Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Train Planes Of Motion, Not Just Muscles

You should train planes of motion (or movements) and not just muscles. If you move like a strong robot, you have probably just built up your muscles without training movements. If your movements are not fluid, you won't succeed much in sports.

As an athlete, you need your body parts to be "in tune" with each other. This way, you function as a "smooth-operating" athlete with little or no wasted motion.

Your kinetic chain (human movement system) consists of the muscular system, skeletal system and neural system. Postural problems and muscle imbalances cause these systems to "malfunction" and you won't play as well......you will probably also end up injured.

You need your body to be operating smoothly in all 3 planes of motion:



1. Frontal Plane – imaginary bisector that divides the body into equal front and back halves. The motions primarily involve abduction and adduction (side-to-side motions). Abduction takes a limb away from the midline of the body and adduction takes the limb closer to the midline of the body.

Examples include exercises performed on a hip abductor and hip adductor machines. Other frontal plane motions would be side lunges, dumbbell lateral shoulder raises and lateral spinal flexion. Quickness and agility movements made by athletes require adequate frontal plane stability, strength, power, flexibility and balance.

2. Sagittal Plane – imaginary bisector that divides the body into left and right halves. The motions involve forward-backward and up-down movements relative to the body and/or joint.

Examples would be walking, running, bicep curls, leg curls and seated back rows. Traditional training techniques (such as training with machine weights) have focused on the sagittal plane of motion. This is not an effective training technique if the other planes of motion are ignored during training.

3. Transverse Plane – imaginary bisector that divides the body into top and bottom halves. The motions are primarily rotational. Obviously, this will be a dominate plane of motion for many athletes. Baseball players (swinging, turning, pivoting, etc.), football defensive backs (hip rotations, quick turns, etc.) are just two examples.

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Mark Dilworth, BA, PES
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4 comments:

  1. I think I've made some of the mistakes that you mention because I definitely move like a robot.

    A friend recommended me to do some pilates!

    :)

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  2. Asimo....the good thing about training and exercise is that you can correct muscle imbalances, flexibility problems, etc. Pilates is also a good choice. Let me know how its going!

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  3. Your absolutely right about using weight training to lose fat. The best type is a whole body workout so you get major major muscle groups active and using up calories all day and night. I also make sure to train my legs for that reason. My legs are good fat burners. If you only train your upper body muscles you'll end up looking a bit scrawny. That's how I lost a lot of it myself. I also do cardio workouts but I only do Intervals for about 20 mins a 3 days a week.

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  4. Thanks for the visit Belt! You are absolutely right---full body strength training and short interval cardio will burn the fat. Keep up the good work!

    ReplyDelete