We’re talking about bending at the hips.  This is a strange scenario, but if I were stranded on a desert island and could only choose one type of barbell exercise to conduct in order to stay strong, healthy, and injury-proof my body, I would choose exercises that required me to hinge at the hips.  Why? Exercises like the deadlift, romanian deadlift (RDL), good morning, and kettlebell swing contribute to strong glutes, hamstrings, and backs (not to mention the benefit to your grip, shoulder, and trunk strength).  Hinging is also foundational to conducting explosive movements like jumping and barbell cleans. Remember when your football coach told you to “bring the hips?”  This is how you learn to bring it with authority.

While the hinge is a “hip-dominant” exercise, the squat is “knee-dominant” and even though it is not directly tested on the ACFT, the squat is essential to increasing our ability to perform Soldier tasks and battle drills.  No need to throw the barbell on your back to start back squatting now… can you get in the proper position without an external load? Test your air squat. You may need to progress from air squats to goblet squats to front squats to back squats.  Remember that proper mechanics come before heavy loads.

• Feet about shoulder width apart

• Hips back first like you are sitting in a chair

• Toes somewhere between straight in front of you and rotated out to 30 degrees

• Knees out, thighs tracking in line with your feet

• Neutral head position and a neutral, rigid spine

If you’re just starting out, squat deep!  This is your opportunity to learn to squat the right way before your ego gets in the way.

We’ve got to push and pull both horizontally and vertically in order to maintain healthy function of our shoulders and backs.  That means at a minimum:

• Horizontal presses like the bench press and push up

• Vertical presses like the overhead press and handstand push up

• Horizontal pulls like the bent over row

• Vertical pulls like the pull up

While unilateral (single leg/arm) versions of each of the aforementioned patterns can and should be integrated into your training, the lunge is a particularly important movement pattern because of the unique requirements placed on a single side of the body at one time.  Lunge movements require balance, coordination, and strength; patterning this movement, especially under appropriate loads, will contribute significantly to identifying and correcting imprecise patterns and preventing injury. One of the best variations of the lunge: the step up.

So far, we’ve highlighted movements that require us to move forwards and backwards or up and down; otherwise known as moving through the sagittal plane.  How many warrior tasks and battle drills occur exclusively in the sagittal plane? Not many. Simple movements like the high knee lunge-twist and spiderman elbow drop are fantastic warmups and will reinforce your ability to move dynamically with precision.  You can also conduct loaded rotational exercises like the following:

• Rotational Ball Slams

• 5-way Med Ball Circuit

• Banded Rotation - Kneeling

• Turkish Get Up

There’s a lot of different ways to get from point A to point B, and we’ve got to deliberately train them.  This includes efforts to improve running mechanics and efficiency, but we’ve also got to consider the mechanics of change of direction, jumping and landing, sled drags and pushes, and load carriage (Rucking, Farmer’s Carry, zercher carry, etc).  Your ability to conduct clean, efficient, dynamic locomotion depends on your ability to learn the precise motor patterns described above. If you’re not a “natural” when it comes to events like the “Sprint-Drag-Carry,” patterning each of the 6 movements above must be part of the recipe for improving your dynamic locomotion.