I the last article we talked about the core and its responsibility for maintaining stability in the spine. I don’t love the title of this article, since ‘extremity’ sounds a bit sterile, but this is how those of us on the rehabilitation side might separate this part of the workout from the ‘core’. I tried to think of ways to define it, in a way that illuminated it functionally rather than just anatomically, and I think that the key is to look at it from a movement perspective. Broadly speaking, if the core is there to provide stability, the extremities are there for mobility: arms swinging and legs kicking during running and jumping and throwing and striking.

Note that this is different from and more general than the elegant ‘Joint-by-Joint’ approach, which examines loose attributes for the amount of mobility at each articulation.

In the sports performance realm, it’s often referred to simply as upper body and lower body training, with each divided further into ‘pushing’ (e.g., squats and presses) and ‘pulling’ (deadlifts and rowing) exercises. For the lower body however, I prefer dividing them into ‘quadricep-dominant’ and hip dominant (glute and hamstring) exercises. See my article Hip Dominant vs. Knee Dominant? for a more detailed examination of this.

http://www.jameswcavin.com/clinicians-and-coaches/?category=Concepts+%26+Continuing+Ed

We divide the upper body exercises even further depending on the angle of the arm: either a ‘horizontal’ or a ‘vertical’ push or pull. Note that the exercises are not grouped by muscles (ie, lats and biceps); they are grouped by the movement that is performed (vertical pulling). This helps to ensure that when selecting exercises we are choosing movements that reproduce functions performed during sport and general life (and also subtly reinforces the exclusion of single joint exercises)

For a typical 3 and 4 day/week offseason or 2 day/week in-season program, we’ll take one upper body movement and one lower body movement each day, then switch to it’s opposite on another day. For example:

Day One:

Quad Dominant: Split Squat
Upper Body Horizontal Pressing: Dumbbell Press

Day Two:

Hip Dominant: Single Leg Stiff-Legged Deadlift
Upper Body Horizontal Pulling: Inverted Row

Day Three:

Quad Dominant: Pistol Squat
Upper Body Vertical Pushing: Shoulder Press

Day Four:

Hip Dominant: Single Leg Deadlift
Upper Body Vertical Pulling: Pull-up

On a two day/week off-season or general fitness program and one day/week in-season programs, we are more likely to perform pushes and pulls on the same day, as the training sessions will be on non-consecutive days and will typically be more spread out:

Day One:

Quad Dominant: Pistol Squat
Hip Dominant: Single Leg Stiff-Legged Deadlift
Upper Body Horizontal Pulling: Inverted Row
Upper Body Horizontal Pressing: Flat Dumbbell Press

Day Two:

Quad Dominant: Split Squat
Hip Dominant: Single Leg Deadlift
Upper Body Vertical Pulling: Pullup
Upper Body Vertical Pressing: ½ Kneeling Bottoms Up KB Press

Depending on the phase, the number of work sets will typically be inversely proportional to the number of repetitions and will range from 3-5. For the purpose of making workouts more efficient, we’ll always program exercises in a superset, tri- or quad-set format. Instead of resting four minutes between heavy sets of front squats, rest one or two. Then put in a set of bench presses, rest again, and go back to the squats. To further improve the density/efficiency of the workout, we might program lower-demand exercises with even less rest. Using the exercises above, here are some options:

Adding antagonistic static stretching:

Front Squat
Hamstring Stretch
Bench Press
Rhomboid stretch

Adding dynamic agonistic stretching:

Front Squat
Quad stretch with 1” on/1” off glute squeezes
Bench Press
Prone T

Adding Corrective or “Supporting” Exercises to the primary lifts:

Wrist Flexor Stretch/Wrist Extension PROM
Front Squat
Wall Slide with diaphragmatic breathing
Bench Press

(Here we’ve put the lower-demand exercises first since the goal in this example to to assist the primary lift)

Adding Core Stability exercises:

Front Squat
Quadruped Contralateral Lift
Bench Press
Pushup Bridge with alternating Knee to Chest

Adding Plyometics:

Front Squat
Jump Squat
Bench Press
Medicine Ball Chest Pass

IF supportive exercises are added will depend primarily on the proficiency of the athletes in performing the lifts. When someone is just learning to squat properly, we may not add supportive exercises in between, because we want to reinforce the skill of front squatting as much as possible, which becomes more difficult as additional tasks are introduced. Also, the intensity and fatigue level will be low and won’t require significant rest between sets.

WHAT additional exercises are added will be dependent on the needs of the individual athlete or the group as a whole. Do they need more lumbopelvic stability? Do they have a hard time catching the bar in the clean properly? Are they tight in the hamstrings or hip flexors? In the real world, what additional exercises are used will also depend on the availability and location of space and equipment to perform specific exercises as well. The purpose of increasing density is to save time, so it doesn’t make much sense to add exercises that require a 90 second round trip.

WHEN additional exercises are worked will depend on the goals of the phase. For example, adding jump squats after a set of front squats is very effective at developing power, but if they are performed after a set of ten heavy squats, when metabolic fatigue is high, the neurologic benefits of the jump may be limited, and so often it may be better to program the plyometrics before the lift unless the athlete is in a specific power phase and using a lower repetition scheme for the front squats.

When determining tempo of the primary lifts, we always use an explosive concentric except in the case of rehabilitation--though with rehab we are always working back towards explosive movement. The vast majority of the time the eccentrics are only about 1.5 seconds, but occasionally we might do slower eccentrics of 2-4 seconds when teaching a lift, during a hypertrophy phase, or with athletes that are doing a great deal of jumping and predisposing themselves to tendinopathy.

The question of repetitions has been covered extensively elsewhere, so I’ll just suggest that when designing a program always keep in mind the SAID principle, as well as the the concepts of periodization, preferably without getting too bogged down in the minutiae of it.

The key takeaways here, as always, are to keep in mind your goals and to structure your workouts in a way that allows you to maximize your use of time while working towards them, and to re-examine them regularly, especially as they relate to your supporting exercises. In the next article we’ll look at integrating conditioning, a topic that has a lot of great research, a lot of dispute over semantics and a lot of unanswered questions, many of which we may have thought were resolved.

Section 3: Strength, Part Two: Extremities