Five Myths About Training Athletes
Erick Minor
http://www.t-nation.com/readArticle.do?id=2413056
I found the following part interesting:
"Myth #3: “Olympic lifts and plyometrics are necessary to improve rate of force development.”
Countless strength coaches believe that in order to be fast you must train fast. That’s why Olympic lifts are staples in athletic training.
I don’t see it that way. Rate of force development is movement-specific, involving a combination of reaction time, maximal strength, flexibility, coordination, and familiarity with the task. Of those qualities, at least two are somewhat genetic — you either have great coordination and reaction time, or you don’t. They’re among the least trainable qualities athletes need to succeed.
On the other hand, strength is the most trainable of all athletic qualities. That’s where coaches need to focus in the weight room. And I’ll be even more specific: In my experience, the eccentric strength of the antagonist muscles is what limits the ability of the prime movers to produce speed and power.
Take a pitcher in baseball. The more eccentric strength he has in the external rotators of his shoulder, the more pitches he’ll be able to throw, and the more often he’ll be able to throw them.
With sprinters, I’ve had a lot of success by emphasizing the eccentric strength of the hamstrings. The hamstrings have a dual role in sprinting: they’re the prime movers — the agonists — during propulsion. That is, they combine with the other posterior-chain muscles to make you go. But when you’re recovering from that part of the running motion, they’re the antagonists to the hip-flexor muscles, which are responsible for pulling your thigh up toward your chest. We call this the “late swing phase” of the sprint cycle, and it’s when most hamstring injuries occur.
In other words, the hamstrings are most likely to get injured when they’re working eccentrically, as the antagonists to the hip-flexor muscles. My job as a coach is to increase the eccentric strength of the hamstrings in the sprinters I train.
With Darvis Patton, I like to use a semi-stiff-legged deadlift with a 40X1 tempo — four seconds to lower the weight to the floor, no pause, an explosive lift, and a one-second pause at the top. He can do five reps with 405 pounds, which is pretty impressive for a drug-free athlete who’s six feet tall and weighs just 174 pounds. We also use trap-bar deadlifts and podium deadlifts, but no box jumps, power cleans, or power snatches.
It’s certainly worked for Darvis. In 2006 his best time in the 100 meters was 10.27 seconds. This year it’s 9.89."