Great athletes make difficult moves look effortless with a combination of skill, strength, and balance. Traditional conditioning builds a fitness base, but modern sports training takes into account athletic movement patterns. The Athletic Body in Balance book and DVD first of its kind to show you how to train for smooth, fluid movement and prevent muscle imbalances, mobility restrictions, stability problems, and injuries. Physical therapist and sports conditioning expert Gray Cook has proven the effectiveness of his approach through the performances of athletes in the NFL, NBA, NHL, WNBA, and Reebok (R) University's sports training system. Whereas other books concentrate on maximizing your strengths, the Athletic Body in Balance book focuses on exposing and overcoming your weaknesses to form a foundation for long-term training gains. Cook will help you identify functional weaknesses; correct imbalances; explore your potential; and refine sport-specific movement skills such as jumping, kicking, cutting, and turning. You will see where conditioning is breaking down and how to get your body back on track. The Athletic Body in Balance DVD then covers five assessment tests to help you find the imbalances in movement patterns, sample corrective exercises to improve mobility and stability, and ways to integrate these exercises into a regular training program. The tests include -deep squat-assessing the mobility and stability of the hips, knees, and ankles -hurdle steps-evaluating bilateral mobility and stability of the hips, knees, and ankles -in-line lunge-determining hip mobility and stability, quadriceps flexibility, and ankle and knee stability on both sides of the body -straight leg raise-gauging hamstring flexibility -seated rotation-measuring uppertrunk stability during a combined upper- and lower-body movement Move more efficiently and achieve real gains in performance with the Athletic Body in Balance book and DVD. Human Kinetics DVDs are coded for universal playback and can be played in all regions of the world.

Movement is a vivid discovery, a fundamental and explicit teaching in which the return to basics takes on a whole new meaning. In it, author Gray Cook crosses the lines between rehabilitation, conditioning and fitness, providing a clear model and a common language under which fitness and rehabilitation professionals can work together. By using systematic logic and revisiting the natural developmental principals all infants employ as they learn to walk, run and climb, Gray forces a new look at motor learning, corrective exercise and modern conditioning practices. The discoveries, lessons and approaches you'll learn * How to view and measure movement quality alongside quantity * How to ascertain dysfunctional patterns with the Functional Movement Screen * What clinicians need to know about the Selective Functional Movement Assessments * When to apply corrective strategies and how to determine which strategies to use * How to map movement patterns and understand movement as a behavior and not just as a mechanical idea This book is not simply about the anatomy of moving structures. Rather, it serves a broader purpose to help the reader understand authentic human movement, and how the brain and body create and learn movement patterns. Our modern dysfunctions are a product of our isolated and incomplete approaches to exercise imposed on our sedentary lifestyles. A return to movement principles can create a more comprehensive exercise and rehabilitation model, a model that starts with movement.