Kinetic Advantage Consulting

Hey everyone, I wanted to take a moment to update you on some ongoing new changes at KAC.

Over Christmas, I experienced escalating health issues that led to me, well, losing movement control over my body. While we are still searching for a clear diagnosis to my ongoing neurological condition, things are looking up. Managing my symptoms has been a journey, and as a movement specialist, you can imagine how challenging it was for me to lose trust in my own body, as well as the toll it took on my family. This experience has led me to reevaluate my future path with KAC.

Moving forward, KAC will no longer offer its traditional consulting/assessment services. However, my loyal powerlifting following, you need not worry. We will reemerge stronger than ever in the near future. This Instagram account will continue, along with free educational content for the amazing community I’ve been fortunate to be a part of since 2017. Expect more content to gear up soon.

In the upcoming posts, I will share specific updates on my technique services, new cutting-edge technique monitoring technologies, exciting partnerships, and upcoming virtual and local Calgary events for you to look forward to.

Thank you all for your loyal support. Stay tuned for the journey ahead.

There’s a reason why not every lifter moves the same on the platform. While experienced lifters have had time to naturally adopt a stance or style that works for them, novice lifters often get bombarded with opinions from every direction on what style suits them best.

If the goal is to lift as much weight as you can, play to your strengths, not everyone else’s.

A framework to identify potential gaps in your current warm-up routine, while avoiding the "kitchen sink approach" by incorporating the minimum required movements to enhance your training.

Practice: Did you know that when you watch someone performing a task, the pre-motor areas of your brain light up in similar ways as if YOU were the one performing the task? This area of the brain is responsible for preparing and executing limb movements through coordinating with other parts of the brain in choosing the appropriate motions.

Range: Mobility is more than just flexibility - it is the ability to move freely and easily that is also dependent on if you are strong enough to be in a position for the given loading demands. Your functional range of motion may also be negatively impacted by pain, anxiety, and postural instability.

Engage: Each lifter has their own unique training history, including injuries and chronically overused, tight muscles. Muscles may experience neurological inhibition caused by both lack of, and distorted neurological inputs that create ongoing strength performance roadblocks for lifters.

Potentiate: Where post-activation potentiation is a phenomena that occurs to enhance muscle force exerted due to its previous contraction, there are aspects of muscle excitement that you can use to achieve similar results in our warm-up routine.

“Quad dominant” or deep squats have both been blamed for chronic knee pain, yet neither are supported in the research. But where did these accusation originate from?

For Powerlifters, knee pain may be related to
hip extensor strategy. The body has many “degrees of freedom” and several synergists available to help the glutes extend the hip such as the hamstrings and adductor magnus.

Scenario 1: In contrast to Weightlifters, many Powerlifters use a more “hips back” squat technique that necessitates both greater hip extensor loading demands and hamstring lengths = greater hamstrings contributions to a larger hip extensor net joint moments (i.e., torques).

Scenario 2: the lifter has very strong quads and avoids torso leaning at all costs. They exhibit a whole body posterior shift out of the hole as a way to take advantage of the biarticular hamstrings to transfer large energies generated at the knee, to assist at the hip. This may also lead to chronically HIGH hamstring tensions over time too!

So how is this all linked to knee pain? While we may think, "Great! The more muscles the merrier!", but its all about balance and old adage "too much of a good thing."

The biarticular hamstrings are hip extensors AND knee flexors. In both of the above scenarios we may underestimating the actual quadriceps tensions present to achieve the NET joint moments required to extend the knee and achieve the lift, especially during high intensity training blocks. The greater the glute efforts (muscle weakness, fatigue, or large loading demands due to technique chosen) = greater hamstring recruitment = greater quadriceps tensions at the knee, regardless of technique.

Many lifters experiencing knee pain report that restricting forward knee travel when squatting can temporarily relieve their knee pain, BUT the pain eventually comes back. Despite their best load management efforts, this temporary reduction in knee extensor demands, quadriceps tensions eventually build back up since the underlying cause of their knee pain and compensatory hamstring recruitment was not addressed.

What would YOU do differently?

While the current body of research supports how breathing and various cueing techniques can enhance TVA engagement and strengthening, its applications for improving squat performance is scarce. In the presented study, investigators aimed to determine how different bracing and "active exhalation" breathing techniques impacted lower extremity muscle activities during the squat for the purpose of improving their strength (i.e., strength of the hips, quads, etc., not just the core musculature).

There's actually a lot to unpack in the paper, not necessarily for the best reasons of which we will expanded upon in the KAC Blog article "To Breathe Or Not To Breathe", so here's the Coles notes for some practice in interpreting academic research and critical thinking:

Since normalized EMG levels did not exceed 60% MVIC for any muscle group evaluated, its a big reach to suggest superior strategy for the purpose of lower extremity muscle strengthening and will extend to squatting to greater depths and with external bar loading.

Greater EMG activation levels do not necessarily guarantee greater muscle tensions, just like how a statistically significant difference does not guarantee clinically MEANINGFUL differences. We also cannot extend these results to ALL lower extremity musculature; EMG only collected for bi-articular and antagonist muscles. Unlike the primary agonist glute max, vastii and soleus muscles for the squat, the RF, BF, and GAS help coordinate as synergists, and at the same time, as antagonists that increase joint rigidity like the TA. In fact, the RF has been shown to minimally contribute to knee extensor joint moments during the squat.

THIRD. Although greater co-activity does technically increase stability, let me put it to you this way: mobility impaired geriatric older adults tend to have the highest co-contraction levels of all to compensate for reduced strength, force control and proprioception. Would it not make more sense to prioritize eccentric strengthening of muscles that matter like the vastii to control the knee rather than relying on higher hamstring co-contraction to compensate?

What do you think?