What Movements to Pair with Bench Pressing

Recently, I’ve been including more soccer-specific articles because I love the sport (along with football) and want the blog to become primiarily soccer strengh oriented.  However, there are times where I love to provide basic lifting ideas and tips to help the general client (applies to athletes as well).  Bench pressing may be the king of the commercial gym.  It gets a lot of attention and people love it wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy too much .  These are movements that people can include between their sets of pushing (bench, floor press, push ups) variations that can help make their bench more efficient, safe, and allow them to get into a better position.  Do the following…

#1 Improve Hip Extension

If you don’t have enough hip mobility into extension, when you set up to bench it may aggravate the lumbar spine (especially if you have pre-existing low back issues).  This also affects how well you can push through your feet when setting up.  Hint: you don’t want to bench with your feet off the floor.  Good leg drive translates to good push up on the bar and staying tight throughout the body.  Perform a glute bridge variation between sets.  A good place is 2-3 sets of 8-10 reps (2-3s hold at top).  The emphasis in on squeezing the glutes up so that they are in-line with the knees.

Use a band if applicable

#2 Improve Thoracic Spine Mobility

Good hip extension is needed to prevent aggravating the low back but so is the mobility of the thoracic spine.  Good t-spine mobility is hard to come by because many spend most of their day sitting.  Also, if t-spine mobility is limited, more often times than not the shoulder will have issues.  A good place to start is 2-3 sets of 5-6 reps/side.  There are a few variations I like for this…

Yoga Plex: might be an all-time favorite because you get a ton of benefit in one movement

• Improving hip extension via the back leg getting a good stretch
• Good t-spine extension/rotation as well as shoulder mobility

Side Lying Rib Rolls or Side Lying Extension-Rotation:  Side Lying helps ensure the motion is coming through the upper spine and not the lumbar spine (why the ball is there).  Grab the ribs and pull back (think: get chest to face the ceiling) while making sure that your hips do not “fall” back as you do this.  There are plenty others such as wall slides, bench t-spine extensions,  quadruped extension-rotation, etc… The take-home try to obtain better hip extension and t-spine mobility so that you activate or facilitate better motion at areas that need it to limit movement at places that do not  (lumbar spine).  Also, because most do a set/rest/repeat it can help them make time more efficient.

Example of how to incorporate:

A1) Barbell Bench 4 x 5

A2a) Glute Bridge 2 x (10x3s hold)

A2b) Side Lying Rib Roll 2 x 5/side

This set-up means you would perform a set of bench–>then do 1 set of A1a–>go back do a set of bench (2nd)–>then do 1 set of A1b.  Simply alternating between A2a and A2b after each set of bench!

If looking to pair exercises for the bench to make it more effective or safe, these are great “fillers.”  If not, try adding them to your warm-up instead.

Cheers,

Matt

Cueing the Glute Bridge

If there is one movement that is disguised very well by compensation, it may very well be the glute bridge.  Often, after showing someone this they typically will present with good glute function but when you think back to the assessment you know there is no way it should look this awesome.  One of the easiest ways that we can bring people back to their “neutral” pelvic positioning (almost assuming they live in an anterior pelvic tilt) is to have them slightly posteriorly tilt the pelvis during the end of exercise or even to start (start in the case of the glute bridge).  Typically, during more complex movements like stiff-legged deadlifts, trap-bar deadlifts, or 1-leg stiff-legged deadlifts, the athletes will finish but it ends short of full hip extension, something we definitely want in order to eliminate the low back from finishing the lift.  They sort of end the lift with a “slight hips flexed” position.  Here is a picture of the compensation occurring for lack of hip extension…

The picture above is a basic example of what we will see with many of our athletes, mostly the younger ones (picture is a bit extreme, but hopefully you get the point).   I have read other cues such as drive through the heels, belly tight (I use these all the time), which definitely help but sometimes I will still see the compensatory pattern.  One simple way to teach or cue the athlete is to take their hands and put them on their pelvis, and show them that they can roll their hips forward (anterior pelvic tilt) and roll them backward (posteriorly).  The key is to find the “middle.”  Simply, laying on the ground tell the athlete to find the low back arch and to slightly flatten their low back to the floor, once they feel for that, raise their hips.  You usually notice a big difference, and I have heard they “feel” it much more.  Teaching this also gives them an awareness to finish the bigger lifts as well so that they prevent from finishing with the lumbar spine.  In the next video, around the 4sec mark you can notice, although minimal (I apologize for you having to watch my glute bridge with such concentration!), me posteriorly tilt and then lift off.

Hope this helps,

Matt

4 Pain Symptoms Associated with Lack of Glutes

     As I get the opportunity to train more athletes there is one thing that seems to be a recurring issue.  It  has got to be glute strength, or lack thereof.  Many young athletes, during simple glute activation exercises like glute bridging usually need to compensate in a variety of ways to perform the exercise.  These are either extending from the low back or the need to use their hamstrings as the primary hip extensor.  Both of which can be problematic when we are asking for only pure hip extension.  McGill has called this “gluteal amnesia.”  Basically the typical 21st century person sits too much which often tightens the hip flexors on the front of the body which then inhibits the muscles on their direct opposite (glutes).  Because of this typical lifestyle you will tend to see this dysfunction (lower-crossed:Janda) in many people.  Here are the following pain symptoms that you may have because of poor glute functioning/strength.

• Low back pain relates strongly.  Lack of hip extension from glutes can cause excessive lumbar extension
• Hamstring strains: Primary hip extensor is glutes.  When they are “shut off” so to speak (even though no muscle is never completely turned off) the hamstrings pick up the slack.
• Anterior Hip pain: poor biomechanics  of hamstring as hip extensors again.
• Anterior knee pain: due to poor glute medius strength
  

  Strong Glutes typed into Google. First picture to pop up

      One way to combat this is to incorporate glute activation exercises into the warm-up or to pair with some of your strength exercises.  Even on days where you are not lifting lower body (does any guy in S. Jersey lift lower body?) it may be wise to add in some glute activation as “filler” exercises. 

• Glute Bridges, Off-Bench Hip Thrusts, Lateral MiniBand Walks, Cook Hip Lifts etc.  These are all great exercises to incorporate each day to a warm-up or as fillers besides the normal strength work.  His is a video I found hilarious on the hip thrust.  I still do glute bridges probably every day before a work out, but I am starting to switch to these as they are a progression to from the normal glute bridge.
• By the Way: This lady crack me up, I don’t know why, but basically you should get the idea.  Just focus on squeezing your butt getting your hips through and make sure you are not extending from your lower back.  Do not think of keeping your abs “pushed in.”  There is no reason for this at all.  Anyway the vid is hilarious as the title says. “You do not a sloppy butt.” Something like 2 x 10 should suffice. 

Pairing Exercises for Speed and Power

     Last week, Kevin Neeld posted great content on pairing exercises together that will complement one another to not only maximize the training effect but also to fit more into your program on any specific day.  It allows you to do more things within the given amount of time that you have with athletes and other clients.  For those of you who have experimented with supersets, this same concept is similar but usually when talking about supersets you are performing back to back exercises emphasizing the same musculature (i.e. Bench Press –> Cable Flys).  Pairing exercises are different in that you can have the main lift paired with another exercise to compliment or a main lift paired with a core or opposing muscle group.

Example:  You would perform A1, A2, A3, and then go back to A1 for the desired number of sets to complete, in this case go through everything 3 times in a row.

A1) DB Chest Press 3 x 8

A2) Stability Ball Front Plank 3 x 20s

A3) DB Reverse Lunges 3 x 8/side

From what I have learned at Endeavor, these are some pairings that can maximize sprint speed and power capabilities with our athletes.

We always begin with speed or power work, whether it be a 10-15 sprint, or a box jump.  Also,  pairing activation exercises are quick effective ways to pair with primary movements.  One of the often overlooked aspects to speed is a lack of end range use of your psoas (hip flexor) which lifts your knee up above 90 degrees of hip flexion.  Most sports are often not getting this degree of hip flexion and as a result other hip flexors have to pick up the slack.  This can be a reason for quad “pulls” or hip flexor pain.  This is a template of pairing exercises for speed…

A1) 10 yard Sprint (2-point start)  3x/side

A2) Seated Psoas Lifts  2 x 15s/side

For power exercises, such as a box jump or drop jump (as well as many others), pairing these sort of exercises with glute activation drills can ensure the proper recruitment for the often forgotten glutes.  Most people’s are usually not strong so incorporating more glute exercises and activation drills goes along with for most people.  A sample template for this might be…

B1) Box Jumps 3 x5

B2) Glute Bridge IsoHolds 3 x (3 x 10s)

 Simple and effective ways to get more out of your speed and power work.  These activations are also ways to prevent injuries because they are usually under active muscles which forces other muscles to work overtime resulting in those typical yet preventable nagging injuries.