I continue on the fundamental understandings of sprinting. We will go into weight training today. Now first thing one has to understand is that weight training is a SUPPLEMENT to the sport of sprinting. As a matter of fact weight training should be secondary to a lot of sports period. Reason i say this because a lot of people think or believe on the idea that weight training is a means to an end, this philosophy results in injury most of the time for people who are not weight lifters or power lifters.
The goal is to get good at the sport one is participating in not the weight training. I can see people get addicted because progression in the gym is more measurable and linear then with any other sport. With other sports one requires a partner to time them on their speed or other complex movements, you don't just need a coach nowadays but a team of people to monitor a whole bunch of things, so it can get rather complex, so weight training is one of the easiest things an individual can monitor. So it's established weights are of great benefit as an assist to many sports. It all has to do with ones ability to recover.
Very few people can deal with large amounts of volume when it comes to strenuous movement or exercise. A lot of people still train like this, especially high school kids for PE, and any other sport in the curriculum. The reason being it was popularized by the Russians when they dominated in the 60s-70s, and their training programs had OUTRAGEOUS volumes, i mean the kind of volume is stupid...I can't even explain it. The reason why they even survived it is because the vast majority of the Eastern Europeans at the time were taking steroids. Aside from that tidbit a usual example i present to you, is lifting very heavy weights for a lot of reps in a given workout AFTER having another tough workout before hand, this is already to much for many people, even well trained people. Not everyone can recover as fast as wolverine, now there are some peoples bio-mechanics and flexibility who fortunately prevents them from being injury prone, these are the rare exceptions, you can prevent injury by being in shape, this allows you to handle more volume without getting hurt in the process. If you cannot recover fast enough for the next work out you are screwed, you are setting yourself up to under perform and get yoruself seriously injured, this is predominantly a reason why we have coaches. The nervous system can only take so much. So naturally understanding all of this how do we avoid this?
Sprinting is a power sport, specifically it is PURE PERFORMANCE power sport. Meaning it requires a lot of power to get that body moving to top speed which we talked about on the first part. Power is speed and strength, so the lifts sprinters are concerned about is the power clean, squats (very important), the bench press to is surprisingly important, and the secondary lifts is also good to improve overall strength of the entire organism, but even more importantly is Plyometrics. Plyometrics is a set of bounds and jumps from certain depths or distances, it is orchestrated by a program set by the coach that allows the progression of the athletes ability to develop more power in jumps or bounds that can enhance their speed over time. With the exception to the secondary lifts, the big lifts like the squat and the power clean are to be worked within 80-90% of your 1 repetition max, Plyometrics should also be handled delicately as injury is goddamn freaking high if one is not careful. So if you can only squat 315 pounds you are working 80-90 percent of that and more, if you can and often times it is done with singles or doubles, which is a nice way of saying one rep or 2 reps(yes it gets that heavy). This is monitored by your coach who knows what he is doing (this is where your faith goes). You need to exercise the ability to recruit all your muscle fibers and stimulate your nervous system to generate more power relative to your body weight, once achieved you will fly.
A very important quote to remember is "less is more". Don't overdue it even if you get a personal best in your lifts or the gym, people often want to leverage their progress by accumulating their workouts in order to get a bigger adaptation. No you are overreaching here or over training yourself to failure. Workouts for sprinters should not be any more different then power sports, like certain positions in football or many of the track and field events, and even to an extent for the weight lifting sports.
to be continued...
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