Therapist John Gibbons has highlighted that not all hip extension is created equally.When lying on a table, and extending the hip, an athlete should have a pattern of
- Glute fires
- Same side hamstring fires
- Opposite site quadratus lumborum fires.
#1 and #2 can happen at the same time, but definitely NOT hamstring before glute.You can see how Gibbons tests this in the video below.
Many athletes do not recruit hip extension according to this pattern.The crazy thing is that often times,too much heavy barbell work can actually make this pattern dominated by the hamstrings and back (because of the need to brace a barbell), rather than “glute first”.
In fact, probablythe mostoff-timed pattern I’ve seen was in a very high level CrossFitathlete, who had a great standing vertical jump, but couldn’t get any higher with any approach (due to quad and spine dominated movement, powerful, but slow).If you can’ttimethe glutes properly, it’s hard to convert momentum into upward movement with much efficiency!
In theJust Fly Performance Podcast,French researcher JB Morin talks about how Olympic weightliters are incredibly fast over a short distance, say 20 yards, but after this, they start to slow down significantly,because they can no longer apply horizontal force to the ground effectively; all power is being used up to supply the vertical force requirements.Fast athletes over 30, 40 and 50 meters can apply horizontal force to the ground at faster speeds.I strongly believe that much of this is due to the patterning of the way the body recruits the glutes, hamstrings and quadratus lumborum sequentially for speed.
When I asked Boo Shexnayder, educator to the NCAA track and field coach contingent, about building glutes for athleticism, he actually favors the effect that good therapy can have on getting glutes active, andthendoing the standard battery of weight room movements, jumps and sprints, rather than trying to overly specialize on glutes in the weightroom.
Bottom line, is that no matter what else you do, baseline patterning and recruitment is the highest priority for athletic glute development.When a muscle is firing hard to drive movement, it gets big.
How do you improve the quality of firing patterns if you don’t have a therapist?There are plenty of therapy tools and substitutions available, but ultimately, I have benefitted the most from learning the work of Douglas Heel through “Be Activated”, and applying this to everyday training.
I feel that the world of breath and breathing training has a lot to offer, as well as low-intensity isometric exercises in cases of a shoestring budget.Simply doing strong diaphragmatic breathing during routine sets of squats and deadlifts helps to get more glute and hip flexor activity in the movement through fascial links of the diaphragm.
I say all this not to downplay strength training at all, but merely to keep everything in perspective.Like the quote goes in the movie “The Big Short”, “Truth is like poetry, and most people f#$^% hate poetry”.
