Re acceleration sports. Today Im bringing the kettlebell swing and single leg high hang clean to step as drills to support the development of pre-tension, abolition of muscle slack and facilitation of quicker acceleration mechanics. Vertical jumps. Horizontal displacement, i.e. running speed. These are often used. Often sought characteristics. Often trained to improve. There are times when VJs, SL hops, and speed tests dont improve. Particularly in females. Heres a few reasons that could shed light. Too much muscle slack - common in females and generation me athletes who a) sit a lot, and b) walk or run with swagger, but not class (thats for another post). Too many counter movements (which is a way to overcome muscle slack but slows down movement). Not enough pre-tension. In track cycling, the faster a cyclist goes, the more co-contractions they have. In triple jump, the further an athlete jumps, the stiffer they are in each landing. In basketball jumps, the higher an athlete jumps, the less change in knee and ankle angle an athlete has at take-off. In baseball batting, the less shimmys the batter has pre-swing, the faster their swing is. In tennis and volleyball, the bigger the backswing, the more the athlete is using the large counter movement to take up muscle slack. Cueing tasks that forbid counter movement force the athlete to find another way to accelerate. The natural groove then is to develop pre-tension. At the moment of acceleration, the antagonists are naturally relaxed and the agonist produces force. Fractions of seconds have been saved with each acceleration movement by not allowing countermovement. Its not the basketballer who jumps highest who gets the rebound, its the one who jumps quickest. One of the better drills to cue acceleration mechanics is the kettlebell swing. This is not a strength drill. Its a technical acceleration/power drill where counter movements degrade the quality of the drill. In the KB swing, the down phase is not passive. If youre being blasé about the KB swing technique, to achieve reps because you read somewhere about a training session that includes bags of reps, (i.e. above 25 at most - with each acceleration step going 2+ metres and a desire to still be accelerating at 60m), and youre a track sprinter for 100m, then dial it back. If youre a field athlete and your acceleration bursts are 5-10 metres, then 2-3 rep set of KB swings is suitable. Dr Mark Chengs video is a great example of how cueing a technically correct KB swing develops pre-tension. Remember, a functional exercise is not what it looks like (this doesnt look like accelerating from one leg), its what it produces - pre-tensions, co-contractions and acceleration through the hips and knees. If you want to grease the groove and get a speed endurance supplementary exercise away from the track - this isnt your drill - try the single leg high hang clean to step. Use this link to get a previous post on this drill - https://facebook/video.php?v=637880706309513 Its main strength (besides also minimising counter movements) is that when cued to take as much time as possible to put your foot down, it forces the athlete to take all rotation out of the swing phase, so that the sum of all vectors is horizontal force production at terminal stance. So, its a drill that supports top speed running mechanics. Ive got lots more to say around it, but might save it for another time, or for the comments section.
Posted on: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 02:53:19 +0000
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