I have been working with a lot of new clients over the last two weeks...

Here is what I have learned....

1. When people lift something, they tend to look at it. Many times, this is a bad. The reason for this: Where the eyes go, the body follows. Look at the bar when you deadlift, you will round your back. Instead, look at a spot about 7-9 feet in front of you. You hips will go down, the shoulders will go back, and your will be able to drive through the heels. This will give you better leverage and is much safer. This only little tip added 60lbs to someone's deadlift.

2. Instructions between lifts can be detailed. Instructions during lifts much be concise. Two words max, and preferably one. The reason, if they are focused on what you are saying, they are not focused on their lifting and body positioning. Where I have really seen this is I have two clients who do follow along KB DVDs. Their form, and their head positions specifically, were atrocious. I have never really seen the point of a follow-along DVD, unless you have the attention span of an ant. Can someone tell me what the point is?

3. People feed of others energy. I think for this reason I am going to group training only.

4. If you are a female, and you wear heels all of the time, you will most likely fail the "Overhead Squat" test of the functional movement screen. The reason: shortened calf and lengthened tibialis anterior. What that means is that you will not be able to keep the feet flat during the test.

For you athletes, there are a number of sports where this improper length-tension relationships will kill your performance: Bowling (this TA also everts the foot, which is important for balance), golf (will pitch your body forward, making you less powerful in the hitting zone), running (this will cause your foot fall to happen too far in front of you, putting major stress on the knee and back). Guys in their 60's that ran a lot in the 80's got knee replacements in the "aughts".

Also, this imbalance can migrate up to the hips (pitch forward) and shoulders (round forward).

5. With the kb swings, quality counts a lot more than quantity. I have seen some people do a swing so short the bell barely moves up or down. What work is being done and/or what skills are being developed. For this reason, I never use swings as a gauge of fitness. It is an open chain exercise w/o a fixed complete. Don't get me wrong, I use good swings for prep, but I measure snatches for performance.