Ballistic by Henry Abbott

I recently celebrated my 41st birthday. At this point in my life, "celebrate" may not be the right word, but you get the point. 

With three young children, a doctor-wife who takes call, and a full-time day job, the days are long and the years, I guess they say they're short. Personal time for me is precious; time that is often hindered by the amount of sitting, crawling, and bending I do on a daily basis to keep this family-engine churning. 

Don't get me wrong: I'm in good shape, but my pattern of movement has changed significantly. Ten years ago, I could sit at a desk all day, then go run five miles or play full-court basketball for hours on end without ever having to think about it. Today, not so much. 

Ballistic: Injuries Are Not Destiny

Enter Ballistic, the new sports science/medicine/training book by Henry Abbott. I'll come out right away and say it: I liked this book a lot because it was incredibly relatable in my current state. 

The book is centered around Dr. Marcus Elliott, a Harvard trained physician who owns Santa Barbara-based P3 (Peak Performance Project). Elliott worked for both the New England Patriots and the Seattle Mariners, but ultimately found a niche in doing things his own way. Using motion sensors and force plates, P3 is half training center and half crazy science project. While athletes show up looking for a personalized approach, ironically, the massive data sets that P3 has at its fingertips create an incredible amount of patterns, particularly when it comes to injury risk. The team jokes that it can't predict that you're "going to tear your ACL in 17 days," but it can paint a pretty accurate picture showing deficiencies in areas like your hips or ankles that might lead to a knee injury. 

P3 isn't a normal gym, and it's clientele are far from normal: elite athletes from around the world post up in Santa Barbara. Some are there at the very start of their professional careers (enter Oklahoma City Thunder stars Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren), while others are in sink or swim mode: careers that are close to the end unless a major change occurs. 

What fascinated me is that many of these athletes had long and fruitful careers on the back of bad biomechanics. No human body is perfect, but legacy training programs and stubborn strength & conditioning coaches often pushed in the wrong direction. Put simply, many of these athletes didn't have the mobility necessary to move the way that they should. 

Peak power, therefore, isn't adding more weight to the squat bar. It's taking a step back and evaluating how you move so that your power sources can be fully unlocked. 

For me, I've felt significant weakness in my right hip for the past year. Many of the ideas in this book spoke loudly: I need to work on both my hip strength and mobility to unlock strong glutes, knees, and ankles. 

The author himself is on a similar journey, and the book comes full circle when readers not only hear about his improvement but the adventures he sets out on as a result. The silver lining in physical limitations is that they actually cover you in an overarching black cloud: feeling bad physically seems to make everything else worse. 

Ballistic takes about the incredible stopping power of James Harden, the weak hips of Kyle Korver, and the explosive ground contact of Zion Williamson. 

When it's all said and done, though, my takeaway is that this was written to unlock the lives of middle-aged men and women across the country. When I was 20, stories from elite athletes provided a different kind of motivation. At 41, it's like "that's cool, but how can I actually apply this?"

Both Elliott and Abbott want people to move. But to move, you need mobility. Sitting in a chair for ten hours a day hinders that mobility, and over time, both the ability and desire to move tend to fade. Imagine how different your aspirations might be if you felt spry again? 

I'd encourage you today to break that cycle. With ideas on what to do (as well as diagrams), this book is the step you need to literally get moving again. 

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