All too often I see workouts that have been created with very little to no thought of balancing muscle or movements.
The 7 fundamental movement patterns can for most part be broken down into two groups
- Movements with the emphasis on pushing
- Movements with the emphasis on pulling
Pushing movements include …
Squats
Chest press
Shoulder press
Step ups
Pistols
Pulling movements include…
Deadlifts
Swings
Rows
Chins
Snatches
The muscles in the front of the body for most part are the muscles that push and the muscles on the back of the body are the muscles that pull. Walk into any gym and you will see a lot of pushing based movements and not much in the way of pulling movements.
I guess it’s because we see the front of our body and not the back. So if you can’t see it then you should just ignore it right?
Wrong !!
The muscles in the back of our body are what give us speed, power and athleticism. If you want to get a flatter stomach then training the muscles you can’t see will do that quicker than training the muscle you can see.
Want better posture? Then train the muscles at the back of the body
Life puts us in a position of anterior dominance (that’s a fancy way of saying front of body dominance) Our heads are thrown forward, our shoulders are forward, our hips are forward, our knees are forward. Training the muscles at the back will pull them back into alignment.
As a very general rule of thumb you should aim for a 2:1 ratio of pull to push. In real life that might look like 3 sets of push ups followed by 4 sets of rows.
One of the reasons im such a fan of kettlebell training is that many of the kettlebell movements focus on the posterior (the backside of the body)
So, don’t be all show and no go. Make sure you do those pulling movements
Swing, clean, row, chin, snatch if you want better posture, you want to run faster, jump higher or be leaner
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