My colleague Kevin Neeld was having a phone conversation with a fellow strength and conditioning coach on the phone yesterday, and since we share the same office I couldn’t help but hear everything he was saying.
Sharing an office with Kevin is sooooo much fun
He was talking about the way we do things at Endeavor and how it might be different for other coaches in different settings. That got me thinking on how important it is to take your setting into consideration with the way you do assessments, write programs, coach your athletes, etc.
At Endeavor, we are training mostly hockey players, which means that we are super busy during the summer months (May through August) which is the hockey off-season and the rest of the year during the hockey season things are slower and we train some athletes from other sports that are in their off-season (mostly baseball, soccer and lacrosse). The athletes we train from those other sports also happen to be much younger than the college/pro hockey players we train in the summer; most of them are 16 and under. We do mostly small group training and the time we spend with our athletes every week is not a lot. In that type of setting, we do things differently than we would with a professional team or in a college setting for example.
Doesn’t exactly look like Endeavor!
It might come as a big surprise to many that we currently don’t have an assessment or testing protocol with our new athletes. Some may argue that testing and assessing every new athlete that walks through your door is of utmost importance, and they might be right. But again it comes down to the fact that you need to do what’s best in your own situation. With the little time we see our athletes, we can’t afford to waste our time with things that are not going to be top priorities. And the truth is that we used to have an assessment protocol which was basically the FMS (functional movement screen) and some goniometer measurements, but we realized after using that protocol for a while that it didn’t change the way we were writing programs anyway.
Hurdle step test from the FMS
So why do it in the first place? Even athletes playing the same sports will need to be trained pretty much the same way, but I will admit that there might be some individual differences between athletes playing the same sport. But the thing that we found out is that we can always identify the problems just by observing our athletes move during the warm up and the rest of the training. If you’ve been around long enough, major dysfunctions are easily identifiable and adjustments on the programs can be made on the fly. We also have a high number of younger athletes, and they definitely don’t present with as many restrictions (if any) as some of the older athletes will. We’ve been quite successful with that approach, both from a time management and injury prevention standpoint.
A similar situation presents itself with performance testing; most of our athletes (for the older ones at least) get tested by their own team at the end of the season and at the beginning of training camp. So where’s the need for performance testing really when they provide us with all the data they/we need anyway twice a year, sometimes more.
There are many factors that will determine how you implement your system and the way you work with your athletes. These include, but are not limited to:
- Number of athletes per group
- Sports the athletes play (do all athlete within a group play the same sport?)
- Age of the athletes and training experience
- Number of coach-to-athlete ratio
- Time available with athletes every session and every week
- Equipment available
- Setting of your facility (how your facility is divided and if you can keep an eye on everyone all the time)
- Experience
- Etc.
As you can see it leaves a lot of possibilities depending on many different factors. You can’t judge what someone does until you’ve seen what their situation is. Every good strength coach or trainer out there does things differently because they are in a different setting. Eric Cressey assesses and writes an individual program for every client and athlete that trains at his facility. Mike Boyle, who’s an equally good and successful coach doesn’t assess anyone and have all his athletes from the same sport on the same program. Who’s right and who’s wrong? Again, I think they’re both right because they do what’s best for their own situation.
All in all, it’s very important to be able to adapt. In my opinion, it might be what distinguishes the great coaches for the good ones. Analyze, apply and adjust things in order to be as efficient as possible in your situation and to get the best results possible for your athletes.
I haven’t done a random thoughts post in a while, and for some reason I like writing these. Hopefully, you like to read them just as much! Today also marks my first anniversary at Endeavor. I guess that makes 2 good reasons to write a random thoughts post! So without further ado;
1. Butter is good for you. I’m sick of people being scared of butter and how everyone is saying how bad it is for you and that it raises your cholesterol and bla, bla, bla. The truth is butter is one of the most stable fat sources over high heat, compared to most vegetable oils which are very unstable. It’s also a great source of vitamin A, vitamin E, beta-carotene, omega 3s and CLAs (if you get the organic kind of course). For all these reasons, butter is an excellent choice for cooking and/or to incorporate in your diet in moderate amounts. And as I mentioned last week, we should all focus on eating more real food, and butter is exactly that. Just make sure you get the organic kind, like any other dairy.
2. Baseball season is right around the corner. For the first time of my life, I had the chance to work with baseball players for a full off-season, and I must say I totally loved it. I had a lot of time to make them stronger, faster and reduce their risk of injuries through good training. A couple of weeks away from training camp, all of our players are about to leave for their team completely pain free and 2 of our high school pitchers got their fastball up to 90 and 88 MPH respectively. So all in all, I can say it was a success and I already can’t wait to work with more baseball players next off-season!
3. As I’m writing this, I’m just finishing the book Never Eat Alone. I can say that it is by far one of the best book not related to fitness that I’ve ever read in my life.
It highlights the importance of surrounding yourself with a lot of people and making contacts with people in a lot of different fields. I already knew that having contacts was important for your career because without good contacts in the fitness business I wouldn’t be where I am today, but the way Keith Ferazzi puts it in his book is really eye opening. Whether you’re in the fitness business or not, you definitely should read that book!
4. I just came back from a road trip to Ohio this past weekend to see on of Endeavor’s hockey player play, and I must say it was a blast! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love road trips! It’s cool to discover new parts of the country, be in good company, listen to good music, and more than anything drink plenty of stimulants!
And when you drive to go see a good hockey game, it always makes things even more interesting!
5. I read Brian St. Pierre’s blog post last week on How to Buy Olive Oil. Brian basically says that not all olive oil are created equal because the olive oil industry is pretty much corrupted. Most of the olive oil brands are imported from Italy, but most of the time they’re just bottled in Italy as they are actually made in other countries. And most of the time the quality of the oil is not what they claim on the bottle. Long story short, the only way to know if the olive oil you’re buying in the US is legit is to look for the COOC (California Olive Oil Council) Logo on the bottle.
On an interesting side story, I went food shopping last night and tried to find a good brand in my local grocery store. Result: of the dozen of brand the store carried, not one had the COOC label! Just another proof that your typical grocery store’s products are of inferior quality.
6. What’s the most common compensation pattern at the shoulders? Upper trap dominance. A lot of athletes have this problem and it’s easily noticeable in different upper body exercises. For more detail on this, make sure you get the free report on shoulder injury prevention strategies by signing up to my newsletter!
This has been a controversial topic for many years now. How young is too young? What’s the optimal age at which kids should start training?
I think it really depends. There is definitely no clear answers that will fit for every kid. But before I go any further let me clarify something that has been clearly misunderstood by a lot of people: strength training, when done in a safe and effective way, will NOT negatively impact growth. In fact, studies proved in the past that strength training for kids in pre- and early pubertal youth is safe and doesn’t lead to injuries or negatively affect growth and maturation (1).
What should determine at what age should kids start training is psychological maturity. Even if it safe for kids to start training as young as 10 years old, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it for any kids that age. The kid needs to be mature enough to be able to focus and train seriously. Because let’s face it, a lot of kids at that age are more concerned about playing, bouncing around, having fun and their level of mental focus is not always very high.
And there is ABSOLUTELY nothing wrong with that; this is what kids are supposed to do! We shouldn’t impose training to a kid that’s not mentally ready for it. At that age kids should play many different sports, play games, run around, have fun! There is no need to start training early and specialize when the focus should definitely be on varying the stimuli throughout different activities and learning as many new motor skills as possible. Training can definitely help do that, but it shouldn’t be forced on them.
And what when a kid is mentally ready to train? What should be the focus? How should we train kids at a young age, around 10-14 years old?
Am I too young for this?
The focus should definitely be put on the quality of movements. Kids should do basic multi-joint exercises that will teach them how to move properly. They need to learn good movement patterns that will help them move better and reduce their risk of injuries. Things like proper hip hinge, scapular retraction, neutral head and neck positions, correct tibial and knee alignment and good running mechanics are all things that should be taught to kids who start training. Those movement patterns should be practiced over, and over, and over again so the kids can move better and become better athletes in the long run. They’re gonna have plenty of time to get stronger and faster (that’s not to say that it won’t happen in the process) as they get older. But if we can establish solid foundations right from the beginning when they’re young and prevent them from developing faulty movement patterns that will get them injured, it’s going to be HUGE for them.
At Endeavor, we just put in place a beginners’ 6-months program that we are going to require ALL of our middle school and freshman in high school athletes to go through, no matter what sport they play before delving more into sport-specific training. And to be honest, I don’t know why it took us so long to come up with this idea because every young athlete, no matter what sport they play all need the same thing; they need to learn how to move properly and reinforce good motor patterns.
Our program is really simple and comprised with basic exercise patterns. We include exercises like short-distance sprints, goblet squats, push ups, seated rows, planks, side planks, pvc pipe hip hinge (that we progress into kettlebell deadlifts), etc. There is nothing fancy, nothing crazy; just basic movement patterns that should be learned at a young age anyway to help your body move better and perform better in the long run.
Goblet Squat
Hip Hinge with a PVC Pipe
So it’s really not about the physical age at which you start training that’s important, but the mental age and more than anything else what you do with your athletes in the weight room to help them move better and become better athletes.
Training for sports has been around for years, even for decades. I haven’t made any specific research on the topic, but from what I’ve seen and heard people were training for sports as far back as the 1960s.
It’s cool to think that over 50 years ago, people understood the concept of training for sports; that they needed to do some type of strength work and some type of conditioning work in addition to the practice of their sport to become better athletes and perform better in their sport. Understandably, what they did back then was not optimal because they didn’t know as much about the way the body works as we do today. They didn’t know much about functional anatomy, energy systems, injury mechanisms and overtraining; research was simply not where it is today.
Training for sports over the 60s through the 80s has been strongly influenced by bodybuilding, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and distance running. What they were doing back then was definitely not optimal, sometimes counterproductive and they had pretty much no injury prevention strategies. All everyone did was go hard, give a 100% whatever they did. When in doubt or when they didn’t get the results from the training program, they just worked harder. It was also a time when everyone thought that more is always better. Nobody ever questioned if the program made sense and if it was geared toward their goal or not. After all, all types of training were created equal and any program was only as good as the effort you put in.
I really don’t have a problem with that; everything has to start somewhere. And more than anything else, there is a valuable lesson to be learned through that: your training program is only as good as the effort you put in. But everything has to evolve. Or does it?
The problem I have with all of this is that WAYYY too many sport coaches, strength coaches and trainers today in 2011 are still doing the exact thing and using the exact same protocols they used when they were athletes back in the days. They just transfer what they have been using 15, 20 and even 30 years ago when they were athletes, and having their athletes train the exact same way. Like I mentioned earlier, we evolved, we learned things we didn’t know about how the body works and a lot of research has been done in the last 30 years.
Some training protocols never get old though!
So where does that leave us today in 2011? Training influences from decades ago still govern how most athletes train. And even worse, they do it because they don’t know any better! This is the sad reality of sports training today: most people go by what has been done over 30 years ago. Coaches and trainers alike don’t go out to try and learn and understand what is optimal and what should be done. Or is it because recent training knowledge is not spread enough by the people who know their stuff? Or is it just because the culture change we desperately need hasn’t caught up yet? All I know is that it leaves us with under-qualified exercise “specialists” in the sports training field, even at the professional level! Instead of having well informed coaches and trainers that apply appropriate training principles, we have coaches who use what they used 20 years ago, which in turn probably comes from what their coaches at the time taught them that probably comes from what they used to do themselves 20 years prior to that. So we end up with training strategies that go back 40-50 years ago that are flat wrong!
This is the training culture that is engrained in almost every sports in 2011. There is a lot of people out there that really get it; they understand how the body works and how athletes should train to become better athletes; they went out of their way to learn new things and apply it with what we know is best for an athlete training for a specific sport. But this is a very, very small percentage of the training community. That same culture is present in every sport, as much at the amateur level as it is at the professional level.
How is it that distance running is still the most common training modality for high level baseball pitchers when a pitch takes no more than a second and the rest in between each pitch is at least 30-40 times longer?
How is it possible that VO2 max (an aerobic test that lasts usually more than 10 minutes straight) is one of the most commonly used test among professional hockey teams when the average hockey shift lasts around 30-45 seconds followed by at least a 3-4 minutes rest?
How could the leg press be one of the most commonly used lower body exercise to develop strength in athletes when there is clearly no sport that require you to drive as hard as possible with both legs at the same time with your back resting against an immovable object?
How is it possible that among basketball players who are clearly among the weakest athletes ever, there are a amazingly high percentage ofplayers who don’t even lift any weights in the off-season?
The culture engrained in sports today is completely retarded. There are just so many things that don’t make sense and are totally outdated. This even happens with coaches and trainers who have Bachelor’s degrees in exercise science and kinesiology. Having been to college myself, I can tell you that a lot of the stuff they teach you is outdated. We’re not going in the right direction to fix that problem at all when the “educated crowd” out there is taught stuff that is not updated. Who’s to blame in that situation? The education system? The colleges? The teachers that don’t always have updated material to teach because they don’t stay current themselves? But I digress.
Something needs to change. Something need to change quiclky. In an era where performance enhancement is more important than ever and where the incidence of non-contact injuries is increasing at an alarming rate, something needs to be done. Performance enhancement happens through proper training and dedication. Non-contact injuries are preventable through good training as well, according to many experts.
The culture needs to change. Hockey players should know that aerobic training is not optimal and that they have better options to improve their conditioning on the ice. Baseball pitchers should know that they have so many options available to them to reduce the risk of shoulder injury that they can use between starts instead o just using distance running that might be more detrimental than beneficial to them. Basketball players should know that max effort strength training will improve their vertical jump.
Everyone involved in sports should know those things. It should be part of the culture.
Last year we had quite a few baseball players come train with us at Endeavor after they finished their season. Most of the players who started early were pitchers, and we had some more position players join us throughout the summer and fall. I wanted to share with you the progression one of our pitcher made throughout the off season.
That 16 years old pitcher came to us at 6’1″ and weighed 165 pounds. When he first started, his best ever fast ball was 80 MPH, but he also said he only got that once as he was a constant 76-78 MPH. His throwing shoulder was also very painful after every throwing session, whether it was bullpen session, long toss session or just about any game he played. He even had some pain the day after training for the first couple of weeks he was in.
He didn’t come in as a total beginner in strength training, as he has been lifting in the past. His numbers were pretty standard for a beginner of that age: 30s for DB reverse lunges, 35s for DB chest press, but he had a very hard time just doing 3 good push ups and the power he was putting in his med ball throws against the wall was borderline pathetic (boy, I wish I had a video of him at the beginning!) .
During the last 8 months we did a lot of mobility work for the thoracic spine, the hips and the ankles; we did a ton of med ball work to improve his rotational power, and we focused on big multi-joints lifts like lunges, chest press, rows and chin ups and got his strength up big time; we hammered the scapular stability stuff and worked on dynamic stabilization for the rotator cuff. We also tried to emphasize the soft-tissue work using the foam roller and the lacrosse ball, and he went to get some ART work done with a qualified manual therapist to work on the muscles around the shoulder and scapula for a couple of sessions
Fast-forward 8 months later, he’s now 17, his body weight is up to 185, his push up form is flawless and he can probably bang at least 15 and the velocity on his med ball throws is pretty impressing. His numbers went up a lot as well: he can DB reverse lunges 70s (165 with a bar and a front squat grip) for 6-8 reps and he can DB chest press 75s for 5-6 reps. But most of all, he hit 87 MPH on his fastball last week and he doesn’t have anymore pain in his throwing shoulder, at all! He is entering his senior high school season in just a couple of weeks and he’s more ready than ever to throw heat! He also plans on playing at the College level next year, which makes things look very good for him.
All in all, we didn’t do anything crazy; just good, smart strength training, using specific modalities to take care of his throwing shoulder and get some soft-tissue work done on the overused structures. It’s that simple! There really is no gimmick to getting results with your athletes; you just need to understand the functional anatomy and the real demands of the sport and take that into consideration when you program for your athletes. But apparently not enough people understand that, because there are still so many strength coaches and trainers out there who do all kind of stupid stuff that will do nothing but get their athletes injured in the long run.
Sign up for my FREE newsletter and you’ll instantly have access to 3 special reports on sports training on how to improve performance in any sport; you’ll want to get these to not make the same mistakes other coaches and athletes make when it comes to athletic development!
As I’ve mentionned often in the past, I’m a firm advocate for single-leg training. I believe it is truly one of the most important part of lower body training, especially for athletes. It’s more functional, more sport-specific and better for injury prevention purposes. At Endeavor, we use a ton of single-leg lifts with all our athletes, and most of the time we use these single-leg lifts as our main lower body strength exercise.
Some of you might wonder what type of exercise we’re using, because let’s face it, you can’t DB reverse lunges all the time. So here’s a little insight to the progressions we use with our single-leg lifts.
- The DB reverse lunge is the first variation we use 99% of the time. Dumbbells keep your center of mass low, so therefore it’s not too hard on your balance compared to other variations.
A reverse lunge will allow you to use a good push off your back leg, so it is easier for athletes and clients who don’t have a lot of single-leg strength. A reverse lunge is also easier than a forward lunge because you don’t have a big deceleration component on your front leg like you have with a forward lunge. This deceleration component makes it much harder to keep a proper upper body posture throughout your set.
- The second one on our progression list is still a reverse lunge, but in which we will change the center of mass by using a back squat grip or a front squat grip with a barbell. Since the load is much higher, the center of mass moves up and it makes it harder to maintain your balance.
Another variation we use to make it harder by moving the center of mass higher is to use dumbbells overhead. This is a variation we will use more in conditioning circuits or to unload the joints, because the overhead position makes it very hard on the core and shoulder muscles. So what happens most of the time is the core and shoulder muscles will be the limiting factors before you get to a weight that’s going to be heavy enough to be challenging for your lower body.
- Third on the list would be the rear foot elevated (RFE) split squats with dumbbells (a.k.a. bulgarian split squats). Having your back foot on a bench makes it harder to get help from your back leg compared to a lunge; so, more weight is supported on your front leg. Some beginners don’t have the strength to do a RFE split squat; they need to do lunges for a little while to get their strength up before they can progress to a RFE split squat.
- Then, of course, you can progress the RFE split squat with dumbbells to a RFE split squat with a back squat grip or a front squat grip with a barbell. Once again the center of mass is shifted higher, so it makes the exercise more difficult.
- Once you’ve mastered the reverse lunges and RFE split squat variations, you can progress to a slideboard reverse lunge. Don’t let the name fool you, because it is much harder than any other lunging variation. The reason is that because of the nature of the slideboard (slippery…duh!), you can’t really use your back leg to help you much; putting more weight on the back leg would make your foot slide away from your body and dangerous things could happen. Just keep in mind that you have very little support from your back leg and you’re using mostly your front leg to pull yourself up, so you need a decent amount of single-leg strength before you try it.
- Last on the list is the single-leg squat and its variations. The main reason why it’s the hardest one is because the leg you’re not using is totally unsopported, therefore it can’t help you at all. You need very good single-leg strength in order to do this one; especially when you perform it with a full range of motion.
All in all, this might not be the exact same progression we use with 100% of our client because there is many factors to consider when building a program; how old is the client? how much lifting experience does he have? how strong is he? does he have any restriction or injury? etc. All these factors will dictate the progressions we’ll use with everyone of our athlete. Also keep in mind that there are many other ways to progress single-leg lifts and make them more challenging, but this is a basic progression that should give you a pretty good idea on where to start and how to progress athletes and clients from there.
If you have been following my website for a while now, you probably know that I’m a big advocate of an appropriate long term development plan for every athletes. I strongly stand against early sport specialization and I honestly think that if we would get away from that, we would have a lot less of injuries in sports and surgeries related to overuse. It is very hard to get people to understand that when you have 90% of people involved in sports training (parents, coaches and trainers) that advocate the exact opposite: if you want to get better in a certain sport, you need to play more and more and more and do it year-round as young as possible so you can develop better.
I went into great details in previous blog posts why this is a totally retarded way of thinking. By doing so, you’re not developping better athletes, you’re actually developping patterns for overuse injuries. That being said, it is our job as strength coaches to educate athletes and parents on why this is so bad and how they should go about training the right way and following a good development model for optimal development and long career as injury-free as possible.
The first step to take in that direction is obviously to have the different national sport associations to endorse a good development model and help promote that to organizations, coaches, parents and players. The big problem we have right now is that these organizations don’t get it. So when you see steps taken in the right direction, it’s really satifying to know that they start to get it and want to help change the trend that is currently poisoning most sports. Mike Boyle gave a presentation about the long term athletic development for hockey players to USA Hockey a couple of days ago. Coach Boyle is one of the smartest, most experienced strength coach out there; he has seen it all in his long career and he has probably trained more hockey players than anybody else in the world. Most athletes he trains, if not all, turn out to have long careers and very few injuries; so, there’s gotta be something he’s doing right. Here is the video of the presentation. I need to warn you that it is an hour and 20 minutes long, but make sure you listen to it; it’s all really worth it.
To me, to know that USA Hockey actually took a step in the right direction and took the time to listen what coach Boyle had to say, tells a lot about the organization and where they’re headed (they also made several changes within the organization and to their development model recently). Don’t be surprised to see more and more American hockey players emerge at the pro levels in the next decade or two.
Please, if you know anyone involved (closely or not) in sports, you need to forward this blog post or just the video to them, whether they’re parents, coaches, athletes and anyone else.
One thing that people overlook too often is the reason why they’re training in the first place. I see too many people who don’t keep their goal in mind when they train. And I’m not only talking about the athletes or fitness enthousiasts themselves here, I’m also talking about the coaches and trainers. Everybody wants to workout hard and do unique style training using all kinds of fancy equipement that they perceive as being magical tools to achieve their special needs.
Impressive….but stupid
Too often people will judge of the training they’re doing by how tired they are at the end of the session and how sore they are the next day. How ridiculous is that? A wise man once said:”every trainer can make you tired, not every trainer can give you results.”
Google “workout tired”….this is what comes up
This couldn’t be more accurate. Whatever you do, make sure you ALWAYS keep your training goals in mind. Never judge your level of fatigue after a workout as an accurate measure for your goal achievements. Never use soreness either as an indicator of your progress.
If you’re training to improve speed, it doesn’t make sense to do interval based work with short rest periods; you will get tired quickly and you won’t be able to give a 100% on every effort. Same thing goes for people who do crossfit type training (as it seems to be the new trend) and are looking to increase their strength and power for sports peformance.
What’s all the hype with that crossfit stuff anyway?
I do think that there are many pros and cons to consider with this crossfit thing before you get into it, but using crossfit for sport-specific performance is totally ridiculous; doing tons of reps with minimal rest is not going to improve your strength and power for anyone with more than 2 years of lifting experience. Also the risk to benefit ratio with crossfit is not worth it if you’re an athlete, as you often perform complex movements with a high level of fatigue. And as I’ve mentionned times and times before, doing distance running or aerobic based training to improve sport-specific conditioning for anaerobic sports like hockey, football, soccer, lacrosse and the like is equally idiotic.
But I’ll stop here as I feel I’m starting to bitch a little too much here. The take home message is this: always keep your training goals in mind whatever you do. Consider what you really want to achieve; whether it’s to increase your speed, increase your power and strength, lower your body fat or gain muscle. Plan your training in a smart way and be consistent with your goals and train accordingly. Also accept the fact that it’s ok to leave the gym not tired sometimes, and it might actually be more beneficial to your results.
I often get question on what a typical training session looks like for the athletes I train, especially in-season; how is the program structured, how much volume is included and how different it is based on the sport played. Depending on the sport, the program will in fact look a little different. But at the same time, most athletes in most sports need to improve speed, power, strength and conditioning while preventing injuries. So in that sense, programs do vary some sport to sport, but probably not as much as you would think. That’s going to be especially true with somebody who’s just never lifted before.
When it comes to in-season training, volume is going to be fairly low so fatigue and soreness are minimized. As I’ve mentioned before, the goal of in-season training is to maintain gains made in the off-season. That being said here is an example of a basic program that could be used with an in-season athlete:
Foam rolling
Dynamic warm up
A1- 10-Yard Sprint (2 point start) 3 x /side
A2- Glute Bridge Iso-Holds 2 x 20sec/side
B1- DB Reverse Lunges 3 x 6/side
B2- DB Chest Press 3 x 6
B3- Front Plank 2 x 30sec.
C1- Seated Cable Rows 3 x 10
C2- Slideboard Hamstring Curls 3 x 10
C3- 1/2 Kneeling Belly Press Iso-Holds 3 x 20sec/side
Conditioning- Bike or Slideboard Intervals 6 x (30sec ON/60sec OFF)
As you can see it is a pretty short and basic training session (probably more geared toward a young athlete with less 2 years of lifting experience), but the point is that in-season lifting shouldn’t be longer and not much more complex than that. As simple as this program is, it accomplishes what it’s supposed to do: maintaining gains from the off-season while avoiding overtraining.
In my last blog post, I explained the concept of synergistic dominance and how it can relate to injuries in sport performance. Today, I’m going to go into more specific examples as it relates to sport performance and how we, as strength coach, can help prevent that kind of imblance that may lead to injury.
Hamstring Pulls
Hamstring pulls are a very common injury among athletes of all level. Athletes will tell you, the worst part about hamstring pulls is not only that it happens a lot; it is a recurring injury that you will have to deal with over and over again. It seems like it’s the type of injury that you just can’t get rid of for good. Agreed that some athletes may just go back to playing and practicing at 100% too soon, but is that really the only reason why it happens? Is everyone suffering a hamstring pull going back to play too soon? I don’t think so. Is it the fact tha we treat the symptoms and not the source of the problem and that’s why the problem keeps coming back? I think so.
During what action does an hamstring pull occur most? While you run or while you sprint I think is the answer. If we analyze the running mechanic and the involvement of the hamstring during that movement, we’ll find that the hamstring contributes to the hip extension (leg going back) while running; and the faster you run, the greater hip extension and contribution from your hip extensors are going to be. So far, there is no problem to the hamstring contributing to the hip extension as it is one of the 2 most important functions of that muscle (the other one being knee flexion). But let’s not forget that the hamstring is not the only hip extensor; the gluteus maximus (butt muscle) and the adductor magnus are also hip extensors. A point could be made that the erector spinae (lower back muscles) may help during hip extension by extending at the lowert back. It is important to note though that this is a compensation mechanism and it is not desirable when running, but it does happen in some athletes, especially if one of the hip extensors is not performing up to par. So what’s wrong about the hamstring in the running stride if it’s just performing its action like its supposed to? Well, because of it’s attachment point far down from the hip on the tibia and the fibula, it makes the hamstring line of pull not optimal at all; that’s why the hamstring “should be” a synergist in the hip extension phase of the running stride.
I say “should be” and you’ll understand why in a second.
The gluteus maximus is a powerful hip extensor that attaches on the illi0tibial band and the gluteal tuberosity. Because of its higher attachement, it makes the glute max a much more efficient hip extensor than the hamstring; therefore, in the running stride it should be the agonist in the hip extension portion.
The problem is that it’s not more often that not. Because of our daily activities (pretty limited) as it is in the 21st century, the fact that we sit way too much, in our car, at work, at school and at home, we leave the glute max in a stretch position most of the day. Combine that with poor lower body training habits (read: focusing too much on the knee extension and knee flexion) the glutes get left out most of the time. All of this leads to a problem that lower back expert Dr. Stuart McGill refers to as “glute amnesia” where your glute muscles are dormant and can’t activate properly. So what happens when the glute max, which should be the most efficient hip extensor, is dormant during running? You guessed it! The hamstring will take over; therefore, be overused and constantly stressed, which might lead to a hamstring pull sooner than later. Not convinced? Look at the glute muscle definition of athletes who pull hamstring frequently; I’m willing to bet that have none have none, meaning that the muscle is underused (or dormant).
Randy Moss = Prone to a hamstring injury?
How can we solve the problem? The first step is to start by activating the glutes; before strengthening the muscle and integrating it into more dynamic movements, you need to make sure it can fire properly without other muscles taking over. A good example of a basic glute activation exercise is a glute birdge done lying on your back.
While doing a glute bridge, you want to make sure you are really activating your glute muscle. Meaning you need to squeeze your butt cheeks together and drive your hips up; you want to avoid hyperexteding at the lower back or “feeling it” in your hamstrings. The glute bridge is one basic example, but you have a variety of glute activation drills and variations that you can use like birddogs, superdogs,s 1-leg glute bridges, wall marches, etc. The next step is to strengthen the glute muscles with hip dominant movements like pullthroughs, straight-leg deadlifts and the like. And as you progress, you want to incorporate proper hip estension through the glutes with more athletic movements like lunges, squats, sprints, jumps, etc.
Hip Flexor Pulls/Strains
Another good example could be made with hip flexor pulls or strains. First of all, it is important to consider that there are 3 major hip flexors in the hip: the rectus femoris, the tensor fascia latae (TFL) and the psoas major.
Rectus Femoris
Tensor Fascia Latae & Psoas
Most of the time, the TFL or the rectus femoris are the ones who happen to get injured; very rarely will you see a pulled psoas. Similarly to the hamstring pull, one gets overused and one get underused. That’s what causes the imbalance and in the long run the overuse injury. Rectus femoris pull are common in activities that involve running or sprinting (football, soccer, track and field); the reason is that these sports are very quad dominant and the rectus femoris, which is a hip flexor but also a knee extensor and one of the 4 quadriceps muscle, is stressed a lot. Conversely, hockey players see more TFL strains/pulls because hockey involves more lateral movements and hip abduction(think leg pushing laterally away from the body). The TFL happens to be a hip abductor as well as a hip flexor, therefore the TFL gets stressed more in a skating stride than on a running stride. Both cases leave out one muscle, which turns out to be, most of the time, the underused one: the psoas. Why is that? The psoas is the only hip flexor active above 90 degrees, therefore if we have movements in sports that don’t flex the hip higher than 90 degrees, it’s going to put more stress on the TFL or the rectus femoris depending on the demands of the sport.
Once again, one of the ways to take care of the problem is to activate and strenghten the weak link; the psoas in most cases. Knowing that it is the only hip flexor active above 90 degrees, we should use drills that put the hip into flexions greater than 90. There are different progressions and drills that can be used to accomplish that. The standing psoas lift is one of them.
The goal is to set up with your foot on a box or bench that will put your knee higher than your hip level; from that position you simply want to lift your foot off the box/bench and making sure you are not rounding at the lower back to compensate for the lack of hip flexion strength. And of course, there are many other options, including sitting on a bench, lying on your back, using bands, etc.
But whether it is to help prevent the ocurrence or re-ocurrence of hamstring or hip flexor strains or pulls, be aware that there are a lot of other factors to take into account. Mobility, flexiblity, stability and soft-tissue quality are just a couple of the factors that also need to be addresed to prevent overuse injuries like strains and pulls from occuring. Also note that the strategies that I mentioned above WILL NOT replace adequate physical therapy treatment in the case of a pulled muscle; they are meant to be used in conjunction with it to treat the source of the problem.
So, hopefully you now have a better understanding of functional anatomy and you can use these principles to help prevent your athletes injuries. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me.
Sharing an office with Kevin is sooooo much fun
Doesn’t exactly look like Endeavor!
Hurdle step test from the FMS
