The Strength Umbrella
If you haven’t already read Dr. Matt Jordan and Stu McMillan’s excellent article titled: Reflexive eccentrics: Their role in performance enhancement & injury prevention please do! Per usual, anything written by these two gentlemen usually gets me thinking, questioning myself, and, in some cases reinforces hunches and ideas!
Specifically, for me, it was a basic question: “What is strength?” Really, that’s it? What is strength? Are you kidding me? Well, one of the first priorities in measurement theory is to properly define what it is you’re measuring. So, what is strength? And for whom? What kind of strength? For what training age? What sport?
“This was a turning point for us and spurred us to view muscular strength as an umbrella term that encapsulated many different force capacities.” – Dr. Matt Jordan
Reflecting back over the years, my internal question was always, what’s strong enough? Is there a certain cutoff, threshold or measure of absolute strength. Specifically, for athletes with advanced training ages, what’s the time cost, risk/reward for increasing absolute strength? I viewed strength with horse blinders. Perhaps a better question would have been, at the highest level of sport, are there any other strength qualities that matter more?
“We questioned and redefined what we understood about traditional strength training methodology, knowing when to apply the basics and when to experiment with other training methods that deviated from the norm.” -Dr. Matt Jordan
“This period was marked by a significant shift in our approach. We moved from a traditional “get big, strong, and powerful” mindset to a more nuanced understanding of strength, where the specific shapes and patterns that occurred in the sporting movement, and the quality and type of muscle contraction, became as important as the quantity of force produced.” -Stu McMillan
Our strength umbrella is very different for foundational performance factors (beginner/intermediate) relative to specific performance factors (advanced trainees).
The Strength Umbrella: Specific Performance Factors
This has been written about in my second book, The Gain, Go, Grow Manual. Here is an exert below.
“You could say that as strength and conditioning professionals we build efferent beasts, but some of the best hockey players I’ve played against or coached aren’t the strongest, although they do take their training seriously. Perhaps the “best of the best” are afferent beasts who use their strength wisely, position themselves appropriately and are much more efficient in choosing the appropriate motor task to accommodate the changing environmental conditions. Strength training is paramount in sharpening the sword and should be part and parcel of the process. Strength enhances the action/reaction of the foot to ice contact forces, reduces soft tissue related injury and increases performance; however, the coordination and response to the environment to use this strength may separate the average from the high caliber. This specific coordinative response is best perfected on the ice.”
Our programs are still simple, but the adaptations we are attempting to solicit are different. Our strength umbrella is more nuanced. Thanks Gents for the reminder and excellent article.
