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Dynamic Chop Pattern
Dynamic Chop Pattern is a compound movement that combines strength, stability, and mobility, making it a popular choice among fitness enthusiasts and athletes. This exercise mimics the motion of swinging an axe or chopping wood, hence its name, and primarily targets the core muscles while engaging various other muscle groups. Start with feet shoulder width or just wider than shoulder width apart, grabbing the resistance over the shoulder on the same side as the resistance, and press the resistance down past the opposite hip. While pressing down with the arms, rotate around the leg opposite the side of the resistance, by pivoting and pushing through the ball of the foot of the leg on the same side as the resistance. The motion is down, diagonal and forward.
Transcript
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This is Brent, coming at you with another
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core exercise, a dynamic strength
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training exercise for the core. The ax-chop. This is one of my absolute
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favorites for marrying the anterior, and posterior, oblique subsystem, something
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very important for all of my athletes who need rotational strength. Now, I will
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admit, this exercise is hard to teach. It's hard to queue. It's not easy to
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get everybody doing all of the little tiny things that will help you get the
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most out of this exercise. My friend, Mike Tierney, from Metropolitan Fitness,
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is going to help me demonstrate. Now, first things first, a little setup. We have
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to be able to place some resistance above somebody's head. You can use a
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resistance band, you can use a cable, but it needs to be up high. Now, Mike is about
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a foot back from that resistance, and a couple of feet off to the side, and that'll
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be important to create the direction of force that we need. We're going to set up
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his kinetic chain check points. I want him starting in a really good posture: head
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back, chin tucked, he's got his shoulders back, he's drawn-in for me. The
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only difference is, for a chop, since we're going through rotation, we actually
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need to be slightly wider than hip width with the feet. The feet are still going to
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point forward, but they're probably going to be closer to shoulder width, or just
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wider than shoulder width. Now as far as the grip, I'm going to have Mike go over
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there and grab the handles, and notice that the first thing Mike does, is
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he doesn't grab inside the handles. Can you show them grabbing inside the
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handles? So if you grab inside the handles, what ends up happening is, as you
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twist your hands, and as you twist through this movement, this tends to rub the top
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of the knuckles, and as the weight increases this actually can become quite
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painful. So, what I'm gonna have Mike do is actually grab from the outside. Not
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only does it make it a little easier to grip, but it might actually get us a
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little benefit in grip strength. He's going to start in this position, and I
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know there's a lot of different ways to go through a chop pattern with your arms,
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what I tend to like best for my clients and athletes, is kind of a pushing
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pattern. You're going to start here, and then push through to palms facing the
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floor, almost doing that old-school tricep extension, but with a
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twist. I'm gonna have Mike show us that, go ahead and do that Mike. Great! And
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you feel like you can hold a lot of weight here right? -I do. Now, since I use
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this as a dynamic strength exercise, and I'm going to probably
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increase load to progress, it's very important that I get the strongest grip,
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the most comfortable grip for an increase in load, that I possibly can, and
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I find that this is it. So, let's go ahead and go back, nice and slow. Good. The next
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little joint system that I want to look at is the lumbar spine, or the trunk. In
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the lumbar spine, or trunk, he's actually doing an oblique crunch, so
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that's flexion with rotation. Hopefully if you have been working on your
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progressions, you've been thinking ahead a little bit, you've already taught a
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crunch, maybe a crunch on a ball, an oblique crunch, an oblique crunch on a
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ball, so that motor program is at least up here somewhere. We know that once we
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start to queue it, it's not totally new. So Mike, let's go ahead and do the push
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through, as well as make sure we show off that flexion and rotation at the spine.
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Good. Now from an anatomical standpoint, you guys can see here he's got external
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obliques working, but instead of that oblique crunch that we were doing, that
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just worked the trunk muscles, now we're getting the whole subsystem involved
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because his adductor on the opposite leg also has to work, which is our anterior
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oblique subsystem. That external oblique, abdominal fascia, contralateral adductor.
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You can go ahead and go back. A really important subsystem for pushing and
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stabilizing posterior forces against us, as well as turning in the kinetic chain.
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So, I want you guys to visualize that subsystem, and then watch Mike do this
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exercise again. Good, Mike. Now the next step - you can go ahead and go back nice
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and slow - the next step is where my chop might differ a little bit from some of
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the chops you've seen in the gym. I've seen some people go for as much flexion
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as they possibly can. I use this to get a little bit more drive out of the glutes,
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and integrate the posterior oblique subsystem as well. So rather than just
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let Mike collapse down this way, I'm actually going to get him to try to
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drive through his outside leg, keep the balls of his feet, or those
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metatarsal heads, from first to five, on the floor, so that he's actually twisting,
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but then pushing and driving through keeping this glute engaged. So
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let's let's show that off as much as we possibly can. We're going to push
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through, oblique crunch, and drive through this glute. Good. And you notice, Mike does
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a really good job here, his glutes are really tight. All of the ball of his
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foot is on the floor, and he's pushing through really hard. Now, Mike is a
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baseball player, as you can imagine - you can go back nice and slow, I won't make you hold
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that - you can imagine, as a pitcher and as a batter, he not only will get the power
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from his anterior oblique subsystem, but now he gets to use his glute to
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drive through, and your glute's the biggest muscle in your body, these aren't. This is
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power here, but this is even more power. So let's see one more of those. Good. So
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this is ax-chop, plus posterior oblique subsystem. Notice his foot
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position. What I'm going to try to do, and you can see he's turned out just a
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little bit here, so let's go back really nice and slow, bring your feet back
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together just a little bit, good. And you will have to do that. As the feet
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are kind of, twisting this way, they have a tendency to shift out a little
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bit. So, going through all of our checkpoints here, from head to feet,
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he's going to go from hand position here, to hand position here, oblique crunch,
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drive through the glute, and then foot position, ideally, would create a 90
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degree angle. He's going to be pushing through that back foot, which is going to
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create a 90 degree angle this way, to this foot that stays planted.
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Let's see all of that together. Great stuff Mike. The last queue,
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that I should have mentioned earlier, is I also want him to come back nice and
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slowly. I don't want him to just let go, I want to take advantage of that eccentric
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phase. So, how would I progress this exercise? Well, stability progressions for
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a dynamic chop aren't as easy to come by, but as a strength exercise I am not shy
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about increasing the resistance. I would love to get Mike up to a heavier band, get
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him onto the cable column, and maybe even keep that rep range in more of a
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strength rep range, like 8 to 12. Once he could do 12, with really good form,
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I'm going to up the weight again. If you aren't familiar with the subsystems,
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try checking out my articles on the blog. Would love for you to
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understand how this works together. Those subsystems do a much better job at
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predicting optimal exercise selection, than looking at these muscles
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individually. I hope you enjoyed this video and I hope you get a ton of
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