Olympic lifters and power lifters have been at this debate for decades, arguing who generates more power. Every now and then sprinters, high jumpers and throwing athletes (hammer, shot, discus and javelin) poke their heads in on the debate. Data has repeatedly shown power lifters generating more total force while Olympic lifters generating more power. [...]
We received a great reaction to our post on resistance training in children, as the CSEP position paper affirmed the benefits of strength training for pre-adolescents. A popular belief among parents is that strength training can stunt growth in pre-adolescents, but there appears to be little research to back this claim. A recent paper published by Michalldis [...]
A short while ago, we highlighted the importance of strength & endurance for all elite level athletes. Declines in strength are related to subjective feelings of fatigue in match play, and furthermore, low levels of endurance are more associated with fatigue development. A new study on the effects of concurrent strength and endurance training in professional [...]
The Wingate Anaerobic Test is one of the standards for power and anaerobic capacity. Coppin et al 2011 decided to determine a mean for NCAA division 1 male athletes in football and track & field. The average male college athlete (aged 20.8yrs, 84.4kg and 183.9cm) it was found that peak power was 1084.2watts with mean [...]
Hansen et al 2011, compared elite and junior rugby players by looking at their 3 rebound squat with 40kg and using the data gathered for power-time and force-time curves. Players also ran 30m sprints. In comparing speed, force-time, velocity-time and peak power, rate of force development and rate of power development it was found that [...]
Static stretching has a bad reputation these days. That is precisely why we went to the literature to see what is being said about it recently. A study by Oliviera et al. (2011) examined the effects of active static stretching on maximal isometric force (MVC) and rate of force development (RFD) over time intervals of [...]
I have been doing a little data collecting recently, based on our speed endurance training. The results give rise to some basic questions which need to be addressed, particularly as they have implications for the kind of training that we (should?) perform. My national training centre athletes’ performed some intensive speed endurance training. We worked [...]
A quick note today, Markovic 2007 did a review of 26 studies of plyometrics and their effects on vertical jump height. In his analysis, it was found that plyometrics improved vertical height. Squat jumps improved it by 4.7% as did drop jumps, counter-movement jumps with arm swing by 7.5% and counter-movement jumps by 8.7%. This would [...]