By Dr. Izzo Lorenzo
Over the years, in all team sports, the time dedicated to the physical conditioning of athletes has increased.
It has been understood that even in sports where the domination of the ball and tactical abilities are predominant the physical preparation is very useful; both to improve the competitive performance (I hold out for a long time at a fast pace in the game and in training, I improve efficiency and I learn more easily the technical gestures etc ..) and to prevent injuries.
The most important conditional ability, and to which we are giving more and more space, is strength. Capacity defined in recent years as the basis of other skills and the starting point for the physical-performance evolution of the athlete.
In summary I train with the weights for:
- Improve the tender performance;
- compensate for the muscular imbalances already present in the athlete or caused by the repetition of technical gestures;
To improve the race performance I have to use methods that contribute to the purpose. The most important principle is the SAID (specific adaptation to the imposed stimulus).
This criterion simply establishes that the athlete responds specifically in relation to the training stimuli given to him.
Stimulus, response, adaptation
This principle contains 2 concepts:
1-specificity of mechanics
2-speed specificity
According to these principles, if the method used to improve performance is mechanically similar to the gesture of competition, the athlete adapts specifically to the type of training he does.
If you train slowly you will become able to perform motor gestures slowly, the opposite if you train with explosive gestures; (slow movements are completely different from the neurologically explosive ones: Hakkinen 1988). On the contrary, every movement that requires large accelerations, with great recruitment of fast muscle fibers and "ballistic" type impulses produces similar neuromuscular adaptations.
Exhaustion series with a high number of repetitions at medium loads, stressing the muscle in different work angles, with brief recoveries have an effect on hypertrophy, but not on the explosiveness of the subject, linked to various factors including the number and efficiency of the fast fibers.
Studies of Bosco and collaborators clearly demonstrate the different hormonal response of the athlete subjected to different methods of muscle strengthening.
In volleyball, where fast strength is required, I need a base of work with high loads and recalls at certain times of the year, but the major and essential component must be made up of exercises with high speed of contraction.
Doing work only with heavy loads and a high number of repetitions for more than 10 weeks causes a negative influence on type 1 or slow fibers and on fast type 2 fibers, with an increase in the transverse diameter of both, but with a "braking" effect of the lens that leads to the reduction of the ability to express explosive force.
A few repetitions diluted in several series with ample recovery performed with ideal load favor, among other things, the increase of testosterone, the connected male sex hormone (Bosco and Coll. 1992-95) not so much as one had always believed with the maximum strength, but with explosive strength and speed.
From this:
Always training with physical culture methods or worse still as body builders creates athletes, often large, relatively strong and who have non-functional strength / hypertrophy (a consideration that is particularly valid for the lower limbs).
