[tommytwotone]

Right, following on from posts on a couple of threads here it's got me thinking that I should put some focus on antagonist training. I'm conscious that my deskbound work / terrible posture ain't helping me get fully fit, plus I injured my shoulder last weekend on my first climbing session back after Xmas so I won't be climbing for a bit.

Thought I'd see if anyone's got anything to add to what I'm currently doing that might be beneficial.

My current session, twice a week is...

Shoulder press (machine) - 2 x 15, 15kg
Chest press (machine) - 2 x 20, 20kg
Press ups 2 x 15
Dips (on box, feet on floor) - 2 x 15
Some ab stuff - crunches / leg raises

Thinking I should be adding some free weight shit to the above, so the other day started doing some front shoulder raises with 5kg dumbell, tricep extensions with the same.

Does that sounds like enough / the right sort of thing?

[chriss]

I just do body weight stuff. Dips on the ring's, different types of press up's. I use a dumbell for reverse wrist curls, also have a stability ball for press up's to work the core to. Gym would be usefull, but they are a bit of a rip off down my way.

[SteveM]

Does anyone know of a more compact alternative to a stability ball? Small house + too much crap already = stressed g/f

 

[Paul B]

Right, following on from posts on a couple of threads here it's got me thinking that I should put some focus on antagonist training. I'm conscious that my deskbound work / terrible posture ain't helping me get fully fit, plus I injured my shoulder last weekend on my first climbing session back after Xmas so I won't be climbing for a bit.

Thought I'd see if anyone's got anything to add to what I'm currently doing that might be beneficial.

My current session, twice a week is...

Shoulder press (machine) - 2 x 15, 15kg
Chest press (machine) - 2 x 20, 20kg
Press ups 2 x 15
Dips (on box, feet on floor) - 2 x 15
Some ab stuff - crunches / leg raises


Does that sounds like enough / the right sort of thing?

Ditch the machines. Exrx.net is your freind!

Tricep extensions with db's are a bit faffy, use a cable stack or something and do strict pushdowns.

Do gironda dips instead of tricep dips, lean slightly forward in the dip bars to help hit your chest.

Ab stuff, I'd start lever progressions if I was you.

As previously stated rings are good for this kind of thing if you have access and someone to shout at you when you're a little "floppy".

[cuboard]

Yes sack off of the machines... there only good for shaping muscle. Work with dumbells as much as possible and don't cheat i.e very strict movement and full range of motion. For example on a bench press with smith machine or bar your range is limited by lenghth  of arms and big chest in the way. Try the same excercise with dumbells and you can drop the dumbell way below the chest.
Its the same with shouler press ... with a bar your swede gets in the way....
I use training with weights as a form of weak point training..... try to balance and equalise the body.. if you can pulldown 100kg you should be bench pressing and shoulder pressing the same.

If you want to train specific muscle groups together and feel an amazing pump ... try tri-setting the three deltoid heads   
or superset the chest and back or superset biceps and triceps....these are all endurance exercises. For power drop down to 1/2  reps maximum lift and isolate the muscle.

try this... 5 X sets of 10-12  1 min rest between sets.... and no rest during tri-set

front delt...dumbell raises, slightly leaning forward, twisting towards the top-palms down, dont use your back to flick the weights up.
straight into arnie shoulder presses, middle delt. with dumbells and then rear delt. various exercises for this ..i bend over feet together raise to the side.

1 min rest, repeat five times.

Next dumbell curls/tricep extensions on cable.... superset.. reps 10/12 five sets 1 min rest between superset.

this is 1 hour in the gym. the next day train back and chest to rest shouders and arms. simple... what you reckon paul.  

[Paul B]

I'm never sold on the high rep range. If you're wanting to build up some antagonistic strength to balance that back out then surely the reps should be low low low?

Supersetting, is good. I found when doing chest and back splits I'd look in the mirror afterwards and depending which session I'd just had the other would look heavily under proportioned. A superset session sorted that out.

Just a thought of mine but I don't think a fully balanced climber, i.e. same bench and pulldown stats is achieving his/her full climbing potential. In my own experience I've found that my back develops to a level of strength then plateau's, by then bringing my chest up slightly, I expand the potential for my back to develop more. I've never got anywhere near the amount I can pull down when doing bench.

I read once that "If you bench +/- 20% (ish) more than you can pulldown then you are in the highest risk group for shoulder injury". Food for thought.

God I miss weights...

[Jaspersharpe]

Just a thought of mine but I don't think a fully balanced climber, i.e. same bench and pulldown stats is achieving his/her full climbing potential.

Remember that you're talking to cuboard here Paul. 

[Stubbs]

I use training with weights as a form of weak point training..... try to balance and equalise the body.. if you can pulldown 100kg you should be bench pressing and shoulder pressing the same.

Surely that would be a whole lot more heavy muscle to be carrying around for climbing - most of which won't be adding to your climbing performance?

[Jaspersharpe]

I repeat......... 

[Paul B]

That was my point.

Being a crimp waif the added weight hasn't seemed to disadvantage me but I can see for some people it will be a massive issue. Being so un-balanced was creating issues for me, regularly my sternum would crunch when rolling over in my sleep etc.

Wait 'til Richdraws turns up, you'll get some solid advice there.

[Houdini]

The basics of antagonism are a sinch.  Repeat after me (you'll pick it up in no time):

You're shit.
Why don't you just give up?
I remember the first time I drilled your mum, like it was yesterday... *wistful*
Have you put on weight?
You're struggling aren't you?
You climb like a chicken in flight
Can you spell 'lard-ass'?

[slackline]

The basics of antagonism are a sinch.  Repeat after me (you'll pick it up in no time):

You're shit.
Why don't you just give up?
I remember the first time I drilled your mum, like it was yesterday... *wistful*
Have you put on weight?
You're struggling aren't you?
You climb like a chicken in flight
Can you spell 'lard-ass'?

[Houdini]

(Ah, now that happens to be an ad-libbed scene.  Genius.)

[richdraws]

Wait 'til Richdraws turns up, you'll get some solid advice there.

You wont get any sense from me, not enough alcohol allowed in my system anymore means I am grumpy and antagonistic.

Right Twotone yer cunt...
I wish I could undo the amount of time I have spent building muscle. But once you have it its a fucker to get rid of so you might as well make sure the muscle you have is as strong as possible.
Twotone you injured yourself at the works right? Why not use the rings and do some dips, they will be way more beneficial to your shoulder strength and prevent you wasting hours in a gym. If you have to go down the gym route why not do something that wont pack on the pounds but will pack on the power - some olympic lifting.

[Paul B]

See thats some knowledge right there: Olympic Lifts for the world!

Ring workouts (steady now!) really are good.

They're hard though and in the works you'll get some twat who wanders over and says something like "how do i get my lardy ass to do that iron cross thingy?" or "look at my muscle up" or "yeah its really hard... until your body gets used to it like mine" (Whilst dancing in between the rings).

Theres still no box either just a swiss ball. I DARE YOU to do a jack knife press up on a swiss ball. Its not as if building wooden boxes is a rarity in the place so I don't see why they haven't bothered.

[The Sausage]

I'll write more on this when I have time, but the idea of agonist/antagonist muscle balance as key to correct biomecanics is outdated. What you have in the body is movement muscles and stabilising muscles (and some muscles that do a bit of both). What you need is alignment (posture, if you like) at ALL joints, and dynamic control of ALL joints (i.e. maintenance of alignment through movement).

Anyway, I have to start work now, but in the short term, forget the bench presses.

[tobym]

I DARE YOU to do a jack knife press up on a swiss ball.

Paul, any links/demo's/description of said exercise?

[Paul B]

I'll write more on this when I have time, but the idea of agonist/antagonist muscle balance as key to correct biomecanics is outdated. What you have in the body is movement muscles and stabilising muscles (and some muscles that do a bit of both). What you need is alignment (posture, if you like) at ALL joints, and dynamic control of ALL joints (i.e. maintenance of alignment through movement).

Anyway, I have to start work now, but in the short term, forget the bench presses.

Please do, i'm very interested to hear about this. Just a quick look on ExRx at a Pull Up (climbing specific), you get:

Muscles

Target

    * Latissimus Dorsi

Synergists

    * Brachialis
    * Brachioradialis
    * Biceps Brachii
    * Teres Major
    * Rhomboids
    * Levator Scapulae
    * Pectoralis Minor
    * Trapezius, Lower
    * Pectoralis Major, Sternal

Dynamic Stabilizers

    * Triceps, Long Head

as the muscles involved, and

    Synergist

          A muscle that assists another muscle to accomplish a movement.

    Stabilizer

          A muscle that contracts with no significant movement to maintain a posture or fixate a joint.

Thats always been why I'd understood that working these muscle would be useful?

What you need is alignment (posture, if you like) at ALL joints, and dynamic control of ALL joints (i.e. maintenance of alignment through movement).

Is it really possible to achieve this on lets say the shoulders where you may have a massively over developed posterior delt compared to the relatively underdeveloped anterior delt that most climbers have? 


Tobym, put a chair/block/swiss ball if your mad a bit away from the rings so you can place your feet on it and support yourself in the press up position with the rings in line with your shoulders. Now, keeping your arms straight extend your arms forward until you're doing a double superman style manouevre. When you're fully stretched keeping your arms straight get back into the original position. Obviously if you're on a swiss ball it will have rolled and you'll need shoulder surgery.

http://www.trainingrings.com/index.php?page=ExercisePushUp

feet on the floor like that if you're just starting out on a block if your a little more beastly.

[tommytwotone]

Wait 'til Richdraws turns up, you'll get some solid advice there.

You wont get any sense from me, not enough alcohol allowed in my system anymore means I am grumpy and antagonistic.

Right Twotone yer cunt...
I wish I could undo the amount of time I have spent building muscle. But once you have it its a fucker to get rid of so you might as well make sure the muscle you have is as strong as possible.
Twotone you injured yourself at the works right? Why not use the rings and do some dips, they will be way more beneficial to your shoulder strength and prevent you wasting hours in a gym. If you have to go down the gym route why not do something that wont pack on the pounds but will pack on the power - some olympic lifting.

Cheers for the info - I'm not going to The Works at the moment as my neck's on the block for reduncancy at work so I'm trying to keep outgoings to a minimum in case I get my P45 next week. I'll defo give the rings a try when I'm next there though. On the plus side, if I get the chop it'll give me some time to train properly!

I'd always dismissed the rings because I thought I'd need a decent base level of strength to get anything out of them, plus I was always worried about injuring myself on them. Guess it's worth a go.

[richdraws]

If you want a few pointers give me a shout. Before I became an alcoholic I used to teach gymnastics. Just PM me.

[The Sausage]

Right, here goes. I shall try and summarize what I alluded to earlier. I hope it comes out making some sense. I suppose what the question about 'antagonistics' can be translated to is 'how can I make sure all the training I do doesn't lead to altered movement patterns, which are ultimately damaging and lead to injury?' (this I shall refer to as 'the question').

First off, here's something for you to try: stand up from a normal chair, but put your hands on your hamstrings as you do so. Now, standing from sitting, in the agonist/antagonist model would be a purely quadriceps job - your hamstrings would be relaxed. But you should feel that they are working. What used to be thought of as agonist/antagonist muscle groups (quads/hams, biceps/triceps, finger flexors/extensors) actually work synergistically to produce a smooth movement.

The reason this happens can be better illustrated with the wrist/fingers. The finger flexors also flex the wrist; the finger extensors also extend the wrist. So, if I want to flex my fingers, but not my wrist (which, incidently is a completely abnormal movement pattern that only occurs after neurological injury), my extensors have to work to keep my wrist stable.

On to the shoulder... The shoulder girdle is a crazy structure. We shall look at the scapula-thoracic junction first. The job of the scapula is to put the glenoid (the dish that the head of humerus sits in) in the right place for the arm action required, and to either stay in the right position, or to move in a controlled way, as the arm performs the task at hand. Unlike the hip/pelvis, which is very stable, the scapula is not (to allow for the range of movement that the arm needs), and is controlled by muscles. Did you know that the only bony attachment of your shoulder to your torso is via your clavicle (collar bone), which joins your scapula to your sternum. The scapula is basically a free floating docking point for the humerus, which is tethered to the thorax by a number of muscles - pec minor at the front, levator scapulae, trapezius (upper/middle/lower), and rhomboids at the back, as well as lat dorsi and serratus anterior (if i've missed any off, sorry, that's just off the top of my head). Now (in theory) these muscles all work together to move and stabilise the scapula.

...but, it often goes wrong, particularly in climbers. Here's why:

The position of the scapula is initially determined by the shape of the thorax. As we all know, many climbers have quite rounded backs, which causes the glenoid to face more anteriorly/inferiorally than it should, which makes it harder to lift the arm aove the head. Try it - really slump into a C shape and try and lift your arm above your head, now straighten up and see how much further it goes.

OK, so we need to be less rounded (kyphotic - it's called a thoracic kyphosis if you want to look it up).

The real problem for climbers lie in the fact that the arms aren't designed to do what we do, and the scapula stabilizers (serratus anterior, middle and lower traps) get pushed out of doing their job by the more 'active' scapula movement muscles - pec minor, upper traps, rhomboids, and to some extent lat dorsi. Problems here are that pec minor pulls the scapula forward and down, exacerbating the problems described above. The rhomboids do a good job of stabilising the scapula when the arm is below shoulder height, but as the arm raises, the scapula move away from the spine, rhomboids lengthen and can't stabilise the scapula anymore, and it 'wings' away from the chest wall - you'll see this all the time when someone catches a hold above and away from them and cuts loose - you can almost see under the scapula.

Both of these things are going to increase the likelihood of the main thing we are trying to prevent in the shoulder - impingement. This is basically an umberella term for the humerus moving about in the glenoid, and damaging structures around it - normally above or in front. The ikely structures to be damaged are - the labrum (ring of cartilage around the glenoid), the biceps tendon where it runs over the front of the shoulder, or the rotator cufftendon where it runs over the top of the humerus.

In a nutshell, you need to re-activate the stabilisers - serratus anterior and the middle and lower traps. But it's hard to do - these muscles don't contain stretch and tension receptors so it's difficult to isolate them. also the exercises won't make you ripped or impress girls (or boys). in fact, you look a bit of a nob doing them. and they're boring. You need somebody to show you how to do them - your brain has no idea where your scapula is or what it is up to.

Right, that's the scapula. it's an amazing piece of engineering, but destined to go wrong. Onto the gleno-humeral joint (glenoid is the 'socket' on the scapula, and you all know what the humerus is).

This bit should be easier, but again, the aim is to keep the humerus stable throughout movement/loading, so it doesn't move around. I know a lot of people do rotator cuff exercises with a theraband, which is great. However, the other thing we need to consider is the position of the humerus in the glenoid. Virtually all climbers' humerii sit too far forward in the glenoid, so some form of anterior impimngement is almost inevitable. You need to start to push the head of humerus backwards, but this is difficult to achieve without introducing instability. It is vital to keep the rotator cuff active.

Almost finally, the subscapularis is part of the rotator cuff that often gets forgotton about - it is attached to the underside of the scapula (i.e. between the chest wall and the scapula) and needs to be part of your rotator cuff routine. To be honest, i forget about too.

Finally, the other vthing that must always be addressed when trying to improve biomechanics are the ligaments. There are many ligamnets around the scapula, but these really limit end of range, so shouldn't get in the way of improvements in scapula stability. Around the shoulder joint (gleno-humeral) is a capsule, which will also cause anterior movement/positioning of the humeral head if it becomes tight. So you need to stretch this too.

Basically, you're not going to be able to diagnose your own alignment/bio-mechanical problems with google and a physiology textbook. I am often around and about and can give general advice on posture/stabilising exercises. If anyone has an actual problem (I'm making myself sound like the A team!), i'm more than happy to talk to them about it. I'll probaly advise you to get it seen to, but can give you some background info which may be helpful. If you are suffering with general, diffuse lateral arm/bicep pain, you probably have some degree of anterior impingement, and i'll definitely be happy to give you my opinion.

phew. hope that all makes sense(ish).

[The Sausage]

p.s. To go back to the original question about antagonists, a big problem is that exercising the antagonists (i.e. bench presses/shoulder presses etc) will actually exacerbate the movement/stability dysfunctons that we already have. They will further activate the movement muscles, and the stabilising muscles will become even less active.

In order to stabilise the shoulder, we do it, not by building muscles at the front, but by getting alignment right and using the muscles that are there to do the job they are supposed to do.

I find it helpful to think of the rotator cuff as guy-lines that pull the humerus into position as it moves.

[Serpico]

Thanks for that. I posted this question some time ago on UKC:

by - Serpico on - 18 Jan 2008
In reply to i.munro:
The rotator cuff muscles aren't antagonists they're fixators/synergists. I'm interested in this idea that's often repeated on here that training antagonists will prevent injury to agonists, when I've never seen any research to support it, no explanation of biomechanically how it works, and no history of it in other sports. It's common in other sports to train antagonists to prevent muscle imbalance injuries, but these are injuries to the weaker antagonist caused by the rapid contraction of a stronger agonist. For instance: in the javelin the agonist is the tricep which contracts strongly at great speed to extend the arm, the antagonist (the bicep) must stretch rapidly, and provide some braking at the end of the motion when the javelin is released, so it makes sense to condition the bicep to withstand these huge forces. Similarly in sprinting the prime movers are the quads and the antagonists are the hams, and it's far more common to see a sprinter pull up with a strained hamstring than a quad injury.
In the shoulder climbers commonly get impingement at the front of the shoulder (possibly what you have?). We tend to chronically stretch our back muscles (lats, rotator cuff, etc,) by hanging on straight arms, and relaxed backs, while trying to recover on routes. Meanwhile the pecs etc also get worked, but are not subject to the same kind of stretching. When muscles are strengthened without stretching they can shorten their resting lengths, so you end up with an imbalance in tension between chest and back, pulling the shoulders forward (the classic climbers rounded back). The solution is to stretch the pecs, tighten the rotator cuff, and scapular retraction.
With the forearm some of the muscles we perceive as antagonists actually contribute to the movement so are actually fixators and/or synergists, wrist extensors for example.
One of the reasons I'm interested in this antagonists protect agonists thing is apart from not being able to find any evidence/reference to it in other sports, is that it seems to contradict one of the fundamental adaptations to strength training ie: that increase in strength is partly down to decreased co-activation of the antagonists.
I hope that all makes sense, and someone can shed some light on this for me.

Your post has addressed a lot of that, but I doubt the 'training antagonists cures all' mantra will disappear from climbing any time soon...

[Three Nine]

I don't understand the physiology, but The Sausage's postural/stability advice has certainly helped me with elbow problems. However, in my limited experience if my elbows are sometimes feeling a tiny bit sore I find a few sets of bench presses soothing. I don't know if this has anything to do with antagonists, but there is the anecdote anyway. Also, since I have started doing some weights once a week my body has definitely felt better. Also pumping iron has a bigger overall impact on your metabolic rate than cardio ever will, which is nice. Plus its fun.

[galpinos]

Thanks for taking the time to post all that Sausage.

As someone who's had numerous shoulder issues in the past (my dislocating shoulder has now been operated on) and is blindly hoping press-ups are the way froward, it's made me think a physio trip might be in order to get taught some exercises.