There hasn’t been a day that’s passed in the last 15-20 years that I haven’t thought obsessively about training for at least an hour or so. I am constantly analyzing and questioning things. I spend a minimum of an hour per day discussing training with my good buddy John Alvino because he has more experience training people than almost anyone I know of. I also dial up the West Coast at least a couple of times per week to talk training with my colleague and close friend, Alwyn Cosgrove. AC is another guy that I love talking training with because he has tons of real world experience and understands what it’s like to have a gym full of guys training at once and the real concerns that arise from that situation.
Anyway, here are just a few of the many questions that we ask each other on a daily basis…
- Should we really be training athletes for maximal strength or just for optimal strength?
- Once they achieve optimal strength for their given sport what good does more strength do for them?
- If we are training them for optimal strength instead of maximal strength how does that affect the rest periods?
- Is it a coincidence that the strongest, most jacked athletes seem to get injured quite frequently?
- Do squats and deadlifts have great carryover to the playing field or is single leg stuff and strongman training far more transferable?
- If I traveled back in time and took the greatest linebacker of all time, Lawrence Taylor of the New York Giants and had him squat and deadlift all off season versus just doing strongman training and plyos/speed work what do you think would improve his game more? Which LT would you rather face?
- If I took Barry Sanders and added 100 pounds to his squat would he have been any better?
- Who’s stronger; the guy who can squat 800 pounds or the guy who can do a single leg pistol squat down to the ground and jump up from that position onto a 30 inch box?
- Who will perform better on the field of play?
- Is CNS recovery something that we really need to be so concerned about?
- Did Michael Jordan or Walter Payton worry about it?
- Is conditioning really far more important than strength for most athletes? Should we be training more for strength endurance than maximal strength? Is the ability to display strength in the fourth quarter more important than what you can do for the first two minutes of the game when you’re fresh?
- Should athletes never do more than six reps per set on any exercise or is their a place for higher rep training?
- If athletes build what would be so called “non functional muscle” with sets of 8-15 reps is that really just dead tissue that does nothing?
- What’s more effective for an athlete; working up to a 3 rep max and calling it a day or doing multiple sets of three with 85-90% with short rest periods equal to what he will face in competition? Is the ability to repeat the effort with the same rest periods he will have to answer to in competition more transferable to the playing field? Or is the heavier load more important and he should bring up his conditioning outside of the weight room?
- Who has greater core strength; a guy who can deadlift 700 pounds or the gymnast who can suspend his body parallel to the ground in mid air on a pair of rings?
- Which type of training would help you more on the football field or in a cage fight?
- If most athletes only train for 4-8 months per year yet still make as much progress as those of us who train for twelve, what does that tell us? How many months per year do we really need to train heavy? What negative effect is the extra work having on us? Would we get better results from taking more extended layoffs?
- Are squats and deadlifts an effective tool for injury prevention?
- What prepares the body more for landing and cutting than landing and cutting?
- Would a proper training program prevent Grant Hill from being chronically injury prone or would he always be chronically injury prone?
- Is the human body capable of doing far more than we think?
- Is it necessary to push it that far if you don’t compete in anything?
- How much can the human body tolerate?
- How little do we need to see improvements?
Just a few things to think about.
21. May, 2008
at 9:50 pm #
Hey Jason, great article. It would be interesting to know what conclusions you three have drawn on these subjects.{ Hint t-nation roundtable article}
I’ve also had been thinking about a few of the things you’ve mentioned, especially
Is the human body capable of doing far more than we think? and
Is it necessary to push it that far if you don’t compete in anything?
For instance, i was reading part of an interview of Jack Dempsey where he explained growing up he did 8-12 hours hard labor on a farm, 6-7 days a week, and then on too mining, so 8-12 hours of pick axe and shoveling 6-7 days a week, and he felt this was one of his keys to success, to be able to out train and out work his opponents. I also read an article by a trainer who trains frequently at high volume, whose grandfather was a lumberjack, back when there was no chainsaws, just axes and two man saws, and again we’re talking 8 or more hours a day, 6 days a week, again no talk of over training. But the question also comes up, how long could a person take that kind of workload without breaking down? And just because you can do something, should you?
And finally, about the training with 8-15 rep range, well i’m not a hit guy by any means, but i have read articles by Dan Riley of the Houston Texans and Kerry Kayes, Ricky Hattons trainer, and they keep things simple, train for strength, practice their respective sports, and do some sort of sprinting and running, and they get the same kind of results as other people in their fields, so it make you think. How much extra is really needed?
22. May, 2008
at 8:19 am #
The rss feed still seems to lack a title, and in my feed reader (google reader), the feed is still a partial feed rather than a full one. Sorry to bring this up again, I just wanted to make sure it hadn’t been forgotten. If however there are no plans to change this, let me know and I will shut up.
Cheers,
Dave.
22. May, 2008
at 11:26 am #
Great questions! Thats why you guys (john, alwyn and others) are such great resources for no bs training. Always questioning and discovering answers. Keep up the great work!
David Otto CPT
24. May, 2008
at 4:21 pm #
Wow, I think about this stuff all the time too, multiple times a day. I always think I know the answer, and then, BOOM, something else changes or comes up and I’m pretty confused again. Seriously, you guys should just put out something, like a book or e-book, that just takes tons of questions like these and answers them as thoroughly as possible. Or at least a discussion about it or something. Because after reading all those questions and not having any definitive answers is just plan, old torture.
27. May, 2008
at 12:15 pm #
Love the weekly quote: A. Einstein.
Another classic:
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds-Albert Einstein.