Body parts don't exist in isolation. Every muscle, joint, tendon, and bone is part of a system. Every athletic movement puts this system in motion. Therefore, it is necessary to train the system not the muscle. Compound exercises, movements that require multiple levers and joints to work together, build better and more efficient athletes. Compound exercises engage more muscle groups, which allows you to lift more weight, which translates into faster more consistent progress. Isolation exercises, movements that focus on moving a single joint through a range of motion, target only one muscle group at a time which means you will be lifting less weight and progressing more slowly. What do you think will make you potentially faster, adding 100 pounds to your squat or 10 pounds to your bicep curl?
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Developing each the different energy systems to perform efficiently is the key to building better athletes. In this post I discussed how to address the different energy systems in the weight room. What follows will will be a series of posts that address energy system training on the track for long sprinters, i.e. 400, 600, and even maybe some 800m runners. All running workouts are not created equal. The demands of acceleration are different the demands of speed and are different than the demands of endurance. As a result, I think of these three general categories when designing a running workout.
Within these three general categories, each can be broken down further into subcategories. Conditioning long sprinters will the focus of this post. I came across the below clip today and was dumbfounded. Come on, "How many hours a day do you workout?" This is a stupid question. Do you really think the answer to this question means anything? It's not about how much. More isn't better. Sure it takes a lot of time to get good at something, but for some reason we think that just because we've put in the time should be rewarded. Thankfully, Jason Khalipa (starting at 1:10) had an intelligent answer to such a stupid question. |
AuthorFormer mathematics teacher and track & field coach at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA. Categories
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