IOL Strength and Conditioning

We are poised at the foothills; looming before us are the staggering holiday mountains: Christmas and New Year’s. Though we’ve traversed the Thanksgiving Range with its mighty peaks, the December ascents remain a consuming and seductive challenge.

Peace and joy and good will claim our attention. Yet, I feel compelled to remind you of the subtle and pervasive pitfalls concealed before us.

It starts. You go to a small party… big deal! And eat a little more than usual—so? And drink a little. Eh!

Trixie brings homemade cookies to work and Biff brings his special eggnog. Good stuff and ‘ya can’t say no. Oops! You miss your classic midweek workout. And Friday—shoulders and arms—gives way to another party… Aunt Sue and Uncle Bob and the kids. Real good people, but they sure can pack it in.

A thin crack in your cool discipline appears. You gain weight, few pounds. Hmpff! Saturday your favorite morning workout is replaced with gift shopping and groceries for your Christmas party. Bring your own booze. Two am, as you clean up the party mess, you vaguely recall devouring a loaf of garlic bread and a bottle of vino with big Tony and big Angella. Those two should exercise.

“How quickly we gain weight,” you muse as you gingerly mount the scale on Monday morning before heading to work. You feel puffy and achy and grumpy. Not enough sleep these days. No way can you go to the gym feeling like a slug. Me llama es El Piggo. “Wednesday I’ll blast it,” you vow. The crack is now a gap and growing.

You eat and eat, forget the Wednesday blasting session and eat again. You feel guilty and fat—bad combination. Somebody from the gym asks where you’ve been and you tell him to mind his own business. Who does he think he is? The jerk! You’re a little high strung.

Now your pants don’t fit. Party, party, I love champagne. You hyperventilate. Who needs protein, pass the pie. Your sneakers don’t fit. What gym? Where?

You’ve contracted bulgebellious miserabeles. Your friends don’t recognize you. Your training gap has become the Grand Canyon. It has a life of its own like a slobbering alien from Krypton Three. Is this a hideous nightmare? Tell me I’m dreaming! How do I get outta here? Hellllppp meee!

Does this sound familiar, Bunky? Don’t let this happen to you.

Don’t miss your workouts. Cut them in half… and don’t eat too much. Cut it in half. Don’t let things get out of hand, 15-30 minutes in the gym 2-3 times a week is far, far better than saying “why bother.” These make all the difference in the world to keep you mentally and physically and emotionally together. They keep you connected, in control, toned, confident, strong, alert, disciplined, cute and charming. You’ll be so pleased with yourself, instead of displeased with yourself, a big dif.

You’ll smile instead of pretending to smile, you’ll laugh, you’ll love.

The gym is always a friendly diversion, and especially so around this peculiar time of the year. Let’s face it. December gets weird—the job, the markets, the malls, construction, shopping, shipping, receiving, the highways and byways. The gym with its mutually enthusiastic faces is a refuge, the only sane place in the nutty world. Peaceful, it’s your world—orderly, safe, stress free, productive, happy.

Don’t wander too far… don’t get lost.

There are been a number of visitors to the forum who show up with questions after reading the What is an Elevated Hip? post of a last year. The most common question isn’t as much what to do about it, it’s figuring out which side is out of normal alignment. Here are a couple of hints to help you sort things out.

What we loosely call an elevated hip is actually an asymmetry of the iliac crests, the top part of the pelvic bowl on one side is higher than the other. This results in a functional leg length discrepancy, and in the physical therapist texts is referred to as a hip joint lateral asymmetry or a lateral pelvic tilt. The top of the pelvis on the high side is flexing toward the spine; the hip socket is high, the pelvis is elevated and probably rotated forward toward the opposite side, and usually the spine will move in a convex arc, toward the opposite side.

This has a big affect on walking. There are three parts of gait representing movement in all three planes of motion, sagittal, frontal and transverse. Optimal gait involves an equal amount of each, and when parts are limited, we see other aspects taking over, creating a compensating gait. For example, picture Frankenstein for a dominant sagittal-plane walk, a runway model’s sway representing the frontal, or a John Wayne swagger as the transverse image.

With a lateral pelvic tilt, the hip joint isn’t able to move well. During walking the pelvis needs to move into posterior tilt during the stride forward; both sides need to move equally. Of course, this can’t happen if one is sluggish, somewhat stuck in an abnormal position.

The glute on that side won’t fire optimally with the pelvis out of neutral; the abductors are weak or not firing and are unable to stabilize the pelvis and move the leg. Instead, the QL lifts the leg around, creating a pelvic flexion toward the spine, rather than true transverse plane action.

This takes longer, meaning the normal-side foot will be on the ground longer as it waits for the elevated side to come around. You can see this if you sit at a mall coffee shop people-watching, and you can feel it in yourself if you find a quiet place where you can pay attention to your footsteps. In fact, attention to your foot pattern is a real good way to sniff out a hip problem.

The high-side hip is in adduction, and the normal side is in abduction. This generally means more weight rests on the outside of the high-side foot. When that happens, there will be less weight on the opposite foot, which will usually drop in, so the high-side foot will be supinated and the normal side foot will be pronated.

The tight areas are the outside hip area of the low side, and the side, glutes and low back area of the high side, including the QL, which will be tight from doing all the work during hip hitching. These you’ll foam roll or roll using a small myo ball.

The weaknesses will be primarily the abductor musculature of the high side. Working the abductors – the outside of the hip region – means fairly isolated work like side-lying leg raises, clamshells or some kind of propped donkey kicks, isolated so the lumbar area stays stable and the leg is only moving from the hip socket.

The psoas will probably need stretching, and the IT band will need rolling. The IT bands always need rolling.

There will probably also be a low shoulder on the side of the elevated pelvis — the length of the waist will be shorter on that side. Those of us who are novices at this will often go after correcting an obvious high shoulder, but it’s usually a factor of the opposite-side hip elevation and will correct itself when the hips level out.

With all our discussion of imbalances and movement patterns, we need to remember there are always exceptions to the rule. Some compensations are common to most people, but we can easily compensate in unique ways. Enforce a little caution on yourself; don’t just assume you’ve “got that” when you read about a functional problem that sort of matches your symptoms.

Test yourself, read a little more and test again. Otherwise, you’re likely to be stretching an area that needs strengthening or working an area that needs soft tissue therapy. You’ll have yourself tottering around in circles, and that’s almost as frustrating as being entirely clueless. Actually, it’s more frustrating.

 This is a guest blog post from our friend, “the sandbag guy,” Josh Henkin.

Why use something so primitive? It isn’t in an attempt to be hardcore or “a bad ass.” There is a lot of science behind what makes what was once an old-school training tool into a standard for the modern lifter.

Core Strength

I hate that term more than most, not because everyone is using it, but because of the misuse of the it. The core is more than the abs; it’s the hips and low back as well, and some argue it’s even hard to separate the lats from the equation. Because the sandbag is so awkward to lift, it incorporates more of the core muscles more than any other training method. We do this instinctively to help become more efficient at the movements as the muscles work synergistically to deal with the awkward sandbag.

Sandbag training allows lifters to better develop the core because every traditional lift becomes a core exercise with the sandbag. For example, squatting has always been known as a great way to strengthen the midsection. With the barbell you have three options: You can perform front, back or overhead squats, all fantastic drills. However, only the overhead squat is a situation where the load isn’t perfectly loaded on the body’s strongest leverage points. In sandbag training, one can use eight different holding positions to challenge the body’s core to maintain posture during the squatting motion.

For example, in shoulder squatting one holds the load on one side of the body. This provides similar axial loading as it challenges the body to resist lateral flexion and rotation. The lifter will also find one leg actually works harder, a great way to strengthen the posterior chain. Such exercises quickly expose weaknesses as “filling in the holes.”

The list is endless with variations of squatting, lunging, step-ups, get-ups and pressing. With any traditional lift, the sandbag can add a new twist to stimulate new muscular strength and growth.

Get Stronger

Most are familiar with the term “farm boy strength.” Most people have met that one guy who grew up on a farm and never lifted weights yet has this tremendous strength that seems to transfer to everything. What did this guy do? He lifted odd objects all the time and developed tremendous strength lifting in different positions with implements that didn’t have comfortable handles or well-distributed loads.

The benefits of odd-object hefting didn’t elude many old-time strongmen. In fact, they often used sandbags to build the incredible strength they demonstrated in a variety of acts or in wrestling matches. In one of the most landmark books in strength and conditioning, The Encyclopedia of Wrestling Conditioning, author John Jesse outlines the following:

“Sandbags over 100 pounds are awkward to handle and provide a true test of all-around strength, particularly in lifting them overhead or bringing them to the shoulder with one hand. Some of the old-time strongman wrestlers would shoulder a 180 to 220-pound sack of grain to the shoulder with one hand and then walk several hundred yards with the bag on their shoulders. A few were capable of pressing the same bag overhead with one hand after bringing it to the shoulder.”

Sandbags build ligament and tendon strength like few other tools can. They fill in the holes that most strength exercises miss because of limited movement and predictable patterns. Strength expert Brooks Kubik best stated why sandbags work so well:

“You feel sore as you do because the bags worked your body in ways you could not approach with a barbell alone. You got into the muscle areas you normally don’t work. You worked the heck out of the stabilizers.”

Bodybuilding and Sandbags

There was a time when there was no difference between being a strength athlete and a bodybuilder. Many methods and tools crossed the lines between these two arenas and one could be strong and muscular at the same time. Even some of today’s biggest bodybuilders have used odd objects in their training.

Renowned strength coach Charles Staley calls sandbags our “most uncooperative” training tool. A lifter can use a sandbag for everything from a clean and press to a biceps curl. Whatever the drill, the sandbag adds a new dimension from coordination to gripping strength. This seems to integrate more muscles than a standard barbell or dumbbell lift and can introduce a much-needed variation to many programs.

Recently a strength enthusiast named Anthony Sharah shared with me, “In the past I followed a bodybuilding routine. I could never get my upper body size to grow to match my lower body. There is no doubt that sandbag training recruits more muscle fibers, or that it is different than barbell training.”

So many bodybuilding routines try to hit muscles from different angles, hit different fibers, and try to integrate muscles in so many different ways. In truth, those striving for muscle growth may find sandbags to be a great compliment to their training program because few training methods and tools can stimulate more muscles in new ways than the sandbag.

Filling in the Holes

Let’s say you believe that sandbags have a place. How do you integrate them into your training program? There are host of different strategies.

• Alternate sets of your favorite classic lifts with a sandbag variation. For example, barbell squats alternated with Zercher or shoulder sandbag squats; deadlifts, alternated with rotational deadlifts, half moon snatches, or even shouldering. The list quickly becomes endless and fun!
• Finish off your sets with a sandbag finisher. Want a more complete physique? After your bench press series, perform one all-out effort of sandbag clean and presses.
• Every cycle, switch out a traditional barbell or dumbbell lift with a sandbag variation. Perform shoulder lunges instead of dumbbells, work bear hug instead of barbell good mornings; use shouldering instead of deadlifts, overhead chop instead of your kettlebell swing.

In the End

Sandbags are not a fad; there just has never been a system of implementing the work into a rational strength training program. My goal is to not simply reintroduce the lifting community to sandbags and their variations, but to the powerful impact these can have on a well-structured program. Random assignment of sandbag lifts is as useless as doing such with barbells, dumbbells or even kettlebells. Utilizing them with extremely focused intent and purpose makes them a tool no strength athlete should pass up!

In the arena of functional fitness and sports performance, Josh Henkin is a widely acclaimed innovator. He is the creator of the Ultimate Sandbag and Sandbag Fitness Systems. In addition, Josh lectures internationally at conferences, top fitness facilities, and elite sports performance programs. He can be reached via email at jsandbags@hotmail.com.