Rope Row and Sled Progressions

Rope Row and Sled Progressions are exercises designed to challenge strength and conditioning, help develop balance and coordination, and burn calories by working the entire body as a unit. Rope Row is a functional exercise that makes use of ropes and varying angles of attack to engage and challenge different muscle groups. It can be performed with various grip variations and can be progressed by increasing speed or resistance. Sled Progressions are exercises that are based around pushing, pulling or dragging a weighted sled, which

Transcript

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This is Brent, President of B2C Fitness, and in this video, on a blustery New York day,
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we're not letting the weather stop us, we're still going to get out here and do
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our power training. In this video we're doing progressions from our power sled
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row. We're going from a bilateral handled row, to a unilateral rope row. As I
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mentioned in the previous video, if I'm talking to you about power I'm not
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talking about how much you can lift, but how fast. Increasing speed and momentum
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in the kinetic chain is a different set of neuromuscular adaptations. I'm going
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to have my friend, Vinnie, come out and help me demonstrate how we get the most
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speed out of his kinetic chain. First things first, he's going to grab this
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rope. We're already talking about this unilateral pull, so if I've
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switched to the rope I've already worked on his bilateral mechanics, I know his
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form looks pretty good both bilaterally, and probably unilaterally with a handle
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as well, because just a switch to a rope is going to require more grip strength,
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more musculature involved in his kinetic chain, to keep producing this momentum. We
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learned from the last video that in order to create a power movement we need
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something called an amortisation phase. That requires an eccentric load, a
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forceful lengthening of tissue, followed immediately by a concentric load. Now, in
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order to get that forceful loading of his kinetic chain, we're going to have to
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put a little slack in his line, so he's going to get about 30 degrees of
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elbow flexion here. He's going to have nice, soft knees, be nice and drawn-in here,
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and then what he's going to do is fall back, and as soon as he feels that
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stretch on his kinetic chain, he's going to pull as fast as he possibly can. So
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the practical application of this, what it's going to look like, is going to be
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kind of like a bounce. He's going to fall back and pull as hard as he can. Let's go
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ahead and put your hand on your hip, good, draw-in. Are you ready Vinnie? Alright, maximal
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effort. Nice! You can see the amount of
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force that generated. A nice stretch, followed immediately by a ballistic and
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explosive movement. Alright, let's try the other hand. Alright, let's get a little
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bit more rope , get a little less slack in your line here. Good. Squat down
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just a little bit, draw-in, fall back, pull. Good, and now he can keep switching hands
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back and forth, he can do all of his reps on one arm and then all of his reps on
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the other. The thing for you to remember is the amount of reps that
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you're going to do, isn't going to be that many. It's going to be somewhere
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between six and ten reps. The set stops not when you can't pull it anymore,
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but when you can't pull it as fast as you initially pulled. Now, I think you
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can see where this sort of exercise is headed. We can start going to
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a hand over hand mechanic. So instead of just doing one at a time, once he gets
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that down, he gets that bounce down, we can start working on him bounce and then
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bounce and pulling from the other side. Alright, let's try to try to get that
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going. I'll pull it back.
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So let's just try to do a couple reps in a row. We'll do right left, and then left
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right. Alright, so he's setting up his kinetic chain checkpoints just the same
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as he always would. A little slack in your line there buddy. Good. It takes a
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little bit of practice, you're going to have to adjust the weight to make
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sure that he's only getting enough rope to just extend out that next
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hand and pull. You can see here he got a little too much rope at the end and he
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started falling backward. So you are going to have to play with
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your surface that you're working with, and how much friction is there, and how
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much weight is actually on the sled. Let's give Vinnie another another chance to
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practice that. This time, Vinnie, instead of going hand over hand over hand, I want
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you to just do right left, stop, and then left right, stop.
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Beautiful, and you can see he had a nice tempo there. His rotations were efficient.
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So that's what we're looking for. Let's see if he can get the same thing
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happening going from left to right. We might have a little bit of weakness
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where he has little more coordination going from dominant hand to weak hand than
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the other way around.
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We can see there, we've kind of picked up on a little weakness Vinnie has. His left
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side needs a little bit of work. So if I was going to work with Vinnie this is
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probably where I would stop. I would be like, 'alright, we're going to do left
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right, hand over hand', and I'd give him six to ten repetitions as long as he
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could keep the tempo. We'd eventually work up to a hand over hand over hand
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over hand, and then rope lengths can become kind of like your sets. You
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can get longer ropes as long as you can continue pulling with the same maximal
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velocity you started with. I hope you enjoy this video, I hope you
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enjoy this exercise, I hope you get a ton of power from it. I look forward to