Friday, November 8, 2013

Postural Restoration at Soar Fitness

For years I have been searching for the solution to the problem of crooked squatting that I see with a lot of my athletes.  After watching kids squat for years, it seems like a lot of them have the tendency to lean to the right.   I knew it was wrong and I knew that there had to be a way to fix it, but how?   The answer ended up being the Postural Restoration Institute.  After months of deliberating, I finally decided to enroll in the PRI Myokinematic Restoration Home Study course.   After two weeks of intense video watching and studying, I can honestly say that it was by far the best continuing education course I have ever taken.  The course I took involved a ton of in depth information about the body, so I will do my best to give you the major points of it in the simplest way possible. 

Below are the major points that I took from the course. 

1.  The Left Anterior Chain  (AIC) is the pattern that this course addresses.   A person in Left AIC, will have a forwardly rotated left pelvis, left foot pointed out and most of their body weight on the right leg.   How many people do you see that stand like this?



2.  The goal of the program is to get some muscles working that are "shut off" and more importantly inhibiting some muscles that are overworking.

3. After a series of tests, the protocol to reverse the AIC pattern is to first reposition the pelvis.  Once that is accomplished, a series of exercises are used to strengthen the Left Adductor group, the Left Glute Medius and the Right Glute Max.  After a certain level of strength is achieved, exercises that integrate all of the above muscles are introduced.

So how is this really going to help my clients?

1.  At lot of athletes experience general back pain because of poor posture.   By introducing these exercises, we can get some muscles working and other muscles to calm down.  Feel better, play better!

2. Internal rotation of the hip is crucial for speed and power and lot of athletes lack that range of motion  - especially on the left side.   The PRI course addresses this issue with a simple progression of exercises.

3.  This seems to be the solution to a lot of the ugly squatting patterns that I have seen over the years.  Fixing that will help with #1 and 2 as well.

So far, I have used the PRI methods with a few advanced and beginner level clients with great success.   One of my pro football prospects has already taken a tenth of his 10 yard sprint time with just 2 weeks of PRI exercises!  As time goes on, my goal is to find the easiest way to implement these exercises into our weekly group training sessions.

1 comment:

  1. What were the exercises used to strengthen the L Adductor group, L Glute Medius and the R Glute Max?

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