Great Lakes S &C Conference

[Bill Hartman]

I just got back from speaking at the 1st Great Lakes Strength and Conditioning Conference held at Concordia College in Wisconsin. After 10 hours of driving through some incredible mid-western storms, my ass-cheeks are finally starting to separate, and I thought you’d be slightly interested in what went on.

A little backround…

One of my best buddies, Scott “Huddy” Hudson, former ATC on the pro tennis tour, is an instructor in the athletic training department up there asked if I’d come up and speak for cheap so I went. It turns out there would be another former co-worker of mine, Darrell Barnes, who works for a competing hospital-based sports training center here in Indy, so it seemed like a good thing to do.

Got up there at 10 pm and ended up talking about the intricacies of sports training with Huddy and Darrell for about 4 hours. Woke at 6 am and headed off to the college…the audience was ACE personal trainers (yes, I laughed as well), ATC’s, Strength Coaches, and PT’s.

Darrell Barnes spoke first (the other speaker at this same time was talking about Hi-carb/Lo-carb diets…I think 6 or 7 people listened to her talk) on “functional” strength training. He did do a good job overall, and actually included some info that we discussed the night before which contradicted his prior beliefs in regard to stretching methods and abdominal conditioning. I thought it was interesting that they (the “Functional Fitness” gang) somehow made some machine exercises (like leg press) “functional” by including abdominal bracing and proper scapular positioning (HUH?). Oh, lot’s of rubber band work, balance gadgets, and 3-D stuff (mostly water, sand, and maybe a couple of pebbles –that’s for Alwyn and Dos). The personal trainers ate this presentation up…seems no one teaches scapular stability and how to warm-up to personal trainers.

The next speakers were from Marquette University (I don’t have my notes with me) and they presented results from the NBA Strength Coaches Poll which basically examined what their programs consisted of. It was either this or Speed training gadgets…I went with the Marquette guys.

Consistencies throughout included Oly lifts, Plyos, and static/PNF stretching for over 90% of the NBA programs. The big complaints with the NBA strength coaches was a lack of control over the players programs in the off-season. Hmmm…maybe if the pay them to show up? It turns out the main reason they don’t show up is because these guys hire their own trainers.

Bill (one of the Marquette guys) also mentioned some of his lab research in regard to ground reaction forces for loaded explosive movements like oly lifts and jump squats. What they found was that the GRF were actually lower with the loaded movements, because it limited their ability to jump higher and increase GRF.

(Side note: after my presentation Bill’s research partner came up to me and wanted to send me some newer research on neural drive (I mentioned it during my presentation) that they are examining in their lab to get my opinion, which I thought was cool…I’ll keep you posted if he sends it).

Key note speech was on ACL rehab…nothing Earth –shattering here. Talked about hormonal and Q_angle influences, Quad to Hammie ratios, Quad vs. Hamstring dominance, mostly from the female perspective. The speaker works in a large clinical group in Chicago and mentioned that word on ACL injuries in females being more numerous than males isn’t so from their perspective as males still outnumber the females by quite a few.

(Side note: Dr. Shelbourne from here in Indy states that all of the above doesn’t matter in regard to predisposing athletes to ACL injuries. He states that it’s the actual size of the femoral notch that is the key determining factor. Since he invented the surgery and most likely has done as many surgeries as anyone else…???)

I got to speak after lunch…great…everyone was full and tired. It went well anyway. I mentioned Stuart McGill’s work and everyone began to write feverishly…seems no one has heard of him?? The look on their faces when I “poo-pooed” the ol’ belly button sucking in thing was priceless. Oh, and apparently personal trainers don’t know what an RDL is either. They dug the dynamic golf stretches as well (doesn’t anyone warm-up??).

The last speaker was the S & C coach from UW-Madison. He spoke for about 55 minutes on what is validity and reliability, showed his forms he uses for testing volleyball players, and then for 5 more minutes he showed how to do some common agility tests (pro agility, T-test, etc.). He said by making the girls slap the floor with both hands on the agility tests rather than touch the cones, they were more specific to volleyball…HUH?? He also does a version of the agility tests where they jump instead of touch cones. They do this form time which I thought was unusual because it actually punishes the girls with higher vertical jumps by increasing their times. Where’s CHAOS when you need it!

Anyway, it was their first attempt at this thing, and it went off without a hitch. I also made a few more contacts which is always a good thing.

Bill

[Chris Correia]

Thanks, Bill, for that summary. Since I live on the greatest of the Great Lakes, I'll want to track that conference in the future.

I wonder what those NBA players are doing in the off season. . .

[I. Kay]

Bill, you said, "The look on their faces when I “poo-pooed” the ol’ belly button sucking in thing was priceless."

In what capacity do you have a problem with the "belly-button sucking" thing? I've been doing a routine which calls for "Thin Tummy" ab exercises, and I've felt the effectiveness.

Is that what you were referring to?

[Bill Hartman]

Isolated training of the transversus abdominis using the belly button draw-in maneuver or thin tummy (Ian King reference?)exercises was devised as a motor control exercise for low back pain patients. It has been misinterpreted by therapist, trainers, and coaches and taught as a necessary exercise in core conditioning programs and as a means of increasing core stability.

Turns out that conscious application of such during dynamic activities and loaded (strength training) activities actually reduces spinal stability. Transversus is recruited reflexively on an as-needed basis depending on the demands of the activity (mostly secondary to breath holding). It also virtually impossible to isolate anyway as anything over a 1-2% max. voluntary contraction of the abs call in the internal oblique. This is based on direct measurements by McGill.

Bill

[bryanc]

Just an aside on ACL risk, it's not the actual number of ACL injuries or ACL reconstructions in females compared to those in males that defines risk, but rather the proportion of ACL injuries per exposures to the possibility of ACL injuries in females vs. males that defines risk. So despite the fact that there are fewer females who injure their ACL's than males, there are also fewer exposures in females than males. For instance, there are no female NCAA football players, so it's impossible for a female NCAA football player to sustain an ACL injury. If you fail to control for exposure, then the numbers will definitely favour males for ACL risk because more males are exposed to the possibility of ACL injury due to other factors that are not related to ACL risk.

However, if you DO control for exposure (a simplistic example would be to measure the number of females and males participating in the surveyed sports and to calculate a proportion of ACL injuries/all athletes exposed to the activity), a higher proportion of female athletes sustain ACL injuries than male athletes, hence the theory that being female is a risk factor for ACL injury.

[I. Kay]

Originally posted by Bill Hartman:
Isolated training of the transversus abdominis using the belly button draw-in maneuver or thin tummy (Ian King reference?)exercises was devised as a motor control exercise for low back pain patients. It has been misinterpreted by therapist, trainers, and coaches and taught as a necessary exercise in core conditioning programs and as a means of increasing core stability.

Turns out that conscious application of such during dynamic activities and loaded (strength training) activities actually reduces spinal stability. Transversus is recruited reflexively on an as-needed basis depending on the demands of the activity (mostly secondary to breath holding). It also virtually impossible to isolate anyway as anything over a 1-2% max. voluntary contraction of the abs call in the internal oblique. This is based on direct measurements by McGill.

Bill

Yep, Ian King's Book of Muscle. I think that the Thin Tummy is used well here though, not as a stabilzer in a lift. That is if I'm understanding you correctly?