Issue 108

December 2013

Sports scientist, TUF 14 cast member and full-time coach Paul McVeigh presents his best conditioning tips. Allow Fighters Only to come to your aid with a killer workout for your posterior chain.


In a perfect world, bench pressing, bicep curls and some abdominal work would cover all of our athletic and aesthetic needs; but if you want to be a more effective fighter you will need to pay serious attention to a group of muscles known as the posterior chain.

‘But what is it?’ I hear some of you ask. Well, you have all probably heard of mirror muscles and know exactly what that term means. The posterior chain refers to the muscles you can’t see when admiring yourself in the gym mirror. We are talking calves, hamstrings, glutes and lower back. Basically all the muscles that are involved in the really great strength-training movements.

These muscles are the key to your athletic development, because a well-developed posterior chain will improve your ability to fight any man/woman/bear. 

And as the key muscles in forward propulsion, your shots and striking will be faster and more powerful; you’ll have the unbreakable posture normally reserved for statues and you won’t have to worry about your jeans falling off your non-existent ass. 

You will also run faster, lift heavier things and be able to keep your hamstrings from blowing up at awkward times. All very good and useful advancements.


DEVELOPING THE POSTERIOR CHAIN

So, how do you develop a powerful posterior chain? A regular serving of the following movements will really set you on your way.


  • Dead lift
  • Trap bar dead lifts
  • Romanian dead lifts
  • Cleans
  • Snatches 
  • Barbell hip thrust
  • Glute-ham raise


All of these really hammer the posterior chain in to development. And the following list of accessory-driven exercises will also help develop the previous exercise movements with even more posterior chain goodness.


  • Single-leg dead lifts
  • Single-leg hip lift
  • Sliding leg curl
  • Pull through
  • Good morning
  • Single-leg good morning


The key to targeting the posterior chain is loading the involved musculature with the hip hinge movement. To get an idea of what we are talking about, stand a couple of inches from a wall and with straight legs push your hips back until you touch brick. Increase the distance from the wall until you can no longer reach it with straight legs. Then do the same with a 10-degree knee bend. This will increase the glute involvement in the hip hinge. Once you have the body weight hip hinge down you can start playing with some of the movements suggested already.

Exercises like squats can be given a posterior chain boost by reaching back with the hips as opposed to dive-bombing straight down. If you initiate the movement with the hip hinge and maintain a relatively vertical shin angle throughout the squat your posterior chain will receive more loading. You will eventually be able to lift a lot more this way and it’s a great idea to try for those whose knees hate them when squatting.


POSTERIOR CHAIN KRYPTONITE 

If you were trying to destroy your ability to recruit your posterior chain muscles, sitting down for ages would be a great way to do it. Prolonged sitting has been described as this generation’s smoking. 

Sitting about all day causes adaptive shortening of muscles on the front of the body, predominantly in the hips. When the front of the hip is over-active and tight, the muscles on the back of the joint don’t get a look-in.

Even if you wanted to use your glutes in a given movement you cannot. This leads to underdevelopment in certain posterior chain muscles and causes others to have to pick up the slack to complete the movements.

This often happens with the hamstrings as they have had the inhibited glutes’ workload dropped on to them, leading to inefficient movement and an increased injury risk. You never hear of an athlete pulling a butt muscle but torn hamstrings are common.

So what can you do to off set this phenomenon? Firstly, stop sitting around so much. Set a timer that goes off every 20 minutes to remind you to get up and move around a bit. 

For every 30 minutes of sitting try to spend two minutes stretching your legs. Combine this with some hip flexor stretches and glute activation drills before lifting and you will have enhanced your ability to lift stuff with a fully-functioning posterior chain.



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