The Weightlifting Addiction

You know what I am talking about……or maybe not.

Weightlifting Addiction, How to tell if you are a “lifting addict”:

Your standing vertical has increased over the past few years, but your running jump hasn’t, and your running one leg jump DEFINITELY hasn’t!
You get anxious to get to the gym the day of your lifting workout…..as soon as you wake up, it is the first thing on your mind.
You have gained 10+ pounds in the first year you started lifting.
You have this inevitable urge to go heavy in the weightroom…….especially when there are a large amount of people watching…..
You have dreams about power-cleaning 2x your bodyweight
You find yourself watching Olympic lifting competitions when you are bored
You haven’t improved your 30m dash or slam-dunking ability in 2 years, but who cares! You can squat 150lb more!
You feel that if you can’t squat 2x bodyweight, you are a failure as an athlete

OK, well those are a few signs I guess……and I will say that this post is primarily geared towards you unilaterals out there, aka track and field jumpers and anyone else who wants to get up off 1 leg. I will say that being a “lifting addict” isn’t all that bad, but if you are a jumper or sprinter it can eventually hurt you! For the most part, a killer standing vertical requires a HUGE squat, and a good 2 leg running vertical requires a pretty good squat, but more complex movements such as running and jumping off 1 leg take a little more plyometric persuasion.

I am certainly not bashing lifting at all, but in order to be a good unilateral jumper, there comes a point in a yearly training cycle when you have to take a break from lifting. This usually comes in the form of plyometric shock work. Believe it or not, taking a break from lifting to do a few depth jump cycles might actually increase your squat. After all, you will be dramatically increasing the output of your nervous system through the myostatic reflex, as well as doing some intensive work specific to bi-lateral power production.

Russian science has shown that the training effect of weightlifting regarding the improvement of speed-strength diminishes within 14 weeks. This scenario has happened to many of us……we start lifting again after taking some time off and gain a lot, but then suddenly we stop gaining, and instead of switching over to another stimulus, aka, plyometrics, we just try to keep tweaking out our lifting programs, adding cluster sets, drop sets, isometrics, partial reps and the like. As some famous authors say regarding periodization, “why do most coaches feed their athletes crap for workouts up until the big meets and then finally back off the weights and do what the athlete needed in the first place?”. Of course the athlete will feel refreshed, but he/she could be at a much higher state of sport mastery if they had gotten what they needed earlier in the season.

I will say that the training effect of lifting can be extended by adding variation, but all lifting is in essence the same in the fact that it offers a training effect of neurological duration, and is not necessarily specific to jumping or running. I think the fear that many people have is that they will lose their hard-earned weightroom strength when they switch to plyos, or that they haven’t hit that “magic number” in the weightroom yet. Alternating cycles will not kill you though, as long as they are planned out with the long term goal in mind! The key is to be patient. Yes, those elite jumpers can clean over 1.5 times their bodyweight, and squat 2.5x, but they didn’t get there by spending the majority of their training time in the weightroom. I will bet you that for the most part, they are naturally explosive, as well as have gained explosiveness through jumping, which contributes to their weight room numbers.

A quick, second to last note…..most Western track coaches develop the different strength qualities in parallel throughout the season….which works, but according to Eastern sport science, not as well as well-planned blocks with specific goals.

I will end on a note from Tudor Bompa’s famous text of periodization for sports which says that athletes who have seemed to reach a plateau after a high training age can benefit by altering cycles of plyometrics and maximal strength. Seems to make sense to me. The two methods build on each other, and are powerful stimuli. FINALLY, to those two would say, “well I have great reactive strength, I just need to get stronger now right?”. For a standing vertical jump, yes you need to get stronger, for high jumping, yes, but not to the point that you would for standing vertical. The ground contact time must remain low! I will get to this more another day, but for now, the moral of the story is, stick with what works, which is not using a specific training stimuli for longer than you need to.

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