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Lance Goyke

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Category: Programming (Page 3 of 3)

Overhead pressing requires good mechanics

How Often Should I Change Exercises?

July 9, 2014 / / 0 Comments

The short answer to this question is: “It depends.” The long answer is what follows.

Reasons you might change an exercise:

  1. There’s a better exercise you should be doing.
  2. You want to vary your training.
  3. To prevent boredom.

Reasons you might NOT change an exercise:

  1. You’re still seeing progress.
  2. It’s a very specific lift for your sport.
  3. It’s a fundamental movement (like a squat or a hip hinge).

Let’s break it down.

 

CHANGE: There’s a Better Exercise

This is the art of coaching. Being able to ebb and flow with the changing tides of training is a huge determinant of your success. I encounter this one all the time with my clients.

If I want someone to do split squats, but they just can’t maintain any semblance of good form, then it’s time to try a half kneeling cable chop instead. This is an example of an appropriate regression.

Now if I want someone to do a squatting bar reach to learn how to keep their pelvis underneath them, I might have their program written out for the next month, but if they get this down in a week, it’s time to move to a goblet squat. This is an example of an appropriate progression.

Play it by ear. If you’re training alone, use both objective (film yourself and watch the tape) and subjective (did that feel correct?) measurements of your progress.

Picture the lift. How did it feel?

Picture the lift. How did it feel?

 

CHANGE: Training Variation

The goal of training is to progressively adapt to stressful stimuli while maintaining the variability necessary to carry out any task you may need to perform.

“Progressively adapt to stressful stimuli,” means lose fat, put on muscle, and gain strength.

“Maintaining the variability necessary to carry out any task you may need to perform,” means don’t get hurt in the process.

So if I do the same exercises overandoverandoveragain, I get good at doing those exercises, but move me out of those exercises and I start to crumble.

My favorite way to maintain variability is to play games (like soccer tennis). If you need a more specific approach, you’re going to need to get a knowledgeable trainer or see a good physical therapist.

 

CHANGE: Prevent Boredom

Prevent boredom and you keep clients physically active. That’s one of the reasons you see my clients playing games during our group class or their own training.

This is an even bigger issue for kids. How can I accomplish what I need to accomplish while they have fun? Don’t criticize a child for not being interested in the squats you’re giving them. Instead, minimize the structure. Games are great for this, and as we just talked about, they’re also good for introducing variability.

Let the kids play!

Let the kids play!

Even simply loading an exercise in a different way, like holding the weights up high instead of down low, can keep someone interested in working out.

So now you know when to change your exercises, but when should you leave them alone?

 

DON’T CHANGE: Still Seeing Progress

This is the most obvious of reasons to keep something in your program. If the four weeks of your program are up, but the weights you’re using for your front squats are still rising, DON’T STOP. Ride those gains for as long as you can. Only then do you want to consider switching things up.

 

DON’T CHANGE: Specific for Your Sport

This one depends on where you are in your training cycle. The further out you are from a competition, the more “general” your exercises should be. This period is good for introducing variability.

If you’re eight weeks out from a powerlifting meet, however, you had best be squatting, benching, and deadlifting. You need to re-groove the patterns for those lifts.

If your sport is not a lifting-based one like powerlifting or Olympic lifting, you do the same thing, only different. If I’m a hammer thrower, I’m going to spend less time with a barbell and more time with a hammer. As I get closer and closer to competition day, I depart from “general” training and move toward more “specific” training.

Hammer throw

Yes, I’ll stay here safely behind the netting, please.

 

DON’T CHANGE: Fundamental Movement Pattern

For every program, you want a bend, a squat, an upper body push, and an upper body pull.

The bend, also known as a hip hinge, is any form of deadlift exercise. Examples include a Romanian deadlift, a rack pull, and a trap bar deadlift. These exercises teach my hips how to extend, and, performed correctly, are huge lifesavers on the low back throughout the day. If I only had one lower body exercise to load, it would be a bend pattern.

Isa Olsson deadlift

Get those hips through, Isa!

The squat is great for training knee extension. I may not choose to load the squat with a bar on my back, or maybe I won’t even load the squat at all, but this movement pattern is great for maintaining mobility across all joints. If nothing else, I can use a squat to train myself to control flexion across all joints, which is an essential trait if you want to maintain a high level of system variability.

I might not load it, but I want to be able to do it.

I might not load it, but I want to be able to do it.

An upper body push can be horizontal or vertical. My favorite version is the push up, but bench presses, floor presses, landmine presses, and cable presses fit in there as well.

An upper body pull can also be horizontal or vertical. A one-arm dumbbell row stays in most of my programs, but cable rows, bent rows, and pull ups are also solid choices. Rowing exercises may be the first thing to go if I have a new client with shoulder issues.

 

End Note

Reasons you might change an exercise:

  1. There’s a better exercise you should be doing.
  2. You want to vary your training.
  3. To prevent boredom.

Reasons you might NOT change an exercise:

  1. You’re still seeing progress.
  2. It’s a very specific lift for your sport.
  3. It’s a fundamental movement (like a squat or a hip hinge).

If you still aren’t sure, you should hire a professional. If you don’t know how to work on cars, you wouldn’t try to fix one on your own. Why would you do it on the most important vehicle you will ever own?

I don't FEEL asymmetrical

Defining Neutrality

April 21, 2014 / / 2 Comments

One of my goals for my non-athlete athletes (the teachers, moms, doctors) is neutrality.

But what does that even mean? What’s not neutral about me?

It’s reminds me of the intro in Van Halen’s “Hot For Teacher”. I don’t feel asymmetrical.

I don't FEEL asymmetrical

 

Asymmetry is Natural

Forgive the morbid visual, but if you cut yourself right down the middle and looked at your right and left insides, no part of your rational brain would think, “I’m a perfectly symmetrical human being.”

And what does that make you? That makes you and I part of the same Homo sapiens family. That’s it. Asymmetry isn’t weird, it’s normal. It’s necessary.

The biggest internal asymmetries that I like to point out to clients are the size of the thoracic diaphragm, the side of the liver, and side of the heart. These make us really good at standing on our right legs and breathing into our left chest wall.

Where's the left liver?

 

And going back to Van Halen, most people I’m cuing won’t feel asymmetrical until I get them neutral. If you live a life on your right leg (hint: you do), you’d feel weird on your left leg, too! Remember the story I wrote about from that course a few weeks back?

 

 

The Origins Project

It’s impossible to say where or why or how this asymmetry has come about to be so prevalent, but I can make a guess (because that’s what the interwebz is so good for: speculation).

It makes sense to me that this asymmetry has come about from natural selection, just like, you know, everything else. The infamous Pat Davidson recently shared a quote with me that sheds some light on the topic from the point of view of a physicist.

“…right-handed DNA for all is the rule. Evolution plays an essential role in this. As only like spirals can link to make a double helix, there is no advantage if some of us had right and others left, or if we had a mix of both. It appears essential for effective procreation, that the half provided by the male matches that from the female, and the most efficient way is if they have only one and the same handedness. While this does not explain how and when the asymmetry in the amino acids of our DNA originated, evolutionary advantage aided by the vastness of time could be the cause.”
-Frank Close, “Lucifer’s Legacy”, p. 76

If you think about the beginning of life on Earth, making two sets of DNA would, at best, halve the chances of life forming. So these all-right-sided DNAs had a huge advantage in making copies of themselves.

 

Defining Neutrality

If I go any further on origins, I’ll be stepping out of my bounds of education, so let’s shift gears. What am I examining to see whether or not you’re neutral?

Well, as someone who works with bodies and weights, the best way I know how to attack the situation is through movement. Even though not every change is orthopedic, these changes are the most tangible to you and I.

So I do some tests. I look at the position of your lower body with an Adduction Drop Test. This will tell me a lot, but most specifically, it tells me the position of your pelvis. Can you adduct?

There are some other accessory lower body tests that I’ll do to confirm my findings because I mess up sometimes. Hip motion tells me a lot of things.

Then I do some tests to look at the position of your upper body. An Apical Expansion test is the first time I ask you to breathe for me. Can you exhale on the left side? Can you inhale on the right side?

Then I’ll confirm my findings, which I find is especially important for the Apical Expansion test because it’s hard to judge the results without tester bias. Shoulder motion tells me a lot of things.

I always look at the way your neck moves, too. This Cervical Axial Rotation test is important because your neck motion tells me a lot of things.

If I can get all of these tests cleared, you’re neutral. If you’re neutral, you can effectively move side to side. You can walk with two legs instead of a right leg and a left kickstand. You can aspire. You can create.

Based on the natural asymmetry I was talking about earlier, I’m able to make some test predictions. If all of these predictions prove correct, I would call you “classic”. A classic left AIC, right BC, right TMCC. A classic human.

Then I can give you an exercise or push on your ribs to help you get neutral.

 

The Epilogue

After you get neutral (note the wording; I’m not doing it, you are), I give you some homework to make it stick. Neutrality isn’t a forever-defined state.

This reminds me of a tenured client I’ve worked with many times at IFAST. She got neutral months ago and was so proud of the progress she’s made. I imagine me watching this is what it feels like when parents see their child walk for the first time.

Then she got busy at work, started sleeping less, eating worse, not coming into the gym consistently, and getting neck problems. I was able to look at her one-on-one and found out that she’s not neutral anymore. What gives?

The state of your system is dependent on so many factors: what you see, what you hear, the exercises you’ve been doing, what has happened to you in the past, who’s around you… Any perception of threat steals your neutrality and puts you into survival mode. What happens for someone like our client in this case is she forgets what it feels like to be neutral. My job is now to remind her. But how?

For some people who aren’t too far locked into the normal, asymmetrical pattern, the task I give you might be to find your left heel a few times a day while you’re at work. This could be enough to remind your body that you have a left side that likes attention, too.

For most people, I’m going to give you some exercises to do at home and in the gym. You may have years of adaptations and compensations that we need to combat, and those tests I listed above tell me which of these we should focus on. And if you’re trying to get stronger and healthier, these exercises can help mitigate the negative effects of weight training.

Most commonly, I see a locked up pelvis on both sides because I see people who like to lift heavy things. If this is you, part of your program is going to be opening up the outlet of your pelvis. As I tell my anatomy students, this makes it so you can poop. Though this is hilarious to tell people in public, it’s not the only side-effect. Remember Bob Ross?

Then we’ll follow up with a lot of reaching activity. If the butt is closed off, so is the back. Active reaching helps make things stick better.

Then I might give you an exercise that reminds your body how to work as one whole system; an integration exercise. Moreover, I’d like this exercise to be done while standing, because you’ll be standing when you’re going about your daily life without me. I want to teach my baby birds to fly.

This pathway isn’t set in stone, it’s just a blueprint. Some people get different homework. Some people get the same homework for different reasons. Some people get the same homework for the same reasons.

That’s just a quick primer on neutrality. If you know someone at the White House, can you suggest to them that we make the first 24 hours of winter Neutrality Day? Neutral people welcome the winter because they have bodies that can deal with change.

Do you welcome winter?

—

Before you leave, do me a favor:

  1. Send this article to the last person with whom you talked about neutrality.
  2. If you haven’t yet, subscribe to my newsletter to get the information I don’t put on the blog.

And as always, comments and emails are always welcome.

All the best,
Lance

Overhead pressing requires good mechanics

Tips to Aggravate Your Shoulder

November 24, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Overhead pressing requires good mechanics

The shape of the glenohumeral joint lets the shoulder move. A LOT. This mobility, however, means that stability is lacking. Plus, it contraindicates some exercises right off the bat. Educate yourself and don’t let ignorance destroy your clients.

Factors Contributing to Shoulder Instability

Without even considering those who have genetic predisposition to floppy shoulders, the “normal” shoulder is already unstable in the grand scheme of joints. The glenoid/”socket” of the shoulder is shallow. Much more shallow than the acetabulum/”socket” of the hip. This lets us reach overhead, but does little to contain the arm.

The scapula, which holds this shoulder socket, is suspended by muscle, not locked into place by the shapes of the bones like the more stable knee and elbow joints. Force couples from muscles surrounding the scapula are everywhere. If not balanced, this will cause even more problems.

And the muscles that control the scapula are only affecting the scapula. The scapulospinal muscles, such as trapezius, also connect to the vertebrae and pull on the spine. If you fixate the shoulder and shorten the trapezius, the spine rotates contralaterally. So the spine has to be stable if the scapula is going to be stable if the shoulder is going to be stable…

Looking in the distal direction, that big, dumb muscle that everyone loves, pectoralis major, doesn’t attach on the scapula. But can it control the scapula? You betcha.

Superficial muscles of the chest and arm

One of the proximal attachments of pec major is on the clavicle, which articulates with the scapula at the acromioclavicular joint. Moving the clavicle orients the scapula. The distal attachment of pec major is on the proximal humerus (around the armpit). Pulling on the arm can orient the glenoid to face inward and downward. This big muscle works better as a prime mover, but can act pathologically as a stabilizer of the shoulder. When this happens, the mechanics of the shoulder joint don’t work very well, i.e. the ball doesn’t stay seated in the socket.

To beat down pec major even further, imagine a client with anterior instability of their shoulder. Now make them do push ups to failure and tell them to make their arms long at the top of the movement. You know, to get serratus. This protracted position makes the glenoid point forward. Pec major keeps working to get me up on that last rep, but pec pulls the humerus forward and inward. This client doesn’t have a capsule to check the anterior glide of the humeral head, and pec pulls the shoulder right out. This is an anterior dislocation.

Don’t coach your clients into dislocation.

This is why a proper assessment is a necessity and why trainers need to take education seriously. You can never know too much anatomy.

How Does Instability Lead To Pain?

Normal roll-and-slide mechanics of the shoulder joint keep it centered in the glenoid. When the humeral head becomes unstable, this centralization is easily lost when demands are placed on the shoulder (e.g. when pec starts to do it’s dirty work).

If you start the lift the arm overhead, the subacromial space can be closed. The humeral head rolls upward, and if no inferior glide accompanies this rollw, it doesn’t stay in the center of the glenoid and an external impingement occurs where the subacromial bursa and supraspinatus/infraspinatus of the rotator cuff rub on the acromion of the scapula.

This instability, however, doesn’t have to be localized to the glenohumeral joint. Instability at the scapula is drastically more common and also destroys the shoulder.

Lateral Raises

Bros everyone love the lateral raises. These, however, are not the only way to develop your deltoids. Plus, they give a lot of people the external impingement we just talked about because normal roll-and-slide mechanics are lost when deltoid takes over as a prime mover AND a stabilizer. Remember our talk about pec major?

We also have to consider the shape of the humerus here. The greater tubercle is a bony bump that sticks out anterolaterally. When the arm is brought into 90 degrees of abduction, strictly occuring in the frontal plane, this greater tubercle is much closer to the acromion and makes impingement easy. The orientation of the glenoid also points forward, making it’s front side more open to the world. Externally rotate the shoulder into a “high five” position and you push the humerus even more forward. It’s much less likely that the shoulder stays seated in the socket.

Abduct the arm without an inferior glide and that acromion will become a percussive instrument

A quick fix for this positioning is to stay out of the frontal plane and move to the scapular plane (about 30 degrees anterior to the frontal plane).

Remember, it doesn’t just have to be a lateral raise. An overhead press in the frontal plane is the SAME position. Pack the shoulder down and back and swing the elbows a little more forward and you get immediate relief by opening up the subacromial space.

Behind-the-Neck Pulldowns

This exercise requires an extreme amount of shoulder extension and external rotation. Both of these will throw the shoulder forward and lead to more anterior instability. Remember those anterior dislocations we were talking about?

What is wrong with a normal pulldown or pullup? Variation for variation’s sake is unnecessary if it’s doing damage. Vary your set and rep scheme before pushing your shoulder to end range of motion.

Overhead Throwing

Baseball pitchers all have shoulder problems. Most know this, but it illustrates another mechanism for injury I want to discuss.

SLAP (superior labrum from anterior t0 posterior) lesions are quite common in overhead athletes. This is where the long head of the biceps brachii comes into play. The tendon of this muscle rides between the greater and lesser tubercles, around the top of the shoulder joint, and ends up connecting at the top of the glenoid on the labrum. Forceful contraction of this muscle pulls on the labrum, and in the case of pitchers who need a lot of force to slow their arm down, long head of biceps can pull the labrum right off.

The long head of biceps brachii attaches to the superior glenoid labrum

The glenoid labrum gives the shoulder more stability by increasing surface area and sucking the humerus into the socket. Compromising this tissue further compromises the integrity of the joint.

Summary

Stability is important for joint longevity. Due to the regional interdependence of the body, stability needs to be attained everywhere for the shoulder to work well. Without this, shoulder mechanics become pathological. Dysfunction and pain are quick to follow. Exercise selection is never as simple as, “This worked for me, so you should do it.” Understand anatomy so that you don’t destroy joints.

Wrist

Why Do I Have Two Bones in My Forearm?

November 10, 2013 / / 0 Comments

Any answer to why you have two bones in your forearm (and lower leg) would simply be conjecture, but it’s helpful to consider the rationale.

Start at the wrist.

Frontal cross-section of the wrist joint.

As the picture above shows, the radius hangs a little lower than the ulna. So when you place your palm on the ground, as you would for a push up, the ground sends most of its force up through the radius. But if we follow it up to the elbow, we see that the ulna is the main bony connection to the upper arm. That is, there’s a gap between the radius and humerus.

What gives?

Those anatomy books that you have to buy for your classes are super helpful. Gilroy’s is my favorite. It’s beautifully illustrated. Learning anatomy is much easier when you have great visuals.

The problem is that they’re misleading to those who have never looked at a cadaver. When you’re examining at an actual body, everything looks the same. Every tissue is pink.

You think veins are actually blue? Pink.

Nerves are yellow? Pink.

Parietal cortex is green? Frontal cortex is red? Occipital cortex is blue? Pink.

So looking at these books makes it easy to get lost in simple solutions. Maybe you have a picture of just pronator teres in your book. It’s easy to get stuck into thinking pronator teres is going to do everything.

The interosseous membrane seems to get lost in discussion since it isn’t contractile like your traditional muscles. But this tissue is huge when we look at both bones of the lower extremity.

Going back to our push up forces travelling up the radius, what happens next? The radius pulls the interosseous membrane which pulls the ulna superiorly. Now we have forces transmitted through the ulna, which go to the humerus, then to the scapula…

This way, forces are dispersed. Similar things happen when we contract our elbow flexors, which mostly connect to the radius. They pull the radius, which pulls the interosseous membrane, which pulls the ulna… Without this, it would be much easier to overuse the humeroradial joint.

This point is illustrated everywhere you can find an overuse injury.  Runners get iliotibial band syndrome. Tennis players get lateral epicondylitis. People who work on their feet get plantar fasciitis.

Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket. The simple fix is to spread the load and stop asking the little guy to handle it all.

Emme Whiteman Squatting

A Lesson in Regression

July 9, 2012 / / 2 Comments

Not enough coaches out there discuss properly regressing clients.

Don’t get me wrong, I hate to do it because I love to see people moving forward, but you have to think about what’s best for your clients. Trying to drive through problems will make them mentally frustrated in the short-term and pathologically physically dysfunctional in the long-term.

When Should I Regress?

When you cannot get your client in the position you want them in, they should be regressed. There’s no shame in their body not being able to handle a certain load; it will get better, they will get stronger, and they will thank you for it.

For example, I was watching my good friend do some half kneeling cable chops the other day that he wasn’t happy with, to say the least.

I looked at it:

  • His spine was scoliotic (I think I made that word up).
  • The weight was very light.
  • This was obviously frustrating him, potentially enough to ruin his day.
  • The amount of tension all over his body was remarkable, even though this task should be easy for him.

He was struggling. He’s needs to be put in a situation where he can succeed.

Proper regression of your clients requires a few steps.

What’s the Problem?

The beginning step to regressing is to determine the “weak link in the chain”, so to speak, and use this information to help the client out.

For my friend, there were a few things going on. In order of importance…

  1. Spinal instability
  2. Shoulder instability, stemming from the unstable spine, weak scapular muscles, overactive big muscles, and dysfunctional small muscles.

The spinal instability is the biggest problem because it is the most proximal problem. If we were to leave the spine alone and just attempt to fix his shoulder, positive changes would never stick.

Emme Whiteman KB Armbar

Offer Assistance

After determining the weak link, you’ve got to figure out a way to make this a non-issue.

When in doubt, move closer to the ground. The closer the body is to the ground, the more stability someone can get through their points of contact.

In my friend’s case, I put him in sidelying and told him to slowly row a light band. Each component of this regression has its own specific purpose. Let’s break it down.

  • We bring him down to the ground into sidelying position to give his spine more stability.
  • Adding the row makes the movement more complex. The primary reason for the row is to challenge his spinal stabilization pattern. For now, I almost don’t even care how the shoulder moves as long as it’s not producing pain.
  • I chose a row and not a push because the front of his shoulder is already very overactive.
  • Then I told him to row very slowly because his pulling technique has years of faulty patterning reinforcing it. Going slow will allow him the time to think through a new movement pattern and “feel it out” while getting those front side muscles to relax.

Looking back, I would make the row a simple isometric so that he can focus on the spine while strengthening his upper back and learning how a full range of motion row should feel. I may also lean towards a push instead of a pull to load the anterior core more once he’s progressed.

Sounds impressive, right? Not so much. It may be embarrassing for the client, but if you can get them past this psychological stage, they will perform better physically.

Emme Whiteman Squatting

Where to Go Next?

Obviously, you don’t want their entire workout on the ground forever.

In a situation like this, where the client was once an extremely able-bodied individual (he was the fastest man in Georgia!), they need a training effect. They need to do something cool. I don’t care at all about the actual training effect, or the muscle he’s going to lose, or even so much the diminished strength, but I want him to enjoy training. Everything else is minutia at this stage.

The easiest way to get someone to stop working out is to take away all of the fun.

Blindly trusting a boring program doesn’t last forever. Eventually they will get sick of it and stop taking your advice.

The importance of this is stressed when you consider that they may never again do the things they used to call “training”. Maybe the guy never squats deep again. Maybe he never benches a barbell again. Maybe he never does another bilateral deadlift.

You will need to find things that can challenge this type of client so that they don’t forever feel like a patient. Now go get creative.

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