Plyos, Olympic Lifts, and Dynamic Efforts are not the Only Ways to Increase Speed and Power
Strength coaches around the world prescribe plyometrics and Olympic lifts to increase force production – to build speed and power. Powerlifters around the world utilize dynamic effort lifts – box squats, speed deads, board presses – to increase their speed and power.
We can all learn A LOT from those methods, but there is one constituent of force development that the above methods don’t take into account. Consider reversal and/or starting strength, acceleration, and stretch reflex actions of the muscles that act as the antagonists to the primary sports movement.
Sports continue to be exciting in New England these days. I’ll be the first to admit that I rarely watch a full game of anything except football, the Red Sox occasionally, and playoff/championship games. Still, I frequently watch Sports Center on ESPN late night when I’m working on the Internet, and I often read ESPN.com on my lunch break. I try to keep my sports IQ up to par.
How’s your sports IQ these days?
Baseball
The Red Sox occasionally go on a roll and are nearly above .500, which is not great, but makes for an exciting season. The starters have not pitched up to expectations and the lineup has not heated up yet either. Good things will come in the month of May if Crawford can start hitting, and Matsuzaka, Lackey, and Buckholtz can start pitching.
This post was written back in 2008, but the poll didn’t get many votes and the post didn’t get any comments. Now that Project Swole has much more traffic and somewhat of a loyal community, I went and rewrote some of this piece and I’m re-posting it today so that we can get more comments and votes. I think it will be an interesting study into the training background of most Swole readers.
When and why did you first learn about exercising?
We all know how beneficial exercise is to maintaining a healthy body. Kids don’t usually know this and teenagers don’t usually care. Typically it is up to parents and schools to educate kids about exercise and nutrition, ’cause quite frankly they aren’t very likely to do it themselves.
I learned about exercising in junior high school when some of my friends started curling and bench pressing to build the “show muscles” for the girls. I even did some curling and bench pressing myself, but not more than a couple times a week, and I didn’t build any significant muscle mass. My real education in weight training came in high school… I’ll talk about that more below.
By now most of you know that the Green Bay Packers won Super Bowl XLV. A big congrats to those guys! Aaron Rodgers and Packers defense were great pretty much the whole game.
Rodgers threw 3 touchdowns and the Packer’s D forced 3 turnovers, all of which led to points. Big Ben had a streak of good play when he nearly tied the game after being down 21-3, but the Green D kept him down where he belongs.
You saw my offer the other day to get a free NFL team jersey in support of Super Bowl XLV. Well, I have a new and better offer; I found something bigger and better, and wanted to let all Swole readers know about it.
Today I want to give you a chance to get 2 free Super Bowl tickets! Click on the link below and submit your e-mail address to get more information.
I get plenty of questions in various comments throughout the website, but I also get comments and questions via the Project Swole Contact Form.
Generally I address those questions through e-mail, but often I do not have the time to reply to each and every question personally.
From now on I want to take a more proactive approach to answering Your Health Questions by posting them separately in the blog. This way we can be sure that everyone benefits from the Q & A.
Kalee wrote:
I have shin splints right now so I can’t run or bike or anything but lift weights while sitting and do core exercises… unless you can think of anything that I could do for cardio that wouldn’t require me to use my legs. What exercises [should I use] until my shin splints heal? Thanks!
Response:
If you haven’t managed to avoid shin splints, then it is obvious that you haven’t read and understood my article about How to Avoid Shins Splints, but first, if you haven’t already, you should take a couple minutes to understand What Are Shin Splints. Once you’ve become well versed on shin splints, you can now read about how heal or treat shin splints. Let’s get this problem under control so you can get back to training.
Isn’t it obvious that we wouldn’t have to know how to recover from shin splints if we could avoid them in the first place? In order to understand how to avoid shin splints, we must first understand What Are Shin Splints. Then we can better understand how to proactively avoid them. We need to learn more about who gets shin splints, how to properly warm up and stretch the lower leg, and finally we need a method of strengthening those muscles. Assuming we can’t avoid shin splints, we will need to understand How to Treat Shin Splints.
Now, let’s examine the best ways to avoid shin splints by first understanding who is in danger of developing them.
Who Gets Shin Splints?
Athletes, weekend warriors, and even military recruits often experience shin splints, especially at the beginning of the season. Sometimes treatment can be as simple as changing to softer running surface or adding extra arch support to shoes to redistribute the stress. Active rest is often recommended by doctors as a primary treatment. This means that a runner should take up non-impact exercises such as swimming or biking, which gives the injured areas time to heal, but also maintains the cardiovascular benefits of exercise.
It is also believed that people with misalignment often develop problems such as shin splints. Misalignment to the knee, pelvis, ankle, neck, and spine, can result in abnormal posture and abnormal ROM at different joints, which causes excessive wear and tear on bones, joints, and muscles.
“Shin splints” is a term used to describe the pain felt between the knee and the ankle after athletic activity, and are considered a cumulative stress disorder rather than an acute injury. This painful condition occurs when muscles and tendons in the lower legs pull on the tibia bone along the shin.
There are several reasons why athletes develop shin splints, but ultimately we can say they develop when the constant stress placed on the joints, bones, and muscles of the lower leg overwhelms the body’s natural ability to recover from trauma.
The most common cause is inflammation of the periostium, the sheath that surrounds the tibia. Traction forces on the periostium from the muscles of the lower leg cause shin pain and inflammation.
Today’s post can be filed away in the there-is-hope-for-humanity category.
A 17 year old high school student named Ike Ditzenberger has down syndrome. He also plays on the varsity football team.
In late September, the Lake Stevens Vikings were crushing the Snohomish Panthers 35-0 with 10 seconds left in the game. That’s when the Panthers ran their top secret play, The Ike Special.
Ike took the hand off from the Panthers quarterback and proceeded to run 51 yards for a touchdown as the clock expired. Vikings players definitely took the end of that play off, but in this case it mattered way more to everyone on that field for little Ike to score 6 points, than to tackle the poor guy to salvage a shutout.
The Vikings ended up winning 35-6 and now have a 4-0 record in 2010, but Ike Ditzenberger and his family have a memory they will treasure for the rest of their lives.
And in Pro Football News…
If Ike’s story doesn’t make you feel warm and fuzzy, then I’ll leave you with this:
I have fun watching football each season, and I’m sure some of you do too. Just wanted to point out that ESPN has a 2010 Quarterback Rankings article up. At the end of the article you can rank the quarterbacks yourself.
For those who feel inclined, go ahead an comment on the ESPN post and let me know who you think the best quarterbacks are. Here, I’ll post my completely unresearched full rankings from what I can remember about last year and the 2010 preseason off the top of my head.
The Project Swole 2010 NFL Quarterback Rankings
Peyton Manning, Indianapolis Colts
I’m a Patriots fan but I can’t dispute that Peyton is probably the best NFL quarterback to ever play the game. I’m sure he’ll win at least one or two more Superbowls before he’s done. This year his team is even better than last year, if that’s possible. I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t toss 40+ touchdowns and win nearly every game in 2010. (more…)
I saw this nifty little video on ESPN today about the effect of your grip on the trajectory of a baseball. Nomar Garciaparra gets wired up with electrodes to conduct this experiment. He used to be a pretty good ball player.
Essentially what happens, is this:
Pitcher throws the ball. In this experiment it is a 90 MPH pitch.
Bat comes in contact with the ball. Nomar swings the bat 67 MPH.
Shockwaves from the contact between bat and ball travel down the bat to the hands.
Some shockwaves are reflected and bounce back up the bat towards the ball.
The ball leaves bat before shockwaves bounce back.
Therefore your grip on a bat doesn’t directly influence the trajectory of the ball when hit.
When you are up by 13 points in the third quarter, shouldn’t you be able to close out the game? What a bummer. Try again next year guys. Hopefully most of the team will stay together.
This fitness tip is for sports performance. Try this movement to improve your food speed. I’m not 100% sure this will work and it sounds really annoying, but I figured it would be a good tip for you guys to try at least.
I’m having a bad day. I missed my Crossfit workout this morning for an emergency meeting with the dentist, now I have dental surgery coming up on Wednesday, and I barely have enough money to cover my bills and expenses this month. Since I really have to work right now, I don’t have time to write a good post today, so I’m going to leave you with some health and sports news.
Apparently we should become addicted to eating high-fat meals for breakfast. I don’t know. I just don’t see it. I would choose a bowl of Total Raisin Bran with skim milk or a bowl of oatmeal, over bacon or sausage any day of the week.
And finally, McNabb goes to the Redskins. I don’t much care about that either, but it will be interesting to see if McNabb improves the Skins, or if playing for the Skins forces McNabb into retirement. I suppose the latter is more likely.
Special Project Swole discount:
Use coupon code HCCT to get 15% off the cover price! Click here to order.
My Review
I posted an article written by the authors of the book Hardcore Circuit Training for Men the other day, called Losing Weight with Circuit Training. Since then I found my copy of the book and finished looking through it.
Here is what I think:
First and foremost, despite the book’s title, this is not just a book for men. These circuits can be used and adapted by women and even kids. It can be used by weightlifters, triathlon athletes, regular athletes, MMA fighters, boxers, and pretty much anyone else who is looking to develop their conditioning.
I get plenty of questions in various comments throughout the website, but I also get comments and questions via the Project Swole Contact Form.
Generally I address those questions through e-mail, but often I do not have the time to reply to each and every question personally.
The category, Your Health Questions is a more proactive approach to answering your questions so that everyone can benefit from the Q & A.
Jim wrote:
“I wanted to know about how much protein my 14 year old should be having.
He is playing football and weightlifting at school. (Freshman). He is 5’8 and 112 lbs.
He wants to add some weight and muscle but we heard that you should not give your teen protein because they will start to grow outward instead of height-wise.
Oh man, how did the Cardinals make it to the Super Bowl? No one saw that coming about 3 weeks ago, or even last week. After all, the Cardinals finished the regular season by losing 4 of 6, one loss was 47-7 to the Patriots, with a final regular season record of 8-8.
