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The Strength Report: Univ of S. FL - Upper Body Multiple & Single Joint Movement

by: Ron McKeefery
Asst. Athletic Director, Strength & Conditioning, University of South Florida
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The game of football is a multiple joint game. Sport specificity tells us that we should train athletes in the fashion they play. Therefore we train each muscle group in a multiple joint fashion. However, we have found that single joint movements have a place in our training program as well.

Why Multiple Joint Movements?
An exercise we do with our kickers each year is that we tell them to kick a field goal and then tell them to kick a field goal without using their arms. Very quickly they figure out that they need to contract several muscle groups to perform. The same is true with every position. Take any picture of someone getting tackled or blocked and you will find the body being put into some very odd positions. If you remember back to the goals article, we are not only helping performance, but protecting from injury. Lastly, to overload some of the larger muscle groups of the body you must use multiple joint movement to provide enough resistance.

Why Single Joint Movements?
Every coach I have ever had has always said that you are only as strong as your weakest link. The same is true with resistance training. How many times have you had someone squatting and something isn’t going right? It is very difficult to deduct from watching the lift if one leg is firing and the other isn’t, or if there is a deficiency in the quads, hamstrings, glutes, etc. By training each of the muscle groups in a single joint fashion you are able to identify muscular imbalances and train the weak link.

The body is divided up into five major areas: neck, hips and legs, mid-section, torso, and arms. We will breakdown and discuss the lower body movements next month; but for this month we want to focus on the neck, mid-section, torso and arms. For each of these areas it would serve you well to come up with as many different exercises as you can think of to fit within the movement. This allows you to incorporate variety into your workouts while accomplishing what you need. I have included some examples for each area.

The neck can be divided into four areas: flexors, extensors, lateral flexors and traps. Protecting the neck is one of the areas we focus most on at the University of South Florida. A neck injury is the most catastrophic injury there is in football and failing to train this area is an injustice to the athlete. As we stated in the philosophy article, you must train each muscle group every 72 hours. At USF we train the neck using manual resistance and with a selectorized neck machine. We will perform neck flexion and neck extension twice a week and neck lateral flexion four times a week. Additionally, we will support the neck by training the traps with upright rows and shrugs.

The mid section is made up of four areas: rectus abdominis, transverse abdominis, external/internal obliques, and erector spinae. The four areas are commonly referred to as the core. Since these areas are always working for you to do daily activities you cannot ever fully fatigue the muscle. Therefore we train the core every training day. We look for 200 total reps and typically prescribe 2x50 reps for each area. For protocols that are timed we count one second as one rep. For example, if we are doing a plank hold for the transverse abdominis for 60 seconds that is 60 reps.

The torso is made up of the upper back/lats, pectorals and deltoids. When training the lats we want to train in both a vertical and horizontal fashion and use a variety of pulling exercises. The lattisimus dorsi functions in both planes of movement so therefore we should reflect that in our training. However it doesn’t function in a single joint fashion. We train the pectorals in a multiple joint fashion with your typical presses such as bench press, incline, decline. The pectorals’ main function is for abduction/adduction of the humerus. We use many versions of the pec fly to train the pec in a single joint fashion. The shoulder works in all three planes. There are not many choices for multiple joint shoulder exercises; so we mostly use many versions of the military press. There are several exercises for the shoulders in a single joint fashion. Essentially, you want to do some sort of front, side and rear shoulder exercise. We will train each body part twice per week in both a multiple joint fashion and single joint fashion.

The arm is made up of the triceps, biceps, hands and forearms. The triceps allow us to train in both a multiple joint and single joint fashion. For example, we will do dips and tricep kickbacks. The biceps can only be trained in a single joint fashion, as can only the hands and forearms. I know some coaches don’t like the athletes training biceps and triceps in the weight room, but my contention is that a torn bicep or tricep will keep you on the sideline just like any other injury. Lastly, how many times have you seen the game saving tackle made by a guy holding on until help arrived. Training the grip is just like any other muscle and should be a part of a training program. We will alternate days training triceps and biceps. Grip is trained every day at the end of the workout so that it doesn’t affect any other lift.

It is important to understand that and upper body training sessions need to include both multiple joint movements and single joint movements for each of the upper body areas. With our coaches I have them write out as many different exercises as they can think of for each muscle group and then divide them by single and multiple joint movements. From there, instead of designing a program around specific exercises we create a template of movements and just fill them in from the list we formed (See chart). This way we can make sure that we are not missing a movement. This allows for both performance gains and injury prevention.

This is the fourth in a series of Strength Report articles written by Coach McKeefery, exclusively for AFM. May’s subject: Lower Body Multiple Joint and Single Joint Movements.





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