This entry was posted on
March 18, 2010 by Mike Robertson.
It was tagged with
Training.
Da Biceptz
Last Thursday was NOT a good day.
You all know I'm a pretty positive person, and I do my best to let
things roll off my back. So just suffice it to say when I don't have
a good day, it's NOT a good day.
Luckily, my good friend/online training client/soon-to-be-intern Eric
Oetter was in town and we decided to get a quick training session in that
evening.
We started off with some big, compound lifts - close-grip board presses
with chains, and weighted chins.
After that, it was on like Donkey Kong.
I was hitting up some tricep work while Eric worked on his pulling
technique, and then we decided to finish off with some biceps (aka
biceptz). I had no clue what to do, so EO offered up an idea:
Crazy 8's
I can write about these today with only minimal shame, as the lingering
soreness has finally diminished a bit. Here's the premise - Crazy 8's
are basically a ladder for your biceps. Grab a relatively light
weight, sit at the end of the bench, and do the following:
Perform one rep
Take about 5 seconds
Perform two reps
Take about 5 seconds
Perform three reps
Take about 5 seconds
You work your way up to eight reps, and then all the way back down. And
one more thing: You can't drop the dumbbells in between sets! You
have to hold them the entire time.
So we finish that entire bicep workout in 5 minutes, and let me tell
you, the pump is ridiculous. (Wow, I really sound like a bodybuilder
here).
I kid you not when I say I was sore until TODAY! Yesterday
(Wednesday), things had started to subside a bit, but for the past 5 days
just getting my elbow into full extension was not only a stretch, but a
subtle reminder of what an idiot I am.
2 - Something "new" can definitely cause a reaction to your body (i.e.
newness can equal soreness).
3 - That "soreness" doesn't necessarily equate to "good."
4 - That just about anything we do can make us sore, or tired, or not
want to lift our arms over our head. In that same vein, just about
anyone can do these things to us - it doesn't take a great coach or trainer
to take someone out behind the woodshed and put a beating on them.
But here's the underlying question - does that mean its good training?
Does that mean we're going to get something out of it?
And this one is really important: Is this something that
we can use consistently, over-time, to get consistent and reproducible
results?
Don't get me wrong - there's a time and a place for stupid,
balls-to-the-wall training. It pushes our physical and mental
thresholds, and takes us to places we probably haven't been to in a
while.
Smart, basic training principles, however, aren't quite that
sexy. But they're also a hell of a lot more effective over the long
haul.
This entry was posted on
March 17, 2010 by Mike Robertson.
It was tagged with
Training.
Knee pain
After training clients and athletes of all
shapes and sizes over the years, it's no wonder why so many of them end up
with knee pain.
Many are left with the impression that they have
genetically "bad knees." Others simply assume that they will no
longer be able to do the extracurricular activities that they enjoy.
However, it's my opinion that a lot of the knee issues you see in
the gym are more a result of limitations in joint mobility, coupled with
structural imbalances around the joint itself.
Here are just a
few of the reasons the average guy/gal has knee pain when training in the
gym.
1.0 - Horrible Ankle
Mobility
Remember all those sprained ankles you
suffered during middle and high school sports?
I sure
do.
You never really had to rehab them all that
much - you simply went back out a few days or weeks later and got back in
on the action. While you didn't realize it at the time, you were
slowly but surely losing ankle mobility.
(And ladies, don't even get me started on
high-heels. You won't like what I have to say!)
Here's the
issue, though - your ankle needs mobility. Even though you may never
use it under load in the weight room, you need the ability to dorsiflex
your ankle, or glide your knees over your toes.
When you
don't have this requisite mobility in one joint, you look to another joint
(typically above or below) to fill in the gaps. So failure to address
ankle mobility needs can often lead to an increased demand for knee
mobility.
This takes me directly into my next point.
1.5 - Horrible Hip
Mobility
While the ankle sprains were bad, the abuse
many of us put our body through every day is even worse.
It's
not the rigors of extreme training or hardcore exercise. No, this
fate is much slower and more deliberate.
It's the act of
disuse that really puts a hurting on our hip mobility.
Quite simply, sitting down at a desk or driving a car all day is a
sure-fire way to watch your hips stiffen up like a stone golem. All
of a sudden, you're wondering why your squat or lunge doesn't feel quite
right, and you can't figure out the answer.
Many of the
athletes/clients I work with are lacking hip extension, and/or the ability
to really turn on their glutes. One of the primary culprits is the
rectus femoris muscle, a two-joint hip flexor that crosses the hip and
knee. A short or stiff rectus femoris not only limits hip extension,
but also makes it increasingly difficult to turn on your gluteals.
With short/stiff hip flexors,
we're immediately more likely to NOT use our glutes and hamstrings to do
the work. So we're left with quad dominant movements that put more
shear and compressive forces on our knees.
Taking it one step
further, when you combine a quad dominant squat or lunge with poor ankle
mobility, your knee is stuck in between two joints that are really pissed
off and not moving well.
The result? A knee that is really
pissed off.
And to think - you don't even have a knee problem,
per se. You have a hip and ankle problem!
2 - Weak Hips and
Hamstrings
We discussed this briefly in our previous
point, but let's dig in a bit more here.
The hip joint is pretty
magical, all things considered. It's a ball-and-socket joint, which
gives it a ton of freedom of movement in all planes of motion.
However, the hip is also extremely important when it comes to controlling
motion at the knee and developing strength/power throughout the lower
body. If your hips aren't up to the task, you're severely limiting
your movement quality, as well as your performance capabilities.
If someone presents at IFAST with weak or dysfunctional hips, we'll take
a multi-pronged approach to get them up to snuff:
1 - Isolative
work to improve motor control and strength in the psoas, glute max,
posterior glute medius, etc.
2 - Single-leg work to activate and
strengthen the stabilizing musculature within unilateral movement patterns.
(This will also be covered in-depth in my soon to be released Single-Leg
Solution DVD and manual).
3 - Bilateral work to strengthen the
big muscles (especially glute max and the hamstrings) via compound
movements.
The problem is, as an industry, we often
get so caught up in using one approach that we forget how many tools we
have available to us!
All of these tools
have a time and place within our training programs. They key is
figuring out what our client or athlete needs, and giving it to them at the
appropriate time.
Which leads me directly to my final point.
3 - Poor Program Design
The final reason many people suffer from knee pain when hitting the
gym is poor program design.
The first reason is obvious - we use
too many machines.
And people, I'm telling you, if you
think people aren't using machines these days, you're crazy. Go to a
commercial gym and see for yourself.
I could go on and on about
why machines are horrible, such as the fact that they lock everyone into a
similar movement pattern, the fact that your body almost never works at
one-joint while restricting motion at others, etc., but hopefully you
already know most of this.
If your "trainer" has you float
around from machine-to-machine while he/she counts reps, run away as fast
as you can!
Another issue you'll see is that many trainees fall
victim to extremely repetitive programming. This is witnessed every
Monday when every male in America feels the need to bench press and/or
train "chest."
In the case of leg training, many guys simply
follow some version of this leg routine for years on end:
- Squats - Leg Extensions - Leg Curls - Calves
Anyone see the problem(s) here?
We
know that they probably have horrible mobility at their ankle and hip, so
they probably don't have the mobility to squat efficiently in the first
place.
We know they probably don't have a butt and
hamstrings, so now we're forced to squat in a quad-dominant fashion that's
really going to torque our knees.
And as if that wasn't bad
enough, to really drive the stake-through-the-heart, we finish up with
single-joint, machine-based exercises that put our knees on an island.
Then, we wonder why they hurt?!?!?!?!?!
Finally, very
few gym-goers that I know put a premium on building the back-side of their
body. Exercises such as RDL's, deadlifts, glute-hams, etc. are almost
never seen in commercial gyms.
The result? The front side
of your body is super-strong, and the back-side is super weak. Can
anyone imagine why we might have a problem?
So there you have it
- some of the major reasons that people who frequent commercial gyms have
knee pain.
But let's be honest here, this is only a few of the
reasons.
What do you guys think? What are some more
reasons why the guy or gal who hits the gym is suffering from knee pain?
Leave your thoughts and feedback below!
Stay strong MR
BTW - If you're interested, I actually created an entire
product that goes much more in-depth as to why most people have knee pain,
as well as how to fix it.
If you haven't checked it out
before, it's called Bulletproof Knees and it's gotten many people fantastic
results. I'll provide the link below. Good luck!
This entry was posted on
March 15, 2010 by Mike Robertson.
It was tagged with
Training.
Mike Wittmer
Hip Mobility
In the second part of our Olympic Lifting series, we're going to focus
on hip mobility. If you missed Part I, you can find it HERE.
As you can tell from the picture above, hip mobility is critical to
perform the lifts effectively. But even more importantly, you need the ability to go into
deep hip flexion with a neutral lumbar spine!
If you lack basic hip mobility, I would start out by employing the hand
grenade approach - throw everything at it that you possibly can! For
those with very stiff hips, we'll often foam roll daily, while also going
through a ton of different mobility drills (such as the ones you can find
in Assess and Correct or Magnificent Mobility).
Once your general mobility has improved, it's time to start addressing
your mobility needs within the specific context of squatting. After
all, the goal isn't to have a ridiciulous amount of non-specific
mobility, Instead, you actually need to have the mobility in the
hips, combined with the stability/stiffness around the lumbar spine to
squat deep in a safe and effective manner.
Here are a series of exercises you can use to get you started.
Kneeling
Rockbacks
Kneeling rockbacks (also featured in A&C) aren't a high-level,
intense exericse.
Rather, the goal with these is to teach you how to move into hip
flexion without
losing your lumbar curve. If I had to nitpick at anything in the
above video (which comes to us compliments of Tony Gentilcore), I would say
he's over-exaggerating his lumbar arch to a degree. It's very common, as
many assume that if you're trying to avoid losing your arch you should just
arch harder, right?
Instead of thinking about arching, think about lengthening the spine
from the head to your sacrum, which will reflexively turn on and engage
your core muscles.
(And don't worry, I'll pick on myself here in a second. You know
I love ya Tony!)
Plate
Squats
Once you've started to discern the difference between hip motion and
lumbar motion, it's time to build those back into our squatting pattern.
The plate squat is a fantastic exercise to help us do this.
When looking to-rebuild your squat, I'll often have clients squat to a
box. I don't necessarily do this for the performance benefits;
instead, my goal is to stop them at the point where they would lose the
neutral position of their spine/sacrum. If you start to see any
tucking or rounding, you're squatting too deep for your current levels of
mobility/stability.
As you can see at the very bottom of the squat, I get a little bit of
rotation at the sacrum. We could argue forever about whether that
subtle bit of motion is possibly injurious, but here's my take - I want to
minimize any changes in lumbar/sacral alignment when squatting.
Bottom line? That's probably a little deeper than I should be
squatting. I would be better served to cut the range of motion
slightly and continue working on mobility/stability until squat depth
improves.
Front
Squats
Once you've mastered the plate squat, it's time to start building
something specific to Olympic lifting - the front squat!
The front squat is a fantastic exercise, not only because it's a
legitamite squatting exercise, but also because it really taxes your
core/lumbar stability and thoracic spine mobility levels.
Like the plate squat, I'll often have people squat to a box early on,
or at least until they can squat to an appropriate level without losing
their lumbar/sacral alignment. In this video, I lose sacral alignment
very subtly at the end range of motion. However, this brings me to
one more very important point.
How Stiffness
Influences Your Squat
You've often heard me talk about stiffness in the past. Stiffness
is not a bad thing - in fact, stiffness helps make great athletes
great!
The problem is when you have a stiffness imbalance - in this case, my
hip stiffness exceeds that of my lumbar spine, which causes the
motion.
However, we can't forget about specificity! In the above squats, I'm
only using 25 pounds for the plate squat, and 135 for the front squat -
well off what I'm capable of using. As my weights go up and my
core/torso are forced to stabilize hard and increase stiffness, my lumbar
spine and sacral position improves!
I could probably use a bit more mobility work for the hips and
stabilizing work for the torso, but I don't want to loosen up too
much. Taking away all my hip stiffness would decrease my ability to
squat and deadlift heavy weights!
This is a key point: You can't assume that if someone fails to bodyweight squat
correctly, that they have an issue. Rather, look at them
with gradually increasing loads (including working sets) to determine if
they have an issue or not.
Often, strong and/or heavy clients don't have as many issues as you
might think. Instead, your choice of assessment isn't specific
enough. I don't care how an elite powerlifter or Olympic
lifters bodyweight squat looks. Rather, I want to know how their
technique and performance looks under relatively heavy loading. If
you still see lumbar flexion or changes in sacral alignment even with heavy
loads, then you have a problem.
Random Thoughts on
Hip Mobility and Squatting
While I haven't addressed it in-depth here, I have mentioned is
numerous time - hip mobility is only part of the squatting equation!
You need to have great core/lumbar stability as well. Think of
developing your own natural weight belt, working the front, sides and back
of your core using various exercises.
The anterior core (and especially the external obliques) work to
prevent excessive anterior tilt. Again, we want neutral spine/pelvis
- NOT a ridiculous anterior pelvic tilt and lumbar lordosis!
Not only does this excessive alignment increase wear and tear on
the spine, but it also limits squat depth as well, as our hamstrings are in
a position of constant stretch/facilitation.
Finally, please keep in mind I'm not an Olympic
lifter! I don't claim to have elite O-lifter mobility, and
if I had Aaron around I'd use him for all my videos. Instead, look at
the things I do/don't do well and use them to improve your own
performance.
So that's it for Part II. Chances are you have some work to do,
so get after it and we'll see you next week for Part III!
This entry was posted on
March 10, 2010 by Mike Robertson.
It was tagged with
Training.
Tired Athletes
Hip Mobility
Last night, I was reminded of a sad-fact regarding high school sports,
as well as strength and conditioning in general.
We have a new kid that's been coming into our facility, and his goals
are simple: Get bigger and stronger for football season. Easy
enough, right?
Not so fast.
He's scheduled for an appointment at 6 pm last night, and you can tell
when he walked in that he was tired. As we asked a few questions, it
became apparent why he looked tired - HE WAS TIRED!
In fact, since 2:30 that afternoon he had been to track practice, as
well as an off-season football workout. Couple this with the fact
that he'd probably been up since 6 am or so that day, and the fact that we
know many high school kids' diets leave something to be desired.
Any wonder why he wasn't setting the world on fire with his
workout?
This is something we have to remember as strength and conditioning
coaches, performance enhancement coaches, or whatever you want to call
yourself.
When it comes to our kids, the only thing we have control over
is our workout!
You can't control the fact your baseball stud ran 5 miles for
"conditioning."
You can't control the fact that your women's volleyball coach decides
the week of the conference tournament that they're out of shape and need
two-a-days to get prepped for this week's games.
You can't control when your D-III softball players' coach decides to
make them perform walking lunges around the track for a workout.
Did I mention it was TWO LAPS?
And if you even think I'm joking, that's just the tip of the
iceberg. I've seen some pretty stupid sh*t when it comes to
training.
The only thing we have
control over is what we do. And if your
athletes come to you in this kind of shape, some mobility exercises, active
recovery, and possibly some low-level/non-intensive exercise is about all
you're going to get out of them.
So next time your athletes come to you totally wiped out, ask yourself
this simple question:
What can I do to make them better?
Chances are a big-time workout it the last thing they need.
Da Biceptz
