During one of my season’s working under Greg Brittenham at the N.Y. Knicks, not only would we require a lot of hard work and sweat out of the players, however we showed them we were ready, willing, and able to work just as hard physically ourselves.

Starting with the first game of the season, we completed 100 Push-Ups. Then, each subsequent game, we added another ten (10) Push-Ups. By the final game of the regular season, we were up to completing five hundred and ten (510) Push-ups!

This was in addition to running drills, running stairs in Madison Square Garden, and finishing by riding stationary bikes for 30 minutes. Our only stipulation was that the Push-Ups commenced once both of us were at The Garden, and once pre-game workouts began (about 5pm) and ended by 8pm. It generally was a competition between Greg and I who could get it all done first. In the beginning, we were trying to get all of them in while we waited in the N.Y. Rangers’ locker room for players to come in so we could get to work and then eventually led to us “sneaking” in Push-ups out on the court, in our locker room, or in whatever room Chapel was in waiting for it to start. Wherever we were, we were getting them in, in between working with and stretching players. Then we would keep our tallies posted on the Rangers’ white board to keep track.

Our game night workouts were compliments to our regularly scheduled workout routines, so it was all in addition to what we programmed for ourselves to do! We reaped tremendous results in strength, endurance and body composition from it.

Try this routine and post your opinions and results regarding it on the Trinity Biomechanics bulletin board:

Okay, sure, we could go on, and on about the beginning of a new year, the beginning of new goals, the beginning of new resolutions, and all that. But why not start to focus on the beginning of your workouts? These preparation movements do more than what you think. When taken seriously, and done correctly, they can restore lost range of motion. They can help build up joint strength (hey, you do 100 reps of each of these and tell me in a week you don’t notice a change in shoulder stabilization and strength!). They are also a great way to dynamically warm-up and stretch your muscles.

The following routine can be completed in addition to any workout as a warm-up, to properly prepare your body to move period. Not just for the forth-coming workout, but throughout your whole day. For beginners, I would suggest cutting the numbers in half, at least. However, I encourage everybody to read thru the instructions and follow along with the attached photos and concentrate on how well you perform each one compared to just “doing them”.