Muscle Fibers and Pennation Angles (Fun!!!)

I think its important for trainers to know and understand functional anatomy. Would you hire a mechanic who couldn't tell the difference between a carburetor from a brake pedal? It amazes me that trainers still use body part splits and design their workouts around isolation movements like biceps curls or abdominal crunches. The body works in movements and should be trained that way. Check out this post I wrote back in April concerning the efficacy of some of the most popular machines at commercial gyms. I'm not saying that there isn't a time and a place for machines and isolation movements, but to base your entire workout on these overrated exercises are both inefficient and ineffective.

The"core". I've bashed conventional core training in my previous posts, but I'll go into further detail today. Core training has been somehow bastardized into abdominal training. The core is a lot more complicated than trunk flexion - you simply cannot it by performing sit ups and crunches!

There are superficial muscles like the rectus abdominus and external obliques, but there are also deeper muscles such as the transverse abdominus and internal obliques - this is just the anterior portion of your midsection. The posterior portion includes another host of superficial and intrinsic muscles that include your spinal erectors and multifidi. Now, in my opinion, the "core" is not just your midsection. I'd say its your entire torso all the way down to your hips, which means we need to include the latissimus dorsi, the glutes, and hip flexors just to name a few.

"You have your ubulus muscle, which connects to your upper dorsimus"

All those different muscles can't be there to just produce trunk flexion. It isn't a functional way to train them, and your other lifts like squats, deadlifts, lunges, presses, and rows will be limited by the weakness of your core. We've always trained the core for strength purposes with sit ups and side bends, etc. but is that its true role? Think about a tennis/golf/baseball player swinging their respective equipment - all the movement and power is generated through the use of their hips and thoracic spine (upper back), all the while maintaining a very ridgid midsection. What about a mother carrying a purse around one arm, with groceries in one hand, while carrying her son in the other? You better believe she's keeping her core tight otherwise she'd tip right over!

Now, check the direction of the different muscles fibers in your abdominals in the first picture I posted. Your rectus abdominus fibers are vertical, the transverse is horizontal, and the internal and external obliques run in diagonals - all of which connect to form a tight, interwoven web. Why is denim so durable?

It's crosshatched. What about an architect designing a house/building?

Same concept. Now, if the core was really designed for trunk flexion - I think it would look more like a hamstring:

Note how the muscle fibers essentially run straight up and down.

Continuing with our discussion of the core musculature. Let's take a closer look at the lats:

Notice how the muscle fibers run diagonally down from the humerus through the thoracolumbar fascia (the white colored fibers) and insert on to the iliac crest. The problem with traditional lat pulldowns and pullups are that they load your muscles in a vertical fashion. Because your lats run diagonally, they are in both a vertical and a horizontal vector. How do we add that horizontal component? We attempt to pull the bar apart. Obviously, the bar isn't going to allow that, but by performing the exercise in this manner, you engage more muscle fibers that woud've otherwise had an unfavorable line of pull.

The hamstrings are comprised of three different muscles: the semitendinosus, semimembranosus, and the biceps femoris (which actually has a short head, as well as a long head).

What we're concerned about here is the biceps femoris. I mentioned before that the hamstring muscle fibers run, for the most part, straight up and down. This is true, but the biceps femoris (BF) actually tracks slightly to attach on to the lateral portion of your knee. Why is this important? If your BF strength isn't up to par, your adductors will win the tug of war of your knee and your patellofemoral joint will literally "cave in" during running, squatting, lunging, climbing stairs, etc. I used to attribute this solely to gluteus medius weakness, but the glute med. is definitely an overrated muscle in this movement impairment. While the BF attaches directly onto the knee, the glute med. influences the knee via the IT(Iliotibial) Band:

Check out the knees of the girl jumping in this video:

Knees collapsing inwards like that is a recipe for an ACL injury. What exercises can we use to help prevent this? You can try squats with a mini band around your knees. Click here for a video with coaching cues by strength coach Mark Verstegen.
You can also try hamstring curls on a stability ball with your feet externally rotated to emphasize the BF.

Now, like I said before, your muscles work in movement patterns in conjunction with other muscles. You need to exercise your glutes as well, which is why I didn't include any exercises that purely "isolate" the BF.

Speaking of glutes:

Your glutes primarily thought of as hip extensors (when you stand up from a chair, as you push your hips forward - you are using your glutes). They are also hip external rotators - meaning they let you do this:

Check out the muscle fiber arrangement of the glutes - they run horizontally. Ask any informed fitness enthusiast on how to build great glutes and they'll generally reply with some sort of squat or deadlift variation. Next time you squat/deadlift/lunge/etc., I want you to think about "gripping" the floor with your toes. From there, as your coming back up from the bottom position, think about "spreading the floor" out from underneath you. In other words, try to externally rotate your feet. Just like you wont be able to pull a bar apart during a pullup, you obviously won't be able to break the floor underneath you, but by consciously trying to rotate your feet outwards, you engage more of the muscle fibers in your glutes, which results in a stronger lift.

I hope these tips add some tools to your training arsenal. Make sure your trainer understands their anatomy!

Train Hard...and smart,

Jason

Perform Better Summit

A couple of weeks ago, I went to a 3-day seminar in Rhode Island. I try to make it a point to go to as many seminars as I can in order to keep up with the latest research, training techniques, and advice from the fitness industry's best and brightest minds. I had an awesome experience and it was definitely the best event I have ever been to. The only part that I didn't like was that there were way too many things going on at once. At any given time, there were four presenters either giving lectures or doing some hands-on work with the attendees. I had to really sit down and contemplate which speaker to attend and which topics would further enhance my knowledge. I decided to go to the lectures almost exclusively, as opposed to the hands-on segments just because I felt like I was there to learn and not necessarily work out. Here are a couple of key recurring themes that resonated throughout the weekend:

1) To state it simply - the foot is really important. It's got 26 bones; the human body has 206 bones. We've got two feet, which means that 52 bones out of 206 make up the skeletal component of our feet. That's basically a 1/4 of the bones in our body! The presenter, Todd Wright, said jokingly "If the foot wasn't that important, it would just be one big ass bone!" He went on to talk about how our feet and hands are great propioceptors, which means they communicate with the rest of our body about our surroundings. Think about how you can feel your way around a room when it is pitch black - our hands take on the role of our eyes and "tell" our bodies where to go. Our feet have this same tactile ability. However, we lose this ability when we don't train the intrinsic muscles in the feet.

Take a look at your shoes. Do they look like this?

All that cushioning might feel nice, but it does not allow your feet to assume its role as a propioceptor. I saw numerous people at the conference wearing these:

These seem a tad bit excessive and might garner some outlandish looks - I would just recommend training your lower body (weight training, not aerobic exercise) with either bare feet, or with shoes like Nike Frees:



Having strong feet can go a long way in protecting the ankles, knees, and hips - all while improving balance and proprioception.

2) The lats are really important. Take a look at how much surface area the latissimus dorsi cover:

It's origins consist of the sacrum, iliac crest, T7-T12 vertebrae, inferior angle of the scapula, and the thoracolumbar fascia. It also inserts on to the humerus directly. The "core" is usually referred to as the abdominal/low back region, but the lats are often overlooked as a key core stabilizer. Train this important muscle and make sure it is activated in all of your lifts.

3) Breathing. Are you a chest breather, or a belly breather? When you inhale, your stomach should rise, and not your shoulders. Our society is very upper-trap dominant. Desk jockeys, students, computer engineers all have a great deal of tension in their upper traps. Everytime you breathe with your chest, your shoulders rise and your upper traps fire. You breathe thousands of times a day - you can imagine how much tension you can build up. Try this exercise called crocodile breathing to help you to breathe using your diaphragm:

Lay face down and push your stomach into the floor and you inhale, and then relax as you exhale. Having too much tension in your upper traps can lead to shoulder, neck, and upper back pain.

4) The fascial sytem. If you can't stand up and reach your toes with your hands, then try this out. Grab a tennis ball and roll the bottom of your feet with it - you are most likely going to feel a quite a bit of discomfort. Find those "hot spots" and really try to dig in. Roll for about a minute per side making sure you cover the entire foot. Try to touch your toes again. Most people will notice a drastic difference in how far down they go. Fascia is what surrounds your muscle tissue - if your muscles are the train stations of the body, your fascia makes up the train tracks. The superficial back line is a line of fascia that connects the bottom of your feet all the way up your calves, hamstrings, back, and actually ends at the top of your forehead.

By manipulating the origin of the back line with the tennis ball on the feet, you get a systematic release and everything seems to "let go". So the tension in your calves, hamstrings, and lower back reduces and allows you to go further down in a toe-touch. Interestingly, a person who has plantar fasciitis (inflammation of the foot) often has headaches. The pain literally radiates up the line of fascia to the top of their forehead. I'll post more about the fascial system in the next couple of days, but do yourself a favor and start foam rolling!

Train Hard,

Jason