That is exactly the point, and these tests were done on lifters FAR more experienced and qualified than yourself who do use CAT
Referring to the Eccentric portion of a lift,
A. Mattes talks about endangering the myotatatic (stretch) reflex which protects the muscles. He sees this actions and the holding of a stretch position for more than 1.5 to 2 seconds causing the muscles being lengthened beyond their tonic/normal resting length to receive greater tension.
Remember you’ve gone beyond the stretch reflex because you’re now straining/stretching muscles to their normal elongation. Now it becomes a danger to the muscle fibers being forcefully elongated.
Now going back to you Steve standing with your heels off the tread of the step. You are lowering yourself so that your heels are now below the horizontal of the step. If you understand the above, then you’ve gone beyond your stretch reflex and the muscle, gastrocs/soleus which you are stretching are being strained under the weight of your entire gravitational body force.
If there are knots in the soleus or gastrocs, (fascia wrapped tightly around portions of those muscles which were injured through overuse or being overstretched…and contracted to protect themselves from further injury), you are overstretching/straining good muscle fiber that when overstretched can be damaged. The end result of this good feeling stretch is that there will come a day when you will say, stretching doesn’t work because you have a calf muscle which is almost totally bound up with fascia which like a tourniquet will not allow the muscle to move through its full range of motion (rom).
As John Jesse noted: Fascia has a strong tendendcy to contract due to age, chilling, poor posture, injury to the muscle it surrounds, and muscular imbalance. Contraction of fascia reduces the range of movement in body joints. You can begin to see why fascial release which is practiced by Rolfers and people of similar techniques works so well to assist someone get back to better balance and fuller range of motion by allowing those adhesions to be loosened from where they are holding unnecessarily to other fascia/muscles and bone.
Something I’ll mention but won’t go into fully since I don’t comprehend it enough to fully explain is the reality of “The Kinetic Chain.”
In movement there is a chain of nerve firings which take place at various moments in the movement of any body part. You probably have seen those machines which takes a person through the ROM of a joint so that when healing from surgery on that joint, there is no binding up of the surrounding muscles and tendons. In walking/running when the muscles within the chain of movement reach the correct position, the nerves fire to set in motion the next part of the chain. Simply by putting your muscles under an intense stretch, you can interfere with the normal firing of nerves in those muscles so that the normal, graceful body movement is impaired.
BTW, I have been lifting for 15 years now so don’t let the fact that I’m 26 fool you. I have a personal best of a 405lbs bench press so I think I am doing at least somethings right.
SuperV
Just interested to know how long you have ever trained with or used the bands/chains?
what I’m saying is entirely probable, and did actually happen. good work on your resluts, keep it up. you need to be more open minded though. You may not know everything.
Supervenomsuperman, there is seemingly only one way in which you will be convinced that stretch bands increase the stored kinetic energy on the yielding phase of the lift which, accordingly, facilitates a faster overcoming phase…you must try for yourself.
Think of it this way, bands facilitate a faster descent than gravity alone (hence overspeed eccentrics by way of hypergravity). Likewise, the reactive component is heightened.
In a sense, the bands contribute their own SSC, ontop of and in conjunction with the lifters.
The same holds true for plyometric depth jumps. The higher the surface from which you jump, the greater the speed which you generate prior to impact, accordingly the greater the reactive component and the higher the subsequent jump. Obviously there is a point in which diminishing returns sets in, due to the organisms limited ability to absorb force, otherwise athletes would be jumping off of buildings and roof tops. LOL
DB Hammer, among others, use bands to facilitate greater descent speed on depth jumps in order to further heighten the force absorption/reactive component.
I myself have observed greater bar speed in my own lifts, when performing squats and bench press with bands. As a mid 600lb squatter, I am faster with 315 + green bands than I am with 315 in bar weight alone.
I am not disagreeing with the eccentric loading being greater in the exercise nor the reactive component. What I am disagreeing with is the bar speed on the concentric phase and also the fact that it fucks up motor control, as was also stated by David W and his experiment. For powerlifters and powerlifters only this may work.
P.S. If I ever go to San Diego I’ll give you a visit as long as you promise to take me to SEA WORLD.
I am the most open-minded person in the world; however, you will have to convince me on why bands should be utilized for sprinters.
Your refusal to concede that stretch bands will facilitate a faster overcoming/concentric phase is a theoretical objection. I, on the other hand,as well as the tests performed by Louie Simmons, speak from practical observation. Practical observations out weigh theoretical objections.
I am not speaking to David W’s position, nor to which sports the usage of accomadating resistance may or may not be beneficial, only to the fact that bands DO facilitate faster concetric phases.
I am no longer in San Diego, my webpage is in need of an update. I am now in Anderson, way up north. So looks like there’s no chance for our trip to Sea World. LOL
I don’t think DB Hammer would advocate the use of bands for concentric phase, just for the eccentric phase. I think it’s called AMT jump where you use the band for eccentric phase and just as you land, you let go of the band and forcefully jump up to the max. I’m looking through DBHammer’s website and I could find only one that DB would use for both E&C called OSP-R squat. Yeah, yeah I’m beginning to understand the whole thing now and I can see that they can be useful in place of oly lifting (which i think is overrated anyway). You could incorporate some of DB’s methods into westside depending on the sports and postitions. I probably most definitely use the westside with bands and chains for OL and DL but for RBs,WRs,DBs, i probably would use more of DBs instead. I still don’t understand how to set things up DB’s way though. With Westside template, it’s easier to do.
That’s because they use a template with body part allocations. DB is all about training your needs. Thus there isn’t a consistent bodypart template to follow. He does give templates for the days though
Day 1: Strength-speed
Day 2: Speed Strength, speed endurance
Day 1 Emphsizes FDA (drop squats absorption), REA (Drop squat with reversal) and OSP-R (Bands)
Day 2 Emphasizes ADA (altitude Drop), RA (Depth Jump, Jump Squats, sprint starts), RFI (Dot Drills, ladders, top speed sprints)
If you want a general bodypart template I’ve kind of noticed a pattern similar to this
Squat variation
ABS
Hamstring/Hip Extension
Squat Variation (optional)
Bench
Row
Delt
Bi or Tri
The Chains and Bands are things I would consider for a powerlifter not a sprinter.
In agreement with David W and also Boyd Epley (Founder of NSCA),
On Page 55 of “The Path To Atheletic Power”
"Principle 5: Progressive Overload
Some coaches have added chains or bands to their lifts in an attempt to provided an overload during the lift. This is the opposite of what an athlete needs. To be explosive, we must train with acceleration throughout the movement. Adding a chain or band actually slows down the movement, and the movement gets harder as the bar is moved through the range of motion. That kind of training won’t provide for the explosive overload needed in powersports. Recently, a high school coach told me of his state champion shot-putter who lost four feet on his throw during his freshman year at a university that was adding chains to his bench press. The shot-putter was forced to go back to his high school to train explosively in the summer to regain his former throwing distance."
So for sports their you have it. I would only recommend training with bands and chains in the intermediate stage of an athlete, once he has already learned the correct movement pattern. What this does is it helps to teach compensatory acceleration. At the advanced/elite stage these bands ruin to much of the athletic performance and so should be avoided accept maybe in the GPP stage where the bands might I repeat might help in maximum strength. :eek:
Supervenomsuperman, I caution you on taking too much to heart with respect to what the NSCA preaches.
I say this being a CSCS myself.
The real significance, as you partly eluded to in the end of your last post, is to identify the specific peculiarities of each individual athlete and asign training means and methods accordingly.
Anyone can quote an authors opinion and use it to fuel a debate. Go to page 410 in Supertraining and you can reference Mel Siff’s findings regarding tests he monitored at Westside Barbell.
To consider the thrower which is referenced in your post, with any seriousness what so ever, we must first assess the enirety of his training program and his particular weaknesses.
To simply state that the employment of chains impaired his throwing distances is irresponisble at best. What else was he doing.
To give ANY concept ANY consideration at all, we must first identify and assess ALL circumstances which combined, comprise all facets of training.
There are no bad methods, only bad applications.
JMAN, I’m with you. I also am CSCS but I don’t think highly of NSCA though or OL. When someone makes that kind of statement, I have to wonder what exactly did they do in that study, etc. Did they follow the protocol of Westside’s methods? This reminds me of lame study NSCA did on OL vs PL. Maybe it works the best to do Westside with chains and bands offseason to build up absolute strength and power and use more of DB’s methods to build up on ballastic and power strength as you near the season. Maybe back and forth cycles between them thorough out the year. Westside doesn’t really focus much on ballastic strength which might be a drawback for athletes seeking speed. It works perfectly for offensive and defensive linemen but i have doubts for WRs, TBs, DBs if they want speed. It’s fine to do regular westside at first to work on posterior chain for everybody but eventually advanced athletes will need to do something differently for sports specfic. I’m all about learning new tricks. NSCA was already 20-30 years behind Eastern European bloc in exercise science when the information first came out after the breakup of USSR. Why rely on NSCA?
Wow this thread has really taken on life of its own!!!
James and Co.
Here’s a question: How come all you opponents of the OL’s think that coaches who use the OL’s are tied to the NSCA? As far as I know the NSCA and USAW are seprate groups. On top of that most well written Olympic lifting programs do not use traditional Periodization, but more of undulating approach.
Itruitt,
Why do we have to get so complicated as we get more advanced? Since we are talking about throwers, former shot put record holder, Brian Oldfield did nothing but a few movements a couple of times a week. He used the gym to get strong on few “Money” excercises and threw the shot far and by the way he could run fast too. Look at Charlie and Ben. Ben squated to get strong, and got “fast and explosive” on the track. Ben never did OI’s and ADA’s!!!Nothing against him but DB’s tries to make a mystery out of stuff that been around for a long time. Many of the things he advocates can be found in supertraining as well as Mel Siff’s supertraining forum archives(there is nothing new under the sun). I spent a month reading DB’s book and articles trying to figure it all out and what i really did was miss a month of training on the basics(squats, cleans snatches, deads, benches) that have been tried and tested for thousands of athletes for many years.
Westide stuff is great for all athletes who need to get strong and it also easy to fit in explosive/power work too. Read some of Simmons articles, he talks extensivly about, doing extra workouts, which he uses for recovery as well as explosive work. Two articles that are gems are called “extra workouts” and “Explosive strength and Power”. So much info on his site. And yes(i know i am going against the grain here) but i use OL’s in the westide template and it work just fine.
My two cents!!!
Frit, we are in agreement.
I am not opposed to Olympic lifts, I simply contest that there are few sports in which the utilization of Olifts are optimal or necessary.
I hear you, good point!!!
There are many ways to accomplish goals- and many ways to creatively assign blame also.
So a shot putter looses 4 feet due to chains?
Let’s think about this for a minute. Chains allow you to get past a “sticking point” to move the bench up. The only people who, by definition, will always have a sticking point to get past are powerlifters, since the bench IS their event. So this shot-putter kept using chains all the time instead of only as, or even if, needed? Who’s fault is that? Are chains bad- or badly used?
Olympic lifts cover a great number of muscle groups at once and can lower the number of lifts needed. The downside is you need superior teaching, supervision, and equipment (not always available). This can still work very well- provided you don’t buy into the concept of total specificity and eliminate the option of using exercises that will spare event-related muscle groups to provide CNS stimulation right before a peak competition (bench for sprints).
I will be discussing this further in the E-book materials to be released shortly.
One point that is oft-overlooked when using Westside to train athletes is that Westside is the conjugate method applied to powerlifting. Because that’s what Louie and the boys are into, that’s their sport. If Louie were to train shotputters or sprinters or whatever, the application of principles would be quite different.