global benefits. What are your core competencies?