B2D article with Dan John and the relationship between fitness and injury prevention

I just came across this post by MC on her blog begin2dig. In it she interviews Dan John and discuss a template for pressing power and references one of my training regimens.

Pressing Matters Part II - Dan John

In part one of this article MC and Dan discuss the relationship between physical fitness and injury proofing. Here's a quick excerpt.

"Training colleague Kira Clarke recently suggested that a coaching colleague has seen a correlation between strength and persistent well being. This is worth repeating so let me post it here, from Kira:
'My coach friend (Will Heffernan) has a simple test (and benchmarks) he uses regularly on his athletes (he adjusts them for different types of athletes, but these are his general guidelines)
Squat or deadlift: 2 x bodyweight
Inverted rows in 1 minute: 30+
Pushups in 1 minute: 50+
Pullups in 1 set: 10+
Bench press: 1.5 x bodyweight

In his experience, once his athletes hit these numbers (and ratios) their injuries drop significantly. And as they surpass them, he still likes to see lower/upper body strength numbers increase together, and the bodyweight numbers increase maintaining the ratio of approximately 5:3:1.'
[...]
He recommends the following for female athletes ...
deadlift: 2 x bodyweight...
pullups: 8+
pushups: 50+
inverted rows: 30+
bench press: 1-1.25 x bodyweight
(It's basically the same benchmarks he uses for 100kg+ male athletes)

He also shared the following snarky remark ...

'The biggest problem that female athletes suffer from is the low expectations of male coaches"


In college I often felt that my muscles were what held my body together through all of the wear and tear of playing volleyball. At the beginning of the season during triple days, we would practice 43 hours a week with 3 hours of lifting a week thrown in on top of that. With a 33" vertical, that much jumping and landing put a beating on my joints. My knees ached like crazy pretty much from September to June, but through it all, all of my tendons and ligaments stayed strong and intact.

College was the first time I had ever really lifted weights or been on any type of auxiliary fitness program. What I did have growing up, was playing outside. I skateboarded and rode my bike everywhere from the time I got up to the time the street lights came on. Every push off with the skateboard is basically a mini one-legged squat with one leg and mini lunge with the other. It also developed balance and muscular endurance.

Once in college, I fell in love with the muscle burn and the strength development gained through weight lifting. At our first max test session, my leg press max came out somewhere around 350 lbs. During one of our lifting sessions a month or so into the season one of my teammates noticed my relatively light weight and remarked half jokingly that I was "sandbagging it" or not giving it my all. This rankled me a bit. I went rogue and began piling on the weight. By the end of the season max test in May, my leg press max was calculated out to be 1280 lbs. I say calculated because they ran out of room to put weight on the machine, even after piling weights on top of it. My squat max went from around 150 to 400. I never truly lifted heavy in the squat because it felt like it was compressing the hell out of my back.

A test of my leg strength came later that year when a few friends and I were driving back along a pretty desolate portion of I-5 in the middle of the night. We took a wrong turn off the highway and ended up high centering the car on a mound of dirt. This was a time long ago, before cell phones were common, so we were on our own. It was a late '80s four door honda civic, not that big of a car. There was enough room, so I wedged myself under the front of the car with my back on the ground and feet on the bottom of the bumper, and after a bit of time was able to push the car off of the mound. I'm 5'10" and at the time weighed around 165 lbs.

This level of strength correlates with the standards mentioned in the article. My knees never felt unstable during any movement through five years of volleyball. Another factor that helped my leg strength and knee stability was my summer job. During the summers in college, I worked for the US Forest Service as a wildland firefighter. Every morning we would alternate between a 3-5 mile run or a 1-3 hour hike with a 40 pound pack. Hiking on the trails with a pack forced my legs to develop strength through different and varying angles and foot positions. Every once in a while my Captain would get this little smirk and a maniacal twinkle in his eye and billy goat it right up the side of the hill. His reasoning was that wildland fires rarely happen right along a trail side. We'd all fall in line behind him clawing and climbing our way to the top. In addition to this, we'd also practice 1-2 500' hoselays a day. A hoselay is where we extend lengths of hose off of the engine, one 100' section at a time, fighting fire as we go, in an effort to catch and cut off the most active edge of the fire. For this we would have an additional 60 lbs on our backs for 100 lbs total, and the Captain would usually find something so steep that we'd have to sprawl out across the hillside and/or hang on to the base of shrubs as we fought our way to the top, if we didn't want to go tumbling over backwards down the hill. All this while dragging a charged hoseline. All in all, a great way to develop a whole lot of usable and functional leg strength. I highly recommend it for any athlete.

So, where does this leave me now? When I started playing rugby a few months ago and found out I'd be a forward in the scrums, my first instinct was to go running for my beloved leg press and hack squat machines. My livelihood as a firefighter depends on my staying healthy, despite any bumps and bruises I might take through rugby, firefighting or anything else. I want my legs and whole body for that matter, as strong as I can get them. But then, as I began to think about it, since working out with kettlebells and following "Convict Conditioning" and Pavel's program in "The Naked Warrior," I am much stronger through a full range of motion. With the leg press and squats my thighs were only going to parallel. With the pistol my body descends all the way down butt to heel. Plus, this also trains balance, functional movement, and body awareness, especially when performed with eyes closed. After using Viking Warrior snatch and push press protocols, I noticed that my body felt much more stable under load during a 52 story full gear stair climb. So, for now, staying the course, and continuing to work my way through these programs. Although, after getting all nostalgic writing this, you just might see me sporting a weight vest hiking and traipsing about trails of the Oakland and Berkeley Hills.