The Constraints Model *Revamped*

The inner machinations of training. Designing a framework that ANYONE can use to build a program for their needs. 1st installment of many.

I want to get right into the nitty gritty off the rip with this one. The principles of this model are ones I use for all of my programming regardless the client population I work with. It is a compilation of all the training principles I use and trust, and as such it is subject to change as advancements in exercise research show better methodology for results.

THE WHY

The constraints model is a training tool that can be used to facilitate training choices based on individual goals and needs. It makes my process of coaching and training easier and streamlines the way that I program for myself and my clients. These principles don’t necessarily focus on individual muscles but instead global movement patterns which of course use muscles to perform.

TRAINING PRINCIPLES

There are several principles that lead to the best possible results, but I am going to focus on the 3 most important in my eyes. Just these 3 principles can yield absolutely incredible results in any individual.

They are as follows:

Specificity

I’m sure athletes have heard the term “sport specific”. All this means is that training should stimulate the systems that are required to complete said task. It is the most important principle of my framework because it dictates how I use the other principles and gives me direction.

Systems can be stimulated in terms of muscles, nervous system or anything that would directly improve the performance of the desired sport.

Specificity lies on a spectrum of being very general or REALLY specific (hang tight this will come into play later).

Overload

I have actually had people unironically ask me if I believe in progressive overload. Short answer, YES. Training disruptive and the body will adapt to stimuli to better resist further disruption. Present it with a greater stimulus, more disruption, more adaptation.

Generally speaking the stimulus should increase overtime (there are many ways to increase stimulus, not only through increasing load). We NEED adaptation to improve, and overloading the system is how we can achieve desired adaptations.

This ranks behind specificity because we need the overload stimulus to be specific to the desired result.

If you want huge biceps and you are overloading your biking mileage, the overload principle probably won’t do you much good.

Fatigue Management

Overload is disrupting systems in the body, but to achieve adaptation we need to recover from the disruption and return to baseline (homeostasis).

There are many ways to look at this from fuel stores to the nervous system to tissue recovery and probably more. While I won’t get into the mechanisms that cause fatigue, understand that it is unavoidable. Failing to manage fatigue can lead to overreaching and overtraining (chronic compared to overreaching).

Some movements are incredibly fatiguing in more ways than one. Think deadlifts, very heavy weights, massive sensory stimulus because the weight is held in your hands, lots of axial loading, lots of musculature used. Deadlifting heavy every day of the week is a great example of incredibly poor fatigue management. We want to avoid applying too much workload which can put an athlete at risk for injury as shown below.

The best way outside of the weightroom to manage fatigue is to eat and sleep plenty. Stay hydrated. The basics— Nutrition will most likely be its own separate post all together.

These 3 principles are the bedrock of understanding how to create training plans the yield results. Paired with effort and intention, anyone can create results for themselves.

THE FRAMEWORK

First lets cover foundational global movement patterns:

• Breathing

• Core for Pelvis (Pelvic Floor/Diaphragm)

• Core for Thorax (Thoracic Diaphragm)

• Locomotion (Walking, Running)

• Triple Extension (Ext of hip, knee and ankle required in sprinting and jumping)

• Throwing

• Knee-Dominant (Squat like movements)

• Hinge-Dominant (Deadlift like movements)

• Vertical Push (Overhead Presses)

• Vertical Pull (Pulldowns)

• Horizontal Push (Chest Presses)

• Horizontal Pull (Rows)

I know there are a lot, and if you have something you would add, please comment and feel free to ask any questions as to why I might’ve left something out!

***I’d like to note that understanding the basic biomechanics of how these movements happen can improve your understanding of these concepts and I can certainly guide you in the right direction for that info.

I say foundational patterns because these umbrellas should cover basically every movement a human is capable of.

Now let’s cover the framework that I use to help decide which specific exercise I will choose to put into a program.

This frame works on a spectrum.

High Grounding ←→ Low Grounding

Think of grounding as the sum of sensory feedback and external support.

• Sensory feedback refers to knowing where the body is in space.

• External support refers to the physical things we are in contact with during a movement.

To give you guys a visual, a sport like gymnastics is incredibly low grounding. Very little sensory feedback as you float through the air with no external support. On the other hand a training for a sport like bodybuilding is really high grounding, lots of sensory feedback with and external support through the use of equipment that we physically hold on to, press against, or wear.

This framework seeks to create a baseline of grounding that everyone can meet and adjust as needed for a goal or demand of sport. The core idea is to meet people where they need to be met in terms of training.

To create the list (we can add or take away from this list) we want to think of ways to make movements as easy as possible to attain. Think of what you want the outcome to be and make the movement as simple as humanly possible. Remember this is a baseline of the MOST grounded we can possible make a movement, it’s a starting point.

Here is a shortlist:

• Constraints

  • Tracks— Think the fixed movement on a machine like a Hack Squat. Tracks create external stability and a fixed path.

• Reference

  • Physical things that allow sensory feedback (Going to use the example of the hack squat again). The pads on the Hack let an individual know where their body is in space, it creates stability.

• Bilateral Stance (Really stable stance shoulder width stance)

• Single Planer Movement

  • The sagittal plane is usually easiest for people to move in, think forward to back movement like a bicep curl.

• Short Lever Length (Torque)

  • Think about how easy it is to pick up a barbell from the floor if you grab it at its center vs by the end. Shorter levers = better management.

• Utilizing External Load (Center of Mass Management)

  • Think of taking a squatting your bodyweight, it might feel awkward until you actually get some weight to hold. The weight can act as a counter balance and actually help someone achieve a position better than they would bodyweight. Load is like a bell curve, the peak is just enough load to be helpful for the movement.

Each of these examples is a baseline, for instance I can use a many constraints or few, lots of reference or little. A more complex example would be planes of movement. We can work in the sagittal plane (flexion:extension), frontal plane (adduction:abduction), the transverse plane (rotation) or multiple at once. The difficulty of movement occurs as listed below with sagittal movement being the simplest and multi-planar movement being the most complex.

Sagittal→ Frontal→ Transverse→ Multi-planar

We can create an even simpler example out of stance (easy to hard, left to right)

Bilateral Stance→Staggered Stance→Single Leg Stance

This essentially means it’s easier to perform a squat, than a split squat and easier to perform a split squat than a single leg squat.

Grounding has been really useful in helping me create a baseline of movement. Understanding what a person’s movement history allows me to gauge what levels of grounding they need to get the most out of training. Moreover, this idea of grounding goes hand in hand with skill or proficiency of movement.

Movement is a skill and we can only produce force or output when we have enough skill to do so. Low grounding movements like acrobatics require a LOT of skill. Even if you have the capacity to create the force to propel yourself through the air, you probably don’t have the skill to be an acrobat.

In the world of lifting most people can produce more force on a leg press than they can squat. The patterns are similar, but the leg press is far more grounded than the squat, you have pads to rest on that provide sensory feedback and counter pressure, handles that do the same, a fixed track of movement, bilateral stance, no effort wasted on managing center of mass. All of the energy in the press of a leg press goes into the press itself due to the high amounts of sensory feedback and external support.

The squat lacks the sensory feedback and external support compared to the leg press, meaning it requires more skill. A good squatter has clearly spent lots of time squatting much like an acrobat has clearly practiced for acrobatics for many years.

You can only produce force through movements you have enough skill to be stable, or where sensory feedback and external support exist to create stability. This leads back to the principle idea of meeting people where they need to be met.

This is important for all athletes. If you can meet an athlete with a level of grounding they can perform efficiently and then progress to a point where they can produce output to train for the demands of sport, you hit the nail of specificity right on the head. This can prevent you from putting yourself or clientele in positions they’re not quite ready for yet, and rather meet them where they need to be met (have I beaten this to death yet?).

Seriously though, If you’ve never done a barbell back squat… don’t try to one rep max a back squat the day you decide to learn, it won’t be strong and you won’t be performing at a level to learn the skill of squatting— This goes for all exercises in the gym. Movement is a skill.

For a sport like bodybuilding where muscles are trained instead of movements per se, high grounding movements can provide an incredible stimulus in terms of muscle growth. To prove a point let me name a few staples; hack squat, leg press, smith machine presses, chest supported rowing….. All are global movements that have great sensory feedback and external support do a great job developing musculature when done correctly.

APPLICATION

What if I just want to get stronger and better at the sports I play recreationally?

The same principles still apply. I find that this framework works with athletes and general population training as well regardless of the individual’s history. It is also a great place to start when working with clients with history of injury because you can scale the amount of internal stability they need to create to meet their needs.

I’ll use myself as an example. I love strength training and recreationally compete in powerlifting, soccer and basketball. Powerlifting is a priority and soccer and basketball are things I do on the side. That being said I’m going to focus on the lifting, and not plyometrics, If I cared more about the sports I would do more plyo, metabolic and sprint work.

Powerlifting as a sport is pretty high grounding compared to the other two sports. Powerlifting also require that I train some form of squat, bench and deadlift in my program.

Soccer and basketball don’t require any movements specifically but in general to be good at each sport I need to be able to move in the transverse plane (rotation), and multiple planes at once. In soccer and basketball I will spend a lot of time creating my own internal stability. I’ve played both sports from a young age so the movements are familiar and I would say that I have the skills to produce force in the lateral movements required so I don’t need to create a ton of grounding in those positions.

On the other hand powerlifting really requires force production so I will need a way to be able to produce LOTS of force. The core lifts are skills but force production is equally as important in PL. Given that I do play sports pretty often, I will use the days I play as my “skill development” for sport. In general you get better at something by practicing the thing directly… playing soccer will make me a better soccer player than lifting will and squatting heavy will improve my heavy squatting.

Below I’ve created a sample lower body day with some explanation as to why I’ve made some choices.

A1: Safety Bar Squat

• Mod Grounding, Mod Skill : Mod Output

• The squat is a required lift to compete in powerlifting so I need to practice it to create the efficiency in the movement so I can express force through it. For my own needs I like the SSB or safety bar squat because I can develop better strength is a more vertical hip path. Because Im training the skill and not maximal strength, I keep these as a moderate output movement, I can express better strength on other movements that require less skill.

B1: Bench Press

• Mod Grounding, Mod Skill : Mod Output

• Bet you didn’t expect to see this here… But I need to bench too and I like having some bench variation 2-4 times a week so I’ll toss this in here.

C1: Machine Squat Variation (Leg Press, Hack Squat, Pendulum Squat)

• Mod Grounding, Low Skill:High Output

• LOTS of output, helping me get bigger and stronger quads, pretty important to squatting and specific to PL, might help if I decided to change gears and focus on speed and plyos for sport.

D1: Heavy Sled Push

• High Grounding, Low Skill:High Output

• I like the locomotive aspect of this, it’s also a very low skill:high output movement where I actually get unilateral benefit and allows the hips to move independently of one another (Very similar to the way they move in sport) A split squat variation could do nicely here if you are proficient enough to where you can get good output and not fall over.

D2: Rotational Core Movement

• Varied Grounding depending on the type, Moderate Skill:Moderate Grounding

• Typically I like a standing version of this where I hold onto a rope or bar and rotate, the dissociation of ribcage and pelvis is important in all ball sports to change direction. In powerlifting we get tons of static core work simply through bracing so I incorporate loaded flexion-extension and rotational movements in all my programs. Loaded variations are key because they’re easily progressible.

D3: Overhead Triceps Variation

• High Grounding, Low Skill:High Output

• Treating this like a hypertrophy movement to aid in my pressing just like the leg press to the squat. Grounding varies on the type of move I pick so generally I’m going to opt for a cable or machine in this specific instance of a free weight movement to get better output. Having it be an overhead movement helps me to maintain overhead shoulder function to be able to do simple sport actions like shoot a basketball.

This is a super simplistic framework for something I might do, there are limitless options and no wrong answers. I might opt for some lateral squat movement to get more frontal plane movement on another day and I’d definitely perform a hinge, not to mention adding in upper body days. This is just one day of a multi day plan.

DISCLAIMER: If you’re new to training. Sport specific doesn’t mean you go and replicate the movements of your sport in the gym with weights… you play your sport to get better at those things. In the gym we work to train properties that translate to the field like strength, power, speed, etc.

I’m sure some of you have seen MLB players swing a bat with a weighted donut on the end of it, but that is to potentiate a swing not to improve the strength of the swing. We do that by training the property of strength through the muscles that are responsible for creating the swing motion.

I’ll put it this way, if you want to be able to swing the bat fast, and you train to swing a heavier bat somewhat fast all you will have learned is how to swing a heavy bat somewhat fast and completely ruin the mechanics of your swing on the normal bat. If you want to swing the bat fast… get stronger and keep swinging the bat fast.

This is super important so I say again, when you hear specificity, you want to think of specific properties that will translate to the sport. Skills specific to the sport you will develop by playing and practicing the sport.

My hope is the next time you’re in the gym you can effectively evaluate what it is you want to train and that trait you want to gain. Provide yourself the grounding necessary to complete the task efficiently or the grounding you need to develop the skill.

I will continue to add to this small body of work, but understanding these basic concepts can be the baseline to creating effective training plans for whatever your goals are. With the articles to come we will dive deeper and deeper into the weeds until programming feels seamless.

There isn’t really a wrong answer and choosing to do the “wrong” thing might not hurt you, but if can make informed decisions and pick the right things you’ll make progress you’ve never dreamed of.