Anterior Pelvic Tilt part 2: What we do at GRIT GYM

2nd installment of Anterior Pelvic Tilt: What we do at GRIT GYM

First off the hips are the center of our bodies, they are also the center of movement, the difference between fast and slow athletes is many times directly correlated w/ the function of their hips, good or bad.

This is interesting b/c what if we can make every athlete's hips better and the whole team takes 1/2 a second off their 40yrd and pro agility times.

Remember these?

They guaranteed to take .2sec off your 40yrd time and we thought that was a huge amount of time.

At GRIT Gym we've been working on extension based exercises, w/ nervous system reaction forces as well as almost zero conventional "core" work and getting incredible results.

Focusing mainly on the function and efficiency of the body seems to have a larger impact than simply seeing how much a kid can lift. Especially in the long run.

Simply by working on getting athletes hips mobile and using specific strength exercises I've seen a consistent .3-.6 sec drop in my athletes times. This is mainly for the 40yrd and pro agility.

What are some of the things we do. Well,

we warm up properly

-SMR

-Mobility work: mainly thoracic spine, anterior portion of hips, and ankles

-Activation

-Dynamic flex

we don't do a ton of sprinting

we do quite a bit of movement training

-Med balls

-plyos

-bands

-shuffles

we keep the plyometric volume fairly low

we don't really do olympic lifts

-my feeling is that the difference between a clean, kettlebell swing, and deadlift is mostly the amount of time it takes to learn each. The kettlebell swing and deadlift give more bang for their buck and the learning curve is quick. Cleans take forever to learn, and I feel like the other two better aid in my athletes progress.

We don't do any long distance, steady state cardiac work. Non, Never, Zip, Ziltch, Ever, Ever, Ever!!!

-We do interval work and complexes but we almost never do anything over 30 seconds.

-there's too much fun stuff for this. Prowlers, ropes, dual action bikes (yeah that one isn't fun), but kettlebells are, short sprints, shuffles, competitions. etc....

-and the majority of my athletes are 16 and under so not only is long distance work not going to help them in anyway its actually very dangerous.

-Its been proven repeatedly that volume is directly correlated w/ injury. Simply put, you run too much and you'll get injured

-It also will suppress immune systems

-Decrease endocrine system activity (during a very developmental period of an athletes life)

-Can potentially stunt growth. If an athletes joint capsules aren't fused, which really doesn't happen until about 21-26 years of age.

-Probably the worst is that long distance stuff makes kids SLOW. You can't get faster by moving slow all the time. You'll just be getting better at moving slow and that's about it.

We do quite a bit of barefoot training, but we're not doing anything stupid like sprinting, and cutting w/o shoes.

The atmosphere is fairly light until it's time to get to work then we go hard.

Kids learn to make better life choices. Like what goes in their bodies (they know what a good breakfast is, and don't drink a ton of pop), how to stand up for themselves, lifting and training naturally raises your self esteem and confidence, working smart and working hard exacerbates this.

I've said for a long time that the first step in self improvement is elimination.

I stand by this. You want to make your life better, remove the crap. You want to be a better athlete remove the crap and stick w/ what works. We don't fill programs to make the athlete "feel" like they're getting better (and I use the quotes for a reason, I'm being extremely cynical). Sure they might be getting stronger on another program doing it that way. You're body will react to imposed demands, but that doesn't mean that you are becoming a better athlete. Talk to me when you can move faster while using less energy, that's what we're going for, b/c that's the program that's gonna take an athlete to another level. When s/he can be tons faster at the beginning of the game and strong enough to last to the end.

Simply put, get a kids hips to open up after 7 hours of sitting in a desk (w/ mobilization drills), take a minute to activate the areas that are going to be lacking (particularly the glutes and probably psoas) and we'll have given our athletes a drastically different chance of being successful and healthy.

I'm off to the gym to take some videos of what I'm talking about. Let me know your thoughts below.

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Anterior Pelvic Tilt

You gotta figure out your pelvic tilt. Until then your performance will suffer, no matter what sport your participating in.

Pelvic tilt goes something like this:

And it's caused by tight hip flexor muscles. You have 4 hip flexor muscles: the Psoas, TFL, Iliacus, and Rectus femoris but non the less your hips tilt fwd and you put yourself in a poor mechanical position that can lead to nagging injuries and you just plain and simple wont be able to perform as well, plus you'll look like you have a belly (see above).

Your glutes wont be able to fire correctly or as efficiently as they could b/c they are inhibited by the tight/shortened hip flexors.

This will put the hamstring in a pre stretched position b/c the posterior portion of the hips are higher than they should be. This is bad. You know any athletes w/ nagging hamstring issues.....it's probably b/c their pelic tilt sits to far anteriorly.......Not good.

Anterior pelvic tilt will also lead to an increased lordosis. In other words your lumbar spine (lower back) is going to have too much of a curve.

Sounds like no big deal right? I mean, it already curves right? Well, increasing the curves of your low back means you aren't as tall, your belly will stick out further making you look like you have more bodyfat than you really do, it's really bad for your back, will probably lead to pain, and its potentially not healthy for the nerves that innervate that area.

What to do

Working on stretching your hip flexors will go a long way.

Most people will need more than that though, and that's where activation and strength comes in.

Next post will be on stretching and lengthening the hip flexors, activation, and strength work.

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Hip and low back health w/ Gluteal function

The vast majority of people I see and assess on a daily basis are terribly deficient in hip mobility and function. Especially in the strength and recruitment of their glutes. The glutes are possibly the most important muscle in your body. Well I should say it's probably the most important muscle that is being left out of your training and movement throughout the day that can lead to a life where you can move more efficiently, stronger and feel much better. 

The gluteals

1. It is a single joint muscle, meaning it attaches to the bottom of the pelvis and to the femur (one joint) so it has huge benefits to keeping the lower back and hip region healthy if it is strong and able to function optimally. The hamstring on the other hand is a double joint muscle, meaning all but one head attaches from the hip all the way down to the bones of the lower leg. Problem because this can lead to hamstring dominance if the glutes are not functioning the way they should, and leave the lower back up for problems due to the glutes not kicking in when they need to. The glutes function in hip extension is pivotal for performance as well as lower back and hamstring health.  
2. The glutes are also a very thick muscle so they are incredibly strong. They should be the biggest, strongest, fastest muscle in the body. This has huge implications on speed and strength development. They are also the direct center of the body, furthering their importance in connecting each part of the chain. If the glutes are lacking not only are you setting yourself up for injury but you're also drastically reducing your abilities because you will not be nearly as strong or as fast as you could be.       
3. Almost every person I see has some sort of pelvic tilt issue, and usually their hips are sitting in Anterior tilt. So the anterior portion of the hip (hip flexors) are too tight and the glutes are inhibited from functioning and therefore very weak, and this also usually leads to gluteal atrophy. So when the glutes should be extending the hip they are actually many times unable to fire (contract) and that's when big problems start. The body compensates and your low back and hamstrings take the load, and if you're lucky enough to not blow out your back you're severely at risk of hamstring issues and other problems.  Most of the time anterior pelvic tilt is due to something like this.
4. The glutes also have many functions that we don't really take into account. For instance the anterior side of the glute medius has a different function than the posterior. This has many implications as the glute complex is actually three different muslces: minimus, maximus, and medius, all with different functions in different planes on differing sides. There is a ton of stability going on through the glute, for proof stand on a balance pad for one minute on one one foot. The glute should also be able to produce tons of force and movement when recruited (even though many are unable to recruit them). To keep this blog from going on for days lets just say the glutes are extremely important

Alright how are we fixing this? Well....I'm actually going to be a jerk and get into that next time, but it'll include some Muscular Activation Techniques and some Mobility stuff then. And I'll leave you with this. Now you'll be sure to understand why the glutes are so important. 

Obviously this girl has not experienced gluteal atrophy. 

Indestructible knees

So in the end you want indestructible knees. If you haven't figured how to this yet then here you go.

1)Make your post chain strong like bull
Get your glutes and hamstrings very very strong. Doing this will not only make you perform better in competition but it will also drastically decrease your risk of injury.

2)Mobility
Work on changing levels and increasing range of motion in different planes at different velocities (especially in regards to the hip). Many many mobility drills in both the sagital and the frontal plane (transverse is important as well but you'll see that you naturally go through these with many mobility drills).

3)Get the knots out
Myofascial release through ART, foam rollers, tennis balls w/e. These tools are friends and can keep you healthy for a very long time. Working on the glutes (especially glute medius), IT Band, hip flexors, quads, gastrocnemius, soleous, and achilles will help immensely.

4)Work on Dorsiflexion and ankle mobility
It may seem like not a big deal, but it take 1-2 minutes and could make or break your career.

The ACL injurty epidemic II

I told you I'd tackle the problems with programming, but I think it's possible I left some very important stuff out of the last couple of these. So before we get into the programming mistakes that I see all the time let's try and make up some ground.

The glutes extend as well as abduct and externally rotate the femur and therefore stabilize the knee as well as the hip itself. They are also the strongest most explosive muscle in the body so why wouldn't you train them.

Most ACL injuries occur when the the femur internally rotates and adducts, like when you see an athlete land after a jump and the knees go inward towards eachother (anyone see a correlation here???). This is about what it looks like. I see this happen when athletes jump and land, when they change direction and decelerate and obviously when they post up against another player.

Notice the knee, this is where most ACL injuries happen. Not good. See how the hip could pull the femur into correct position to avoid this. 

Just to complete this moment of randomness lets go over the difference between girls and guys when it come to the knee.

Knee issues are a huge problem for girls. For one, girls are typically more valgus than guys which puts them at an increased risk for knee issues since their knees are already closer to that dreaded internally rotated and adducted position where the injury most often occurs. But girls are also typically more quad dominant and don't have as much hamstring strength as males putting them at an even higher risk. And not to dig on girls, but to make sure you know that girls and guys cannot be trained the same, but girls typically have more flexibility in the hamstring, sometimes too much in fact and that leads to an increase risk of ACL injury as well.  

Hopefully that cleared up some issues.