Selkäspecialisti Dr. Stuart McGill:in haastatteluja

[Pohjoisvirta]

Muutamaan otteeseen olen lainaillut McGill:in ajatuksia palstalla ja t-nation on haastatellut miestä peräti 2 kertaa.
Ensimmäinen haastattelu on tuoreempi ja Mr Spine menee tuonne v. 2003.

Back to McGill

T-Nation: No doubt. You had some pretty experienced lifters, coaches, and trainers questioning their own foundations. Except me, of course. Tell the T-Nation audience about how perfect I was, Dr. McGill!

Dr. McGill: Yes, Eric, you showed wonderful lumbar control! Once we have ensured that lumbar control is well established in the athlete, we may follow various protocols to challenge all of the neuromuscular compartments of the abdominal obliques. We then may focus on tuning the flexor mechanism (for example, push-up position, then walking the hands out in front and maintaining the bridge).

From these, we move on to short-range plyometrics. So, I'm dismayed to see the number of people performing full range curl-ups over a gym ball, risking their backs. When is this done in real life? In the real world, the strength and power athlete uses torso stiffness as a short-range spring to direct hip and shoulder power through the linkage with minimal energy losses. Every great kicker, thrower, jumper, and lifter uses the core in this way.

T-Nation: Millions of people feel "tight" in their lower back, so they logically assume that the best way to fix the problem is to stretch the lower back out. With our DVD and writing, Mike Robertson and I have gone to great lengths to show that it's a deficit in hip mobility that's actually one of the problems, and that stability of the spine is what these people need. Care to elaborate?

Dr. McGill: I agree. When we test athletes who complain of being tight, and who have been stretching to deal with this sensation, many show their problem to be neurogenic tension – not always tight muscles.

So, while stretching the back, hamstrings, and the like, may feel good as the stretch receptors are stimulated – the neural tissues are stretched causing more stiffness the next day. Worse yet are those who may have stiffness due to disc bulges, and stretching only makes the bulges larger.

Immobility of the hip joint has been shown to be a correlate of back troubles. True hip joint mobility can be trained in some people, but again, the source must be ferreted out. It could be a tight or compromised hip joint capsule, tight muscles, or neural tension.

By the way, in lifters, neural tension usually originates in a lumbar root from a disc bulge. Stretching is contraindicated in this case. The key is to move or change posture to assist the bulge in reducing, then proceed with nerve root flossing techniques, then correct the faulty lifting pattern that caused the bulge in the first place.

Mister Spine

Mister Spine part 2

T: I think most T-men are not rounding our backs during squats and deadlifts. However, you’ve said that I should not stretch my back like it would be stretched when I bend over to touch my toes in a hamstring stretch?

SM: First, there are many backs that should not be stretched—those with discogenic pain may perceive the sensations from stretching muscle spindles as good, but they will be fooled—the disks may be accumulating trauma to ensure they remain chronic.

Second, I would consider that a very unwise way to stretch your hamstrings. A much more clever way to stretch your hamstrings would be to stand upright, put your leg up in front of you on a stool or box and have the spine in a neutral posture while rotating the pelvis to stretch the hamstrings. But be careful and ask the question yourself why you're stretching the hamstrings. You may be compromising knee stability.

T: So you’re saying that there’s not much point in stretching the ligaments of the spine?

SM: Again, stretching ligaments in the spine is a myth. If you stretch them to create an increased range of motion, you’re going to either tear them or avulse them. You may be building your tolerance to stretch—or you may be stretching muscle. But you don’t want to stretch ligaments; they’re there for a reason. They’re there to protect the discs. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying don’t warm-up.

Also, remember that treating someone for health objectives vs. training them for performance are two different ball-games. We have measured world-class powerlifters, and even though they appear to fully flex their spines, they in fact don’t. But at the end of the day I’m not saying never flex the spine, either. There is a time and a place.

T: You also talk about abdominal-bracing during most movements. What do you mean by that exactly?

SM: The spine under compressive load will buckle under very low loads and you need muscles to stabilize it—bracing does this. People have used the analogy of guide wires on a ship’s mast—it’s very apt—to prevent unstable behavior.

You may have heard about transverse abdominus and multifidus as being very important stabilizers of the spine. I’m afraid that if that’s what’s being used to create stability you won’t create much stability at all—you need all the muscles. Not only will the spine buckle, but it can become unstable in shear. The criss-crossing action of the obliques, for example, anchored on rectus abdominus, means that you have to not only fire up transverse but also the obliques and also rectus.

An abdominal brace is where you tense all the abdominal muscles, but you do not suck the navel towards the spine. You can once again use the analogy of the rigging of a ship’s mast—if you move the rigging closer to the mast it actually buckles at a lower load, and if you can move the guide wires out away from the mast you get much more stability. The classic weight lifters like Vasily Alexiev didn’t have a nice hollowed abdomen—in fact he had enormous stability that came from the distances of those strong guide wires, to give a graphic example.

So don’t solely focus on multifidus, but I’m not saying neglect it either; I’m saying think of it with all the other extensors in mind. People don’t give credit to muscles like latissimus dorsi, which is very rarely mentioned in spine stability yet supremely important. Every muscle we have is important at some point in time or in some situation.