Monday, March 8, 2010

The concentric phase - the need for speed

In 1999 I wrote, published and claimed copyright on this concept (bolding added now):

Where I believe most get it wrong is this. For those concerned about power (rate of force development), I don’t recommend using anything less than a fast or attempted-to-be-fast concentric contraction for some 80-90% of total training time. A lack of awareness of the ‘need for speed’ (attempted acceleration) in the concentric phase in the power athlete may result in an adaptation to a non-specific rate of force development. This is the same non-effective and perhaps detrimental training effect that occurred when athletes first started using strength training and using the bodybuilding methods way back decades ago – a total lack of awareness of the need for a fast/attempted-to-be-fast concentric contraction. Therefore the power athlete cannot afford to spend more than 10-20 % (as a generalization) of their total strength training time using numbers greater than 1 as the third number.

I was conducting research and I came upon the following exercise in a publication copyright claimed by another 'author' at a subsequent date (bolding added):

As an important consideration however is the use of tempo with power athletes. For anyone concerned with power or speed, anything less than an explosive (or an attempt to be explosive) is not recommended for the bulk of your training. While it is fine for a general fitness client or an aesthetic driven client to use slow concentric it is largely determinantal for the explosive power athlete as it is non-specific to the development of power. So for the explosive athletes a rep tempo will either end in a ‘1’ or an ‘X’.

And I said to myself: “That looks familiar!” So I cross-referenced it and I said to myself: “Wow! No wonder that looked familiar!”

And I came upon this wording another one more times by the same 'author' in different publications - in the absence of credits or references to the origin or permission to use from the original author (myself), and that the 'author' claimed copyright....

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