gavriil

When I decided I'd get back into volleyball and being active in general almost 2 years ago, the second thought was, I will have to go through some conditioning first before going into it so I minimize chances for injury. I played vball from 12 until 22 years old and coached in collge for two years, so I know the game very well and used to be good at it. Being only 6 feet tall pretty much determined no serious future for me in the sport, so I followed the...school and career path instead


The next thought was that, because I saw great results from lifting weights when I was around 21 (for no more than 6 months), this time, I will emphasize weight lifting even more so that I become even better at performing within the sport.

I thought that lifting weights, would make me a better vball player.

I started a general conditioning program during the first 6 months and then got more and more advanced with squats and deadlifts incorporated into the program during the past year.

When I started "trying" my performance state at open gym sessions, I was buffled! I felt and was slower than ever. From an integrity perspective (balance, overall support of joints and muscles), I felt good, but there was no...ooomph there, to use an automotive term. It's like very little torque at low revs (without the kick at the top end either ).

I was disappointed but did not fret, instead I tried to find out why this was happening. That's when I came up with an unforgettable moment in time, for me. The moment that I:

1. found out that there is a difference between strength and power and
2. understood what that difference was

That was the moment that I almost quit the gym altogether. Vball and all. I was in a capitulation state phsychologically (this is about 10 months ago).

Why take it so hard...

Well, I realized that for the past year (back then), I was doing the wrong things at the gym, when considering my goals, which althought I knew, I did not understand them. I knew what I wanted to..."be like", but I did not understand much about the nature and characteristics of those goals. Lack of appropriate knowledge was the only culprit. Why? Mostly because I took misconceptions from others, or print media as truths and based my goals on them. In the end, terrible, if not, non-existent results were shown.

The reasons I continued were:

1. By understanding the differences between strength and power, a new goal was basically set automatically for me and I love to attain goals, or at least try to

2. I later realized (after researching the matter) that the past 12 months of resistance strength training was not for nothing. That's because as I will mention again below, it's necessary before an athlete works on adding power.

So what are strength and power?

First STRENGTH:

Many ways to define it. One answer is...strength is energy. Another is work performed (although work in physics suggests applying force over a distance). In our lifting world, it can be defined as "force at zero velocity". I know, it's still sounds technical. Here is a simpler one to me: You lie on the bench, you take the barbell loaded with two plates and the coach says to you, bench press this weight once. TAKE ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD! If you can do it, you are strong

The sentence in capitals is important because this characteristic (of no dependance on TIME), makes strength, what it is. Strength.

Hence:



where

F is the force and
s is the distance traveled by the object.

Translation in Gym-lingo:

Work (or Strength) = 225 pounds of weight moved in a bench-pressing-like motion, whatever the distance travelled (the distance from start to the completion of the rep).

POWER:

Power changes everything because power introduces TIME in the equation.

In physics (The science of matter and energy and their interactions), power (symbol: P) is the amount of work W done per unit of time t.

So:



where:

P is power
E is energy or work W
t is time

Translation in Gym-lingo:

200 (pounds of weight) / 2 (benchpressed in two seconds) = 100

BUT:

200 (pounds of weight) / 1 (benchpressed in one second) = 200

The larger the result, the more POWERFUL the athlete!

So what the hell does all this mean? Well, a TON if you're a coach of a javelin thrower and of a deadlift powerlifter. Why?

Apparently muscles care! They care about the difference between power and strength. They act very differently when you give them time to lift something as opposed to very little time.

Since you all lift, you are very familiar about the kinetic and biomechanic nature of lifting large weights in the gym. What you may not know is that, that type of training leads to strength improvements (apart from muscle growth). I am stronger if I can benchpress 10 more pounds today than 1 month ago. How long it took me to lift it is irrelevant.

But what if I am a high jump jumper?

Let me ask you all this:

Can any of you jump, if I asked you to do it in no less than 30 seconds? Try it. It's impossible. You will never leave the ground. And I have not even asked you to jump high. Even jumping more than 10 inches, (or even at all) is impossible.

Same thing with throwinig the javelin, pitching, spiking the vball, power-cleaning, jerking, snatching, running, pretty much every major and minor sport-related activity that's related to some type of sport.

Interesting. Cos if that's the case, most sports, if not all, are a TON more related to POWER than STRENGTH.

Now that you start to understand the importance of strength and its definition:

Let's go back to muscle talk. Check this graph out for a sec:



This is at the heart of around the time when I seriously considered quiting. When I understood and interpreted this graph and its stipulations to my goals. So what's the graph say?

First let me say that this graph depicts what happens as far as force and time when an athlete jumps vertically.

Every one of the three curves represents a type of athlete:

1. untrained,
2. heavy-resistance strength-trained, and
3. explosive-strength-trained

X axis is Time and Y axis is Force. Very simple and comprehensive. Now let's look at their behavior (that of the athletes):

Look at the strong guy and the untrained guy. Up to about the first 170 miliseconds, they are equally strong! Amazing! Then after the strong guy is given enough time, he shows "what he can do". And the more time we give him, the better he performs.

Now look at the power-guy. Right from the first miliseconds, he is gone! Significantly higher application of force during the first 300 ms. Then he clearly "runs out of gas".

Another way to think of this is as an automobile engine power curve. The strong guy has top end, the powerful guy has very good low and mid range torque.

Isnt that amazing. The way muscles react, depending on the type of training done?

Let me go a little deeper into what happens in the muscle to explain some of this behavior:

First let start going from outside the muscle to "all the way in":



A muscle fiber looks like this inside:



Very complicated thing the muscle is, but I am only going to try and talk about one small aspect of the muscle "guts". What the industry calls MOTOR UNIT.

It looks like this:



And its definition as it says above is:

A motor neuron plus all of the muscle fibers it innervates.

Now check this out:

An important characteristic of skeletal muscle is its ability to contract to varying degrees. A muscle, like the biceps, contracts with varying degrees of force depending on the circumstance (this is also referred to as a graded response). Muscles do this by a process called summation, specifically by motor unit summation and wave summation.

Motor Unit Summation - the degree of contraction of a skeletal muscle is influenced by the number of motor units being stimulated. Skeletal muscles consist of numerous motor units and, therefore, stimulating more motor units creates a stronger contraction.

Gym-lingo:

In one of the open gyms I played at, there was this guy. He was a stick! I mean the guy was about 140 pounds and almost 6 feet. He would hit the ball harder than anybody! I could not believe how hard this guy could hit the ball when I considered his muscle mass. WHy did that happen I wondered.

In other words, is there a corelation between muscle mass and power?

Well, in simplistic terms, apparently, a powerful guy uses a lot more of his available muscle than a strong guy would, when executing an explosive motion. And btw I will borrow the time-limit from the definition of plyometrics to define "explosive motion". And that is, any motion that takes 0.315 sec or less to happen at least once. So if you bench press whatever weight in no more than 0.315 sec, you're doing it explosively. If you do it slower but still "quite fast", it's called dynamic (I dont have to define quite fast because it's not relevant here).

So: What does the above mean? It means that the skinny guy hitting the ball like lightning is able to TURN ON A VERY LARGE NUMBER OF HIS MOTOR UNITS ALL AT ONCE AND WITHIN THE TIME I DEFINED ABOVE, AS COMPARED TO THE STRONG GUY.

Strong guys, take time to turn a big number of motor units to ON. And Olympic Lifters (and other equally amazing athletes) turn them on qickly and KEEP THEM FIRING (that's the hardest of all).

Ah! So that is why, one does not necessarily need muscle mass to be powerful! Apparently, when called upoon for a very little amount of time, at maximal force, EVEN A LITTLE BIT OF MUSCLE CAN DO SOME MAJOR DAMAGE. Hence the stories of the little guy beating the living shit of a significantly bigger and more musculine guy we all heard at least once since high school. Street fighting apparently, is a lot more about power (and cardio performance) than it is about strength. When you are fighting with someone, you dont move slow apparently.

So it all starts to make sense now. It trully is coming together. Yes there are tons of unanswered questions, about the exact behavior of a muscle internally when certain things happen or not, but we now understand the principles of power vs strength. We at least understand that there is a distinct difference between the two and what that is.

To be continued...

FastAcura

That's a great write up. The same goes for soccer. A lot of these skinny guys with almost no muscles on their legs can hit the ball 75 yards like it's nothing. That why I include machines when I train legs and try to do a lot of reps in the shortest time possible.

stphy32

Excellent write up gav.

FastAcura

gavriil, is it ok to use machines for power, or should people just lower the weight and stick to free weights?

gavriil

Thank you both.

LTRAIN

cliff notes please???
so you are trying to say u want power or strength then you should take time to do a rep??

gavriil

You are asking about things I would write about, during my "to be continued" session. But it's OK, as long as it's writen somewhere, it's useful.

First, the above is a little vague mostly becuase I am not sure if I should assume that, if you were to "use machines for power", you'd be using a high amount of weight (and "high" needs to be very carefully examined first and defined later). If that is the case, that is, that you ARE assuming that, then it is the wrong approach. Twice. Once because you are using "heavy weights" (whatever heavy means) and two, because you are using machines for it. So:

1. Machines, in most cases, just like in the case of bodybuilding, are not as effective for building power, due to their isolating effects and nature. Actually, in the case of building power, which assumes its use in a sports environment, they are even worse than in the bodybuilding (muscle mass growth) case, because sports-related activities (motions, if you will) are almost always of very highly compound nature. So the usual reason within bodybuilding of, say..."deadlifts are great compound exercises and compound exercises are more effective in the case of growing muscles" applies here, in the case of power, even more.

Let's take as an example of a vball player in attack mode. Spiking the ball, engages a VERY high number of muscle groups (let alone muscles). Look at what he's doing (in a simplistic schematic):









Believe it or not, the muscle groups involved and THE WAY they are involved during the second and third graphs, are exremely similar to a POWER CLEAN! Olympic lifting, yes. That's when I understood why olympic lifters are the best performing vertical-leap athletes on the planet. And they have NO technique (when compared to vball players) and they weigh A TON (again compared to lean vball players or even basketball players). Hence they jump like bats. MOTOR UNIT ENGAGMENT baby!



They turn an extremely high number of them ON, faster than anyone and KEEP THEM FIRING (the latter is extremely difficult and that's what usually makes the difference between a gold medal and 10th place).

I am getting off topic here but my point is that WHEN TRAINING FOR IMPROVING FOR POWER, COMPOUND NATURE OF EXERCISES IS OF PARAMOUNT IMPORTANCE.

Forget about the way bodybuilders, or even powerlifters think like. It's totally different.

The above sentece was THE REASON I almost quit. I realized that what I was doing was so freaking different, no wonder I could not move in the court. And when I was looking at 19 year old kids, with 1/3 my muscle mass hit the ball 3 times harder than me, I almost cried, or worse! All this work and pain I went through, for nothing?

2. You mentioned "lowering the weight".

WHEN TRAINING FOR IMPROVING POWER, ALWAYS USE THE APPROPRIATE WEIGHT SO THAT THE EXERCISE DOES NOT STRAY OFF THE DEFINITION OF PLYOMETRICS OR (WORST CASE) DYNAMIC LIFTING!

Many claim 40-50% of your overload weight. I disagree. It depends on the exercise, it depends on the goal, it depends on the athlete's strengths and weaknesses, it depends on how advanced the athlete is from a general conditioning perspective and even more importantly, it depends on the combination of all of the above and how they affect the outcome with regard to their different combinations of answers one can come up with. Way too long of a sentence, but these notions are very hard to describe and I am sure I am missing a TON which I have not become aware of yet.

For sure though, the weight has to be..."low". The principles of overload, do not apply here.

Here is a definitive example in my case:

When I squat (for strength and muscle growth purposes) I usually overload at 350 pounds and 5 reps ((upper) hamstring goes to parallel with the floor).

When I work on adding power, as part of improving my vertical leap, I do the lovely (kidding) JUMP SQUATS. So Pu on a 25/30p weight on each side on the olympic standard barbell and start jumping as high as possible and as intensly as possible (inside the power rack), going lower than parallel with the floor. So what is that? 105 pounds? That's about 30% of my squat OL sets. Why not go higher? Because that's where maximum point where the jumping still feels happening in a fluent manner. Any more weight and it's not happening quickly enough, hence, it's not jumping any more, it's entering the realm of dynamic squats and even more weight would do it 100% dynamic, or slower (a regular squat).

Again, the definition of ploymentrics does contain the magic number 0.315 sec or 315 ms. Anything more than that and you're leaving the plyo world, wondering into a different world. But dont get me wrong, I am not doing ONLY plyos and I am not against dynamic lifts. On the contrary. As you know, I am a big proponent of power cleaning and I admire olympic lifters highly. It all depends on the factors I listed above, starting with the athlete's goals.

More discussion, I am sure, will come along from questions, comments, etc.

gavriil

Sorry but, believe it or not, my first post IS the cliff notes of the subject. This is a very highly complicated item for discussion and there is still a TON experts do not fully understand, or even, be aware of.

No, that's not what I am saying at all... Sorry.

FastAcura

Thanks again.

So a boxer for example would take 30% of his overload weight (dumbells for example) to become quicker, or more powerful? How many reps should one do, or should I go by time and just do as many as I can in a certain amount of time?

Also, is it a good idea to overload at the beginning and train for power at the end of the week, or is that not enough time to rest?

gavriil

Holy cow, so many good questions, so little time to answer them.

A boxer is a great example of power, but also cardio. And that's a very difficult combination for athletes. The difference between champions and the rest (in the appropriate sports) is that champions continue to be able to apply maximal force (that is, to be highly explosive) even after, or during an exhausting cardio session (of whichever type - it does not matter how it took place - running or rope jumping, etc.).

How many reps: First let me say, the principles of STR during strenth exercises apply with power. It's important for the maximum amount of ATP to be present before a power set commences. So 2.5 to 5 minute breaks (depending on the set and exercise) is not only permissable but encouraged. As far as the number of reps, I'd say 10 is the maximum. But you do need to periodize. Meaning start with a lower weight, or no weight and do two 14 rep sets as a warmup, then add some more weight to acclimate and then go for the maximum weight while keeping the principles stated above (fluency and time).

Now the last question of yours is very good. Because today it is unclear as to the effects of the combination of power and strength training at the same time. Even experts disagree currenlty. I try to separate them, with regard to days. But I mix it up. Just keep in mind that it is easier to overtrain with strength training than it is with power training exercises. The muscle needs a lot more time to heal when overloaded under high intensity.

Also keep this in mind (although you did not ask it...yet):

MUSCLE SIZE IS A LOT MORE RELEVANT WITH STRENGTH TRAINING THAN POWER TRAINING.

FastAcura

Thanks again. I figured muscle size would be more dependant on overload sets than power sets. I think it would be a good idea to balance them. There was this little asian guy who probably weighed less than 140lbs at my old gym (X Sport Fitness), but he could knock out so many reps @ 200 lbs. I figured it must be more dependent on power than muscle. I doubt he could have done those sets at a really slow pace.

So let's say if my overload for bench press is about 230. I should be doing only 10 reps @ 80 lbs for power training? That's below what I would usually consider warm up sets. Sorry about all these questions. It's great to know all this.

gavriil

Thanks for appreciating this info. I find it fascinating and the more I dig into it, the more interesting it gets.

First about the small asian guy: It all depends on how fast he was lifting it. It sounds a lot of weight to be lifted fast from a 140 pound guy. Why?

Total work performed = weight lifted (DIVIDED BY) time (how fast it was lifted).

So if you bench press 100 pounds in 2 seconds you are doing more work (usually measured in watts) than if you lifted the same weight in 4 seconds.

You mean more on power than strength?

ABout the weight you mention above for bench pressing:

My first question is what are you trying to achieve (before I answer)?

FastAcura

Yes, more power than strength

So by doing slower reps, you actually do less "work"? So doing slow negatives for example is not a good way of building muscle?

What I wanna do?

Well first, I work out because I like working out. Of course I wanna add muscle mass, but staying in shape is important too. I don't wanna be "big" and slow. I wanna find the right balance between being in good shape and looking good. Don't wanna get too big because of soccer.

gavriil

When a rep takes place, in order to figure the amount of work achieved (that really is ENERGY) you divide the total weight lifted by the time it took to lift that weight.

But muscles do not follow the simplistic rule of "the more powerful they get, the larger they get". You will find that noted by me above I believe (or at least I meant to write about it).

With regard to stimulatio: Muscles grow the fastest when overloaded under high intensity. This assumes strength resistance type of training.

gavriil

Finally about the above question. Yes, if you want to add speed to your chest, shoulder, tricep muscles, 3 sets of dynamic, weighted lifting will help a ton. But, I'd also add power cleans and jump squats.

FastAcura

This might be OT, but I had a question regarding building muscle. How many sets should one do? I remember you said it works best when doing OL, and keeping it between 4-6 reps. How many sets are considered overtraining?

gavriil

The answer (and more) to this is here:

https://acurazine.com/forums/health-fitness-34/what-do-you-think-about-steroids-137959/

Start from the middle of the page and go down.

FastAcura

Man, that's some great stuff. I'm gonna have to reevalute the way I train. I would warm up with one or two sets, but then I would be lifting at 100% and then lowering the weight.

A question - you said do two sets at MO. So people shouldn't move to dumbells after doing bench press? I usually move from bench press to dumbells and change the angles up a bit.

FastAcura

Does the same apply to legs? I usually do more reps when I do legs, is that bad? I don't want them to just get big, but also be in better shape when I run.

gavriil

Moving to dumbells after you are done with your barbell exercise/s is totally acceptable. The opposite is not. The barbell almost always guarantees better results. Because overload can be better achieved.

gavriil

The above applies to all skeletal muscle. It is a myth to think that certain skeletal muscle reacts differently to stimulation for growth. Abs and calves are usually misunderstood. They are reacting the same exact way as any other skeletal muscle. Smooth muscle and cardiac muscle is a different story.

When you say "be in better shape when I run" what do you mean exactly?

FastAcura

What I mean is, when I play soccer, I'm not neccesarely putting all my strength into 2-3 sets of 4-6 reps. It's evenly distributed throughout 90 minutes. When my legs get tired, it feels like I did a lot of reps at a lower weight than the other way around. Will doing low reps @ higher weight help get stronger for an exrcise that's more like doing higher reps @ low weight?

gavriil

What a great question your last sentence is!

When preparing for a sport, not only in theory, but I have personally experienced from myself that, the correct order of preparationg is (again, the emphasis goes to the ORDER of the below):

1. Strength training (and this goes without say that it can be broken down to basic, intermediate and advanced)

2. Power training

3. (sport specific) Technique exercises (this is mostly helping coordination of certain muscles relevant to the sport),

4. Cardio, and finally

5. Sport strategy and physhology (which is less relevant here)


So going to your question above, absolutely strength is important but cardio is also part of the answer to the first part of your question.