In this blog I will give some updates on my movements over the last few weeks starting with my visit to London to attend the Pelvis Biomechanics two-day workshop with Biomechanics Education.  Then I will give a few more updates on my training progress.

Biomechanics Education

I first met Rachel and her Biomechanics Education team at the elite Sports Performance Expo 2015 on June 10th.  I was quickly sold on the power of the training system as I was given some almost instant relief from some long term hip discomfort that I have been managing for 14 years.

I have made a few educated guesses that when I was 20 I had a major trauma to my pelvis during a weight lifting exercise where I squatted too much on the smith machine.  I think it caused a pelvic dysfunction known as a rotating pelvis and a functional leg length discrepancy.

After getting sciatic nerve pain and later significant hip discomfort with various muscles appearing to go in spasm I had almost given up going to see physios and osteopaths to perform various joint manipulations and soft tissue manual therapy.  It was relieving the discomfort but never removing it.

But when I went to see one of the Biomechanics Education Coaches the Expo they quickly assessed I had a functional leg length discrepancy (using Downing’s sign test) and gave me a static lying down leg press muscle release to release the piriformis.

After a few days of doing the muscle release I felt noticeable improvements in my discomfort.  So I started to read up more on Biomechanics education.

Take a look at the website here

This week I decided to take the leap and commit to doing my Biomechanics Coach Diploma.  There are five 2-day workshops and the first one was ‘Pelvis Biomechanics.’

I like the modular system that then informs our screening and exercise correction programmes.  I like the way that the screens allow you to biomechanically evaluate your client and provide client specific, corrective exercise.  As you can here in my video below, it’s the client specific corrective exercise intervention that I was looking to learn more about to make me a superior fitness professional without needing to train further in clinical /therapeutic practices.

Martin Haines- Founder Intrinsic Biomechanics Systems gives his views here on a classic debate- are my knees rolling in because I have weak glutes?  We discussed these topics and other ones like it on the workshop and the moral of the story was to not be fixed on one line of enquiry.

I have learnt loads more about Functional Anatomy and debates like the ‘week glutes’ one above are clearly not so black and white when you know that there are several reasons why a major muscle may not be ”functioning properly”.  It’s not so easy to just say a muscle is weak- it may be inhibited by a spasm of a synergistic muscle such as piriformis or a tightness in the thoracic spine.

I am now learning not to accept the commonly held assumptions about what a test positive test shows you- look a little deeper and challenge the status quo.

Boxing Training

As a result of feeling better than ever in terms of managing my level of discomfort it has come at the best possible time.  I have always struggled to perform dynamic exercise such as high intensity running, sprinting, jumping and so forth.  So ordinarily I would be cautious about really ‘going for it’ with my boxing training.

However, the last couple of days have felt pretty good.  I wrote about my planned training in the last couple of blogs, the most recent one here.

In that blog I spoke about how I was going to train Local Muscular Endurance

Local Muscular Endurance

This week I did Variation 1 on Monday and Variation 2 on Wednesday. I did hypertrophy (weights) on Tuesday and a run today (see below).  I will do Hypertrophy again on Friday or Saturday.

Variation 1:

Jump circuit (more emphasis on Power)

1.  Barbell squat Jumps for 8 reps
2. A ten-fold jump from leg to leg for 2 repetitions
3. Kettle bell squat jumps for 8-10 reps
4. Double leg half squat jumps for 10-12 reps
5. Jumps on a box 40-50cm high with a double leg take off jump for 4-6 repetitions
6. Six-fold jumps (2 on left and then  2 on right-6 take offs on each leg) for 1 repetition.

Comments:  With these six exercises you can comfortably get through them all with minimal rest between in under 2-minutes.  I was taking 1-minute rest between circuits and did two circuits.  Next week I will do three circuits.

 

Variation 2:

Weights circuit (more emphasis on Strength)  30-60 sec on: 1-min off, with aim to get pulse down below 140 bpm in the 1-minute rest.

1. Barbell squat
2. Bench press
3. Straight leg sit ups
4. Bent arm chest flyes
5. RDL
6. Barbell side bends
7. Barbell pullovers
8. Supinated grip bicep curls
9. Barbell bent over row
10. Barbell overhead press

Comments: I chose to do each exercise for 60-seconds and have 60-seconds between exercises.  I felt 60-seconds was a bit too much rest so I might go for 40:20 to make it harder to recover.  I gave myself the target of hitting 30 reps in as many of the exercises as possible.

 

Cardiovascular Endurance

Today I did 400m repeats on the track.

I did each repeat with 1-minute rest between them.  As it was the first running session (apart from 5-a-side football for several years) I decided to take it easy to get in to it.

Rep 1: 2:00 mins

Rep 2: 1:47 mins

Rep 3: 1:38 mins

Rep 4-6: 1:38 mins (50m fast-50m slow alternating intervals all the way around the track).

My goal:

In training to Run 6 x 400m all under 1:20 and as a time trial do four laps in under 6:00 minutes, two laps in under 2:50 minutes and 1 lap in under 1:15 minute

 

Finally:

Don’t forget we now offer Personal Training and Adult Group Fitness now!

Come along and get involved.  Email me at [email protected] if you’re interested in finding out more.