The Most Valuable Training You're Not Doing: Part One - Lateral Movements

Welcome to my new blog series: The Most Valuable Training You’re Not Doing, Part One – Lateral Movements.

Everyone is familiar with staple exercises like Bicep Curls, Squats, or Bench Press. One thing all these exercises share is that they all work in the same plane of movement. This is called the Sagittal plane, but can easily be remembered as the plane of flexion and extension. Our body moves in 3 planes of motion, Flexion/Extension, Lateral and Rotational. Today we will be talking about an overlooked motion group: the lateral plane, also know as the Frontal plane.

The Frontal plane encompasses all the exercises that focus on lateral movement. Think of movements like a dumbbell shoulder raise where your hands go from your pocket directly away from your body, so you mimic the shape of a T. A Cossack squat also fits this definition.

How does this apply to us as grapplers?

We are constantly placing stress upon our muscles and joints in a variety of directions, so it only makes sense to train them to be strong in all of those possible directions. For example, takedowns. The majority of takedowns involve misdirection or off balancing to complete the movement to the ground.

In the study by (1) McCormick, et al., it shows us that our body responds to directional training, so if you want a quicker side step to get to the back during an arm drag, or need to be able to hop quickly to one side to defend a single leg takedown, you need to train in that direction, because a normal forward/backwards movement doesn’t translate with the same quality of benefits.

Speaking of balance, the muscles groups that heavily influence that ability, such as the abductors/adductors, core and other smaller stabilization muscles are more directly targeted which result in more effective recruitment in the future. Better recruitment means you will have more muscle fibers working to help your balance in the future.

This leads to a cascading effect where when you have better recruitment in these directions, you’ll have a more stable area around your joints too. This is especially important for knees, where they are generally injured from lateral or rotational injuries. I like to think of lateral movements as providing some armor to joints they are protected in multiple directions.

This armor also applies to your spine which can really benefit from side bend stretching to expand its range of motion before injury. In that same vein, performing exercises such as a suitcase carry, where you hold a heavy weight in only one hand as you walk, can work on the muscles the prevent sideways motion in the spine, helping to prevent injury and improve control.

(1)   McCormick BT, Hannon JC, Newton M, Shultz B, Detling N, Young WB. The Effects of Frontal- and Sagittal-Plane Plyometrics on Change-of-Direction Speed and Power in Adolescent Female Basketball Players. Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2016 Jan;11(1):102-7. doi: 10.1123/ijspp.2015-0058. Epub 2015 May 26. PMID: 26023808.