Unit Goals
- Understand Law of Lines and the Power of Centration
- Appreciate the importance of motor control
- Understand the 6 Common Movement Problems (broken lines
- Understand the Law of One Cause
- Appreciate the importance of system stability.
<script src="//my.visme.co/visme.js"></script><div class="visme_d" data-url="y4y3mmzr-golden-armour-rules" data-w="1080" data-h="1080" data-domain="my"></div><p style="width: 142px; font-family: Montserrat,serif; border-radius:3px; padding: 3px;font-size: 12px; color: #314152">Made with<a href="https://www.visme.co/?vc=Made-With-Visme&utm_medium=Embed" target="_blank" style="color: #314152; font-size: 12px; font-family: Montserrat,serif; font-weight: 600; text-decoration: none">Visme</a></p><script src="//my.visme.co/visme.js"></script><div class="visme_d" data-url="y4y3mmzr-golden-armour-rules" data-w="1080" data-h="1080" data-domain="my"></div><p style="width: 142px; font-family: Montserrat,serif; border-radius:3px; padding: 3px;font-size: 12px; color: #314152">Made with<a href="https://www.visme.co/?vc=Made-With-Visme&utm_medium=Embed" target="_blank" style="color: #314152; font-size: 12px; font-family: Montserrat,serif; font-weight: 600; text-decoration: none">Visme</a></p>1.1 Motor Control
Motor Control is simply how we control our bodies during movement. Our body is an interconnect system of joints, muscle, tendons, ligaments, and bones that are controlled by the brain and nervous system. There are 5 key areas or joint systems of our body that always work together and can’t be separated – that’s why we sometimes call motor control System Stability. The 5 key areas of System Stability are:
- The Cranio-Cervico Area – where the head and neck connect
- The Shoulder Area – (See Unit 3)
- The Hip and Back Area (See Unit 2)
- Knee Area
- Ankle and Foot Area – (See the Law of Foot Power)
Figure 1: 5 Key Areas of System Stability
1.1.1 Motor Control Factors
To move and control our body during movement is based on the 6 Motor Control Factors:
1. Awareness of where our body is in space and the ability to Activate a muscle;
2. A Program in our mind of how to perform a movement;
3. Joint and Tissue Health;
4. Joint Range and Tissue Pliability;
5. Force generating capabilities of muscles (strength and power);
6. Capacity (Endurance or fatigue resistance of a muscle)
Figure 2: Motor Control – “The Mind-Body-Program Connection”
1.1.2 Awareness and Activation and Motor Control
Awareness is knowing where each joint in your body is in space. For example, do you know where your elbow is right this second. Take a moment….
Yes there it is.
But I have a feeling that you had to think about it for a moment.
Activation is the ability to contract any muscle of the body. Think about the muscles that will move your index finger. Try to move the index finger by itself up, down, left, right and make a circle.
These two components of motor control are extremely important. At the joint level, this means you know where a joint is and how to control the muscles around that joint. Now if we look at joint systems and the entire body, this means we know where all the joints of our body are relative to each other and we can control them simultaneously. AMAZING!!!
Many athletes don’t realize the position of key areas, and they have troubles activating those areas. That’s why we see so many Common Movement Problems – See Unit 1.4 for more information. Chances are you’ll have a couple. But don’t worry we’ll teach you how to correct them forever!
1.1.3 Motor Program and Motor Control
A motor program is how your brain controls and moves your body through muscular contractions. It’s amazing how this happens. To illustrate the complexity and range of skill let’s use singing. To make a sound we need air from your lungs which goes through an opening which is controlled by your vocal cords, jaw (mouth) and lips. Now compare the amazing control (tone, pitch) range and rhythm that occurs when Beyoncé signs vs. an ordinary singer. The difference is all related to how air is being controlled by the vocal cords, jaw (mouth) and lips. Beyoncé’s mind and how she’s developed these areas is what makes her special. This amazing talent is coded in the coordinated message that the brain sends to control the vocal cords, jaw and lips.
Now consider the complexities of controlling the entire body when hit a pitch in baseball. We must take the visual information from our eyes to predict the trajectory of the ball. Based on this information we decide whether to swing or not. If we choose to swing, we must coordinate all the muscles to bring the barrel to the ball at the exact moment the ball is in the hitting zone. WOW. This is incredible! Our mind is incredible. All of this is done by a motor program that takes information, processes it, makes a decision, executes a program, refines the execution of the movement (makes adjustsments), all in a less than ½ second. The best news is this program is highly upgradable. We’ll show you how as you become a PLIP HERO.
Figure 3. Motor Control. Beyonce and Ordinary Signer
1.1.4 Joint and Tissue Health and Motor Control
Normally joints, muscles, tendons, ligaments and bones (we’ll refer to all of these as MSKC Tissues, which stands for Musculo Skeletal and Connective Tissues) are healthy. But injuries and overuse injuries commonly occur with sport participation. When a tissue becomes injured or sensitized it doesn’t function as well when healthy. It can’t produce as much force and can’t stabilize or move the body as well. Having healthy MSKC Tissues is very important for all athletes. Unfortunately, many athletes experience chronic overuse or growth related injuries that robs them of their athleticism and motor control development. This program has been designed to help prevent chronic overuse injuries by giving you knowledge and by improving your motor control.
Some common category of injuries includes:
- Tissue Stain or Sprain
- Tendinopathy
- Bruise
- Tissue Rupture
- Stress fracture
- Fracture
1.1.5 Joint Range and Tissue Pliability
How much range and tissue pliability or flexibility you have at a joint will determine how much the joint can move in any direction. For example, try to touch the ground with your palms while keeping your knees straight. This challenge tests the flexibility of the hamstrings. If you can’t do this then your range will be limited to how far you can go. Overtime you can improve your hamstring pliability to ultimately touch your palms to the ground. The advantage of flexibility / range is amazing:
- Improved recovery
- More range to produce faster movements
- Decreased injury rates
Note, there is an optimal range for most athletes. The optimal range for some sports, like gymnastics and dance are greater than the range of most athletes. Going beyond the optimal, likely doesn’t provide any injury prevention of sport performance benefits, in fact it may lead to more injuries if the hypermobile joint doesn’t have sufficient stability.
1.1.6 Force Generating Capabilities of Muscles
Muscles contract to produce force. The amount of force a muscle can produce is strength. The speed that a muscle produces force is known as power. Strength and power are very important qualities to develop in an athlete and it determines both stability and movement.
They also contract for 2 main reasons – stability or movement. Let’s use the hip abductors to illustrate this important point. Note, hip abductors are made up of several muscles on the side of the hip. When running, landing, or jumping they contract to stabilize the hip which in turn stabilizes the knee and trunk. When the hip abductors don’t produce enough force to control the ideal / centrated position of the hip the hip moves into unwanted positions. As a result, dynamic knee valgus often occurs. More on this in the next section. Now if you were to lie on your side and perform a clam shell, your hip abductor would cause movement of your hip away from the body. Notice that the muscle can control joint position (stability) or it can cause movement (movement). Pretty amazing!
1.1.7 Capacity – Muscle Fatigue Resistance
Capacity, is how many times can you perform a movement before control breaks down. Capacity is based on many factors, such as:
- Muscular endurance
- Cardio
- Muscular power endurance
- Fatigue
The type of challenge will determine which factor will cause a control breakdown. For example, running 2 miles will challenge both cardio and muscular endurance, whereas performing the maximum number of push-ups will challenge muscular power endurance. Great news. Like all 6 Motor Control Factors, capacity can also be developed. For example, the control of your trunk, knee and hips when running can be developed so humans can run over 100 miles!
Figure 4: _____ Canadian ultra marathon athlete has run over 1,000,000 miles.
1.1.8 Motor Control, Physical Literacy, and becoming fluent in a language
A young developing athlete’s brain is extremely special. The brain and all the functions of the brain occur because of special connections within the brain from one neuron to another neuron. A neuron is the basic cell of the brain and nervous system. There are over 1 trillion neurons in the brain.
As we age our brain both strengthens these neural connections or it will reduce these connections. where it will prune or strength , where it has all the ability to adapt to what it becomes exposed to. If it doesn’t become exposed to something
- ·Like learning a language motor skill acquisition is about stacking skills on top of skills to achieve higher levels of….
- Fluency
