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  • Ron says:

    First, happy 4th of July.

    Now, do you have any plans to do any follow up research on your”Does force vector influence the transfer of exercises to sprinting performance?” study? I’m gonna try really hard to leave this as a comment and not write you a book instead. I’m not surprised by the findings at all. My sport of choice is taekwon-do (lifting is more of a tool to get me better at it. If my terminology is a little different, that’s probably why) and based on my personal experiences, I’ve suspected this for years now. In particular, I have a friend who’s a college powerlifter who also trained with me. He’s at least 100-200 pounds stronger than me in both squat and deadlift (vertical type lifting movements) but he’s not a fan hipthrusts/glute bridge movements (horizontal movements). His sidekicks (more vertical in nature I guess) are freakin lethal. I’ve done breaks with heel kicks and wheel kicks (more horizontal in nature I guess) that he’s actually tried and failed to do. He slightly outranks me and has at least a small advantage over me in every way except for the horizontal strength I get from hip thrusts. This is where I feel I got what I needed to do the breaks he couldn’t.

    Specific to expanding the research, do you have any plans to do a study on vertical force workouts vs horizontal force workouts vs mixed workouts? Squats and deadlifts are my main lower body exercises and my accessory lifts for squats are leg extensions becausse of the sticking point at the end of the range of motion (0 degrees or when my leg is straight vs about 100 degree sticking point or so in a squat) and my accessory lifts for deadlifts are hip thrusts (for the same reason of a completely different sticking point) and glute ham raises.

    A powerlifter’s main concern is his/her sticking point. Once they get the weight by that point, they’ve got the lift and the number on the lift is what’s important to them. With athletes, I don’t think that’s the case. They need as much strength as possible in the beginning, middle and end of the range of motion. If eccentric lifting may increase your concentric strength, but not as much at it increases your eccentric strength and concentric lifting may increase your eccentric strength, but not as much as your concentric strength, then lifts focusing on one sticking point may help strength on another sticking point, but not as much as lifts that focus on that sticking point itself.

    In terms of actual physics, any falling object has a terminal velocity. That speed is reached when/if gravity has a long enough time to apply its force to it and if it only 100 yards to reach that terminal velocity, then it can fall 100 yards, a 1,000 yards or 10,000 yards and it would never go any faster. The only way for it to fall any faster would be to increase it’s weight and gravity’s force on it. If that objects mass magically lessened, then it would actually slow down. Remember that childhood myth that a penny thrown off the top of the Empire state building would build up enough speed to cut somebody in half? The penny’s weight isn’t that much, so it’s terminal velocity isn’t that much, so that”s why this isn’t true.

    Inside the human body, our strength is equal to the force of gravity on an object. and only having strength at the beginning of a range of motion is like a falling object losing mass at it falls. It would reach its top speed and then start to slow down. Because the human body is limited to the amount of time we have to generate speed and force by the length of our limbs, we can’t afford this. If anything, because of the law of diminishing returns where an object will go from 10-20 MPH easier and faster than it goes from 20-30 MPH even though it’s teh same 10 MPH increase because it’s closer to the objects terminal velocity. we need more strength to help us continue increasing speed and force.

    This is why I’d love to know if an all squat workout would increase vertical jump height more, equal to, or less than a workout that adds leg extensions and hipt thrusts to it to increase the strength at the end of the range of motion where we have so much leverage on the weight that the strength increases are minimal if at all. Same thing with running and broad jump distance by adding deadlifts to hip thrusts vs just hip thrusts. Volume would have to be adjusted to put the workouts on a level playing field with each other. That’s a lot more your thing than it is mine.

    Again, sorry if the terminology is a little different. The weightroom is a much bigger part of your life than it is mine. I do know you were a math teacher, but I have to throw the physics stuff out there because that’s my reasoning for wondering the benefits of different sticking point accessory lifts on tradional vertical/horizontal lifts. Now that we have that research study as a starting point……..

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