01/09/2014
Great info from Mr. Born:
Finding Your Weaknesses
You don't need another post telling you to head to the gym. You know that you need to train to reach your fitness goals. Besides, it's the start of the new year, and for most people that means motivation will never be higher. (And for others, your desire to improve is constant and consistent.)
But here's what you might not know: The 24-hour rule might be the real reason you always seem to hit some sort of roadblock.
What is the 24-hour rule? It’s the counterintuitive approach to health. While everyone usually focuses on what they do during the 1-hour they are in the gym, it’s oftentimes the other 23 hours that do the damage. So your job is to make sure you take the extra effort—either in the gym or at home—to ensure that you keep your body in good health in spite of what might be happening outside of your workouts.
Training smarter can go a long way towards preventing injury and achieving your goals, such as melting fat or packing on muscle. People spend the majority of their non-training time in one of three positions: standing, sitting, and laying. Each of these positions can cause your posture to be altered, and those changes show up when you try to do some of the best exercise. Your goal is to minimize unnecessary muscle activity and imbalanced stress across your joints.
The following test will show you where you are going wrong on some of the most popular lower body exercises, and offer 2 quick fixes to put your body in a more efficient position, no matter what you’re currently doing.
Examine Your Movement: Lower Body Pulling Exercises
You know them as: deadlift variations, such as straight and trap bar deadlifts, stiff-legged deadlifts, cable pull throughs, 1-leg stiff-legged deadlifts, and box squats.
Common Error
A common movement flaw is not maintaining your neck and upper back position throughout the movement. This pattern is one of the more difficult ones to master.
The Signs
What Happens: When you create movement through your neck or upper back during these exercises you place excessive stress on your spine.
How You Know It Might Be a Problem: These movement dysfunctions can lead to pain along inside of shoulder blades, through your neck and up into your head.
How to Identify the Issues: The next time you perform any of these exercises, pay attention to the position of your neck and upper back.
Once you lock yourself in place—meaning that your neck and back are aligned with your spine—there shouldn’t be any movement.
Rounding your shoulders or pulling them too far back, or lifting your head is a recipe for disaster, especially as you become stronger and lift more weight.
Coaching Cues
When performing a lower body pulling exercise, keep the following cues in mind:
Chin packed back
Chest up
Back flat
Abs squeezed tight
Shift your weight back
Fixing the Problem
You need to teach yourself how to “brace” your spine. That is, you create complete tension throughout your upper back and neck while moving. The movement isn’t the hard part; it’s maintaining complete stability and staying locked into place while doing anything that is dynamic. Here are 2 exercises that will help:
Lying Scap and Chin Retraction
Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet flat on the ground. Interlock your fingers behind your head.
Keeping your hands behind your head, squeeze your shoulder blades together so your elbows move towards the floor. You should feel your shoulder blades squeeze together in the back, as if you were trying to hold a pencil with them.
From here, imagine growing tall through the back of your neck as you pull your chin in. You should feel your neck stretch in the back.
Hold this position, with your elbows pulled into the ground and chin pulled in, for 5 seconds. Relax and repeat for 4-6 reps.
Dumbbell Farmer’s Walk
Hold two heavy dumbbells in your hands at your sides.
Keep your eyes straight ahead, chest out, and shoulders blades back as you walk in a straight line for 25 paces (using whatever space you have available).
Turn around and walk back for a total of 50 paces. You should feel your grip and shoulders working. Don’t let your shoulders round forward.
