Structural Balance for Performance Potential

The human body is a brilliant example of adaptation through time. As health and fitness professionals who work with clients and athletes, it is crucial that we understand the principle that a body adapts to the stress to which it is induced.  This is essentially the SAID principle: Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands.  What this means from a practical perspective is that there must be a reason and specific intention behind the interventions we have with our clients.

Optimal results come with optimal planning and preparation

Structure and tissues adapt to physical stress, or if we’re speaking in training-specific terms, mechanical load.  We know that loading tissues creates a predictable response within a predictable range, that is, stress on normal tissue within physiological limits and with sufficient recovery normally leads to tissue adaptation.  This is the entire premise behind periodization, which centers on “the ability to induce specific physiological adaptations and translate those adaptations into increases in performance” (definition from the NSCA ®).  On the other hand, if overload is excessive, repetitive or biomechanically inefficient, or of recovery is insufficient, we exceed the biological limit of the tissue and injury occurs.

A foundational element of physical preparation is to prepare the body and ensure movement efficiency so that loads are optimally distributed, both over time, and within movement itself.

Ensuring structural balance and promoting stability and motor control are among the many elements that should be part of the foundation to build your base.

Structural Balance

In order to give you a good representation of why structural balance is crucial, we can compare the body with a sailboat. Just like a sailboat, our body adapts to and interacts with our environment in order to function.  A sailboat is designed to use the force of the wind to navigate. Over time, sailboats were built to improve performance and resilience with taller and wider sails and stronger masts and hulls.

If you were focused only on your performance goal, your first idea would be to adapt the sails to make them taller and wider so you could use the wind more efficiently to sail faster.  This would seem like the obvious solution, but if you don’t consider making the hull and mast stronger, chances are they will be unable to tolerate the increased wind and water impact forces.  The idea behind structural balance is the same.

Your potential is always only as great as your weakest link

With proper foundations, the mast and the hull, you tap into the full potential of taller and wider sails.  You must consider your body as a whole in order to achieve higher performance potentials.  A sprinter needs his lower body to be explosive in order to run faster. But he also needs a super strong trunk to provide the stability to counter rotational forces in order to avoid forces dissipation in other directions than the ones propelling him forward.

Here is another example to help you understand structural balance.  A boxer surely wants his anterior body to be as strong as possible in order to punch quicker and harder. But what if the punch doesn’t land? His antagonists (posterior muscles) must be strong enough to decelerate this movement.

There is also an importation association between structural balance and joint stability.  Agonist-antagonist imbalances may alter joint positioning and appropriate motor recruitment, which in turn will limit joint mobility or range of motion.  If you cannot get into proper position, your strength potential will be limited.  If you somehow manage to get into the position under load, your capacity to generate force from that position will also be limited.  This not only impacts your performance but increases your risk of injury.

While structural balance work can be programmed using strength ratios between specific lifts, an approach popularized by the late Charles Poliquin, at a more foundational level, it is about making sure you balance your training to hit all muscle groups and types of movements.  For example, making sure you have a balance of anterior and posterior chain work, pushing and pulling movements (vertical vs horizontal), unilateral work, etc.

While specific work is important, from a prevention standpoint, movement variability is another component of structural balance that needs to be included at some point within the training periodization.  Including unilateral work and rotational work is important for a lifter who tends to work mainly with bilateral lifts, like squats, deadlifts and bench press, and helps reap the benefits of the myofascial crossed chains for stability.

Myofascial Crossed Chains

The concept behind the myofascial crossed chains is based on the linkage of fascia and muscles.  Fascia can be defined as collagenous tissue that is part of a whole-body tension force transmission network.  The myofascial links are important in distributing and transmitting force.  While there is certainly a body of research around myofascial chains and many theories surrounding the identification of different chains (Mézières, Rolf, Myers, etc.), there is debate as to whether it is possible to affirm the existence of the chains.

However, the existence of crossed chains, hypothetically or not, is very interesting for performance purposes.  Crossed chains are dynamic and very closely related to gait, as they are comprised of muscles involved in contralateral extension and flexion patterns.  This cross-body tension is markedly important for distributing force from the extremities through the trunk, as well as creating stability within the trunk.  The repeated effect of training movements involving these myofascial crossed chains is to recruit a set of key muscles to provide increased stability across the joints involved.

This concept therefore becomes very interesting for weightlifters requiring significant stability to move high loads, and power athletes needing to optimize their potential for transferring forces between the trunk and the upper and lower limbs. It is also quite relevant for runners for more efficient forward propulsion.

The development of these myofascial crossed chains also appears to be very relevant for the general population who are at risk of or suffer from low back pain. For example, the organization of the muscular system of the posterior crossed chain involves the latissimus dorsi and the thoracolumbar fascia crossing with the contralateral glute max and biceps femoris (a portion of the hamstring).  Tension through all of these structures ensures greater protection and stability across the lumbar spine as well as stabilization of the sacroiliac joint.

Here are some examples of exercises that solicit the posterior and anterior crossed chains:

Pulley RDL + row:

Landmine half-kneeling twists :

You can’t shoot a cannon out of a canoe

If the human body was a sailboat, performance potential would be enhanced by taller and wider sails.  But because we are only as strong as our weakest link, this performance potential would be limited by a mast and hull that are not strong enough to tolerate the increased wind and water force generated by the more efficient sails.

Programming efficiently for structural balance and working with myofascial crossed chains important elements of physical preparation to build a foundation from which to expand your sails.

Physical preparation is an art and is very complex considering the multitude of elements to consider that can have an impact in the development of physical capacities.  It is an art, and a foundational element of this art is to prepare the body not only to handle loads, but to distribute these optimally through the body.  These are the steppingstones to unleashing your full performance potential, the mast and hull of your body.

article by Joey Rousseau, B.Sc.

in collaboration with Mai-Linh Dovan M.SC., CAT(C)

Joey comes from a martial arts and football background. He has always handled his own physical preparation in order to perform in those sports. He holds a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology from UQAM, which has provided him with the knowledge and understanding of the human body to optimize his interventions. His passion for training drives him to continuously improve upon himself in order to help his clients to become stronger and healthier.

REFERENCES

Jose Luis Rosario. “Understanding Muscular Chains – A Review for Clinical Application of Chain Stretching Exercises Aimed to Correct Posture”. EC Orthopaedics 5.6 (2017): 209-234.