You may be seeing a few posts that go back to an idea that I'm thinking about that come from Charlie Weingroff's "Lateralizations and Regressions" DVD as I'm working my way through them currently.
One of the messages that struck home was the idea of load.
"If I have a way of lowering system load...you win."
Say you back squat 405lb, but you front squat 225lb. Both are equally hard. If you choose to front squat, you get equal fitness but have almost cut your system load in 1/2. Now you can front squat 225lb but you can only front squat with two 50lb kettlebells held in the rack position. Both are equally tough for you, but if you choose the kettlebell, you have essentially cut system load in 1/2 again. Now, instead of holding the kettlebells in the rack you hold them in a bottom up position and can only hold 25lb kettlebells. Again, equally hard, but you have once again cut the system load in 1/2.
Very interesting concept to keep fitness, but slash system load.
It's up to you to decide how to implement in your own athletes/patients programming, but it is a cool way to manipulate a few variables.
2 comments:
First off, love this blog. Lots of things I've taken and implemented into my own practice
Second, I think there is definitely diminishing returns to reducing load and difficulty or toughness does not equal effectiveness.
No amount of bottoms up kb squats will give you the joint integrity, bone density, strength and power that a barbell loaded squat or deadlift could.
I think there is definitely a fine line. A sprinter or team sports athlete probably could do with sparing the CNS and system load of back squats or deads and front squats and single leg work or RDL's etc. could suffice. But when you start going to the bottoms up kettlebell stuff you are going to lose a lot of possible adaptation.
Of course a lot of this all depends on your goals as well.
Just my opinion!
Hey Nik thanks for the comment! Yea, I totally agree with you and I don't think that BU KB press will replace putting weight on the bar, but I think it gives perhaps an option to increase frequency and also a way to bring back training after an injury. Like you said as well, when the training is more CNS driven to sprints it's creates a nice balance of perhaps being able to keep strength while energies are directed elsewhere.
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