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Home gym gear review thread
- Thread starter PRCD
- Start date
What exercises are they referencing in that paper? Cressey always emphasizes thoracic mobility but it seems like something you have to practice more in this day and age. Guys who play their sport a lot probably get enough practice. Pro surfers all have really good thoracic rotation. Look at the GOAT:
His hips open towards the foam ball but it seems like most of the rotation is in his upper back and neck.
Another athlete who comes to mind is Iron Mike:
I suppose weekend warriors and people like us who go to the gym to stay mobile need to include more of this in our strength and conditioning programs.
I think it's more of a bromance haha.
Think of me as someone trying to make up for too many saggital plane movements (ie, lost training time).
Right, but there's no such thing as rotational strength and rotational exercises do nothing for weightloss or a bodybuilding prep. Muscle fibers run one direction. when given a neurological input they contract and release as needed. This underscores the efficacy of the compound movement. When you put your body or a limb in a compromised position in order to add a degree of difficulty you are just adding imprecise lever resistance. You can stay in a position of maximum leverage and add precise weight to add appropriate stress which is much more controllable and beneficial..... and a more reliable way of managing stress to get these specific muscles stronger.
There's no reason to train rotation or body position because these are activity and sport specific and are done during practice specific to that performance or event.
Force production and resistance is automatic absent a neurological disorder. You don't have to train your body positional or otherwise to do either, just be strong enough to resist external force.
Segmental disassociation is trained with timing and body position during practice of specific activities. For instance, for years baseball players would put a donut at the end of a bat to try and build swing speed with the thought process being training with a heavier bat mimicking the movement will make my swing stronger/faster. It was figured out a long time ago that timing and leverage are the hallmarks of swing speed and making a bat harder to swing was the anthills of swing speed. I went through similar experiences with my golfers. Many had contraptions set up in their homes to make it harder to swing the golf club down from the top through impact. All it did was teach them to pull the handle down and destroy an otherwise high level swing. When the weight changes the leverage points change.
I'm talking about just getting your heart rate up. You can do it with an assault bike, battle ropes, sprints, a barbell, or JC bands. Conditioning exercises/routines tend to get boring fast.
I'm confused. We have muscles that twist the trunk and hips. You're saying there's no point in trying to strengthen them apart from in a compound movement (like a squat) because it's an imprecise lever resistance? What does that mean?
Thanks. This is a great example of what I was getting at earlier. So you can actually make yourself WORSE at a sport by trying to mimic sport movements (like a racket swing) using resistance because it screws-up the timing and neural input. What do the functional fitness people say about this?
You guys are scientists. I'm just a surfer dude. I've been doing squats and deadlifts with light weights (75lbs and 95 lbs respectively...lots of reps). I get DOMS every time in my glutes and hamstrings. Then the other day we finally had tubes at my local and I found it hard to get in a tight crouch. My hamstrings were too tight (and the back was resisting too). Pulling in is the only thing I'm kind of good at.
So now I've added air squats in my "compromised" valgus squat position to my regimen. I swear the muscle dynamics feel a whole lot different than a proper squat. Less glute and hamstring and more in the knees. I also from time to time get down in my tube crouch and stay in that position for while to stretch those muscles, whatever it is attached to my inner knees. Today we had little wave and I felt I could crouch again. Always a little worried about popping m discs again when I try to squeeze into micro tubes...
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It’s fun as sh!t to get high and use battle ropes and nothing made me want to puke faster. There’s also like a million different ways to use the ropes. If it ain’t fun or mentally challenging(kettlebells) I’m not doing it.
I learned about the importance of rotational strength when my Mom volunteered me to go help the neighbors throw 100+ lb hay bales into a truck all day. That and in pretty much every sport I played or did. Lacrosse, judo, surfing, snowboarding, etc. Shrug.
Other than golf if you’re not able to vary the tempo of your movement at will or deal with variations in the tempo while training you’re probably not a very good athlete imo.
I don't really know what to think about this. To the extent that rotational exercises work, it seems to be because they are like a mobility drill. That study you poasted suggests many of us suck at recruiting and feeling the muscles of the thoracic spine in which case it helps to use them. That said, I don't know if it's something that benefits from overload like progressively overloading a compound movement for strenf. The judo players I've seen who use bands to practice morote seoinage might just be benefiting from practicing the movement like golf players going to the driving range.
Got it. Anyway a person can get their hart rate up, especially a sedentary person is good by me. The most important part about being a "coach" or what have you is putting together a program that has buy in and adherence. If a person give you 4 weeks and it started becoming a dray, you won't see them come week 6.
The muscles in the trunks and hips don't need to be rotated to work or become stronger. Many of them are stabilizers and when you perform for instance a squat or a kettlebell swing they are doing the work that is necessary for them to be as strong as they need to be. As the main muscles get stronger they are going to be gaining the necessary strength along with them. You don't need to try and isolate them. It's unnecessary at best. I do believe that everyone needs to do "ab" work as well as a few other isolate type exercises a couple times a week. Nothing hyper specific but there are benefits to certain parts of the body getting some extra work.
Functional training has been fairly well debunked. There a few YouTube guys left doing it but unless you are blessed with supreme genetics you aren't going to get much from them. There's always going to be guys that live by clicks and views who will promote whatever to keep revenue coming..... but just like how the top CrossFit games competitors don't actually do crossfit, many of these YouTube personalities don't do this garbage either. Jeff Cavaliere who was probably the most well known guy to use...and I'm not sure but I'm fairly certain he was the first YouTube to coin the phrase...stopped using the term because as he gained popularity others started using the term and really started going off in a silly direction with it....like the Functional Patterns douchebag. I spoke to Jeff once about it and he was pretty emphatic that he meant it to say that overall strength is functional....like a squat is something people do every day of their life and an overhead press is like putting groceries on the shelf. His point was that training for strength is functional. Jeff lives by clicks, it's how he makes a living and he would die poor if all he did was do a video of squats, and other compound movements. One thing that has remained constant with him though has been strength and its importance.
I can feel and flex the muscles of my thoracic spine. They are an important part of me to be able to deadlift heavy. I've never done anything to train them except by using them to keep my spine rigid during a deadlift. Mine are significant in comparison to most other people you see.
I posted a thread on it a week ago. I was hoping more people would post on it. I'm trying to learn more about it.
Judging by some of the call-outs he's been getting lately, he's going to die by the clicks. I actually never associated Jeff with functional training. His schtick seems to mostly be unilateral training and training on your feet more. "If you want to look like an athlete, you need to train like an athlete." I tried one of his programs and didn't see any improvements in strength or hypertrophy.
I think some of Jeff's "genetics" are vitamin S. IDK, Greg Doucette has been pwning him lately. Greg rightly makes the point, "Look, if the guy will lie about the weights he's lifting, what else will he lie about?"
The problem with the idea of "functional training" is that there is no agreed upon coherent definition for what it actually is.
For example you could say that a back squat is functional because it mimics a standard human movement that we've been doing for 10s if not 100s of thousands of years. Although then you could argue that you are not usually lifting heavy weight on your shoulders, so therefore a front squat, deadlift or farmers walk be more "functional" because it more closely mimics lifting or carrying something off the ground. To take it further, you could argue that lifting a sandbag or some kind of irregular shaped heavy item be more "functional" because most objects that we need to lift in real life are not dense yet relatively small uniformly shaped discs at the end of a smooth stick.
Meanwhile, fitness equipment manufacturers sell "functional" trainers which are merely cable systems with different angles for pulling weight stacks.
Basically, you can make the argument for just about anything to be "functional", or not. Not to say that there are not some trainers using the term more relevantly and putting out high quality programs and content, but I think the word has kind of lost its meaning.
For example you could say that a back squat is functional because it mimics a standard human movement that we've been doing for 10s if not 100s of thousands of years. Although then you could argue that you are not usually lifting heavy weight on your shoulders, so therefore a front squat, deadlift or farmers walk be more "functional" because it more closely mimics lifting or carrying something off the ground. To take it further, you could argue that lifting a sandbag or some kind of irregular shaped heavy item be more "functional" because most objects that we need to lift in real life are not dense yet relatively small uniformly shaped discs at the end of a smooth stick.
Meanwhile, fitness equipment manufacturers sell "functional" trainers which are merely cable systems with different angles for pulling weight stacks.
Basically, you can make the argument for just about anything to be "functional", or not. Not to say that there are not some trainers using the term more relevantly and putting out high quality programs and content, but I think the word has kind of lost its meaning.
Agreed. And that’s how I found and why I LOVE MAX SHANK.
Because the “proof is in the pudding”
This is what the end result of true functional training looks like:
Father = Dan John, Son = Max Shank, Holy Ghost = Ido Portal
If I had an experienced Judoka come to me and say I want better faster stronger throws I’d say go buy $15 worth of play sand at Home Depot and find something really durable with no handles to put it in and figure out how to use it to mimic the sport specific movement patterns you want to be stronger at. Or just go buy a grappling dummy?
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