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The body is meant to function as a unit, therefore it has developed a system in which it can functionally operate to either stabilize, endure, push, pull, or stretch when doing certain movements. When we break it all down, the body will always need to have both concentric and eccentric strength to properly function. Those who are lacking in either of them will have it show in their fundamental movement patterns. We tend to always have misconceptions when discussing concentric and eccentric based strength training. We also find a lot of individuals developing asymmetry in muscular strength which in turn distorts their physique and performance. So first, let's break down the terms "concentric" and "eccentric" to better understand their roles in strength training.
Concentric Muscle Contractions are when muscles shorten as it contracts against resistance. It is commonly referred to as flexing. For example, during a chin up, the concentric phase is when you lift your body weight off the ground to pull yourself up bringing the upper chest to the bar which would then primarily contract the lats, rhomboids, biceps etc… The eccentric muscle contraction phase would control movement on the way down to where you started, lengthening the muscles as they resists against your body weight. While both concentric and eccentric contractions are important for overall muscle strength, balance and development, eccentric strengthening often receives less attention despite its significant benefits. Here at SPU we have many reasons why we implement eccentric strength training in our athletes program. Firstly, eccentric strength training helps stimulate muscle growth and pure strength. The eccentric contractions can generate greater force compared to concentric contractions, leading to greater muscle damage and subsequently greater muscle growth and strength when properly recovered. During the hypertrophy phase for an athlete of the appropriate age, we tend to put some form of eccentric strength movements to help them gain some lean muscle mass in the off-season. Secondly, eccentric strength training helps with the root cause of injuries and treating symptoms. By putting the joints through certain stress, it helps improve the athletes’ joint stability, reducing the risk of injuries, particularly in activities involving deceleration or sudden changes in direction. Lastly, eccentric strength training can easily help with improving functional strength. Many everyday movements involve eccentric muscle actions, such as lowering oneself into a chair or descending stairs. Strengthening the muscles eccentrically can improve performance and efficiency in these activities. As we age, eccentric strength becomes much more valuable. With cases of post surgeries, eccentric strength training is often used in rehabilitation programs to ensure a safe recovery. In all, we can not neglect the importance of eccentric strength training because it helps with the basis of fundamental and functional movements more than just focusing on training concentric movements. -Coach Andy Louis
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What are the main factors behind the causes of injuries? How do we best address injuries and prevent them from recurring? We’re speaking on non-contact injuries/ overuse injuries.
Here at SPU we prioritize our athlete’s unique body by making sure that we’re tailoring their program to their own body’s needs. Every athlete that goes through our doors will go through an analysis that allows us to attain more information about their body’s biomechanical integrity prior to training with us. Through the analysis we’ll be able to address things such as mobility, stability, strength, and neuromuscular firing patterns with 10 fundamental movements. If the athlete is experiencing pain through a certain movement then we take them through a sub-test similar to the initial movement to better address the root cause of the pain. We tend to find high levels of symptoms and injuries with younger athletes nowadays that are involved in multiple sports year-round with little to no rest. Not giving the body time to adjust, rest and grow through those vigorous movements will eventually cause an overuse injury. Also those athletes will most likely lack either strength, stability, or even neuromuscular firing pattern awareness to prevent themselves from getting injured. Another major factor to the causes of injuries is that athletes usually get the wrong treatment for their symptoms prior to the injury itself. There are lots of professionals on the market that tend to treat the symptoms and not the root causes of the problem. They’ll focus on strengthening the area rather than getting the athlete stronger all-around and moving better functionally. An athlete with a pulled hamstring doesn’t need more hamstring strengthening exercises, they need stronger hips/ glutes that will help better extend their hips through acceleration than having the hamstring doing the work. Same thing for a pitcher getting elbow pain from throwing. The issue isn’t the elbow, the root cause would be the scapula lacking strength and stability and not staying in place when throwing, gliding forward and transferring all the tension down to the elbows. When left unaddressed, the athlete then develops an elbow injury. In short, we find that athletes are not getting treated properly for their symptoms and injuries through wrong diagnosis and they’re also involved in too many activities leading to an overuse injury. -Coach Andy Louis Athletes need to separate speed, power, and strength exercise when training due to the specificity required in the exercise program. Each of these physical attributes requires different training stimuli from the body and muscles for optimal development, and focusing on one at a time allows for more targeted and effective progress. Here's a breakdown of why they are often trained separately. Firstly, we can better understand why we must specify our exercise programs when training by comprehending the SAID Principle. The SAID Principle states that the body will adapt to the specific demands placed on it. Therefore training for a specific quality such as speed or power allows the body to make targeted adaptations that enhance performance in that specific area. This is why when a coach is training an athlete that lacks agility and reaction speed, he tailors the program to focus on getting their body twitchy by increasing their plyos and power production exercise. In high volume and repetition, we hope the athlete will start to adapt to the stress that those exercises place on them with regards to the athletes overall strength. Secondly, different types of training have distinct effects on the nervous system and muscle fibers. Training for strength, for example, involves lifting heavier loads, which primarily recruits high-threshold motor units and increases muscle cross-sectional area. On the other hand, training for speed may involve lighter loads and higher velocity movements, emphasizing neuromuscular coordination and efficiency. With that being said, intensive training, especially for power and strength, places a significant load on the muscles, joints, and central nervous system. Focusing on one attribute at a time allows for proper recovery and reduces the risk of overtraining and injury. Lastly, different physical qualities often rely on different energy systems. For instance, power and speed activities are more reliant on the ATP-PC (adenosine triphosphate - phosphocreatine) system, while strength training may involve different energy pathways such as the glycolytic energy system. Speed training is based on fast bursts of movements that are short in duration. Such high intensity stress on the body will ask for more rest to recuperate that specific energy pathway to repeat the process. Therefore, training one quality at a time allows for targeted energy system development. Ultimately, while there is a benefit to training these qualities separately, it's important to note that there can be overlaps, and many training programs include elements of each. Working on speed would mean that we must also focus on the plyos and power production elements( Sprints, Plyo Hops, Box Jumps, Step Jumps), the strengthening elements (Heavy loaded exercises) required to produce the power, and stability elements (eccentric strength) required to be agile. Additionally, sport-specific training often requires an integration of these qualities, as real-world activities rarely isolate a single physical movement. Individual training goals, the demands of a specific sport or activity, and an individual's fitness level all play a role in determining the most effective training approach. -Coach Andy Louis One of the common misconceptions we hear from parents and kids is that they are getting in shape and working out because they are in-season, or going to practice, or participating in some type of sport related activity. In reality, you shouldn’t substitute performance training (read: strength, power, and speed development) and replace it with practice. Those are two separate things.
In simplest form, performance training is trying to increase your physical output. This means pushing more weight, jumping higher, being more explosive, etc., trying to increase your maximal output. This is your capacity. Playing your sport is about learning skills, applying your physical abilities to a sport, utilizing your capacity in highly specific ways. In both games and practices you will test your capacity, your skills, as well as your conditioning as well. However, playing your sport does not increase your capacity. Your ability to apply your capacity to specific activities is your efficiency. In short, capacity is what your total capabilities are, efficiency is how well you apply those abilities to specific skills. This means that performance training and sport activities, while closely related, are not good substitutes for one another. Just because you went to practice doesn’t mean you got your workout in. Ultimately, you’ll need to be able to improve both your capacity and your efficiency if you want to reach your potential. -Coach Alex Drayson What are the functions of the abdominal muscle group? The abdominal muscles' primary function is to stabilize the core and help with various movements done by the spine when we twist, extend, and go into flexion in all the planes. With social media constantly pushing content that can be way out of context to the general public and athletes, we tend to lose ourselves in how to properly train the abdominal muscles and not only focus on limited movements and muscle isolations.
Here at SportperformanceU, we needed something that would help us differentiate ourselves as an athletic performance gym from the others. With servicing countless student athletes, many of which are going through different stages of growth, we knew something needed to be done to help us help those athletes in a better manner. Understanding the body’s unique movements and fundamental functions was the first step towards making our program different from others.
Each athlete is different, whether it is a skill aspect, fundamental movement aspect, or even skeletal structure, there’s always a factor that makes them different. Biomechanical integrity is a way for us to understand how an individual's body performs doing the fundamental movement analysis. Our company founders Alex & Matt had thought it through and used a system derived from FMS to make what we have now. It tests the dominant knee movement, both bilateral and unilateral (in short, squats and lunges), dominant hip movement known as hinging or deadlift and eight other movements that challenges the fundamental functions of the spine, shoulders, scapula, pelvis, core, and lastly the glutes with subtests. Filtering out the muscular strength imbalances, stability, neuromuscular firing patterns, and mobility issues that show doing the analysis helps us indicate the root cause of certain limitations. And if there’s a history of injuries, it would help us better understand how to best address those and prevent more injuries down the line. Social media, which is a great tool, can also be deceiving when what you're seeing online, is labeled as “a good exercise,” can mostly be out of context to your body’s capabilities. The question, “Is this a good exercise?” needs much more information in relation to what your body needs and can do. That is why we take pride in making our athletes understand their individuality in a positive manner and properly teaching them exercises derived from their tailored program. That way, each athlete that walks through our door is doing a program that is tailored to their body’s capabilities and no one is doing the same thing unless they share the same case. -Coach Andy Louis How does our brain undergo various changes when doing consistent strength based training? It is well known that consistent strength training results in better longevity due to overall muscle mass and that high intensity interval training results in better heart health. However, those benefits aren’t the only effects of strength training on the body. Consistent strength training also affects our brain in various ways. We will discuss various cognitive adaptations that occur to the brain when consistently doing strength training.
Firstly, an improvement in the executive functions is an example of the cognitive adaptations that occur from consistent strength training. Executive functions are cognitive processes responsible for problem solving, decision making, and planning. A study on the “Effects of Exercise on Cognition” Sports Medicine , Volume 51 (12) – Dec 1, 2021 has shown a significantly improved performance on a “Stroop Task" - which challenges your cognitive flexibility and selective attention. The group consisted of healthy elderly women ages 65-75 training biweekly for 6 months. When compared to the controlled group doing light balanced based training the regular group had a better performance. It proves increased demand for focus and concentration during training can translate to improved cognitive control in daily life activity and also sports. Secondly, the brain undergoes various neurochemical changes when doing strength training. The stress induced from strength training causes the brain to release endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin. Those chemicals are responsible for pain tolerance, mood and stress control. This can lead to a better performance as an athlete when managing in-game situations. The brain’s neuroplasticity also increases when you introduce the body to various new movements, specifically when constantly strength training, forming new neural connections, recognizing, and adapting to new patterns. Lastly, the brain releases neurotrophic factors like BDNF stimulated by strength training. BDNF is a brain protein that supports the growth and maintenance of neurons. BDNF also contributes to neuronal plasticity, which is essential for learning and memory. Thus, the more we involve ourselves into strength based training with controlled intensities the more room we create for the brain to adapt and improve our overall performance whether in our daily living activities or in a sport. -Coach Andy Louis Exercising is a vital component of a healthy lifestyle and it provides benefits to both men and women. Staying physically active can offer great advantages such as better cardiovascular health, weight management, and better mental well-being. Although those components are only the top layer of what really goes on when exercising. It is essential to recognize and understand the hormonal differences between men and women and their influence on how exercise affects the body from the aspects of reproductive organs, body composition/ metabolism, and exercise induced stress.
The first component we can think of when discussing hormonal release differences between men and women is their reproductive organs. Men will always have an abundance of testosterone due to their reproductive organs. This is why men tend to have higher muscle mass when going through full development and higher power output when exercising. On the other hand, women who do not have testes (testosterone producer) therefore will have a lower count of testosterone in their body. Testosterone plays a key role in muscle growth, strength development, and overall athletic performance. Having an abundance of the hormone can boost your recovery time, and protein synthesis. So we can kill the myth of “Women will get bulky when they do strength training constantly”. Another hormone that brings more differences between men and women and its effect with exercise is estrogen. Estrogen is primarily a complex hormone for women. It does have similar effects to testosterone but also goes into improving bone health, joint stability, and helping with fat storage. For women, high levels of estrogen leads to higher fat storage at the hips and thighs, affecting body composition. In comparison to the levels of testosterone in men, estrogen levels in women are much lower, and even much lower in men, hence why men tend to store less fat and have a higher muscle mass. Lets not forget women's menstrual cycle that affects their energy levels. The follicular phase which is before ovulation is associated with high estrogen levels leading to higher fat metabolism and improved exercise performance. In contrast the luteal phase which is post ovulation leads to high progesterone levels causing a decrease in carbohydrate utilization and reduced exercise capacity. When we look at the metabolic system between men and women, the higher muscle mass composition in men leads to a higher metabolic rate, causing a higher caloric expenditure during exercise. For women, their lower muscle mass composition leads to a lower caloric expenditure during exercise and lower metabolic rate. Their higher fat composition serves as energy for longer bouts of exercises that increases the stress levels on the body. The body will release stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline which helps with energy mobilization and focus. However, the body composition along with the stress hormones also leads to recovery and overall performance differences. Ultimately, hormonal differences between men and women have a significant impact on exercise performance. While men benefit from higher testosterone levels, resulting in greater muscle mass and strength, women experience unique hormonal fluctuations throughout their menstrual cycle that can affect energy levels and exercise capacity. Recognizing and understanding these differences allows coaches to tailor the workouts and still attain the goal at hand. -Coach Andy Louis How do injuries happen when playing sports? What are some factors that can lead to an injury? Generally speaking, when we think of injuries in the athletic realm, we think of hard contact and accidents. Injuries occur based on many factors and it starts with the athletes’ body. Is the athlete strong enough to handle the physical stress of their sport? We have seen all types of athletes go through injuries and that can already prove to us that it is a complex matter, but with a strong fact that strength is a key injury prevention tool.
When we’re looking at injuries, we need to understand how and why that injury happened. For instance, if a high performing basketball athlete tears an ACL that was not from hard contact, or a bad fall, you definitely need to reconsider why it happened. Each athlete has a unique body and physique that allows them to perform the way they intend to perform. However, a factor such as muscular strength imbalances can be the root cause for an injury to occur. The ACL is responsible to keep the tibia and femur in line with the hips and it gets help from the surrounding muscles to keep the knee stable. When athletes have a lack of strength in their glutes, their knees become vulnerable when absorbing ground impact, otherwise, it goes into a valgus shift as the body gets into a squat position. When that knee takes on the hard cuts and turns, and the bad landings from the rebounds, it’s only a matter of time until it gives away. The best way to prevent that is to get the hips and the surrounding muscles stronger to work together and protect the knees. The glutes are a very important muscle group that should be the strongest in our body. Lacking strength in the glutes can have great looking athletes spending most of their time on a physical therapy bed. The best way to stay clear of no-contact injuries is to keep your strength in check and train effectively for your sport. The stronger you are, the better the performance, the less you get injured. Another factor we tend to neglect when looking at the root cause of injuries is the type of training we’re doing. Are you really training like an athlete should be training? Many athletes get blinded by the cool online exercises and tools they find and neglect training the fundamental movements that they do in their sport. You can be the best quarterback there is when it comes to playing football, but if you have a weak rotator cuff or an unstable scapular, that issue should be prioritized and addressed first in your training routine. Getting stronger and staying strong helps take out injuries as a limiting factor to your performance. Relying on raw talent can’t always save you. You’ll be the athlete with a good arm and bad shoulder stability and mobility, beating the weak rotator cuff muscle each time you're throwing, leading to an injury. You’ll be stuck at half of your full potential because there are one or two important things missing in your training. If you keep the body in shape for the stress of your sport, you are more resistant to potential injuries because you’ve maintained an adequate routine. -Coach Andy Louis As youth sports have grown into a very robust machine, we have seen that the uptick in organized sport participation has had both positive and negative consequences. While on one hand so many young athletes have developed both sport skills and life skills that will carry them forward into the future, we’ve also seen that when done incorrectly, organized youth sports can create highly detrimental mental and physical side effects. Let’s examine the structure of youth sports, the risks that have developed over the last decade, and how to prevent the negative consequences.
The first thing to really look at is the play and practice structure. As youth sports have become far more structured and competitive, the frequency of practices and length of the season have grown significantly. Many kids are practicing 5-6 days a week, and their seasons are often close to 12 months a year. Swimming and baseball are notorious around our facility for having heavy practice schedules and long seasons. That by itself is problematic, as many young bodies simply aren’t ready for structured, maximal effort activities at such a high frequency. This issue is compounded when athletes are asked (or choose) to play for multiple teams, as is the case in some sports. For instance, in baseball, when a player wants to play on the town travel team, they are also required to play in the house league as well. This means the player has two teams to practice for, two game schedules, and in many cases is now pitching beyond what is reasonable. We’ve seen it happen in basketball, soccer, lacrosse, and other sports too, where the athlete is playing on multiple teams within the same sport at the same time, and the season begins to take a very high toll. Realistically, kids are not professional athletes - their seasons shouldn’t resemble professional seasons. They need fewer, shorter practices, and less total games. Ultimately, we have to tackle the issue of youth sport coaches and programs trying to monopolize their players. When we’re looking at kids aged 5-12, they are still in a stage in which they should be able to try every sport they want to, rather than be pigeonholed into one or two sports. They should also be given time to just be kids - go outside and play, hang out with friends, and be with their families, rather than have sport turn into a nearly full time job. But, with sport becoming such a big business even at that age, so many coaches and leagues are determined to drive up participation hours and lengthen seasons in order to create an increasingly profitable financial structure. This issue of “control,” where leagues and teams really do end up controlling their players, is especially dangerous when we consider that many youth coaches are only slightly more educated than volunteers, and make decisions with a short term focus that leads to long term consequences. Now, I say that very carefully, because so many youth coaches are great people - they care about the kids, want to see them improve and thrive, and spend a lot of time trying to set up their players for future success. However, even well intentioned coaches have caused significant damage given the current structure, and the results are even worse when we see money driven coaches living vicariously through youth sports. There are two main consequences to this systemic overuse of youth athletes - overuse injuries and mental burnout. Let’s tackle injuries first. Across the youth sports world, we are seeing more and more serious injuries for kids below age 12. This is because a longer season, heavier practice schedule, and potentially multiple teams leads to significant overuse. The most common one is baseball. Coaches constantly want to put their best pitchers on the mound, but with a 6-9 month season, sometimes four or more games in a weekend, plus 2-3 practices a week, that can be problematic. We have seen numerous kids come in to us having had Tommy John surgery before high school (even as young as 10), or kids who have had to shut down throwing movements for months at a time due to significant stress injuries. We have kids who have told us they play over 100 games between Spring, Summer, and Fall baseball. That’s as much as minor league professional baseball. While we’re using baseball as an example, they are far from the only culprit. Swimming is perhaps the worst, with up to 14 hours of practice a week and an 11-month season. When we did an intake for a swim team that was beginning training with us, over 70% of their high school swimmers already suffered from chronic knee or shoulder injuries. Many sport movements are highly repetitive and specialized, such as swimming strokes or baseball pitching, and that leaves players at a higher risk of overuse injuries. In those cases, it is especially important to limit total repetitions, specifically maximal effort repetitions, and to control total volume. The hardest part of these situations is that these injuries are preventable. From the youth infrastructure side, simply shortening seasons or reducing total time would be a great first step. But, because the industry of youth competitive sports is built around constant participation, we see injuries increase with revenue. The more money a team can make, the more willing they are to overlook injury issues. Ultimately, kids need breaks, need some degree of diversity, and need coaches who put the athlete’s health ahead of elementary school trophies. The mental consequences of overuse are just as prevalent and negative. The number of kids who learn to hate their sport, who learn to look at sport as a job instead of a passion, who get turned off from sports altogether, is startling. Aside from their love of the sport, overuse does have other diagnosable side effects, like stress response and depression. While those occurrences fall outside our scope, we’ve seen them happen. Sometimes all it takes is a bad coach who drives the kids too hard, too often. Even though it’s hard to find youth sports coaches, it’s important to hold them to a high standard in their treatment of the kids. There is no doubt that many youth sports programs need to tweak their structure. Too many practices, too many games, too long of a season, and too much overuse on specific movements has led to increased preventable injuries. Programs need to realize that they don’t own their players, and create their schedules in such a way that kids are still allowed to have non-structured play and participate in other activities. Another factor that could help prevent some of these injuries, particularly in the middle school aged group, is proper training. As young athletes begin to develop better strength, better coordination, and better movement technique, they also increase their capacity for increased participation and decrease their risk of injury. The irony is that many kids do not have time to begin training, even twice a week, due to the commitments they have to their sports teams, therefore they get injured with their sport team. Ideally, kids would begin their strength training at around age 11, with a well-programmed, age appropriate workout system, allowing them to venture further into more competitive situations. From a time and schedule standpoint, this would mean committing approximately 2 hours per week towards strength training, while participating in sports practices for about 3 hours per week (probably two 90-minute practices), and one day each weekend for games (or a full weekend of games every other weekend). That way, the athlete has a reasonable balance of practice, training, and competition, as well as has time for other activities. While this blog post really takes a harsh line on youth sports, that’s not the entire picture. I know so many youth coaches and programs that are doing fantastic things for young athletes, and who do a great job with their teams. The growth of sport has had an overwhelmingly positive effect on young people. That said, there is a trend of negative side effects that many parents have discussed with me and we have seen first hand, which is what this piece is meant to focus on. Ultimately, we have many well intentioned people doing unintentional damage, which is unfortunate. We also see many unethical people who see youth injuries as collateral damage in their quest for bigger and more profitable programs, which is evil. As youth sports continue to grow, it’s important to keep perspective on what those games mean, make sure time commitment is reasonable, and hold coaches accountable for acting in the best interest of their players. -Coach Alex Drayson |
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