As always in this journey into the perfecting of our understanding of the body and its uses and how best to use it to achieve our desired movement outcomes, I come across bodies of evidence and advancements from very clever people, much smarter than me, who bring forth ideas of how best to use elements to complete movements. As I have learnt in my research and the more that I write about movement and its potential and how to perfect it … I am always rallying against my own beliefs. I hear something and I instantly say to myself “oh I’m not sure I agree with that” and begin a rather amusing dialogue with my inner ego and my inner student that battles out a conversation that becomes a slinging match of infantile proportions that usually ends with slurs and insults and comments on the opposing parties intelligence and demeanour.
So in talking with some new very clever people this week I was confronted with the concept of the BRACE POSITION. Now to qualify this is not the position that we all chuckle at when the airline personnel demonstrate with rigour each time that they fly (oh how we all long for those onboard demonstrations now and wish we were enjoying the banality of the on board safety demonstration as it would mean we were actually going somewhere on a holiday). Here we are talking about the concept of how to brace and reinforce your foundation when you are involved in a movement or in performing a lift or exercise.
The concept of BRACING to me is not one that I am actually familiar with. You see as a dancer, we never really BRACE. We breath and we use our breath to complete movements and even on the odd occasion where we do lift (if you’re a slightly above average height male and got some muscularity about you this is usually your lot in the chorus), the concept of bracing and holding a position is foreign to us. Dancers move through lines, and we even in a held position there is a concept of movement and kinetic stablising constantly intertwining about our bodies - much like a gymnast who may appear to be in a perfectly balanced handstand but is always playing with the pivot point over his wrists with his alignment teetering between fingers and palm.
The BRACE is something that powerlifters and olympic lifters talk about a lot as it is an integral part of being able to perform heavy lifting and 1RM max lifts . I’ve talked a lot about how the core is more than just your internal obliques and this theory of bracing feeds into that concept. The BRACE is about how to activate the musculature of the obliques ALONG WITH the rectus abodominus and the latissimus dorsi to create a supportive brace for the lumbar spine as well as solid platform for the trunk and legs to perform movement against. The lats are particularly important as they connect into the thoracolumbar fascia (another favourite of mine) which makes up part of the supportive core of the generic abdominal area. The activation of these muscles alone does NOT constitute the all important brace that we are seeking. There needs to be a co-ordinated combination of Intra Abdominal Pressure involved with musculature contraction to enable this.
Intra Abdominal Pressure occurs when the diaphragm contracts (drops down) to create an intake of air into the lungs. This dropping of the diaphragm does two things: 1) increases the available space in the thoracic cavity which creates an influx of air into the lungs, 2) decreases the available space in the abdominal cavity that creates an increase in pressure. The increase in pressure is precisely what is needed to help create the support for the abdominal cavity and particularly the lower back to enable lifting of heavy loads. This is a functional application of Boyle’s Law which relates to pressure of a gas increasing as volume of the container decreases. This principle is the first step in creating the brace for heavy lifting.
So we see that there are two main elements to creating the brace. They are not one and the same and both must be activated to create an effective brace position. A Venn diagram displays the relationship between Breathe and Brace and shows that there is a sweet spot where the two meet. However, there is a sequence to utilising both aspects and the breathe must come first before the brace. If not, the contraction of the rectus abdominus, obliques and lats restricts the amount of expansion that the ribcage can perform.
Now this is all true for heavy lifting. Maximising force and energy in a powerful motion and maximal effort of push. But what about movement? If you are of the yoga school of movement, then breath is used rather differently in movement. Allowing breath (or prana) to initiate movement is a well known and basic practice of the yoga school. Breath comes first. But that is where the similarity differs, with movement being performed with breath and using the breath to control the flow of movement.
This concept of VINYASA flow links movement with breath. Using the breath to create optimal alignment and expansion of joints that occur naturally with inhalation/exhalation. According to the Vinyasa text, “inhalation naturally expands the belly and ribs and with proper alignment will lengthen the spine and encourage expansion”. Conversely exhalation naturally contracts the belly and thus should be used to come out of postures or ‘to close’. Using the Ujjayi breath helps to create an audible guide and assists with balance in the breath and incorporating exapansion/contraction into your movement practice. I’ve even used this in the clinic, encouraging clients to breath into difficult releases. It does work and can help incorporate the nervous system into helping to release the muscular system.
This concept is also a big part of the work of Dr Luly Sweigard, a revolutionary dance practitioner from New York in the 1930’s was one of the foremost promoters of the use of breath and imaging with movement. Her work is classed as the foremost text on movement for a lot of dance practitioners and this work was furthered by her students Dr Lulu Sweigard and Barbara Clark talked a lot about the link between breathing and modern dance. They also utilised the breath in movement and promoted its manipulation to create efficient flow of movement as well as create stability.
Hissing as long as possible on one breath tends to bring the little used deep muscles of the rib case into action, thus contributing to the release of muscular strain, which limits the flexibility of the rib case in its 104 joints. When hissing is used with movement, it tends to give greater stability to the alignment of the trunk…
Martha Murphy
So there are varying takes on the use of breath in movement and that of breath in particular when it comes to heavy lifting. So what about power generation within movement. Emma Ferris talks about this in relation to a golfers swing and how breathing effectively with your diaphragm can make or break your golf swing. A swing is movement, and too much holding or bracing can actually minimise the co-ordinated flow of movement that is necessary for something as multi planar or technical as a golf swing. Too much tension restricts flow creating unnecessary tension and decreasing thoracic rotational range of motion which ultimately inhibits force in movement.
When you hold your breath you tense your muscles which stop the flow of movement. While you increase intra-abdominal pressure – which can be good to have a bit of when you swing, with breath-holding it can cause too much pressure making it hard to move through the swing, blocking flow.
Emma Ferris
This also explains how stress and golf so completely don’t go together. When we are stressed we tend to hold tension in our abdomen and as stated above, this prevents the ability for the diaphragm to contract, and the movement of the ribs is reduced. In order to counteract this, often people will take the breathing into other muscles, namely the scalenes, upper traps, posterior neck muscles or the pectoral muscles. This ineffective breathing technique creates even more issues as these muscles are not meant to be the primary muscles of respiration - which means they are bad at it. And this will create shallow breath patterns and limited movement in the abdomen cavity and thus a bad ability to incorporate a good brace when and if the time comes to lift something heavy.
Kelly Starret, a highly respected performance and strength conditioning coach and trainer, talks a lot about a good brace position when you are performing power movements - such as a push up or chin up. Creating tension through the gluteals and the hips helps to minimise unwarranted movement through the spine and torso and thus creates a better platform for movement. In this way Starret talks more about endurance over strength. Having the ability for the bracing muscles to keep tension maintained over a series of movements and not just one max lift. He promotes a utilisation of the brace position even whilst seated to help build muscular endurance so that when you come to do a 20km run, you aren’t failing in those important ‘core muscles’ and tweaking your back in the final stages of the race. It’s more than just the core - it’s using and conditioning the back muscles along with teh obliques and the gluteals and even into the quads and hamstrings and lats. There is a whole network of muscles that need to be trained and used to help co-ordinate the bracing and breathing positions.
So understanding how to brace, knowing when to breathe and training with these concepts in movement is a really important and vital knowledge to have to prevent injury and compromised posture. If we can breath first, then brace or indeed know how to use the breath within a movement context, we may just find ourselves able to hit that ball further or throw that ball better or crush an off forehand without having to resort to golf clubs in the pond, racquets in the players box or being crushed under a bar bell. Get your breath and your brace on.
