Muscular Balance and Pain

The reality of living on earth is that the brain and the body adapt to the stress of gravitational constraint. Since gravitational force is a constant 9.8 mps what occurs pretty early on in childhood is that the development of the motor system encounters this stress and is influenced by it in significant ways. The challenges of this are that the adaptations are not always the most favorable. Since the body and brain are linked in function and dysfunction what we can not guarantee in any motor learning scenario is that there will be a bump free adaptation process.

For example, when you are first learning to ride a bike generally there are some falls. Now some people will have fewer falls than others. What this means though is that some of us are going to get a couple skinned knees, hands and elbows in the process. While this may not be the smoothest part of the process what does occur is that these potentially more noxious parts of motor skill development create an incentive to improve qualitatively quickly. Just like when a child learns to walk. Just like when someone learns to squat with a barbell for the first time. Just like when someone pulls a sled for the first time. There are moments of discomfort with learning that assist in solidifying the process.

What occurs from those moments forward is that there is a motor pattern that has developed and it may not be the most optimal one that could be developed for high amounts of volume or intensity but it is serviceable enough to keep around for limited bouts of engagement. The subtle shifts of weight from side to side or front to back when riding a bicycle may have long term complications built into them but it's an efficient enough motor pattern to keep you upright, travel a short distance and then arrive at the destination. You may not be able to travel 300 miles with this pattern or with these positions but for a mile or 2 it's not terrible and the brain/body will accept this pattern pretty subconciously. There isn't a thought process for riding the bike it's just the way that you do it. Just like walking, breathing and the beating rhythm of your heart. It's a subconcious motor function.

When people motor learn under strength training constraints these subconcious movement patterns show up. If the hip muscles are not strong enough at a certain point in the learning progression then the reality is that the stress will shift somewhere else because the brain is constantly problem solving. So when people talk about squats hurting their knees and deadlifts hurting their back what we are coming to grips with is the lack of development motor pattern wise to allow smoother adaptations to occur. Whether it is at 100lbs, 200lbs, 300lbs or 20lbs the reality is that the body is either prepared to handle that stress in the movement or it is not.

Where this developmental process turns the corner is in training. If you have pain and you have weaknesses in specific ranges of motion then I am going to guarantee those are linked expressions of the nervous system. If when you first learned to back squat your glutes were the limiting factor and your quads were the strongest portion of your lower body I understand why you have knee pain when you squat. If you have weak lats and hamstrings I know why your back hurts when you deadlift. It's not the deadlift pattern or motion at 100lbs, 200lbs, 300lbs or 20lbs. It's the reality that you can no longer continue to just work on specific skill development and expect to continue down a silky smooth road. Just like when riding a bike, just like when walking, just like when running or jumping or any other gait related function. The more muscular balance you have access to force production wise the fewer issues you will have as you leverage those physical skills into higher and higher stress.

The greater the asymmetry and the more imbalanced the body is the less it will be able to lateralize its force production capacity under more intense stressors. This is why it's critical in training to intentionally plan variability of the stressors into the training process. If you don't you become the cyclist who doesn't understand why they have knee pain/back pain when they ride for 20 miles instead of 10 miles a week. The difficulty becomes identifying movements that need specific assistance work under low stress conditions. When you are experiencing challenging training this situation will reveal itself sooner or later. It's only a matter of time before you either address it or risk significant injury through continued increases of training stress.