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This is Brent, coming at you with more
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to progress the plank. I'm going to take a very standard exercise, the mountain
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climber, show you how to reinforce triple flexion, and triple extension
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mechanics, making a mountain climber, a reactive stabilization exercise. This
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increases the transference for all of my running athletes. All of my running
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athletes out there, you guys know how important that drive, and how important
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that turnaround is. I'm going to show you how to keep this stable, so that you
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don't lose any of that lower body power. I'm going to have my friend, Leann, come
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out and help me demonstrate this exercise. Now, let's talk about set up
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really quickly. You are going to have to get your upper body elevated a little
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bit. You can see in here, we're just using a standard bench, usually that works. If
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you have a taller athlete, you might even have to get a little further elevated. A
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prerequisite exercise, something you're going to have to be thinking
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about as you progress in your programming, to do this exercise you have
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to be able to do a single leg plank, and do a single leg plank really well. I want
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to be able to get Leann into a single leg plank here, with this knee up, and that
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she's driving through this leg, glutes tight, quads tight. She's got her toes up,
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but the ball of her foot down, driving through plantar flexion. So all of this
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is really steady. This is the triple extension mechanic that we are
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going to keep reinforcing through this exercise. Then, of course, here, in her
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other leg - you can actually switch legs for me Leann - good, in this leg, we want
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triple flexion. So I want to see hip flexion, knee flexion, and then I actually
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want ankle dorsiflexion and inversion. Okay, so turn in just
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a little bit, like this. Now, the tricky part of this is not what Leann
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just did, the tricky part is, I'm going to try to get her to switch, quickly,
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without moving any of this. She's got to keep her torso and pelvis totally still,
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like she's got a martini glass on her back, we all know how stupid martini
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glasses are, they spill everything everywhere. From a stabilization
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standpoint, if you use that little analogy to think about how easy it is to
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spill, I don't want any movement here. She's going to go ahead and switch
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really quickly for me. Switch. Boom! You can see Leann went straight into that
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triple extension. She's got the ball of her foot centered in the floor, quad
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tight, glute tight, and she's in triple flexion on the other leg. Once she feels
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like she's stable, she can go ahead and switch again. Switch. Good. We saw just a
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little bit of bounce, it took her a second to stop bouncing and stabilizing,
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and she can switch again. Now, I know most people do mountain climbers as fast as
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they can back and forth, but if we're doing it for the purposes I mentioned
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before, we're trying to reinforce triple extension, trying to reinforce triple
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flexion, and trying to improve stabilization through the lumbo-pelvic hip complex, we
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want to make sure we're stable between each shift. So, go ahead and switch again,
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and you can see my hand's coming up just a little bit. Switch again. Good. Switch.
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Switch. You can speed this up, as long as they can maintain stability.
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There are progressions to this exercise, just like there'd be progressions to any
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of our exercises. Since we are in our core realm, within the core portion
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of our program, I'm probably still going to increase in stability, even though
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this is a reactive exercise. One thing we can do, is we can take something that's a
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little unstable, this is actually just a Dynamax soft medicine ball, or
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you could also use a BOSU ball on top of this, providing that you
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can make sure it's safe, and won't slide out. I'm going to have her get into
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that same position. Good. Glutes tight, quads tight, calves tight, balls of feet
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on the floor. She's going to go into that flexion position, and now she's going to
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have to work really, really hard to maintain stability here. It's probably
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going to slow us down a little bit in our switches, so go ahead and switch.
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She's got to feel totally stable again, and she's rocking towards me a little
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bit. She's going to center, make sure her glutes are tight, now switch. Good. Takes her a couple
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seconds to stabilize, but when she's stable, she can switch again. You
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can see here how she can't switch quite as fast, that'll be part of her
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development, her progression over the next couple of weeks. Once she is able to
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switch at a, we'll call it, a rhythmic tempo,
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then I would look to increase stability even further. This is where a really
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huge challenge comes in. We can do stability ball, reactive stabilization
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for the core, or mountain climbers on a stability ball, as they might be called. So
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once again, she's going to hold this position, kinetic chain checkpoints and
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alignment: glutes tight, quads tight, calves pushing. Once she's stable, she
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gets to switch. See, she was a little slower on that switch, she had a little
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harder time getting centered again. Good. Switch. Good. Make sure your glutes are tight,
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quads are tight, and calves. Alright, switch. And once again, we try to work this back up
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to a rhythmic tempo. So there you go. We've got a very very challenging exercise
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that you can add to your plank progression. This is a reactive
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stabilization training exercise, so you would definitely be looking to put this somewhere
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in your power training phase. We talked about increasing
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in stability from bench, to bench with something unstable under the arms, to the
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stability ball, and of course you have to stabilize between each step, which means
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it's going to take work before planting the foot equals stability, rather than
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planting in, stable hold, and then switch. Once you guys get up to a rhythmic tempo,
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then you can switch to a more unstable activity. You're probably
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looking for 12 to 20 reps of this exercise, of course you could do it by
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the clock as well. I hope you enjoy this exercise and I hope you enjoy the