|
| It's extremely common for athletes to perform all their movements with externally rotated feet. This positioning is a means of compensating for a lack of dorsiflexion range of motion – usually due to tight plantarflexors - during closed-chain knee flexion movements. In addition to flexibility initiatives for the calves, one should incorporate specific work for the dorsiflexors; this work may include seated dumbbell dorsiflexions, DARD work, and single-leg standing barbell dorsiflexions. These exercises will improve dynamic postural stability at the ankle joint and reduce the risk of overuse conditions such as shin splints and plantar fasciitis.
Eric Cressey
www.BuildingtheEfficientAthlete.com |
| Read more |
|
| Frontal plane stability in the lower body is dependent on the interaction of several muscle groups, most notably the three gluteals, tensor fascia latae (TFL), adductors, and quadratus lumborum (QL). This weakness is particularly evident when an athlete performs a single-leg excursion and the knee falls excessively inward or (less commonly) outward. Generally speaking, weakness of the hip abductors – most notably the gluteus medius and minimus – is the primary culprit when it comes to the knee falling medially, as the adductors, QL, and TFL tend to be overactive. However, lateral deviation of the femur and knee is quite common in skating athletes, as they tend to be very abductor dominant and more susceptible to adductor strains as a result.
In both cases, closed-chain exercises to stress the hip abductors or adductors are warranted; in other words, keep your athletes off those sissy obstetrician machines, as they lead to a host of dysfunction that's far worse that the weakness the athlete already demonstrates! For the abductors, I prefer mini-band sidesteps and body weight box squats with the mini-band wrapped around the knees. For the adductors, you'll have a hard time topping lunges to different angles, sumo deadlifts, wide-stance pull-throughs, and Bulgarian squats.
Eric Cressey
www.BuildingtheEfficientAthlete.com
Technorati Tags:
Eric Cressey, Health, Weight Lifting, Strength and Conditioning, Strength Training, Deadlift, Glutes, Hips, Low Back, Squats, Injuries
|
| Read more |
|
Thought you all might be interested in a local publication I just had:
http://www.townonline.com/parentsandkids/columnists/x2088648457
Have a great weekend,
EC
|
| Read more |
|
| 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.
|
| Read more |
|
| Q: I just read your article on leg extensions, and I'm wondering if leg curls are bad, too. I'm rehabbing a mild hamstring pull, and I’m wondering if light-weight leg curls are okay.
A: I'm not a fan of leg curls at all. Your hamstrings will never work in isolation like that; they'll always be co-contracting with the glutes, adductor magnus, and smaller hip extensors. When you do a leg curl, you really just encourage an overactive muscle to tighten up even more than it already has.
In our Building the Efficient Athlete DVD set, Mike Robertson and I go into great detail on how when you see a muscle strain, you should always look for a dysfunctional synergist. Think about the functions of the gluteus maximus: hip extension, abduction, and lateral rotation.
If it shuts down, you can get hamstrings or adductor magnus strains (synergists in hip extension), piriformis issues (synergist in lateral rotation), tensor fascia latae (TFL) strains (synergist in hip abduction) or even quadratus lumborum tightness/strains (hip-hiking/lateral flexion to compensate for lack of hip abduction). You also might get lower back tightness or lumbar erector strains from lumbar hyperextension to compensate for a lack of hip extension range of motion (secondary to glute weakness not being able to finish hip extension). Finally, you might experience hip joint capsule irritation anteriorly because your glutes aren't providing enough posterior pull to counteract the tendency of the hamstrings to allow the femoral head to glide forward during hip extension.
Yes, I know I'm a longwinded geek, but I do have a point. That is, always look for inefficiencies and dysfunction; don't be lazy and just stop at pathology. Several pathologies can result from a single inefficiency/dysfunction/syndrome. If you understand how to identify and correct these inefficiencies, you can use comparable protocols to fix a lot of problems.
They say that one of the best ways to win people over is to take their pain away. If you're a trainer or therapist whose income depends on getting people healthy, you NEED to know this stuff.
Oh, and as for your hamstrings issue, get the glutes firing with various activation exercises and stick to hip extension movements such as pull-throughs, deadlifts, forward sled dragging, box squats, and back extensions to get co-contraction of the glutes. It goes without saying that I would also include plenty of single-leg exercises. If you want to start training knee flexion, when the time is right, incorporate some glute-ham raises.
www.BuildingTheEfficientAthlete.com
|
| Read more |
|
| Last week, sports fans witnessed arguably the most gruesome knee injury – both visually and medically – in recent history when the Clippers’ Shaun Livingston’s knee folded up like a lawn chair on a seemingly harmless play (be forewarned; this video is not for those with uneasy stomachs). Given Livingston’s age (21) and “fragile” 6-7 frame, many supporters of the NBA’s new age minimum restrictions are quick to assert that this injury would not have happened if Livingston had been forced to wait longer to enter the NBA. Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports wrote a detailed piece on the topic.
As a strength coach who has worked extensively with basketball players, I can say without wavering that this couldn’t be further from the truth; chronological age had nothing to do with Livingston’s injury. Physical maturity, training experience, and – presumably – ignorance of previous injuries and imbalances did. What seems to be lost in the details is that the Clippers guard also had a stress reaction in his lower back and pre-existing ankle problems; any of the best coaches and physical therapists in the business will all tell you that dysfunctions are almost never isolated.
Stress reactions are commonly the result of repeated hyperextension of the lumbar spine secondary to poor core stability and hip mobility (not to mention that the typical NBA spine is a LOT longer than that of the Average Joe). As part of this dysfunction, the gluteal muscles fail to fire sufficiently, and they lack the strength and activation level to decelerate “knock-knee,” internal rotation forces in landing – just like the one that ended Livingston’s season. When you lack mobility at the hips and ankles (most basketball players have terrible ankle mobility due to high-top sneakers and ankle taping), the knee (a joint that should just be a stable hinge) develops instability to create mobility. He could easily have developed chronic hip or knee pain; a traumatic injury got him first. Put a 1983 Buick engine in a 2007 Ferrari body, and you’ve got the typical NBA athlete.
When it comes to injuries, the basketball culture is reactive, not proactive. Unlike sports like football, hockey, and baseball that have embraced dedicated off-season conditioning programs (not to mention resistance-training from an early age), the basketball community – from the youth leagues right up to the NBA – has yet to appreciate how valuable a role strength and conditioning can play in preventing injuries like Livingston’s.
Rather than preventing the injuries by participating in dedicated off-court off-season training programs, most basketball players go right back to playing street ball, AAU hoops, or NBA summer leagues – all the while reinforcing the imbalances they’ve developed. Everyone wants to compete, but nobody wants to train or even rehab. Apparently, alley-oops and crossover dribbles are a lot more “sexy” than lifting weights and doing flexibility drills – at least until you rupture an ACL, MCL, PCL, patellar tendon, and lateral meniscus on a lay-up.
Karl Malone was notorious for his rigorous off-season lifting regimen, and he was quite possibly the most durable player in the history of the league. Entering the NBA at a young age wasn’t a problem for Lebron James – and it should come as no coincidence that he was resistance training for years before his arrival to the NBA at age 18. I had a 15 year-old, 192-pound high school shortstop front squat 300 for an easy single on Friday, then vertical jump 28.5 inches and box squat 355 today with a bit left in the tank. Do you mean to tell me that he won’t be ready for professional sports physically in three years? Please!
The NBA doesn’t need to institute age restrictions; it needs to take the initiative to develop a culture – independent of age – where players start training smart and taking care of their bodies.
Want to learn more? Check out The Ultimate Off-Season Training Manual.
|
| Read more |
|
LEARN
HOW TO
DEADLIFT
- Avoid the most common deadlifting mistakes
- 9 - minute instructional video
- 3 part follow up series
|
