If you have been exercising on regular basis and focusing on progressing, there is a high chance that you have come across minor setbacks with things like muscle aches, muscle stiffness, joint pain and so on. Although, we are careful with technique and tempo, these setbacks can happen to any of us. As much as we can appreciate devices such as massage gun, foam roller, massage ball, and so on, to relax the muscles when the range of motion or movement is being compromised, however, it is vital to understand why the range of motion is sub-optimal and movement is being compromised.
My training career started by thinking about how to make our body stronger to prevent from those issues to happen, however, it is also a fact that no matter how careful we can get, we will have some degree of muscles and joint issues if we are striving for better selves because we are challenging ourselves in different positions such as squat, bench press, pull ups, farmers carry, deadlift and so on. Challenge can be with load, speed, metabolic demand and so on.
Many of these issues are difficult to identify what caused it. Let’s say your lower back hurts while performing a squat. Yet, the cause may not be a squat. Could be that you were sitting too long at the office, and the hips were tight which may have led to compensating the squat movement by using lower back muscles more than hip muscles. Could be you didn’t hydrate enough, didn’t sleep well, didn’t eat enough, too much stress. It is very difficult to identify cause of the issues even with so many imaging technologies that are available now such as, x-ray, MRI, CAT scan and so forth. However, issue is there, and it needs to be addressed and strengthened so that we can get back into what we want to do.
Movement Compensation
Regardless of what is causing the discomfort you can observe issues by looking at the movement. Even with minor issues, such as sore or stiff muscles, there may be some form of movement compensation. Compensation means incomplete mechanics or poor motor control. For example, when you do overhead press, is your arms above your shoulder with elbow straight. When you are squatting can you go through full range of motion without knees caving in (Valgus knee) or rounded back. These are all signs of movement compensation and may need to be addressed for ideal movement pattern.
When the movement compensation can be observed in the gym, you can almost guarantee that this movement pattern will be happening outside of the gym such as at home, at work, at your sporting events and so on.
What does this mean? Let’s take glutes for example. When glutes are weak, underactive, or not properly engaged, the compensation may happen. Instead of glutes the body may use hip flexors, quads, and lower back to perform the movement. Whatever the reason may be, when the glutes are not used properly in squat, deadlift, hip thrust, jumps, sprints, and walk, the body is extremely good at finding the muscle that can be used in a place of glutes. When exercising without addressing the issue, this compensation movement pattern, which can be developed into the baseline movement pattern in your sports and daily physical activities, can lead to lower back pain, hip tightness, hamstring issues, and ACL tear.
One of the reason why hamstring and ACL tear is common among athletes is their sprinting, cutting, jumping and landing mechanics possibly have a movement compensation. Some of the issue may be tight hip flexors and cannot extend hip properly. Another is motor control of hip is poor that knees cave in while performing sprint and jump which can lead to knee problems.
As a trainer, I go through warm up routine with clients rather than having them walk on treadmill for 15 minutes alone. By having them go through various movement patterns during the warm up, it is valuable moment for me to observe a possible movement compensation. Common compensation that I see is walking with toes pointing out and it is easy give away for possible hip flexor tightness and under active glutes.
Range of Motion
Although ideal range of motion guideline can vary from organization to organization, certain amount of range will be required based on what physical activities you will be participating or movement during the day. Lets say you want to reach for the object on top of the fridge. You will need certain range of motion in shoulder in order to be able to reach it.
With my clients I examine how much range of motion they have with the exercises that I am given them without movement compensation. Exercises can be squat, plank, row, overhead press, deadlift and so on. This process usually happens during their warm up. If they can perform in proper range of motion without compensation during the training, they can perform in same way outside of the gym.
Ideal hip flexion, for example, is about 120 degrees. Which means you should be able to lift your knee up slightly above your hip level without compensating. If the range is far below that then problem such as not able to get up the stairs without swinging the leg may happen. Task can be done but not in ideal format.
Have Purpose to The Exercise
Whether your goal is to look good or perform better, you should pay attention to improving the quality of the exercise that you have chosen. Understand what ideal movement pattern and range of motion is like. If your exercise movement is not ideal, find the exercise to help you to improve your main exercise.
If your exercise is overhead press, you may want to work with pull ups or lat pulldown. Rotator cuffs need to be worked on so face pull may be a good exercise to add. Tightness around the neck area can also hinder the movement of shoulder complex.
Simple exercise like plank can do with elbow on the floor or hands on the floor. If you are working on the bench which plank will you choose for core activation?
Exercise choices should be done to improve your main performance and not because you saw them on social media.
Have a purpose to the exercise.
Kota Shimada
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