Evolutionary Athletics

Make sure you subscribe to my FREE Newsletter - Click Here Now for EXCLUSIVE members only content!

High speed eccentric loading (like what’s found in reactive lifts, plyometrics, sprints, etc.) carries with it a number of positive adaptations that can be found pretty much nowhere else. Plenty of people know that sprints and plyos are useful, but few know the exact physiological changes they bring about. In order to clear things up, we’re going to try to shed a little light on the topic. Training methods focused on high speed/high force eccentric loading bring with them the following benefits:

Strength Specificity:

Neurologically speaking, strength is largely specific to muscle contraction type. Someone with high levels of concentric strength will tend to have high levels of eccentric and isometric strength, but it is possible to develop one or two kinds of strength out of proportion with the others. Eccentric loading trains eccentric and isometric strength to a higher degree than does concentric training. And since most sporting movements are dependent on reactivity (which is dependent on eccentric and isometric strength), this is most certainly a good thing.

Fast Twitch Fiber Hypertrophy:

Eccentric training, especially high speed eccentric training, has been shown to hypertrophy type IIa and type IIb fibers to a greater degree than concentric training. Similarly, some research shows a decrease in type I fibers from this type of training as well.

Sarcomeres in Series:

Traditional hypertrophy is an increase in the number of sarcomeres (basic contractile units within a muscle fiber) running in parallel with one another. This appears as a greater muscle cross sectional area. In addition to basic hypertrophy, eccentric loading also builds more sarcomeres running in series (end to end). This appear as longer muscle fascicles and allows for greater muscle shortening speeds.

Intramuscular Connective Tissues:

Eccentric loading makes muscles more resistant to damage caused by further loading. It accomplishes this through building stronger intramuscular connective tissues. This also decreases the likelihood of injury due to muscular overload.

All in all, eccentric training is slightly difficult to apply (as the high intensity it involves increases chances of injury is misapplied), but it’s more than worth it. Understanding why it’s useful isn’t really necessary, but it’s neat to know anyways.

High speed eccentric loading (like what’s found in reactive lifts, plyometrics, sprints, etc.) carries with it a number of positive adaptations that can be found pretty much nowhere else. Plenty of people know that sprints and plyos are useful, but few know the exact physiological changes they bring about. In order to clear things up, we’re going to try to shed a little light on the topic. Training methods focused on high speed/high force eccentric loading bring with them the following benefits:

Strength Specificity:

Neurologically speaking, strength is largely specific to muscle contraction type. Someone with high levels of concentric strength will tend to have high levels of eccentric and isometric strength, but it is possible to develop one or two kinds of strength out of proportion with the others. Eccentric loading trains eccentric and isometric strength to a higher degree than does concentric training. And since most sporting movements are dependent on reactivity (which is dependent on eccentric and isometric strength), this is most certainly a good thing.

Fast Twitch Fiber Hypertrophy:

Eccentric training, especially high speed eccentric training, has been shown to hypertrophy type IIa and type IIb fibers to a greater degree than concentric training. Similarly, some research shows a decrease in type I fibers from this type of training as well.

Sarcomeres in Series:

Traditional hypertrophy is an increase in the number of sarcomeres (basic contractile units within a muscle fiber) running in parallel with one another. This appears as a greater muscle cross sectional area. In addition to basic hypertrophy, eccentric loading also builds more sarcomeres running in series (end to end). This appear as longer muscle fascicles and allows for greater muscle shortening speeds.

Intramuscular Connective Tissues:

Eccentric loading makes muscles more resistant to damage caused by further loading. It accomplishes this through building stronger intramuscular connective tissues. This also decreases the likelihood of injury due to muscular overload.

All in all, eccentric training is slightly difficult to apply (as the high intensity it involves increases chances of injury is misapplied), but it’s more than worth it. Understanding why it’s useful isn’t really necessary, but it’s neat to know anyways.

High speed eccentric loading (like what’s found in reactive lifts, plyometrics, sprints, etc.) carries with it a number of positive adaptations that can be found pretty much nowhere else. Plenty of people know that sprints and plyos are useful, but few know the exact physiological changes they bring about. In order to clear things up, we’re going to try to shed a little light on the topic. Training methods focused on high speed/high force eccentric loading bring with them the following benefits:

Strength Specificity:

Neurologically speaking, strength is largely specific to muscle contraction type. Someone with high levels of concentric strength will tend to have high levels of eccentric and isometric strength, but it is possible to develop one or two kinds of strength out of proportion with the others. Eccentric loading trains eccentric and isometric strength to a higher degree than does concentric training. And since most sporting movements are dependent on reactivity (which is dependent on eccentric and isometric strength), this is most certainly a good thing.

Fast Twitch Fiber Hypertrophy:

Eccentric training, especially high speed eccentric training, has been shown to hypertrophy type IIa and type IIb fibers to a greater degree than concentric training. Similarly, some research shows a decrease in type I fibers from this type of training as well.

Sarcomeres in Series:

Traditional hypertrophy is an increase in the number of sarcomeres (basic contractile units within a muscle fiber) running in parallel with one another. This appears as a greater muscle cross sectional area. In addition to basic hypertrophy, eccentric loading also builds more sarcomeres running in series (end to end). This appear as longer muscle fascicles and allows for greater muscle shortening speeds.

Intramuscular Connective Tissues:

Eccentric loading makes muscles more resistant to damage caused by further loading. It accomplishes this through building stronger intramuscular connective tissues. This also decreases the likelihood of injury due to muscular overload.

All in all, eccentric training is slightly difficult to apply (as the high intensity it involves increases chances of injury is misapplied), but it’s more than worth it. Understanding why it’s useful isn’t really necessary, but it’s neat to know anyways.

High speed eccentric loading (like what’s found in reactive lifts, plyometrics, sprints, etc.) carries with it a number of positive adaptations that can be found pretty much nowhere else. Plenty of people know that sprints and plyos are useful, but few know the exact physiological changes they bring about. In order to clear things up, we’re going to try to shed a little light on the topic. Training methods focused on high speed/high force eccentric loading bring with them the following benefits:

Strength Specificity:

Neurologically speaking, strength is largely specific to muscle contraction type. Someone with high levels of concentric strength will tend to have high levels of eccentric and isometric strength, but it is possible to develop one or two kinds of strength out of proportion with the others. Eccentric loading trains eccentric and isometric strength to a higher degree than does concentric training. And since most sporting movements are dependent on reactivity (which is dependent on eccentric and isometric strength), this is most certainly a good thing.

Fast Twitch Fiber Hypertrophy:

Eccentric training, especially high speed eccentric training, has been shown to hypertrophy type IIa and type IIb fibers to a greater degree than concentric training. Similarly, some research shows a decrease in type I fibers from this type of training as well.

Sarcomeres in Series:

Traditional hypertrophy is an increase in the number of sarcomeres (basic contractile units within a muscle fiber) running in parallel with one another. This appears as a greater muscle cross sectional area. In addition to basic hypertrophy, eccentric loading also builds more sarcomeres running in series (end to end). This appear as longer muscle fascicles and allows for greater muscle shortening speeds.

Intramuscular Connective Tissues:

Eccentric loading makes muscles more resistant to damage caused by further loading. It accomplishes this through building stronger intramuscular connective tissues. This also decreases the likelihood of injury due to muscular overload.

All in all, eccentric training is slightly difficult to apply (as the high intensity it involves increases chances of injury is misapplied), but it’s more than worth it. Understanding why it’s useful isn’t really necessary, but it’s neat to know anyways.

Theologian, thrower, and coach Dan John has said, on many occasions, that the body is one piece, and he’s right. When performing in athletics, no one part works in isolation. The position and motion of almost every joint impacts the position and motion of almost every other joint. Still, despite the coordination and balance demanded by nearly every sport, some people feel the need to train their body in isolation.

While everyone knows that machines are the worst culprit, they’re not what I’m writing about here. Athletes, male athletes especially, have a tendency to need to feed their egos. They commonly do this through building large upper bodies and focusing on weight at the expense of form. They arch, lift their asses, and cut ROM on their bench presses. They bounce and neglect full ROM on chins (I’m guilty as charged here). And they generally squirm, wriggle, and cheat the weight up in any way possible.

This focus on upper body and disregard for form can lead to two things: a disproportionately big and strong upper body, and poor coordination between the upper body and trunk, both of which can lead to problems out on the field. To give what is perhaps the most common example, most young men put a lot of energy into the bench press, but the bench press comes with a few problems, at least when performed as it commonly is. First of all, arching excessively when pressing essentially turns off the abdominals. Regularly bench pressing with an extreme arch can “disconnect” the pressing muscles from the abs, and this will impact stability and the transfer of force between the upper and lower body when out on the field. Second, too much bench pressing can generate gains in upper body mass and strength far in excess of what the midsection is able to stabilize and transfer down to the lower body, further worsening the situation created by the first problem. It’s not just the bench press though, other lifts can have similar effects. Weight training isn’t just about building muscle, but about building a balanced and coordinated body too.

So, how does one go about building up their upper body while making sure the strength and coordination of their core rises in concert? Simple, just train with the right movements and cues.

For the pressing muscles, the best movements to use are overhead presses (barbell or dumbbell), push presses, and weighted push ups with the hands and feet elevated for extra ROM. For the pulling muscles, the best movements are bent over rows (barbell or dumbbell), chin up variations (with the right cues), and front levers. Really, any movement where the lower body or core needs to provide stabilization while the upper body is working are good. For all of the movements listed above, the two cues that needs to be kept in mind are to keep the abs contracted and to hold the pelvis neutral (neither a posterior or anterior tilt) while lifting. These cues ensure that the body learns to coordinate upper movement with torso stabilization.

Having typed all of that, traditional lifts like the bench press are just fine to include, but it’s best not to go overboard. If you’re going to bench press or build a big upper body in general, follow the aforementioned cues, and make sure that your midsection is strong enough to stabilize the weight of and force generated by your upper body. While a big upper body may look impressive, if it’s developed out of balance it’ll only hurt your performance come game time.

While it’s true that the glutes, quads, hamstrings, and abs are the primary “engines” behind most sporting movements, it’s impossible to reach one’s full potential without adequately strong and functional lower legs. Whereas propulsive power is generated by the hips, it’s transferred into the ground through the calves, ankles, feet, and toes. If the foot and ankle complex isn’t strong enough to manage the forces of the hips, an athlete will essentially be leaking power.

In addition to transferring force from the other muscles into the ground, the foot and ankle complex is designed for reactive function. What this means is that the tendons in the feet and lower legs gather energy with each foot strike (or countermovement) and then return that energy for additional propulsive power.

The stronger and more coordinated one’s feet and lower legs are, the better they’ll be able to transfer power from the larger muscle groups and the better they’ll be able to capture and reuse power gained through reactive function. These abilities will manifest themselves largely in faster coupling times (ie. You’ll get off the ground faster and with less of a load up).

When training the lower legs one needs to pay attention to both the musculature and the tendons. Strong, coordinated muscles with high RFD are needed to maintain joint angles upon contact and stiff (resistant to deformation) tendons are the springs in which reactive energy is captured. The stiffer the tendons, the more energy they’ll be able to absorb and put back out and the faster they’ll be able to do it. Since the primary function of the lower leg complex is to act isometrically, that’s what most of the training methods targeting it focus on.

In order to train the musculature, weighted isometric holds with the calves stretched tend to work the best. Standing calf raise ISOs target the gastrocnemii and seated calf raise ISOs target the solei. The gastrocnemii are utilized more heavily when the knee is closer to full extension, and the solei are utilized more heavily when it’s bent. As such, different sporting movements require different balances of strength. Sets of 30-60 seconds tend to work best for both exercises, and to minimize spinal loading they can be done one leg at a time.

To train the tendons and local RFD, plyometric variations tend to work the best. Jumping rope, line hops, rebounds on and off of a step, altitude landings, depth jumps, sprints, and bounds all work very well, and choosing exercises depends largely on one’s sport and readiness level. I would recommend that people work their way up to depth jumps, altitude landings, and bounds by following a progressions like the one below:

Jumping Rope or Line Hops (2-feet)

Jumping Rope or Line Hops (1-foot)

Step Rebounds (2-feet)

Step Rebounds (1-foot)

Low Altitude Landings (<CMJ height)

Higher Altitude Landings (>CMJ height)

Depth Jumps

Bounds

By gradually increasing the intensity of the exercises, one will ward off the chance of getting shin splints and will make sure they’re absorbing the force with their muscles and tendons, not their skeleton and ligaments. Progressions goes at one’s own pace, and it’s best to err on the side of caution. Nobody ever got injured by doing too little.

Jumping rope, line hops, and step rebounds are all best when done in sets of 20-30 seconds. Altitude landings and depth jumps work well in sets of 3-5 repetitions. And 20-30M is usually good for bounds.

By keeping a healthy diet of lower leg work in one’s routine, one can make sure that they’re getting the most out of their hips and legs and make sure they’re reactive as possible. Those with the best lower leg function tend to move effortlessly, appear to skip across the ground, and get up higher faster than their opponents. If those sound like desirable traits, then foot and lower leg function is where you need to focus, but not at the expense of the hips and core.

Throwing in a couple of sets of plyometric drills before each session and a couple sets of calf ISOs after each session should be more than enough to build strong feet, ankles, and calves. How much you do exactly is largely determined by your work capacity and the rest of your routine, but even a few sets can go a long ways.

For some reason, probably due to the popularity of Westside Barbell’s training methods, the term “strength” has become all but synonymous with lifting maxes. Because of this, far too many athletes spend their energy pushing heavy singles in the squat and deadlift when their time and energy could be better spent elsewhere.

In truth, strength shouldn’t be defined or measured via a maximal lift, a maximal lift is just one expression of strength. More accurately, strength should be viewed as the maximal amount of tension one can generate under a set of given circumstances. In other words, the strength needed to squat 500 lbs is not necessarily the strength needed to long jump 25′, though they are similar in origin.

Breaking things down, and oversimplifying them somewhat, strength is based upon a number of trainable and untrainable factors. Untrainable factors include limb lengths and tendon attachment points and should be largely ignored as they are, obviously, untrainable. Trainable factors can be further split into two groups: physical factors and neural factors.

Physical factors include:

-Muscle cross sectional area (size)

-Muscle fiber type ratios

-Tendon size and strength (stiffness)

Neural factors include:

-Intramuscular coordination (including rate coding, RFD, and firing synchronization)

-Intermuscular coordination

-Various reflexes and counter-reflexes (myotatic stretch reflex, GTO response, etc.)

Lifting heavy is actually a skill unto itself. It takes a good deal of intermuscular and intramuscular coordination to handle heavy weights, and it’s true that lifting heavy does train RFD and rate coding, but there’s a hitch. The neurological gains associated with lifting heavy are specific to the movement in which they were gained. In other words, all the heavy squatting in the world won’t build up the type of coordination necessary to sprint fast or jump high. What it will do though is create excessive neural fatigue that will impact the rest of the athlete’s training.

Putting the whole concept into a nutshell, neurological gains do not transfer over between dissimilar movements, only physical gains are entirely general. What this means is that athletes should not seek to train their CNS in the weight room, only their muscles, and they should seek to do so in the most efficient manner possible so as to save energy for their sport specific training, where they develop the complimentary neural skills.

The main point I want to get across is that a maximal lift is not the end-all-be-all of strength. Just because someone raises their squat doesn’t mean they got stronger (out on the field), it’s entirely possible they just got more skilled at squatting. However, if their increase in strength was due not to an increase in skill, but an increase in muscle mass, then the gains will transfer onto the field. As long as the muscle is there, it doesn’t matter how heavy you can lift for a single.

To maximize muscle and tendon gain and minimize neural fatigue in the weight room, I would suggest that athletes keep their training intensity to between 65-80% 1RM and think more along the lines of hypertrophy rep ranges (6-12). This type of training provides enough loading to effectively build up the muscles and tendons, but not enough to create undue fatigue. More specifically, I would suggest 20-40 total reps (per exercise) over 1-2 main exercises once every 3-4 days. These weight room sessions will do plenty to train the necessary physical factors and will leave enough energy to train the neural factors out on the field.

To sum everything up, all tasks rely on the same musculature, but on different neurological programs. Build up the musculature in the weight room and do the programming on the field. Don’t wear yourself out trying for heavy singles, they’re as much skill as they are strength.

-RJ Nelsen

Hey everyone, my name is RJ Nelsen and I’m an athlete/coach whose primary interest is speed training, both for team sports and for track and field. I can’t say I have much in the way of accomplishments to my name, but over the past few years I’ve transformed myself from a scrawny couch potato into a half-decent athlete. Since I started training I’ve added 40 lbs to my frame (170 lbs to 210 lbs @ 6′1″), taken my vertical leap from touching rim to dunking from a standstill, added 18″ to my broad jump (8′8″ to 10′2″ and still going up), have done 7 chin ups with 90 lbs around my waist, and have dropped over a second from my 100M time. These numbers aren’t final either. I’m still improving and intend to eclipse them all in short order. I’ve also had the pleasure of helping many athletes get closer to their sporting goals.

Over the past few years I’ve learned the ropes from training myself, training others, talking to knowledgeable and experienced coaches, and reading anything and everything I could get my hands on. I’m finally starting to get a firm grip on things and I hope I can pass a little bit on.

-Roger