Unpopular S&C Beliefs

[macklin]

Great thread.

I think that the benefits of powerlifting plans for boxing/striking martial arts are completely overstated. The amount of time amateurs waste trying to "get strong" while showing up too sore to train properly for their sport is ridiculous. A basic, low-volume plan to strengthen the joints, correct imbalances, and otherwise stave off injury seems like a much better use of your time. I lurked for years here watching the Carnal Salvation crew prescribe a 3-day PL split to anyone who'd ask - often with no fight or fight training experience of their own - and cringed. I've actually never met or trained with a successful, high-level striker who invested any serious time in weight lifting.

And I know that's flying in the face of billions of studies and empirical hooplah.

 

[Papawash]

Doing HIIT is not the end all be all of conditioning, I think LISS also has it's benefits, especially for those who are looking to improve their cardio base.

 

[j123]

Doing HIIT is not the end all be all of conditioning, I think LISS also has it's benefits, especially for those who are looking to improve their cardio base.

They're both useful, as per shown in Joel Jamison's FAQ thread. LISS helps for overall endurance, and HIIT is for high intensity pace. So in a fight it would be:

LISS helps for the total duration (25min fight, 5x5min)
HIIT helps for the max intensity of each round

doing only LISS would be bad, as the fighter would gas in a very heavy paced round
doing only HIIT would be bad, because by the 3rd round he would be wiped

I speak from exp on both. First 2 fights, I only did only LISS type running (5-6km daily runs) and gassed in the 2nd of a 3x2min fight (2min, although it sounds very short, the intensity is much higher than a 5min round).
3rd fight, I did HIIT only. Did well at first, but gassed horribly in the third. It was tied, and I ended up getting a 4th round, and I had nothing to answer.

 

[selfcritical]

Potentially unpopular belief - All novices, unless they are committed to training solely for a sport with one dominating attribute, should use concurrent training, with a fairly large degree of exercise selection. I think something like Sheiko's novice program with even more low intensity cardio added is basically what people should be doing. Novices can most easily improve multiple traits at once, and using more variety will give them more oppurtunity to learn new motor patterns, and to overcome plateaus at intermediate by increasing specificity

 

[Badger67]

I believe that also for the most part, i hope others get on board with it.

 

[JauntyAngle]

I've got one:

Oly ifts frequently won't be the best means of training explosiveness for athletes.

If you are training explosiveness, the movements you train should be fairly sports-specific. With the Oly lifts, the movement starts off slow, gathers pace as you sweep the bar into the hips and then the explosive part happens- the popping of the hips, some pulling of the bar. (The jerk is also an explosive movement, but I'll put that aside for now.)

While that might well be helpful in many sports, there are also some where it is going to be irrelevant (e.g. a tennis player wanting more powerful ground strokes) or marginal (some sort of field sport player wanting to be able to change directions quicker).

 

[selfcritical]

What do you think about med ball throws for distance for developing explosion/speed?

 

[j123]

What do you think about med ball throws for distance for developing explosion/speed?

I'm not very experienced as a lifter and not a S&C coach either, but I feel there needs to be a max strength base developed in newer athletes/competitors before moving onto plyos (esp. the higher demanding ones). I wouldn't recommed guys who can't squat their BW to be employing depth jumps into their routine.

 

[JauntyAngle]

What do you think about med ball throws for distance for developing explosion/speed?

I'm no S&C coach, but I would have thought that they could be pretty good for any sport where you have to extend your arm explosively out in front of you. Anything that you can change the resistance is going to be helpful, so you can do them progressively and also adjust where you are on the strength/speed curve. And being able to measure distance means you could measure performance. So... they sound good to me.

What do you think? You know a lot more about this stuff than I do.

 

[selfcritical]

I'm not very experienced as a lifter and not a S&C coach either, but I feel there needs to be a max strength base developed in newer athletes/competitors before moving onto plyos (esp. the higher demanding ones). I wouldn't recommed guys who can't squat their BW to be employing depth jumps into their routine.

Hence the question about light weight throws. Not a lot of force absorbed, but high velocities are reached

 

[selfcritical]

I'm no S&C coach, but I would have thought that they could be pretty good for any sport where you have to extend your arm explosively out in front of you. Anything that you can change the resistance is going to be helpful, so you can do them progressively and also adjust where you are on the strength/speed curve. And being able to measure distance means you could measure performance. So... they sound good to me.

What do you think? You know a lot more about this stuff than I do.

I compete in the one sport where explosiveness definitely doesn't matter, so very little practical experience in developing it. If i get to where actually want to compete in Judo/Sambo, i'll probably have to put some more thought into practical organization. I can't Oly lift to save my life either.

 

[ripskater]

What do you think about med ball throws for distance for developing explosion/speed?

I never really did much of that, but I think it's beneficial. I know some sprint coaches do many variations of medicine ball throws.

 

[ripskater]

I've got one:

Oly ifts frequently won't be the best means of training explosiveness for athletes.

If you are training explosiveness, the movements you train should be fairly sports-specific. With the Oly lifts, the movement starts off slow, gathers pace as you sweep the bar into the hips and then the explosive part happens- the popping of the hips, some pulling of the bar. (The jerk is also an explosive movement, but I'll put that aside for now.)

While that might well be helpful in many sports, there are also some where it is going to be irrelevant (e.g. a tennis player wanting more powerful ground strokes) or marginal (some sort of field sport player wanting to be able to change directions quicker).

I think the oly lifts are typically more beneficial to sports than powerlifts.

I am a fan of doing many exercises and training many movements rather than a bunch of sets of a few. Unless you just have some really glaring weakness that is crucial to the sport you want to compete in.

 

[JauntyAngle]

Hence the question about light weight throws. Not a lot of force absorbed, but high velocities are reached

Well, I believe it's true that your "strength base " should be there before you consider doing much explosiveness work.

Presuming the base is there, I think there's a lot to be said a linear periodization, with general strength, max strength, "conversion to power" and taper blocks. During "conversion to power" you would do a little bit of maintenance (85% 3x3 type stuff), and then draw on the armory of exercises you can use to increase power- depth jumps, bounding, box jumps, Oly lifts, speed variants of the power lifts, sprints, agility drills, various types of throws. But your selection has to be reaonably sports specific- if your sport doesn't involve jumping or running or a similar motion, no sprints or bounding etc. Programming, I believe, is a lot like you would programme sprints- relatively low volume, plenty of recovery between sets and reps if needed, high focus on completing its movement with maximum speed (no grinding it out), but other than that, progressive.

I think something like 2-4 weeks for this type of thing is recommended, depending on how important strength and power is for you. That would be coming after the two main strength blocks, which would be 6-8 weeks each. So, overall not that much of your time is spent working on explosiveness.

 

[Obscure Terror]

Fuckin' Jaunty laying down the truth.

1. Build a strength base
2. Maintain strength and build power
3. Maintain strength and power and focus on specificity

Almost all trainees try and skip 1. to try 2. & 3. This is a mistake.

Conditioning and power output are built on a strength base, and they are both qualities you can build quickly, but also lose quickly. Strength takes a long time to build, but also a long time to lose.

 

[MMouse]

They're both useful, as per shown in Joel Jamison's FAQ thread. LISS helps for overall endurance, and HIIT is for high intensity pace. So in a fight it would be:

LISS helps for the total duration (25min fight, 5x5min)
HIIT helps for the max intensity of each round

doing only LISS would be bad, as the fighter would gas in a very heavy paced round
doing only HIIT would be bad, because by the 3rd round he would be wiped

I speak from exp on both. First 2 fights, I only did only LISS type running (5-6km daily runs) and gassed in the 2nd of a 3x2min fight (2min, although it sounds very short, the intensity is much higher than a 5min round).
3rd fight, I did HIIT only. Did well at first, but gassed horribly in the third. It was tied, and I ended up getting a 4th round, and I had nothing to answer.

This

Best gas tank I had for my fights was having both systems developed

 

[AtlSteel]

Low rep low volume heavy deadlifts cure all kinds of shit. Not sure that's an unpopular belief but it's been true for me. Posture, lower back pain, misc aches. By heavy I mean last set is 1-3 rep range to failure or almost failure (with good form) after a few warm up sets building up to it. A few days to recover.

 

[livingdeadmoose]

Doing more than 40-50 pushups or situps is just pointless, needless suffering. You should do a harder exercise if you can do 50 of something, unless you just get a sense of satisfaction out of doing a lot of the same thing. It isn't really making you stronger.

I really wish the military would learn this.

 

[Noodles03]

I heard with weight training to always go heavy on your last set of your workout because that's when your body adapts the best. Is there any truth to that?

 

[Badger67]

No. There's tons of benefits to vary rep ranges, intensity levels and rest intervals. One doesn't have to lift heavy on their last set to get stronger. There's things like periodization, step schemes, % based programs and RPE programs. Some of which, you wont be lifting anything seriously heavy (90% 1RM +) for long time, if at all.