….what has been in print for over 20 years…

The sport specific technique session was coming to a close when I heard my fellow coach refer to a prior knee injury in one of the athlete.   Let’s call that athlete Billy.

Intrigued, at the conclusion of the session I asked the young athlete:

IK: What was the knee injury?

Billy: I had meniscus surgery on my left knee.

IK: Let me ask, were you doing off-field training at that time? Strength and conditioning?

Billy: Yes.

IK: Mmmm…And what age were you when this happened?

Billy: 15.

IK: Mmmm….

So I decided to provide some general guidance in the hope of helping to reduce the damage that was already done.

IK: So you need to keep away from strength training.

Now I know what you are thinking – Ian, does that mean you have changed your mind, that strength training is no longer important and relevant to sport. No, that’s not the case. But what I have got to realize from four decades of professional observation is that what most athletes are doing is damaging and most would be better off doing nothing. Especially those whose positions really don’t require high levels of size and strength, and especially those with prior joint injuries where (in my opinion) the injuries were caused or contributed to be the flawed off-field training).

Billy: Oh. I am doing a fair bit of strength training now.

IK: How much?

Billy: 4 days a week.

IK: Mmmm…Okay the next step would be to minimize your exposure to quad dominant exercises.

In the 1980s I saw first hand the phenomenon that physical therapists were calling ‘quad dominance’, and spend the next decade creating and refining a systems to categorize exercise, to help myself and any others who wanted to use the concept to avoid the damage caused by quad dominance. I called this concept ‘Lines of Movement’. [1]

So we’ve got many ‘professionals’ who can talk the talk – can word drop terms like ‘quad dominant’ and ‘posterior chain’ [2] – but have got no clue how, why or where it should be applied.

IK: You know, squats, lunges etc.

The look on Billy’s face told me all I needed to know.

IK: Okay, where did you get your program from.

The answer confirmed my fears.

IK: Let me see if I can help you. Show me the program and I will tell you the changes to make.

Billy showed me the program. Two days out of four were leg days. Nothing unusual there. And five out of the seven (5/7) exercises in each of those days were…..quad dominant exercises. The usual suspects – squats, lunges, step ups etc.

The boy was dead man walking. He had a challenged future in sport by virtue of what he was led to believe was ‘the right thing’ in his off-field training.

The only exception to this rule is those athletes with genetically gifted with load tolerant connective tissue.The kind that rise to the top in say US pro sport, from a base of millions. The eastern European philosophy – throw a lot of eggs at the wall, the ones that don’t crack – they will be the champions.

IK: Billy, there is possibly that for now you should do NO quad dominant exercise, at least for a few months.   The goal is to ideally reverse the imbalance the quad dominance you have created from years of imbalanced strength programs. Now you can move to a ratio of say 3:1 hip dominant to quad, etc. etc.7

Billy: What are some hip dominant exercises?

IK: Deadlifts, deadlift variations, Olympic lifts, Olympic lift variations etc etc. Single leg exercises where the trunk stays over (not that windmill bastardization of my single leg stiff legged deadlift though!

And then I left Billy to ponder the gap between what he had been led to believe was going to make him a better sports person, and those challenging thoughts provided by Coach King!

It’s always tough to walk away from an athlete left possibly to drown from incompetent advice. However I do my best to provide athlete and coach education. The challenge is the swell or rubbish education, at both professional, academic, and lay person level rises faster…..

Ah, the pro’s and con’s of the information age….

If only they athletes knew what damage they were doing to themselves in the way they trust those so-called experts and those in positions of authority.

——

[1] Now despite (or because) this concept has been published more times by others in the absence of any connection to the source than by myself, one would have expected the message would have sunk in. But it hasn’t. Probably because those who published it didn’t really appreciate, value and understand the concept in the first place.

[2] Not the original title ‘Lines of movement’, because this was about the only thing the plagiarist’s changed!