Creating Value Behind the Scenes with Michael Hill - SimpliFaster
This week’s Friday Five discusses a range of topics—including career longevity, developing basketball players, and alien invasions—with Georgetown University’s Michael Hill.
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Freelap USA: An obvious difficulty working with basketball players is their tall, lean frames. What do you do to accommodate these athletes (especially those over 6’6”) in the weight room and those who are particularly lean (under 185 pounds)?
Michael Hill: There are definite challenges to working with tall, lean frames. Most basketball players have uncharacteristically long wingspans and disproportional torsos and are playing a sport that puts drastic demands on their bodies in severe angles that they shouldn’t be in. This results in an increased injury risk.
Regarding barbell training, the first issue would be holding a barbell and making accommodations for athletes who can’t truly get into positions such as a position 1 clean, hip rack position, or hip crease position. They may need to take a wider grip, bend the elbows, retract the shoulder complex, have less knee bend, etc.
The second is accommodating for exercises coming off the floor. This is, relatively speaking, easier now using blocks to proportional tibia, fibula, and femur heights. The third is using a bigger grip or Fat Gripz over the barbell to accommodate for the sizeable hand spans. The last would be the racks that we work in, which are the 10-foot-tall Sorinex Base Camp Series.
