here is the first few lines from an article chris T did for t-mag. in the article he is refering to the bench press, do (and if so how) do these same concepts apply to sprinting?
Bench Press Battlefield
Manipulate the CNS and Tap Into Hidden Strength!
by Christian Thibaudeau
The Art of War
Think of your body as a vast army made up of many regiments and divisions. This army has great potential; all it needs is the right leadership. For athletes and bodybuilders, the nervous system is the General of this army. It’s the nervous system which directs and coordinates muscular actions. As such, we’re pretty much as strong as our nervous system allows us to be.
What do I mean by “allow”? There are several protective mechanisms which exist in our bodies and these safeguards can greatly impair our efforts to display maximal strength. Some rare cases in which our safeguards are “turned off” — a frail woman lifting a car to save her kid for example — give us an idea about our real strength potential. As one strength coach says, “Your muscles already have the strength to lift a car; they just don’t know it yet!”
The lower the activation threshold of these safeguards, the harder it’ll be for you to produce a large amount of force. This can help explain how seemingly “average looking” individuals can sometimes actually produce more force than bulkier, more muscular people: their safeguards have a very high activation threshold. They might be able to use 70 to 80% of their strength potential while you may only be able to use 40 to 50%.
Many bodybuilders and athletes have a lot of muscle mass, but a very low threshold. This is like having an army with 1,000 soldiers, but only 400 actually willing to fight. On the other hand, another army might only have 800 soldiers, but 700 of them make William Wallace in Braveheart look like a sissy. Obviously the second army will be more effective and efficient. The same is true for you: having a lot of muscles is good, but you have to get your “soldiers” to work for you!
So, how can you motivate your troops? There are several proven methods which may help you increase your capacity to produce force in the gym. Some are long-term solutions while others are short term. A program involving both of these can help you drastically increase your strength potential much faster than you’d have thought possible. These methods involve playing with the reflex actions and the central nervous system (CNS).
It’s quite hard to utterly apply all these concepts to sprinting.
One of those concepts I allready utilise in my training for about the last month. In fact I read many years ago that you can lose as much as 15% of your calf strength (for something like 10 to 20 mins), after stretching/relaxing them. Here’s how I get around that without negatively compramising my warm up. At the side of the track(insde lane), you’ll tend to find a thin girder (about 2in" thick) that goes all the way round the track. I put the balls of my feet on that and with straight legs i bounce up and down using the calf muscles. My heels go lower than my toes so I’m stretching the calf more than what it’s being stretched in sprinting. (after the workout i do much bigger range on the stretch, and a differant stretch). However, becuase I’m bouncing (although ball of foot does not lose contact with girder/prop) it means that I’m not relaxing the calf, rather warming it up and firing it up ready to go. It’s still been stretched enough not to risk injury though. That’s certainly NOT golgi tendon organ disinhibition, rather using it to prevent the calf from losing some of its elastic response at begining of training session from long classical stretches. Much of myn warm up is looking more and more this way. I do some deep bodyweight squats before the speed stuff gets under way, but I still do big range of motion stretches for the hips and thighs before the sprints, not to many though. After the sprint session I’ll lay back and use props, (a wooden beam for example) to hold ny stretches for sometimes more than a minute each stretch.
As for one of the other points, I’m not sure if golgi tendon organ disinhibition would be good to thouroghly work on before a sprint session or not.
As for the antagonist/agonist stuff, I’ve personally not yet thought about incorperating special exercises their as most of our skeletal muscles of course do both the tension and relaxations in sprinting. I’ve allready forgotten half the exact details within the t-mag site on that feature, can’t go on.
Any one else?
The lower the activation threshold of these safeguards, the harder it’ll be for you to produce a large amount of force. This can help explain how seemingly “average looking” individuals can sometimes actually produce more force than bulkier, more muscular people: their safeguards have a very high activation threshold. They might be able to use 70 to 80% of their strength potential while you may only be able to use 40 to 50%.
this is the concept that intrested me the most. thinking along the lines of a world record 100m athlete (with high safegaurds on the track) and only benches 215lbs (low saefgaurd for the weight room).
ive seen it recently in my own gym as some of the local sprinters lift there once or twice a week. 2 guys of equal speed lifting 2 totally different poundages. could this be a contributing factor to “what makes an athlete fast?”
how much does the poundage that one lifts equate to his/her actual speed?
the article talks about similar principles presensted in the book “Power to the People!” by Pavel Tsatsouline
But to use those principles, Pavel emphasizes going through the lifts very slowly
If you use the techniques in the article and your bar speed is slow when lifting, it may help you lift more and get stronger but does that really mean you will get faster?
ThankGod for golgi tendons or we would twist our body apart like gumby. I dont think a women or man lifting her/his car in an emergency has anything to do with strength I would look at it more as a miracle from God.
