Ok. Ive had some athletes with, well.... lets face it... too much muscle slack. And they want to be good at running. And they want to be good at force production and force absorption and force reutilisation... in other words - jumping, landing, quick contact rebounding. So, theyve developed so many breakages in their kinetic chain that many things suffer.... from their big toe to there lower back, well.... even further up. And when it comes to muscle slack, it takes quite a bit of strength training to stiffen up such slackness. Lets repeat that. It takes strength training to stiffen them up. Tendons, ligaments, connective tissue. (Theyre usually very good at contorting, and have great potential at yoga) But in the meantime, we can begin re-programming the type of kinetic chain robustness that is required to not leak energy out in running. Heres a drill that does just that. And its such a great drill because we get performance of the motor pattern we want (co-contraction in the hip and pelvis) without having to coach it. We simply cue the athlete to achieve a result, which is to keep one knee up and push a weight up as much as they can on the stance leg. To push that weight up, you have to automatically co-contract everything in the stance hip/pelvis area. In motor learning terms, its intrinsic knowledge of result in order to improve something somewhere else. This position of co-contraction is called the Lock Position. Its absolutely crucial in running. If the free hip is not going up, youre lost. In hurdling, its the main quality they need. Watch Sally Pearson from 3:18 in this youtube clip to see its relevance...youtu.be/hf1pc5yE1Uw The position of the pelvis is a result of good movement. So what do we teach first? We teach them the end position - the lock position. And the body will self organise towards this. Its a common theme in cueing of many movements, but in this specific case - running and jumping, the clear outcome should be that the hip and pelvis are in the lock position in stance. This can be such a crucial drill for those any issue around the hip, knee and foot.
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 03:27:14 +0000
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