018 Structural balance

Hello and welcome to the High Performance Physiology Podcast. I'm Chris Beardley. I'm here with my co-host Rob Mauseri. We're going to talk about something called Structural Balance this week. Basically, again, we're just going to treat this in a very relaxed and casual way. I'm not going to talk about a lot of physiology and biomechanics before we jump in. I'm just going to do this quick intro and then hand over to Rob to ask him to tell us a little bit about what he's been seeing in this topic because essentially it is just as reacting a little bit to what we've been seeing or what Rob has been seeing in terms of what people are saying about this idea of Structural Balance, which is essentially ratios of strength in different exercises. Without further ado, Rob, can you tell us a little bit about what you've been seeing and what this topic of Structural Balance is actually all about? Yeah. Basically, it's the idea when you're training, especially athletes. You need to look at the main barbell exercises and base programming decisions and where you take the athletes training around what lifts are stronger and weaker. Typically, you would be using a shoulder with bench press, as I'd say, the 100% value for the upper body lifts and then they're using where dips, chin ups, pull ups, overhead press. Some isolated external rotation work and things like that should be relative to that. Then for the lower body using the high bar back squat as kind of a 100% value and then they sing deadlift front squat, various clean variations and some step ups and things like that around that squat value. Then you kind of use those numbers to pick what you should train or wear an athlete might be weak in need of more work in that area. Okay, understood. I think I can see why people find that idea attractive because it takes a lot of the thinking out of a training program design. You basically test the athlete for these different exercise strength tests and you write their numbers down and you can say, "Okay, here are the areas where the athlete is a long way away from the averages or the norms or the standards that we're aiming for and here are where they are kind of better." We're going to focus the training program on those areas and we're going to aim for this holy grail set of ratios which are suddenly going to make you out of the better at the sport that they are participating in. Essentially, it means that all of the stuff that we talk about is largely unnecessary, which don't actually need to go, "What does the athlete need in order to be better at their sport?" You don't need to do any analysis of their sport or the movement patterns in their sport. You don't need to do any designing of the training program to enhance the qualities that make them better at those particular movements. It's all just basically creating this list of exercise strength ratios and targeting development in that direction, which as I say, makes things very easy which I can see why it is very attractive to people to use that particular type of frame. Okay, cool. When you've been analysing this, when you've been looking at this, what are your initial reactions? What are your thoughts about this? I mean, I learned it years and years ago and initially, like you said, I found it to be a cool idea and a bunch of big time coaches and that I've been talking about it. I rolled with it for a little bit, did not see any real significant benefits, especially for like training. Come at athletes, myself in particular, anything like that. So, moved away from it, obviously. And I always see the idea, even now, that if you're somehow in balance, particularly in our, like the little muscles and movements with the external rotation work and things like that, that, like, you know, those little things, quote unquote, stable as your muscles, things like that are going to be limited in your performance, obviously in a bench press, but also in throwing, in punching, in athletic things, where you need to be fast and powerful. Okay, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that because that's a really interesting kind of idea. And I think a lot of people hear that and initially kind of go, oh, yeah, I was neglecting that thing and therefore if I include that thing, it'll help me achieve the goal that I'm trying to achieve. So it's kind of like a high jacking of the logic process where the idea arrives and you go, oh, I haven't thought of that. And you initially just kind of grab hold of it and you run with it and you see if it actually makes a difference. But we were just kind of chatting a little bit about this before we jumped on the podcast today. And I was like, well, if we analyze this idea as, as like in the context of somebody who's been doing, say powerlifting for a year or two, they've already got a relatively solid bench press or squat or deadlift or whatever. And somebody comes to them and says, oh, let's do a analysis of your kind of various different exercises. And let's see whether you have a high level of external rotation strength or whatever or let's, you know, look at some of these stabilizing muscle exercises and see whether you have low levels of those relative to your main lifts. And, you know, let's say they identify that those exercises, you know, do show a lower level than the standards show, which I would probably expect that they would do, to be honest. And that therein lies part of the attraction of this kind of testing in reality, because if you can find something that's missing, you can then, you know, start to present a solution. But I think it's interesting just to say, well, okay, but if I'm doing a bench press, let's imagine the time in a powerlifting program and I'm kind of been working on my bench press for a year or two. And I've probably got to a point where the sort of muscular development of my prime move is is relatively high. So I've probably got to a point where my, when we talk about plateaus in in strength training, we basically kind of identify them as either stimulus plateaus or fatigue plateaus. Now, fatigue plateaus obviously poor programming, but a stimulus plateaus is like a challenge that you have to try and overcome because it's kind of telling you that you're bumping up against your maximum muscular development in a particular muscle area. You're going to have to get creative about how you solve that problem. And, you know, we've talked about sticking regions and kind of accessory exercises in the context of powerlifting and how neuromaconic matching works in that kind of context. So if this is one of that, say as I'm familiar to you, then please go back and listen to that episode. So, you know, basically answer the question, the way I'm talking about right now, which is that ultimately if you're trying to make progress and you've got kind of, you're bumping up against your maximum muscle size with one of your major muscle groups, then what you really got to do is try and find a way to get the bench press to rely more on the others instead because you kind of maxed out. So in my particular case, I would probably find very quickly that I maxed out what my choice is for capable of doing and I'd have to try and reorganize my bench press to rely on the other muscles instead. So it's kind of an accessory exercise process that you would go through, try and make that happen. But the reality is that that plateau is happening because the main muscles are bumping up against their maximum muscle sizes and you can't really make much more development in those particular areas. The reality is though that if my stabilizer muscles are being used in that exercise because they're needed, then they will be used up to the point that they're needed and they will actually grow alongside my prime move of muscles and because their stabilizers, they're not actually prime moves, they're much lower levels of motunit, cumin. Ultimately, they'll have lots of capacity to grow as I get stronger with my prime move of muscles and I start to sort of just push my bench a little bit higher. I stabilise the muscles, I'll activate a little bit higher and immediately because they've got so much capacity to grow, they'll just immediately grow the amount that they need to grow. They're just literally waiting for me to push a little bit harder in the prime move of areas and immediately they will just not chop up a level of activation and instantaneously those fibers that haven't been particularly worked previously because the recruitment levels have been too low. Well, immediately become activated and loaded and grow and everybody's happy. Ultimately, growing stabilizer muscles is the easiest thing in the world because they're literally just sitting there waiting for you to just tick up a level of motunit, cumin and immediately they'll grow because they just haven't grown prior to that point. It's like being a beginner really. It's like you can kind of think about it saying, well, the stabilizer muscles are at the beginning level of kind of hypertrophy in that context where it was your other muscles are kind of at the advanced level. This is one of the reasons I really don't like kind of saying that people have a particular training status. I think muscles have training status. People don't have training status. I've said that before. I think this makes no sense. But this kind of idea that stabilizer muscles or synergistic muscles are somehow going to be limiting us is actually impossible because as soon as you actually need them, activate hypertrophy, everybody's happy. I just don't get why people don't see that. It's so strange. And then it's a huge focus and then you want to be using tons of training time, trying to adjust these things and if you spend 10, 15, 20 minutes, whatever it is doing a bunch of very isolated exercises, one of you just did, you're benching, you're rosy, you pull downs, chin ups, whatever it may be, things like that. Those muscles of the cuff and that, they're going to get trained well enough anyway. Certainly, like you said, to the level that you need them to be, to be executing the lifts and it just doesn't, yeah, it doesn't, to me, I was anymore make so. to be trying to target them. And I mean, if for some reason you wanted, you know, some giant lower traps or some really, really big muscles around the cuff, I don't know, you know, for some reason that's a goal, I have at it. But if you think that it's gonna give you 50 pounds or some of that on your bench, or if you didn't like a weird goofy step up variation, it's gonna help drive your squat up things like that, and just what I'll see, or it'll drive your, you know, your jump performance and stuff like that. You know, you're not, you're not gonna get anything out of it. I'll see if you'll do like a step up and there are a person who can squat, you know, in the 400, 500 pound range, they'll do some isolated, partial range step up where they have some like a, you know, 15, 30 pound dumbbell, and they're just doing kind of like a top range for high reps. We'll say it's improving, you know, knee stability and this and that, or you know, targeting the VMO, which doesn't work as impossible. And like that, and you know, you see, I see it all the time. And yeah, maybe on paper it sounds cool and you think maybe it could work and it just does not work at all. - Yeah, the logic isn't there, is it? I mean, I just want to clarify the people that we are talking, we're describing very much the stabilizer kind of muscles here, the kind of the external rotation, you know, kind of stuff that you started off talking about. Which is different from accessory exercises that we were talking about previously. So an accessory exercise is trying to provide prime mover muscle growth in a way that we're not getting it in the main lift because the main lift is, you know, kind of pushing activation to another prime mover and it's not allowing us to max out the kind of the other one that we're interested in. So, you know, I've seen some really great kind of accessory exercises and as it's along those lines, we did our own kind of version in the podcast previously, but I've seen other people doing other great ones as well. And they've come with some really creative ideas. This is not that, we're not talking about that. That's cool, that's prime mover stuff. This is about exercises training muscles that are not kind of prime mover. Okay, with that being said then, what else are you seeing in this kind of context? You're seeing, you know, you described to us how, you know, your initial impressions of it, what else are you seeing in this particular area? - No, I mean, I definitely see, I'm going to, but you said I see a program all the time. I do obviously see cases where it appears to work. So I figured, you know, you can address, you know, cases where on paper, you think, oh, this is actually working because it's improving structural balance, yeah, the other, but, you know, if you look at it, say someone's bench is lagging and they happen to do a phase where they add in more dip work, more overhead press works, and like that. - Those would be prime movers, wouldn't they? - That's what I'm saying. - This is what I'm saying, yeah, exactly. So this is the, yeah, exactly. This is the kind of the diversions. Like, are those, but that's still within the context of the, I see what you're saying now. Okay, I just took me a moment to catch up with you. - Yeah, it's like, it'll work like it's working because you've improved these ratios. - When in reality, you've actually been doing, yeah. You've got more recruitment in the prime movers, you've gotten, you know, very likely more size in the prime movers you might not have been getting. So it's not a proof you because the ratio is important. - Yeah, okay. So for example, then, if some, right, okay. So for example, then, to keep in keeping the bench press example with, with me is the, as kind of the individual doing the benching. Obviously, I'm going to be very tricep dominant. And I also am going to have a monster dip compared to pretty much any of my other pressing exercises. So the person is going to look at my structural balance and invert commas and go, your dip is way too high relative to everything else. You need to do a lot of kind of work on your chest and delts and then you'll find that your other exercises will go up. And the irony is that they will because what's happening in the bench press is that my triceps are going to do all of the work and I'm going to be limited by the fact that my triceps are maxing out and I've got nowhere else to go. And I'm not training my delts, my pecs enough to really make progress. I in bench exercise because I'm just continuing to send all the activation to the triceps. This is what we talked about in the accessory kind of for compensation and powerlifting episode that we did. So yeah, absolutely, we'll actually work. But it's not working because of structural balance. It's working. Because I'm training the muscles that I need to train in order to make progress in the bench press because my triceps are currently dominating. And if people will go, well, no, that is structural balance. Then then what you're saying is that structural balance is literally just following neuro-canonical matching. Yeah, I mean, it would come right back. And a lot of people, too, when they're doing accessory work, a lot of times they'll do-- if they're doing things like tricep extensions, direct shoulder work, stuff like that, a lot of times they're not doing it with enough intensity. They're not doing it. And then maybe doing some fluff work, high reps, far from failure, not really getting anything out of it. So then they go and do something like a dip or an overhead press that involves those prime rivers more. They use a heavy load, good rep range, a little bit chaff failure. And then all of a sudden they get these increases in recruitment. They get these increases in a purge of read that they're not getting from just kind of doing some half-fast work at the end of a session on those muscles. And then, yeah, it gives this great appearance that, well, this worked so well because you improved the balance. But it just comes down to all the things we generally talk about. Exactly. And I guess really, one of the things that we've kind of skated over is worth emphasizing is that it may not be possible and probably isn't possible for many people to actually achieve these kind of strength ratios if their leverages are kind of away from the norm. So if somebody like me who's got really extreme triceps leverage and not great leverage for very much else, then ultimately it's going to be extremely strange. Well, it's just actually impossible. Once I got my sort of dip strength to the level I got to do, it was just going to be absolutely physically impossible for me to get my bench or any of my other pressing exercises to those ratios. It would have just never happened no matter what I did. So ultimately, I think some people are just going to have leverages. And you see people with amazing deadlift. So you look at them like, if you want to get their structural balance equations correct or ratios correct, then their squat would have to be this level. If you look at them and go, they're just-- Yeah, they're not going to happen. They're not going to happen. And then the university gets someone with incredibly strong arms and legs, a great bench and squat. Exactly. I have just a deadlift that's never going to be-- never going to catch up. And if it's an athlete, there's not a need for it to catch up. You have someone who's deadlift is lagging. So you say, oh, I need to bring up the deadlift to improve posterior chain, hamstring straight, whatever it may be. Well, there's way better exercises for that. You just do hip thrust and direct hamstring work. And you're going to get way more out of that. Then improving your deadlift. The deadlift is going to improve-- I think it's-- So one of the points that I make repeatedly, but probably not repeatedly enough, is that adaptions are the thing that matters, not outcomes. So if we talk about strength or speed or power or whatever, my first question is, well, what is the adaption you're triggering that's going to actually stimulate in this kind of benefit you in that outcome, that strength or that speed or whatever? And I think really we've got something kind of similar here. Because if somebody thinks about strength in a deadlift, they're thinking strength, weight lifted. And they're like focused on that number, that load, that they're lifting. But the reality is, it's the torque that they're producing at the joints in order to lift that weight is being generated by a muscle force and a leverage. And then the required torque is being generated by the body position and segment length, so that you've got certain external moment arm lengths required to lift the lower. If I'm lifting a barbell from the floor, and the external moment arm length is horizontal distance of the line of gravity going through the barbell to my hip joint, if I change that distance, if I make that distance shorter, then I basically can lift a heavier load. And I'm going to look like I'm stronger. I'm actually creating-- I'm displaying more strength, which is true, from a load point of view, because I've made the exercise easier. So you can see some of the really old time lifters. They would have these crazy body positions, where they would try and bring the barbell line of action really close to the hip joint. It would just absolutely nuts from our perspective today. And so basically, what they're trying to do is just increase the efficiency of the lift. And so you look at it and go, oh, they're really strong in that sense. But in terms of talks and in terms of muscle forces, it's a different story. But the same thing happens internally. So like, muscle force in the leverage. If you've got an amazing leverage on a muscle, then ultimately, it's going to be able to produce a really high joint talk, even though it's not producing really high muscle force. And so ultimately, what these disconnects between what we see is the load being lifted and the muscle force being generated. And people are just going load lifted muscle force. I'm like, hang on a minute. You've got an external moment arm length to worry about. And that could be varied depending on the segment lengths. And the coordination and the way that the person is performing the lift and all that kind of thing. And then secondly, when you talk about the actual talk at the joint, again, you've got a muscle force. But then you've got this internal moment arm length. And when you external moment arm length can move around because of your segment length or your way of performing the exercise. And your internal moment, who knows what? And could be massively varied between people. It's literally impossible to get, oh, no, this person's strength has in muscle force producing capacity is not sufficient because I can see them lifting this load into that load. It's like, it's nonsense because. because you've got two leverages in the middle of that chain of events, and people are just ignoring. And I think that's the problem, it's that people don't understand how talk works. And we've got these two different moment arms that are basically breaking the connection between muscle force and the actual low being lifted. So this is ultimately why fundamentally a strength ratio just isn't going to make sense, because you could get one athlete's muscle forced to just be the maximum possible level. The other biggest muscle force you could possibly get, the muscle is absolutely fully developed. You can't physically shoehorn any more Maya Fibola protein into that muscle, it's like absolutely done. And they still can't lift the kind of load that you're asking into it. And there's some other guy who just walks in and he's just like, oh, these ridiculous moment arms, kind of peculiar way of lifting the way. And he's just kind of moving the way with no difficulty whatsoever. And that is just going to happen because of inter individual variety or variability rather. And so I think just the fundamental approach to saying we know these ratios need to be kind of in these numbers. I think it's just never going to work for most people most of the time. Yeah. And then other ones, I get a ratio as I've inused our attempting to determine if someone is powerful enough explosive enough, so they'll use ratios between the squat and some of the Olympic lifting variants, especially some of the power variations. So not the full lifts, but power snatch power, clean things like that. And we talked obviously about speed and power. Those things, yeah, well, they may have a decently high power output where they sit, does it not really matter and training them directly to improve them is going to improve those, not your actual. Yeah. And I would be cautious about comparing movement patterns that are different like that. So much easier just to measure vertical jump height and then add a little bit of load into a load of vertical jump height and compare those two numbers. I mean, that's going to give you perfect comparability more or less. You can even do like a force velocity profile and use a quick calculation to see what that tells you and you can get kind of some sort of line on a chart that will give you some information. But I would keep the same movement patterns if you're going to compare those. I mean, the thing is that is already out there. People can already use that. It's available to this apps for it and you know, it's not difficult. So I wouldn't want to re-invent the wheel if we've already got the ability to do that in a much more valid way with two different, you know, two loads for the same exercise. Yeah. Yes, it's a lot of it, I think, just looks like you said at the beginning, looks, you know, good on paper and theory, gives someone the ability to kind of take a lot of the guesswork out of writing someone a program and then adjusting it long term. And it's just not really necessary. And no, it's also a lot of it relies on overly depending on like periodizing programs and using different things as you go through a program and stuff like that. And obviously we've said a ton of times now if you think something's important, just keep it in the program, don't change the program, just do it all the time. And then, you know, if your exercises are good and someone's made the progress, also don't change the program and don't change it because, you know, X, Y and Z are supposedly imbalanced. And yeah, also, you know, the idea around it, limiting injury and stuff like that. I know you and I talk before the podcast a little bit, but it's not really good, a good doubt of there. Have we done an episode on injury at all? Have we done anything on injuries yet? We probably should at some point. Okay. Because I know that we've, I mean, this is obviously us having a conversation in the middle of an episode, but we won't do this very long. We were thinking about doing something on running economy because a lot of people have been asking us about doing some more on the aerobic exercise stuff and I'm not prepared to build a cardiovascular adaptions model. That's not going to happen. I'm too old. It's going to take me 10 years. I'm just not going to do it. So you'll have to find somebody else to do that for you. But the best I can do is I can do running economy and we can, you know, segue a little bit into things like cycling economy as well for the same reasons, but that'll basically give us a strength training for endurance running, strength training for endurance cycling and that kind of thing. We can do that. And we can also do something on injury prevention, I guess we could do something on muscle strain. Injury could do a little bit on maybe tendon damage, but probably not much more than that because there isn't any data. And that's kind of the point I was going to make when we just kind of went off piece there a little bit, which is that a lot of people ask for, you know, how do I kind of target injury prevention with strength training? Like, well, you know, there's almost no data. There's just, there isn't really any data out there. And certainly there isn't any data that says, if you do, if you build your strength ratios to these levels, then you'll reduce the risk of injury. And that data doesn't exist. Does it have a just? There's the voice, there's the voice of somebody spent time looking for it this week. I love so much. Really so without message. I was digging and digging and digging and trying to find things in favor because I did try in favor of anything I'm going to chat about and I was just like, I can't and I know I texted you and I'm like, I can't do it. Do you have anything you like it's not there? It's just not there. You could have asked me, I would have told you. No, it's just nothing there. So yeah, I mean, to be fair, it's because it's actually really, really difficult to collect that kind of information. You know, and the reality is that most of the time if you are going to collect that kind of information, you need to be part of a really big or tapped into a really big organization that is collecting that data for you. For the simple reason, that injury is aren't actually that common. So you need to be actually kind of monitoring an enormous number of person hours in the gym or person hours in a sporting context in order to be able to collect enough kind of data to be able to say, well, you know, this is kind of potentially what might be associated with an injury risk. And not only do you have to have those person hours collected and the injuries that happen in those person hours, you also need to know what those people were doing outside of the gym. Yeah, there's so much that goes into it. And honestly, it just, it's one of the people think it's really easy. Oh, yeah, we can easily find out what kind of risk factor for an injury. I'm like, no, you can't. No, you can't. There's sheer amount of data collection that would have to go into those kind of processes is just absolutely crazy. So yeah, so there isn't anything really. And this isn't, and to be kind of like you're saying, trying to be a little bit objective, this isn't saying that, you know, you can rule out the possibility of these things playing a role. That is just that there isn't any supporting data, not only for that, but for anything else either. I mean, literally the best we've got is a little bit on strain injury, you know, maybe a little bit on the on the tendon damage side. More than that, you're not going to find anything. People go, oh, well, if I do this, then I'm going to be less likely to get injured in my squat deadlift, you know, kind of bench press scenario. I'm like, and actually talking about, unless you're talking about not taking antibiotics. Yeah, that's that. I mean, that's a pretty, pretty effective way of avoiding certain injuries. And honestly, I would say that's probably one that makes it really hard to determine what's going on in athletes too, because a lot of top athletes are lying about getting natty. You need to break it to most people, but, you know, everyone thinks athletes are clean and that's a really big risk factor, especially for things like tendon ruptures. And, you know, so ultimately if, you know, that's probably one of the only things that you could point to and say, you know, is that likely to be a factor, but, you know, that's a separate issue. So, yeah, okay, cool. So that was actually really interesting for me to go through that process with you, because I didn't, I hadn't really made the connection between people following a structural balance, kind of training program, and somebody probably making progress in a, say, maybe a powerlifting kind of context, because it was inadvertently identifying the prime movers that they were actually kind of not using so much. Ultimately, as I say, if I was a benching, I would be using my triceps, and therefore my main progress would actually occur by using my delts and my pecs. That would actually register on a structural balance test. It would display the fact that I am a triceps-like venture inadvertently. It would tell me that my dip was too high and other pressing exercises would do low, and it would tell me to go away and do some more of the exercises that would actually help me. So this is really interesting, because there's actually that element of effectiveness baked into that program for that reason. In that context, it will actually have a positive effect, but the reason that it's having that effect is because of the way near mechanical matching works, essentially allowing us to use the muscles that we have best leverage for and pushing activation in those directions instead of other directions. So yeah, really cool. I didn't realize that before I worked through that. Yeah, it is cool to think about it, but it's definitely not because you're low traps or you're not. Not because. Well, the stable Realising stuff is silly because as I pointed out those muscles can always just grow as soon as you activate them They'll grow like a wee because they're literally just been sitting there, you know kind of with all these Not so far as the aunt anywhere remotely fully developed and as soon as you Reach into that activation territory. They'll just grow So it's the easiest thing in the world to kind of move that forward But in terms of the primary stuff with the difference of between say a wide-brit bench and an hour a bench or a dip or a heavy Wherever pressing that would actually reveal they kind of the especially with reference to the bench press if you're referencing everything off A standard competition bench press would actually reveal that as an interesting area of kind of Development so I mean I yeah, and I guess we already do use that when we say to people one of the ways that you can See whether somebody is kind of choice of dominant or you know kind of adult dominant or put dominant in a bench pressing situation Is just look at the ratios of those lists and we already were saying that I guess but they've kind of codified it into a whole kind of system Yeah Cool Is there anything else that you want to say about strict romance or have we covered everything? That's pretty much everything just if anyone's trying to use it for Preventing injuries just just know that data doesn't exist and We say you do anything for magically preventing injuries pop stop. Stop taking antibiotics Yeah, that's a big one that that'll work that'll work for helping prevent injuries But yeah, pretty much nothing else has got any any data behind it and that as I say just to repeat myself That doesn't mean that stuff doesn't work. It means that the data is really hard to collect and the people who've done like tons of work On it like with the Nordic curl stuff hamstring strain tree They've done insane amounts of work to get to the point where they can say we think this is helpful Trying to try to get you know kind of the data to be collected To support those things is just a monstrous effort. So that's why it's really hard to say whether anything is helpful It's not because nothing is helpful. It's because that we just really haven't got the data to back anything up Cool, let's stop there and we will be back with another topic next week