I sat with Stuart McGill at the SWIS convention some years ago during a Chek seminar. Priceless.
Thomas, if you have the time, I would love for you to expound on this.
Aggielax, Dr. McGill found him, lets say, less then credible when it came to spinal structure and function. No peer reviewed research, no research of any kind for that matter. Chek says he’s had two complete cadever (sp) studies or something like that. McGill just chuckled. I imagine McGill has done more. Essentially he said that drawing in the abdomen doesn’t provide the spinal stabilization that Chek purports. He kept saying, “It doesn’t work that way.” “It doesn’t work that way.”
McGill is the director of the Spine Biomechanics Laboratory at Waterloo University has had over 100 research articles published and has his hands on spinal tissue and testing real people every day. You can draw your own conclusions.
Thank you, Thomas. I envy your experience. Did you happen to see the interview with Dr. McGill on T-Mag? It was pretty interesting. Chek’s work, as you may well know, is/was based in large part on the work of Richardson and Jull out of Australia. IMHO, and in the opinion of others (namely the late Mel Siff), he took some liberty in extrapolating their work with rehab patients to healthy individuals.
Intuitively, it never made sense to me to “draw your belly button toward your spine” when performing a max effort squat when bracing felt so much more “stable”. Dr. McGill has since confirmed my suspicions. Right or wrong, he has made a fortune in preaching such techniques and still clings to such dogma.
As an aside, I recently attended a physical therapy session with one of my clients and the therapist (quite respected I might add) began to instruct me in the “latest” techniques in spinal stabilization out of Australia. LOL. I’m only a personal trainer and I read this stuff years ago! Then again, as a personal trainer, what do I know?
i believe even Richardson (or it may have been Janda) public stated that it was not wise to extrapolate that same research for subjects without a pathology.
I am surrounded by chekkies at my gym, and to Pauls credit he has a fantastic system for creating parrots that just repeat everything he writes, but have zero clinical reasoning skills.
for instance, I witnessed a chekkie aggressively stretching a very out of shape) new clients plantarflexors. I overheard him saying that he had a muscle imbalance at the ankle joint. When the client got up and walked over to get a drink i saw a pretty clear case of foot drop.
someone once said 'a little bit of knowledge is somethimes a very dangerous thing"
the folks at westside barbell instruct their lifters to push out their abdomens against their belts for greater stability when squatting - and squat suit or no squat suit, 1000lb on your back requires quite a bit of ‘core stability’
Aggielax, no I don’t recall reading that article in T-mag. I’ll look for it.
Chek writes/talks about “primal movements”. Squatting, twisting, lunging, pulling, pushing, etc… and bases his training around these movements. As if people weren’t already doing this already. Yet he wants you to draw the abdominals in which isn’t a “primal” movement!
Chek is now on a lengthy speaking tour traveling to the deepest parts of the South American rain forest, central Africa and remote parts of northern China. He’ll be educating the indigenous people to draw their abdominals in when they carry trees back to their homes to be used for canoes, fire and houses, large game and a yoke with water jugs on each side.
It’s very noble work he’s doing, because these uneducated people for 3,000 + years have simply braced their spine instinctively!