Survival of the Fittest

Thanks to the readers who offered up their suggestions and experiences with mental training techniques in response to Friday’s post. Much appreciated!

Funny thing, what the universe sends you when something is on your mind. Last week, I signed up for a teleseminar series I read about on Eric Cressey’s blog so I could “listen LIVE to 16 of the world’s top muscle building coaches and authors as they ’spill their guts’ and reveal their BEST training, nutrition, injury prevention, mental and supplement information EVER… absolutely FREE!”

(Listen, brother: I like to picture Hulk Hogan giving that pitch even though I know the man behind the teleconference is Vince DelMonte, author of the e-book No Nonsense Muscle Building: Skinny Guy Secrets to Insane Muscle Gains. If you’re interested in signing up, too, see details here.)

The email notification I got about today’s interview said:

[T]odays interview is with Pete Siegel R.H., who is the
world’s most foremost mental training coach who has
worked with 100’s of pro athletes and celebrities reach
their full potential.

Hmm, relevant much? Sounds like the emphasis will be on mental fitness for bodybuilders, but since mental training skills are applicable to all sports and fitness pursuits, I fully expect to learn how to develop a “champion mind,” too.

The only thing is, THIS INTERVIEW IS GOING DOWN IN ABOUT AN HOUR, at 3 p.m. Central Time.

If you’re interested in getting in on it, hurry up and click here. (If you have problems with the link, that ain’t my problem. I’m just the unaffiliated messenger.)

If you happen to listen in, too, let me know what you think!

UPDATE: If you missed the call, there’s still a replay up at the same link. If it’s anything like the Bill Hartman call last week, it’ll be up for the next 24 hours, and you can even download an MP3 of the interview.

THIS WEEKEND, I’m playing rugby for the first time in what feels like ages. And having been training again for not even a month and a half yet (after a loooong break from the gym … and the track … and the field), I’m not feeling as physically prepared as would be ideal. Stupid motivation — why couldn’t you have come knocking at the beginning of December?!

But I know that with continued devotion to my program, my physical conditioning will come back (seriously, hurry UP already). Till then, it’s probably more important than ever that I tackle my mental game again, too, so I compiled the following READ TO WIN Book List. (Cue trumpet fanfare.)

I have a lot of reading to do before tomorrow morning.

Thinking Body, Dancing Mind: TaoSports for Extraordinary Performance in Athletics, Business, and Life by Chungliang Al Huang and Jerry Lynch — This book is a reread for me and came highly recommended by my former USA U-23 and club rugby coach Barb Fugate. I’m positive her pregame visualization and guided imagery sessions have played a part in the many victories she’s got under her belt. And oh right, the authors! They cover such topics as perfectionism and fear of success — solid gold info for many athletes, including myself.

In Pursuit of Excellence: How to Win in Sport and Life Through Mental Training by Terry Orlick, PhD (Human Kinetics, 2000) — Orlick has spent decades coaching Olympic athletes on mental skills, so he knows his stuff. But I think maybe the most amazing part of this book is that my edition (pictured — albeit rather wonkily — at left) has a photo of a jewel-encrusted, nonspecific championship ring, Super Bowl style, on its cover. Find out more on Orlick’s methods at www.zoneofexcellence.ca.

The New Toughness Training for Sports by James E. Loehr, EdD (Plume, 1995) — Yet another dude who has worked with high-profile Olympic athletes, Loehr offers tons of bulleted advice and puts you to work molding yourself into a “fearless warrior.” At first glance I thought the info was presented in too workbook-y a fashion for my tastes, but once I dug in, I felt Loehr’s grit coming off the pages. (Or oh god, was that dirt?!) Best quote? “Emotions respond much as muscles do. The ones you stimulate the most become the strongest and most accessible.”

Mental Training for Peak Performance: Top Athletes Reveal the Mind Exercises They Use to Excel by Steven Ungerleider, PhD (Rodale, 2005) — There’s a chapter on tapping into the power of dreams that I want to hit, and I see advice in there from 1968 Boston Marathon winner Amby Burfoot (Burfoot also writes the Footloose blog at Runner’s World). Another interesting part of Ungerleider’s book is that the third and final section is divided into sport-specific mental practice, so there’s a section on cycling, running, swimming and weight training, to name a few.

The Mental Edge: Maximize Your Sports Potential With the Mind-Body Connection by Kenneth Baum (Perigee, 1999) — Baum has worked with a range of athletes who’ve found success with his program. He covers defining your desire, visualization techniques, identifying and conquering obstacles, and committing to action.

Mind/Body Fitness by Tom Seabourne, PhD (YMAA, 2001) — Seabourne, a sports psychologist, was also a national tae kwon do champ. He teaches martial arts breathing as part of his sound-mind strategy. More at www.tomseabourne.com. Hands down best part of his Web site is the picture at right. Who doesn’t smile during shirtless biceps curls? (Also, do people still do biceps curls? I had no idea!)

I’D LOVE TO HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS on the topic of mental toughness. For instance:

• What are your favorite mental fitness books or other resources? What’s missing from my list?

• Do you use visualization and guided imagery before competition? If so, what techniques work best for you?

• If something goes wrong during a game/match/workout session, how do you right your mind?

If you don’t know much about mental training but would like to learn, these Experience Life articles can lay out the basics.

“Train Your Brain” from November 2006 — Covers breathing, affirming talk, and visualization and guided imagery.

“Mind-Body Synergy,” also from November 2006 — On the benefits of developing a strong mind-body connection.

“See It, Believe It” from January/February 2006 — How visioning works (really-really works)!

“Find Your Focus” from May 2005 — On staying amped for and during your fitness routine.

(disgusting image at top ganked from www.fitbuff.com)

Among the Experience Life staff, we joke that you’ve got to drink the Kool-Aid. Which I admit sounds a little (lot) cultish, but we just mean that to truly thrive at our jobs, each of us must embrace the type of healthy lifestyle the magazine promotes. Which is not to say we don’t have plenty of unhealthy habits or off days. Really off days — one afternoon a few weeks back, Anjula, Laine and myself all realized that so far that day, we’d primarily eaten chocolate and cheese. But I digress.

A couple years back, I saw a flashy new drink called GT’s Kombucha (pronounced kom-BOO-cha) on the Whole Foods shelves. It looked delicious — bright purple liquid, pretty packaging, health claims involving probiotics and amino acids, with no added ingredients — 95 percent raw, organic kombucha (whatever that was) and 5 percent fruit juice.

Susceptible as I am to the marketing of actually healthy things (like chia seeds!), not to mention purple drinks, I was sold. (Does it sound like I’m continuing to digress? I’m not — I’m actually going somewhere with this.)

ONCE I GOT THE THING HOME, I further investigated — if by “investigated” you mean “read the bottle,” which said:

Kombucha is a handmade Chinese tea that is delicately cultured for 30 days. During this time, essential nutrients form like: Active Enzymes, Viable Probiotics, Amino Acids, Antioxidants, and Polyphenols. All of these combine to create an elixir that immediately works with the body to restore balance and vitality.

What else did I need to know? I shook the bottle hard to stir up the sediment that had formed in the bottom and started to crack the thing open … only to have it fizz out all over the place. OK, so … it’s carbonated (or fermented, rather). Missed that somehow.

And then I noticed that my hands smelled vinegary, as if I’d just dyed Easter eggs. (Sure enough, the process of making kombucha is essentially the old-world process of making vinegar.) This did not bode well, and indeed, when you want a grape-tasting treat, kombucha would not come to mind. So I poured most of the bottle out and thought that was that.

But kombucha kept cropping up. In Experience Life’s Inside Out (Health and Beauty Bits) department in July/August 2006, which means our editor in chief, Pilar, is a fan. In an August 2007 interview with comedian Tina Fey on the Late Show With David Letterman (minutes 4:10 to 6:02 are devoted entirely to Fey’s kombucha habit). And before a planning meeting last month, it seemed like all the EL staffers were comparing notes on the best ways to drink it. (Laine’s suggestion? Cut it with water and fill your glass with ice.)

I mean, the stuff is supposed to improve digestion, detox the liver and boost energy, so I see the appeal, and just recently, I decided to try it again.

Maybe it’s just the power of suggestion at work, but I’m on board now. Kombucha is my Kool-Aid.

My friend Kathy (strange to call her anything but “Sausage” — aren’t rugby nicknames great?) pasted a link to this CrossFit workout in a comment she left in response to my last post.

She says, “I just read the article in the mag on [the Tabata Protocol] … never thought 4 minutes could be so painful until I met a workout called ‘fight gone bad.’”

Indeed, I would not want to meet this workout in a dark alley.

Originally designed for mixed martial artist B.J. Penn, with the metabolic demands of ultimate fighting in mind, “Fight Gone Bad” is an intense, five-minute weightlifting, plyometrics and cardio circuit that’s repeated three times, with a one-minute break between rounds (just barely enough time to be able to breathe again … sort of). So, 17 minutes total. If you live that long.

After watching the video of the workout, I can see how the first five minutes could do you in. And I have yet to make it through one four-minute Tabata round on the treadmill (although I have muscled through it on the stationary bike now). But still … does anyone else want to work out right this minute?

It looks like you can rig up a similar circuit at nearly any gym (that is, you don’t have to be at a CrossFit facility) as a way to build your work capacity without courting your slow-twitch muscle fibers — fast-twitch types, rejoice!

UPDATE: As I was perusing the workout and exercise list at CrossFit.com (some really amazing stuff there), I came across a Tabata version of the “Fight Gone Bad” workout! See the video here (complete with music from Culture Club).

A few weeks back, my friend Angie proposed that a group of us do the Leprechaun Run here in Philly this past Saturday.

Without really digging into the race description — aside from noticing that the proceeds benefited the Special Olympics — I agreed. I saw a “5” and assumed it was a 5K.

I was wrong.

A couple days before the race, as I was filling in my entry form, I noticed that, in fact, the race was five MILES — not kilometers — long. Oops? Considering my longest cardio session since I’ve gotten back into fitness has lasted 23 minutes (and 37 seconds), I found this bit of info quite alarming.

But the other option was a two-mile walk and, well, there was pride to consider. I mean, I could run five miles if I wanted to … I’ve just never wanted to before. Right? And anyway, wasn’t I supposed to be building up my aerobic base?

I think it’s worth noting here that Stubot (of Pull-Up Challenge “fame”) declined the race invite, replying “Distance running isn’t really appropriate rugby training, so I don’t want to weigh myself down with the wrong muscle fibers. I don’t even know what that means, actually.”

Ah, prescient Stubot.

While I slogged through the race in just under an hour, in the future I will arm myself with one of the following two excuses. I mean reasons. OK, excuses — but they’re good ones.

Legitimate Excuse No. 1: Sprinters don’t need to build an aerobic base.

Literally the day after I sent in my race form, Vern Gambetta, director of Gambetta Sports Training Systems, blogged about the notion of “Building an Aerobic Base” as it relates to sprinters.

There, the pretense I’d been laboring under mocked me. His first sentence sums it up: “For some strange reason, the myth that you must build an aerobic base for sprinting still lives.”

Hold up — that’s a myth?! That myth is the only reason I signed up to do five miles. (That, and to benefit the Special Olympics, of course.)

It was my understanding that I was still in base-building mode, which all types of athletes have to muster through at the beginning of a program, and that later I’d be able to switch over to more fast-twitch-focused workouts.

But no. To drive the point home, later that same day Gambetta posted “More on ‘Aerobic Base,’” with detailed support from Jack Blatherwick, PhD, the conditioning coach for the NHL’s Washington Capitals (not to mention former conditioning coach for the U.S. Olympic Ice Hockey team, including the 1980 “Miracle Team”).

Five highlights of Blatherwick’s argument:

> For sprinters, of course the most important base would be speed — in concert with strength and power. It is a waste of time — and perhaps counterproductive — to train with long slow distances. Aerobic/cardiovascular fitness is essential for all young athletes, of course. The important question is how to acquire it.

> Regarding team sports that require skill and athleticism, the mistake made by many fitness coaches is to “compartmentalize” the training into separate workouts — aerobic endurance, anaerobic power, anaerobic endurance, skill, agility, strength, etc. etc. etc. Of course in a game, all of these attributes are required at the same time, so we should be looking for more ways to incorporate the various elements into “integrated workouts.”

> … anaerobic interval training is highly aerobic, and can be a more intense cardiovascular workout than what fitness gurus would call a “cardio” workout. College hockey players doing six weeks of dryland training composed of “anaerobic intervals” for quickness and power made greater gains in aerobic and cardiovascular measures than if they had trained with aerobic distances for the same period

> There is a neuromuscular consequence for everything we do — including endurance workouts. This means we are forming habits at all times — physiological habits that might be very difficult to break.

> … it is obvious we should rethink our compartmentalized approach and add “overspeed practice.” This means pushing the team out of their present comfort zone — to perform skills and make read-react decisions at a faster pace, using appropriate intervals. Then, as the training season progresses, increase the length of the intervals and total length of the overspeed practice. This approach certainly does not include long, slow distances, because “slow” is not part of the mission.

Legitimate Excuse No. 2: Doing nothing assists recovery just as much as doing “active recovery” (often a clever name for a long, slow run).

It might be a stretch, but there is at least some data to support this statement. As long as you are part of a small, elite population of athletes, that is (specifically, a young, female, elite soccer player). But sometimes, I think research is about hearing what you want to hear. (Hellooooo, placebo.)

Bryan Chung, MD, founder of the blog Evidence-Based Fitness, dissected the 2008 study “Neuromuscular fatigue and recovery in elite female soccer: Effects of active recovery” from the journal Medicine and Science in Sport and Exercise in his recent post “Rest vs. Active Recovery.” (Active recovery is performing submaximal exercise to promote recovery from intense training sessions/games.)

The study compared the recovery times of two groups of soccer players who played two games, 72 hours apart — one group did active recovery, and the other recovered passively.

Turns out the researchers didn’t find a bit of difference between the two groups.

While Chung noted plenty of flaws in the study, his bottom line was “… you can probably do whatever you like best, whether it’s sitting on the couch, or getting some active recovery in, feeling relatively assured that it’s probably not going to hurt you. [C]ertainly, this study draws attention to question whether active recovery, though theoretically sound, is actually any more beneficial than passive recovery.”

Yes! I’ve always despised — and skipped, in large part — the 30-minute “recovery run” the day after rugby games. (I really hope Martha Daines isn’t reading this post.)

And now, happily, I will continue to do so. If you take issue with that, see Excuse No. 1.

And the winner of the Posterior-Chain Barbie design contest (see the bottom of the “Perfectly Balanced [Strength Ratios]” post for details) is …

[drumroll]

Reader Kim, who is clearly a master of Microsoft Paint. (Never mind the scary soulless robot eyes — after all, since when does Barbie have a soul?)

Who wouldn’t purchase one of these?!

A while back, I received the pretty little Pilates pose chart above (click here to download the PDF) from high-profile instructor Alycea Ungaro’s PR people. Kinda handy, no?

The Real Pilates Web site has a bunch of free, downloadable workouts, but this was my favorite. It’s something I’d like to pin to my bulletin board and choose from when I need to break up the monotony of sitting at my desk.

Now, if only I did Pilates. Or owned a bulletin board. (Making note: Must buy bulletin board. I wish I had somewhere to post this blasted note….)

But I do want to give Pilates a whirl. Experience Life published an article called “Pilates Power” in January/February 2007, and among the benefits listed are improved core strength, balance and flexibility. All desirable qualities in an athlete.

To wit, a 2003 article in USA Today touts the gains male professional athletes are experiencing from practicing Pilates. Dallas Mavericks basketball star Jason Kidd and Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling are big fans. (On a somewhat related note, did you know Kareem Abdul-Jabar is a devoted yoga practitioner?) From the USA Today article:

Hannah Gallagher, Schilling’s Pilates instructor, says, “He’s a man. He’s used to hard-core workouts, where you throw up afterward. Pilates is not that. It is an equal balance of stretch and strength.”

Substitute the word “athlete” for “man” and you’ve hit upon something many of us struggle with. Or, conversely, pride ourselves on. “Go hard or go home” or “No, pain, no gain” ring a bell? But that which destroys us doesn’t always strengthen us, and we might do better to occasionally foray into the softer side of training.

What do you guys do to achieve balance in your routine?

… but please show your might by doing them right! (Photo above ganked from www.withfitnessandhealth.co.uk.)

This morning, I read Tara Parker-Pope’s Well blog entry “The Art of the Pushup” in The New York Times, and thought, nice topic! Pushups — not to mention pull-ups, squats and other old-school calisthenics — are excellent markers of strength (often, even those who look strong can’t handle their own body weight).

Plus, pushups (also known as press-ups) help keep your scapulae positioned correctly — important for avoiding shoulder injuries.

After skimming the blog entry, however, I clicked on the embedded link to this pushup calculator, which “tell[s] you how many push-ups you should be doing,” and thought … not so nice.

And then I watched the accompanying video called Drop and Give Me Twenty! after which I cringed and hid under my desk for a while (see the video here; scroll down just a bit).

WHY WAS I SO AGITATED? The answer is two part.

1) Because of this particular distinction in the calculator’s form guidelines:

Male subject
-forefoot or toes on floor

Female subject
-knees on floor or mat

All calculations are based on these guidelines.

I mean, really? There’s no third measurement option for women who do pushups on their toes? We are all automatically relegated to doing modified, or “girl,” pushups, which, as Alwyn Cosgrove points out in The New Rules of Lifting for Women (Avery, 2007), take your core out of the movement? (The book points out you’re better off starting with 60-, 45- or 30-degree pushups, placing your hands against a wall or on a bench. For a nice pushup progression, see Krista Scott-Dixon’s “Mistressing the Pushup.”)

2) And also because the pushup form of the women in said video is utterly atrocious. (Think I’m exaggerating? Watch it.) Not a good example among the bunch — heads hanging low, backs swayed, elbows barely bending, and even, at minute 3:01, an especially gruesome attempt at a clapping pushup from a woman who is essentially starting from her hands and knees, rear high in the air.

But not a word about these form indiscretions is uttered in the video — just woman after woman in a Crunch fitness class, committing every pushup no-no in the book. (There are, however, several readers who express their disdain in the comments section.)

I FELT … MISREPRESENTED. And angry. I mean, not a single example of a woman doing pushups on her toes?!

Parker-Pope’s full column on the topic, “An Enduring Measure of Fitness: The Simple Push-Up,” again makes the case beautifully for pushups being an effective and worthwhile full-body exercise. But then, again, we return to the gender divide. As quoted in the article:

“It’s sort of a gender-specific symbol of vitality,” said R. Scott Kretchmar, a professor of exercise and sports science at Penn State. “I don’t see women saying: ‘I’m in good health. Watch me drop down and do some push-ups.’ ”

Perhaps some Penn State women’s rugby players would like to swing by and visit Kretchmar during office hours, just to enthusiastically demonstrate their pushup prowess?

Something else that comes to mind is the 30-second pushup test that’s often part of the fitness testing at U.S. women’s rugby tryouts. If you don’t get to at least 25, you’ve missed the mark. I’m trying to picture what would happen if a player asked to do pushups from her knees….

BUT I WONDER if I’m just out of the loop on this. Are pushups, done on your toes and with perfect form, a point of pride in women? Or do I hang out with too many jocks?

For those of you who like to partake in the many variations of the pushup, such as clapping (or plyo), stability-ball, medicine-ball, dumbbell, rear-elevated, weighted, Hindu, fingertip, knuckle, one-armed and handstand, here are some exercises.

For women and men alike.

From the “Join the Movement” Web Extra, April 2007:
Stability-Ball Pushup
Assume an elevated pushup position with your hands on a stability ball. Lower your chest to the ball while concentrating on maintaining stability in your core (avoid bending at the waist). Press back up to the start position. Complete 10 to 12 pushups.

From “Jump To It,” December 2004:
Plyo Pushup
Assume the pushup position, hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart and elbows bent. Push off the ground explosively, so that your hands lose contact with the floor, and attempt a clap while your upper body is in midair. Land with your hands in the starting position and immediately push off again. Work up to repeating five to 10 times. Do three sets with a one-minute rest in between.

Depth Pushup
Assume the pushup position, but this time with both hands on a 5- to 8-pound medicine ball, elbows fully extended. Quickly remove your hands from the ball and drop down, catching your fall with your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart, elbows slightly flexed. Absorb the shock on your wrists and elbows by allowing your elbows to bend and your body to drop into pushup position until your chest touches the ball. Then immediately and explosively push up by extending your arms forcefully. Try to achieve maximum height so your hands leave the ground and then land back on the ball. Repeat the movements immediately three to eight times. Complete three sets, with a one-minute rest in between.

From “Man Alive,” September 2004:
Dumbbell pushups
Kneel on the floor with a pair of dumbbells in front of you. Grab the dumbbells, spacing your hands shoulder-width apart, palms facing back toward your legs. Keeping your grip on the dumbbells, get yourself in the classic pushup position. (Your arms should be straight, elbows unlocked with your legs straight out behind you, feet together.) Lower yourself down, then push back up until your arms are straight once more, elbows unlocked. Perform as many repetitions as possible.

I think you can do just about anything cardio-related for one minute. You may not want to, but you just have to buck up, have heart, dig deep and git-’er-done. (Or so go the platitudes.) So four minutes didn’t seem like too big a stretch, especially when discussing a cardio workout in its entirety.

Ever since we published “The Tabata Tune-Up” in the March issue of Experience Life, I’ve been itching to try it. Big results in less time? I’m in — it just so happens I’m eager to hurry my progress along (within the parameters of training smart, of course). Sure, in the article we’re up front that it’s tough, but how tough could it possibly be?

Ah, well, yes. Post–Tabata cardio workout No. 1 — done on a treadmill at 12.1 mph, 2 percent incline — I’m here to report that four minutes can stretch on for some time. Especially when one’s vision is getting ever-so-slightly black around the edges.

I made it through two and a half minutes on Friday night, but I’m not (that) ashamed. Or rather, that’s not the end of it. Tabata No. 2 tonight.

In search of snow, I set off to the Poconos after work Wednesday night. It was Ladies’ Night at Blue Mountain Ski Area, and with the weather warming up in Philly, it seemed high time to seek altitude.

Now, I grew up by Fun Valley Ski Area (which I just found out has discontinued its winter activities; I’m nearly inconsolable, though I haven’t been there in 15 years), and until I hit high school, I had a season pass most winters.

But fond as I am of the place, I have to admit the runs were pretty consistent with the gently rolling plains of Iowa. Plus, they were short! Just a straight, 20-second shot to the bottom of the hill. You could wear yourself out if you tried very, very hard, but it took all day.

Which means I wasn’t fully prepared for the sheer length of the trails the other night (or during a college vacation to Breckenridge, but that’s another story). My legs were already feeling a little thrashed from the leg-intensive workout program I’ve been following, and in no way, shape or form were my quadriceps up for the challenge.

But that was the thing: As I skied, only my quads became fatigued. No other muscle groups seemed fazed, but my thighs burned with the intensity of a thousand suns. Were they the only muscles doing anything?

THAT GOT ME THINKING ABOUT some stuff I read about what the strength ratio between quadriceps and hamstrings should be, and how many of us — especially women — are quad dominant.

I picture my own quads as ultra-chivalrous gents, gallantly shooing off the right muscles for the job at hand: “No, no, allow me to get the door for you,” or “Need help across that puddle? Please, take my arm.” Or maybe they’re more like martyrs, hissing, “Do I have to do everything by myself? Fine, why don’t you just rest.”

In any case, if your quads are significantly stronger than your hamstrings, you’re essentially playing ratio roulette, because you’re far more susceptible to knee or hamstrings injuries.

In fact, one of the neuromuscular factors leading to the higher incidence of ACL injury in women and girls is likely this particular muscle imbalance. From Experience Life’s September 2006 article “Weak in the Knees” (which I’ve referenced before):

Women tend to have stronger quadriceps relative to their hamstrings, which may decrease the hamstrings’ ability to stabilize the knees. The general recommendation for a healthy hamstrings-to-quadriceps strength ratio is for the hamstrings to be at least 60 percent — and ideally closer to 80 percent — as strong as the quads.

My friend Sara Wiley, CSCS, associate director of strength and conditioning for athletics at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities (who is also, might I add, a fine rugby inside center), takes it a step further, saying she likes to see hamstring strength at 80 to 90 percent of quad strength.

Here, a little Q and A with her on the topic.

Me: Why are women more likely to have a quadriceps-to-hamstrings strength imbalance?

Wiley: There’s some debate about whether this is genetic or due to activity choices. As girls mature, it appears they develop quad strength more quickly than hamstrings strength. My thought is that it’s not really that we develop all that differently physiologically, but that we engage in activities that don’t require us to engage the posterior chain in the same way as males of the same age.

I say this because we know that after training, females can exhibit quad/hamstrings strength ratios similar to males, and retrain motor patterns so that the hamstrings fire with strength and in coordination with the quads.

I say this also because I grew up in the Midwest on and near farms, and the farm girls I train now seem far sturdier with respect to the posterior chain. I think they grew up playing and working outside, where the boys and girls played the same games and did similar chores. Maybe they should market a “Posterior-Chain Barbie” … just kidding [see bottom of post for contest]. Obviously, it’s difficult to make sweeping generalizations, but there is something to be said for modeling behaviors (think the little boy watching Favre and emulating his throwing style) and motor patterns set as a young child.

Me: How can you tell if you’re quad dominant?

Wiley: I don’t know of a standard method of self-assessment, but one idea is the hamstring hip lift, which can be performed as follows:

1. Lie on your back with your feet hip-width apart, the soles of your feet on an 18-inch bench or step.
2. Push down into the bench with your feet, lifting your hips up high. You’ll feel your hamstrings working. Do not lift your shoulders or neck off the floor, and keep your upper back down flat.
3. Lower the hips back down until your butt is just off the floor, and then push down into the bench and raise your hips again.
4. Continue for 15 repetitions, rest for 45 seconds, and then complete two more sets.

It’s just a hamstring exercise, but a person with decent hamstrings strength should be able to handle it. If, on the other hand, you struggle, you should work on those hammies.

Do this exercise once or twice a week. When you can do three sets of 20 reps, try doing one-legged hamstring hip lifts. Start with three sets of ten, and build to three sets of 20. For further challenge, you can try these on a stability ball; first double-legged, then single-legged.

It’s a great exercise for runners.

Me: How do the pros measure quads-to-hamstrings strength?

Wiley: You can measure quads-to-hamstrings strength isokinetically using a specialized machine called the Cybex Test, which is set to move at speed versus resistance. This allows you to compare peak torque at extension (quads) versus flexion (hamstrings) at similar speeds. The problem is, it’s not real-world applicable or related to actual function.

That said, it’s still the best way to compare the two while eliminating uncontrolled factors (technique, for instance), and it’s still a standard and accepted test/measurement system, though many are trying to improve it.

Me: Are having quads that are much stronger than hamstrings more common than vice versa? Do you ever see vice versa?

Wiley: Quad dominance is much more common. Can’t say that I’ve really seen the opposite. That’s not to say it couldn’t or doesn’t happen, just haven’t seen it myself.

Me: Why you think this type of imbalance is so prevalent?

Wiley: Most people engage in quad-dominant activities for one reason or another — they like them more, or they’re directed to do certain exercises by their trainer. Or maybe because you can’t see your hamstrings in the mirror? Sometimes I think people just don’t consider whether they are doing balanced activities in workouts, or they don’t know if they are or aren’t.

I rarely train athletes based on muscle groups (i.e., we don’t do “hamstring workouts” or “quad workouts”). But, I do evaluate my programs to make sure that lower body pushing exercises [which activate the quads] are balanced with lower body pulling exercises [which activate the hamstrings], either within that workout or within the week.

Lastly, form and technique play a role. For instance, when doing a squat, if you don’t dip below 90 degrees, you aren’t engaging your hamstrings.

Me: Any other factors that might come into play?

Wiley: Muscles don’t operate in a vacuum, and there are other factors that can have implications for injury. For example, while it’s important to have hamstrings that are strong, they must also be able to coordinate their efforts with the quads or the risk of injury still exists. An example would be a soccer player planting a leg to decelerate — there is a powerful quad contraction, and the hamstring must also fire at the right time to counteract this force, or the ACL is at risk.

This is why jumping/plyometric exercises are a significant part of ACL-injury-prevention programs.

It’s also why compound movements that require movement at multiple joints and coordination of muscle groups are superior to isolated movements. Poor eccentric hamstring strength compared with concentric quad strength can manifest itself as hamstrings strains in runners, because the leg comes through into a foot strike out in front of the body.

Excessive tightness in other areas may also affect the hamstrings. Tight hip flexors may lead to inhibition of the glutes, and if the glutes aren’t doing their job, the synergistic muscles (hamstrings and low-back muscles) have to take over to perform hip extension. The most common result of this is usually low-back pain.

Me: What exercises should people should do if they’re quad dominant?

Wiley: Pulling exercises, such as deadlifts. They are for everyone! Learn to do them right! Deadlifts with a wide grip put further emphasis on the posterior chain. Try also Romanian deadlifts and good-mornings. (Generally, think BENDING EXERCISES.)

I think people are sometimes scared of this category of exercises because they work the posterior chain, which involves the low back. But when you learn to do these correctly (flat back, wide chest, tight core) they might also (GASP!) prevent back pain.

As I mentioned, you can also do hip lifts on a stability ball. Obviously, machine leg curls work the hamstrings, but they don’t work them where they cross the hip, only at the knee. It’s important to work both — so do machine leg curls and stability-ball leg curls.

CONTEST: Five bucks to the reader who submits the best illustration of what Posterior-Chain Barbie would look like. Email entries to jsinkler@experiencelifemag.com. I’ll post the winner at the end of next week.