Seminars, Workshop, and Class Information

Roberto Parker, MS, CSCS, FDN, MTA, USWA, CHEK2

The body is a 3 dimensional design that moves and functions in 3 planes of motion:

• Sagittal plane-linear motions
• Frontal plane-lateral sideway motions
• Transverse plane-rotational motions

What are the most popular lifts conducted in school weight rooms and health club gyms?

In high school and university weight rooms the most popular lifts are bench press, squat, power cleans, and push press. These are more popularly known as the big 4.

In the majority of health clubs where is there less emphasis on sports performance and more on vanity, the most popular lifts are bench press, arm curls, lat pulldowns, and tricep extensions.

What is the common denominator among all of the aforementioned lifting exercises? They are all linear sagittal plane movements that focus building and strengthening the power thruster muscles consisting of the glutes, pectorals, latissimus, trapezius, quadriceps, arms, and hamstrings. The power thrusters are important for performing heavy work loads and certain athletic endeavors, however, the body also has muscles that function as stabilizers, neutralizers, and steering mechanisms for joints and lager muscle groups.

Whenever I write these article and blogs I normally will reflect back on my 3 decades of personal and professional experience in training performance athletes, men, women, and kids from all backgrounds. What I have often notice is that to many people are extremely weak in the middle portions of the body consisting of the midsection, middle/upper back, hips, and buttocks areas. Often times I will train a high performance athlete who can squat a building on his back, however, he struggles to execute a 1 legged pistol squat. Another example is a an active man or woman over the age of 30 who has chronic back or knee pain.

Over the years in working with these types of individuals I began to wonder why is it that a number of the individuals that I train and/or coach are very strong with conventional weightlifting but they cannot hold their own bodyweight in a plank position or performing a pushup on a stability ball without collapsing within 2 seconds of attempting the movement?

The midsection abdominal area plays a role in stabilization of the spine and contributes to hip stability and balance, however, in order to strengthen the steering mechanism components of the lower body it begins with the Hips. The functional importance of the hips play a huge role in knee and ankle stability along with spinal stability. Functional training of the hips engages the muscles of the femur that are responsible for internal rotation, external rotation, abduction( lateral movement of the femur away form the body’s midline), adduction( movement toward the body’s midline), flexion, and extension. Going back to the power thrusters vs. the steering muscles: squats, power cleans, and push press( sagittal plane) will strengthen the leg/hip thrusters which consists of flexion and extension, but they have very minimal impact on the steering components( frontal/transverse plane) of the leg which consists of abduction, adduction, and external/internal rotation of the legs. Once again the body functions in a 3 dimensional pattern and if 1 or 2 of these dimensions are continually compromised, performance will diminish and injury potential will significantly increase in the back, hip, knee, and/or ankle areas.

Posture

It all begins with good posture. When everything is aligned correctly from head to toe the potential of injury, chronic pain, immobility, or compromised performance is significantly minimized. Within a positive postural environment when the body is placed under a load from running, jumping, lifting, striking, and/or falling, the majority of the load forces are dissipated into the ground as opposed to a negative postural environment in which the brunt of the load travels to the joints of the body( not good!).

Illustrative example of good posture:

What happens within a bad postural environment? The body is one huge network that has innate compensatory survival instincts to keep us alive and functioning even when tissues are out of balance. That being said, if tissues are chronically out of balanced with no functional attempts to correct the problem, major pain, injury, and a state of disease can work its way into the tissues of body.

When your car is out of alignment it still runs, however, there is decrease in fuel efficiency, more wear on the tires, the engine works harder and becomes overloaded, pressure hoses wear out faster, and the car just does not run smoothly as it should. When the body is working under a chronic out of alignment type of load there a number debilitating maladies that will happen similar to a misaligned automobile. Converse to the good posture illustration, with bad posture much of the external force loads are absorbed by the joints of body which can cause extreme of amounts of wear and tear on the joints( tendonitis, cartilage deterioration, nerve impingement, ligament damage, muscle tears…

Bad Posture illustration:

Notice in the bad posture illustration how spine has a very pronounced curvature along with a protruding belly in the front, this is termed hyperlordosis. In the second bad posture illustration the left hip is hiked up higher than the right hip, termed lateral pelvic tilt. Here a few maladies that can occur from hyperlordosis or pelvic tilt:

• Pronation( inward rotation) of knees
• Shortened leg length
• Pronation of the ankles
• Flat feet
• Weakened gluteus maximus and other gluteal muscles
• Over tight hamstrings
• Over tight spinal muscles
• Shoulder shift and tilt
• Head shift and tilt
• Weakened midsection

The hips can be off center by only a fraction and if it is not functionally corrected before it becomes a chronic issue it will have negative effects on performance and overall health.

Anatomy of the Hips:

Major Contributors to Hip Function …. See spreadsheet graph

• Illiopsoas ( hip flexor) is a very powefulr hip flexor( thruster muscle) in the sagittal plane.

• Gluteus Maximus( buttocks) is a big time muscle thruster responsible for hip extension( sagittal plane).
• Biceps Femoris is a lower leg(hamstring) power thruster muscle that also assists with hip extension and is major component of knee flexion(sagittal plane).
• Lateral Hip Flexors consists of the gluteus medius. Its role is hip stability in the frontal and transverse planes. The lateral hip flexors contributes to steering the femur inwardly while its main job to thrust the femur laterally( sideways) from the body’s midline.
• Adductor Muscle Group adducts( inwardly) the femur toward the body’s midline( power) and internally rotates( steering) the femur towards the midline( frontal/transverse plan).
• Piriformis is deep hip muscle that is primarily a steering wheel for the femur( transverse/frontal planes)

Lower Cross Syndrome

According to Vladimir Yanda( holistic muscle therapist) many of the maladies that afflict the hip, knee, foot, and back areas emanates from the illipsoas muscle group. Notice in the below illustration how the illiopsoas ( A) has a predisposition to shorten and tighten, opposite of the illiopsoas is the gluteus maximus (B) which is predisposed to lengthen and weaken.

Muscles that have a propensity to tighten and shorten are termed “tonic” muscles. Opposing the tonic muscles are “phasic” muscles which have a propensity to lengthen

and weaken. Tonic and phasic muscles must be work in concert with one another to create a healthy balance environment for the musculo-skeletal system to maximally function.

When the System is out balance Mr. Yanda termed the condition as The Lower Cross Syndrome.

Listing of the Tonic/Phasic muscles:

Tonic: illiopsoas, adductor muscle groups, piriformis, biceps femoris

Phasic: gluteal muscle groups, rectus abdominus,

The illiopsoas and gluteus maximus are working in opposition to provide balance to the hip area.

Typically when they are out of balance the illiopsoas over powers the gluteus maximus causing the hip pelvis area to anterior ( forward) tilt. If anterior tilt is not corrected it will cause a cascade of negative events:

• Low back pain due anterior pelvis that places an overload on the lumbar( low back) spine.
• Stretched and weakened Gluteus Maximus. As the pelvis tilts forward the gluteus maximus is less active and less engaged in powerful movements.
• Oblique hip tilt loads and moves to one side( right or left) of the pelvis, often at an oblique angle which adversely effects leg length, lumbar spine area, and the height of the pelvic structure.
• Weakened midsection, due to the anterior hip tilt the fibers of the rectus abdominis are overly stretched and weakened and if the pelvis is tilted at an oblique angle the fibers of internal/external obliques are overly stretched.
• Knee Pronation (knock knees) is quite often caused by anterior hip tilt which can also become problematic to the foot and ankle areas of the lower leg.

Abnormalities from a Lower Cross Syndrome( see illustration):

Practical Applications:

Remember, the body is a network of that has a series of communication between muscle nerve, tendon, ligament, and organ tissues.. The prime directive is survival even if the body must compromise optimal performance and comfort levels.

To put in simplistic terms the muscles of the trunk feed into the hips, muscles of the hips feed into legs, muscles of the legs feed into the knee, foot, and ankle areas.

• Constant foot pain? Evaluate the hips.
• Knee complications? Evaluate the hips
• One leg is shorter than the other and it effects my gait? Evaluate the hips
• I have constant low back pain? Evaluate the hips
• Can’t get my midsection stronger? Evaluate the hips
• Chronic sprained ankles? Evaluate the hips
• Cannot improve my athletic speed and jump skills? Evaluate the hips
• Have a difficult time properly performing a barbell squat? Evaluate the hips.

Be advised there are other factor contributing to the above complications. We could go further upstream to the head and neck areas (forward head posture, overly protracted shoulders, weak scapula retractors..) to further evaluate, however, typically it begins in the relationship of the gluteus maximus to the hip flexors. In future articles we will investigate the affect of the neck and shoulder areas in relationship to back, hips, and leg areas.

Hip Strength/Mobility Exercises

Go to this link to view gallery:

http://istworkshops.webs.com/apps/photos/album?albumid=15825297

There are a number of times in which I will spend the first 30-40 minutes of a one hour session focusing on what I term “stretching/strengthening” exercises and drills. Recall what I stated earlier in this article, so many individuals are tight in the middle portion of there bodies, more specifically their hip area. Over the years I have emphasized a good portion of a training session to mobilize the hip area of many students/athletes/clients and what I have noticed is a dramatic improvement in their range of motion in executing weighted squats, lunges, jumps, speed drills, agility, kick boxing, etc…

In fact I had a client state to me on day that he felt so “looser and stronger” in his hips, legs, and back after spending 30 minutes of performing mobilization drills.

Improve Athletic Performance.

I can’t tell you the number of young athletes that I have trained( middle school-college) who are so stiff and tight in their legs and hip areas and have a difficult time with simple movements such as body weight lunges, body weight squats, and quadruped planks. A number of the same middle school, high school, and college athletes are doing heavy squats, power cleans, push presses, and deadlifts at their respective school weight rooms, yet some of them cannot even body weight squat without losing their balance or breaking form! Not a good plan. I highly encourage coaches, PE teachers, and parents to emphasize the fundamentals of body weight movement patterns, and mobility drills before applying maximal weight to young athletes.

I am by no means discouraging weightlifting drills, in fact I include them in my training programs for those athletes that are functionally ready to properly execute them. As trainers, teachers, and coaches we need to functionally screen these young athletes prior to advancing them to intensive weightlifting exercises.

Much of the issues that I see with young athletes is that there a bound up in the hip areas which as previously illustrated compromises the hip, knee, ankle, and foot areas relative to power, speed, and balance movements.

Improving hip strength and mobility will pay huge dividends in the following areas of:

• Weightlifting
• Speed
• Quickness
• Reducing injury potential
• Jump skills
• Flexibility
• Agility
• Confidence

Improve Fitness Potential:

After age 30-40 the body slows down and stiffens up…right? Not if you take care of your body and incorporate the correct type of exercise program. Often I work with 30-40 some things and there biggest concern is losing weight and desiring to keep that 20 year old looking physique from back in the day. My counsel to them is to improve your health first and foremost and that includes the proper balance of nutrition, rest, stress management, some supplements, and of course exercise. For the sake of this article lets direct our focus on the health of the middle portion of the body. There must be a proper balance of stretching the muscles that are overly tight( hip flexors) and strengthening the muscles that are overly weak( gluteal muscles and midsection). When there is balance it creates a healthy environment that amounts to:

• Healthier back
• Healthier knees
• Healthier spine
• Better posture
• Ability to physically move from point A to point B with minimum or no pain
• More energy and vitality
• Increased confidence

Recommendations:

Much of the what Yanda explains in relationship to the Lower Cross Syndrome stems from our lifestyle of sitting down 8-12 hours/day. Sitting for extended periods of time overloads and hyper-tightens the hip flexor muscles which is the main culprit contributing to the Lower Cross Syndrome. Sitting in front of an electronic device has become the number work station in our industrialized society. My recommendation to you is leave your station( if possible) every 30-60 minutes and walk around, Do a few body weight lunges, squats, stair climbs, pushups. Why pushups? Just for the health of it!

Think about this, what if you did 5 body weight squats and 2 pushups every 60 minutes during an eight work hour day?

That amounts to 40 squats and 16 pushups per day, multiply that by 5 days/week, that would amount to 200 squats/week and 80 pushups/week.

In addition, take about 5-10 minutes/day to perform specific exercises to mobilize and strengthen the hips( stretching, strengthening, bungii cords, ankle weights, kettlebells, swiss balls, and dumbbells).

You will notice a huge difference in your energy level and certainly in the health of your hip and spinal regions.

  Mobilize and Strengthen those Hips!

Related Web Sites and References:

http://www.muscleimbalancesyndromes.com/2012/09/24/hip-exercises-beneficial-for-anterior-knee-pain/

http://www.muscleimbalancesyndromes.com/2012/05/08/treating-hamstring-cramps-through-the-hips-functional-or-structural-approach/

http://www.muscleimbalancesyndromes.com/2012/01/23/lower-crossed-syndrome-type-a-vs-type-b-whats-the-difference/

http://www.muscleimbalancesyndromes.com/2012/04/10/evidence-for-dns-diaphragmatic-dysfunction-in-low-back-pain-patients/

http://www.jandaapproach.com/the-janda-approach/philosophy/

Innovative Sports Training offers physical, nutritional speed, and strength evaluations for all ages.

Contact Roberto Parker:

Phone Number, 816-405-7703

e-mail: [email protected]

Websites:

• ISTfastandurious.webs.com
• ISTworkshops.webs.com
• Metabolicprimal.webs.com

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