Coaching Vertical Jump with a Valgus Collapse

Ahhh, the knee cave, my old friend. This, by far, is the most common strength and movement pattern deficit I see in developing athletes. More officially known as a valgus position of the knee, it signifies not only a severe lack of specific and general strength, but also may be an indicator of poor body control overall (due to other common muscular strength deficits that generally come as part of the "package").

The valgus position, in my experience, is an oversized red flag waving high in the air. This red flag is warning of a looming knee ligament injury.

This is a very important topic, as most coaches, parents, and athletes have no idea how to correct the problem or even identify that it is a very big - and potentially dangerous - problem.

Check out the video where I break down film of an athlete in for training and discuss what I've found and how we're going to fix the problems:

Coaching the Forearm Wallslide

A deceptively simple exercise, the forearm wallslide delivers a huge ROI:

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 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.

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

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 

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:

1. Ground based - 90/90, etc
2. Against gravity —> Static
3. Against gravity —> dynamic & sub-max
4. 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. 

Common Beginner Mistakes - Part 3

Part 3 of the "Common Beginner Mistakes" series is underway!  Like all the great series' out there (Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Star Wars...), it's important that you check out each and every single one.  Take a look back at Part 1 and Part 2.  I'm sure you'll find a hidden gem or two in there that will help you make better progress in the weight room. As you may know, I'm a creature of habit.  I tend to order the same meal from Taco Bell (6 crunch tacos), dry my body off in the same sequence after taking a shower (I know... I'm weird), and I always choose the color blue while playing Settlers of Catan. With that, let's check out a couple of videos of incredible feats of strength.

Mistake #7 - Program Hopping

"Programs Hoppers" are a severe annoyance to all experienced strength and conditioning coaches out.  They typically suffer from a mild case of ADD, commitment issues, and a severe lack of gains.  These individuals can often be seen at your local Crossfit gym, never performing the same workout twice.  These people need a lesson in the mechanisms of musculoskeletal adaptation.  Mentioned in part 2, a major principle behind strength training is called the SAID principle.  This states that you body will form Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands.  In other words, your body will adapt to the stimulus that you apply to it, HOWEVER, it's critically important that you apply the stimulus for a sufficient period of time. If you're constantly changing the stimulus, the training effect will be negligible, and your body won't experience enough of the same stress to adapt and grow stronger.

This is why most of the established training programs are designed in blocks.  The exercise selection inside of a single block is typically static, and each block typically lasts 3-4 weeks.  This way your body has enough time to experience and adapt to the method of training.  Now, I'm not advocating doing the same exact thing for 3 weeks straight.  Another important principle of strength training is termed the Repeated Bout Effect.  This principle states that as you apply a stimulus and your body recovers and adapts to it, the same stimulus will not elicit an equal amount of adaptation.  Your body experiences a point of diminishing returns, and this is the reason we apply progressive overload and increase the weight on the bar over time.  In this way, we're applying a slightly greater stimulus, but maintaining the movement and allowing our body to adapt to greater and greater amounts of the same stress, and grow stronger because of it.  Here at SAPT, we program our clients in 4 week blocks, increasing volume over time, which in turn elicits progressive and consistent adaptation.

Mistake #8 - Sticking to the Same Program Too Long

Now, this may seem a bit contradictory to our previous point, but hear me out.  I touched briefly on the Repeated Bout Effect above, and this point of diminishing returns applies to whole strength programs/methods of training as well. Eventually, if you continue to do the same thing over and over and over again, you'll reach a point where you just aren't making measurable amounts of progress.  Once this occurs, you need to change the stimulus that you're applying to your body.  This doesn't mean do 1 week of 5/3/1, 2 weeks of the Cube Method, and follow it us with another week of Starting Strength.  You need to stick to a program to actually elicit the adaptation you are trying to achieve, and then mix it up and change the program once you've gotten all that you can from it.

This is a tricky concept, but in reality, you should be grateful for these training principles!  They allow you to gain valuable training experience.  All these programs are created using different training philosophies.  They utilize different methods of manipulating volume over time to elicit strength gains.  We're all unique human beings, and, because of this, we respond to stimuli in different ways and to different degrees.  Some people respond better to high frequency training with low to moderate intensity loads, while others adapt more efficiently to lower volume, high intensity training plans.  You may not respond to a training program in the same exact manner as your best friend, and you also may not adapt as well the second time you perform a program.  As you become more and more experience in strength training, you'll discover what works best for you.  You'll discover the style of training that meshes with your personality, lifestyle, and preferences, and, with a little bit of patience, you'll develop a system of eliciting strength gains progressively.

How to Write a Warm-Up for Strength Training

Walk into any commercial gym and here are the various warm-ups folks execute: -       Swing the arms back and forth

-       Quad stretches

-      What warm-up?

What if you could enhance your workouts, prevent injuries, and perhaps strike up a conversation with that cute guy or girl in just 10 minutes? (Well, no promises on that last one.)  The easy, albeit not-so-sexy, answer is: perform a dynamic warm-up! I get it, warm-ups are boring and unimpressive, but when done right, can go a long way to increasing the benefits of strength training and extending your lifting career.

What’s the point of performing a dynamic warm-up anyway?

1. Increase bodytemperature- cold muscles, joints, and ligaments are more likely to get angry and sustain an injury.
2. Prepare the body for movement, part 1- especially if you fly a desk all day long, the joints are probably a little gunky. Warm-ups help restore range of motion (link for temp loss of ROM) lost during periods of lack of motion.
3. Prepare body for movement, part 2- exercises employed in warm-ups can help “groove” the nervous system for certain movements, making the body more efficient, which in turn allows it to hoist heavier weights. For example, a quadruped rock can prime the nervous system for hip hinging or squatting patterns.
4. Activate dormant muscles- along the same lines as point #2, prolonged positions (i.e. sitting) can reduce the function or certain muscle groups, either through changes in muscle length or tension. A classic example is, prolonged sitting tends to shut down the glutes and tighten the hip flexors.; supremely unhelpful when trying to deadlift massive loads from the floor. If you want the maximum benefit, you need the muscles turned on!
5. iYou look like a Jedi- true story: the first time I saw someone going through a dynamic warm-up (my to-be husband actually) I thought he was doing tai chi or some other marital art thingamabob.

Right, so you’re convinced you need to have a dynamic warm up before hitting the weights, but what do you do?

Let’s think in *very* general terms, everyone needs:

Correct breathing mechanics

Hip mobility

Glute activation

Thoracic spine (T-spine) mobility

Core stability

CNS (central nervous system) activation

Granted, depending on sport played, injury considerations, and whether or not you have laxity, the specific needs for each individual will be different. However, I’ve found that if you include exercises that encompass those components, you’ve got a pretty solid warm-up that will take care of 90% of the demands for general fitness preparation.

Here are some sample exercises geared toward the above mentioned characteristics:

90/90 Breathing

What it’s good for: breathing mechanics. This is a good beginner breathing drill if you or your client is having a hard time attaining 360-degree expansion of the diaphragm and rib cage.

I’m not going to delve into breathing today but if you want to know more (and you absolutely DO want to know more) you can read a few posts HERE and HERE (Also, indirectly, improving breathing mechanics will improve both t-spine and hip mobility.)

Crocodile Breathing

What it’s good for: breathing mechanics. Another good beginner drill as the floor provides tangible feedback for expansion.

Bulldog Hip Mobility

What it’s good for: hip mobility and core stability and a wee-bit of glute activation. Maintain a neutral spine and relatively stable hips as the knee moves around for maximum benefit.

Adductor Rockbacks

What it’s good for: hip mobility. Specifically this helps work out some of the gunk the adductors accumulate. If you don’t know what I mean, try a few rockbacks and you’ll instantly know where your adductors are. These bad boys are the “groin” in groin pulls and knotty, nasty adductors are more susceptible to pulls. Keep ‘em happy by rocking!

Half-Kneeling Hip Flexor Mob

What it’s good for: hip mobility and (indirectly) glute activation. This one, as the name implies, targets the hip flexors (front of the hip). Tight hip flexors can wreck havoc on pelvic position- which can set you up for back injuries or hamstring pulls- and, delightfully, shut down glute function through a process called reciprocal inhibition. Considering that most athletic endeavors require high-functioning glutes, this is a problem.

Glute Bridge

What it’s good for: glute activation. Wake up your sleepy glutes!

Quadruped Rockback

What it’s good for: hip mobility, core stability, CNS activation. Primarily, at SAPT, we use this to groove the hip hinge and teach neutral spine while moving. It also tells us if someone can squat to parallel or not by how their spine and hips move. Read more about that HERE.

Bird Dog

What it’s good for: glute activation, core stability, CNS activation.  Try to maintain a neutral spine and pretend you have to balance a glass of water on your butt. You’ll feel it in the right places. The cross-body movement (opposite arm and leg moving) fires up the CNS and solidifies coordination between the brain’s two hemispheres.

Spiderman with Overhead Reach

What it’s good for: hip and T-spine mobility. This hit everything and feels amazing. Make sure you follow your hand with your head so the neck isn’t cranked around.

Bear Crawl

What it’s good for: core stability and CNS activation. Similar to the bird dog, by maintaining a neutral spine and level hips, the core muscles have to fire and the brain has to coordinate the cross-body limb movement. (Technically, there’s a some glute action in there as they come in to stabilize the hips laterally.)

Yoga Pushup to T-Rotation

What it’s good for: All of the above. If you’re very limited on time, this is a great all-around movement to hit everything in one swoop. As a bonus, it grooves the pushup technique and encourages scapular movement- which is often non-existent in most people.

Stepback Lunge with Over-The-Shoulder Reach

What it’s good for: all of the above.  Plus, you’ll look like one cool cat doing this one.

Walking SL RDL with Reach (forward or backwards)

What it’s good for: all of the above. In addition to all the other benefits, this one will challenge your balance.  This is another exercise that can help groove a pattern, namely the hip hinge.

Putting it all together

Another note, I try to program warm-ups to progress- loosely anyway- from ground, to quadruped, to standing. For example:

Crocodile Breathingx 8 breaths

Quadruped Rockbacks x 10

DL Glute Bridge x 8, hold :02

Bulldog Hip Mobility x 8 each

Spiderman w/ OH Reach x 6/side, hold 1 breath

Bear Crawl x 8 yds

Walking SL RDL x 6/side

That whole thing should take about 5-8 minutes; a small commitment for big benefits!

The body is like a car: you can’t expect the car to speed off at 80 miles and hour on a cold day. Likewise, you can’t expect your body to jump into heavy strength work while it’s still cold. Prevent injuries and capitalize on your time under the bar by employing a proper warm-up before each training session.

Training With A Chronic Illness

I had another awesome opportunity to write a guest post for Dean Somerset's blog. If you haven't yet read his stuff, you should do yourself a favor and start today. He is extremely intelligent and posts useful and so-that's-why-that-happens type stuff.

If you have a chronic illness or recovered from a long-term injury, I hear ya.

Most of fitness literature out there focuses on on training methods to get stronger, bigger, leaner, healthier, etc.,– which is exactly what you’d expect an industry called “fitness” to talk about.

There is, however, a small-ish (or perhaps not- so- small) portion of the population that has some form of chronic illness. Training for us is, well, different.

My aim with this post is to provide encouragement and practical strategies to anyone out there who is either battling a chronic illness, or may be dealing with a long-term healing process from a prior injury. Continue reading...