Spine stability demands the ability to both limit and express movement at the spine. Be able to resist movement under heavy load while maintaining the ability to execute quality movement at the spine.
Split stance exercises at their core should be frontal plane movements at the hip.
When you stand on one leg you have to shift your pelvis over that single-leg base of support otherwise you’d fall over. In a split stance, this provides a massive opportunity to train deep ranges of internal rotation and maximize glute length.
Where we see issues in execution is rooted in still having a bilateral base of support. It’s easy to set up too wide or shift out of the working leg during movements like B-stance RDLs and Bulgarian split squats.
Understanding where these leaks occur will help you troubleshoot common issues and stay ahead of the curve as intensity progresses.
Upper Back Tightness 101
Scapular position is at the heart of rib cage and thoracic spine mobility. Without active intent through the scaps most thoracic spine mobility is just twisting the lumbar spine on the thoracic spine.
This principle doesn’t just apply to unloaded bodyweight drills, it scales in benefit as you begin to deploy deliberate protraction and retraction under load.
Picking upper body push/pull exercises that incorporate scapular movement is not only a great way to improve mobility, but can prove to be useful in growing muscles of the torso and upper extremity.
Ideal weekly programming structure in contact sports isn’t one size fits all. The goal is to position the athlete to perform at their highest level on game day. This will differ across sports, time of season and individual needs.
In contact sport environments, your greatest asset as a coach is adaptability. Adjust the plan when athletes come in feeling the physical toll of competition and accumulated hits.
Use your TEMPO.
High-level movement mechanics matter for troubleshooting, but sometimes that lens makes us overlook the simple variables we can use to get someone into better positions.
• Slower eccentrics give you more time to organize yourself in space.
• Pauses help maintain positions and control the transition phase from eccentric to concentric.
• Isometrics are a great way to reinforce specific positions.
• Slow concentrics have a place for those who tend to rely on momentum-based strategies.
Don’t miss the big picture. Sometimes we can find very simple solutions without digging too deep into the toolbox.
Glue “activation” isn’t a question of whether the muscle is on or off.
It’s a question of whether your nervous system will grand you the ability to transfer force through the lumbar spine, pelvis and femur in a meaningful enough way to express the output of your glutes.
Glute activation boils down to proper coordination, not a specific band or under loaded, over isolated, high sensation low utility circuit.
Head over to the @pre_script YouTube to get the full story.
Weak hip flexors?
When dealing with “hip flexor” issues, we too often start with a super zoomed-in approach. We use specific isolation exercises and try to blame a singular, small muscle for an issue that actually involves the global coordination of several other muscles.
Most of the time, the problem stems from a lack of stability or poor positioning at the pelvis. This isn’t to make anterior tilt out to be a boogeyman, or to say we need hyper-specific stability exercises, but rather to shift our focus toward finding stronger positions at the pelvis and maintaining them under load.
If we can find a better stack between the rib cage and pelvis, keep that under load, and even express some reciprocal motion in exercises like split squats, we are going to solve a lot more problems than we would starting with hyper-focused isolation.
If you want to train hip flexors in isolation, there’s nothing wrong with that, but the same principles still apply: you have to find home base at the pelvis first.
This full case study is live on YouTube.
Tune in to hear how I managed a client’s knee tendinitis issue while navigating their hesitation to do exercises that “look like knee exercises.”
Communication bridges the gap between knowledge, application, and results. There is an art to getting the job done while navigating a client’s predispositions, and that lies within the ability to use your communication tools to sculpt the masterpiece.
Plyometrics can be applied to any program. Just ask two questions:
1. Does this serve the client’s goals?
2. How can it be effectively integrated into the current program?
A weak glute med is often cited as the source of many problems around the hip, back, and even knee, with the standard solution being “just strengthen it.”
The issue is that this fails to address where we actually see problems arise in properly integrating muscle function.
At the hip specifically, if we lack the variability to move through the frontal plane and resist force with the limited base of support needed to do that, the issue isn’t our inability to do a specific color of band for X number of clamshell reps. It’s that we lack the variability or ability to manage force in those ranges to meet the needs of joint function.
Being strong locally never hurts, and being strong globally always helps, but for most common movement issues, we need to unpack where we are failing to integrate muscles into a system instead of how they operate in isolation.
Exercise Intent
Continuity in training requires understanding the intent behind each movement in your program. When equipment becomes the variable, being able to recreate the intended stimulus in any environment, no matter what equipment you have access to becomes a huge driver of progress.
Next time you’re picking exercises, think about what the core essence of an exercise is and how you can reproduce that stimulus even if you’re not on the same machine every day.
