Lateral Movement and Gaps in Traditional Strength Training

Training Q&A [Moderated]
1

Docs, I wanted to get your thoughts on an ongoing training conversation I’ve been having with a friend of mine who is a second year resident, former Marine, and life-long gym rat, about some of what he considers to be limitations in my programming. (I’m in BBM Group Programming, Powerbuilding.)

Specifically, we’ve been talking about stability movements: kneeling on a swiss ball for time, weighted reps performed on a swiss ball, etc., and the carryover from these into non-specific strength and conditioning.

His concern is that because the barbell lifts are linear, with very little twisting of the trunk or lateral movement, they contribute to a neuromuscular phenomenon that makes lifters susceptible to certain types injuries when engaging in other activities that do involve lateral movement. (He’s talking about lifestyle stuff: hiking, recreational sports, tossing little kids around on the playground, etc.)

He’s making two basic claims about strength training centered around the barbell lifts.

  1. The muscles, ligaments and tendons associated with lateral & omnidirectional movement become not only understretched and understrengthened - but the whole body becomes structurally out of balance.
  2. Beyond muscle imbalance, there is a proprioceptive neural spatial component — where the act of lateral and omnidirectional training enhances the Central Nervous System to know where your body is in space.

For example: If you ran sprints for 6 months and nothing else — and then I asked you to run lateral shuttles — not only would you perform poorly — but the chance of you tearing your ACL during the process is enhanced not only due to muscle imbalance, but also because your body would be average or below average at lateral foot placement in space and more apt to roll an ankle or twist a knee.

Would you all agree that despite the advantages to overall strength offered by training modalities organized around the barbell lifts, they leave some small gaps that could be disadvantageous in generally active day-to-day living? Might there be some non-specific value in supplementing our strength training with some “functional”, omni-directional training?

Thanks for any thoughts you might have on this.

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  1. I would first ask for evidence to support his claims related to injury.

  2. Strength is indeed specific in a number of ways. So we would not argue that squatting, pressing, and deadlifting fully prepare you for every possible situation in life, though we do think they probably provide most people the best bang for their buck. If you’d like to interpret this as “leaving some small gaps”, well, sure. However, the extent to which these “gaps” result in a significant “disadvantage” or otherwise increases the risk of some negative outcome in the general population (i.e., excluding competitive athletes, who have unique needs) is probably where we’d disagree.