Today’s show is with Alex Effer, owner of Resilient Training and Rehabilitation. Alex has treated and trained a variety of clients, from professional and amateur athletes, to a wide spectrum of the general population, ranging from those with certain medical conditions, to postoperative rehabilitation and individuals with chronic and complex pain. Alex has experience as an exercise physiologist, a strength and conditioning coach, and has consulted with a number of elite and Olympic organizations. Alex has taken a tremendous amount of continuing education courses and is on the leading edge of modern training theory.
There are loads of different continuing education courses and theories, each carrying methods to train athletes from perspectives on breathing, corrective exercise, and exercise variations, to name a few. It is in the process of getting to the core principles that define these many training systems, that we can gain a greater level of wisdom to make better decisions in exercise selection and training organization.
For today’s podcast, Alex speaks on his continuing education journey, and core principles that many current courses in human performance/assessment and biomechanics tend to have in common. He speaks on how to dial up, or down, points of contact in a movement to help an athlete achieve better mastery over a skill or core human function.
In the second half of the show, Alex gives some analysis and progressions with functional training movements, such as crab walks, and bear crawls, and then talks about how some “meathead” oriented exercises are actually more functional than we give the credit for. Finally, Alex talks about exercises that either “push an athlete backwards in the chest” or “push them forwards” from the back, and how those ramifications can go into, not ony the way we select exercises, but aso the way that we periodize and organize our training programs.
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Timestamps and Main Points
5:15 – Common trends that Alex found in his educational process, having taken “all the courses”
13:30 – How Alex looks at force vectors in training and movement, and the difference between walking and running when assessing gait and looking at these force vectors
20:15 – Where Alex has gotten most of his information in training when considering PRI versus other educational systems (such as DNS or SFMA)
22:15 – Why it may be a faulty method to try to compare babies to adults in terms of baseline movement patterning
30:00 – How to transition a client from 12 points of contact, to only 2, and how to use the extra points of contact to improve one’s movement ability when athletes may struggle with standing motions
44:30 – Assessing crab walks, and explaining (or regressing) why athletes might not be able to lift their hips up while performing the crab walk
51:15 – Why some “fitness/bodybuilding” movement can have athletic movement applications, such as a tricep kickback or arm curl coupled with head turn
56:15 – How athletes doing exercises in a manner that “feels good” often times is an optimal method of them doing that movement, versus whatever the commonly accepted technical model for that exercise might be
1:00:00 – Alex’s theory on periodizing training based on early, mid and late stance oriented movements
1:12:15 – Viewing training intervention as either “pulling someone back” or “pushing them forward”
“When you take every single course, you kind of get mind-blown by them the first time… and then you hit a client that totally goes against all the algorithms and everything they say, and you have to pivot”
“(all the continuing education courses) believe in some sort of respiration and how that affects the body”
“You got two phases of respiration, so you got inhale which is more external rotation, and exhale which is more internal rotation. You also have the three phases of gait, two of the phases are external rotation so you’ve got to believe there is some semblance with inhalation, and then you’ve got one of the phases, mid-stance which is more pronation, so you have to believe that is going to be more exhalation”
“If this person is limited in internal rotation, they must be limited in exhalation in that area”
“As I pronate my foot, I’m going to have an internal rotation force go all the way up near my head”
“If I can’t get the air in certain parts of my ribcage, or certain parts of my pelvis, then I am going to induce more muscle tone in that area… I now have to use a muscle strategy in order to pull the air in; I use my lats, I use my pecs, I use my SCM, I use my traps”
“Go into the anatomy app, and remove all the muscle, and start with “how do the bones move”
“So, position, breathing, gait, and force vectors: To me, those are the main things that I think about based on all of the different systems I’ve taken that influence me today and dictate how I may program and what I’m looking at from an assessment standpoint”
“Internal rotation is a downward force into the ground”
“Why do we pronate? Why do we internally rotate? Because we are hitting a ground that does not visibly deform when we hit it?
“What I really like from DNS, or what I took was the developmental sequences (lying on your back, side, quadiped, half kneeling) going from 12 points of contact to the ground, to just having 2, and how to manage that”
“You can get so sucked into the algorithm that you take thinking out of the equation”
“With every exercise I do on the ground, I try to have the feet involved”
“When I’m doing an assessment I ask, “how far forward on the toes is this person”?
“For me, the supine is going to help me gain range of motion, to be able to try something with more range of motion, and has more gravitational demand to it”
“Toe off and heel strike are more of a horizontal force vector”
“(In crab walking) I’m not able to flex my one shoulder as I’m walking forward; I can’t bring my arm forward because that rib cage doesn’t have the ability to flex… they are more sagittal plane driven and they don’t have the ability to rotate”
“Let’s say you do a crawling sequence, first you do a forward bear crawl, then a reverse bear crawl, then a crab walk, and see how that improves (because that is going to open up the manubrium). Then if that still doesn’t work, side planks are going to help, tricep kickbacks are going to help”
“Bicep curls (with a simultaneous head turn) open up space in the upper back”
“Doing lower reaching or heel elevation exercises can bring me into a heel strike bias, which is going to open up some shoulder flexion, internal and external rotation, and then I can move onto a mid-stance phase; force production and strength”
“The first phase of an off-season is more heel strike, it’s more hypertrophy, let’s build some muscle mass, let’s restore range of motion; and then we move into more strength in the second phase… that phase is more mid-stance, I need to start producing force”
“Landing exercises are going to be more heel-strike bias, because that is deceleration”
“BFR, how expansive is that? That’s going to promote some external rotation for sure in those areas”
“In order to understand programming, at the top of the page, write heel strike, mid-stance, toe-off. Then write down all different lunges, then squats, then deadlifts, then presses”
“A flexed thorax (more heel strike) is something we should be searching for… most people are being pushed from behind and going onto their toes, so we need to push them back. I am asking, am I trying to pull this person back, or am I trying to push them forward?”
Show Notes
Supine cross connect
Walking cross connect
The manubrium
Erik Huddleston’s chart on training expansion and contraction
About Alex Effer
Alex Effer is the owner of Resilient Training and Rehabilitation, a name that emphasizes Alex’s unique approach to fitness, which is one that combines both aspects of normal fitness and rehabilitation principles to achieve long- lasting pain free results. Alex uses his comprehensive knowledge and passion in exercise science, autonomics, respiration, rehabilitation, and biomechanics to develop programs that promote injury prevention, sports performance, and rehabilitation through quality of movement.
Alex has gained extensive clinical and practical experience treating and training a variety of clients from professional and amateur athletes, high profile executives, older adults, individuals with certain medical conditions such as Stroke, Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis, Congenital Heart Disease, Postoperative rehabilitation and individuals with chronic and complex pain.
Alex’s experience includes: Head Exercise Physiologist at Ace Sports Clinic Inc; Director of Return to Performance and Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Varsity Baseball, Women’s Lacrosse, and Golf team at the University of Toronto; Consultant for the Varsity Blues Football, Hockey, Swimming Team; Head Exercise Physiologist for Balance Physiotherapy; and consultant to Olympic Swimming Athletes, and NBA players.
Alex earned his Bachelors of Kinesiology from the University of Toronto, obtained a Post-Graduate Certificate in Exercise Science for Health and Performance from Niagara
College and is a Certified Exercise Physiologist, Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach, and EXOS Performance Specialist.
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