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Posted in Athletic Development on July 20th, 2010 at 8:21 AM

In a previous post, I outlined the joint-by-joint approach to performance training. This approach, based on the fact that adjacent joints tend to lie on opposing sides of the mobility-stability continuum governs every aspect of athletic movement and performance. In case you missed it, you can check it out at our blog here:

The joint-by-joint approach provides a phenomenal framework for people in the athletic world to understand how JOINTS work to create movement, but is limited in its ability to explain how muscles function to create movement.

One of the key areas of the body that dictates performance levels in most athletes is the hips. Learning how to move properly through the hips and activate/strengthen the right muscles in the surrounding areas will do more for performance and injury prevention than focus on any other area of the body (as I mentioned in last week’s newsletter: failure to maintain proper hip rotation will call excessive rotation at the lower back and eventually injury).

Is glute dysfunction limiting your performance?
One illustration of this lies in one of the most common performance limitations in athletes today: glute dysfunction. From a performance standpoint, it’s important to understand that your Gluteus Maximus (your butt muscle) is a strong hip extensor (think of the motion your hip goes through once your foot touches the ground during sprinting). It should be one of the strongest muscles in your body.

Unfortunately, because we sit so much during the day most people have what is sometimes referred to as glute amnesia. Muscles that are held in a stretched position tend to become weak and aren’t activated to the extent they should be during most movements. In this case, sitting all day causes the gluteus maximus to become weak and affects its ability to produce force. Not only is this a HUGE barrier to peak athletic performance, but it’s also a major cause of one of the most common athletic injuries.

Synergistic Dominance
I mentioned earlier that your Gluteus Maximus is a strong hip extensor. Your hamstrings are also pretty strong hip extensors and assist the Gluteus Maximus in this movement. Muscles that assist others are known as “synergists”. As is the case all over your body, when one muscle is too weak or not activated correctly (in this case the Gluteus Maximus), a synergistic muscle (in this case the hamstrings) needs to pick up the slack. Over time, the synergist (hamstrings) takes on the extra workload (a phenomenon coined as “synergistic dominance” by world-renowned physical therapist Shirley Sahrmann), becomes overtaxed and eventually fails (strain/tear).

For some people, it’s helpful to think of a coworker/family member/teammate/friend that they rely heavily on in one way or another. Now imagine if this person went on a 1-month vacation and you had to pick up the slack. You could probably handle the extra stress for the 1st week, maybe even the first two, but eventually you’d snap. After all, you can only handle so much in your life and most of us are already overworked!

Performance Implications
This example highlights how a poorly functioning glute can lead to a hamstring injury. There are other examples of this throughout the body (e.g. poorly functioning psoas major, a hip flexor, leading to high rectus femoris, one of the quadriceps muscles, strains). This also explains why so many athletes have the same injuries over and over. When an athlete strains a muscle, the 1st goal of many trainers/therapists is to stretch and strengthen the muscle. The symptoms are being addressed, but the cause is not. In the example above, it’s easy to see that the hamstrings are more than likely overly strong from having to do the extra work. Strengthening the hamstrings in this case may be counter-productive, and if glute activation isn’t addressed, the athlete is likely to re-injure his or herself in the future.

Take Home Message
The big picture here is that the body is highly adaptive, but can only sustain so much stress. Sometimes unlocking higher levels of athletic performance is a matter of “waking up” dormant muscles and THEN strengthening specific movement patterns. There are a few fundamental activation exercises that we have almost every Endeavor athlete perform on a regular basis. We’ve found that these exercises, while sometimes easy for athletes to perform, can go a long way in maximizing performance and minimizing injury risk. Athletic performance is as much about quality as it is quantity. Athletic development programs need to include an emphasis on improving joint mobility/stability according to the joint-by-joint approach and muscle firing patterns BEFORE adding load (e.g. external weight) or volume (e.g. more sets or repetitions).

To your success,

Kevin Neeld, MS, CSCS
Director of Athletic Development

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