Key Concepts - Building athletic performance (Part 1)

1. Aim

To introduce the Sanari Fitness model of athletic performance and why it should be the definitive approach to athletic development.

2. Intended Audience

Sports coaches, S&C coaches, healthcare professionals, athletes

3. Introduction

Over the years I have come across myriad different training methods, exercises, theories pertaining to fitness, athletic training, protocols for rehabilitation, studies looking at the most effective strength and conditioning programmes, neural development, neuroscience and so on. They all gave and continue to give, great value and understanding into their relative fields of study. But there was nothing that put it all together. Nothing that could give the building blocks of how we should develop in a larger strategical model, that could be used to help sequence how all the programmes and theories should be used to create an athlete, from start to finish. So that is what I decided to do. To create a single pathway that pulled everything together, to give a roadmap to creating an athlete. So without further ado, here's the model!

4. General overview

Before we get into the details lets discuss what the diagram represents. We should always sequence in the following way:

"move as a human first, then as an athlete, then specify"

Gregory J Hunt

I am well aware of the arguments surrounding early specialisation, over early generalisation in sports but right now just go with it, read on and understand the model in its entirety. Then you can fire the comments at me! This sequencing affectively sets the agenda for each step on the pyramid giving the main focus at each level. 

On the left hand side you can see "Skill Aquisition". This refers to all skills from movement skills such as walking and crawling, to more advanced technical skills used within a sport. They start off as more basic or fundamental. As time goes on these skills not only get more complex but also the breadth of skills we retain and use becomes wider. Remember that this model is focussed on purely physical athletic development not directly skill development. However, I felt it helped to give a reference point by including it.

In an ideal world moving up this pyramid would coincide with chronological ageing. Certainly up to the third level - "5 base movement patterns" - and for some, up to the level of "power". But this isn't always the case. There is an assumption as a coach that on receiving an individual into your training programme that they are a "normal", healthy, human being and therefore have all the pre-requisite movements and exposures that you would expect of a "normal" human being of their age. This may be the biggest single mistake of any coach who is involved in developing young or lower level athletes. For coaches who are working at the very apex of their sports, with the best athletes and teams, it is just as common to find individuals missing or using incorrect movement patterns. Very common in fact. "How so?" you may ask. How can someone be a top athlete and still move poorly? I will come to this later in the post.

So as I mentioned, in an ideal world (and most likely a natural world) people would progress up the pyramid with chronological age, with specific skills being added as required. But the reality is, that in a group of 20 people all chronologically aged 18 years old, (chronological age referring to to the amount of time they have been alive) you will have a variety of functional ages. Functional age is the actual ability to perform tasks based on a variety of things including social skills, cognition, physiology and motor development. This idea is nothing new. We all know the terms "late developer" and "the precocious child". We all know the stories of the puny kid at school who is now a physical specimen as an adult or the kid at school who grew a full on wizards beard by the time he was 12! We know kids progress at different rates. The concept of functional age also gets applied to the elderly because not only do we develop at different rates we also decline at different rates. It makes sense. When we are in phases of our lives where large amounts of changes are happening to our bodies and brains, often at an accelerated rate, we start to look at functional age over chronological age. 

The issue is that we make a sweeping assumption that any deficits someone has growing up, are somehow all ironed out just because they had their 21st birthday (for the purposes of this post we will use 21 years old as adulthood). This is simply wrong. We need to work off function, not age or time spent in a sport to measure people from.

The second premise this model is built upon, is to understand that "normal" is a spectrum not a single defined point on a graph. By that I mean someone can have a variety of sub-clinical issues but still be deemed as "normal". For example you can have pretty bad balance and not be medically diagnosed as having a balance disorder, so you are normal? Yes ...... BUT YOU STILL HAVE CRAP BALANCE! This poor balance will have a direct effect on your ability to perform athletically. So from an athletic perspective, no, you are not normal. The disconnect is that we no longer view the ability to be physically active as a part of being a human being. It is seen as something for "sporty" people. Not joe public. Whether you are involved in sports or not doesn't really matter, as a human being you should be able to balance. Just like every adult, male or female, assuming no traumatic injuries or defects, should be able to do at least 1 chin up and so forth. As coaches we need to make sure we assess what is actually in front of us not what we believe is in front of us. 

So with the general preamble out of the way lets delve into the specifics of each level.

5. Level 1 - Genetic, epigenetic and anthropometric constraints

This first step is taken form the work by Nobel Prize winner Gerald Edelman PhD, on Neural Darwinism and more specifically from Prof Dr Mijna Hadders-Algra (Professor of Developmental Neurology) and her application of part of this theory, called neuronal group selection theory, to the understanding of motor development. 

This first step is the most complex and complicated but time spent studying the works of these two brilliant scientist will give huge benefit to any coaches ability to develop athletes at any level. I have only scratched the surface of their works but intend to continue researching them. When I came across Hadders-Algra's article, "The Neuronal Group Selection Theory: a framework to explain variation in normal motor development (2002) (1), it was a real eureka moment. This article clearly stated the science behind my current thoughts and concepts on early development and it laid the pathway for the creation of this model. It marries the nature and nurture aspects of development with a heavy emphasis on exploration and exposure to different stimuli. Take time to read the full article but for now I will summarise the key elements that sit within this model.

Genetic - The inheritance of genes from our parents that give us the initial start state for our development. If I am lacking certain genes to start with, then I can't simply magic them from thin air. It is well known that athletic parents are more likely to produce athletic children. One reason for this is through genetic inheritance. But that is only part of the story. Read on.

Epigenetic - This is the mechanism by which the expression of the genes is altered. I.e. whether a gene is switched on or off. You can have all the amazing sporty genes you like, but if you don't activate those genes then you may as well not have them. 

Anthropometric Constraints - This is closely related to genetics but refers specifically to our shape and form.  Anthropometry is the study of proportions of the human body. So here we are talking about the fact that we are all designed to have 4 limbs, 2 eyes, ten fingers and toes etc. In turn these all have certain proportions that are deemed normal. Stimulating our brains via exploration is vital to proper development.  Think of a baby laying on its back on the floor thrashing their legs and arms around as they do. This seemly random thrashing around is actually part of a strategy to find things to stimulate the brain. 

Lets now imagine that Mum has placed a new fluffy toy next to baby. As they thrash around one of their arms connects with the toy. This gives feed back to the brain. So they do it again and again. They may then start grabbing and stuffing the toy into their mouths. All the time this is giving baby stimulus and forming their brains. Now if Mum places the toy just outside of babys reach then this stimuli does not get experienced by the baby, as they can't locomote to grasp it yet. The reach of their limbs are therefore a constraint. 

These anthropometric constraints, when coupled with the want to explore and experience new stimuli, drive us to get moving! By turning our heads to see to our left and our right in an attempt to see more things, our big fat baby heads eventually help us to roll on to our tummies. From here we start trying to look up, again so we can see more stuff, rather than looking straight at the boring floor. This begins to strengthen our spines as we have to extend. These rolling and (eventual) creeping actions begin to form early methods of locomotion, albeit very ineffective, that enable us to explore things that are outside of our immediate vicinity. 

In summary, we constantly try to overcome gravity and our anthropometric constraints to feed our stimulus craving brains. This is the reason why puppies, kittens and children do the most stupid things and are always getting up to mischief. They are hard wired to explore as much as they can in the early years in order to expose their brains to as much stimuli as possible. This is how we create well adapted, physically proficient individuals. This idea of exploration actually holds true through out our lives but more on this later.

6. So how does this model apply to top athletes?

Earlier I mentioned the applicability of this model to professional athletes and how these athletes often have issues with movement. So if they have issues with their movement but still achieve professional/international performances, then surely their movement deficits can't be that large or the movement patterns are just not important, right? WRONG! If you have an athlete that is performing at a high standard but is lacking in the foundations of this model they are a ticking time bomb for injury and/or not achieving their potential. 

Remember "it is not about beating the rest, but to be the best". If you're a regional level athlete and your goal is to simply beat the next fastest guy in your region then thats your cap. Ok so now you move to nationals and you want to beat the next guy, brilliant. Then international, same thing. OK so the model works.WRONG! WRONG !! WRONG!!! the model doesn't work if you had the potential to be greatest that ever lived. So what, you were the best at that point in time, out of the bunch that currently competed on the days you competed. Big wow. Unrealised potential is a loss, not a win. 

With high level athletes they have certain strengths, be it body and/or brain, that allows them to offset their deficiencies. If it is through their ability to understand the game and other peoples actions or reactions we might call this person a talent player. That ability to some how be a step ahead of the opposition. It may be they have a seriously big engine and they just keep going grinding the opposition to dust through attrition. Most of the time they have combinations of many different attributes which are that much better then the competition making them stand out. But being at the top of your game does not mean that you have great movement by default.

In fact, what we often see is that top athletes are simply far better at executing compensations to try and offset any weaknesses they have. By this I mean they will use a different pattern of muscle firing to achieve the exact same movement outcome. An example of this is the glute firing test. The athlete lays prone with one knee bent at just over  90º and the foot dorsiflexed. From here coach/therapist would places their hands on the erector spinae muscles, glute max and hamstrings. The athlete is then instructed to raise their knee from the floor, no more than a few millimetres, 1cm at the max. The therapist then feels for the firing pattern. In this position it should fire glute (as primary hip extensor) then hamstring in support of the action, followed by lower back once all available hip extension has been used up. However, this sequence can vary in every conceivable way. 

1. glute - back - hamstring 
2. hamstring - glute - back
3. back - hamstring - glute
4. hamstring/glute - back 
5. and so on

Without feeling the tissues or getting verbal feedback from the athlete, the outcome looks the same. The knee lifts from the floor, no problem.  But an individual that is driving from the back and hamstrings in this position is either not achieving their full power output (due to poor glute engagement) and/or they are an injury waiting to happen as the glutes are lagging. It is this "process" approach, not an "outcome" approach that coaches need to focus on, because this is how an individual achieves their potential. 

For me it is really exciting when I have a professional athlete that I find with large movement deficits, because if they are achieving a good level of output with those deficits, then when we correct their movement, they fly! Unfortunately this is the hardest group to get on board. You tell a football coach that their top goal scorer moves poorly and needs work, it tends not to go down too well. But as I stated earlier, it is about the individual achieving their potential, not about being better then the current competition.

7. To be continued...

In the next post we will work our way up, dealing with the next levels of the pyramid. If you are enjoying the posts set up your RSS feed or follow Sanari Fitness on Facebook and Instagram. All the best and see you for the next instalment. 

References

1. Hadders-Algra M. The Neuronal Group Selection Theory: a framework to explain variation in normal motor development. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology 2000;42:566-572. doi:10.1017/s0012162200001067