Training to Eliminate Compensation Patterns

In the previous post we covered what compensation patterns are and how they both cause injury and rob people of their ability to perform at their physical peak. Now, it is time to delve into ways to fix these problems through training. Compensation patterns have been ingrained in the body through repetition. More and more repetitions build up a greater body of information, and in order to rewrite that information we need to input a large amount of new information.

Training is simply a stimulus to the body. This stimulus causes adaptation in the body based on many different factors, with the amount of adaptation being directly related to the amount of stimulus. To maximize adaptation, we want to maximize the information that we put into the body through training; that means high load and high velocity.

At first it may not be safe or effective to train using weights at high load and high velocity. Also, if this training is done before the body is properly prepared, it is more likely to actually reinforce compensation patterns rather than eliminate them.

The most effective way that we've found to prepare the body for efficient movement with minimal compensation is the extreme isometric protocol. Iso extremes, as we call them, involve holding the body in proper position for several minutes. Of course it may take several sessions to work up to being able to hold for this long, and that's fine.

One example is the iso extreme lunge. In this exercise, one gets into a lunge position and pulls maximally with the hamstring of the front leg to drop the hips as low as possible. Pulling with the front hamstring accomplishes many useful things. For example, the concentric contraction of the hamstring activates several reflex arcs. It causes eccentric contraction of both the quad on the same leg as well as the hip flexor of the opposite leg. And what do we know about most injuries? They occur during the eccentric phase of movement. Hmm...

Actively pulling to the maximum range of motion also causes the body to contract the muscles in the exact same way as a max effort sprint. How much feedback (or information) do you think is sent to the brain during a max effort sprint? That's right, a lot! During a five minute iso extreme lunge, we can actually achieve the same adaptation that we would get from five minutes of max effort sprint. This is a big deal, because very few (read: none) humans are able to maintain a max effort sprint for five minutes. If you don't believe it can be done, check out this video.

So, we know that doing the iso extreme exercises sends a lot of information to the brain. But what's the big deal? Well, as mentioned earlier, we need a lot of input to overwrite compensation patterns. While performing iso extremes, the information that we send to the brain is going to ingrain correct movement patterns related to proper position and patterns of muscle activation. Therefore, if we do enough iso extremes, we can actually overpower those built up compensation pattern. This leads to efficient movement. And efficient movement translates to more speed and strength with less effort, as well as fewer injuries.