Isolating Abdominal Muslcles
The isolation of the internal oblique and transverse abdominas was a big topic of discussion at the seminat I was teaching yesterday. This now has become part part the folklore of training and rehab. I am amazed that people can't take a step back and think through this whole process. Those muscles are deep abdominal muscles that are very hard, maybe impossible, to voultarly recruit. Yet people still insist on teaching their patients and and athletes to do that using the drawing in maneuver or abdominal hollowing. Stuart McGill in his research has debunked this. The hollowing in actually destabilizes the spine. One again remember that the body does not recognize individual muscles, it recognizes patterns of movements. Use movemnst that require those deep abdominal muscles to work as part of the bigger picture
posted by Vern Gambetta @ 4/29/2006 06:59:00 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
For those of you who insist on "feeling the burn", try my ab jumping jack:
Move your feet in the traditional in sync, frontal plane style. Hold your arms at shoulder height, palms together, in front of your body. Now drive the arms in the transverse plane (horizontal ab/adduction), while the feet move apart & together in the frontal plane. Your feet are going to want to rotate in the transverse plane as you fatigue. You must resist this, and keep those toes pointing forward.
Start slow, then gruadually increase speed as you become more proficient at it. You may hold a medicine ball in your hands for extra resistance. Do 4 sets of 15-30 seconds.
Vern,
i love reading your blog and always look forward to reading what you have to say about any topic in the field of athletic conditioning and performance. Having read your comment about the recruitment of the TrA and deep abdominal musculature, I can see your point if you are coming from the stadpoint of treating a healthy athlete, but in one who has a history of back pain, it has been shown that deep abdominal musculature does not get recruited properly and that the spine is not stabilized appropriately in these athletes...so a process of encouraging the athlete to retrain the nervous system to recruit would be appropriate and beneficial.
Not having seen the presentations you are referring to, i am unsure of your response to this, but maybe this angle of a history of back pain could be a topic in a blog in the near future!
Keep up the hard work and thanks for putting together a GREAT blog!
-bryan
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