One of my goals I wanted to get out of my experiences at Northeastern was to become more familiar with a greater number of exercises, which have a great potential to improve an athlete. So far this goal has been meet and I cannot wait to exceed what I thought I would learn here. One of the very first exercises I learned on my second day at Northeastern was the chop, which intrigued me from the moment I saw it. One lesson I learned well during the first week as stated by Gray Cook “First move well, then move often”, meaning the quality of the movement is the first most important factor of mastering a movement. Once the movement has been mastered an athlete can then perform it for a quantity, but it’s expected to be performed well. This is a statement is very important to follow when learning a chop because of the complexity of the movement.
The movement of the chop is a three dimensional movement, where a bar is moved in a downward movement. At Northeastern this movement is executed in a half kneeling position and is performed on a Keiser machine. The motion of the exercise involves a push and a pull. During the chop the athletes starts themselves in a half kneeling position where the knee closest to the machine is up. The athlete should sit at a diagonal line to the machine to allow the most precise movement to take place. It is important for the athlete to have a neutral spine which is inline with their head and back leg. The Keiser is set up to the top of the lever or near the top, depending on the height of the athlete. The part of the bar closest to the machine or highest up component of the chop is the location of where the inside hand is placed. The outside hand is placed on the second half of the bar depending on the height of the athlete. Throughout the exercise the athlete must remain in good posture through their spine, one key to watch is that the shoulders stay relaxed and the cervical spine remains inline with the rest of the body. A cue to ensure the body stays inline is that their coccyx tucked underneath their body and glutes are activated. Also the coach can place their hand on the athletes head and tell them to resist the force from coach’s hand on their head, where this force the athlete to sit up tall and get their chin up.
It’s important for the bar to remain as close to the body as possible and when the ending movement is complete, the rope from the machine should be against the inner arm. To make sure the athlete is pulling down the bar as close to the body as possible is to place a foam roller on the inside part of the knee which is up and instruct the athlete to complete the movement without knocking down the foam roller. The importance of posture during the lift is important to maintain and improve core stability in the hip and stabilize the spine. The athlete wants to feel very stable as if they are a statue connected to the ground. During the chop the movement is a downward pull, which is then pushed to the side of the athlete. The athlete returns the bar to the starting position in the same manner in which they pulled the bar down, but the most important concept of the exercise is to show the control the athlete has when coming back to the starting position. Without adding weight, the most challenging chop would be if the front foot is in line with the back knee, as if it’s on a balance beam, but at Northeastern that is the position that is required to earn the right to hold the bar. This exercise can allow a coach to see all the weaknesses of an athlete, it would be advised to focus on main cues to give the athlete such as squeezing the glutes to stabilize and keep neck through the hips in a neutral position. When you observe an athlete who has a very wide stance in the kneeling position, this indicates they are overcompensating for a weakness, where I would have the athlete decrease the weight and have them take a lesser wider stance.
The other details are important, but if a coach started all issues at once they could make the athlete overwhelmed. During the start of the movement the athlete should inhale and the air is released when the movement is complete and weight is released. Even though this is seen as a corrective exercise, it can be used as a strengthening exercise, especially for the upper body. Being able to have control is just as important with this exercise as the strength. A similar exercise that involves the mirror image movement is called the lift, where the movement starts from a position of low to a position of high with a pull and push movement. During the lift the weight is half to two thirds of the weight of a chop. Both the lift and the chop are a very valuable movements in an athlete’s program for different reasons.