Movement in Athletics – Follow up to Spine Function
I got some great responses from my last blog piece, Spine Function: From Treatment Table to The Field.
University of North Dakota Strength and Conditioning Coach Aaron Schwenzfeier had some great insight into how he approaches movement training for his athletes:
Good stuff Patrick. Like you said, awareness is essential. Once you have awareness, everything has potential.
I’ve discussed this before, but this is where it seems we are in the dark ages of coaching. We are looking for EXERCISES to use in hopes of magically creating good MOVEMENT. It seems to be more about teaching the next “great” exercise, and less about teaching movement. Too much avoidance of certain exercises because athletes don’t know how to move well.
Take the stabilizations such as side or front bridging. Say we do 3 or 4 or 5 sets of bridges. Sure the athlete may get up and move a little different and better, but only while there is still a neural activation and/or maybe calcium still bound to the troponin keep the muscle somewhat contracted. As soon as this “wears off” the athlete probably hasn’t learned anything. You might be giving them a ‘bigger gun’ but they sure as hell don’t know how to use it.
I like to teach athletes some basic rules to movement (in general) and most importantly the potential different movements of the spine and pelvis and how they relate to movement. Key is to get them to understand a few basic necessary rules. Then I tell the athlete(s), “YOU tell ME how to perform the exercise.” … they better know or else I haven’t done my job.
This leads to a lot of positive stuff to happen.
All exercises can be good or ok, just need to know how to “drive” them.
Awareness is step 1.
Aaron
I like Aaron’s approach of laying down some basic “rules” and then asking the athletes’ to take that understanding and develop movement. Instead of just shutting people down and saying “this is wrong, that is wrong, suck this in, tighten that up, don’t do that, do this, etc…”, he is allowing them to figure it out, put the puzzle together and gain an understanding of how to function.
My friend and colleague Keats Snideman has often commented on how he feels that many of the mobility problems we see in people develop due to changes in their brain – for example perceptions, reflexes, emotions, etc. – and not just problems with muscles or fascia per se.
Sometimes we can get so caught up in the exercise(s) we are teaching people that we just force them into these postures that we think are the “right way” or the “proper” way to perform the movement without taking into account the individuality of the person and the fact that no two squats (or bench presses, or lunges or whatever for that matter) will look exactly alike. People are different and they movement differently. Obviously, we want people to be technically proficient lifters and lift in a safe manner, and they should! But, we need to accept the fact that people are individuals and they may not move in the exact same way. We have to know what the perfect exercise technique looks like, and then understand how much deviation from that we are willing to accept that is still with in the realm of being safe and effective for the individual in question.
One thing I try when teaching an exercise to clients is to not exactly tell them what they are doing “wrong”, but rather, to ask them what it feels like when they move in a certain way. Ask them if they are aware of what their body is doing. Then, I ask them to move in a different way (the way that I would like them to move) and ask them if they can feel the difference and what it feels like to them. After a few reps, they start to develop an understanding of the rules as Aaron was referring to.
A good example of this is some clients I have had coming to me with some shoulder issues. When they have worked with other trainers or massage therapists in the past, it was always, “Stop shrugging when you row! Stop shrugging when you perform your rows! Keep your shoulder DOWN!!” Well, obviously that was not working. The clients still had a poor understanding/awareness of the movement. So, my goal was to have them perform a few reps of a row in the position that they felt was “stable” to them (which was with their shoulder in a shrugged position, upper trap dominant). I asked them if they could feel and notice how they were shrugged – and they could. Then, I placed my thumb at the inferior angle of the scapula and asked them to perform the row but to pull their shoulder blade down toward my thumb. I asked them if they could feel the different – and they could. Then, I had them perform a few sets and each time the shoulder started to shrug during the row, they immediately stopped and said, “Oops!” and then corrected the movement and continued on. They now understood the rules and they have created awareness and we are on our way to improving overall function! Yay!!
Anyway, just wanted to share some of those ideas.
This whole thing started out talking about spine function, so I thought I would throw up a link to a New York Times article from today – Is Your Ab Workout Hurting Your Back?
Patrick
patrick@optimumsportsperformance
5 comments
Great stuff Patrick! This mirrors my thoughts in many ways. This is why I like some of the work done by Feldenkrais, it really teaches people to become more “aware” of their habitual body mechanics and how they might learn to use their body in more effictive and efficient ways.
I agree! The best training lesson I ever got came from a baseball coach. He never told you what you were doing wrong. Instead, he suggested you do it one way (exaggerating the mistake) and then another way (opposing the mistake). Each time he asked how it felt and then he suggested finding something in the middle that felt just right. He said if the information went from his head to the player’s head it had little chance of reaching the body. But if he could offer an experience that got the player to be more aware of their body it was a “no brainer” so to speak. I took that lesson to heart and then to the gym where I use it often.
Patrick,
Excellent stuff, and very timely. In my development, one thing I have most certainly learned is that “don’t” cues are for the most part ineffective, especially compared to “do this” cues. By saying “don’t” it seems that you are really impacting someones confidence in their competence to perform well, which is rarely a good thing.
Keep up the great work.
-CB
Patrick,
Body awareness/ proprioception is the key to movement, exercise, and motion restrictions. Most coaches don’t understand the neurology and biomechanics behind exercise, so are constantly trying to “correct” athletes movements without understanding “WHY” the athlete is moving in a certain way. Below I will post the basic neurophysiology behind motion restrictions and movement patterns for viewers to read. Nice post by the way. Good to see other coaches who understand movement concepts and how to correctly teach/coach.
Sincerely,
Jason Russell DC, CGFI, ACE
If a muscle has been compromised, due to factors such as trauma or overuse, the sensitivity of the spindle will be lessened and the muscle will become less capable of regulating tension relative to a stretch or a load. The result is a reduction in the gamma motor neuron stimulation allowing the muscle spindle to shorten as the extrafusal fibers contract. The more that muscle shortens, the greater the slack and less responsive is the muscle spindle. In other words, the law of reciprocal inhibition only holds true if proper neurological input is being sent to the contracting muscles. If not, then the impulses that would inhibit contraction of the antagonist muscles will also be affected. This means a more active muscle spindle of the antagonist muscle, which means more tonicity, which equals tightness.
We therefore must be evaluating these kinds of things. If we can figure out where else in the body this problem is and rectify the reasoning the brain is laying down that tightness, we can start to see some improvements. Look for the muscular backup systems. If the iliac division of the glut max isn’t working (neurologically inhibited or weak), it can borrow from something else. You can go into the QL, or the lumbar multifidi, or the iliocostalis lumborum and borrow some hip extension from them. Its not true hip extension, but rather lumbar extension but the bottom line is that it can progress you forward and give you some kind of range back. If you can’t borrow it from there, you can go down into the biceps femoris and borrow some extension and external hip rotation from there. If you then give them glut exercises to do and their hamstrings begin to cramp, that should be a clue that they are borrowing and that is their compensation.
[...] last post on Movement in Athletics got some great comments and I thought I would touch on the idea of preparing the tissue to move [...]
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