To preface this article I will begin by saying that these concepts and principles are best explained in more detail in Mike Boyle’s New Functional Training for Sports, which has been an indispensable resource for me in program design.

Before we dig into how we approach abdominal training, we’ll first look at the anatomy of the abdominal musculature. In order to understand the function of these muscles in the context of sport, we need to understand their structure. Structure leads to function. The muscles we’re focusing on when we think about abdominal training include the rectus abdominis, the six-pack muscle, as well as your internal and external obliques and the transverse abdominis. Looking at their placement, it’s quite obvious that they play a large role in what happens in terms of movement of the spine. In traditional anatomy, the function of these muscles is to flex the trunk, twist the trunk, and bend to the side. However, when we consider the job of these muscles while playing sports, it’s actually all about resisting movement. The job of the abdominals while playing sports is stabilization, not movement. Think about a football player bracing himself for a hit, or a soccer player about to take a shot. In both these instances, the abs are active in order to prevent excessive motion and keep the athlete in a stable position. In a strength and conditioning context, our job is to prepare athletes for these situations.

One main job of the anterior abdominal musculature is to prevent excessive extension of the lumbar spine, or low back. When the abs are weak, it’s common for athletes to slip into an extended posture while playing sports, working out, and just in everyday life. This is a common cause of low back pain. If we can teach athletes to turn on their anterior abs effectively, we can reduce this hyperextension and ultimately prevent injuries and improve performance. Put another way, weak abdominals causes the pelvis to tilt anteriorly and cause excessive stress on the low back. It is a key component of lower cross syndrome, which I have talked about previously. How do we begin to use our abs to stabilize are pelvis? There are two exercises, or rather two groups of exercises that are staples of our athletic performance classes:

1. The plank
2. the ab wheel.

The plank is perhaps the simplest method when learning to resist lumbar extension. This exercise is one of the first drills we use in order to teach kids to engaged their abdominals. In order to fire up the abdominals, we instruct athletes to push into the floor, and think about engaging their glutes, quads, and abdominals. Doing this will instantly make the exercise more difficult and allow the athlete to learn what an isometric abdominal contraction feels like. The other really important key when performing planks is the breath. The diaphragm is a muscle. One of its antagonist muscles is the transverse abdominis, the deepest abdominal muscle. A protagonist-antagonist relationship means that when one muscle is contracted, the other is relaxed and vice-versa. At the bottom of an exhale the diaphragm is maximally relaxed, so the TA is maximally shortened. To take advantage of this during a plank, athletes are instructed to perform long, slow exhales, which helps them to actively engage the deep abdominals.

The ab wheel is the other movement pattern we use to learn to resist extension. However, it is a quite difficult exercise, especially for those who’ve yet to fully grasp the concept of using their abs to resist lumbar extension. So, we start with the stability ball rollout. Think of the stability ball as a giant ab wheel. Starting in a kneeling position with the abs tight and glutes engaged, the athlete rolls forward, leading with the hips. As the athlete rolls out they must keep their abs engaged in order to keep their spine is a solid position. Even if this exercise is easy for the athlete, I like to air on the side of caution to ensure that they can properly control their spine before moving on to the ab wheel.

Between the plank and the stability ball rollout, athletes can begin to learn to use their abdominals in order to prevent overuse of their low back muscles. Starting all training programs teaching antiextension will help keep athletes healthy in the long run, and greatly reduce the incidence of low back pain in young athletes.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this three part series on abdominal training, where we’ll focus on antirotation, why it’s important for athletes, and how to train it.

If you’re interested in applying these concepts, our next athletic performance class session is starting Monday, March 5. You can sign up online or give us a call.

 

 

 

Works Cited

“Abdominal Muscles Anatomy.” Abmachinesguide, Ab Machines & Workouts, abmachinesguide.com/abdominal-muscles-anatomy/.

Boyle, Michael. New Functional Training for Sports. Human Kinetics, 2016.

In the last decade there’s been a huge surge in the popularity of strength training among athletes, and rightfully so. The performance world is realizing more and more the benefits of developing strength, mobility, and power. Developing physical literacy via strength training provides athletes a foundation, onto which they can build their sports skills. Yet, most young athletes have nowhere to begin with regards to strength training. They do some bench press, some bicep curls, and call it a day. It doesn’t take a pro to realize that this is not the best approach to take with regards to developing a safe and effective strength and conditioning regiment. For all athletes, but especially those just starting out, there are a handful of principles that we use to guide our program design and coaching.

• Learn basic movements

Too often athletes want to try advanced exercises, and the latest fitness fads. However, there is no substitute for the tried-and-true methods that have been used for decades. When starting out, athletes must learn how to squat, hinge, push, and pull, and do this in a safe manner. So many kids want to learn how to back squat and bench press, when they can barely stand on 1-leg without falling. This means starting with the simplest form of an exercise there is, which almost always requires a bodyweight movement. If a young athlete can’t control their spine on a bodyweight squat, there is a very high chance of injury if we throw 50 pounds on the athlete’s back. Master the basic movements, and when it is time to load the movements there will be much less risk of injury and dysfunction.

• Mimic the demands of the sport

“Train slow, play slow”

–Mike Boyle, New Functional Training for Sports

 

In most traditional sports like soccer, lacrosse, baseball, and basketball, power and acceleration are most often the qualities that separate the good athletes from the great. These sports are not played at a steady state, but rather at alternating periods of sprint and rest. With that in mind, it’s important that our training mimics the energy system demands of these sports. Let’s take soccer as an example. A soccer game is not played at a smooth jog. It’s a mix of sprints, jogs, and walks, with periods of acceleration and deceleration. So how should these players train? With intermittent periods of sprinting and jogging followed by rest. The quote above from Mike Boyle sums it up perfectly. If you train quickly and explosively, that’s how you’ll play. If you train under your maximum output, you will play under your explosive capabilities. So, in our programs the athletes get a fair amount of rest. This allows them to go 100% when necessary, and let their bodies recuperate before the next rep. The goal is not to make the workout as difficult as possible for them, it’s to allow them to push their explosive capacities which will ultimately transfer over into athletics. For most sports, endurance and aerobic capacity should not be a high priority in strength and conditioning. It takes years to get powerful, but only a few weeks to get into aerobic condition. In the weeks leading up to the start of a sports season, we implement circuit training as a method to train the aerobic system. However, the emphasis year-round remains on prioritizing acceleration and power development.

The other important piece to consider is that most sports are not played linearly (except track). They involve lots of changes of direction, acceleration and deceleration in unpredictable positions. In order to prepare athletes for these positions, we must train all planes of motion. So, a training program should involve linear sprints, lateral sprints, and everything in between.

 

• Do no harm

“Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.”

-Hippocrates

We work out to improve performance. Yet, many of us know what it’s like to tweak something in the weight room, and how easily it can set us back. Yes, injuries happen. Oftentimes they are unpreventable. However it is our job to ensure that the chance of injury is as low as possible. The biggest cause of injury is trying to progress from the baseline, bodyweight movements too quickly (see above). Going further, most of the time the injury is related to an athlete’s inability to control their spine. This is what our “pelvic tilt” and core work is for. Teaching athletes how to engage their abdominals muscles and posterior (hamstring and gluteal) muscles, which places the spine in a neutral position, precedes all other weight room movements. Anytime you’re excessively feeling your low back in a movement, you should ask yourself whether your core was engaged, and your spine in a neutral position.

Another method we use to minimize risk while still being able to get athletes stronger is implementing lots of single-leg movements. The squat and deadlift are both complex movement patterns, requiring coordination of the entire body to perform adequately. It takes time to master these with little to no weight. However, an exercise like a split squat or a single leg stiff-leg deadlift can be performed without any weight yet still be strenuous, especially for beginners. So, we can still effectively strength train while using lighter loads which equates to lower chance of injury. Additionally, single-leg exercises ensure that one side of the body is not being overemphasized too much. Often in a bilateral squat, athletes will favor one leg or the other, but in a single-leg squat, this weakness becomes exposed. Single-leg exercises require more activation of muscles that stabilize the pelvis. While playings sports, this stabilization is essential, because very rarely are two feet on the ground at the same time. Single-leg exercises mimic what sports demand more than bilateral movements.

 

• Wrapping Up

For those starting out in the weight room, keep it simple. Athletes can progress for years and years before their program needs to get away from anything more than basic progressive overload. If you’re not sure how to incorporate these principles into your strength and conditioning program, drop by our youth athletic performance class. Class is currently running Tuesdays and Thursday from 3:00 to 4:00 from now until February 22. If anybody is curious about learning more about these principles, I’d highly recommend picking up Mike Boyle’s book, New Functional Training for Sports.

It’s that time of year again. Time to take stock of everything that has happened in the last year and look ahead to the year to come. With this inventory, it is time to set your goals and resolutions. Did you accomplish the goals you set for yourself last year? If you didn’t, you’re not alone.

Why Resolutions Fail:

The most common reason new year’s goals fail is because people treat habits like a light switch, something that can be turned on and off. Habits take weeks or months to solidify, yet somehow, people think those lofty goals set on December 31 can be achieved with a simple flip of the switch. The goals set in a brief spawn of motivation, and without any other system.s in place, will undoubtedly. If you’re relying on will power and being able to “flip the switch” to achieve your goals, you might as well throw in the towel right now.

Why Resolutions Succeed:

• Specificity

“I’m going to workout this year,” is a bad goal. It’s about as unspecific and generic as you can get. It’s the type of goal you would imagine that weird uncle proclaiming as he held up his New Year’s champagne.  “Every Thursday morning I’m going to attend Sandy’s Active Strength class from 8:30 to 9:30,” on the other hand, is specific. It’s clear, it has direction, there’s no ambiguity about it. Make your goal as specific as possible, and the actions steps will be much easier to follow.

• They’re Failure-Proof

Humans respond to incentives. It’s in our nature. So, give yourself external incentives to achieve your goals. In particular, fear of loss has been shown as a greater motivator than potential gain. Intuitively, this makes sense. If you’re being chased by an angry dog, there’s no question you’re going to run as fast as you possibly can. In contrast, if there’s a positive reward at the end of the run, like money, you’re still going to run, but not nearly with as much desperation as the person being chased by the dog. So, one great strategy is to give something away to friend and don’t let them give it back to you unless you achieve your goal. Give your friend $200, and tell them not to give it back unless you go to the gym 3 times this week, and you’ll surely be less apt to skip out.

Another great way to use fear of loss as a motivator is using public accountability to your advantage. Have a goal to gain 10 lbs of muscle this year? Talk an absurd amount of trash to your friends. If you fail to follow up on all the talk, you’ll look really, really stupid, and be really, really embarrassed. Public accountability could also be as simple as having a workout partner. Are you really going to skip out on a session knowing somebody is waiting for you? Some friend you are.

These strategies are your insurance policy to achieving your goal. On the days where motivation is lacking, you need to have systems set in place to ensure you don’t skip on the goals you’ve set. The reality is that without incentives, humans break commitments on an embarrassingly regular basis. If you’re relying on willpower, you’re putting yourself in a difficult position to succeed.

In today’s world, it’s seemingly impossible to go five minutes without somebody somewhere trying to give you nutrition advice. Whether it’s the media quoting the latest fear-mongering message, your personal trainer, or your grandmother, nutrition advice comes from just about anyone and everyone these days. From low carb and ketogenic, to gluten-free, vegetarian diets, and everything in between, it’s so easy to become confused, and have no idea what the best way to eat is. So here I am… giving you more advice about nutrition. But in all seriousness.. I’m trying to find my way through the ocean of endless nutrition advice just like you. These ideas do not contradict any diet method, but instead act to improve or fine tune whatever diet you are currently following.

“The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“An amateur marries methods and experiments with principles. The expert marries principles and experiments with methods.”

-Anthony Donskov – Donskov Strength and Conditioning

In my experience the key to a successful diet has never been based on a specific protocol, but rather based on principles that are simple, and sensible. Rarely if ever do I get caught up in counting macronutrient ratios, weighing food on a scale, or really anything that is too complex or time consuming. The more complex and the more variables you add to your diet, the more difficult it will be to stick to. This is a big reason why simplicity is essential. I would estimate I follow these “rules” roughly 90% of them time. There is a place for any sweet treat or indulgence in moderation. Don’t view these are strict rules, view them as fluid guidelines which should be tweaked and exchanged for based on your personal experience.

 

Principle #1: Eat a lot of vegetables

This should come as no real shock. If there’s one thing just about everyone agrees on, it’s that we should eat more vegetables. Plants are incredible creatures, and quite frankly, the best biochemists on the planet. They have managed to convert sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into fixated organic molecules that the entire animal kingdom (directly or indirectly) uses as fuel. Vegetables provide us with the necessary vitamins, minerals, fiber blah blah blah you all know this. Consuming more veggies is easier said than done. One strategy that I have used to ensure that I was ingesting enough vegetables per day was to keep track of how many servings I ate. Actually tracking this made me realize that although I thought was getting plenty, I was really only getting a few servings per day. This made it very easy to see why maybe I didn’t feel as good as I should have, or why my digestion was a bit off. Another key for ensuring high vegetable intake has been investing in a local CSA (community supported agriculture). Each week during the warmer half of the year we receive a large basket of vegetables. Yes, it is much more expensive than buying them at the grocery store. But, we know exactly where it all comes from, and we are supporting the local farming community. In fact, I developed a great relationship with the farmer, and he still lets me come and pick kale and spinach from his gardens as I please even though the CSA season has ended. (It’s December and I still go and get kale). Actually, the colder it gets, the sweeter the leafy greens get.

On top of that, eating a lot of vegetables will motivate you to eat well in all areas of your diet. If you had 2 eggs and spinach sauteed in olive oil for breakfast, you will be more hesitant to pursue fast food or the vending machine come lunchtime.

 

Principle #2: Awareness

The first step to fixing any problem is to first become aware of it. Nutrition is no different. Do you think you generally eat a healthy diet? How do you measure or evaluate this? I’m not suggesting you weigh everything you eat on a scale. Being aware of your intake can be as simple as judging how your body feels after eating specific foods. You know your body best, and by taking notice of how you feel when ingesting certain foods will give you a better idea of what diet suits you best than anybody else. To take this one step further, you could take pictures of all of your meals for a day, a few days, or a week. Then, you can really look at your food intake from a new perspective. You could find that you eat a lot more sugar than you thought you did, or that you’re lacking in quality protein. (This tip is taken from the 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss). Regardless of what actions you take, the first step to improving your diet is to first be aware of where you’re actually starting at.

 

Principle #3: Proper planning

Failing to plan is planning to fail. In other words, why are you buying oreos and muffins at the grocery store? You know there will be a time in the week when you will be tempted to eat them. Do not rely on your willpower to get you through these situations. By keeping the foods that are not part of your diet out of your accessibility, it will be significantly more difficult to break whatever guidelines you set for yourself. So, if there’s an opened bag of potato chips lying on your counter somewhere, and you have no intention of eating it, you should just throw it away now. Don’t put yourself in situations where you will need to resist temptation.

The other side of proper planning involves planning and preparing your meals ahead of time. For me, creating a meal plan for the week, and going to the grocery store and sticking to that plan has been key, as well as packing a lunch from home. This has stopped the inevitable gas station or fast food runs when time is short. Whatever organization and planning methods work best for you, it’s important to implement them and stick to them. This does not need to be time consuming. In fact, it likely saves time in the long run. 1 trip to the grocery store get dinners for the week will use up less time than needing to go pick up dinner every night.

That’s it. Whatever diet plan you follow or adhere to, if you adhere to one at all, these are simple principles that can improve anyone’s nutrition. Do not add unnecessary complexity when it is not required. Just adding one of these principles and implementing it into your life can make a big difference. Once again, as stated earlier, use these ideas as nothing more than guidelines or suggestions. Pick and choose what works for you and your lifestyle, and discard what doesn’t. 

Let’s hear from you! What are some strategies or principles that guide your nutrition? Reach out on social media and let us know!

Nearly all of us have been there. You wake up feeling great, the sun is shining and the beautiful December weather is in the air. You notice that one of your pillows fell off the bed while you were sleeping. Naturally, you casually reach down to pick it up (probably with a rounded back), and… ugh. You tweak your low back. You may know this story all too well. And if you’re feeling tight in your lower back, you are surely not alone. A 2009 study in Archives of Internal Medicine estimated that nearly 80% of Americans will experience low back pain at some point in their lives.

The most common postural fault that I witness every day in athletes of varying endeavors is known as Lower Cross Syndrome. Lower cross syndrome is where our hip flexors and low back extensors become increasingly tight, and glutes, hamstrings, and abdominals become increasingly weak. To compensate for these imbalances, your pelvis tilts anteriorly, which creates excessive spinal curvature, also known as hyperlordosis. This syndrome is less formally known as “Donald Duck butt,” due to the appearance of the person’s butt sticking out like Donald Duck. If you think about the lifestyles we lead, this makes perfect sense. We sit at a desk all day, drive our car with our hips in a flexed position, and then go play sports and do exercises that are predominantly performed with our hips in flexion. It is no wonder then, that we are unable to get out of this hip-flexed position when we exercise. Today’s post will focus on strengthening the hip extensors, but it is important to remember that they are just one piece of the puzzle in correcting this fault.

Due to excessive hip flexion, many people do not have the ability properly extend their hips at all. Their bodies are not able to distinguish between extension in the low back (lumbar extension), and extension through the hips. For example, one exercise that we commonly perform here is the stability ball hamstring curl. The goal with this exercise is to get the hamstrings, which are typically weak, to properly extend the hips. What do we mean by this? Well, the hamstrings, comprising of 3 muscles, (biceps femoris, semitendinosus, and semimembranosus) have 2 major functions:

1. Flex the knee (knee flexion) – this one is most commonly seen in traditional hamstring training.
2. Extend the hips (hip extension)- this is the key that is often overlooked. If we can simultaneously get into maximal knee flexion AND maximal hip extension, the hamstring will be in its fully shortened position.  

   

However, when many people perform this exercise the extension does not come from the glutes and hamstrings. It comes from low back muscles that are already strong, particularly the quadratus lumborum (QL), which extends the lumbar spine, NOT the hips. In other words, the lumbar extensors are working in place of the hip extensors. Hamstring curls are a good example of this, but it is also very common at the top of deadlifts and squats, and essentially any exercise where hip extension is a part of the movement.

Donnie Thompson, the first person to hit a powerlifting total of 3,000 lbs, has called the QL, “an angry troll on your back.” Couldn’t have said it better myself. Our QL’s are, to be blunt, way too strong for our own good. Our QL works hard all day, performing actions that should be done by our glutes and hamstrings. Over countless reps day after day it should be a no surprise that this muscle becomes inflamed, causing low back pain.

If you’ve ever taken a class here at Fit 2 Excel, you’re probably sick of us telling you to get into a pelvic tilt. What this means is to literally posteriorly tilt your pelvis and remove the curvature in your lumbar spine. When you can posteriorly tilt your pelvis, you put your QL into a position where it is very weak, so that the extension has to come from the hips, which will be primarily performed by the glutes and hamstrings. In nearly every exercise, from core exercises, to deadlifts, to push-ups, the pelvic tilt is where you should start every movement. In fact, I will take this one step further and propose that we should try to walk around in a pelvic tilt as much as you possibly can. If you can work out with good spinal mechanics for 1 hour, that’s great, but what about the other 23 hours? If you’re still sitting most of the day and moving around with your pelvis tilted anteriorly and thus your low back excessively arched, then long term change will likely not occur.

So, your call to action, is to, starting today, spend 5 extra minutes in that pelvic tilt. Turn off the lumbar extensors and turn on the hip extensors. As time goes by, gradually increase the amount of time. Ultimately, long term change only occurs with long term lifestyle and behavior change.

We’re always open to questions, comments, feedback, and suggestions. Reach out on social media, or if you would like to personally reach me you can email me at [email protected].

 

Works Cited

Boyle, Michael. New Functional Training for Sports. Human Kinetics, 2016.

“Donald Duck.” Disney Clips, Walt Disney.

Ferriss, Timothy. “Gymnast Strong.” Tools of Titans: the Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.

Freburger, J K, and T S Carey. “The Rising Prevalence of Chronic Low Back Pain.” Archives of Internal Medicine, vol. 169, no. 3, 9 Feb. 2009.

Human Kinetics. “Lower Cross Syndrome.” Muscleimbalancesyndromes.com, Muscle Imbalance Syndromes, 2010.

“Quadratus Lumborum.” Ken Hub, Ken Hub.