An athlete’s ability to maintain their center of mass over their base of support is a universal critical indicator of performance.
An example from my coaching this month:
During training with the partner blocking drill (pushing her around a bit as she comes in for the shot) Fanny said “I feel like I’m having trouble with getting power out of my jab step”
It came into my awareness that when she was throwing her weight into me and gifting me control over her COM. Rather than dropping her base and lateral pushing me away, she was leaning into me and thus too far over to get oriented for a powerful jab step. Furthermore, in a game setting the player in my position could simply step away when they feel that weight which has the potential to make the person in Fanny’s position fall or become off balance enough to be capitalized on. To remedy this strategy, we had her focus on getting her weight a little lower and using her strength to push and lateral shuffle, thus setting herself up for a more powerful jump for the shot. Below are before and after images and slow motion video breakdowns of these shots before and after adjustment.
Before adjustments...
After adjustments....
COM and Base of Support Deviations
It is worth noting that there are trade offs that occur in sport – while all athletes must manage and leverage their center of mass and base of support to their advantage, it is not necessary that the center of mass is ALWAYS over the support – sometimes it is necessary to throw one’s weight in a direction and quickly replace one’s COM in order to sprint forward or in order to tackle or counter another athlete’s weight. However, it is important to understand that these types of sport action are harder to recover initial position from.
It is up to an individual and their coach as to what kind of COM management strategy is needed in a given situation and what next moves must be made or what the next positions are after that management moment occurs.
For example, when a football player tackles another player or a baseball player slides into base on their stomach – they effectively remove themselves from making another game movement for a brief moment to produce a powerful action and pass the game on to the next player on the team. Some sports and some sport actions require repeat or follow up efforts that need the previous movement to have been balanced, some sport actions only need to happen once and the recovery phase can be sacrificed.
In some sports, like we see in Judo, the concept of Kuzushi or “unbalancing” is where one player essentially co-ops control of the other player’s balance and takes advantage of it. The following video provides an exceptional visual of how center of mass can be leveraged using Judo techniques:
Putting it together...
From Olympic lifting, to boxing, to basketball – controlling your center of mass is key.
If you can’t get into positions where you can stack your center of mass over your base of support, work on mobilizing the segments that will permit you to stack that better.
If you can control your COM well but you’re not powerful, focus on getting stronger at movements where your base of support and COM are stacked and train them up!
Lastly, if you’re having a hard time exiting or finishing a movement look at how you’re setting it up – deadlifts to jump shots there’s always clues about how you’ll finish the movement visible in how you start it.
If you are having a hard time identifying and solving these problems Unbreakable has got your back with in person and remote coaching options!