This past weekend I was down in Indianapolis for the 3rd annual Performance Enhancement Seminar. I was there for the first one and out of the country for the second. I was a little disappointed in the fact that I thought it would be held at the IFAST gym, but was held in the Hilton. Mens Health ranked it a top 10 gym in the country recently.
First up was Mike Robertson with a topic about Single leg training. Mike broke down single leg training, some progressions that you can employ and also explained why you still need to do double leg training, ie. don't give up your deads and squats. Truth is everyone should be doing some type of single leg work. Your stabilizers will never get as strong as they can without them and it's also a valuable tool in balancing out strength discrepancies in each leg.
2nd up was Lee Taft. Lee is a speed coach and presented a topic on lateral conditioning. Proper form, looking at different cues for your athletes to use. His favorite saying is "load to explode." Simply put, proper foot and ankle will load the knee, which loads the hip, which propels the athlete. He has some interesting low box (4ich) drills. I'm not completely sold on the carryover aspect for actual sport. I think much of what he talks about would have application for combine testing, 40 yard dash, pro shuttle. Where you practice over and over exact steps to maximize performance. But in a chaos situation, an actual game, I'm not sure.
3rd was Evan Osar. Evan is a really smart chiropractor and trainer out of Chicago. I don't buy a lot of peoples products, but I bought Evan's Lower Extremity Conditioning manual. He had some really interesting information on the hip. His topic covered bracing the corset, top of diaphragm to pelvic floor, to free up the hips. His views were stabilize the lumbar spine and the hips free up. A little opposite of working so much on hip mobility to achieve lumbar stability.
4th was Pat Rigbsy. Pat is a business guy and had a few pointers on how to get better coin for your time. Bootcamps, networking group training. The one thing I took away was spend your time doing what your good at.
5th was Bill Hartman. I thought this was the most interesting talk of the day. Bill has been called the smartest man in Fitness. His talk was on energy development for field athletes. He had some really controversial points that makes you stop and think. One was slow twitch hypertrophy will help explosive athletes. Hmmm....never thought of that. The other was incorporating some training in the sub 120bpm training. Glycolitic training can be reached in around 3 weeks. Tabatta isn't as effective as you think, and went on to break down the original tabatta study. Overall an awesome presentation.
Last was Brent Jones. Brent is a kettlebell guy. The one thing I took away was an arm bar for mobility. I will try to get a video posted up of this exercise as I think it will be helpful for glenohumeral stability and thoracic mobility. He also reawoken my desire to get better with my Indian clubs. I bought some 1890 original Spaulding Indian clubs when I was in chiropractic school. They are some of the first "weights" and they train using circular patterns. Pretty cool stuff.
Overall, this was a pretty good seminar. I look at things this way. Did I learn at least one thing that will change the way I treat patients? Did I learn one thing that will change the way I train athletes? If I did, my tool box got bigger, which means I get better, which means it was a success.
6 comments:
slow-twitch hypertrophy can help explosive athletes? Interesting. Do you agree? How? Where can I find more research?
Hey EAMSLIDER.....I think I recognize your profile pick! lol....hows life?
I think it really applies more to explosive field sports where there is a repeated exposure to high powered activities. Example being a running back that has to carry the ball all out 20x a game over a three hour period.
For a bobsled athlete that needs 4 seconds of energy every 2 hours, not so much. The only place I can see it helping is push championships.
This is just my vague recollection so I could be off, but there was a couple points on slow twitch. The difference between the two fibers as far as speed is really really small and you're using both to some degree all the time. I think that slow twitch accounts for a larger percentage of your total strength and slow twitch can fire for longer. So slow-twitch hypertrophy can give you much higher maximal strength even in explosive movements.
I could see that- but I would still be interested in how much slow twitch fiber hypertrophy a football player would need- especially per position. Interesting concept though and interested to learn more!
Life is good btw- ready for the season to start! How's life in MI? Hope all is great!
Allen- so do you remember how he mentioned you would train to increase slow twitch hypertrophy while training fast twitch muscle fibers as well? Interested to hear more about the "small difference between the two fibers in speed" as we're traditionally taught- fast twitch = faster speeds and people with greater percentage of fast twitch muscle fibers are faster.
I guess how I understood it and I could be mistaken. Everything you do, from a 6 second push to a 6 min mile all your systems ATP-CR, glycolytic, aerobic, are all working. So if your slow twitch get stronger, they will contribute more so the fast twitch (even though working) are working less. So you can stay maximal effort more times or for longer. (look up bioenergetics EAM if interested)
This is understood though, that you have to do traditional Max Effort type of training, ie.big weights, fast movement, sprints, plyos.
The point was to do in addition to this, some slow twitch training. The example being 120 heart rate for 30-60 min 2x a week. This doesn't have to be a slow jog.
We used to do the full Cook Warm up. Remember how long that took?!? That would be an example of slow twitch hypertrophy training.
Allen thoughts?
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