To Explode or Not to Explode...

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Conditioning Research has posted this article about explosive movement… the study (or rather studies) cited contend that explosive weight bearing movements don’t offer transferable benefits to athletes. So doing cleans won’t make you a faster sprinter or more agile soccer player (if I understand correctly) but will make you better at cleaning. What are your thoughts?

Workout

Front squat 3-3-3-3-3 reps

2 comments to To Explode or Not to Explode…

Chris

November 26, 2009 at 3:40 am

Thanks for the link. Sorry if it is Crossfit heresy.

The science certainly backs up your summary as far as I understand it. Another interesting link is at http://tinyurl.com/ydu8nb6 – HOUSTON TEXANS. STRENGTH &. CONDITIONING. PROGRAM. (Players Manual)

It clearly explains the difference between strength development and skill development. There is also an interesting section on explosive training:

Dr. Bob Christina, renowned motor learning expert, states, “It is the intent to raise a weight fast that is the key to developing explosive power, not that the weight itself is lifted fast.”

Observe the raising speed of a power lifter attempting to bench press a heavy weight. He pauses momentarily (as the rules demand) with the bar touching his chest and then tries his earnest to “explode”–raising the weight as fast as he can. It is the power lifter’s “neurological intent” to raise the weight fast. The bar however, moves in a smooth and controlled manner. This occurs because the weight is heavy enough, and the form required strict enough, to eliminate momentum.
Joseph

November 26, 2009 at 3:12 pm

In the “A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ACSM POSITION STAND…” paper, it states that research showed that people that trained in free weights made higher gains in free weights, and that people training on Nautilus machines made equally impressive gains on the Nautilus strength tests, but that the strength gains were less (though still present) when tested on the alternate modality (free weight trained on Nautilus and vice versa).

So it seems that in both cases, there is a “skill” specific to each modality that accentuated the increases in raw strength/power.

So by constantly changing modalities as we do in pure crossfit are we focusing on raw strength/power development. And by focusing on specific skill sets (gymnastic, Oly, etc) are we undermining transferrability?

In other words, will I get stronger by sucking in each area, but training in multiple modalities, and is this better than developing skill-accentuated strength in one or two modalities, but lose the ability to transfer that skill to other activities/modalities?

To generalize vs to specialize?

Just thinking out loud here.