What is one of the “red pills” when it comes to coaching?
Athletic movement is asymmetrical.
I am the kind of guy who will forgo a comedy for a nature show. Nature is the ultimate masterpiece at work. Everything works together, and it is downright unbelievable how creates can thrive in ridiculous, harsh, environments with such precision.
One of the favorite articles I’ve read was done by John Kiely on how adaptable the human organism is to still be able to move and complete a task, even when it shouldn’t be, such as in the case of a total hamstring removal. Kiely mentions in the piece:
“We become resilient runners not because we are machine-like, but because we evolve coordination patterns tailored to our individual anatomy, capitalizing on strengths, masking deficits.”
“To the observer, when we run, each stride appears a duplication of the last, but that’s an illusion. Under the surface, many aspects of running action — relative positions of bones and joints, foot postures, timing and interaction of muscular contractions — consistently vary between strides, allowing us to disperse impact stress throughout extended tissue networks. As a consequence, each stride is unique.”
The human brain can function when, well, there isn’t even much of it!
We are considered healthier and more ready to compete and train when our heart rate is more variable; beats are more asymmetrical and further apart.
When we “live on a metronome”, we are less adaptable.
If you are familiar with the Postural Restoration Institute, you know that with our heart on the left, liver on the right, and lungs/diaphrams that are built and shaped differently, we live with hips and spines that are fundamentally “twisted”. Does this lead us to moving around while getting regularly injured or being painfully slow?
Of course not.
So the big question, how does this play out in athletics and sport movement?
Well, on the simple level, we know for a fact that jumping and throwing are asymmetrical. You throw with one hand, so clearly one arm has a job, and the other arm, another job.
Same thing with the legs. This is pretty simple.
“A 94 meter javelin throw requires a total interaction between both sides of the body.”
OK, so on to something a little less straightforward: jumping.
Well, single leg jumping is evidently asymmetrical in the takeoff, duh! But what about the leadup? Is it just run normal on a metronome, then all of a sudden, go asymmetrical in the last few steps? Or is there more?
“You see the asymmetry and rhythm coming long before the long last stride in this 29 foot bomb of a long jump”
OK, double leg jumping! Now we have something that is more symmetrical, right? You run, then plant on two feet, and project yourself upwards. Not so fast.
Double leg jumping is highly rotational and symmetrical. Each leg has its own job in pronation and supination oriented ground strike. One leg gives, the other takes and re-directs.
“Each of Mac’s legs has a specific job in redirecting his momentum upwards”
OK OK, these are easy right? Well what about sprinting? Clearly the best sprinters have steps exactly each like the other for maximal “efficiency” (whatever that is). Yes?
No.
Not at all. Exhibit #1, the world record holder.
“Usain Bolt has a stride that is non-linear asymmetrical”
Bolt has a clearly asymmetrical stride. Does it hold him back? Would he run even faster if each step was the same?
Hmm, well some people will say yes, but why don’t you ask a cheetah?
Do you think if a cheetah had a “symmetrical stride” that it would go faster? Does a cheetah need a coach? On another note, should it lift weights?!
You see this in team sport movement, clearly, that there are particular asymmetrical rhythms that tend to rule function, and better athletes have it. The best athletes are kings and queens of “big-little” rhythms, which Adarian Barr talked extensively about in our latest podcast.
If you’ve been around Just Fly Sports for a while, you’ll know that I am very anti-over-coaching, anti-robot, anti “put-athletes-in-a-box”, so I’d imagine the above videos and thoughts aren’t much of a shock to you.
The question is, what do we do about it? How do we know what is good asymmetry and what is bad? After all, exacerbated postural pathology (such as an AIC or BC pattern that isn’t reciprocal) or issues caused from prior injury, overuse patterns, or stress can create a ticking time bomb. We know things like hip flexor tightness being linked to contralateral hamstring injury rates, so clearly it’s not a black and white world.
That’s actually a great thing about sport, and life in general, things are much more grey than they are black and white?
I learned asymmetry and its coaching implications from Adarian Barr. When we know it, we can coach things like:
- Hand and arm motions that fit with asymmetry patterns seen in elite performances
- Environmental training constructs that can allow athletes to explore asymmetry
- When to leave a movement pattern by an athlete well-enough alone
- How to specifically set up athletes for sprinting and jumping based on their tendencies and optimal movement
So what does it take to determine good asymmetry? To determine when to leave things alone, or even when to coach an athlete in an environment that rewards asymmetry? There are dozens, if not hundreds of options.
“Knowing athletic asymmetry helps us put athletes in enviornments to utilize asymmetry in the context of proper timing. Here is a drill I learned from Adarian Barr.”
Well first, you have to watch video. You also have to know what to watch for when watching video, which comes from seeking advice from experts and discussing with other coaches.
As a sports performance community, if we took a few of the hours we tend to spend in the minutia of VBT and complex rep schemes, and instead watched the best athletes in action in context of knowing what to watch we would all be in a little better place in terms of being able to serve our athletes. As I see it, a more intimate knowledge of sport movement is where the field is headed.
I tend to spend much of my working lunches watching track and field videos, but I also love watching team sport highlight videos, such as “crossover” compliations, and of course, dunk compilations. The same things that show up in elite track movement show up in elite sport movement, elite sport movement having the 8-ball of being a complex and reactive environment!
So much of what I watch now, I have gained an “Nth” level of understanding from by learning from my mentor, coach Adarian Barr. I see things now that I would have had no clue about just 2 years ago (including all the asymmetrical ideals found in this article), and my coaching is all for the better.
If you enjoyed this article, you may be interested in more of coach Barr’s work, in which case, I’d recommend checking out his upcoming clinic series “Rewire”, which is coming to both Santa Clara, California and Columbus, Ohio in the near future. I hope to see you there (Santa Clara)!
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