Today's guest post comes from Cressey Sports Performance - Florida coach, Dylan Lidge.
The ability to access hip extension while the opposite hip flexes is crucial in sprinting, throwing, hitting, and a myriad of other athletic endeavors. To ensure true hip extension, the heel, knee, pelvis, rib cage and head need to be stacked. Here are few dynamic ways to challenge hip extension in a warm-up.
Side-Lying Hip Extension Iso Holds to Wall - You should be able to draw a straight line from the bottom knee to the ear. Keep full foot contact onto the wall. Aim for a 30 second hold.
DB Goblet Hip Flexion End-Range Lift-offs - The goblet load keeps the athlete in a stacked position and is a great way to get the core activated. The athlete should “push the floor” under them and “stay tall” to ensure the glute extends the hip. Aim for a 5 second hold.
Arms Overhead High Knee March with Med Ball - The med ball challenges the athlete to go into hip extension and shoulder flexion without compensating. Control the pace for 15yds.
Split Squat Iso Hold - Back Heel Pressed to Wall - The back heel into the wall helps the athlete utilize their glute and hamstrings for hip extension. Hold for 30 seconds.
2-arm KB Racked High Knee March - Cue the athlete to exhale at the top of each rep. The kettlebells challenge the athlete to establish good core stiffness in a stacked position. Perform 8 reps on each side.
About the Author
Dylan Lidge serves as a Strength and Conditioning Coach at Cressey Sports Performance - Florida. Prior to joining the staff, Dylan completed an internship at CSP-FL in the summer of 2020. He graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a B.S. in Kinesiology. He is currently studying at the University of Illinois-Chicago for his MS in Kinesiology with a concentration in Biomechanics. At UIC he holds a position as a teacher's assistant in an exercise technique course, as well as an instructor for a personal fitness course. In 2019, he interned with the UIC Strength and Conditioning staff assisting with the baseball team. Dylan has coached baseball at the collegiate, high school, and youth levels.
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Today's guest post comes from Cressey Sports Performance - Florida coach, Dylan Lidge.
Wall marches are drills that have been used commonly over the years in the strength and conditioning and track and field communities. Unfortunately, many coaches don't appreciate how much you can build on the basic wall march to teach a number of different movement competencies.
This closed chain exercise can be used in warm-ups as a more dynamic movement. As a great "bang for your buck" warm-up, it provides glute activation, hip flexion/extension, ankle mobility/stability, foot position awareness, and even scapular protraction/upward rotation. It also teaches an athlete the feeling of a stacked position, which is key for producing force efficiently. Not to mention, this is an excellent way to teach athletes sprint mechanics, primarily during acceleration.
To perform the Glute Wall March, stand upright with your palms against the wall at shoulder height. Push the wall away as if you are at the top of a push-up. Next, take a few steps back to get into a forward lean while keeping your heels on the ground. This should be around 45 degrees, as this position allows an athlete to produce more horizontal force into the ground, which is required during acceleration. From there, lift both heels off the floor and transition to the toes of the feet (just like doing a calf raise). Flex one hip and allow the femur to raise until it is perpendicular to the torso. The shin angle of this leg should match the torso angle. Dorsiflex the ankle to match the angle of the femur. Meanwhile, the opposite leg should be straight. We see "triple extension", or extension through the hip, knee and ankle; this will create a straight line from the head to the heel and reaffirm the "stacked"position. Cue the athlete to push into the wall with high intent. In order to push the wall, the athlete must put force into the floor or "drive the floor away."
Here are some key benefits:
Glute Activation
Pushing the floor fires the glute, which pulls the hip into extension. The Glute Wall March puts the athlete in hip extension they will get to on the field. Owning hip extension in this position is a great way to prep an athlete to perform on the field or in the gym, and protect against excessive arching through the low back, which may create spine discomfort/injuries.
Hip Flexion
The core stability the wall provides assists an athlete during hip flexion, which is when we often see compensations in posture, such as excessive lumbar flexion and extension. Especially with athletes who display poor lumbopelvic control, this position can set them up to own their hip flexion.
Ankle Stiffness
Ankle stiffness is necessary for athletes to display elasticity while running or changing direction. If you're looking for a drill to improve ankle stability or to improve your "bounce" during plyometrics, give this a try.
Foot Orientation
The orientation of the foot on the floor is in late stance during the Glute Wall March. This is a great way to build an arch for those who have flat feet. An adaptation many pitchers develop is a flat arch in order to access pronation as they drift off the rubber. Overall, late stance is able to bias supination, which can help counter those in excessive pronation.
Scapular Protraction/Upward Rotation
The serratus anterior is important for driving the "rotation" aspect of scapular upward rotation via its protraction capabilities. Athletes, especially those who throw overhead, need to be able to get the scapula "around and up" the rib cage in order to in order to both create a good ball-socket congruency at lay-back, and also to reach thee arm overhead and finish out in front.
Running Mechanics
The Glute Wall March allows an athlete to feel the position they need to be in during the acceleration phase of a sprint. During acceleration, athletes must apply horizontal force into the ground. This requires a forward lean. As the glute wall march is closed chain exercise, it provides stability for the athlete to feel the necessary forward lean during acceleration.
Fortunately, we have several variations we can use to bias our training toward different benefits. Here they are:
Glute Wall March Isometric Holds
Isometric holds are a great way to get an athlete to feel a position. Typically, we'll program three five-second holds on each side - although you could also do 30s/side if you're looking to really reap the tendon health benefits of this drill.
Glute Wall March ISO - Supinated Forearms
This has all the benefits of a glute wall march iso hold, but it's an easy way to sneak in a forearm stretch in a population that often lacks elbow extension and forearm supination.
Glute Wall March 1-2's
Once an athlete understands what a stacked position should feel like, progressing to this variation can allow them to put more force into the floor. A common cue is to pretend the legs are "pistons of an engine." This promotes the feeling of leg drive during acceleration.
Wall Assisted Load and Explode
This dynamic variation can help an athlete feel more intent of driving the floor away. It's a great way to help an athlete use the ground to produce force while maintaining a stacked position.
As you can see, these drills deserve a place in your training programs, whether it's warm-ups, arm care, movement training sessions, or as a filler in between power training or strength exercises!
About the Author
Dylan Lidge serves as a Strength and Conditioning Coach at Cressey Sports Performance - Florida. Prior to joining the staff, Dylan completed an internship at CSP-FL in the summer of 2020. He graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a B.S. in Kinesiology. He is currently studying at the University of Illinois-Chicago for his MS in Kinesiology with a concentration in Biomechanics. At UIC he holds a position as a teacher's assistant in an exercise technique course, as well as an instructor for a personal fitness course. In 2019, he interned with the UIC Strength and Conditioning staff assisting with the baseball team. Dylan has coached baseball at the collegiate, high school, and youth levels.
The supine bridge with reach has been a popular mobility drill for us for close to a decade now, but I realized that we haven't highlighted it in an online feature to give it the love it deserves. The video is actually part of The High Performance Handbook video library.
I love this drill because it not only gives us the terminal hip extension we get with many glute activation exercises, but also an element of thoracic mobility. In many athletic endeavors (including pitching, as you see below), the thoracic spine must continue to rotate as the hips extend.
This drill enables us to not only train some of the muscular recruitment patterns we want, but also challenges the fascial system by getting us a more multi-planar, proximally initiated challenge. You also get a nice blend of elasticity because of the rhythmic nature of it, and can easily interject variety by changing the angle at which you reach.
We'll work this into a warm-up with a set of five reps on each side, or mix it in as a "filler" between medicine ball sets. Give the supine bridge with reach a shot to keep your mobility work engaging, progressive, and productive!
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With 2019 winding down, I'm using this last week of the year to direct you to some of the most popular content of the past 12 months at EricCressey.com, as this "series" has been quite popular over the past few years. Today, we start with the most popular articles of the year; these are the pieces that received the most traffic, according to my hosting statistics.
1. The Most Important Coaching Responsibility- Coaches are some of the most important influences in young athletes' lives on a number of fronts. In this post, I focused on what I believe to be the single most important responsibility of a coach.
4. Mid-Week Movement Miscellany - This was a collection of random thoughts on movement that unexpectedly proved to be a big hit.I might have to turn it into a regular series.
Recently, I box squatted for the first time in a few months - and the posterior chain soreness I felt got me thinking about the functional anatomy in play, particularly with respect to the glutes. Here's what's rattling around my brain on that front (warning: functional anatomy heavy nerd post ahead).
1. People think of the gluteus maximus too much as a hip extensor and not enough as a posterior glider of the femoral head.
The gluteus maximus is an important prime mover of the hip - especially into hip extension. However, it's also a crucial stabilizer. The other hip extensors - hamstrings and adductor magnus - have inferior attachment points lower down on the femur.
Meanwhile, the gluteus maximus actually inserts higher up - right near the femoral head.
The result is that when you extend your hips with the hamstrings and adductor magnus, the head of the femur can glide forward in the socket and irritate the front of the hip. When you get adequate gluteus maximus contribution, it helps to reduce this anterior stress. In many ways, the glutes work as a rotator cuff of the hip (while the hamstrings and adductor magnus act like the lats and pecs, respectively).
2. Glute activation can be a game changer with respect to chronic quadratus lumborum (QL) tightness - but only if you perform exercises correctly.
Shirley Sahrmann and her disciples have frequently observed that whenever you see an overworked muscle, you should always look for a dysfunctional synergist. A common example at the shoulder is a cranky biceps tendon picking up the slack for an ineffective rotator cuff.
Quadratus lumborum fits the bill in the core/lower extremity because its attachment points unify the pelvis, lumbar spine, and ribs.
When it shortens, it pulls the spine into lateral flexion and the lumbar spine into extension. In other words, it can give you "fake" hip abduction and hip extension - both of which come from the glutes. Whether you're doing mini-band sidesteps, side-lying clams, or loading your hips in a pitching delivery, you need to make sure the movement is happening at the ball-socket (femoral head - acetabulum) rather than at the spine. And, when you're doing your prone hip extension, supine bridges, hip thrusts, and deadlifts, you want to make sure you're getting true hip extension and not just extra low back arching.
3. The eccentric role of the glutes in the lower extremity might be their most key contribution.
When heel strike happens, it kicks off the process of pronation in the lower extremity. This pronation drives internal rotation of the tibia and, in turn, the femur. There is a lot of ground reaction force and range of motion that must be controlled, so much of it is passed up the chain because we simply don't have that much cross-sectional area in the muscles below the knee. Because it functions in three planes of motion, the gluteus maximus is in an awesome position to help by slowing down femoral internal rotation, adduction, and flexion.
If you're looking to learn more about how functional anatomy impacts how you assess, coach, and program, I'd strongly encourage you to check out Mike Robertson's new Complete Coach Certification. I've had the opportunity to review it, and it's absolutely fantastic. You can learn more - and get a nice introductory discount - HERE.
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