You
would have been exposed to a training course of some type in your
military career.
During and following this training you would have no doubt been
involved in some form of course evaluation, the aim of which is
to improve the contents and structure of the course to improve
its effectiveness.
The same mentality can be applied to your physical training. A
means of conducting this continual self appraisal is through the
principals of training.
While these coaching-based principals have expanded over the years,
the most common, which will be discussing over the next several
editions, are: Reversibility, Specificity, Variety, Overload and
Individuality.
Reversibility
Don’t use it, you lose it. I have covered this concept in
regards to detraining over stand-down periods, this time we will
look at it from another viewpoint.
Consider decreasing your training volume to decrease your chance
of injury. You may think it prudent, for example, to decrease
the distance you run thereby decreasing skeletal impact and leading
to less chance of lower limb injury.
Makes sense, but then with that mentality why run at all? If you
just sat down all day there would be even less skeletal impact
and therefore less chance of lower limb injury.
“How about the fact that if I run for 10 minutes instead
of 20 I will get the aerobic/anaerobic benefits with less chance
of injury?” you ask.
True, however while your chance of injury may decrease initially,
your body will go through a period of detraining or reversibility
and the lower workload will be reset as your maximal workload;
which still has the potential to lead to the same amount of relative
stress on the body yet for a lower work output.
It is not the volume of training that is an issue but rather the
preparation and development you have undertaken.
Specificity
While many may say that their training program is specific, you
need to ask, specific to what?
I have often seen personnel training in the gym doing exercises
such as the bench and leg press to improve mechanical movement,
like tackling obstacles in confidence courses or for a specific
sport.
While from a generic consideration, leg presses increase leg strength
and increased leg strength will assist in a confidence course
and many sports, several key considerations are forgotten.
First, the leg press (like the bench press) is performed with
the assistance of back support; hence the need for core stability
to protect the spine and effectively transfer strength is not
developed.
Therefore, when transferring to an unstable environment, the gains
in leg strength are questionable. Consider your increased leg
strength being an upgrade from a musket to a cannon, great stuff.
Now consider firing this cannon from a rowing boat – see
the problem?
If there is a disparity between the firing platform (the core)
and the weapon (leg strength) problems inevitably arise.
There is also the question of motor patterning and synergy.
The leg press and bench press actions have a stable and fixated
core moving around the limbs, while the action they are training
for often has the core unstable and moving around fixed limbs
(that’s why the bench press and lat pulldown will have limited
improvements on push ups and chin ups).
Your brain patterns the movement backward. It’s like playing
the same record forwards then backwards – the record is the
same but the sound is rather different.
(Try this. Quickly fold your arms, then quickly fold them in the
opposite manner, ie. other arm on top. Feel the difference? Motor
pattern one way as opposed to another).
Now consider the synergy requirements of your training activities.
The leg press and bench press are performed in isolated actions
while jumping or striking a ball require effective multi-tasking
and intermuscular communication or synergy (just because you know
the letters of the alphabet, does not mean that you can read).
So does this mean that leg pressing and very short endurance events
are worthless? No. However, ask yourself why are you doing these
activities and are they the best to help you achieve your goals?
Next edition we will cover the bench press, leg press and very
short endurance events when we look at three more principals of
training – variety, overload and individuality.
