To me, the conventional deadlift (feet closer together, hands outside knees) is the most advanced variation of the deadlift and likely not the best starting point for most lifters.
Yet, purists out there would prefer passing a kidney stone through their eyeballs than ever consider reverting to a sumo style.
Whether it’s someone’s anatomy (short arms and/or long torso) or mobility deficits (hip flexion ROM, thoracic spine extension, or even ankle dorsiflexion) the conventional style deadlift might not be a great choice…for now.
A sumo-style deadlift (wider stance, hands inside the knees) may be the better option. It allows for a more upright torso, decreasing shearing forces on the spine, which can make things infinitely friendlier.
Stop being a slave to your ego and realize you don’t have to pull conventional all the time (or ever) despite what that dude at the YMCA who competed in one powerlifting meet back in 1998 told you.
You can’t go more than a few clicks on the internet before you inevitably come across some coach or trainer discussing the merits of positional breathing and how it can help improve performance in the weight room (and on the field).
(👆👆👆 I guess this depends on what part of the internet you peruse…BOM, CHICKA, BOM BOM 😉 😉 😉 )
Nevertheless, if you’re someone who geeks out over the human body and movement in general “positional breathing” is a term you’ve definitely come across.
And you likely still aren’t understanding it’s relevance.
I have a treat for you today. Dr. Michelle Boland (a Boston based strength & conditioning coach and one of the smartest people I’ve ever met) was kind enough to offer to write on the topic for this website.
Positional Breathing: The Implementation of Training Principles
Note From TG: For a bit of an “amuse bouche” on the topic of positional breathing I’d encourage you to check out two posts I wrote on the topic HERE and HERE.
Identify
Our role as fitness professionals is to determine what is important for our clients. In order to do so, we need to identify what is important, formulate principles, and then follow through with implementation.
A way to identify and formulate what is important to us as trainers, is to create principles. Principles are simply what you believe in and what you teach your clients. Principles serve as a hierarchy of reasoning for your training methods, which include your choice of exercises, organization of training sessions, program design decisions, and communication strategies.
In this article, I am going to review my first two training principles:
Training Principle 1: All movement is shape change (influence from Bill Hartman)
Training Principle 2: Proximal position influences distal movement abilities
Formulate
Movement is about shape change.
We change shapes by expanding and compressing areas of the body.
Movement will occur in areas of the body that we are able to expand and movement will be limited in areas of the body that, for some reason, we have compressed. The ability of an athlete to transition from expanded positions to compressed positions informs their ability to change shape and express movement.
Movement occurs in a multitude of directions depending on both position and respiration. Certain positions will bias certain parts of the body to be able to expand more freely, allowing increased movement availability. Respiration can further support the ability to expand and compress areas of the body, as an inhalation emphasizes expansion and an exhalation emphasizes compression.
(👇👇👇 Just a small, teeny-tiny taste of importance of positional breathing 👇👇👇)
Position selection is my foundation of exercise selection.
Positions such as supine, prone, side lying, tall kneeling, half kneeling, staggered stance, lateral stance, and standing can magnify which areas of the body that will be expanded or compressed. Additional components of positions can include reaching one arm forward, reaching arms overhead, elevating a heel, or elevating a toe. Furthermore, pairing phases of respiration within these positions will further support where movement will be limited or enhanced.
The position of the proximal bony structures of the body, such as the rib cage and pelvis, can greatly enable or restrict movement. Positional stacking of the thorax and pelvis provides an anchor for movement. Respiration then provides the ability to create expansion in the thorax and pelvis, thus providing expansion areas of the body, within joint spaces, allowing our limbs to express pain-free movement.
Lifting heavy weights can often compress areas of our body and reduce our ability to expand and rotate through our trunk and hips, limiting movement, and negatively affecting our ability to perform. Remember, expansion begets movement freedom, so adding positional breathing work or pairing movement with respiration can create opportunities for expansion.
Implement
Where is a good place to start with positional breathing work?
Start by thinking about what you already do.
Then, apply your new lens of where you want movement to occur.
Finally, label the positions of the exercises and pair respiration within those movements. Pair an inhalation when you want to enhance expansion and an exhalation when you want to enhance compression. Here are a few examples of how I implement my two training principles into exercise selection. Movement within each example can be supported or limited with changes in position, respiration, or execution.
1. Supine Reach
The supine position is combined with a bilateral arm reach forward with the intention to expand the upper thorax during inhalation. The position can also be used as a tool to teach stacking the thorax over the pelvis by cueing a hip tuck and soft exhale to move the front side of the ribcage downward. Our “stack” IS the set-up position for your main loaded, lift exercises (squat, deadlift, etc).
Check out how the inhalation expands the upper thorax and the exhalation creates compression.
Now you will not be able to take your eyes away from those two movement strategies.
2. Staggered Stance “Camporini” Deadlift
The staggered stance position is going to magnify the expansive capabilities of the lower, posterior hip of the back leg. The staggered stance position allows you to use the front leg to push back to the side of the back leg and align the pelvis and thorax back and to the side of the back leg.
The opposite arm reach allows you to transition the weight to the back leg. The expansive capabilities can be enhanced in the posterior hip with an inhale during the hip movement backwards (hinging).
3. Low Cable Step-Up
The staggered stance position puts the hip of the elevated leg in flexion (expansive) and the hip of the leg on the ground in an extension (compressive) biased position.
The addition of an opposite arm cable hold expands the backside of the upper back (avoid resisting the cable). The posterior hip of the elevated leg will compress as the individual pushes their foot into the ground and moves against gravity to perform the step-up.
At the bottom position, expansion can be enhanced in the posterior side of the flexed hip and posterior side of the arm holding the cable during an inhalation. Coaching cues may magnify expansion and compression within areas of the body by pairing respiration within phases of the exercise. Try inhaling at the bottom position and exhaling during the movement/step-up.
4. High Hip Reverse Bear Crawl
The bear crawl exercise is performed in a prone position. The additional component of the high hips and reverse direction promotes expansion in the upper thorax and posterior hips. You can coach continuous breathing through the movement or pause at certain points to inhale.
This is a fantastic warm-up exercise!
5. Tempo Squat Paired with Respiration
The squat starts in a standing position.
The assisted squat will also include a positional component of both arms reaching forward (same as goblet squat, zercher squat, or safety bar squat) which encourages the ‘stack’ position of the thorax and pelvis. The assisted squat is an example of turning positional breathing work into fitness. The squat movement requires both expansive and compressive capabilities within various phases of the movement in order to be able to descend and ascend against gravity.
The exercise can be used to teach people to change levels with a stacked, vertical torso. As a general notion, inhale down and exhale up.
6. Medicine Ball Lateral Stance Weight Shift Load and Release Throw
The exercise is performed in a lateral stance position.
Here, we are adding fitness with an emphasis on power, to positional breathing work!
Pair an inhalation with pulling the medicine ball across the body (transitioning weight from inside to outside leg) to bias expansion of the posterior hip of the outside leg. Then pair an exhalation with the throw to bias compression, exiting the hip of the outside leg.
This exercise also encourages rotational abilities and power through creating expansion and compression in specific areas of the body. For example, if you want to promote right rotation, you will need right anterior compression, right posterior expansion, left posterior compression and left anterior expansion abilities.
Conclusion
The use of positional breathing activities can improve our abilities to move with speed, free up range of motion at the shoulders and hips, rotate powerfully, and move up and down efficiently. My training principles are derived from this concept. My specific strategies are implemented through exercise selection, cueing, teaching, and pairing respiration with movement phases.
The ‘stacked’ position emphasizes a congruent relationship between the rib cage and pelvis (thoracic and pelvic diaphragm) and I believe it can serve as a foundational position to support movement. I want to thank Bill Hartman for exposing me to this lens of movement.
Implement these strategies with your clients and you’ll discover that positional breathing work WILL help your clients squat, hinge, run, rotate, and move better.
Principle Based Coaching
A strategy such as positional breathing work for better client movement is only as good as your ability to implement and communicate it with your clients. We become better at implementation and communication through analysis and development of our PRINCIPLES.
In this webinar, we will take a step back and learn the skills to formulate principles, make new information useful, AND IMPLEMENT information. At the end of the webinar you will know how training principles can be used to:
Make new information useful to YOU, YOUR clients, and YOUR business
Clarify your coaching decisions
Develop a more pinpointed coaching eye
Plan more effectively to get your client results
Gain confidence in your abilities and formulate your own coaching identity
There’s no shortage of “debates” in the health/fitness space. Ideal neck position during a deadlift is also a hotly debated topic and I can appreciate both sides of the argument. Here’s my take and what has worked well for me and my clients.
Maintaining a “neutral” spine during a deadlift is paramount.
It’s the first commandment of deadlifting.
Neutral in this sense means “maintaining the spine’s natural lordotic (lower back) and kyphotic (upper back) curvature.”
Coaches will start hyperventilating into a paper bag if they see an athlete round his or her back during a deadlift. Okay, so why do we not hold the same standard to the cervical spine or neck? Is the neck not part of the spine?
I prefer people adopt a chin tucked or “packed” neck position:
👉 It reinforces the neutral spine, which the neck is part of. I understand the other side of the argument. There are many examples of people extending their head back during a deadlift (i.e. a not-packed neck) and they’ve been fine.
👉 But in the beginning stages, a packed neck is my preference. Then as someone grows more proficient with the movement they’re allotted more leeway. Besides, what often happens during a max effort attempt – extended neck, and yes, sometimes a rounded back – should not be held to the same standard as a sub-maximal attempt or to someone just learning the lift.
👉 In terms of how to cue the proper neck position, I like to have lifters stare at a target 10-15 feet in front of them on the floor. This helps with better neck position and actually helps increase full-body tension.
This is a tricky question and one I’m asked often when discussing how I coach up the deadlift.
We have to be cognizant of balancing what will likely help prevent injury (namely a bicep tendon tear), but also allow for optimal performance and turn you into a deadlifting Terminator.
My approach is pretty simple:
Use a double overhand grip during your warm-up sets until it becomes a limiting factor or you’re unable to maintain your grip during your work sets.
Switch to an alternate (under/over) grip to help keep the bar from rolling out of your hands.
👇👇👇👇👇👇 THIS NEXT ONE IS IMPORTANT 👇👇👇👇👇👇
3. Alternate your alternate grip (left and right facing you or facing away) with every subsequent set.
I’ve personally had zero issues – with regards to injury or developing any “grip imbalances” – utilizing this approach with myself or with my clients.
SIDE NOTE: Yes, person who will inevitably bring up the hook grip. That’s an option too. We get it: You’re better than us.
SIDE NOTE (Part 2): Speaking of the hook grip, check out THIS article on the topic. It contains everything you’ll need to know.
You hear this cue a lot with regards to deadlift technique and performance.
I could say something as equally abstract like, I don’t know, “banana honkeydorey train whistles” or “please pass the parmesan, Chad” and seemingly get the same message across.
Which is to say…
…what the heck does “get slack out of the bar” even mean?
In short, it refers to getting better leverage and “connectivity” before you initiate the pull.
Many lifters yank the bar off the ground, which in turn makes me cringe because I’m always afraid someone’s going to rip their bicep tendon off the bone. Moreover, the yanking action elicits a loud “clank” noise (barbell hitting inside of plates).
Getting the slack out of the bar means using the barbell as a counterbalance to 1) gain leverage, and 2) get everything connected – inner cylinder of the plates “connecting” with the barbell – BEFORE you initiate the lift.
I like to tell my clients/athletes to get two clicks: bend the bar (get the slack out), then pull.1
Recently the indelible, delightful, and impressive Meghan Callaway and I collaborated on a series where we each shared four innovative exercises for both the hip flexors and adductors.2
As far as duos go, we rank somewhere in between peanut butter & jelly and Bradley Cooper & Lady Gaga.
Check em out.
You Won’t Believe Your Eyes
#1 Isometric Copenhagen Side Plank + Band Resisted Psoas Marches
This exercise strengthens the adductors and hip flexors, improves lumbo-pelvic stability, and shoulder and scapular stability.
Meghan’s Coaching Tips:
Place a resistance band around your feet.
Fully extend your upper leg, and place your ankle and foot of this side on an elevated surface.
IMPORTANT: If this position bothers your knee/any other part of your body, opt for the bent leg variation (your knee should be bent to 90 degrees, and your knee, lower leg and foot should be on the surface). If you do this, the band will need to be placed above your knees.
Get into a side plank position from your forearm, and set your body so it is in a straight line from your head to foot. Maintain this position for the duration of the exercise.
Your shoulder should be above your elbow.
Now use your adductors and press your body away from the surface and towards the ceiling. Do this for the duration of the exercise.
Perform psoas marches on your other side.
Pay attention to your supporting arm. Push away from the floor and protract your shoulder blade (move it away from the spine and around the ribcage).
Do not allow your lower back to hyperextend, round, or flex laterally, ribcage to flare, torso, spine or hips to rotate, or hips to pike or collapse.
Aside from your moving leg, the rest of your body should remain in a fixed position.
Maintain a 360 degree brace. In terms of breathing, do what works best for you.
Do 8-12 marches per side
#2 Copenhagen Side Plank Tempos
This exercise strengthens the adductors, improves lumbo-pelvic stability, and shoulder and scapular stability.
Tony’s Coaching Tips:
Fully extend your upper leg, and place your ankle and foot of this side on an elevated surface.
IMPORTANT: If this position bothers your knee or any other part of your body, opt for the bent leg variation (your knee should be bent to 90 degrees, and your knee, lower leg and foot should be on the surface). If you do this, the band will need to be placed above your knees versus around your feet.
Assume a side plank position making sure your elbow is directly below your shoulder. From there push away from the floor so that you’re not “hanging out” on your upper traps (and to better support your shoulder blades).
Think about pressing your top foot (the one on the elevated surface) INTO said surface and think about PULLING your lower leg up from the floor via the top leg. Your body should remain in a straight line throughout – no deviating via your lower back or slouching forward with the shoulders and upper back.
The key here is the tempo.
THREE second count up and THREE second count down with EVERY rep.
This is an exercise that can easily be butchered and adding in a strict tempo helps to increase the challenge and to ensure the muscles we want to engage (adductors) actually do the work.
#3 Towel Adductor Slides aka “Thighmaster”
This exercise strengthens the adductors and improves hip controlled mobility.
Meghan’s Coaching Tips:
Kneel on two towels (you may place a pillow on each towel if this is more comfortable). Your head, torso and hips should be in a stacked position.
Now slowly slide your knees apart, and to a range where you are able to maintain proper form (and where it feels comfortable).
Once you hit your end range, really squeeze your inner thighs (adductors), and return your legs to the starting position.
Do not allow your lower back to hyperextend, round, or flex laterally, ribcage to flare, torso, spine or hips to rotate, or weight to shift from knee to knee.
Maintain a 360 degree brace.
In terms of breathing, do what works and feels best for you.
Do 3 sets of 10-15 reps.
#4 Lateral Lunges With Plate Slides
This exercise strengthens the adductors – bilaterally (<– Cue emphatic & dramatic music here).
Tony’s Coaching Tips:
A quick shout out to friend and colleague @vernongriffith4 for this brilliant idea.
Place a light plate on the inside of your LEFT foot, grab a kettlebell or dumbbell in your left hand and step laterally to right making sure to sit BACK into your RIGHT hip. Return to the standing position by “pulling” or gliding the plate with your left foot.
Repeat for 5-8 repetitions per direction.
#5 Prone Band Resisted Psoas Marches With Feet Elevated
This exercise strengthens the hip flexors, improves lumbo-pelvic stability, and shoulder and scapular stability.
Meghan’s Coaching Tips:
Place a resistance band around your feet.
Get into a plank position from your hands and feet, and elevate your feet on a wall or other surface. Your body should be roughly parallel to the floor.
Place your hands so they are well ahead of your shoulders.
While remaining in the plank position, lift one foot off the wall and bring your knee in towards your torso. Return your leg and foot to the starting position with control, and repeat using the other side.
For the duration of the exercise, press your body away from the floor and protract your shoulder blades. Also, press your body backwards against the wall. Otherwise your feet will likely slide down the surface.
For the duration, engage your glute on the side(s) that is in contact with the surface.
Do not allow your lower back to hyperextend, round, or flex laterally, ribcage to flare, torso, spine or hips to rotate, or hips to pike or collapse.
Maintain a 360 degree brace. In terms of breathing, do what works and feels best for you.
Do 3 sets of 6-10 marches per side.
#6 Core Engaged Ludicrous Deadbug
This exercise strengthens many things: your hip flexors, abdominals, glutes, lumbo-pelvic stability, your soul, everything.
Tony’s Coaching Tips:
Loop a band around an immoveable object: pole, squat rack, etc. Place a small mini-band around both feet and situate yourself so that your shoulders are on a bench and your heels are on another bench/box/chair a few feet away with the looped band over your head.
Next, perform a glute bridge, grab the band above your heads with both hands, and pull taught with arms straight until you have max (or ludicrous tension) in your abdominals.
While maintaining the glute bridge (don’t allow your hips to deviate position), press one heel into the bench as you bring one knee towards your chest against the resistance of the band while forcefully exhaling ALL your air.
Do not allow the tension from the band in your hands to diminish.
Lowering your leg back to the bench and repeat the same process of FIVE reps, making sure to exhale ALL your air every rep.
NOTE: You can regress this exercise to be performed on the floor only.
#7) Straight Leg Lifts (Lateral And Medial)
This exercise strengthens the hip flexors, improves hip controlled mobility, and lumbo-pelvic stability. You may use any items you have at home. I’m using some Lysol spray.
Meghan’s Coaching Tips:
Sit on the floor. Your head, torso and hips should be in a stacked position. Fully extend both of your knees, and plantarflex your feet (point them away from you).
While keeping your knees fully extended, ankles in a fixed position, and feet plantarflexed, lift your legs over the objects in a lateral direction, and then back to the starting position.
Do not allow your legs or feet to strike the objects, or for your legs or feet to strike the floor.
Do not allow your lower back to hyperextend or flex laterally, ribcage to flare, torso, spine or hips to rotate, or weight to shift from hip to hip. Some minor spinal flexion is ok.
Maintain a 360 degree brace.
In terms of breathing, do what works and feels best for you.
This exercise strengthens the hip flexors and abdominals and basically “locks” you into place so you can’t cheat with your lower back.
Tony’s Coaching Tips:
To give credit where it’s due: I stole this exercise from friend and colleague @dougivsc. The hip flexors can be both simultaneously tight and weak and endless stretching is NOT the answer. It actually (may) be feeding the symptoms.
Grab a foam roller, a light or average band, and a tennis ball. Wrap the band around a pair of J-hooks in a squat rack so that they match the length of the foam roller from the ground.
Sit down underneath the band with your legs in a V-shape and your torso as upright as possible; place a tennis balls to the side of your ankle.
With the foam roller upright and just in front of you press it UP into the band. Oh shit, that’s a lot of tension!
That’s good – it’ll make it harder for you to cheat.
Maintain tension INTO the band with the foam roller, lift your foot off the floor and “lift off” over the tennis ball alternating over and back for 8-10 reps per direction.
When it comes to the setup, however, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach.
In this instance we’re all special snowflakes with varying limb lengths, torso lengths, and hip orientation… all of which will affect what will feel best and allow us to lift the most amount of weight.
That said, there are two tenets to the deadlift setup that applies to every lifter:
1. Use the Wedge.
Popularized by Dr. Stuart McGill, it’s a foolproof way to set yourself up for success and protect your back. Basically, when you bend over to grab the barbell, you want to use it as a counterbalance to “pull” your chest up and get the hips down, “wedging” yourself between the bar and the floor.
2. Now think, “Armpits over the bar, with maximal hamstring tension.”
There’s more to building strong, powerful legs than just traditional barbell squats and deadlifts.
Note From TG (cue Southern Belle drawl):I do say kind sir, I have never heard such blasphemous shenanigans uttered in all my life. I feel a bit of faint coming on.
Someone.
Catch me.
CATCH ME!
While those movements certainly have their place, you know by now not to skimp on single leg work.
Single leg exercises are going to help you work out imbalances between sides, improve coordination, balance, stability, and athleticism, while helping to make you more resistant to injury.
Single leg work can be divided into two categories:
Supported – As in a lunge or rear foot elevated split squat
Unsupported – As in a single leg deadlift or skater squat
Both categories are sagittal plane dominant, meaning the body moves from front to back.
But when you do unsupported single leg exercises, the need to resist motion in the frontal and transverse plane increases significantly. You need to call in your adductors, glute medius, minimus, the intrinsic muscles of the foot, and your core musculature, to a larger degree.
The best single leg exercise is the skater squat.
Why?
Because just like with every other exercise in the world, progressive overload is the name of the game. Of all the unsupported single leg exercises, skater squats allow the greatest range of motion and the most loading potential.
Not quite a single leg squat and not quite a single leg deadlift, skater squats are the ultimate hybrid. They build lower body strength and add size to your quads and glutes, without beating up your back, hips, or knees.
The only problem with them is most people don’t want to do skater squats because:
They take a little bit to get the hang of the technique, and
They are really hard and humbling.
Here’s How to Master Them
1. Use a Counterbalance
Use 2.5 or 5 pound weights in your hands as a counterbalance, and squeeze a tennis ball between your hamstring and calf on the non working leg. This will help keep the back leg in a better, tighter, position and keep you from turning it into a reverse lunge.
2. The Rest
Reach with your hands slightly across an imaginary line coming out of your middle toe of the working leg and towards the wall in front of you as you lower your back knee down to a pad without letting your back foot touch the ground.
Then, use your hands like ski poles and drive them down as you push through your front foot to return to the starting position.
Start by stacking a few airex pads for your back knee and lower them as you get stronger to increase the range of motion.
I mentioned before that they have the greatest overload potential. After you start knocking out 8+ skaters to the floor, you need to continue upping the ante to keep building muscle and strength.
Here Are 5 ways to Take Them to the Next Level
1. Torso Weighted
Use a vest or chains to increase the load.
2. Front Loaded
Using a sandbag or weight plate increases the core challenge and emphasis the quads more.
3. Angled
Full disclosure: I picked this up from performance coach Vernon Griffith. The angled loading places more stress on the muscles involved with stabilizing you in the frontal plane: your adductor and glute complexes, QL, and obliques.
4. From a Deficit
Elevate the working leg on a 45 pound plate or two to increase the range of motion.
5. Eccentric Emphasis
Use anywhere from a 3-8 second lowering phase to increase the time under tension.
Whichever variation you’re using, try these for 2-4 sets of 5-8 as either your main lower body exercise or after your heavier bilateral exercises to balance out the spinal loading.
About the Author
Scott Hansen is a Bostonian transplanted in Southern California, a strength/fitness/wrestling coach, educator, sub par surfer, and die hard New England sports fan.
He works with adult athletes, as well as an assistance wrestling coach and strength and conditioning coach for La Costa Canyon high school wrestling in Carlsbad, CA.
If you have a shoulder (or two) chances are there’s been a time in your life where things haven’t felt great. This sentiment is only amplified if you happen to be someone who lives an active lifestyle playing sports and/or enjoys lifting heavy things.
There are a myriad of culprits that can lead to shoulder pain.4
One of the staple drills I like to use to accomplish the above (scapular upward rotation & protraction) is the Forearm Wall Slide.
Admittedly, it’s a simple looking thingamabobber of a drill.
I mean, all you do is move your arms up and down on a foam roller, right?
Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Alas, simple in appearance, not so simple in execution.
TOP VIDEO showcases two common faults I see when most people perform this drill.
❌ Reps 1-3 = depressed or “pinned down” scapula. Incessantly cueing your clients/athletes to retract & depress the shoulder blades has ramifications.
Sure, it’s an excellent cue to lift a metric shit ton of weight. There’s a reason why we tell people to bring their shoulder blades together and down during a bench press.
However, the scapula is meant to move around the ribcage and it’s imperative for overall shoulder health. When someone is pelted over the head with “together & down, together & down” cues the end result is a shoulder blade that’s cemented in a downwardly rotated position.
This can (not always) lead to shoulder ouchies.
❌ Reps 4-6 = shrugging pattern. The upper traps do play a significant role in shrugging (elevation). Shrugging, however, is NOT upward rotation.
In both scenarios there’s no “real” upward rotation happening.
The drill is ineffective.
Bye, Felicia.
BOTTOM VIDEO showcases what we actually want to see happen.
I like to cue people to “reach” towards the ceiling through their pinky finger, and then to sorta lean into the wall as the arm straightens overhead.
Here we get the upper trap to kick in more effectively and we can now see a shoulder blade that’s upwardly rotating (and moving around the rib cage via protraction & Serratus activation).
Performing with shirt off = 37% more Serratus Anterior activation. #science.
It’s crucial when choosing certain drills – even the seemingly simple looking ones – that they’re executed the right way. The details and nuances matter.
On a scale of 1 to NASCAR they’re not very exciting. They’re not exciting to perform, much less write about. You think I want to sit here and write about push-ups?
I can think of a litany of things I’d rather write about:
Standing in line at the Post Office.
Rugs.
Buying socks.
Attending another kid’s clarinet recital.
Alas, given the pickle we’re all in at the moment (everyone’s training at home with access to minimal equipment) and the tsunami of push-up tutorials and variations making my eyes bleed on social media I felt it prudent to add my quick two-cents on the topic.
As much as I may bellyache on the push-up I’m actually a huge fan.
There’s a bevy of benefits.
They’re one of the more user-friendly exercises out there, require no equipment other than your body, can be easily progressed or regressed depending on the needs and ability level of the person performing them, are gluten free, and, maybe most important of all, have a superb carry-over to both everyday and athletic pursuits.
I’ve been coaching people for 18+ years and I have yet to come across a client/athlete who’s improved their efficacy in performing a push-up and not seeing a noticeable improvement in their ability to execute sexier lifts like squats, deadlifts, you pick.
A push-up done well improves lumbo-pelvic control (canister position or stacked joints) which then helps with force transference which then helps with…E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.
Poor Torso Position:Lower back arching, anterior pelvic tilt (porn star). Thanks to the folks at Mark Fisher Fitness for the porn star analogy.
But this isn’t even the main mistake I want to point out.
Everyone points this one out and I am wowing no one here.
Here’s the One I Wanted to Point Out
Performing them with pants on.
Why?
What’s the benefit of wearing pants?
Tell me.
TELL ME!!
Okay, the REAL Thing I Wanted to Point Out
Another bonafide benefit of the push-up is it’s proclivity to bolster one’s overall shoulder health.
Sometimes (but really almost always) whenever someone comes to CORE to work with me in person due to a shoulder that hates them, I’ll watch him or her perform a push-up and I’ll inevitably see this:
Other than the obligatory game of connect the dots you could play with the “beauty” marks on my back, what do you see?
SPOILER: Two shoulder blades that are glued together.
THIS is the mistake I see most people make. The (in)ability of the shoulder blades to upwardly rotate and move around the ribcage.
The shoulder blades are meant to move. This cementing effect can spell trouble:
Overactive rhomboids, which feeds into scapular downward rotation syndrome.
Ligaments of anterior shoulder capsule become lax and are more prone to injury.
A part of my soul dies.
Instead, what I prefer to see is something like this:
(Kudos to my wife for the Stanley Kubrick’esq camera work).
The subtle “plus,” or protraction (pushing fully away) at the top of the push-up is MONEY for Serratus Anterior activation which then helps nudge the scapula into upward rotation (as well as abduction).
The result is a proper push-up and most likely a pair of shoulders that will feel infinitely better.
Scott Hansen is a Bostonian transplanted in Southern California, a strength/fitness/wrestling coach, educator, sub par surfer, and die hard New England sports fan.
