Review: Building the Efficient Athlete

By Ryan Smith, DC

For www.EliteFTS.com

Building the Efficient Athlete is a must-have for any coach, trainer, athlete, or iron warrior who is looking to maximize performance and minimize injury potential. Let’s face it. Whether your arena is a field, court, platform, or gym, you can’t perform maximally if you’re injured or your body works inefficiently. Imagine having a sports car capable of going 0–60 in four seconds. How fast will that car go if the spark plugs aren’t firing right or the timing is off? Or what if the alignment is bad or the parking brake is stuck? It’s safe to say that it won’t be close to its potential.

Well, your body’s machinery works the same way! Fix those problems, and you’ll maximize performance while minimizing injury. Building the Efficient Athlete is your practical guide to doing just that. It will show you how to get the muscles firing properly and in the appropriate sequence, how to improve posture/alignment, and how to remove the “neurological brakes” that hamper performance and contribute to injuries.

Eric Cressey (Magnificent Mobility and The Ultimate Off-Season Training Guide) and Mike Robertson (Magnificent Mobility and Inside Out: The Complete Upper Body Warm-Up) collaborated once again to put together Building the Efficient Athlete. The program consists of eight DVDs and an accompanying manual and contains material that has been taught in seminar fashion. The information is top-notch and could literally have been taught as a college course in physical medicine and rehabilitation.

Building the Efficient Athlete gives the user a few goals including the following.

• Learn some basic functional anatomy and understand the benefits of knowing it well. 
• Be able to administer both a static and dynamic assessment of a client/athlete.
• Acquire the ability to implement proper exercises to correct postural flaws.
• Be able to critically examine training programs and exercise technique for flaws.
• Learn to correlate postural flaws, muscle imbalances, and muscle substitution patterns to both prior and potential injuries.

This should be on the bookshelf of every trainer and coach who is looking to not only increase their knowledge, but also provide the best service and programs to their clients and athletes.

Ryan graduated from The Ohio State University in 1996 with a B.S. degree in Exercise Science. While attending Ohio State, he completed an internship in the Health-Related Fitness Program at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. In 2000, he graduated Summa Cum Laude from Texas Chiropractic College. Ryan participated in an orthopedic rotation through the Baylor Sports Medicine Institute, with one of the Houston Astros team physicians. He served as a sports medicine advisor for the USA Fit marathon training program for 5 years. Currently he is in group practice in Columbus, Ohio and focuses on myofascial therapy and rehab in addition to traditional chiropractic treatment.www.chirocolumbus.com.

Elite Fitness Systems strives to be a recognized leader in the strength training industry by providing the highest quality strength training products and services while providing the highest level of customer service in the industry. For the best training equipment, information, and accessories, visit us at www.EliteFTS.com.