If you are an athlete or coach, analyze your entire training program to make sure it is sport specific. Check out this key sentence from Tudor Bompa and Gregory Haff’s book Periodization – Theory and Methodology of Training:
“The concept of movement pattern specificity reveals that the type of muscle action, kinematic characteristics (ie. movement patterns), kinetic characteristics (ie. forces, rate of force development, power output), muscle groups activated, and acceleration or velocity characteristics of the movement all contribute to the exercise’s ability to transfer to the sporting activity.”
Your movements in the weight room should never try to replicate sports movements (check out this blog for more on this topic). However, the exercises you choice should have characteristics similar to your sport. You want the exercises to carry over to the playing field otherwise why would you waste your time in the weight room to begin with. Once you begin to understand these scientific principles, it makes sense to incorporate ground-based training (exercises performed in standing positions), Olympic lifts and other high power output exercises, exercises in the full range of motion, and exercises in all planes motion. At the same time, it should begin to make sense why it is not as beneficial to train on machines that control only one movement and usually control the speed of the movement. Not to mention that most machines require the athlete to sit or lay on their back/stomach – that doesn’t look anything like sport!
Train Hard-Train Smart –> it’s not just important to train with intensity, it’s important to train with the correct knowledge too!
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