By Josh Luck

 

 

As athletes, it is important for us to realize the significance of our training scheme to have an effective carry over to our sport. In many sports like wrestling, boxing, figure skating, and others, body weight is an issue. Making the weight class or just keeping your figure for presentation is important. With this in mind, we must effectively create a training program that limits the factor of hypertrophy (growth of muscle), but focuses more on what we call relative strength. Relative strength is simply, the amount of force your muscles can produce in relation to your body weight. For the wrestler, being as strong as possible for your weight class is important but by doing so, doesn’t mean we have to put on muscle, ultimately shifting us into a higher weight class. Moving to a higher weight class simply pushes the competition to the next level. As the level of competition increases, so does the strength of the other athletes. Training to gain maximal strength and keeping our body weight relatively the same, involves these steps to training;

 

1. We must focus on our maximal lifts that involve or imitate muscle function in the sport.

 

 

2. Using these lifts, we must generate maximal force stressing neuromuscular adaptation (mind-on-muscle connection) in the working muscle. In doing so, repetition ranges of 1-5 rep maximums must be utilized (repetition maximums use 90-100% of your ability to lift a weight 1 time, causing the muscle to completely fatigue in the 1-5 rep range).

 

 

3. The more repetitions completed at maximal effort, the fewer sets necessary for the body to benefit. When using repetition maximums, the number of sets per exercise must be high in order for the body to respond to the training effect. Six to twelve sets of 1-5 reps per exercise have the best training effect. This allows the body to adapt to the weight being lifted. Because we are dealing with a low number of repetitions (and lack of time under tension), we must give the body a repeated amount of maximal effort (90-100%) to make significant gains of strength.

 

 

4. The amount of time under tension in relative strength training should not exceed 20 seconds per set of the exercise. For example; if I were doing a set of 5 repetitions, I could use a tempo of 3 seconds per eccentric contraction (lengthening of the muscle), and 1 second of contraction (shortening of the muscle). Giving me a total time under tension of 4 seconds. Four seconds of 5 repetitions would give me 20 seconds per set. Different variations of eccentric, isometric (pause in the bottom or top of the movement) and concentric contractions can be used, as long as they do not exceed 20 seconds.

 

 

5. The higher the training intensity, the longer the rest intervals between sets must be. Because we are dealing with such high training intensities (90-100%), rest intervals of 3-5 minutes between sets are necessary for full muscle and neural recovery. Training under fatigue leads to incorrect form and increased chances of injury. This limits the maximal output of the muscle (exactly what we don’t want to happen). We want the muscle to produce a maximal force in the fastest amount of time with correct form.

 

 

Training for relative strength is a very strenuous and hectic training parameter. You should always train with a partner, because the loads are so high. Safety is paramount in any training program. It is found that an average rep range of 3 repetitions work best for athletes. Performing reps of 1-2 for excessive amounts of time will not be significant in training progression. They should be used as a variation for short periods of time. Excessive loads of 1 repetition maximums for a long period of time will burn an athlete out, and could also lead to injury. It is important to listen to your body and what it tells you. Each workout an athlete performs, one of two things should be able to occur;

 

 

1. The athlete should be able to progress 1-2% in the training load (weight)

 

 

-or-

 

2. The athlete should be able to perform 1or 2 more repetitions than the previous workout.

 

 

If neither of the training factors can be obtained, the athlete needs to change the exercise variation because the body has adapted to the working volume (reps, weight) or time (tempo).

 

Josh Luck is the owner/founder of EliteFootballTraining.com . For more information regarding this topic or you would like to submit a comment, please send an email to joshualuck@eiltefootballtraining.com or please visit http://www.EliteFootballTraining.com for other related topics and training information.

 

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