Physical Subculture

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Lesson re-learned this week: Go for too long not doing Goodmornings as a regular part of your lifting diet, and the consequences are severe. I have to go to couples therapy just to get my hamstrings to start talking to me again. Waaaaay below anything resembling a max lift, I crept some GM’s back into the program yesterday and now make the vow to not forget them for any length of time. As Mohamed El-Hewie wrote in Essentials of Weightlifting and Strength Training: “You should be doing Goodmornings as long as you walk on this planet.”

Recent workouts at Bodytribe:

Clean practice. Working around 75-80% for doubles

Goodmornings/Farmer’s walk. Goodmornings for 8-10 reps, then heavy FW, 100 feet (or more). Brent decided to hang chains off the already loaded FW handles, which added an element of imbalance and the constant possibility that one (or both) of the handles might get lighter quick if said chains rolled off. It was a brilliant idea. I love it when I’m out-Bodytribed by someone else.

Barbell trilogy: clean/press/back squat. This one was from Allyson, but it might make Steve Justa proud. Make the bar heavy enough to scare you a little on the overhead portion, especially having to swap the bar from front to back, and vice versa. Get to 30 reps, even if it means repeated sets of singles or doubles.

FOUNDATION movements.

Remember the ‘functional training’ trend about 8 years ago when everyone decided that balancing on strange objects and doing everything with one limb instead of 2 while blindfolded or upside down was the magical way to ‘work the core.’ Every fitness trade show was packed with gidgets that were pretty colors and often inflatable. Doing an overhead press (with small neon-colored weights) while precariously balanced on a squishy half globe on one leg was vastly important for your athletic ability, and even more important for developing you CORE, whatever the heck that was.

But many strength athletes and coaches weren’t impressed. There seemed to big a couple big obstacles in the logic of what was passing as ‘functional’ training. The first had to do with the concept of balance. There are few scenarios that require us to have stable feet on an unstable surface. With the exception of board sports, most daily or athletic scenarios will force our body to right itself through reflexes and actions that require the movement of the feet, not focusing on the stability of the spine and hips as much as the controlled MOBILITY of the spine and hips.

Mel Siff wrote extensively about this righting process:

“Balancing drills on wobble boards, balance boards and core stability
balls prevent the stepping reflex, which takes place on stable
surfaces. Performing activities on “unstable” objects requires
different change-in-support and compensatory actions than
[differ from what is] required to dynamically stabilize in real sporting situations. If
there is a sudden unexpected imposition of loading (e.g., a push),
which occurs frequently in actual sporting situations, the dominance
of the periphery or distal segments assist the whole body in re-
establishing stability.”

In other words, ya gotta be able to move the feet to right yourself, and denying that ability by focusing on the ‘core’ can actually screw up the process.

Then the studies started coming in:

The effects of ten weeks of lower-body unstable surface training on markers of athletic performance.

Cressey, E.M., C.A. West, D.P. Tiberio, W.J. Kraemer, and C.M.
Maresh. J. Strength Cond. Res. 21(2):561–567. 2007

The conclusion?

“These results indicate that UST (unstable training) using inflatable rubber discs attenuates performance improvements
in healthy, trained athletes. Such implements have proved valuable in rehabilitation, but caution should be exercised when applying UST to
athletic performance and general exercise scenarios.”

As trainers we often fall under the weirder-is-better model, trying to keep things interesting or ‘different’ by making them complicated. Far be it from me to knock this process, as we sometimes need to paint the barn a different color (or is that too archaic of a metaphor?), but there needs to be a SOLID FOUNDATION.
A quick example: (harking back to a recent post about swings), a spine that hasn’t made the necessary graduation from potty training (our version of basic squat training) to weighted deadlifts or back squats hasn’t the education to be prepared for the hip and spine demands of a proper swing.

Example 2: know your deadlift and bent rows before EVER attempting a stiff leg or single leg exercise. Since rows (when done properly) are great lessons for learning scapula position, ‘twould behoove folks to understand the relation between said scapula and the rest of the spine when doing bent over exercises, like stiff legged deadlifts, or the single leg varieties that are effective throw backs to the functional training craze (very effective, if folks know how to establish spine position through basic FOUNDATION exercises).

THE BIG 5

I want everyone I work with to be very familiar with some basic movements. These FOUNDATION movements give folks a solid idea of body position, which includes postural considerations (what to do with shoulder blades, hips and spine) as well as good dose of simple STRENGTH, the ability to generate force within these positions.

THEN we can play with the variations and interpretive dance moves that might make up future workouts.

1) Deadlifts/squats (which can only happen after graduating from potty training). Yes, I count these both as one, not because they are identical, but to know ne, you’d better know the other, so I see them as interchangeable, but essential

2) Pushups. The pushup is an amazing postural exercise. If your scapula, spine, hips and head aren’t in alignment, I’ll kick you in the stomach. Add the dynamic element of movement while maintaining position and you’ve got quite a little college coarse in biomechanics.

3) Bent over rows. For all the same reasons as above…. yet a a little different.

4) Overhead presses.

5) Windmills. Let’s add a rotation element to our positioning, as well as a unique flexibility component. Wanna learn a great deal about yourself or your client? Work them into a windmill.

In the two examples above (swings and stiff deads or single leg deads), I’ve seen a lot of rounded backs and protracted shoulder blades attempting the exercises I mentioned, placing strain on their spines while not learning much about how the body works. Yikes. Athletic movements, no matter how weird, can be a party for the bored mind, but if the body hasn’t mastered the FOUNDATION movements, it might be one of those parties where drunken frat boys decide to burn the gazebo and fill the pool with beer. The concept starts off as a fun idea, but goes wrong very quickly.

Mike knows his FOUNDATION movements.