Goal #4 Develop Movement Pattern Efficiency

(Part 1: Injury prevention though movement pattern perfection)

In a conversation with a NCAA Division I softball coach who recently won a national championship, the coach was asked by one of my staff members, “What are you looking for (in the athlete we are sending to your program).” Her reply shocked me at first because I don’t usually hear this from coaches. She said, “I don’t care about fast feet…I want good feet.” I completely agree! With quality movement comes, efficiency, with efficiency comes speed and consistency.

Sometimes athletes tend to think that the harder they push, or the faster they move, the better the outcome. This is not always the case. Roy Palmer, author of the Performance Paradox has the following comments, “… athletes tend to engage the ‘wrong kind of effort.’ By misdirecting energy we achieve the opposite to the desired result and succeed only in reducing efficiency and limiting further development. Performance may appear to be enhanced by some measures - but at a price."

The price you pay is inconsistent performance. Overworking certain muscle groups, added stress on the connective tissue and the inability to control the forces, momentums, and torque you can generate all lead to injuries. A continuous monitoring of the efficiency of the mechanics involved in the specific sporting event is essential. Maximal effort, while injured or limited in a particular range of motion, will cause the athlete to modify the movement pattern to try and generate more speed or power. This modification done repetitively, repetition after repetition, starts to alter the sequential muscle firing patterns, thus creating an inefficient movement pattern.

At CAP, we have a 15 minute movement section in each 90 min class. This is block that is dedicated solely to perfecting the 3-4 basic movement patterns of sport:

• Positioning – we define power position as the athletic stance from which you can move explosively in any direction
• Acceleration – the ability to quickly and efficiently reach top speed without compromising the body
• Transition – the moment of a directional change where the athlete is rapidly decelerating and trying to accelerate at the same time
• Throwing or Hitting – The transfer of energy from the lower body to upper body with explosive acceleration

It is in these movements that injuries most commonly arise. Positioning in a rapid deceleration while trying to change direction can lead to ankle, knee, hip, quad, groin and calf related injuries. Another example would be throwing while trying to use too much upper body and its tendency to lead to overuse injuries of the elbow and shoulder.

In our warm ups we combine the physical preparedness (stabilization, mobility, and activation type exercises) with the athletic preparedness (rhythm, coordination, and movement based activities). After warming up these two focus areas together we blend them into our 15 min movement section in a way that allows the athlete to make the connection between training and sport. This will help insure that the proper movement pattern protocols are filed correctly so that they can be used in the sporting event.

We try and incorporate drills to stabilize and strengthen these movement patterns in the training block that immediately follows movement training. The progressions usually go from basic to complex, slow eccentrics and isometrics first, with focuses on the ability to absorb and stabilize forces, before focusing on generating explosive forces. We isolate these patterns into squatting and lunging motions, rotational cable drills, medicine ball rotational patterns, and sport cord work. Once the athlete is putting strong, stable, efficient movement patterns together, you should notice speed increases on the field or court and an increase in confidence as well!