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January 14, 2016

My Favorite Exercise Combinations: Installment 11 – Teaching the Weight Shift in Med Ball Drills

I love throwing medicine balls around in the gym. It’s loud and it makes my soul feel good. However, when I give this task to a youth athlete or use it for fat loss purposes, sometimes these medicine ball exercises go right over the person’s head (pun intended).

So with that in mind, I have an awesome combination for y’all today, and it is a great teaching tool for anyone from beginner to advanced athletes.

There are a lot of cool things going on here, and I’ll outline what happens in the first exercise in this combination:

A1. Lateral Mini-Band Walk with Pump Fake – 3×5/s

This first portion I liken to observing how gait patterns occur. Long story short, every time you take a step forward with one foot, you need to accelerate with the back foot.

Every time you take a step forward as well, you need to decelerate with the foot that has just left the ground.

Integrating Ideas – Introducing the Lateral Mini-Band Walk

How does this integrate with a lateral mini-band walk?

You need to decelerate as you take a step to the side, and the “pump fake” with the medicine ball takes this necessity for deceleration to the next level. Otherwise, well, you’ll just fall over. Further, you need to accelerate away from the side on the other foot.

To take it the next level, you need to observe internal rotation at the femoralacetabular joint on the leg that is receiving the weight shift, which talks beautifully about deceleration, and then in order to re-accelerate you need to push out of that position at the hip, and go into external rotation (and hip abduction as well).

Over-coaching athletes to bring their knees into a position that is biased towards genu valgus may be incorrect – the correct position is to subconsciously cue hip internal rotation through external cuing. That is when you win.

qangle — Food for thought – males can also have large Q-Angles, not just females (and vice versa).

Further, this necessity for deceleration at the hip will also need to be translated up from the foot – so overpronation should not be observed, but rather staying on the ball of the foot. Overpronation can be thought of as having a flat foot position – there is no arch, and thus there is no force absorption, or rather there is no authentic and efficient force absorption (force is lost through the lack of an arch, and compensation may occur).

Arch vs No Arch — Flat Foot (Left) vs Arch (Right)

Now, to translate this to a sport specific lingo, what happens when you change directions? What happens when you need to re-direct any forces from one position to the next? What happens when you need to make a cut on a field?

Now, with these ideas under your belt, you can go into the next exercise and teaching tool of shifting in and out with power and speed – the Step Back Rotational Med Ball Shotput.

A2. Step Back Rotational Med Ball Shotput – 3×5/s, 8lb to 10lb

In actuality this can be any side to side, or frontal plane, variation of a medicine ball exercise.

While this exercise may seem relatively straightforward, there are ways to move erroneously. From a cuing perspective, make sure to do these things:

Elbows high, imagine someone is behind you.
With your lead or front elbow, try to smack or hit the person behind you.
Show your shoulders and chest to the wall in front of you – this will avoid any sidearm like action from occuring.
Push the ground away from you – or place an object to step AWAY from, since you need a good follow through with your hips.
Break the wall with the ball, which should capture intent for power and speed of movement.

These are all the things that I’m looking for when utilizing a very simplistic drill involving medicine balls. Hope this brings some insight as to how I look at things!

As always,

Keep it funky.

December 22, 2015

My Favorite Exercise Combinations – Installment 9

Motion at the shoulder joint has now been known to improve through several mechanisms:

Improving soft tissue quality, so signaling can be improved to the motor units that are attached to the muscle fibers involved with these movers.
Reorienting joint position of the glenohumeral joint by improving joint centration.
Improving rib cage position/spinal position in order to improve the brain’s strategy for where “up” actually is with respect to upward movement of the arm.

In this exercise combination, I aim to improve the motoric control of the rib cage, while simultaneously asking the brain to move the shoulder upward through reflexive and reactive exercises.

A Left Jab, Right Hook Combination

After watching Creed about five times in the past 4 weeks, I’ve come to appreciate the simplicity that a simple combination can provide from a foundational level. The most intensive combos can be utilized in order to achieve an outcome – or you can just jab a few times, and give a good hook at the right time and get the same or better effect.

In my opinion, the following combination will be able to improve shoulder motion by doing the following:

Improve rib cage position
Improve recruitment of upward rotators of the scapula
Inhibiting lumbar erectors as stabilizers
Making the shoulder stabilizers fire reactively

So, if you are dancing, looking to improve handstand coordination, or simply aim to improve overhead motion during training, these simple drills can help you immensely.

A front plank has many benefits – it is a great first progression for anterior core involvement, can serve a purpose for a teaching tool for several different exercises, along with providing an adequate muscular endurance challenge for the individual that is lacking the endurance for an upright posture.

However, let’s take some of these other facts into account.

Protraction When you perform a front plank correctly, you will have your shoulder blades slightly protracted and abducted, or fitting on the side of your rib cage. When this occurs, you have several intrinsic muscles within the shoulder girdle firing to stabilize.

Secondarily, you also recruit obliques if you are in a good position from a lower ribcage and pelvic position, so recruiting our athletes to “bring their belt buckle up to their nose” can improve abdominal positioning quickly.

Abdominal Obliquables By recruiting internal and external obliques, you can inhibit some of the extension based muscle groups that are often stabilizing in place of these obliques.

And lastly, you can also improve position of the neck by telling individuals to make sure your face is NOT near the ground, but maintain eyes and nose towards the ground – which will help recruit a neutral spinal alignment. This will help turn off some of the cervical neck extensors that many people exhibit during a forward head posture.

Bottoms Up, Bottoms Up…

Finally, you can improve motion of the shoulder by performing a Half Kneeling 1-Arm Bottoms Up KB Press.

If the kettlebell is bottoms up, the weight will want to tip from side to side, and by reflexively or reactively asking your hand to grip TIGHT, you will also improve recruitment of the rotator cuff of the shoulders. I also try to not start in a retracted scapular position, or even a too protracted and abducted position. In fact, I find that improving thoracic position in the moment while holding the kettlebell will improve shoulder position into a more “packed” position.

As you bring the weight up, think of hiding your ears with your arms. This will make sure you keep a centrated position of your shoulder joint, and making sure you don’t fall forward with your hands or backwards with the weight.

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In conclusion, you can combine these two exercises together in this fashion:

A1. Front Plank Arm March – 2 to 3 sets of 20 to 30 seconds (or 6 to 8 inhales / exhales)

A2. Half Kneeling 1-Arm Bottoms Up KB Press – 2 to 3 sets of 5 to 6 per side

If you’re finding yourself having some shoulder issues from a motor control point of view, give this a shot.

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As always,

Keep it funky.

-MA

October 4, 2015

How to Attack a High Rep Set

On a day to day basis I see many types of people go through their first couple workouts. On one hand we have the “newbie-to-lifting-but-is-amazing-at-sports,” and on the other hand I often encounter the “wants-to-lose-weight-and-has-no-idea-where-to-start” individual. This is fantastic, and I commend these people for having the charisma to step outside of their comfort zone and into something that is completely new and fresh – something that I haven’t done myself in quite some time.

One common denominator that aligns these individuals into similar veins of thought involves the kinds of exercises they will be doing. Certainly they will be pushing, pulling, squatting, lunging, and hip hinging with the best of them.

However, what I am referring to more accurately refers on the way those exercises are done. Let me explain.

Often in order to understand something more intricately, you will need lots of repetitions. There is a thought process that “practice makes perfect,” which makes sense because if you don’t do something how will you get better at anything.

So when you’re starting a new exercise program, many times individuals will become frustrated that they are performing so many repetitions of an exercise. Well, there are tons of awesome physiological benefits to outline as to why you are doing something – from tissue remodeling, to muscular hypertrophy, to neuromuscular training, to getting a good sweat in. Whatever the reason, you want to make sure that you are reaping the best qualitative benefit while optimizing your quantitative output as well.

At the very least, this is simply my opinion on how to attack a high repetition set. Watch the video below on how to improve your outcomes when training a new exercise for tons of reps. This doesn’t have to only apply to the back squat, this can also apply to upper body exercises, like the push up, bench press, or even abdominal exercises like a stability ball rollout or a cable chop.

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Keep it funky.