Great athletes are strong. Always.
The longer I have coached and trained, the more true this statement has become to me. In my observations, tall lanky athletes such as the 6’5, 180lb guy who drives the lane to throw down a nasty dunk or the ectomorph who high jumps over 7’ become pretty dang strong in a short period of time once you throw them in the weightroom. There are a few exceptions here and there, mostly being ectomorphic athletes whose build allowed them success in sport, but take those athletes and give them a sufficient amount of time, and their strength will shine through. Bottom line, the best athletes are the best force producers, and many, but not all have used the weightroom to great success to help attain high levels of force production.
The weightroom is not just an area that explosive athletes are given a chance to shine, but a vehicle that can make terrible athletes good, and good athletes great. Well planned strength training can give the un-natural athlete a fighting chance on the field of play. If you are aiming to jump higher and run faster, you need strength to do it. Remember, maximal force capability of muscle is the ceiling by which speed and power are determined.
Long Term Improvements
Somewhat counter-intuitive to those first two paragraphs, athletes should never sacrifice strength in favor of their actual sport (I believe in Dan John’s 80:10:10 ratio, 80% of practice devoted to sport, 10% to strength and 10% to corrective/regeneration work), but strength is something that must go up year by year if long term improvements are to be made. A sometimes forgotten fact is that explosive work, such as sprinting and jumping can make athletes better in the weight room. Dr. Yuri Verkhoshansky proved this when he showed that a training block devoted to depth jumping brought up the 1RM squat of the athletes as well. Why though?
Explosive movement demands very high levels of neuromuscular power, and it is power that is specifically wired to the working muscles of our sport. A maximal vertical jump from a running start requires an extremely fast eccentric lengthening, a rock hard isometric contraction and then a rapid release of that energy with forces exceeding many times that athlete’s bodyweight. Seeing how there are specific muscular actions that take place in dynamic movement, such as a vertical leap, it can be useful to focus on those actions in the weightroom.
Two Methods for Breakthroughs
When it comes to strength training, there are two powerful, but often ignored methods that will lead to strength and power breakthroughs based on various modes of muscular contractions that can induce fantastic gains, even for those who have many years of training under their belt. These two methods that often get “swept under the rug” can inject a serious boost of nitrous oxide into the vehicle of your strength training.
Those two methods are:
- High tension eccentric training
- Compensatory acceleration training
So why isn’t normal, smooth up and down repetition strength training, good enough for continual gains? Well for many athletes it can be, but there is always a better way. Let’s look at strength training from a motor learning perspective.
Motor Learning and Strength Gains
When we perform an exercise for a long enough time, we often get stuck in a “rut”, but why? All of us have experienced the principle of diminishing returns, so an answer to the question is certainly in order. This answer is both simple and complex: when our body figures out to perform a movement (such as squatting) the motor pattern sent by the brain to the muscles is solidified and becomes hard to change. Once the body can perform a task adequately, why change what works? According to our nervous system once motor patterns are established, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”.
Unfortunately, our nervous system doesn’t realize that our goal in training is not to be “comfortable”, but rather freakish athletic beasts with bar bending squats and 40” vertical jumps. To bring ones body to the point of a 40 inch standing vertical is very “uncomfortable” from a nervous system point of view, so we must constantly be coming up with ways to teach our nervous system new external challenges and possibilities, thus provoking extra gains out of our CNS.
High Tension Eccentrics
The first method to move towards greater muscular strength and tension is accentuated eccentric training. “High tension” eccentrics is a glorified way of talking about slow eccentrics. Any type of training with the word “slow” in it just isn’t very sexy and will often get tossed to the wayside by coaches and trainers. Slow eccentrics are a powerful tool, however, and for several reasons, which are:
- Creating sustained high levels of tension in muscle
- Creating higher levels of muscular time under tension, spurring muscle growth
- Overloading the neuromuscular groove of the exercise
- Slowing down the exercise to enhance technique
- Helps to give “rate” dominant athletes more time to produce force in dynamic movement such as vertical leap.
Compensatory Acceleration Training
The second method is compensatory acceleration training, or “CAT”. CAT was a term first coined by Fred Hatfield, a man who squatted quadruple bodyweight and had a 40 inch vertical leap. In a nutshell, CAT training involves using a weight 60-85% of the 1RM and exploding as hard as humanly possible on each repetition, trying to blow the bar through the roof with each upward exertion. A simple, but effective concept, Hatfield has claimed that powerlifters who take on the CAT philosophy of training often tack a whopping 100lbs on their squat in 3 months. Perhaps even more pertinent to the readers of this article, Hatfield claims that basketball players will improve their vertical leaps by 5-6 inches by adopting the method.
Dr. Hatfield had a good point when he told athletes to explode as hard as possible on each rep. Who wouldn’t want an increased squat and vertical leap?
Why is CAT so Effective?
Traditional lifting in the concentric (up) phase purposefully slows the movement down as an athlete reaches the top of the lift in order to keep the bar from flying off of the shoulders/out of the hands, etc. Over time, this can teach the nervous system bad habits.
Another great reason to explode as hard as possible is to improve the efficiency of athlete when converting the energy stored in the down phase to the up phase of the lift. The best athletes in terms of jump and sprint performance are very good at reversing the eccentric and concentric phases of movement. In the weight room I work in, we have an air powered Jump machine with a power readout measured in Watts. To get a high power readout, an athlete must be good at reversing the downward motion to upward in an instant. I have found that many of my track athletes score extremely high on the machine due to their instant reversals of direction. In the same vein, exploding hard on each lift will help an athlete’s speed of reversal.
Putting it Together
These two powerful training methods can be manifested in many forms. Strength coaches have formulated quite a few more ways to do lifts than simple up-and-down repetitions performed at the athlete’s preferred pace. We must remember that research has proven that using only one bar speed throughout the course of a training program will not yield optimal strength gains, but there must be variability. How does that variability exist?
- First, eccentric tempos can vary from fast downward drops, all the way to super-slow 30 second lowerings (but will average between fast drops and 5 second lowerings).
- Concentric phases can either be explosive (for CNS training) or controlled upward motions.
I don’t recommend spending much time moving slow on concentric phases, however, you will see elite strength coaches such as Poliquin having athletes perform 5 second concentrics from time to time. An easy rule to follow however, when you want to get strong, spend more time slowing down the eccentric phase, and when you want to get fast, get explosive with the bar. There are a myriad of possibilities and more advanced ways to program, but as a starting point, it really is that simple. Below is a video of me doing some 5 second eccentric front squats, and I have attached a tendo-unit to the bar measuring my power, and helping me strive for powerful upward phases.
Recommendations
If you are interested in these concepts, I would highly recommend the following 3 books:
Triphasic Training: Cal Dietz
Special Strength Manual for Coaches: Verkhoshansky
The Best Sports Training Book Ever!: Brad Nuttal (remember Inno-sport?)
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