Every semester a new crew of interns make their way to IFAST to learn what we do and how we do it. Our intern system has cranked out some outstanding professionals many of whom have become successful fitness business owners and high level strength coaches.
One of our current interns, “Li’l Stevie” Gabrielsen, is a powerlifter working his way up the ranks with a little bit of deadlift issue. Seems he’s strong enough to pull just about anything off the floor, but he can’t lock it out.
Case in point…
Did he try pulling with bands? yes.
Did he try pulling with chains? yes.
Did he try pulling from pins? yes.
Now to his credit, Stevie has busted his ass and pulled 605, so these are all reasonable methods to correct his weak lockout. However, based on his investment of effort, Stevie believes his progress should be much greater than he’s able to demonstrate at this point.
As part of their internship, each intern undergoes our extensive IFAST Assessment. Today was Stevie’s turn and the results were quite interesting.
A key component of the IFAST Assessment is to use a battery of corroborating tests to zero in the true fitness diagnosis. Trying to infer too much information from a single test is a common mistake that leads to poor exercise selection, ineffective programs, and less than optimal results.
For instance, here’s Stevie’s initial supine straight leg raise test…
Your initial suspicion may be stiff or short hamstrings, but without a corroborating test, you really don’t know for sure. Here’s his right passive supine straight leg raise…
Clearly, Stevie doesn’t lack passive hamstring flexibility on the right leg, but check this out…
He actually has less passive straight leg raise capability on the left compared to right.
So to review, active supine straight leg raise on the right was significantly limited and passive was within normal limits, but active was better on the left and passive was less on the left compared to right.
Have you figured it out yet?
No?
Okay, so we put Stevie in prone to take a look at his prone hip extension. Here’s his first attempt.
Clearly he can’t effectively extend the hip, so is it a lack of hip extension flexibility or weakness? Here’s your answer.
Obviously flexibility is not the issue based on passive hip extension testing. It would seem that Stevie has been trying to lockout his deadlifts with only one glute, thus his frustration and slower than expected progress.
Problem solved, right?
Not so fast.
What’s your corrective plan?
Glute strengthening? Nope. Stevie’s been busting his ass trying to strengthening his lockout which includes literally tons of hip extension work, so doing more of the same will most likely turn into an exercise in frustration.
Straight leg raise corrective exercise? Nope. We actually attempted some just to see what would happen out of curiosity, and while there was some change, it wasn’t significant enough to get excited about it.
What we ended up doing was to use the results of several other tests that indicated that Stevie had a pelvic asymmetry. One quick and dirty pelvic correction later and here were his restest results…
With his pelvic symmetry restored, Stevie can now approach training with greater insight and use his previous methods with an effective hip extensor mechanism. We anticipate almost instant improvement in his next training session.
Pelvic asymmetries alter the length-tension relationship of the muscles attached to the pelvis that, in turn, alter joint flexibility and the ability of muscles to produce tension/strength. Without this knowledge and the ability to differentiate between position-related faults and true flexibility or strength deficits, your corrective exercise prescription will in all likelihood fail.
As a reminder, we still have a few seats left for Diagnosis Fitness: The Complete IFAST Assessment System on July 27-28. Attendance is limited and the tuition goes up July 2nd, so don’t wait to reserve a spot.