Lower extremity injuries are all too common from the average person to the elite athlete. Often, these injuries are predictable and thus preventable through proper training and maintenance.
Before we run through the exercises, we need to establish a few principles to work with.
- First, everything else being equal, a stronger person is typically harder to injure.
- Mobility and stability are both equally important. Let’s put that debate to rest.
- Joints are controlled by muscles.
- Joints are supported and stabilized by ligaments AND muscles. Stronger muscles will make a stronger joint.
- Strong hips and hamstrings are required for resilient lower extremities.
- The weakest link will usually break first.
- Technical and biomechanical proficiency in exercise and sport are critical.
Note that this is a list of assistance exercises that are not very common for most programs. I’m assuming that your regimen already has a healthy dose of squat and deadlift variations, power cleans, and the usual assistance lifts. These exercises supplement the program, not replace it.
Exercise 1: Nordic Hamstring Curls
Strength coaches have long known about the importance of hamstring strength and control for knee health. More recently through research, they’ve identified that hamstring weakness can increase the incidence of knee injuries. The most well known example is the incidence of ACL injuries in female soccer players.
The Nordic hamstring curl places a great emphasis on the eccentric strength of the hamstrings, which is extremely important in sports performance.
Grab a friend (or something heavy to wedge your heels under) and kneel down on both knees with your hips straight. You might want a pad under your knees for comfort. Have your friend anchor your heels down to the floor. Slowly lower yourself down using your hamstrings. You should feel like you’re trying to dig your heels into your training partner’s hands. You will likely get to a point where you’ll need to use your hands to catch yourself so you don’t face plant onto the floor. Push yourself back up into the starting position, but only enough to complete the movement. You still want to contract the hamstrings through the concentric phase of the lift. Do anywhere between 3-5 sets of 5-as many reps as possible.
Most people will not be able to perform a complete NHC, especially through the concentric phase. Do your best to control the eccentric phase and push as hard as you can through the concentric phase.
Exercise 2: Bulgarian Split Squats
I really don’t know why countries need to claim exercises. This is simply a rear-foot-elevated split-squat.
Actually, just saying Bulgarian split squat is way easier…
Most sports are, by their nature, unilateral dominant for the legs. Rarely, you’ll see an athlete perfectly square up to perform a squat or jump. Most often, they will be jumping while running, sprinting, bounding, or pushing someone forward. Of course, this does not mean neglect bilateral movements like the squat and deadlift, but we can’t forget about unilateral strength.
Unilateral movements can be difficult to load if you haven’t been exposed to these exercise variations. The Bulgarian split squat can be loaded with dumbbells, kettlebells, sandbags, bands, and even a barbell if you have the requisite balance and ab strength.
Start yourself in front of a bench or chair. Take a casual step forward. Place one of your feet onto the bench or chair behind you. Squat down, making sure your hips stay straight and your knees don’t cave inwards. Keep tension through your hip, hamstring, and quads. Go as low as your mobility will allow, and squat back up. 3-5 sets of 5-20 reps.
Exercise 3: Hill Sprints
If you want to hurt without hurting yourself, run as fast as you can up a hill. Then repeat that a couple of times, you crazy loon!
Most people these days don’t sprint, so when they do, they end up hurting themselves. You see, sprinting is actually a pretty intense activity on the body if you’re not used to doing it. Besides the fact that most people don’t have the technical proficiency to run fast, most people don’t have the strength or tendon resilience to tolerate sprinting very well.
Plus, sprinting is taxing on the body. It’s tough on the muscles and your CNS, making it difficult to recover from. There is a reason why the great track coach Charlie Francis limited the number of yards his athletes ran in a given workout.
Hill sprints take care of most of the problems that flat ground sprinting presents. First of all, you’ll be running considerably slower so it’s easier on your joints. Since you’re running at a much lower velocity, it places more stress on your muscular system rather than your CNS. Win win!
This is probably one of the best conditioning exercises out there as well. It’s very hard, imitates an activity that most athletes do (running), and has relatively low injury risk.
Step 1: Pick a hill. I would say a 30-45 degree incline is ideal but since some places are pretty flat I won’t be picky. Step 2: Run uphill about 20-50 yards. Step 3: Try to not puke. If you’re new to this, go at about 80% and work your way up as your get better at it. 10 reps is a good starting point, but make sure you’re resting between sprints. Make sure you walk down.
Originally, I was going to include 5 exercises in this article, but it started to get really long so I’m going to turn this into a series. This is part 1. Stay tuned for part 2!
