Core Training

I was recently asked by Mens Health magazine to put together some information for an article about core training. As is often the case with these kind of requests they are a little unsure what shape the article will take - as such I cobbled together my current (because they do change!) thoughts on the core – what it does – and how to train it. The Mens Health piece ended up being shorter than planned and more of a sample workout – you can see the article here.

However, I thought it would be worthwhile publishing the information I had put together for them.

The core - depending on who you listen to – can include everything from your ‘6 pack’ mucle (rectus abdominus) through to your gluteals (butt) and even your diaphragm. Training it effectively will require understanding that its more than doing crunches.



 

Muscles in the body can be broadly catergorised into ‘tonic’ or ‘phasic’ muscles.

Tonic muscles have a job of maintaining tone and are also known as postural muscles or stabilisers.

Phasic muscles - as the name suggests - provide movement.

[caption id="attachment_101" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Avoid dysfunction, imbalance and injury by not mixing up your Dachshunds with your Huskies. Or just get your stabilisers to stabilise.[/caption]

 

Maintaining optimal functionality requires us to use the right muscles,  at the right time, for the right job.  When we have large global (phasic) muscles doing the job of smaller, local (tonic) muscles, the big boys become overly 'tonic' (tight) and the little guys become weak and inactive. Classic example of this is the chronically tight hamstring doing the job of stabilising a pelvis  in a person with a weak core - you can see my post on the relation between hamstrings and core strength here.

The musculature of the ‘core’ falls into the tonic category .  Tonic, or postural muscles have a role of resisting movement rather than providing it. Their job is quite simply to keep you upright, or more specifically keep your ribcage on top of your pelvis.

 

[caption id="attachment_97" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Core stability - natures version of Jenga[/caption]

Understanding the role of the core then makes training it very simple. All we do is understand how many ways our upright, neutral posture can be compromised, and train to provide strength resisting those forces.

What directions can affect or challenge our 'neutrality'?

Flexion (forward bending)

Extension (backward bending, or arching)

Lateral flexion (side bending)

Rotation

Now to effectively train the core we need exercises to provide strength and stability resisting ALL of those directional forces. The most important to consider are the flexion and extension resistant exercises – as they are the most common forces we have to deal with – which of those we bias will depend on the starting posture of the individual.

Good ‘bang for your buck’ exercises for each plane:

Anti-flexion: ‘bird dogs’, prone ‘superman’, glute bridges

Anti extension: dead bugs, roll outs, plank variations.

Anti lateral flexion: Side planks, suitcase carries

Anti-rotation: chopping variations (as a guide - start with half kneeling and progress through tall kneeling, to standing)

 

Most important point to get across with core training, or indeed training any other tonic muscle (rotator cuff etc) is that you do not train them to failure – ever!

[caption id="attachment_98" align="aligncenter" width="105"] Little, often, and always with correct form is the key to core stability[/caption]

 

Crushing a bicep / tricep workout till you can fry an egg on your arm is all well and good – but ever tried doing that and then performing a fine control task with that same arm the next day?

Muscles that we need to maintain posture and prevent injury we do not teach to fail and shut down– think of it as driving without your seatbelt on….

PRI Postural respiration - Cliff notes

PRI stands for Postural Restoration Insitute - a group of very clever folks led by Ron Hruska, working out of the Hruska Clinic in Lincoln Nebraska.  Anyone scanning the internet for training / rehab information will have undoubtably come across writing either by them, quoting them, or at least heavily influenced by them.

I was introduced to the PRI school of thought whilst spending some time at Cressey Performance in December 2013.  I was, quite frankly, pretty taken aback at the dramatic impact some simple breathing drills could have on my hip and shoulder range of motion, and that some niggly SI joint pain I'd had for years had 'magically' vanished. Needless to say - after getting back to the UK I was very keen to get into a bit more detail as to the hows and whys of PRI methodology and signed up for their certification program.

 

Now PRI courses are very anatomy heavy - and very technical in their descriptions of internal kinematics.  Bit my attempt at a cliff note summary is below:

 

Human beings are hard wired to not die.  When we talk about primal patterning - nothing is more 'functional' than staying alive.  This is a key concept of how PRI methodologies work.

[caption id="attachment_90" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Staying alive is important.
And JT opening up his right chest wall helps him do this.[/caption]

The PRI thought process is that we as humans will adopt some postural changes as a result of both internal and external influences.  Internal being the internal anatomical asymmetry we are all born with - larger chest cavity on the right side, thicker diaphragm leaflet on the right, heart and vena cava on the left - making it easier for us to collapse the right chest cavity than the left.  Throw on top of that the right sided world we have created around us - where even the southpaws will generally have to reach for most things with their right hand and you can see why what PRI term the Left AIC Right BC pattern is so frequently adopted

 

[caption id="attachment_91" align="aligncenter" width="194"] Left AIC Pattern.
Credit: Postural Restoration Institute.[/caption]

So if we have settled into a posture like the one above - we have closed down the right mediastinum and created a less than optimal mechanism for respiration.  However - respiration is a pre requisite for life - and we are hard wired to ensure that we can continue to exchange gas no matter what.

Now there lies the rub - a less than optimal respiratory mechanism will require greater assistance from the accessory respiratory muscles (lats, upper traps, legator ecap, scaliness, SCM) and start to create all kinds of associated problems relating to over activity or hyper tonicity in these areas - this list is seemingly endless and ranges from upper trap trigger points through to thoracic outlet syndrome, migraines and anxiety.  But... as we need to breathe...we will use whatever means necessary to do so - and if that means recruiting all these other muscles to do it then so be it - it may screw us up - but at least we're not dead....  However, thats not the while story - now that we have figured out a new way to breathe, our in built survival mechanism will not actually permit movements that it sees as a threat to this new pattern.  So if you are using your neck to breathe - your neck is 'on'  - and don't expect it to be 'off' until you have fixed the pattern - all the stretching in the world won't solve that problem as the neural tension created is (as far as your nervous system is concerned) what is keeping you alive.

Now we know what the problem is then how do we fix it?

PRI non manual techniques are essentially taking the subject to the opposite posture of the one s/he is in (so typically externally rotating the right shoulder and ribcage and internally rotating the left hip) and carrying out controlled, forceful, diaphragmatic breathing in that new posture.  The purpose of this is to 'trick' your nervous system into allowing inhibition of the overactive accessory muscles.  In simple terms convincing yourself that coming out of the adopted posture is no longer a threat....

The list of PRI positional breathing drills is immense and way too long to go into here - but they are all built on that underlying principle of reversing the acquired posture - and learning to breathe there.  Only when you can breathe there can you 'own' the new pattern you are trying to create.

So there it is  - 20+ hours of lectures down to a few paragraphs and a John Travolta picture.  Hope this summary is useful - and I highly recommend checking out the full PRI resources.

 

 

PRI Postural Respiration - Cliff Notes

How Functional is the Overhead Squat?

I am well aware that this post may upset a few people – and whilst upsetting people is not its main aim – I do like to encourage people to challenge ideas, ask questions, and formulate their own opinions rather than blindly follow

 



 

Over the past decade there has been a shift away from the single joint machine based training popularized by Joe Weider in the 80s, and towards ‘functional’ exercise.  I am all for this – preparing people for life outside of the gym  - whether its on the sports field or simply being able to climb the stairs at home without any pain – that is what I’m all about.  However, there is a case to be made for the pendulum having swung too far…

 

[caption id="attachment_81" align="aligncenter" width="224"] Awesome bosu leap brah, let me high five myself in the face[/caption]

A functional exercise by definition must have a function.  As simplistically stupid as that may sound.

The overhead squat is often billed as the ‘king of functional exercise’ and the be all and end all of programming. In many functional gyms.   I would strongly beg to differ on this point.  How many times in your every day life, or even in your sports are you required to hold a load directly overhead and squat to the ground repeatedly, whilst keeping said weight directly over your head?

The overhead squat is a derivative of the snatch – one of the most dynamic and explosive movements in competitive sport.  As well as requiring speed and power, the snatch also requires technical expertise .  The ‘catch’ position of a snatch is, essentially, the bottom of an overhead squat.  For the competitive Olympic lifter – training this movement under load makes a lot of sense – they may have all the speed in the world to get under the bar, but without adequate core stiffness and lower extremity strength they wont be able to get ‘out of the hole’.  If your goal is to perform a loaded snatch, then yes, the OHS will be an important programming concern for you.  Now whether you should be programming the snatch for either yourself or your clients is a while other conversation!

 

[caption id="attachment_82" align="aligncenter" width="236"] Olympic lifter at the bottom of a snatch. note the heels, hips, shoulders, head and the centre of the bar are all directly above one another.[/caption]

The overhead  squat, in my mind, is an excellent assessment tool – it gives an indication of ankle mobility,  hip mobility and stability, core stiffness, thoracic mobility and scapular stability – all important parts of successful and pain free movement.

However – how many people that we assess ace it on every one of those?  Not many…   So how many of those could or indeed should be loaded through this movement pattern?  Even fewer….

 

[caption id="attachment_83" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Well aligned olympic lifter on the left. The guy on the right has neither the ankle, nor hip mobility to be in this position. The bar has to be above his feet or he will fall over - he is going into an excessive lumbar extension, forward head posture and hyper extension of his neck to try to maintain some kind of balance. Note the knees collapsing in due to the excessively wide stance he has had to adopt to get down there, this is also causing inversion at his ankles. We won't even go into whats going on with his shoulders.[/caption]

Heck 90% of the clients I work with (everything from Olympians through weekend warriors, to orthopedic referrals) don’t do any form of overhead lifting. Ever!

Now lets take those small number of  the population who can safely be loaded in an OHS position.  If we remove those who are competitive O – lifters, then what training effects are we going to give to the rest?

Can the person stably support enough weight in the overhead position to get any kind of training effect in their legs and hips?  I doubt it  - not unless the you were looking at higher repetition sets, however, in a high rep set what is going to fatigue first - the upper back or the legs?  When the upper back and the posterior cuff start to give out, and you're plugging away trying to get something out of it for your legs, what takes over?  Your lumbar extensors and the passive retrains in your shoulders - so essentially you promote hyper lordosis and hang out on the ligamentous structures of your shoulders - nice.

At best you may build in some upper back hypertrophy – given the time under tension required through the thoracic extensors. But if thats really your goal there are far safer ways to achieve it.

If I want to train an average Joe or Jane to get stronger, so they can better function in the outside world – surely deadlift variations, anterior loaded squat patterns, and loaded carries have far more relevance…

I’m fairly sure that when I changed my dishwasher the other day I pulled and lifted the old one over the step with it in front of me – I did not hold it above my head and repeatedly squat up and down with it.

If we think through the activities and movement patterns in most peoples daily lives, or indeed within competitive sports, the deadlift, and its derivations are infinitely more ‘fucntional’ than the overhead squat.

This is not to say the overhead squat is an entirely redundant movement.  Far from it.  as mentioned above I find it an excellent assessment tool, a very quick and easy way to get a snapshot of an individuals gross movement patterns.  I also think it has a place as a mobility drill, and I often use it as part of my clients dynamic warm ups.  It has a nice 'feel' for the client getting in and out of the position with stability, and is a great prep for doing some loaded front squats.    However,  just because something is a useful mobility tool does not mean we stick 60% of their bodyweight on a bar and ask them to do it to failure!

As Gray Cook  - creator of the FMS system so simply put it "Train the deadlift, maintain the squat"

Stretch What's Tight.....?

That’s what we’re all taught in PT school right?  Strengthen what is weak and stretch what is tight…  Or in todays parlance – mobilize and stabilize.

 

Is it that simple though?  How many clients do you work with who had a tight hamstring, you stretched it and fixed the problem…  Not just got some transient improvement for a couple of hours, but genuinely addressed the tightness?



We should be a bit smarter than that by now.  The question what is tight is not enough – we need to be asking why its tight.

 

There are a number of reasons a muscle can ‘feel tight’ – ranging from genuine tissue length restrictions through to protective tension and alignment issues.

 

So how do we know what it is? We do assessments!

As ‘The Injury Whisperer’  Dean Somerset says: “If you aren’t assessing you’re just guessing.”

Try this simple assessment and correction for the any of your male general fitness clients who are suffering from the ‘tight hamstring’ epidemic:

 

Take a look at the line of their shorts from the side.  If you note a significant downslope on the waistband from back to front they are likely to be sitting in an anterior pelvic tilt (a very common posture for a desk-bound male).

 

[caption id="attachment_75" align="alignnone" width="300"] Anterior pelvic tilt - or 'lower body cross syndrome'[/caption]

Have them perform an active straight leg raise – take a note of where they get to.

 

[caption id="attachment_76" align="alignnone" width="300"] Active straight leg raise to assess hip flexion[/caption]

Then have them perform a maximal effort front plank with a neutral pelvis keep in mind if they are starting from a position of anterior tilt they will need to aggressively fire their glutes to back to neutral – in fact it would do no harm for these folks to be cued slightly into a posterior tilt (flat back).  Have them take 6-8 deep diaphragmatic breaths with a forceful exhalation – if it’s a genuine max effort plank this will be enough to have most people shaking like the proverbial dog on a comfort break.

Next  - re test the active straight leg raise and see if they perform any better…

 

Now if they perform better on the re-test you have given the person increased range through hip flexion.

 

But hang on -  you haven’t stretched their tight hamstring!

 

If we get a positive result with this correction – then the restriction was as a result of protective tension – and we have simply given the client a platform allowing the hamstring to ‘switch off’ and permit a movement that was previously considered as threatening.

 

Womens Health

Those of you who know me, and my training philosophy, will know that the whole '10 week challenge' body transformation thing is about as far removed from what I practise as it is possible to be.

I don't claim to be a 'diet guy' or to be the one to turn to when prepping for photo shoots. I train my clients and athletes to get stronger, perform better, move more efficiently, avoid and recover from injury.

However, this time last year I took on a project for Womens Health Magazine that was exactly that.  Take a 20 something journalist still slightly living the student lifestyle, and see what we can do with her in a 10 week training cycle.   We didn't do anything mind blowing - we worked on her alignment and mobility, then once her movements were cleaned up she trained to get stronger in some basic lifts whilst cutting out the junk from her diet.   She trained hard,  lifting 4 days per week with an active recovery low intensity 'fuel burning' session thrown in.  The diet was sensible, 90% 'clean' leaving room for a few treats and cheats.

 



The reason I am re visiting this subject now is that I have been updating a training program this morning for a colleague of this 20 something journalist.  Some 12 months on from the original project.  The program is again focussing on movement quality over quantity, and improving athleticism and performance.   It is not about quick fixes, fad diets and 'transformations'.

Training for improved performance gives specific, measurable results and sustainable benefits to quality of life.  There is a reason why 12 months on we're still going.....

Read the full article here

 

Goal Setting Part 2 - Supercharge your Goals

Further to my post on SMART goal setting,  I wanted to follow up on how to really make your goals ‘stick’….

 

What makes a goal far more likely to be achieved is attaching an emotional quantity to it.  A SMART goal may be ‘I want to lose 2 inches off my waist by my summer holiday’.  Yes it is specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound… but what is to stop this trainee falling off the wagon?

 

[caption id="attachment_61" align="alignnone" width="300"] Supercharge your new year resolution[/caption]

We can write the target down, put it on the top of their training program, even cover their work station with those annoying yellow stickies.  But…  once the New Year, new you, spring into summer or whatever other horrifically unimaginative gym promotion starts to wear off  how do we keep the eyes on the prize?

How about if we ask the question ‘what does achieving this goal mean to you?’

Asking this question brings us to start making statements like:

‘If I add 10kg to my deadlift in 4 months I will be strong enough to compete’

or

‘Losing 2 inches off my waist by my summer holiday will give me more confidence on the beach’

All of a sudden we are attaching significance to what was previously a fairly dry statement.  This goal is now charged with emotional value.  For those of us who deal with clients or athletes on a daily basis this is key.

The numbers alone may well be enough to motivate athletes through yet another grueling winter but our general fitness clients may need a little more.  They may see the value of getting stronger, leaner, or improving athleticism – however – is this enough to get them out of bed at 5.30 on a February morning?  In my experience the real, and tangible effect of hitting the target provides far more of a drive than the target alone.