Paleo Chicken Pot Pie

Chicken Pot Pie, for me, is something I've always wanted to like. It's great in theory: savory, filling, comfort food. Sadly, I've only ever experienced the salty, unsatisfying, terrible variations that are sold in the frozen food section.

Last night my 34-year wait ended.

Please do yourself a favor and make this recipe. It is one of the best things I've ever made or tasted. It was quick, easy, healthy, and all-round amazing.

THIS Paleo Chicken Pot Pie is unreal. The small dish in the background was after Duke looked under the crust and rejected it. So, I ate that one, too.

My only adjustments were that I used the entirety of a roasted chicken (not just chicken breasts) and it was most certainly NOT organic. I also subbed out the almond flour for coconut flour due to my almond allergy. ***If you use the recipe as written, you should get a crust that fully covers the dish.***

Primal Rolls: Why Rolling Improves Athletic Performance

Primal rolls… a lot of our clients have encountered this deceptively difficult exercise. I imagine most of our clientele believe we program these solely for our own amusement as we watch them struggle to roll over on the floor.

While that’s not entirely true (it can still be amusing to watch sometimes) there are legitmate reasons to program primal rolls.

First, what is a primal roll?

Before I delve into the “why” we need to go over a few terms so we’re all up to speed.

The Core

You have an inner and an outer core.

Inner core: imagine a cylinder in your midsection with your pelvic floor as the bottom and your diaphragm at the top, the transverse abdominis is the front, and the lumbar multifidi constitute the back of the cylinder.

Functions: “Reactive” meaning it turns on without us thinking about it. It’s also involved in respiration (breathing), segmental spinal stabilization (keeping your spine from slipping around like a Jenga tower), and continence (not wetting your pants at inopportune moments.) The inner core supports the outer core and its most important function is that it must turn on and engage prior to the outer core muscles or abnormal muscle patterns (compensations) will result.

Outer core: erector spinae (muscles on either side of the spine), rectus abdominis, and the external obliques

Functions: posture stability, help produce movement (i.e crunches), resist external loads (maintaining a neutral spine during deadlifting or squatting), and attracting the opposite sex (it’s all ‘bout dem abz…).

Muscle Activation Sequence

According to this paper in the North American Journal of Sports Physical Therapy, movement dysfunction (compensation patterns or incorrect movements) is more often than not a problem with muscle sequencing and stabilization rather than weakness in a prime mover muscle; this means that the movement dysfunction is a neurological problem, not muscular strength problem.

When the inner core fails to fire properly- especially since one of it’s primary functions is to support the outer core- the body will increase the activation of the outer core muscles to compensate hence, those muscles are “on” all the time which can lead to trigger points, muscle fatigue, and “tightness” or restrictions in other muscle groups. It's all connected, folks!

Thus if we address muscle activation sequences then we can clean up movement dysfunctions and reduce the risk of injury due to those trigger points, fatigue, and restrictions.

It’s all About the Neck

Why do we, SAPT coaches, tell you to “pick up your head” first while performing a primal roll? Great question! Movements of the neck and head drive movement of the trunk. Neck flexion and extension will drive trunk flexion and extension. This is why we naturally want to look up when we’re at the bottom of a squat- it will help us drive upwards. Simply, where the head leads, the body follows.

By leading with your head/neck/eyes first, you’re ensuring that the nervous system is driving the movement which is the main point of rolling- to reset the neurological component of the inner/outer core coordination.

Types of Rolls

Supine (on your back) → prone (on your stomach) (upper lead)

Prone → supine (upper lead)

Supine → prone (lower lead)

Prone → supine (lower lead)

Ok, got it, but how does this relate to my sport/life?

Fair, it does seem a bit abstract doesn’t it? I’ll let the smarter-than-me authors from the paper speak for me:

The Relationship of Rolling to Rotation

Frequently, even highly functional patients demonstrate dysfunctional sequencing or poor coordination during active rotational movements that are part of their functional demands/tasks. Rolling patterns can easily illuminate rotational movement pattern dysfunction, especially when comparing between sides. It should be noted that the movement dysfunction is usually a problem with sequence and stabilization rather than a deficiency in strength of a prime mover. Theoretically, a person should be able to roll (rotate) equally easily to either the right or the left. Frequently athletes have a typical pattern or habitual “good side” for rotational activities. Consider the gymnast, thrower, or golfer; each of whom rotates to the same direction repeatedly, according to the demands of their sport. Examples include the twisting and spinning motions used during tumbling, the unidirectional rotation used during the throwing motion, and the same-side rotational motions that comprise the golf swing. In each of these examples, the athlete has a preferential side, and a pattern of rotation (e.g. always to the left in a right handed thrower or golfer) which is typical for the performance of their sport, and may have asymmetry in rolling to the opposite side.

The Relationship of Rolling to Other Movement Tasks

Although described in relationship to rotational tasks and movements, rolling is not only related to rotational tasks. The rolling patterns can function as a basic assessment of the ability to shift weight, cross midline, and coordinate movements of the extremities and the core. Abnormalities of the rolling patterns frequently expose proximal to distal and distal to proximal sequencing errors or proprioceptive inefficiency that may present during general motor tasks. Finally, many adults have lost the ability to capture the power or utilize the innate relationship of the head, neck, and shoulders to positively affect coordinated movements.

Got that? The ability to roll is in fact crucial to your performance of daily movements particularly shifting weight from side to side, activities that cross the midline and use both sides of the body at the same time (think running, sprinting, even walking), and coordinating your arms/legs with your core (which is every movement…).

Rolling also teaches disassociation between the upper and lower extremities. Why is that important? Think about a soccer kick: the upper and lower halves of the body must move independently to actually create the movement. If they didn't then you'd look like a Foosball player without a stick, not terribly useful in a game. 

Remember that whole "neurological coordination" thing? Nearly every athletic movement requires both sides of your body/brain to work together and if there are hiccups in those signals, well, you're performance is going to suffer. 

Rolling acts as a reset button for your nervous system and you become more efficient at organizing yourself from a athletic performance standpoint. 

Get Rollin'!

As silly as they seem (and you feel doing them), rolling patterns are useful for resetting aberrant muscle sequences that could be holding back your performance and potentially even be the source of injuries and/or pain.

P.S. If you really want to put on your nerd pants, then I recommend reading the full paper (linked above) as they dig deeper than I did here- it really is very interesting. 

Guest Post: Building Sport Specific Strength for Triathletes

Today's guest post comes to us once again from pro-triathlete Calah Schlabach. While Calah espouses specific training for triathletes, the concept of sport-specific strength can be applied across the board to every sport. 

In my first SAPT blog, I talked about the benefits of strength training for an endurance athlete (specifically, how gym-based strength training has helped me as an elite triathlete). Today, I’m going to talk a little bit about a different aspect of strength training--sport-specific strength training.

First, let me clear up my definitions. Your gym strength work should be “sport specific,” meaning that it should primarily focus on strengthening movements that are specific to your sport. Where it focuses on movements not specific to your sport, the purpose should be balancing out the muscles you neglect while using your primary muscles for swimming, biking, and running. (Note from Kelsey: think of this as general physical preparedness (GPP). This is stuff that every athlete will benefit from, i.e squats, pushups, general aerobic conditioning.)

What I am talking about here when I say “sport-specific strength training” is the work you do in each triathlon discipline that is focused specifically on building strength in that discipline, while doing that discipline.

All your workouts do (or should) have a specific purpose, whether it be building endurance, speed, power, or *dingdingding!* strength! Obviously, many workouts touch on more than one of these elements at once, and obviously, they are all important.

Though triathlon is generally listed under the generic title “endurance” sport and some of the top athletes are freakishly small, triathlon is, nonetheless, a “strong person’s” sport. Obviously, endurance is terribly important. However, one can be as fit as can be and have a huge aerobic capacity, but if she is not strong, she may struggle to go the distance.

This is why it is important to be sure to incorporate adequate sport-specific strength work into your swimming, biking, and running. Here are some ways to incorporate strength into your workouts in each triathlon discipline:

The Swim:

-Swim longer sets/reps: These get you ready to go the distance

-Swim with hand paddles: Hard plastic hand paddles create more resistance for your hand. Swimming with them is like lifting weights in the water.

-Swim with hand paddles and a band around your ankles (you can buy “ankle locks” specifically for this, or you can use an old tube): Taking away your kick forces your arms to work harder, and forces you to work harder to hold your body position. Additionally, it forces you to catch quicker, which is an important skill in the open water.

The Bike:

-Ride hilly courses and do hill repeats. Hills build strength in every discipline; If there were hills in the water, they would build strength!

-Ride in a gear that restricts you to 75-85 rpms at tempo effort. This is a great workout to add into your base phase.

The Run:

-Run hills. Work up to running your long run on rolling terrain.

-Run tempos. Tempo effort is about 85% of your maximum heart rate; so well above endurance pace, but definitely not all-out. A good tool for figuring out your tempo pace (and running paces in general) is McMillan’s Running Calculator.

-Add a tempo finish to your long run. Do the majority of your long run at long run pace (quite easy), but build up to running the last few miles at tempo pace.

-Make sure you are doing a long run. Your long run should be about 25% of your weekly run mileage.

SAPT: Methods Behind the Madness

For years we, as coaches, have hung our collective coaching hats on the idea that Strength & Performance Training provides the absolute best in training services to our clientele. We stay at the forefront of the human performance industry. Constantly researching, screening, and evaluating new methods that emerge to determine validity and applicability for our population. 

We get results. No question about that. But we often struggle to communicate our uncommon methods to our clients and their families in a clear, grounded fashion. It’s not for lack of trying. It’s just pretty darn hard to succinctly explain why the first month to three months at SAPT will involve doing things that, on the surface, seem to embody the antithesis of the common conception of performance training.

As such, we are launching a six part series called SAPT: Methods Behind the Madness. In this series we will expose many of our “secrets” and help you understand how and why these elements must come together to build a complete human, whether they consider themselves an athlete or not.

Week 1: Breathing

Week 2: Primal Patterns

Week 3: Quadruped Rocking

Week 4: Crawling

Week 5: Skipping & Marching

Week 6: We love barbells, here’s how you get to use them

At the conclusion of this series, it is our goal that you will see clearly, how each element builds upon the others to combine, efficiently and effectively to build powerful, healthy athletes (and humans).

Enjoy! 

Does Red Meat Really Cause Cancer? Good Grief...

Oh. My. Goodness. Nutritional sensationalism at it's best! 

I'm sure many of you are aware- since the media outlets are metaphorically shouting from the rooftops- a small summary paper of a large study was published recently about red meat and cancer. Per usual, someone grabbed the headline like a half-crazed streaker and sprinted naked down the street waving a banner.

Fortunately, saner heads prevailed and the guys over at Examine.com (great site, by the way) published an article dissecting what the study actually said as well as provide some excellent insight to reading research in general. 

Please, do yourself a favor and READ THIS. Then go eat a burger.

Training Around Elbow Pain- Tips, Tricks, and Tweak-Prevention

I had the opportunity to write an article for Breaking Muscle. Check it out!

Twingy and tweaky elbows are never desirable. But much like with shoulder pain, if you’ve been lifting for any appreciable amount of time, you’ve probably experienced (or currently have) elbow pain. But all is not lost if you already have pain.

This article offers some tips to avoid elbow pain through preventive work. I’ll also explain a few ways to reduce pain and work around it. Not only that, but there’s a little bit of anatomy thrown in so you can show off at parties.  READ MORE....