For any movement professional, understanding how and when to use PRI activities/concepts can be difficult when your first learn them. It has taken me two years to reach a point where I feel confident enough in my understanding of the material that I have a consistent game plan for how to incorporate the information on a day to day basis. It helps me understand the human system to a deeper level, gain insight into the driving mechanisms and feed forward activity of a patterned brain, and create movement interventions to improve or build new motor strategies.
There are two main ways I use PRI in my day to day sessions with clients/athletes:
- Inhibition and facilitation (quieting down concentric tension in certain muscles, and increasing concentric tension in others)
- Specific movement re-patterning (incorporating those new muscle actions in a full body movement pattern).
The latter I focus heavily on sensorimotor cuing (what muscle activity the individual should feel) and biomechanical sequencing, whereas the former is a preparatory strategy aimed directly at the individual’s proprioceptive awareness.
During the facilitation/inhibition period, I focus an individual’s attention awareness to specific proprioceptors in the body, areas of neuromuscular neglect (muscle activity they may not have performed in a very long time), and promote specific positions of the axial anatomy . This is aimed at teaching the individual on how best to maintain proper respiratory activity before contending with heavy external load (gravity, environment, etc.).
I need the individual to understand what it feels like to maintain respiratory function of their diaphragm while performing an exercise, and be able to achieve triplanar function through a spectrum of movement ranges. Depending on the exercises or biomechanical tasks I plan on coaching them to execute in the session that day, I will choose preparatory positions supine, prone, side laying, all four, half kneeling, or standing unsupported and supported. I will then transition from one of those PRI activities into a regression of the planned movement/s of the day (squat, lunge, hinge, etc), focusing on carrying over the neuromuscular pattern to a more global movement. This strategy, for me, is an attempt to “rewire” the motor cortex and memory systems of that individual for that given movement category.
I need to be realistic with myself and assume that as soon as I choose any activity for my client to perform, the individual’s memory system will immediately call upon previous executions of the movement, sensory information and all, to formulate a predictive strategy. If I can intervene during that period, and reeducate the individual on how to perform the movement, with a successful, rewarding outcome (no pain, increased efficiency, etc.), I can hope to illicit a more permanent motor pattern.
The main exercise/es of the day, where I increase the intensity of the pattern via velocity, load, volume, or accumulated fatigue, still carry the concepts worked on with the initial PRI preparatory activities at the beginning of the session (inhibition/facilitation). Sensorimotor cues and references, ventilatory activity, and kinetics of the pattern are coached to certain detail depending on the activity’s intensity. The more intense, the less internal cues I use, the less intense the more I can internalize.
The remainder of this article I will share some examples for key movement patterns, which could be categorized as both fundamental exercises and sport specific exercises depending on the context. I will attempt to provide sensorimotor suggestions, biomechanical checkmarks, and a 3-4 step progression from PRI activity to higher intensity movement.
The movements I chose are split squat, front loaded KB squat, single leg deadlift, and medicine ball rotational throw. These main exercises I use in every program, general population or athlete, as they are excellent at building competency in the sequencing of axial to appendicular movement I want my clients to carryover into everyday life.
Split Squat Progression- sensory focus: front foot heel, front leg hamstrings/adductors, obliques
- Right Side Laying Respiratory Left Adductor Pullback
- Left Side Laying Knee To Knee
- ½ Kneeling Band Pullback
- Set up in a half kneeling position, with front foot parallel with the back shin and foot.
- Place a band around the front shin, attached to a stable surface directly in front of the shin.
- Exhale as you “glue” your front heel into the floor, followed by an inhale as you pull the knee directly back towards the hip. Think, “deepen the crease in your groin”.
- Feel your ribcage go down in front, and obliques gain tone.
- Maintain this position, and by increasing the force through the front foot, elevate your back knee an inch off of the ground. (Think: front hamstring shortening!)
- Hold, breathe, and keep the band on tension for 10-20 seconds, maintaining a strong effort of front foot force into the ground.
- Split Squat
- Achieve set up acquired during the half kneeling band pullback, simulating band pull but without band (leverage floor, use hamstrings and adductors to pull the thigh backwards).
- Maintain the sensory cues as you exhale and ascend, and inhale and descend.
- *Additional option that I personally like, is a retro lunge. It teaches the individual how to move their axial skeleton backwards in space, and cleans up form well. Steps are as follows:
- Stand on your right foot, with your left toes lined up with your right heel.
- Slowly rock from your left toes to the heel, “staple the heel to the floor” and continue to step back into a lunge with your right leg. (Left reverse lunge).
- Exhale as your push through your left foot and return to start position.
Squat Progression: sensory focus: heavy heel in the floor, hamstrings felt at the top, obliques, movement through the knee and hip simultaneously, knees travel forwards as hips travel backwards
- 90/90 hip shift with right arm reach
- Reverse squat (reprinted with permission)
- Wall Supported IO/TA (reprinted with permission)– I will also turn this into a bench squat, and take the individual away from a wall, and have them squat to a bench with ball between knees.
- Front Loaded Squat
- Grab one or two kettlebells and front load them in front of your chest.
- Place your feet between hip and shoulder width apart.
- Exhale, and “staple” your heels, little toe, and big toe into the floor as you flex your knees slightly. Focus on your anterior rib cage depressing down and back into your body, and your scapula slightly protracting (reach elbows forward). You should feel obliques, hamstrings, glutes, and quadriceps.
- Maintaining this thorax position, inhale as your descend into your squat.
- Exhale as you come up, drive the floor away from you and focusing on extension of the hip and knee in unison.
Single leg deadlift progression- sensory focus: heel, hamstrings, adductors, glutes, obliques, opposite glute
- 90/90 hip shift with right arm reach (reprinted with permission)
- Left Side Laying Right Glute Max
- Standing Supported Hip Shifting
- Stand with feet shoulder width apart, with your forearms supported on a table in front of you.
- Exhale and round your back, tuck your tailbone under you performing a pelvic tilt, and feel your ribs go down, back, and in.
- Soften your knees and load your heels.
- Push the floor away from you with your right arch, and shift your body left, loading your left heel, and orientating your “zipper” towards your left knee. You should feel right glute, left hamstrings, and left inner thigh.
- As your inhale, bend lower, as you exhale, push through your left heel and come back up to original knee flexed position.
- Alternate sides.
- Single Leg Deadlift
- Place a light mini-band below your knees, with feet hip width apart.
- Shift into your left hip as you open your right knee against the band. You should feel your right glute, and your “zipper” should be facing your left knee.
- Load your left heel, and bring your left knee in until your feel left inner thigh.
- Maintaining activity of your right glute, pick your right foot up and bend it behind you, so you are supported on your left leg.
- As you inhale, pull down and back into your left hip and perform a stiff leg deadlift (or hinge).
- Exhale as your push the floor away, keeping your right glute engaged with your left hamstrings.
- You should maintain alignment of nose, sternum, left knee, and left big toe, as well as right hip and knee below the left.
Medicine Ball Rotational Throw- sensory focus: heel, arch, hamstrings, adductors, glutes, obliques
- Modified All 4 Belly Lift
- Right Side Laying Respiratory Left Adductor Pullback
- Standing Left AFIR Lunge with High Guard
- Medicine ball rotation
- Place a light mini-band around your shins just below your knees.
- Shift into your left hip as you open your right knee against the band, pushing into the floor with left heel and right arch.
- Load your left heel, and bring your left knee in until your feel left inner thigh.
- Load a medicine ball across your left hip, with head rotated to the right.
- Inhale, and as your exhale, drive the floor away with your left foot, and rotate, releasing the ball as your body rotates right.
- You should finish loaded into your right foot, with “belt buckle” and sternum facing the ball trajectory.
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