Why Do We Need To Train In All Plane’s?
So what does training in all “planes” mean anyway? Most of our activities are done in front of us or moving forward rather.. walking, cycling, even the little things like working at our desks and being on our phone. That being said, our bodies are capable of moving in all directions! We can move laterally, backwards, even rotate… but we don’t often train these motions as much as we do forward movement.
The three planes of motion are the sagittal, coronal (or frontal) and transverse planes.
Sagittal Plane: Divides the body into left and right halves. Includes Forward and backward movements. This is the one I mentioned in the beginning where we do most of our activities.
Coronal (or Frontal Plane): Divides the body into front and back halves. This plane includes lateral “side-to-side” movements.
Transverse Plane: Divides the body into top and bottom halves. This plane includes rotational or “twisting” movements.
So now that we know what they are, why do we need to train them all?
When it comes to our daily lives we may do most movements in the Sagittal plane, but we do still use the other ones frequently. Training in all planes will help prevent injury because our bodies will have the strength to support ourselves in all directions. Think if you’re doing something and you have to all of a sudden move to the side or twist to get something, this is where people tend to hurt themselves… you know when you “move the wrong way” or “got up funny”… if we are strong in all planes of movement we won’t hurt those muscles that don’t get used as much. We always here about our “stabilizers” and the need to have strong ones. This is a good example, also a good reason why free weight work is better than machines.. it’s just more practical.
When it comes to our performance, we never want to be strong in one direction but not the other. If you have strong forward movements, we want to make sure we have a strong posterior side as well for support. If you are strong moving in one direction or do something that involves a unilateral movement, you still want to train the other direction as well. While you are working the other side is still supporting. This side needs to be strong too. Think about the golf swing.. we may swing one direction but we still need the other side for support and stabilization. You still want 2 strong arms and 2 strong legs even though their responsibilities are different.
Training in all planes will automatically involve all muscle groups. Thinking of our work outs this way instead of by specific muscle’s will help ensure we train equally, and also train our body how it was meant to be trained!
Some of you know I do tend to think of workouts as “Push” or “Pull” whether it be lower upper or full body… hopefully this gives some insight now as to why :). An "“upper push” is pretty much chest shoulders and triceps. An “upper pull” is back and biceps. A “lower push” is quads, glutes, and calves. A “lower pull” is hamstrings and glutes. Of course our core is involved in all! In my opinion it should be trained every time because of this simple fact.
Happy exercising!
Robyn
side note yes…..the frontal plane is not where the forward movement happens. This used to get me all time too ;D