A Guide to Hip and Knee Dominant Athletes

A Guide to Hip and Knee Dominant Athletes, and Why Not Knowing the Difference is Holding Back Your Progress

There is one aspect of training that most coaches/trainers don’t understand, and once you learn it, you’ll never think of training athletes the same way again. It is the reason that top level track and field coaches have a tendency to become manual therapists, and that corrective exercise has shot to the top of the list in personal training conferences. It is why coaches can yell at athletes about their form until they are blue in the face but nothing will ever change. What is this aspect of human physiology that is so vital to our success?

Are you ready? Here it is:

Form is Dictated by Function, Technique Dictated by Strength

In other terms, the human brain is smart. Very smart. It searches the 700+ muscles in the human body to determine which ones will do the job at hand the most efficiently. Below are some examples of how the brain responds to certain situations in the human body regarding performance technique.

• Are the quadriceps stronger than the glutes? Then run in a quad dominant fashion.
• Are the hip flexors weak or inhibited? Then start recruiting the adductors and rectus femoris to assist in knee lift while running.
• Are the adductors/groin tight? Then watch the athletes knees cave in while jumping and squatting.
• Are the ankles immobile? Then sit the hips back farther in squatting and jumping.
• Are the glutes weak? Use the hamstrings and spinal erectors more!

Different sports require different optimal joint configuarations, sprints, jumping, and rotating all require a certain amount of mobility and stability throughout the body

These results are all poor movement patterns of course! The intelligence of the brain tends to work against the body in the creation of inefficient technique in favor of temporary results, bringing about compromised performance and increased incidence of injury.

One extremely important duality of training is whether or not the athlete is knee or hip dominant, because the way the athlete moves will be reflected by this categorization.

When you see a runner who can’t get their knees up and whose legs swing far behind the body during a race, more often than not, that runner has big quads, accompanied by weak hip flexors. On the other hand, athletes with incredibly stiff ankles and weak vertical jumps are many times hip dominant by nature, as their bodies have taken their knees out of the equation.

It typically takes a trained eye or slow motion replay to take a look at an athlete and determine whether or not they are knee or hip dominant, but in the weightroom it is easy!

It often takes a trained eye or video playback to assess movement deficiencies out on the field, but in the weight room it is often easier

In order to shed some light on the difference between hip and knee dominant athletes, I shot this 10 minute video. Within, I talk about identifying hip and knee dominant tendencies in the weightroom setting, and the things that can be done to correct them. Check it out below.

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