Improving your athletic movement goes hand in hand with the concept of energy transfer. In this blog post, we’ll focus on how you can harness your potential energy and more effectively transfer it; more simply put, we’ll talk about how to unlock your athletic movement potential. Which means lifting more, running faster, jumping higher, and even just moving better in general!

To optimize energy transfer, we need to be aware of how our muscles and connective tissues work together. It seems to be common knowledge that strength training is beneficial to improve athletic movement, but more frequently overlooked is the role of our connective tissues in movement. It is the working relationship between our muscles and connective tissues that allow us to effectively transfer energy. Think of it this way, muscles create force and connective tissue transfers/delivers it.

ENGINES AND PATHWAYS

Our favorite analogy to help explain this is by comparing a few examples of a vehicle moving down a wide-open highway. Think of our muscular strength as the horsepower in the vehicle and our connective tissue will be referred to as the highway.

We can drive a muscle car that has all the horsepower you can fit into it, but we won’t be able to top it out if we are driving on a highway with a bunch of potholes.
Or, you can be driving on a perfect surface, but you won’t go very far or very fast with the horsepower of a golf cart.

The point is, we need to train to build power AND take care of the path we are transferring energy through. This means finding balance in strength training for structure and function, which includes but is not limited to incorporating compound lifts, bilateral movements, training in all planes of motion, isolating weak or lagging areas, etc. You read it right, strength training and training for movement quality complement each other and should be built into every program, don’t let anyone tell you differently!

building the engine

Sticking with the car analogy, we’ll dive into how you can build your horsepower and keep your roads cleaned up for smooth cruising. To work on both aspects simultaneously, we like to break this up into two areas of focus: the inner unit and the outer unit. The role of the inner unit is to transfer force through stabilizing the pelvis and lumbar spine, while the outer unit plays the part of coordinated movement through our extremities.

While the term “functional training” gets tossed around a lot, and misused quite often, the true definition began with the science behind the inner and outer units. There is always room for debate around the most ideal way to train, however sling systems are mentioned in any practice based on improving movement quality because this approach recognizes that movement is driven by a series of working relationships between our muscles and connective tissues.

the powerhouse and sling systems

The Inner Unit: The inner unit refers to the functional synergy of the deep muscles of the core. These tonic muscles can be thought of as background muscles as they act with little or no stimulus. They play a key role in supporting our posture and breathing, in addition to stabilizing during strength exercises and dynamic movement. It is extremely important that we place a focus on these core stabilizers to avoid “leaking energy” and injury. In Pilates, this area is referred to as your ‘Powerhouse’. With a stable and strong powerhouse, we set ourselves up to maximize our strength and athletic movement capabilities.

The Outer Unit: The outer unit consists of many muscles that play a role controlling range of motion, generating movement, and providing global stability (aka - balance). There are four sling systems that make up the outer unit: the anterior oblique sling, posterior oblique sling, deep longitudinal sling, and lateral sling.

Each of the systems shown above are a series of muscle connections along fascial lines that work synergistically to support functional movement. When strength training, a ‘train by muscle group’ approach is very common, but less effective in supporting overall movement quality. This is why you see so much hype from strength coaches around using compound movements, bilateral movements, and training in all planes of motion. We aren’t against attempting to isolate muscle groups or body building principles; we would just suggest that strength training in these ways also be used to support a body building style routine. At the end of the day, a combination of both isolated, compound, bilateral, & multi-planar movements are most ideal when building or following a specific strength training program – that is, if the goal is to ensure you are moving well in addition to gaining strength and/or size.

cleaning + maintaining our roads

the role of our connective tissues

Connective tissue, otherwise known as facial tissue, is the biological fabric that holds us together. Standard anatomy charts are great for pointing out all of the muscles, bones, ligaments, tendons, and organs of the body, however, the fascial tissue that is responsible for holding it all together often is overlooked. Think of it this way – rather than looking at our body as a series of muscles all connected by fascial tissue, look at the body as one piece of fascial tissue that has muscles, bones, and organs intertwined within it.

Caring for our connective tissue is another key component to maximizing movement potential. As mentioned with the car and road analogy earlier, we can build ourselves as strong and powerful as we want, but it won’t be worth anything if we lack the ability to move functionally.

The connective tissue care you will experience through this program includes passive stretching, active mobility drills, isolated joint mobility exercises, flow-based movement, positional isometrics, and end range training. Each of these are fancier terms for what you would expect to experience in a Pilates, Yoga, Kinstretch, or mobility-focused class. Foam rolling, massage, and other forms of body work are also great ways to improve connective tissue health, but we’ll stick to what you can do on your own with no external assistance.

If you would like to experience these concepts and practice your physical understanding of how to improve your energy transfer, you should check out The Movement Reset 8-week program and mobility manual! You can also find a ton of exercises that support these concepts on our YouTube Page!

Thanks for reading!

~ Coach Nick