[Vern Gambetta]

Vern Gambetta on August 22, 2007 at 5:03 am #13308

I was talking to a swim coach theother day and he made the following comment: “I saw something on a website on Kettlebell training and it looks really hard. I think I willput it in my program.” I took a deep breath and admonished him to takea step back and think about what he was trying to achieve. It is hard,but is it beneficial training in the context in which he wants to useit? Kett

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[Carson Boddicker]

Carson Boddicker on August 23, 2007 at 2:03 am #67958

Vern,
Excellent points!  In the majority of athletic arenas you'll find the "it's hard, so it must work" idea.  For example, today was my first workout with my college team and it was all over the place.  Part of the workout following our run was about 6 minutes of arm circles (arms abducted, tiny circles with both pronated and supinated palms). 

The rationale, of course, was that you feel the muscle burning, so it has gotta make you a better runner as evidenced by the "Man, this is hard!  It makes your shoulder endurance go up so much!" comments.  What they failed to realize, in my opinion, was that they were continuing to worsen some postural flaws, as a lot of the guys on the team have elevated scapulae and scapular winging.  In my opinion, they'd have been far better off with doing a bit of middle and lower trap activation work.   

Carson Boddicker

[Mike Young]

Mike Young on August 25, 2007 at 11:39 pm #66250

Sometimes, athletes have the mentality that harder = better too. In the end, there has to be enough of a balance to give athletes the confidence they have worked hard enough to win.

ELITETRACK Founder