By MOlly GAlBRAITh
2. Pull Through – The pull through is a fantastic exercise that teaches the all-important hip hinge pattern. As my friend and Coach Mike Robertson says, “Every great athlete has a great set of hips.”
I couldn’t agree more. The problem arises when a young athlete doesn’t know how to hinge at the hip, and they are then forced to start deadlifting. Since they haven’t grooved this pattern, they tend to round their lumbar spine instead of hinging back into their hips. This not only prevents their hips from getting strong and limits the amount of weight they can lift, but it also puts their low back at high risk for injury.
The pull through teaches an athlete how to push back into their hips and effectively load their glutes and hamstrings. Once they have been doing pull throughs with good form for a month or two, we will allow them to deadlift with a kettlebell. Once they master the kettlebell deadlift, they can move on to a trap bar deadlift. In time, they will eventually learn the barbell deadlift. This is the safest and most effective hip hinge progression we have found for our young athletes.
3. Bear Crawl – The bear crawl is a highly underrated exercise that every young athlete should be doing. Crawling is one of the most fundamental human movement patterns. Babies develop the crawling pattern in order to crawl away from danger and towards sustenance. However, once children start walking and no longer have a need to crawl, they tend to lose this pattern. That, coupled with sitting at a school desk all day and sitting in front of the TV or computer all night, hinders children’s ability to crawl properly.
The way we teach the bear crawl is very different from the classic bear crawl. We teach the bear crawl as a moving plank—where your core stays very still and you are only moving your arms and legs. We have our athletes start out in a push-up type position—with their feet slightly wider than shoulder-width apart and their hands and toes turned out slightly, around 20 degrees. We cue them to take small steps and to keep their core as stable as possible. This will force them to open up their hips and will improve the strength and stability of their shoulders and scapulae. Once your athlete can perform several 10- to 15-yard bear crawls with good form, you can have them progress to backwards bear crawls. You can also load the bear crawl by putting a band around his or her waist and hooking chains around the band.
4. Push-up – Ah, the classic push-up. One of the first bodyweight exercises a young athlete learns, and with good reason. When done properly—which is rare—the push-up is good for many things, including but not limited to: teaching proper protraction and retraction of the scapulae, training anti-extension of the core, teaching the athlete to control his/her body weight, and increasing overall upper body strength.
When your athletes are performing push-ups, make sure that they maintain a neutral spine and head, maintain a tight core and tight glutes, and keep their elbows tucked into their sides at around 45 degrees.
It’s also imperative to make sure that their scapulae is protracting at the bottom of the push-up and fully retracting at the top and that they are using a full range of motion. This will ensure your athletes are getting the maximum benefit from their push-ups. Once they can perform sets of 15 push-ups, they can progress to weighted push-ups or other weighted horizontal pressing exercises, if applicable.
5. Suitcase Carry – Carrying variations are great exercises for young athletes to perform, and one of our favorites is the suitcase carry. We love suitcase carries for several reasons: they integrate hip and trunk stability, they teach the athlete to resist lateral flexion, the offset load has real world carryover, they strengthen the grip, and it’s an exercise that reflexively puts you in a good position.
Suitcase carries are extremely uncomfortable if you don’t have a tight core, tight, glutes, and a packed shoulder. These things naturally happen without much cueing. Once an athlete can carry
40% of his/her body weight in one hand for 15-20 yards, you can progress them to more difficult variations such as: suitcase carries in the rack position, offset farmer carries, trap bar carries, and much more.
6. Inverted Row – Inverted rows are an incredible row variation for young athletes. Firstly, most young athletes cannot perform a proper chin-up. In order to perform a proper chin-up, athletes must fully retract their scapulae and get their chest out at the top of the chin-up—while keeping their ribs down and keeping their core stable. Very few young athletes are capable of this.
The inverted row is fantastic because it can be progressed and regressed very easily by simply changing the angle of the body slightly (even in the middle of your set). Inverted rows are fantastic for improving core stability, increasing upper back strength, and teaching an athlete how to properly protract/retract their scapulae. Make sure your athletes can do at least 10 solid inverted rows with their body almost parallel to the floor before they attempt chin-ups or heavy rows.
There you have it: six basic exercises that young athletes must master before moving on to more difficult variations. Remember, doing these correctly will develop a solid foundation of strength and groove proper movement patterns to get your young athletes strong and keep them healthy at the same time!
Justin Enes has been one of my training partners for the past two years, although we’ve known each other for around 10 years or so. It was just by chance that I happened to be at Iron Island Gym in Oceanside, New York—the day Justin walked into his first powerlifting gym.
To say I was unimpressed would be an understatement.
Justin was around 20 years old, about six feet tall, and maybe 170 pounds. At the time, Iron Island was a hotbed of East Coast powerlifting and home to some of the strongest lifters in the world. Walking in, he had the classic wide-eyed expression of someone who had not only bitten off more than he could chew, but also of someone who was about to be swallowed alive. The only thing close to an interaction I had with him was when my training partner, Rocco, bitched at him for showing up to squat in running shoes. Yes, my training partner was actually named Rocco… what can I say, it was Long Island.
Aside from a general curiosity about the “new guy,” I remember being happy to see him there because I was at the beginning of my own career, and it’s always good to have another guy a few rungs down from you on the ladder. That was about as much thought as I gave him at the time.
Although most guys would have turned right around and continued training in the safety of their own “fitness center,” Justin kept at it—even despite living a solid hour from the gym. As a result, he got stronger... Much Stronger.
Throughout the better part of the decade, Justin and I did not train together regularly, but we’d see each other at meets and whenever I visited Iron Island. After a few years, Justin got his first elite total and became an impressive deadlifter (because he is a gorilla-armed freak).
Fast forward to two years ago. Due to my work schedule, I could no longer train at Eastside Barbell, but I knew that my buddy, Anthony Ditillo, and Justin had a small crew at Apollon Gym in Edison, New Jersey. Luckily for me, their bench day also fit my new schedule. Justin now weighed around 230 pounds and was squatting and benching over 700 pounds. Yet, there was one thing holding him back from that elusive pro total.
His bench sucked. As a long armed guy, he was never what you’d call a good bencher, and he spent most of his career using his 700+ deadlift to compensate for his lack of pressing power. After bugging him about it for almost a year (he is as stubborn as a damn ox), I finally convinced him to let me program his benching.
Although he was working extremely hard, there were a couple of things I thought he could be doing better.
First off, his work ethic—which was responsible for his awesome pull—was killing him and beating him up on bench. The first thing I did was scale back his volume and force him to take deloads throughout the cycle.
Secondly, although he had been using a shirt for many years, he had some bad habits that we corrected. His biggest issue was that he automatically lifted his head, causing him to lose support at the bottom. Now, he uses the head lift as a last resort to get the weight to touch.
Finally, I forced him to touch more frequently while in a meet cycle. Justin used a lot of board work, and while this helped his top-end, it hurt his technique. He still uses boards in the shirt once per month to keep his top end strong, but he will also touch progressively heavier weights throughout the cycle.