Dynamic Dialogue with Danny Matranga - 50 - Bulletproof Your Body: Posterior Chain Training + 5 Best Moves”

Episode Date: July 7, 2020

In this episode, Danny outlines the importance and how-to of posterior chain training. Developing the upper and lower back, glutes, hamstrings, calves and more is an integral part of improving both performance and longevity.   Coach Danny also shares his 5 favorite movements to develop a rock-solid posterior chain!---Thanks For Listening!---RESOURCES/COACHING: I am all about education and that is not limited to this podcast! Feel free to grab a FREE guide (Nutrition, Training, Macros, Etc!) HERE! Interested in Working With Coach Danny and His One-On-One Coaching Team? Click HERE! Want To Have YOUR Question Answered On an Upcoming Episode of DYNAMIC DIALOGUE? You Can Submit It HERE!Want to Support The Podcast AND Get in Better Shape? Grab a Program HERE!----SOCIAL LINKS: Follow Coach Danny on INSTAGRAMFollow Coach Danny on TwitterFollow Coach Danny on FacebookGet More In-Depth Articles Written By Yours’ Truly HERE!-----Support the Show.

Welcome back you guys to another episode of the Dynamic Dialogue podcast. I am coming at you guys actually from my hotel room in Las Vegas. I decided to take a brief little vacation. I understand that yes, things have in fact been going on in the world and I do still take COVID quite seriously and of all the places you think would be unsafe you might assume Vegas because it's normally incredibly crowded but it's actually dead out here there were six people on my plane on the way over here and there was like maybe 30 or 40 people in the entire 11 pools here at the Venetian. Interestingly enough, I did stumble upon the gym here, which is actually, I would go so far as to say it may well be the best hotel gym in America. There's nothing quite like what I've seen here. I'm

talking prime fitness equipment. These are between five5,000 and $10,000 machines. A full rack, four squat racks, four pull-up bars built into that cube-shaped rack that you'll often see at a CrossFit box. Tons of free weights, tons of barbells, hex bars, a flippable tire area, a rock climbing wall, dumbbells up to 120, probably 20 different Cybex machines, Norma tech boots, a bod pod, hyper volts, um, hyperspheres, uh, all kinds of stuff. Like this is the, if you are a fitness person and it's really important to you that you have access to a high quality facility, when you travel, that you have the opportunity to train relatively hard. I am one of the people who doesn't necessarily need to train at the highest level, but I do like to still get a workout in

when I travel, whether it's for business or leisure, it's purely just a neurotic thing. I need to stay in my routine, but I definitely scope out the gyms in the area. I'll always make do, but I just so happened to stumble across this here and I was pleasantly surprised. To say pleasantly surprised would be an understatement. I'm genuinely blown away. Today's episode, we're talking all about the posterior chain and the importance of developing the posterior chain as an athlete, as a lifter, as a hobbyist, just in general. We'll break it down regionally, right? Breaking the posterior chain into its different components. And then we'll talk a little bit about it globally.

But let's first define what it is when I say posterior chain. What am I talking about? What part of the body is this? What's included? So when you think about the body in general, when we talk about the anatomical position, and the anatomical position is basically the position you'll see every single body presented in when you look at anatomy texts, or when you look at even if you think of da Vinci's famous painting of the Vitruvian man, where the man is facing you, palms are up, that is the anatomical position. So everything on the front of the body, right? The pecs, everything that's visible, the pecs, the anterior delts, the abs, the quadriceps, the tibialis, the front of

the shin, that's all considered the anterior chain, right? The front half of the body that is visible when looking at somebody straight on. Now, all this stuff on the back that we can't see as the name would imply is the posterior chain. So we've got the upper trapezius, those muscles that go into the neck. We've got the rear delts, the lower traps, obviously the lats, the big sweeping muscles of the back, the glutes, all three of them, medius, minimus, and maximus, the hamstring complex, and the calves. So there's a lot of muscles that make up the posterior chain. Now, for many lifters, it's hard to develop a good mind-muscle connection with those muscles. They may not be things we prioritize as much as we should, and they may just be things that overall get a little bit less volume in our

training. And that's really common, and I've actually seen that a lot at the gym, just by kind of watching how people work out. People tend to hit chest a little bit harder than they hit back. They tend to hit biceps a little bit harder than they hit triceps, which by the way, biceps are technically on that anterior side of the body, but they have more of a posterior function and triceps are more on the posterior side of the body, but they have a more anterior translative function. We'll talk more about that in a second. But you tend to train the abs more than the low back, especially in men. You tend to train the quads more than the hamstrings. We see this all the time. The only posterior chain muscle that I would say definitively gets trained more than its anterior chain counterpart is calves.

And that's saying something because a lot of people simply skip calves. And the reason I think in the long run, we see a prevalence of more anterior chain training than posterior is because plain and simple, those are the muscles we can see in the mirror. Those are the muscles that when we're training, we're always looking directly at ourselves when training those muscles. When we're hitting chest, we oftentimes see it on exercises like cable flies or front raises, even lateral raises, which I would consider an anterior chain muscle. Quadriceps for sure, especially in men. And those posterior chain muscles, we usually train them prone or not in the direction of a mirror or just generally have a harder time seeing them. And even when we look at our own physique, turning around and

looking at the posterior chain is oftentimes something a lot of people don't do as much. Women obviously tend to do it more because of the prevalency of developing glutes, especially right now. But overall, I think it's fair to say that the posterior chain simply does not get enough love. So when I think posterior chain function globally, all the muscles I've recognized, what I call from toes to nose. So we're talking calves, hamstrings, glutes, low backs, lats, traps, lower and upper posterior deltoids, rhomboids, etc. All of that stuff is very, very important for spinal stability, for extension strength, for hinging,

for athletic potential, for making your physique pop. It all plays a really important role, and maybe more so than the anterior chain. And let's talk a little bit about that just so you guys can get, we'll talk about it regionally so it makes the most sense. So first let's start with the upper back. And so we're talking about everything. When I talk about the upper back, I talk about everything north of the lats and your lats actually go from way down on your back all the way under your armpit and around to the front of your humerus. So the front of the

arm bone. And so everything above the top angle of those lats, which is roughly around, if you were to just draw a straight line, roughly around the bottom of your scapula. So your shoulder blades, everything above that, we've got the rhomboids, the rear delts. Okay. And we've got the upper traps. So upper traps do a ton to support the shoulder. They help elevate the scapula. The rear delts help abduct or move the arms away. And they also help with external rotation and the rhomboids help with retraction. And all of those things are really, really valuable for helping with our posture, for helping with the quote unquote health of the shoulder. That's kind of an ambiguous or dubious term, but if you have the right type of development

in symmetry with the upper back that you do with the front of the shoulder, you'll almost always have a healthier shoulder. Well-developed rear delts and rhomboids can really make you look thicker through that upper portion of your torso by providing depth, particularly the rhomboids. And then rear deltoids have been renowned in bodybuilding circles for decades for the role that they play in giving a shoulder that three-dimensional look that's so coveted in physique sports. We certainly see it a lot in athletics, but it's mostly pursued in physique sports that as you get leaner, if you have well-developed medial and anterior deltoid heads, but you maybe lag a little bit posteriorly, your shoulders might look shredded, but they don't always have that look of being three-dimensional. When you develop the rear deltoid, that's when you

can really, really see that three-dimensional look. And again, it's also a really valuable muscle for external rotation. And external rotation is important. Most people end up in an internally rotated position because the pecs and the lats, which are muscles we both talk, we're going to talk more about them both in a minute, but they're muscles we all use quite a bit. They can internally rotate the shoulder. They have a tendency to do that. So developing the rear delts can help with maintaining posture. It can help with keeping the shoulder centrated in a nice position, and it can make throwing sports a lot easier by increasing external rotation capacity. So can make throwing sports a lot easier by increasing

external rotation capacity. So the upper back has a lot of different muscles involved. You could also include the rotator cuff in there, but all of that stuff is really important. And I wouldn't say that if you do not train it regularly, you're totally screwed. But what I would say is a lot of the common issues we see with the shoulder girdle or even the neck can be mitigated by having a strong upper back. So rotator cuff injuries can obviously be mitigated by training the rotator cuff. Common scapular issues like scapular winging can oftentimes be addressed by hitting some of the muscles in the front, like the serratus anterior, but also stuff like the lower traps and the rhomboids. There's all kinds of stuff that all kinds of good stuff, I should say that happens when you give a little

bit more love to the upper back. And so moving down from the upper back, we'll talk about the mid back. And what we'll call this is the thoracic spine and lats. So we'll consider this basically, if you wanted to draw a line, everything below the scapula down to that low back region. So understand that again, I'm not being perfect with my anatomy here. I'm just painting regionally. We're not going to talk about which rib or which vertebra, but let's talk about below the scapula, the bottom of your shoulder blade, all the way down to basically where your glutes are. So we're talking about the thoracic spine, lumbar spine, and the lats.

Your thoracic spine is really important for rotation. If you want to be functional in what you do in athletics and you need to rotate like lacrosse, baseball, tennis, you need to have core strength that allows for thoracic rotation, violent thoracic rotation. You need to have thoracic mobility that lets those muscles pull violently through that region. Lats are huge. They make up basically everything below the shoulders down to your ass, depending on your genetics, where those lats insert is going to be different. But those muscles do a ton, right? We use our lats when we do things overhead. We use our lats when we pull things in. We use our lats when we pull things in. We use our lats when we pull things down. We use our lats when we run. We use

our lats when we throw. And if you talk about a physique, when you see somebody with an impressive set of lats, you tend to see that V taper, that V shaped look that we love so, so much. And it really can make your waist look trimmer or more slender, which is why women are much more, or there's a greater prevalency I've seen of women training lats, which I think is great. It's always been a part of the bodybuilding community. Because those lats work from such a low region of the spine all the way up top, they provide some structural integrity there to help keep your back healthy. They also support in lateral flexion a little bit. So when you think lats, we always think pull-ups, pull-downs, rows, stuff like that. But they also

help with things like lateral flexion, where we perhaps are contracting side to side and bending a little bit at the spine. So they play a role there. And the strength of your lats has the opportunity to support your spine. It can present the opportunity to help protect the shoulder. And they insert your lats into this lattice of connective tissue, this thoracolumbar fascia that we have that's just this thick network of fascia. this thoracolumbar fascia that we have that's just this thick network of fascia. And fascia turns into tendons, which turns into muscles, right? Not in all cases, but fascia will turn into connective tissue, which can then translate into muscles. So your lats are really intertwined into this lattice-like structure.

And so they indirectly play a role in supporting that low back. And in my coaching experience, one thing I can tell you is I've worked with a lot of clients and in working with debilitating or frustrating low back pain, incorporating more lat training almost always has a really, really positive effect on managing that back pain and helping develop strength across that whole posterior chain. The other thing that we have to consider is muscles transmit signals across tissue. And because those lats make up such a big portion of your posterior chain, they go from such a high spot all the way down to such a low spot, they help with transmission

of forces across the posterior chain. Whether that's absorbing force or producing force. Your lats are the middleman and a lot of movements that we do that involve the posterior chain, particularly things like deadlifts, where we need a strong isometric contraction of the lats to help keep the arms in and keep the bar close to the body. So there's a lot of stuff going on into that thoracic spine and lumbar region. Hey guys, just wanted to take a quick second to say thanks so much for listening to the podcast. And if you're finding value, it would mean the world to me if you would share it on your social media. Simply screenshot whatever platform you're listening to and share the episode to your Instagram story or share it to Facebook. But be sure to tag me so I can say thanks and we can chat it up about what you liked

and how I can continue to improve. Thanks so much for supporting the podcast and enjoy the rest of the episode. Now, below that, right where the lumbar spine ends, we're talking glutes. Your glutes are gonna run right up against where your lumbar spine effectively runs out. And obviously, the biggest muscle there is your glute max. You also have your gluteus medius and minimus. And when we

talk about the gluteal complex in general, the number one thing that comes to mind is hip extension. And what that looks like is if you're sprinting, hip extension is the backwards drive of the leg. Or if you're doing a hip thrust, it's when your hips thrust forward. When you sit in a chair, if you're listening to this podcast in the car, you are in hip flexion. If you were driving right now and you look down, you'll see your hips are at almost a perfect 90 degree angle. If you were to squeeze your glutes really, really hard, you'll actually start, go ahead and try this while you're listening, you'll actually start to elevate out of your chair. You will start to extend your hips. And so your glutes and your hamstrings, which we'll talk about in a minute, play a big role in hip extension. However, it's not just about hip

extension. The glutes also play a role in hip abduction or moving the hips out and hip external rotation, as well as stabilizing knee joint through those same functions. So for people who have had knee problems in the past, or just general pain, like women who tend to have patellofemoral pain syndrome, or things like what people will often call bursitis, or just what people say is cranky knees. A lot of times I've found that developing the glutes can really help support those muscles by helping avoid any excessive rotation because strengthening those glute meds, those glute mens, medius and minimus, and the glute max can keep those knees in better

alignment when doing things like squats and deadlifts and even things like walking. It doesn't seem like it matters a lot until it does. And I want to reiterate that a lot of this stuff might seem like overkill, but it's all really, really important when communicating with clients, developing your physique, and just trying to make sure you have a balanced approach to your training. It's also quite fascinating when you talk about how it is exactly that the body works. So we talked about the glutes, their role in supporting the knees. They certainly support the hips as well. Having a strong developed gluteus maximus can help centrate the hip. That's one that I heard from the glute guy, Brett Contreras himself. I'm not sure if cancel culture

has officially ended Brett Contreras after all the stuff that came out about him a long time ago, but he never was somebody who did me dirty professionally. And I've learned a lot from Brett, whether it was through his work or in person. So you know what, more power to the guy. I think he's done a lot of good stuff for the glute space and the ability of strong glutes to help keep that hip socket better functioning and keep that head of the femur better in that acetabulum. It makes a lot of sense. I think that having strong glutes makes a lot of sense for athletes, for people who want to develop a good physique. Obviously, it makes a big difference. But in general, having strong glutes is always going to be probably quite good for the long-term health of your hips.

Having stronger glutes and not just glute max is going to help with your sprinting speed. So, if you're an athlete or somebody who just wants to be faster, you should work on developing your glutes. And then another thing, again, going back to that thoracolumbar fascia, the glutes are right up against that. They help again, integrate into that lattice structure to create support by helping to better centrate the hips and better develop some of that musculature down low, I have found that glute work can be extremely effective, extremely, extremely effective at helping to mitigate back pain simply by, again, increasing the strength of the musculature around that lumbar spine. This is low back pain, of course, and something that I think oftentimes gets

overlooked, which is simply moving through comfortable ranges of motion that don't put a lot of stress or torque in certain areas. So for people with really bad knee pain or really bad back pain, which is common, particularly with older populations or just general population, you see this stuff all the time. Things that we often do for glutes like glute bridges, hip thrusts, reverse lunges, even tend to be quite, quite gentle on those joints and allow us to train and build a little confidence so we can address those things better across multiple training blocks or a training program. Another muscle group that I think we need to talk about because we're talking about hip extension is the downstairs neighbor to the glutes, and that is the hamstrings group. So the hamstrings

is four different muscles. We have the semimembranosus, the semitendinosus, and the biceps femoris, which is generally divided into two heads, a short head and a long head. generally divided into two heads, a short head and a long head. The hamstrings group does one primary function when we think about it colloquially, or when we think about how we train it in the gym most often, we think about knee flexion, right? Like the lying hamstring curl. That's the thing that people think about, but it also does hip extension. Like when we do the Romanian deadlift, the hamstrings help the glutes in hip extension. So when we do the Romanian deadlift, the hamstrings help the glutes in hip extension. So when we do RDLs, we're always training glutes and hamstrings. When we do hip thrusts, we're always training glutes and hamstrings, but way more glutes. There's a lot

of opportunity for these two exercises to work together. Things like good mornings come to mind. things like good mornings come to mind. Now, again, the hamstrings are predominantly responsible for knee flexion. They get a little help from the calves, but it's only the first 15 degrees. We'll talk more about that in a minute, but they're a secondary hip extensor as well as a knee flexor. And they do an amazing job at making your physique pop. When I look at a woman's physique or when I look at a man's physique or when I look at a man's physique and they have really well-developed hamstrings, I always know that there's an athlete in there or somebody who takes their training very serious. It's a muscle that is not necessarily as easy to develop as the quadriceps or the glutes for many people. Training the hamstrings is

oftentimes quite gritty. If you were to just break down the general selection of hamstring dominant exercises like lying hamstring curls, RDLs, good mornings, glute ham raises, Nordic ham curls, all those are hard. They are all a battle. And in doing those, it takes a little bit of a gut check. To develop a great set of hamstrings is usually something you only see on people who take their training very seriously and who know how to train quite hard. So it definitely separates the men from the boys or the women from the girls, if you will. And it also really helps with, again, things like knee pain. A lot of the knee pain people deal with has to do with being, and you'll hear phrases like quad dominant thrown

around a lot, or, you know, that's really the big one. And I don't want to say it has to do with being quad dominant, but I'll say a lot of these common knee problems could be mitigated by having better balance between the hamstrings and the quadriceps. That's what I'll say. I'm not going to say that people are quad dominant because I think that puts a weird connotation on things and it makes people think they can't train their quads or do squats. But I do think that having better symmetry in development as well as strength between the glutes and the hamstrings is really, really important. And so the last muscle group of the posterior chain, before we move on to the five movements that I believe to be best to develop a quality posterior chain is of course the calves. Now the calves are actually two muscle

groups, the soleus and the gastrocnemius. And the gastrocnemius is the one that we'll typically talk about when we are talking about the calves. But I do consider the calves to be a regional group of two different muscles. Some people say the gastrocnemius and the calves are the same thing and that the soleus is its own muscle. But I've always believed that the calves is representative of gastroc and soleus together. So soleus is what we would call deep to the gastrocnemius. It's underneath and it's predominantly going to be responsible for plantar flexion or your calf raise based movements when your knee is bent. And we really hit that gastrocnemius or that surface level muscle, the one we really see when our knee is extended doing

the same motion. So when you think about a standing calf raise, that's really going to develop the gastrocnemius. And when you think about a knee calf raise, that's really going to develop the gastrocnemius. And when you think about a bent-legged calf raise or what we often call a seated calf raise, that's going to do a better job of developing the soleus. Now, calves can be really tricky and training them and developing them is something that a lot of people put a lot of work into with very minimal return. But one of the things that I think is important to consider is that a lot of people train them in a relatively sloppy fashion. They don't take their time to go through a full range of motion and contract those muscles fully and with great intent. They oftentimes end up

doing bouncy reps, I call them, where they get a great deal of assistance from the Achilles tendon, which is the tendon that attaches the calf into the back of the ankle. So understand that they are important for athletic performance. They're important for ankle health and ankle mobility. However, if you have a hard time developing them, you're not alone. It's very common. You might just need to work a little bit on that technique. So guys, we broke it down, everything from the upper back through to the thoracic spine, down into the lumbar spine, the glutes, the hamstrings, and the calves. And so when we talk about developing the posterior chain in general, there's a few lifts that really come to mind. Number one, of course, is going to be the deadlift. The deadlift does a fantastic job

of developing the hamstrings, the glutes as well, because we're doing quite a bit of hip extension. It does a great job of strengthening the lats isometrically as we keep the bar close to the body. The requirement of that isometric tension through the lats and up into the shoulder tends to be great for both the upper and lower back. So we end up, if we're doing deadlifts properly and progressing them intelligently, we end up doing a lot of good for our body by including this movement in our

program to some capacity. It doesn't have to be a barbell deadlift from the floor. It can be a hex bar deadlift. It can be a barbell Romanian deadlift. It can be a dumbbell Romanian deadlift. There's so many ways we deadlift that all have a really, really high quality impact on developing the posterior chain. Another movement I really have always liked for the posterior chain is of course, the pull up the chin up or the lat pull down. They do a really good job of training the lats of course, but they can also help train the lower traps, which are really important for posture. And again, they all integrate nicely into that spine and create some support there. So I really look at pull-ups and deadlift patterns as two of the

better bang for your buck movements for the posterior chain. But we also have things like rows, which are quite nice. People love to tout the ability of rows for developing depth to the back. They're great for developing the upper back musculature, like the rhomboids, particularly if we retract all the way. I like one-arm dumbbell rowing as a way to train both rotation and anti-rotation, depending on how we're coaching and cueing the movement. I really, really like face pulls as well as an excellent exercise for developing the upper back. So the first four or the five that I really like are deadlifts, rows, pull downs, of course. And I also quite like face pulls and one arm rowing variations. Those are,

those are all really effective movements for developing your posterior chain that I think have broad application to a lot of people, whether you're gen pop, you just want to be in shape, whether you're a bodybuilder, whether you're an athlete, all of these movements are tried and true. I think they're quite good and you can fine tune most of them to best fit your physique and your fitness level. Oh, and then on a closing note, because I talked a little bit about it, the anterior chain biceps do a more of a pulling motion and they're more involved when we do things like rows and pull downs. So I actually consider them a posterior chain muscle functionally and an anterior train muscle geographically. And the triceps on the other hand,

while they do help in shoulder extension or moving the arm back, they really do a lot of their work functionally when we press. And so I consider them more of an anterior chain muscle. I hope you guys found some value here. If you did go ahead and share this, tag me and send me a DM. So just take a screenshot of this, tag it, tag me, share it to your Instagram story. One, it helps the podcast grow and it really, really makes a big difference for me. But two, I'd love to hear what you liked about this, how I can improve. And if you'd like to see more episodes like this moving forward. Good night, you guys from my hotel room here at the Venetian. I am going to Momofuku tonight, which is a Korean restaurant. I've got a reservation and I'm very much looking forward to it. So do stay safe out there.

Enjoy your evening. If you're getting to this, you'll probably hear it Tuesday morning. So hope you guys have a great week here. And thanks so much for listening. you