The more you learn...

It seems as though so much of the training information today has evolved over the past 20-30 years, but sometimes I wonder how much of that is true. I know expert strength Coach Charles Poliquin has said that information doubles every 18 months (or something like that). And maybe that's true.

But what I notice is that what's new today is really just another interpretation of something that has been around for a long time. For example, training rep speed has been debated for what seems like forever. Go slow, go fast, go moderate speeds, count your rep speed, don't count it...how can this all make sense? Dr. Fred Hatfield, the first man to officially squat over 1,000 pounds in competition, has said for decades now that speed is the most importnat factor in all of sports. I couldn't agree more. Just ask any coach. Charlie Weiss, Notre Dame's head football coach, stated yesterday in his team's post-game conference (after a blowout by Georgia Tech) that his team just wasn't prepared for the "speed of the game". And that was obvious to those of us watching.

I'm getting a bit off track. What this means to me, is that rep speed should be an important concern to any aspiring athlete or trainer. Anecdotal evidence suggests, and research confirms, that lifting at faster speeds imposes more stress (read force) on the working muscles. This leads us into the force/velocity graph that some of you may have seen before. At low weights, velocity is high and vice versa. Remember the last time you attempted to lift a 1 rep max weight? Pretty damn slow, huh?

But if I loaded the bar with 40% of that weight, you could lift it much faster, probably even throw it into the air. But the force is much lower, since the amount of weight (40% of max) is too light. So there must be a compromise, right?

Thankfully there is. Dr. Hatfield noted decades ago that striking the right balance between the mass and the speed optimizes force production. Louie Simmons of Westside Barbell fame has expanded upon these concepts a bit further for powerlifters, but the main point remains. Lifting in the range of 55-85% of your maximum allows you to keep the mass high enough to stimulate the muscles optimally, but also enables you to impart high speed upon the bar. And there is the key: high speed. This is where Dr. Hatfield's "compensatory acceleration" concept comes into play. Attempting to constantly accelerate the weight, even at the lighter percentages, allows the athlete to impart maximum force at all phases of the concentric movement. Which leads to faster eccentric movements, thus increasing the resulting concentric movement more.

The point of all this is that faster lifting speeds will yield greater dividends in muscle and speed-strength performance. I'll touch upon these ideas more in future posts.