elitefts™ Sunday edition

Follow the Chain

Once a semester, I get the opportunity to speak at John Carroll University (JCU). For those of you unfamiliar with JCU, I recommend making a trip. I know it's in Ohio (sorry Dave, but what a bad state!)—and Cleveland at that—but it's a great university and I love having the opportunity to speak with the undergraduates there. This all came about because a good friend of mine, Dr. Jim Cerrullo (Dr. J.), is a professor of athletic training at JCU. A few years ago, he asked me if I could come up once a semester and speak to his strength and conditioning class. It has worked out well for both of us, and I always learn a lot from the students (I even gained a few interns).

Kinetic Chain

Why am I telling you all this? Great question! This month's article is about following the chain—the kinetic chain that is. I want to explore how we improve movement, not just strength. I'll examine what other schools are doing in their assessments, what I'm doing, and what, if anything, we all need to be doing.

I usually go to Cleveland the night before my presentation and spend the evening talking science, life, and fine beer with Dr. J. However, this time I had to drive up the morning of the class. I arrived at JCU at 8 a.m. My talk was scheduled for 9 a.m. I know Dr. J. has labs at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., so I stopped by to learn and maybe show the students some of my tricks of the trade.

Shoulder Assessment

On this particular day, the students were assessing shoulder and scapular function. The class was filled with Division III athletes who, up until last year, didn't have a strength coach. Many of these athletes trained, but most of their training was on their own and it created many dysfunctions in their movement patterns. One of the students was a football player who clearly trained, but had very tight pec minors and an underdeveloped mid-back and lower traps. As the class assessed this young man, we started talking. After class, a few of the students came up to me and asked me what I would do to correct his issues. To me, this is a much deeper question than the students realized. How do we get an athlete who achieved a certain level of strength to change what he is doing in order to achieve even greater results?

I thought about this for a second, and my answer was something along these lines. I told the students that I would add some work at the beginning and end of his workout to address his weak points. Then, I would motivate him to still train with his team. Yes, we would still bench press, and yes, we would do what the team was doing, but we would add something in every day to address what he was missing. They asked if it was smart to keep him benching. Again, this was much deeper than any of them realized. The way I see it is if I told him to quit benching, he would quit benching in the varsity weight room, but he would continue to bench in the student recreation center and his buddy's basement. I said this and he laughed. He replied, "Yep, I'd still bench." So how do we correct this student's issues without losing his mindset?

Buddy Morris once said, "Every day is an assessment." This defines how I currently do assessments. When I walked into the lab at JCU, the chiropractor who was in the lab said, "See, Hamer's one leg is at least an inch shorter and he leans as he walks down the hall." This was the first time that I ever met this chiropractor. That is what a good assessor should be doing—always assessing!

Functional Movement Screen

A few years ago, I ran every one of my football players through the functional movement screen (after a few long days and hours with Brett Jones learning how to do this). What I found was the players are tight, their shoulders are garbage, and they need more mobility work. My concern was that I already knew this. A few months later, I reran the screens. The numbers improved almost everywhere. I was proud of what the athletes did and walked around for a few days as if I was the greatest strength coach. Then, I started looking a little deeper at what we were doing. Did we really get that much better? Questions started to arise. I knew the players got stronger and improved mobility and flexibility. They could also hold a good plank for a longer period of time. However, what the screens showed was that the players had just gotten better at the test.

When my staff and I first ran the screens, we were good practitioners and didn't tell the athletes too much about what we were doing. After the screens, athletes asked what we were doing and why we were doing it, so we explained some of what we were trying to accomplish with the screens. Of course, the athletes then became competitive about the screens and asked if they could try the overhead squat because they knew they could do better if they tried harder. This concerned me because we were trying to see natural movement patterns, not what the athletes could do if they tried hard. We wanted to see how they moved without thinking about it. Remember, the body will create a range of motion one way or another. In other words, we will get into whatever position we want to. The key is how we get there and return to homeostasis. So there I was running a second round of the functional movement screen, and my athletes were trying to get the perfect score of 21. This created a problem. In the competitive environment of a Division I weight room, our athletes were trying to win. The functional movement screen isn't about winning, but about seeing where you have issues in your movement patterns.

This left me with a new problem—how could I assess my athletes without them competing and trying to improve? I concluded that the functional movement screen is a useful tool and using certain screens or parts of a screen when needed is important. However, watching the athletes is more important. I do wonder if the functional movement screen would work better in a non-team setting where competition is kept to a minimum. Perhaps having a certified athletic trainer run the screens instead of the strength staff would work better. I know some schools do this, but we currently don't.

But back to what we do...we try to treat each day as an assessment, as Buddy Morris said years ago. I found that the first thing I want to do is watch the athlete's foot while he performs any squatting movement. Again, follow the chain. The foot is where force is transferred from the athlete's body to Earth (or a bad Nike running shoe). If we see the foot shift, we can follow the force up the kinetic chain and try to fix the issue. Often, all I needed to do to fix the issue is tell the athlete to keep his foot flat on the ground. If he does this, he tends to clean up the squat.

Other fixes

Overhead work: Before anyone kills me, yes, we do some overhead work. I tend to watch the lumbar spine here because athletes who are tight in the pecs or who are overdeveloped in the upper trap area will let their lumbar roll forward in order to achieve an overhead press or a push press. Sometimes just videotaping the movement and showing the athlete the video will fix the issue. We also use kettlebells in our overhead work, and you can see it there as well. If telling and showing the athlete doesn't fix the issue, I give the athlete work for the weak points or have him foam roll the area, stretch, or use a tennis/lacrosse ball before the workout.

Bench press: "Trapping the bar up," as I call it, is always a problem. So once again, I show the athlete where the elbows flare and how the upper traps are flexed and cause the bar to drift back. The nice part with this movement is that you can grab the anterior part of the shoulder. When you do this, most athletes who "trap the bar up" will scream and say that this hurts. Then we just teach them how to make that not hurt. Simple fixes are always better.

These are just two easy fixes to poor movement patterns. Remember, as I said earlier, we're trying to see what the athlete does naturally, so it's important to show the athlete the issue and then demonstrate how to correct it. Once you've done this, you must coach this every time the athlete comes in. We're trying to re-educate the body on how to move, while exciting different muscles and relaxing others. Because we know that the athlete naturally moves in an inefficient manner, we must continue to coach this to make the fix permanent so that the athlete teaches the body a more efficient or safer movement pattern.

I know some people who do use the functional movement screen with their teams, and others use parts of the test. I found that there is good information to be gained through these tests, but it's how we use the information and how we run the screens that is important. A good friend of mine, Bobby Sepsey, uses the screens with all his athletes. Cameron Davidson at Penn State uses three to four different screens with his athletes and then uses other tests if he sees problems. The University of Missouri came up with their own version of the functional movement screen that they use. I recommend to all coaches out there the exact same thing that I recommend to my athletes—become educated on the issue and then make an informed decision. I think it's important for all strength coaches to go to at least one full day seminar on the functional movement screen to understand where it may fit into your program. I'll leave you with my two favorite sayings and a link to another article so that you can explore this a little deeper. The article, titled "Determining and Strengthening Weaknesses" is by one of my mentors and friends, Tom (Mylo) Myslinksi. In this article, he explores strengths and weaknesses and how to address them.

Two common sayings that suit this article are "ignorance is bliss" and "with knowledge comes responsibility." In other words, let's learn more from each other, and while we do this, let's take that knowledge and do something positive in the world.

Next month, I'll be writing about our national conference. I'll be spending the week traveling the country meeting with different strength coaches at different colleges and universities (eight universities have already planned the visit). If you have any thoughts or ideas you want to share as a strength profession, email me at hamer@rmu.edu.