That is, however, exactly what happened on the night of unprecedented cold temperatures. Like many auto- mobile drivers, these decision makers falsely believed that redundant safety devices allowed them to oper- ate in more dangerous conditions without increasing the risk of a catastrophe.
Sport Specific? Special Strength? Sometimes. I will share some general principals I read and see if people agree. Often concepts are loosely shared through observation and I coin things with terms so that concepts are given some life. One of my biggest observed faults in training is the lack of understanding the training process. I was reading some engineering articles after I was emailed some great papers from researchers poking some serious holes in sport specific training. I saw with dramatic pause some programs may be causing more problems instead of reducing injuries, and decreasing performance.
Replicating The Sport – How close training resembles what you are training for has pros and cons. Remember specific exercises need to be in a balance that prepares but doesn’t punish. Off-seasons need a break from pattern overload, and replicating patterns with loads when they need rest can exacerbate the problem. The sport is a stress, and after watching some soccer players not have access to any formal training and being world class athletes you are getting a lot stimulus from the sport and that must be counted as part of the training load. The training load is not just output energy wise but stresses that interact with your biomotor abilities and must be integrated with your other training elements. For example single leg training and rotational training needs only small doses in a program because you are already getting overlap of those type of contractions biochemically and physically. Efforts to take a concept too far will create unnatural disturbances to recruitment patterns such as the problems we had with unstable surfaces, weighted implements, tethered cords, and even machines that promised the moon and only gave injuries. For example one famous discus athlete increased his rotational power to the point he gained 6m without any rotational work besides his sport and bilateral lifts and symmetrical core exercises. What was thought to be foolish by one russian super coach because he didn’t anything training specific felt the wrath of being swept by other athletes not in the know.
Isolating Muscles and Joints- Often PT and Sports Medicine must do some isolation work to bring up something lagging. Many times something will be claimed to be shut down. While rehab is often necessary can we study the programs that effectively enhance performance with low injury statistics instead of studying disease or failure? Wisdom might be learning from others but perhaps we can learn from coaches that seem not to struggle with injuries from their program design. Why is this shutdown? Why is this team testing great? The corrective exercise crowd is doing a great job helping improve function. Strangely the have to do a good job the next year as their training design put them back to square one.
Training Load and Training Design- How much, how hard, and how. I don’t have the answer but I have a few experiences after using a fundamental USATF set-up. Periodization isn’t dead, but it’s not in favor because of marketing and private industry people not having their entire career based on plans but attachments to talent. GPP? Sure we see some people drop the name but they don’t know what it really is from classical approaches. Remember hard/easy from Oregon? We talk about high low or vertical integration but the cliff notes of the programs can’t be dumbed down to other sports without talking about the details. For example some athletes that do max speed work will feel adductor magnus DOMS and then try to do some specific exercise to bring up the weak points. Of course they feel it as they just started transitioning to it and they didn’t do anything to address it in the fall or in the SPP. Charlie talked about blending phases together so they were not just rough blocks and that is the art of program design, bringing along athlete in a cohesive, congruent, and comprehensive plan.