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Q: Had a couple questions on the isometric elevated push-up holds. How do you structure this exercise into your training programs? Is this something you will do in the warm-up or after other movements?
What have you found to be the most effective scheme as far as the hold is concerned? Meaning, do you have your athletes go for time/until fatigue/reps/multiple sets, etc.
Have you utilized unstable surfaces with this exercise as well?
I would be using the holds mostly with my softball players as they prepare this upcoming fall and am always looking for various shoulder exercises to reduce the risk of injury. Thanks so much for any help you can give.
A: With beginners, it may be the first movement. Generally, though, I'll include it later in the training session. It's also great for back-off weeks; I actually include it as part of regeneration phases if an athlete is worn out post-season (maintain muscular activation with lower joint torques). I go into more detail on this in The Ultimate Off-Season Training Manual.
We always do at least two sets, and sometimes as many as four. I generally won't go longer than a minute; many athletes won't be able to go much longer than 15-20s (especially female athletes).
As far as unstable surfaces are concerned, there's not much reason to use them for this; you can train proprioception pretty easily at normal speeds. One of the inherent benefits to using upper body unstable surface training is the maintained muscular activation with lower resultant joint torques (prime movers become joint stabilizers - see JSCR research from David Behm and Ken Anderson). You can get this same benefit from isometric holds, so doing them on unstable surfaces would be overkill, IMO – especially in a female athlete population who is likely too weak in the upper body in the first place.
Eric Cressey
I’ve seen the mistakes they commonly make, and I’ve seen how tremendous the results are when they get things right. |
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Honestly, the word “core” has become so hackneyed that it makes me kind of ashamed that our profession. I mean, let’s face it: “Core” can essentially be translated as “The rectus abdominus, lumbar erectors, obliques, and all those other muscles between the knees and shoulders that I’m either too lazy or misinformed to list.”
Everything is related; our bodies are great at compensating. As such, it’s imperative that the approach one takes to “core” training be based on addressing where the problems exist. The most common lower back problems we see are related to extension-rotation syndrome. We most often get hyperextension at the lumbar spine because our gluteus maximus doesn’t fire to complete hip extension and posteriorly tilt the pelvis; we have to find range of motion wherever we can get it. Having tight hip flexors and lumbar erectors exaggerates anterior pelvic tilt, so this hyperextension is maintained throughout the day to keep the body upright in spite of the faulty pelvic alignment.
The rotation component simply comes along when you throw unilateral dominance into the equation. It might be a baseball pitcher always throwing in one direction, or an office worker always turning to answer the phone on one side. Lumbar rotation is not a movement for which you want any extra range of motion, and the related hip hiking isn’t much fun to deal with, either.
The solution is to get the glutes firing and learn to stabilize the lumbar spine while enhancing mobility at the hips, thoracic spine, and scapulae. You just have to get the range of motion at the right places.
Unfortunately, thinking this stuff out isn’t high on some people’s priority list. It’s “sexier” to tell a client to do some weighted sit-ups, Russian twists, and enough yoga to make the hip flexors want to explode. I’m not going to recommend sit-ups to anyone, and if an athlete is going to do something advanced, he’s going to have shown me that he’s prepared for it by successfully completing a progression to that point. You can get away with faulty movement patterns in the real world, but when you put a faulty movement pattern under load in a resistance training context, everything is magnified.
Eric Cressey
Start with the right plan. |
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Olympic lifts and adolescents… do you use them? Why or why not?
Personally, I generally don’t for several reasons. It’s not because I’m inherently opposed to Olympic lifts from an injury risk standpoint. Sure, I’ve seen cleans ruin some wrists, and there are going to be a ton of people with AC joint and impingement problems who can’t do anything above shoulder level without pain. That’s not to say that the exercises are fundamentally contraindicated for everyone, though; as with most things in life, the answer rests somewhere in the middle. Know your clients, and select your exercises accordingly.
My primary reasons for omitting them tend to be that I don’t always have as much time with athletes as I’d like, and simply because such technical lifts require constant practice – which we all know isn’t always possible with young athletes who don’t train for a living. Equipment limitations may be a factor (bumper plates are a nice luxury). And, to be very honest, I’ve seen athletes make phenomenal progress without using Olympic lifts, so I don’t concern myself too much with the arguing that goes on. If another coach wants to use them and is a good teacher, I’m find with him doing so; it just isn’t for me, with the exception of some high pulls here and there.
Eric Cressey |
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| I group these two together simply because they are intimately related in terms of shoulder health and performance.
Although each of the four muscles of the rotator cuff contributes to humeral motion, their primary function is stabilization of the humeral head in the glenoid fossa of the scapula during this humeral motion. Ligaments provide the static restraints to excessive movement, while the rotator cuff provides the dynamic restraint. It's important to note, however, that even if your rotator cuff is completely healthy and functioning optimally, you may experience scapular dyskinesis, shoulder, upper back, and neck problems because of inadequate strength and poor tonus of the muscles that stabilize the scapula. After all, how can the rotator cuff be effective at stabilizing the humeral head when its foundation (the scapula) isn't stable itself? Therefore, if you're looking to eliminate weak links at the shoulder girdle, your best bet is to perform both rotator cuff and scapular stabilizer specific work.
In my experience, the ideal means of ensuring long-term rotator cuff health is to incorporate two external rotation movements per week to strengthen the infraspinatus and teres minor (and the posterior deltoid, another external rotator that isn't a part of the rotator cuff). On one movement, the humerus should be abducted (e.g. elbow supported DB external rotations, Cuban presses) and on the other, the humerus should be adducted (e.g. low pulley external rotations, side-lying external rotations). Granted, these movements are quite basic, but they'll do the job if injury prevention is all you seek. Then again, I like to integrate the movements into more complex schemes (some of which are based on PNF patterns) to keep things interesting and get a little more sport-specific by involving more of the kinetic chain (i.e. leg, hip, and trunk movement).
On this front, reverse cable crossovers (single-arm, usually) and dumbbell swings are good choices. Lastly, for some individuals, direct internal rotation training for the subscapularis is warranted, as it's a commonly injured muscle in bench press fanatics. Over time, the subscapularis will often become dormant – and therefore less effective as a stabilizer of the humeral head - due to all the abuse it takes.
For the scapular stabilizers, most individuals fall into the classic anteriorly tilted, winged scapulae posture (hunchback); this is commonly seen with the rounded shoulders that result from having tight internal rotators and weak external rotators. To correct the hunchback look, you need to do extra work for the scapular retractors and depressors; good choices include horizontal pulling variations (especially seated rows) and prone middle and lower trap raises. The serratus anterior is also a very important muscle in facilitating scapular posterior tilt, a must for healthy overhead humeral activity. Supine and standing single-arm dumbbell protractions are good bets for dynamically training this small yet important muscle; scap pushups, scap dips, and scap pullups in which the athlete is instructed to keep the scapulae tight to the rib cage are effective isometric challenges to the serratus anterior.
Concurrently, athletes with the classic postural problems should focus on loosening up the levator scapulae, upper traps, pecs, lats, and anterior delts. One must also consider if these postural distortions are compensatory for kinetic chain dysfunction at the lumbar spine, pelvis, or lower extremities. My colleague Mike Robertson and I have written extensively on this topic. Keep in mind that all of this advice won't make a bit of difference if you have terrible posture throughout the day, so pay as much attention to what you do outside the weight room as you do to what goes on inside it.
Eric Cressey
www.BuildingtheEfficientAthlete.com
Click here to purchase the most comprehensive shoulder resource available today: Optimal Shoulder Performance - From Rehabilitation to High Performance. |
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| When it really comes down to it, regardless of the sport in question, the efficient athlete will always have the potential to be the best player on the court, field, ice, or track. Ultimately, knowledge of the game and technical prowess will help to separate the mediocre from the great, but that is not to say that physical abilities do not play a tremendously influential role on one’s success. Show me an athlete who moves efficiently, and I’ll guarantee that he or she has far more physical development “upside” than his or her non-efficient counterparts.
This “upside” can simply be referred to as “trainability;” I can more rapidly increase strength, speed, agility, and muscle mass in an athlete with everything in line than I can with an athlete who has some sort of imbalance. That’s not to say that the latter athlete cannot improve, though; it’s just to say that this athlete would be wise to prioritize eliminating the inefficiencies to prevent injury and make subsequent training more effective. Unfortunately, most athletes fall into the latter group. Fortunately, though, with appropriate corrective training, these inefficiencies can be corrected, and you can take your game to an all-new level. Mobility work is one example of the corrective training you’ll need to get the job done.
What’s the Difference Between Mobility and Flexibility?
This is an important differentiation to make; very few people understand the difference - and it is a big one. Flexibility merely refers to range of motion - and, more specifically, passive range of motion as achieved by static stretching. Don’t get me wrong; static stretching has its place, but it won’t take your athleticism to the next level like mobility training will.
The main problem with pure flexibility is that it does not imply stability nor readiness for dynamic tasks - basketball included. When we move, we need to have something called “mobile-stability.” This basically means that there’s really no use in being able to get to a given range of motion if you can’t stabilize yourself in that position. Believe it or not, excessive passive flexibility without mobility (or dynamic flexibility, as it’s been called) will actually increase the risk of injury! And, even more applicable to the discussion at hand, passive flexibility just doesn’t carry over well to dynamic tasks; just because you do well on the old sit-and-reach test doesn’t mean that you’ll be prepared to dynamically pick up a loose ball and sprint down-court for an easy lay-up. Lastly, extensive research has shown that static stretching before a practice or competition will actually make you slower and weaker; I’m not joking!
Tell Me About This Mobility Stuff…
So what is mobility training? It’s a class of drills designed to take your joints through full ranges of motion in a controlled, yet dynamic context. It’s different from ballistic stretching (mini-bounces at the end of a range of motion), which is a riskier approach that is associated with muscle damage and shortening. In addition to improving efficiency of movement, mobility (dynamic flexibility) drills are a great way to warm-up for high-intensity exercise like basketball. Light jogging and then static stretching are things of the past!
My colleague Mike Robertson and I created a DVD known as Magnificent Mobility to address this pressing need among a wide variety of athletes - basketball players included. We’ve already received hundreds of emails from athletes and ordinary weekend warriors claiming improved performance, enhanced feeling of well-being, and resolution of chronic injuries after performing the drills outlined in the DVD. I think it’s safe to say that they like what we’re recommending! In case that feedback isn’t enough, here are seven reasons why basketball players need mobility.
Reason #1: Mobility training makes your resistance training sessions more productive by allowing you to train through a full range of motion.
We all know that lifting weights improves athletes’ performance and reduces their risk of injury. However, very few people realize the importance of being able to lift through a full range of motion. Training through a full range of motion will carry over to all partial ranges of motion, but training in a partial range of motion won’t carry over to full ranges of motion.
For example, let’s assume Athlete A does ¼ squats. He’ll only get stronger in the top ¼ of the movement, and his performance will really only be improved in that range of motion when he’s on the court.
Now, Athlete B steps up to the barbell and does squats through a full range of motion; his butt is all the way down by his ankles. Athlete B is going to get stronger through the entire range of motion - including the top portion, like Athlete A, but with a whole lot more. It goes without saying that Athlete B will be stronger than Athlete A when the time comes to “play low.”
Also worthy of note is that lifting weights through a full range of motion will stimulate more muscle fibers than partial repetitions, thus increasing your potential for muscle mass gains. If you’re a post-player who is looking to beef up, you’d be crazy to not do full reps - and mobility training will help you improve the range of motion on each rep.
Reason #2: Mobility training corrects posture and teaches your body to get range of motion in the right places.
If you watch some of the best shooters of all time, you’ll notice that they always seem to be in the perfect position to catch the ball as they come off a screen to get off a jump shot. Great modern examples of this optimal body alignment are Ray Allen and Reggie Miller; their shoulders are back, chest is out, eyes are up, and hands are ready. The catch and shot is one smooth, seemingly effortless movement.
By contrast, if you look at players with rounded shoulders, they lack the mobility to get to this ideal position as they pop off the screen. After they receive the ball, they need to reposition themselves with thoracic extension (“straightening up”) just so that they can get into their shooting position. This momentary lapse is huge at levels where the game is played at a rapid pace; it literally is the difference between getting a shot off and having to pass on the shot or, worse yet, having it swatted away by a defender. These athletes need more mobility in the upper body.
As another example, one problem we often see in our athletes is excessive range-of-motion at the lumbar spine to compensate for a lack of range of motion at the hips. Ideally, we want a stable spine and mobile hips to keep our lower backs healthy and let the more powerful hip-joint muscles do the work. If we can’t get that range of motion at our hips, our backs suffer the consequences. Believe it or not, I’ve actually heard estimates that as much as 60% of the players in the NBA have degenerative disc disease. While there are likely many reasons (unforgiving court surface, awkward lumbar hyperextension patterns when rebounding, etc.) for this exorbitant number, a lack of hip mobility is certainly one of them. Get mobility at your hips, and you’ll protect that lower back!
Reason #3: Mobility training reduces our risk of injury.
It’s not uncommon at all to see athletes get injured when they’re out of position and can’t manage to right themselves. If we get range of motion in the right spots, we’re less likely to be out of position, so we won’t have to hastily compensate with a movement that could lead to an ankle sprain or ACL tear.
As an interesting add-on, one study found that a softball team performing a dynamic flexibility routine before practices and c
ompetition had significantly fewer injuries than a team that did static stretching before its games (1).
Reason #4: Mobility training will increase range of motion without reducing your speed, agility, strength in the short-term.
Believe it or not, research has demonstrated that if you static stretch right before you exercise, it’ll actually make you weaker and slower. I know it flies in the face of conventional warm-up wisdom, but it’s the truth!
Fortunately, dynamic flexibility/mobility training has come to the rescue. Research has shown that compared with a static stretching program, these drills can improve your sprinting speed (2), agility (3), vertical jump (3-6), and dynamic range of motion (1) while reducing your risk of injury. Pretty cool stuff, huh?
Reason #5: Mobility training teaches you to “play low.”
All athletes want to know how to become more stable, but few understand how to do so. One needs to understand that our stability is always changing, as it’s subject to several environmental and physical factors. These factors include:
1. Body Mass - A heavier athlete will always be more stable. Sumo wrestling…need I say more?
2. Friction with the contact surface - The more friction we can generate (as with appropriate footwear) with the contact surface, the better our stability. Compare a basketball court (plenty of friction) to the ice in a hockey rink (very little friction), and you’ll see what I mean. This also explains why athletes wear cleats and track spikes.
3. Size of the base of support (BOS): In athletics, the BOS is generally the positioning of the feet. The wider the stance, the more stability we are. Again, think sumo wrestling.
4. The horizontal positioning of the center of gravity (COG) - For maximum stability, the COG should be on the edge of the BOS at which an external force is acting. In other words, if an opponent is about to push you at your right side, you’ll want to lean to the right in anticipation in order to maintain your stability after contact.
5. Vertical positioning of the COG: The lower the COG, the more stable the object. You’ll often hear sportscasters talk about Allen Iverson being unstoppable because of his “low center of gravity” or because he “plays low.”
From a training standpoint, we can’t do much for #1, #2, or #4. However, mobility training alone can dramatically impact how well an athlete handles #3 and #5. The better our mobility, the easier it is for us to get wider and get lower. The wider and lower we can get when we need to do so, the better we can maintain our center of gravity within our base of support. Neuromuscular factors - collecting providing for our balancing proficiency - such as muscular strength and kinesthetic awareness play into this as well, and the ultimate result is our stability (or lack thereof) in a given situation.
Reason #6: Mobility training can actually make you taller…Really!
I’ve worked with a lot of basketball players, and I can honestly say that not a single one of them has ever told me that he wants to be shorter. And, I can assure you that the coaches and scouts would take a guy who is 7-0 over a 6-11 prospect any day.
So what does that have to do with our mobility discussion? Well, imagine an athlete who is very tight in his flexors; his hips will actually be slightly flexed in the standing position, as the pelvis will be anteriorly tilted (top of the hip bone is tipping forward). Likewise, if an athlete has tightness in his lats (among other smaller muscles), he’ll be unable to fully reach overhead. These two limitations can literally make an athlete two inches shorter in a static overhead reach assessment.
Just as importantly, such an athlete is going to “play smaller,” too. He won’t jump as high because he can’t get full hip extension and won’t be able to optimally make use of the powerful gluteal muscles. And, his reach will be limited by his inability to get the arms up fully. Together, these factors could knock two inches off his vertical jump and prevent him from making a game-saving block. It really is a game of inches.
Need further proof? I’ve seen several athletes instantly add as much as two inches on their vertical jump just from stretching out the hip flexors and lats before they test. This is an acute change in muscle length, though; mobility training will enable you to attain these ranges of motion all the time.
Reason #7: Mobility and “activation” training teach certain “dormant” muscles to turn on.
In our daily lives and on the basketball court, it’s inevitable that we get stuck in certain repetitive movement patterns - things we do every day, several times a day. With these constant patterns, certain muscles will just “shut down” because they aren’t being used. Two good examples would be the glutes (your butt muscles) and the scapular retractors (the muscles that pull your shoulder blades together). As a result, these shutdowns lead to faulty hip positioning and rounded shoulders, respectively (and a host of other problems, but we won’t get into that).
To correct these problems, we need what is known as activation work. These drills teach dormant muscles to fire at the right times to complement the mobility drills and get you moving efficiently. Mike and I went to great lengths in Magnificent Mobility to not only outline mobility drills, but also activation movements and movements that incorporate components of both.
Reason #8: Having mobility feels good!
Think about it: what’s the first thing an athlete wants to do after a good stretching session? Go run and jump around! Now, just imagine having that more limber feeling all the time; that’s exactly what mobility training can do for you.
Closing Thoughts
Knowledge of the game and technical prowess will take an athlete far in the game of basketball, but it takes an efficient body to build the physical qualities that will take that same athlete to greatness. Without adequate mobility, an athlete will never even reach the efficient stage - much less the next level.
Eric Cressey
www.MagnificentMobility.com
References
1. Mann, DP, Jones, MT. Guidelines to the implementation of a dynamic stretching program. Strength Cond J. 1999;21(6):53-55.
2. Nelson AG, Kokkonen J, Arnall DA. Acute muscle stretching inhibits muscle strength endurance performance. J Strength Cond Res. 2005 May;19(2):338-43
3. Kurz, T. Science of Sports Training. Stadion, 2001.
4. Young WB, Behm DG. Effects of running, static stretching and practice jumps on explosive force production and jumping performance. J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2003 Mar;43(1):21-7.
5. Thompson, A, Kackley, T, Palumbo, M, Faigenbaum, A. Acute effects of different warm-up protocols on jumping performance in female athletes. 2004 New England ACSM Fall Conference. 10 Nov 2004.
6. Colleran, EG, McCarthy, RD, Milliken, LA. The effects of a dynamic warm-up vs. traditional warm-up on vertical jump and modified t-test performance. 2003 New England ACSM Fall Conference. 11 Nov 2003. |
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| Q: I recently was in attendance at your lecture/hands on session at the Learn-by-Doing seminar in Atlanta, GA. I signed up for your newsletter and have been following your blog ever since- it's great! I have a question for you and would love to hear your thoughts.
I was recently asked by a Physical Therapist about form on a bench press after watching one of my clients training. She wanted to know why I wouldn't put a clients feet up while performing the exercise. She has a theory that when everyone does a bench press (any prone horizontal push for that matter) they should do it with their feet up (as in on the bench)- to take stress off of the lower back. The client I was working with at the time (goal fat loss by his reunion this summer!) was performing dumbbell close-grip bench press with his feet planted on the floor.
Thoughts?
A: Thanks for your email and the kind words.
Most back problems you’ll encounter are extension-based (a tendency toward an excessively lordotic posture, generally secondary to tight hip flexors and weak glutes/external obliques/rectus abdominus). As I recall, Sahrmann has noted that extension and extension-rotation syndromes account for 80% of back issues.
In SOME people with these problems, flat benching pressing with the feet on the floor can pose a problem. In these same people, sleeping on the back ends up being uncomfortable – one reason why I feel it’s valuable to place a pillow under the knees when sleeping in this position. Flatten the lumbar spine out a bit and you ease the extension stress. Unfortunately, benching pressing is a lot different than sleeping!
Benching with the feet up on the bench is, in my opinion, throwing out the baby with the bathwater. When we flatten out the lumbar spine, we also flatten out the thoracic spine. It goes without saying that the loss of thoracic extension is closely related to scapular winging (abduction). And, if you’ve read stuff from myself, Mike Robertson, and Bill Hartman (who made Inside-Out, a fantastic DVD and a manual along these lines), you’ll notice a resounding theme: the shoulders are at the mercy of the scapulae and thoracic spine.* To that end, I don’t feel that benching with the feet up is the best option.
Rather than just criticize without an alternative solution, though, I’ll throw a few out there that I’ve used with great success:
1. Incline Press – Throw in a bit of hip and knee flexion, and you reduce the need for an arch – unless you’ve got a client who uses the “ceiling-humper” style of cheating! Additionally, incline benches tend to be a bit easier in terms of set-up on individuals with back pain.
2. Bent-Knee Floor Presses – On the surface, this sounds like exactly what you get with a bench press with the feet elevated, but in fact, you’re protecting the shoulders by avoiding the bottom position of the movement. We can get away with sacrificing a little bit of scapular stability when we stay away from the more “at-risk” zones.
Some might recommend stability ball dumbbell bench presses, but I think it would be a bit inappropriate right now. I use unstable surfaces very sparingly in training (and almost exclusively in the upper body), but this exercise has some merit in certain cases. Research from Behm et al. demonstrated that muscular activation is maintained with unstable surface training, even if total force production is lower. Essentially, muscles do more work to stabilize a joint than they do to generate torque in the desired direction of movement. In other words, you can get a solid training effect with less external resistance. So, it can be a great thing with bouncing back from shoulder injuries, or just tossing in a lower intensity deload week. Unfortunately, stability balls markedly increase spine load – not something we want to do with those with back pain. For more information, check out The Truth About Unstable Surface Training.
To get back to the feet on the floor versus the bench debate, I think the “on the bench” crowd really overlooks the fact that the bench press is actually a pretty good FULL-body exercise. When performed properly, there is a ton of leg drive and momentum transfer from the lower body, through the thoracolumbar fascia, to the lats and rest of the upper body with the help of solid diaphragmatic (belly) breathing techniques. We aren’t just training pecs, you know?
For more tips on sparing the shoulders and proper upper-body lifting techniques, check out the Optimal Shoulder Performance DVD set.
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| Whether I like it or not, around these parts I've become known as an "injury guy." People get jacked up doing stupid stuff, and guys like Mike Robertson, Bill Hartman, and myself fix them up by pointing out that said "stuff" is, in fact, stupid.
To that end, a lot of my consulting work is done in the corrective exercise realm — basically handling people who fall into the gray area between physical therapy and healthy training... bridging the gap, so to speak. We know that 80% of Americans will have lower back pain at some point in their lives, and 70% of gym-goers will experience shoulder problems somewhere along the line, but we can't send all of these people to physical therapy.
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