Whip The Hip!

Rotational movement integrated with precise timing/sequencing
of the hip and glutei muscles will help give you the elusive power
you seek. So few people understand how to rotate at the hip and
engage the glutes with powerful contraction combined with rear
foot plantarflexion.

This lack of sequencing and movement patterning means a loss of
durability and inhibited optimum performance. Lack of ‘hip whip’
manifests itself in too much muscle recruitment from the upper
torso and the client will ‘bleed’ unproductive energy. It is a term
that represents the motion of powerful active contraction of the
glute with rotational power of the hip joint.

It’s the ‘snap’ of activation with intent of movement that counts.
No sloppy follow thru .The rear leg should have a tense activated
glute and the rear foot should be plantar flexed with minimal
weight resting on the ball of the foot. I tell my clients if I walked
behind you and hit that butt I better bounce off. No loosey
goosey!

Don’t worry about the front leg glute. That will be activated
because you are standing on it with more transferred weight. Pay
attention to the rear leg. Try the rotation without active glute
contraction and then with contraction. Tell me what difference you
feel? You feel much more powerful and stable right? Take a look
at this picture below to see a representation of an end phase ‘hip
whip.’ This is a high stability, loaded movement pattern. Top of
the ‘food chain’ in the 4-stages of owning the whip you will see
listed below.

The glutes are really nice to look at I know, ( well some are) but
the important thing in performance is how they function. Can
they activate? Can they sequence? You may need to spend time
teaching clients how to disassociate the top and bottom of the
body first and then move into locking in transitional patterns.
Start with no load and then increase to resistance bands, and
finally cables.

If you can master the power of the hips and glute you will
unleash the secret weapon of performance. All things being
considered you must own the ‘hip whip’ by progressing thru 4
stages.

1. Insure adequate mobility is on board in the hips. Particularly in
extension and internal rotation. Look for asymmetries.

2. Fascial snags and glutei trigger points must be released and
addressed because they will cause soft tissue extensibility
dysfunction and loss of mobility.

3. Glutes must be activated in relationship to the calves and
iliacus Glutes are often inhibited and weak in relationship to
facilitated calves and iliacus. Release the iliacus by manual
pressure and foam roll the calves, followed immediately by supine
hip bridges to activate the glutes. Be careful of doing the wrong
thing to the psoas. It is often tight and weak, indicating a need
for stretching then immediate strengthening. Simply stretching a
tight and weak muscle is asking for TROUBLE!

4. Movement patterning and motor control. Gaining stability of
the hips in static position, then proceeded by dynamic, and finally
loaded high threshold movement so you can lock in the new
mobility with neural control.

Precision of movement. Quality over quantity. Better is better,
more is not better. These are your guiding principles of power.
Now go have fun whipping your hip!

Rodger Fleming, ATC, LMT
Body Awareness Therapeutic Massage
Macon, Georgia

No Muscle Memory!

In this week's installment of BaseballStrengthCoaching.com's blog, I want to take a minute to discuss one of my pet peeves. Recently it seems that I have heard quite a few professionals discuss the concept of "muscle memory". While I understand the concept, as exercise science professionals we should know better. There is no such thing as "muscle memory"! Muscles do not have memory control centers. The actions of our muscle tissue are controlled by conscious and subconscious brain functions.

Sports performance skills such as running, throwing, striking, catching, jumping, landing, and stop and turn activities require coordinated muscle recruitments of multiple joints and planes of movement. During the developmental period of infancy, we learn how to recruit various muscle groups in order to stabilize and balance our bodies (raise the head -> rollover -> sit up -> stand). As we continue to grow and mature, we learn basic loco motor skills such as scooting, crawling, and walking. Still later in our development, we progress to more fundamental movements such as traveling skills (climbing, galloping, jumping, running), object controls skills (kicking, throwing, striking), and balance movements (dodging, rolling). All the while, the brain is programming and saving these movement patterns for future use. With practice the patterns are fine-tuned and enhanced.

The Central Nervous System (CNS) is not programmed for isolated muscle function. When a motor task is necessary, the CNS recalls the pre-programmed patterns of movement that were learned during our developmental years. During sports activities, the body has to compensate for the pre-programmed movement patterns and react to gravity, momentum, and ground reaction forces. This pattern of muscle activation and movement programming has also been seen in recent visualization research.

Rather than referring to this process as "muscle memory", which by definition is not possible, I like to use the phrase "subconscious memory". Subconscious memory more accurately reflects the motor responses.

David Yeager, ATC, CSCS
Co-Founder, BaseballStrengthCoaching.com

Athletic Destinies Determined By Age 10

I recently came across this article. This is something that I really try to preach to young athletes. I'd be interested to hear some other opinions.

David Yeager, ATC, CSCS
Co-Founder, BaseballStrengthCoaching.com


LeBron James was 10 years old once. By that age, he was on his way to becoming the LeBron James we know today, and he was helped by playing football, according to expert trainers who agree that a range of play activities between age six and 10 helps build a broad base of athletic motor and coordination abilities.

Each year hundreds of kids come through Scott Moody’s AthleteFit facility outside Kansas City, and dozens of them finish high school with collegiate sports scholarships.

“If [kids] don’t develop those manipulative motor skills at that age, that 6-10 window, then they don’t have the confidence necessary to participate,” said Moody. As a result, their overall fitness goes down, further dropping confidence. “It’s this downward spiral that most people never come out of.”

Moody joined more than 100 trainers from across the U.S. and Canada at a recent National Strength and Conditioning Association Youth Training Symposium in Chicago (see him presenting on TRX Suspension Training in the photo above). They discussed how in an overweight yet sports-obsessed culture, trainers are making a difference in how kids get started in athletics.

Patrick McHenry, a high school strength coach in Castle Rock, Colorado, talked about a tall, strong basketball player who could shoot and who looked like he might be great, but as a senior he lacked footwork.

“Was it too late? Yes, for him.” McHenry said. “If we had had him during his sophmore or junior year we could have helped him, but would he have been the best? No.”

Rick Howard, director of athletics for the School District of Philadelphia, gets requests from teachers and coaches for lowest-common-denominator training programs to meet the needs of, say, a third-grade physical education class or a girls’ softball team.

“It’s not that easy,” he tells them. “You really have to know everybody on that team, what they’re good at, what they’re not good at.” Mostly he sees sports instruction and training for kids that winds up reinforcing what they’re already good at, “Kids that are fast, keep them running.”

Reinforcement has run amok in cases where young athletes are opting to specialize in one sport at a young age. In the worst cases, according to McHenry, they run the risk of overuse injuries.

“We find they’re missing their window to all of those motor skills that are going to help them athletically later in the game,” said Moody.

“Girls’ soccer players have trouble tracking the ball in the air,” he pointed out, “because they never played volleyball growing up, they never played softball growing up. They didn’t get used to tracking objects out of the air.”

Mike Nitka is an editor for the trainers’ association journal and a Wisconsin high school wrestling coach. Motor skills in older people, he said, “can be developed, but not at the highest level possible because Mother Nature is trying to give us the biggest assist possible, and these are the windows” for that.

“I have a sign in my office,” Nitka said, “Volleyball players play volleyball. Athletes play anything they want.”

Article taken from news.medill.northwestern.edu.

Pull With Your Back

As coaches, we strive to achieve the maximum benefit for our athletes in the shortest period of time. Often, we see athletes performing an exercise correctly but not receiving the outcomes they should. Perhaps, this lack of outcome stems from the lack of appropriate focus on the performance of the exercise. For me, one of those exercises is the Lat Pulldown / Pull-Up exercise.

The primary muscles that are engaged during this exercise are the latissimus dorsi, rhomboids, teres major, and the lower trapezius. Their function is to adduct the arm and draw it closer to the pelvis. During the throwing motion, these muscles act as large decelerators to counteract the distraction forces at the glenohumeral joint. The muscles of the hand /forearm flexors, as well as, the biceps brachii are considered secondary movers during the Lat Pulldown exercise.

One of the common mistakes that I notice when athletes perform this exercise is that they over-emphasize their grip and as a result pull down using the smaller muscles of the arms. As I mentioned, the primary focus should be placed on the larger musculature of the back. Using mental cues can improve the mind-body connection. When coaching these athletes, I find it helpful to use the mental cue, “Pull with your back!” to emphasize the proper performance of the Lat Pulldown exercise. This will make an immediate impact in the technique by locking your “lats” into activation. To check this technique, the coach can place his hands on the athlete’s shoulder blades and feel that the pulldown movement is being initiated by their depression and retraction.

Focusing on the proper muscular activation while performing a movement can help to insure maximum benefits are achieved. “Pull with your back!” can be used for any exercise that requires the large upper back muscles to perform (i.e. seated row, bent-over row, etc).

David Yeager, ATC, CSCS
Co-Founder
BaseballStrengthCoaching.com

Let’s Get to the Core of the Problem

Well, it’s been a little while since our last installment on the BaseballStrengthCoaching.com blog site. I apologize for that. With the initiation of the baseball season, I have been striving to settle in to a routine, adapt to the rigors of travel, and adjust to the day-to-day grind that is the game of baseball. But, that’s a topic for another time.

What I want to talk about this week is the dreaded Oblique Muscle Strain. Baseball is a rotational sport. Everything players do from swinging the bat, pitching the ball, or fielding a ball in the hole, involves a rotary movement at the hips, torso, or shoulder complex. The oblique muscles are the responsible for creating this torso rotation pattern. In recent years, many major league players, both position player and pitcher alike, have been sidelined by injury to this muscle.

In my opinion, these injuries occur for several reasons. First, have you ever followed a hitter around for a day and counted exactly how many total swings he performs? Let’s look at an example of a typical day. Player A shows up to the ballpark and goes to the hitting cage for early work. He may perform up to 30-40 repetitions attempting “lock in his swing”. Then, later in the day, Player A participates in the daily team batting practice which consists of up to 15-20 minutes of a group of 4 hitters. Each hitter may perform another 40+ repetitions. During the game, he takes another 5-10 swings while in the on-deck circle. This time, often with an additional weight on the bat. And finally, he averages 5 at-bats per game. And just for argument, let’s say that he takes 4 swings per at-bat for an additional 20 repetitions.

40 + 40 + 10 + 20 = 110 swings per day

110 swings per day. And, that doesn’t even take into account the number of rotational movements that are performed with his throwing activities. Add these numbers up over the course of an entire season and the rotational repetition volume is astounding. High volume can lead to fatigue. With fatigue comes changes in movement patterns. Changes in movement patterns equal abnormal muscle firing patterns.

The second reason I think these injuries occur is a result of a neuromuscular “misfire” and is directly related to the type of core training that we traditionally perform. During the hitting and throwing motions there is a period of loading (potential energy) and unloading (kinetic energy). As the pitch is being delivered the hitter performs a slight countermovement to “load” his swing and harness energy. As the ball gets closer to the plate, he begins to initiate his swing and “unload” his energy through the bat to the ball. It is at the point of switching from loading to unloading that these oblique injuries occur. In terms of plyometric training we call it the “amoritization phase”. And ideally, the switch should be as quick as possible in order to maximize the benefits of the stretch-shortening cycle and create the optimal resulting concentric force. Traditionally, players and coaches emphasize standard crunches, concentric med ball rotations, and possibly even medicine ball throwing exercises to improve overall core / trunk force production. However, when an athlete is not trained to harness energy and quickly change direction to release that energy. He lacks the neuromuscular conditioning to execute the fine-tuned pattern of load-stabilize-unload. When this lack of programming is coupled with the fatigue and abnormal muscular recruitment I mentioned earlier, the potential for injury increases.

Finally, “it’s all in the hips”. Hip mobility is a key factor. Athletes must have adequate flexibility and range of motion in the pelvis and hips to allow for complete torso rotation. When he lacks mobility in the hips, greater stresses are transmitted up through the spine creating greater needs of the abdominal musculature. Greater requirements result again in abnormal muscle recruitment patterns and can potentially lead to injury.

Prevention programs of these oblique and abdominal muscle injuries should emphasize the following points:

1. Monitor swing volume and tailor activities accordingly. Emphasize quality over quantity.

2. Core strengthening programs should focus on stabilization, eccentric loading, and the quick switch from load to unload. (Of course a good baseline strength level should be present before progressing to this type of training.)

3. Attention should be placed on hip mobility.


David Yeager, ATC, CSCS
Co-Founder, BaseballStrengthCoaching.com

Movement Training vs. Muscle Training

Sports performance skills such as running, throwing, striking, catching, jumping, landing, and stop and turn activities require coordinated muscle recruitments of multiple joints and planes of movement. During the developmental period of infancy, we learn how to recruit various muscle groups in order to stabilize and balance our bodies (raise the head > rollover > sit up > stand). As we continue to grow and mature, we learn basic loco motor skills such as scooting, crawling, and walking. Still later in our development, we progress to more fundamental movements such as traveling skills (climbing, galloping, jumping, running), object controls skills (kicking, throwing, striking), and balance movements (dodging, rolling). All the while, the brain is programming and saving these movement patterns for future use. With practice the patterns are fine-tuned and enhanced.

The body is a sophisticated and marvelous machine. The joints of the body are connected to each other much like the links of a chain or an engineering system. Action at one joint in the chain (i.e. movements, forces, dysfunction, etc.) directly affects the next joint above and below in the sequence and indirectly influences the rest of the body. Activities can be divided into two types:

Open Chain Activities – one end of the chain is fixed to a point while the other is
free to move in space.

Example: hamstring curl, tricep extension, bench press etc.

Closed Chain Activities – both ends of the chain are fixed to a point.

Example: squat, lunge, push-up, etc.

In reality, there is no such thing as a pure open and closed chain. Sports movements involve a constant cycle of opening and closing of the chain (i.e. running, jumping, throwing, kicking, etc.). The Central Nervous System (CNS) is not programmed for isolated muscle function. When a motor task is necessary, the CNS recalls the pre-programmed patterns of movement that were learned during our developmental years. During sports activities, the body has to compensate for the pre-programmed movement patterns and react to gravity, momentum, and ground reaction forces.


Force Production >> Stabilization >>Force Reduction >> Stabilization >> Force Production


Despite the body’s natural tendency to movement pattern activities, many athletes, coaches, and trainers continue to perform sport-specific strength training activities by isolating and developing specific muscle groups. This will succeed in developing muscle size and strength, but will limit the crossover for sports performance and daily life. During athletic and daily life activities, the body must function as an integrated unit rather than isolated segments. Performing exercises which stress multi-joint and sport-specific movement patterns which the athletes encounter while playing strengthens the muscles in the manner in which they are used. This helps to limit abnormal muscle recruitment patterns and stresses on the body by integrating and enhancing the function of the kinetic chain.

David Yeager, ATC, CSCS
Co-Founder
baseballstrengthcoaching.com