Injury Prevention (Part 1) Educate Yourself - By radical_P

The best way to handle an injury is to prevent it from happening in the first place. Once the injury happens it is to late. It doesn’t matter that you may not have warmed up properly or you may even not have had enough rest. At this point in time you are injured. Now you have to take time off and do a series of things to rehab yourself back. But what if you could have avoided all of this with a little knowledge. In this article I am going to help you to understand function and hopefully when all this series is over you will be armed with enough knowledge to take yourself to the next level.

Lets look at the difference between closed chain exercises and open chain exercises. Closed chain exercises are exercises that involve ground reaction forces that cause spinal loading. Where open chain exercises do not. Closed chain would be like a squat and open chain would be like a bench press.

A key principle that underlies functional total body integration is performing exercises in the standing position, (closed chain) which creates a real life gravitational response that excites the nervous system and stimulates proprioceptive feedback from the ground up. Total body integration must include participation from the hips, thighs, core, and upper extremities. All efficient movement must take place against the background of a strong and stable core. If we are to create functional strength carryover to life’s activities, we must follow another key principle regarding the human movement system:
To produce effective powerful movement patterns, we must load the system prior to unloading, decelerate before accelerating, perform eccentric contractions prior to concentric contractions, and create kinetic chain pronation before supination.

These principles are clearly demonstrated in sporting activities. If we want to jump higher, we must flex the hip, knee, and ankle by performing a partial squat prior to the jump. This storing of elastic energy or pre-loading allows us to jump higher. To test this theory, we would simply see how high we could jump without a pre-loading or jumping with the legs kept straight. Then, we would perform a 1/2 squat prior to the jump. The later quite clearly produces a higher jump. If we want to throw farther or harder, we must follow a sequence of pre-loading movements to produce a smooth powerful release. If you’ve ever watched someone try to throw a ball with their feet together without prior hip flexion, trunk-hip rotation, accompanied by shoulder extension, it looks like they’re throwing a dart at a board. Proper pre-loading mechanics are essential, but the missing link is often a lack of core strength and dynamic spinal stabilization.

Many traditional exercises that are directed at improving core strength and spinal stabilization strength are often very static and performed in prone (face up) or supine (face down) positions. The lying positions fail to teach our movement system to react to gravity, momentum, and ground reaction forces in a three dimensional environment. Obviously the floor-based movements do not load and integrate the hip complex or lower extremities to function in a life-like manner. The feet are not in contact with the ground, and therefore do not create the foundation for correct biomechanical sequences that transfer to real life. If the goal is to improve functional core strength and dynamic spinal stabilization, we must train the core in a total body manner. Adopting this methodology will result in improved balance, posture, integrated hip-leg strength, integrated upper extremity strength, and a stable core.

radical_P - Copyright 2003 BeyondMass.com