Continued from Part I / Part II, we’ll jump into two more ideas, and some application regarding the negative aspects of some traditional barbell movements and cues in context of athletic performance training.
Breathing, Barbells, and Reflexive Power
I’ll deliver a quick Douglas Heel anecdote before getting to the next piece of the movement equation here. I’ve learned a lot of concepts from Douglas that I consider when designing and implementing resistance programs for athletic performance. One of the pieces that I think about more and more, particularly after my last seminar with him, is that of reflexive breathing.
I had heard, some time ago, that doing things like a plank, while locking down the body into “the right position” really had no athletic transfer, because when you were actually running, jumping, swimming, or whatever, your body would just revert to its natural position. After all, when you are sprinting down the track, it’s not like you can think to yourself “ok, let me suck my belly button in, and squeeze my butt”. Nope, you just run.
Sport is reflexive in nature, and conscious positions learned in the weightroom don’t always hold strong in the context of rapid movement
What I found with Douglas Heel was that, when I would perform a basic bodyweight hip bridge position with my glutes and transverse abdominis “locked in”, I was actually much weaker (when pushed laterally from the side) than vs. when I would simply lift my hips up, and focus on breathing with my diaphragm. When I focused on what my diaphragm was doing, instead of maintaining a particular position, I found that my glutes acted much more reflexively to keep me from tipping over. The key to athletic performance is the reflexive function of the glutes and psoas, not using your forebrain to replicate a particular position that your pilates teacher taught you.
The hip bridge is often overcued in exact pelvic position, and undercued in breathing technique
The same principle can apply to our common strength training instruction. For example, setting up for a squat typically involves locking out the chest and arms to support the barbell (reinforcing an unfortunate 3-3-3 arm pattern as taught by Douglas Heel), taking a big breath, dropping to the bottom, and breathing out hard on the way back up. Not a bad tactic, but it can be improved upon.
Athletes should always have the capability to make breathing a separate function from the movement pattern they are utilizing. I’m not going to say that you should breathe in reverse during a heavy squat or deadlift, and I understand the need for a high level of pressurization in the abdominal cavity for those movements. What I am saying is that when using submaximal weights, athletes should be able to dissect the breath pattern from the movement itself. They should be able to belly-breathe during any point in the lift. Remember, the diaphragm has fascial connections to the psoas, and the psoas and glute work hand-in-hand. Activating the diaphragm has positive repercussions for general strength and function around the pelvis.
Clearly, heavier and more impactful lifting does typically emphasize a strong breath during and through the sticking point of the lift. In my experimentation with the kBox, I’ve found that using a strong belly breath to reverse the force of the wheel has great reflexive implications for building a better vertical jump and other explosive movements, and it just feels better than holding the breath for the reversal.
Now if the tension in the lift revolves around the trunk and diaphragmatic breathing, and tension isn’t excessive in the face and arms, then that’s great! This usually isn’t the case though, in most resistance training programs. I really love things like deadlift compilations, because the faces lifters make are pretty awesome. Could you imagine if athletes competed with the same levels of facial tension though? We would be seeing injuries left and right, in addition to performance that was anything but reflexive.
The bottom line is that, as sports performance professionals, we should stay away from some common cues we regularly see in 1-RM driven lift technique, and steer athletes towards reflexive adaptations of movement that revolve around proper breathing and flow of body tension.
Muscle Slack and Co-Contractions
In building a training program, be sure to regularly emphasize movements that force athletes to store and release tension quickly. In sport, muscles work more often in an “explosive isometric” capacity than an “eccentric-isometric-concentric” motion. Many sport movements are also built around what is called “co-contraction”, which is the ability of opposing muscle groups to fire rapidly enough to provide the fine motor control that happens in hundredths of a second (think sprinting over a rocky path).
Muscle slack is a term made popular by Frans Bosch that refers to the instantaneous amount of tension in a muscle when it is subjected to forces in athletic movement. Think about muscle slack this way: when an athlete’s foot plants to jump, how much tension is instantaneously present in the knee extensors (quads)? If there is little tension present, the ground contact time will be vastly prolonged (because the body has to “wait” for the quads to get up to the proper tension level), and the jump will suffer tremendously. However, if the foot contacts the ground, and the muscles are already highly pre-tensed (no muscle slack), transferring the force to the steely connective tissue, BAM, the athlete rockets off the ground with speed and power!
With this in mind, regular “up and down” lifting doesn’t cross over well to the muscle action seen in sport, because it relies on minimizing and maximizing tension (slack) over a longer period of time. At a given point in a traditional up and down squat, the tension in the glutes could be high, or it could be rather low. Doing this type of pattern all the time can teach muscles to work in a pattern of lagged force production that doesn’t cater well to elastic force transfer. That doesn’t mean don’t do it, but it means that you need to watch how much of an emphasis you place on it, especially for higher level athletes who rely on reflexive power.
I really enjoy using Cal Dietz’s Triphasic Method for a simple way of alternating the motor learning effects from various types of reactive driven barbell tempos. Cal still utilizes a traditional heavy squat day on Wednesday, but his other lifting days are tempo driven. I think a 2 to 1 ratio is a fine compromise for many strength programs, and Cal has shown that this ideal can work tremendously well given the results he gets with his athletes.
Cal Dietz’s reactive isometric front squat is one of my perennial favorite movements
Doing a traditional up and down squat will help build intermuscular coordination (cooperation between muscle groups), as well as potentially improving overall muscle size and strength, but it can’t help build intramuscular coordination very well (which is more important for higher level athletes). This is clearly why many beginner and intermediate athletes make huge gains from a regular resistance training program, while you won’t see many elite sprinters and jumpers regularly doing powerlifting based training means.
So what to do about lifting heavy? You certainly still can, and should do so in many situations. The easy answer is to do the heavier barbell work in context of shorter ranges of motion, or even in isometrics, where muscle tension can be more accurately controlled. My personal favorite is a heavy ¼ squat isometric hold done as part of a complex or French Contrast set. By doing heavier movements in this manner, a very high neural charge can be acquired, while avoiding the drawbacks of larger ranges of motion with heavy weight that can provoke compensation patterns, and development of muscle that isn’t as usable for athletic power.
Lifts that Maximize Transfer
With all this information in mind, here is a list of exercises I have found that tend to have better transfer towards the ways in which athletes produce force.
| Better Transfer | Lower Transfer |
| Pistol and Skater Squats | Deep Squat with Compensation |
| Reactive Tension Squats and Deadlifts | Traditional Squats and Deadlifts |
| Fast Olympic Lifts in Variety | Low Bar Back Squats |
| Heavier Partial Squats | Deep Good-mornings |
| Dynamic Deeper Squats | Slow/Monotonous Olympic Lifts |
Summary:
- Don’t (regularly) squat through the heels. Don’t deadlift through the heels. Don’t run through the heels. Don’t jump through the heels. (Wait, I shouldn’t have to tell you those last two….)
- Generally speaking, center pressure in the foot when lifting weights.
- Don’t steer your accessory lifting towards building better lifts. Steer it towards building better athletes.
- Utilize proper diaphragmatic breathing patterns in all barbell movements.
- Avoid excessive tension in the extremities in any barbell lift (unless absolutely necessary for safety, and then I would question your intent of the exercise)
- Generally speaking, cater more towards movements that support some mode of the intermuscular coordination found in sport.
- Avoid movements that take the dorsal muscles beyond their traditional working length in force transmission
- Avoid heavy, grind-out traditional powerlifts as the main focus in exercise selection
- At the very least, integrate proper diaphragmatic breathing techniques into your traditional strength work, and avoid excessive extremity and facial tension in barbell movements.
Counterpoint: Cases for Heavy Traditional Powerlifts
For the purpose of motor learning and athletic development in the same muscular layout of performance in sprinting, jumping and the like, competition standard powerlifts don’t offer the highest transfer. When it comes to general potentiation and muscular recruitment, however, they are just about as good as it gets, particularly the classical clean and jerk, and snatch, if you are in an environment where you have the time to teach them properly.
Additionally, athletes who can deep squat with a good lumbo-pelvic rhythm can reap benefits of this lift relative to speed and particularly, vertical jump, for quite a bit longer period of time than athletes with sub-optimal lumbo-pelvic rhythms.
Younger, and even intermediate athletes who need a higher level of intermuscular coordination will benefit well from traditional lifting patterns (so long as good breathing and tension control are emphasized), and there isn’t a huge need to complicate things early on. Just remember that these types of exercises are an important motor learning tool, and overload shouldn’t just be used in context of increased weight on the bar.
Finally, many athletes are anchored, or attached to a particular lift, and get a large mind/body benefit from performing that lift with heavy resistance. For these athletes, it really isn’t worth it to fight them, just insist on the performance of that lift with the proper tension and breathing techniques.
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