To illustrate how important and beneficial correcting these weaknesses can be, I will use a case study of another athlete training under my direction. But first we have to learn how to determine structural balance because as they say “if you do not assess, you guess!”
Structural Balance Testing
Structural Balance testing involves running the upper and lower body through a series of length tension and strength tests to determine which muscle groups are basically ‘underachieving’ or restricting performance. These flagging muscle groups can cause changes in biomechanics, pain & injury to joints and inhibit performance in your chosen sport. For example, with the aforementioned surfer he tested significantly weak and restricted through the medial hamstrings and as such, along with other factors, he was getting a lot of knee pain when surfing. Which is not a good thing if you want to make a living out of the sport right?
It is a good idea for everyone from professional athletes to your 80 year old grandmother to be tested. In the CCPC on the Gold Coast, I use a combination of tests picked up from Charles Poliquin, Ken Kinakin and other physiotherapy screening assessments.
For the most of the population, the main weaknesses found in the upper body will be a lack of elbow flexion, external rotation and scapular retraction strength. In the lower body, you will generally find that the vastus medialis, medial hamstrings, lower abdominals and spinal erectors test poorly. Of course there are variations but just like low carbohydrate dieting will suit around 80% of the population, this is generally what myself and others like Charles Poliquin have found clinically. As such, when first starting resistance training, individuals (from rehab cases to pro athletes) will all complete very similar exercises. In fact, the main difference between introductory protocols will be the rep, set and rest prescription, which depends on their fiber type make up. As a general rule, a faster twitch trainee will complete lower repetitions and a greater amount of sets compared to a slower twitch trainee.
Gold Coast Titans Under 20 prop Sam Ross was sent to me by his agent at the end of last year. When he reported into the CCPC, he had been diagnosed with osteopubis, which is condition that is characterized by inflammation of the pubic symphysis and chronic groin pain with running. As such he had to wear a strap on his adductors (which are the muscles on the inner thigh) whenever playing and was in a fair bit of pain with all running.
Now there is recent evidence out of Argentina published in the American Journal of Physical & Medical Rehabilitation that showed very effective results with glucose and lignocaine injections to regenerate the connective tissue1. Unfortunately, Sam did not have access to this on the Gold Coast. So after evaluating his structural balance, we used a combination of Active Release Techniques (ART) and remedial strength training. After 12 weeks, he now no longer needs to wear his adductor strap and has not had groin pain running since finishing his remedial training phase. He also made significant gains in his upper body strength.
This is what we did with the strength training to fix the problem and bring up his weaknesses.
Over the 12 weeks, Sam completed two three-week accumulation and two three-week intensification phases. To explain these training phases, an accumulation phase is characterized by relatively higher repetitions and lower sets and an intensification phase contains relatively lower repetitions and higher sets. You basically alternate between the periods of accumulation and intensification to keep producing strength and performance gains. This periodization (or planning) of training was first suggested by a German strength researcher called Dietmar Schmidtbleicher and I learned of it from Charles Poliquin.
Now although I had seen stronger adductors in underweight spelling bee competitors, Sam’s major problem was his lower back. In the upper body, the aforementioned common weaknesses were also present especially in the lower trapezius and scapular retractors. So due in part to his commitments with the Gold Coast squad, we trained four days out of seven with one torso session, one arms session and two legs sessions. Of note is that one of those legs sessions focused almost exclusively on bringing his spinal erectors (lower back) up to par. WE ALSO did not use any different exercises or variations that I would not use with OVER 90% of my clinical exercise physiology patients. This work has since stabilized the pelvis during running and seen a rapid decrease in his adductor pain and osteopubis symptoms. Alongside this, from the increased strength in the legs, Sam’s acceleration over 10m has also vastly improved dropping 0.26s through timing gates.
From the two upper body sessions per week that focused on his weaknesses, Sam also dramatically increased his upper body strength. When we retested after the 12-week block was over, Sam added 12.5kg to his 1RM Bench Press and a massive 32.5kg to his 1RM Chin. These are impressive numbers but consider these three things. One is that Sam has been following the ‘Thy Must Bench Press At Least Three Times A Week’ gospel since he was fifteen, which means he would not have any of the dramatic gains in strength seen with new trainees. Secondly, he injured his sternum in one of his trials which hindered his upper body training. Thirdly, and this is bigger than Oprah was in the 90s (no pun intended), he did not complete a single barbell bench press in the 12 week block. By simply bringing up his weak muscles to par, he got stronger on all movements.
Let’s get back to theme of this article now.
Focusing your training on correcting your weaknesses, you will become spectacularly stronger and also dramatically reduce the incidence of injury. By training structural balance, you do not need any fancy or ‘sport specific’ exercises (oh my gosh!) but you will perform a lot better in your chosen sport. The other thing you have to realize is that IF YOU DO NOT complete a preparation period where you train structural balance, you are almost wasting your time training to try to improve performance. This also holds true for losing body fat. Two reasons here. One is that we are only as strong as our weakest link. I am sure you can figure out why this matters – if not I will start buying stocks in Gingko Biloba because you are going to need it! Two is that you will not have enough base levels of strength to benefit from more advanced training methods.
With our case studies, simply by increasing Sam’s bench press strength, it now means he is more likely to succeed in rugby league. This is because bench press strength is one of the major and only significant differences between park footy and professional rugby league players2/3. He also managed to pick up two tries in his first trial, which was practically unheard of for the big 112kg prop forward. In the surfer’s case, improving the medial to lateral hamstring strength ratios will mean less knee pain and being able to consistently surf at a higher level now that he is not in and out of the physiotherapists’ offices.
Increased strength. Increased speed. Decreased injuries. Better sporting performance. You will get all these benefits by devoting six to twelve weeks at the start of the year to training your structural balance. Not a bad trade off wouldn’t you say?