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Check out how BKE Integration helped this athlete with her ability to arch the lower back while in hip flexion. What worked? Not stretching or any flexibility or mobility or soft tissue techniques. It came down to training her hamstrings to “load” or contract and stabilize her pelvis while moving into forward pelvic tilt.

If you have a bio mechanical issue that appears to be lack of flexibility, it might not be your flexibility at all, but instead a “loading” issue. This occurs when your kinetic chain has a weakness in a specific range of motion. The muscles involved do not have the ability to support or stabilize your structure while in this position. They might be incredibly powerful in other ranges of the same movement, but incredibly weak in these few specific degrees.

The featured athlete here grew up as a dancer and later transitioned into powerlifting. During her deadlift, she experienced a rounding of her lower back and couldn’t figure out why. As a dancer, she was taught to always keep her upper body vertical, so she did not spend much time in a position of hip flexion. The end range of hip flexion remained weak since it was rarely used. In the hip flexion position of the deadlift, her hamstrings would not support her pelvis in an anterior tilt position, thus creating a “neurological tightness”. Her pelvis would not tilt forward far enough so that she could maintain extension in the lumbar spine during the deadlift. We fixed it with a series of exercises to train her hamstrings in that specific position. We had to teach them how to work in that range by using extremely low loads and working up as they started to activate.

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At Athlete Engineering, we assess each athlete by breaking down the fundamental needs of their sport and position and compare those needs to the individual’s current condition. Not only do we look at the athlete’s structure and movement, but also their biology and state of consciousness (BioKinetic Energy). From this assessment we can determine where the priorities are for optimization.

This pitcher needs a few more miles per hour on his fastball. After a thorough assessment, we determined that has priorities on all three sides of the triangle. On the Kinetic side, he needs more supination in his right hip and more spinal rotation to the right in his lumbar. On the Biological side, he has candida and adrenal fatigue. And on his Energetic side, he has a faulty belief that more is better – more training, more pushing, always filling up space, now sleeping and resting enough. The two latter sides have been draining his energy and not allowing for full recuperation. So, we work on all three sides simultaneously.

Pictured here is the difference between his right and left leg when being tested for Supination. In his pitching mechanics, he needs powerful External Rotation in his right hip to push off the mound. As you can see, his mobility moving into External Rotation, a major part of supination, is limited. More on this to come but the first and very important step is complete – knowing where you are and where you need to get. This can save you years of unnecessary, unproductive, and often damaging training programs.

Notice the difference in this athlete’s neck before and after a BKE Integration session. In the before, you can see a flatness to the neck. In the after, it has a nice curvature to it, or lordosis. His first cervical vertebrae, the atlas, was misaligned by being protracted, or forward. Imagine the pressure on his spinal cord from this misalignment and the effect it must have had on his entire nervous system. The neck acts as a dimmer switch to the nervous system. If there is a misalignment, power decreases to all your nerves, muscles, and organs. When you realign and mobilize it, energy returns, strength increases, and injuries disappear.
Eat * Move * Think
Bio * Kinetic * Energy