When Dr. Pat Ivey arrived at the University of Missouri during the spring of 2004, the first training he emphasized was posterior chain training. Now the Associate Athletic Director of Student-Athlete Health & Performance at the University of Louisville, Ivey still believes the posterior chain is the key to building a solid foundation. After all, he says, that is where the power comes from.
“To make sure we are set up to have a good summer, I’ve gone as as far as spending three weeks developing the posterior chain,” says Ivey. “I think of it as the foundation. For a power athlete, you can’t produce power without having a strong posterior chain. If you look at the muscle groups we are talking about, ‘posterior’ means back and ‘chain’ means that everything is connected. So you can look at the upper back, developing the traps through the lower back, erectors, glutes and hamstrings.”
There are various exercises coaches can assign to help student-athletes build the kind of power required for explosive movement, says Ivey.
“If we start with the traps, then we are talking about shrugs,” he says. “Heavy shrugs are great for developing the traps. For the lower back, I like the reverse-hyper. Glute-ham raises are perfect for developing the glutes. On the whole, I like squats, deadlifts and box squats.”
Plyometrics Augment Posterior Chain Training
Ivey says he and his staff are careful not to become too enamored of exercises designed to produce force alone. He says many strength coaches overlook exercises that train force absorption.
“It’s just like putting a huge motor in a car and not working on the suspension or the brakes,” says Ivey. “Eventually, you are going to crash if you develop something like that. If you don’t develop the handling of that car, you are going to crash.”
Ivey says many coaches fall into the trap of training student-athletes backward. They get so caught up in producing the power that they forget they need to stop that power. Plyometric training – properly done – is key to the development of not only force production, but force absorption and change of direction.
“That’s something that definitely needs to be emphasized more in training,” he says. “Athletes not only need to be able to produce more power, they need to absorb it. Ultimately, you want your athletes to consistently perform at their highest level and ability, but you also want them to be safe and avoid injury.”
How Mat Drills Develop The Posterior Chain
Ivey utilizes mat drills to fill a variety of training needs, including posterior chain training.
“If you’re trying to accomplish conditioning, you can pick up the pace,” he says. “If you want to emphasize movement and agility, you can slow down the pace. If you want to emphasize teamwork, you can do that as well. You can emphasize whatever you want from mat drills. If you want to it be just a warm-up, you may not have them go full speed.”
Ivey says that mat drills are also perfect for emphasizing competition, in which case he may not focus to closely on technique.
“If you’re looking for acceleration, you have three guys on the mat at one time,” he says. “You can gauge how hard someone is accelerating because you have two other people to compare that person to.”
