CategoriesCorrective Exercise Program Design

Training With Laxity: Tips and Advice From Someone Who’s Been There, Done That

I’m traveling back to Boston today after spending the weekend up in Edmonton with Dean Somerset teaching our Complete Shoulder & Hip Workshop.

FYI: Future Dates: ST. LOUIS (September 26th-27th), CHICAGO (October 17th-18th), and LOS ANGELES (November 14-15th).

It was an awesome two days and we were ecstatic to have the opportunity to share our new material with a bunch of personal trainers and coaches eager to geek out over everything shoulders and hips (and my lame cat jokes).

The highlight, though, had to be me admitting to the audience (full of Canadiens, mind you) I’ve never been to a hockey game. Like, ever. You could factor that and then imagine any number of other awkward scenarios – farting in an elevator, being on a first date and realizing you forgot your wallet, that part in Star Wars when Luke and Leia kiss (and then, fast forward to Return of the Jedi, and you realize that they realize they’re brother and sister) – and none of that can top the awkward concert of crickets chirping which occurred.

Okay, it wasn’t that awkward. But I did get a few “what chu talkin’ bout Willis” looks.

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Nevertheless I’m out of the loop today, but have an awesome guest post by DC-based strength coach, Kelsey Reed, on the topic of joint laxity and hypermobility.

Enjoy!

Training With Laxity

Cue a bunch of crickets chirping and then

Want to see a strength coach party trick?

 

I have a fair amount of joint laxity and amongst coaches and trainers this stunt usually produces a few raised eyebrows and surprised looks. Amongst normal people, they just stare blankly at me and wonder why would anyone bother to do a squat facing the wall.

Joint hypermobility or joint laxity (the terms are used interchangeably) is the ability of a joint to move beyond the usual range of motion. Typically this is because the ligaments are looser than “normal” the due to either genetics or injury.

For the most part, joint laxity isn’t debilitating nor is it usually a worrisome problem, particularly if you’re a gymnast, dancer, baseball pitcher, or a Cirque du Soleil performer.

However, if you are a lax athlete/trainee there are some training considerations to keep in mind. It’s easy to inadvertently injure yourself or cause chronic aches and pains.

Before we dive into some recommendations, are you someone with joint laxity?

The most common test for generalized joint hypermobility is the Beighton Scale.

If you can do at least 2 or 3 (sources differ), then it’s an indicator that you may have general joint hypermobility. Don’t freak out; like I said hypermobility is very common, particularly among children and adolescents (though many grow out of it later), females, Asian, and Afro-Carribbean races. Laxity can manifest in a variety of ways with differing levels of severity. It also isn’t necessarily systemic; it can affect some joints and not others.

If it’s so common, why do we need to worry about it?

According to Dr. Hakim over at Hypermobility.org:

“However some hypermobile people can injure their joints, ligaments, tendons and other ‘soft tissues’ around joints. This is because the joints twist or over extend easily, may partially dislocate (or ‘sublux’), or in a few cases may actually dislocate. These injuries may cause immediate ‘acute’ pain and sometimes also lead to longer-term ‘chronic’ pain.”

I would also add that being hypermobile or lax will also increase the chance that joints will be unstable and therefore exercises that focus on stability will be key to maintaining healthy joints. Additionally, the end-range of motion of joints will be the soft tissue instead of the bones; you could easily stress and irritate the ligaments and tendons during lock-outs. (More on that below)

Since there is a slightly higher risk for injury for us lax people, here are some of my thoughts when it comes to training.

Be Mindful of Joint Position During Exercise

Just because your joints can go through a full range of motion, doesn’t mean that it’s necessary. For example, look at my elbows at the top of a push up:

I catch a lot of my females doing this and I coach them to leave a little slack in the lock-out. Their arms are still straight, just not pushed to the very end of their range.

Here’s another common position lax people can fall into:

In this position, I’m not really “owning” it but instead I’m relying on all my passive restraints (the ligaments) to keep my body stable. Notice the excessive arch in my lower back, my shoulder blade sticking up like Mt. Doom, and my elbow popping forward beyond my wrist.

I would argue that this position offers a false sense of stability and, as the weight increases, it’s going to become harder and harder to stabilize and eventually something will start hurting.

Here’s where they should be:

Here, I’m actively stabilizing by using the surrounding muscles- my core, upper back, and the triceps/biceps of my support arm- it’s safer and more effective in the long run.

Placing the ligaments and tendons under load while pushing through to the end range of their movement is a recipe for achy joints. Be aware of how you/your clients are performing various exercises and own the range of motion- you should be stable and strong, not loose and wobbly.

Balance Distraction and Approximation Exercises

Simply, distraction exercises pull the joints apart, as in a pull-up, and approximation exercises push the joints together, as in a push up. People with hypermobility are going to be more sensitive to the external forces placed on their joints.

For example, I experienced some wicked elbow pain last year.

I was mystified – I wasn’t benching too much or doing hundreds of skull crushers and curls, all the no-nos when it comes to cranky elbows. I took a gander at my weekly training routine at the time, and in an effort to increase my deadlift, I was deadlifting, pull-upping, kettlebell swinging, and rowing nearly every day; I did push ups a few times a week, but aside from that, I didn’t include any pressing.

The former exercises are all fantastic in themselves yet they’re all distraction. I had triple (if not more) the volume of distraction as I did approximation exercises. I subbed out a few of the pull-ups and rows for pressing and, surprise! My elbows felt much better.

When performing exercises that are distraction, pull-ups, row variations, and even deadlifts to an extent, it’s best to avoid the “dead hang” position (when you’re fighting gravity by hanging on your passive restraints instead of actively holding the bar/weight). If the stress is placed on the joints without the accompanying muscle activation, all that tension goes straight into the tendons and ligaments (when I hang from a bar, I can literally feel my forearm bones separating from my upper arm). By creating muscular tension when holding onto the weight or bar, it will prevent excessive stress for your poor ligaments.

Stop, for the Love of Iron, Stretching!

We humans like to do what we’re good at and if you’re hypermobile, you’re good at stretching. Hypermobile people need stretching as much as Darth Vader needs a haircut.

If you feel tight, it’s probably because that muscle(s) is fighting to hold your joints together because your tendons are loose. At best, stretching is only going to feed into the dysfunction (if there is one). We need to stabilize! Which rolls nicely into the last point…

Note From TG: HERE’s an article I wrote on why “stretching” isn’t always the answer.

Stabilize

It’s not cool or sexy but it’s darn useful! If you’re hypermobile, there’s a chance that the ligaments in your spine are too. No good, my friend. Planks, deadbugs, bird dogs, are examples of stabilization exercises that focus on the smaller, lower threshold muscles that are necessary for happy spines and joints.

Seeing as the shoulder is one of the more unstable joints, shoulder stability training  is imperative for hypermobile trainees.

 

Adding isometric holds to exercises is another way to increase time-under-tension to bolster tendon and ligament strength. Crawl variations are low-threshold core stabilization exercises that teach you how to stabilize dynamically (during movement). They also are approximation exercises to add to your training. If you want to get fancy, you can add a few chains:

 

Take care of your tendons!

If you have joint laxity and have/want to avoid joint pain, pay attention to your joint position, balance distraction and approximation exercises, stop stretching so much, and work on your overall stabilization. Own the range of motion you have- don’t push to the full ROM if you don’t need to and risk injury due to instability.

Hypermobility isn’t a curse, it’s actually a pretty cool trait; it just takes a little extra thinking when it comes to training.

Thanks again to Tony for allowing my musings to appear on his blog once again!

About the Author

Kelsey Reed is head strength coach at SAPT Strength & Performance located in Fairfax, VA. Bitten by the iron bug at 16, Kelsey has been lifting ever since. Her love for picking up heavy things spurred her to pursue a degree in the Science of Exercise and Nutrition at Virginia Tech.

Now she spends her days teaching and coaching others in the iron game. In her down time, she lives life on the wild side by not following recipes when she cooks, fighting battles through characters fantasy fiction novels, and attempting to make her cats love her.

CategoriesProgram Design Strength Training

How the Powerlifts and Sport(s) Go Together Like Peanut Butter & Jelly

Today’s guest post comes courtesy of strength coach, and good friend, Kelsey Reed. Some of you may recall Kelsey’s popular post – Fitness Marketing to Females: Don’t Be a Victim! – from a few months ago.

She’s back. And this time she’s discussing the powerlifts and how applicable they are when training for sport(s).

Enjoy.

Recently, I have been immersed in Easy Strength by Dan John and Pavel. (Tony mentioned it HERE.) If you’re a strength coach and you have not read it, do yourself a humongous favor and do so. Your athletes will thank you.

Dan and Pavel divvy up the various types of trainees into four quadrants. Today’s post will focus on Quadrant III: athletes/clients who possess a symbiotic relationship of strength training and their sport or goal in question. I’ll leave the other three quadrants as a mystery awaiting your discovery.

Unless you work with elite athletes, Olympic hopefuls or professionals, the bulk of your clients will be in QIII.

The mentality when working with said clients should be:

They are ___ athletes (i.e. football, soccer, or fill-in-the-blank) who happen to lift, NOT lifters who play ____.

Personally speaking, this has always been helpful for me to keep in mind when I’m tempted to allow one of my teenage boys to go for a 1RM (the answer is usually “No.”). After all, my athletes are training with me to improve their sport performance, not their weight room performance.

In general, there are two types, or spheres, of training: general physical preparedness (GPP), and special physical preparedness (SPP).

As strength coaches, our job often falls more in the realm of GPP rather than that of SPP. The bulk of GPP training is derived from the basic human movements: push, pull, hinge, squat, carry/walking pattern, and crawling. Those look remarkably like, bench press, rows, deadlifts, squats, and farmer carries.

Nikolay Vitkevich, a full-contact black belt and world-class powerlifter, says:

“You must clearly understand the difference between basic training and special physical preparation. [SPP] is different for everybody; one beats up on a tire with a sledgehammer, another does figure eights with a kettlebell, and someone incline presses. Basic training is roughly the same in all sports and aims to increase general strength and muscle mass. Powerlifting was born as a competition in exercises everybody does.”

Did you read that last sentence? Read it again and let it sink in.

A strength coach can easily accomplish 90% of what an athlete needs by intelligently dispersing those movements throughout the training week. From a training economy standpoint, you can’t go wrong by placing a premium on squatting, deadlifting, and pressing.

Deadlifting, squatting, and pressing are exercises every athlete should perform. They are the meat and potatoes (or meat and sweet potatoes for the Paleo adherents out there) of strength and conditioning. The number of muscle groups involved in the powerlifts allows for higher poundages to be used, which in turn, stimulates the neuromuscular and endocrine systems in ways not found in other exercises. The effect produces really strong people. And with everything else being equal, the stronger athlete will win.

Not that it’s impossible to become strong without the powerlifts, it just takes much, much longer. You cannot beat the efficiency and efficacy of picking up heavy things in building powerful athletes.

The powerlifts are also scaleable to each athlete’s strength and experience level.

A 9 year-old can benefit from the squat while using a 5 pound plate as much as a 20 year-old with 200lb on the bar in the next rack over.

That same little guy can deadlift with 15 lbs, while our older athlete has 300lb on her bar: both will increase the strength in their posterior chains. The 9 year-old may learn how to hold a plank (still a press) while an older athlete benches, again both are developing full body strength.

What’s more, the powerlifts are broad enough to apply to every sport and so effective at strength building, why wouldn’t you use them?

Now, before you attack me with pitchforks and PubMed articles, I know that some lifts are not optimal choices for all sports or for all athletes. It’s the difference between contraindicated exercises and contraindicated people.

For example, I will rarely (if ever) bench press an overhead athlete, but will defer to one of the hundreds (literally) of push up variations.

 

I would be remiss to note, too, that non-powerlifter athletes should use the powerlifts, but should not train like a powerlifter.

The powerlifts, programmed appropriately, build a solid strength foundation from which speed and power will spring.

What do I mean by that?

Powerlifting methods can produce CNS fatigue, joint/muscle soreness, and require substantial recovery time. Which is fine if the athlete’s sole goal is to add weight to the bar. But, the human body has only so much capacity for adaptation and recovery. QIII athletes are focused on another goal, typically involving their sport, and need to have plenty of gas in the tank for sport practice.

Another point to remember, in most, if not all athletic endeavors, power (force x velocity) is driving force behind quick athletic movement, like this dude:

 

Max strength does contribute to maximal power output, but only up to a point. If it takes .3 seconds to reach maximal force output but a broad jump only takes about .1 second, you’re not going to be able to express your full strength in that brief amount of time.

Therefore, power athletes (which is pretty much every sport) need to increase their rate of force development. To prevent this post from becoming longer than the lines for the new Star Wars movie, read this and this for more in-depth information.

Max strength and power are not distinct entities, but the latter is built upon the former. Thus, it is imperative to develop a solid strength foundation from which an athlete’s power explodes (pun definitely intended). How to train for power is another post for another day.

As Yoda Pavel says, “Power is strength compressed in time, so to get powerful, you must get strong.”

Athletes have a limited amount of time and energy therefore, exercises that require minimal amount of time are ideal; the powerlifts fit the bill. Like peanut butter is to jelly, barbell work should complement sport practice in an athlete’s overall development.

About the Author

Kelsey Reed is head strength coach at SAPT Strength & Performance located in Fairfax, VA. Bitten by the iron bug at 16, Kelsey has been lifting ever since. Her love for picking up heavy things spurred her to pursue a degree in the Science of Exercise and Nutrition at Virginia Tech.

Now she spends her days teaching and coaching others in the iron game. In her down time, she lives life on the wild side by not following recipes when she cooks, fighting battles through characters fantasy fiction novels, and attempting to make her cats love her.

Kelsey, along with her husband, Coach Steve.

CategoriesStuff to Read While You're Pretending to Work

Stuff to Read While You’re Pretending to Work: 11/7/14

Soooo, who’s as excited as me to go see Interstellar this weekend? I bought two tickets for Lisa and I to go see it this Sunday afternoon in IMAX.

Admittedly, I’m a little biased. I’ll go see anything Christopher Nolan makes. The man can do no wrong. He could write and direct a movie about Tracy Anderson saying the alphabet backwards while curling 3 lb pink dumbbells and fighting Batman…..in space, and I’d be like “SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!!!!”

Quick Movie Fact: did you know writer/director, ChrisNo1, filmed an entire hour of this film with IMAX cameras???

As a quick reference, remember the opening sequence of The Dark Knight, when the camera panned down from the sky towards the top of the building where the bank robbers zip-lined into the next building, which was a bank, and then chaos ensued where they started shooting one another, the Joker appeared (he was one of the robbers!!!!), a bus came out of no where and plowed through the bank walls and he escaped?

That scene was filmed with IMAX cameras.2

Needless to say I’m super excited, and I may write up a quick review at some point this weekend like I did HERE. It all depends on whether or not I faint from excitement when the movie starts.

Think Critically and Don’t Believe Everything You Hear. Example: “Forks Over Knives” – Kelsey Reed

I like to eat meat, and I don’t really care for any program (or person) who tries to convince me that eating meat is the equivalent of shaking hands with Hitler.

I “get” the message that documentaries like Forks Over Knives – and more recently, Fed Up – are trying to convey. The Western Diet is crap and it’s killing people. 100% agree!

But to use the approach that eating meat is the main culprit – without taking into context all the other variables in people’s diets (loads and load of processed foods, sugar, lack of fruits, vegetables, and fiber, as well as lack of exercise), not to mention the conversation that TOTAL (excess) calories matter – is shameful at best, sensationalistic BS at worst.

I felt this short rant and take on the movie by Kelsey was fantastic and brought up many valid points. Don’t believe everything you hear!!!

The 5 Jackasses of Fitness – Dan John

Per usual, Dan writes yet another fantastic article.

22 Habits of Unhappy People – InfoBarrel

Nailed it!

For Your Additional Reading Pleasure

Here’s a recent article I wrote for Men’s Health titled What to Do Instead of Kipping Pull-Ups.

Here’s an article I appeared in on The Daily Burn titled 5 Major Benefits of Total Body Workouts.

Also, as a reminder Examine.com’s Research Digest is on sale for 20% off through this weekend (ends on Nov. 9th). I feel it’s a fantastic resource for professional development, and even if you’re not a fitness professional is worth a look if you’re interested in staying on top of relevant nutritional topics.