Muscular Force

30 March 2021

13:45

Neuromuscular training

 

Your neuromuscular system is made up of nerves and muscles. It takes both for your body to work properly. For instance when doing single-length intervals in the pool while focused only on PDLC with long recoveries after each lap, you are building nerve pathways to fire certain muscles at the right times and in the right ways. Repetition increases your skill for a particular movement.

 

The more times you use certain nerves to cause the muscles to contract powerfully, the faster and more economical you become.

 

Sports scientists used to believe that only muscle size determined a person's strength. But since the 1980s, strength training research has shown that the nervous system plays a major role in how powerful an athlete is.

 

In this chapter we will see how to use the two training tools to strengthen your neuromuscular system and ultimately make you more powerful and capable of going fast for a long time. These tools are plyometric training and strength training

Muscle

 

There are several muscle types throughout your body. At the most basic level, these are divided into fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibre types. The slow-twitch fibres are your endurance muscles. They aren't very powerful, but they can contract over and over before fatiguing. Fast-twitch muscles are just the opposite, they contract very powerfully, but fatigue very quickly. Every triathletes has a unique mix of these two general muscle types.

 

In general terms, the triathletes who will commonly benefit the most from strength training are women and those over the age of 50.

Plyometric training

 

Plyometric training consists of explosive bounding and jumping drills. It was briefly introduced in Chapter 12 with strides workout. Perhaps the perfect workout for improving your running efficiency, plyometric training combines fast running with a focus on form on a fairly soft surface, such as grass, and a bounding drills between the fast-form runs. While there is some research showing that plyometric training improves cycling, it's most effective in improving running power and speed.

 

Looking at running from a strictly biomechanical perspective, there are three things you can do to run faster:

• Increase your stride length
• Quicken your cadence
• Reduce ground contact time.

 

In early base period, do strides with plyometrics two or three times each week along with about 8 strides in a session (each stride takes about 20s). After 6 - 8 weeks of such training you can go into maintenance mode with one or two such sessions per week.

 

The combination of strides and plyometrics can be a workout on its own when preceded by a long warm-up and followed by a long cooldown, or you can use it as part of the warm-up for another run workout. Such training should be done only when you are fresh and rested. Doing it when you are fatigued will cause your body to produce less muscular power, exactly the opposite of what you are trying to achieve.

 

• Never stop doing the strides-plyometrics workout, it should be the most frequent workout of all your running sessions.
• Do not try to force your stride length to increase or your ground contact time to decrease, this will only make you slower and less efficient.
• Be patient and allow the strides-plyometrics workouts to make the changes gradually

 

If the weather forces you to train indoor, you can use a jump rope instead. Double- and single-leg rope jumping is a simple form of plyometrics.

Strength training

 

Force x Speed = Power

 

Force results from neuromuscular strength and can be developed with weight training. Another reason for weight lifting is injury prevention (up to half). Strength training has also been shown to reduce fatigue in the latter portions of a long endurance race.

 

 

Weight lifting language

 

• Free weights and machines: Free weights must be held in your hands and balanced during the exercise. Balancing the load helps to improve small-muscle and core strength, but it's risky. On the other hand, balance is not required with machines, so they are considerably safer. If you are new to lifting weights, machines are probably the better way to go.
• Sets and reps: A weight lifting workout is made up of several exercises to build strengths. Each exercise consists of several repetitions (reps) which makes up 1 set. The sets are usually then repeated with a brief recovery break after each.
• Load: How heavy is the weight that you are lifting.
• Repetition maximum (1RM): How great the load is for a given set of an exercise is typically based on how heavy the greatest load is that you can lift on time for that exercises. This is called 1RM.

If you're not an experienced weight lifter, select a load you can lift only 4 to 10 times for a given exercise. Then se how many reps you can do with that load and using the following table, determine your 1RM factor for that exercise.

• Recovery: make sure you have adequately recovered before doing the next set.
• Spotter: A training partner who can assist you with balancing the load and guide you through the exercise
• Concentric and eccentric contraction: Muscles always work in one of two was, concentrically or eccentrically. In a concentric contraction, the muscle gets shorter as the load is lifter (e.g. arm curl). In an eccentric contraction, the muscle gets longer as the weight is lowered (e.g. back to arm curl start position). Every strength exercise has a concentric and an eccentric component. You are capable of handling a much greater load when doing eccentric exercise, but they also place a great deal more strain on the muscle.
• Speed of movement: Some of the exercises call for "ballistic" movements. These are often described as "explosive" lifts. When you are doing ballistic exercises, the concentric contraction is the movement that is done explosively; the eccentric portion is done slowly.
• Replicating a sport's movements: There is little reason to do exercises that aren't similar to the sport in which you are trying to become stronger and more powerful.
• Multijoint exercise: The sports involve the use of several joints that are driven by contracting muscles at the same time. It's always best to do exercises involving all of the primary joints of that movement.
• Balancing muscle strength: The exception to the multijoint exercise guideline occurs when you are balancing muscle strength. Joint motion is controlled by two or more muscles. The working muscle for a joint is called the agonist. When the agonist is working ,the other muscles for that joint are relaxing, they are called the antagonist. There should be a healthy ratio of strength between the two.

 

 

Other weight lifting consideration

 

• Workout spacing: Weight lifting sessions should be spaced as evenly as possible throughout the week.
• Warm-up and cooldown: Just as before swimming, biking and running workouts, there should be a warm-up before lifting weights and a cooldown afterwards.
• Warmup: There are 2 steps in a strength training warm-up routine:
1. Increase blood flow slowly o the muscles that will soon be challenged by lifting heavy loads. 5 to 15 minutes of gradually increasing aerobic movement on a stationary bike or a treadmill will increase your blood flow in your legs.
2. Make a few reps of the exercise with a light load (e.g. body weight only). Emphasize on technique while doing these. Do this second-stage warm-up before each subsequent exercise.
• Cool down: Spinning for a few minutes (5 minutes is plenty) on a bike with good technique and a relatively high cadence will help to restore your neuromuscular firing sequence.
• Exercise order: Do the exercises that involve the heaviest loads first and alternate muscle groups and movements.
• Starting a new phase: When starting a new phase of strength training involving heavier loads than what you've been using, be conservative in selecting loads in the first session.
• New exercises: If unsure how to do an exercise, have someone who is experienced show you.
• Lifting failure: Doing reps until you are unable to lift the weight one more time is not recommended. Pay attention to how your muscles feel and stop 1 or 2 reps short of failure.
• Time available: The exercises described later are only the ones that are most likely to result in performance gain. Feel free to do more if you have the time and energy.
• Muscle mass: Some athletes are likely to bulk up when lifting weights. While that's good for strength, it can be counterproductive to triathlon performance.
• Food and strength: Research suggests that eating 10 to 25 grams of leucine-rich protein immediately after the session, but at least within 3 hours of lifting, enhances strength gains. Example of common protein and leucine-rich foods (10g proteins and 1000mg leucine) are boiled eggs (2 medium), cheddar cheese (45g) and milk (295ml).
• Special groups and weight lifting: Young triathletes (under 18) must be very cautious with weight lifting. Triathletes over 50 reap the greatest benefits from weight lifting.

 

Strength training program

 

Bike

The key to make significant gains is to build up to lifting heavy loads with a low number of reps by doing exercises that primarily work the extension of the hip, knee and ankle joints at the same time. There are six common weight lifting exercises that drive these joints:

• Double-Leg Squat (p.223)
• Single-Leg Squat (p.224)
• Dead Lift (p.225)
• Step-Up (p.226)
• Lunge (p.227)
• Leg Press (p.228) (uses machine)
• Leg Curl (p.229): (the leg curl exercises is not a power-enhancing exercise for cycling. Its purpose is to balance the strength of the three hamstring muscles)

Choose one or two of these exercises that you will do in each weight lifting session. Or you may opt to do several of them in the interest of variety over the course of the season.

 

Run

You can make even greater gains in running by doing ballistic weight lifting with lighter loads (50% of 1RM or less). There are two ballistic power building exercises for runners, select one of these to do along with the cycling exercises:

• Power Step-Up (p.231)
• Power Clean (p.232)

 

Swim

Swimming is the least likely to improve as a result of weight lifting. The reason for that is that the swim positions are very difficult to replicate in the gym. The risk is that you are building strength for movement you shouldn't use and that will make you slower if you do. There is one dryland exception:

• Catch and Pull (p.234)

 

 

Sport-specific strength training alternatives

 

There are swim, bike and run workouts that you can do to develop strength without ever liftin a weight. While these workouts have significant strength rewards, there are risks you need to be aware of. You must be cautious and conservative when doing any of these exercises. The first time you do any of them, do only 2 or 3 reps and hold back on how much effort you put into each.

 

Biking

This workout is called force reps. It involves using a small, steep hill and high gears. The details of the force reps are described in Appendix C Muscular Force - F1 Force Reps. This workout calls for 3 sets of 3 reps each. Each set in this workout, with recoveries, takes 10 to 20 minutes, so doing 3 sets with a warm-up and cooldown requires at least 45 minutes and as much as 90 minutes. Do an easy workout the following day.

 

Running

Just as with the bike force reps, you need a step hill. The hill can be quite short, about 10 / 15 meters. It's best to do these on a grassy hill because the softer surface reduces some of the leg stress and therefore the risk for injury. If you decide to try the workout with a weight vest, wait until after you've done the workouts two or three times without it. The details of the force reps are described in Appendix D Muscular Force - MF1.

 

There are a few things to look for when purchasing a weight vest. Look for one that has Velcro straps so the fit can be adjusted. Also look for a vest that allows you to adjust the amount of weights that can be carried.  For the running force reps workout you'll likely use about 5% to 10% of your body weight. However, the vest may also be used for weight lifting in a home gym, so you may want to have the option to greatly increase the load well above 10% of body weight.

 

Whether doing bike or run force reps, do this workout only one time per week for each sport. Within 6 weeks, you should be aware of feeling much stronger during this session.

 

Swimming

When it comes to swimming, the most critical component of performance is technique. When your movement patterns are well established, you can move on to building swim strength. When working on swim strength, you obviously can't use hills. The alternatives are to use hand paddles or wear a T-shirt while swimming. The paddles emphasize the catch portion of the stroke, wearing a T-shirt increases the drag of swimming and causes you to work harder to overcome the resistance. The details are described in Appendix B Muscular Force - MF1.

 

Whether you are using paddles or T-shirt, simply do the fast-form 25s just as before, only now with greater resistance. You must treat this drill with caution and you must always include an adequate warm-up of 10 to 15 minutes in the pool, followed by a few fast-form 25s without paddles or T-shirt.

 

To keep things simple, I recommend doing the force reps with 3 sets of 3 reps each and with long recoveries between reps and longer recoveries between sets. Start conservatively by doing only 1 set the first time and increase the load gradually over the course of a few weeks.

 

 

Core strength

 

Core strength could also be called torso strength. It has to do with small and big muscled from your armpits to your groin. These core muscles stabilize the spine, support the shoulder and hips, and transfer force between the arms and legs. Poor core strength is most obvious in running and less obvious in cycling and swimming, but in all three sports it results in a loss of muscular force.

 

How do you know if your core strength is adequate ? One way is to have a physical therapist do an assessment. Another ways is to have someone make a video of you while running, then look for the dropping hip on the recovery side. Run on a treadmill and shot the video from the back. Tuck your T-shirt in, so you can watch the waistband of the running shorts on the video to see if it dips from side to side when recovery leg swings through.

 

You can easily fit these into your strength training, as a stand-alone workout or included following a swim, bike or run session. Examples of core strength exercises are:

• Front plank (p.240)
• Side plank (p.241)
• Front plank with rows (p.243)

 

Periodization of neuromuscular training

 

Periodization of muscular force training

 

The number of weight lifting exercises is rather limited, do only six or seven exercises - one or two hip-knee-ankle extensions, leg curls, one power exercise pour running, the catch and two for core strength. The workout will probably take around 45 minutes to an hour.

 

 

Periodization of weight lifting

 

Summary of the weight lifting phases

 

Details of the weight lifting phases. This table doesn't include the core exercises. Core exercises may be included continually throughout the season with little concern for periodization.

 

For best results, do the weight lifting session immediately after a swim, bike or run. If you can't lift then and must do it before another workout, then separate the two sessions by several hours.

 

 

Periodization of sport-specific alternatives

 

The force reps workout done while swimming, biking, and running are treated in much the same way as gym sessions when it comes to periodization.

 

Periodization of force reps for Swimming, Biking and Running

 

These may be blended into a swim, bike or run workout during which you are also working on other abilities. To reduce the risk for injury, however, the force reps portion should be done early in the workout immediately after your warm up. For example, if you are going for a ride in which the primary focus will be aerobic endurance, you could warm up for 15 to 30 minutes, do a force reps segment, then continue into the main set.

 

 

Concurrent training

 

You probably can't do everything, so you will need to decide how much time and energy you have available for training. The first consideration is which sport is your greatest limiter. When it come to limiters, your primary concern should be cycling, because it accounts for about half of your total race time, then running, and finally swimming. Focus on your limiting sport and emphasize on those things that are likely to produce the greatest improvements, this may not be muscular force.