Friday Terminology


I have noticed the term "quad dominant" being used lately. Anyone know the origin of this term or care to take a stab at a definition?

(Yukio jerks 189 kg @ 77kg bw at the 2007 Arnold.)

Comments

Anonymous said…
I'm not sure of the origin, but I know that the first time I saw the term "quad dominant" was in Sep 1999. It was in an article entitled "Twelve Weeks of Pain, Part II: Limping Into October" written by Ian King and online at T-Nation.

In that article he had the following definition: "I refer to muscles or workouts that are predominantly anterior thigh as being quad dominant, and those that are predominantly posterior thigh as being hip dominant."
9:00 PM
Anonymous said…
Use it in context? i've heard similar terms for activities like running and biking, vs. olympic lifts and kettlebells.

I'll bet the people you've heard use it are also the ones who emphasize "heels" -- yes?
3:14 AM
Anonymous said…
um. Go take a look at this picture http://www.velonews.com/photo/37967
That's what I always think of when I hear the words "quad dominant". Or dunlops disease (the quad dun lop over der knee!)

ha, ha
carla
5:54 AM
Arien Malec said…
Also refers to people who can't/don't fire their glutes/hamstrings effectively, and thereby move most of their weight anteriorly.
9:12 AM
Jerimiah said…
I have also heard it a lot, and yes mostly from people that talk about heels. My impression has always been that it referred to exercise like knee ext, leg press, and wall or quarter squats that focused on the quads while nearly forgot the glutes and hams. Again, I believe you have picked up a phrase that was probably taken out of context and overused by people trying to sound trendy.
4:53 PM
Unknown said…
I use the term a lot and it often is linked to the cue "heels down."

I don't know where it originated, but the term "quad dominant" to ME describes a faulty movement pattern. If the lifter is lifting properly, the hip extensors (i.e. hams & glutes) are doing most of the work and that happens when the lifter keeps their heels down. Lifters that haven't learned to use their hip extensors properly rely on the quads too much. It means their hip function is "muted."

Lifters that are quad dominant tend to rise onto their toes and tuck their tails and keep their hips open thus negating any contribution of the hip extensors.

Quad dominant people tend to look okay doing front squats and movements where their torso must remain vertical. However, quad dominant lifters perform poorly on deadlifts, kettlebell swings and olympic lifts which require use of the posterior chain. Furthermore, you'll encounter a lot of quad dominant people with knee and lower back injuries.
5:05 AM
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