You probably understand the importance of the posterior chain by now – that series moving and stabilizing muscles up and down your back side including but not limited to your . You probably know that sitting too much “numbs” this all-important set of muscles and is essentially a huge “hole” in the back of your body.
If you sit around and don’t do anything this might not be a problem. But if you have decided to use your body for sport and movement – you probably know that “posterior chain amnesia” is a very big, potentially catastrophic problem.
You might even know that a lot of athletes out there have no clue about all that functional, performance enhancing muscle on the back side of their bodies. And you know that weakness in the posterior chain means you lift less weight, possess poor movement quality and get injured more easily.
There is a lot of great information out there showing how rediscovering the muscles in the back of your body can literally “fix” you – i.e. make you stronger and hurt less. Or maybe you are new on the scene and are hearing all this for the first time.
Some bright minds in the fitness industry are now calling the posterior chain the “new core.” So what more can be said? Why am I here talking to you? Why should you listen?
Let me tell you a story. It was in the middle of happy time – deadlifting. The barbell felt like a feather. The muscle in the back of my body fired on all cylinders. The line between whether I was consciously firing the muscle or whether the muscle was firing on its own was completely blurred. It was somehow both. I couldn’t believe it. My back felt like iron that had just been dropped in cool water after being heated. Iron doesn’t bend under pressure. That’s how my posterior chain felt. After years of back injuries – in that one magical set I felt everything I had been doing wrong for years and years of lifting weights – fixed. What happened? For the first time in my life, my posterior chain – the entire chain had been “linked.” If I weren’t a fitness marketer, this revelation would have stayed locked up in my garage gym… But I had a decent sized email list of strength and fitness enthusiasts. I was anxious to share this linking sequence with any one who lifted weights and would take 2 minutes to try it. I asked for deadlifters and kettlebellers to give it a test drive.
Linking is simply a “muscle check-down” to do before exercise. It is not a warm up, more like a “fire up.”
1. Easier movement. It automatically improves your hip mobility for hip hinge movements like swings and deadlifts and any type of squat.
4. WAY less time warming up – you’ll get faster results from less than 2 minutes of linking than any other warm up.
5. WORKS FAST – Possible Automatic PRs (personal records). About 40% of our users experience an automatic PR from linking.
6. Less Tight Muscles. Due to reciprocal inhibition you both fire and relax muscles simultaneously. I bet you will not miss your tight psoas.
7. Higher Quality Workouts. If you use more muscle, more muscle gets a workout so you look like you work out with less working out.
8. Less strain on your lower back. Knowing how to use muscle directs the force of the weight away from your spine.
9. FOCUS. It is much easier to focus when all your muscle is turned on and ready to go. One less thing to worry about.
10. Programming Flexibility. You can use it before any program you are on and it will automatically make a good program great and a great program even better.
Here’s a simple example. Do you know how to use your hip flexor muscle? I mean, are your hip flexors strong? “Who cares,” you say. Try this. Get a medium SIZED kettlebell or dumbell. Put your foot underneath it and lift it up. Some call this a toe pull. Your hip flexors are firing to lift the weight off the ground. FEEL that? Do that for 10 seconds on your right leg. Now, lift your right knee up. Note how high you can lift it. Now lift your left knee up.
You have just improved hip flexion mobility using STRENGTH – not mobility or flexibility exercises.
You squat, right? Who doesn’t? Now actively pull yours hips down into a squat using the FIRED UP hip flexor muscle from the strengthening exercise. If you are squatting with your bodyweight or a barbell/kettlebell you best be using those meaty flexor muscles for extra depth AND strength (on… 
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