This week I got a chance to chat with Eric Cressey and Mike Reinold, two guys who I feel are really taking our industry to the next level.

This week they’re launching a fantastic new product called Functional Stability Training, and in this interview we’re going to cover some common injuries these guys are seeing, a brief look into their assessment process, and most importantly, how they’re getting great results with their core training programs.

Since we’ve interviewed them a handful of times before, let’s go ahead and jump right into it!

Guys, I’ll spare you the typical questions “like why did you have this seminar,” blah, blah, blah, and get right into it.

The title of your seminar was “Functional Stability Training.” If you guys could start us off with your definition of stability, or what stability means to you, that would be great!

MR: There are really two ways that the body produces stability – statically and dynamically.  Static stability is how our joints provide stability using the capsule, ligaments, and bony anatomy.  This isn’t under our control.  Dynamic stability is how our body uses the muscles and neuromuscular control to produce stability.

Through years of abuse and poor posture, our body finds a way to accomplish our daily tasks by compensating.  This often means our dynamic stability is compromised and our static stabilizes take some abuse.  That is when we see pathology.

Understanding Functional Stability Training is essentially understanding the true role of the musculature.  This is something we touch upon in the FST program:

There is a huge trend in our industries now to assess and correct movement dysfunctions.  We have gotten great at working on mobility issues but I still personally think we all have room for improvement in our understanding of how to maximize stability.

A good example of this is to train the hips to extend while the core maintains lumbar spine stability.  I talked about this in a recent post on my website discussing advanced glute bridge progressions.  By advancing a standard glute exercise bridge you can promote both anti-extension of the spine and rotary stability.  This is functional stability training.

Everyone talks about mobility and seems to intuitively know that mobility is important. Why do you think people fail to recognize the need for stability?

EC: I think that part of the problem is that we’ve been so conditioned to use the word “tight” that most people have never even thought about what it really means.  In other words, is it truly short or is it just stiff?  Obviously, “stiff” has a bad connotation, in the minds of most.

Truth be told, though, in the overwhelming majority of cases, it’s just stiff – meaning that we can effect positive changes in someone’s movement and get rid of “tightness” by simply creating stiffness (stability) at adjacent joints.  If a tissue is truly short (as you might see after a post-operative immobilization period), you need to get cracking on longer-duration stretching and manual therapy.

As proof, just look at some of the brightest physical therapists at the forefront of the industry.  You simply don’t see Shirley Sahrmann or Gray Cook giving lectures or writing books on how to static stretch people.  Most of their teachings are heavily geared toward stabilization exercises.

Now, there certainly is a need for various “tissue length” initiatives – whether it’s stretching, mobility work, soft tissue treatments, or any of a number of other approaches.  These practices transiently increase range of motion so that we can build stability within new postures.

Mike, something that discussed in the first lecture really stuck with me. You talk about the components of dynamic stability, with one of those being dynamic ligament tension.

Could you briefly describe what that is, along with why it’s important?

MR: When dynamic ligament tension was first described, it simply applied to how the connective tissue (of muscles around a joint) often blends into the capsular tissue.  Good examples of this are how the rotator cuff muscles blend into the glenohumeral joint capsule, and how the quadriceps blends into the retinaculum tissue of the knee.  Studies have shown that contraction of these muscles produces stiffness, of stability of the capsular tissue and joint.

This is a huge component of what we try to achieve when we train the musculature to stabilize a joint.

As our understanding of the fascial system continues to evolve, I think the concept of dynamic ligament tension can also be applied here as well.  Through fascial connections through the body, muscle contraction can cause stability in other places throughout the kinetic chain.  Our job is to maximize this potential.

Another cue that I really liked was when you were discussing the plank. You cued your client to “pull” themselves up using your abs. What do you hope to accomplish by doing this?

MR:  One of the big faults I see from the start of a plank is just plopping down and starting the plank as the person gets into position.  It is very rare that I see someone do this and actually perform a plank without being in a flexed hip position.  I want them to start from the floor and pull up so that what they are engaging their anterior core to do the work and not their iliopsoas.

Alright EC, it’s your turn!

I was in full-on geek heaven during your presentation on training around lower body and spine injuries. What are some of the most common injuries that you see on a day-to-day basis, and what are some quick-and-dirty tips to help train around them?

EC:  Given that I work with a lot of extension/rotation sport athletes, I see a lot of spondylolysis (vertebral fracture) and spondylolisthesis (vertebral “slippage”) cases, sports hernia, and femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) cases.  Like everyone else, too, I have some disc injury folks who come through my door, but as this video shows, it’s not altogether surprising.

I think that the first quick-and-dirty tip is to appreciate that there probably aren’t any quick-and-dirty tips!  As an example, in working with spondy cases and FAI (assuming a labrum isn’t really chewed up), folks can usually handle single-leg exercises with no problem.  However, most single-leg exercises are going to be a big problem with someone who has a sports hernia.  Conversely, you’ll see sports hernia cases where an athlete can squat completely fine, but squatting would be contraindicated for the spondy (too much stress on the pars interarticularis) and FAI (too much mechanical impingement at the hip joint).

So, I guess my quick and dirty tip is for fitness professionals to get educated about how the body moves, how specific injuries/conditions occur, and how one can maintain a training effect in spite of these issues.

Along those same lines, I think we realize that too much extension in the lower back is every bit as bad as too much flexion. Are you doing anything new in your programming to try and counteract excessive lumbar extension?

EC: Definitely.  The first step (as you could probably infer from my earlier response about good vs. bad stiffness) is to spend some time optimizing mobility in the appropriate areas.  For us, this has meant continuing to attack hip mobility (particularly extension) and thoracic mobility.  However, we also see pretty significant limitations to full shoulder flexion in many overhead athletes – usually secondary to restrictions in the lats, posterior cuff, teres major, and long head of the triceps.  When you combine this stiffness with poor t-spine mobility and a lack of anterior core control, you get athletes who substitute lumbar extension, rib flare, and forward head posture in place of shoulder flexion:

I actually wrote a lengthy blog about this: Are Pull-ups THAT Essential?

Once you’ve improved mobility in all the right areas, you need to work hard to establish lower trap control, anterior core stability (anti-extension control).  In terms of the former, I still like a lot of the conventional lower trap exercises (prone off table), but utilize a lot more forearm wall slides variations nowadays.  More importantly, we just cue athletes into the correct scapular position on a lot of their other exercises (most notably how we set the scapula for rotator cuff drills).  For the latter, I like prone bridging variations, rollout variations, overhead carries, and reverse crunches.

Here’s one last little tidbit that I touch on in quite a bit of detail in the presentation: the inferior rectus abdominis (RA) attachment point interacts with the superior attachment point of the adductor longus (AL) on the adductor aponeurosis (anterior aspect of the pubis).  The RA pulls the pelvis posteriorly and superiorly, while the AL pulls it anteriorly and inferiorly.  So, you’ve got a nice little tug-o-war going on – and usually the AL (the most commonly strained adductor muscle) wins, making it dense and fibrotic.  Incorporate not just mobility work for it, but also some direct (gentle) soft tissue work on the area with a ball:

Mike, how would you describe your assessment process as a clinician? What might you be doing differently than we trainers would in your assessment process?

MR:  In my role, I am often dealing with pathology, so my initial assessment is to find what may be pathological.  What I often find in low back pain patients is that they have pathology (maybe it’s a disc or spondy, whatever) but they have a ton of underlying movement deficiencies that are likely causing their balance between instability and dynamic stability to sway.

Once I get my patients asymptomatic and out of their acute flare-up, that is when the real work gets done in correcting their underlying areas of deficiency and compensation.  At this point I would say my assessment process is the same – watch people move and find out how they are compensating.  When you identify how they are compensating, you can reflect back and figure why they are compensating.

Awesome guys, thanks a ton for answering all these questions! Where can my readers find out more about yourselves, as well as the Functional Stability Training product?

MR: In addition to my website, MikeReinold.com, Eric and I just released our latest collaboration, Functional Stability Training for the Core.  It is an online program (though you can opt to get a DVD as well if you like) that will show you how Eric and I approach training the core from the standpoint of both rehabilitation and performance training.  You can find out more information at FunctionalStability.com.

EC: I run a free blog and newsletter at www.EricCressey.com.