Have you ever seen a golfer swinging a weighted club?
Have you ever seen a basketball player practice throwing with a medicine ball?
Have you ever seen a boxer shadowboxing with dumbbells?
If you have, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, let me explain.
There is something of a fad called “sport specific training.” The theory is that if you replicate the movements of your sport with heavier objects, you will get better at those movements. And if you buy into that theory, it can make you worse. Much worse.
Why? Because when your nervous system learns new movements, it creates something called a “motor program.” When your nervous system “codes” for the new program, there are several components that go into it, and what the movement looks like is just one component. The other components are speed, range of motion, which muscle contracts, at what time and with what force.
So what happens when you load a movement that in your sport you perform unloaded? If it’s heavier, you have to go slower, the range of motion may be shorter, and it certainly changes which muscles contribute to the movement.
All in all this can cause poor technique carryover to your sport, and if you have good technique to begin with, practicing your sport with weight can make it worse.
So leave the sport specific training for the sport, and in the gym train fundamental movements, like pushing, pulling, squatting, lunging and others.
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Until next week,
Igor.
647-271-8672
