Instagram is full of celebrity trainers working with athletes, posting videos of them doing all these wonderfully creative movements involving weights that look like snippets from whatever sport it is they do. They get loads of views and traction because they look explosive and relevant... but are they effective? 🤔
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In sport we’re required to produce contractions against resistance in various directions, but the increased load of an implement is always downwards ⬇️ apart from inertial forces and unless it’s a cable or band. Even then, purely from a direction of resistance, I look at most of these sports-emulating movements and wonder about their applicability.
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Then there’s the matter of my previous tweet. Stronger muscles produce better contractions 💪🏽 More stable conditions allow muscles to get better at practicing producing more force. All of these wildly dynamic, complicated movements have limitations on the amount of force that can be produced because of the stifling instability and distractions in play 🤹🏻♂️
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There’s this strange thought process perpetuated on the internet that training individual movements somehow makes you worse at coordinated or “integrated” movements, but personally I find that quite insulting 😢 Someone is genuinely going to tell me that by getting better at executing individual components my brain is so stupid that it will get worse at putting them all together? 🥴 yeah... nah.
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It’s often justified by the “functionality” of explosivity 💥 ok, but muscles produce contractile force. Force = mass x acceleration. If you train moving a lot of mass slowly, how does that not have a carry-over? And when working with someone whose joints take an absolute hammering with all of their ACTUAL sports-specific training, is dealing with the shear loading, unpredictability and deceleration components of sports-resembling training what they really need? 🧐
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It doesn’t add up to me, but it makes for an interesting conversation so have at it in the comments below 🤷🏻♂️
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P.S. Correlation doesn’t equal causation. Just because a trainer works with someone talented, doesn’t mean it’s their methods that are causing their success 👀
