My good friend and strength coach at Wisconsin, Ray Eady, sent me this video yesterday and it got me thinking a lot about mobility and how training has changed over the years. Do yourself a favor and watch the video first before continuing to read on.
That was pretty impressive stuff and goes to show you what the human body is capable of doing in terms of mobility and stability. If you don’t know, mobility is the quality of moving freely…the key word is MOVING! It is not static flexibility (length of a muscle), but rather relies on the CNS to control how much movement is available at each joint. Stability is the ability to control movement…it does not mean, no movement, but rather controlling motion.
Breakdancing was extremely big in the late 70′s and throughout the 80′s and goes to show you what the human body can do….or could do at that time. You don’t see breakdancing as much as you used to back then and could it be attributed to the sedentary nature of our lives these days???
I’ve been a strength and conditioning coach at the Division I level for about 12 years now and know for a fact that my programming has changed over that time. Most of it has changed to structure in more mobility work and emphasize corrective exercise – not only because I’ve learned more about it over time, but because simply our athletes these days NEED it to handle the demands that are placed upon them by the requirements of their sport. They need it to play but also to be healthy even when they’re playing days are done.
What exactly is corrective exercise?
As some love it, and some frown upon it. Corrective exercise simply is exercise that is designed to restore and improve in-efficient movement patterns. It can be drill that you do in your warmup or between sets of your heavier movements. It can be things you do on a recovery day or things that you prescribe as “extra work”, but the goal is the same; we should be looking to improve movement and the quality of it.
How do we know if a movement pattern is in-efficient?
We assess and watch our athletes and clients move. We as fitness professionals should have an understanding of what ideal biomechanics are – not everybody is going to be the same, but we should have a fundamental understanding of what’s good vs. bad. Pain is another sign of somebody possibly having a movement dysfunction. Assessments such as the FMS, or drills from Assess & Correct, gives us a reference point to where somebody is initially before training them. If we don’t know where we are, how can we know where we are going or how we are going to get there? Assessing is part of the testing protocol along with performance based testing such as power, strength, and conditioning.
Mobility and adhering to the Joint By Joint approach has become a bigger part of my programs and every year I see new freshman come into our program, it re-affirms the changes that I have put into my programs. We emphasize it in our pre-work before our warmups, in our warmups, in between sets of speed and power work and in between sets of our strength work. There are a number of methods that we will use as well: soft tissue work using lacrosse balls, sticks, cobblestone mats and foam rollers, dynamic flexibility, band work, isolated mobility, integrated mobility, isometrics, PNF techniques, and full range of motion resistance training.
As our society has changed and the athletes we see may have different issues that impair their quality of movement, we as fitness professionals have to address these issues to help prepare them to be successful in sport and life.
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One of my interns, John McGuinness, is very into minimalist shoes and I thought he would be able to give some great feedback on Art Horne’s new book, Barefoot in Boston. This is an awesome read and will benefit many different professions. After reading the review, check out the link to pick up this product!
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How are those stylish, expensive, high heeled training sneakers treating you? Have you been experiencing pain in your low back, calves, ankles, hips, and/or knees? Well, the problem may be reduced by something less complicated than we think. By transitioning from these modern sneakers into something more minimalist, we may be able to alleviate these lingering pains one at a time. Yes, that means you will have to give up those Sketchers Shape Ups, because they are definitely not the answer to your problems, they are more than likely the cause!
Contrary to popular belief, today’s “advanced” sneakers can actually decrease your performance and increase your likelihood of injury. I don’t know about you, but paying for overpriced sneakers that can have a negative impact doesn’t sound appealing to me!
Art Horne, a great guy, and one of the most knowledgeable minds in the athletic training/strength and conditioning world, recently released his book, Barefoot in Boston, that covers the above topics, and many others in great detail.
Art reviews some of the history of barefoot running/training, how we are supposed to heel strike when walking/running, how we should take a step-by-step approach to wearing minimalist footwear, and how making this change will take some time. In addition, he looks at how our feet are optimally developed when barefoot, not in sneakers that can cause weakness and a loss of mobility. The potential benefits of abandoning the use of today’s high-heeled shoes are well worth the wait. Remember, slow and steady wins the race!
If you are interested in making the switch, a detailed progression is included that will help you transition from wearing modern cross trainers to minimalist footwear, and eventually to being barefoot.
There aren’t many detailed studies on the topic of barefoot training, but Art does a great job of explaining the research that is out there and how it will all benefit us over time.
I have been reading Art’s blog (www.bsmpg.com) for quite some time now, and have attended two of the great seminars he has organized, and I always come away with a ton of useful information. Barefoot in Boston is more of the same, and if you want to perform better and decrease the likelihood of injury, I suggest you pick up a copy today!
John McGuinness
A wise man once said to me, “If you want to be a great coach, you better focus on learning the basics before you ever think about all the fancy stuff”. Progressions are a big part of life in general, and the same holds true for the development of an athlete. When training an athlete, or anyone for that matter, you must first understand and appreciate how movement was developed and use this knowledge to physically educate the client. Far too often we forget that before we walked, we crawled, literally and figuratively. I’ll be honest, for many years I was as guilty as anyone for trying to get athletes to the next level as fast as I could. Sometimes this was at the expense of their basic movement skills. Deep down, as experienced trainers, we realize that an athlete might not be 100% ready for the next step in the progression. However, for many reasons, that doesn’t always hold enough water to actually keep them back. It could be due to the group setting, where 90% of the kids have picked it up and are ready to move on, which allows convenience to dictate advancement. Or does the glam of moving heavy weights and sprinting across the field act too appealing to deny? Whatever the reason may be, it is unquestionably irrational. As a baby you progress from a stagnant, immobile being and progress in only a few years, to something that can walk, jog, sprint, jump, spin, and a whole bunch of other movement patterns. So before opening up the latest book on periodization or sifting through a hot new study on post tetanic facilitation, I encourage you to dive a little deeper into the “basics”, which seem to be so basic that they have been forgotten for many of us.
Much of this thought process started to bloom shortly after the birth of my second son. I knew that if I planned on teaching my boys what it meant to live a life of strength and health, I had better start brushing up on the fundamentals of age appropriate physical activities. I was given a great piece of advice from a friend, who suggested I pick up a copy of Physical Education for Children: Building the Foundation by Gabbard, Leblanc and Lowy. I did, and it was probably the most well spent $10 of my life. After only a few short pages, my entire training philosophy began to shift gears. I realized that improving human performance was anything but a short-term process. Sure, for years, I had been recommending athletes train for at least 3 months in order to get a true training effect, but after soaking up some of this book, I concluded that 3 months isn’t going to cut it. A year, 3 years, 6 years…this was all I could justify as legitimate developmental periods of training. Because of this long-term development model, more time can be devoted to the basics that lay the foundation for all of the advanced complex techniques practiced in the later stages of training.
Do not mistake this piece for a tutorial on youth training only. I believe that our fast-paced, instantly gratifying, automated society has created a population with a complete lack of physical education. Adults are just as in need of some P.E. as the poor kids who are being deprived of it in the school systems of today. These adults need to re-learn how to move, be strong and healthy beings. This is where my idea for Gym Class Core originated from and in a way, is a regression to an old article from many years ago. One of the first articles I ever wrote that was titled strength exercise for your core was a short depiction of some of the non-traditional methods of training your Core. That article was mainly for athletes and other people who lift heavy and don’t have time to prop themselves up on a Bosu Ball and crunch their way into a disc herniation. THIS article is a way of stepping back and taking a more primitive approach to the core training that may be just as demanding for many of the less mobile trainees of today.
Now to some of what I’ve been blabbing about. If you ever played youth football you may recall one of the most dreaded forms of punishment known to man…the bear crawl. Granted, the fact that preseason camp took place in the dead of August and the pads they gave you outweighed your own body didn’t make the movements any easier. I remember toiling over which I thought would explode first, my body or my heart. But looking back at this simple movement, I now realize how effective it can be at total body conditioning and functional core strengthening. If you think about it, the crawl in general is one of the first “exercises” the body does to develop total systemic strength. In a newsletter published by the National Association for Child Development, Robert and Ellen Doman state, “Crawling engages virtually all of the muscles of the body, from the arches of your feet to your abdominal and neck muscles, all of which are used in the process of moving your body forward across the floor. Arm, chest, and back muscles are utilized in pulling the arms forward and then pulling the body forward. Quads, hips and hamstrings are worked during the leg movement.” The two go on to highlight that, aside from the military; hardly anyone has utilized a crawling movement since the age of one.
Besides the fact that crawling is a great tool for building system strength, it also develops an integral function of the brain that is used in an incredible amount of motor skills and non-movement skills. Crawling actions are known as cross-lateral movements. This means that the right and left sides of the body are working together simultaneously and require input from both sides of the brain. In Carla Hannaford’s book, Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All in Your Head
If you’re interested in hearing a little more about these types of movements, you can check out those writings as well as a couple others from Vern Gambetta and Carl Valle. Gambetta, in Athletic Development: The Art & Science of Functional Sports Conditioning
With only a few short suggestions on the benefits these movements can accompany, it baffles me that they are used so infrequently in GPP phases and warm up sessions across the board. The only obstacle I have come across when implementing these movements has been logistical in nature. SPACE. Many trainers and commercial gym goers do not have the luxury of a 25 – 50 yard indoor turf space at their disposal. Although I think it would be awesome to walk into a commercial gym and see some athlete doing bear crawls around the treadmills between the gerbils that are aimlessly jogging for hours, I don’t think it would fly with many gym owners. So in lieu of this barrier, we came up with a series of exercises that honor the old school crawls and crabs without requiring all the space of the originals.
Let’s get down to the good stuff:
- Crab Hip Lift: Starting in the supine position (on your back). Using both hands and both feet as your balancing points. Squeeze your scapulae (shoulder blades), puff out your chest and then squeeze your glutes (butt) and drive your hips up into full extension. Your finishing position should look like a table. This is the CRAB. Hold tension for 1 sec, drop down and repeat. After a while you can start adding a Hold at the top. Start with a few seconds and build your way up as far as you want. Don’t forget we’re squeezing the glutes and scapulae and creating tension, not avoiding it.
- Crab Single Leg Reach: Drive the hips up in the same manner as before. As you approach the fully extended position, we extend one leg up as high as we can, maintaining a perfect posture everywhere else. Alternate sides.
- Crab Single Arm Reach: Now we reach an arm instead of a leg at the top of the hip lift. After getting the hang of just lifting your hand of the ground, believe me it can be trickier than it sounds, we want to take the arm and stack it over the other arm. What the end result will be is a straight line from hand to hand (one on the ground, one as high in the air as possible) and a slight rotation at the t-spine. I find this exercise to be a great activation tool as athletes get stronger because it works everything from hip extension, thoracic extension/rotation, shoulder stability and rotary stability. Try it out and let me know what you think.
- Crab Diagonal Reach: Now as we lift the hips, we reach 1 arm and the opposite leg towards each other leaving only 2 contralateral points of balance, which obviously increases the difficulty by a lot. We hold the lift and alternate sides. A great progression of this movement is incorporating the hip lift simultaneously with the diagonal limb reaches to get a more coordinated effort from the entire body.
- Crab Rotational Reach: In this movement, we bridge up into the hip lift and hold it. Then bring 1 leg under the other and drive your foot as far through as possible. At the same time, reach the opposite hand in the opposite direction as far as possible. This will result in a lot of rotation and repositioning but maintain your torso positioning. You know what…just watch the video and enjoy.
BEAR SERIES: The same progressions (stable to unstable, 4 point to 2 point) are applied to the bear series. This is, however, a more dynamic progression that involves a little more movement.
- Bear Hold: Nothing fancy here. Get into the 4 point bear position (push up with flexed hips and knees) and make sure to keep your hips about shoulder height. Lifting your hips up does little to alleviate the amount of fatigue your arms will feel, but makes a world of difference on your legs and core. Stay low and hold your ground. If you can hold it for 30 seconds you are able to move to the next step.
- Bear Diagonal Reach and Crunch: Bear position. Think about a birddog without the knees touching the ground. Extend one arm as far forward as possible and the opposite leg as far back as possible. It is important to maintain torso position, and avoid allowing your plant leg to straighten. If you get the reach down, add the crunch by bringing the elbow and knee together without moving your torso at all.
- Bear Lateral Jump: Start in the bear position. Keeping hands planted firmly on the ground jump both feet out to the side, if possible over a small object. Progress from individual jumps, where you maintain position before repeating to the opposite side, into repetitive continuous jumps. In this version you want to keep your feet vertical (as they are in the starting position just slightly out to the side).
- Bear Flank Vault: Start in the bear position. Jump both feet out to the side but this time you will be rotating your torso in the direction you jump. Unlike the lateral jump, when your torso rotates you will land with your feet slightly rotated as well to keep toes, hips and chest facing the same direction. We have 3 progressions to this variation. The first was just described. The second adds a unilateral vertical reach. Once the feet land, reach the jump side arm as high as you can. The last variation is to start the bear position with 1 arm up already and continue the movement as described.
- Bear Dancer: Start in the Bear position…again. Think of a break-dancer in this one. While reaching 1 leg under the other one and up and away as far as possible, reach your opposite hand out towards the foot. This will result in rotation and repositioning but avoid the unnecessary torso movement.
- Bear Rotational Reach: Same as the Crab Rotational Reach except you’re in a bear position. Bring 1 leg under the other and drive your foot as far through as possible. At the same time, reach the opposite hand in the opposite direction as far as possible. This will result in a lot of rotation and repositioning but maintain your torso positioning.
Whether you’re an athlete in need of some multi-planar semi chaotic core training or just a hard-core gym rat looking for a twist to spice things up, give some of these a try and I doubt you’ll be disappointed. Most people who are unfamiliar with these movements will, undoubtedly, look very uncomfortable and very uncoordinated. This fact alone should make you wonder what you may be missing in your routine. Training shouldn’t always be comfortable and familiar, so change things up. Mastering any new movement will only make you better.
Gabbard, Carl, Elizabeth LeBlanc, and Susan Lowy. Physical Education for Children: Building the Foundation. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1994. Print.
NACD – Newsletter – Down Syndrome: The Importance of Crawling on the Stomach. The National Association for Child Development. Web. 18 Oct. 2010. <http://nacd.org/newsletter/1009_down_syndrome_crawling.php>.
Hannaford, Carla. Smart Moves: Why Learning Is Not All in Your Head. Arlington, VA: Great Ocean, 1995. Print.
Gambetta, Vern. Athletic Development: the Art & Science of Functional Sports Conditioning. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 2007. Print.
Valle, Carl. “Hope on a Rope.” Weblog post. Regeneration Lab. Web. 25 Aug. 2003.
Jeremy can be reached at jeremyfrisch@gmail.com
If you work with basketball athletes or taller athletes, you may have noticed that these athletes may struggle with not only double leg squatting but also single leg squatting. This is because their femurs tend to be longer than the average folk.
This comes back to simple physics as a longer lever is more difficult to control. And if an athlete has trouble controlling movements, injuries are sure to occur. Every joint within our body needs a certain amount of mobility (movement) and stability (control). If mobility is established then we need to add stability/control to it. In our case of long femurs and squatting, the first step is to make sure there is adequate mobility within the hip joint. If that is good we need to move onward to see why an athlete still has trouble performing the movement. The movements that tend to be the hardest to control are the eccentric actions of the squatting movement which are internal rotation and adduction. Now what muscles help control these femoral movements?
Namely the muscles that help to externally rotate and abduct the hip which are the gluteal muscles.
The Glute max, medius and minimus play a huge role in developing femoral control. And we have to train these muscles in ways that help to work on these actions.
If we don’t include exercises that help to work on femoral control than it could lead to knee issues in our athletes. Double leg squatting is a good starting point but having 2 fixed points of contact doesn’t challenge the hip musculature to the same degree as single leg work….and single leg unsupported to be specific.
Mike Boyle was the first strength coach that broke down single leg training into single leg supported and single leg unsupported. Single leg supported exercises is where you have 2 points of contact where one leg is performing the majority of the work. Examples are lunges, split squats, lateral squats, etc. Single leg unsupported work is where the body is supported on a single leg and the other leg is free (in the air). Examples of these exercises are single leg squats, single leg reaches, and pistol squats.
With basketball athletes and athletes with longer femurs it is imperative that single leg unsupported work be included to help develop the glutes to control the femur. Single leg squats to a box with a band above or below the knees is a great way to start and get the athlete to understand femoral control and the importance of it. You may need to start your taller athletes with a higher box and progressively move them down to a lower box as their strength and control improve.
We should all know the importance of single leg strength now, but if you are working with taller athletes make sure single leg unsupported work is included within your program.
What are other variations that you would include?
I read this very interesting blog post by Eric Cressey this morning and he provides some great facts on why parents shouldn’t be afraid of having their children start resistance training. I just said resistance training, not necessarily weight training – begin with bodyweight exercises, mastering technique before progressing to using external loads.
