In Part 1, we discussed the Growth, Maturation, Developmental Age, and Long Term Athletic Development.

 

In Part 2, we will discuss the brain, motor development, and bone age..

 

The brain and movement. In Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert's TED Talk, he "starts from a surprising premise: the brain evolved, not to think or feel, but to control movement." I have met many fathers who are proud that their son did not crawl. Unfortunately, that is not a good thing!

 "Relative to the performance of crawlers, noncrawlers showed lower average and subtest-specific performance on selected measures of the Miller Assessment for Preschoolers. These results, interpreted through Ayres' sensory integration theory and applied to current occupational therapy practice, support Farber's hypothesized importance of early crawling experience in the development of sensory and motor systems of the body and general motor skill development."

Reference

 otor Development. "The development of fundamental movement skills is associated with positive health-related outcomes. Children do not develop FMS naturally through maturational processes. These skills need to be learned, practised and reinforced." Reference

 This s why a Long Term Athletic Development/Youth Physical Development program is so important. Our coaches in the United States do a great job with sport specific skills: throwing a ball, kicking a ball, swinging a bat or racquet. But they do not do a good job with basic movement: running, jumping, landing, hopping, skipping. I coach my son's U8 soccer team and at the beginning of the season, he was the only child who could skip. Why, because at home, we played. And part of playing was skipping!

 And this becomes even more important for overweight and obese kids. Reference

 Bone Age. "The bone age of a child indicates his/her level of biological and structural maturity better than the chronological age calculated from the date of birth." Reference

 This is one of the main reasons why chronological age should not be used as the only factor to consider when developing a youth athlete. Bone is an active tissue composed of minerals and collagen, an elastic tissue that helps prevent fracture. Most bones in the human skeleton fully ossify by the time puberty occurs. Ossify means that the matrix of mineral and collagen harden around cells that remain metabolically active. Some bones do not fully ossify until late teens to the mid 20s (shoulder 17 - 20, hip 18 - 23, breastbone, collar bone and spine 23 - 25). Reference

 Over the course of one year, about 5% to 10% of bone is replaced with new bone. This process is called remodeling. "Remodeling continues throughout life so that most of the adult skeleton is replaced about every 10 years." Reference

 Determining a child's bone age can be very helpful in determining the safety of training and playing sports. Reference. When is it safe to increase the parameters of training like load (weights), speed, and physical contact? "... the current data from several intervention trials in children indicate that programmes incorporating a diverse range of weight-bearing impact activities can enhance the mass, structure and strength of bone, particularly in boys during the prepubertal years." Reference

Knowing bone age helps determine these training parameters and thus may differ greatly from common recommendations based on chronological age.

 

In Part 3, we discussed nutrition.

 

In Part 4, we will provide a quick explanation of the forces involved in jumping and landing and collisions.

 

Most parents are still afraid of having their kids "lift weights." Why? In the book The Physics of Football, author TImothy Gay, PhD, a professor of Physics and college football player asks and answers the question, "With just how much force did Dick Butkus hit running backs?" (p. 29) 1, 150 pounds of force, or about three-fifths of a ton in the backward (negative) direction." (p. 30)

 

When kids jump, they can produce ground reaction forces of three to five times bodyweight and rates of force totaling 500 times bodyweight (Ref). Thus, technique training and proper strength training is necessary to prepare the body for jumping activities.

 

So parents, you let your kids jump and you let your kids collide. But do you prepare them for the physical stress of these activities with proper strength, speed, agility, mobility, and conditioning training?

 

How hard does Ray Lewis hit?

 

 And what is it that gives a soccer player like Cristiano Ronaldo the edge over other players?

 

 

 

 

In Part 4, we provided an explanation of the forces involved in jumping and landing and collisions.

Be Better At Evaluating Players

Michael Yessis, PhD, a world renowned sports science expert, states,

"Coaches deal with players on a regular basis and should know them better than anyone else. They should know all their strong and weak points and as a result, should be able to determine their success or failure on the field. Right?"

"So why are coaches not better in evaluating present and future players? The problem appears to be in determining strong and weak points. The definition of strong and weak points is critical here. For example, coaches usually define strong and weak points in regard to execution of what they are required to do in execution of a particular strategy or tactic."

"The ability to run and cut well in order to execute a particular pattern is considered a very basic skill that must be learned; it is not innate. Without this ability you will never attain greatness in executing the coach’s tactics or strategy. When you are able to run well you will be able to more easily and quickly learn any pattern of running that is needed. If your running and cutting mechanics are poor, you will always have difficulty in executing a particular pattern or pass strategy."

"The bottom line is that most coaches do not evaluate basic player skills." (Source)

Functional Movement

What is "functional movement?" This term is used so frequently by the fitness and sports training community. Functional movement or training means that the training you perform should be directed at two areas: what YOUR child's body needs and what YOUR child's sport or goals require. We know from studies on athletes what the movement requirements are for any sport. By using GPS technology, we even know the requirements by position. 

 

"Regular participation in organized youth sports does not ensure that youth are adequately exposed to fitness regimens and activities that sufficiently improve health and sports-specific fitness to minimize risk of injury and promote lifelong health and fitness. Accordingly, participation in physical activity should not begin with competitive sport, but should evolve out of regular participation in a well-rounded preparatory conditioning program." (Source)

 

Proper assessment of a child is necessary to determine that child's physical needs. Are they weak/strong, flexible/inflexible, have good balance or poor balance? The Functional Movement Screen is a great foundational assessment. In addition to that, what other areas must be assessed? And once your child is assessed, how do you combine their individual needs with the sport requirements? 

 

Functional Movement Screen (FMS)

 

The FMS is a simple test that can be used to help determine physical preparedness. Listen to: Should You Screen Your Kids?

 

Try the following home tests and video your child. Be honest with yourself – how do they look?

 

• Run – forward and back

• Skip – forward and back

• Jump/Land

• Lateral Shuffle

• Thrown

• Kick

• Catch

• Roll (Summersault)

• Roll front to back and back to front

• Squat

 

Joint Hypermobility

 

 Have you ever heard of Beighton's score for joint hypermobility? The picture above shows the 5 tests that make up the score. Has your pediatrician ever performed this on your child? Unfortunately, probably not. If your child is hypermobile, does your child's coach or trainer know what to do?  Unfortunately, probably not. This is essential to know so the proper exercises are given to strengthen the muscles around each joint. Stability and motor control must be developed before explosive sport movement is performed. So if your child is running, jumping, landing, changing direction and has joint hypermobility, they are at increased risk of injury. With the proper training, this hypermobility can be controlled and maybe even developed into an advantage!

 

Even more on why multi-sports is the way to go....

"A quick survey of members of the squad found that collectively they played at least 14 different sports competitively while growing up, as well as soccer. And significantly, all believe the other disciplines enhanced rather than hindered their soccer careers."

"I understand the argument of people being one sport athletes at a young age, but for me and my personality I would get burned out as a young kid playing just one sport," said Wambach, who focused solely on soccer when she went to the University of Florida and quickly progressed into the national team ranks."

From: U.S. women were multi-sport athletes before focusing on soccer

 

A COMPREHENSIVE VIEW OF DEVELOPMENT OF U. S. OLYMPIANS WHO COMPETED FROM 1984 - 1998 

 

“In this initial report, the main objectives are to provide the general patterns and trends that characterized the training and development of U. S. Olympians.”

 

“…no matter what the initial characteristics of the individuals, unless there is a long and intensive process of encouragement, nurturance, education, training, the individuals will not attain extreme levels of capability in the particular fields.”

 

Motive for Participation: FUN! Love of sport and activity combined with early success

“…youth sport programs that emphasize fun, enjoyment, and love of sport provide a springboard for athletes to continue their development upward.”

 

“…the people most responsible for developing an athlete’s love of sport were the initial coaches or teachers.”

 

Participation in a Variety of Sports before single sport focus

“Overall, it appears that these U.S. Olympians were very active in a variety of activities as children and adolescents. In the age groups, <10 years old and 10-14 years old there was a range of 2.6-3.5 sports for all respondents. In elementary and secondary school physical education, Olympians reported an average of 3.3-3.4 days per week of activity.”

 

Introduction to sport participation: Clubs

“…physical education programs did not introduce most Olympians to their sports. For all respondents, the private or commercial club was the most common type of program in which Olympians made the decision to pursue excellence; collegiate sport programs were second in popularity.”

 

Training: Progressive, slow increase over many years

“…progressive increase in training load over a long period [12 – 13 years]  is needed in order to reach the top levels of Olympic sport.”

 

Importance of Coaching: From the beginning of sport participation to the highest level

“Female and male Olympian respondents rated the importance of coaching highest during the national and international competitive phases of development…. Nearly equal in importance was the coaching that occurred during the skill acquisition phase.”

“…educated and experienced coaches must be in place at the youth sport level in order to provide an appropriate and fun atmosphere.”

 

Qualities of a Coach: Ability to motivate and ability to teach

Coaches “…who possess the qualities that Olympians value such as an ability to teach, an ability to motivate, training knowledge, and strategic knowledge of a sport may yield better performance results.”

 

Long Term Performance Progression: Dedication and Commitment

“Olympian respondents ranked dedication and commitment as the number one factor for long-term performance progression. Mental focus and competitive success were ranked second and third, respectively. These results suggest that the most important factors were coming from the individual athlete. The next set of factors, ranked fourth through sixth focused on supportive individuals and groups and included family, coach, and training environment. The last set of factors, ranked seventh through ninth, included training partners, competitive failure, and education about training.”

 

Factors Contributing to Drop Out: Conflict with other life pursuits

“Olympian respondents cited conflict with other life pursuits as the most common reason why their peers discontinued participation in sport. Financial pressures and failure to improve followed closely.”

 

The Olympic Dream: Starts with achieving local success

Introduction to sport -> 3 years -> local success -> Olympic dream -> 3.5 years -> decision to become an Olympian -> 1.7 years -> belief it was possible.   “One of the strongest trends to emerge from these data was the short period of time between the decision to become Olympian and the belief that it was possible.”

 

Sport participation to the pursuit of excellence

The “challenge and love of competition”, “a desire to be successful”, the need for a “competitive outlet”, and “fun” were the four prominent factors that motivated all Olympians to pursue excellence in their sport.”

 

Long Term Athletic Development

“…one of the distinguishing marks of these data is that male and female Olympic medalists had a longer local developmental stage by 1-2 years than male and female non-medalists.”

 

A Path to Excellence: 2000 – 2012

 

Development of an Olympic Dream

Introduced to the sport: 11.4 years old

Achieved local competitive success: 14.2 years old

First dreamed of becoming an Olympian: 14.0 years old

Started making decisions to make Olympic dream a reality: 17.5 years old

Believed it was possible to become an Olympian: 19 years old

Made first U.S. Olympic Team: 25.5 years old (calculated based on the midpoint of the selected age-range).

Therefore, the average length of time from when an athlete was first introduced to the sport until making first U.S. Olympic team was 14 years (11.4 – 25.5 years of age).

 

Factors Directing Olympians to Sport: Love of activity and sport combined with early success

Intrinsic love of activity, Love of the sport, Early success , Parental influence, Coach recruitment , Peer recruitment , Sibling recruitment

 

Motivation for Participation

Challenge/love of competition, Desire to be successful,  Competitive outlet,  Fun

 

Motivation for Pursuit of Excellence

“…challenge or love of competition, desire to be successful, competitive outlet and ‘Fun’ were the highest-rated motives to pursue excellence in sport.”

 

What are the core skills?

 

Movement Training is founded on a few key components and it's these that make up the core skills.

• Breathing
• Joint position & awareness
• Joint mobility & stability
• Core endurance

Breathing

 

It's the glue that brings of Movement Training together, it allows the body to relax and the brain to learn new movement. There are 2 types of breathing, costal and diaphragmatic. Costal is breathing from the chest and is associated with stress, diaphragmatic breathing is from the abdomen and associated with relaxation.

As you breathe from the abdomen and relax your mind opens up and you can focus on different areas of the body. When breathing from the chest your mind closes onto the area of the body that is being exercised.

 

Joint position & awareness

 

Knowing where your joints are in space and time is essential for better movement. As you begin you'll chunk this into single joint movements as you get to know your joints and their movement you can begin combining them together to form more complex movements.

If you jump into the deep end and try to learn complex movements first you can overwhelming, your breathing goes costal and your brain won't learn the movement.

 

Joint mobility & stability

 

Having supple joints that can move through a greater range of movement allows your bodies communication senses work better. All of your muscles, ligaments, tendons and fascia have sensors that talk to your brain about their position, length, tension and force and your brain uses this information. It uses it to determine what's safe and unsafe for the body, if joints are tight this information is disrupted and makes exercising more unsafe.

It also affects your stability, all of these sensors are connected to the brain by a nerve, which is like wire for your body. If joints are tight the information that's trying to get from your brain to the joint gets disrupted and the muscles on one side of the joint activate before the other side and creates a wobbling joint.

 

Core Endurance

 

This is ability to resist fatigue, a core that fatigues quickly is more vulnerable to injury. If your core can maintain a good posture over an extended period of time not only does your risk of injury go down how well you perform can go up.

 

Summary

 

These skills are the foundation to all movement and your ability to improve it, if you take the time focus you'll see improvement all through your fitness. They don't have to learn in isolation, you can work on them together, all thats required is time and patience.

 

Egoscue Method takes a different approach to rehabilitating injuries

 

Injury prevention programs unpopular with high school coaches

Oct 27, 2015

 

Although injury prevention programs have been shown to help reduce leg and foot injuries in sports, less than ten percent of high school coaches implement the programs as designed, according to a new survey.

Half of coaches are aware of the programs, but many believe they’re too complex or do not offer an advantage over existing practices, researchers found.

“There are a ton of different programs out there,” said lead author Marc F. Norcross of Oregon State University in Corvallis.

Most include stretching and strengthening exercises focused on the hips and thighs, sometimes with jump-training to promote landing softly, Norcross said. Many are designed as 15 to 20 minute warm-ups three to four times per week before practices or games, in place of less structured warm-ups.

“We don’t know exactly how they work, but they are beneficial at least in some respects,” he told Reuters Health. “Rather than sit by and wait for the perfect medicine, let’s adopt this now.”

For the study, 66 head coaches for basketball or soccer at 15 high schools in Oregon completed an online survey of injury prevention program (IPP) knowledge, attitudes and behaviors.

Overall, 34 coaches were aware of IPPs, 14 reported using one of the programs with their team and six said they implemented the IPP exactly as designed.

Coaches of girls’ teams were more likely to be aware of IPPs than boys’ coaches.

Those who didn't adopt an IPP often said the programs offered no advantage over their current way of doing things, were incompatible with their needs or would be difficult to implement, the authors write in the Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport.

“A good proportion didn’t view lower extremity injury as a problem on their team,” Norcross said.

In the 2013-2014 academic year, participants in high school sports in the U.S. sustained more than 300,000 lower-limb injuries that required medical attention and suspension of play for at least one day, according to a report by the Colorado School of Public Health Pediatric Injury Prevention, Education and Research Program. These include minor injuries and more serious ones, like anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears.

ACL tears are serious injuries, but a coach may go several years without seeing one on his team and therefore believe they are not an issue, Norcross said.

“Most of these programs have been developed for ACL but also decrease things like ankle sprains and muscle strains, which are more common,” he said.

Oregon - like most U.S. states - does not promote awareness or education about lower extremity injury among high school coaches, the authors write.

Coaches are required to have training on so many important health and safety issues, adding another to their list of requirements may not be the way to address this issue, Norcross said.

“Sometimes a groundswell might be more beneficial for affecting change than a top-down approach,” he said. “From a layperson perspective, a parent or administrator can ask the coach, are we using this program?”

Coaches who are interested in implementing one can find free resources online for the FIFA 11+ warm-up program, designed for soccer players, or ask health care providers in their area for injury prevention mechanisms, he said.

 

Injury prevention programs not widely used in high schools, study shows

 

 

The Importance of Implementing the FMS Among High School Athletes

Written by FMS Video

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The above video is a feature on how Hargrave Military Academy basketball team has used the FMS to help direct the training and rehab of their athletes.  Hargrave is one of the most successful programs in the country having produced 100 Division 1 scholarship athletes over the last decade.  

 

FMS's Don Reagan of Mountain River PT works with Hargrave and describes how evaluating their movement has enabled him to become more proactive with his treatment and training: 

 

"The tools within Functional Movement Systems have provided me the opportunity to transition from not just a rehab or mediation professional, to performance and optimization professional," says Don Reagan in the video.  "Now we're doing screens at the beginning of the year... and looking at their movement quality.  We're able to help them manage their movement before they are injured."

 

Junior high and high school athletes can be the most challenging populations for strength coaches to work with, in part, because the significant difference between chronological age and biological age.  Two athletes can be the exact same age, but at different ends of the spectrum in terms of physical development, movement literacy and training experience.  

 

Using a cookie-cutter training or prehab program for every athlete is inefficient, and, potentially, detrimental. 

 

This is a sentiment echoed by FMS Certified trainer Peter Kafaf, a football coach who has worked with some of the best linemen in the country, including former #1-ranked prospect and current Michigan freshman Rashan Gary.  

 

When Kafaf met Gary, he didn't look like the athlete who would mature into the recruiting prize of the 2016 class.

 

"Rashan couldn’t move.  Hips were tight as a drum.  He scored 1’s on both his hips," Kafaf told us.  "He worked hard to improve his limitations and he became even faster, even more explosive. His 40 yard dash time dropped from a 4.94 to 4.74.  Now it’s terrifying how fluid he can move."

 

"Rashan’s upper body was as tight as I’ve seen on any kid I’ve ever worked with.  Like frozen chicken legs.  His hands are terrifyingly fast now, but were the complete opposite when I met him."

 

Gary may have become a game-breaking athlete on the football without the FMS, but understanding how he moved helped direct his training, both on and off on the football field.

 

Kafaf discovered the FMS through a trainer who was working with his then 8th-grade son.  Kafaf's son had movement limitations which made it difficult to train.  Poor mobility in his hip and thoracic spine (extremely common among teenage athletes) was causing lower back pain and discouraging his pursuit of sports.  When the trainer showed how improving his movement in key areas could alleviate strain on his shoulders and lower back, Kafaf was hooked.

 

"If it wasn’t for FMS, my son probably would’ve quit sports.  If he didn’t start moving better he would’ve never found rugby and had the opporunity to compete in college."

 

"It seems like 9 out of 10 kids have some degree of improvement that they can make in their hips.  That's problematic because many sports and exercises in the weight room demand good mobility in the hips.  If kids don't have it, they are at risk of injury."

 

"I'm convinced that one of the most dangerous places you can send a kid is to a high school weight room if they haven’t been screened," says Kafaf.  

 

While weight training is an effective strategy for reducing injury risk in athletes, health and fitness professionals will agree that a poorly designed program can do more harm than good.  Early studies of injury rates in teenage athletes indicate that younger athletes are most susceptible to injuries in the weight room and that the majority of injuries occured in unsupervised settings.  Conversely, when a young athlete is properly trained and supervised, injury rates in the weight room are lower than those observed when children are at play during recess (and a fraction of sports like football, wrestling and cross country).

 

"I’m religious about the FMS because it’s criminal what improper weight programs can do to high school kids," says Kafaf.  "They walk into a weight room and are asked to squat and deadlift, but the majority of kids don't have the mobility and symmetry to perform those lifts."

 

"The urgent message to these kids is that this is single best thing to do for performance and health is to understand how you move before starting to train," says Kafaf.  "Think of the FMS as a tuning device for your body.  A guitar doesn't play well when it's out of tune, nor does your body doesn't perform well when it's out of tune."

 

The FMS isn't necessarily a path to speed and explosiveness, but it is a tool to help safely train speed and explosiveness.  Thousands of college football players are screened every year (including three of the more promising linemen in the BIG10), but many high schools would benefit from implementing the system into their athletic programs.

 

 

Before the countless hours of training that would help them become Olympic champions, the @USAGym team were screened

 

The benefits of using the FMS within USA Gymnastics

Written by Dave Tilley FMS

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My name is Dave Tilley. I have my doctorate in Physical Therapy, recently became Board Certified in Sports Physical Therapy, and currently am studying to obtain my Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist credentialing. I was a competitive gymnast for 18 years, which ended with spending 4 years on the Springfield College Men’s Team. I also have been coaching both Men’s and Women’s competitive gymnastics for 12 years, and currently still coach. Not surprisingly, given my background, I specialize in the rehabilitation and performance enhancement of gymnasts. I coach in the North Shore of Boston, and treat gymnastics clients at Champion PT and Performance in Waltham, MA. 

I have been fortunate enough to work with a range of gymnasts, all the way from the youngest recreational athletes all the way up to collegiate and elite level athletes. Along side my clinical and coaching life, I also spend a large deal of time traveling the country to lecture on gymnastics topics through my company, SHIFT Movement Science and Gymnastics Education. 

I took my first FMS and SFMA class right after graduating from PT school about 4 years ago, and then went on to take the next few levels of coursework. I have spent a lot of time with the system as one part of my practice, which gives me a unique perspective on its application to gymnastics. Having put hundreds of gymnasts through the FMS and SFMA, today I wanted to share with you some of my thoughts on why I feel it’s beneficial to use the FMS within the sport of gymnastics.

 

Thoughts on The Patterns 

 

1. Overhead Deep Squat

 

• Gymnastics is a jumping, landing, and squatting sport. I feel strongly that teaching and regularly screening for proper squatting/landing mechanics is one of the biggest things anyone can do to combat a variety of different injuries in gymnastics. The landing forces of gymnastics have been recorded in research to be between 7 – 17x body weight. Unfortunately, many gymnasts continue to demonstrate non optimal landing patterns, placing notable stress on their ankle/knee structures over time. Not to mention, the infamous “stuck” landing is much more obtainable when muscular squat dominated patterns are used to dissipate forces. Screening and improving this pattern as needed is crucial to longevity and performance in gymnastics. 

 

• If you think about it, during the overhead squat the gymnast has to statically control both arms and the upper body overhead in the presence of a dynamically changing condition of the lower torso and legs. That’s a mouth full for the gymnast keeping the arms in control while the body and legs move. In my mind that looks a lot like what might happen during uneven bar skills like giants, free hips, many other swinging skills. It also could be a puzzle piece to controlling handstand based skills, and overhead conditions like tumbling/yurchenkos (vault skill). All of these skills have different patterns and positions that are context specific as the body is fixed in this test vs not fixed during skill work. But, I can get behind the idea that this test puts a unique demand on the shoulders that may be applicable to gymnastics.

 

• The deep squat screens a pattern, not an isolated muscle or joint. Many gymnasts I have screened struggle with this test quite a bit. Although excessively stiff lats and calves are commonly found, there are many possible reasons why it is limited. It could also be a reflexive anterior core control issue, or a simple lack of awareness for squatting mechanics, which is equally as common. Many things about a gymnasts movement profile can be further investigated by starting with this pattern. 

2. Hurdle Step

• Many people talk about how the hurdle step (along with other tests) can look
  at reciprocal motion of the legs, which also happens quite a bit in gymnastics. Running for tumbling and vaulting require rapid force development in a short amount of distance for skills (vaulting, 3 steps before big tumbling passes). This pelvis dissociation also shows up in many tumbling, leaping, and inbar skills during swinging. It’s good to know the gymnast doesn’t have a huge problem with the basic motions or have a side to side asymmetry in this lower body motion before we start fancy running drills.

• A hurdle is a fundamental basic for both men’s and women’s gymnastics. It’s a key technical aspect to developing huge power for a tumbling pass or vault. From a very young age the gymnast uses their dominant leg for all of their hurdling, and also some women’s beam series like back handsprings. These basics also evolve into higher level tumbling passes that connect 1 ½ twists to step out motions. I think there’s value in making sure that an asymmetry doesn’t pop up to the point of a 1/3 or 2/3 hurdle possibly leading to a movement issue elsewhere.

• The hurdle step pattern also gives one opportunity to see how the gymnasts leg can perform in a single leg stance format. Again, you can’t blame one thing for it, but there are plenty of times for both men and women single leg stance with hip extension with superimposed balance is needed while the rest of the body is moving. Beam, floor non acro elements, running again, and more.

 

3. In Line Lunge

• Any women’s gymnastics coach should be in love with this test. Hello baseline balance beam screen.
• It’s super important to look at the connection of hip, knee, and ankle mechanics during triple flexion and it’s integrations with the trunk for skills. They go to this pattern a lot and many times the lack of control can create lots of issues both injury and performance wise.
• You’d be amazed to see how many of my gymnasts do poorly on this test because they defaulted to lower back extension with their lunging and can not maintain dowel contact along their spine. I think that speaks a lot to a gymnast who goes to lumbar motion as their main stabilization pattern. This is concerning for me as a medical provider and coach, in relation to a lack of active core control being compensated for by loading the static stabilizers of the spine (pars and ligaments primarily) to absorb huge forces during skills. Although there is lacking research to present a direct correlation, for this scenario may be a hint at spine overload, possible injury, and non optimal core performance.
• I’m definitely interested to see what a gymnast’s frontal plane function is for this type of motion in all planes. Single leg jumping/landing and asymmetrical jumping/landings happens all the time in gymnastics. We aim for a double leg landing that creates equal force dispersion, but due to the high variability in such complex skills this often does not occur. Due to this, having pristine single leg control is very important. 

 

4. Shoulder Mobility

• Here’s another one I’m a big fan of for gymnasts, especially in looking at their default strategy to use their upper extremity quadrants both overhead and reciprocally. I saw a surprising amount of 2/3 asymmetries in many of my gymnasts that needed correcting. I think one reason for this is for the gymnast having a dominant arm with pirouettes on bars, tumbling, round off entries on floor and vault, and other skills. I also think true soft tissue extensibility problems are very common, despite gymnast “looking flexible”. Many athletes I work with have excessive amounts of capsular hyper laxity, but still have true limited overhead motion when controlling spinal extension compensations. This is concerning for micro instability and other issues at the shoulder an hip. A quick shoulder mobility screen may catch something very important here.

• How the gymnast uses their thoracic spine matters a lot. If they have an issue from this related to mobility, control, or pattern driven, it’s important. It may mean they struggle to use their thoracic spine during skill work and may overload their lumbar spine. This is a big issue in gymnasts and this is just one of many ways to check it out in the FMS.
• That 2/3  or 1/3 shoulder asymmetry is a big radar flag for me. Thinkabout what’s going on in the gymnasts system if they are bilaterally loading hundreds of high force handstands, tap swings, giants, high force tumbling, and vaults on an asymmetry? Or if a male gymnast is loading it with bilateral parallel bar swings, hundreds of pommel skills, or jams on high bar? The list can go on but I think there’s something to be said for picking up on and correcting these asymmetries early.

 

 

• Shoulder Clearing Test – Many gymnasts are sneaky, try to betough,or simply may not realize their shoulder pain isn’t just a normal part of training. Shoulders, elbows, and wrists literally serve as a second pair of weight-bearing hips, knees, and ankles for gymnasts. For that reason, they take a lot of mileage and we need to be regularly checking in on them for pain. There are huge rates both instability based or more biomechanical rotator cuff / labral issues in male and female gymnastics.I think shoulders can get beat up in gymnasts on both sides of the spectrum. I thi
  nk some get pain because they have huge localized imbalances and altered joint mechanics. I think others have too much motion everywhere they get instability and beat up their shoulders. I think some just have an issue putting all the pieces together for a pattern. For whatever reason, if they test positive for pain you better find someone to help get to the bottom of it before it sneaks back up to bite you on you down the road. 

5. Active Straight Leg Raise

• Step ins for hiccups on bars, toe ons/toe circles, some release moves, beamseries, and other skills are kind of hardcore active straight leg raises. There are plenty of other more typical active straight leg situations in gymnastics too related like the obvious leaping and split leaping for women, and I think scissor work for mens pommel horse also can go into this category to a degree. For all these reasons and more, this test has huge carry over to gymnastics.
•  

• Every gymnastics coach and gymnast in the world wants to have fantastic toe touches, pike positions, and perfect over splits on both legs. On the surface this may seem like a “how far can I get my leg over my head test”, but it’s much more. How the gymnast gets their leg there is really the focus. As I’ve said before, there are many more things to splits and pikes than your hamstring and hip flexibility. Knowing of mechanics of an active straight leg raise outside of how high can you get your leg and if soft tissue is tight is big. Like for example, can the gymnast reflexively fire their core and maintain good spine/down leg position in hip extension when they raise their leg for the pattern? To me that’s much more important. I have unfortunately dealt with too many cases of gymnast who have lumbo pelvic control and spinal positioning problems that show up as serious hip or hamstring growth plate injuries. Gymnastics culture automatically chases more flexibility, when in reality that is the last thing they need. This test, along with some other more gymnastics specific screens, can help uncover this motor control problem and save someone from a long road of spinning their wheels in the mobility department. I wonder if coaches and gymnasts would be surprised to hear that a quick active straight leg correction may quickly get them that equal split on both sides they’ve been dying for, without always needing more stretching.

 

6. Trunk Stability Push Up

• First off, as many people know the trunk stability push up isn’t a measure of arm strength. It purposefully changes the push up parameters, and then allows for a look into how well the gymnast can automatically create spine stability centrally before they use their extremities. Pretty important in my eyes. In the milliseconds gymnasts have to catch the low bar and nail a perfect release move to handstand, I think it’s more about turning the right things on, at the right time, and in good coordination rather than how many hollow rocks you did in the last month of conditioning. It’s also kind of funny to see the faces they make when they realize what the test is all about. There is a lot to be said about making sure gymnasts do not constantly live in a high threshold, high tension core strategy. They must equally train the low threshold and lower level motor control for injury prevention and optimal performance. 

 

• Press Up Clearing Test – 

• I can’t emphasize enough the importance of regularly screening a gymnast for lower back pain. I use a series of 7 back pain screens on every gymnast I work with, in an effort to impose a variety of different force demands on the back commonly seen in gymnastics. If a gymnast has pain with a simple prone press up test, that’s concerning. It could be a quick fix but it could be the start of something serious. Remember they load that motion hundreds of times per day under very high force and speed for beam, tumbling, yurchenkos, and tons of drills. Lower back pain and fractures are an epidemic in gymnastics. Along with pain or no pain although not specific to this test in the FMS, I think the quality and presence of hinge points into extension are very important as well. Although I don’t know if we can prevent them all, I think early screening like this and other pre-hab/smart training can go a long way to make a dent back pain rates for young gymnasts.

 

7. Rotary Stability

• The rotary stability test can again help bias the ‘soft’ or deep cores reflexive and automatic function while the trunk stability push up can give a better indication of the ‘hard’ or outer core. For me the improper balance of low threshold/ ‘soft’ core training compared to overload of high threshold/ ‘outer’ core use in gymnasts is huge. As pointed out, the importance of core control and low threshold spine stability can’t be over stressed.

 

 

• Along with a low / high threshold training imbalance, I think it’s extremely common for gymnasts miss training the core in a full 360 manner. In my experience it seems to be the anterior core is trained more than the posterior, which is trained more than the lateral and rotary core, which is trained more than proper intrinsic function related to breathing and the pelvic floor. I think this is one test that is good to both raise attention of both a coach and gymnast to possible issues related to this. I know I added in much more rotary and lateral core work once I saw that the rotary stability was across the board the biggest problem for my gymnastics team. Not to mention, gymnasts many times train a lot of active spinal rotation or sidebending motion for gymnastics skills, but sometimes overlook the “anti” rotation or sidebending that is crucial for athletic performance. For this reason, I program a ton of turkish get ups, bear crawls, and unilateral weighted carries for the gymnasts I coach.

 

• The rotary test has also been on my mind a lot in conjunction with rolling patterns for girls that show a lack of fundamental core control.  Part of me thinks always going to the dominant side for round offing, twisting, release moves, one-armed skills, and more would throw off the system into a central asymmetry. Again, I have been surprised in the last year to see some notable asymmetrical rolling pattern issues and 2/3’s on rotary stability for my gymnasts. I haven’t quite gotten to the bottom of it, but again, I think this is something worth knowing about for a gymnast.

 

• Spine Rock Back Clearing Test 

• A gymnast should have the capability to fully flex their lower back without painor limitations. I’ve found it very common to see gymnasts who live in extension chronically show poor breathing patterns, and lose unweighted spine flexion. Living in constant lumbar extension puts stress on certain aspects of the spine as well as may set someone up for fulcrum based dynamic microinstabiltiy of the hip in extremes range of motion. Also, I have had 2 gymnastics patients who actually presented with flexion intolerance with back pain, and it was extension based corrections that helped them get out of pain. Although more on the uncommon side, anterior spine problems and flexion issues do exist in gymnastics. High force or improper landings with poor position into flexion may create this type of problem. Both for movement of the spine and detection of pain this is important thing to consider for gymnasts. This clearing test is the picture on right below

 

General Thoughts

• I also like the FMS because as I hinted the gymnast shows their “go to” pattern free of specific movement cueing. I think in gymnastics coaches sometimes cue and vocalize a ton for skill work, rather than just stay quite and see what the gymnast naturally does. Subconscious automaticmovement patterning is ultimately the goal. Also, it’s a deduction for a coach to talk in their routine so so there’s that too.

 

• It’s not all-encompassing for the sport, and I think the people who inventedthe test would be the first to tell you it’s not meant to be. It’s just a tool. Along with the FMS I think there are gymnastics specific patterns I like to always look at like a handstand, a bridge or back walk over, and a hanging tap swing or giant. I also look at some more dynamic testing like single leg and double leg squatting/jumping/landing, and whatever else I feel that gymnast needs. Then the role of fatigue and stress, but again that’s not what the FMS is meant for. I think in conjunction with the FMS a coach and gymnastics gym can come up with a great screening system that can go a long way for both health and performance.

 

• There are lots of correctives that can be given to the gymnast for pre-hab or prior to practice that can help out. Sometimes changes are faster than you think and keeping them isn’t so hard either. There are tons of corrections outside of the FMS that can be used. If it works, it works.
• I think this can be really helpful to keep tabs and baselines on the gymnasts as they develop, grow, move through competitive levels, and recalibrate to their system. Movement and the screen changes yearly, monthly, daily, and hourly depending on what you’re doing. If you throw an injury into the mix for a young gymnast that’s even more significant. Dr. Greg Rose had a fantastic lecture on screening youth athletes that if people are FMS members they should definitely check out. Especially when it comes to the topic of chronological age versus developmental age, and early vs late blooming athletes. 

---

References

• Cook G. Movement: Functional Movement Systems: Screening, Assessment, and Corrective Strategies. Aptos, CA: On TARGET  Publications, 2010.
• Schneides, et al. Functional Movement Screen Normative Values In Young, Active Population. IJSPT 2011 6(2)
• Cook G., Burton L., Hoogenboom B., Voight M. Functional Movement Screening: The Use of Fundamental Movements As An Assessment of Function Part 1. IJSPT June 2014 9(3)
• Cook G., Burton L., Hoogenboom B., Voight M. Functional Movement Screening: The Use of Fundamental Movements As An Assessment of Function Part 1. IJSPT August 2014 9(3)
• Weingroff, C. – 2015 Sports Rehab Expert Teleseminar/Video Addition Inservice – http://www.sportsrehabexpert.com/public/994.cfm
• Gray Cook, Lee Burton, Alwyn Cosgrove – The Future of Exercise Program Design
• Weingroff, C – Lateralizations and Regressions  DVD. 2014
• Gray Cook, Craig Leibenson, Stuart McGill: Assessing Movement: A Contrast In Approaches & Future Directions 
• Gray Cook, Dan John, Lee Burton. Essentials of Coaching and Training Functional Continuums DVD. 2014
• Gray Cook, Lee Burton. Key Functional Exercises You Should Know DVD.
• Leibinson, C. The Functional Training Handbook. Wolters Kluwer Health 2014
• Rose G. Why Screen Kids? 2014 (Video Lecture Recorded from Functional Movement Summi

   

 

 

Stop Tightening Your Abs!

 

If you’ve taken a fitness class lately, scanned the most recent fitness magazine, or watched the newest workout video posted to YouTube, you have undoubtedly been informed that you need to stabilize your core or engage your abdominal muscles while working out.

Delivering a punch in a kickboxing class? Tighten your abdominals!

Doing a downward dog in a yoga class? Stay strong in your belly!

Dancing those pounds into oblivion with a Zumba video? Brace your core!

While there is no doubt that you’ve heard those (or a variation of those), I’m here to warn you that you might not want to believe everything you’re told.

While the term “core strength” has been a buzzword in the fitness industry for a while now, I think it’s overused and grossly misinterpreted. I hear clients on a daily basis who think all of their symptoms will disappear if they simply strengthen their core. They believe their back pain, hip pain and shoulder pain are due to the simple fact that they’re weak. But, that’s not necessarily true. While I believe core strength is important, it’s not a panacea. Ultimately, you have to look at the position and posture of the body to find the true cause of one’s pain.

I’m sure that when you think “core,” you think abdominals. You almost definitely think about the “six-pack” abs, and you might think about your oblique muscles, but I’m sure you don’t think about anything other than those. However, did you know that your core stretches from your toes all the way up to your skull? Yes, that’s right, it’s a full-body chain. Take a look at this:

 

Notice the blue shading? That’s one continuous line of fascia (a connective tissue) and muscles that runs from the skull all the way down to the foot. Yes it includes your abdominal muscles, but it includes so much more than that. Known as “The Superficial Front Line,” it actually attaches to your toes and your jawbone. In light of that information, hopefully you’re starting to think of you “core” in a different light.

Most health professionals run into trouble when thinking of your core as just the abdominal muscles. The muscle that most of them are targeting when telling you to tighten your abs is the transverse abdominis, otherwise known as the TVA. It is shown in the picture below and runs like a weight-belt around your waist.

 

However, did you know that the TVA should only be used when compressing the abdominal cavity? That’s right–the TVA is used for forceful pushing…a.k.a. pooping and puking! In addition, it helps women when birthing children. So unless you’re doing one of those three activities while working out, you most likely aren’t activating your TVA like it’s designed to be used!

Think of guy-wires holding up an old-time circus tent. Those wires can only do their job when they’re pulled tight–pulled away from the center of the tent. When the tension is let off of those ropes, therefore allowing the ropes to move toward the tent, the whole tent falls, right? Well, we can think of your TVA in the same way. When you are told to “suck and tuck” or brace your abdominals, there is a compression, an inward motion, that happens. Rather than pulling the guy wires more taut, when you tighten your abs you’re actually performing a moving-in motion.

The end result? While thinking that you’re stabilizing your abdominals, the reality of the situation is that that movement is having the opposite effect on your abdominal cavity. The guy-wires that are being asked to brace your spine have now become “slack,” just like the guy-wires of a circus tent. Remember, the TVA is a compression/inward-motion muscle, not a tension/outward-motion muscle. By “bracing” and compressing your TVA, you’re asking for the whole circus tent to come crashing down. And, because of the superficial fascia lines running from head to toe, the effects of instability aren’t just felt in your lumbopelvic region. No, unfortunately, the entire body becomes unstable.

If you really want to impact your core, focus on the entire kinetic chain. The muscles of a balanced body know exactly when to work and when not to work. If you’re balanced, you won’t have to consciously think about tightening or bracing your abdominals. Think about it this way: If I asked you to keep your biceps muscles flexed throughout your entire workout, you’d look at me like I was crazy. You know that tightening your biceps the entire time wouldn’t make any sense and those muscles would fatigue. But if you wouldn’t continuously tighten your biceps, why are you doing it with your abdominals?

And, just to prove the point: How many of you have your abs tight right now?

How did I know your abs were tight? And, why on Earth were they tight to begin with? We have become so ingrained with the erroneous thinking that we need to tighten our core that most of us are doing it all the time without even thinking about it.

Continue that trend, and your tent will come crashing down.

QUESTION: Did I catch you with your abdominals tight?

  

  John Elder

John Elder is the Vice President of Corporate Operations for Egoscue, Inc. and former Clinic Owner of Egoscue Nashville.

John is the main content contributor for the Egoscue blog. A client since 1995, he was an instant believer in the Method and felt relief after his first visit at Egoscue Headquarters in Del Mar, California. It is because of Egoscue that John was able to realize his dream of playing Division I baseball while at Yale University. John has traveled internationally with Egoscue and handles many of the Midwest and East Coast speaking engagements for Egoscue, Inc. His clientele includes the young and old, working professionals, stay-at-home moms, professional athletes, weekend warriors, politicians, and the everyday “Joe.”

“Our sport is your sport’s punishment”- A Brief Look at Motivation and Punishment

By stevemagness | October 20, 2016 | 1 

 

“Our sport is your sports punishment”

Way back when I was a high school runner, quotes like these would invariably pop up on the back of a High School Cross-Country team’s shirt. The obvious point was that what we do as runners is often what team sports were assigned to do when they showed up late to practice, missed a crucial play, or made some sort of mistake.It’s not unusual for teams to invoke punishment for athletes who show up late or miss practice. The thinking goes flows along the lines of “We’ll teach them a lesson so that they never want to make that mistake again.” It sounds good in theory, if we make them do bear crawls after arriving 2 minutes late, then they will make sure they are on time. They will learn their lesson!

We were partially correct. They learn a lesson. Just not the one intended.

If we look into the psychology books for an answer, we can see some peculiar findings related to parents picking up their children at daycare (Gneezy and Price 2000). One would think that most parents are responsible enough to pick up their kids in a reasonable amount of time. Initially, in Gneezy and Price’s research, this turned out to be true. Parents tended to be punctual when picking up their children

But when the daycare introduced monetary fines for those parents who picked up their children late, they got the opposite of the desired effect. Instead of increasing compliance, the rate of parents showing up late increased! What’s worse, when the daycare took away the punishment, punctuality didn’t return to pre-fine levels. Their mindset had been shifted.

While this applies to money as a punishment, which carries its own connotations, I can’t help but think similar results would be seen regardless of the type of punishment. What the researchers found in the aforementioned study was the introduction of money as a punishment shifted the psychological framework people had for being late. It shifted it from a social dynamic (respecting everyone’s time, being socially responsible) to a very self-centered individualistic one. This shift in mindset altered the reasons or justifications people develop in their head for why they show up on time. In turn, the behavior changed.

When we think of punishment in athletics, we need to stop thinking about compliance but instead about what message we are sending athletes. If I’m a soccer player or a football player, what does ‘running’ a few laps if I show up late do to me? It shifts my mindset to ‘the only reason I’m showing up is that I don’t want to get punished’ instead of “I show up on time to get better and out of respect for others.’ Additionally, it frames running (or whatever exercise) as a negative. All of the sudden, running becomes tied to ‘I’m in trouble.’

What this does is even more detrimental. It means that any time this player has to run, he’s not looking at it as an opportunity to get better, he’s looking at it as something he has to suffer through because of something he did wrong. That means, we further reinforce the horrible sloppy shuffle run thing that team players often do, as they go through the motions with no intention or focus.

Now, my college team isn’t perfect. My women are almost always spot on time, while my men occasionally stroll in a few minutes late (I’m looking at you Parms…)

Now, not exactly related to being late or showing up on time, but after the season I went back to our practice logs and counted who missed the least amount of days of practice. Unsurprisingly, as I went down this list, the people who showed up the most, tended to have the largest improvements in their performances. The athletes who missed little to no practice, other than excused ones (injury, etc.) had big improvements. Now there were some who showed up consistently and didn’t get improvement, which is my job to figure out why, but on the whole the people who showed up day in day out did best. This might seem like a ‘well duh’ moment, but to me it shows a mindset.

It’s not about getting in the work, as I know that even the guys who occasionally missed a practice or two got in their work, it’s more about the commitment. It’s about setting yourself up so that it’s an ingrained activity, like brushing your teeth. It’s not a chore that you occasionally try to avoid.

And that’s where motivation and punishment come back into play. When you start setting up punishment as a way to motivate people to comply, it creates the wrong mindset. It sends the message that “I better show up or else…” instead of “I’m showing up because I choose to.” The latter ingrains the message that training is an important part of who you are. We’re not showing up for the paycheck or to avoid being punished.

We’re showing up because we choose to.

https://www.scienceofrunning.com/?v=47e5dceea252

 

 

To help reduce the rising number of soccer-related injuries, Xiang offered these recommendations:

 

 

• Take part in a preseason conditioning program that focuses on building core muscles, strengthening neck muscles, and working on hip and thigh strength.
• Warm up before play.
• Wear recommended protective gear -- shin guards and mouthguards.
• Follow and enforce the rules. "Many injuries occur during illegal play or when coaches or referees don't enforce the rules," Xiang said.
• Learn about concussions. "Know the symptoms and encourage players to report any hits to the head even if they happen in practice. Make sure to follow concussion management and return-to-play policies," he said.
• Ban heading (hitting the ball with the head) for younger players. "Only allow heading once children reach 11 and introduce it slowly by limiting the amount of heading in practice for children 11 to 13," Xiang said.

 

 

The report was published Sept. 12 in the journal Pediatrics.

 

Removal From Play After Concussion and Recovery Time

R.J. Elbin, Alicia Sufrinko, Philip Schatz, Jon French, Luke Henry, Scott Burkhart, Michael W. Collins, Anthony P. KontosPediatrics Sep 2016, 138 (3) e20160910; DOI: 10.1542/peds.2016-0910PDF

 

"We are trying to turn them into athletes first and runners, throwers, and/or jumpers second."

Keep in mind that sports are artificial activities and doing them repetitively will create injuries. 


According to the National Survey of Children’s Health, nearly one-third of children (ages 10 - 17) were either overweight or obese.

Roughly 2 million injuries are reported by high school athletes each year.

Recent research suggests that lower extremity injuries are the most common musculoskeletal injury, accounting for 42% of all injuries reported.

 

All-Area Girls Track: Dillow, Archer not afraid to fail

 

Willingness to try different events paid off for top performers

 

By Sean Star

Reporter-Herald Staff Writer

Posted:   06/19/2018 04:36:28 PM MDT

When you see someone competing in multiple individual events at the state track meet— like Loveland's Moira Dillow and Berthoud's Cailey Archer this year — it's easy to assume they're just naturally gifted athletes who are pretty much good at everything they try.

While that may be true with some, it's not the case for these two. Don't be mistaken: They're extremely talented in multiple disciplines. But also know: They're not afraid to fail.

That intrepid approach led Dillow and Archer to discover talent within themselves that might've otherwise gone untapped, earning them leading roles on the 2018 RH All-Area Girls Track and Field team, Archer as the Track Athlete of the Year and Dillow as the Field Athlete of the Year.

 

Thompson Valley distance runner Kenadi Krueger, Berthoud hurdler Sam Mulder, Berthoud jumper Sophia Visger, Mountain View sprinter Mikayla Moser and Mountain View pole vaulter Jenna Doherty round out the All-Area team.

A former gymnast and future college rugby player, Dillow began her track career primarily as a pole vaulter — and a pretty good one at that, nearly qualifying for state as a sophomore. Over the years she also dabbled in jumps, sprints and hurdles, experiencing varying degrees of success at each.

"Honestly if you fail, you fail. That's how you learn. And I feel like a lot of people are too afraid to fail," she said of her willingness to try just about everything a track meet has to offer. "But I mean, come on, what else do you have to lose out here?"

 

Eventually Dillow found her true calling as a thrower, although she wasn't necessarily awesome at it right away, either.

"I had no idea what I was doing," she said. "This heavy ball of metal, I just kind of threw it. They asked me if I wanted to throw shot my junior year, I said that sounds fun."

Despite her background in rugby, Dillow said it was her experience in gymnastics, specifically having good body awareness, that helped her improve so quickly as a thrower. She qualified for state in shot put last year before emerging as one of Colorado's elite competitors this season as a senior.

She had seven consecutive top three finishes leading up to the 5A meet where she took sixth. But two weeks before that is when she truly shined with her toss of 41 feet, 5.5 inches at the Front Range League championships setting a district record and holding up as the second-best mark across all classifications in the state this year.

The secret to her success? Making a habit of being the last one to leave practice certainly went a long way, but so too did her freewheeling approach.

 

"I've never really experienced a competitor who had as much fun as Moira did. It was all business in the ring and when she was about to throw, but then between throws and at practice and things like that, she just smiles, is doing cartwheels and hanging on the fence and all kinds of crazy stuff," LHS coach Brennan Stine said. "Not saying she didn't take track seriously, because she did and obviously that shows, but she was definitely able to have fun with what she was doing. When she stepped in the ring it was business, game face on, let's go do this thing."

Dillow also excelled in discus this spring, despite having just four varsity meets under her belt prior to this year. She steadily improved through the season before everything clicked at the very end, qualifying for state the week before the big meet en route to a 13th place finish at Jeffco Stadium.

Archer's season was also one filled with plenty of experimentation. Traditionally a high jumper, the BHS junior expanded her repertoire this spring to include the 100 hurdles and every race from the 200 dash all the way up through the mile. She went into every event with the same mindset, unafraid of what her time was or how she fared compared to everyone else that day.

With a goal of becoming a multi-event athlete in college, all she cared about was learning more about each event and herself as a competitor.

"I guess I don't set a whole bunch of tangible goals for any of the events," she said. "I think those are a good thing and they can help people achieve a certain level of success. But for me when I go out and don't expect anything but I'm working harder, then I feel like no matter what I'm going to do, I'm going to be proud of it and I'm going to be happy with how it goes.

"So I just take it on the day to day basis and try to see, 'Well I tried something completely new, it's something I want to work on a little bit more.' I think just some people like to get really, really good at one thing, and I feel like to a certain extent I'm never going to be the best at anything, but if I can be good at a lot of stuff, then it's still cool."

While Archer was able to experiment with a number of different events, there were two in particular that stood out: her old specialty, the high jump, and the 800, which came from her background as a cross country runner. The Spartans' standout placed second in the 3A high jump by clearing 5-3 and 12th in the 800 with a personal-best time of 2:21.43. She also clocked the area's best time in the 400 with her fifth-place finish at the Weld County Championships.

Training for stamina and explosion during the same season proved to be a challenge, but one Archer was able to conquer by constantly communicating with her different coaches.

"It was definitely a challenge at the beginning of the year trying to figure out what I was going to do, because I know that it's important to train for whatever you specialize in, so I ended up training with the distance folks most of the time, because that's not something that you can get in the other kinds of workouts," she said. "Whereas you can throw in some speed workout into a distance workout and still get those benefits. It was a little bit tough because it was just so much more mileage than I had done before, so my body got a little tired. But it was still fun."

BHS coach Colby Schultz was initially worried Archer, who had mostly been an explosive athlete during her career, was going to dedicate so much of her training time to distance, but her willingness to be honest about how she felt made all the difference.

"As coaches we really listen to her more than I think each other, and listen to how we thought her body was working and what we thought the best thing was for her," Schultz said. "Trying to keep her healthy is obviously the biggest issue. But she really didn't have any issues with that and she was very open and honest about how her body was feeling this year, so we were really able to focus on certain events at certain times when she felt like she was going to compete the best in those."

Doherty — The Mountain View senior was 8 inches better than any other pole vaulter in the area and placed seventh in the event at state. She also had top six times in the area in the 100 and 200.

Krueger — The Thompson Valley sophomore had the area's best time in the 800, 1,600 and 3,200 and placed in the top 15 at state in both the half-mile and mile.

Moser — The Mountain View sophomore clocked the area's best time in both sprints as well as long jump, earning a conference title in the field event.

Mulder — The Berthoud senior reached the state finals in both hurdling events, collecting a pair of seventh-place finishes for the Spartans.

Visger — The Berthoud senior had the area's second-best mark in both high jump and long jump, earning 11th place finishes in both at state.

 

1. WHAT IS GROWMETRY?
2. HOW OLD IS A CHILD, REALLY?
3. HOW TO ESTIMATE THE BIOLOGICAL AGE OF A CHILD?
a. Traditional methods to estimate biological age...
b. The Growmetry method to estimate biological age...
4. WHY IS BIOLOGICAL AGE IMPORTANT?
5. THE BENEFITS OF GROWMETRY FOR A HEALTHY ATHLETIC DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH
6. THE GROWMETRY EXPERTS
 
Annexes (4)
 
 
Contact:  Hans Brislinger, Growmetry Project Development   hans.brislinger@growmetry.com
GROWMETRY  – Worldwide, the only currently available method for the regular estimation of the  biological age of children and youth
GROWMETRY  – A revolution for junior level  sports: individual age-appropriate training, fewer  injuries, more joy and success in sports
GROWMETRY  – An Austrian innovation that has attracted already international attention
 
 
1. WHAT IS GROWMETRY? An easy to use, unique Internet application for the regular estimation of the biological age of children and youth. Growmetry was designed for individual athletes, teams, coaches/trainers, Sports Organizations (any size) and dedicated adults.
 
The athletic development of children and youth must be based on their biological age, to avoid under- or overloading, while maintaining a targeted successful, and healthy athletic development.
 
2. HOW OLD IS A CHILD, REALLY? In General, we interpret a child's age as their calendar or chronological age. This is calculated from the date of birth and has always been used by schools and sports organizations to divide children and youth into groups. 
 
The biological age of a child, however, reflects their actual level of biological development. Children and youth with the same calendar age do not grow and mature at the same rate. Therefore, a large number of children and adolescents (over 40%) can be labelled  as early or late bloomers. The difference between calendar and biological age can be up  to +/- 2.5 years.
 
Whether a child is a late or early bloomer has no bearing on its talent and athletic ability. However, the biological age indicates the child's current growth phase and identifies its special needs with respect to its athletic and sportive development.
 
3. HOW TO ESTIMATE THE BIOLOGICAL AGE OF A CHILD? a. Traditional methods to estimate biological age... …based on the evaluation of primary and secondary sexual characteristics or using  x-rays (radiation!) of the elbow or hand to determine the level of development of  children and youth.
 
b. The Growmetry method to estimate biological age … …requires ongoing monthly measurements of the body size of a child or youth. This  new and unique method can estimate the biological age for many years, regularly,  and with great accuracy. Through the analysis of the measured values (body height), Growmetry can quickly and accurately identify and highlight changes in the growth  patterns (= biological development).
 
4. WHY IS BIOLOGICAL AGE IMPORTANT? Children and youth have different rates of growth, development and maturation.  Think of two ten-year-olds. Biologically, one can be 8 years old and the other 11.  That is a biological difference of 3 years.  Whereas by calendar age, they are both 10. Current training pro-grams are designed for a specific calendar (chronological) age. They do not take into consideration the biological age of children and youth (late or early bloomers). 
  
5. THE BENEFITS OF GROWMETRY FOR HEALTHY ATHLETIC DEVELOPMENT  OF CHILDREN AND YOUTH In sports science, it has been established that certain skills can be optimally developed based on specific biological time phases. The methods and strategies for child and youth development in sports have changed dramatically in recent years. Coaches and trainers must know the biological age of junior athletes and customize their training accordingly.  Successful youth coaches know that children of the same chronological age can be to  +/-2.5 years biologically different ages  Growmetry shows these differences in the biological age and allows for the development of  age-appropriate individual training programs for youth  Over and under loading, maldevelopment with late sequelae and injuries from overload can be avoided  Individualized training can better prepare children and youth for high stress situations in sports while at the same time, allow them to experience greater joy and fun with sports  Parents want to optimally support their children in their sport and make the right decisions in relation to their healthy athletic development
 
Currently, many sports lose up to 70% of participating children after only a few years. The dropout rate is especially high in the "smaller", the biological "younger" group. 
For sports, these children, with few exceptions, are almost always lost. This alarming and unfortunate trend has been confirmed in the current societal developments in the fitness and health of our children.
 
The biological age in youth sport helps avoid the feeling of a physical inferiority in children and adolescents. A sporting competition among "true" peers does not exclude the smaller participants and prevents frustrated junior athletes from leaving their sport prematurely.
 
6. THE EXPERTS OF GROWMETRY  Univ. Doz. Dr. Bernhard Zwick and Dr. Robert Kocher co-founded Growmetry 2008  Both, experienced athletes, working for more than 15 years with athletes of various sports, who are nationally and internationally active  The focus of their successful work for many years has been in the field of long-term and healthy development of children and youth  With the German bio mathematician Dr. Lutz Leistritz, over the course of 6 years, they developed procedures/algorithm capable of estimating biological age by the analysis of measurements of body size (growth rate)  The Growmetry team consists of internationally experienced experts in medicine, mathematics, sports science, business development and information technology
  
 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Annexes
 
 
Annex 1 Estimated biological age, male, biologically younger  View: growth curve 
 
Annex 2 Individual training - the Growmetry Generic Model (an example) View: active relevant display - male
 
Annex 3 Individual training - the Growmetry Generic Model (an example) View: active relevant display - female
 
Annex 4 Individual training plan – the Growmetry Generic Plan (an example)  View: composition and weighting - male
  

TIMING OF MEASUREMENTS • Measure every month 
• Measure only in the morning
• Measure after a day without exhausting exercise
• Use a high quality steel tape measure 
• Use a big setsquare (triangle)
• Use a graduation of mm or 1/16 inch
• Use a hard floor (no carpet) and a flat surface wall
• Keep the setting and equipment constant

TAKING A MEASUREMENT
 • Measure barefoot, feet together
 • Standing upright posture with the knees straight
 •  Heels,  buttocks,  shoulders and  the back of the head touch the flat surface wall
 • A theoretical line  from the ear canal to the eye should  be horizontal
 • Position the triangle with one arm against the wall
• Move the triangle down until its horizontal arm touches  the highest spot of the junior's head
 • The junior athlete holds a deep breath for few seconds
• Where the arm of the triangle that rests on the head  meets the wall is your point of measurement  
• Mark this point and measure the vertical (shortest)   distance to the floor with 1mm or 1/16inch precision
 • Repeat the procedure three times for higher precision
• Enter all three body height values into your personal   GROWMETRY.COM account
 • After about 360 days GROWMETRY.COM can   estimated biological age


THE MASTERMINDS
 
The Growmetry method is the result of years in research and development. An international team experienced in medical, sport science and mathematics have been involved.
 
The masterminds of Growmetry, Univ. Doz. Dr. Ernst B. Zwick and Dr. Robert Kocher, cofounded Growmetry in 2008. Both are experienced athletes working for more than 40 years (both) with athletes of various sports, who are nationally and internationally active. The focus of their successful work for many years has been in the field of long-term and healthy athletic development of children and youth.
 
The customization of training programs for children and youth turned out to be a great challenge. In fact, all current training programs are designed for a particular chronological age of children and adolescents. 
 
Since the biological age may differ from the chronological up to +/- 2.5 years (early and late developers), these (training programs) are not always easy to implement in reality. 
 
Ernst and Robert’s goal is to find a user-friendly system to incorporate the biological age of  junior athletes into their training programs.
 
With the German bio mathematician Dr. Lutz Leistritz, over the course of 6 years, they developed procedures/algorithm capable of estimating biological age by the analysis of measurements of body size (growth rate) – the Growmetry method. The Growmetry team consists of internationally experienced experts in medicine, mathematics, sports science, and business development and information technology.
 
Ernst and Robert share the vision that the biological age of a junior should be honored when it comes to developing their potential in sports and academics. The creation of long term player development models is THE main goal of both and their cooperation. They also adapt these models to specific sports, which is done in close cooperation with coaches, trainers and exercise scientists working at organizations or clubs.
 
   Ernst and Robert with members of the Austrian National Golf-Team.

 
October 2013
  
 
Univ.-Doz. Dr. Ernst B. Zwick … …is a senior consultant orthopaedic surgeon specialized in paediatric orthopaedics. He received his training at the Medical Universities of Vienna and Graz (Austria), and Medical Schools in Heidelberg and Aachen (Germany). Besides his private practice in Graz, Ernst works as medical advisor and consultant to help sports bodies, coaches and trainers to enhance the quality of junior training and to implement Long-Term-Player-Development (LTPD) concepts.
 
Coming from a paediatric orthopaedic background, Ernst’s strengths are the interpretation of physiological parameters in relation to growth. His years working in a biomechanical laboratory, Ernst can be seen as the link between mathematicians, who set up elaborate mathematical models used for the Growmetry methods and clinicians, coaches and trainers. During the last five years Ernst also teamed up with paediatric psychologists to develop a curriculum for the long term development of mental and performance aspects in junior sports.
 
As senior consultant orthopaedic surgeon, Ernst takes care of numerous athletes (national and international) and golf professionals playing on the first three level European tours. He is the medical professional for the national amateur Golf teams of Austria and member of the Junior Advisory Board of the Titleist Performance Institutes/USA (TPI).
    
 
Dr. Robert Kocher… …is senior consultant surgeon, senior trauma surgeon and senior visceral surgeon. He received his training at the Medical University of Graz (Austria). He is also a certified tennis coach, is the medical professional for the national amateur Golf teams of Austria, and takes care of numerous national and international top athletes active in various sports. In addition, he teaches at renowned national and international institutions.
 
Robert’s background as a trainer (national certified) paired with his medical expertise in general and trauma surgery, facilitates the communication with coaches and trainers when it comes to the implementation of Growmetry estimations of the biological age of junior athletes. 
 
He has a special interest in new findings concerning training junior athletes while honoring their biological age.
 

What is GROWMETRY.COM?
A service available on the Internet to estimate the biological vs
chronological age of your child/ junior athlete, to optimize athletic
training or simply to enhance enjoyment of sports.

Why should I use GROWMETRY.COM?
To adjust the appropriate level of training to the biological
age of your child/junior athlete to bring out their best in sports.

What do I get using GROWMETRY.COM?
The biological age in correlation to a junior athlete’s chronological
age is displayed in an online graph.

How does GROWMETRY.COM work?
It’s an easy to use ONLINE application to estimate biological
age of children or junior athletes.

How to start with GROWMETRY.COM?
For Parents, Coaches or Trainers, Organizations, Teams,
Associations and their Children or Junior Athletes.

What is the GROWMETRY.COM membership fee?
Click on this link to learn more about the conditions
for a "start-up" membership.

Biological Age
What does it mean? Chronological vs biological age?
Why is it so important? Who should participate?

Track benefits make for great multi-sport athletes

May 8, 2015

 

Track is a sport that offers great benefits to a high school athlete. Running in general is one of the most effective ways to stay in shape and train for each sport. Track can teach kids the proper running techniques for any kind of running, whether it be sprinting or distance.

Football is a sport of power and physicality. But skill position football players need to be fast while linemen need to have the agility to make blocks and be a step ahead of the opponent they are lined up against. It begs the question: Should football players run track?

Bucyrus football coach Aaron Eckert believes the answer is a yes, but he does not require it. The only thing he wants for his players is to stay competitive and be dedicated.

“I believe football players need to be fast,” Eckert said. “So yes, I believe if you want to be successful in football, you should be as fast as you can be. Track is a great way to get athletes faster, but as an assistant baseball coach at Bucyrus, I do not tell all of my football players they must do track.

“I want them doing something — but leave that up to them. And if they do not participate in a spring sport, then they are working on their strength and speed in our weight room.

“Overall, track is a great sport and there are a lot of benefits from having a strong track program because it really trains kids to become faster and more explosive, and all sports benefit from that.”

Plymouth track coach Jay Follett understands firsthand the benefits that track could have for an athlete. Of his 19 boys, five also play football, six run cross country and one plays golf in the fall; five play basketball and two wrestle during the winter.

On his squad, he has just three athletes that are single-sport athletes, 12 are two-sport athletes and four are three-sport athletes. Not only do the other sports programs benefit from track, but his track team benefits from multi-sport athletes competing and staying in shape out of track season.

“Too often, the benefits of other sports are overlooked by those involved. Track, in particular, can aide in developing speed, agility, explosiveness and endurance,” Follett said. “Each of these attributes are critical to success in other sports such as football, cross country, basketball and wrestling. Running form in particular can be improved to enhance the speed of athletes and benefit other sports such as football.”

He also believes the change in seasons is good for athletes. The change in seasons allows the athletes to change focus and not burn themselves out on training for a particular sport.

“The change in seasons is also beneficial to athletes who play multiple sports during the school year,” he said. “A great number of my biggest contributors on the track team are athletes that play multiple sports during the school year.

“Athletes who play multiple sports seem to put less pressure on themselves. They can actually have fun playing or participating in a sport and not take everything so serious.”

Injuries

With any sport comes the risk of injuries. So, should an athlete who is dedicated to football and wants to specialize in the sport run the risk of an injury in track that could potentially cause him to miss time in football?

If kids are given correct instruction and take the competition seriously, there should be a very low chance of injury. Colonel Crawford head football coach Ryan Teglovic believes that athletes need to stop worrying about what could happen.

“We love for our kids to run track and be three-sport athletes,” Teglovic said. “I like our kids to compete year-round in a variety of activities and skills. I think specialization takes away from kids having fun and kids get burnt out. I think we are a society that worries too much about what could happen. I don’t believe kids should not play a sport because they might get injured, they should not play if they don’t like the sport.”

Mohawk football coach Brent Konkle has not had a negative experience with a football player running track, and even if he had, he would still want his player running.

“As far as a major injury, football has never been affected,” he said. “Even if a major injury occurred as a result from a track injury, I would still encourage kids to run track. My learned philosophy is I want kids involved in any sport including basketball and wrestling that will make them be competitive all year around. Any kid could get injured outside of sports doing questionable things such as four-wheeling or hunting.”

Specializing

Most high school athletes today are specializing in one sport. With AAU programs, it is very easy to play basketball all year long. In southern states, where winter weather is a nonfactor, a lot of kids are concentrating on football or baseball and nothing else.

Mainly in north central Ohio, the concentration is basketball. AAU programs dominate high school kids’ time and athletic schedules. It is to the point that area schools’ participation numbers are suffering in the spring.

Track is one that is significantly affected, and because of that, the football players are missing out on a chance to develop skills that would benefit them in football and any other sport they choose to play. Track could be a great way for those basketball specialists to learn how to run with proper technique to become faster and more explosive.

Konkle agrees track is a sport that could benefit an athlete with any sport they choose to participate in after spring.

“I have read and agree that track is the one sport that prepares athletes for almost any other sport,” he said “I want my athletes training and competing in the spring. I played four years of college baseball at Heidelberg, so I don’t want to take away from the sport of baseball, but track prepares my football players for summer workouts because of the physical conditioning and strength training.”

Eckert thinks asking a kid to specialize is just wrong. With the size of Crawford County schools, if every athlete played one sport, the schools would be lucky to field teams in a majority of sports.

“I think every coach has had both (negative and positive) experiences when dealing with athletes involved in other sports,” he said. “Every coach wants their sport to be No. 1 to the athletes we coach, and that’s just not the case.”

Follett thinks specializing is the biggest problem when it comes to high school athletics.

“I think that the biggest issue with high school sports today is athletes, parents, and coaches that believe that athletes must focus on one single sport,” Follett said.

Dedication

Carey football coach Todd Worst makes it clear: If players are not going to take it seriously, they would not benefit from the training they could have learned in track.

“I believe that track can be beneficial for most football players,” he siad. “If approached with the right attitude and workout routine, athletes can get faster and stronger while participating in track. The same explosive power required to run sprints, run hurdles and compete in the field events is needed on the football field.

“At Carey, we are fortunate to have track coaches who understand the importance of lifting while in track season. Our last meeting of the football season always ends the same way. Play the next sport as well as you can play, but if you are not in a sport we expect to see you lifting with us beginning in January.”

Scholarships

Track is a great way to earn a college scholarship. Konkle pointed out Ohio State football coach Urban Meyer recruits more multi-sport athletes than any coach in the country.

The truth is, a great way to play college football is to earn a track scholarship and walk on to the football team. Many Division I athletes do that. And many of those athletes took it upon themselves to use track as means to learn the proper techniques of running and used them on the football field to excel and get better.

The Cleveland Browns used a 2015 third-round draft pick on University of Miami running back Duke Johnson. Johnson is the leading rusher in Hurricanes history with 3,519 yards. He also excelled in high school as a sprinter and long jumper. He concentrated on football until the 2013 track and field season, when he joined the Hurricanes squad. He posted a personal-best time of 6.92 seconds in the 60 meters.

Many high school athletes need to learn the fundamentals of any sport they participate in, and track is the perfect sport to teach them the basics they need in order to be successful in their sport.

 

MARK CHENG: GROUNDWORK PROGRESSIONS—CRAWLING AND CROSS-CRAWLING

Home » Mark Cheng: Groundwork Progressions—Crawling and Cross-Crawling

 

by Mark Cheng
This is a text excerpt of Mark Cheng’s Prehab Rehab 101 video.
You can review a variety of preview clips here.

In Prehab-Rehab 101, The Groundwork Progressions, we move from the most fundamental developmental positions up to half-kneeling, the precursor just before we get to standing in symmetrical stance, split stance and single-leg stance. The five positions we discuss in high detail in the video will give you the tools and the eyes you need to break these exercises down and use them with your clients, athletes and patients.

The Positions

In each of these positions there are breakdowns and highlights for you to understand how to train in these positions for better mastery and ownership of all of the movements that go into higher-level strength and performance. This will show up as efficiency on the field for your athletes—higher performance with less strain. For those of you working in a rehab setting, this is essential for getting your patients back into the game of life without pain.

In the crawling progression, we’ll have people on their knees, their feet and their hands; they’ll have six points of contact. Whether the feet are toes down, with the balls of the foot in contact with the ground, or whether the instep is down—either way works for the initial setup.

As we begin this progression, we work on first looking straight ahead and, ideally, looking up higher. Similar to babies, when they start to crawl, they don’t just look at someone right in front of their faces. They begin to look up, just like an adult would. If you were watching the video, you would see that all three of our models have different ranges of ability.  We wanted to show you the ranges and teach you how to work at the level you or your clients are capable of.

From here, keeping the elbows locked, the next position is to drop the chest down and then prime it back up. We’re looking for the head and neck to be able to look forward or look up even taller than where the eyes would go when parallel to the ground. Breathing stays loose throughout this phase.

Once we have this basic position, being able to break contact with any one of the limbs at any time is a next test, but before that, we would work on the head and neck. I’d have you look to the left, like you’re trying to see something that drew your attention. Then look back to the front at someone who’s about your height right in front of you, and then to the right.

Things to Look Out For

For those of you who are coaches, you would look for a shoulder that may dip down; if you notice someone turns the head to the left and dips down onto the right shoulder, that’s a key. The elbows should stay locked with the feeling of engaging the shoulder stabilizers and spreading the chest.

However, it’s all about moving the head and neck and being able to move the line of sight and actively engage that line of sight—not just turning the head without the eyes. We would want to be looking at detail on the walls or at detail in the surroundings because later it’s all about moving and reacting from here.

Notice the lower back would not be hunched. For someone who has a rounded lower back, we want to cue to drop just a little so it’s even.

The beauty of working on these progressions is it allows us to feel firsthand when things are difficult. Take the time to address things. Don’t be afraid to give clients the stepping stones they need for success.

 

If you’re trying to do ground work and your older clients are resistant because they don’t feel able to comfortably get back up, give them the stepping stones they need. Maybe it’s just propping the shins or knees against a bed or couch and they’re able to put their hands on something else.

Being able to work shoulder packing is a huge benefit for our older adults. As they’re in the position, they’re engaging all of the four knots at the same time.

The shoulders and hips are engaged, but then, once we start cross-crawling in place, we are now working on both mobility and stability. We have to stabilize and we have to be able to mobilize. The side that comes up is the side that’s mobile. The side we’re based upon is stable.

As far as the line of sight, ideally you want to be looking at about your same height in front of your body. A baby would crawl because it’s trying to look at something and then move toward something it sees.

The Cross Crawl

Often when we work the cross crawl, we’ll see people looking straight down, but that doesn’t provide the same level of benefit. Encourage a higher viewpoint. The whole idea is we’re moving because we see something we want to get to, so it’s about the head, neck and the torso. The hips also move, but the eyes are important. I can’t emphasize this point enough. Where you’re looking is super important.

We’re alternating between mobility and stability back and forth between left and right in a diagonal pattern. We’re engaging the eyes, the head and the neck from different contexts relative to the ground—mobile stability, as well as reactive mobility, keeping the head and chest high off of the ground. If you start sagging the chest down toward the ground, your shoulders are not stabilizing.

Different levels of strain or effort are important to notice.

Let’s go through the crawling progressions. We start off with six points of contact—head, neck and arm movements and drills. Then we go into the arm movements. These are the same sort of progressions, just with a different frame of context in relation to the ground.

Now let’s go into the cross crawl, just breaking contact with the ground. One of the things you want to note is an excessive swing of either the hips or the shoulders. The chest stays high, tall off of the ground.

You’re just trying to break contact with the ground. It’s not a contest to see how high off of the ground you can get. It’s not a bird dog. It’s gently breaking contact with the ground and having control…while still breathing.

If these ranges of motion are foreign to a person, the metabolism is working overtime. These may not look like high-intensity workouts, but if the nervous system isn’t used to this, the person is burning a ridiculous amount of calories trying to tap back into these movements.

With the rocking in six points of contact, we’re juicing the four knots, changing their reference to the ground. We’re rocking back and forth nice and easy—not too far forward and not too far back. We’re giving another framework for the brain to appreciate not only the contact points, but also how the limbs are knotting themselves back into the body.

Using Force in Crawling

Once we have these basic bodyweight progressions, we start looking at force. When we own control over bodyweight and over the body itself, then we challenge it.

For strength, we’ll use a light sandbag and pull it back and then launch it forward, again pull it back and launch it forward. Here we have three points of stability, but we also have to be able to issue force from the free hand.

When you move to the other side, if you notice a big discrepancy in terms of ability or stability—maybe on one side your client is super stable and on the other side, one leg keeps flying up—that’s an indicator. The side of greatest challenge is the one you want to work on more.

The next level of progression in crawling is to go from six points of contact to four points. To do that, rock back under the forefoot and rob the knees of contact with the ground. This is the “bear” position or the bear crawl.

The hips have to be lower than the head. Ideally, the hips have to be even lower than the shoulders. This becomes a little more difficult—not only because it requires strength in the core to keep the knees up, but also to have flexibility in the hip. If the hips are limited in terms of flexion, this is difficult.

When things become challenging, the line of sight almost always goes down. The trick here is to make it so we’re practicing so the line of sight is forward. Our eyes go down because we want to sight the ground when we don’t trust our balance. We’re looking for the ground so we can catch ourselves. That’s a primitive reflex. Instead, we want to keep the eyes engaged forward.

Higher-Level Crawling Positions

In higher-level training, we begin issuing force, like dragging the rope with three points of contact—just the feet and one hand—throwing the rope or even doing the same as we did with the sandbag.

Now for the hardest progression.

When you change the elevation or change the angle relative to gravity, crawling becomes climbing. This can also be a way for some of your elderly clients to access the crawling pattern. For them, working from the top down is more important than working from the bottom up.

For your athletes, you might have one hand and foot on the floor, while the other two points of contact are on the wall. Here we are at an angle, looking up toward the ceiling. It’s tempting to look forward between the hands, but we want to look more toward the ceiling. Bring your hands a bit closer to each other, so the hands are pretty much even with the shoulder line. From here, we work on that cross-crawl pattern.

Ideally at this stage, we want to minimize the rotation of the hips, which is breaking contact with each part of the ground. If we want to up the ante when the person is a bit more advanced, the next part is very important—you’ll go to the side. This is not for the elderly clientele unless they’re very advanced, but this will work well for athletes, especially your athletes who need to be functional and strong in a variety of contexts.

The next position in our crawling progression is diagonal, where we have two points in touch with the ground and two points in touch with the wall. Being able to stabilize is important. You’re not going to be able to cross-crawl in this position because it’s too unstable, but this is a good way to learn to stabilize.

Feeling the ground with different points of contact is very important. The wall is a point of stability, but the ground is also a point of stability. Being able to keep the body in position, then move the head and neck looking left and right is valuable.

Progressing further, it’s hands down and feet up, going into partial inversion. It looks like it’s going to be the start of an elevated push-up, but instead keep the hips and knees flexed.

You don’t want to be looking down; imagine you’re crawling downhill. This is challenging—not only in terms of keeping contact with the wall, but also in terms of stability.

In terms of the downward cross-crawl, imagine if you’re doing an uphill crawling or climbing pattern, you’re now climbing downhill—a reverse climb, climbing down head first. For animals in quadruped, that’s pretty standard. If you’ve climbed up a tree, you have to be able to climb down, and to look in the direction in which you’re climbing.

Crawling is ordinarily something most humans don’t do enough of, and it’s very rich for core development. All of the groundwork progressions we cover in the Prehab Rehab video are valuable for your adult clients, your injured patients and your athletes.

Learn the progressions and discover what to look for as compensations and your clients will be well served.

This was a text excerpt of Mark Cheng’s Prehab Rehab 101 video. You can review a variety of preview clips here.

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Tap into the Brains of Some of the World’s Leading Performance Experts

FREE Access to the OTP Vault

 

Inside the OTP Vault, you’ll find over 20 articles and videos from leading strength coaches, trainers and physical therapists such as Dan John, Gray Cook, Michael Boyle, Stuart McGill and Sue Falsone.

Click here to get FREE access to the On Target Publications vault and receive the latest relevant content to help you and your clients move and perform better.

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crawling

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https://www.functionalmovement.com/Articles/845/creating_cross_body_connections_for_better_rotation 

 

75% Of Junior Golfers Surveyed Believe That Early Specialization Is Necessary For College Recruitment

 Fri Aug 24, 2018 by Brendan Ryan

 

This article is based on a collaborative effort between Brendan Ryan, Dr. Bhrett McCabe and the AJGA, which they were generous enough to make available to the TPI community.

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As part of a growing commitment to junior golf, the American Junior Golf Associations has sought to explore important trends in junior golf by partnering with top golf researchers and junior development specialists to survey members about important trends. In this article, we examine data collected from 50 of the 71 junior players at last year’s AJGA Senior Showcase. The goal of this data collection was to better understand the benchmarks of the college recruitment process and provide continued support to junior golfers and their families. 

The online, optional survey created by Dr. McCabe, the AJGA and myself had 8 questions:

1. At what age did you first become interested in golf?
2. At what age did you play your first 36-hole tournament?
3. At what age did you start the college recruitment process?
4. What other sports do you play competitively? Please list the sports, as well as the number of years you have participated
5. To play Division I golf, do you believe you need to specialize in golf?
6. How many hours (in total) do you think you have spent on the college recruitment process?
7. How much control do you believe you have over the recruitment process (1= very little, 100=Total Control)
8. Do you feel you need to specialize early in golf to be recruited to play collegiately?

What We Learned About The Participants

Of the 50 respondents, the average player reported to begin to take an interest in golf at 9.2 years with 30 percent of golfers starting at 5 years of golf or younger, while 54 percent of golfers starting between the ages of 10-14, and 10 percent starting between the ages of 6-9 years old. The average age for the participants first 36-hole tournament was 13.48 years and only 10 percent reported playing a 36-hole event before their 10th birthday. Participants also reported that on average they started to engage in the recruitment process about the start of their junior year and on average had invested about 43 hours. 

What The Data Tells Us

Not surprisingly, the data through this survey highlights that many respondents were at one-time, multi-sport athletes, and while many started playing young, the average player took a larger interest in golf as they grew older. Although players seemed to fit what we consider a very healthy development model, they also reported that they felt significant pressure to specialize in golf. A shocking 75 percent reported that it was necessary to specialize in golf to be recruited to play collegiately. The fact that junior golfers feel enormous pressure to specialize is concerning because of the tie between early specialization, burn out and injury. 

Early specialization has gained significant attention over the last few years. In a 2013 American Medical Society for Sports Medicine survey, 88 percent of college athletes who were surveyed played more than one sport as a child. Specialization is continuing to increase, however, despite its reported consequences. In a 2017 TIME article about the growth of the youth sports industry, the industry is estimated to reach beyond $15 billion per year and the pressure to secure college scholarships is only intensifying the specialization urgency. Early experiences in the game of golf were fantastic and in efforts to grow the game, exposing players to positive benefits of the game such as sportsmanship, motor learning, and resiliency, can prepare them for life ahead. It is important that we continue to educate and refine resources to maximize the recruiting process and allow those players ready to compete the opportunity to compete at the school that is right for them. Research done by Dr Neeru Jayanthi of Emory University and associates, suggests early specialization in a single sport is one of the strongest predictors of injury. Athletes in the study who specialized were 70 percent to 93 percent more likely to be injured than children who played multiple sports.  This is especially important in a repetitive rotary sport like golf. The association between movement variability and movement competency is observable at a young age too.  A 2016 study found that gymnastics-like movement training improved stability and object control in kids with an average age of 8.

Though the impulse of parents and young golfers understandable and well-intentioned, it does not reflect the most effective path to facilitate the highest athletic ceiling or long-term success in golf.  TPI has written extensively about the multi-sport backgrounds of some of the top golfers in the world, including Jordan Spieth, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson and others.  One of the most important tenants of the TPI Junior program is build the athlete first, golfer second.  Athletes with better movement skills and movement capacity have a better chance to succeed in their chosen sport. 

 

Though the benefits of a multi sport background are nearly unassailable, it’s important to not that the argument FOR it can become a little reductive.  Many studies don’t take into account games played or complementary training programs.  Additionally, research often does not answer the question: did they play multiple sports because they were great athletes? Or were they great athletes because they played multiple sports? It’s probably a little of both.

Brooks Koepka isn’t having success in golf BECAUSE he played baseball growing up, but there’s an excellent chance that baseball helped develop coordination and speed that helps him excel in golf.   Most importantly, playing baseball (or any other sport) didn’t hurt Koepka’s chances of earning a scholarship, as the survey results suggest young golfers believe. 

If playing at an elite level is the goal, rushing to secure a scholarship isn’t a necessary strategy.  In a normal year, at least 35% of the signing class happens in the late period (after April 1). It is also important to understand that while early signings make up a tremendous amount of buzz on social media, players who commit more than two years in advance of their graduation date make up less than 3% of commitments but 28% of posts. Junior golfers are not the only ones who are concerned. In another data collection, this time of 57 college coaches (50 from NCAA D1 schools and 7 from NCAA D2 schools), 75% of coaches polled believe that athletes are committing too early.

Elite athletics is about accumulating skills. When athletes participate in a board spectrum of activities, it is more likely that they have not only been exposed to diverse skills and experiences but given time to develop compentcy in there areas.  There’s no substitute for developing golf skills, but it shouldn’t be done at the expense of developing movement skills.

 

 

Movement Excerpt: Self-Limiting Exercise Gray Cook

 

Self-limiting exercises make us think, and even make us feel more connected to exercise and to movement. They demand greater engagement and produce greater physical awareness. Self-limiting exercises do not offer the easy confidence or quick mastery provided by a fitness machine.

The earliest exercise forms were self-limiting—they required mindfulness and technique. Idiot-proof equipment and the conditioning equivalent of training wheels did not exist. Great lifters learned to lift great; great fighters learned to fight great; great runners learned to run great. Their qualities and quantities were intertwined.

Self-limiting exercise demands mindfulness and an awareness of movement, alignment, balance and control. In self-limiting exercise, a person cannot just pop on the headphones and walk or run on the treadmill, fingering the playlist or watching the news on a well-placed monitor. Self-limiting exercise demands engagement.

The clearest example of self-limiting exercise is barefoot running. While running barefoot, the first runners connected with the sensory information in the soles of their feet. This works perfectly—this is the very reason the soles of the feet have such a uniquely dense distribution of sensory nerves. This provides a window to our environment, like the nerves in our hands, eyes and ears. The information provided by sensory nerves in the soles help all who walk on two feet continually adjust their movement, stride, rhythm, posture and breathing to meet changes in the terrain.

The modern running shoe allows us to ignore a sensory perspective of running that is only second to vision, and, as you know, the increase in running-related injuries paralleled running shoe development. When running barefoot, over-striding and heel striking is not an option—it produces jarring, discomfort and pain because it is not authentic. Is it not a bit peculiar that the quick twinges of pain refine the barefoot runner’s stride to help avoid running injuries, while the comfort of the modern running shoe later exchanged those friendly twinges for debilitating pain?

The modern runner uses braces to cover a weakness, often not taking responsibility to rehabilitate a problem, or dissatisfied with the rehabilitation process and its incomplete outcome. Christopher McDougall reveals this concept in an amazing story in his book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, a story that reminds us to temper all technologic advancements against historical facts and time-tested principles. He touches on medical and biomechanical issues, prehistoric man, exercise concepts and a detachment from the joy of movement we exchange for superficial results.

This book is highly recommended for trainers, coaches and rehabilitation professionals to help them see their respective professions through the eyes of the inquisitive, chronically injured runner. Christopher’s investigation and story connects important dots we can all appreciate. In his journey, he discovered rehabilitation and coaching wisdom that is logical and simple. The problem is that he had to dig to find it. Part of his digging was caused by our incomplete practices of movement assessment, exercise and rehabilitation.

Examples of other natural, self-limiting categories are governed by breathing, grip strength, balance, correct posture and coordination. Some exercises combine two or more self-limiting activities, and each has natural selective and developmental benefits. These exercises produce form and function while positioning the entire movement matrix for multiple benefits. As we train movement, anatomical structures model themselves around natural stresses.

Self-limiting activities should become the cornerstone of your training programs, not as preventive maintenance and risk management, but as movement authentication—to keep it real. The limitations these exercises impose keep us honest and allow our weakest links to hold us back, as they should.

Used correctly, self-limiting exercises improve poor movements and maintain functional movement quality. These exercises are challenging and produce a high neural load, which is to say they require engagement and increased levels of motor control at the conscious and reflexive level.

Anytime we don’t acknowledge our weakest links or confront them in training, we demonstrate the same behavior that caused our collective functional movement patterns to erode in the first place. Embedded in each workout, the self-limiting activities continually whisper the message that we cannot become stronger than our weakest links.

A word of caution: These activities are not magic. They don’t automatically install movement quality. They simply provide the opportunity should the individual be up to the challenge. Each of these activities imposes natural obstacles and requires technical attention. There is usually a coordination of attributes not often used together, such as balance and strength or quickness and alignment. These activities usually require instruction to provide safety and maximize benefits. If you do not respect them, they can impose risk.

However, patience, attention to detail and expert instruction will provide a natural balancing of movement abilities. These do not have to make up the entire exercise program. Instead, they offer mental and physical challenges against natural limitations and technical standards. These activities will not only provide variety, but should ultimately produce physical poise, confidence and higher levels of movement competence.

Exercise Program Design Fundamentals, Part One

A well-designed training program is crucial for making continued progress both in the short and long term.

However, program design can be a confusing topic with a countless number of articles, tips, techniques, methods and programs to choose from.

In this article, you’ll find clear, simple and powerful guidelines to help you design exercise programs that deliver results without the need for outrageous gimmicks or special fitness fads.

Identify the right quadrant to train in
Adapted from Dan John’s book Intervention.

Back in the 1970s, every month brought a new wave of magazines filled with new tools, programs and movements all guaranteed to change the lives of athletes. We tested a few, laughed at couple and generally kept one or two ideas from all the pulp. 

Today, through the internet, new ideas are presented to us virtually every minute. Because of this, most of us are swamped with new training ideas, programs and equipment. This can make it difficult to know what to work on in your training sessions.

To provide clarity, here’s a simple four-part quadrant grid that will help classify you as a trainee and show you what you should be doing in your training.

These quadrants are based on two continuums:

• The number of qualities an athlete must have to excel at a sport
• How good an athlete needs to be at each of the those qualities relative to how good any athlete can be at that quality 

 

Quadrant One

A person in Quadrant One should spend the training time trying to pick up as many qualities as possible at a low level. The key to this quadrant is exposure and diversity, not necessarily performance excellence. People training in this quadrant learn the rules, skills and appreciation of games, sports and movement.

Most people only get one shot in life at this quadrant, which makes it a very important stage for future athletic development.

Quadrant Two

This quadrant houses the collision sports and occupations. A lot of qualities are needed, and the level of these qualities is quite high. People who would be classified in this quadrant include football players, rugby players and special forces soldiers. 

Most people train in this quadrant, yet few actually should train in this manner.

The very nature of Quadrant Two, with the sheer volume of qualities and the high level of these qualities necessary just to show up, makes it tough to see whether or not a new idea, plan, supplement, program or concept is really making a difference. 

Quadrant Three

Most people fall into this quadrant. This will sound odd, but in Quadrant Three, only a few qualities are needed…and at a low level. 

Quadrant Three can be further divided into elite athletes, and everyone else.

It may surprise you to see elite athletes in this quadrant. You might ask, “Don’t elite athletes need qualities developed at a high level?”

Let’s take the example of an elite track athlete. 

This athlete needs technique and strength. The strength levels are amazing, but not high when compared with someone who just lifts like an elite Olympic lifter. 

A Quadrant Three elite athlete may need the absolute strength to deadlift 600 pounds. That’s a pretty big number, but let’s remember the world record is approaching twice that. It’s all relative.

With Quadrant Three athletes, you must understand this: Technical work is strength work; strength is technical. The two qualities flow into and build on each other. Mastery in the weightroom carries over to the ring, which brings knowledge that carries back into the weightroom and then back out to the ring. A strong person you teach to throw the discus or a good thrower you make strong will never throw as far as the thrower who seeks to master both aspects since these complement each other.

People in this quadrant who aren’t elite athletes should be spending the bulk of their time working on two things: hypertrophy—less fat and more muscle— and joint mobility.

Quadrant Four

Here in Quadrant Four, we find the rarest of athletes. These are people who need very few qualities, but at the highest levels of human performance. 

Think 100-meter sprinters and Olympic lifters.

More of a visual learner?
Click here to view the Four Quadrants Infographic.

Find your gaps

Adapted from Dan John’s book, Intervention.

Identifying the right quadrant to train in will help you set the right goals and help focus on the right elements in training.

The next step is to find out where you are and where you fall short by using assessments.

There are countless standards and assessments covering mobility, flexibility, strength, power, speed, agility and sports skills. You’ll have to spend some time finding the appropriate standards and assessments for your goals, or those of your clients.

Once you’ve found the right assessments and standards, conduct the assessments, identify weaknesses and address them.

Retest regularly to make sure you’re on the right track.

An important point to remember in all this: What you’re not doing is what you need to do.

The movements you’re ignoring are the things you need to do!

Never ignore the strengths, but combine the time working on strong points, which is everyone’s favorite stuff anyway, with the less favorite, such as mobility, flexibility or tissue-quality work—the foam rolling and all of that.

If you are in Quadrant Three, you can find most of the assessment tools you need in Dan John’s book, Can You Go.

In the book, he goes into each assessment in detail and shows you how to integrate them into the rest of your training program.

To get you started, here are Dan John’s basic strength standards for men and women. These standards cover the five essential movements: push, pull, squat, hinge and loaded carry.

 MENWOMENPushExpected = Bodyweight bench press

Game-changer = Bodyweight bench press for 15 reps

Game-changer = Bodyweight bench pressPullExpected = 8–10 pullups

Game-changer = 15 pullups

Game-changer = Three pullupsSquatExpected = Bodyweight squat

Game-changer = Bodyweight squat for 15 reps

Game-changer = 275-pound deadliftHingeExpected = Bodyweight to 150% bodyweight deadlift

Game-changer = Double-bodyweight deadlift

Game-changer = 135 pounds for five in the back squatLoaded Carry

(at least 20m)

Expected = Farmer walk with total bodyweight (half per hand)

Game-changer = Bodyweight per hand

Game-changer = 85 pounds per handGetupOne left and right, done with a half-filled cup of water

What is meant by ‘expected’ in the standards above? It’s the shoulder-shrugging nod of, “Yes, of course, I can do that.”

An untrained man can often do these standards on the first training session, and someone detrained (he took a few years off to build up some belly fat) might be able to do most of these anyway.

If you can do all six movements at a game-changer level, your concerns are not in the weightroom. 

If you’re dealing with a body fat problem, it’s diet. If you’re failing in sport, it’s technical or tactical, but it isn’t a weightroom issue. You are clearly strong enough and balanced enough to do practically anything.

These are general standards, of course, but the idea is, if you max out one test and fail miserably on the others, it indicates your weakness and your best direction.

Using the FMS to find movement gaps

The Functional Movement Screen (FMS) is another great tool you can use to find gaps in your training.

The FMS is a simple but powerful screen of movement quality that takes less than 10 minutes to do.

This following case study, adapted from Alwyn Cosgrove’s section of The Future of Exercise Program Design, is an example of how the FMS can be used to shape the design of a program. 

FMS Program Design Case Study, a 51-year-old woman

Before designing a training program, let’s look at the important information gleaned from the intake questionnaire and initial FMS screening.

Personal History

• Female
• 51 years old
• Accountant
• Taekwondo background, intermediate rank
• Participated in 5K runs

Medical History

• Overweight by 20 pounds
• Other findings normal (vitals, heart rate, etc.), cleared for exercise

Specific Interests and Targets

• Fat loss
• Feel better about herself
• Improve muscle definition
• Improve posture

Other information

• Highly motivated, has an important event coming up
• Has lost weight before
• Only has two days to work out

In this case, our client is cleared to train. She has no risk factors in her medical history.

So our job now is to help her reach her goals. We have four weeks to deliver the fat-loss results she wants. She doesn’t care about her leg raise improvement. She doesn’t care about her squat looking good. She only cares about getting into her skinny jeans in 28 days.

If the jeans won’t fasten in 28 days, she’ll fire you and tell the whole world your training program didn’t get her the results she wanted.

Looking at her FMS screen results, we see that she’s healthy movement-wise. She has a score of two on all movements and has no asymmetries.

Movement Health (FMS Score Sheet)

• Total: 14, no asymmetries
• Deep Squat – 2
• Hurdle Step – 2
• In-line Lunge – 2
• Shoulder Mobility – 2
• Active Straight Leg Raise – 2
• Trunk Stability Push-up – 2
• Rotary Stability – 2

An example program for our client would look something like this:

Program

• Dynamic Warm-up
• Core: Plank, Chop & Lift
• Power: Medicine ball throws, Kettlebell swings
• Strength
  • Squat – Goblet squat
  • Lunge – Step up, single-leg deadlift
  • Single-Leg Stance – Bodyweight split-squat
  • Hinge – Kettlebell sumo deadlift
  • Push – Pushup, pushup variations
  • Pull – Inverted row
  • Twist – Anti-rotation press
• Metabolic work

Our client doesn’t have a problem with rolling, so we can select core exercises like the plank and chop and lift. These are great exercise choices for someone of her level.

We choose a split-squat over a dynamic movement like the lunge because she’s a beginner in the weightroom. Moves like overhead lunges would probably be too much to start off with. Remember, you’re here to get her fat-loss results, not to make her exercise moves look awesome.

Push-ups and push-up variations are a great choice for someone of her level.

For pulls, inverted rows using a TRX are a great choice, too.

And finally, we have the anti-rotation press for the twist movement.

This would be an example of a quality program for someone whose movement is healthy. 

Let’s now look at how the FMS can inform program design by looking at the case of someone who has issues in movement. Let’s say that her FMS results changed to the following:

Movement Health (FMS Score Sheet)

• Total: 12, no asymmetries
• Deep Squat – 1
• Hurdle Step – 2
• In-line Lunge – 1
• Shoulder Mobility – 2
• Active Straight Leg Raise – 2
• Trunk Stability Push-up – 2
• Rotary Stability – 2

The only change is the deep squat and the in-line lunge, both of which have gone from a two to a one score. 

Everything else is the same. 

The one scores on the deep squat and in-line lunge tell us that our client cannot perform these movements properly and has stabilization issues.

Taking this information, we simply go back to the program we designed before and find what we need to modify according to what her real needs are.

There’s no need to redesign the entire program—and that’s the great thing about using the FMS.

What do we need to change?

Here’s a clue: Our client can’t stabilize on the lunge. She can run a 5K—which is the equivalent of 4,500 short-step lunges—without pain, but she cannot do one regular lunge.

What major muscle group may not be working properly? 

Her core? No.

It would be her glutes. Her glutes aren’t firing properly and she’s getting her stability from either her quads and hamstrings or her lower back.

So how do we activate her glutes?

Should we use isolation work? No, because that may not transfer well to dynamic movement.

Should we do glute bridges? That might activate the glutes, but it may not transfer to a standing position.

The answer is to put her in a kneeling position.

If you put her in a tall-kneeling position, the quads are stretched and the hamstrings are short, so neither can provide stability.

You’ll be then able to coach the lower back to get the core and glute firing properly.

Knowing this, we can change the chop-and-lifts to tall-kneeling chop-and-lifts. We do the medicine ball throws from the tall-kneeling position.

We also lighten the load on the split-squat since the lunge is a problem. We change it to an assisted split-squat.

The hinge and the push-up aren’t a problem, so we don’t have to touch them. But for the push movement, we can do tall-kneeling pressing overhead to get in more glute activation.

For the pull movement, we change it to cable rows in half-kneeling and half-kneeling pulldowns.

The anti-rotation press is a great choice to start with, and we make it even better for the client by using a half-kneeling position for the exercise.

We didn’t need to write a completely new program. We just used the FMS results to make small but significant changes that really targeted the movement deficiency in the client.

But how does this help a person lose fat?

The ‘1’ scores on the FMS show the person has muscles that are not firing correctly in basic patterns. This movement deficiency equates to a metabolic deficiency.

By addressing the movement deficiency by improving the ‘1’ score to a ‘2,’ you automatically create a metabolic increase. This means more fat loss in the same amount of time, and a very happy client.

Modified Program

• Dynamic Warm-up
• Core: Plank, Chop & Lift
• Power: Medicine ball tall-kneeling chest-throw, half-kneeling side throw
• Strength
  • Squat – Goblet squat
  • Lunge – Step-up, single-leg deadlift
  • Single-Leg Stance – Assisted split-squat with the TRX
  • Hinge – Kettlebell sumo deadlift
  • Push – Incline push-ups, tall-kneeling overhead press
  • Pull – Half-kneeling cable row, half-kneeling pulldowns
  • Twist – Anti-rotation press in tall-kneeling
• Metabolic work

The FMS helps us find the gaps in a client’s training and allows us to make a huge difference in results just by identifying the right tweaks to make.

For more FMS exercise programming case studies

Click here to see the rest of Alwyn’s section in The Future of Exercise Program Design. In The Future of Exercise Program Design, Alwyn Cosgrove, Gray Cook & Lee Burton will show you how to use the FMS to get success with your clients by identifying their weak links and addressing them.

To find out more about the Functional Movement Screen

Click here for a comprehensive infographic on the Functional Movement System.

Or click here to get Gray Cook’s popular Movement book, where he goes in depth into the principles behind the Functional Movement System. He also details the two tools, the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) and its medical counterpart, the Selective Functional Movement Assessment (SFMA). 

If you’ve ever thought about implementing the FMS in your own facility, this book is a great resource that you will constantly refer back to.

Divide your training time

Adapted from Dan John’s book, Intervention.

Everyone has limited time to train. It’s important to divide your time wisely to maximize the results. The 80/10/10 rule is a valuable tool you can use when categorizing training time. 

 

Simply spend 80% of your time on training toward your goal.

If your goal is to lose fat, spend 80% of your time on shopping, cooking, measuring, weighing and preparing your food.

If you are a thrower and your goal is to throw farther, spend 80% of your time throwing.

If you’re a basketball player, spend 80% of your time practicing free throws, playing the game and doing basketball drills.

Then divide the remaining 20% of your time equally into strength training and corrective work.

For example, if you have 10 hours a week to train, spend eight of those hours practicing your sport. Spent one hour on strength training and one hour on correctives.

This time division keeps training focused, while providing enough time on strength training and correctives to support the pursuit of the goal. 

Make consistent progress with Dan John’s Intervention system

In Intervention, Dan John unpacks the exact system he uses to assess and improve the strength, conditioning and fitness of the people he coaches.

The Intervention system is the result of 35 years experience training and competing as a field athlete, and coaching all kinds of clients from high school students to people looking to lose a few pounds, to older athletes wanting to move without pain, all the way up to professional athletes in the elite categories of sport.

In Intervention you’ll learn just about everything you need about designing a training program, from assessments to rep schemes to exercise selection—all presented as a logical, coherent step-by-step process.

You'll be finally able to see exactly what you need (and don’t need), and what to do next.

Click here to learn more about Intervention, the book, or Intervention, the DVD. 

Work postures before developing a pattern

Any movement pattern is just a dynamic posture. It’s important to ensure that your client can hold a posture before you work to develop a pattern.

When designing a training program, make sure proper posture is developed before doing movement pattern work. This will ensure that your clients are able to walk before they run.

Most people have poor posture due to thoracic and hip mobility issues, often caused by too much sitting. A great way to remedy this is the tall-kneeling position. This takes away use of the knees and ankles in the movement, and forces people to relearn how use the thoracic spine and hips.

Gray Cook and Dan John discuss this in the following video.

 

Drills to develop postures and patterns

In Essentials of Coaching and Training Functional Continuums, Gray Cook and Dan John show drills you can use to develop postures and patterns.

They also explain how to use the Functional Movement Screen (FMS) results to categorize training priorities. Some of what they cover include:

• Exercise choices for power, work capacity and metabolic load
• How to evaluate movement health, competency, capacity and complexity
• The difference between an exercise continuum and a training progression
• Minimum standards to progress, hold or regress

If you’re wondering about which areas to work on, or how or when to progress or regress certain exercises, you’ll find Essentials of Coaching and Training Functional Continuums a great resource for designing exercise programs.

Stay Tuned for Part Two

In Part Two of Exercise Program Design Fundamentals, you’ll learn about the fundamental human movements, programming sets and reps, and the place of corrective exercise in your training programs and warm-ups.

 

Tap Into the Brains of Some of the World’s Leading Performance Experts

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Youth Sports in America: How Sociology, Economics, and History are Affected by the Monetization of Youth Sports

By youthsportsinamerica on Mar 5, 2015, 9:37am PST +

 

 

Obsession with failure and hunt for perfection linked to burnout, sports study uncovers

Date:April 22, 2022Source:University of EssexSummary:The hunt for perfection and obsession over tiny mistakes are strongly linked to burnout in athletes, a new study has found.Share:

 

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Story Source:

Materials provided by University of Essex. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

 

TRAINING WHEELS DON’T TEACH BALANCE

Training wheels don’t teach balance; they just make learning to balance that first bike a little safer. Those little devices simply prevent a mistake from turning into an accident. Training wheels are the tools, not the training, and in fact, they can actually hinder perception and slow the process of learning balance if used incorrectly.

Have you ever seen a child lean on one training wheel while making a turn? If you’ve witnessed this, you have watched the child learn a behavior that will actually need to be unlearned. This was not learning to appreciate balance; it was learning to ignore it.

If we put the training wheels on a child’s first bike and took the time to demonstrate how the wheels work and challenged the child with a goal, learning would be accelerated. Saying “Honey, these little wheels are there to catch you, but try to never lean on them” would provide cleaner learning and would not set up a situation in which the child would need to unlearn something later.

A great little perception and education tool would be to put some tape around the perimeter of each training wheel and have your little learner attempt to ride short distances without marking up the tape. You could let the child also just have fun and ride and play, but every now and then, do the tape test. When you’re not looking, the child would probably practice a little as kids always do. The subtle message you are sending is, here is the safety net…now try not to use it!

The beginning of corrective exercise is no different. This is particularly important when cre­ating a stability experience that could potentially become an exercise. Too much help or advice will not force the sensory motor system to perceive a problem and start searching for a behavior to recapture control.

For example, sometimes the narrow base in quadruped or half-kneeling is actually the exercise—just the narrow position. People may work for minutes, struggling to find balance in a narrow-base half-kneeling posture drill. Some will get discouraged and say, “Wow, I can’t even get in position for the exercise!”

You can counter that with, “You are doing great. Apparently, this is your exercise. It’s right at the edge of your ability. Your brain and body are working it out. You’re making connections and working out angles. You’re learning to feel and do, and feel more. Thanks for helping me find your exercise.”

Flight simulators are designed to allow a student pilot to make mistakes without risking life and limb. The simulators still indicate and report mis­takes, and that is where the learning comes from. Safe perception and correction of many movement mistakes will improve movement learning speed.

Once the training wheels come off, you can’t verbalize how to ride a bike, can you? You can explain how it feels, but you can’t say how you do it. Riding a bike is a perceptual and behavioral experience that does not lend itself to complete or compressive verbal description.

The ability to perform a stable half-kneeling posture or a solid single-leg stance is no different. Those who can do it cannot explain it as quickly as strug­gling can produce it in those who can’t, provided it’s a correctly dosed experience.

The point here is that correctives need to be challenging and mildly stressful, but they always need to be safe.

Modern conveniences are partially to blame for many of our movement problems. Adaptive move­ment behaviors are minimized every time a new group of modern conveniences is introduced. The loss of adaptability represents specialization, and overspecialization is the kiss of death for biologi­cal organisms. Modern conveniences are nice and we should keep them, but what happens when we start adapting exercise equipment to make those more convenient, too?

If exercise were a movement-quality stressor, movement patterns might be maintained. However, modern exercise equipment is usually designed to allow quantity regardless of the level of quality. This is the fundamental reason some self-limiting activities should be performed as part of a general exercise program.

Physical exercise is the last chance we have to maintain physical adaptability, and when we lose that adaptability, corrective exercises must fix it. Once corrected, better exercise choices should maintain it. Corrective exercise and general exer­cise must produce manageable stress in areas of both quality and quantity, and if it doesn’t, it’s not likely to produce appreciable authentic movement.

ADVANCED CORRECTIVE STRATEGIES

Advanced corrective strategies are drills used to incorporate and coordinate the attributes of mobility and stability into movement patterns. It’s common for a person to have the mobility and stability required, but for some reason be unable to perform a movement pattern. This individual has the physical and mechanical ability, but just can’t produce the behavior. We need to help connect the dots and turn ability into behavior.

Sometimes the person is thinking too much, obsessing too much, or concentrating on the wrong thing. Of course, the opposite can be true as well—the client or patient might be detached, under-sensitive, and out of sync with a posture or movement. That person is over-processing some­thing natural, authentic and fundamental, or is not connected to it at all.

Advanced corrective exercises break these cycles four different ways. No single way is best; each one provides an option that you can employ to incorporate movement fundamentals into movement patterns. Each of these techniques can be called advanced, but these are really just move­ment pattern retraining.

Different problems and personalities will respond differently to each technique. Do not disregard the basic correctives in the previous chapter. They create the foundation and might produce all the correction needed to change a screen or assessment.

The advanced corrective strategies that follow are designed to work with fundamental mobility and stability already in place. Each drill or technique has a trick it plays on the perceptional and behavioral systems, but the trick can only be effective if the criterion is in place prior to the activity.

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Journal Reference:

1. Luke F. Olsson, Michael C. Grugan, Joseph N. Martin, Daniel J. Madigan. Perfectionism and Burnout in Athletes: The Mediating Role of Perceived Stress. Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology, 2021; 1 DOI: