Against my better judgment-and at the risk of the strength & conditioning villagers showing up at my doorstep with torches and pitchforks-I decided to write an article on reconstituting proprioception training. Because of this, I’ve sort of become the unwilling “instability for S&C guy”.
Unfortunately, that has turned into people thinking that I’m a fan of all instability and that’s my main hat-this couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m actually not a fan of 99% of the instability training that’s out there.
It doesn’t take up a ton of our training time.
It’s just one of many things we do.
Yes, we still lift…on the ground.
We don’t do any real weighted work on there because it takes away from force generation.
We don’t do circus tricks on yoga balls.
It’s just that I believe I’ve found a way to properly program it and because of that, I get asked to speak on the subject.
Illegal Fireworks Paradox
Without getting to specific takeaways, the whole concept was meant to unite two opposite sides-the anti-instability group and the pro instability group-and to show that instability training has long-suffered from the illegal fireworks paradox…
Just because some people decided to ruin illegal fireworks for the rest of us by doing ignorant stuff with them, doesn’t mean they can’t be awesome if used safely. Instability training is the same thing. Doing a squat on an instability ball is the gym version of setting off a Roman Candle in a dry field. You get the idea.
Instability training is just one component of my Neurobiomechanical Model for training systems.
Now that I’ve gotten my required instability caveats out of the way, let’s get to the point-a specific type of instability training-oscillating kinetic energy training-and practical applications with the Inertia Wave™.
Background
This was actually inspired by an old Inno Sport training concept combined with some of the wisdom of Louis Simmons-a pioneer of oscillating kinetic energy training (or Chaos Training) concepts. With Oscillating Kinetic Energy Training A.K.A. O.K.E., the training stimulus comes from the pulsing waves-or perturbations-that create unstable physics, challenging the athlete to deal with a series of multi planar resistance profiles. This creates a reflexive firing in your musculoskeletal system. Sometimes movements are weighted, in other cases they aren’t.
This is nothing new-dangling banded kettlebells from a bar is a longtime powerlifting concept out of Westside Barbell. Most Olympic Lifts very much include O.K.E., technically. Suplex bags, strongman yokes, and many other training tools also feature O.K.E. as part of their stimulus.
One O.K.E. implement I feel is especially relevant for sports combines this unpredictability with dynamic and ballistic movements in the Inertia Wave. This is a different dimension than conventional Westside O.K.E. concepts-both have their place. The Inertia Wave creates live energy and perturbations that are continuous once you get the device going with a few whips-this creates a reflexive muscle firing that recruits all the muscles you don’t see in the mirror that propel you through space and time-and helps to properly integrate them. I feel it is an ideal O.K.E. implement for sports. Since most may not know what O.K.E. is, let’s go into its overall benefits before going into one way I implement it with Inertia Wave.
O.K.E. Benefits
Including O.K.E. work as an ACCESSORY training implement to your full program can serve some major purposes: by creating a higher degree of motor control (and movement quality), we can neurologically set the table for additional gains in:
- Speed
- Power
- Strength
- Agility
- Braking & C.O.D. (Change of Direction)
- Movement Fluidity (On/Off Switches-Contract & Relax Cycles-Inter/Intra Muscular Coordination)
- Injury Prevention
This overlooked and underdeveloped training concept should be looked at as a derivative of human movement. Human movement-and sports-are not always purely linear, controlled, and slow.
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One example of how I implement O.K.E. Bridging the gap between rehab and strength & conditioning.
Performance Needs Analysis
Most mainstream (at risk of sounding like a hipster 😉 ) strength & conditioning programs have an overreliance on what I call ‘perfect scenario’ training. Everything is performed in a slow, controlled, linear (and sagittal) format-only for athletes to go on the field into an environment that is anything but.
Yes, MANY (most?) movements-from prehab to foundational strength movements-are and should be done in this controlled format that emphasizes positional ownership. However, if this is ALL that we do, we risk a ‘dumbing down’ of the nervous system.
What do I mean by this?
Inner Workings & Neural Dynamics
The brain can be lazy in some ways. The brain’s chief concern is survival. The brain would prefer you to go from point A to point B utilizing as little resources as possible. This means we spend less energy from a metabolic (and ultimately mitochondrial) perspective and can conserve these things for more important, survival-based tasks.
If we live and train linear lives-one set of postures, one set of movements, one set of training-not to mention the over-specialization issues going on in youth sports-then our brain & nervous systems adapt to this. We begin to shut down neuromuscular connections and associations the brain deems unneeded.
Here’s the thing with well-designed instability training, playing multiple sports, novel movement/play, and more-by supplying the brain unfamiliar (and “dangerous”) stimuli, we can reawaken innate human neurological connections. By making the brain sense danger, the brain is forced to recruit previously dormant neuromuscular connections-activating smaller, stabilizing muscles that segmentally move prime movers through space and coordinate the whole system. Neuro-Rate functions-force creation, absorption, co-contractions, relaxations and all neurological on-off switches-become sharpened. Inno Sport and Tim Anderson’s work are great reads if you want to dive into the inner workings.
Sporting Demands & Inertia Wave Adaptations
Take some air now that we’re out of the rabbit hole. Thanks for staying with me. Let’s get into some sporting needs I feel we can agree upon:
Motor Control & Neuromuscular Efficiency
The aforementioned higher motor unit recruitment of primary and secondary muscle groups is something O.K.E.-and the Inertia Wave-can induce. Again-well-designed O.K.E. wakes up muscles and muscle grouping behavior that help propel the body through space. Better motor control and optimal muscle recruitment translate into better movement quality.
In essence, the live energy creates a series of forces the athlete is forced to react to-reflexively fire in response.
Fast, Efficient Force Absorption
Athletes need to be able to absorb force fast and efficiently. It’s not just about a muscle that isn’t activated, either. Highly involved muscular co-contraction behavior around joints, fast relaxations, appropriate fitness, and appropriate chains of fascial connectivity absolutely play a role here. The instability and oscillatory effects of the Inertia Wave do wonders for waking up proprioceptive mechanisms, as sensory receptors such as muscle spindles are forced to work overtime to continually adjust to erratic movements.
This is a vital piece of force absorption. Most coaches and PT’s only address slow, maximal, linear strength force absorption through lifting and do not address quick, eccentric force absorption in the proper fashion. Sports involve much more fast, ‘speed strength’ eccentric overloads for force absorption than they do ‘maximal strength’ ones. Not only that, although the surfaces in sports are somewhat level, the environment is anything but stable. Including O.K.E. helps the athlete react to this unpredictability beyond what is solely provided by linear, controlled lifting and conventional plyometrics.
Integrated Core
In the book Anatomy Trains, the importance of an integrated core that stabilizes as well as dynamically propels the body through space and time is highlighted. This means having a developed center of mass/gravity, appropriately linking chains of muscle groups of the body, and assisting in proximal-distal muscle firing to control your limbs in space. K.E. and the Inertia Wave help develop these core muscles you don’t see in the mirror. A properly developed core is the channel by which force absorption and generation should be transmitted.
Contract & Relax Cycles
We went into contract & relax cycles for force absorption. Muscles also have to be able to very rapidly turn on and off in most sports in order to deliver power. Neuro Rate functions, as it were. The Inertia Wave work helps athletes develop proper reciprocal inhibition that can deteriorate if excessive slow, heavy lifting work is done alone without proper holistic consideration of how the body works. By this token, we can help develop rate of force development adaptations.
As an added bonus, O.K.E. creates an additional metabolic cost due to the added muscle recruitment and energy expenditure. You can potentially get creative using it in conditioning programming as I have done with MMA athletes.
Consider O.K.E. Training
The takeaway here should be to consider O.K.E. training as a supplement in your training model. My theory is that well-designed instability training is one key component of laying a foundation for quality movement-from which everything else originates.
I have experimented with O.K.E. in a variety of ways and have found the Inertia Wave to be a great tool in its implementation for the faster responses required post-rehab and in sports. By getting athletes of all varieties to move better-with more neurobiomechanical efficiency-we can improve coveted strength, power, speed, and movement abilities while properly rehabbing and bulletproofing them from injuries.
For starters, try integrating a relevant version of O.K.E. for you or your athletes into your movement prep work.
About Matt Cooper
Matt Cooper (Coop) is a nutrition consultant, strength & conditioning coach, and human performance coach from California. Driven by an obsession to expand human performance, Coop spends his time researching, experimenting, doing nerdy things, and building better humans in general at Stand Out Performance (Fast Twitch LA) in Compton, California.
Coop works with athletes and individuals-from developmental to professional levels-remotely and in-person to optimize their health, performance, and fitness.
Coop translates research, experience, and human performance technology to design one stop shop services and programs that address relevant areas, including nutrition, health, training, sleep, mind/body integration, the nervous system, recovery, and beyond.
Coop’s own personal journey began in athletics and fitness-until poor health and mental states befell him at an early age-this lead to him becoming his own practitioner and fuels his current work, marrying functional medicine and human performance to help others become superhuman.
- Certified Nutrition Consultant
- Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist (CSCS)
- NeuFit Electrotherapist
- Speed of Sport Affiliate; Certified Sport Performance Specialist
- Director: Wellness I Performance I Sport Science; Fast Twitch LA
- Director: Wellness I Performance I Sport Science; Black House MMA
- Consultant: The Third Wave
- Chief Scientific Officer, Ketone Score
- Over 1K Clients Helped (pro/developing athletes, individuals, businesses, addiction/trauma)
- Co-Author, The Ketogenic Diet: A Metabolic Manifesto For Dieter & Practitioner
- Communications; SSU
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