Strength Training Programs: Integrating the Functional Back Line for Pelvic Stability and Performance Enhancement

Written on October 14, 2011 at 7:24 am, by Eric Cressey

Today’s guest blog comes from former Cressey Performance intern Eric Oetter.  Eric was one of the best interns we’ve ever had, and writing like this is just one example of why.

In Thomas Myers’ groundbreaking work Anatomy Trains, several “lines” of fascially connected muscles are presented. Myers denoted these lines as “anatomy trains” (thus giving rise to the title of his now famous book). For those unfamiliar, fascia is a seemingly endless web of connective tissue, which envelops and unites the musculoskeletal, nervous, and circulatory systems of the body. Though manual therapists have treated the fascial system for centuries, Myers has played a pivotal role in introducing the concepts fascia and musculoskeletal tensegrity to the strength and conditioning community.

Tying the bottom of the foot to the scalp through fascial connections up the posterior surface of the body, the superficial back line remains the most referenced of Myers’ anatomy trains. While this line certainly has implications in extension (above the knee), propulsion, and full-body pronation, it’s far from being the only line yielding practical application and solutions for strength and conditioning coaches and movement therapists.

Patrick Ward wrote an excellent guest piece on Mike Robertson’s blog last year concerning the deep front line and its effect on diaphragm functionality. I’ll follow suit with some examples of how the functional back line can produce stability across the posterior lumbo-pelvic-femoral complex.

Functional Back Line Anatomy

Tying one humerus to the contralateral tibia, the two functional back lines take the following path across the dorsal surface of the body:

Shaft of humerus –> Latissimus dorsi –> Lumbodorsal fascia –> Sacral fascia –> Sacrum –> Gluteus maximus –> Shaft of femur –> Vastus lateralis –> Patella –> Subpatellar tendon –> Tuberosity of tibia

From behind, the lines look like a giant “X”, intersecting at the pelvis. The two key components in this discussion will be the latissimus dorsi and the glute max, as well as how their muscular actions can affect the sacro-illiac joint.

Sacro-Iliac Joint Stability: Form Closure vs. Force Closure

The sacro-illiac (SI) joint is comprised of the articulation between the illium and the sacrum and lies right in the middle of both functional back lines, deep to the lumbosacral fascia. Much like a crack in the sidewalk, the joint acts as a predetermined fracture to defer stress across the pelvis.

Viewed from the back, the SI joint resembles a key fitting into a lock– the grooves on either side of the posterior illium are congruous with the lateral sacrum. This “lock-and-key” structure can be described as an instance of form closure. Essentially, the innate stability of the joint is provided by bony approximation.

While form closure can create stability, it’s not truly authentic. For example, we can create stability in the lumbar spine by shearing it into extension and using bony approximation to prevent movement. I hope all reading agree that such a situation is less than ideal.

A superior option would be the force closure of a joint system. As opposed to form closure, where the morphology of the joint system creates stability, force closure entails the surrounding musculature dynamically stabilizing a joint by “pulling it tight”.

Relating to our previous example of the SI joint, imagine how much better it would be to stop relying solely on the ligaments that cross the joint andinstead employ the powerful glute max and lat, which cross superficially as part of the functional back line, as both become continuous with the lumbosacral fascia.

While using the functional back line to create force closure is useful in cases of general instability, it can be especially valuable in the instance of sacral torsion, where, as shown in the CT scan below, the sacrum rotates one way and creates strain on the contralateral tissues/ligaments as they are pulled taught.

Training this line in isolation can certainly provide benefit, but why not implement a big-bang strength exercise that integrates the entire line at once?

Here are two great examples of how to train the functional back line in a more dynamic fashion.

Split-Stance Low Cable Row

The split-stance low cable row provides an excellent presentation of shortening the functional line from both ends, thus force closing the SI joint. The latissimus dorsi aids in the horizontal pull while the contralateral glute max stabilizes the pelvis in the transverse plane to fight rotation. (Remember, any unilateral movement is inherently rotational.)

Coaching Cues:

• Place the cable stack with a D-handle attachment at its lowest height.
• Set up facing the stack with feet about hip width apart. Imagine that you’re standing on railroad tracks – when you take the step back to set up, the only movement should be in the sagittal plane.
• Pack the chin, brace the core, and then flex the hips to the point that the torso is angled at about 45°. Put most of your weight through the outside of your up-foot heel.
• Perform a row, holding at the top for a one count.

Potential Corrections:

• Look for lumbar extension in two places – the initial set-up and as a substitution for scapular retraction. Think “neutral spine” throughout.
• Scapular elevation and shoulder hyperextension are common compensation patterns during horizontal pulling. Think of rowing “back-and-down” and only to the point that the scapula gets to the thoracic spine.
• Make sure that you or your client feels the front-leg hip musculature kick on to stabilize – if not, play with the set-up a little until those external rotators are contracted.

The split-stance low cable row can be a great horizontal-pull variation for any client, but especially for those experiencing lumbosacral instability. I’d recommend placing it as an accessory exercise on upper body days – 3-4 sets of 8-10 reps.

1-arm Cable Rotational Row

Serving as a progression to the split-stance low cable row described above, the cable rotational row is a fantastic movement to dynamically integrate the functional back line into a more advanced pulling variation with much greater demand placed on the glute max. I view this movement much like the horizontal pull version of a push-press – the lower body drives the action with the upper body coming along for the ride.

Coaching Cues:

• Set up a few feet away and perpendicular to a cable stack with feet about a step outside of hip width. The D-handle should be about waste height.
• Offset the feet so that the toes of the inside foot (closest to the stack) line up with the middle of the arch on the back foot. This positioning is crucial to maximize external rotation/abduction of the front hip.
• Grab the D-handle and allow the load to pull you toward the cable stack. Maintain an erect torso and packed chin throughout. You’re allowed to let the back foot toes come up, but keep the front planted in position.
• Once you’re facing the cable stack with arm outstretched, drive hard through the front heelto extend the front hip/knee while simultaneously pulling the D-handle across your torso.
• Hold the end position – hip extended/abducted, scapula retracted, and eyes straight ahead – for a count of one before reversing the movement.

Potential Corrections:

• I find some clients tend to lead the row with cervical rotation, finishing the movement looking away from the cable stack. These biomechanics are sub-optimal, so make sure to cue a packed chin.
• Rowing from this position can prove awkward, as there is a tendency to try and row around your torso. Fight this urge by keeping the cable close to your body – it should be in contact with your shirt as you finish the row.
• Achieving full hip extension on the front leg is a must – make sure the movement is initiated by driving the lateral heel into the ground almost as if you were going to step away from the stack.

The benefits of the rotational cable row are numerous, but two stick out in my mind. First, it drives a powerful and dynamic contraction of the functional back line, which as we’ve seen can have ramifications for pelvic/SI stability. Secondly, this variation has huge carryover for some of our rotary sport athletes who rely on the connection between shoulder and contralateral hip to develop force.

As mentioned above, use this as a progression to the split-stance low cable row or with some of your athletic clientele – think in the range of 3-4 sets of 6-8 reps per side.

Conclusion

The functional back lines can be powerful players in creating stability across a region of the body that demands it. In cases of lumbo-pelvic-femoral instability, utilization of these lines can be as crucial for correction as they are for performance enhancement.

I hope the two exercises described above help give some practical application for the functional back lines in action – let me know in the comments!

About the Author

Eric is currently a senior at the University of Georgia majoring in Exercise and Sport Science, with plans to pursue a Doctorate of Physical Therapy. After concluding a Division-1 football career at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Eric has ardently pursued his passion for coaching, garnering experience with clients of all ages and ability levels through internships at both Indianapolis Fitness & Sports Training and Cressey Performance. He can be reached at ecoetter@gmail.com.

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Eric Cressey’s Best Articles: 2010

Written on December 26, 2010 at 6:22 am, by Eric Cressey

With 2010 winding down, I thought I’d use this last week of the year to direct you to some of the most popular content of the past 12 months here at EricCressey.com, as this “series” was quite popular last year.  Today, we start with the most popular articles of the year; these are the pieces that received the most traffic, according to my hosting statistics.

5 Reasons You Aren’t Getting Stronger – This post came during the launch week of Show and Go: High Performance Training to Look, Feel, and Move Better.  With some of the unique programming strategies outlined in Show and Go, it seemed like a good opportunity to outline some of the common mistakes folks make that I really sought to avoid when writing the program.

How to Find Your Fitness Niche – The popularity of this post surprised me.  I suppose it means that I have more fitness professionals (and aspiring fitness professionals) reading my blog than I’d previously thought.  This piece discusses how I “fell” into my baseball training niche.

Make My Kid Run Faster – Apparently, I’m not the only one who has to deal with the occasional crazy father who tells me how to train his kid!

Clearing Up the Rotator Cuff Controversy – This post discusses my approach to structuring rotator cuff exercises throughout the training week.

The Fascial Knock on Distance Running for Pitchers – This was a fun article to write because it combined a review (of Thomas Myers’ presentation at Perform Better) with a summary of my own experiences training pitchers.  It’s always great to take the perspective of another and see how it meshes with your own philosophy – whether it confirms or refutes what you’re doing.

High Performance Training without the Equipment (Installment 1) – I’m glad that I checked back on my statistics to find that this was so popular, as I haven’t gotten around to writing any subsequent installments.  I’ll pick it up soon.

I’ll be back soon with the top product reviews of 2010.

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Strategies for Correcting Bad Posture: Part 3

Written on December 3, 2010 at 7:54 am, by Eric Cressey

This is the third installment of my Correcting Bad Posture series.  In case you missed the first two installments, you can check them out here:

Strategies for Correcting Bad Posture: Part 1

Strategies for Correcting Bad Posture: Part 2

Today, we pick up with tip #9…

9. It’s not just the strength exercises you perform; it’s how you perform them. Often, people think that they just need to pick a bunch of “posture correction” exercises and they’ll magically be fixed.  Unfortunately, it’s not that simple, as making corrections takes time, patience, consistency, and perfect technique.  As an example, check out the following video of what some bad rows often look like in someone with a short pec minor, which pulls the coracoid process down and makes it tough to posteriorly tilt and retract the scapula.  The first substitution pattern you’ll see (first three reps) is forward head posture replacing scapular retraction, and the second one (reps 4-6) is humeral (hyper)extension replacing scapular retraction.

Ideally, the chin/neck/head should remain in neutral and the scapula should retract and depress in sync with humeral movement.

Of course, these problems don’t just occur with rowing motions; they may be seen with everything from deadlifts, to push-ups, to chin-ups.  So, be cognizant of how you’re doing these strength exercises; you may just be making bad posture worse!

10. Get regular soft tissue work. I don’t care whether it’s a focal modality like Active Release, a mid-range modality like Graston Technique, or a more diffuse approach like general massage; just make sure that you get some sort of soft tissue work!  A foam roller is a good start and something that you can use between more targeted treatments with a qualified professional.  A lot of people really think that they are “breaking up scar tissue” with these modalities, and they certainly might be, but the truth is that I think more of the benefits come from altering fluid balance in the tissues, stimulating the autonomic nervous system, and “turning on” the sensory receptors in the fascia.

For more thoughts along these lines, check out my recap of a Thomas Myers presentation: The Fascial Knock on Distance Running for Pitchers.

11. Recognize that lower body postural improvements will be a lot more stubborn than upper body postural improvements. Most of this series has been dedicated to improving upper body postural distortions (forward head posture and kyphosis).  The truth is that they are always intimately linked (as the next installment will show) – however, in the upper body, bad posture “comes around” a bit sooner.  Why?

We don’t walk on our hands (well, at least not the majority of the time).

Joking aside, though, the fact that we bear weight on our lower body and core means that it’s going to take a ton of time to see changes in anterior pelvic tilt and overpronation, as we’re talking about fundamentally changing the people have walked for decades by attempting to reposition their center of gravity.  That’s not easy.

So why, then, do a lot of people get relief with “corrective exercises” aimed at bad posture?  Very simply, they’re creating better stability in the range of motion they already have; an example would be strengthening the anterior core (with prone bridges, rollouts, etc.) in someone who has a big anterior pelvic tilt and lordosis.  You’re only realigning the pelvis and spine temporarily, but you’re giving them enough time and stability near their end range to give them some transient changes.  The same would be true of targeted mobility and soft tissue work; it acutely changes ROM and tissue density to make movement easier.

Long-term success, of course, comes when you are consistent with these initiatives and don’t allow yourself to fall into bad posture habits in your daily life.  In fact, I have actually joked that we could probably improve posture the quickest if we just had people lie down between training sessions!

12. Add “fillers” to your weight training program. Mobility drills aimed at correcting bad posture are often viewed as boring, and in today’s busy world, they are often the first thing removed when people need to get in and out of the gym quickly.  To keep folks from skipping these important exercises, I recommend they include them as “fillers.”  Maybe you do a set each of ankle and thoracic spine mobility drills between each set of deadlifts (or any strength exercise, for that matter) – because you’d be resting for a couple of minutes and doing nothing, anyway.  These little additions go a long way in the big picture as long as you’re consistent with them.

I’ll be back next week with Part 4 of the Correcting Bad Posture series.

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The Fascial Knock on Distance Running for Pitchers

Written on June 9, 2010 at 2:42 pm, by Eric Cressey

This past weekend, I had the privilege to experience Thomas Myers in seminar for the first time.  For those who aren’t familiar with Myers, he is the author of Anatomy Trains and a pioneer in the world of bodywork and fascial research.

There were a wide variety of attendees present, and Myers made dozens of interesting points – so the take-away message could easily have been different for everyone in attendance as they attempted to fit his perspective into their existing schemeta.

While I enjoyed all 150 minutes of his presentations, the portion of Myers’ talk that jumped out at me the most was his list of the eight means of improving “fascial fitness:”

1.       Use whole body movements

2.       Use long chain movements

3.       Use movements including a dynamic pre-stretch with proximal initiation

4.       Incorporate vector variation

5.       Use movements that incorporate elastic rebound – this consists of cylic motions of a certain speed (for instance, cycling wouldn’t count)

6.       Create a rich proprioceptive environment

7.       Incorporate pauses/rest to optimize hydration status

8.       Be persistent, but gentle (prominent changes can take 18-24 months)

A big overriding them of Myers’ lecture was that the role of the fascia – the entire extracellular matrix of the body – is remarkably overlooked when it comes to both posture and the development of pathology.  He remarked that he doesn’t feel like we have 600+ muscles in the body; he feels like we have one muscle in 600+ fascial pockets because they are so interdependent.  And, in this fascia, we have nine times as many sensory receptors as we’ve got in muscles.

Think about what that means when someone has rotator cuff problems – and treatment only consists of ice, stim, NSAIDs, and some foo-foo rotator cuff exercises.  Or, worse yet, they just have a surgical intervention.  It overlooks a big piece of the puzzle – or, I should say, the entire puzzle.

For me, though, these eight factors got me to thinking again about just how atrocious distance running is for pitchers.  I have already ripped on it in the past with my article A New Model for Training Between Starts, but this presentation really turned on a light bulb over my head to rekindle the fire.  Let’s examine these eight factors one-by-one:

1.       Use whole body movements – Distance running may involve require contribution from the entire body, but there is not a single joint in the body that goes through an appreciable range of motion.

2.       Use long chain movements - Pitching is a long chain movement.  Jumping is a long chain movement.  The only things that are “long” about distance running are the race distances and the length of the hip replacement rehabilitation process.

3.       Use movements including a dynamic pre-stretch with proximal initiation – This simply means that the muscles of the trunk and hips predominate in initiating the movement.  While the hips are certainly important in running, the fundamental issue is that there isn’t a dynamic pre-stretch.  This would be a dynamic pre-stretch with proximal initiation:

4.       Incorporate vector variation – A vector is anything that has both force and direction.  Manual therapists vary the force they apply to tissues and the directions in which they apply them.  There are obviously vectors present in exercise as well.  Here are 30,000 or so people, and pretty much just one vector for hours: forward (to really simplify things):

Here is one guy (and a good looking one, at that) in multiple vectors in a matter of seconds:

Incorporating vector variation into programs is easy; it just takes more time and effort than just telling someone to “run poles.”  Take 8-10 exercises from our Assess and Correct DVD set and you’ve got a perfect circuit ready to roll.

5.       Use movements that incorporate elastic rebound - Sorry, folks, but even though the stretch-shortening cycle is involved with jogging, its contribution diminishes markedly as duration of exercise increases.  And, frankly, I have a hard time justifying bored pitchers running laps as “elasticity.”

6.       Create a rich proprioceptive environment - There is nothing proprioceptively rich about doing the same thing over and over again.  They call it pattern overload for a reason.  Pitchers get enough of that!

7.       Incorporate pauses/rest to optimize hydration status - Myers didn’t seem to have specific recommendations to make regarding work: rest ratios that are optimal for improving fascial fitness, but I have to think that something more “sporadic” in nature – whether we are talking sprinting, agility work, weight training, or dynamic flexibility circuits – would be more appropriate than a continuous modality like jogging.  This is true not just because of duration, but because of the increased vector variation potential I outlined earlier.

8.       Be persistent, but gentle – This one really hit home for me.  Significant fascial changes take 18-24 months to really set in. I am convinced that the overwhelming majority of injuries I see in mature pitchers are largely the result of mismanagement – whether it’s overuse, poor physical conditioning, or improper mechanics – at the youth levels.  Poor management takes time to reach the threshold needed to cause symptoms.  In other words, coaches who mismanage their players over the course of the few months or years they coach them may never actually appreciate the physical changes – positively or negatively – that are being set into action.

Distance running might seem fine in the short-term.  Overweight kids might drop some body fat, and it might make the practice plan easier to just have ‘em run.  Kids might not lose velocity, as they can compensate and throw harder with the upper extremity as their lower bodies get less and less powerful and flexible.

However, it’s my firm belief that having pitchers run distances not only impedes long-term development, but also directly increases injury risk.  Folks just don’t see it because they aren’t looking far enough ahead.

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