SAPT Exercise of the Week: Turtle Rolls for the Anterior Core

Ever since Dr. Stuart McGill (professor of spine biomechanics at the University of Waterloo) unleashed his research on spinal health and published his book, Ultimate Back Fitness and Disorders, the fitness industry was awakened to the fact that the typical human sit-up places up to 3,300N of compressive force on the lumbar spine. For those who are wondering if this is a good thing: it's not. As such, when it comes to enhancing someone's "core" strength, I'm almost always going nix repeated spinal flexion in training (i.e. sit-ups), and opt for improving spinal stability. Think pallof presses, landmines, woodchops, single-arm farmers walks, and planks, to name a few.

Or, I may choose a host of anti-extension exercises to give someone their ab training fix, utilizing any of the 20+ demonstrations I give in the video below:

However, should ALL movements resembling a sit-up be avoided like the bubonic plague? I don't think so.

While I do believe that - nine times out of ten - one should train spinal stability in order to correct low back dysfunction, reduce the risk of injury, and morph into a healthy, high-functioning athlete; there are exceptions to the rule.

For example, if I'm training a number of mixed martial artists (which we're consistently doing at SAPT), are you telling me that I never need to help them improve their abdominal strength for guarding?

Or, if helping someone prepare for a military test, should I avoid having them do sit-ups even though the testing protocol calls for a very specific test in sit-up endurance?

(Disclaimer: What I am NOT saying is that you always need to train people in positions specific to where they find themselves in sport (Ex. If I'm training a boxer do I need to repeatedly punch him in the face?). However, sometimes a small dose of a particular training protocol is needed to maximally prepare someone for their respective event.)

Turtle Rolls

Enter the turtle roll. This is a brutal abdominal exercise that hammers the rectus abdominus, along with the internal and external obliques, to both maintain trunk flexion and resist trunk extension. See the demo below:

How to do it:

• Wrap your hands behind your head and touch your elbows to your knees
• Have a partner SLOWLY rock you up and down, touching your heels to the ground at the top
• Brace your abs HARD. Try not to generate any momentum to "swing" yourself up
• Perform 8-12 repetitions
• A cat walking around you is optional

The beauty of these is that you can do them virtually anywhere, as long as another person is close at hand. It is much harder than it looks to keep your elbows in contact with your knees, especially if your partner is moving you slowly. After you master a bodyweight turtle roll, you can hold a weight plate on top of your head (you won't need much though, trust me).

A couple caveats:

• If you have back pain, I'd avoid this one. You can receive plenty of good ab training via other means
• If adding turtle rolls in a training cycle, be sure to do plenty of work for the erectors and include a healthy dose of thoracic mobility drills to prevent hyperkyphotic postural adaptations in the thoracic spine. You should be doing this anyway, though....GOSH!!
• Don't get too addicted to these. They'll certainly fill your "I need to feel my abs burn" craving but be careful to keep your total volume of spinal flexion work in check

That's it, try it out and let me know what you think.

Weight Training & Golf

Okay, I have to fess-up: I'm sick. At this point, coming up with something new and creative is pretty much beyond me. I feel accomplished to have simply gotten off the couch this morning and made it into work. Below is an article I wrote about 4 years ago. Enjoy! Recently, I was speaking with a colleague about the elusive "magic bullet" golfers are always trying to find. This behavior pattern is similar to the overweight person who refuses to buckle down and do actual work to lose the extra inches and pounds. They would rather spend money on ineffective supplements and As-Seen-on-TV merchandise that promises a quick fix to 5 years of poor eating and exercise habits. Somehow it never quite works out the way the box says it will.

Golfers tend to have a similar disorder driven by products on the Golf Channel that point them towards virtually everything except the only proven method to improving golf specific performance: integrated weight lifting and flexibility training. There’s nothing new or sexy about the following notes, but if you are dedicated to seeing your accuracy and distance improve, then give these tips a try: 1.  A thorough dynamic warm-up will dramatically improve static and dynamic flexibility. Spend about 15-25 minutes to get a sufficient warm-up prior to weight training. Standard dynamic movements for the SAPT golfer include: prisoner squats, over speed good mornings, knee hugs, Frankenstein kicks, walking lunge with twist, lying reach-backs, hip bridge, bent knee twist, active “t” stretch, plus many, many more.

2.    Prehab everyday to keep the pain away. Prehabilitation exercises are special movements designed to help prevent injury in specific high-risk muscles or joints. Terminal knee extensions, rotator cuff movements, and grip strength/mobility movements are great places to start.

3.    Golf, like most power sports, relies heavily on the strength of the posterior chain. Your posterior is comprised of all the muscles on your backside, so get these areas as strong as possible. You will see improvement in drive length and golf posture.

4.    Instead of traditional supersets, take an integrated approach to flexibility training by coupling a strength exercise with a dynamic flexibility exercise. For example, couple a squat with a movement geared towards improving T-spine mobility (like lying reachbacks). This approach increases workout efficiency, allows for rest between sets, and places a greater priority on active flexibility training.

5.    Stance is best trained through traditional strength movements: squat variations, good mornings, rows, hang clean, etc. Powerful hip rotation is driven by a strong posterior.

6.    Backswing, downswing, and follow-through are best trained through a series of special exercises and flexibility movements. If you are a right-handed player, part of the goal here is to help achieve greater stance specific strength in left arm abduction and right arm adduction (if you swing left-handed the goal is left arm adduction and right arm abduction strength).

7.    Be smart and train all aspects of muscular contraction: concentric, isometric, and eccentric. Examine all parts of the swing and stance to determine what types of strength are needed throughout. For example, a great deal of isometric strength is needed in the adductors and lower back to maintain proper golf posture.

Make It Effective Understand that there is a right and wrong way to do everything and everyone will have a different starting point. Because serious golfers have a heightened ability to perceive changes in their body, they are extremely sensitive to any new demands imposed on their bodies. Be conservative in your approach to starting a strength training program – remember we’re after long-term consistency. To improve new program effectiveness, several factors need to be taken into consideration: •    Training age

•    Chronological age (this is important as golf is one of the few sports where it is possible for a 57 year old to consistently beat a 20 year old)

• Stance

• Backswing

• Downswing

• Follow-through

•    Flexibility through all stages of swing and standard flexibility

Look at each of these variables independently to identify strengths and weaknesses. Then take a step back and look at the whole picture to determine training priority. For example, if you have a difficult time maintaining a flexed and stable posture during the downswing, then there may be a problem with calf flexibility – notes like this will help inform exercise priority.

A carefully planned and consistent program that includes weight training and flexibility will provide huge returns and lower scores.

Increasing thoracic mobility to improve pitching velocity…

While the majority of the adolescent pitching population is busy this offseason shortening their pec minors on the pec-deck, we’ve got our guys and gals performing thoracic mobility drills aimed at actually improving pitching performance and velocity.  Besides just improving the overall functionality of the student-athlete, incorporating thoracic mobility drills (both extension and rotation) are going to improve their abilities in the “cocking” or “layback” phase of the wind-up. 

Some indicators that suggest the pitcher in your life is in need of some thoracic mobility drills:

1)      He or she spends the vast majority of their day slumped over a desk, then at home on the computer, and then on the couch in front of the TV creating a strikingly similar posture to this cute little fellow…

2)      He or she has complained of, or have battled chronic, elbow, shoulder, and lower-back pain throughout their career.

3)      His or her fastball couldn’t breakthrough a wet paper-bag.

Only about 10-weeks remain until high-school tryouts.  Slowly step away from the bench press, and request a free consultation with the experts at SAPT, so we can “get you right.”

But what do we know…

Chris

Emphasize Individual Pathways to Sport Expertise

Research on expertise, talent identification and development has tended to be mono-disciplinary, typically adopting genocentric or environmentalist positions, with an overriding focus on operational issues. In this paper, the validity of dualist positions on sport expertise is evaluated. It is argued that, to advance understanding of expertise and talent development, a shift towards a multidisciplinary and integrative science focus is necessary, along with the development of a comprehensive multidisciplinary theoretical rationale. Here we elucidate dynamical systems theory as a multidisciplinary theoretical rationale for capturing how multiple interacting constraints can shape the development of expert performers. This approach suggests that talent development programmes should eschew the notion of common optimal performance models, emphasize the individual nature of pathways to expertise, and identify the range of interacting constraints that impinge on performance potential of individual athletes, rather than evaluating current performance on physical tests referenced to group norms.

Did you grab the essence of that abstract? I'll wait while you read it once more and let everything sink in...

Fascinating. Often in team sport the coaches and, thus, the athletes become focused on everyone on the team achieving the same physical performance norms. For example: everyone on a soccer team must achieve or exceed 11-minutes on the Beep Test, every front row player on a women's volleyball team must touch at least 10'0", or every 100m sprinter must perform at least 75 continuous push-ups.

But what if EVERY athlete simply can not achieve these norms? As a coach, what is the message you send? Is it one of insistence upon achieving the norm at the detriment to development of more important skill sets? Or to the detriment of continuing to develop a well-rounded athlete that in the long-run may, in fact, exceed these norms?

The message in this abstract ("Expert performance in sport and the dynamics of talent development."

Sports Medicine

2010.) is the same message we send to parents, athletes, and coaches alike at SAPT. We constantly emphasize individual successes and performance over and above any comparative norms. And this is the ROOT of why we provide unique and individual programming for every single one of our clients. Why would you train exactly like someone else? You're unique, right? I know I am. My strengths are different than yours. And my weaknesses will be just as unique to me.

Do yourself or your kid a favor when looking for performance training options (be it physical preparation, technical skill development, or mental performance) and seek out the sources that provide an individually focused approach. Yes, it will cost a few dollars more than, say, an enormous "speed camp" cattle call, but in the end it will be well worth it to foster true performance development in your athlete.

Strength Training In-Season & Cirque Video

For most of our readers this is a "preaching to the choir" study I found: "Effects of complex training on explosive strength in adolescent male basketball players." But, I thought it was worth posting for those few of our readers who may not be fully sold on in-season training:

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a complex training program, a combined practice of weighttraining and plyometrics, on explosive strength development of young basketball players. Twenty-five young male athletes, aged 14-15 years old, were assessed using squat jump (SJ), countermovement jump (CMJ), Abalakov test (ABA), depth jump (DJ), mechanical power (MP), and medicine ball throw (MBT), before and after a 10-week in-season training program. Both the control group (CG; n = 10) and the experimental group (EG; n = 15) kept up their regular sports practice; additionally, the EG performed 2 sessions per week of a complex training program. The EG significantly improved in the SJ, CMJ, ABA, and MBT values (p < 0.05). The CG significantly decreased the values (p < 0.05) of CMJ, ABA, and MP, while significantly increasing the MBT values (p < 0.05). Our results support the use of complex training to improve the upper and lower body explosivity levels in young basketball players. In conclusion, this study showed that more strength conditioning is needed during the sport practice season. Furthermore, we also conclude that complex training is a useful working tool for coaches, innovative in this strength-training domain, equally contributing to a better time-efficient training.

As a college strength and conditioning coach and the owner of SAPT, I've seen countless times how important strength training is for athletes to remain strong, fast, and free of injury during the practice and in-season time frame. I always get a chuckle out of athletes (or their parents) who only "need" 4-6 weeks of preparation before their respective tryouts begin.

Check out this nonsense someone sent to me (and by nonsense, I mean this is absolutely so amazing that it is ridiculous):

Lastly, Ryan and I are expecting a new bambino or bambina at the end of May! Have you ever heard the term "Irish twins?" I hadn't... apparently, it refers to siblings born in close succession. It originated in the 1800's and was a derogatory term used to describe the reproductive tendencies of Irish immigrants. Someone suggested yesterday I will have Irish twins with baby #2. Technically, I think they would need to be born closer to 12 months apart... our kids will be 23 months apart, thank you very much.

Our take on "sport specific"

Quite frequently we're asked, "Is this (insert sport here) specific training?"  Here's our take: Understand that all athletes, no matter what sport, need to engage in general movements to enhance their global strength so to speak; these exercise include squats, deadlifts, rows, unilateral movements, horizontal pressing and pulling, vertical pulling etc.  These are, and should be, the bread and butter of every good strength training program.  

We also blend drills that have a bit more dynamic correspondence, or specificity, to one’s sport.  For instance, with our baseball players we incorporate various overhead and rotational drills with light medicine balls to improve velocities on these various planes of motion. 

These occur primarily in the offseason as competing for the energy to develop technical abilities is not as significant.  When implementing, we're careful to not too closely mimic the intricate movement patterns required by sport, i.e. throwing a baseball, as this can lead to a hindrance in the actual development and create inconsistencies with that particular skill.  Read that again; yes, mimicking too closely, or inappropriately weighting a particular movement can actually prohibit technical mastery of specific sport skill.  This is why as one gets closer to a competitive season, and certainly as one is engaged in-season, we wean these drills from the student-athletes program as the acquisition and refinement of sport skills are of paramount importance during this time.

From an injury prevention stand point, we are very cognizant of the stressors placed on the body during various sports, and understand that many of these stressors transcend sports.  As such we tend to focus most of our efforts on these areas in an attempt to combat the repetitive and asymmetrical nature of sport.  Our efforts are also aimed to improve the shortcomings of the individual as each present their own intimate challenges.

Getting strong all day long,

Chris