Muscular Balance

Muscular Balance
By Bernard "Bun" Gladieux, Jr.

High level fitness, no less than other forms and aspects of life itself, is filled with ironies and imponderables.

Why is it, for example, that the fitter you are, the more likely you are to eventually suffer a sports injury?

One of the most common and commonly ignored reasons athletes get hurt is muscular imbalance. Although the problem is widely recognized in sports medicine, it remains an elusive concept and a chronic problem for many practicing and otherwise healthy, high performance athletes.

All muscles in the body move your different body parts in different directions. If one muscle pulls your knee one way, another pulls it in the opposite direction. This pair of muscles or muscle groups “oppose” one another.

To cite one of the most straight forward examples, your quadriceps muscle raises your knee; your hamstring muscle lowers your knee. For most training runners the quadriceps muscle is substantially stronger than the hamstring by half again as much. At least part of the reason is that your quadriceps is one of the muscles that lifts your leg up against the pull of gravity.

The problem arises when the quadriceps keeps over-developing relative to its opposing muscle, the hamstring. The more pronounced this strength discrepancy, the more likely a hamstring pull injury.

Interestingly, Dr. Gabe Mirkin points out in his Sport Medicine Book that athletes whose hamstrings are nearly as strong as their quadriceps rarely experience these hamstring pulls. These athletes include skiers, skaters and cyclists. Additionally, sports that require athletes to fully extend or straighten the legs as in running, football, soccer and basketball show a much greater frequency of hamstring injuries.

Hamstrings are especially susceptible to injury because the muscles of the upper leg are
relatively massive and are subject to great mechanical stresses in many common athletic
moves.

Mirkin points out that some of this stress on the hamstring involves extreme stretching that forces the muscle to function much as a tendon. He recommends, therefore, in prevention and in rehabilitation that the hamstring be treated with its dual role very much in mind.

Remembering also that the hamstring muscle is part of the soft tissue linkages that connect along your backside between your head and your heels, here are some strengthening and stretching exercises that will help prevent one of the athlete’s most painful and disabling injuries. Do none of them that produce any pain. Do them slowly and deliberately each on each side after warming up at least to a glow. Adjust weights so that you can press 12 repetitions to full extension in about one minute without resting between reps.

1. Leg curls: Lying flat on your stomach, bring your heels up against resistance, bending at your knees to right angles. You can use an exercise machine, ankle or shoe weights or an elastic band ;ole an old bicycle inner tube looped around a bedpost or a piano leg.
   
   
2. Leg presses: Standing with knees bent at a 90 degree angle or in a leg press exercise machine, push with the soles of the feet against resistance. You can also do one-legged half squats by resting the opposite instep on a chair or a bench that is about knee height. Hold weights in your hands to increase resistance.
   
   
3. Lower hamstring curls: Sit in a chair with an inner tube looped around your ankle and anchored to a stationary base like a doorknob.
   
   
4. Bicycle: Spin your crank arms using your hamstrings to power the bottom and upward arcs of each stroke so that your crank cycle is even throughout. You should be able to produce a burn in your hamstrings as well as your quadriceps if you are working with an efficient pedal technique.