0:00 This is Brent, coming at you with another core exercise, a dynamic strength 0:04 training exercise for the core. The ax-chop. This is one of my absolute 0:08 favorites for marrying the anterior, and posterior, oblique subsystem, something 0:14 very important for all of my athletes who need rotational strength. Now, I will 0:19 admit, this exercise is hard to teach. It's hard to queue. It's not easy to 0:23 get everybody doing all of the little tiny things that will help you get the 0:28 most out of this exercise. My friend, Mike Tierney, from Metropolitan Fitness, 0:32 is going to help me demonstrate. Now, first things first, a little setup. We have 0:36 to be able to place some resistance above somebody's head. You can use a 0:39 resistance band, you can use a cable, but it needs to be up high. Now, Mike is about 0:44 a foot back from that resistance, and a couple of feet off to the side, and that'll 0:48 be important to create the direction of force that we need. We're going to set up 0:52 his kinetic chain check points. I want him starting in a really good posture: head 0:55 back, chin tucked, he's got his shoulders back, he's drawn-in for me. The 1:00 only difference is, for a chop, since we're going through rotation, we actually 1:04 need to be slightly wider than hip width with the feet. The feet are still going to 1:07 point forward, but they're probably going to be closer to shoulder width, or just 1:11 wider than shoulder width. Now as far as the grip, I'm going to have Mike go over 1:15 there and grab the handles, and notice that the first thing Mike does, is 1:19 he doesn't grab inside the handles. Can you show them grabbing inside the 1:22 handles? So if you grab inside the handles, what ends up happening is, as you 1:26 twist your hands, and as you twist through this movement, this tends to rub the top 1:31 of the knuckles, and as the weight increases this actually can become quite 1:34 painful. So, what I'm gonna have Mike do is actually grab from the outside. Not 1:38 only does it make it a little easier to grip, but it might actually get us a 1:41 little benefit in grip strength. He's going to start in this position, and I 1:45 know there's a lot of different ways to go through a chop pattern with your arms, 1:48 what I tend to like best for my clients and athletes, is kind of a pushing 1:54 pattern. You're going to start here, and then push through to palms facing the 1:59 floor, almost doing that old-school tricep extension, but with a 2:03 twist. I'm gonna have Mike show us that, go ahead and do that Mike. Great! And 2:08 you feel like you can hold a lot of weight here right? -I do. Now, since I use 2:12 this as a dynamic strength exercise, and I'm going to probably 2:14 increase load to progress, it's very important that I get the strongest grip, 2:19 the most comfortable grip for an increase in load, that I possibly can, and 2:24 I find that this is it. So, let's go ahead and go back, nice and slow. Good. The next 2:29 little joint system that I want to look at is the lumbar spine, or the trunk. In 2:34 the lumbar spine, or trunk, he's actually doing an oblique crunch, so 2:39 that's flexion with rotation. Hopefully if you have been working on your 2:43 progressions, you've been thinking ahead a little bit, you've already taught a 2:46 crunch, maybe a crunch on a ball, an oblique crunch, an oblique crunch on a 2:51 ball, so that motor program is at least up here somewhere. We know that once we 2:56 start to queue it, it's not totally new. So Mike, let's go ahead and do the push 3:00 through, as well as make sure we show off that flexion and rotation at the spine. 3:07 Good. Now from an anatomical standpoint, you guys can see here he's got external 3:12 obliques working, but instead of that oblique crunch that we were doing, that 3:16 just worked the trunk muscles, now we're getting the whole subsystem involved 3:20 because his adductor on the opposite leg also has to work, which is our anterior 3:25 oblique subsystem. That external oblique, abdominal fascia, contralateral adductor. 3:31 You can go ahead and go back. A really important subsystem for pushing and 3:35 stabilizing posterior forces against us, as well as turning in the kinetic chain. 3:40 So, I want you guys to visualize that subsystem, and then watch Mike do this 3:45 exercise again. Good, Mike. Now the next step - you can go ahead and go back nice 3:52 and slow - the next step is where my chop might differ a little bit from some of 3:56 the chops you've seen in the gym. I've seen some people go for as much flexion 3:59 as they possibly can. I use this to get a little bit more drive out of the glutes, 4:03 and integrate the posterior oblique subsystem as well. So rather than just 4:08 let Mike collapse down this way, I'm actually going to get him to try to 4:12 drive through his outside leg, keep the balls of his feet, or those 4:17 metatarsal heads, from first to five, on the floor, so that he's actually twisting, 4:22 but then pushing and driving through keeping this glute engaged. So 4:27 let's let's show that off as much as we possibly can. We're going to push 4:30 through, oblique crunch, and drive through this glute. Good. And you notice, Mike does 4:37 a really good job here, his glutes are really tight. All of the ball of his 4:41 foot is on the floor, and he's pushing through really hard. Now, Mike is a 4:46 baseball player, as you can imagine - you can go back nice and slow, I won't make you hold 4:49 that - you can imagine, as a pitcher and as a batter, he not only will get the power 4:55 from his anterior oblique subsystem, but now he gets to use his glute to 5:00 drive through, and your glute's the biggest muscle in your body, these aren't. This is 5:06 power here, but this is even more power. So let's see one more of those. Good. So 5:12 this is ax-chop, plus posterior oblique subsystem. Notice his foot 5:19 position. What I'm going to try to do, and you can see he's turned out just a 5:22 little bit here, so let's go back really nice and slow, bring your feet back 5:25 together just a little bit, good. And you will have to do that. As the feet 5:30 are kind of, twisting this way, they have a tendency to shift out a little 5:33 bit. So, going through all of our checkpoints here, from head to feet, 5:37 he's going to go from hand position here, to hand position here, oblique crunch, 5:43 drive through the glute, and then foot position, ideally, would create a 90 5:49 degree angle. He's going to be pushing through that back foot, which is going to 5:52 create a 90 degree angle this way, to this foot that stays planted. 5:58 Let's see all of that together. Great stuff Mike. The last queue, 6:06 that I should have mentioned earlier, is I also want him to come back nice and 6:09 slowly. I don't want him to just let go, I want to take advantage of that eccentric 6:13 phase. So, how would I progress this exercise? Well, stability progressions for 6:19 a dynamic chop aren't as easy to come by, but as a strength exercise I am not shy 6:24 about increasing the resistance. I would love to get Mike up to a heavier band, get 6:30 him onto the cable column, and maybe even keep that rep range in more of a 6:33 strength rep range, like 8 to 12. Once he could do 12, with really good form, 6:37 I'm going to up the weight again. If you aren't familiar with the subsystems, 6:41 try checking out my articles on the blog. Would love for you to 6:45 understand how this works together. Those subsystems do a much better job at 6:49 predicting optimal exercise selection, than looking at these muscles 6:53 individually. I hope you enjoyed this video and I hope you get a ton of 6:57 performance out of this exercise.
