Today's post is a little longer than usual because its something that I feel is really important. So bear with me and have a read.
I firmly believe that maximum strength is the foundation to high level performance and that trying to get anywhere without developing it is going to lead to failure. Creating strength gives you the potential to be powerful, efficient and conserve energy; as any load bearing task, be it walking, lifting, jumping etc. has become a proportionately smaller load and therefore requires less effort.
Many feel that doing strength training will make them slow, that they will get HUGE and cumbersome within minutes of touching a heavy weight. This may be true if you only train by lifting maximal loads for years, but if your max strength training comes as part of a balanced programme and you continue to play your sport it can have fantastic benefits. My football (soccer) players at the Uni often say they don't want to lift weights because they don't want to get slow; I usually refer them to these studies:
There is a strong correlation between maximal strength in half squats and sprint performance and jumping height in soccer players. (WislĂff et. al., 2004)
In elite basketball players Squat 1 rep max performance was the best single predictor of 5m and 10m sprint times. (Chaouachi et. al. 2009).
I once heard Dan Baker explain the adavantages of max strength really well: Increasing your strength can increase power production and your ability to succeed in contact sports: Peak Power is found at 45-60% of 1 Rep Max (Baker et al. 2001). Therefore, increasing your 1RM strength widens the range of weights that fall in this zone and the ability to accelerate yourself, an object or an opponent. Let’s say you are a 95kg rugby player with a 1RM squat of 140kg, if your max power is achieved at 45-60% of this, you are able to exert the most power against an opponent weighing 63-84kg. If you increase your 1RM to 180kg, your max power range increases to 81-108kg. Which puts your opponent perfectly in your max power range; so you can smash them all over the field!
Further support comes from a study by Moss et. al. (2003), they showed that training at a high % of 1RM increases power throughout the entire weight spectrum, whereas training at low % of 1RM only increases power at lower loads. So if you only train at low % of you 1RM you will get very good at moving light loads quickly, but you will be on your arse when it comes to being powerful when dealing with heavy loads, such as other people.
It is even good to strength train when competing as an endurance athlete: Paavolainen et. al. (1999) Studied the effect of plyometric, barbell and sprinting exercises on endurance athletes and found that “simultaneous explosive-strength and endurance training improved the 5K time in well-trained endurance athletes”. So even distance runners need to be strong. I have found this to be true in my own personal experience. When I was a rower at University level I was the fittest I have ever been in my life, I had a 1RM back squat of 135kg, so I could do 125kg for 2, maybe 3 reps. 3 years later having done zero fitness training for 2 years and trained almost exclusively in Powerlifting I had a 1RM of 207.5kg and did 125kg for 25 reps! That’s because 125kg is now only around 60% of my 1RM, so I can bully it around all day long. If I ever went back to rowing again I reckon I would be a hell of an improved rower now that I am nearly twice as strong as I used to be.
So there you have it, getting stronger can give you a greater opportunity for success.
Hopefully that has given you an insight into my thinking and hopefully an urge to get in the gym and lift!
see you in the gym.
As always please check us out on Facebook Twitter Website and post any questions that you might have below.
Russell
0 comments:
Post a Comment