Ep. 350 How to program for personal trainers 8 Core Movement Patterns & CCA

Struggling with programming for your personal training clients? Enter the 8 core movement patterns and the CCA within the SUF CPT.

Most training plans fall apart for one simple reason: they’re built on random exercises instead of a clear movement system. We walk through the eight core movement patterns we use to coach real people and to get consistent results, whether you’re training general population clients, athletes, or yourself. You’ll hear how we think about vertical push and vertical pull, horizontal push and horizontal pull, unilateral work, squats, hinges, and transitional patterns so every exercise has a job and every progression is earned.

We get specific on the “why” behind common lifts: which muscles drive each pattern, what joint actions matter, and where coaches usually go wrong. We talk shoulder-friendly pressing choices like the landmine press when overhead range is limited, why eccentrics are a cheat code for building pull-ups, and how too much fixed-scapula pressing can sneakily beat up shoulder health. On the lower-body side, we lay out practical progressions for step-ups, lunges, squats, and hinge work, plus the mistakes that turn a hinge into a quad-dominant pattern.

We also hit two topics that every trainer needs in their toolbox: breathing mechanics and pain myths. If someone can’t run well, sprinting volume has to match tissue capacity. And “deadlifts are bad for your back” misses the real issue: mechanics, progression, and exposure over time.

To tie it all together, we share a simple CCA programming template that’s plug-and-play for full-body training with a push emphasis or lower-body emphasis, plus how we use accessories to keep sessions fun without compromising force production. Subscribe, share this with a trainer friend, and leave a review. What movement pattern do you need to coach better next?

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Transcript

Eight Movement Patterns Framework

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Haddy y'all, welcome back to the show of fitness podcast, helping you better train your clients by understanding the eight core movement patterns. And then we're going to design a program at the end of this on our fancy new whiteboard. It begins with the eight core movement patterns, not random exercises. Boston ball squat. Yeah, that's going to get your clients' results. You need to master the fundamentals. There are eight core movement patterns. We push, we pull in the vertical side, the horizontal side, and then we're going to squat hands unilateral and do transitional movements. I'm going to break down the main muscles that are engaged in each core movement pattern and then give you some examples with the most regress to progress, starting with the vertical push. Overhead in the frontal plane, it's going to be primarily your anterior and medial deltoid. If you bring it to more the transverse or sagittal, it's going to be anterior deltoid at the shoulder. At the elbow, we have extension, that's going to be your triceps, and the scapula will be upwardly rotating with the upper and lower trapezius as well as the serratus anterior. The most regressed variation would be your half kneeling or banded press. I love the landmine because it's a lot more shoulder friendly. If your clients can't truly own 160 degrees of flexion, a landmine press or a split stance is going to be superior for most of our clients. Smith Machine machine presses are great. Only issue you can find is if we constantly lock down that scapula, we just need to make sure to take the scapula through its eight actions. When we constantly lock it down, as seen with bench pressing and a lot of other movements on a bench, you want to make sure to get it moving freely. Seated dumbbell military press, Arnold presses are great, all three points of motion. Standing barbell, the common mistake that you're going to see is a rib flare with extension. And then we cannot own our lumbopelvic hip complex. So we get that anterior pelvic tilt. When I do a standing barbell press, I like to have my feet really wide and externally rotated because then your glutes are going to be fired up, protecting your lower back. Push jerk is a great explosive exercise. Awesome for athletes. And then we want to get to that handstand. That is a true functional exercise. It's just a badass exercise. If you can throw your feet on the wall, or even better, just do a straight up handstand and crank out some reps, your shoulders will be looking very huntacular. Moving into our vertical pole at the humerus, we're going to have adduction. So it's primarily our lats. At the elbow, we're going to have flexion, so our biceps, and then downwardly rotating for our rhomboids, major, and minor. The most regressed variation would be banded. You can have the trainer holding a band and you're pulling it down or use it on like a cable machine, and also your lap pull down, very user-friendly exercise. And then moving into a machine-assisted chin up or a band, if you have that trainer engagement, we're really big into. So get your clients to the top and then control that eccentric. The best way to be able to do a pull-up is to do the eccentrics, overload the muscle and connect the tissue. Dead hangs with scapular depressions and elevations, great to do. Upright row is a great exercise for all three heads of the deltoid as well as all three parts of the trapezius. Pull-ups, weighted pull-ups, start getting into the speed or reactive pull-up. So you hang at the end position and then you clap and get up there as quickly as you can. And then doing some muscle ups. Those would be the most advanced. Moving into the horizontal push movement pattern, you're going to have horizontal adduction, which is going to be the sternal fibers of your pec major. The elbow is going to be extending and your scapulas are going to be protracting. That's if you're doing a push-up. But when you do a bench, you want them locked in so they're going to be retracted and depressed. Great for optimal force production. But if all we're choosing is exercises where we fix our scapulas, not the best for true shoulder health. We would start with a barbell push-up and/or wall bench. I prefer the barbell push-up because when you're on the wall, you can just get a lot of extension in there. A lot of times it's not friendly for your clients' wrists. Moving into eccentrics. I don't like girl push-ups. Why are we going to label exercises girl and guy? We don't do that. It's a push-up. So do the actual movement. Squeeze your glutes, come down as a nice unit. You could put a band under your clients to help them up concentrically. Moving into a push-up or decline press, that's going to be your easiest of the three presses. Bench press is going to be in the middle, and then you're going to have your incline press being the most challenging. Barbell bench press, plyo, clap push-ups, and the incline, barbell, and one arm push-ups. The reason I put incline is the most advanced because most of the time we can't get into that humor extension of 70 degrees. And when we have a barbell, it's a fixed position and you're really forcing maximal range of motion. Most dudes would prefer a dumbbell incline because we're more freely movable, and then we can modify that range of motion. Moving into the last upper body pattern, which is going to be a horizontal pull. If we keep a neutral grip, that's gonna be primarily our lats, pronated, more mid-back and posterior deltoid. Your elbow is going to be flexing, so it's your biceps, and then we have retraction, mid-trapezius, as well as your rhomboids. The easiest ones are gonna be your banded rows and your face pulls. We should probably be doing a lot more horizontal pull with a pronated grip because we do so much pressing. We're gonna press here, we're gonna press there. A lot of anterior deltoid recruitment. We get that anterior glenohumeral glide, just not optimal for true joint centration with that glenohumeral joint. Moving into like a TRX row, awesome for clients to own that pattern. Getting into a chest supported row or a T-bar row, awesome because you're taking away that stability. The stability is great, but you got to own it first. And if you move right into like a bent over row, which is a lot more advanced, puts a ton of stress on your lower back. And for beginning clients, general pop, probably who you and I are working with more, they can't own that yet. So it's too much stress, and we don't want that for the time being. Over time, we can progress and you can get into that and pendulate rows, which you see at the very, very top. We have landmine rows, sled poles, and a pendulum row. Those are just more advanced. Looking at a three-stance row, probably one of my favorite, where you're gonna place your elbow on your knee and then row. I also love incline rows because you get a greater range of motion. Moving into our lower body pattern, starting with the unilateral, depending on your torso position, it could be more glutes if we're leaned over. It could be more quads if we're more upright. You got to look at the torso angle as well as the shin angle. The most regressed are gonna be banded step downs. Place a band across the pins in your rack, pressing down great for senior citizens who cannot do the basic step up with eccentric control, getting into high step ups, more glute activation, assisted lunge. You have a pole or some type of PVC pipe, and then moving into weighted lunge. You can do so many variations with the lunges, whether if it's a waiter's carry variation or goblet variation, so many variations to do. Lateral lunge, Bulgarian, it's probably one of the most advanced, and then your pistols obviously are gonna be the most challenging. Getting into our squat pattern, mostly the glutes at the hip, our quads at the knee, and then our adductor group is gonna work with extension as well. Your torso position is gonna make a huge difference on what you're going to engage. T Rex squat, body weight squat, your plate extended so you hold a 10, 20 pound weight in front of you. You get a lot more posterior chain to keep you more upright. I love doing those. Putting some wedges behind your client's ankles if they don't have that range of motion. Safety bar squat, back squat. If you don't have that optimal range of motion, can't get to 160, you're placing your humerus with a ton of external rotation. That's why you'll see some people squat with their hands really far out because they don't own that range of motion. Safety bar squat would probably be better for most of our clients. Front squat is a great progression from the back squat, getting into like your zertur and overhead squat. In my 20 plus years of training, I've never done an overhead squat with my clients. Never done an overhead squat assessment either, but it's just not my clientele base. We're not Olympic or power lifters, so we don't need to be doing those, but that is your most advanced variation. And then we have our hinge pattern, which is gonna be primarily more your glutes and your erectors and your hamstrings. Start off on the ground with your bridge, body weight. You can have a foam roller pushback, meaning there's a foam roller behind you, and you're just working on that hinge pattern where your shins are nice and vertical. A common mistake we see with the hinge pattern, our knees are migrating forward, which is gonna be more quad activation. Your hip thrust, RDLs, your sumos, and then your conventional windmill rotational. I love where you're picking up from the side. You have to own that though. We talk a lot about low back pain in our level two seminars addressing soft tissue, the biopsychosocial model of pain. There's so many exercises that we just label as bad. Deadlifts are bad. No, it's like saying soccer is bad. No, you just suck at soccer. It's not a bad sport. Deadlifts are not bad for your back, you're just not doing it properly. It's tissue capacity. You have to own the mechanics and progress over time. So a windmill is great for rotational movement when you're doing the hinge pattern. And the Jefferson is gonna be a bent spine, picking up load. Awesome for exposure therapy for those that do have low back pain. If you show them a Jefferson, you will be able to get there, but you gotta own the movement. We got to get that guard down, and you will be able to pick up weight with the rounded back. And last but not least, we have our transitional, your gait and walking mechanics, running, breathing mechanics. How are we breathing? So many of us are just right from the chest. Too many of us are chest breathers, which is gonna be your pec minor, your upper trapezius, also your sternocleomastoid. We want to be 360 degrees of breathing. Most of it should be coming from your diaphragm, so your stomach coming out, a little bit through your chest, but your back should be coming out as well as your side ribs. Full 360 degrees of breathing. We have crawling, rolling, throwing, carries, jumping, sprinting. You got to own those mechanics before you do things that are maximum. You can't even run properly. Now you want to start doing sprints. You see someone on Instagram who has an amazing physique, and now you want to start sprinting three times a week. That is not appropriate. Make sure the tissue capacity and the increase in volume is appropriate for our clients. We just don't start throwing three times a week sprinting because they haven't sprinted in a couple of years. Make sure it's appropriate. Now I want to break down some programming. We're gonna take a look at what we would do for a client who wants to focus more on their upper body using a full body but a push emphasis with the CCA. The C stands for core movement pattern. If there's a guy that wants to focus on his chest, we're gonna do bench press into pull-ups. So we have the agonist being the chest. Then when we do a pull-up, the agonist would be our lats, the chest would be resting, then we do some ab work, whether if it's a plank, and then we rest for a couple minutes and then go back into round two. Add some weight, challenge with the pull-ups, do an ab exercise, rest for a couple minutes, and then get after it for a PR for that third round, bench pull-ups, abs. That would be your first CCA moving into the second one. Incline dumbbells into dumbbell row. That would be a perfect example of a push to a pull. I like that pronated grip to really get that posterior deltoid, and then some farmers carries that carry transitional pattern. And then you'll end off with a goblet, which would be our leg, and then we have a landmine for the shoulders, and let's do some bicep curls. If you have time, we can do some push-ups into some ski erg, into some lunges, whatever we have for three to five minutes, depending on the client, their condition state. We don't want to do all this high-intense stuff in the beginning. If I did bench press into pull-ups, into incline dumbbells, into push-ups, into cardio, it's gonna be a lot harder. It's also a lot harder to drive drunk. Don't do it! Even though I love whiskey, I'm not going to do that because it's not smart. You're compromising force production. Why? That's the thing with social media today. We see something that's hard and challenging, we think we're gonna get the results that that person has. You can optimize and do it more efficiently. So, this would be an example of a push emphasis full body using the CCA. Moving over here to lower body, we want to start with that leg pattern. You do not have to do a squat first. You can do a unilateral or a hinge. But the great thing about the CCA is it's a plug and play. So, your next workout, if you start with a squat on Monday, on Wednesday, you can begin with a hinge. You could just take that third CCA, move it up to the first one, and then bump them down. It makes your life a lot easier. And you don't have to worry about entertaining your clients because that's what you do with the accessory as well as the warm-up. You make it fun for the warm-up and the accessories as long as it doesn't compromise force production for that main core pattern. Goblet squat into a push-up. A lot of times with my ladies, I will do body weight functional exercises because they don't want to get big and bulky. You and I are qualified trainers. We know they're not, but you have to respect that. Like if you go to a restaurant, you have the best fucking salmon in the world, but they don't want salmon, you're not gonna bring them salmon. You respect that. Three rounds there, moving into a step up, into a chin-up, into some abs. For the accessory, it can be isolation. It can be cardio in the second or third circuit. We don't do cardio in that first circuit because you're compromising force production, as I just said. Step ups into chin-ups, abs for three rounds. See what they like to do for their ab exercise. If they like bicycles, have them show you what that looks like. Slow it down. Get involved as the trainer. These accessories are where I like to add that trainer engagement. It's gonna separate you from the average trainer that's out there. In that third round, maybe you want to do an RDL or a hip thrust for that hinge pattern into a landmine, and that'll just stick on the landmine and do an anti-rotation. Your arms are fully extended in front of you, and you're gonna be pulling the bar back and forth. Great for core engagement. If you have some time, you can do some lunges into some jump rope into a wall sit. Get them to feel it. You're providing that value, but it's safe. And then you sit them down and you sell them on working with you because you're a great trainer. And that's what we teach you at the SUF CPT. If you like these videos, comment what you'd like to see more of. We got you covered. And remember, big biceps are better than small ones, and keep showing up.