Post 39: Sprint Training

          As if anyone cares, I wrote an article back in February of last year on Speed Training. I always find it comforting when I can look back on things that I knew in the past... and realize I've learned since then. Recently I've been reading the eBook from Bret Contreras and Chris Beardsley, The Optimal Athlete: Sprinting. Although not everything I've read so far is exactly news to me, they've done a nice job of selecting studies to review that make more sense of what are sometimes abstract concepts.

          In the beginning, Bret makes a statement regarding the nature of scientific research. If you know anything about Contreras, you know he loves science. I would agree that sometimes it is frustrating to read studies that always end with "more research is needed," but as Bret mentions in the beginning of this review, it is wisest to stick to the common threads throughout the research.

          Since this blog is really more of a place for me to keep all my thoughts and stuff, I'm going to throw down a few things that I found to be of particular interest. Especially relevant to training athletes (most specifically sprinters) for speed. If that helps you great, if not, whatever.



Concept 1: Net horizontal propulsive forces are of greater importance than total ground reactive forces (including vertical.)

          A while back I recall reading an interview in which Bret talks about this French kid Christophe Lemaitre. In the interview, it was discussed that he tested with unusually high horizontally-oriented GRF's (ground reactive forces.)

          For those of you who are not familiar with the terminology, GRF's are the resulting force from the ground to the object in contact with it. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, etc. Therefore the GRF is equal to the force applied to the ground, and by virtue of the mechanics, it has a vector too.


          So in order for two things to happen: a) A human to travel forwards, b) A human to continue forward, force must be applied by the support leg both horizontally (to accomplish part a) and vertically to buy time for the trail leg to recover and enter the late swing phase before contact. What is interesting however, is that not only is it important to be able to apply a great deal of force quickly, but that the studies consistently demonstrate greater importance of the amount of force applied horizontally. Vertical GRF's are really only necessary to give the athlete time to prepare the subsequent stride and replace the next step in optimal location on the track. So with this in mind, coupled with specificity, it is recommended by the authors that sprinters use exercises which train strength and power in a more horizontal plane - Like Bret's famous Hip Thrusts.

Concept 2: F-V qualities of muscle are of greater importance than absolute strength.

          The Force-Velocity relationship is basically an illustration demonstrating that we move heavy weights slow and light weights fast. More specifically, different qualities fall on different parts of the force velocity cuve. As their names might suggest, Absolute Strength would fall far to the right, where load is greatest and speed is negligible, and speed-strength would fall high-left where muscle shortening velocity is highest, and load lowest. However, if you note the dotted line (as always) there is an optimal range for power output.

          Think about bench pressing. If you can take 135 pounds and throw it off your chest, doing reps will be fast, but not require a high percentage of your absolute strength. If you can take 300 pounds and move it slowly, you have likely taxed your absolute strength, but have not even begun to approach appreciable velocity. So although different for everyone, there is an optimal range for power output where the force produced and the velocity at which the muscle contracts to do so are in perfect balance. This gives you the greatest value for Power (Force / Time.) If we maximize both factors, we get the greatest product.

          Having said all that, consider that foot-to-ground contact times in sprinting are easily under a second in duration. I think I recall Louie Simmons writing that maximal contractions cannot be achieved before 0.4 seconds, so the ability to produce a LOT of force FAST is of paramount importance.

Concept 3: Vertical and joint stiffness. 

          As I believe I've mentioned before, energy leaks in the kinetic chain (although abstract in notion) are a very real thing. You miss lifts when you let your air out, good morning a back squat, or generally don't "stay tight" because you've allowed an energy leak. Force is best transferred through rigid segments, this includes everything from the forearm, to the trunk, to the core, to the femur and lower leg. This is best and most memorably demonstrated through the old "ever try to push a rope?" trick. Now that we've discussed desirable muscular contractile qualities, and the direction in which we should apply force, I'm going to say how it's best transferred to the track. If your body can produce these forces, you would be remiss to not effectively transfer the greatest possible percentage of them to the external environment.

          Stiffness as defined by the ability of an object to resist deformation when encountering forces, is important for sprinters. Generation of adequate force is the responsibility of the hip extensors and knee flexors, among other things. Transfer of force from body to ground involves some stiffening of the ankle, knee, hip and even trunk.

          Nothing operates at 100% efficiency, and the body is no exception, both mechanically and metabolically. If a sprinter is already limited by the amount of time (sub 1s.) to apply force to the track, and additionally by his or her own genetic capacity to produce force quickly via muscular contraction, it seems unfair that we lose even more energy/force when it can be dissipated by hypermobile joints.

There are a few thoughts for today.

Alex

Post 38: A lesson in skepticism, and learning from your mistakes.

          "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." - Douglas Adams

          The above quote is one that I came across about a year ago, and remains one of my favourites to this day. Recently, I have had the opportunity to apply this to my life a couple of times and it saved me some serious headaches. This also applies greatly to training both as a coach AND as an athlete.

          First, a quick story. Last night, my girlfriend and I booked a trip to Memphis to go to the Beale Street Music Festival in May. Admittedly, I've been talking about going since April of last year, and if it weren't for her, I don't know that I'd have had it in me to finally just book it and go! Anyways, I've been to Memphis before for a baseball tournament and had a great time. We played great, and finished well in a national showcase tournament, but one of the things we didn't prepare for was the area. One of our vans (and a bunch of other vehicles there) were broken into during a game and we lost wallets, gloves, all kinds of things. So when we were looking at hotels last night, I said to her a few times that I'd rather pick somewhere that she and I could feel safe. I knew that if we were going to drive 15 hours to get there, we wouldn't want anything else to worry about, and especially if we were going to be carrying passports, cash etc. So we booked a place with no cancellation fees so we could at least have a backup plan, and no penalty if we changed our minds later.

         Of course, the internet is both a blessing and a curse, it just depends how you use it. When we searched the hotel, obviously the people who are trying to sell it to you will have nothing but the best things to say about it. Additionally, any affiliate websites will do the same - they will make a percentage for promoting if you choose to pay them. The trouble with this is you will find what you search for. The information you usually can benefit from is from places you don't search for. Like the 0/5 star review you might find buried in the last part of the advertising website. (I don't think people searching for travel advice to Memphis will find my story here as quickly as they'd find a Super 8 in a bad part of town.)  So, heeding the advice given at the start of this post, I decided to search for poor reviews, things WRONG with the place we're going. Luckily, I haven't found anything yet, but will continue to search until I feel that I've exhausted resources.

         So, what's all this got to do with training? Well, those who know me are aware that I'm not the biggest advocate of "strictly cardio," CrossFit, and a host of other modalities, but for the sake of brevity, I'll stop at those two. Whether a trainer/coach or an athlete is searching for something to commit to or try for the first time, your search will probably produce a myriad of results that claim Training System _______ is the best of the best. No question about it. But an experienced coach or athlete knows all too well that for an industry that seems so black and white, there is an awful lot of gray area. Here's a great article that got me going on this subject. If you search CrossFit or Cardio Training or something like that, you'll likely get 50 results that praise it for every 1 that bashes it. Instead, like my lesson from travelling, why not search for what's wrong with it, and THEN make a decision?

          I also bought a new cellphone recently. I'm not the type to make investments like this without researching, so I scoured forums that compared the phone I liked to other ones that came out around the same time. As I mentioned above, you'll almost always find what you want to hear, and read things the way you want them to sound (if you read at all.) Ironically, even after all that, I ended up having to get the charging port replaced about a week later - once I searched for ways to fix it on my own, it seemed like everyone and their mother with the same phone were having similar issues. 20/20 hindsight is a bitch.

          So again, how does this apply to training? If you seek out answers based on certain criteria, you will likely hear things the way you want them to sound. People come in to our facility sometimes and ask if we do "CrossFit" type training. I could easily say yea we do, sign up today! But I don't, A) because it's not true, and B) because I hate that stuff. If people want to do that, I would rather not have them in my gym anyways. Instead, if I have the time, I ask them a couple questions about their athletic/training/injury history and give them a bit of a caveat that if you're just trying to lose a few pounds, that might not be the safest choice. In two cases that I can recall explicitly (due to moral victory,) people have actually said, wow thanks for the advice, I think I'd like to start with you guys instead.

         
          Granted, I've sold two memberships on that premise vs. mass marketing that we do crossfit everybody come in... NOW! But if you're serious about what you do, this feels a hell of a lot better than the alternative. It sure makes my job more comfortable as well, I'd rather do what I know will work with certain populations, than try to teach a 30 year old pregnant woman how to do powercleans to failure. I think it's in one of the related videos here. Additionally, I like having people know exactly what they can expect working with me, than have them go and badmouth my work to other people and say I tricked them.

          So whether this helps you make a decision about your training or some other aspect of your life, I hope you found it useful. At least give everything a healthy dose of skepticism and see what it boils down to afterwards.

-Alex