Dear Fellow Fitness Professional,
Do you have any idea how important it is to locate and correct weakness? As a certified fitness professional it is your duty. I want to show you why you need to hone this skill if you want to be successful in the fitness industry.
When most people think of a professional athlete, they envision a heavenly combination of physical ability mixed with a near perfect gene pool.
I am here to tell you that NOTHING could be further from the truth.
In fact most athletes are merely amazing compensators that have practiced their skill over and over again until it becomes an innate ability.
The truth is that most PROFESSIONAL athletes have more muscle weakness, more scapular deficiencies and true core weakness than the average soccer mom.
I have had extensive experience with both.
The difference lies in the amount of practice and coaching the athlete receives.
Some of you may think I am crazy.
If so why did this professional athlete below present with so much weakness?
Surely his trainers prepared him well for the sport of Professional Baseball…
I must be crazy to make a bold and cocky statement like this right?
WRONG!!!!
I speak the truth…PERIOD
Am I tooting my own horn? No I am absolutely not doing that.
I am simply trying to show you that unless the trainers correct the weaknesses present in this athlete, they will not tap his FULL potential as a pitcher.
The Pittsburgh Pirates must understand that a chain will only be as strong as its weakest link.
Sooner or later Daniel would have broken down…I will explain in the next post
If you don’t correct the weaknesses in YOUR clients, you will not tap their full potential.
You must understand that unless you identify and fix those weak links that kinetic chain will always break and will NEVER carry a true load.
In this video watch Daniel as he performs my “Wheel Of Death Test”.
Watch the weakness that is uncovered.
After you devour this information please leave your analysis in the comments section.
Feel free to hurt my feelings. I don’t mind.
I want to know if you guys can spot weakness. Trust your intuition. Nobody here will make fun of you or tell you that you’re wrong. I just want you to open your imagination and connect with your creative and investigative mind.
Decipher this riddle and leave your feedback.
The next post will contain my analysis of what the heck is going on here.
You will learn a lot in the next week. You will learn from yourself and you will learn from me as well.
God Bless,
B
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23 Responses to “Correcting Scapular Weakness In Pro Athletes And Average Joe’s”
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What I want you to do is watch this video and tell me if you can see what is going on in Daniel’s body. What specific weaknesses does he have?
What specific exercises does he need?
No answer is right or wrong!
I just want to see how you are thinking
I want you to open your mind!
over active hipflexors, psoas, lack of transverse abdominal and rectus abdominals. Weak glutes and tight hamstrings also. As NASM would put it “Lowercross deviations”
Prone iso planks for time to build up his endurance in his TVA. Swiss ball crunches for rectus abdominal streght. Supine swiss ball hip bridges to get better glute strength. Also a set of prone plank pushups could help as a start for something a little more dynamic. 80% focus on some corrective flexability in his calfs, hams, psoas-hipflexors, and Lats
I think he was demonstrating a lumbar weakness during the prone crawls, and a low muscular endurance. There was a definite improvement in the second clip.
This brought back some memories when we would use a wheel of death for our swim team in 1980. Well, it
was a 2×4 with wheels and carpet but same idea. I see some shoulder, back, and ab weakness but some
strong glutes and weak hams. Get those shoulders dialed and keep those rotators strong and great
negatives on the ham sets.
Serratus anterior weakness? Couldn’t keep his scaps down in the first clip.
Brian, I saw weakness in his lumbar region..too much anterior pelvic tilt while walking on his hands. I saw too much scapular retraction while walking on hands
Weak TVA, weak glute firing, tight hip flexors and biceps femoris. Bad upper body stability. All the exercises increased rom, strengh, and mobility of weak areas. He should win some games and have a longer career.
During the wheel crawl he relied 90% on his arms to do the work. Weakness in the lumbar area of his back (droopy). He had to use momemtum just to sit up the first time and at the end when he had to turn back over. He seems to lack strength mostly in the t.a., as well as his rectus ab. Hip flexor weakness. The exercises chosen will help build explosive strength and leg strength, that will help improve his game on the pitchers mound and at bat. His pitching strength should now come from from stronger shoulders, back and abs, not just his arm. His balance, endurance and coordination should improve, not to mention, less chance of injury.
Weak in lumbar paraspinals, rectus and obliques. Poor use of UEs due to weakness or at least inability to maintain tension in lats,scapular retractors and stabilizers and serratus by holding arms out to the side too far during those wheel crawls.
I think he has a combination of upper and lower body cross syndrome, so tight pectorals, weak upper back shoulders and lower back, tight hip flexors, weak TVA, weak gluteus and hamstrings, he compensates by overusing his arms, pectorals, hip flexors and upper abs, maybe stretching his hip flexors could help him to activate his TVA muscles, but maybe won’t be enough as he probably does not know how to activate these muscles properly and he needs to be taught how to feel and activate these muscles again, as they can become inhibited by other stronger muscles as themhip flexors or upper abdominals.
As a result of all this his posture must be bad, so he would need corrective postural exercises, stretching the tight muscles and strengthen the weak ones with the type of exercises you are prescribing him to do as they will target all these areas very effectively.
Weak lower adominal strength and hipflexors. Muscle imbalance in his legs. Quads are over powering his weak hamstrings. I took a class with Greg Cook which, address muscle imbalances and weaknesses and how to correct them. Is your spider training similar?
Weak Lumbar, glutes, adducters and abducters and hip flexors.Weak tva.Possible imbalance on non-pitching side.
Exercises will help re-address imbalances and instability in muscles and joints created through repetitions of throwing forward on same side.Will strengthen the areas used in decellerating following pitch.
To borrow Mark Verstegen’s terminology, he lacks “pillar strength.” He’s unable to stabilize the scapulae under dynamic conditions, he’s not keeping his glutes tight, and what’s in the middle? The “core”…which isn’t working effectively either. There’s obvious sagging of the low back. Like most athletes, he has an anteriorly-tilted pelvis.
In the gym clips, you can tell he’s improved! His body is more balanced-out and he’s able to keep everything “set” during the exercises.
Being a pitcher his anterior chain will defintely be over used. His Tranvesre absominal muscle is weak noted by the droop in the lower back. Glutes need work, he couldnt even get his glutes in the air on the wheel of death. The obliques are dominant on one side as well.
I would say…triceps, deltoids, rectus abdominals, quads, and glutes
Hey B…I see a lot going on with Daniel. I don’t have nearly the experience you do, but I will give it a shot.
First, I see serratus anterior, latissimus dorsi, tricep, lower traps and subscapularis weakness. These can be strengthened by practicing perfect form pushups and small movement exercises such as
scapula protraction/retraction and elevation/depression.
I also see Daniel using his quads and hip flexors to perform a lot of the core exercises, which of course indicates core weakness, especially the TVA and the multifidus.
Because he is quad dominant (from running/speed work), he presents with weak hamstrings as indicated during the pull-ins. And because he is in sagittal plane movement most of the time, he also shows weakness in his glute medius and minimus as well as ITB tightness.
Can’t wait til you post “the answers”!
The way you are educating us is phenomenal…real cases, video and feedback; fun and informative!
Keep it up, Brian…you are a true gem.
xo,
blondgrl
Brian,
everyone has mentioned the over active psoas (which is why there is short range of motion with hip movement and lumbar flexion) and lack of strength endurance in the abdominals, low back, gluteal amnesia.
There is also middle, lower trap weakness as Daniel starts shrugging and compensating with his upper traps while moving on the wheel.
Fix the week links so that the body works better as a whole (good approach by the way).
I’m interested whether you do any heavier compound movements with Daniel? I am training quite a few baseball players and I would like to see how you plan a training phase out (I know it depends on the athlete but you though process).
Luka Hocevar
http://www.hocevarperformance.com
I’m actually seeing weakness in the shoulders, trapezius, and latts. He’s using all hipflexor and what core strength he has to crawl. Also, no muscle endurance–He’s probably used to speed training, as noted above.
Yes, he definitely has a weak core. His back sank alot during the exercises. But one thing I did see was a weak mind. He did not connect mind with muscle. I think he gave up too quickly and he did not focus on the task at hand – especially during the wheel test. Just my opinion!
Okay–lets go! No amount of exercise, of any style or type will strengthen a muscle that is “turned off”. Pathologically shortened muscles due to poor posture, overtraining agonist and ignoring antagonist, or simply the fact that we live in the 3 sqaure feet in front of us our entire lives create this dysfunctional dynamic that will be perpetuated until something breaks…lets hope its not a tendon!! So in order to allow the targeted “weak” muscles to fire properly we first need to inhibit the antagonist via deep tissue methods and myofascial release using foam rollers and medicine balls.. to really get at it! Next..strengthen the target muscles FUNctionally and with PERFECT technique, moving from small, controlled movements gradually increasing ROM, stability of surface, and resistance and dynamics to sport specific demands. RELEASE restrictions, RESTORE strength (small and controlled to grand yet still controlled) then REALLY kick butt!
Brian you are a KILLER!!!
Where one dysfunction in the chain occurs the entire system is comprimised.
Daniel looks as though he is plagued with tightness in and around his lumbo pelvic hip complex. His adductors are super tight as evidenced during the curl ups which suggests his glute medius/minimus complex is under-active and weak. This compensation pattern then means those adductors of his have become synergistically dominant and they are not the primary movers for the type of exercise you used. Loved the exercises you chose to address and correct this. The 1-legged king squat and well as jumping lunges really will work to strengthen this weakness on him. With flexibility work, SMFR, and retraining/strengthening his glutes, the compensation in his adductors should lessen and take away his potential for groin pulls, potential knee injury (at least reduced soreness he may feel on the lateral knee) among other potential injuries if left as is. I am sure he has issues with his IT band as well.
As he is ‘muscling’ the work with his upper body which is strong, one of his weak areas are his TVAs, shortened psoas, shortened erector spinae in the lumbar region and over-active QL’s (he was really relying on ’swinging’ at the hips on the wheel pull.
Also looking at his hand movements on the hand walk part of that movement; his hands and wrist are overtly internally rotated which in turn following up the chain cause overt internal rotation of the shoulder complex. I think part of the reason he fatigued so quickly is because external shoulder rotation has become very difficult for him. Also, he clearly has overdeveloped anterior delts which are causing his rhomboids are lengthened. His upper traps and lats are weak as are rear delts and also both scapulas look as though they are elevated more than they should be (suggesting weak scapula stabilizers). Doing the kettle bell walking pushes/crab walk, specifically targets this problem but working to put the rear dealt, lats and upper trap into a lengthened state while strengthening all at once. Great idea – thanks!!
Crab walk also forces Daniel is strengthen his wrist flexors which most likely have become tight as a result of throwing pitch after pitch.
His neuromuscular system is comprimised and so over time his muscles simply stopped being utilized and recruited properly. His body isn’t working as efficiently as it could be. It was so interesting to see how quickly his total body fatigued. My guess is that he does a mean bench press and even probably does pretty well when asked to do pushups however when asked to move dynamically where he is taken out of those comfortable static movements he’s used to…we see the result. Total body muscular fatigue!
Looks like he also has a little bit of an anterior pelvic tilt action going on which suggests his psoas is tight and stabilization system of the core (tva’s, internal obliques, pelvic floor muscles) are weak. Explains his difficulty with the bridge and why his hamstrings fatigued so quick (they’re weak…along with his glutes.) Extension is difficult for him and also wouldn’t be surprised if he is prone to hamstring strains/pulls and lower back pain (tight QL’s).
Thanks Heather!
New stuff coming soon
Do you have a website?
God Bless,
B