00:00 - 00:04This is Brent, coming at you with another core exercise, a dynamic strength
00:04 - 00:08training exercise for the core. The ax-chop. This is one of my absolute
00:08 - 00:14favorites for marrying the anterior, and posterior, oblique subsystem, something
00:14 - 00:19very important for all of my athletes who need rotational strength. Now, I will
00:19 - 00:23admit, this exercise is hard to teach. It's hard to queue. It's not easy to
00:23 - 00:28get everybody doing all of the little tiny things that will help you get the
00:28 - 00:32most out of this exercise. My friend, Mike Tierney, from Metropolitan Fitness,
00:32 - 00:36is going to help me demonstrate. Now, first things first, a little setup. We have
00:36 - 00:39to be able to place some resistance above somebody's head. You can use a
00:39 - 00:44resistance band, you can use a cable, but it needs to be up high. Now, Mike is about
00:44 - 00:48a foot back from that resistance, and a couple of feet off to the side, and that'll
00:48 - 00:52be important to create the direction of force that we need. We're going to set up
00:52 - 00:55his kinetic chain check points. I want him starting in a really good posture: head
00:55 - 01:00back, chin tucked, he's got his shoulders back, he's drawn-in for me. The
01:00 - 01:04only difference is, for a chop, since we're going through rotation, we actually
01:04 - 01:07need to be slightly wider than hip width with the feet. The feet are still going to
01:07 - 01:11point forward, but they're probably going to be closer to shoulder width, or just
01:11 - 01:15wider than shoulder width. Now as far as the grip, I'm going to have Mike go over
01:15 - 01:19there and grab the handles, and notice that the first thing Mike does, is
01:19 - 01:22he doesn't grab inside the handles. Can you show them grabbing inside the
01:22 - 01:26handles? So if you grab inside the handles, what ends up happening is, as you
01:26 - 01:31twist your hands, and as you twist through this movement, this tends to rub the top
01:31 - 01:34of the knuckles, and as the weight increases this actually can become quite
01:34 - 01:38painful. So, what I'm gonna have Mike do is actually grab from the outside. Not
01:38 - 01:41only does it make it a little easier to grip, but it might actually get us a
01:41 - 01:45little benefit in grip strength. He's going to start in this position, and I
01:45 - 01:48know there's a lot of different ways to go through a chop pattern with your arms,
01:48 - 01:54what I tend to like best for my clients and athletes, is kind of a pushing
01:54 - 01:59pattern. You're going to start here, and then push through to palms facing the
01:59 - 02:03floor, almost doing that old-school tricep extension, but with a
02:03 - 02:08twist. I'm gonna have Mike show us that, go ahead and do that Mike. Great! And
02:08 - 02:12you feel like you can hold a lot of weight here right? -I do. Now, since I use
02:12 - 02:14this as a dynamic strength exercise, and I'm going to probably
02:14 - 02:19increase load to progress, it's very important that I get the strongest grip,
02:19 - 02:24the most comfortable grip for an increase in load, that I possibly can, and
02:24 - 02:29I find that this is it. So, let's go ahead and go back, nice and slow. Good. The next
02:29 - 02:34little joint system that I want to look at is the lumbar spine, or the trunk. In
02:34 - 02:39the lumbar spine, or trunk, he's actually doing an oblique crunch, so
02:39 - 02:43that's flexion with rotation. Hopefully if you have been working on your
02:43 - 02:46progressions, you've been thinking ahead a little bit, you've already taught a
02:46 - 02:51crunch, maybe a crunch on a ball, an oblique crunch, an oblique crunch on a
02:51 - 02:56ball, so that motor program is at least up here somewhere. We know that once we
02:56 - 03:00start to queue it, it's not totally new. So Mike, let's go ahead and do the push
03:00 - 03:07through, as well as make sure we show off that flexion and rotation at the spine.
03:07 - 03:12Good. Now from an anatomical standpoint, you guys can see here he's got external
03:12 - 03:16obliques working, but instead of that oblique crunch that we were doing, that
03:16 - 03:20just worked the trunk muscles, now we're getting the whole subsystem involved
03:20 - 03:25because his adductor on the opposite leg also has to work, which is our anterior
03:25 - 03:31oblique subsystem. That external oblique, abdominal fascia, contralateral adductor.
03:31 - 03:35You can go ahead and go back. A really important subsystem for pushing and
03:35 - 03:40stabilizing posterior forces against us, as well as turning in the kinetic chain.
03:40 - 03:45So, I want you guys to visualize that subsystem, and then watch Mike do this
03:45 - 03:52exercise again. Good, Mike. Now the next step - you can go ahead and go back nice
03:52 - 03:56and slow - the next step is where my chop might differ a little bit from some of
03:56 - 03:59the chops you've seen in the gym. I've seen some people go for as much flexion
03:59 - 04:03as they possibly can. I use this to get a little bit more drive out of the glutes,
04:03 - 04:08and integrate the posterior oblique subsystem as well. So rather than just
04:08 - 04:12let Mike collapse down this way, I'm actually going to get him to try to
04:12 - 04:17drive through his outside leg, keep the balls of his feet, or those
04:17 - 04:22metatarsal heads, from first to five, on the floor, so that he's actually twisting,
04:22 - 04:27but then pushing and driving through keeping this glute engaged. So
04:27 - 04:30let's let's show that off as much as we possibly can. We're going to push
04:30 - 04:37through, oblique crunch, and drive through this glute. Good. And you notice, Mike does
04:37 - 04:41a really good job here, his glutes are really tight. All of the ball of his
04:41 - 04:46foot is on the floor, and he's pushing through really hard. Now, Mike is a
04:46 - 04:49baseball player, as you can imagine - you can go back nice and slow, I won't make you hold
04:49 - 04:55that - you can imagine, as a pitcher and as a batter, he not only will get the power
04:55 - 05:00from his anterior oblique subsystem, but now he gets to use his glute to
05:00 - 05:06drive through, and your glute's the biggest muscle in your body, these aren't. This is
05:06 - 05:12power here, but this is even more power. So let's see one more of those. Good. So
05:12 - 05:19this is ax-chop, plus posterior oblique subsystem. Notice his foot
05:19 - 05:22position. What I'm going to try to do, and you can see he's turned out just a
05:22 - 05:25little bit here, so let's go back really nice and slow, bring your feet back
05:25 - 05:30together just a little bit, good. And you will have to do that. As the feet
05:30 - 05:33are kind of, twisting this way, they have a tendency to shift out a little
05:33 - 05:37bit. So, going through all of our checkpoints here, from head to feet,
05:37 - 05:43he's going to go from hand position here, to hand position here, oblique crunch,
05:43 - 05:49drive through the glute, and then foot position, ideally, would create a 90
05:49 - 05:52degree angle. He's going to be pushing through that back foot, which is going to
05:52 - 05:58create a 90 degree angle this way, to this foot that stays planted.
05:58 - 06:06Let's see all of that together. Great stuff Mike. The last queue,
06:06 - 06:09that I should have mentioned earlier, is I also want him to come back nice and
06:09 - 06:13slowly. I don't want him to just let go, I want to take advantage of that eccentric
06:13 - 06:19phase. So, how would I progress this exercise? Well, stability progressions for
06:19 - 06:24a dynamic chop aren't as easy to come by, but as a strength exercise I am not shy
06:24 - 06:30about increasing the resistance. I would love to get Mike up to a heavier band, get
06:30 - 06:33him onto the cable column, and maybe even keep that rep range in more of a
06:33 - 06:37strength rep range, like 8 to 12. Once he could do 12, with really good form,
06:37 - 06:41I'm going to up the weight again. If you aren't familiar with the subsystems,
06:41 - 06:45try checking out my articles on the blog. Would love for you to
06:45 - 06:49understand how this works together. Those subsystems do a much better job at
06:49 - 06:53predicting optimal exercise selection, than looking at these muscles
06:53 - 06:57individually. I hope you enjoyed this video and I hope you get a ton of
06:57 - 07:00performance out of this exercise.