Pushup Progressions

The only thing that keeps my head from exploding seeing a butchered pushup is marveling at how many things things need to be in place before you even attempt one. The widely held belief that doing pressing movements in the supine position (bench pressing), helps you do a pushup, is somewhat misguided. Pushups require Olympic level shoulder, core, and hip stability. Do not assume that happens automatically. 

You have to earn your stability, and therefore, earn the right to pushups by learning how to create stability in the places your brain doesn't think to, or more precisely, forgot how to. Very few people can manage proper pushup position alone. To descend to the ground and come back up compensation free is amazingly difficult, but something you can definitely work up to if you understand how to regress this movement. 

Regressing means decreasing the load of your bodyweight until you find a way to do it compensation free and that doesn't mean modified on your knees. When you modify the pushup by doing them from your knees you cut out more than twenty five percent of your body weight. That's tantamount to removing an arm to complete a squat. 

This is why Grey Cook and other movement icons recommend finding the place where you can do the entire pushup compensation free and progress from there. And we already know how many times the brain needs to repeat a new pattern before it becomes a habit...fifteen hundred. 

Let me explain to you why so many men can do a bench press better than a pushup. 

What provides the majority of the stability in the bench press? 

The bench. 

What provides the stability in the pushup? 

Everything. 

Laying on your back, the brain won't see a need to fire the rotator cuff, it's reading nothing but stable green lights from the floor. Unless every effort is made to contract the rotator cuff muscles prior to descending into a press, they won't fire. Pec minor, bicep, and labral tears are common maladies among heavy pressers. Sounds ouchy.

Strength enthusiasts that can bench three times their body weight but can't produce a compensation free pushup make you wonder why simply flipping the movement over tends to make that pressing strength disappear.  

It's because strength unused is useless strength. 

If you can bench press four hundred and fifty pounds, does that mean you can push a four hundred and fifty pound block to the ground from standing position? Not a chance, because the core can't stabilize that amount of force. This is where the isolation principal fails. There's no doubt that the guy pressing tons of weight is strong. But how useful is that strength? Very, if he lies on his back lifting diesel engines off the ground all day. 

Generally speaking, most people struggle with this movement. The majority of compensations come from the hips, which have to stay in flexion to manage the weight being transferred to the spine. It has to do this because the core is unable to handle the load.  

Proper pushup position requires flexion be removed from both the hip and the knee. Another way to think of it is when in pushup position, contract the quads and glutes hard, creating stability and forcing the load into the core, where you want it. If you can't achieve this, the pushup needs to be regressed. Below are regressions you can make. 

When attempting your pushup, think of sling shot pulled tight. It promises to deliver a pellet hard and fast but won't unless the base of the slingshot is stable. Fire from an unstable base and you have no power or control and that pellet drops to your feet. None of this is unlike the pushup. Your body, from head to toe, needs to find all the stability it can before attempting to use the arms like the elastic of a sling shot. Any bend in the ankle, knee, hip, or spine, means the sling shot will fire from an unstable base. 

The value of this exercise exceeds any amount of time you might spend perfecting it. There's no reason that progressing this movement to the floor and beyond shouldn't be possible for anyone. But no one does a pushup without creating enough stability first. So use these to help keep my head from exploding, I may use it someday.

Beginning Regression

Progression 1

Progression 2

Progression 3

Flight to Nowhere?

I know what you were thinking the first time you saw one: "No idea what it does, and I want no part of it." It is a giant flight of stairs to nowhere. Oh, except it's also a massive weight loss tool. And it does it in twenty minutes! This isn't about VO2 MAX. I won't blather on about lactic acid, aerobic thresholds, max HR, or recovery rates. I'm gonna hand you a proven winner.

Divulge me briefly as I turn your attention away from common sense and cue you in on how this machine has never failed me when I wanted to drop weight. Never ever. This machine is straight up intensity. So first off, spend some time with it. Earn your stability. Get your brain used to managing this machine without holding on before doing the workout. Hold on to any cardio machine and you burn thirty percent less calories, and worse, it allows the brain to stare at a TV or an iPad.

Truth time: You're not a great multitasker. Your brain is under-stimulated. Include it in that cardio workout or loose it's greatest contribution to your life outside the gym, better motor control.

Rule 1: No Holding On.

Next, you have to find the level that breaks you. So when I say I want a 1 minute sprint, that's sixty seconds, no more, no less. Use the brain to add precision to your cardio. Watch that clock, anticipate the next sprint. Breath through your recovery time. Each progressive sprint builds on the last, especially during 1 Minute sprint day, because you only have 1 minute to recover. The thirty second and ten second sprints days have longer recovery times because they demand higher output.

Rule 2: Find the place that's breath challenging, not breath taking. Know your limits.

Lastly, before I reveal the cardio secret workout is to let you know the cardio secret. Most people increase cardio duration and ignore the elephant that promises the most bang for their buck:

Intensity.

I believe every minute over thirty increases your chance of an overuse injury. My opinion. I have way better results with my runners intent on participating in half marathons by cutting their distance runs and adding intensity runs to their training. Don't get stuck in the cardio trap of having to increase distance to kickstart results. Intensity gets you there quicker and with all the benefits you expect from cardiovascular work: Lower resting heart rate, lower blood pressure, increased vascularity and circulation, and best of all, fat loss without muscle loss.

Rule 3: Intensity over Duration.

Sprinter Vs. Marathoner
     Intensity Vs. Duration      

These are three separate workouts to be done on three separate days:

5 Minute warmup followed by intervals of one minute on a high level, one minute on a recovery level. (Make sure the recovery level is low. Truly recover. Keeping the level high during a proposed break is counterproductive to giving it your all during the high level minute).

Minute 6 to 7: Increase the intensity to a level that is challenging but you complete the minute relatively easy.

Minute 7 to 8: Decrease the level to your recovery speed. Level 4 or less.

Minute 8 to 9: Increase one level higher than first interval.

9 to 10: Decrease to recovery.

10 to 11: Increase two more levels than first interval.

11 to 12: Decrease to recovery.

12 to 13: Increase to three levels above first interval.

This is where you'll be looking for the level that breaks you. Under a minute and the level is too high.

Do a total of eight to ten intervals.

Workout Two: Decrease your interval times to thirty seconds work, one minute rest. These are fun because you can fly up those stairs and get decent amount of time to recover. Same set up as workout one. No more than ten sprints.

Workout Three: Decrease your interval times to ten seconds work, one minute rest. No more than twelve sprints. This is a fast day. Buckle up!

The Case of the Missing Internal Rotation

Math is like Boo to me, mention it and my back goes up, hair on end, incisors flared. The entirety of my scholastic career was spent trying to weather this very logical language of cause and effect:

A+B=C.

My C always had a remainder.

Always.

But statistics took what twelve years of grade school pounded in and said, "Hey Bry, A+B=C...maybe." You first have to prove that C couldn't happen by chance. Chance? WTF. Math is supposed to be so absolute, so refined.

Even better were confounding variables. If I remember correctly, they go something like this: Seventy percent of the people who had heart attacks last year chewed gum. Therefore, gum causes heart attacks. No. No. No.

When someone tells me 14% of this, or 90% of that, I feel sleepy, then I feel stabby.  

The take away from statistics for me was: Trust No One.

The only trustworthy statistic is one that is overwhelmingly significant, meaning it shows a difference between A and B so large, it's undeniable. The first thing any scientist will ask is how repeatable are those results across multiple populations. So when we discover that an overwhelming majority of people with lower back pain also tend to show deficiencies in hip internal rotation, we raise an eyebrow.

After learning this, I started looking. All my clients that presented a history of low back pain had trouble internally rotating at the hip. As a matter of fact, internal rotation tends to be lacking in most of my clients that don't test well in the FMS. And an overwhelming majority of my clients with past shoulder injury, or anyone who scores low on the shoulder mobility screen in the FMS, show a loss of internal rotation in the shoulder.

Where did all the internal rotation go?

In an attempt to prevent an extremity from damage caused by blunt trauma or cumulative faulty movement, the brain seeks to keep it within visual range. Think of why you're put in a sling after a rotator cuff injury. That sling puts you into shoulder internal rotation, right where the brain wants it. If not for the sling, you'd keep it there instinctively, and the brain would pain punch you if you attempted to move it.

To find out what really restricts a joint's range of motion, it needs to be assessed. Going through each individual joint action will expose any soft tissue dysfunction. It's important to make sure to get instant feedback from any intervention, understanding that only consistency restores new mobility and stability to a default setting. An intervention is considered successful when whatever is gained becomes the new normal, be it extensibility or contraction.

It's doubly important not to focus on today's workout as much as today's result. Restoring lost range of motion is smart, but restoration without stabilization paves the way to re-injury, because if you can't stabilize it, you shouldn't load it.

So test it, see if you can do tactical frog. Start in quadruped (all fours), on your elbows and get as much extensibility out of your adductors as you can, don't over do it. From there, slowly push your hips back, horizontally. Press your palms down into the floor so the core fires when you push deeper into hip flexion. Push back a little more each time to find the range of motion you can produce without compensation. Do not create range of motion you don't have. Any compensation means to get you where you want to go, the brain borrows mobility from other joints. This is not the recipe for stability and we cannot create stability without addressing mobility issues first.

And for shoulder internal rotation, try the sleeper stretch shown here: 

https://youtu.be/gtFsE7zMeoM

Statistics rarely garner my attention. But something that proves statistically significant, I'm all ears. Science can be as hard to trust as faith, especially when there are forces that seek to bend your opinion in a particular direction. Besides, anatomy and physiology are amazingly hard disciplines, which is why I try to educate clients on basic anatomy and encourage them to know as much as possible, like having a law degree before chatting with Saul Goodman. It helps you determine if the person you entrust with your health is doing right by you. I absolutely love it when clients ask questions, and love it even more when they challenge me. Nothing is more satisfying than figuring out movement issues with a captive client. It makes me feel like this kid...

Eight Pound Life

Think about the rest of your life. Literally think about how many days you have left. I'm hoping you have to squint so see that far down the timeline. With the time you have left I want to ask you one question:

How much weight can you pick up if your life depended on it?

Put aside the rumors that if necessary, you could lift a car off a loved one because adrenaline would give you Hulk strength. This is nonsense, the best most of us could do in that situation is yell louder at the 911 operator.

I just want to get you thinking about your programming the same way you look at your 401k. The money you're hopefully socking away helps, but what body you bring to retirement will determine how you spend it, no?

Antiquated movements or movements unattached to a plan do more harm than good. Everything done in the gym needs to contribute to life outside it. If it doesn't, don't go. A well thought out program includes planned progressions. Every workout is a stimulus that the body adapts to, so the next time we do it, we do it better. An exercise that doesn't lend itself to be progressed in more than weight or intensity doesn't make sense. Unless it makes your arms look better, then do it.

Any and all exercises can be justified if you answer one simple question: What will I do better in a month after doing this exercise?  If the answer is that exercise, the net gain for improved life functioning is zero. A harsher reality is that if you have a history of re-injury, your exercise program might be at fault.

Chain gyms and run of the mill training certifications forgot the best part of fitness: Everyone brings a unique body with a unique set of movement patterns and compensations to the table. Cookie cutter workouts and machine circuits are too one size fits all. In our attempt to make fitness quick and foolproof, we lost the real message:

Exercise is supposed to enhance, not hurt. Too much intensity breeds poor form, lack of intensity breeds ambivalence. Do it or don't, just don't waste your time in the middle. Remember to simplify things whenever you can. Muscles are either bigger, smaller, or the same size. So keep what you have, lose it, or make more, those are the choices. We know that losing muscle is a bad idea; it slows the metabolism, makes you weaker, and you have less energy. Maintaining is fine, IF you look exactly the way you want...anyone...anyone...Bueller....

So when I ask you how much weight you can lift I mean how much weight does life present you with? If you regularly need to pick something up, but can't, your training doesn't mimic your life. Can you lift one side of your couch? From the floor, on your back, can you stand? How long does it take?

If you only train with eight pound weights you can only expect an eight pound life from your muscles. Hopefully, everything you encounter in your day is eight pounds or less. By the way, a shovel full of anything is at least twenty pounds, so unless your weather forecast is sunny and eighty, three hundred and sixty four days a year, you'll encounter inclement weather, and eight pound weights don't get you ready to dodge eight pound hail.

Exercise that mimics life is a program that adopts movements you might need to access while pumping gas, mopping the floor, or chasing a curiously quick two year old. Mothers, how many bends and twists do you make in a day, with a kid in your arms? Respect.

Single plane movements on a machine or in front of a mirror with eight pound weights are a waste of time because you don't live an eight pound life. Exercise is prep for the: THIS IS NOT A DRILL moments I hope you never encounter.

But if you do...ain't it nice to be ready?

Training with Blades

The rising incidence of upper cross syndrome (shown below) proves our daily lives are affecting our ability to keep poor posture at bay.  The importance of shoulder blade stability as it relates to shoulder joint mobility cannot be understated. 

Too often, a single sided solution is applied to a double edged problem. The inhibited muscles in the pic above means that even if called into action, these muscles can't actually achieve contraction until the tight areas release. Focusing on the inhibited muscles only won't work. The program necessary to fix the problem includes releasing what's tight, getting extensibility out of it, then contracting what's inhibited. 

Understanding the shoulder doesn't have to be daunting. Mechanically, the shoulder joint is almost the same thing as the hip joint. But the two diagrams below point out a glaring difference; the shoulders are not ball and socket joints like the hips:


                          

There is no real shoulder socket like in the hip joint, making the hip better suited for supporting our bodyweight.

But was evolution so haphazard as to leave the shoulder hanging, so to speak?

Hardly. 

It made up for the lack of ball and socket stability by creating the rotator cuff muscles. From now on, recognize the shoulder as two separate structures, the shoulder blade and the shoulder joint. The shoulder blade, or scapula, provides stability for the shoulder joint to move properly. It's important to make the distinction between these two joints because problems arise when the blade becomes too mobile, forcing the joint to become too stable, a lethal combination.   

                      

If you look at muscle fiber direction only, you see that when the rotator cuff contracts, it pulls the scapula inward toward the midline of the body. If you imagine you have two saturated sponges under each armpit and try to squeeze the water out, the rotator cuff fires.  

Clients seeking better postural control need to know how to contract the rotator cuff muscles so the brain feels secure enough to move at the shoulder joint. Supraspinatus, Infraspinatus, Teres Minor, and Subscapularis, all live on the scapula and make up the SITS acronym used to remember these important stabilizers. The supraspinatus stabilizes the shoulder during abduction, the infraspinatus and teres minor stabilize by externally rotating the shoulder, and the subscapularis internally rotates the shoulder. 

It's important to note that the trapezius muscles can be of help or hinderance when attempting to improve shoulder function. Again, looking at fiber direction only, the traps pull the scapula in several directions. A preponderance of clients present overdeveloped upper traps that force the brain to downplay the roll of the middle and lower traps. Both are important to shoulder stability since the middles traps retract the blades while the lower traps depress them, muscles I find clients have a hard time engaging. 

Other important contributors to shoulder stability are the serratus anterior, most often the culprit in winged shoulder blades, the lower traps, important for combating upper trap dominance, the levator scapulae, probably more to blame for pulling the scapular upward than the upper traps, and the rhomboids, which retract the blade. (I find the brain only uses the rhomboids when the load is significant, suggesting that picking up and holding heavy things greatly benefit those seeking stronger shoulder stability). 

Lastly, grip strength ties it all together because the grip tells the brain exactly how serious to take what you're holding. The brain couldn't care less about what you hold loosely. Grip tightly, and the brain takes the contents of your hand very seriously. Every exercise done with a crushing grip allows the brain to respond by creating more shoulder blade stability.

The video below shows you which moves to master before loading the shoulder. Mobility can be dangerous without the means to stabilize it. Precision in upper body movements depends on the stability of the blades.

https://youtu.be/eAS_OAqRtNk

Remember, pain is indicative of a deeper issue and should be screened by a professional right away.

What I'm Supposed To Do

Some people emerge from childhood with concrete life messages. Others struggle. It's fair to say my mother's alcoholism and tortured soul caused us to struggle. 

After wrestling our own demons, Mom and I engaged in healing dialog. 

Tough questions were asked and answered. 

We cried. 

Then laughed.

She at her joke, me at her uncanny ability to use humor as a band aid. 

I find sarcasm better suited to my needs.

But if you live by the sword, you die by it. 

Mom's sword was an Eve Light 120. Cigarettes so long, she kept the lighter set to blow torch.  Memories jettison back to childhood the second I smell any phase of a smoked silo, beginning, middle, or end. 

 

In her last months, post lung cancer diagnosis, she wrote a diary to each of us.  

She begged my brother not to be reckless and angry. 

My sister's oozed guilt, since mom's drinking affected her most. 

Mine beckoned me to continue journeying toward self discovery. 

After hiking Mt. Elbert, I know that if my mother had the physical capacity, she'd have climbed there herself. 

When my mind spins chaotic, or I lose my way, I remember the mom I knew post childhood, who laughed with complete abandon, who camped, hiked, hugged trees, and kept ducks in the back yard.   

I know the best way to honor her is to achieve what she couldn't. 

Confronting my demons is the only way to put them to rest, 

or let them know I'll go down only after the fight.       

Isolation Vs Integration

This title reminds me of Intimacy vs. Isolation, an Erik Erikson stage of psychosocial development not far removed from today's topic. Successful completion of this psychological stage leads to comfortable relationships and a sense of commitment, safety, and care within relationships. 

I'll start by saying that isolation training made perfect sense to me early on. My passion for fitness grew during a decade that cherished muscle cars that weren't hard to strip down and build back up stronger. This mentality led us to gyms that gleamed with machines that isolated muscles, believing the ideology that muscles made stronger in isolation worked better in concert. This, unfortunately, does not work. The decade left us with internally rotated shoulders, crappy knees, and broken hips. We essentially squatted and pressed our way into the Orthopedist's office.

Now, I believe it more beneficial to get the whole body moving. When that's not possible, isolation movements work, so they're not quite the antithesis of whole body movements. Whole body movements have flaws too. These movements need to make sense. I'm pointing at exercises like the single leg on an inverted Bosu curl into press. This exercise is excellent, if you clean windows, on one foot, on the bow of a ship sailing an angry sea, for a living. Whew, sometimes the sarcasm just flows.

I believe isolation training has a place in programs where significant muscular imbalances are found during assessment. But loading a weak muscle with sets on a machine doesn't help reintegrate it back into the collective. If a muscle is weak and underworked, there'a another problem right next door. That muscle's polar opposite is likely to be overworked. Strength interventions are only as valuable as the intervention for the overworked side. Think of a rely race runner that never lets go of the baton. Now you're dragging a runner. Moving this way is extremely inefficient and the brain won't have it, so it shuts it down.

Standing on an unstable surface, like an inverted Bosu, doesn't increase your ability to balance because the ankle is a mobile joint. Every time you destabilize it, the brain snaps into panic mode. If you train in panic, you get panic when an unstable surface out in the world threatens to topple you.

It also doesn't make much sense to isolate muscles like the hamstrings or inner and outer thighs since they're best at stabilizing. Not to mention, the brain checks out as soon as you sit on a machine because there's no threat to stabilization when you're on your butt. Every attempt to strengthen a muscle better suited for stabilization is counterintuitive. Moving the glutes through a hip hinge, as in a single leg deadlift, is a better way to get the hamstrings working correctly. A side lunge engages the inner and outer thigh muscles better than any machine.

Dr. Erikson observed that psychological isolation leads to a lack of intimacy and depression, the exact face I read on every person doing sets on a machine. Don't discount the fact that moving around and being a geek is what life is all about. When's the last time you swung on a swing? I try for once a week, because nothing in this world tickles my core like the height of a pendulum.

So get out, move, do a cartwheel. Allow the body to feel what it's like to integrate all it's musculature into one movement. Because if three sets of ten on a machine made these things better, you'd never get near it. I'd be on it.