how do i get knee joint strength like this?

[Fred Mak]

i've had a lot of knee problems in the past.  ok, we're working on getting elbow strength in foundations, but how do i get knee joint strength like the girl at the 2:20 mark?  her knee is hyperextended and supporting the weight of another human being.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5L4MT8LdOQ
 

 

[ForzaCavaliere]

High Reps of BW Squats.

 

Even doing Indian Squats for high reps is supposedly very good for knee health.

[Connor Davies]

You're kidding me right?  Have you even tried the first 4 SLS/iM's?

 

Really though, your legs support your entire bodyweight all day.  It's not too much of a stretch to imagine they could support someone else.

 

More specific to WAG, they do a lot of tumbling, which involves forces in excess of 7 gravities.  So their legs have to absorb quite a bit of shock.

[Fred Mak]

this is different.  this is straight leg strength, like straight arm strength

[Connor Davies]

this is different.  this is straight leg strength, like straight arm strength

Think about how a gymnast lands.  It's always with straight legs.

 

Go ask anyone involved in jumping, biomechanics or strength training and they'll tell you that that's a really bad idea.  It puts way to much strain on the joints....

 

You see what I'm getting at here?

[Alan Tseng]

watching her knee at 2:20 made me scared for her

[Joshua Slocum]

Think about how a gymnast lands. It's always with straight legs.

Go ask anyone involved in jumping, biomechanics or strength training and they'll tell you that that's a really bad idea.

That's because it is, which is why gymnasts land with bent knees.

[Matthew Barrett]

That's because it is, which is why gymnasts land with bent knees.

Right.

I think you have rebounding and landing confused. They are two seperate mechanics. Landing and rebounding are two different mechanics. You rebound with straight legs, with as little bend as possible on floor and no bend at all on trampolines. While both require a large amount of strength, landing an elite pass requies more strength as it completely absorbs the energy of the tumbling while rebounding redirects it.

[Connor Davies]

That's because it is, which is why gymnasts land with bent knees.

I stand corrected.  For the most part though, their legs seem pretty straight.  Whenever I land from even a short distance, my legs instinctively bend into a squat in order to absorb impact.  The less I do this, the more stress I feel on the joint.

 

So how much strength does it take to absorb these kind of impact forces without buckling completely ie squatting?

[Joshua Slocum]

 

They are two seperate mechanics. Landing and rebounding are two different mechanics. You rebound with straight legs, with as little bend as possible on floor and no bend at all on trampolines. While both require a large amount of strength, landing an elite pass requies more strength as it completely absorbs the energy of the tumbling while rebounding redirects it.

 

Actually, you do not want any bend in your legs when rebounding on a spring floor. That would cause a significant loss in energy. You want knees locked when punching and rebounding. 

 

I stand corrected.  For the most part though, their legs seem pretty straight.

They're not 'pretty straight'. They are bent. Watch any tumbling pass that ends with a landing on the feet and you'll see the athlete exhibits distinct knee flexion. 

[Cody Ward]

I stand corrected.  For the most part though, their legs seem pretty straight.  Whenever I land from even a short distance, my legs instinctively bend into a squat in order to absorb impact.  The less I do this, the more stress I feel on the joint.

 

So how much strength does it take to absorb these kind of impact forces without buckling completely ie squatting?

It's not as bad as you'd think.

[Andrew Long]

Anyone have anything to say about the op? I'm curious about this as well

[Joshua Slocum]

Exactly the same way you develop the equivalent strength for your elbows: lots of joint prehab, and a very gradual increase in load. 

[Matthew Barrett]

Actually, you do not want any bend in your legs when rebounding on a spring floor. That would cause a significant loss in energy. You want knees locked when punching and rebounding. 

 

We certainly train and teach that way. However, when performing skills that require a large amount of inital power it is inevitable that the knees willl bend around 5º and the heels of the feet will contact the ground for less than approximately .25 seconds.

On easy skills it is possible to keep the knees locked but once you begin tumbling at speeds to performing skills such as twisting double saltos, stretched double saltos and many other difficult skills, there will be a slight bend. When you tumble on pavement it becomes even more obvious.

The same thing can be observed in the scapula. On trampolines it will remain elevated during the tumbling but on spring floor it will depress at contact for repulsion off the floor.

[Matthew Barrett]

It's not as bad as you'd think.

A 45º bend is considered pretty major in tumbling. We also sometimes bend at the hips as well to help absorb the energy.

[Connor Davies]

They're not 'pretty straight'. They are bent. Watch any tumbling pass that ends with a landing on the feet and you'll see the athlete exhibits distinct knee flexion. 

 

If you have to double check to make sure it's there, I'd say it's pretty straight...

[Joshua Slocum]

If you have to double check to make sure it's there, I'd say it's pretty straight...

Show me a video of what you're talking about. 

[Connor Davies]

Show me a video of what you're talking about. 

Having reviewed some videos on youtube, I have to admit I was hasty in my claim that they perform their landings with straight legs.

 

Still, sometimes they're pretty close.  I don't know if it's because of different amounts of rotational impact, lower bodyweight or what, but sometimes those legs are way straighter than other times.

 

But okay, point taken.

[Joshua Slocum]

 

We certainly train and teach that way. However, when performing skills that require a large amount of inital power it is inevitable that the knees willl bend around 5º and the heels of the feet will contact the ground for less than approximately .25 seconds.

On easy skills it is possible to keep the knees locked but once you begin tumbling at speeds to performing skills such as twisting double saltos, stretched double saltos and many other difficult skills, there will be a slight bend. When you tumble on pavement it becomes even more obvious.

The same thing can be observed in the scapula. On trampolines it will remain elevated during the tumbling but on spring floor it will depress at contact for repulsion off the floor.

Huh. I just watched a bunch of slow-motion tumbling videos and you appear to be right. Do you have any idea why the knees tend to bend? I would have thought that would cause the knees to buckle on a powerful tumbling pass. 

[Karl Kallio]

In the video at 2:20?  It seems to me like the athlete has probably worked on split flexibility her whole life.  There's a common exercise where one person lies on their back and another pushes down on their extended leg.  Often it is used with PNF-like stretches. The knee often hyper-extends like that.  Fairly quickly (2 years with consistency) you get to the point where the person pushing uses most if not all of their body weight.  One could imagine simply progressing over time to withstand larger weights.  I would add that it is probably wise to work on strength in the posterior leg muscles both for a bit of muscle mass and specifically near that ROM.  Also the bit that freaked me out in that move was that there was so much potential for wobbles and they managed to keep it so steady (imagine if the upper or lower bread in the sandwich had wobbled, it would have been the middle girl who would have to absorb the movement , probably in her knee)

 

 

 

http://danceconceptsutah.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/IMG_02881-300x224.jpg

[Rob Kowalski]

Even doing Indian Squats for high reps is supposedly very good for knee health.

 

Forgive my ignorance; what's an Indian Squat?

[Alessandro Mainente]

I want to share what i got the opportunity to discover in the last months about "steel joints".

Since november i started to visit and work in the university of the movement science in Milan (italy). one of my teacher is involved in the research of strength and using instrument like EMG, MRI he discovered one important thing. How fast your joint adapts to a stimuli is genetical matter, but how to facilitate heal/strengthen is a matter of good approach to training. one of these idea is the SSC of Coach. 

Talking about different approach there is the theory of the super slow stripping sets. To understand better i want to clarify what's happen during this set:

-choose a good bodyweigth leverage that correspond to your 50% RM of you max

-perform reps with 6 seconds positive phase and 6 negative phase

-be careful to complete elongate the muscles during the negative but not squeeze all the muscles during the positive, stop near the point of max contraction

-when you reach the limit of zero reps choose an easier variation and so on until you cannot perform just one reps.

 

the physiological response under this method was experimented on 2 subject with supraspinatus problem and bicep tendon problem. surprisingly after 1 months and half doing only the rehab , tendons grew up bigger with a decrease of scar tissue ( this part is unfortunately not explicable). the measure where done with a MRI scan before the rehab and after using both medical judgment and segmentation algorithm to extract tendons parameters.

what i really catch from that is that when you are doing the partial contraction and fully elongation you are chocking the muscle arteries by the renovate blood supply, all this blood will stay exactly before the muscle...in the tendons. Also this approach does not create excessive doms and hypertrophy.

 

Could be a very precious opportunity to test this approach over all the GB community and tell me the result. Also i will enjoy if Coach can experiment that with his students and let us if it work. the approach could be applied for both rehab and strengthen the connective tissue aside from the injury.

[Connor Davies]

Forgive my ignorance; what's an Indian Squat?

Google 'baithak'