Why do sprinters lift weights

I am blessed now to work with Chase Madison under the guidance of coach Mike Turk and our head strength and conditioning coach Jim Zielinski, all of whom not only support the work we do in the weight room here, but believe in it as well. Weight room topics of conversation always seem to turn into a debate. However, no one has reinvented the wheel in quite some time, and similarly most weight room protocols were created decades and sometimes even centuries ago.

What has changed significantly, though, especially as of late, is the accessibility of these resources, and the increased number of people trying to prove why their methods work. The human body is a collaboration of many systems, and every practitioner knows that every athlete is different. Many coaches have a success story that is attributed to some magical workout or exercise, when in reality, a full picture is needed to properly evaluate it. The arms race of the sport performance and sport science industry has muddled the picture even further.

Plenty of strength coaches have begun to market themselves and create catchy names for their systems. This coupled with social media has turned many coaches more focused on being marketers and entrepreneurs than trying to improve sport performance. I may be the old man yelling at the clouds at this point, but from what I have seen over the years, most of the things people think are cool or new on social media are the opposite of that; they are small parts of an already-existing training program that people package as a miracle drug for the masses.

When I send my athletes into the weight room, they are leaving the track. It is a weight room. It is not a track room. Things that go on in the weight room do not have to look like the meter dash or the long jump. The goal of the weight room is to supplement what is happening on the track to help reach your key performance indicators. Weight room velocity is another topic of debate.

I have consistently heard bad opinions about athletes not being able to move a bar in the weight room fast enough to be relevant to track speeds and velocities. People will muse about Carl Lewis not lifting and directly apply that to their rationale to keep their athletes out of the weight room. I am lucky enough to have a Vmaxpro along with some other velocity-measuring devices available to me, but I have never once looked at any of our velocity tracking devices and thought to myself, Man, that is close to our top-end speed.

We simply use technology to make sure we are on track with the factors we are looking for. While I am not looking for weight room movements that mirror those on the track, I am looking for metrics that will improve performance. Power development, absolute strength, and rate of force development are the main contributors to movements that will occur on the track.

Yet if you do not have a well-rounded system that teaches mechanics, employs intensity and plyometrics, and builds track-related skills such as acceleration development, absolute speed, and speed endurance properly, none of this matters. I am in the position of training athletes with experience.

While I often joke that some people who arrive in college with decent marks act like they just began training, the obvious truth is that they have more mature bodies and have generally been competing for some time. We start power development from day one. Even if I was working with younger athletes, I would do the same thing. Power development pairs well with acceleration training and is the major factor in overcoming inertia.

We use Olympic lifts in the weight room to help develop this along with our multi-jumps, multi-throws, and intense sprinting. We utilize this all year to some degree. I liken it to my North Star, as no matter how far we are away from home base, I always return to power training through Olympic lifting protocols.

Power development lays the groundwork to build strength for the rest of the year. The nice thing about Olympic lifts are there are basically no short-term or long-term negative effects. The fatigue or loss of coordination that can come from bilateral static movements is nonexistent with these lifts. While peak power is gone after step three, we are still trying to move the ceiling on this all the time. Absolute strength is one of the more debated topics I find on my timeline.

I believe my weight room approach could best be described as meat and potatoes. I say that because we will only do two-to-three lifts per day on our main lifts that have major central nervous system involvement. We get in and get out. We squat. I mainly use the squat to build up to absolute strength development. Early in the year, we have protocols that use adequate recovery times to maintain power outputs throughout the lifts.

Because we load these pretty adequately throughout the year, I keep things simple. Elastic strength is the ability of tissues to absorb, store, and release energy.

The more energy these tissues release, the faster and more powerful the movement. But instead of just looking at the actions of muscles, consider that high levels of elastic strength can be produced by connective tissues, especially tendons. Tendons should not be thought of as simply rigid cables that connect muscle to bone.

In fact, kangaroos have long tendons on their hind legs that can store up to 10 times more energy than their muscles. These animals are especially efficient at producing movement because tendons do not need oxygen to work and do not fatigue. Another concern is the extensive use of foam rolling , which may reduce the elastic qualities of connective tissues such as tendons and fascia.

In addition to questionable sports medicine practices, Charniga believes that focusing on partial-range exercises, such as parallel squats rather than full squats and power cleans rather than full cleans, may cause tendons to lose their elasticity and thus make them more susceptible to injury. The same can be said of isometrics. Russian sports scientist A.

Getting back to sprinting, there are many weight training exercises that can improve elastic strength. To avoid excess knee flexion after the foot touches the ground, squats and lunges are good because they emphasize eccentric i.

To decrease the time between leg flexion and leg extension, barbell and hex bar squat jumps are effective. There is much more to be said on this subject, but these exercises are a good place to start. There are also special flywheel-type resistance training machines that are ideal for developing elastic strength.

Some of these machines provide the optimal amount of eccentric load at high velocity during dynamic movements. More people are reading SimpliFaster than ever, and each week we bring you compelling content from coaches, sport scientists, and physiotherapists who are devoted to building better athletes.

Please take a moment to share the articles on social media, engage the authors with questions and comments below, and link to articles when appropriate if you have a blog or participate on forums of related topics. He is a former strength coach for the U. This book examines the use of relative and elastic strength training methods to develop physical superiority for women.

It is available through Amazon. Great article. One question. If the years between 8 and 13 are the best years to start developing speed and quickness, are we then teaching these kids the exercises atributef to these qualities starting at that age?

The age of specialization depends upon the sport. Citing German sports scientist Dietrich Harre, initial specialization training for technical sports can begin at age 10, but in endurance sports that age is More specifically, here are some sports and what Harre says should be their initial stage of specialization:.

I suspect that this is probably true. It is a theory I have had for some time. In general reading, a fitness leader accreditation course, and University studies on relevant topics I incessantly have encountered the pronouncement that squats should be parallel because the amount of pressure measured in the knee joint becomes large if the angle goes below parallel.

The knowledge could have some application for people recovering from injuries but, in my view, does not provide a justification for doing a partial range of motion in the exercise.

The same people who teach that also teach contradictory things such as just about every other exercise should be conducted over a full range of motion to avoid a reduction in flexibility and increased injury risk. Great article! I just wished I had written and published it! I remember attending a seminar with Pierre Roy, the former Canadian Olympic Weight Lifting coach, and he would give similar examples of his weight lifter out sprinting some of Canadas elite sprinters for the first meters.

I remember the Swann vs Oldfield race. He raced Evelyn Ashford as well. We were blown away along with some of the NFL athletes that we were training at the time. I shared this on my face book. Keep up the good work. To answer your question, consider that a technical formula to determine relative strength is to divide your absolute strength by the cross section of the muscle.

Here is another way to look at it:. Weightlifting formulas take this into consideration. There are many formulas, such as the Siff formula named after my good friend, the late Mel Siff , the Wilks formula, Sinclair formula, the Schwartz-Malone formula, and so on.

That would equal a Siff score of Now John adds 5 kilos 11 pounds of bodyweight, but still squats kilos. Now his score is Thus, his relative strength is lower. Now John, still weighing kilos pounds , squats kilos pounds. His score is now His relative strength is still lower than when he weighed kilos and was squatting kilos. Now, John, still weighing kilos, increases his squat to kilos pounds. His score has jumped to However, if John, at kilos bodyweight, were to squat kilos , his formula would be Thus, to improve his relative strength, if John adds 5 kilos of bodyweight and squats kilos, he needs to increase his squat by 9 kilos to increase his relative strength.

What you find with weightlifters is that, at a certain point in their peak lifting ability, they usually stop gaining bodyweight and will compete in the same weight class for several years — yet still become considerably stronger.

This is because they use relative strength training methods. Track training and competition should dominate. Prior to the start of the competition, take days break from heavyweights to work at the end of strength and power phase while maintaining your track work. Weight training in the competition phase should play essentially a maintenance role. Keep basic health, safety, and injury-prevention tips in mind as you move through your sprint training program.

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