Movement As Medicine
The Movement As Medicine Podcast - EP 13: What Does It Mean To Meet Your Client Where Theyre At?
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I tend to use 3-5 second holds at the bottom.
https://a.co/d/4T0FZUc
The Side Plank is our go-to frontal plane core exercise that we use with pretty much everyone who comes through the gym.
Although, side plank is often viewed as a “basic exercise” it can actually be pretty tough for the beginner to do well as it relies both on trunk strength and upper body strength.
Here is a progression I will often use to build up a client’s strength in the side plank.
🔹Short Lever Side Plank: The short lever variation is a great place to start for beginners because it significantly reduces both the trunk and shoulder load of the exercise.
🔹Regular Side Plank: Once we progress to regular side plank continually progress by increasing the duration of the hold. We like to progress by increasing “breaths per set” to encourage deep abdominal breathing during the exercise.
Ie). Deep breath in the nose/out the mouth - WK 1: 3 breathes/WK 2: 4 breathes etc etc
🔹Feet Elevated Side Plank: By elevating the feet you increase the frontal plane challenge the shoulder load of the exercise.
🔹Adductor Side Plank: These aren’t for the faint of heart! We typically reserve these for our competitive athlete clients but they can be a great way to load both the adductors and the obliques simultaneously.
🔹Side Plank Row/Press/T’s: I love various dynamic variations for our gen pop clients. Things like side plank rows, presses and cable T’s can’t be a great way to challenge the dynamic stability of the position.
🔹🔹Bonus: If you have a client who struggles to support their bodyweight in a side plank either due to weakness or shoulder injury suitcase carries serve as a great alternative to develop frontal plane strength.
As far as trunk strength, stability and power exercises go I’m not sure there are many exercises that provide more value than the cable lift progression when followed from beginning to end.
🔹Tall Kneeling: This is a great starting place to teach clients how to create tension in the trunk muscles while managing sagittal and transverse plane forces.
🔹1/2 Kneeling: Exercises done in half kneeling are extremely useful for developing both hip and trunk stability. 1/2 Kneeling posture creates a frontal plane stability demand for the hips while inserting the transverse plane demand at the trunk.
🔹ISO Hold: I love the ISO Hold variation for athletes. Getting a bonus ISO split squat hold is great to continue to strengthen the split stance position. If you have Gen Pop clients who struggle to hold a split squat I would recommend just skipping to standing.
🔹Standing Static: Once you get to standing you can likely increase the external load do to the change in stance. Load is up heavier and challenge the trunk to manage rotational forces across the body.
🔹Dynamic: Now that you’ve progressed through the static variations we want to focus on speed and power output and and begin incorporating some pelvic rotation into the exercise. Move it fast and be sure to use @ancoretraining or @keiserfitness rather than a traditional weight stack.
🔹Step-Up: I love the step up variation because it allows us to get some unilateral loading to develop power in single leg stance.
🤓 Quick Cues:
☑️ Follow the hands with your eyes (this will help create some natural thoracic rotation)
☑️ Pause at the chest on the way up and down on Tall Kneeling, 1/2 Kneeling, ISO and Standing Static
☑️ Add Hip and Trunk rotation for the Dynamic Variations
@certifiedfsc
Contrast training involves pairing a strength exercise with a power exercise in the same biomechanical pattern with the goal of taking advantage of post-activation potentiation, leading to greater neurological output from the nervous system. This is a popular training technique for the advanced competitive athlete and something we use frequently with our athlete groups at @mbscofficial. However, I don’t often see coaches taking advantage of the benefits of contrast training for the adult training population.
As we age, the excitation of our nervous system trends down rapidly after the age of 30 if we fail to stimulate it with training. One technique I like to use with my Gen Pop clientele is the using contrast training periodically for phases in the program to continue stimulating the nervous system and simply provide some variation in the program. They often find it fun, interesting and it provides us avenue to get them moving fast again.
With athletes we may choose more aggressive power options like sprinting, hopping and different jump variations however we can still harness with value of contrast work with more intermediate choices for the older adult client.
Three Variations I Like To Use Frequently Are:
1️⃣Push-Up (Ideally loaded)
2️⃣Medicine Ball Chest Pass Variation (One Arm or Two Arm)
1️⃣Squat (Heavy Goblet or Two Kettlebell)
2️⃣Jumps
1️⃣Pull-Ups or Pulldowns
2️⃣Medicine Ball Slams
Give these a try and let me know how you like them!
@certifiedfsc
Justin recently released "High Performance Nutrition For High School Athletes": https://a.co/d/cJR0jGN
In this podcast, we discuss everything from developing a "Champion Mindset" to enabling behavior change to protein and hydration.
At the end, we take some questions from the live audience, including a great one specifically about Protein intake and Osteoporosis.
The Relationship between Prevalence of Osteoporosis and Proportion of Daily Protein Intake: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3560339
Listen on Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-movement-as-medicine-podcast-episode-33-justin/id1606564003?i=1000646718518
Listen on Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/5sKrTMkA7MGhPQJ1tNJsHl?si=Py9uQ4i6SUy_L-IDY8_yqg
That nature of hockey is that players skate a TON resulting in a lot of hip stress which can commonly lead to issues like adductor strains, sports hernias, FAI, glute tendinonpathy and hip flexor irritation. In addition to a regular hip mobility routine that helps maintain general hip range of motion, a solid s lower body strength program that focuses on developing strength through full range of motion in multiple planes can be an extremely valuable way to develop durability in the hips.
🔹Lateral Squat:
Lateral Squats are criminally underrated in value for improving hip mobility and hip strength. Similar to slideboarding they have great carryover to the skating stride and allow us to train the hips moving in the frontal plane while strengthening the adductors and the lateral hip muscles.
🔹Split Squats/Lunge Variations:
Split squats and lunge variations are a centerpiece to our lower body strength programming at MBSC. They allow us to work on improving hip mobility while developing tons of lower body strength in the hips and quads. We often use both regular split squats and rear foot elevated split squats in the program.
🔹Active Hip Flexor Strengthening: Supine Cable Hip Flexion/Hip Flexion + Adduction:
I think for the skating AND running athlete isolated hip flexor strengthening is a necessity. In order to build durability and reduce strains, strengthening of the psoas, illiacus, pectineus and adductor breves should all be strengthened to improve isolated flexion as well as flexion + adduction.
Give these a try and let me know how you like them in the comments!
Try these 3 tips to clean up your push-up technique!
1). Squeeze A Pad In Between The Knees:
Cleaning up sagging hips and poor positioning in a push-up can sometimes be as simple as adding a towel or pad squeeze in between the legs during the exercise. By squeezing the pad and actively adducing and contracting your adductors and glutes, you will be able to contract your abdominals more easily by taking advantage of the irradiation effect. Sherrington’s Law of Irradiation states that “a muscle working hard recruits the neighboring muscles, and if they are already part of the action, it amplifies their strength."
Keep the reps low and quality high, and work adding reps slowly over time while using the pad squeeze.
2). Improve Your Anterior Core Strength:
Although the push-up is traditionally viewed as an upper body exercise, it is highly dependent on anterior core strength to maintain a plank like position during the movement. I find most clients push-ups improve immensely if spend time prioritizing “anti-extension” core strength with exercises like planks and rollouts.
In addition to practicing push-ups, master the hardstyle front plank where you focus on actively contracting your abdominals in the plank position for up to 45 seconds. From there, progress to the stability ball rollout to increase difficulty.
3). Regress To An Incline Push-Up
If you are still struggling to perform a push-up on the floor, try regressing to an incline push-up on a box, bench or ideally on a barbell in a squat rack. By inclining you can reduce the total load on your upper body and trunk muscles, allowing you to perform it correctly. Find a height that is challenging for 6 repetitions so that it still requires you to brace hard, challenges your upper body and helps you build strength. Keep the quality high and slowly progress down towards the floor as your strength and form improves.
Start with Bilateral Isometrics and progressively move towards unilateral active reps.
Bilateral ISO - Bilateral Active - Unilateral ISO - Unilateral Active
Lack of time is the most commonly cited barrier for the average person to reach the minimum exercise guidelines.
Given that most people cite time availability as their biggest reason for not exercising, would it make sense for us to promote less time demanding options for improving VO2Max for the average person. I think yes.
In this video I explain the power of using MAS Intervals for improving Aerobic Power and give you plan to get started.
If you want to access this video without ads and all of the materials referenced to MBSC.TV today to start your FREE trial.
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Book Recommendations:
Jenny: "The Busy Trap" - Tim Kreider (Article)
archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap
Kevin: "How To Fail At Almost Everything And Still Win Big" - Scott Adams
amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp/1591847745/ref=asc_df_1591847745/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312061076565&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=12285696787934578127&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9002018&hvtargid=pla-434105675270&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=62837065140&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312061076565&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=12285696787934578127&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9002018&hvtargid=pla-434105675270
Often, in addition to some foam rolling and soft tissue work, some basic focused mobility and stability/strengthening drills can go a long way to reducing symptoms at the shoulder.
Try these drills, and let us know how you like them in the comments!
The single-leg squat can be a challenging exercise to master, especially for beginners. Use this progression to develop a HUGE single-leg squat.
The push-up to downward dog variation has been one of my favorite, feel good warm-up exercises recently for both myself and my clients.
I think it checks a lot of boxes to warm up the upper body joints and tissues while promoting scapular motion and thoracic mobility.
This is almost always a go-to on days where I am planning upper body pushing and pulling.
I like to progress to the one arm reach variation for more advanced clients.
Give a try and let me know how you like it!
It’s always important to remember that exercises are simply tools that we use as coaches to help drive results.
Certain tools will be more or less useful/necessary for specific clients, their goals and their chosen sport.
There will always be lessons learned and shared between the different universes within in the fitness world. Understanding basic principles and appreciating the the overlaps and the differences is what helps you become an effective coach across multiple domains.
First and foremost, focus on what the client wants and needs and then build your exercise selection around those constraints.
To listen or watch Episode 29 of the Movement As Medicine podcast hit the link in our bio.
Wes "Showdub" Showalter has had a long and winding road in the fitness industry in multiple cities, businesses, and coaching positions. Despite changing locations and taking on new challenges he has consistently developed himself into the most sought-after coach in his area time and time again. Wes combines an incredibly outgoing personality with a work ethic and great technical coaching skills that have made him indispensable wherever he coaches. In this, extremely entertaining and informative podcast, Wes shares his story and shines a light on the lessons that he has learned in his journey to become a successful independent contractor in the fitness industry.
Book Recommendations:
Kevin - "Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine and the Murder of a President" - Candice Millard
Wes - "Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue" - Ryan Holiday


