Cats and Cows

Cat, Cow, Cue.

What does a pair of barnyard animals have to do with coaching youth athletes? Well...nothing. However integrating these two basic yoga poses into an activation sequence can have a positive effect on the proprioceptive abilities of your athletes who struggle to keep a strong, safe spinal position during whole body lifts. The cat and cow poses help drive home the feeling of a neutral spine so they can recreate it in lifts like the deadlift, squat, clean, and snatch. If cues like "stick your butt out" and "pull your shoulder blades together" are not helping your athletes get into a safe spinal position, coaching them through a cat and cow sequence in warm up/activation may be of some benefit.

The cat and cow poses are a part of most introductory yoga classes, and are even used in prenatal and senior yoga sequences. The spinal flexion and extension are simple enough for most populations, which is one reason for the popularity of the poses. Both are quadruped movements, beginning with hands and knees on the floor, with hands under shoulders and knees under hips. For the cat pose, imagine there is a fishhook in the mid back, pulling it directly up to the ceiling. Scapulas protract, the head hangs heavy between the arms and tailbone tucks under to complete the active spinal flexion. To transition to cow pose, imagine there is a weight attached to the belly button, pulling it to the floor. The head looks forward and slightly up and scapulas retract. The spine is now in extension with the hips and butt pointed up and back. Transition back and forth between the two poses 5 times, and hold the final cow pose to do a few quadruped hip rocks to stretch the hips.

The first time you coach a group in this you may get a couple of snickers from your athletes when you ask if anyone has taken any yoga classes. Even if they have, they may not be willing to admit it (especially guy hockey players)...it's just not seen as a macho thing. Macho or not, it's useful so we do it. Younger athletes (10-13) seem to pick it up right away, but it takes the high school aged athletes a few spastic, jerky transitions to get the movement down. Then it is easier for them each subsequent workout. It gets so easy, in fact, that we rarely do it past phase 1.

So how does this contribute to the lift? In some cases, it is difficult to keep a new lifter from rounding his back in a squat, deadlift, clean, etc. Some youth athletes simply do not respond to cues like "reach your butt to the wall behind you" or "shoulder blades together like you are pinching a deck of cards," but if they have rehearsed the movement, the practice effect and visual feedback from mirrors help them to feel the difference between a rounded back and a more neutral spine. All it takes to cue an adjustment is to tell an athlete "Right now you are a cat. I want you to be a cow." The transition usually comes quickly and easily, followed by a eureka moment from your athlete as they snap into a stronger, more mechanically sound position for the lift Over-extension is not usually a problem since the cow pose is done in quadruped where gravity assists to create additional extension in the spine. In biped, athletes are not able to create the extra extension and a more neutral spine is maintained.
As coaches, we have to find 10 different ways to say the same thing in the hopes that one of those ways will resonate with our athletes. This is just one way to cue, but we have found that a vast majority of our newer lifters respond positively to it. We have had success with this cue, and hopefully it can add to your tools to use on your athletes.

Be well,
Brian Sipotz
Advantage Strength and Conditioning