Introduction
Olympic Weightlifting can be a sport in which athletes compete to the total weight of two lifts: the snatch and the clean & jerk. The education methods utilized in Weightlifting may also be employed by Strength & Conditioning coaches as a way of strength training to get a great deal of other sports. One of the primary causes of exploiting various strength training modalities such is made for power development. There are many variations on the party’s theme of power training. Some training modalities include plyometrics (Wilson, Elliot & Wood 1990), assisted and resisted training (Faccioni 1993a; 1993b) and speed and acceleration drills (Cinkovich 1992). A favorite method employed to increase athletic power is Olympic Weightlifting (ie power cleans, push presses, snatches, jump jerks in addition to their variations) conducted from the exercise (Garhammer, 1993). It is traditionally been described as efficient of manufacturing general explosive ability (Takano 1992; Stone 1993; Garhammer & Gregor 1992). However, there are many important considerations that demand to be addressed when implementing Olympic lifting exercises into the Strength & Conditioning program of an athlete, some of these include movement competency, training age, sport and coaching time with athlete. The purpose of this informative article by Elite Performance Institute (EPI) is to give you a biomechanical and physiological discussion as to why weightlifting exercises are beneficial to improve athletic performance and how they must be performed in the exercise program. For additional information, go to www.epicertification.com
Power Defined
Power may be defined as the best mix of speed and strength to create movement (Chu 1996). Particularly, power represents draught beer the athlete to create high levels of work through a certain distance. The harder power a player possesses the better the level of work performed (Wilson 1992). Power can be a mix of strength and speed:
POWER = FORCE (strength) X VELOCITY (speed to move)
There are many physiological and neural adaptations which comprise the strength component (Moritani 1992). Physiological adaptations to strength incorporate a rise in muscle tissues through hypertrophy, ligament density and bone integrity (Tesch 1992a). Neural adaptations (Schmidtbleicher 1992) that can be produced are: (1) increased recruitment of motor units; (2) increased firing rate of motor neurones; (3) synchronised firing of motor neurones; (4) increase in intra-muscular coordination; and (5) increase in inter-muscular coordination.
Speed to move is composed of a number of interrelated factors (Ackland & Bloomfield 1995). These are generally; (1) muscle fibre type; (2) skill; (3) muscle insertion points; (4) lever length; (5) muscular posture; and (6) elastic energy technique series elastic component.
Olympic Weightling exercises facilitate development of the guts (Strength-Speed and Speed-Strength) with the force-velocity (FV) curve (see above). The FV curve acts a road map to Strength & Conditioning Certification regarding the type of strength developed from each exercise, session or phase of training from the program. Because of this, the Strength & Conditioning coach can effectively plan what sort of power they need to develop and which training modality (powerlifting, Olympic liftining, plyometrics, etc) is better utilised to elicit these adaptations.
Conclusion
Concern still exists as to the ef?cacy of including Olympic weightlifting exercises from the strength training programs of athletes in sports other than weightlifting. These concerns generally belong to 3 broad categories: 1) Perceived time required to discover the movements due to the complexity with the lifts. 2) Deficiencies in comprehension of the potential bene?ts that can be derived from performing Olympic lifting exercises correctly. 3) Concern in the possibility of injury as a result of performing these weightlifting movements.
It is evident there’s a plethora of biomechanical great things about performing these lifts with limited disadvantages. The biggest risk may be with the perceived danger of performing these lifts. Judging by the research presented by Brian Hammill with the British Weightlifting Association (BWLA), it could be stated with con?dence the injury risk can be as low or below most sports providing there exists quali?ed supervision given by certi?ed Strength and Conditioning coach who have been trained in coaching the weightlifting movements.
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