Oddly, carrying is one of the most common things we do in life—and also it is one of the most challenging things. Just ask any new mother who spends half her day walking around with a baby (why is it that all babies can sense when you’re sitting and scream bloody murder until you reluctantly stand up and walk around with them?).

We often talk about the importance of four movements: pushing, pulling, squatting, and hinging. All the while forgetting about one very important, albeit less sexy, way we move: Carrying!

Oddly, carrying is one of the most common things we do in life—and also it is one of the most challenging things. Just ask any new mother who spends half her day walking around with a baby (why is it that all babies can sense when you’re sitting and scream bloody murder until you reluctantly stand up and walk around with them?).

And although there really is nothing sexy about carrying six bags of groceries across the street and up the elevator to your apartment—in fact, all it is is annoying—it’s something you probably want to be able to do your entire life. So, you might as well find ways to make carrying things, be it groceries or babies (maybe both), that much easier.

Try this carries-only workout the next time you’re looking for a challenge that will also translate into making regular life just a little bit easier.

Functional Carry #1: Farmer Carries

Every time I do a heavy farmer carry I’m surprised how hard they are. It’s almost as if I block out and forget the pain each time so I don’t talk myself out of ever doing one again.

• Start with 2x100m farmer carries with two minutes rest between with 50 percent of your body weight (25 percent in each hand). If that goes well, add 10 percent. If that goes well, try the super challenge.
• Super challenge: 100m body weight farmer carry (50 percent each hand) without putting the weight down.
• Focus on walking with perfect posture and keep your arms close to your sides.

Functional Carry #2: Overhead Carries

If your shoulder flexion permits, try a single arm overhead carry. Again, focus on perfect posture (neutral spine, shoulders back) and keep that elbow completely locked out overhead.

• Start with 2x50m with each arm using a weight that allows you to maintain perfect posture. If that goes well, add some weight.
• Super challenge: 100m double arm overhead farmer carry with 15-20 percent of your body weight in each arm.

Functional Carry #3: Bent Arm Carries

Bent arm carries are great for shoulder and back health. Same deal as the other two carries—focus on perfect posture, only for this carry bring your elbow up to your shoulder height and then bend your elbow 90 degrees so the weight is just above your head pointing toward the sky. Keep your arm in line with your body and don’t let it splay out to the side.

• Start with 2x50m with 10-15 percent of your body weight maximum. Add weight if you can maintain the perfect position.

Functional Carry #4: Back Rack Carries

These are great because they allow you to go a little heavier and spend some serious time under tension with your core firing on all cylinders. If you have access to a yolk, even better, and if not keep them a bit lighter.

• Start with 2x20m with the equivalent of your body weight on your back. Make sure you keep a rack close by so you can plant it right into a rack at the end of the carry. If that’s a success, load on up! How heavy can you go?

Functional Carry #5: Double Barbell Farmer Carries

If you have the ability and space, try a farmer carry with two barbells in each hand parallel to your body. This will force your wrists and your core to work a whole lot harder to control those weights. If you master this, carrying eight bags of groceries will be easy peasy.

• Start with 2x20m with an empty barbell. If you can do that easily and with control, then consider adding some weight.

The post Loaded Carries Boring? Nah! They’re Essential appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

You bench press, do push-ups, and maybe even military press. You squat, lunge, deadlift, glute bridge, pull-up, row, and have tried countless “ab” variations. You’ve likely hit the treadmill, the air bike, and even tried battle ropes, but do you carry? The reality is you do.

Carries, or walking while holding a load, is done by almost everyone at varying intensities throughout their day. You pick up your baby boy and walk him over to his mother (carry). With a kiss and a handoff, you grab your briefcase and lunch box (carries) and head out the door. Both are placed safely in your car before you head back to the garage to lug out an industrial-sized trash can (carry). After work, you stop by the grocery store to get more dog food and water. With one in each arm (carry) you head back into the house.

It would take me all day to count up all the carrying a moderately active person does in a week, yet training these carries usually does not rank high on our exercise priority list. Sure, we know that strength coach legend Dan John ranks carries as the most important movement.

Still, we’ve always considered that more of a quirky twist than the guiding directive of someone who knows it best. In reality, locomotion, or moving from point A to point B, is the most important movement. Loaded carries are the loading of locomotion to make it stronger. With John’s endorsement and our daily walking needs, we must all be adding carries into our weekly training, right?

The Trouble with Loaded Carries

I’m as guilty as anyone. If I add carries to a team’s exercise program, I put them last. Odd placement for a “priority.” When they are added, I’ve noticed a very interesting trend. I talk it up—I explain relevance, coaching cues, and most importantly that athletes need to walk until technical failure (until they could no longer keep the bell neutral in their grip with the thumb over finger and shoulders squeezed down and back).

Only then should they safely bring the weight to the ground. Yet, invariably every athlete would start at the same place and stop at the same place. Usually, they had no idea what size dumbbells they carried and were using different weights from set to set. Usually, the weights were far too low—what I began terming “a lunch box.” They’d never approach squat so mindlessly, but there is something about loaded carries that people don’t take very seriously.

I found that I had to coach these up very hard. I was ruthless about sending athletes back to get a more appropriate weight. Or, if they chose a “lunch box,” I’d follow them around not allowing them to put the weight down for the entire, ridiculous distance it took for them to truly approached technical failure. In my football and baseball programs, I was able to shift the culture by incorporating heavy carry challenges that created a degree of pride about carrying capacity.

For most, the loaded carry is an afterthought, but it truly is the best method I know to train grip, core, and work capacity. These three factors have a broader carryover to every other exercise and performance goal than any other. The grip connects us to our environment. The core connects each piece of our body and, with grip strength, allows us to utilize every part of our body in manipulating the environment.

Finally, work capacity stretches our ability to do work longer. It is very important to carry hard to stay healthy. Despite a far less active and physically demanding upbringing, wrist fractures are 50% more common today in our youth than in the 1950’s. Nearly half of all boys and a third of girls will fracture their wrist during childhood. We are missing out if we continue to dismiss and disrespect the loaded carry’s power.

How to Develop the Loaded Carry

You’re convinced. Now how exactly do we go about intentionally developing this skill? It is a broad question that speaks to the ambiguity that causes many to coast through their carries. You can carry sandbags, kettlebells, dumbbells, barbells, or anything.

The more awkward the better. You can hold them by your side, in a bear hug, in a Zercher, in a kettlebell rack position, overhead, or any combination. Dan John even does them up hills while pulling sleds. You can go heavier for shorter distances or lighter and longer. Your imagination is the only limitation.

I recommend including loaded carries daily, but with different variations and goals throughout the week. Here are some of my favorite protocols:

• Time Intervals – 6-10 Rounds of 30 seconds of work and 30 seconds of rest.
• For time – Set a clock for 5 minutes and do one arm carry variation like the suitcase carry. Move constantly, switching hands as needed.
• For technical failure, go as far as possible until perfect technique is maxed, then immediately put them down.
• Superset them with bear crawls. Set a distance and go for speed!
• Program them for distance – Pick a distance and go! Any variation works. Simply put the load down when you’ve hit technical failure. Rest and repeat the process until you’ve eclipsed the distance. In a lot of ways, this is a heavier version of what anyone who goes backpacking is doing every time they set out on an adventure.
• Take your carries outside and hit uneven terrain. Go up hills and around obstacles. The variation is functional and fun.

Now that you have your protocols, get good at a few different methods. Start simple and add more over time. The possibilities are endless, but here are some of my favorite variations:

• Farmer’s Walk
• Suitcase Carry
• Rack Walk
• Waiter’s Walk
• Cross Walk (one arm pressed into a waiter’s walk and the other in a suitcase carry or rack hold)
• Bottom’s Up Kettlebell Walk
• Loaded Walking Lunge
• Zercher Carry

So what are you waiting for? The sky is the limit. Pick up something heavy and get going!

The post Humans, You Must Be Able to Carry appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Flowing between modalities and using the connection between the entire body is what makes fitness endlessly fun and interesting. The quickly approaching summer weather provides an opportunity for breaking down even more barriers to fitness by taking your work outside.

Take It Outside

Fresh air is good for the human spirit. Ditch the stationary bike for a real one. Break away from that rower for a river and a kayak. You’ll find rejuvenation from hikes, jogs, or just a relaxing walk. But there is more you can do outside. Grab some kettlebells and hit the entire body as you would in the gym. Better yet, challenge and embrace that most primal and important movement skill: locomotion.

We often forget that crawling, walking, stepping up, climbing, and carrying items from place to place are the most natural components of human movement. They combine every movement pattern, from hinging and squatting to pushing and pulling. This modest concept engages the deepest depths of your bio-evolution and connects you with people across all age groups.

Think of all the earth moving that took place as nomadic bands followed herds, constantly resettling and building fires to commune around. As history moved to agrarian based economies, consider how many millions of people worked day upon day collecting materials and manipulating them to build homes and communities?

You are a manifestation of that same capacity and human heritage of locomotive prowess. This summer I encourage you to explore your capacity for locomotion through one or all of these challenges. In the process you’ll rekindle something essential that has laid dormant and discover the enjoyment of moving for its own sake.

The 1 Mile Dumbbell/Kettlebell Farmer’s Walk

This is a gut check, but a fun challenge. The farmer’s walk is a very basic loaded carry variation that packs with it an amazing, total body training effect. Pick up two dumbbells (or kettlebells, if you prefer) and walk a mile. Keep quality form. Put the bells down as many times as you need. I recommend setting a timer and trying to beat your time later.

Standard Loads:

• Women – 15% of body weight in each hand, rounded down to nearest 5lbs. (Example: a 150lb woman would carry 20lbs per hand.)
• Men – 20% of body weight in each hand, rounded down to nearest 5lbs. (Example: a 200lb man would carry 40lbs per hand.)

The Half Mile Bear Crawl

Sure, you could work up to a full mile, but you might be amazed just how hard it is to bear crawl for 800 meters. Your back should stay flat and your core tight as your knees drive outside of the arms. Each step should be a simultaneous movement of the opposite arm and opposite leg.

The 15+ Mile Hike

Backpacking is a truly wonderful hobby. Start slow and get your feet wet on some short, easy hikes. There is a lot to learn and research along the way. It’s nice to find a more experienced friend whose wisdom you can learn from, but regardless the 15-mile hike is a great challenge to awaken an appreciation for nature and the most human experience of long-distance walking.

Progress and Regress

As usual, all exercise is about progression and regression. I would regress these challenges as much as necessary to meet your current needs and fitness level. The standards given are very challenging. Once achieved, you could progress them further by adding weight, speed, or distance. The point is to break out of the norm and challenge yourself by embracing a movement based goal.

If you want more of a challenge you can also try my at home 4-week plan, The Will and The Way or, my gym plan, Push, Pull, and Thrive.

The post 3 Summer Challenges That Will Shift Your Fitness Approach appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

As a trainer for firefighters and non-firefighters alike, it has been my pleasure to help people learn how to train for the real world. While the specific demands and levels of urgency may be different for firefighters and non-firefighters, the principles are the same. It doesn’t matter whether it is an overflowing laundry basket, a positive pressure ventilation fan for clearing smoke from a structure, or your backpack; in the real world, we do more than lift. We lift in order to move things to a different location. This continues to be a struggle for people and a source of injury, discomfort, and decreased performance. Thankfully, you can train using incremental skill development to progress into efficient carrying.

Secure Single-Leg Footing

Observe people when they are walking. Many times, they are in a forward lean, with their center of gravity in front of their base of support. This isn’t walking. This is falling and catching yourself with the leading leg. This is a common cause of slips and falls in general, but becomes a tremendous hazard when you go into carrying. When carrying, your center of gravity becomes combined with the object you are transporting. Consequently, your gait and stride is severely impacted and can have a detrimental impact.

While there are several pieces to why you may lean forward, one of the most immediate you can address is your ability to maintain your balance over a single point of support. Developing secure, single-leg footing will train your body to stay upright. You can do this by becoming comfortable standing on one leg for an extended period of time, using the following cues:

• Use your entire foot: Grip the floor with your toes and drive your heel into ground. Minimal shoes or bare feet will be helpful.
• Soften your knees: This will encourage greater posterior chain utilization.
• Stand tall: This will allow your body to become secure over the foot.

When done correctly, your ears, shoulders, hips and feet are aligned in a standing plank. This will allow you to feel your equilibrium over a single point of support in a way that will transfer over to loaded carries later. Practice until you are able to sustain this for 60-90 seconds. Then you can progress further to resist external forces. This comes in the way of leg swinging.

Leg swinging is a great way to train your body to be secure under dynamic interference. Stand upright on a single leg, then allow the other leg to swing freely. This will create resilience in the endurance and reaction ability of the stable leg. As you progress even further, you can add in the arms to continue resisting the momentum that naturally occurs from the motion you create.

Active Hip Stability: Kneeling Around-the-Worlds

When you are carrying, you are moving in all three planes of motion. While it may not seem like it, you are working incredibly hard to resist lateral and rotational forces as you move forward. Developing hip stability will play a key role in resisting these forces. One of the best and most accessible ways is to use the Ultimate Sandbag for kneeling around-the-worlds.

1. Take a kneeling position and hold the Ultimate Sandbag by the outside handles, pulling them apart as aggressively as you can.
2. Drive your hips forward while digging your toes into the ground behind you to engage your posterior.
3. Raise your right forearm over your head, stretching the lat on that side, while pulling downward with your left hand, elongating your left upper trap.
4. Continue passing the Ultimate Sandbag around your head with maximal tension and resistance.
5. Maintain your initial head position until the Ultimate Sandbag is behind your head with your elbows high. Here, pause momentarily, then continue this circular motion until it comes completely around to the front.
6. Alternate directions as you do this again.

To progress this movement even further, add a step forward during this motion. It will further increase your hip stability as you resist the adjusting load while removing a point of support.

1. Step forward with your left leg into a lunge position as you pass the Ultimate Sandbag over the left side of your head.
2. Once it is behind you, hold this position with the same maximal tension, continuing to pull the Ultimate Sandbag apart.
3. Return to the starting position by reversing the path of the bag and returning the front leg to the kneeling position.
4. At this point, switch sides and switch legs.

Rotary Stability: Dead Bugs and Crawling

The ability to resist rotational forces is imperative. While the kneeling around-the-worlds do work on this, you can do even more through crawling. Crawling is irrefutably a foundational skill. As a firefighter, crawling is a skill we use at nearly all major structure fires. In fact, three years ago, crawling literally saved my life. Are you training this fundamental skill? The good thing is that there is a very easy-to-follow template to restore this skill and strengthen your core stability to resist rotational forces.

Dead bugs are a great way to train your body to move in a contralateral and stable fashion while creating intraabdominal forces using the ground as external cueing.

1. Lie on the ground with hands extended above your shoulders and knees bent above your hips.
2. Extend your right arm behind and left leg simultaneously.
3. If you feel your low back begin to arch, draw your belly button into the ground while tucking your hips. This will provide greater security in your spinal alignment as your move into carrying.

To progress this pattern, move into hand-foot crawling. You will have to maintain that same core stability while resisting rotational forces as you reduce your points of support from the ground. This will encourage you to learn to stabilize your spinal alignment as you move forward.

1. Assume a quadruped position with all four limbs on the ground.
2. Lift your knees from the ground.
3. Once in a secure, solid position with knees under hips and hands under shoulders, move forward in a slow and controlled fashion.
4. Continue this for a designated number of strides.

Train Your Body for Heavy Carries

At the end of the day, carrying is something that we need to be able to do. However, there are many people who do it in everyday life inefficiently, in a way that may lead to decreased performance, discomfort and even injury. You can build a solid foundation to carry heavy loads by establishing secure footing using leg swings, stable hips with kneeling around-the-worlds, and rotary stability with dead bugs and crawling.

Want to train like a firefighter? Contact me for more programming strategies.

The post Prepare Your Core for Heavy Carries appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

I worked on a farm when I was younger, and almost every blue-collar job I’ve had since then involved carrying objects from one location to another. I remember the first time I tried carrying a hay-bale in each hand when I was a kid. I staggered along and struggled to hang on and cover the length of the barn. But I had the capacity to improve, and I did.

Since then, I’ve carried about everything you can think of in all sorts of positions: on my back, up high on my chest on one shoulder, at my waist, one-handed, two-handed, overhead with one hand, overhead with two hands, and more. Each position strengthens the body in a slightly different way.

If you’ve never done any form of loaded carry, it’s hard to describe what they bring to your table. Carries toughen up the body. They help you express your strength in odd ways. Carries create stability under motion. They can transform a person and give them that missing quality in their performance.

My Challenge to You

This year, a lot of people have found it hard to perform a regular routine and stick with it. But I like challenging people. So, here’s the challenge: perform loaded carries for the next six weeks. I’ll lay out a few ideas for you to try. I guarantee you will be amazed at how you feel at the end if you stick with it.

Most people perform carries by picking up an object, carrying it, and then setting it down to rest for a minute or more. This is even how carries are contested in strongman competitions. During loaded medleys, for example, a contestant will move 5-10 objects from one location to another, and then they are done.

But we are going to change the game.

The 6-Week Loaded Carry Challenge

You’ll need three objects to carry. It doesn’t matter what they are. My suggestion is do this close to home. Take a break from the gym for the next six weeks. It will save you drive time (traffic is terrible this time of year) and the time it takes to figure out what to wear to the gym so you look fashionable.

If you don’t have your own backyard, store the objects in the trunk of your car or hide them in some bushes. If you don’t have much money, you might use several different sizes of rocks, an old duffle filled with gravel, a short log, or an old tire. Use things no one would want to steal if they found them. You can store them out back at the company where you work. Just let a few people know so they don’t throw your training “equipment” away. Improvise, adapt.

I trained like this in Yellowstone Park years ago while on a camping and hiking trip. I used long logs and a rock. The surrounding campers thought I was nuts. After observing me, they gave me a wider berth than they did the bison.

The Set Up

Put one object at a line or wall and set the other two at the other line or wall, with about 30-60 feet between the lines. With heavier objects you want less distance between the two lines. Start at the line with two objects. You will figure out why in about one up-and-back trip.

Let’s paint a picture of what the carries will look like. Be sure to have a timer or clock handy. Note the time.

1. At line A you have a barbell and slosh pipe lying on the ground, with a sandbag 60 feet away at line B.
2. Grab the barbell and carry it over to the sandbag. Drop it.
3. Pick up the sandbag and carry it back to the slosh pipe. Set the bag down or drop it.
4. Pick up the slosh pipe and carry it back to the barbell.
5. Set the slosh pipe down and grab the loaded barbell. Carry it back to the sandbag.

Okay, so you know the drill. Keep the medleys going for 20-30 minutes. Rest as needed.

The Goal

Your goal is nonstop carrying for thirty minutes. At that point you can begin to increase the time, working up to an hour. Or you can increase the weight of one or two of the objects. Increase weight, time, or both. Pick your poison. Just don’t try to kill yourself. Let your body adapt and enjoy the process.

“Heavier and odd-shaped objects are more difficult to carry. You want to develop the endurance to carry the entire time, but don’t forget to bump up the weight and difficulty every now and then.”

If you are up for the challenge, drop your regular routine and do these loaded carries 3-4 times per week for the next six weeks. You will find clarity when you free yourself from your regular convoluted gym routine. If you miss a day here and there due to the holidays and family visiting, no biggie. You can do carries nearly every day if you mix things up. Vary the objects, carries, weights, and length of time spent carrying.

Add a Friend

If you want some added fun, get a partner and another object so you have four objects total, with two at each end. You start at one end and your friend starts at the other end. You each pick up an object and walk past one another to the opposite side. There will be only one object there, the one your friend did not pick up. So drop your object and pick up the other one and walk back to the other line. At the same time your friend will be doing the same thing opposite you. Walk past each other again and repeat this sequence. On your fifth pick up you will be back to the first original object. But you’re not done yet – you’ve got 27 more minutes to go!

If your friend is faster, you’ll have to pick up the pace to make this work. You can actually push one another a bit. But don’t get carried away (haha). The objective is to last the entire time, not run back and forth.

If you’re doing the carries by yourself, test yourself every month or two and see how long you can last. You might go for three hours or so. Of course, you will need to drink some water and perhaps take short rest breaks here and there. Have a protein drink available to sip on if you need it. Hey, some people have hypoglycemia, so don’t get all high and mighty with your “worrier diet.” Or was that warrior? Who knows.

Just Pick It Up and Move It

Carries don’t require a lot of thinking. Just go out there. Pick three objects and carry them back and forth. View it as if it’s a job. You just go do it, no questions asked. Put in the work, push a little, and it’s pretty easy to get stronger and create some work capacity without killing yourself. Plus, it’s a heck of a lot of fun.

Heavier and odd-shaped objects are more difficult to carry. You want to develop the endurance to carry the entire time, but don’t forget to bump up the weight and difficulty every now and then. This will help strengthen your body in odd ways as you build more capacity, potential productivity, or whatever you want to call it. Put in the time, and I guarantee in a couple of months you’ll have more bite to your bark.

More Like This:

• Pick Up Something New: 10 Loaded Carries to Strengthen Your Training
• The 4 Most Important Exercises You’re Probably Not Doing
• Carry On: 2 Kettlebell Loaded Carry Workouts
• New on Breaking Muscle Today

The post 6-Week Challenge: Loaded Carries for Farmer’s Strength appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The truth is, whether you are an athlete training to get that competitive edge, a fitness enthusiast looking to change your physique, or an avid runner who is stuck at a desk eight hours per day, there is something more you could be doing. Something that will help you blast through your plateau, take time off of your races, and help to decrease and eliminate some of those nagging aches you feel throughout the day.

The Four Most Important Exercises You’re Probably Not Doing

The key is incorporating the following exercises into your fitness program. These exercises are the cream of the crop when it comes to improving your alignment, stability, and motor control – all of which are crucial and often overlooked aspects of training.

Loaded Carries

I want to talk about alignment for a minute. When I use this word most people think of being adjusted at the chiropractor because they were “out of alignment.” They speak of alignment like it is something that just happens, and something that someone else needs to fix. The truth is alignment is simply the position where our bodies work optimally. Where everything is where it should be and where we put the least amount of stress on our joints.

Alignment comes primarily from strong stabilizer muscles. If these muscles are not working properly and you add a load to the body, you will see your alignment fall apart. In simple terms, this means you aren’t showing good stability or motor control. If this lack of stability or motor control isn’t addressed, it will undoubtedly lead to pain and injury in the future. Even more, poor stability and motor control can actually lead to decreased performance and can prevent you from getting the results you should be getting.

Enter loaded carries – one of the best ways to fix your alignment and train the stability of your shoulders, hips, core, and entire body. Put simply, loaded carries force you to find your alignment through improving your internal body awareness and firing up your stabilizing muscles.

You can think of loaded carries like a moving plank. They create unbelievable core stability while at the same time causing our rotator cuff muscles to activate. You see, our stability muscles are reflex driven. Pick up something heavy in a farmer’s walk and your body will automatically find proper alignment without conscious thought.

Don’t believe me? Think about the six-year-old holding hands with his dad when suddenly dad pulls him his arm so hard and quickly in order to avoid a huge puddle. Does the kid dislocate his shoulder? Did he consciously activate his rotator cuff muscles to avoid dislocation? Of course not, it happened automatically, by reflex.

This is where loaded carries are king of kings. They force us to stabilize and align our bodies simply by carrying something heavy, while having a huge metabolic demand at the same time. What could be better than that?

There are three types of loaded carries that you can do, all of which can be performed uni- or bilaterally: the waiter’s carry, racked carry, and farmer’s or suitcase carry. Try mixing it up and trying all of them!

In the waiter’s carry, the arm must be locked out straight overhead, with no bend in the elbow. In the racked carry, the wrist should be in a neutral position with the kettlebell held close to midline, arm close to body.

In the Farmer’s (two kettlebells) or suitcase (one kettlebell) carry, arms should be by side and you should be actively pushing the kettlebells down toward the ground.

The Turkish Get Up

While technically the Turkish get up (TGU) is a vertical carry, it deserves its own section. The TGU is one of my favorite exercises for prehabilitation, rehabilitation, and general strength and conditioning. Benefits include improved hip and thoracic spine mobility, core strength, shoulder stability, coordination, symmetry, balance, and proprioception, to name a few.

The TGU trains alignment similarly to the aforementioned carries, but the beauty of the TGU is that it utilizes what we call shoulder packing throughout the entire movement. This means that the proper positioning of both the scapula on the thoracic spine and humerus on the shoulder joint are maintained throughout the full movement – something often lost once we go overhead.

To better understand shoulder packing, you need to understand what should happen as our arm goes overhead. First, the scapula should rotate upwardly while maintaining its stable position against the thoracic spine. This happens by a force couple that exists between our upper and lower traps and serratus anterior.

If this force couple doesn’t occur properly, the scapula will disengage from the thoracic spine in order to still achieve the movement. Although the end result is that we achieve the overhead position this way, the problem is our rotator cuff muscles then can’t properly fire and work to stabilize our arm since the scapula has disengaged. This leads to an unstable shoulder and to our upper trap muscles compensating, meaning an increased risk of injury to not only the shoulder and upper extremities, but also the neck. Not to mention an improper movement pattern that can lead to compensations down the entire body.

The fact that the TGU forces this packed position is why it is such a fantastic exercise. It allows the necessary muscles to get stronger, while at the same time re-patterning the movements to ensure that muscles are firing in the proper sequence. All of this, along with the addition of some killer strength gains, means there is no question this exercise should be a regular part of your training.

The Dumbbell Push Press

The push press is possibly one of the most advantageous and underutilized shoulder stability exercises out there. Unfortunately, overhead presses often get a bad rap when it comes to shoulders; however, there are times when they are absolutely helpful in both strengthening and improving stability.

Why is the push press so amazing? In addition to it being an awesome exercise to increase your heart rate and strength, the best part about the push press is that you have to eccentrically control the weight from overhead – a weight that you couldn’t otherwise lift.

There are two phases of the press: the concentric and eccentric phase. In the concentric phase the muscles are shortening to produce a desired movement, while in the eccentric phase the muscle is under tension while lengthening in order to control the opposing movement.

Eccentric training actually has huge benefits for muscle growth, and is especially important when it comes to strengthening muscle tendons. In fact, eccentric training is key during rehabilitation of tendons after they have been injured and, even more importantly, this training can prevent these injuries from occurring in the first place.

Think about it. By using your legs to help you lift a heavier weight overhead, you then must control the weights as you lower them. When else would you get such great eccentric work if you couldn’t use your legs?

Barbell Glute Bridge

Lifestyle factors, such as sitting at a desk all day and driving long distances, mean that we are using our glutes and posterior chain less and less. Furthermore, we are constantly in a position of anterior flexion, causing our anterior musculature to become short and overactive and our posterior musculature to become lengthened and weak.

The kicker is that these posterior muscles, especially our glute muscles, are crucial for injury prevention and for hip movement and stability. This means we need to increase the strength of these muscles to ensure we maintain good stability and alignment. This is where the barbell glute bridge comes in – one of the best glute strengthening and activating exercises.

The best part about the glute bridge is that it not only strengthens, but also forces us to go into hip extension, a range of motion that is often lacking in many athletes. It is also easy to modify, as beginners can start with a basic bodyweight glute bridge, progressing to adding weight as they are able.

So, make sure to include the barbell glute bridge into your program. Not only will you activate and strengthen your glutes, but you will also look even better in those jeans of yours!

References:

1. Gray Cook, Lee Burton, and Dan John. Essentials of Coaching and Training Functional Continuums. Perform Better Functional Training Summit. Perform Better. Providence, Rhode Island, US. June 12, 2014.

2. J. Cowell, et al. “Eccentric muscle actions and how the strength and conditioning specialist might use them for a variety of purposes.” Strength and Conditioning Journal 34 (2012): 33-48.

3. R. Paine and M. Voight. “The role of the scapula.” International Journal of Sports Physical Therapy 8 (2013): 617-629.

Photo 1 courtesy of Shutterstock.

Photo 2 courtesy of Strength Education.

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