Strength training with weights

Edited by Doctor Izzo Lorenzo

Over the years in all team sports, the time devoted to physical conditioning of athletes has increased.
It has been understood that even in sports where ball control and tactical skills are predominant, physical preparation is very necessary; both to increase the competitive performance (I resist longer at high pace in the game and in the training sessions, I improve the efficiency and I learn more easily the technical gestures etc ..) and to prevent injuries.
The most important conditional capacity, and to which more and more space is being given, is strength. Ability defined in recent years as the basis of other abilities and the starting point for the athlete's physical-performance evolution.
In summary, I train with weights for:

- Improve race performance;

- compensate for the muscular imbalances already present in the athlete or caused by the repetition of technical gestures;

To improve race performance I have to use methods that contribute to the goal. The most important principle is the SAID (specific adaptation to the imposed stimulus).

This criterion simply establishes that the athlete responds in a specific way in relation to the training stimuli that are administered.

Stimulus, response, adaptation

This principle encompasses 2 concepts:

1-specificity of mechanics

2-speed specificity

According to these principles, if the method used to improve performance is mechanically similar to the gesture of competition, the athlete adapts specifically to the type of training he does.

If he trains slowly he will become skilled in performing slow motor gestures, the opposite if he trains with explosive gestures; (slow movements are completely different from explosive ones from a neurological point of view: Hakkinen 1988). On the contrary, any movement that requires large accelerations, with large recruitment of rapid muscle fibers and "ballistic" impulses produces similar neuromuscular adaptations.

Exhaustion series with a high number of repetitions at medium loads, stressing the muscle in different working angles, with short recoveries they have an effect on the hypertrophy, but not on the explosiveness of the subject, linked to various factors including the number and efficiency of the fibers quick.

Studies by Bosco and collaborators clearly demonstrate the different hormonal response of the athlete subjected to different methods of muscle strengthening.

In volleyball, where fast strength is required, I need a base of work with high loads and calls at certain times of the year, but the major and essential component must be exercises with high speed of contraction.

Performing work only with heavy loads and a high number of repetitions for more than 10 weeks causes a negative influence on the type 1 or slow fibers and on the fast type 2 fibers, with an increase in the transverse diameter of both, but with a "braking" effect of the lens which leads to the reduction of the ability to express explosive force.

A few repetitions diluted in several series with ample recovery performed with ideal load favor, among other things, the increase of testosterone, the connected male sex hormone (Bosco and Coll. 1992-95) not as much as had always been believed with the maximum strength, but with explosive strength and speed.

From this:

Train always with methods of physical culture or even worse as a body-builder he creates athletes, often large, relatively strong and who have a non-functional strength / hypertrophy (a consideration that is particularly valid for the lower limbs).