5-year-old bodybuilder from Romania

Guiliano Stroe, the 5-year-old bodybuilder from Romania.

Watch this Video! There has been much debate about resistance training at such a young age. No matter what you or I may think, this kid is doing some incredible feats of strength.

Exercises After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction

Open or Closed Kinetic Chain Exercises After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction


I wanted to post about a recent research paper I was reading titled “Open- or Closed-Kinetic Chain Exercises After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction”.

I was reading this research paper because from strength and conditioning/sports performance point of view I believe in Closed-Kinetic Chain exercises, but I also work with several client that have had past ACL injuries and I am open to anything that will make them a better athlete! The most interesting thing I found was that “OKC and CKC exercises for rehabilitation of the ACL-reconstructed was the load differences may not be clinically significant and that both exercise types, in combination, may be important for ACL rehabilitation. Additional prospective randomized clinical trials must be performed to determine the optimal time to introduce these exercises”

I would have to say that within the last year I have come across more athletes/ clients looking for guidance and training after coming out of physical therapy and wanting to get back into playing full speed. And more and more I am seeing major problems with the athlete being told they are “cleared to play at full speed”. Most of the athletes that have come to me from a port rehab setting have only performed minimal OKC exercises at the least. I have found that no balance or stability drills have been incorporated into the rehab program. I think this is where most athletes do not understand just because they are cleared from a PT that they are ready to go running full speed on the field! This is where a quality performance specialist should come into play! This is not to say all PT's are not adequately providing their clients with the necessary exercises for proper rehabilitation, but most rehab centers are not designed to develop the athletic ability needed to perform at a high level. The job of a PT is to get you back into normal everyday living.

**OKC exercises as those in which the foot is not in contact with a solid surface (Leg extensions)

**CKC exercises as those in which the foot is in contact with a solid surface. (Squat, Lunge)


Brian Van Hook
VH Sports Performance – Las Vegas, NV


1. Braden C. Fleming, Heidi Oksendahl, Bruce D. Beynnon. Open or Closed Kinetic Chain Exercises After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction. Exerc. Sport Sci. Rev. 2005. Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 134–140

Exercises of the week: Single Leg Romanian Deadlift

Single Leg-Romanian Deadlift (RDL)

Muscles Used: Hamstrings, gluteals, adductors

Most people know about RDL (Romanian Deadlift), but have you ever tried them single leg? Not only does it strengthen the hamstrings to a high degree, but it works on dynamic balance, dynamic flexibility and strengthens your adductors as well. Just don’t get too crazy with the weight, because this exercise is way harder than it looks! Every time I show one of my athletes how to perform this exercise they always want to use a heaver weight, I tell them to keep it light and tell me how your butt feels tomorrow, every time they come in the day after they are complaining how they hurt every time they sit on the toilet! So remember to start out with light weights (5-10lbs BD in each hand to start) balance will be the hardest thing at first!

Hold a dumbbell in each hand in front of your body and raise one of your legs. The weight should be on the heel and the chest elevated. From this position, keep your free leg straight and swing it back while lowering the dumbbells down to the top of your opposite foot. Return to the top and repeat.

When you get good at these, try to keep your swing leg off the ground throughout the entire set.

Tips:

-Don't stand on a platform for this exercise in an effort to increase your range of motion. If you bend over too far or if the dumbbells hit the ground, you could alter your form.

-This exercises is very awkward at first. If you can't use heavy weight initially, just focus on form and the poundage will increase with time.

-Vary the amount of bend in your front leg. Varying the knee angle will place slightly different emphasis on certain areas of the legs and glutes. Just keep that bend consistent throughout the motion.

-Allow the front leg to "split the uprights" with your arms. The dumbbells should remain an inch or two away from the sides of the working leg. Your upper body will be slightly turned toward this leg.


***Single Leg exercises are a great addition to an athletic performance training program when done correctly. Being a past offensive lineman myself I can reassure you singe leg strength is key for lateral movement on the line of scrimmage!!

Brian Van Hook
Las Vegas Strength Training

Bosu ball, unbalanced surface training

I wanted to write about something that has been bothering me for a couple of weeks now, it’s kind of my little rant!

I see trainers around town doing squats, lunges, curls, and anything else you can manage while teetering hazardously on a stability (or Swiss) ball, balance disc, Bosu ball or wobble board. So why do they think this is a fabulous idea, the main being that such exercises add a balance component and not only engage the target muscles, but also engage lots and lots of small stabilizing muscles. Meaning, you get the extra benefit of improved proprioception (awareness of your body in space), so why not?

Yes the Bosu balls and balance discs do work for those of us who've suffered ankle sprains!

The most common type is a lateral/inversion sprain (shown below), in which your foot twists to the inside, stretching or tearing the ligaments on your outer shin. The telltale signs of an inversion sprain are pain, swelling, and eventually discoloration on the outside of the ankle.

Your peroneals, muscles on the outside of your shin, are in charge of preventing inversion. If they're working properly, they'll contract fast enough and powerfully enough to straighten the foot before the ankle rolls and your ligaments stretch or tear.

Once you've suffered an ankle sprain, you're going to have functional ankle instability unless you follow a good rehabilitation program. In this area, the research has shown over and over again that training on unstable surfaces, wobble boards, Bosu balls, balance discs can correct this proprioceptive delay and get rid of functional ankle instability. That's why unstable surface training is a great rehabilitation tool.

Yes, unstable surface training works for people in the rehab setting, BUT a lot of trainers assume they can apply the same techniques to healthy athletes and prevent ankle sprains, improve balance, and enhance performance. This makes perfect sense right?

The problem is the latest research shows that while doing such exercises are great for rehabbing ankle injuries, they can actually de-power healthy athletes. Now if you're healthy, and your goals have anything at all to do with getting stronger, faster and more powerful, you actually don't want to wobble. (That's not to say you should cut out abs and upper-body exercises like pushups on the ball -- I'm just talking about exercises that involve standing or kneeling on unstable surfaces (especially on the “Buso ball” with the dome facing up)

While researching the subject I came across a study that showed replacing 2 to 3 percent of overall training volume with unstable surface training didn't improve performance, and even more important: unstable surface training minimized improvements in jumping, sprinting, and agility tests. Put another way, the subjects who weren't doing unstable surface training made bigger gains in power, speed, and agility (1). The study explains that one existing criticism of unstable surface training is that such training does not allow for sufficient loading to induce strength gains; the results of this study not only verify that assertion but also demonstrate that unstable surface training actually reduces power (and presumably strength) gains derived from concurrent stable surface training. As such, trainers/coaches applying unstable surface training with a proprioceptive training effect in mind may in fact be impairing the development of important athletic qualities; this finding demonstrates that proprioception is likely best trained in a specific sense with stable surface initiatives.

So just because something works in rehab doesn't mean it's useful for healthy athletes. In fact, if it takes the place of something else in their training, the opportunity cost seems to make things worse.

I would like to note that the study did point out that there may be certain sports (e.g., surfing, snowboarding) for which unstable surface training may offer appreciable carryover to performance, the results of the present study suggest that for most athletes, instability should be applied to training in more sport-specific contexts. These contexts include the application of destabilizing torques applied further up the kinetic chain, just as athletes would encounter in sporting environments where they move on fixed contact surfaces (1).



VH Sports Performance Las Vegas, NV



Information on this article was taken from a study that was done by Eric Cressey for the NSCA Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. Eric is full of great info; he is known for his work with baseball players and really is a go-to guy for all types of quality information.


1. ERIC M. CRESSEY, CHRIS A. WEST, DAVID P. TIBERIO, WILLIAM J. KRAEMER, AND CARL M. MARESH. THE EFFECTS OF TEN WEEKS OF LOWER-BODY UNSTABLE SURFACE TRAINING ON MARKERS OF ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 2007, 21(2), 561–567



2. CRAIG A. GOODMAn, ALAN J. PEARCE, CALEB J. NICHOLES, BRAD M. GATT, AND IAN H. FAIRWEATHER. NO DIFFERENCE IN 1RM STRENGTH AND MUSCLE ACTIVATION DURING THE BARBELL CHEST PRESS ON A STABLE AND UNSTABLE SURFACE. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research. 22(1):88-94, January 2008

Flexibility

Among the different aspects of training, flexibility may be one of the most lacking in programs. Back when I went to High School, pulling your arm across your chest and bending over to touch your toes was considered a good way to warm up before training. Not because it was the best way, but because that’s how my coaches were taught to stretch so it’s the way they taught me. It seems like it is the same way today! When I go out to meet with new coaches/clients the first thing I like to show them is a proper warm up, it’s easy and takes little time. I always ask the coaches why they do their specific warm up, and the answer is always the same, “because that’s what I did when I was playing sports”. I try to explain that both cases, static and dynamic stretching, the purpose is to take the muscles though a greater than normal range of motion. Static means that the stretch is being held and the muscles are at a constant length. Dynamic stretching implies that the muscles and joints are moving as you stretch. During dynamic stretching, we are steadily loading and unloading the muscles across multiple joints. I want them to understand that his method assists with increase ROM of the joints while also warming up the neuromuscular system. When first starting with some teams the dynamic warm up will feel like a regular workout to them! I remember running a baseball team through a dynamic warm up and they were all complaining their legs where sore and felt like they just did a workout! I was in total shock of how tight and immobile this team was (they are a great baseball team too). If there is one bit if info I can share with you it is to perform a proper warm up. If you have questions about proper warm ups or dynamic stretching please take a look at our main website to see what we can offer you. Sports Performance Training