Understanding Resistance Training

Resistance training may be one of the most misunderstood topics in fitness and performance. There's plenty of misinformation out there on the inter-webs so let's look at some common myths and misconceptions regarding resistance training.

• Lifting weights will not make women bulky or "manly".
  • This is a common one that I hear all the time and frankly isn't true. It's almost impossible for women to get "bodybuilder bulky" from strength training because they don't produce enough testosterone to support that amount of muscle building, so to get to that level there typically needs to be some form of supplementation to get that amount of muscle building.
• Resistance training makes you slow.
  • I get this from my young track athletes who are just starting out their journey of athletic development. It's been thought that resistance training will make you slow and this isn't the case. To go sprint faster you need to put more force into the ground, so strength training is necessary for speed or power athletes.
• Girls shouldn't lift heavy weights.
  • Every time I have my track girls I see them not wanting to grab anything heavier than an 8 lb dumbbell when they can clearly go much heavier. This comes back to the false notion of them not wanting to get bulky, but to get strong you have to lift heavy weights and progress to heavier weights as you get stronger.
• A good workout will leave you exhausted and sweaty at the end of it.
  • This is something I get from parents, that their kids aren't tired enough at the end of a session, or that they rested too much to get a good workout in. While it may come from good intentions, this "no pain, no gain" thinking that has surrounded fitness and performance training has gone on too long. For high intensity work (max strength, speed, power) there needs to be plenty of rest time so that the athlete can perform to their abilities. While there is a time and place for exhausting workouts they should be used sparingly depending on the goals of the individual.
• You'll see results immediately.
  • I sincerely hope no one truly believes this. For physical changes to occur with resistance training it takes generally 6-8 weeks of consistent training. Before this, you'll see increases in strength, coordination, and power but these are primarily neurological improvements and the physical changes begin to show soon after this. The key with this is that you have to be consistent to see improvements.
• Endurance athletes don't need resistance training.
  • This topic has gained a lot of attention recently and many endurance coaches still won't budge from the way they've always done things. The truth is that resistance training helps stave off injuries, improves running economy and can make you faster. This works because your muscles have now been stimulated to a level that allowed them to fire in a more efficient manner that wasn't happening with just running, cycling, swimming. The benefits of adding resistance training are very clear for endurance athletes and should be part of every training plan.

Training Equipment, What’s Really Necessary?

In plenty of gyms and training centers there seems to be an emphasis on getting the latest and greatest training equipment. Whether that’s spending thousands on high speed treadmills, splurging on a vertimax, or getting the latest and greatest pulley system. While every piece of equipment has its pros and cons and is be best used for certain situations, in my opinion this is putting the cart before the horse.

Call me crazy, but I’d rather put emphasis on coaching and proper technical knowledge of exercise physiology and biomechanics instead of on equipment. By gaining a deeper understanding of exercise science, every piece of equipment is just a tool to use and can be manipulated in any way to get the adaptation your looking for. Treadmills are great, but running on ground is better most of the time. Pulley systems allows you to do a lot of different things, but a set of resistance bands a harness and some creativity can accomplish a lot of the same things at a fraction of the cost.

Classical strength training equipment (barbells, dumbbells, etc...) a little bit of space and knowledge of biomechanics is a great combination to get an extremely versatile strength training experience, that can accomplish just about any goal a person has at a fraction of the cost of other more expensive items. And while this may seem like a hate article on expensive equipment, it’s rather a questioning of why would you purchase it in the first place? Are you able to safely and effectively accomplish the same goal with other means? Could that money be used elsewhere on upgrading your current equipment and getting higher quality weights that will last years if maintained properly, or even on furthering your education to gain a deeper understanding of how to use what you currently have?

While I have no problem with expensive equipment, but outside of one on one training and very small groups, it effectively creates a back log of athletes during training because getting multiple pieces often isn’t feasible, and the time spent funneled at one piece of equipment could probably be better used elsewhere.

Ultimately, the means and methods used to get a certain adaptations are up to the coach, but in my opinion, I think we should try to keep it as simple as we can, and always keep the goal the goal. 

Why You Should Invest In A Performance Coach

I get it, why would you want to pay a large amount of money to have a coach, when you can get a gym membership for less than $20 a month and maybe just hop in a few classes every now and again. Or you can take to the internet and find the latest and greatest workout from your favorite fitness celeb on Instagram and you too can get in the best shape of your life by copying exactly what they say they do (heavy sarcasm here if you can't feel it).

But, this doesn't always work. More often than not, you may not know how to properly perform the exercises. Or maybe you don't have the mobility or strength to get into those advanced positions they so gracefully display. This also doesn't account for what your personal goals are, or how much time you will need to accomplish them. 

Let's say that you're one of the lucky ones though, you're able to fully execute the exercises and can do so well enough to not hurt yourself. And let's say that you also are able to stick with the program for more than a few days, and you actually get through a couple weeks of training. And maybe you even got to see some results after this, but now what? Likely after four weeks or so you'll plateau and stop seeing progress even though you're doing everything they did. Now that's only if you're lucky, more realistically, you will probably end up getting extremely sore the first few workouts and this will deter most people. Or you may stick it out and complete a few weeks of the program but see absolutely no results from it. Either way, you're not where you want to be and it sucks. The reason is that without close monitoring and programming, you will either not have enough of a stimulus to reach your goals, or you may receive too much and it'll absolutely crush you, which could ultimately put you further away from your goal.

But with a structured program, provided by a qualified professional, that adapts to your needs and goals you will see much more success than compared to a cookie cutter program off the internet. In addition to receiving immediate feedback regarding technique, modifications that suit your needs, and a base of knowledge on how to properly structure training sessions, there is the accountability factor. Because anyone with access to the internet and fifteen spare minutes can grab a free training program online that promises them their best self in 30 days, no one sticks with it. This low barrier to exercise programs is what derails many, because there was no effort in finding that program, they're not invested in getting better. They'll tell their friends that they want to change or reach this goal, but won't put any skin in the game. This is by far the biggest upside to investing in a performance coach. Having to report to someone and putting your money where your mouth is, will work miracles in keeping you consistent and on track to reach your goals.

So stop just settling for doing one workout every other week and having to start over each time, invest in a coach now to truly see progress towards your goals!

Sign up now with my remote coaching services for individualized training plans and nutritional guidance designed to get you  results.

Are You Training What You Think You're Training?

Bigger, Faster, Stronger.

These three words are yelled from strength and sport coaches all over the country when talking about what they want they're strength and conditioning program to accomplish, but when the rubber meets the road and athletes begin training, are they actually training what the coaches think they're training? One thing that I've noticed a lot lately is that many coaches will claim to be training aspect of physical performance, but either because of how they set the session up, or by failing to make sure the athlete is recovered enough, they end up not doing what they think they're doing. Because anyone can get someone tired and make them feel like throwing up, or like they had a "good workout", this does not mean that the individual got faster, stronger, or any more powerful because of that session. Very rarely in a progressive training program will an athlete feel like they've just gotten their ass kicked, and rather it will feel like they're resting way more than they think they should. This is because to truly improve performance, you have to respect the rest that these qualities demand in training, and the execution of training has to be the highest priority, with a quality over quantity mindset, instead of always just trying to do more.

Sprinting Basics

Most sports have a few things in common, one of these commonalities is that you can never be too fast. In fact being faster than your competitors correlates well with getting more scoring opportunities in games. But before going on any further let’s define what speed is, for most sports it is how fast an athlete can sprint at maximal speed. 

Sprinting, is a highly technical skill that has been determined to be an outcome of stride length and stride frequency. The basic premise is that the longer your stride length, this will allow you to cover more distance and will help you be faster, and for stride frequency, the shorter time you take between each stride, the faster you will be able to sprint. Stride length is primarily determined by limb lengths and motor control and typically is optimized once the athlete begins to learn the skill that is sprinting. So while this is a determinant of speed, there is little to be done to improve it once the pattern has been set. Stride frequency is based on two factors, flight time and ground contact time, and commonly is trained by teaching athletes to quickly “turn over” and move their legs as fast as possible. While this may make sense at first glance, a deeper dive into the subject shows that flight time, no matter if it’s measured from Olympic level athletes or your average grandma remains relatively unchanged. In fact when studies on stride frequency are done, the one commonality among elite level sprinters is that they get on and off the ground the fastest which is the main factor that can be modified to improve maximal sprinting speed. So while it may be common practices to ask your athletes to swing their feet faster to be faster, this actually doesn’t determine sprint speed and instead the focus should be on shortening the ground contact times.

With emphasis being on shortening ground contact times, there are a few ways to do it. First and foremost, proper body positioning must be maintained. The pelvis should be slightly posteriorly rotated (butt tucked down) as this sets the body up for proper positioning at touch down, as well as not allowing the swing leg hip into hyperextension. By being in proper position at touch down, with the stance leg under the hips, the ground contact time is reduced because the leg effectively acts as a spring and gets up and off the ground without any extra time needed to get into position, but when an athlete reaches out in front of them, this may seem like it will increase stride length and will improve sprinting, but in reality it increases braking forces at the foot and increases the amount of time needed to get into proper position and then off the ground. 

A second important training factor for improving sprint performance is to get strong. There are clear correlations of an athletes squat one rep max and their sprint time being faster up to about a strength level of 2x body weight. Another reason this is important is because during sprinting, forces of up to 5x body weight are experienced at every ground contact, and that’s only on one leg, so increasing the amount of force you can put into the ground in a very short period of time is essential to sprinting faster. Strength training also increases the stiffness of your tendons, the ability to withstand deformation, which is essential to being able to withstand the forces associated with sprinting.

Ultimately while sprinting is a highly technical skill, the major determinant of success and running really really fast is how quickly you can get off the ground. Making sure that you are in proper position at touch down, getting strong are some of the best ways to aid the effort of getting fast, instead of spending time trying to move your legs faster or increase your stride length which may ultimately lead to decreases in performance.

Sports Specific Training

Sports specific training has been around for a while now and promises to get an athlete better at their sport by training the positions and actions that they will use in games. While this sounds like a great idea at first, the extent to which it has been taken has reasons to cause concern, as many gyms and fancy equipment merely mimic the sport action, but just add some form of weight or resistance to it. This is all based on the SAID (specific adaptations to imposed demands) principle, or more commonly called the principle of specificity, which shows that we only adapt to the things that we are exposed to. 

However, many of the people pushing sports specific training are there to develop physical capacities, not sports skills and tactical training. Because of this, what is taught during these training sessions may contradict what the athletes sport coach may want. Also, if too much resistance is added, then this can alter the biomechanics of the movement and can ultimately interfere with the learning process and prove to set the athlete back instead of making them better.

To add to this, many of the methods used in sports specific training are primarily focused on moving fast and developing power. While power development should be part of every athlete's strength program, without a sufficient base of strength the athlete will not adapt as well to the power training and will be leaving some chips on the table. In fact, general strength training can raise an athlete's power to a greater extent than just power training, until the athlete has reached sufficient maximal strength levels.

This shows that general preparation is the foundation for specific adaptations. Without this foundation of sound movement skills and strength, the athlete may be at an increased risk of injury. And on the flip side of that, by only training "sports specifically", you put the athlete at risk of overuse injuries by only working through the same motor patterns that they use all the time in competition.

Ultimately, a trainer or performance coach is there to develop the physical capacities so the athlete can be more successful in their sport, not just add weights while blindly thinking that it will transfer better to competition. At the present, the best form of sports specific training is a holistic program that gets an athlete stronger, faster, and more powerful, while minimizing the risk of injuries that could possibly occur from overuse. Outside of this, skill development should be left to the sport coaches to build on top of the general prep that has been done in the gym.