Cedric Unholz

• Tweet
• Sharebar

• Tweet

 

This week I was fortunate enough to interview Patrick Ward, a strength coach and manual therapist based in Phoenix, Arizona.

 

Patrick has greatly helped me improve my knowledge in manual therapy and anatomy related areas, and has been extremely generous with his advice and time.

 

Some excellent info in this interview, I hope you enjoy it.

 

1. Hi Patrick, thanks for taking the time to do this interview. Could you outline your background, and how you came to be an S&C coach?

Thanks for having me, Cedric. My background is probably very similar to many others in this field. I started training at a young age, 13, because I wanted to be bigger and stronger – I was a small kid. I just kept on training and the more I learned, the more I was fascinated with physiology and the human body.

That led me to become a trainer, and it has been a process of learning and developing my skills ever since. I just try and get better at what I do every day.

 

2. You are a manual therapist as well as a strength coach and as such possess a large array of “tools” that most strength coaches do not have. How do you feel this particular range of skills aids your work as an S&C professional?

Doing manual therapy can be very effective in the training process. If during my assessment I find some things – limitations, painful movement, poor ROM, asymmetries, etc – that I know I can help improve with soft tissue therapy, then I go for it. Additionally, it offers me a go to option when an athlete is fatigued and beat up from hard training or competition. We can back off for a few days and do some more soft tissue work and just help improve recovery, relaxation, and decreasing overall stress.
Having a thought process about how soft tissue therapy fits into your training philosophy is something that needs to be developed. I don’t sit around and do 60-90min Swedish massages. What I do is very specific and thought out in terms of giving the individual what they need in order to get them off the table and move.

 

3. Could you provide some advice tor my readers who are looking to do a manual therapy course to enhance themselves as a trainer?

It isn’t so much about a class but trying to obtain licensure that is key. I talked about that a little bit in my blog – http://optimumsportsperformance.com/blog/?p=1366. Having the license that says you are legally able to work on people is a critical component. After that, learn as much as you can. One class or one course wont teach you what you need to know. It is more about experience, getting your hands on a lot of people, and knowing your anatomy! Anatomy is everything!

 

You have to know where to put your hands, where not to put your hands and when to assess and treat one thing verses another. Anatomy is king in manual therapy and the more you know the better you will be. This goes beyond just knowing origins and insertions of basic muscles (which it sometimes surprises me that many trainers don’t know basic functional anatomy) but knowing about how those muscles interact with other muscles, fascia, ligaments, joints, etc, and also knowing about the nerves and circulatory system. Learn and read as much as you can about anatomy!

 

That being said I do heavily support the courses from the NMT Center, put on by one of my mentors, Judith DeLany. These courses are incredibly comprehensive with regard to anatomy and being thorough and specific with soft tissue structures. I cannot recommend the courses enough to massage professionals.

 

4. Could you give my readers a basic summary of your training methodology?

My training methodology is governed by three basic principles – Move well, train appropriately, and get fit.

 

Breaking them down:

Move well basically means what it says. How good are you at owning fundamental patterns? Can you perform them properly without asymmetries between the two sides? The Functional Movement Screen has been a valuable tool in my assessment process. I also use a very thorough table assessment to look at and evaluate things more closely as I don’t want to miss anything.

 

Train appropriately is all about lifting with good technique and having a proper training program that makes sense. If you move well and you have a sound training program and good lifting technique you are allowed to move to the final step in the methodology.

 

Get fit means different things to different people. For some it may mean improving strength and power and for others it may mean losing body fat and improving overall health. This is obviously goal dependant, as a professional athlete may have different goals than a general training client. Whatever get fit means to them is what we shoot for, but they need to be competent in the first two rungs of the ladder (move well and have good technique) before getting here.

 

5. For the readers who are less familiar with your work what population(s) do you train/work with and do your approaches differ depending on who you work with?

My clients are pretty diverse. Obviously being in Phoenix lends itself well to working with the golf population, so some of my clients are professional, amateur and recreational golfers. I have a few beach volleyball athletes as well as the normal recreational endurance athletes – marathoners, cyclists, and triathletes.

 

Other than that, the rest of my clients are general population folks just looking to obtain better health and fitness. I also get referrals for soft tissue therapy from chiropractors and physical therapists from time to time, so I guess my clientele is pretty broad. I don’t focus on any one person or group.

 

6. What, in your opinion, is the biggest problem you see within the field today?

I think one of the biggest problems is that this field tends to breed mediocrity. So many people are content with just being mediocre. I am constantly disappointed when I meet trainers, massage therapists or clinicians (physical therapists, chiropractors, doctors) that don’t stay current with their information.

 

They are totally happy with knowing what they know, and have no interest in progressing further. I just don’t know how anyone can do that! Our field has a lot of work to do if it ever wants to progress forward. It is way to easy to obtain a certification and call yourself a professional. The industry is too watered down with individuals that have no interest in it and just treat it as a “job”.

 

7. Who have been your biggest influences as a coach and person?

I have drawn influence from many of the big names in the industry. People like Gray Cook, Shirley Sarhmann, the late Mel Siff, Stuart McGill, Leon Chaitow, Vladimir Janda, Vern Gambetta, and Mike Boyle all come to mind.

 

Honestly, there are too many to name in that list as I have been influenced in one way or another from everything I have read and everyone I have seen lecture, whether I agreed with them or not.
That being said, there are three key people that have played an instrumental role in my development. I have had many opportunities to learn from these people in person and correspond with them on a personal level. Being able to have this connection to them has obviously allowed me to develop my ideas on a deeper level based on their teachings, and for that I will always be grateful.

 

Judith DeLany – Judi is an incredible professional. She has forgotten more about soft tissue therapy than I know, and being able to represent her organization as a certified neuromuscular therapist and assist when she is teaching some of her courses has been a great experience.

 

Charlie Weingroff – I can’t say enough great things about Charlie. Plain and simple, he is the strength coach I want to be when I grow up. Spending time talking with Charlie has been some of the greatest learning experiences of my career.

 

Willem Kramer – Willem Kramer is a physiotherapist from the Netherlands who I hope more people start to hear about. If Charlie is the strength coach I want to be when I grow up then Willem is definitely the manual therapist I want to be when I grown up! Willem’s approach to manual therapy (which can be found on his Anatomy Links website – http://www.anatomylinks.com/) takes the concept of regional interdependence to a whole other level. Willem is the reason I ended up going to massage school anyway!

 

At the time he was working with the Arizona Diamondbacks and getting amazingly fast results (I often refer to him as Gandalf, as he gets results that seem to be out of this world and only possible for someone who is a wizard and possess skills in magic). I was hanging out in the training room one day and watching him work his magic on a few athletes and I started to ask him questions about where I could learn what he was doing. He told me to not go to physical therapy school but rather just get a massage license, as that would allow me to do the techniques he was using. That was all I needed to hear, and I signed up for school two weeks later. Talking to and learning from Willem has been a critical step in furthering my manual therapy thought process.

 

I am forever in debt to these individuals for the knowledge they have shared and hope that someday I will be a professional that appropriately represents that which they have taught me.

 

8. “Corrective exercise” seems to be the buzzword in the industry at the moment. Where in your opinion does this fit in the training process and how do you go about incorporating it into your programs?

Corrective exercise gets a bad rap because many want to argue that it is physical therapy. To me, physical therapy is about rehabilitation from injury. Corrective exercise, in my opinion, is more about correcting poor movement in a non-pathological population.

 

If you have a poor active straight leg raise pattern or if you have a poor squat pattern, then those things need to be corrected. The ways in which you correct those movements will vary from person to person depending on the exercises in their toolbox. What is more important than the exercises you choose is probably that they make the change that you want.

 

This comes back to honouring some sort of screening process as a way to assess and then re-assess to determine if you are moving in the right direction or not. Like I stated earlier, I use the functional movement screen, and think it is an excellent resource. I wrote a little bit about how some of this stuff fits together in my blog article on developmental kinesiology.

 

The way I incorporate this into a program is pretty much dependant on the individual and what I think their needs are. If the person is very weak and limited, then we need to start with very basic progressions. If the person has a higher movement capacity and is more advanced, then we can do other things. I use the hierarchal order of correction that I explained in the developmental kinesiology article to correct the movement patterns that need to be ironed out. If someone tests below a 14 or has asymmetry, we are constantly re-assessing to ensure that our progressions are moving us in the right direction and once we can get back to a 14 or better with no asymmetries we typically re-test the FMS every 4-6 weeks to ensure that we haven’t lost any of our patterns. Every exercise in the training program has a purpose and I need to be able to justify that exercise. If I can’t justify doing an exercise or an exercise correction, then it doesn’t go in the program.

 

9. What are your all-time favourite resources for:

- Strength Training – Supertraining by Mel Siff
- Rehabilitation – Clinical Application of Neuromuscular Techniques Vol. 1 and 2 by Leon Chaitow and Judith DeLany
- Nutrition – Anything by Lyle McDonald.
- Business – Success Principles by Jack Canfield
- Random/recreational – The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidige

 

10. What do you do to for your continuing education?

I do everything I can for continuing education – attend lectures, read books, read research, read articles and blogs from industry professionals, email and “talk shop” with industry professionals, watch DVDs, etc.

 

My goal is to always improve my skills so I can better assist those that I am working with. I spend thousands of dollars every year on my education and attend many lectures. I try and read everything and make it a goal to read something new everyday – a few pages in a textbook, a research paper, an article, etc.

 

People trust you with their bodies and if you aren’t trying to get better at what you do, then you have no business working with them or working in this field.

 

11. What resources would you recommend to young, up and coming coaches and/or manual therapists?

My top five books for trainers/strength coaches are (in no special order):

 

- Mel Siff: Supertraining
- Gray Cook: Athletic Bodies in Balance
- Mike Boyle: Functional Training for Sports
- William Kraemer and Steven Fleck: Optimizing Strength Training – Designing nonlinear periodization workouts
- Vern Gambetta: Athletic Development – The Art and Science of Functional Sports Conditioning

 

 

For manual therapists I like:

- Leon Chaitow and Judith Delany: Clinical Application of Neuromuscular Techniques Vol. 1 and 2
- Warren Hammer: Functional Soft-Tissue Examination and Treatment by Manual Methods
- Thomas Myers: Anatomy Trains
- Andrew Biel: Trail Guide to the Body
- Gilroy, MacPherson, Ross: Atlas of Anatomy

 

 

Other than those books, read everything you can, watch DVDs and attend lectures. I subscribe to a few journals and try and get as many research papers as I can that I think will apply to what I do or help me better understand what I am trying to do.

 

12. If you had to choose one thing that you think people should be including in their training, what would that be?

I don’t know if I can pick just one thing. I think good training really depends on that individuals needs. So, that one thing should probably be a good assessment. Whether you use the FMS or a different approach, I think you need to have some way of appraising your quality of movement. From there, you will have a better idea of what you need to work on and what your training program should include.

 

13. What advice would you give young coaches like myself who are looking to excel in S&C?

There are a few things that I tell young professionals that email me questions:

 

1) Develop a philosophy on training. Put together a set of principles that mean something to you.

 

2) Read everything you can. Never stop learning.

 

3) Try and meet with and talk to as many industry professionals as you can. Ask questions and take a lot of notes.

 

14. Patrick, thank you so much for your time, it’s a pleasure to have you on the site. Where can my readers find out more about you, and any projects that you may have coming up?

Thank you for having me, Cedric. My website is pretty much where you can find out about me and read all of my articles and thoughts. My blog is pretty active as I try and update it a few times a week with different ideas and concepts. It is located at http://www.optimumsportsperformance.com/

Related posts:

1. An Interview with Charlie Weingroff