Movement A Mechanical Advantage

The importance of mechanical advantage or disadvantage in exercise selection is often neglected. It is crucial to consider the purpose of the exercise and its impact on specific muscles. While machines were once overemphasized, compound multijoint movements may not effectively target specific muscles or create tension. The goal should be to achieve desired outcomes, such as running faster or jumping higher, rather than focusing solely on the amount of weight lifted. Understanding mechanical advantage, torque, and leverages can optimize exercise effectiveness. However, excessive focus on manipulating mechanical advantage can lead to compromised movement patterns and hinder performance. It is important to train muscle groups and consider connective tissues to facilitate better adaptation. Reinforcing bad mechanics and prioritizing output over input can be detrimental. Dynamic correspondence and re-engineering movement patterns may be necessary to improve performance. So let's talk about the idea of why mechanical advantage or disadvantage is important. One of the things that I find so often neglected in exercise selection is this idea of what's the point of the exercise. We've talked about this in other modules, but the adage of movement, not muscle. Well, the truth is that the movement is designed to train a certain muscle. And I get the point, and I get the idea, and this is the managing of the pendulum. This is the trying to organize what we do based off of logical and intuitive phrases that make sense to the masses. So we can discourage people from only doing machines. And you've got to go back to the history of machine craze is real, and it was big, and people got way too myopically focused on machines. But in regards to the pendulum swinging now violently the other way is maybe lost sight of the value of what the point of any exercise is, where I think machines did a better of a job than compound multijoint movements did in regards to targeting a specific muscle and creating stress in a specific muscle or creating tension in a muscle. But understand the throughput, understand the output, understand what we're trying to accomplish with any exercise. Who cares about the load you use with the exercise? Who cares about does it get us what we want, relatively speaking, to doing something else? So a squat is a good exercise. It should have some sort of fundamental application and correspondence with running faster, jumping higher, or changing direction more efficiently, etc. That's the point. Who cares about a 500-pound squat or a 1,000-pound squat? What we only really care about, does it get us what we want? The same thing with investing, the same thing with any time that you put in to get something else. Off-season training is a means to an end. It's a really good means, and it's a really important aspect of an athlete's development. But it's just simply a means, not demolishing or devaluing what we do. But the reality is we can get too hung up on what a certain exercise is. And I say that because, in reality, when we get too hung up on a certain exercise, it really starts to move into the threshold of either managing momentum or, in this case, what we're going to talk about here, mechanical advantage. That we're trying to constantly compensate for mechanically disadvantaged position by either not having the tensile strength from the tractile tissue in that area or just not having simple leverage. And the thing that we talked about, and God, man, I know it's hard, but go through gear ratio. Go through levers in this movement course because there's just so many variables that you've got to associate with other than just mechanical advantage or disadvantage. That there's certain architecture of muscle groups that just simply are better at producing force and others are better at producing higher velocities. There's certain leverages that create more momentum of fluids within the joint. And as we break down a good exercise or bad exercise, blah, blah, blah, it really comes down to if we get too hung up on the output of a certain exercise, it becomes less about the actual function of what that exercise is supposed to do and more about how can we manipulate certain variables, in this case mechanical advantage, to get us to a certain number. Remember, running faster, jumping higher, throwing something further probably is going to be the majority of our goals. And if we don't have a concept of what exercises facilitate that and how to do it in order to best get that, then we're probably going to struggle to get that in a consistent manner. So mechanical advantage is understanding what angle a joint can exert as much force as possible. Sometimes this is referred to as torque, which is the radius times force times the angle between the force and the lever arm. Torque is a product of a force multiplied by the perpendicular distance in the line of action. Just remember that perpendicular distance because it could be a big part of mechanical advantage. So when a lever is, or a bone, is positioned at an angle such that the muscle is able to pull perpendicularly, it's a mechanically advantaged. This is what we were talking about with gear ratio and flexor-based muscles, that mechanically advantaged muscle groups don't need as much contractile tissue. So if I'm pulling perpendicularly, a.k.a. like flexion, then I will have a little mechanical advantage, which means I don't need as much contractile tissue. But what it doesn't say there is the impact on the connective tissue, the tendons, the ligaments, the fascia around that muscle and joint. So the greatest force requirements we need are when the angle is parallel to the level and least is when the angle is perpendicular to the level. So imagine trying to tighten bolts when you are perpendicular versus parallel. It's a lot harder when we are parallel. Alright, so one of the things that I think is so important is as we're starting to look through a, hey, I am perpendicular, parallel, or hey, I am in a position that, man, I'm really changing the mechanical advantage. So let's say I have a compound movement like a squat or a deadlift. You find constantly people are trying to get to this, I'm going to try to make this pulling from a perpendicular position, right, or pulling perpendicularly. So when I start to think about squats, okay, well, push your butt back, drop your chest, try to create this more perpendicular angle. Or, hey, when I'm squat or when I'm deadlifting, I bend my knees and I sit my hips, again, trying to pull more perpendicularly. And what that's doing is creating mechanical advantage to finish the movement. And that, in a sense, is the issue. And one of the things that I thought was so really well done and said from the Physics of Resistance training book is this idea of this rotary force around the joint that we are going to find assistant levers that can bring more mechanical advantage to the party. And I think that's the issue with compound movement is that if it's so point B oriented, we lose the primary tension in the targeted muscle group that we're trying to train. Movement's not muscles, but muscles need to have some sort of physical stress to create some sort of adaptation. And where you see this come out is this squat mechanic that is so point B oriented, and you get this very, very hip-dominant vertical jump. And that's where I think it becomes really problematic. And the same thing with acceleration mechanics, that the more we can hold certain positions and hold certain vectors, the better the output. That the ones that are going to go more horizontal in a vertical jump are going to limit their vertical force. And the ones that are going to get more vertical in a horizontal displacement, like sprinting, are going to limit their velocity. And I say that because that's essentially what we're teaching in hardwiring and programming when we start to manipulate mechanical advantage and not understanding the consequence of that. That you've lost the ability to control vectors and planes, and now you have to find a strategy to accommodate the movement. That you've created a hardwired pattern that now is inefficient towards output in sprinting and jumping. There is a motor learning component to it, absolutely. There is a pattern of jumping and sprinting that is really, really dialed in, and yes, there is a margin of influence. But if it's externally load, and we're reinforcing crappy positions that can try to manipulate mechanical advantage by using synergistic joint action that can bring more mechanical advantage to the party by pulling more perpendicularly, then we're going to run into issues in terms of actual performance. And when we look at the flexor-based muscle group that is going to be mechanically advantaged, and we start to get, like, I got to just go into it, but the idea that, hey, butt back, it's hamstring activated. On some theory, yeah, but it's not directly pulling. Like, the best way to create tension in a muscle is to lengthen it from its insertion point, or from the origin, into the insertion point. And yes, if we are creating a vertical shin, butt back, we in theory are pulling on the hamstring, but that's coming from a position that's not necessarily designed to do that. And we are sharing the load with our quadriceps, which in theory should be the primary loaded tissues during that movement. And that's why we see a epidemic of weak quads with people who are squatting all the time. It's crazy, but they also have very, very poor hamstring strength, at least knee-dominant, from more distal fibers as well. So here's the rub, that we're training movement patterns that aren't really training muscle groups, connective tissue, anything around that joint that's going to facilitate better adaptation. But the other part, it's reinforcing bad mechanics, and it's looking through this lens of output over input, and output is coming at the compromised state. One of the things that we talked about in several other places, right, from Strength Deficit and our new book coming out, Programming in the Team Setting, is this idea of dynamic correspondence, that what we need to do is figure out, hey, how do we get to an output? And how do we get to something that has residuals to performance? It's a hard thing to figure out. And I would argue, is this looking at techniques and saying, is this really making my athletes jump higher or run faster? Is that really doing that for us? And if it's not, you might need to go back to re-engineering that movement pattern and re-looking at how you teach things. Now, alternatively, let's say that you do work with a cyclical sport and does very, very small list of things they need to do for competition, like a Nordic skier, or a cross-country skier, or a bobsled, or a rower, or even a sprint athlete. Like, they just got to run forward, right? These very cyclical things that they're repeating over and over and over again. Finding the joint actions that facilitate that, overloading that joint action, and not interrupting that or inhibiting that, right? So, like, for instance, let's say that a bobsled needs to have a very horizontal position off the start. And we teach this vertical shin, butt, back, squat. Imagine that running mechanic, right? That they would lack the prerequisite horizontal vector, either range of motion, either tensile strength, or motor control, to be able to projectile that bobsled horizontally as fast as possible. And when you're looking at transference to training, and you're saying that, okay, well, I got them stronger, so in theory that they, quote, unquote, should be better. And that's kind of the reason why I love weightlifting, because I think it's good luck trying to find mechanical advantage. I think that one of the best books on that would be Demasculization of Sport and looking at putting it more vertically. And instead of pulling it higher, dropping lower, that would be the equivalent of a low bar, butt, back squat, and a sumo deadlift. Is this, like, finding creative ways to create more mechanical advantage and pulling more perpendicularly. But in reality, it's the idea of, it's just, it's the same premise, just trying to manipulate your body as a lever to get either more force or get better mechanical advantage, and just making more of a efficient movement pattern. And what Turingo would talk about is the Fossberg flop in there, in that you're not jumping higher, you're just using more of this, like, whip type of mechanic where you're projectiling your body over a bar. And I think that in itself is something that we're breaking down, these movement patterns and the transference. Like, who cares about what someone could squat and deadlift? It doesn't matter. I know that probably comes off as sacrilegious to a lot, but it really doesn't. Not if it's not making people run faster or jump higher, or even better yet, bigger and more resilient. Like, if they're constantly hurt in the weight room from loads that they can't necessarily utilize without breaking down, that is an inefficient training program, bar none. That's the facts of the matter. So, recap, in terms of mechanical advantage, thinking about the direction, perpendicular and parallel, thinking about what is the output, relatively speaking, thinking about, am I training a movement pattern to facilitate better transference to overall performance, and I should find a way to look at that as a better exercise program that's going to have better performance outcome. One of the things that Brig Null say, we want maximal benefit with minimal external load. Imagine if you can get the same benefit as a 500-pound box squat with a 100-pound leg extension. I honestly think you should consider that, because when you're really breaking it down, and we're playing the law of averages, and we start to look at fractal relationships, that there's just inherently more risk on a micro-scale and a macro-scale with these patterns that are using heavy external loads that are just trying to compromise position to get to some sort of output. Yeah, that's a problem. That, in a sense, is where I really think we need to get to as a performance set, is understand the mechanical advantage, and you might reintroduce machines back in, and might understand, hey, I need a more vertical position, and I need to load the quadricep more on a split squat or a squat. Hey, I need a more horizontal position on a hinge. Breaking that down is so paramount and so foundational. All right, stop here. Let's get on to the practical next, and then this is the last module, guys, so movement will be wrapped up here at the end of this case study. All right, here we go.