Stop What You Start

Strength and power is directly related to the ability to stop whatever motions you start is an adage in the strength & conditioning world that directly applies to law enforcement and more specifically to tactical fitness and injury prevention.    When you have to go hands on with a POS you must be able to counter whatever motion they create, counter it with your motion and apply your force to force a submission or takedown.  Imagine attempting to apply an arm bar or come-along without the ability to keep your body in position during the move; you would both end up in a tactically disadvantageous position.

How you train in the gym directly correlates to how well you perform on the street. If you exercise sitting down then you will lose the power generation from the hips and core as they are not activated when sitting.  If you do a lot of pressing motions (chest) with little pulling then you will suffer from a very common muscle imbalance in LEO’s called upper crossed syndrome.  Ultimately all these imbalances will create faulty muscle firing patterns in the body, this will increase your risk of injury and will cause pain.  Pain from normal tasks is no fun and pain while on duty is even less fun.

Stop what you start.  As a profession public safety employees tend to focus on a specific set of exercises.  Exercises like crunches, leg raises, bench press, shoulder presses, seated lat pull downs, leg press and smith machine exercises.  High intensity exercises and long distance training also produce a similar result; we are biased to just one plane of movement, the one in front of us.  This bias creates a very predictable pattern of movement dysfunction that will lead to an increased risk of pain and injury.  We lose the ability to control, overcome, stabilize and stop whatever motion that we start; this eventually leads to injury.

Fix the pattern and get stronger. There is a series of exercises called ‘tall kneeling’ progressions.  They are designed to build back the ability to stop whatever motions you start.  Strangely they will also improve your power, core endurance and make your back hurt less!  In full disclosure when I learned these exercises I “did not get it” at first. These motions are strange and require a high degree of concentration.  It took me a few times to really begin to appreciate the true power of tall kneeling exercises but once I did my “key lifts” improved almost immediately.  Since I know you will ask the “key lifts” are the Sumo deal lift, Kettle bell get up, Pull up, Paloff press and Squat.

The key to the tall kneeling progression is twofold.  First is to always do these in front of a mirror or with a partner.  You must maintain ‘neutral spine’ at all costs; holding a stick on your back will reinforce neutral.  Second is to never cheat the motions.  Glutes must be engaged at all times, absolutely no shrugging, head straight and keep your knees in line with your hips at all times.

While I am tempted to say 3 sets of 15-20 (endurance) is best it’s really control that is your guide.  Once you lose control of you it’s time to take a break. 

The final key is the ratio of movement.  It’s a quick concentric (first move) then a pause followed by a slow 4-5 second eccentric (returning to the start position).  This is what builds the ability to stop what you start plus is will engage the core and hips like never before.

You can do just the full tall kneeling protocol or break it up into push and pull workouts.  As an example if I am going to do a pull workout consisting of pullups, rows, fly’s and pulling from the floor I would do a few sets of tall kneeling to get everything primed.  But I may also use the full routine to get everything re-set after a few days on duty.

A final note on the exercise:  First start ALL the exercises on BOTH knees aka. tall kneeling.  Then progress to the split or lunge stances shown and behold the differences between your right and left sides.