Few people would argue that core training is an integral part of an athletic development training program. Aesthetic benefits aside, core training is widely accepted as improving:

1. Lumbar stability and therefore reducing risk and/or symptoms of low back pain
2. Force transfer between the lower and upper body, which improves power in just about every athletic movement (kicking a soccer ball, swinging a bat, lacrosse and hockey shooting, fighting off defenders in every contact sport)
3. Stability of the pelvis to allow for more efficient lower body movements, such as rapidly changing direction

Because of the core’s importance in both maximizing performance and minimizing injury risk, core stabilization concepts are one of the underlying foundations of all of our training programs at Endeavor. If you’ve been reading our newsletters for the last year (and I know you have!), you know that our entire staff actively seeks out new information to better design programs to help our athletes. Last week I came across a draft of an article from Eyal Lederman, a professor in London, titled “The Myth of Core Stability.” I’m always intrigued by articles that argue against the norm as these are usually the most eye opening.

Lederman argued that the evidence in support of core stability training to back pain is pretty limited. He notes that strength may not be the issue since some of the major core muscles are minimally active during activities of daily living. As a quick background, muscles become “active” when the body sends an electrical signal to the muscle to contract. For study purposes, the signal is often “normalized” to a maximal value for that muscle (MVC). When we talk about these “maximal” values, we need to keep in mind that maximum activation is highly dependent upon the length of the muscle and direction of the movement, but I won’t bore you with all the underlying neuroscience.

The article cites research demonstrating that walking necessitates average values of:

• 2% MVC from the rectus abdominis (the six pack muscle)
• 5% MVC from the external obliques

Further research is cited painting the picture that normal activities (even some with external loads added) require minimal trunk muscle activity (between 1-5% MVC).

The underlying tone of the article was that core stability training is foolish and scientifically unsupported. I bring up this article because many times these things work their way to your eyes and ears through the media with headlines like “Core Training Is Not Important” as some staff writer attempts to create an interesting story with out-of-context research. Within an athletic context, there are a few things worth keeping in mind:

• The article cites trunk activity during walking and standing, not sprinting, cutting, jumping, swinging, throwing, shooting, or blocking
• The article is put within the frame of solving back pain, not optimizing performance
• The article largely ignores evidence of active people with back pain resolving symptoms by putting a greater focus on improving their posture and core stability
• Like many academics, this article systematically (although using flawed logic) dismisses many commonly held beliefs about core training, but fails to offer any alternative

Our core training system functions to integrate appropriate mobility and stability of the pelvis and spine into athletic movements. We follow a basic progression of:

1. Reinforce core stability in static positions (front planks, side planks, glute bridges, anti-rotation belly press isoholds, etc.)
2. Increase challenge to static core stability by adding a dynamic component (chop and lift variations, plank and bridge “marches”, rollouts, tight rotations, 2-Way Bunkie side planks, dynamic anti-rotation belly press’, etc.)
3. Maximize unexpected dynamic stiffness through perturbation training (Split stance belly press with perturbation, overhead stability ball perturbation, squat with overhead stability ball perturbation, split squat with overhead stability ball perturbation, stability ball front plank with perturbation, side plank with perturbation, etc.)

While I think most people are at least loosely familiar with the first two steps of this progression, few athletes have been exposed to perturbation training. I strongly believe this type of training will drastically increase in popularity over the next several years. Check out videos of a couple of the more advanced progressions of perturbation training at the link below. Have you ever seen anything like this?
 

Split Squat IsoHold with Overhead Stability Ball Perturbation

Stability Ball Front Plank with Perturbation

Colby Cohen and Jeff Buvinow do a great demonstrating these exercises. The goal is to not move at all or, more realistically, to minimize the displacement and return to "neutral" as quickly as possible. It's hard to tell from the video, but I'm really "cranking" on them pretty hard. We progress to more vigorous perturbations, but ultimately we want to challenge their stability in multiple directions. We can also have them maintain stiffness throughout the entire exercise, which gives it a more "battle" feel or have them relax and try to react to the perturbation as quickly as possible. In the first video, I'm randomly alternating amongst pushing, pulling, and rotating the ball in a variety of directions. In the second video, I'm somewhat randomly alternating between rotating the hips, rotating the shoulder, and laterally deviating the hips and shoulders. By creating a random variety of stresses, the athlete learns to reflexively generate stiffness.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld, MS, CSCS

One of the most prevalent movement flaws we see on a daily basis is an inward collapsing of the knee during cutting, squatting, and jump landing patterns. This is especially true in females, who tend to have a more difficult time preventing this motion due to their skeletal structure (wider pelvis). This pattern can lead to a variety of knee injuries, the most threatening of which is the well-known ACL tear.

Try This!

One way to illustrate this concept is just to move your arm in large circles. If you look at the diameter of the circle made at your arm by your shoulder, it will be considerably smaller than the diameter of the circle made by your hand. In the above example, your lower leg would be your upper arm (small circle) and your hip would be your hand (large circle).

 

In athletes that have difficulty keeping their knee out, despite a few weeks of training and coaching under their belt, I take a closer look at their feet and am starting to notice a common theme.

 

If you look closely, you'll see that the achilles tendon appears to head straight down, and then take a somewhat sharp turn toward the outside of the foot. This is indicative of an over-pronated foot. This athlete appears to have the problem on both feet. Can you imagine what his knees will look like?

 

See how his knees appear to point inward? In a correctly positioned foot, the achilles would appear more vertical and the back of the knee would be facing straight back instead of rotating toward the inside.

 

There is some debate about whether we can restore an arch in our feet through training. I’ve run this question by my friend Ryan Chang, who was a fellow grad student when I was at UMass Amherst, but current works as a Pedorthis at Kintec Footlabs and has done biomechanics work for Adidas, and he seemed to think getting an orthotic was the better route. John Pallof agreed. It’s better to get a corrective orthotic in there early to prevented undesirable motion at the knee and hip. As I mentioned in last weeks newsletter, unwanted motion accumulates into serious injuries. Knee meniscus tears and hip labral tears are amongst the many injuries that could result from this.

If your feet look like the gentleman’s in the picture above, it may be worth scheduling an appointment with a specialist to see if you’re right for orthotics. John Pallof was kind enough to pass along his “go-to” resource in this regard: Sole Supports (http://SoleSupports.com). If you go to the site, you can find a provider that’s near you (There are 9 within 25 miles of Endeavor).

Take Home Message

My hope is that you take this information seriously and don’t push this stuff to the back burner. I recently heard my friend Joe Heiler (a PT from Traverse City, MI) mention that Jan Eckstrand presented research at the 2009 Soccer Industry Medical Symposium 2009 stating that an analysis of 70 teams from 18 countries over 8 seasons (over 9000 injuries!) revealed that previous injury was BY FAR the best predictor of future injury. This isn’t to say that previous ankle sprains are predictive of future ankle sprains (although they are); this means that ANY injury is the greatest predictor of ANY future injury. This point CANNOT be overlooked. Injury prevention should be the primary goal of every athlete, and is the primary reason I think athletes need to be training year-round.  

At Endeavor, we really pride ourselves on constantly looking for better ways to develop our athletes. All of our coaches continuously look for cutting edge information on program design, more effective exercises, nutrition, recovery strategies, and injury prevention (amongst others). Working alongside such passionate people is what makes my job so much fun to do.

Over the weekend I spent some time watching DVDs of a 3-hour presentation from Dr. Vladimir Issurin on Block Periodization. Dr. Issurin is a scientific advisor to the Soviet and Israeli Olympic teams. His presentation delved into how to alter the emphasis of various training aspects to best peak for competition. Eastern European training methods have always intrigued me, so I was psyched I got an opportunity to hear from one of their secret weapons.

Is this development?
One of the things he said that really caught my attention was (to paraphrase) that in today’s athletic development systems, competitive workloads have replaced training workloads. Think about it. Add up the total time athletes spend practicing and training in a given month. Add up the total time athletes spend playing games. In previous athletic development models, a ratio of preparation: competition would likely be AT LEAST 5:1, meaning athletes would spend 5 hours of preparation (practice and training) for every 1 hour of competition. Now this ratio is significantly closer to 1:1, if not 1:2.

Concomitant with this shift in competition emphasis, we’ve seen a drastic increase in the amount of burnout amongst high school athletes and an UNACCEPTABLE increase in the number of non-contact and overuse injuries. To address the former, this means that when athletes should be entering their best years, they’re so burnt out from the non-stop competitive nature of their sport that they give it up. This is tragic.

The Cause of Overuse Injuries

The increase in overuse injuries is related to what I think of as “tissue stress accumulation”. Simply, this means that the stresses placed across tissues within your body (muscle, tendon, ligament, etc.) accumulate over time, ESPECIALLY if special attention isn’t paid to recovery. When I was in San Jose, John Pallof (a brilliant physical therapist) said he thought one of the reasons groin strains, hip flexor strains and sports hernias were so much more prevalent now is because people are training more than ever before.

John noted that the training is absolutely necessary for the prevention of a host of other injuries, but he alluded to a great point: With the increase in competitions both within a season and across multiple seasons (Issurin) and the necessary increase in training (Pallof), our body’s just aren’t given the time to recover that they need. This reality is exemplified by the fact that almost ZERO attention is paid to recovery and improving soft-tissue quality.

Take Home Message
There are three things you should take from this (and pass along to everyone you know and love):

1) As a community, everyone in sports needs to ease up on the competition and put a greater emphasis on practices with components of skill development. It’s okay to slow down practice and focus on individual skills. In fact, it’s paramount for development.

It's okay if every practice doesn't end with athletes looking like this!

2) From a training standpoint, the goal is to get the maximum benefit from the minimum amount of training. This comes back to minimizing tissue stress accumulation and highlights the fatal flaw in the “more is better” idea. This focus underlies the design of all our athletic development programs at Endeavor. It’s why we sometimes use 2 sets instead of 3, why we tell athletes to lift lighter weights on certain sets, and why we dial back our strength work significantly when it’s time to really hammer home conditioning. Maximum results, minimum stress. That’s the goal.

3) Lastly, EVERY athlete should be actively pursuing improved soft-tissue quality. I recently heard someone say that athletes ignoring performance-limiting factors (such as poor soft-tissue quality) are essentially driving with the brakes on. At Endeavor, we address soft-tissue quality by having our athletes go through a self-myofascial release circuit before they do their dynamic warm-up, which uses foam rollers, tennis balls, and medicine balls to break up knots and adhesions within the muscle (taking the breaks off). These implements can help restore normal muscle extensibility and fluid motion in young athletes and help maintain tissue quality in older athletes.

As athletes get older, it is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE that they go see a manual therapist on a regular basis to do some soft-tissue work done on their hip musculature. In this case, manual therapists include professionals that can do massage, A.R.T. (Active Release Technique), and Graston. This is truly the secret behind long-term injury-free athletic excellence. I’ve found that most massage therapists avoid the hip musculature for liability reasons, and therefore aren’t of much use for our purposes (although the relaxation is still awesome and I’d never tell anyone not to get a massage). If a therapist shies away from this area for liability reasons, find a new therapist. Because not all manual therapists are created equally, I made it a mission to seek out the top professionals in our area to refer our athletes to. I generally tell our older athletes to go see one of these therapists once per month to get work done, sometimes more or less depending on the therapists recommendation.

Endeavor's Manual Therapist Network
If you’re reading this and you’re unfamiliar with the work I’m referring to, I highly recommend you contact one of the 4 professionals below and schedule an appointment. Don’t wait until you (or your players) are hurt before you take an active role in improving your soft-tissue quality and start to focus on recovery!

Craig Bohn                                Dr. Anthony Lafferty
Hockessin Athletic Club                Lafferty Family Chiropractic   
100 Fitness Way                          402 Commerce Lane
Hockessin, DE 19707                   Suite 114 Parke Place Blvd #D
(302) 239-6688                          (856) 768-7737
cbohn@hachealthclub.com

Dr. Michael Tancredi                 Dr. Mark Kemenosh
Tancredi Chiropractic                   Glen Oaks Health and Spine
600 Reed Road, Suite 101            3 Jefferson Drive
Broomall, PA 198008                   Laurel Springs, NJ 08021
(610) 353-9400                          (856) 228-3100
 

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld, MS, CSCS
Director of Athletic Development
kneeld@endeavorfit.com
(856) 269-4148

P.S. Call or stop in today for more information or to sign-up for one of our Athletic Development Training Programs, GUARANTEED to get you the results you deserve.

My friend Mike Potenza was kind enough to invite me out to San Jose last week to help out with the San Jose Sharks prospect camp. Throughout the week, I had the opportunity to interact with the entire coaching/scouting staff, the athletic training staff, a few of the Sharks players (that were around for the Summer), ~45 domestic and international elite level prospects, Mike and his supporting interns/volunteers, and John Pallof (one of the smartest people in human performance that I’ve ever met). Needless to say, it was an eye opening experience.

More than anything else, there was ONE common theme for this camp:

Conditioning for sports is all about training your body to work at a high intensity for extended periods of time and then recover rapidly. Basically, conditioning in any sport comes down to delaying or minimizing fatigue.

Fatigue is truly an amazing thing. Few people realize how complex fatigue can be. To really wrap your mind around what causes fatigue, it’s important to understand that fatigue is movement specific (direction, involved musculature, type of contraction, intensity, etc.) and involves every major body system: nervous, muscular, endocrine, and cardiorespiratory.

Over the last several months I’ve been working my way through Neuromechanics of Human Movement by Roger Enoka. In this book, he explains the differential fatigue mechanisms that result from static (think holding a stationary position) and dynamic contractions.

Static Contraction Fatigue

One of the things that stuck out in my mind is how different the cause of fatigue can be between isometric (no change in muscle length) and dynamic contractions. For instance, during isometric contractions fatigue can result from occlusion (closing off) of blood flow to the working muscle that results from an activity-induced increase in intramuscular pressure. This both impedes nutrient delivery, and activates Group III-IV afferents (muscle receptors), which can decrease motor neuron excitability (think less force production).

Dynamic Contraction Fatigue

This differs from dynamic contractions, which do not result in the same amount of occlusion of blood flow as isometric contractions.  Compared to isometric contractions, dynamic contractions result in a more significant depletion of energy substrates such as Phosphocreatine and ATP, lower blood pH to a greater degree (more acidic) and produce more blood lactate.

Sport-Specific Conditioning

If you’re not interested in the underlying science, stay with me. The take home message here is that fatigue mechanisms are different for static (isometric) and dynamic (concenctric/eccentric) contractions. Most sports involves both. Even when athletes aren’t running, many sports require them to stay in a “crouched” position, which involves constant static contractions from multiple muscle groups.  While nothing in sports is as cut and dry as the strictly dynamic or strictly static contractions that are used in neuroscience labs, we can still learn from the light those studies have shed on our understanding of fatigue mechanisms.

In order to improve your capacity, you need to create an overload. Regarding “dynamic conditioning”, athletes should use a mix of shuttle runs, slideboards, and sled drag variations. What many programs lack is an integration of “static conditioning”. This can be done in the form of squat, split squat, or back leg raised split squat iso-holds, progressing both in time and with weight.  As your training progresses, you can begin to combine the two forms of conditioning by alternating static holds with explosive actions.

For example, an athlete could stand by the edge of a slideboard and hold a split squat for 10 seconds. Maintaining a good split squat position, they would then explode back and forth on the slideboard 5 times, then return immediately to the static hold position on the other side for another 10 seconds. Cycling through this 3 times (10s hold, 5 rep slideboard, 10s hold, 5 rep slideboard, 10s hold, 5 rep slideboard), would constitute one repetition.

Check out the video below:

To your success,

Kevin Neeld, MS, CSCS
Director of Athletic Development