If You Don’t Have All 3 Of These, You May Be In Trouble.
Did you know that even the strongest people in the world can lack joint stability? Would you believe us if we told you that someone who can deadlift 500 lbs may not be able to do a single leg RDL?
In the fitness world, the terms strength and stability are thrown around interchangeably but are two completely separate concepts. On top of that, there is another concept that is part of the strength/stability spectrum that not many people are familiar with.
Disregarding flexibility and mobility, there are 3 major components to movement to consider when you’re training that all build on one another:
Motor Control: Our body’s ability to control movement! This is the basis on which we are able to train. Motor control is timing of muscle contractions and awareness of joint positioning. Having awareness of how a joint is moving allows us to perform exercises in the most efficient way possible.
Stability: Once we have awareness of how our joints are moving, our smaller muscle groups (or stabilization muscles) support these movements. Stability is the capacity of these small muscle groups to both maintain a single position during an exercise, and to support efficient joint mechanics during movement.
Strength: Most athletes are familiar with the concept of strength. In simple terms, strength is how much weight you are able to lift.
Sacrificing 1 or 2 of these causes your body to compensate, and potentially lead to much bigger issues in your movement and health in the future.
To become a better athlete, learning to train motor control and stability will help support your strength training. We are able to build greater strength when we have more awareness of how we are moving (motor control), and balancing the use of our smaller muscles supports the use of our larger muscles to move weight (stability and strength).
There are countless ways to build all three of these, and it’s always important to keep working on all them too for your overall safety, health, and wellness. Here is an example of a for all three in relation to the deadlift.
1. Motor control: PVC pipe drill to control neutral spine while deadlifting.
2. Stability: Single leg RDL (3 seconds down and 3 seconds up) to improve stability of smaller muscle groups around your hips.
Single Leg Single Kettlebell Deadlift
3. Strength: Progressive loading of your deadlift → gradually increasing weight to your deadlift over time to continuously push your body’s limits.
As athletes (regardless of what level) we should always strive to improve how we move our bodies so we can stay active and remain in the communities we love!
If interested in finding out what could be holding you back from performing at a higher level, or slowing you down the absolute least as you age, we can help. Click HERE for a totally free call to find out if we’d be a good fit to help you achieve a more active and healthy lifestyle for life.
Have fun training!
Dr. Val
