By Paul Chek, HHP, NMT
Founder, C.H.E.K. Institute

The phrase "Big Bang" conjures up thoughts of getting the most for your money, the beginning of something new or getting the most from your time. No matter how you slice it, the expression strongly implies something new, something more or something better. Fact is, these are all things gym-goers are after! Many people rush to the gym before work, on their lunch hour or between work and dinner trying desperately to keep the fat off and stay fit.

In this article, I'll show you how to effectively apply this exercise concept and share some of my favorite time-saving workouts so you can enjoy the maximum health, fitness and body-shaping benefits. (And, if you are a fitness instructor, filling your classes with members will be much easier if the people attending your classes begin to lose fat faster and look better than those who don't. This is where the concept of the Big Bang exercise can be helpful to both instructor and client.)

For clarification, a Big Bang exercise has the following qualities:

• Meets the characteristics of a functional exercise.
• Utilizes numerous biomotor (life-movement) abilities all at once.

To better understand the Big Bang concept, let's review the characteristics that make an exercise functional.

Reflex Profile

While performing an activity in a sport or daily living, our nervous systems are constantly generating reflex activation of postural muscles to keep us upright and orient our body in space. When moving across a fixed surface, such as a step or a balance beam, we use what's called our righting reflexes. When we are on a surface that moves under us, such as a skateboard or a Swiss Ball during certain exercises, we maintain our balance using tilting and other equilibrium reflexes.

Maintaining Your Center of Gravity

Most functional activities require that we stand and move in a three-dimensional unsupported environment. Our center of gravity shifts anytime we move our body or extremities relative to our base of support.

If our center of gravity goes outside our base of support (feet), we are more likely to fall. For example, if someone were to toss you a 10-pound medicine ball and you had to reach outside the space occupied by your feet, the weight of the ball could shift your center of gravity far enough outside your base of support that the weight and inertia of the ball could pull you over.

Motor Skill Transfer to Functional Movement

When we perform an exercise, we are learning a skill. For that skill to transfer to any functional activity, the exercise must have similar movement qualities as the activity.

For example, the squat and a vertical jump have very similar movement characteristics, which is why squatting is so helpful with improving vertical jump. Conversely, knee extensions and hamstring curls are such isolated movements they have a negligible effect on improving one's vertical jump performance.

In fact, in the long run, such exercise may deteriorate motor control, leading to faulty motor sequencing (the way muscles are recruited during movement). One example is quadriceps dominance -- the premature recruitment of the quadriceps relative to the hamstrings during functional movements. Quadriceps dominance has been linked to the incredibly high incidence of non-contact anterior cruciate ligament injuries in athletics today.

These injuries are particularly common among females who have a greater propensity to use knee extension machines and leg presses than their male counterparts.

Open- vs. Closed-Chain Compatibility

When you're selecting an exercise to improve your performance, choose an exercise that requires the same demand for open- or closed-chain function. An open-chain exercise is one that allows the distal (or working) segment of the body to move freely against the resistance such as with the bench press. The weight is pressed up and off of the body because you can overcome the resistance.

In closed-chain movements, the distal segment (hand or foot) is fixed and can't overcome the resistance, thus the chain is "closed." A good example of a closed-chain exercise is a push-up. It is closed because you can't push the ground away from your body.

Therefore, to improve an athlete's ability to quickly get up from the ground (as in sports like football, wrestling or hockey), the push-up would be a better choice than the bench press because getting up from the ground is a closed-chain activity, just like the push-up.

The Big Bang Table

Big Bang exercises address more biomotor abilities (Bompa) and utilize more planes of movement than many traditional exercises. If you're not familiar with it, the term "biomotor" (bio = life and motor = movement) refers to a number of movement abilities people can use.

As seen in Table 1, it is possible to develop a biomotor profile for virtually any activity. For example, the leg press does not require balance, agility, coordination, or a high degree of flexibility, but it may require strength or endurance. On the other hand, the Cross Box Step-Up (see next page) utilizes balance, coordination, agility, flexibility, strength and endurance.

So, if you're training for a hiking trip, you would want to choose an exercise that required similar biomotor abilities, making the Cross Box Step-Up the obvious choice. As you can see, the more functional exercise characteristics that are addressed by any given exercise, the more of a Big Bang exercise it is.

Using a point system, giving 1 point for each characteristic that improves someone's functional capability, I've compared three traditional exercises to two "Big Bang" exercises in Table 1. A quick glance at this table demonstrates the tremendous return someone can get using Big Bang exercises over traditional ones.