What are the fundamental movements and abilities that every athlete should possess in order to achieve athletic competence?
The key to effective training lies not in an exhaustive range of movements, but rather in mastering the foundational training and movement plane, known as the front-to-back or sagittal plane. This plane is where strength and conditioning originated and continue to thrive. My attendance at Pat Davidson’s enlightening seminar, “Rethinking the Big Patterns,” had a profound impact on my perspective and influenced the integration of his knowledge into this article.
Conversely, the frontal and transverse planes are where play, both recreational and sporting, predominantly takes place. This is not to suggest that training in these planes should be excluded or neglected, but rather that it is not the ideal starting point if one lacks a solid foundation.
By prioritizing the development of core competencies and gradually incorporating rotational movements with barbells and cables, athletes can establish a strong foundation before progressing further.
The Foundational Movements
So what is the foundation? For a physical preparation program, there are a few sagittal plane competencies I am stressing more and more each year, and looking for all my athletes to be able to perform. These set the foundation for any training to come, and they are as follows:
Do a good front squat for 20 reps with at least 70% bodyweight
2-minute ISO lunge hold
1-minute ISO pushup hold
Hang for at least 90 seconds
(For males. For females, I’m looking for around 55-60% bodyweight on the squat, a kneeling position for pushups, and then at least 50 seconds of hanging. These markers can also change quite a bit based on age and ability, but for the sake of this article, I’m talking about mature athletes).
Athletes who can’t do these things are going to be at a disadvantage in terms of being able to leverage the machinery of their bodies in a balanced manner.
These four primary emphases also cover a lot of bases. Let’s get into them briefly.
A “Good” Front Squat
When it comes to basic capabilities, I’ve always started with a front squat before I got into back squats. From the world of the Postural Restoration Institute and reading Justin Moore’s work, I’ve found that teaching athletes to “reach” while squatting is a game changer.
Starting with either a kettlebell squat, or Frankenstein front squat, with feet shoulder width and facing forward, I want an athlete to keep a fairly vertical torso while being able to reach a position where the thighs are parallel, or darn close to it (depending on anatomical factors).
The shin angle will mirror the torso angle. Former podcast guest, Cody Plofker has a nice demo below.
If an athlete can’t get there, we just go as far down as they can without spinning feet out or letting them lean forward.
In this manner, a muscular dominant lifting strategy is used, rather than an impingement strategy (using an extended facet-on-facet spine to lift), and we try to feel more abs and hamstrings in the movement than athletes typically would in squatting. I’m using Pat Davidson’s “heels back, knees forward” more often as well after the seminar in trying to get more hamstring contribution.
Hamstring contribution in squats isn’t just specific to PRI, but also is seen through studying from some Jay Schroeder disciples, since we want the quads “off” on the way down, in a sense, and “on” on the way up… just like athletic movement.
Once an athlete has some basic competency, we’ll progress (heels elevated a bit is OK), and hope to get up to around 55/70% bodyweight for 20 reps before really considering back squats, partials, bands, and chains, etc. I use the 1×20 system quite often, and many times in early blocks, so I fit this here rather than a 1RM.
I’m not trying to test a 1RM if you can’t show me your own position.
2-Minute Lunge
Where the front squat is our ground-based symmetrical lift, the lunge is our sagittal asymmetry and position-based competency. The Extreme ISO lunge is an all-time favorite of mine, and the more I use it, the more connections I see to other systems with it, such as PRI.
The simpler the tools you can use to get what you want, and the less you have to instruct your athletes to get it, the better.
For the lunge, simply perform a 2-minute hold as shown below. Beware, most athletes will fully CHEAT and try to go higher than the designated position. If anything, tell them to go down when it starts to get hard… not up. Don’t be soft and lift your hips when it gets hard. Face the pain… embrace it like you would a friend. You’ll be fine afterward… ISO’s help you feel better.
Be nitpicky. Good athletes can go way beyond 2 minutes.
1-Minute Pushup Hold
The pushup hold kills three birds with one stone, basic upper body strength, and balance, as well as the ability to maintain the trunk in a relatively straight line throughout the performance.
I say relatively, because I now never, ever coach bracing of the trunk for anything. Long gone are the days of “abs and glutes locked in”. Bracing is for those who don’t have to coil and uncoil… who don’t have to load and explode.
By giving minimal cues in terms of hips and spine, etc. athletes will often figure out how to fix their trunk on their own… which is the way it should be. Let them problem-solve instead of holding people’s hands through an entire program. A minute is a good starting point here, and females can use a kneeling position.
Athletes who get shoulder pain on this generally are really bad at being reciprocal with their shoulder blades and have trouble pinching them together in the back.
Hang for 90 Seconds Straight
Last, but not least, we have the bar hang. I want my men to be able to hang from a bar for 90 seconds, and women around 50. If you’ve seen videos like the one below, it’s easy to get a little jealous at some of our friends in the animal kingdom, but also realize how adaptive to our environments we are. By simply spending some time hanging, we adapt very quickly, and the effect on our grip, backs, ribs, spines, fascia and lats are substantial.
Some of the people who are the worst at hanging actually aren’t those with a bad grip, but are those with mega-compressed ribs and a wide infra-sternal angle. We had a power-lifter intern last year with a huge squat, bench, and deadlift relative to his body weight, and he could only hang for 20 seconds before dropping the first try! We got him up to a minute before his time was done.
Hanging is a basic physical competency all of my athletes will get. For some, grip strength really is a limiting factor, but anyone can improve.
Conclusion
So there you have a peek into my basic block-zero competencies I expect to improve rapidly in all new athletes and see get even better as athletes go from year to year. Get to a solid place in this basic 4, and you are in a wonderful place to expand your athletic world.
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