Despite the majority of high level power athletes putting in significant time in the gym, it’s an topic that often divides opinion.
Is lifting necessary?
You will inevitably here a few people who will (very vocally!) say that sprinters don’t need to lift and will list athletes of athletes that famously did little to nothing in the way of lifting, Carl Lewis perhaps being their favourite example.
And to be fair it’s true.
It isn’t necessary to lift weights to develop the various different types of strength, but it certainly is a very practical way of doing so. It is perfectly possible to come up with extremely challenging bodyweight exercises – if you doubt that just go try a single arm press up with your feet on a chair. However a barbell is a widely accessible tool where the load can easily be controlled, monitored and adapted… how does one add an extra 2.5kg of load to a single arm press up for example. The ability to manage load is one of the big advantages to lifting over other forms of strength work in my opinion.
For the purposes of this blog, I’ll focus on strength work towards the slower end of the force/velocity curve where lifting weights really comes into its own.
Too much of a good thing?
My view is that whilst the manageability and therefore monitoring of load is one of the things that make weights so attractive, it can also be one of the biggest problems.
Athletes tend to be competitive, not just with others but also with themselves. It is far too easy to get caught up in seeing the numbers going up in the training diary. Athletes must remember that the lifting is being done to support their sport and not an end in its own right. I must admit in my own training days I got caught up in the gym, became far too bulky and went into track sessions fatigued after lifting sessions earlier in the day.
It goes against the nature of many athletes, but I believe that for many there comes a point when they need to accept that there is little to be gained by getting any stronger at certain exercises. Take a female sprinter, who after several years of work is deadlifting 180kg for example… she could most likely still get stronger, perhaps even close in on that big psychological barrier of 200kg. But to do so is likely to require a fairly significant commitment to that goal which is likely to come at the expense of track sessions or even other work in the gym which would have had a greater benefit.
Finding the sweet spot
I’ve found the most effective way to incorporate lifting is to keep the overall volume relatively light. It’s necessary to accept that when it comes to heavy lifting there will be an impact on the CNS, so I try to write the programme so that there is a decent gap between a heavy gym session and the next high intensity track session.
The challenge here can often be gym-culture and peer pressure. Going to the gym is one of the few parts of a power athlete’s training that they can do alongside their non-track mates. However, what I would programme for someone looking to run 100m as quickly as possible is very different to what I would set for a teenage lad that wants to fill out a fitted shirt in a nightclub. Whilst your typical gym-goer won’t need to be fully recovered until their next gym session, a sprinter will likely have a high intensity speed session in their programme before they next pick up a barbell again. Clearly, where the opportunity to recover is different, the workload should be different too. The athletes need to accept this and appreciate that what may be fine for their mates is likely more than they should be doing.
Comments