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STRENGTH TRAINING FOR SPORTS
The race is to the swift;
The battle to the strong.
John Davison, 1857-1909
One of the most exciting things occurring now in
athletics is the use of weight training for sports.
Weights are used to develop strength and muscular
endurance, to correct muscular weakness and imbalance,
to prevent or rehabilitate injuries, and to improve
technique and performance in virtually every sport, from
baseball to wrestling.
It wasn’t always this way. Back in the ‘50s, weight
training was strictly for body-builders, power lifters
and Olympic lifters (plus a small contingent of health
and strength-minded pioneers). The first use of weights
for other sports that I can recall was with track and
field star Dave Sime in the early ‘50s. Sime, a top
sprinter who made the 1952 and 1956 Olympic teams,
proved that weights at least didn’t hurt
performance. Billy Cannon, and All-American running back
for LSU in 1959, owed much of his success to weight
training. He and his LSU teammates were pioneers in the
use of weights in sports.
As the years passed, there was a ripple effect as
more and more trainers and players discovered what eight
training could do:
- Supplement and complement traditional training
- Produce gains in strength or size that could not
be achieved any other way
- Balance strength of different body parts
- Prevent injuries
- Often provide the quickest and safest way
to recover from an injury
It’s surprising to most people, especially those who
remember the ‘50s and ‘60s,
just how extensive weight
training in sports has now
become. Coaches now have their own weight training
programs or consult with strength coaches for the
appropriate exercises for their particular sport. Each
of these people has a different
approach but the message is the same: To be
competitive in most sports today, weight training is
mandatory.
Obviously, different sports require different skills
and therefore different training programs. But there are
certain elements of fitness and generalized principles
that apply to all athletic training.
THE ELEMENTS OF FITNESS
What does it take to be in shape? What are the basic
qualities of fitness? Just as a farmer needs to four
elements for his crops to grow—water, sun, soil and
air—you need the following elements to be in good shape:
- Strength
- Muscular endurance
- Cardiovascular endurance
- Flexibility
Understanding these elements of fitness, especially
how you train to achieve each one, is very important if
you are to get the most out of your weight training.
Strength
Strength is the ability of a muscle to produce
force. It is measured by the amount of weight you can
lift in one repetition; for example, the most amount of
weight you can bench press or lift in the squat.
Pure strength is the most important ingredient in
many sports: shot-putting, discus-throwing, jumping high
in basketball, having a powerful tennis serve, driving a
golf ball, throwing a baseball, etc. Strength is also
the key to sports where you have to meet an opponent
with a lot of force, such as wrestling or football.
Power is something different.
Power = Strength + Speed
A person may have a lot of strength at the bench
press, but not be able to shot put well. He doesn’t have
the speed of movement that, combined with strength,
generates the necessary power for a long
toss.
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Muscular Endurance Muscular endurance is the ability of a muscle to
produce repeatedly over a period of time. It is measured
by the number of repetitions of the movement or skill.
If you can do only one or two push-ups, then for you
it’s a strength movement. If you can do 35 push-ups,
then for you it’s a muscular endurance exercise. Sports
requiring muscular endurance are wrestling, hurdling,
rowing, sprinting and sprint swimming. These sports
differ from strength sports in that you have to apply
force for a longer period of time.
An athlete can continue to produce muscular force for
only a limited period of time before the energy stores
in the muscle are depleted. In movements that apply
maximum force (strength), such as lifting a heavy
weight, the energy stores are quickly depleted. If less
than maximum force is required, and the athlete must
ration strength (as in a wrestling match or sprint),
energy stores are depleted more gradually and the
movement can continue for a longer period (muscular
endurance).
Cardiovascular Endurance
Cardiovascular endurance is the capacity of the
respiratory system (lungs and blood vessels) and the
circulatory system (heart, arteries, capillaries and
veins) to supply oxygen and nutrients to the muscle
cells so an activity can continue for a long period of
time.
This type of fitness is necessary for sports like
distance running, cross-country skiing, cycling,
distance swimming, triathlons, rowing and soccer. (These
sports are also the best exercises for improving
cardiovascular endurance.) Here the amount of force
required of a particular muscle or muscle group is low
and the movement is rhythmic. This means that one muscle
group is resting while another takes over. For example,
in rowing you pull with your back muscles in the power
stroke and push with chest muscles on the return stroke;
while one group is resting, the blood stream is bringing
in nutrients and whisking away waster products. These
alternating rest periods allow the movement to continue
for a long time.
Flexibility
Flexibility, the fourth element of fitness, refers to
the range of motion possible in the joints. This is
controlled by muscles, tendons and ligaments.
It is well known that flexibility can be increased by
stretching (for more information on stretching go to
http://www.stretch2move.com/ or email
me at
TheAnswer.nutrition@gmail.com). However, there are two important factors to
keep in mind:
1. Every individual differs in flexibility. Some
are loose-jointed, some tight. A loose-jointed person is
obviously well-suited for gymnastics, but is liable to
get injured in contact sports. A tight-jointed person
can better withstand the impact stresses of contact
sports, but tends to have great difficulty at
gymnastics. Most people are somewhere in between and can
modify their flexibility to coincide with the demands of
the sport and their body type.
2. Each sport has different flexibility requirements.
You don’t always want maximum flexibility in
every direction. Example: football players are
susceptible to blows from the side of the knee, and
skiers often fall and twist their knees. These athletes
should do quadriceps exercises to provide stability for
the knee, and make themselves less flexible in
side-to-side knee motion. On the other hand, gymnast
need full body flexibility, since good performance
involves going to the extreme range of motion for the
joints.
As a general rule, you need enough flexibility to
go through the range of motion required in your sport
without restrictions in movement.
Many people think that weight lifters are inflexible
or "muscle-bound." On the contrary, weight training
improves flexibility. In a study that compared
flexibility for champion college gymnasts, champion
weight lifters and bodybuilders, the weight lifters were
slightly more flexible (in measurements of 30 different
joint movements) that the gymnasts and much more
flexible than the wrestlers or 16-year-olds.
To repeat, the elements of fitness are:
- Strength
: Maximum force in a short burst
Muscular Endurance: Power that is
repeated for a period of time, not just a short
burst.
Cardiovascular Endurance: Force
applied over the long haul
Flexibility: Range of movement in
joints
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