STOP OVER-DEVELOPING YOUR POSTERIOR CHAIN

STOP OVER-DEVELOPING YOUR POSTERIOR CHAIN.

You would of heard time and time again people banging on about posterior chain development and by strengthening the glutes, hamstrings and lower back you will reduce the risk of injury.

This is somewhat true and I do not disagree with developing the posterior chain, if you look at most of my posts, you can see a lot of posterior chain developing exercises such as Squats and Deadlifts.

Although these exercises are impressive and fun to do. The posterior chain may not be the only chain or sling that need you need to develop.

What about the Deep and Superficial Anterior Chain? or the Lateral Sling? or the Anterior Oblique Sling? do these even matter?

Yes they do. Development of all these slings/chains is important for complete muscle balance and synergy. Developing strength in all slings/chains is the key to becoming strong, pain free and mobile. However if you have a dysfunction or multiple dysfunctions in any of these slings it will often display itself by some sort of injury or niggling pain.

A typical case that I’m presented with would be low back pain and/or knee pain and dysfunction of the Lateral Sling. The Lateral Sling is made up of the Quadratus Lumborum (QL), Glute Medius and the Adductor group. These muscles control movements at the hip and knee joint and are responsible for lateral stability which is needed for movements such as walking, running, step ups, lunges etc. .
So this being said, if there is weakness in any of these muscles in the lateral sling it will likely cause a compensatory movement pattern either at the hip or the knee, thus an injury will often occur at lower back or knee. So by correcting this imbalance by strengthening the Lateral Sling, the niggling pain generally clears up.

My point is that yes the posterior chain is important but it’s just as important as the rest of the chains and slings in the body. To really reduce the risk of injury we have to find the weakness, turn them into strengths to create strength in the entire body.

I mean, if you can deadlift 200kg but you can’t do a sit up, you might run into some problems if not now in the future.