5 Step System To Fixing ANY Muscle Imbalance
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What’s up coaches and athletes. My name is Michael Hughes. I’m a functional movement specialist and founder of Gymnazo Edu.
Strategies on how to approach addressing any type of imbalance with your clients. But before that, if you’re someone who is interested in the new ways of thinking about fitness and exercise, please don’t forget to subscribe to our channel to keep getting a fresh perspective and strategies on all things movement and training related. So obviously, I’m not a bodybuilder, and nor do I really care to be, I’m perfectly content with my normal size muscles. But as a movement specialist, I do consider myself an expert in understanding the biomechanical aspect of how the human body moves. And the first thing I want to clear up is the difference between how I would define a muscle imbalance versus a movement imbalance. Simply put, muscle imbalances are aesthetic or strength based, where movement imbalance is a system wide dysfunction. So for the sake of this video, and because I’m not about bodybuilder or power lifter, I’m going to focus on teaching how to approach solving movement imbalances, because solving muscle imbalances is relatively simple. You can go check out any of the person’s video out there on how to address that. But in this video, though, I’m going to give you a problem solving strategy that you’ll be able to use with every single client that you have. At first, it’s important to note that everyone has movement imbalances, because the world the way it is forces us to have imbalances. A simple example would be writing with a pen, your right or left hand dominant, right? You do that consistently. driving in a car, the gas pedal is always the right foot. And for some reason, they said that that pedal for your foot is act
anything else that basically our life encourages asymmetrical movement that will basically perpetuate and create a movement imbalance. Now, based on this truth, what kind of movement biases can you come up with? That? Maybe your client or you have already? Now? Can you brush your teeth better than one hand, another hand? And can you kick a ball with one foot better than another foot? Right? I bet you can. So drop a comment below and let me know what you’ve seen with yourself, or with your clients and athletes that they presented to you as a movement bias. Alright, so everyone has an imbalance and everyone is different? How are you supposed to figure out what’s causing those imbalances? Well, let me start with this. Any kind of movement related dysfunction is a multi dimensional problem. Meaning there are lots of different causes of why someone has a particular boom and balance. And it goes beyond just the physical someone’s belief systems, their self esteem, their ego, their experiences all play a role in how someone moves. For example, all those guys out there walking into a 24 hour fitness or something like that, with their shirts off and their chest pulled out, Well, they certainly have a level of confidence that affects how they move, versus someone with, let’s say, low self esteem, incredibly low self esteem probably has much more of a hunched over and kind of like a forward lean posture. And that’s also going to affect how they move. And those are just simple, simple examples. But because there are so many different behavioral layers that cause movement imbalances, we’re gonna start with how to look at the many layers of how to approach fixing those imbalances from a physics and biological view. So let me try to break down those layers for you just kind of real quick. In environment imposes physical and biological circumstances to the body. Fair enough. Well, then, how do the nerves respond to that? Now I’m talking more about the proprioceptive sphere, right, the movement nerves, but they’re all also all nerves play into a biological circumstance as well. So then how are the muscles and the fascia connective tissue able to respond to those nerves communication? Is the muscle actually primed, ready to go? Like, has that neurological signal been passed through that connection? Often? Is the body ready for that? Right? There’s a lot of things that can go and kind of not necessarily go wrong, but not be fully ready to go. Then after that, how do muscles manage the load response to the joints capacity? Now the physics is coming through, right? Do the muscles have the tensile strength? Do they have the elasticity? Are there enough fibers in there that are not so bound down and kind of gunk together? That would allow a full load to happen and do The joints have the full capacity as well. Are there nicks in the meniscus? Are there different little tears and things that happened from previous injuries, scar tissue that is built up? Okay, then how do the nerves and joints respond back from the muscle force production, right, then as it comes down, it has to shoot back up. So we’re talking about a quite a bit of an outline for this for you to consider. And now that we have this little bit of framework, how is movement produced, we can start to reverse engineer these, these imbalances, right got to think about that outline and think about the reversing of that process to really come down to a long term solution. So here’s a case study that I’m going to help to demonstrate on how I typically go about solving for movement and programming with a movement in balance. So I have a case study, and this particular client has anterior hip pain on the right hand side, when she goes running. Now it’s on her push off leg, we call that transformational zone to or when in gait cycle, when the foot is behind you. It’s about to propel, and push off. And when she goes running, that anterior hip called the hip flexor region, shoots pain, it sends a signal saying, not loving it, please stop doing it. And it’s been there for a few years, but definitely, very, very hard, like very pronounced in the last eight weeks. So we have to start and kind of think about this particular case study, and what are we going to how we’re going to break this down to understand how to solve for this thing? So I’m asking a few questions. And we give answers, not a full detailed answer, but a good answer. Can I keep your mind thinking, right? So where do I start? Well, I wanna start with an intake, right? I wanna start with the intake of understanding different aspects. So in this in Texas, a real life life client, she is in the medical profession. So she’s standing up and working, and intense times and then sitting down and doing a lot of documentation. So she’s that she spends most of her day sitting. She’s in mid 40s, she’s had three children, all natural births. And through that process, she’s stayed relatively fit. But she also has incontinence, which incontinence is a real fancy word for saying that she leaks a little urine as she does jumping activities. So from that knowledge, we know that there is probably some pelvic floor imbalances. Along with anterior hip imbalances. Pelvic Floor is essentially the base of your torso in between your legs, that feet up into the very bottom or base of your pelvis. There’s a lot of muscles in there. And we’re gonna talk about that a little bit more on why that’s really important, or why that we need to consider that. Alright, so with that knowledge set, dry, there’s more to it. But that’s kind of the basis of what we want to know. What movement data do we collect? Well, from that, we do a movement assessment. And we like to do a three dimensional lunge and balance assessment called 3d maps. Well, right away, the first motion is an anterior lunge, post your hand reach, well, that definitely exposes and recreates the running position from the lower body down on how that hip works. And guess what, boom, that hurt. The stretching of the loading of that muscle created dysfunction. What about from a stability standpoint, we stood on that leg we reached all the way out and sure motion pattern also cause dysfunction or pain at that spot. In fact, standing on her right side, she could probably reach about either just for a relative speaking, two feet out. But standing on her left side, she could reach like three feet out. So she didn’t have the range of motion on that front hip as as well. As she went to the posterior chain, she reached back back down. And when she loaded into her left hip, she felt the pinching sensation in her right front side interest, not just of the pain but like a binding sensation. Okay, so that tells him some more information about what’s what’s going on. From a stability point, it was the same thing. As she hid in the frontal plane, she went to her left and right lateral chains. These were very gunky, very iffy, and very much like I feel discomfort, slight pain, but not as much as the anterior. But if she didn’t have a good clean range of motion getting through her adductors expecially. When she decided to do a single leg, she stood on her left side, she would slide out pretty far, but when she stood on her right side, her range of motion was significantly reduced. Consider adductors were the primary movers of that motion pattern from the lower body and then as she into it into rotation coming through, also limited going to the left, again, not being able to access the adductors in the transverse plane as she rotated through. Okay, what’s all this mean? Again, still putting it together. As she went through offside Funnel Plan A lot of motion through the left, left hip, go into the right Hip,
achy just didn’t have the slide didn’t have that ability to kick on through. Interesting. That’s kind of a lot of front hip, that’s also some lateral hip too. And then the kicker, she went through offside rotation, slid through. And as she went through to the right side, big grab a big lockup didn’t have good range of motion, getting into rotation from the hip. Now I’m just focusing on the hip, there are some upper body stuff as well. But to keep it relatively simple and concise, her hip didn’t love and it was in pain with extension wasn’t necessarily in pain with a B duction. But had some limitations, especially from a stability standpoint, also had some pain, but also major range of motion loss and through external rotation, and was very gunked up into internal rotation. Now, again, that’s just data. What do we do with that data? Right? Well, we have to start problem solving and reverse engineering, what all that means. So we know that running hurts, right? And that’s the same thing as the extension piece. But why? Why does it hurt? And what can we take from the observation that she has pain in an ad duction has a little bit of pain, but but still some discomfort in a deduction, sorry, a B duction. Going out a deduction going in some range of motion loss and external, an external rotation, excuse me, and some funky kind of gunk Enos pinching in internal rotation? Well, we want to think about this is that all dysfunction can lead to a distinctive problem. So let’s start unwinding different pieces of the body. So I need to confirm I do pose a theory to this. And my theory is that because her abductors are have too much of an imbalance, because her lateral hip has too much of an imbalance, it’s creating too little motion. And that for that to that removed amount of motion, is causing her anterior hip to overstretch, over lengthen, and therefore produce an achy PowerPoint presentation or drive as she tries to run. So in my theory, I’m going to give her more and I’m going to give her more I’m going to be more abductor, more glute, more lateral hip to remove anterior hip pain. So that’s going to be my theory, right? So from there, I have to start to experiment and investigate if I’m correct in that or not. But there’s one interesting thing that I also need to take into consideration. The incontinence, I got to take into consideration that for three natural childbirth, her pelvic floor is not fully engaged and the tension is off. So what actions do I take to fix that imbalance where this is where I start to create the solution. And again, this is only in session one or two, from start to figure these these things out? Well, this is what happened. I actually went on my overall instinct, that that that that incontinence, and pelvic floor is probably going to be the biggest problem. So we actually start to want to actually stabilize through the abductors, adding more tension, and more tension through the abdominals through essentially some great techniques, which is not the most important thing right now, right now as the strategies and the principles to understand those techniques. And from there, after bringing more intentional integrity into the abductors and into the core, she started to do more walking drills, she started to do more high knee drills, and guess what pain reduction started instantaneously. Meaning that after our first session alone, she was able to tie her shoes without achy pain, and even take long strides was significant. I’m talking 50%, and more pain reduction in that hip now was just under after the first session. So we still have more to do. But I want you to think about this one, right? If we don’t have enough tension in the abdominals, what does that do to the rest of the system? Right, it creates havoc. If we have too much tightness on the adductors too much tightness on the outside hip. What does that do? It creates havoc on the system. So when I’m assessing and addressing movement imbalances, it’s always a question of Is This the primary mobility or stability stability problem, because that is going to be to the dictate of how I program from the very start. If it’s a mobility problem, primarily, there’s a basic outline I like to follow. I want to start with an outline to fix a basically a mobility problem, there’s not enough of it. So I’m going to start with soft tissue work that could be foam rolling, that could be my own skilled hands, and we’re starting to unwind the fascial network around that area, or in that chain of movement. From there I want to stretch that motion pattern. I want to bring it in the sagittal plane. If it’s pain free, I want to bring it in the frontal plane If it’s pain free, I want to bring it in the transverse plane and lengthen it. If it’s pain free, once I go through those two steps start time to basically bring in a little bit more stability, but stability in the newfound mobility depending on the plane of motion, and the fascial line that that chain reaction was in. And that could be anything from simple balance work, to basically isometrics to even just the thought process of going through the natural motion pattern that caused the discomfort in a very reduced way. Again, lengthen, or assuming, unlock, lengthen, and then begin to strengthen in the new found range of motion that you just created. Now, if it’s a stability problem, then I will take basically the same outline, but I’m going to skip extra stretching and extra mobility parts because they simply need to bring more tension through the area. But the important part about the strengthening is a want to do it in a tension way that the body needs. Meaning. If someone has a stability problem in external rotation, that I want to strengthen them in external rotation, I don’t want to go into a neutral space and just do basic drills, I want to recreate the positioning with pain free as close as I can, to start to bring in the appropriate tension in the angulation that the muscles are in. Remember, muscles do not connect relatively in a straight line, some do most don’t. There’s oblique with these to them, there’s curves to them, there spirals to them. So I want to match that in my movement patterns. Therefore multi dimensional movement is a key component and understanding how to apply strategies to fix movement imbalances. Now, the only thing to be mindful is that movement imbalances are not only mobility and stability problems by themselves, they’re in fact always both. And therefore you have to train both at the same time. But a strategy that I use often is to first balance the mobility and stability scale in the athlete to solve for the acute issue, then work on combining mobility and stability training for conditioning and long term movement and performance sustainability. I’ll say that one more time, just to make it simple. I fixed the major problem first, then I always blend in mobility and stability training at the same time. A quick example of that would be single a balance with huge overhead dumbbell presses to create that stability. But in that stability, I’m creating huge ranges of motion, as an example, to create the mobility and the range, but the stability to come back home. Again, that’s how life and all sport is we need range of motion and strength to make a drill happen. Okay, that’s all I got for you today. If you want to dive deeper into these problems, to start solving major, major issues with clients with athletes, and you need those strategies in you need these kind of these bigger issues to kind of have a greater thought process around checked in the description below at a multi dimensional movement coaching mentorship program where we teach you how to apply the fundamental principles of movement to how to address pain and empower you with problem solving skills that are certain to keep your clients coming back. Alright, if you liked this video, please give us a thumbs up. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to our channel. We’ll see you next time. Cheers.
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