Making his case....

I think it's funny how many people are like "Will they improve my sport?", "Are they really worth the money?", will they do this, will they do that? I was compiling their benefits for my notes and thought everyone else might find it interesting. Most of you will recognize a good bit of this information spread throughout Pavel's writings. These are some incredible benefits for just two movements practiced for only 50-150 minutes per week. I haven't even covered flexibility yet. If anyone can add to this list, feel free.

From: http://forum.dragondoor.com/training/message/499672/

Benefits of the Swing

Easy on high-mileage knees.
Strengthen the legs and hips without overdeveloping them.
Build backs.
Dramatically reduce the odds of back injuries.
Forge a vice grip.
Work the abs.
Develop championship conditioning and burn fat without the dishonor of aerobics.

Easy on High-Mileage Knees

Swings rarely irritate even high-mileage knees. They do not have the flexibility demands of squats, but they develop the same movement patterns and muscles. In fact, they have been found to help bad knees. In developing proper lifting technique, the body develops a dynamic stereotype. You will lift with your hips in your day to day life, unloading your knees. Improper recruitment patterns of the hip is usually the problem with bad knees. Think of it like this. If your hips don't turn out right as you pick something up, your knee gets wrenched. If it turns out too much, your knee gets wrenched. If you hips don't take up a load, you knee gets wrenched. Let's face it, the hips just aren't really good neighbors. But, as demonstrated by physical therapist Gray Cook, through proper recruitment training, such as the swing, you can fix this problem.

Strengthen the legs and hips without overdeveloping them.

Ken Shamrock of UFC fame pulls rather than squats because a fighter has no need for heavier legs. Pulls strengthen the legs and hips without overdeveloping them. Chafing is no fun. And for some comrades, for instance special operators and infantrymen, bloody thighs are simply unacceptable.

Build backs.

As Randall Strossen, PhD, put it, to a man of strength a muscular back is what big arms are to a bodybuilder. The swing will develop your back from top to bottom. You lats prevent the weight from getting away and aid the erectors to keep the spine straight through the lumbodorsal fascia. The midsacpula retractors, the muscles between your shoulder blades, contract to keep your upper back in proper alignment. The neck, traps, and lower back are some of the prime movers in the swing.

Dramatically reduce the odds of back injuries.

-Swings strengthen the glutes.

The late Vladimir Janda, MD, from the Czech Republic observed that people with low back dysfunction often exhibit “gluteal amnesia.” And if not overcome with proper recruitment pattern practice, it is likely to lead to more back problems, since the back has to take over the lifting task of the powerful glutes. The glutes are strongly emphasized in the swing.

Scientists have found that when your spine is hyperflexed or very rounded, the lower back muscles just check out and leave all the work of supporting the spine to the ligaments. And ligaments have wavy structures that, when loaded, get the slack pulled out of them. This predisposes them to tearing, leading to chronic pain, osteoarthritic degeneration, and disc herniation.

-Swings stretch the hip flexors.

In Janda’s research, weak glutes were associated with tight hip flexors. The powerful psoas major originates on the vertebrae of the lower back, and inserts into the top of the thigh bone. When it is tight, it pulls on the lumbar spine, or lower back. Again, by strengthening the glutes you reduce your odds of a back injury. This time through a process called reciprocal inhibition. When a muscle contracts, it relaxes the antagonist, or opposing, muscles. Think, the harder you flex your biceps the more the triceps relax. Your body doesn't want to drive with its parking brake on. By increasing the resting tonus of the glutes, you decrease the tightness of your hip flexors.

-Swings develop back extensor endurance.

Those of you with bad backs, and if statistics do not lie, it is every other American, note on your forehead: stretching will relieve the pain, but will not fix you up. Spasms and pain are only symptoms. The real problem is usually weakness. A weak back muscle has to contract hard just to keep you from walking on all fours—spinal erectors are 'anti-gravity muscles'. This tension is difficult to maintain, so the muscle just locks up. Movement and circulation become limited, so it gets even weaker, so it cramps even more to get even weaker to cramp even more... It's a vicious circle.

Trying to fix a bad back with stretching is about as useful as an oil change on the Titanic. Professor Stuart McGill, PhD, the number-one spine biomechanist in the world, concluded that while lower- back strength surprisingly does not appear to reduce the odds of back problems, muscular endurance does (Luoto et. al, 1995). I dare you to find a better developer of the back extensors’ endurance than the high-repetition swing.

-Bracing is superior to hollowing for spinal stability.

When you brace as you lift something, the diaphragm expands to increase intra-abdominal pressure. Within your abdomen, there are many baroreceptors that measure changes in intra-abdominal pressure and adjust muscular tension and blood pressure to support it. This increase in pressure potentiates muscle excitability via the pneumomuscular reflex. This increases your strength as well as supports the lumbar spine.

Think of it like an internal weightlifting belt. The diaphragm is rarely strengthened by conventional training but is heavily emphasized by the breathing patterns used during the swing. Dr. McGill has demonstrated that “bracing” the abdominal wall is essential for protecting the lower back. Through consistent practice, the swing will improve your skill at this by forming a dynamic stereotype as well as strengthening the diaphragm.

-Sensible ballistic loading appears to reduce the odds of ar thritis.

Repetitive ballistic loading of swings and other quick lifts appears to be highly beneficial to your joints—provided you do not overdo it. In Supertraining, Drs. Yuri Verkhoshansky and Mel Siff state: “Joints subjected to heavy impact are relatively free of osteoarthritis in old age and those subjected to much lower loading experience a greater incidence of osteoarthritis and cartilage fibrillation . . . as one progresses up the lower extremity, from the ankle, to the knee, the hip and finally to the lumbar spine, so the extent of fibrillation increases at any given age. It appears that the cartilage of joints subjected to regular impulsive loading with relatively high contact stresses is mechanically much stiffer and better adapted to withstand the exceptional loading of running and jumping than the softer cartilage associated with low loading. Thus, joint cartilage subjected to regular repetitive loading remains healthy and copes very well with impulsive loads, whereas cartilage that is heavily loaded infrequently softens . . . the collagen network loses its cohesion and the cartilage deteriorates.“

Forge a vice grip.

Dr. Fred “Squat” Hatfield stated, “The best grip exercises are always going to be pulling at heavy weights ballistically.” Why train your grip? Firstly, grip is a major weak link in most training. The majority of trainees have a lot of strength, but they lack the grip strength to express it. When your grip is lacking, even a light load can seem heavy.

Secondly, let's try an experiment. Make a fist. A white-knuckle, crush to dust fist. Now, do you feel how your shoulder and biceps flex without you having to tell to. This is Sherrington's Law of Irradiation. Put simply, the nerve signal to flex bleeds off onto the ajoining muscles. What this means for your training is that, by increasing your grip strength, you increase your overall strength. The harder your fist flexes, the harder the ajoining muscles will flex. Increased tension means increased muscle tone.

Work the abs.

“...swings work the abs well,” observed famous powerlifting coach Louie Simmons. You must remember that your abs are utilized in your day-to-day life, not just during crunches. Crunches are a waste of time. Remember that. They do nothing for you and fail to even isolate the abdominals. What?! Oh, my world is shattered! Blasphemy! Remember my example on irradiation. The same happens here. Because your average person's abs are not strong enough to perform a crunch when isolated, the nerve signal to flex bleeds off onto the hip flexors, even though they aren't supposed to be used in the limited movement.

You must remember that forward flexion is not the primary job of the abs. Their actual job is to provide a stable platform for other muscles to pull from. For instance, tensed abdominals balance the pull of the psoas muscles on the spine, maintaining its normal curve. The high-tension breathing pattern along with the secondary part of the swing, abdominal contraction at the apex of the swing, strengthens your core muscles.

Develop championship conditioning and burn fat without the dishonor of aerobics.

According to research conducted at the University of Copenhagnen, swings were found to be at least as effective cardio as running and bicycling. But it was found that, due to the bracing performed during the pull, the swing had rather unique benefits. (Cook et al. 2005) He looked at the carotid arterial compliance and BRS, baroreceptor sensitivity, of two groups. One group had been doing the valsalva maneuver, bracing against resistance, while training their VO2 Max while the other had not.

Arterial compliance is how easily the heart and arteries are stretched. If the aorta is able to expand, it expands and allows the blood to be sent through with minimal resistance. This means that there is not a waste of energy on the part of the heart. Think of it like this. Would you rather try to blow up a balloon or a bottle?

Recall that baroreceptor measure changes in intra-abdominal pressure. They regulate muscular tension and blood pressure. BRS is their reactivity to these changes. The greater their sensitivity, the greater their response. With improved response comes a longer, happier, more productive life.

When he analyzed the results, he found that arterial compliance and BRS doubled in these individuals. These two benefits alone make the swing the ideal form of exercise, even without all the other benefits listed. These two will ensure a fail-safe heart.

Benefits of the Get-up

Get-ups fill in the small gaps in your armor left by the swing’s blanket bombing

Build classic torsos and strong arms.
Make the shoulders flexible and resilient.
Fortify the abs and the obliques.

Build classic torsos and strong arms.

Overhead lifting build's a torso along the line of Laurent Delvaux's statue Hercules: broad shoulders with just a hint of pecs, back muscles standing out in bold relief, and wiry arms. Eugene Sandow, George Hackenschmidt, and the other strongmen of yesteryear rarely if ever did light triceps work yet they sported symmetrical and well cut up "horseshoes". These early ironmen believed that the triceps needed very heavy stimulation. Science later caught up with their intuitive discovery. A study by Travill found that the brunt of the triceps work, regardless of the exercise and the loading angle, is performed by the medial head. Only when the resistance gets very heavy do the lazy lateral and longheads kick in.

Make the shoulders flexible and resilient.

The habit of having overly slack muscles of the upper back flicks a few switches in the spinal cord where muscular length and tension are regulated. The muscle starts perceiving your decidedly unmilitary bearing as the norm and becomes unwilling to contract and shorten. Tightening and hyperactivity of the internal rotators of the shoulder (e.g. the pectorals) and the neck extensors (e.g. the posterior cervical group, the upper trapezius, the sterno-cleido- mastoid muscle) results in inhibition of the deep neck flexors, the scapula retractors (e.g. rhomboid, mid and lower trapezius) and the external rotators of the shoulder (e.g. the rotator cuff). This results in a chin forward slumped posture, often accompanied by shoulder elevation.

Over a period of time the abs, the pecs, and the muscles between your ribs shorten and refuse to straighten out. Once you force them too, they test pathetically weak in the stretched position. This dysfunctional postural and movement pattern results in fertile ground for almost all the common musculo-skeletal ailments of the upper body including neck pain, shoulder pain, rotator cuff injury, cervicogenic headache etc. Why does this happen? Look around. Almost everything we do as a society is done in front of us, driving, cooking, writing, cleaning, computer work. Add in a healthy dose of stress (causing upper trapezius hyperactivity) and you have injury-prone shoulders.

Needless to say, neither extreme makes for a functional human being. An effective muscle has no trouble going from a near cramp to great length and can display great strength anywhere in this range. Get-ups facilitate and strengthen the mid and lower trapezius, rhomoboids and rotator cuff. This in turn will inhibit the upper traps and neck extensors, reversing shoulder elevation and chin forward posture. Strengthening the scapular retractors and facilitation of the rotator cuff results in external rotation of the shoulders, pulling the shoulders out of the vulnerable internal rotation position. That is why one of the first things you will begin to see after beginning the Program Minimum is improved upright posture.

Fortify the abs and obliques.

As soon as you start doing heavy get-ups, you will be pleasantly surprised at the powerful effect this drill has on your abs and obliques. While the swing tends to emphasize the abs, the get-up will target the obliques. The obliques are very important to athletes and fitness freaks alike. Strong, well toned obliques make one's waist look trimmer and are critical to performance. The obliques are the muscles underneath the love handles. Like the abs, they run from your rib cage to your pelvis, but at an angle. The external obliques are aligned in the direction your fingers point when you put your hands in your pockets; the internals run perpendicular to them. The obliques perform a number of functions when used in different combinations. They laterally flex the spine, as in a side bend, rotate the spine, or help the abs with forward spine flexion.

Spine stabilization, as in during the get-up, is another important function of your obliques. This will also strengthen the quadrotus lumborum, deep muscles on the sides of the lower spine, important for back health and difficult to develop. The stronger your muscular corset is, the less the wear and tear on your spine. The few people who train their obliques either do broomstick twists and crunches with a twist—worthless because of the minimal muscular tension they generate—or dangerous twisting situps. Torsion, simultaneous bending and twisting of the spine, chews up the intervertebral disks.