Athletic Variations to Common Exercises

Training like a bodybuilder will make your muscles look good, but it won’t make you move better. Exercising like a powerlifting will give you strong hip and back muscles, but you won't be able to use these athletically. Most guys do the same routine for years and this leads to stiff joints and slow bodies. If your goal is health or performance, these athletic variations will allow you to build your body while maintaining your athleticism and without hurting yourself or getting slower.

Heel-elevated Variations

When walking, running, jumping, or moving athletically we want very little weight in the heels because heavy heels is slower and leads to common knee injuries. Unfortunately, It’s common practice to place all the weight into the heels when lifting because this makes you more stable. Most coaches recommend the "tripod foot" with heavy heels and many coaches even elevate the heels during things like squats, but they don't realize they're making the feet and ankles weak and uncoordinated.

The glutes and feet are connected with fascia. Isolating the feet and calves is not helpful, instead, build coordination and connection for the whole body by understanding and respecting the body's fascia.

For years I lifted with the conventional tripod foot, but when I started doing Muay Thai I realized my feet and ankles were unable to support my strong hip muscles and I couldn't move around how I wanted. Most guys have hip and upper body muscles that are too big and strong for the feet and ankles to control, and this leads to injury. It's one reason for why modern athletes have so many non-contact injuries: they have big, strong muscles but poor coordination and an inability to absorb force below the knee. One solution is to include heel-elevated variations in your training program.

The first exercise to master is the drop-in as this trains the coordination of the lower limb and the ability to co-contract the front and back of the leg simultaneously. Practice this for 30 seconds per side a few sets per day until you start to feel strong standing on one foot with the heel elevated.

Use heel-elevated exercises like the heel-elevated squat or lunge. These videos explain the concept of co-contraction where we engage the muscles on both sides of the body to better utilize our fascial systems.

Elevating the heels is the simplest solution to increasing the athleticism and transfer of gym exercise to functional daily use. You can do this for all lower body exercises: squats, lunges, split squats, and deadlifts. It isn’t necessary to fully lift your heels off the ground. Just putting as much pressure into your toes as possible is a great place to start as this will improve engagement of all your muscles below the knees. After doing this for a few weeks, you’ll wonder why you ever lifted with disengaged feet!

Coiling Core Movement

Spinal engine theory is the idea that the spine and torso are the primary engine for movement: walking, running, jumping, throwing, punching, etc. The body is dynamic, not static. Try throwing a baseball without side-bending your torso - it just doesn’t work. It’s important to know how to resist movement at the core when lifting heavy items, but in every other case of daily life and athletics, the core moves! The majority of core training should be dynamic and athletic.

Start by learning how to coil your body with the wall coil by standing in a split squat and side bending to lengthen one side and shorten the other. Rotate your torso to tuck your one side shoulder into your back pocket. This is how the torso generates force for crawling, walking, running, throwing, punching, and swinging.

Since most people are stiff in the torso, the hanging coil is the perfect exercise to improve mobility.

Once you've become accustomed to how to coil, move to core exercises that include this coil like the coiling cable press and coiling cable row. Get creative and learn to use this coiling core in all exercises.

Single Side Variation

Most exercises in the gym are bilateral - both sides work the same way at the same time. Think of the chest press, squat, or deadlift. However, in daily life we rarely have this symmetrical set-up. Instead, we’re often in a split stance, pressing or pulling with one arm only, or carrying awkward or uneven loads. To make your gym training transfer easier to real life, train with mostly single side exercises. Choose a reverse lunge over a barbell squat, a single-leg deadlift over a barbell deadlift, a single arm dumbbell press over a bench press, or a half-kneeling cable row over a seated row. Training one side at a time will reduce the imbalances present in your body and improve your core strength and coordination.

A great exercise is the rotating split squat as this trains the body unilaterally while also applying the coiling core technique explained above. Start with a TRX if this is too difficult and move to training without assistance and eventually by adding load.

Conclusion

There’s nothing wrong with training like a bodybuilder or powerlifter, but if that’s all you do it’s more likely for you to experience imbalance and chronic pain. The body is all connected, not isolated, yet most of the training in the gym for athletics or chronic pain relief is focused on isolation. Apply these 3 strategies to your training in the gym to make better exercise selections that improve athleticism and coordination.

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