THOSE AHA MOMENTS...

I love nothing more than when a client has a lightbulb moment.  I live for these moments! Here is one from yesterday:

Client:  “I’m not sure if it was right but when I was carrying my shopping home yesterday I tried to focus on keeping my shoulders drawn down and gently squeezing my arm to my side like we have been doing in the exercise you get me to do.  I noticed that my shoulder that usually aches a lot after my shopping trip was fine yesterday and thought I’d ask if I was doing the right thing?”

Me: “Hell yeah, you were doing the right thing!  That’s what I like to call body awareness, AKA progress!  That is EXACTLY what you should be doing every time you carry anything.”

Client:  “Ah, I thought it must have been right as my shoulder didn’t hurt”.

The scenario ended with a HIGH 5! ☺

When we make our bodies more aware of good movement patterns and enforce it as a habit that is where CHANGE occurs! Those “AHA” moments are way more effective if the client is taught the biomechanics of a movement, along with the FEEL of it.  These movement patterns are then trained and re-inforced in session.  When this translates to their lives and they begin to make connections between WHY we are doing what we are in the gym and how it translates to their lives it is hugely empowering for each individual.  It doesn’t always make sense when explained during sessions until the connection is made outside of the gym through body awareness. 

I always try and train my clients for LIFE, to prepare them for whatever life throws at them and in order for them to achieve functional and pain free lives.  Everything we do in-session has a purpose and a direct translation to their necessary function through life, whether it be through sport; certain hobbies; achieving basic pain free functional movement patterns or just being ready for the unpredictable!

FLEXED LUMBAR SPINE OR NEUTRAL PELVIS?

Picture 1 = Anterior Pelvic Tilt

Picture 2 = Neutral Pelvis

I have my finger on my Anterior Superior Iliac Spine (ASIS/most antierior bony prominence at the front of your pelvic bone) & my thumb on my Posterior Superior Iliac Spine (PSIS/bony prominence at back of pelvis, usually where your dimple is), when these two points are level, you are in a neutral pelvic position.

I wanted to bring attention to the fact that there is a difference between causing a flexed position in the lumbar spine (lower back) and creating a neutral position at the pelvis. When your pelvis is in a neutral position, it doesn't necessarily mean that your lumbar spine is going to be in a flexed position.

I say this because I often find that people who have a history of lumbar disc bulges or herniations seem to perceive a neutral pelvic position as lumbar flexion.  They also tend to be afraid of moving their pelvis out of an anterior tilt as they use it as a protective mechanism to avoid lumbar flexion.  

The main issue I have with this is that although a flexed lumbar spine (particularly under load) causes disc compression, so does an excessive anterior pelvic tilt, not only does this alter the pressure at the discs but it also causes Sacroiliac Joint (SIJ) compression & encourages core instability.  The majority of people who have excessive anterior pelvic tilts also have dysfunctional glutes (glute activation decompresses the SIJ). One of the roles of your glutes is to create a posterior tilt of the pelvis.  If you never let your pelvis move out of anterior tilt then you are disabling your glutes (compare the above two pictures again and tell me which one can you see more glutes in) and you can probably add obliques; abdominals; TvA to that dysfunctional list too. You can tell by the creases of my top that in the first picture on the left my abs are stretched and elongated and in the picture on the right, they are contracted. Stretched abs = unprotected and compressed lower back!

Your body will find stability where it can if it is lacking and this can be in the form of SIJ compression due to dysfunction in your core musculature.   Make sure you aren't forcing yourself into anterior tilt, whether under load (lifting or pushing weight) or not but working on pelvic stability instead so you know where neutral is.

Don't feed a habit...CHANGE a habit!

MYTH BUSTING!

There are two very common myths that people have been led to believe and I have them come up repeatedly in my work, I'd like to draw attention to them and ask that you please please please think before taking these myths on board.

Number 1 Myth:  "I need to do situps to strengthen my core"

What I would say to this:  No offence to anyone who has ever used this phrase but it is Balderdash!  

Number 2 Myth:  "I need to use a weightbelt to support my lower back"

What I would say to this:  Please see Balderdash comment above!

Now these are extremely common and easy mistakes to make as these days there is so much access to information out there that it is hard to sieve through the crap and find the honest truth. And I hate to say it but there are a lot of trainers out there who have very basic knowledge and either haven't been exposed to or sought out the truths as yet or don't have the understanding.

There are also issues of jumping onboard the "things that are cool" train and accessorising the crap out of yourself in order to look the part.  Last time I checked, all I needed to train was myself, just a body, maybe some clothes, leave the shoes at home though! 

Maybe a mate of yours trains in a belt and raves on about how "secure & strong" his back feels when he's lifting.  So you're like "cool dude, mind if I try?", then you're like "wow, I can lift more with this belt on and everything feels so tight".  Or maybe your trainer encourages you to wear one as they think it will protect your back.  If any of these scenarios ring true please please please stop and ask yourself WHY???!!!  

This important little 3 letter word has somehow become lost in society.  No one seems to turn around anymore and challenge what they are being told.  Everyone just accepts, particularly if it is coming from someone in authority or if it is someone you should be seen to trust.  Go out there and find the truth for yourself and then challenge it!

The thing with the situps is that your Rectus Abdominus (six pack muscle) is not your core! It does not protect your lower back and if anything can actually make things worse if you overuse your Abs and cause dysfunction in your system.  You can also do harm if you already have core dysfunction (which is highly likely if you have or have had lower back pain) and are doing multiple situps as your back will not be protected throughout the movement.

Your deep core muscles comprise of your Diaphragm (hence why I put so much emphasis on breathing when it comes to core function); Pelvic floor; Transversus Abdominus (TvA); Multifidus & to a degree your Internal Obliques as well.  Your Rectus Abdominus is a global muscle and is not designed to be a stabiliser.  The above mentioned muscles have to work in synergy (when you have a functional inner unit) to control Intra Abdominal Pressure (IAP) on lifting.  If any of them are out of sync and being lazy or even being overkeen and have become overactive then it blows out the whole system.

Weightbelts prevent you from being able to access your breath properly (creating dysfunction) and last time I checked you were born with a weightbelt, it's called your TvA ;-)...try using it!

If you'd like to know the secret to a stable lower back and a better functioning unit, let me tell you...FUNCTIONAL BREATHING! :-)  It's that simple, well initially anyway, that is where you start...no point in trying all these fancy core exercises or thinking 100 situps a day will save your back.  Start with breathing please!  Once again, please check my stability exercises library for the intro to breathing, My Youtube Channel has my video on it as well and you can refer to my facebook page for an awesome interview link on breathing and pelvic floor.

For further reading on why I hate the weight belt and how it is making your back WEAKER & DYSFUNCTIONAL, yes, I said WEAKER, please look back through my blogs for my blog post on the weight belt and all will be revealed in more detail!

Please feel free to leave a comment below if you can tell me the benefits of wearing a weightbelt. Same goes for the situps.  I'm very interested to know what people's views are or what they have been told.

THINK TWICE BEFORE YOU BELT UP!

More often than not I see loads of guys and girls donning the weight belt during lifting sessions, regardless of whether it is a heavy strength session or a metcon that is being carried out.  

When did the weight belt trend begin and what knowledge have we gained since then?  

Do you even know WHY you are wearing a belt if you are someone who puts one on habitually before each session?  

I have tried to breakdown an article by Paul Chek on the subject to highlight the most important points made.  I strongly advise anyone with an interest in prolonging their low back health or anyone currently using weight belts regularly to read the full article here.

Weight belts have been known to be used as far back as the early 1900's, with no clear reasoning behind the reason for their use.  It may have been in line with medical trends back then to use corsets as a treatment for scoliosis and back pain?

These days there has been much research into the area of lower back stabilisation and low back pain resulting in a much more in depth understanding of the stabilising system of the spine.

Cue The Inner Unit & The Outer Unit…

The Inner Unit consists of A)  Transversus Abdominis  (TVA) & posterior fibres of Obliquus Internus, B) Diaphragm, C) Deep Multifidus, D)  Pelvic Floor Musculature.

These muscles play a vital role in lower back stabilisation!  A study carried out in 1999 concluded that in people without back pain, the TVA fired 30 milliseconds (ms) prior to shoulder movements and 110 ms prior to leg movements.  During each variation of movements performed within the study there was still synergistic (muscles working together to perform a movement) recruitment of all inner unit muscles.  It was noted that regardless of movement plane or pattern of the subjects, the TVA muscle appeared relatively consistent in its activation pattern.  Researchers propose that the nondirectional, specific activation of the TVA relates to the dominant role played in providing spinal stiffness.

 "The TVA, in concert with other inner unit muscles (Figure 1), activates to increase stiffness of spinal joints and the sacroiliac joints (6,7,15). Activation of the inner unit provides the necessary stiffness to give the arms and legs a working foundation from which to operate. Failure of the TVA to activate 30-110 ms prior to arm or leg movements respectively has been correlated with back pain and dysfunction (6, 16). The inner unit is part of a system of stabiliser mechanisms, all of which are dependent on the integrated function of all inner unit muscles." - Paul Chek

Couldn't have said it better myself!  

The Outer Unit consists of many muscles such as the External Obliques, Internal Obliques, Erector Spinae, Latissimus Dorsi, Gluteus Maximus, Adductors and Hamstrings working together with the inner unit to achieve co-ordinated movement.

Here is a simplified version of the inner/outer unit systems.  Using a pirate ship’s mast as a human spinal column. While the inner unit muscles are responsible for developing and maintaining segmental stiffness, the bigger muscles, shown here as guy wires, are responsible for creating movement.

The Inner and Outer Units Simplified

The outer unit muscles of the trunk demonstrated here are (A) rectus abdominis, (B) internal and external oblique, (C) erector spinae; the outer unit actually contains other muscles, which have been excluded for simplification. The inner unit, which contains all the muscles demonstrated in Figure 2. is demonstrated here as (D); the multifidus acting as segmental stabilizers for the purpose of controlling joint stiffness. To tighten the guy wires (A-C), which provide gross stabilization of the ship’s mast without synergistic tightening of the segmental stabilizers (D) would obviously result in increased potential to buckle the mast. The mast represents your spine!

"Recruitment of trunk stabilizers via EMG with and without a weight belt has been studied. These studies concluded there was increased recruitment of the erector spinae and rectus abdominis when wearing a belt. Now that you understand the workings of the inner unit, it should be evident that by recruiting the larger, gross stabilizers without proportionate recruitment of the inner unit musculature responsible for regulating joint stiffness, the result could certainly lead to spinal joint dysfunction or exacerbate an existing condition. It is also likely that prolonged use of weight belts will result in coordination problems within the inner unit muscles and among the inner and outer unit systems." - Paul Chek.

Now, all this said, if you are someone who regularly relies on a weight belt and this article opens up your eyes into entering the world of being Back Strong & Beltless.  Please refer to Part 3 of the article where Paul will talk you through the safe and necessary steps to take in order to wean yourself off the belt.  Your current movement patterns will be reliant on your weight belt and getting rid of the belt all of a sudden will no doubt result in injury.  Wean yourself off slowly and carefully and get your internal weight belt working for you instead!  Just as nature intended!  :-)

All references can be found on Paul Chek's full article.

REGRESS TO PROGRESS

To quote Pat Flynn from Chronicles of Strength (love this simple, yet effective way of summing up this whole blog post in 3 small symbols)...

"- = +" :-)

The golden rule in movement:  REGRESS TO PROGRESS!...

For the trainers out there:  please don’t expect your client to “get” movement by handing them a weight they’re not ready for and just expecting them to move correctly by shouting out a few cues to them…it ain’t gonna happen!  

The only thing that happens is they learn bad movement and possibly land up with an injury.  

For the fitness enthusiasts out there: you have to break down movement and work on the weaknesses within a movement pattern in order to progress a movement. Don't just think that practising single leg squats or pistols is going to get you better at doing pistols...it's only gonna get you injured.  There is a reason why you struggle with certain movements, you need to find that reason and work on it!  Maybe your ankles aren't mobile enough; maybe your hips are unstable; maybe you lack good sequencing in your inner unit (core); maybe you have flexility issues in either certain muscles or joints; maybe fear is holding you back; maybe all of the above! :-o  There are a number of possible, likely reasons but you need to find yours.

Just because your mate did loads of hamstring flexibility and went from finding pistols difficult to being able to achieve them, doesn't mean that's going to work for you.  We're all individuals here and you need to treat yourself as one.  And holding a kettlebell out in front of you is not the answer, yeah, you might feel more stable but maybe, just maybe that is because you have core issues and the kettlebell is forcing your body to react to the weight by engaging your core before you descend, but what happens when you try again without the kettlebell?  

I'd suggest ditching the kettlebell and stepping away from the pistol for a while to work on core sequencing...once you've made progression there, find ways to progress.  I'm just using pistols as an example, this applies to anything in life.  And it takes time, you're not gonna fix things overnight.

So please, think before you cause yourself harm.  If I gave you one Golden Rule of advice it would be CHECK YOUR BREATHING!  This is highly important for any form of stability work.  If your'e unsure, my stability exercise page has a great description of how to check your breathing and how to correct it, I have video links on Youtube to help as well & my facebook page has a link to an awesome interview with Dr Perry Nickleston & Julie Wiebe on the pelvic floor & breathing...Check it out!  Core function begins with breathing!

I repeat:  Regress to progress…Perfection before load…Get assessed if you're unsure...

PREVIOUS INJURY IS A BIG PLAYER IN THE MOVEMENT GAME!

One of my clients, who is a keen diver, tells me whenever he swims or dives he usually always gets pretty bad cramping in his right hamstring towards the end of the swim/dive and wandered if there was anything he could do for it.

After a couple of minutes of assessment I had discovered he had a hamstring to quad dysfunction & his hamstrings were compensating for his medial quadricep (Vastus Medialis) predominantly. His VMO muscle (Oblique fibres of the Vastus Medialis that form the teardrop muscle at the knee) was particularly weak and had some noticeable wasting. His quadriceps in general on the Right side were slightly wasted in comparison to the Left.

He then precedes to tell me when he was 15 years old (+-50 years ago) he tore his medial quad & never got treatment on it, there was a noticeable dip in the muscle bulk as well which had been there ever since (a give away for a full tear or a possible partial tear). EUREKA!  

So our findings related back to an ancient injury from decades ago that has manifested as dysfunction in his right side and causing him problems at this time.  He admitted never having issues after the injury healed and kept playing footy for years.

Moral of the story, even though his injury was decades old and he'd adapted to it in a way that enabled him to get away without too much trouble for many years, it eventually comes back to bite you in the ass!  Some cases being worse than others but don't ride on dysfunction for too long as it will always win!  Post injury compensations stay with you for life, unless of course, you seek help to change them!