Sarah Walls 8/21/19 Sarah Walls 8/21/19

My Hip Hurts! Training with a Hip Labral Tear, Part 1

So your hip hurts? The good news is there are always safe workarounds in the case of injury or lingering issues. Coach Sarah Walls begins her two part series on understanding how to apply safe training to the lower body with a labral tear in the hip.

So your hip hurts? I’m sorry to hear that - mine does, too! The good news is there are always safe workarounds in the case of injury or lingering issues (that should be accounted for as they always add up to real injuries down the road).

If you’d like to learn about the “why” behind some hip trouble, check out: "My Hip Hurts!" Training Around Femoroacetabular Impingement

Today, we’re just going to start talking more specifically about solutions for hip impingement - often felt as a pinching or dull ache - and often resulting in hip labral damage (there is a wide variety here).

It’s a pretty good rule of thumb that squatting is either not recommended or recommended to be heavily modified for athletes who are having hip labrum issues. This is because of the high degree of hip flexion during the squat - or where the knees come closer to the chest - can cause some major problems in the hip. The usual recommendations to modify the squat are to adjust depth or move more towards unilateral exercises (like split squat and lunge variations).

Hip IR/ER: the body needs a balance of both and should be both strong and mobile throughout both rotations.

Some strength coaches have famously denounced the bilateral squat pattern because they feel the risk vs reward does not make sense and will remove the movement all together.

I’m not there, yet! But I will say, that for the athletes I work with, they almost all have the same risk factors in common: poor ankle ROM, long femurs, and short torsos (relative to leg length). This is a recipe for hip trouble over the long term.

In these cases, I like making unilateral lower body exercises the main lift (be it as a precaution or a necessity) because it ensures we are getting a full range of motion in training the legs. Then we don’t have to rely so heavily on squatting to full-depth to get proper training effect.

The classic box squat. Easy on the knees, great way to load the hips. Might this be too much of a “good thing” over many years with little variety?

But, adjusting squat depth and favoring lower body unilateral work is certainly not a new approach.

Here’s what is: combining postural breathing exercises while encouraging the natural internal rotation of the hip. I’ve been diving in deep on using postural breathing exercises coupled with hip adduction. These positional breathing drills, which are realigning the diaphragm and the pelvis simultaneously, while also involving the adductors and even the hamstrings. The adductors themselves do not get a lot of work while squatting, and could cause an imbalance or injury if not addressed (side note: a split squat DOES heavily involve the adductors).

Pounding the adductors, hamstrings, with a simultaneous “tail tuck” and “rib tuck” through exercises relieves the hip a bit in how we then start to train the surrounding musculature. This can be quite refreshing for the athlete over time. More on these specifics next week in part 2.

But why keep chasing the squat? Why bother trying to make adjustments? Why NOT just join the group that bans this movement pattern from lifts? 1. Variety is key (I’ll touch on that later); 2. A bilateral squat is VERY functional: defensive position, anyone? Bilateral jumping is also pretty darn commonplace 3. It allows you to use more weight and thus tax the core a lot more.

Not what I’m talking about! This is bad squat IR and shows weakness and lack of control. An injury waiting to happen.

Okay, I’ve convinced myself. Let’s keep plugging away:

Most coaches when coaching the squat do not allow for natural internal rotation of the hip, true, most coaches will coach athletes to drive the knees out really hard and maybe even use a wide stance as well.

The opposite of this, and perhaps the more natural way to squat, that I’ve been experimenting with lately is this idea of not driving into so much external rotation when squatting, and allowing a little bit of natural internal rotation.

With this knee travel, the knee must remain inside the toe box and we should see this slight motion in the deeper portion of the squat or as part of a natural motion in the split squat. Again, and I can’t emphasize this enough, the knee motion is very slight, always under control, and stays within the toe box.

If you are struggling with hip pinching or catching, I recommend getting the hip looked at by a qualified medical professional who can help you understand what’s going on inside. If things are looking manageable, that’s awesome! You can train.

Please come back next week for part 2 of this post and I will share exercises ideas, specific training days, along with safe loading parameters. Getting the correct work-arounds will help you not only feel better but also feel like you are making progress once again.

Since you’re here: We have a small favor to ask! At SAPT, we are committed to sharing quality information that is both entertaining and compelling to help build better athletes. Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage us authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics.

Thank you! SAPT

Sarah Walls 7/15/19 Sarah Walls 7/15/19

Breathing Basics: Switching Sympathetic to Parasympathetic

Learn how to quickly switch into a focused, but relaxed state for your training session or practice, while optimizing air flow pathways.

Breathing drills have become an important foundation to each and everyone of my training sessions and it is something that, while complex on the surface, can be implemented in very simple ways that come with huge payoff.

If you want to get a primer in breathing drills, please check out my post from a few years back to get a foundational understanding of WHY they can be an important part of any training session: BREATHING DRILLS

In the past, I really only used one breathing drill per session, today it is up to a minimum of three. I like using a 3-drill circuit as the first thing the athlete does in their session for dual purpose of reaching the autonomic nervous system and targeting the respiratory muscles for warm-up purposes.

When using these drills in this way, paying attention to the way the athlete is breathing is very important. In this case the correct way would be to get as much air in as you can through your nose, hold it for a moment, and then exhale through the mouth.

Perhaps this runner could benefit from a pre-session breathing circuit to help optimize airflow and prevent excessive exhaustion?

Outside of this there are body positions that are more optimal to do this in than others, however this may be more useful when we are trying to reset positions than anything else. In truth, it really does not matter the position in which you are breathing, the most important thing is that we are breathing deeply.

The main goal of this type of breathing drill is to take us or our athletes from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state. This would mean switching your brain away from the daily stresses that all people deal with (from their boss, family, relationships, etc.) to focusing on the practice/training session in which they are about to engage. It helps the mind separate from the noise that doesn't help while you’re training, practicing, or competing.

The other purpose that the breathing serves is to get the airflow to go through the body in a way that is extremely helpful for learning how to properly brace and support the spine. This is a safety enhancement, first and foremost, and a performance enhancement second. We want the body to be able to brace against and resist force, while we also want it to be able to produce force. Both of these are optimized with proper breathing.

Bracing and resisting against forces protects us from injury, while producing force is what aids our performance. Breathing drills are the easiest way to start to teach an athlete’s body how to do those things. The key is making sure that the airflow is going deep down into your belly and expanding into your lower back and into the sides of your waist.

With this style of breathing we are also activating all of the important muscles in the trunk that are involved in bracing. Activating these muscles help realign the bony structures in our body to aid in stability and bracing. For example, many people tend to have an anterior pelvic tilt. If you think about your hips as a bucket of water, if you dip it forward, that would be an anterior pelvic tilt, and the water is now spilling out a little bit. Breathing drills help us pull those hips back into neutral and teach the muscles what that feels like to be neutral and braced in that position. Another good example of this would be rib position.

Another common positional fault would be an overextended position in the ribs, which carries over to both injury risk and performance. This is another common postural fault that increases injury risk and can decrease performance just through an ineffective improper rib position. If someone is standing and they seem to be sticking their chest out, they are probably overextended. They're not just standing straight up, they're going beyond that. The telltale sign for this is we see the ribs sticking out. There are simple breathing drills that work to tuck those ribs back in and teach them where they should be. We need to get them to have a closer relationship with the diaphragm, which is extremely important from a positional standpoint.

Nothing fancy here. Just deep breaths.

We went pretty into the weeds here but the most important thing to take away is if you come into the gym a little stressed out, just take some time and do a breathing drill. For example, eight deep breaths as a minimum. You can do those seated, close your eyes or don't close them, just make sure that air goes in through your nose and out through your mouth, traveling deep deep down into your belly. Doing this alone will really help you feel more calm and ready to get into your training session or whatever it is that you're trying to transition into.

Thank you! SAPT

Sarah Walls 5/31/18 Sarah Walls 5/31/18

Breathing Drills

The foundation of our work with close to 100% of the population we work with begins with correcting breathing patterns. In a nutshell, here is why…

The foundation of our work with close to 100% of the population we work with begins with correcting breathing patterns. In a nutshell, here is why:

Dramatic improvement in movement patterns
Fewer injuries
Better recovery (between intense bouts and sessions)
More bulletproof and awesome
Sets the stage for building to athletic potential

When you or your child begin a training program at Strength & Performance Training, the first step is going through our advanced, unique, and cutting-edge evaluation. From the results of that evaluation, we begin the program design process.

As with any evaluation process, the results impact the pathways that come thereafter. In the case of SAPT, their are varying levels of pathways. Each with their own sub-paths. Over our many years of working with athletes at every level and from every walk of life, we have been able to determine the pathways that lead to the greatest progress in the most efficient possible route.

Our first pathway, the one that is always prioritized as both foundational and necessary in all programs, is that of breathing patterns and drills.

Life Support

The human body really is a marvel. When given the proper conditions, it is capable of high-performance, the likes of which we have yet to see fully realized. While on the other end of the spectrum, given the “proper” conditions, the body is capable of adjusting and functioning in extremely unfavorable conditions. Great athletes can even thrive when everything about their lifestyle and training would indicate otherwise.

The body can adjust to anything that does not actually kill it. We somehow manage to eat completely manufactured food-like products and still manage to think, write, walk. Humans have adapted to a lifestyle of sitting, when we were clearly designed for low-level ambulatory activity at most times. The examples can go on endlessly.

As these adjustments occur, we generally tend to think everything is on the up-and-up in our bodies. Why walk, run, or bike from place to place when we can sit, relatively relaxed, in a motorized vehicle that quickly zips us from A to B? Sure, it is comfortable. But, when that sitting is complimented by another 8+ hours of sitting at school or work with an extra 3 hours reclined on the couch it starts to accumulate and effect your body negatively. The results - that you may only notice over time - include: poor circulation, atrophied gluteal muscles, low back pain, sciatica, rounded shoulders, forward head posture. All of which result in big time postural problems, predisposition to injury, and a myriad of physical and psychological problems.

While it has become more generally accepted by the public that sitting = bad and moving = good, there is a lot more to this. The science of human performance is just that: Science. The research coming out every year is staggering and the knowledge that has developed just in the last 5-years is unbelievable.

At SAPT, we only have human performance specialists on staff. Not hobbyists. Professionals. As such, our charge is to ensure that the programs and, ultimately, value we deliver to our clients must stand at the forefront of the industry.

Since we’re diving right into science, let’s take a look back at the simple example of sitting = bad and moving = good. Okay, I agree. But, let’s take that deeper. Let’s be a little smarter about this and ask some more questions:

We know that the common mal-alignments in the body ultimately stem from poor pelvic balance and that is, in fact, causing the postural asymmetries.

But what causes this poor pelvic balance in the first place? Traditionally, we’ve chalked it up to an increasingly sedentary environment - too much sitting, not enough moving. Even for children. In fact this problem first develops in children, all children.

Let’s go deeper still. There is actually something else going on besides our chair bound, screen driven environment. It just so happens that if you look very deep, like inside your body, you will discover that the muscle responsible for respiration, the diaphragm, is actually itself asymmetrical! In fact, the thorax is packed with asymmetrical situations: the heart sets on one side, the liver on the other to adjust the diaphragm is divided into two domes (on the right and left sides) one dome is smaller and weaker than the other. This sets off a precipitation of events. All of which ultimately influence our athletic performance, efficiency, injury patterns and more.

Posture

Let’s break this down a bit further. It’s important to grasp this point. If you can grasp this, then you will understand our methods: All kinds of important parts of the body attach and interact with the diaphragm. Since, by our bodies’ design, one side of the diaphragm is stronger than the other and that means that certain compensatory patterns always develop. Always. If you are a human you have these patterns.

The diaphragm is stronger on the right side, this ultimately means that we favor (and overwork) the right side of the body. While the left side becomes weakened and inefficient. Similar to having a dominant hand, the right side of the diaphragm is everyone’s dominant side.

After understanding this as fact, we can see the commonplace asymmetries develop: one shoulder higher than the other, the rib cage set at predictable angles from right to left and front to back, the pelvis rotated predictably.

Injury Potential and Predictability

Alright, we’re getting back on solid footing. The by-design asymmetry of our diaphragm causes the postural asymmetries that cause, over time, injury. This is another fact.

How many times has a well meaning coach had an athlete statically stretch chronically tight hamstrings? Do they ever regain the proper ROM? Nope. But, those tight hamstrings are actually indicative of a risk for injury that points to pelvic misalignment and, you guessed it, points then towards diaphragm and thorax corrections that MUST occur before high performance can ever be achieved.

Another common example: How many times has a pitching coach focused their injury prevention program to address only the throwing side? Their thought being that they need to strengthen and protect the side of the body that gets worked all the time. WRONG. Good gracious that’s just layering on the problems. The body needs to be balanced out for high performance.

Sub-Optimal Performance

Let’s continue to talk about the pitching coach who runs a one sided arm care program. Hey, it kind of makes sense. You throw with one arm, why wouldn’t focus on strengthening the musculature on just that side?

Because over time you create many layers of dysfunction. These layers can be very hard to peel back in older, trained athletes. These layers will inevitably limit the lengths of their careers (from a physical standpoint).

Never, ever layer strength on top of dysfunction. The potential for injury skyrockets (that’s my opinion) and it becomes very difficult to make the foundational corrections (to backtrack).

The result? The athlete has now gotten “stronger” and tighter and more imbalanced in the pursuit of increased performance.

What should the approach have been? Fix the imbalances first, prioritize this as essential to performance, then and only then, begin to strengthen.

Respiration

When respiration isn’t occurring efficiently, an athlete’s ability to recover between bouts of training (or plays in a game) will be suboptimal. Potentially leading to injury, compromised decision making (think ability to read a developing play), lost points, or a Loss.

Gait

We’ve established that the diaphragm will cause poor pelvic balance. But what does that mean for gait?

“Walking and breathing are the foundations of movement and prerequisites for efficient, forceful, non-compensatory squatting, lunging, running, sprinting, leaping, hopping, or jumping ONLY WHEN three influential inputs are engaged: proprioception, referencing, and grounding.” [PRI coursework]

Pulled muscles, ligament tears, rolled ankles can all be traced back to a pelvis, and thus, breathing problems.

Turns out, that tilted and rotated pelvis can be a real problem!

How many great (or on their way to great) athletic careers have been stopped in their tracks by an injury?

How to fix: Zone of Apposition

Moving forward with the understanding that breathing really is the key to life, we have to ask: how do you fix this?

There is something called the Zone of Apposition (ZOA) and this is the area where the diaphragm and ribcage overlap each other. We want to maximize this overlap through proper ribcage positioning.

Here’s the good news: train the ribcage to be in the proper position and now those imbalances start to clear up. The benefits include:

Better ROM at all joints
Better recovery for bouts of work
Less compensatory patterns throughout the body

Now we can work on performance!

How we use/integrate breathing drills to achieve performance improvements

Ground based:

Against gravity —> Static

Against gravity —> dynamic & sub-max: These drills are any movement in which we can take the opportunity to work on proper alignment of the ZOA and respiration while moving our bodies with or without load. A standing dumbbell shoulder press is an excellent example of a sub-maximal exercise that can be executed with consideration to breathing (or not).

Against gravity —> dynamic & max: again examples include actual lifts but this time at maximal effort or maximal speed. The deadlift is a good example. Taking the opportunity to set the ZOA is what ultimately will fire the core, protect the spine, and make for a more productive lift. And, YES, it IS possible to be very strong and execute max effort with perfect form!

What the athlete gets as a result:

Better movement patterns (without forcing it)
Fewer injuries
Better recovery (between intense bouts and sessions)
More bulletproof and awesome

It seems that to truly get what we want from our bodies, we need to first take care of some of the deepest considerations: diet, breath, mindset pop out to me.

Sarah Walls 4/25/16 Sarah Walls 4/25/16

Priority #1: Breathing

If you were to say to me in 2006, Hey Sarah! Guess what?!? In 10-years you will be laying the foundation for high performance by pounding the crap out of breathing drills. I would have believed you***. It's pretty obvious, when you think about it, but the evidence for it's true importance has only been surfacing over the past couple of years.

This is an insanely complex topic that can literally have an effect on the obvious: your ability to recover effectively between bouts of intense exercise allllll the way to the obscure and surprising: regaining normal range of motion about joints that have been previously all kinds of locked up.

So, here ya go. My long-winded explanation of why you or your child may be doing do many drills to re-pattern their breathing. The concept of training breathing patterns now forms the foundation for all SAPT athletes.

Below I've organized a loose hierarchy of what proper breathing actually accomplishes for us humans:

Life Support

Like everything else in the body we adjust to sub-optimal patterns and just assume everything is A-OK (ex: somehow staying alive when only eating frankenfoods). In this case, I'm referring to our bodies amazing ability to be totally out-of-whack and yet not collapse in on itself, biomechanically speaking.

But, as professionals in the industry of human performance, we know that those common mal-alignments in the body ultimately stem from poor pelvic balance and that is in fact causing the postural asymmetries.

What causes the problem with the pelvis in the first place? Traditionally, we’ve chalked it up to an increasingly sedentary environment - too much sitting, not enough moving. Even for children. In fact this problem first develops in children, all children.

So, let’s take it deeper. There is actually something else going on besides our chair bound, screen driven environment. It just so happens that if you look very deep, like inside your body, you will discover that the muscle responsible for respiration, the diaphragm, is actually itself asymmetrical! In fact, the thorax is packed with asymmetrical situations: the heart sets on one side, the liver on the other to adjust the diaphragm is divided into two domes (on the right and left sides) one dome is smaller and weaker than the other. This sets off a precipitation of events. All of which ultimately influence our athletic performance, efficiency, injury patterns and more.

Posture

Okay, let’s break this down. It’s important, so try to stay with me… I’m also working hard to keep up with myself. All kinds of important parts of the body attach and interact with the diaphragm. Since, by our bodies’s design, one side of the diaphragm is stronger than the other that means that certain compensatory patterns always develop. Always. If you are a human you have this pattern.

The diaphragm is stronger on the right side, this ultimately means that we favor (and overwork) the right side of the body. While the left side becomes weakened and inefficient.

From here we can see the commonplace asymmetries develop: one shoulder higher than the other, the rib cage set at predictable angles from right to left and front to back, the pelvis rotated predictably.

Injury Potential

Alright, we’re getting back on solid footing. The by-design asymmetry of our diaphragm causes the postural asymmetries that cause, over time, injury.

How many times has a pitching coach focused their injury prevention program to address only the throwing side? Good gracious that’s just layering on the problems.

Sub-Optimal Performance: Layers of dysfunction

Let’s continue to talk about the pitching coach who runs a one sided arm care program. Hey, it kind of makes sense. You throw with one arm, why wouldn’t focus on strengthening the musculature on just that side?

Because you frack up the entirety of the athlete, that’s why.

Never, ever layer strength on top of dysfunction. The potential for injury skyrockets (that’s my opinion) and it becomes very difficult to make the foundational corrections (to backtrack).

The result? The athlete has now gotten “stronger” and tighter and more imbalanced in the pursuit of performance.

What should the approach have been? Fix the imbalances first, prioritize this as essential to performance, then and only then, begin to strengthen.

Recovery during repeated efforts

Gait

We’ve established that the diaphragm will cause poor pelvic balance. But what does that mean for gait?

Pulled muscles, ligament tears, rolled ankles can all be traced back to a pelvis, and thus, breathing problem.

That tilted and rotated pelvis can be a real problem!

How many great (or on their way to great) athletic careers have been stopped in their tracks by an injury?

How to fix: Zone of Apposition

Moving forward with the understanding that breathing really is the key to life, we have to ask: how do you fix this?

There is something called the Zone of Apposition (ZOA) and this is the area where the diaphragm and ribcage over lap each other. We want to maximize this overlap through proper ribcage positioning.

Here’s the good news: train the ribcage to be in the proper position and now those imbalances start to clear up:

Better ROM at all joints
Better recovery for bouts of work
Less compensatory patterns throughout the body

Now we can work on performance

How SAPT uses/integrates breathing drills to achieve performance improvements:

Ground based - 90/90, etc
Against gravity —> Static
Against gravity —> dynamic & sub-max
Against gravity —> dynamic & max

What the athlete gets in return:

Better movement patterns (without forcing it)
Fewer injuries
Better recovery (between intense bouts and sessions)
More bulletproof and awesome

With regards to training the ZOA, it's not a matter of if it needs to be trained, rather the important aspect is for the coach to assess and determine what level the athlete needs to be placed at to get started and progressed forward.

***I'm sorry, I lied - in 2006, I was 25 - knew virtually nothing - and it was hard to tell me anything unless it was about box squats, deadlifts, or the bench press.

Guest User 2/17/14 Guest User 2/17/14

Breathing Mechanics: Why Football Players Should Care

Breathing? Really? How could something as simple and common as breathing possibly affect football performance? If you're willing to spend about eight minutes to read this, you won't be sorry! Proper breathing mechanics are an aspect of sports performance that is a) largely ignored by a decent chunk of the athletic community (but is growing in exposure thanks to the PRI, Eric Cressey, Chalrie Weingrof, Kevin Neeld, Mike Robertson and a host of other smart coaches.) and b) are the 6 Degrees to Kevin Bacon of athletic movement. Everything connects back to breathing mechanics. Note- this is going to barely scratch the surface of all the breathing literature out there, so fitness nerds, don't get uptight about missing information. The point of this article is to explain the importance if breathing mechanics and provide some practical applications for coaches and players. If this post sparks your interest and you want to learn more, I recommend a search on the Posture Restoration Institute (from which I derived most of the information); all their articles are a good starting point.

A brief anatomy lesson is needed before we proceed.

The diaphragm is an umbrella shaped muscle and when it contracts, it pushes your organs down. This creates a large space in your lungs thus lowering the pressure. The one thing I remember from physics is that air moves from high pressure to low pressure. So, when there’s a lower pressure in your lungs, air whooshes in. (ha! And you that you sucked it in. Nope, it forces itself in. This blew my mind when I first learned the secrets of inhalation.)

Diaphragms are cool and important (understatement!) but breathing requires accessory muscles too. Our intercostals (rib muscles) and scalenes and sternocleidomastoids (neck muscles) contribute to the life-giving act of breathing. We need to use ALL THREE areas.

You can test yourself to see what area you tend to rely on most often based on if you get a cramp during exercise. For example, my neck (scalenes and SCM) is hyperactive during exercise and I get neck cramps during sprint work. Got a stitch in your side? Probably relying more on intercostals than your diaphragm.

Think of it like this: Harry Potter is the diaphragm, Hermione is the intercostals, and Ron is the neck muscles (mainly because Ron is so temperamental and is easily irritated, much like the scalenes).

As a coach or player, here's a quick test of breathing mechanics. Lye supine with your knees bent at 90 degrees against a wall. Place your hands just beneath your rib cage (this helps determine if the abdomen is expanding 360 degrees during inhalation). Take a DEEEEEEEP breath and exhale.

If an athlete is breathing properly we should see three things:

1. Circumferential expansion of the the abdomen (front and back)

2. Rib expansion (front and back too)

3. Li'l bit of apical (upper ribs) elevation. Note: too often THIS is where you'll see the breathing take place. You can tell because the shoulders will rise up towards the ears.

It's when one of these areas is impaired that we see dysfunction (pain/injuries) occur. Harry Potter is awesome but he would never have defeated Voldemort if he didn’t have Ron and Hermione.

1. Breathing affects EVERYTHING. The average person takes roughly 20,000 breaths per day. That's a LOT of contractions of the diaphragm. Aberrant breathing patterns will not only alter the ability of the diaphragm to function efficiently but it creates hyperactivity and hypertonicity (high tone/tension in the muscle) of the accessory muscles AND of muscles down the line (believe it or not, it can affect hip mobility!).

2. Think about the accessory muscles (and their neighbors): scalenes, SCM, levator scapulae, pec minor, trapezius... if those guys are tight and irritated, that will wreck havoc on cervical posture and shoulder mobility and function. Why do you care about that? If the cervical posture is whacked out (aka, your neck) those muscles are not going to function properly, it'll be harder to strengthen them in the way they need it and that puts you at a greater risk for concussions. Shoulder function/mobility is especially important for quarterbacks. If the shoulder isn't moving properly, say hello to rips, tears, and strains of the rotator cuff, bicep tendons, and labrums. Hooray.

3. All that tension spreads to the rest of the body. It increases the sympathetic state (flight or fight response) and thus not allowing the body to fully recover after workouts/practices/ games. This will eventually run down the athletes. The increased sympathetic state will increase anxiety, mess with sleep patterns, and can even decrease pain threshhold; all of these equal poopy workouts and even worse recovery.

Hopefully, after all that, I've convinced you that breathing patterns, make that PROPER breathing patterns, are extremely important and integral to athletic success. Again, if you truly want to improve performance, you should see a professional and get assessed and trained. (that was a shameless plug, I know, but it's true!)

But, run through 4 quick and simple things coaches and players can add to/be cognizant of to create a better breathing environment.

1. Posture Re-education:

Why? Three words: Zone of Apposition.

"Achieving the optimal ZOA really depends on the shape/orientation of your ribcage. If your lower anterior (front) ribcage tends to be elevated (as in picture on the left), it can alter the length-tension relationship of your diaphragm resulting in aberrant breathing pattern, lumbopelvic instability (hips and spine...BAD place for instability) and a cascade of movement dysfunctions." - Bill Hartman

Read about the Zone of Apposition on PRI's website.

2. Breathing Re-Education

As mentioned above in the "what you should see" part, we need to teach our athletes (and ourselves) how to

a) Achieve circumferential expansion. This does not mean just the belly sticking out during inhalation, but we need lateral expansion too (out to the sides and back of the body). A lot of people will "hollow" that is, draw in the belly and elevate the ribs and shoulders. This needs to stop. A drill like this will help.

b) Breathe with the abdomen and chest moving at the SAME TIME. The accessory muscles (notably the neck muscles) should be relaxed. Here's a video from Bill Hartman that encompasses both points:

c) Learn to get our ribs down with a neutral spine! Too often athletes have the mega arch (lordosis) in the lower back. This needs to stop! Compare the two pictures above, see how the lower portion of the ribcage is down on the "correct" picture? This is how we need to inhale and exhale. Exhalation should be active: the abs should be involved to help pull the ribs down.

3. Coaching Breathing

We need to teach athletes how to get to a neutral spine with the ribs down. The picture of the supine breathing above is a perfect drill for that. The floor gives feedback so the athlete can feel their spine and whether or not it's neutral. It's a great way to teach a "packed neck" too (meaning, no cranking on that neck into extension). The left hand can help monitor rib position to teach the athlete what "ribs down" feels like. THIS MUST HAPPEN FIRST before we expect them to move well during more strenuous exercise. Have your athletes spend a few minutes before training breathing in proper position.

4. Breathing drills

Breathing "reps" should be 3-4 sec inhale through the nose, a 5-8 sec exhale through pursed lips with a 1-2 sec hold. A great drill is the supine 90/90 position from above. It's a low level drill that will help the athlete be successful. Here's another example: