Recently there’s been a debate among fitness professionals about whether or not back squatting is necessary.  The “functional” people may have you believe only single leg work is necessary.  The “old school” people or those with backgrounds in powerlifting and olympic lifting won’t listen to a word about cutting squats out of a program.  Depending on the population, training goal, and health status of the individual, I’ve agreed with both populations.

Why the debate?

Orthopedically, there is sufficient research to suggest that heavy squatting over the LONG-TERM may lead to degeneration of the spine.  Functionally, most sports and lifestyle activities aren’t performed on two legs.  These are the two basic arguments thrown around for NOT squatting.

Naturally, there is an opposing side to these arguments.  The main attraction to squats is that they can be loaded heavily.  If performed correctly, they are a safe way to build a significant amount of muscle and strength in the hips and legs.  The benefit to this should be obvious.  Bill Hartman, a physical therapist and fitness professional working in the Indianapolis area, noted that the joint reaction forces are more similar to many athletic movements in squatting than single-leg movements.  In other words, for some aspects of the body, squatting may be MORE functional than single-leg exercises.  I have some questions about this concept.  Bill is sometimes referred to as the smartest man in fitness and is highly respected around the country, so there’s probably something to what he’s saying.  Having said that, I can’t help but wonder: if these high joint reaction forces are prevalent in athletic movements, wouldn’t they also be prevalent in jumping/sprinting?  Would it still be necessary to squat someone to prepare them for these high forces if they’re experiencing them through other training modalities?  Also, are these high forces something that we want to mimic through training?  In football and hockey, it’s likely at some point that the athlete will get so hard that it feels like they hit a brick wall.  Of course, we don’t prepare our athletes for these contacts by having them run into a brick wall.  Yes, that’s a stupid analogy, but I think you get the concept.  Just because athletes encounter something through competition doesn’t necessarily mean it should be mimicked through training.  Again, this isn’t a knock on Bill; I’m just raising some issues to think about.

Yesterday I listened to an interview with Jeff Oliver, the head strength coach at Holy Cross.  Jeff is both highly experienced and very intelligent.  In the interview he mentioned that when an athletes hips tuck under at the bottom of a squat, it may not be due to tight hamstrings or a lack of hip mobility as commonly argued.  Instead, he said it might be due to an anatomical limitation.  In other words, you can’t improve it.  Forcing athletes to squat through this range may lead to femoroacetabular impingement, which is linked with several other hip pathologies (hip labral tear, sports hernia, groin pain, etc.).  The prevention of these injuries is of paramount importance, both in terms of optimal performance, and long-term health (FAI and hip labral tears are related to future osteoarthritis).  He mentioned that he has stopped squatting individuals that he suspects have this anatomical structure and that these athletes report both feeling and performing better.  When I spoke with Flyers Strength and Conditioning Coach Jim McCrossin, he mentioned that he doesn’t squat athletes he suspects of having similar injuries to parallel.  This certainly contradicts the “squat to full depth no matter what” crowd.

As always, there are a few take home points from all of this:

1) Analyze the goals of the athlete/client to determine whether squatting is even necessary Athletes and general population clients will probably benefit from a greater proportion of single-leg work.

Athletes competing in powerlifting and Olympic lifting events will need to include the back squat in their programs. That’s a no brainer.

2) Analyze the performance of the athlete during the exercise

If athletes can squat to parallel (or below) with their feet flat on the ground and without their hips tucking or lower back rounding, squat them to parallel (or below).

If form starts to break down higher up, try spreading their feet slightly wider.  If form still breaks down, don’t squat them to parallel.

3) Analyze how your athletes feel. This ties into the first point.  If the goal is improved athletic performance, weight

training is a means to an end.  If the exercise isn’t improving performance and your athletes feel like hell doing it, it might be time to try something new!

The most important point: Always learn from other professionals, but never be blinded by their words.  Just because something works for them does not mean it will work for you.  Be objective in the assessment of your own programs.  Just because you think it will work doesn’t mean it will.

The best professionals in any field are those that are results-driven.

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Since a lot of my background is in injury prevention, I get questions all the time about preventing and rehabbing injuries, as well as the “when I do this, this hurts” questions.  The two most common ones:

1) My shoulder hurts after I bench

2)  My low back hurts after I deadlift

Both are extremely common and extremely unnecessary.

There are a few exercises you can add to your repertoire to prevent both of these conditions.  Sometimes these are referred to as “prehabilitation” exercises, which is just a clever way of saying that you use them to prevent rehab.  I’m a firm believer in putting the time in to prevent injuries before they occur, opposed to pushing forward with the blinders on, getting hurt, and having to take time away from your training to fix a preventable injury.  Frankly, the latter situation seems completely mindless and illogical.

Typically people get shoulder pain when benching from a host of ailments commonly referred to as shoulder impingement.  This can be partially prevented by pinning your shoulder blades back and down before you bench and keeping your elbows in close to your sides, not winged out to 90 degrees.  Neither position is better for building strength or size (another common misconception); one is just safer for your shoulders than the other.

However, I’ve also found that adding in some scapular stability and glenohumeral mobility work before benching helps a lot.  These are four of my favorite exercises:

1) Scapular Stability (Lower Trapezius Activation)

http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/reachrollandlift.html

2)  Scapular Stability (Serratus Anterior Activation)

http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/ScapPushUp.html

3)  Glenohumeral Mobility/Scapular Stability

http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/standingdynamicblackburn.html

4)  Glenohumeral Mobility

http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/HockeyStickDislocation.html

The low back pain from deadlifting problem is typically due to one of three things:

1)  Horrible form

2)  Your lower back being your weakest link, in which case it’s better to start with lighter weights to build up some strength in your spinal stabilizers AND practice the movement before moving onto heavier weights.  This process should only take a few weeks and will save you lots of pain and discomfort in the future.

3)  Poor glute activation.  Many of you have probably heard this before.  If your glutes (those big muscles that you sit on) aren’t producing enough force at the right times, muscles above (the low back) and/or below (the hamstrings) will need to pick up the slack.  I’ve found that pairing deadlifts with a glute bridge variation eliminates this problem altogether.  I try to get my 3-4 sets of the glute bridge variation done pairing it with my warm-up sets on deadlifting, that way I can focus on the heavy lifts and just relax/focus in between.  Although simple and very related, these are my three favorite glute bridge variations:

1)  Glute Bridge: http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/GluteBridge.html

2)  Glute Bridge w/ MiniBand: http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/GluteBridgeMarchMiniBand.html

3)  1-Leg Glute Bridge w/ Leg Up: http://www.prodigyperformancetraining.com/1LegGBLegUp.html

Try throwing these exercises into your warm-ups and pairing your primary lifts with them and see if it helps get rid of your pain.

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Do you think all athletes should train the same?

Before answering that question, think about differences in the power, speed, strength, range of motion, coordination and conditioning demands of the sport and various positions within a sport.

The key to successful training is specificity.

I’m a hockey guy so I’ll use that as an example.

Hockey players need to be explosive in movement specific patterns (deceleration->acceleration exercise for goalies).

Hockey players need to be able to transfer force from the hips through the upper body (this is very important for improving shooting power)

Hockey players need single-leg strength and stability.

Hockey players need to be quick and fast in a variety of different movement patterns (Check out the videos for one of my favorite exercises, the 3-Way Shuffle-to-Sprint: 10-Yard Sprint, 5-Yard Deceleration Way 1, Way 2, Way 3)

Hockey players need rotational power and stability.

Hockey players need to address hip flexor and adductor (read: groin) strength in movement specific patterns.

Hockey players need to be conditioned for high-intensity work bouts.

From a coaching stand point, specificity helps with program buy-in.  Despite being new there, I haven’t had any trouble getting my hockey guys at Endeavor to do anything (including seemingly silly psoas activation exercises) because there is a hockey specific rationale for everything we do.

If you (or your athletes) aren’t currently following a structured training program, it’s time to start.

People often ask me where they should begin.  I think the most important first step is to add a dynamic warm-up before every on- and off-ice practice or training session. A well-designed dynamic warm-up will activate the muscles that need to be activated, reinforce proper movement patterns, increase functional range of motion around specific joints, increase body temperature and neural efficiency, and decrease injury risk.

If you’re unsure of how to go about designing a warm-up that incorporates all of those things or are sick of just doing high knees, butt kickers, side shuffles, and cariocas (Yes it’s carioca. NOT karaoke…which is what people do to embarrass themselves on stage with a microphone) as your warm-up, I highly recommend Eric Cressey and Mike Robertson’s Magnificent Mobility.  It’s a phenomenal resource with a ton of unique exercises that’s been used by countless collegiate and professional strength and conditioning coaches.

Implementing everything else gets a bit complicated. If you’re interested in how I put programs together, I’ve thrown a copy of an old program I used with a goalie on my website.  You can download that here. We were working with pretty limited resources, but we were still able the job done.

Before I wrap up this newsletter I have a special request.

I try my best to provide you with meaningful content and exercises that you can use immediately.  If you’ve enjoyed the content of my newsletters, could you forward them on to 3-5 other people you know that you think would also be interested in this information?  More readers = more feedback = more content specific to what you’re interested in.  Thanks in advance for your help in spreading this information.

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Recently, I posted the exact program I used with a female college hockey player this season to help restore functional ability and minimize pain related to chondromalacia and patellofemoral syndrome.  If you missed it, go check it out here: The Knee Pain Program

I wouldn’t consider myself a knee expert, far from it actually.  But I would consider Mike Robertson a knee expert, and I’ve learned a lot from studying his work.

Quick Side Note: Mike and Eric Cressey put out, in my opinion, the best product in strength and conditioning to date: Building the Efficient Athlete.  It’s the only product in the industry that really addresses functional anatomy, which is crucial to understanding both performance and reasons for injury.  I highly recommend it to anyone that is serious about taking their performance (or that of their athletes) to the next level.

One of the major things I’ve picked up from him is to look at the hip for clues as to why the knee hurts.  This year I noticed a common theme in my female hockey players: Most of them had noticeably internally rotated femurs while standing.  You can tell this by having someone stand in front of you without shoes on and look at the direction their knees point from the front and back.

For those of you that aren’t functional anatomy geeks (yet!), the patella (or knee cap) sits between two bumps on the bottom of the femur called condyles.  To help you picture this, curl the knuckles of your pointer and middle finger on your right hand and then spread those fingers apart.  This is indicative of your femoral condyles (on your right leg).  Now place your pointer finger of your left hand between the groove, acting as your patella.  Now rotate your right hand inward, without changing the location of your left finger.  What you’ll find is that your left finger will pull out of that groove slightly.

This is exactly what happens when someone has an internally rotated femur.  Basically this means that anytime the athlete bends their knee, the patella won’t be tracking in the groove, but rubbing up against that lateral (or outside) femoral condyle.  You can imagine why this friction may create problems and lead to knee pain!

You can begin to address this by both stretching the internal rotators of the hip (mostly the adductors/muscles of the inner thigh), but the best thing to do is strengthen the hell out of your hip external rotators.  Referring back to the program, I address this with “isolation” and activation exercises: Side Lying Hip Abduction/External Rotation Holds, Close Stance Glute Bridge Hold w/ MiniBand and Lateral MiniBand Walk; and then lead into more functional movement patterns: Split Squat Iso-Hold w/ Toe Pull, 3-Way Squat Circuit; and Reverse Lunge.  The idea is to activate/excite the muscle, then integrate it into normal movement.  After all, being really strong on your back or side won’t help at all if you aren’t strong on your feet (or skates).

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