PRIOTIZIING STABILITY BY JAMES THAYER
James is an Assistant Director of Fitness and Wellness, educator, presenter and Pre-Script Coach. He believes the best approach to learning is to engage, educate and empower individuals and communities. James utilizes coaching, programming, performance and movement proficiency to set a standard for conversation to application.
Prioritizing Stability
Stability is the linchpin between mobility and strength for force transference. An inability to resist forces acting on the body creates force leakage (compensation patterns) instead of a direct path of force into the movement. When stability is the limiting factor to exercise execution or duration, utilizing the two tenants of stability creates a seamless transition of regression for the long-term goal of sustainable progression.
The two tenants of stability are:
1. Deviate the Center of Mass (CM)
2. Reduce/Expand the Base of Support
These concepts create a roadmap on how to best utilize stability in relation to exercise. Understanding that using an unstable surface for stability purposes has less transferability and less sustainable progression than starting in a bilateral position supported by external stabilizers such as dowel. Moving from two dowels, to one dowel, to no dowel or from two legs to one leg promotes sustainability and long-term progression. When we think of a base of support it should coincide with contact points. More contact points or surface area offers greater external stability and support. Fewer points of contact and surface area means there is a higher reliance on internal stability during the exercise.
Deviation of center of mass is the other tenant of stability that can be utilized to progress and regress exercises. By creating longer or shorter levers, stacked or extended joint positions the demands of gravitational pull on a client in those positions will be more or less challenging to overcome.
By incorporating the tenants of stability into exercise selection and modification considerations a coach or trainer affords adaptability, movement proficiency and sustainability to any client's exercise program.