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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