Whaaat?!?!

Sit ups and crunches are one of the most unproductive exercises you can do to work your core.  If you think about the most important functions of the core muscles you’ll likely end up with these 2 answers:

- Stabilize and protect the spine from excessive movement

- Force transfer from the lower body to the upper body

That being said, you can now appreciate why exercises that encourage motion at the spine are not the most productive ones when you want to work your core for functional and sports performance purposes.  That’s why exercises such as planks, belly presses, and chops and lifts variations are far better options.

But what if sit ups and crunches actually served a purpose?

Before you ask, no, I’m not crazy.

One of the big differences between exercises that recruit your trunk muscles isometrically (planks, etc), and crunches and sit ups is the shortening of the muscles during the exercise.

If you perform too many crunches and sit ups, there is a c0ncetric action on the rectus abdominis that will most likely shorten the muscle in the long run.  Because of the rectus’ attachment on the ribcage, it might pull you into a bigger kyphosis.

The guy probably did too many crunches…

What might be beneficial with these exercises might be more in regards to the oblique muscles.  During a sit up or a crunch, the obliques pull the lower ribs down via their upper attachment, and posteriorly tilt the pelvis via their lower attachment on the illiac crest.

For somebody who presents with a significant rib flare and an anterior pelvic tilt, it might not be a bad idea to include a low volume of these “evil” exercises with a rehab purpose to correct the issue.  We’re not talking about doing 100′s of crunches per day here.

This really is the only situation in which I might consider using a couple sets here and there with an athlete, though.

For this purpose, I like the straight leg sit ups for the way it recruits the internal and external oblique.

But again, this is something I would use only for rehab or prehab purposes, and the bulk of my core work would still be variations of planks, belly presses, un-even carries, etc.

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Single-leg exercises like reverse lunges, rear foot elevated split squats and 1-leg squats can have great value in a training program as it improves your strength, your stability and your balance on 1 leg, which is the way most sports are played.  Whether it is when you run, when you change direction, when you skate (if your sport is played on the ice) or when you decelerate, all of these actions take place on one leg at a time.

For these reasons, single leg exercises might be more “functional” than 2-legs exercises like squats.  Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love squats, but they might not transfer as much as single leg exercises when it comes to developing strength, speed and power in a sport context.  You just need to know which one to use and when.

Athletes still need to be able to squat as it is one of the most primitive patterns that the nervous system should control and master at a very young age.  You could be surprised to see how many athletes have a hard time squatting properly.  It can be because of mobility restrictions, stability or motor control problems, or other reasons, but it’s still a movement that an athlete (and any person as a matter of fact) should own.

If this isn’t textbook form….unfortunately I might lose this skill as he ages

That being said there is a strong neural relationship between single-leg strength and its carryover to sport’s performance.  And these can be used as a main lower body lifts just like a squat or a deadlift.  On top of being very beneficial in the transfer to sport’s performance, single-leg lifts can be great to reduce spinal loading (because you’re usually using less weight than double leg exercises) and to establish symmetry between both sides.  Also everything changes from double leg to single stance; more stabilizer muscles are engaged, core muscle activation is increased and the foot’s proprioception is challenged to a much greater extent.

Even if spinal loading is not as great as with regular squats, you can still get a tremendous effect out of single-leg training and gain a lot of strength.  If you’re not convinced, just check out this video of one of our hockey player at Endeavor doing Reverse Lunges with 255 pounds for 6 reps!

Even Coach Jorts  from  CoachJortsTraining.com can’t squat as much double leg! (barely 225! Pfff, those jorts don’t even make you stronger)

In all seriousness, my friend Kevin Neeld just released his Ultimate Hockey Training book last week and he goes into great details on the benefits of single-leg lifts.  Make sure you get a copy; he’s still selling it at the introductory price (less than 35$!!)

Stability is often perceived as a good thing; single-leg stability, core stability and scapular stability are all terms that are commonly referred to when we’re talking about functional training and we see those things as being positive outcomes we want to get out of our training program.  Referring back to the joint-by-joint approach popularized by Mike Boyle and Gray Cook, some joints in the body should be geared more towards stability and some others should be geared more towards mobility.

The Joint-by-Joint Approach

But this doesn’t mean that those joints should have only one of the two (mobility OR stability).  Every joint in your body needs a healthy balance of both; some just need more of one than the other.  It’s also important to acknowledge that every joint in your body needs some sort of stability.  As physical therapist Charlie Weingroff puts it: “you need stability before mobility”.  In other words, if you can’t stabilize your joint, taking it into a full range of motion might not be a good idea.

When this guy talks, I listen

Stability is very important per se.  But stability is not always good.  Confused?  Perfect!  Let me explain: as I just mentioned, you NEED stability in every joint in your body, but if you can’t get stability with proper muscle activation and balance around a joint, most of the time your body will find a way to get that stability.  This is when compensation patterns occur; you have the wrong muscles trying to stabilize your joints because the right muscles that should stabilize aren’t doing their job.  Some other times, when the muscles’ contribution isn’t enough your body will look somewhere else to find stability.  This is when passive structures like ligaments and bones are being used for stability purposes, and that’s when things start to get pretty ugly.

When a baseball pitcher throws a baseball at 90mph and his arm rotates at 7,000°/second at the shoulder, if the the rotator cuff and scapular stabilizer muscles can’t control the deceleration, something else in your body will, because I can guarantee you that his arm is not just going to rip off his body and go flying in the air!

That means that something somewhere is stabilizing the arm at the shoulder in the deceleration phase.  And again if it’s not the right muscles doing it, it might mean some added stress on the ligaments of the shoulder, some irritation to the labrum, compensation patterns taking place by stabilization from the wrong muscles, etc.  There are plenty of examples like this one in athletic performance.

Always keep in mind that stability will happen one way or another.  We just need to make sure it’s happening at the right places with the right structures.  Otherwise we’re setting ourselves up for injuries.

Want to know how to get that stability at right places for optimal shoulder performance?  Enter your information below to get my ‘Shoulder Injury Prevention Strategies’ report for FREE!!!

Functional training is a concept that’s becoming more and more popular these days.  Everyone has his own interpretation of what functional training is and how it is applied.  For some, it is to reproduce sport-specific movements, for others it’s to stand on unstable surfaces to do everything from core training to biceps curls, and for others it’s to develop physical qualities that are specific to the practice of their sport.

Functional? I have my doubts on this one…

No matter how you interpret functional training, there is an important line that people are crossing too often when applying exercise variations or specific tools in the gym.

Let’s face it: we all love variety.  We love to try new exercise variations, new tools (TRX, slideboards, stability balls, ropes, etc), and for a good reason; when you’ve been training for a long time (read: one year is not a long time) you might get bored doing the same stuff all the time.  But too often variety becomes what dictates your training program.  And too often at the expenses of proper form.  I think it is crucial to perfectly master the basic movement patterns before any attempt at progression and/or variety.

I’ve said in the past that form is everything when you lift.  When you lose perfect form, I truly think that whatever you do, isn’t functional anymore.  Period.  Whatever your definition of ‘functional’ is, it has to has be based around proper movement patterns.  Whatever exercises you use, whatever tools you use, there is only one optimal way your body moves and it is the same whatever you do.  It doesn’t matter if you do your push ups on the floor, with your hands on a bench or on a TRX; the movement at your shoulders and the stability you present with the rest of your body should be the same for all three of these variations.

Sorry. Not for everyone.

If you can’t master a reverse lunges with dumbbell in your hands, why would you do a reverse lunge with a bar on your shoulders or with whatever crazy unstable surface you want to use?  If you can’t do a front plak with perfect form for more than 30 seconds, why would you do it with your elbows on a stability ball?

Variety sells.  Especially when you’re a personal trainer; it’s a good way to attract new clients.  But no matter how boring the basic stuff is, it needs to be done.  And it needs to be done for as long as you’re not doing it perfectly.

Variety shouldn’t exist until you master optimal movement patterns.

You’re welcome.

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Today’s post, which I’m pretty pumped up about, is an interview I did recently with fellow strength coach Bret Contreras.  For those of you who don’t already know Bret, he’s a very smart and well read coach who has been in the research field quite a while.  He is now a well established strength coach, training clients in his own gym. He’s also been under the bar for quite a while himself.  Bret is actually moving to New Zealand in the next couple of months to pursue his PhD, so that will make him even smarter! Bret was kind enough to let me pick his brain for a couple of questions on how he views strength and conditioning.  So without further ado, here it is:

DL: Bret, your name has been around for quite a while now in the strength and conditioning world. You have been writing for T-Nation and on your own blog, but most importantly you have actually been training clients and been under the bar yourself for quite a while now, which I think are two very important things to do in order to become a successful coach.  You have mentioned to me that you think coaches and trainers should possess a variety of skills to better serve clients and athletes alike.  Would you mind naming a few and telling us how they impact the way we deal with clients and athletes?

BC: First off David, I’d like to thank you for this opportunity. I appreciate the fact that you’re interviewing me. Here are some of the skills that will help coaches and trainers be more successful:

-Critical thinking: Strength training is an art and a science – an arta scienza.

Training really IS an art

Coaches should put a ton of thought into their athletes’ and clients’ programs, and each program should differ based on a myriad of factors:

-Knowledge of autoregulation: Coaches should never completely stick to a pre-set plan with their athletes and clients. Coaches should adapt their programming on the fly based on their verbal feedback as well as their biofeedback.

-Psychology: Coaches should try to be good motivators, to “believe” in their athletes and clients, to have high expectations, to figure out what makes their athletes tick and adapt their approach accordingly, and to push them hard while still having fun.

-Knowledge of the history of strength & conditioning: Coaches should try to develop an appreciation for the evolution of the iron game and should be able to rattle off the training philosophies of many different experts.

-Ability to discern the truth: Coaches should possess a sound understanding of the workings of the human body so they will intuitively know what works and what doesn’t.

DL: That is definitely why it’s so important to have a good educational background in this field.  I know you have been involved quite a bit in the research world and in particular with muscle EMG for a variety of muscles in different movements, especially with the glutes (and on a related note you’ve been named The Glute Guy, which is probably the coolest nickname ever for a strength coach!).  That being said, for the glutes, do you find any difference between open chain and closed chain glute exercises as they correlate to performance in different sports and activities?

BC: I won’t pretend to know the answer to this, but I will tell you that the more I research the more I realize that I don’t know everything I once thought I knew. There’s so much we don’t know about strength training, and our understanding about what transfers best to sport performance is seriously lacking.

I will tell you this – open chain glute exercises render surprisingly high EMG levels. When the thigh can move freely with no ground-communication the glutes seem to contract very hard. Some individuals have trouble activating their glutes in a closed chain environment, but if you put them in an open chain environment they do much better in terms of glute activation. I think it’s wise to make the focus of lower body training on closed-chain movements – squats, deads, lunges, Oly lifts, hip thrusts, ghr’s, back extensions, and hip rotational work. But I also think it’s wise to supplement with open chain hip isolation work – band or cable adduction, abduction, and flexion, reverse hypers, and quadruped hip extensions.

DL: What I really like about your blog and your articles is that you always bring up new ideas and you think outside the box, which I think many coaches and trainers (including myself!) are not very good at.  One of the new concepts you brought up that I really like are the ‘Load Vectors’.  I find it very interesting and I don’t think many people understand this concept yet.  Could you elaborate a little bit on what Load Vectors are and tell us what their practical applications are in strength and conditioning.

BC: The best coaches were already incorporating load vector training into their programming long before I came around. I just came up with a naming system. I’m absolutely amazed that no one came up with this model before I did. The model, which involves axial, anteroposterior, lateromedial, and torsional components, ensures:

-optimal multi-directional strength development

-optimal multi-directional power development, and

-optimal structural balance

This way, the client performs better and stays healthy. Coaches and trainers need to understand the various exercises that can be performed for each vector and which are best for various portions of the force-velocity curve.

DL: A topic that’s hot right now in the training world is core training. I think core training will probably always be a controversial topic as as we understand the core more and more from a functional standpoint, and (thank God) begin to move away from the “just do 100s of crunches mentality” that was so typical of the past.  What is your take on core training? And what are you doing differently in that regard?

BC: My take is that we still don’t have it all figured out. Here are some questions that coaches should be thinking about in regards to core training:

-what are the different categories of core exercises?

-is there an optimal amount of volume for the core?

-should the core be trained specifically or does it get worked just fine from compound movements?

-should the core be trained for strength, power, endurance, or all three?

-what rep ranges work best for the core, and are those rep ranges uniform for all types of movements?

-should we train the core for movement, stability, or both?

-are there any advantages and disadvantages to training with dynamic spinal movements?

-are there any advantages and disadvantages to training with static-based stability movements?

-should specific core training be placed before or after the strength component of the workout?

I won’t pretend to know all the answers to these questions either, but I will tell you that the research gives us incredible clues as to how we should train the core. To understand the answer to these questions, you really have to have a sound understanding of spinal biomechanics.

DL: I know you train a lot of female clients; the way we train females has been another hot topic lately.  What do you think we should do differently with females clients and athletes compared to males, and also, what should we NOT do differently?

BC: I love training women, and I believe that I’m one of the best in the biz at getting women to look good. Of course, getting clients to look good has more to do with coercing and motivating them to be strict on their diets than it does with sound training. However, in terms of training there are some important considerations. Women are weaker – especially in the upper body, less powerful, and have a tenth of the testosterone that a man has.

As to what we should do differently, women have a higher ratio of type I to type II hypertrophy than men. In fact, their type I fibers are often larger than their type II fibers. This means that higher rep training should be interwoven with lower rep and medium rep training. Furthermore, women recover in strength quicker than men. This means that increasing the frequency with your female clients is a wise strategy. Finally, women often have different goals than men. Listen to their goals and plan accordingly. Most really appreciate a routine that includes tons of targeted glute-work.

What doesn’t change, assuming that the woman has a goal to improve the shape over her entire body, is the emphasis on progressive overload for the big basic compound movements from the primary movement patterns – quad dominant, hip dominant, horizontal press, horizontal pull, vertical press, vertical pull.

DL: Good stuff! Bret, thanks a lot for your time!

This is it folks.  Make sure you check Bret’s blog, as he has some great content each and every week!  It is definitely one of my favorite websites to visit to get good information on strength and conditioning.

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.

Functional training is a term used quite a bit these days. Functional training might have totally different meanings depending on who you talk to. It can also be used for a variety of training methods and exercises. One that is refered to a lot as “functional training”, and in my own opinion is just a load of crap is unstable training surface.

This is probably the stupidest thing I have ever seen:

And don’t get me wrong, this is not just because I dislike it; unstable surface training is totally useless and counterproductive from a performance training standpoint. Before I get too much hate mail about this, I am just going to prove my point.

- First of all, I don’t know of any sports that are played on a surface that is unstable and/or moving under you (with the exception of alpine and water skying).  As far as I know, sports are played on floors, grass and ice which are all really stable surfaces. 

- From a safety standoint, I am not sure how safe it is to perform this kind of exercise in training.  There is a significant risk of falling off the stability ball, Bosu or whatever implement you’re using.  Keeping in perspective that my first two goals as a strength and conditioning coach are to avoid hurting my athletes during training and preventing their risk of injuries, I want to stay away from anything that ressembles loading my athletes with weights on a very unstable surface.

- Performing exercises on unstable surfaces require extra stabilization at the joints involved (mainly the hips, knees and ankles for lower body training).  At first, more stabilization might sounds interesting, but consider this: while performing an exercise on an unstable surface, your antagonist muscles are required to activate to take care of the unstable demand placed on the joint(s).  On the other side, if you’re trying to improve strength and power in your athletes’ program you need the exact opposite; you need the antagonist to relax as much as possible if you want to improve the force expression at the involved joint.  So right here, we have two totally conflicting situations and different goals.  Why not improve both at the same? Well, the bad news is that studies have showed that incoporating as little as 5% of your total training volume in unstable surface training decreases maximum force output in trained athletes. Doesn’t sound too good to me.

I don’t think I need to go much further; if you’re looking to improve speed, power, strength and overall performance you might want to reconsider using unstable surface training if it is unsafe, totally non-sport specific and decreases force production.

The only valuable use unstable surfaces might have is to reestablish proprioception in people who had ankle sprains, as there is sufficient proof in the litterature to support that, but that is pretty much all it is good for. 

As for as training for improved stability, I am all for it; but I think it should be done in a more sport-specific context.  For example, single leg exercises might have tremendous value in a training program as almost everything in sports happen on one leg at the time, for example running and skating.  Using single leg exercises like the reverse lunge will take care of all the stability you need.

But I won’t go into more details about this, as it could be the topic for a whole other blog post.

If you want to learn more about the use of unstable surface training, you need to pick up The Truth About Unstable Surface Training by Eric Cressey.  Eric goes into great details on everything that touches unstable surface training.