My Brief Stint as a Lemming

Speaking of stupid human tricks....That post got me to thinking about "wall squats." A staple of personal trainers, a variation on the infamous physical therapy "wall slide", this exercise continues to stink up gyms and clinics around the country. And I'm sure young basketball players are still routinely tortured by coaches who make them do "wall sits." Any idiot can make it burn, right? Who needs a Smith Machine when you can have somebody lean back against the ball and mindlessly flex and extend their hips/knees? Don't let those knees go over those toes, Mrs. Jones!

Is there really any reason to do this versus doing a bodyweight squat? Or a sit-to-stand for frail or post-operative patients? Why the ball?

In 2000, I began working for a high-end personal training company. The organization was basically good people trying to help other good people be more fit. And although this is a topic for another blog, I made TWICE the hourly wage that I had previously made working for a prominent St. Louis hospital as a physical therapist! We had an uppity gym in a wealthy suburb of St. Louis and worked with many prominent citizens. One of the things I noticed initially was the other employees using the "wall squat" with our snazzy silver Swiss balls. Not wanting to stand out or be too aggressive (progressive?) with my older, less fit, possibly less open-minded and very wealthy clients, I began doing them too. And then one day, the light bulb went off.

What the hell was I doing?

I'd NEVER done a "wall squat" while working with Derrick, much less with myself. Was I being lazy letting my clients do something that seemed to them to be work, but really did nothing functional for their lower extremity strength, mobility and balance? So I changed my mojo and started, once again, using bodyweight squats, Vern's squat series and yes, even barbell squats. I got their center of mass over their base of support and taught them how to move their bodies--even the personal injury attorney who'd had a laminectomy. That dude now lifts 3x per week (with a barbell) on his own, plays golf and has taken his physical health back after being terrified of exercise--all after the age of 57.

So use your noggin. Don't be a lemming. Don't be an exercise monkey who is satisfied to count reps or hand people weights--in the clinic or the gym or the weight room. Make them think; teach them to work and move their minds and bodies. It's your duty.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Form and Function

Image
Way back in 2002, I scanned these images by Howard Schatz from Sports Illustrated (October 14, 2002). A fascinating array of elite female athlete physiques, heights and weights, eh? These are some of the women featured in his book Athlete --a very cool pictorial essay that celebrates athletic form and function.
Read more

It's About Preparing People, not Preventing Injuries

ACL injuries do not happen in a void. People sustain injuries when their infrastructure is unable to manage a specific set of physical circumstances. To describe the mechanism of the injury without the context of the person and their level/type of sport, is to miss valuable insight. In sport, we prepare the person, to the best of our understanding, to meet the physical demands of that sport. We do not just work to prevent one particular injury; we prepare athletes to navigate the total sport physical environment. By "we" I mean the coaching and support staff -- specifically the athletic development staff.  Athletic development (AD) coaches prepare athletes through the development of physical literacy and movement competencies via movement progressions. It is more than strength, power, agility; it is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors to manage themselves within the entire sporting environment. At the higher levels of sport, AD coaches coordinate wit...
Read more

Strength: Overcoming Tradition & Assumptions

Image
The term "strength" comes with many images and stereotypes. The most common stereotype usually includes intimidating men who look like action figures, in spaces that look like iron jungles. Strength is associated with mass gain, limb girth increases, muscle hypertrophy and maximal force production against an external load. With regard to lower body strength, we speak in terms of multiples of bodyweight (BW), with the ratio of 2x BW historically viewed as necessary and desirable. We have historically trained in terms of 1 RM. There has been a trend recently to adopt a VBT (velocity based training) approach, as we know 1 RM changes on a daily basis and technology now allows us to more finely tune things with velocity as the target within each set. These things can be helpful as we initially learn to measure and document progress. But I think it is important to step back from this narrow outlook, because this view of strength does not serve all of us well, in either the rehab or...
Read more