Movement Relativity

Albert Einstein was often asked to explain the general theory of relativity. Jokingly he would explain it as “put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity!”

I would consider myself a movement guy. I love reading, writing, talking and training athletic movement. I believe that as S&C coaches, physical preparation coaches, whatever you call yourself if you work with athletes; our job is getting our athletes stronger, faster, more mobile in their movements for their sport(s).

Whatever background, form of training, degrees, certifications, experiences, beliefs, you may have, I believe that results should be our middle ground in which we meet and start and end our conversations. A theory without results is just wishful thinking. Context and Results trump everything!

Results should be our middle ground in which we meet and start and end our conversations

Motor control theories account for how the nervous system tries to solve the degrees of freedom problem. These theories influence the type of research questions asked and the types of experiments that are conducted. (Reflex Theories, Hierarchal Theories, Dynamical Systems and Ecological Approaches) For years theories on this how and what have lead to great debate amongst motor control theorists. The science of motor control is the physics of living systems. This is a very tough subject to study because it is physics of non-observable objects. You don’t really know what is going on within the system, as there are no ways you can go inside to see.

Theorists have to view the system in a sneaky way in order to try and find out the physical laws that lead to a specific behavior. The physical approach of control (bottom-up) looks at movement, and they figure it is the body and the nervous system that is the wise guy making all of the decisions.

From a Hierarchal approach (“top-down” – decisions are made by the higher centers of the brain that have pre-structured sets of commends), theorists don’t care as much about the body in movement, but mostly about the brain and how decisions are being made from the store representations of movements. But now there is growing evidence for the theories (Ecological Psychology & Dynamic Systems Theory) explaining how there is more of an interaction of independent states that self organize and collect information from various constraints (environmental, organistmic, and task) that help to build movement and coordination, and that there is no one wise guy making the decisions. This makes it very dynamic because components from a top-down and a bottom-up approach are added to the movement plan all together, thus making the system self-organizing.

Dynamic Systems Theory, Hierarchy Theories, Reflex Theories, Ecological Theories; these theories emphasize certain aspects of the actual system, which combines them all. It is a very dynamic system because it changes with time. It is built on a hierarchical principle (very few people argue that the spinal cord is hierarchically lower to the brain), and most actions are ecologically sensible. Mark Latash

A passage from the book Synergy, sums up the ongoing debates and struggle of understanding movement: “While working in an area of science dominated by intuitive rather than precisely formulated notions and hypotheses, Bernstein realized that before solving problems, one needed to focus on their exact formulation. Later in his life, he liked to recount the following story (as recollected by Prof. Zatsiorsky):

You probably do not know that God has a cousin who has never been very famous. So, the cousin asked God to help him achieve fame and glory in science. To please the cousin, God gave him an ability to get any information about physical systems in no time and to travel anywhere within a microsecond. First, the cousin decided to check whether there was life on other planets. No problems; he traveled to all the planets simultaneously and got an answer. Then he decided to find out what the foundation of matter was. Again, this was easy: He became extremely small, crawled inside the elementary particles, looked around, and got an answer. Then, he decided to learn how the human brain controls movements. He acquired the information about all the neurons and their connections, sat at his desk and looked at the blueprint. If the story has it right, he is still sitting there and staring at the map of neuronal connections.

As a practitioner, I am not in any position to argue for or against the various theories of motor control & learning. But what can be discussed is the problem, the context of the situation and the solutions that did or did not resolve it. The point I am trying to make is that I believe that they, all movement theories, work! Its all relative! That’s why there are so many of them. It depends on the context in which you need / use them.

I believe in making robust, dexterial, adaptable, abundant, problem-solving, opportunity for action ready, information grabbing, athletes. I believe in making fast movers AS WELL AS fast thinkers. But sometimes athletes have poor movement and throwing that shit into a blender is just going to leave you with shit soup!

For example, it is well known that during sprinting, landing on your heels (heel striking) can cause excessive forces to disperse to places we don’t want them to go and causes a large amount of braking forces on the body. Now in order to correct this, you could try constraining the environment and either having the athlete running up a hill or taking their shoes off. And yes, some athletes will correct their foot strike patterns doing these things. But to get this to move to an unconscious – competent motor pattern, constraining the environment alone WONT fix this because unfortunately sports are played in shoes / cleats, and on level surfaces. And there is no perceptual stress from game tactics, teammates or opponents that you have to think about running up a hill or with your shoes off. Sometimes, to move the scale from unconscious incompetent, to unconscious competent, its a hard road. It depends however on what is trying to be developed within the athlete’s movement.

I want to show two athletes that I’ve worked with, a quarterback and a running back, and how I assessed them, and what we worked on to change / improve their mechanics.

Quarterback Mechanics:

* The time frame for this is from January 2015 – August 2015

* Note that this quarterback was training with me while having to do football practice everyday with his team which started in January of 2015

Videos 1 – 4)

These were the initial videos of this throwing mechanics. I always video from the side and front. From my assessment, he lacks a weight shift, separation between his hips and shoulders, his elbow drops down during medial shoulder rotation and he performs wrist flexion rather than wrist pronation at release

Video 5 – 6)

Along with technical exercises, here he is using specialized exercise to learn the weight shift – hip rotation, as well as strengthen the movement.

Video 7 – 8)

Introducing a small stimulus lets you know if the movement is sticking as well as allows you to move to more chaotic-environmental shaping movements. Here just the use of throwing a lacrosse ball can change mechanics. In this video his weight shift suffers. So we stay with this until he masters it from slow – fast, and then add in more stimuli.

Videos 9 – 10)

He was throwing with his football team which I know wasn’t re-enforcing his mechanics, so I came to video him and lo-and-behold he reverted back to his old mechanics. This is the problem with the transfer of learning/training. It is a long process that needs to be step like with stimuli to build to his game actions. In my opinion, throwing with his team set us back several months of learning.

Videos 11-12)

We started to implement more stimuli: just having him bounce up and down until I clap/hold up my hands/say a word. Again this shows how much, if at all, his mechanics are beginning to move from conscious to unconscious.
True learning is based on retention.

Video 13)

I am introducing him bouncing while throwing to multiple targets while maintaining his mechanics. You can see that his elbow begins to drop again. We stayed with these and worked on them from slow – fast.

Video 14)

We started to implement different drops (3-5-7step). His hip-shoulder separation began to disappear so we stayed here and worked on that from this.

Video 15)

We started being together his drops, throwing to a target and his mechanics.

Video 16)

Once he mastered throwing from the drop, we started working on throwing to live targets. His elbow begins to drop again, so we stayed working on throwing to live targets until it improved.

Video 17)

Specialized exercise for hip rotation-separation

Video 18 – 19)

Progressed to the field and started throwing to live targets

Video 20)

This isn’t a great clip, but it’s one of the better ones that I was giving where you can see him throwing in a live game. In slow motion you can see his separation, his shoulders and elbow up and his medial rotation.

Running Back Mechanics:

* Time Frame: July 2014 – Sept 2015 (Junior and Senior Season)

* During our time together, he was forced to lift & train with his high school team 3-4x a week

Videos 1-3)

These were the initial videos I had of him to assess his movement and where to build a program for him.
One thing that kept standing out to me was his inability to just “stick” his foot into the ground and make a clean hard cut. It appears to me that everything is rounded and takes 2-3 steps what in my opinion should take only one.

Video 4)

This video shows his initial cutting technique in our facility just going back and forth
What I am looking for is where and how many steps does it take for him to stop himself and push off.
In this video you can see that it takes him two steps to stop.
His initial stopping is being down on the inside leg, and then the second (outside leg) follows to stop and begin push off.

Video 5)

Here is a video of him working on stopping and starting on one leg. This takes a tremendous amount of technique but also strength to achieve this.

Video 6)

Shows the difference between videos 4 & 5, with his ability to solely use his outside leg as both the stopping leg and starting.

Video 7)

This is a special strength exercise for the cutting technique
This strengthens his ability to push his hips laterally and hip abduct

Video 8)

This is an explosive special strength exercise improving his ability to push off

Video 9)

Here is a plyometric exercise for improving the ability on one leg to change directions. We call these compass jumps

Video 10)

Here is a plyometric exercise for the push off in his lateral movement

Videos 11 – 13)

Here are some videos of him working on cutting with a visual reaction (coach pointing).
The two hardest directional cuts an athlete will ever make going 100mph is a sharp 90degree or 180 degree angle. So we work on these as much as possible.

Videos 14 – 16)

Here we are trying to challenge his cutting technique but having him react to a visual stimulus while carrying a 10-15lb water bag.

Videos 17 – 19)

Here is game footage showing in my opinion better cutting ability

I wanted to show two athletes and their movement problems and the brief view of the journey we took to help improve what I felt was hindering their performance and the results that we got. Is it perfect? Heck no. But I wanted to at least SHOW some results and give CONTEXT to what and how we used motor learning.

I tried hard to collect all of the documented videos of these athletes in their time but as a coach it is hard to video and coach at the same time. If anyone has any questions or concerns please feel free to reach me on social media or email jmoyer@dcsportstraining.com

Everything should be made as simple as possible; not simpler. Albert Einstein

About Jeff Moyer

Jeff Moyer is the owner of Dynamic Correspondence Sports Training, whose motto is, “We Build Better Athletes.” At DC Sports Training, athletes work on the physical, mental and visual aspects to the sports. Their goal is to deliver the athletes of the greater Pittsburgh area the highest, most efficient results year after year of training with us. We will exhaust our means in order for our athletes to achieve the highest results, and to create a system model that will develop our athletes both physically and intellectually. Education must be the road to which will help us set this standard. Our results will be the vehicle which to drive us.

Jeff graduated in 2004 from Hartwick College where he was a two sport athlete (Football & Track & Field). Jeff has been a sport coach (Basketball & Football) at the youth, JV, Varsity and College level for football for over 10years. Jeff has been in the strength in conditioning industry for over a decade, having worked in the medical, private, team, high school and collegiate settings, training clients from youth development, to rehabilitation and sport performance.

Jeff has a relentless passion for all things physical preparation. His pedagogy is heavily influenced by Eastern Bloc sport science, while apprenticing under Dr. Michael Yessis and Yosef Johnson of Ultimate Athlete Concepts. Jeff has also been fortunate enough to extensively study with and work with Dr. Natalia Verkhoshansky, Mike Woicik of the Dallas Cowboys, Louie Simmons of Wesitside Barbell and Fellowship under Dave Tate of EliteFTS.

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