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Transverse Abdominis (TVA) and Gluteus Maximus Activation and Progressions
Transverse Abdominis (TVA) Activation and Progressions:Transverse abdominis (TVA) activation and progressions refers to specific exercises that are designed to improve the strength and stability of the transverse abdominis (TVA) muscle, which is located in the deep core. TVA activation should focus on slow and controlled breathing and the contraction of the transverse abdominis muscle from the base of the ribcage to the pubic bone. Progressing this
Transcript
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This is Brent coming at you with yet
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Rob and I will be geeking out over TVA activation, and glute max activation, and
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how are we going to progress these exercises. We've come up with a
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method that not only progresses both, but combines them, which, of course, increases
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the efficiency of our programs as well. I'm gonna have my friend Rob come out
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and help me demonstrate.
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Now, I have to warn you ahead of time, I'm going to go ahead and apologize
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for Rob, he has to turn his back to you.
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This is just so he can demonstrate the exercises. You need to be able to
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see his hips, and what's going on with his hips and reference to this wall.
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Let's talk about TVA activation to start. We use the quadruped position
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a lot.
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Notice that he has his feet tucked, they're in nice alignment here, so his kinetic
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chain checkpoints are in line: feet, knees, hips, and a nice straight spine.
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Now, what you have probably started to notice is, as soon as you start going
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through the progressions of TVA activation, as soon
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as they start any of the marching, or they start lifting legs, - and you can go
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ahead and lift the leg here and show it-
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they start doing this shift, this way. We don't want to shift this way. That
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takes everything out of alignment here.
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That's also a failure of his external rotators and abductors in this hip, to
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stabilize his hip.
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Regardless of whether that is part of our compensation pattern, we know that
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that is a common compensation pattern, we don't want to contribute, or create one,
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we want to find a way to get this stable, and that shift in the spine isn't
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going to help us out either.
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So, Rob has come up with this ingenious way of making sure we don't do this,
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and in the process has made this exercise incredibly hard.
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So, what Rob does, is he takes this yoga block,
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but you could use anything you can find in the gym that soft enough
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for somebody's knees to be able to handle. You just want to get
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their knee off the ground a little bit.
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Now, what you're going to see here is, as soon as Rob
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shifts his pelvis back in a neutral position, and you can use that
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martini glass queue I used in the first video where we pretend there's
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a martini glass on your back, try to get level, don't shake... as soon as he did that,
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he had to abduct slightly at the hip, which is of course going to activate his
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abductors and external rotators, so we're good here, as well as his multifidi on
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this side of his spine,
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so now he's nice and stable here. Queue the drawing-in maneuver.
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I can keep him from shifting this way by just going, 'okay Rob, you're not allowed to
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touch the wall. The wall is right there, if you feel it, you need to back off of it, don't
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lean into it'. Now he's totally set up, and, believe it or not, just doing this,
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is really hard.
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That little movement to take his knee off the ground, is
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super, super hard. If I want to make it a little harder, I can just have him lift
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this foot, and then go into a little bit more triple flexion to get that foot off,
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or triple extension. Good. This is actually the final progression we'll show.
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You could go with keeping the foot on the ground, or
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we could try this arm. Don't try this arm on the same side, same leg. It doesn't work
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out so well, we don't anybody falling over! You can work in some upper body
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stuff on this side. You can work in the lower body stuff on this side.
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Once again, shown that triple extension here...
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And then, of course, Rob was showing me this exercise, and I'm going, 'wow
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this is awesome, this is really, really tough.' Then I thought, 'well you know,
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we should probably do? We should probably just add glue max activation to this,
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and make it really, really tough'.
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So that's what we did! What Rob is going to do is move the
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block to his other knee now. He's going to do the exact same thing, I'm still
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going to keep him from shifting, except now, he's not going to be trying to stay
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away from the wall so much this way, as staying so that he can slightly feel the
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wall. That will keep him from shifting toward me, and then what I'm going to
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have them do with this side, if you guys remember with the glute max, our
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overactive synergists our erector spinae, which we know we already have out
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because of our position, and the fact that he's going to draw-in real hard, and
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then the biceps femoris, which we are going to take out by having him extend his
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knee, flex is quad really, really hard, and then we have posterior fibers of adductor magnus.
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The way to get that out is by abducting into the wall a little bit.
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He can go ahead and point his toe, going into plantar flexion for me, so we
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reinforce triple extension. So, we have TVA activation with the quadruped, and now
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he's actually perfectly set up to go ahead and give me some nice hip
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extension, which, of course, is going to be great
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glute max activation.
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So if you've been working on TVA activation already, and glute max activation
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already, this progression is a wonderful way to take it up a step, increase the
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need for stabilization, increase the need for coordination,
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as well as get these two exercises together which is going to
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make your program more efficient. Now, we did talk about a couple ways we could
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progress this.
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Rob is really fond of the half foam roller under the knee.
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You could use the half foam roller under the knee for the TVA progression, or the
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glute max progression.
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So why don't you show the glute max activation progression. Good stuff! And
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you can see, this just increases the need for stability, and increases the need for
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coordination.
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Good! Then, of course, we could progress this farther by just doing
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something simple like add an ankle weight to this leg, and we could start
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with above the knee, and then at the ankle and increase weight over
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time. You can experiment with time on this, do this for 60 seconds on each side.
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You could do it for your reps of 12 to 20 repetitions on each side,
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our normal activation stuff, and you're going to do that one to three set range.
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Thank you very much Rob, I know that was a tough video for you!
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